Greed Over People

If you had any doubt that the Republican Party favored the rich and powerful over everyone else, such doubt can now be safely abandoned.  The GOP, which apparently stands for Greed Over People, continues to hold a gun to the head of the American people, playing their role as extortionist for the very rich to perfection.  Their plan is to hamper and obstruct any effort to do the people's business unless and until their ransom is paid and the wealthy are given everything on their wish list.  At that point, the rest of us can begin negotiating against ourselves regarding tough choices and shared sacrifice as long as the most privileged are insulated from the pain.

Nothing brings this into sharper focus than Republicans' refusal to extend desperately needed unemployment benefits or anything else until we cut taxes for the richest sliver of 1%.  This became an inarguable fact after the Democrats already started negotiating against themselves and agreed to lower taxes on everyone whose taxable income fell below $1,000,000 a year and Republicans rejected this as an insufficient sop to the fantastically rich for whom they pimp.

Considering the ability of Republican lawmakers to inflict devastating harm on average Americans, coupled with the heightened airport security of late, perhaps al-Qaeda should funnel its resources into the GOP coffers rather than spending money on suicide vests.  Maybe if they did so and it came to light we'd realize what's happening.  Unfortunately, since the Senate Minority Leader isn't named Osama bin McConnell most Americans are blind to the fact that we're being kneecapped by these thugs.  Indeed, keenly aware of our widespread oblivion, Mitch McConnell was even brazen enough to say, "We need to show the American people that we care more about them and their ability to pay their bills than we do about the special interests' legislative Christmas-list."  While I abhor both the complete lack of integrity and the cruel indifference to the suffering of his constituents, it's hard not to marvel at the ability to summon the colossal audacity it takes to make such a statement, which is opposed to the truth by a full 180 degrees.

Republicans are taking the unprecedented step of shutting off needed unemployment benefits at a time of such high unemployment.  The average check is less than $300 a week and the entire expense would add much less to the deficit that then unfunded tax cuts for the richest Americans.  Nevertheless, Republicans are wiling, perhaps even eager, to to strip away the only safety net that lies between millions of Americans and Dickensian horror.  On the other hand, the far more expensive, far less economically valuable tax cuts for the wealthy not only don't have to be paid for, but Republicans have vowed to rain down a firestorm of obstructionism and pain if anyone dares to oppose this most sacred of budget busters.  In other words, if the modern American equivalent of Ebenezer Scrooge has his after tax income reduced from 700 times that of Bob Cratchit down to 675 times, Republicans will do everything in their power to ensure that some American homes face the heartbreaking prospect of "an empty chair and a tiny crutch without an owner."

I want to emphasize how much more valuable these unemployment checks are to our economy than the proposed tax cuts for those at the top of the economic ladder.  All of the money from the unemployment benefits gets put back into the economy. People using these checks to keep the wolf from the door aren't stashing their money in the Cayman Islands.  The same cannot be said for those making $1,000,000 a year.  The Republicans' own hue and cry over the failure of the stimulus proves this very point.  We tried to pump money into the economy through a program of tax cuts and spending, but the rich and powerful scooped it up and they're now hoarding unprecedented amounts of cash.  Any economist would readily affirm that we'd get a greater return on the jobless benefits than on the top bracket tax cuts, but Republicans will continue to carry water for the rich, everyone else be damned.

The Obtuse Angle

To paraphrase something I read before George W. Bush's reelection, Harry Reid is toast but for a toaster. The Senate Majority Leader faces a litany of problems that should render him almost unelectable. He has low approval and high disapproval ratings with a large percentage of strong disapproval. If we also consider the anti-incumbent fever sweeping the nation, Nevada's economic woes and buyer's remorse over electing President Obama (he won the state with 55% of the vote but his current approval rating in Nevada is lower than the national average), and the fact that among Nevada's likely voters, self-identified conservatives outnumber self-identified liberals by a margin of nearly two to one, Senator Reid is in serious trouble.

Republicans were given a wide margin of error in their effort to flip this important seat. Any credible candidate would automatically become a prohibitive favorite to win simply by virtue of Reid's challenges. I'm pretty sure Nevada Republicans could have successfully run Wayne Newton. However, to a rousing chorus of "Danke Schoen" from Democrats everywhere, they chose one of the few Nevadans who could actually lose to Senator Reid. To use a baseball analogy, Republicans only had to hold onto their 10 run lead in the bottom of the 9th inning. Then they went to the bullpen for the righty, Sharron Angle.

If Reid manages to hold his seat, Republicans will learn a painful lesson about overindulging the lunatic fringe of the Tea Party, or as I call this subgroup, the Mad Hatter's Tea Party. I suppose at some point we'll get used to Sharron Angle, but for the moment her antics are still jaw-dropping. Indeed, part of me suspects that after the election we'll see a movie in the vein of Borat, at which point we'll learn that she was only toying with us. While this is unlikely, it still seems more plausible than a major party candidate for the U.S. Senate who is this bad.

I remember a sitcom episode in the 70's, in which a Ted Baxter style character (possibly Ted Baxter) was running for office and his handlers, whenever told that the candidate would be asked questions, responded with stammering trepidation, "H...hard questions?" We all laughed, but that fictional character is essentially the real Sharron Angle. I'm not exaggerating when I say that she holds "press conferences" and runs for daylight before anyone can ask a single question.

There is good reason for Sharron Angle to evade the press. Her strategy is clear: She will only speak directly to the far right and count on everyone else to vote against Harry Reid while knowing nothing about her. That would explain why she threatened to sue Senator Reid for publishing what she trumpeted on her own website as the reason to vote for her in the primary. Of course as soon as she won the primary, she wanted to erase all evidence of her positions in an effort to mislead either primary voters or general election voters by trying to sell different views to each electorate.

Among the jaw-dropping antics referred to above, she went on Fox News, an outlet very sympathetic to a right-wing candidate, but still shocked the host by proclaiming that the media should only ask the questions she wants to answer. As the stunned broadcaster sat there asking himself if she could really be that naive, she smirked and took the opportunity to twice squeeze in free plugs for her website and beg for $25 donations. This reminded me of people who would call into serious radio and television shows just so they could blurt out, "Howard Stern" and hang up. Like these puerile Stern fans, Sharron Angle is an intellectual toddler who is no more qualified to serve in the Senate than she is to play nose tackle for the Redskins.

Her outrageous positions, for instance, women are wrong to work instead of staying home to raise children, gay adoption should be illegal, teen rape victims should be forced to carry the resulting pregnancies to term, Democrats are idolaters who literally worship government as their god, etc. make good headlines but would make abysmal law. Not only does she have no new ideas, she doesn't have any that weren't already frayed around the edges 40 years ago. She brings absolutely nothing of value to the table and we can't afford to waste a Senate seat on her.

Grumpy Old Pouters

A wise man once said, "You can't kill your parents then ask for sympathy because you're an orphan." G.O.P. lawmakers, as in Grumpy Old Pouters are now acting like petulant children because the bi-partisanship that they painstakingly murdered is now dead. They gambled on a strategy of trying to bring down a President rather than being responsible grownups and doing what we pay them to do, and they crapped out. In keeping with their inclination to take defeat in the manner of a spoiled brat, Senator John McCain has proclaimed that Republicans will not cooperate for the rest of the year. We know that Senator McCain can't possibly hold his breath that long, but it's not clear whether or not he actually stuck out his tongue or stamped his feet as his announced his intention not to play nicely with the other boys and girls.

With that, the cat is officially out of the cellophane bag. The wide eyed idealists who believed that Republicans in the Senate had at least a scintilla of good faith and were not solely concerned with obstructing those who sought to solve our problems, must now abandon the last shred of hope that such integrity existed. This is not to say that Republican lawmakers are inherently worse than Democrats, or that Democrats wouldn't have done the same thing if the roles were reversed; we have no way of knowing. However, in this case, it happens to be the Republicans and they deserve to be called out.

Unfortunately, this debacle persists as Republicans pursue some Machiavellian gains by using parliamentary gambits designed to both drag this out and to politically embarrass Democrats. Republican senators are working feverishly to find some excuse to change the bill's text so that it would have to go back to the House for yet another vote. The most regrettable aspect of the whole sordid affair is the transparent demagoguery and sleaze. Republicans are proposing poison pill amendments designed to both alter the bill and provide fodder for deliberately dishonorable and false advertising. For instance, Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK), introduced an amendment to bar coverage for erectile dysfunction medication for convicted sex offenders. Republicans intend use votes against this thinly veiled charade in ads specifically designed to deceive voters by mischaracterizing the votes as a desire on the part of Democratic lawmakers to use taxpayer money to give Viagra to monsters who rape children. Such deliberately misleading advertising for a product would cause significant FTC fines.

I want to make it clear that this only happens to be Republicans in this case. The sleazy demagoguery and win at any cost gutter politics cut across all party lines and political ideologies. That said, people need to be held accountable for their wrongdoing. I'm bothered because these are our leaders and we should to be able see them as something other than contemptible. Politicians acting without a sense of honor or decency corrode our democracy and further harm the already maligned though noble calling of public service. I know politics can be a bare knuckle street fight that sometimes gets pretty ugly, but we need to recognize what's beyond the pale and when to say stop it! You're disgracing your office and your country.

The Unsinkable Scott Brown

If the political pundits are correct that purple is the new black, then Massachusetts is becoming tres chic. For those of you who have no idea what I'm talking about, in political speak, blue states are reliably Democratic, red states are reliably Republican, and purple is, of course, what you get when you have a mix of red and blue. Massachusetts was just about the bluest state in the union, but last night, Scott Brown, a comparatively unknown Republican state senator defeated well known Democratic Attorney General, Martha Coakley in a special election to fill the seat of the late Senator Ted Kennedy. This latest "Massachusetts Miracle" will doubtlessly be discussed by political junkies and social scientists for years to come, and it may take quite some time to sort out its meaning and implications.

According to some polls, Ms. Coakley had a 31% lead two months ago. Not since the 1978 Red Sox has anyone in Massachusetts blown a lead so big so close to the finish line, and this time no one can curse Bucky F--king Dent. Mr. Brown ran an excellent campaign and Ms. Coakley did not, but that doesn't seem enough to fully explain last night's result. Was it perceived arrogance on the part of Coakley, Obama, or the Washington Democrats? Was it the unpopular health care bill working through Congress, the Tea Party, anti-incumbent fever (Coakley wasn't an incumbent but the seat was controlled by her party), or was Brown just that attractive a candidate? All of the above and likely every combination thereof will be claimed by someone as the right answer, but we'll never really know for sure. Among other things, voters can't always pinpoint exactly what makes them pick A over B. All we can say for sure is that Massachusetts, which seemed destined to send its first woman to the Senate, will instead be sending a Republican to the Senate for the first time since the Nixon landslide of '72.

The bigger question is what does it all mean? If the reason is the health care bill, does it mean reform is dead for now or does it mean that we'll pass different reform? If it's anti-incumbency, are Republican incumbents as vulnerable as Democratic incumbents in November? What if people just prefer Scott Brown? Also, what are the broader implications of now having 41 senators in the Republican caucus? Yes, Obama is losing popularity, but he remains popular in Massachusetts. Yes, the Tea Party fought for Brown and he won a seat held by Democrats for a long time, but in November in the New York 23rd, the Tea Party backed a conservative and they lost a long held Republican seat to a Democrat. I don't know; maybe moderates are sick of both sides trying to pull them to the respective lunatic fringes.

If there's anything I feel safe in saying it's that our recent political history can teach us something. Shortly after the Republican Revolution of 1994, people wrote the epitaph for the Democratic Party as a national force. A few years later, the same was said of the Republicans, asserting that they now represented only the Deep South and Mountain West. After seeing this go back and forth with the speed of Olympic ping-pong, even Americans, notorious for having a short historical memory, will likely hesitate before drawing such sweeping conclusions. Congratulations to Senator Brown and, as one of your constituents, let me thank you in advance for your service to our state and country. May your election usher in a new era of more responsible governing and less of the partisan bickering that has eroded the respect we should have for those who represent us in Congress.

Lead, Follow or Get out of the Way

The post's title is probably my favorite Thomas Paine quote. It enjoyed new life and widely came into the public consciousness as a commercial tagline when Lee Iacocca was running Chrysler. It's certainly much more elegant than its modern counterpart, which because of its crudeness I won't repeat here, but suffice it to say that it rhymes with "knit or get off the cot." Paine's words should be a bare minimum standard for any elected official, and failure to adhere to them should automatically disqualify him or her for re-election. If this standard were applied, the sad and shameful truth is that a lot of familiar faces on Capitol Hill would disappear.

Let's get a couple of things straight. First, simply obstructing the problem solving efforts of others while offering little or nothing in the way of your own solutions is not to be celebrated as dissent or the sort of checks and balances the Constitution envisioned. The Monty Python crew understood this when they pointed out the following distinction, "Argument is an intellectual process. Contradiction is just the automatic gainsaying of any statement the other person makes." If you're only capable of offering the equivalent of contradiction and not a compelling argument, then we neither need nor want your input and we'll let those with something of value to add carry the day. Far too many in both chambers of Congress, especially the Senate, are failing to do the job for which they're accepting a paycheck. In many cases, if they practiced law the way they practice lawmaking they would be disbarred.

Secondly, the world is an imperfect place and, thus, simply finding fault with someone else's plan means nothing. With respect to health care reform, for instance, every proposal has its own set of problems and doing nothing at all would eventually be catastrophic. You add absolutely nothing to the dialogue if you only point out costs or other shortcomings without demonstrating that your idea, loss for loss, is better overall.

Finally, this should apply not only to lawmakers but also to the general marketplace of ideas. My patience with those who offer nothing but negativity has been exhausted. I could eventually bankrupt someone who took the following bet, turn on Rush Limbaugh at a random point during his show. If he's saying anything positive about right wing politics or anything else, I owe you $20; if he's simply spewing venom, you owe me $1. I recently posted a piece about our demons and better angels. Rush's world is composed almost exclusively of demons. He is to anger and hatred what Richard Simmons is to exercise for the corpulent elderly - no one works harder to promote it. I'm also out of patience with Obama haters. Predictably, the people beaming with schadenfreude when Obama failed to secure the Olympics for Chicago claimed last week that he didn't have the international star power people thought he had. Today those same people are fuming that he was awarded the Nobel peace prize solely because he has international star power! They don't care that they're vulnerable to the form shattering question, were you lying then or are you lying now? All that matters is that they get to hate, mock and scorn.

Demagogues, Death Panels and Dunces

The now infamous warning that a government health care system would be "downright evil" largely because of its "death panel", was given to us by Sarah Palin, the former Governor and current dear God, would you please just go away already! of Alaska. This should take its rightful place in the Fear-Mongering Hall of Shame beside the image Joe McCarthy holding a piece of paper he claimed to be a list of 205 known communists working in the State Department. Unfortunately, in times such as these, when anxiety is running rampant, ridiculous claims gain traction. Forget the people who are born gullible and will die gullible, when there is widespread insecurity, even more discerning people are susceptible to being terrified of whatever bogeyman du jour is being injected into the conversation. There will always be a lunatic fringe making wild accusations, but in better times, we laugh them off and broadly agree that when we need serious thinkers to weigh in on complicated issues, such people are up way past their bedtime and should be sent upstairs while the grownups figure things out.

There is nothing wrong with honest disagreement, in fact, while discord may feel uncomfortable at times, we are much better off because we have people vehemently pushing conflicting ideas, allowing society to ultimately sort out their respective merits. Demagoguery, however, is another matter altogether. We should give no quarter to people who know the truth but feign ignorance in order to exploit the feeble-minded and people whose ability to think clearly has been hampered by fear. The demagogues have come out in force concerning a provision that allows health insurance to pay for physician counseling regarding end of life decisions. Politicians who look people in the eye and suggest this is designed for the wholesale slaughter of the elderly and sick are stupid if they don't know better, dishonest if they do. So, which is it?

In 2003 the Senate passed legislation that, among other things, provides for paying physicians for counseling with respect to end of life decisions. The bill received 54 votes, 42 of them Republican. Among those voting Yea was Senator Grassley of Iowa, the ranking member of the Senate Finance Committee, who recently made headlines for more or less fueling the public's wholly unfounded fear of a provision that's roughly the same as the one he voted for a few years ago. He's not stupid; he's just counting on you to be stupid.

Now let's look at Sarah Palin's 2008 proclamation of Healthcare Decisions Day, designed to encourage doctors and others to inform people and increase the number of citizens with advance directives regarding end of life decisions. Of course, to be fair, I have read Palin's infamous Facebook rant, and the basis for her accusation may not be the controversial end of life counseling provision. She may very well have just made the whole thing up in her head. She simply declared that the government would refuse to pay for care, and that less productive people would be dragged before the death panel for a thumbs up or thumbs down. It may be unfair to accuse her of deliberately misleading people. She may simply lack the intellect required for meaningful understanding of a complicated issue. There is certainly more than ample evidence that she is entitled to the benefit of the doubt on that score.