September 18, 2015: Media Gone Apoplectic, Losing Their Grip, Recovering Lost Souls

In an essay by Adam Johnson, originally appearing on the website ALTERNET and republished on the website rawstory.com, American mainstream media—the collective guardians of the modern corporate order—have gone apoplectic over recent political developments in the United Kingdom.

“Yesterday, Jeremy Corbyn won the vote for Britain’s Labour leadership election – basically the equivalent to the American Democratic Party primary – in a blowout, garnering almost 60% of the vote while the runner-up, Andy Burnham could only muster 19% of the vote. Jeremy Corbyn, a self-described socialist, outflanked his opponents to the left on many issues, including militarism, immigration, unions – breaking ranks on a whole host of centrist orthodoxy that Labour had embraced since the mid-90’s.

The American media, perplexed as to how someone labeled with the dreaded “s” word could not only capture a major party nomination but do so with the largest mandate in the history of the party, went into full smear mode:

First up, Reuters who led with tabloid “Karl Marx Admirer”:

This headline was used everywhere form NBC News to Yahoo News who reprinted the story.

Centrist conventional wisdom factory the Daily Beast circled the wagons, inexplicably lumping Corbyn in with Donald Trump and accusing him of spreading the politics of “hate” and “spite” despite being unable to cite a single example of Corbyn demonstrating either.

Time magazine, another centrist conventional wisdom factory, insisted Corbyn couldn’t win the general election. Mind you they cited no polls showing this, only spouted the same old trope that “hard-leftists” couldn’t win. You know, the same argument peddled by those who said he wasn’t going to win the Labour party leadership.

Neoliberal Vox, insisted on calling him “radical”:

Even though someone with a large swath of mainstream support cannot, by definition, be “radical”. The LA Times, Slate, CTV in Canada, and ABC10 Los Angeles went with “Divisive far-left” entirely on their own

It’s mystifying how a man who had the largest mandate of any party leader ever can be called “divisive” but so it goes in a corporate media which conflates elite conventional wisdom for the will of the people. The reality is Corbyn’s win isn’t just a rejection of standard neoliberal orthodoxy — it’s an indictment of it. For years we’ve been told the will of the people is to be anti-union, pro-austerity, and pro-corporate takeover of pensions and education. Now the tide is shifting dramatically and the cognitive dissonance of those in charge of our media is too great to compute. They must at once report on Corbyn’s record victory while insisting he’s fringe.

The goal of cheap smears like “Karl Marx admirer” (not that there’s anything wrong with that, but the goal is to red-bait) and “far left” and divisive” is the same as those leveled against Bernie Sanders: “unelectable”, “socialist”, “far left”. Though Corbyn’s positions are demonstrably more to the left of Sanders’, both pose an existential threat to the pro-corporate position of the establishment left of the UK and US respectively and thus, must be dismissed as anomalies. Increasingly however, it appears they are anything but.” (1)

The movement by Britain’s Labour Party to reject the legacy of Tony Blair, and the concurrent movement within America’s Democratic Party to purge itself of the discredited legacy of Bill Clinton’s Democratic Leadership Council, are indeed encouraging coming along with news that Australia has just ousted its Murdock-backed prime minister in favor of someone within the conservative movement seen as less noxious by the voting public.  The nascent trends in industrial countries toward the rejection of the tired old neo-liberal (or neo-conservative depending on the country), ideologies in favor of more community and ‘collectivist’ oriented proposals, programs and leadership, demonstrate perhaps the beginning of a world-wide movement that will finally bring to heel the riot of greed and avarice that has come to plague this planet in recent decades.

It will take a coordinated world-wide movement to accomplish this task, for capital has long since ‘flown the coop’ and is now beyond the reach of mere national governments.   Already the Catholic Church—long a bastion of conservatism and bulwark against social justice—now finds itself led by a pontiff who has taken the moniker “Francis”—after St. Francis of Assisi, and is now advocating world-wide redistributions of the planet’s wealth.  Elsewhere we find now in Britain, Australia, Canada, and the United States the re-awakening of long dormant populist movements rising to challenge the entrenched establishments.   

The elites have been caught off-guard, not knowing and not possessing the language with which to respond.  Labeling these movements ‘extreme’ and ‘out of the mainstream’ now only further confirms their legitimacy among the long alienated and exploited working classes throughout the world. 

Meanwhile Hillary responding with vague ideals is met with a truly populist response that is now demanding specific actions.  On the conservative side, establishment candidate JEB Bush tells his audience that the woman he would chose to put on the U.S. ten dollar bill is none other than  Margaret Thatcher, forgetting that the ‘Iron Maiden’ had become so onerous that she was toppled by her own party in favor of a former circus barker. 

One senses that the high tide of conservatism has passed, that the global grip about the throats of those who produce the wealth as represented by the Reagan-Thatcher political tryst is finally weakening as conservatives seek a reassurance and the Labour and Democratic parties move respectively to recover their lost souls. 

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(1). Johnson, Adam “America’s mainstream media freaks out after Socialist wins UK Labour leadership” http://www.rawstory.com/2015/09/americas-mainstream-media-freaks-out-after-socialist-wins-uk-labour-leadership/

September 17, 2015: To Lead is To Teach, Preparing the Ground, Reason to be Proud

 

In the spring of 1968, appearing before a group composed largely of medical students at Indiana State University Robert Kennedy, campaigning for the presidency, gave an impassioned speech about the need to make this a better country.  Citing statistics concerning urban and rural poverty, the need to expand the food stamp program, and especially the need for a national health care, Kennedy knew that this largely white middle class audience was not his natural constituency.  The poor had, by this time, largely come to be seen by white America as a ‘black’ problem. The majority of the poor had always been white in America, but in the minds of most white Americans, especially those in suburban and rural America, when they saw in their minds the face of poverty, it didn’t look anything like what they saw in the mirror.

 

Kennedy spoke from conviction on that bright spring day.  When he finished speaking one of the students raised his hand.  When asked to speak the young man asked the Senator “Whose going to pay for all this?”

 

“You are”, replied Kennedy, who then went about explaining the responsibility that those who are blessed have to the less fortunate.  By most accounts, the message was not received with the enthusiasm of the usual campaign event, but that was not the Senator’s purpose.  There is more to campaigning for the presidency that rallying support. 

 

To lead is to teach, and campaigning for the nation’s highest office presents an excellent opportunity to teach the nation lessons it may not want to confront.  It presents an opportunity to jog people out of their false sense of security and their deeply ingrained certitudes.  It presents an opportunity to begin a dialogue with those with whom one does not necessarily agree and create the conditions for the long and arduous process of breaking down social barriers and creating a common ground upon which all parties can reach a workable compromise. 

 

It is a function of a university in a republic to bring together those of opposing views providing a place for the civil advocacy and exchange of ideas. Indiana State University, in the heart of conservative Hoosier country, knew that inviting the junior Senator from New York would serve the purpose of stretching the horizons of many of those in attendance.  And Kennedy, addressing an audience that at the time was not old enough to vote and from which he probably wouldn’t recruit a great many campaign workers, nevertheless took the opportunity to appear before the assembled students; for here was a chance to talk to the next generation; here was a chance to teach; here was a chance to make perhaps the campaigns most significant and lasting impact.

This week found Bernie Sanders standing before a large and attentive audience in Lynchburg, Virginia at perhaps America’s most conservative fundamentalist institution of higher learning.  Before an audience of perhaps ten thousand or more in the field house at Jerry Falwell’s Liberty University, Sanders began his remarks by acknowledging that much of what he represents would find little favor here.  “We are different”, he began.  But, he continued, there is much more common ground than one might think between this white Jewish liberal Senator from a northeast state and the convictions taught at one of evangelism’s most celebrated universities.  Calling inequality ‘immoral’ and the moral imperative of meeting the needs of the least among us, Sanders spoke at length about the common ground upon which they could perhaps reach consensus.

 

By most observers, the reception given the Senator was polite, respectful and reserved.  Still, in post-event interviews with those in attendance the audience was not entirely dismissive with some expressing agreement with the senator on several issues.

 

Reporters asked the respondents if they were likely to vote for the Senator or join the campaign.  The response was tepid, only a few expressing outright support.

 

But this is not the issue.  By taking his campaign and his message into the precincts where the pundits would least expect him to go, Sanders is not only working to create a truly national movement, but more importantly is beginning the dialogue necessary to prepare the ground upon which the future can be built.

 The story isn’t, as the press would have it, that Sander’s is here exhibiting the courage of Daniel by going into the proverbial Lion’s Den. Nor is the story that he had failed in his effort to convert the assembled to liberalism.   It is that in the context of today’s bitterly partisan political climate Liberty University provided a much needed public service by hosting a forum in which a reasoned, civil discussion of our agreements as well as our disagreements can take place.   Jerry Falwell would have every reason to be proud; and so should the nation.

 

 

 

 

September 16, 2015: The Fact that She’s a Woman, Glimpse Into the Soul, Pointing to the Right

Michelle Goldberg writing in a recent edition of “The Nation” (1) tried to answer the question “can Hillary win over the left?”  Citing Clinton Administration era campaign rhetoric and Hillary’s vote against ratification of the Central American Free Trade Agreement in order to establish her left-leaning bona fides, Goldberg ends up quoting Saru Jayaraman, cofounder of the Restaurant Opportunities Centers United, a group seeking fair wages for workers in the industry on why, in the end, she is supporting Hillary:

“The fact that she’s a woman, the fact that gender equality and income inequality are going to be two of the key issues of the campaign [wages for tipped workers] really fits into the nexus of those two issues” Jayaraman says”’. (2)

The fact that she’s a woman…therein lies the final justification. 

But this essay was written in the summer and another season is fast approaching.  Political columnist Karen Tumulty reported in yesterday’s Washington Post that the latest polls show deeply troubling trends for the Clinton camp.  In a piece entitled “Clinton’s Support Erodes Sharply Among Democratic Women (3) it is becoming clear that Hillary can no longer base her campaign on gender issues.

Citing numbers in a new Washington Post/ABC News poll, an ‘alarm siren’ should be, says Tumulty, going off in the Clinton campaign.  In just the last 8 weeks, according to the numbers, Hillary’s support among Democratic-leaning female voters has dropped an astounding 29 percentage points; down from a high of 71% to a mere 42 % now.  Moreover the steepest decline has been among white female voters, down to levels where she has now nearly lost her gender advantage, polling almost equally between white males and females.  As a result, reports Tumulty “Clinton’s once-commanding lead over Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), and Vice President Biden, who is considering joining the race, has been cut by two-thirds…The poll suggests”, Tumulty concludes, “that the historical significance of Clinton’s campaign is being overtaken by other forces”(4)

The email scandal has certainly been corrosive.  Defenders rightly maintain that Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice did government business using personal emails and servers, and that the applicable law was enacted after she left office.  But her reaction to demands that she produce the ‘evidence’ brought back all-too-many memories of the lost Rose Law Firm documents surrounding the ‘Whitewater’ scandals, as well as memories of the previous Clinton tenure in the White House.  Not being completely forthcoming and nitpicking by using legal formalisms does not endear one to the voting public; a public that has grown weary of parsing language, obfuscations, and outright evasions.  Her reactions have simply played into America’s deepest suspicions about the Clintons, including the veracity of their public commitment to political action. 

As a case in point, Goldberg in her article in the Nation quotes Clinton White House operative James Carville in an exchange with the other Clinton-anointed guru Dick Morris about Hillary’s then plans for Health Care:

‘“Mystified, he [Morris] went to James Carville: “what’s with all this liberalism?”

“These fucking liberals are all over the place!” exploded Carville, They are like water damage. They seep in.”’ (5)  

Supporters see Carville and Morris as foils against whom Hillary has burnished her progressive liberal bona fides.   I prefer to see it in another light.  Morris, a political hack who worked primarily on Republican campaigns before he worked with Clinton and after he left the White House in disgrace, and Carville seen here revealing behind closed doors his real proclivities, were both central to the rise of Bill and Hillary Clinton on the national stage.  The fact that the Clintons not only employed them but assiduously sought their counsel and acted upon it betrays the sincerity of their public proclamations concerning commitment to a real progressive agenda; for here, in a nutshell, one gains a glimpse into the soul of a Clinton administration.  This is what lies behind the deep suspicions concerning the trustworthiness of Hillary Clinton, an issue magnified by her tepid response to pressures to be forthcoming—including her reluctance to hold news conferences and submit to press scrutiny.  The result, as Tumulty reports in interviews with various Democratic operatives about the country, is that many Democrats and especially many Democratic women want to see a woman elected President of the United States.  The problem for Hillary, as the recent polls so clearly demonstrate, is that a growing number of women question whether Hillary is the right woman for the job. 

Besides, has anyone noticed that the arrow on the Hillary’s campaign logo is pointing to the right?

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1. Goldberg, Michelle. “Can Hillary Win Over the Left?”  “The Nation” September 14/21, 2015  pages 13-18

2. Ibid. pg. 18

3. http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/poll-sharp-erosion-in-clinton-support-among-democratic-women/2015/09/14

4. Ibid.

5. Op. Cit.

September 15, 2015: We Laughed at Reagan Too, Intelligent Enough to Understand, Save It From Itself

 

“You know, we laughed at Reagan too, and Nixon, and ‘’ol Two-Cows’”

                        -----from “The Quotations of Chairman Joe”

 

Economist Paul Krugman, in a piece appearing in the New York Times, (1) entitled “Republicans Against Retirement” had this to say concerning the dynamics emerging in the Republican contest for the party’s presidential nomination:

 

“Something strange is happening in the Republican primary — something strange, that is, besides the Trump phenomenon. For some reason, just about all the leading candidates other than The Donald have taken a deeply unpopular position, a known political loser, on a major domestic policy issue. And it’s interesting to ask why.

 

The issue is Social Security. Most GOP candidates want to modify it with the outright intent to kill it into privatization. George W. Bush tried it after the 2004 election claiming he had earned the political capital to ‘reform’ Social Security. Of course it was a loser and Republicans ran away as fast as they could from touching Social Security.

 

So what is Donald Trump’s position? He wants to save and expand it.” (2)

 

 

Then Krugman answers his own question:

 

“The answer, I’d suggest, is that it’s all about the big money.

 

Wealthy individuals have long played a disproportionate role in politics, but we’ve never seen anything like what’s happening now: domination of campaign finance, especially on the Republican side, by a tiny group of immensely wealthy donors. Indeed, more than half the funds raised by Republican candidates through June came from just 130 families.

 

And while most Americans love Social Security, the wealthy don’t. Two years ago a pioneering study of the policy preferences of the very wealthy found many contrasts with the views of the general public; as you might expect, the rich are politically different from you and me. But nowhere are they as different as they are on the matter of Social Security. By a very wide margin, ordinary Americans want to see Social Security expanded. But by an even wider margin, Americans in the top 1 percent want to see it cut. And guess whose preferences are prevailing among Republican candidates.

 

To most Donald Trump is a caricature. However the media has the ability to make a caricature into a contender. One must not forget that the demise of the middle-class began with an actor, Ronald Reagan. He was a caricature backed by an ideology that has inflicted unmeasurable damage to the middle-class. Soon after, George W. Bush, another caricature, another bastion of incompetence, used two wars and tax cuts to transfer America’s treasure to a wealthy few.

 

Chuck Todd interviewed Donald Trump recently. The intent to provide legitimacy to Donald Trump was evident. All bases are covered in case Trump breaks through. That Fox News took Donald Trump’s side in the spat he had with Megan Kelly is also probative.

 

It turns out the one percenters may turn over the 2016 election to a one percenter. Either way, they win. That is why a grassroots political revolution is necessary to get a real middle-class populist elected.” (2)

 

It is easy to characterize Donald Trump as being a megalomaniac without a hair stylist but, as Krugman rightly points out, we very well may underestimate him at our peril.  The Donald, it appears, is no fool.  As noted in the previous post, lying not very far beneath the veneer of the tea-bagger movement, now the base of conservatism, are deeply held suspicions not only of the elites but of the emerging concentrations of economic power.  What we may be witnessing is the emergence of a grass-roots firestorm that spans nearly the entire current political spectrum from Tea-Party libertarians to the emerging New Deal Democrats.  A fire fueled by the growing inequalities created by the present order and the resulting foreclosure on the American Dream.  ‘The Donald’, as he has come to be known, may well be far ahead on the curve within the conservative movement, for the lingering possibility is there that when the Tea Baggers wake up and find that they are not seen by the 1% as their natural allies, they will no longer be so willing to go to the ramparts in defense of the insurance, banking and energy cartels. 

 

Trump is smart enough to understand that what Barry Goldwater represented is still the driving force among grass-roots modern conservatism; that is a deep distrust of the ‘eastern’ establishment representing as they do the eastern moneyed interests.  While the ‘astro-turf’ movements financed entirely by the likes of Dick Armey’s ‘Freedomworks’ and other billionaire-funded political action groups have worked assiduously to mask over the differences, by putting the middle class upon the economic rack and ratcheting up the pain level out of a perverse sense of sadism, the radical wrong may have brought about the undoing of their ‘blessed state of nature’; and that undoing may be manifesting itself in the growing candidacy of one Donald Trump.

 

Trump, understanding the immense stake the voting public has in programs like Social Security, is now seen as the only Republican contender to stand foursquare in support of the program, to the point of echoing Bernie Sanders in a call to increase Social Security and Medicare benefits.  Moreover, for the first time in a generation, we now have a Republican candidate actually talking about raising taxes!  Trump has not only been found criticizing the levels of CEO pay in this country but is about the country advocating an increase in taxation for hedge funds, derivatives, and other financial instruments. 

 

It is worth noting that the first casualty in the Republican race for the presidency was none other than the GOP’s most experienced governor.  Rick Perry, governor of Texas for a record 14 years, called it quits earlier this week leaving Rand Paul to ponder what it says about a party that would jettison so quickly it’s most experienced executive.  The answer is that the public has grown so distrustful of its political elites that it hold in near absolute scorn any record of political accomplishment.  As a result, not only do we find ‘The Donald’ way out in front of the pack but registering in at number 2 is another candidate with no record of public service, a retired neurosurgeon from Detroit named Ben Carson.  While it is still early, and it will be months before the electors of this nation go to the polls to make a ‘serious’ choice, it is nonetheless telling that the two candidates with the least experience are garnering the most support within conservative ranks.  This speaks to the alienation of the electorate; a deep distrust of the political elites which the voters rightly see as being nothing but the water-carriers for the moneyed interests.

 

It remains to be seen if Trump is in the pocket of the 1%, or that his candidacy is simply another neo-con ploy to co-opt the middle class.  Trump is too much a loose cannon to know for sure, but I suspect, in this context, the Trump is much more of a ‘populist’ candidate than Krugman gives credit. Should he prevail, he will be in a position to perhaps redefine American conservatism by taking the movement out of the hands of the money-changers and giving it back to the people.  He may also, in the bargain, snatch victory from the jaws of defeat and, in so doing, save the Republican Party from itself.

 

______

 

1. Krugman, Paul “Republicans Against Retirement”, New York Times, August 17, 2015

 

2. http://egbertowillies.com/2015/08/17/1-percenters-may-enable-donald-trump-gop-nomination-not-for-the-reason-you-think/

 

September 14, 2015: To Sustain a Republic, Wealth Must Be Distributed, Majority Must Have the Wealth.

 

"Wealth, like suffrage, must be considerably distributed, to sustain a democratic republic; and hence, whatever draws a considerable proportion of either into a few hands, will destroy it. As power follows wealth, the majority must have wealth or lose power." (1)

                          ----John Taylor, "An Inquiry into the Principles and Policy of the Government of the United States" (1814)

 

John Taylor 1753-1724, otherwise known as John Taylor of Caroline, was a contemporary of Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, and James Madison.  Present at the creation of the republic, he served as United States Senator from Virginia on three separate occasions, 1792-1794, 1803, and from 1822 until his death in 1824.

“English legal historian M.J.C. Vile views Taylor as "in some ways the most impressive political theorist that America has produced." [2] Historian Clyde N. Wilson describes Taylor as "the systematic philosopher of Jeffersonian democracy,"[3] and as "representing 'both a conservative allegiance to local community and inherited ways and a radical-populist suspicion of capitalism, ‘progress,’ government and routine logrolling politics.'"[4] According to historian Adam L. Tate, Taylor was "an agrarian who 'viewed happiness as possession of family, farm, and leisure,' had no great love for organized religion, social hierarchy, and other such traditional institutions."[5] "Taylor took solid liberal ground in holding that men were a mixture of good and evil. Self-interest was the only real constant in human action. . . . . Indeed, while other thinkers, from Thomas Jefferson to Federalist John Adams, agonized over the need for a virtuous citizenry, Taylor took the view that 'the principles of a society may be virtuous, though the individuals composing it are vicious.'" [6] Taylor's solution to the effects of factionalism was to "remove the base from under the stock jobbers, the banks, the paper money party, the tariff-supported manufacturers, and so on; destroy the system of patronage by which the executive has corrupted the legislature; bring down the usurped authority of the Supreme Court." [7] "The more a nation depends for its liberty on the qualities of individuals, the less likely it is to retain it. By expecting publick good from private virtue, we expose ourselves to publick evils from private vices." [8] (9)

Described as at the ‘intersection of republicanism and classical liberalism’ Taylor stands as a precursor in a line of political thought that defending the sovereignty of the several states would lead inexorably to the philosophies of John C. Calhoun and the politics of  interposition, nullification and secession.  His defense of slavery would likewise anticipate the works of Edmund Ruffin and George Fitzhugh, laying the intellectual justification for the antebellum south’s ‘peculiar institution’.

Why, then, would Professor Reich light upon what are now the obscure writings of an early 19^th century politician and political philosopher, and an early apologist for the ‘lost cause’, in order to make a point about contemporary American politics? 

I can’t speak for the professor but I would suggest it is precisely because Taylor (a relative of a future United States President Zachery Taylor) represents not only significant views held by many of our founding fathers, but because he represents a significant part of the American Political Tradition influencing our politics today.  I am referring here to the strain of classical liberalism that today would be called libertarian, emphasizing local control, state’s rights, and limited government.  But note here how, in an early formulation of what would become libertarian conservatism, one finds clearly evident ‘populist’ economic formulations that would lead Taylor to oppose like Jefferson, the economic policies of the Federalist Alexander Hamilton. The distrust of banking in general and central banks in particular has a long history in this country as Taylor’s writings suggest.  He was not alone.  From Jefferson to Jackson to the “Greenback” party and William Jennings Bryan’s excoriation of the ‘cross of gold’ (referring to the Gold Standard); to FDR’s struggles with Wall Street and the Banking industry; to many on the political ‘right’ today who advocate the abolition of the Federal Reserve banking system; Americans from the first have consistently exhibited a great unease with the centralization of economic power.  

Today we can easily dismiss Taylor’s views on race and slavery, as we can dismiss his view that state sovereignty trumps all.  The Civil War changed all that.  But like Richard Henry Lee, James Madison, Thomas Jefferson and others Taylor reminds us that many, if not most, of those who wrote and ratified the founding documents of this nation were deeply distrustful of concentrations of economic power.  They held these views not because they were against ‘free markets’ but because they knew that there is a relationship between economic and political power; that one inexorably produces the other, and that rule by oligopoly would mean an end to the democratic experiment.   Indeed it was precisely to wrest control from the oligarchs that the citizens of Athens rebelled and established a Democracy, demonstrating as they did not only the reasons and justification for the citizens to seize control but that Democracy and a redistribution of wealth have, from the beginning gone hand-in-hand.  To defend Democracy or, in our case, a republican form of government, one must inevitably confront the questions concerning the distribution of wealth in society.  It is comforting here to re-confirm, the thesis of  Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. in his “The Age of Jackson”, that the founding fathers were not only suspicious of combinations and cartels but advocated and worked to regulate, or outright prevent, their formation.

I have previously written about this, expressing precisely these points. (10)  That what differentiates a true republican government from a so-called “Banana Republic” is the existence of a healthy, powerful and indeed controlling middle class; and that, therefore, it necessarily follows that to wage war upon the middle class is to wage war upon the republic itself.  Taylor understood this, as did Jefferson, Lee, Madison and Adams.  Modern conservatives do not.

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 1. Robert Reich, Facebook post 8/28/15

2.Joseph R. Stromberg, Country Ideology, Republicanism, and Libertarianism: The Thought of John Taylor of Caroline, The Journal of Libertarian Studies, Vol VI, No. 1, 35 (Winter 1982) (citing M.J.C. Vile, Constitutionalism and the Separation of Powers, 167 (Oxford: Clarendon Press 1967)).

3. Wilson, Clyde (2011-11-03) A Little Rebellion, Chronicles

4. Hales, Dylan (2008-12-01) Left Turn Ahead, The American Conservative

5. McCarthy, Daniel (2005-08-01) Liberty and Order in the Slave Society, The American Conservative

6. Stromberg, pp. 39-40.

7. Id. at 41 (quoting Grant McConnell, "John Taylor and the Democratic Tradition," Western Political Quarterly, Vol. 4, No. 1, 27 (March 1951)).

8. Forrest McDonald, Novus Ordo Seclorum 75 (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press 1985) (quoting Taylor).

9. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Taylor_of_Caroline.

10. http://wandererandshadow.blogspot.com/2008/01/january-13-2008-banana-republic.html

 

 

September 13, 2015: Principle Prevaricator, Burnishing his Legacy, Disingenuous to Say the Least

 

“I'll tell you exactly why. I think that politicians—particularly now, in the aftermath of this crash—fear that anything they do will be held against them later if anything bad happens. Look at all the grief I got for signing the bill that ended Glass-Steagall. There's not a single, solitary example that it had anything to do with the financial crash. And in fact, a study done afterward said that the unified banks were actually slightly less likely to fail than either the commercial banks that overloaded on subprime mortgages, or the investment banks, like Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, and others.” (1)

Bill Clinton, the principle prevaricator and serial fornicator-in-chief, has recently been about the business of burnishing his legacy. Faced with criticism that actions taken by himself and his administration materially contributed to the economic crisis of 2007-08, Clinton has taken to defacing the historical record. First, as Wallace Turbeville, noted in his blog demos.org, “Owning the Consequences: Clinton and the Repeal of Glass-Steagall”:

“The financial crisis occurred because banks involved in trading had become massive, concentrated and interconnected in response to the repeal of Glass-Steagall’s separation…There were only five notable investment banks left in early 2008. Of those, two went down, a third (Merrill Lynch) survived only by a forced merger into Bank of America, and the fourth and fifth—Goldman and Morgan Stanley—were threatened with failure when they were converted overnight to universal banks. Converting to universal banks qualified them for FDIC insurance and the implicit support of the US government.  The facts, such as they are belie the spin, the massive financial institutions proved if anything more vulnerable and those that survived did so only with the help of massive federal bailouts.” (2)

But more importantly was the blanket statement that “there’s not a single, solitary example that it had anything to do with the financial crash."  Turbeville, who worked for Goldman Sachs and worked assiduously in the period leading up to repeal to save the New Deal law, thinks otherwise.  But even granting the validity of the former President’s assertions Clinton, perhaps intentionally, quite misses the point entirely.

Even if you grant the assumption that repeal didn’t cause the crash, repeal did, for the first time since Glass-Steagall was enacted in the 1930’s, produce a financial crisis.  That is, the recession and resulting dislocations put commercial banks at risk resulting in hundreds of banks closing down or selling out in a further concentration of economic power.  Wells Fargo purchased Wachovia, Guarantee Bank folded and was bought out by Compass Bank as two noted examples. 

It has amazed me, in recent years, how graduates of the most illustrious and celebrated universities in this country have been able to apply so limited a knowledge of our historical record.  Prior to the Great Depression, as any cursory student of American History will attest, economic recessions or depressions were consistently accompanied by financial crises, each worse than the preceding, finally ending with the denouement of 1929.   To remedy this the New Dealers built a firewall between commercial and investment banks so as to prevent the vicissitudes of Wall Street from eviscerating Main Street. The result was that for nearly 7 decades this country had experienced great prosperity punctuated by the occasional hard times as the ‘business cycle’ did its inevitable work.  At no time, however, did the hard times bring on a financial crisis threatening the very foundations of the banking system.   That, of course, changed.

One would have thought that, being a ‘Boomer’, and, therefore prone to short-term memory, that the Savings and Loan crisis in the late eighties would have sufficed to advise caution.  But no, spurred by the Conservatives and eager to establish a ‘legacy’ Clinton went about ‘triangulating’ the Middle Class by repealing one of the signature bulwarks of the New Deal.

Clinton apologists would have us believe that old Bill, too busy or too distracted by scandal, was somehow dragged into this, finally presented with a bill that was so overwhelmingly approved by both houses of congress as to be veto-proof.  This too is a besmirching of the historical record for as noted previously in these columns, once agreement was reached with the Republican majority, Clinton’s White House enthusiastically pushed the bill, declaring its passage upon signing to be one of the most significant pieces of legislation passed in decades.   Oh Bill was out there, alright, repeating the usual palaver that this was a dawn of a new age, and that the antiquated old rules didn’t apply anymore to the ‘new economy’.   Scoundrels always make those arguments as we serially come to believe that the old rules governing economics no longer apply.  When these arguments hold sway, you must believe that certain attempts at financial levitation are soon at hand.  And so it was.  It took about a decade, about the mean time for these things to fully mature and, as predictable as the rise of the morning sun, Wall Street was soon knocking at the door hat in hand. 

It is disingenuous to say the least for Clinton to parse the language, a propensity for which he has repeatedly demonstrated a remarkable talent. But with Hillary now on the hustings seeking the presidency in her own right, it is important for Clinton to burnish the record for Hillary, joined as she is at the hip, cannot put much distance between her candidacy and the legacy of the country’s first experiments with a Clinton in the White House.  To now own that legacy is the challenge, even if it means not letting the historical record get in the way.

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1.     http://www.demos.org/blog/9/11/15/owning-consequences-clinton-and-repeal-glass-steagall

2.     Ibid.

September 12, 2015: Salt in an Open wound, Compelling and Obvious, Deep Rouge and Tawdry Tinsel

 

Back in the campaign of 1988, George H.W. “Pappy” Bush, then Vice President of the United States, set the country a-titter when at a campaign photo-0p he discovered the check-out scanner at a grocery.  As he marveled at the technology, the country let loose a collective snicker, as once again the Bush family was demonstrating for all to see its collective ignorance of what is going on in America.  To suggest that the Bushes are out of touch is an understatement; no more so than his snot-nosed, drug-addled, alcoholic oldest son somehow construing Reaganomics with ‘compassionate conservatism’. 

Now we have presented before us the latest incarnation of the Bush Dynasty, one John Edward Bush, otherwise known as JEB.  In July, shortly after launching his campaign, Jeb solemnly announced that to his lights the economy would best respond if Americans worked longer hours.   Recoiling from a stinging rebuke from the Democratic National Committee, which issued a statement calling Bush’s remarks “easily one of the most out-of-touch remarks we’ve heard in this campaign cycle so far”(1), Bush protested that he meant part-time and underemployed workers need to work harder. 

 
It doesn’t matter that the jobs aren’t out there or that, according to a recent Gallup Poll, “that already many Americans employed full-time report working, on average, 47 hours a week, while nearly 4 in 10 say they work at least 50 hours a week.” (2)  Moreover, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, “US workers toil more hours than workers in any other large industrialized country.”(3) Conservatives in general, and the Bush’s in particular, have been of late fast and loose with the facts, betraying a casual relationship with reality. 

I can forgive the dolt his myopia if what he represents weren’t such a threat to the economic well-being of the country.  After all the Bush boys are a product of the country-club set, far removed from the cares and worries of middle class struggle. What troubles me is the rest of the statement.  Answering questions about his tax reform, Bush told the Manchester Union Leader that

“My aspiration for the country and I believe we can achieve it, is 4 percent growth as far as the eye can see. Which means we have to be a lot more productive, workforce participation has to rise from its all-time modern lows. It means that people need to work longer hours” and, through their productivity, gain more income for their families. That's the only way we're going to get out of this rut that we're in.”(4)

This, to me, is the most damning part of his statement.  Increased productivity, it should be obvious to even the most obtuse, has not brought relief to the middle class.  Take the current minimum wage as a case in point.  Adjusted for inflation, the minimum wage would be—in 1968 dollars—about $16.00 an hour.  But Adjusted for increase in productivity, we would have to raise the minimum standard to about $21.00 an hour.  Using this index one can gain a rough estimate of how much of the increase in productivity has been ripped off by the investment class, the top 10% of wage-earners, and especially the top 1%.   Seen another way, the top 1% have taken the entire wealth generated by the recovery since 2007, and the top 10% have stolen in the neighborhood of over 110% of the new wealth.  The question remains:  Since the median household income has actually declined over the last 30 years and, as has been reported in this column, it has declined in all 50 states in recent years, what has happened to all this increased wealth?  The answer is at once compelling and obvious, it’s gone to the capitalist pig.

In this context, Bush’s remarks represent a cruel hoax, an insult, a pouring of salt into the wound.

If this weren’t enough the snot-nosed little lord Fauntleroy has earlier this week, unveiled his ‘new’ tax plan.  Professor Robert Reich describes it thusly:

 “Frankly, I have never seen proposed such a huge transfer of income and wealth to the very top. According to Josh Barro of the Times, the plan would save each member of America's top 0.01 percent an average of $1.5 million a year.

A few details: The plan cuts the top federal income tax rate from today’s nearly 44 percent (including the Obamacare surcharge) to 28 percent, cuts the top tax rate on capital gains and dividends, and abolishes the estate tax, and reduces the corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 20 percent.

Yes it expands the Earned Income Tax Credit for the working poor and raises the standard deduction for the middle class—but these are tiny compared to the huge giveaway for the top.

It would cost some 3.4 trillion over 10 years.  To pay for this Bush would cut spending

(He doesn’t indicate where the cuts would come from), cut back federal regulations, and allow big corporations to repatriate the hundreds of billions they’ve stashed overseas.

This is a bigger version of the trickle-down voodoo economics his brother unleashed upon America (which itself was a bigger version of Reagan’s voodoo trickle-down economics).

That this plan comes from the Republican Party’s most establishment candidate—at a time when the wealthiest Americans are raking in a higher share of the total national income     and wealth in more than a century, when the middle class is shrinking, and when almost 1 in 5 of America’s children are in poverty—reveals, as if we needed more evidence, the utter moral bankruptcy of today’s Republican Party.” (4)

Indeed, after laboring mightily, the Republican ‘establishment’ to presenting the struggling middle class with these dog-eared bromides, present nothing less than an assault upon our collective intelligence. History repeats itself: A Bush expressing concern, if not compassion, for the struggles and travails of Middle America only to reveal himself to be nothing more than a Koch-addled, curb-crawling practitioner of the world’s oldest profession, once again gussied up in deep rouge and tawdry tinsel, displaying itself as “Republican Principle.   False pearls before real swine.

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1.     http://news.yahoo.com/jeb-bush-people-longer-hours-235206730.html#
2.     Ibid
3.     Ibid
4.     Robert Reich, Facebook post 9/12/15