A Mathematician Redistricts Congress

 The 2013 GOP House of Representatives:

 An Embarrassment to Democracy

We've heard plenty -- including posts on this blog -- about the anti-democracy tactics being successfully employed in states where the entire state government is under Republican/ALEC control.  When a state governor, the state house and the state senate are entirely prepared to enact anti-democracy schemes, the results are not pretty.

In the 2013 election we can see the grisly results of this multi-state tactic.  Although a majority of votes were cast in the election for democratic candidates, the control of the Federal House of Representatives remained in the hands of John Boehner and the tea baggers.  When too many "Democratic" Senators refused to back Reid's proposal to reform the filibuster rule in the Senate, effective control of that body remained in the regressive hands of Mitch McConnell.

We can point at Boehner and McConnell easily enough, but we must remember that neither of these two "representatives" actually represents anyone in the states where they were elected.  Even the most generous over view of the "legislative habits" of these two, along with their respective cronies, hardly suggests that they have any particular interest in the needs of any visible constituency or the country.

Understand in no uncertain terms.  The Republican minority in the Federal Congress does, actually, represent the interests of a constituency.  It's just that this constituency is not the voters who put them into office -- or, of course, the rest of the country, either.  

These Federal boys work for billionaires.  So do their "little brothers" at the state level who have managed to successfully "crow bar jimmy" the districts back home.

This post is going to concentrate on the state level "monkey business" which resulted in the fall of majority rule in the House of Representatives.

A Few Thoughts About Gerrymandering

If you think that the farmers and ranchers in the red state "fly over" country are zealously independent now, try to imagine what this was like in the early days of the nation.  West of the Mississippi a crop of ruthless, rural barons emerged almost at once as the conquered territories were transformed into states.  The wealth and power of these earliest oligarchs was derived primarily from exploiting their ownership of various natural resources -- oil, cattle land, timber, gold and the like.

South of the Mason Dixon Line we found similar oligarchs whose wealth was derived from primarily agricultural holdings operated by slave labor.

This entire class jealously protected their advantages -- regardless of the legitimacy of how those assets had been accrued.  We may think of "Robber Barons" as banking, oil, rail road and manufacturing magnates, but this category of oligarchs operated mainly in the industrialized areas of the East.  Of course, the "Easterners" jealously protected their own holdings.

As it become increasingly clear to this class that the Federal Government was not only here to stay, but likely to become more and more of a presence as time bore on, their "control issues" began to surface.  When the end of the Civil War, the Emancipation Proclamation and other developments started their predictable intrusion into the previously slave driven Southern enterprises, every effort was, naturally, made to promote artificial priorities such as states' rights and to do everything possible to sustain their apartheid past by controlling the election of US Representatives.

In no time, these efforts began to "deliver the goods."  The Southern oligarchs, firmly in command of their state's federal legislators were able to extract all manner of corrupt economic advantages while undercutting any potential Negro voting influence with glacial Jim Crow Laws.

The rural Western oligarchs, seeing how profitable this had been for their Southern counterparts, began their own states' rights moves.  Sewing every possible granule of "distrust for the Feds" among the voters, the cattle-oil-gold barons established themselves as a trustworthy bulwark against federal intervention in their state policies.

In both regions the underpinning of the anti-democracy appetite was the same.  If you were an oligarch, your interests would be far better served if you controlled the "democracy" than it would be if the masses of Americans did it with their votes and through normal kinds of representative government.

The heavy weights in the East may have been the last "pigs at the trough," but they jumped into "remanufacturing democracy" on their own in no time.

How the House Was Designed To Work

MeanMesa will take advantage of an interesting summation of our current dilemma from SilverBuzzCafe (Read the entire article here. )

Rebalancing The House Of Representatives

I’ve been pondering the problem of gerrymandering – the manipulation of electoral boundaries to take advantage of voter demographics. The Republicans have a significant majority (234 to 201) of the seats in the House of Representatives. However, they only won 48% of the popular vote versus the 49.2% that the Democrats won. They managed to retain control of the House because of gerrymandering by the Republican controlled States. 

The situation is now so skewed that the Democrats need 53.5% of the popular vote to gain a majority, whereas the Republicans only need 46.5%. The Republicans have a 7% advantage in a process that is supposed to be democratic. It’s a problem that will be very hard for the Democrats to overcome.

There are some other inequities in the system too. The House of Representatives is supposed to give a proportional share of power to each State based on population. The House controls spending, so States with a large population should tend to contribute more to the Federal government in taxes than small States, so it seems fair enough. There is always the problem that a small State with very high income per capita may be contributing more money than a larger one with low income occupants, but the principle of honoring the wishes of the majority comes into play. That power is balanced by the Senate, which has two Senators per State, preventing small States from being bullied by large ones.

Descending to straight mathematics, we see the United States population -- as it was recorded in the 2010 US Census -- as just under 309,000,000 (309 million) citizens. (Read more: 2010 US Census )  These citizens are represented in the US House by 435 US Representatives.

That all sounds simple enough, but there are just a couple of "special rules" which have been incorporated to make things more fair.  Although the states are divided into Congressional Districts, those districts don't cross state lines in order to create an equal ratio of citizens to Representatives.  There is also a "lower limit" as to the number of Representatives a state will have.  This provides a state such as Alaska -- one with very low population -- the opportunity not to be simply "bumped out" of the House, that is, left with no representation at all or left sharing a Representative with, say, Montana.

The following chart shows the number of citizens represented by a single House Member.  The idea was that this number would be very close as the population of states was compared.  If that were the case, the line across the top of the bars would be basically horizontal.  (You'll probably have to click on the image to find your state along the bottom of the chart.)

(Chart source.)

In practice, the allocation of the number of House seats per State has also gotten out of balance. The chart above shows the number of votes needed to elect a single Representative by State. California and Texas need around 700,000 people to get a Representative, whereas over-represented States like Alaska, North Dakota, Vermont and Wyoming only need around 200,000. Washington, DC is allocated the same number of seats as the lowest scored State. California has about 12% of the population and 12% (53) of the seats in the house, whereas Wyoming has 0.18% and 0.68% (3) respectively. Interestingly, the States that are disproportionately over-represented also tend to be the ones that contribute the least per person in Federal tax Dollars. However, both parties seem to be equally hit by this particular inequity.   (Read the article here.)

Back to Gerrymandering

If you happened to be a Republican Governor in a state with both state houses controlled by Republicans, you had a chance to redistrict, that is, redraw the boundaries of your Congressional Districts, after the US Census in 2010 had been completed.

If there were a way to cleverly perform that redistricting chore which could very carefully group collections of Republican and Democratic voters so that more of the new Congressional Districts had a majority of Republicans and just a sprinkling of Democrats, your state would wind up with more Republican Representatives and fewer Democratic Representatives.

Of course, you would not be outrightly disenfranchising the Democrats in your state, but you would be collecting them together in a special way which would make them a majority in fewer of the new districts you were creating resulting in a slightly larger number of Republican House members. This is exactly the reason why the US House of Representatives is controlled by Republicans when more than a million voters cast Democratic ballots.

This is also what is precisely what is meant by the term: "gerrymandering."

The result would be that your state would send a larger number of Republicans to the House of Representatives even though simply counting the number of ballots cast for each party would suggest the opposite.  However, for such anti-democracy schemes to actually work, the boundaries of the districts which are created for this purpose become grotesque.

The graphic below illustrates some examples of these bizarre Congressional Districts.  Similar district boundaries can be found all across the country in Republican held states.  Let it be added, Democrats are not even close to being "as pure as the driven snow" in this matter, either.

Examples of extreme gerrymandering

The intention is simple enough to understand.  By traipsing along a corridor on both sides of an Interstate or extending weird filaments of districts miles from population centers, the exact, desired "mix" of registered voters can be parcelled out to produce the exact election results desired.

Naturally, when we consider each case of these wildly manipulated district Congressional boundaries all across the country, there is a story of malice and conspiracy behind every one.  The current disaster in Washington is ample evidence of the anti-democracy menace posed by the practice.

The malady has never before reached the degree of the grave threat we are facing today.  One of the two established political parties has forsaken even the possibility of formulating policy which might attract a straight majority in elections and, instead, now commits its entire political effort at exploiting traditional vulnerabilities in the established electoral system.

When we look at each of the two issues brought out [above] in this post we see two serious, fundamental, problems with the system currently in place.  Some Americans have more and less access to the "representative" part of our "representative" democracy based on their state of residence, while others send "representative" delegations to the Congress which are clearly not "representative" and could have not won majorities in Congressional district elections other than arcane, snake-shaped, gerrymandered monstrosities.

The anti-democratic impact of this practice is further aggravated by the brazen voter suppression crimes being routinely conducted by states entirely under the thumb of the GOP -- and, entirely under the thumb of the oligarchs who own that party.  The prospect of the Supreme Court setting aside Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act makes ideas such as the one presented here even more immediately relevant.

None of this is acceptable.  Regardless of the original conspiracies which initially established each of the individual cases of this electoral mayhem, the task of correcting it falls directly to us.  Now.

 Re-Shaping Congressional Districts

 a Part of Election Reform

While MeanMesa visitors who pay attention to the commercial version of national news have recently heard  plenty about the problem of gerrymandering in Republican controlled states, they have also heard very little about what might be done to re-establish the representational fundamentals.  In fact, that same reporting seems to imply that any sort of meaningful correction to the current district boundaries is simply "out of reach" for citizens wishing to bring elections back to some semblance of rationality.

This is not the case.

MeanMesa is certain that we would hear the howls from some Congressmen in "safe" districts if it were even suggested that they might have to face an election where all sorts and varieties of living, breathing people were going to make that decision rather than entire land areas with painfully tailored boundaries inhabited by equally exclusive partisan voters.

Let's get the easy part out of the way first.  We know how many Congressmen we are going to elect.  We also know how many citizens are theoretically to be represented by each one.  We know the population of each state as reported by the census.  Of course, we also know all about the "special rules" which set the minimum number of representatives for low population states.

Presented with this data set, an eighth grader could assign the right number of Congressional districts to all the states in the union.  There would, naturally, be a few unavoidable inequalities in his final product, but it would look nothing like the bar chart up above in this post.  His result would show that almost exactly the same number of citizens was being represented by each Congressman.

Importantly, that is not what the chart above shows.  In fact, what the chart above shows isn't even close to that kind of equal representation.  Some of the most egregious discrepancies are indicating an almost two to one difference.

Of course there have been efforts to curtail the outrages of gerrymandering, but we can see that none of them were even marginally effective.  For the remainder of this post, we can:

1.  look at some of the traditional anti-gerrymandering plans, 

2. briefly analyze why such grotesque schemes were driven by the dated technology of the census, and

3. propose a modern solution which can reinvigorate the principles of democratic representative government.

Now, doesn't that sound like more fun than simply complaining?

Anti-gerrymandering Plans for Voting District Boundaries

The following sample is from WIKI: "Gerrymandering."  It is included here simply as an example of the pre-technology complexity of such schemes.  (Read the entire WIKI article here. Footnotes have been removed, but internal links remain enabled.)

Objective rules to create districts

Another means to reduce gerrymandering is to create objective, precise criteria to which any district map must comply. Courts in the United States, for instance, have ruled that congressional districts must be contiguous in order to be constitutional. This, however, is not a particularly binding constraint, as very narrow strips of land with few or no voters in them may be used to connect separate regions for inclusion in one district.

Minimum district to convex polygon ratio

One method is to define a minimum district to convex polygon ratio. To use this method, every proposed district is circumscribed by the smallest possible convex polygon (similar to the concept of a convex hull, think of stretching a rubberband around the outline of the district). Then, the area of the district is divided by the area of the polygon; or, if at the edge of the state, by the portion of the area of the polygon within state boundaries. The advantages of this method are that it allows a certain amount of human intervention to take place (thus solving the Colorado problem of splitline districting); it allows the borders of the district to follow existing jagged subdivisions, such as neighbourhoods or voting districts (something isoperimetric rules would discourage); and it allows concave coastline districts, such as the Florida gulf coast area. It would mostly eliminate bent districts, but still permit long, straight ones. However, since human intervention is still allowed, the gerrymandering issues of packing and cracking would still occur, just to a lesser extent. Also, it would not allow convex coastline districts, although this could be remedied by a secondary calculation using a "polygon" with a border being a defined distance from the shore

Shortest splitline algorithm

The Center for Range Voting has proposed a way to draw districts by a simple algorithm. The algorithm uses only the shape of the state, the number N of districts wanted, and the population distribution as inputs. The algorithm (slightly simplified) is:

1. Start with the boundary outline of the state.
2. Let N=A+B where N is the number of districts to create, and A and B are two whole numbers, either equal (if N is even) or differing by exactly one (if N is odd). For example, if N is 10, each of A and B would be 5. If N is 7, A would be 4 and B would be 3.
3. Among all possible straight lines that split the state into two parts with the population ratio A:B, choose the shortest. If there are two or more such shortest lines, chose the one that is most north-south in direction; if there is still more than one possibility, chose the westernmost.
4. We now have two hemi-states, each to contain a specified number (namely A and B) of districts. Handle them recursively via the same splitting procedure.
5. Any human residence that is split in two or more parts by the resulting lines is considered to be a part of the most north-eastern of the resulting districts; if this doesn't decide it, then of the most northern.

This district-drawing algorithm has the advantages of simplicity, ultra-low cost, a single possible result (thus no possibility of human interference), lack of intentional bias, and it produces simple boundaries that do not meander needlessly. It has the disadvantage of ignoring geographic features such as rivers, cliffs, and highways and cultural features such as tribal boundaries. This landscape oversight causes it to produce districts different from those an unbiased human would produce. Ignoring geographic features can induce very simple boundaries.
While most districts produced by the method will be fairly compact and either roughly rectangular or triangular, some of the resulting districts can still be long and narrow strips (or triangles) of land.
Like most automatic redistricting rules, the shortest splitline algorithm will fail to create majority-minority districts, for both ethnic and political minorities, if the minority populations are not very compact. This might reduce minority representation.

Another criticism of the system is that splitline districts sometimes divide and diffuse the voters in a large metropolitan area. This condition is most likely to occur when one of the first splitlines cuts through the metropolitan area. It is often considered a drawback of the system because residents of the same agglomeration are assumed to be a community of common interest. This is most evident in the splitline allocation of Colorado.


As of July 2007, shortest-splitline redistricting pictures, based on the results of the 2000 census, are available for all 50 states.

Minimum isoperimetric quotient

See also: Compactness measure of a shape

It is possible to define a specific minimum isoperimetric quotient, proportional to the ratio between the area and the square of the perimeter of any given congressional voting district. Although technologies presently exist to define districts in this manner, there are no rules in place mandating their use, and no national movement to implement such a policy. Such rules would prevent incorporation of jagged natural boundaries, such as rivers or mountains. When such boundaries are required, such as at the edge of a state, certain districts may not be able to meet the required minima. Enforcing a minimum isoperimetric quotient would encourage districts with a high ratio between area and perimeter.

First, we can try to "wrap our minds around" the prospect of doing something like this then explaining the results.  This scheme, regardless of the motives behind it, is practically guaranteed to deliver a product so complex that it will reinforce the very suspicious assumption that the actual working details of the democracy are beyond the grasp of common citizens.

Explaining Several Centuries of Gerrymandering

Next, let's allow our imagination to describe the actual process of traditional redistricting.  We see a basement room filled with long Formica tables where the staff from State legislators are pouring over huge paper maps of their constituent districts.  Greasy hamburger wrappers on the floor are already tempting the mice and cock roaches.

The maps themselves, now falling apart from the continuous "trial boundary lines," are covered with eraser crumbs, a literal cloud around the latest pencil lines setting the district boundaries.  At the end of the table, a road weary political hack is pounding out another few feet of tape from his ten key adding machine.  The cigarette smoke in the place is even thicker than the electoral avarice.  Heavily stained coffee cups have now been set aside, each one filled with cigarette butts and cold Maxwell House.

For the nineteenth time, the lines are once again erased, adjusted, replaced, trimmed, expanded and the process is repeated.  The geometric shape of the proposed districts grows more extreme and arcane with each attempt.

These tattered maps showed "roughly" where voters in specific districts lived, registered and voted.  They also showed the more or less permanent polling place locations.  When the election results from the last few elections were added, the gerrymanderers sitting around that table had everything they needed.

There was also a sense of stoic disassociation floating around with that cigarette smoke.  Every one present knows that a similar crew of "redistricters" was sitting through the same endless task in another basement somewhere.  Those would the the corresponding staff of the opposing party.

When the two contradictory boundary plans had been completed, there would be the inevitable court case for the next step.  An innocent judge -- we hope it will be an innocent judge -- would then laboriously reconcile the district dream boundaries.

Months later, the back breaking judicial task would be completed.  Neither party of the deadlocked State legislature would be pleased with the results, but the party in power would have managed to extract a cluster of tiny advantages from the final plan -- advantages which ultimately delivered one or two quite artificial, "safe" or even "safer," Congressional election districts and the correspondingly larger numbers of partisan House Members.

While this may be a great cartoon, this isn't funny. (image source)

All of this mischief was not only made possible by the state of electoral districting technology of the past, but it was also made inevitable by the savage political ambition of those with access to the decision making.  The rectifying technological possibilities have, of course, advanced significantly, but, unhappily, the ambitions remain just as cravenly intense today as they did then.

This anti-democratic practice was, occasionally, even openly defended by those most involved in the corruptly bewildering, manipulative process.  "We want these residents to be in one district because they have such common interests or common backgrounds."

Just remember that the elections results of the 2012 election handed control of the House of Representatives over to the party that lost the election.

Making The New Districts -- Every Ox Gets Gored

Don't kid yourselves. Unlike those old Formica gerrymandering tables of the past, every modern campaign equips itself with a cold steel data set containing the precise longitude and latitude of the pillow on every voter's bed.  The location of voters is neither a post election surprise nor a pre-election mystery.

Further, developing a "state sized" Cartesian field where every single registered voter can be located by a simple "x and y value" isn't any sort of high tech trick either.

The census has already provided the population data needed.  With that in hand, we can count on every state to jealously calculate the number of Representatives to be elected which is also the number of people living in the soon to be designed district which will elect that Representative.

A hundred years ago, the location of polling places was a consideration.  Voters had to endure a wagon trip taking a day or two just to get to cast a vote.  This is, of course, totally a thing of the past.  In Albuquerque any registered voter can show up at any polling place, have a ballot printed and cast his vote.

Next, we can return to our "not really so funny cartoon."  Those voters wanted a "consolidated" election district.

What does that mean?

For starters we can look at the grotesque examples shown up above, and we can decide that these are not the "consolidated" districts those voters had in mind.  Let's define some rough rules for the definition of "consolidated."

Why not rectangles?

We can begin at one corner of the state and start marking out rectangular shapes of various sizes, each one having just the right number of voters in it.  To avoid a politically "convenient" rectangle shape which happens to be 75 miles long and 800 feet wide, we can establish a minimum "balance" ratio of each rectangle's height to width, that is, each rectangle's North to South dimension compared to the same rectangle's East to West dimension.

Let's say that these dimensions must fall between the ratios of three and five.  This means that we may wind up with a variety of shapes for our boxes, but that  each box will be a rectangle with sides meeting these proportional limits.  This means that each rectangular district we create will be "consolidated."

When a state boundary is irregular because it, for example, follows a river or a coast line, we can employ the old tried and tested surveyor's technique of "double meridian distances."  The only additional "rule" might be to limit the length of the straight chords following the irregular side to, say, one thousand feet or less.  [The shorter the chords are, the more accurate the areas will be.]

But remember, Congressional districting is not about land, it's about people.

All this may sound confoundingly complex, but trust MeanMesa.  A ten year old PC could pull this off in a matter or minutes by raw trial and error.

What Happens

After the initial screaming begins to die off a bit, we find a very different map of political realities in the wake of these simple changes.

A Representative elected in one of the rectangular districts will have to earn his keep by actually representing all the voters -- including the ones who didn't vote for him -- in his election district.  And, horror of horrors, that constituency is going to be a mish mash of every kind of citizen.  The day of the "single agenda" Representative from a perpetually "safe" Congressional District will have ended.

Part of the notable challenge of preforming the responsibilities of being a member of the House of Representatives is to devise a way to actually represent the interests of the people who elected you.  A legitimate Congressional constituency has interests which conflict with each other.  When every effort is made to either exclude voters with such conflicted interests or strand them in synthetic district boundaries without even the most remote chance of constituent representation, democracy is not served -- it is subverted.

MeanMesa thinks that this could improve things immeasurably. Right away.  Some of the "creatures of darkness" prowling around the House of Representatives today would find their "divine right" to be outrageously out of touch had evaporated.

There are serving House members who could not even briefly "hold their own" in a civil conversation with MeanMesa.  Asimov famously said: "Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent."

These incompetents have conspired to do violence to our democracy.  The American voting booth is where these outrages end. 

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.

House Tea Bags After the Fall of FOX

Just an Interesting Question

As we watch the House Republicans careen into an uncertain future, we can imagine that, perhaps, they think that the track under their out of control locomotive actually goes somewhere.  Whatever that dark destination may be, the ties which hold that track are incontrovertibly tied to the now staggering FOX News Leviathan.

The Glorious FOX Route To Congressional Fame (image source )

Previously a stalwart, bed rock foundation for the Republican reactionaries, we now see FOX gleefully dodging the soft bullets of the British Parliament, perhaps a temporary respite before further onslaughts by US authorities and the "nice folks" in its Board of Directors.  Let's just say that FOX is occupied right now, too busy to produce its normal glacial cover for the crooks and other miscreants it managed to elect in 2010.

MeanMesa remains confident that the FOX instructions, orders and talking points still flow in a daily stream to their indentured politicians in the Congress, but when such a petulant, adolescent fascist suddenly realizes that what used to be "Nazi-like efficiency" has cascaded into a divided house, priorities can slip and confusion can set in where there was once mind-numbing order.

This dismal forecast holds just as much for the tea bag in the House as it does for the now wandering bigots, hill billies and other "FOX heads" who used to listen to the rubbish for hours on end.

Without the unifying flow of hate and lies, all these education challenged folk have now become "lost souls."  Using one of their own talking points, the situation can be described as a desperate "crisis in leadership."

Darn.  This always seems to happen when the "leadership" is having their feet cut off at the ankles.

FOX stock is crumbling.  Crowds are cheering.  Murdoch is lying even faster than ever before as he panics, throwing his "colleagues" into the meat grinder, two at a time.

GOPCon House Caucus "Strategy Session" Without FOX ( image source)

A Not So Bright Future for Tea Bags

The moment everyone has been dreading as this whole "crisis in the pig sty" has been unfolding is that last, glorious belch from Murdoch himself.

"Unleash the hill billies!"

Unhappily for the now global "bait and switch" fraud which has been the "Murdoch Media Empire," the hill billies will almost immediately revert to the aimless wandering which characterized them before the FOX sham began.  Bearing their banjos and luke warm cans of Blue Ribbon, they will, once again, congregate in unruly burping clutches at the nearest American Legion bar.

The ultimate effect could reach far beyond the FOX Reich bunker and the stock market, beyond the train wreck at Downing Street and beyond the puzzled, pan handling faces of unemployed "talk whores" such as Limbaugh and Hannity.

The tea bags in the House, previously quite comfortable and secure with Dick Armey's 1,300 strong tea bag movement standing squarely behind them, will find themselves without a constituency.  Coming to its senses, the US electorate will gradually begin to ask themselves "What were we doing, again?  Was there some reason we elected these throw backs in the first place?"

Worse, in the smoky back rooms of the Congress, previously unrepentant tea bag savages who used to march only to the sound of fiscal blood, will find themselves desperately seeking the advice of the old Wall Street banksters who comprise the traditional "looting branch" of the Republican Party.

The tea bags will begin to wear $1,000 dollar suits with red "power ties,"  start to avoid meet and greets at Erma Lou's Grits and Pork Chop Diner and adopt the dour, threatening "frown smiles" we are accustomed to seeing only on the old crooks like Hatch, McConnell and other old school Republican fascists.

It might be a dark day for FOX, but it will herald a promising new sunrise for America.

Wedding Night Blues - The Boehner/Tea Bag Couple

MeanMesa seldom hesitates when the opportunity for fiction drops from the sky, that is, fruit as sweet and ripe as the "low hanging fruit" in the Garden of Eden.  Now, we can invite the muse again.  What might a fly on the wall have heard -- conversation only, please -- from the Republican "love nest" on this first night of married bliss with the keys to the House of Representatives and a slowly warming jug of Rob Roys abandoned impatiently on the motel room desk?

The following, fictional account has been approved for all ages.

Speaker of the House, John Boehner -( image source)

 The "Big Doin's" Where John Found Love

The Wedding Night at the Tea Bag Motel

"Oh, John.  I still can't believe this is really happening.  Here we are -- just the two of us.  You, a big, strong Ohioan and me, an undeserving tea bag trollop.  Now that we are officially married forever and ever, we may as well, you know, we may as well Biblically consummate this 'marriage made in heaven' so all the voters will know that we really do, in fact, love each other completely."

"Uh, of course.  Yes, dear.  It's, uh, time to start the family, I guess.  Maybe I'll just have a quick smoke and another Rob Roy before we get, uh, lost in the passion of the, uh, moment."

"Why are you starting to sob uncontrollably, John?  Isn't this the best day of your life?"

"Nothing to worry about, my dear. I always sob when things get, uh, passionate, darling.  Where did I put my lighter?"

"Oh John.  This is too intense.  I can feel the aphrodisiac sensation of all this new power raging up inside me.  It's making me flush.  Oh God.  Do I ever feel fecund.  Just think.  We're so powerful now that all we have to do is say something and it turns into reality.  That's right, isn't it John?  Why don't you finish that cigarette and your Rob Roy and sashay over here and finish me?  I'm so ready.  I'm going to melt.  I can't wait another minute to start being powerful and fecund."

"I'm coming to get you right now, my little love muffin.  What shall we, uh, 'turn into reality' first?  I know that you want to read the Constitution out loud and repeal health care reform before we, uh, start.  That's fine.  In fact, while you're doing that, I'll have another Rob Roy and smoke a smoke."

"Darn.  This Constitution is plum full of big words.  Is there a dictionary in here, John?  Do you have any chewing gum?  I don't want to have a dry mouth when we start."

"I don't think so, honey.  Let me take a look.  Nope, there's nothing here by a Gideon Bible and few clean towels.  But, hey, not to worry.  Daddy brought a tape recording of the whole Constitution being read over Christmas carols by Justice Scalia.  We can just listen to that while we're, uh, repealing health care."

"That will be great.  Now, we've simply got to get down to business.  Are you going to take off all those clothes?  If you're not, I'm going to rip them off that big, manly House Speaker body with my teeth!  Yahoo!  Hello heaven and goodbye health care!"

Suddenly the motel room door bursts open.   A somewhat confused man stumbles through it.  He is wearing a cheap, Sears suit, wire rimmed glasses and scruffy brown shoes.  His bald forehead is adorned with the green eye shade of a seasoned accountant.

"Damn, John.  Who is that guy?  Is this some kind of 'special surprise?'  You devil!  You're bringing in someone to watch us repeal health care!  This wedding night is getting hotter and hotter by the second!   Oh God, I can hardly wait another minute.  What's his name?  I mean, what should we call him?"

"That's PAYGO, honey.  I wasn't sure that you'd like him.  I met him in the House restroom at the close of the last Congress.  I didn't actually invite him in to watch, but since he's here, I guess it's going to be okay as long as you think it might liven things up a bit."

"John, if you didn't invite him to watch, does that mean that you're thinking 'threesome?  I'm not sure I'm ready for that this soon after getting married.  I mean, this is our first night together.  I thought we could just  cut spending, repeal health care and turn things into reality all by ourselves here in our little love nest."

"My little sweet potato, that's kind of a problem.  PAYGO here is going to require that we, well, pay for the stuff we are turning into reality as we go.  Our problem is that repealing health care is going to cost quite a bit, and, since we don't want to increase the National Debt, we're going to have to figure out some way to pay back the difference before we can even send it to the Senate.  The bill is going to run roughly $200 Bn.  Did you bring any change?"

"John, couldn't we just hold the poor people for ransom like you guys did with the big tax cut for the rich?  I mean, that worked out swell last time.  All the extortion money to buy off the billionaires went on the National Debt.  Why can't we add just a little more this time around?  I promised all my grassroots tea bag friends that I was going to repeal health care no matter what."

"Sweetie, that would have been fine if everybody weren't watching, but you tea baggers got all the hill billies fired up during the campaign.  Now, since they are all watching, some liberal press reporter is going to dump this right back into our laps before we can arrest him.   We probably shouldn't press the  health care repeal issue if we don't figure out some way to trick them first."

Sobbing, the tea bag trollop's mascara and false eye lashes began to form a soupy substance drooling down along her cheeks.

"John, I came to here to be soiled by the Washington establishment.  I dreamed of being turned even trashier by my big, super manly Speaker of the House. Now, instead of being screwed by the Congressional insiders, I'm getting the cold shoulder from my new husband!  I feel awful -- like I've just been used to get what you wanted.  You don't even love me, do you?"

"Well, my little tea bag, there might be some truth in what you're bitching about now.  I'm taking PAYGO out for a few drinks to see if I can soften him up a little.  I still have the RNC credit card I took away from Michael Steele."

"But what about me?  John, this is our wedding night!  You're not just going to dump me to go get drunk with PAYGO are you?"

"Yeah, I am.  Live with it.  In fact, I'm going to try to convince PAYGO to fly down to the Caymans in my Exxon jet to relax and maybe meet some girls.  Meanwhile, you can just get cleaned up and wait for me to come back.  I may need you later when I sober up."

The Exit Interview

Where do I go when I've gone to far...?

What can be done when facts mean nothing?

The two college students were approaching voters as they walked toward the parking lot after placing their ballots.  Their assignment made them specifically interested in polling Republican voters.  It seemed like the answers to the poll were even more important now that all the signs pointed to a Republican resurgence.  A middle aged man was walking toward his car when the younger of the two met him.

"Excuse me, sir.  I noticed that you are wearing a tea party pin on your jacket.  Is it safe to assume that you voted a Republican ticket just now?"

"Yup.  Even though those Republicans are way too liberal for my taste, I didn't have much of a choice, so I voted a straight Republican ticket."

"Do you mind answering a few questions on my public opinion poll?"

"You're a Democrat aren't you."

"Actually I am a student.  In our class we are conducting exit interviews in hopes of finding out what the Democrats seem to have missed in the election.  I'm pretty much a Democrat myself, and I'm hoping that with the results of this poll, our party's platform can better reflect the feelings of voters next time.  Do you mind participating?"

"Okay, I guess.  Just so long as you don't try to trick me."

"I think you will find the poll questions pretty straightforward and it only takes a few minutes. This poll is specifically about the economy.  That seems to be where we missed the boat this time.  Shall we get started?"

"Let her rip."

"The first question is about taxes.   Do you think there is a bill going through Congress that will raise taxes?"

"Yes I do.  The politicians keep trying to confuse everyone, but the Democrats in the House are definitely planning to raise my taxes.  They've already started."

"Did you know that the Democrats in the House have actually lowered your taxes?"

"That isn't true.  The Democrats have raised taxes."

"Maybe you're referring to the tax cuts that will end this year.  Is that what you mean by 'raising taxes'?"

"Yeah.  That amounts to raising taxes.  Taking away the tax cuts -- anything that makes people pay more taxes -- means higher taxes."

"So, somebody voted to end the tax cuts, and in your view, that means that somebody is raising taxes.  Do you know who voted to end the tax cuts?"

"Yeah.  The Democrats."

"Actually, the law which ends the tax cuts was voted in by the Republicans when they passed the bill in the first place.  That tax cut bill has increased the national debt by over a trillion dollars so far.  The Republicans passed the tax bill without any way to make up the lost revenue, so the government had to borrow the money to make ends meet."

"The Democrats want to pass a new permanent tax cut bill for middle class tax payers, but eliminate the old tax cut for the top 2%.  They think that middle class families will probably spend their tax refunds, but the top 2% don't seem to spend or invest the money they get back from the tax cuts."

"If the same tax cuts for the top 2% get extended when the old bill expires, it will raise the national debt an additional 700 billion dollars before it expires the next time in 2020.  If you are in favor of keeping the tax cuts and there still isn't any way to make up the difference, it will mean borrowing another 700 billion and adding that to the national debt.  Is that what you want to happen?"

"See.  That's exactly how the Democrats have got us so far in debt.  By the way, that debt is going to land on my grandchildren.  We think that all tax cuts are good, no matter who gets them.  Let's go on to the next question."

"You mentioned your grandchildren.  That brings up the second question.  Are you in favor of the reforms to health insurance the Democrats passed?  Do your grandchildren have good health coverage?"

"No, I'm not in favor of ObamaCare.  It's going to cost a trillion dollars which will go into the national debt.  Again, that will all land on my grand kids."

"The Democrats think that the health insurance reforms will save a trillion dollars over the next ten years.  That would mean lowering the national debt."

"How in the hell are we going to pay for ObamaCare and still save money?  That's nuts.  Democrats are trying to trick us into thinking that we are getting something for free."

"When we consider the whole economy we can think in terms of changes in the  GDP.  When the economy is doing well, the GDP increases and vice versa.  Right now -- this year -- one dollar of every six in the GDP is going to health care.  All sorts of people are paying out that money in a lot of different ways, but that is the total percentage, about 16%.  That amounts to around a trillion dollars every year."

"That's what happens when the government gets involved, costs sky rocket.  That's why I don't like ObamaCare."

"Did you know that in countries where the whole health care business is run by the government the total cost is lower and the people are healthier?  In fact, their cost is about one third of what we pay for each person, as a percentage of their GDP those countries pay about a third of what we pay and the health outcomes are quite a bit higher all across the board."

"The Democrats looked at the numbers and figured out that we'll go broke if we keep paying such a high price.  They tried to fix the system.  Most of the really good cost saving ideas in the health reform bill were blocked by Republicans in the Senate."

"Maybe, but you're not talking about the worst parts of ObamaCare.  What about the death panels, rationed care and gigantic cuts to Medicare?  That's why 70% of Americans don't like it and want it repealed.  Anyway, insurance premiums have gone up faster since it was passed than before.  Every politician who voted for it is going to lose the next election.  American voters hate it."

"Did you know that 70% of Americans were strong supporters of the bill before the Republicans in the Senate sabotaged its best money saving parts and its increases in services?  While the bill was being written, insurance companies were spending more than a million dollars a week lobbying Congressmen to defeat it." 

"Since then, insurance corporations have spent millions conducting a misinformation campaign.  They are raising their premium rates as fast as they can before the regulations go into effect.  Democrats think that cutting big insurance companies loose on individual families without any rules isn't really fair."

"ObamaCare is a government invasion into the privacy of American families.  We have to get government out of our private lives.  Go on to the next question."

"The next question has to do with the deficit.  What do you think about deficit spending budgets year after year?"

"I think it's criminal.  It's one place where the Democrats have no place to hide.  They are the ones in favor of big government and a nasty habit of 'tax and spend.'  That's how we spent our way into the mess we're in now.  That's one of the main reasons I voted for Republicans.  They know how to get spending under control and get us out of debt."

"Did you know that huge budget deficits started with Ronald Reagan and continued to increase with every Republican administration since then?  In fact, Reagan was in charge when the national debt first hit one trillion dollars.  The Bush Sr. administration continued deficit budgets big time, but no administration can even hold a candle to the deficits the Bush Jr. administration and a Republican Congress racked up.  They were adding between a third and a half trillion dollars to the debt each year.  On the other hand, in two terms the Democratic Clinton administration cut spending and almost eliminated the national debt by the end of 2000."

"That's not true.  Anyway, even if it did happen, it was the result of the Republican administration in office before he got there.  It just took a little time to happen.  Plus, the deficit went up immediately after Obama took office.  How do you explain that?"

"President Obama but the cost of the wars into the budget.  The previous administration always financed those expenses with borrowed money,  They kept the war expense off the books by repeatedly calling it an 'emergency supplemental' budget.  Obama put those expenditures back on the books making the deficit go higher."

"Yeah, but that doesn't explain why the deficit has exploded since he came into office.  He's been spending money right and left, increasing the budget deficit every day.  That's why we had to elect Republicans this time to stop him."

"Did you know that the very first budget of the Obama administration actually lowered the deficit for the first time in years?  It went down $200 billion dollars even counting the stimulus expense.  Plus, of course, we got all the roads and bridges and other things that the stimulus paid for out of the deal."

"That's impossible.  How can you say that Obama lowered the deficit when he turned $800 billion over the banks in the bail out?  That was so crooked that the Republicans are going to have to spend time investigating it."

"George Bush Jr. gave the TARP money to the banks and brokers.  Obama has gone to great lengths to get it back, in lots of cases, with a profit.  His administration has used that money to pay down the debt from the Bush Jr. government."

"That's just not true.  Everybody knows that the Democrats always run up debt.  Go on to the next question."

"Our last question has to do with jobs.  What do you think about the turn around from the huge job losses we ran into during the Bush Jr. administration?"

 

"First of all, it's about time you Democrats quit blaming George W. Bush for everything.  The economy was still on its feet when he was President.  It's gone to hell while Obama has been President and the Democrats have been running the government."

"Well, remember the GDP business we discussed earlier?  Did you know that during the Bush Jr. administration our national GDP was actually contracting at around 6% per year?  The previous administration just sat there while the country was losing 600,000 jobs a month.  That went on for almost six years."

"Also, did you know that more private sector jobs have been created during the first two years of the Obama administration than were created during the eight years of the Bush Jr. Presidency?  Also, while the previous administration was doing nothing about jobs or the economy, the top 2% were doing great.  During that previous administration the richest 400 Americans increased their personal wealth by over $630 billion dollars?  That's why Obama is against extending the tax cuts to the top 2%."

"So, there you have it.  That means that Obama and the Democrats are in favor of raising taxes.  Are there any more questions?"

"No.  Thank you very much for helping me with this poll.  I really appreciate it."

"No problem.  We Republicans are famous for being generous in victory.  Maybe now you can help your Democrat friends start making sense out of their policies.  There's nothing like manning up, facing facts and making changes."

The student's companion approached as the man walked toward his car where his wife was waiting. 

"Did you get the interview?"

"Yeah, I did.  Except I'm not sure what to do with the results.  Too bad this assignment is for political science and not some sort of abnormal psychology."

Across the parking lot, the Republican's wife asked about the young man after her husband had started the car. 

"Who was that you were talking to, honey?"

"Some Democrat student with an exit poll.  If those damned kids would watch the news, they'd have some idea of what the hell was happening."

"What's for dinner?"