PBS: With a Whimper

I saw the very first New Hour on PBS, some 30 years ago, with Jim Lehrer and Robert MacNeil. They were still trying to figure out what to do with a full hour of news. They played with "Postcards," which were pictures of scenes from around the country, to fill that yawning 60 minutes.  Eventually, they got it right and after you got accustomed to The News Hour, all the other news programs looked like shameless news-entertainment hucksterism. 

But the years do take their toll, and now we've got the hoary pundits of Mark Shields and David Brooks who are so wrapped up in their own images as pundits, they simply cannot see the forest for the trees--in fact branches and entire trunks are crashing down on their heads and rendering them brain injured.

Last night Rahm Emmanuel joined Shields and Brooks in the sky box above the convention floor and these two aging journalists did not just embarrass themselves, they embarrassed this erstwhile fan and the viewing public. 

Shields was so intent on demonstrating how even handed and objective a true, professional journalist he was that he asked Emmanuel how the Democrats could complain about the Citizens United case, (which allowed a few very rich people to buy up all the television air time to air their own commercials, espousing their own self serving moneyed interests) when President Obama was the one who ceded the "moral high ground" to the Republicans in 2008 by refusing to accept public funds for his campaign and he was able to outspend John McCain two to one.

The statement/question was so breathtakingly stupid it caught Emmanuel, who is rarely at a loss for words, off guard and he simply, appropriately ignored it. 

He did not answer because the answer would have had to go something like this:  1.  Candidates were not legally required to accept government funding for their own campaigns and Obama did the simple calculation that he could air more TV ads using contributions acquired from millions of $25 contributors than if he took a lump sum for the government. 2. Using the internet, millions of voters contributed typically less than $100 to fund Obama's messages. 3.To compare using the contributions of millions to the contribution of a precious few rich men--the Koch brothers, Mr. Adelson (the casino magnate) as being morally equivalent , in a democracy, is so insipid as to raise the question of whether or not Mr. Shields should be sent immediately for a CAT scan of his brain.
In the Citizens United case a reactionary Supreme Court said monetary contributions are a form of speech, protected by the First Amendment, which was written in the 18th century, before there was television, radio or PBS. Justice Scalia started preaching about "original intent" and the sacred concept of cleaving to the parchment, as if he was talking about a stone handed down from God. 
What Emmanuel and many others have been saying is when you have a huge crowd in a stadium, in  democracy, each voter has a voice. And each voice should be of equal importance. But when you give a microphone and a huge sound system and a podium and a place on the stage to the Koch brothers, then their voices are heard above all others, then their speech is more equal than any other.
Now, Mr. Shields, that, you might think would be immoral. 
But is it immoral for a candidate, faced with Sarah Palin's frothing rants to say, "I will not accept half the air time, half the attention I can be given by millions of eager contributors, so we can pretend we have public financing of national political campaigns?"
Would the moral high ground have been to honorably lose to Sarah Palin and a man who has subsequently revealed himself to be less honorable than we thought he was--a man who has been seen on Jon Stewart saying the Constitution guarantees America will be  a Christian nation?
Who is Mr. Shields to define "moral high ground?"
Where did Mr. Shields ever get the idea he could put "higher moral ground" in the same sentence as "political campaign."
Now you will say, good for the goose, good for the gander, but Citizens United is a bird of a different feather.  This is a decision by a Republican Court to limit speech under the rationale of protecting free speech.
Rather like protecting the integrity of the election by disenfranchising  as many likely Democratic voters as you can with voter ID laws.
When Mr. Ryan shows himself indifferent to facts, hostile to truth telling, where is the moral high ground comparison?
Then David Brooks swoops in for his "Gottcha" moment, asking Mr. Emmanuel how the Democrats can say Mr. Ryan and Mr. Romney want to kill Medicare when they would allow current recipients to keep their current coverage and to phase in the Coupon Care Medicare over 15 years? 
How much insight does it require to know that the Republican Ryan bill, voted for by every Republican in Congress was a bill not to change Medicare, not to save it, but to kill it?  
What is the definition of disingenuous? What does the dictionary have a picture of David Brooks by that word?
Emmanuel, of course, simply replied there is a difference between a guarantee of payment for all costs of medical care and a coupon.  He might have said, a coronary bypass operation costs $250,000 and Mr. Ryan's coupon would cover $8,000 of that. Do you really think Mr. Ryan is "saving" Medicare with his coupon?
Emmanuel looked from one to the other much as the animals of Animal Farm looked around the table and could not distinguish the people from the pigs.

Deval Patrick et al: Finally, Some Punches

"Mitt Romney talks a lot about all the things he's fixed. I can tell you that Massachusetts wasn't one of them."

"He's a fine fellow and a great salesman, but as a governor he was more interested in having the job than doing it."


"Republicans have made obstruction itself the centerpiece of their governing strategy."

"I will not stand by and let him be bullied out of office--and neither should you."

"All that today's Republicans are saying is that if we just shrink government, cut taxes, crush unions and wait, all will be well. Never mind that those are the very policies that got us into recession to begin with."

--Deval Patrick, Governor of Massachusetts

"Mitt Romney has so little economic patriotism that even his money needs a passport. It summers on the beaches of the Cayman islands and winters on the Swiss Alps."
--Ted Strickland, Former Governor of Ohio

Well roared, Lions.

         --Mad Dog

Pledge Politics

Jackie Cilley, who says The Pledge is a pledge to raise property taxes

Grover Norquist Who Wants to Drown Your Government In His Bathtub

When you think about it...But who ever really thinks about anything in governance now?
But if you do think about it, every Republican and every Democrat who has taken this asinine pledge to NEVER PERMIT AN INCOME TAX in the state of New Hampshire, has actually taken a pledge to raise property taxes.

Jackie Cilley did think about it and she said, "No."

Only two things are certain: Death and Taxes. 

If we are going to have a government, we will have taxes of some sort.

Unless, of course, you agree with Grover Norquist that the government we ought to have should be small enough so Grover can drown it in his bathtub, but even then, you need taxes.

And if we have taxes, then if you make one tax smaller, or eliminate one tax, then all the other taxes have to, do what?  That's right, Einstein, the others must GET BIGGER!

So if we say no sales tax, no income tax, no this tax, no that tax, what has been left to taxpayers in New Hampshire is the property tax. 
 As taxes go, the property tax may seem like a "progressive" tax, that is, it falls more heavily on those with more valuable property.  Problem with this simplistic thinking is, it really does not fall most heavily on those with the most disposable income, those whose bank accounts get bigger every year. It falls most on those people who have owned property, their homes, for the longest and they have seen the value attributed to their homes and land rise. Of course, this is imaginary value. Your home and land is worth nothing until you sell it, but you pay rising  taxes on that imaginary value every year you do not sell it. So if you are retired, living on your Social Security and your 401 K, you watch your "rent" you pay the state of New Hampshire on your paid off home rise, while your income does not rise.

When I ran a small business I paid: Federal income tax, income tax to the State of Maryland, self employment tax, Alternative Minimum Tax, Social Security tax, Medicare tax, Maryland and county property tax, state personal property tax, Auto Registration tax.  And those are just the taxes I can remember. I had an accountant who kept track of all the taxes I had to pay. 

Of all these, I hated the income tax most because it required me to keep all sorts of records and receipts, which even after 30 years of collecting and filing these things, I never felt I got right. And it made me play games with what was a reasonable deduction:  I could deduct the miles I put on my car driving to certain locations but not to others, if I kept a log of where I drove. Driving to my office parking lot was not deductible. Driving to a hospital parking lot was deductible. It was intrusive, frustrating and I knew others were gaming the system where I was not.  People like Mitt Romney didn't have "ordinary income," so they paid only 1/3 of what I was paying.  Friends bought Expeditions and Excalibers, very large SUV's because they could deduct most of the cost of these behemoths, while I drove my economy car. Friends put their malpractice insurance on credit cards, because they could deduct payments made by credit cards and that paid air fare for London vacations. People gamed the federal income tax and I resented the whole game.

So I hate income taxes.

But the state income tax was a straight fraction of whatever you paid the feds. It was less obnoxious.

I wouldn't want a state income tax, but I might prefer it to higher property taxes or to a tax on my car or on my parking at work. 

But what I really find obnoxious is a pledge some sleazeball like Grover Norquist popularizes telling me what a third rail, an electric fence in the state of New Hampshire ought to be.

American Taliban: The Republican Party

Jeff Daniels as Will McAvoy in The Newsroom

             

The Newsroom has been savaged by some reviewers, both from the political right, which is predictable, and from the left, for the usual reasons of stupidity posing as intellect, but I wound up watching all ten episodes, and was not at all put off by the preachiness. In fact, its writer, Mr. Sorkin, does pretty much what George Bernard Shaw did in the early 20th century--he writes plays of ideas, in which speeches are made and ideas vigorously presented. For doing this, Sorkin is criticized for not writing what the critics expect from TV. He is criticized for being preachy, which is apparently not allowed in television drama. It violates somebody's rule.

Apart from its place in literature, the show is useful as a platform for ideas. It summarizes with great clarity the great issues of the day, and its last episode lists the 12 characteristics of today's Republican/Tea party, after a nifty observation about what the Republican Party is now all about, summarized in a quotation from a Republican office holder explaining why he did not support any of the government's social programs, like Medicaid, Social Security or Medicare:

"My mother told me not to feed stray animals. Because, you know why? They breed."

This of, of course, is what I've been describing as the Republican view of the poor and disadvantaged as "the undeserving poor."  If you are not rich, it's because you have not worked hard enough or you are too stupid.

So here is the profile of the dirty dozen characteristics. You'll have to watch the show for examples of each, but I'm sure you can supply your own. I've supplied a few:

1. Ideological purity (Mitch McConnell saying his only job in the Senate, and the only job of Republicans is not to govern but to deny President Obama a second term.)

2. Belief that compromise is weakness (Paul Ryan stomping out of Budget negotiations with President Obama.)

3. Fundamental belief in scriptural literalism. (Teach creationism not evolution.)

4. Denying science (Vaccination causes mental retardation. Abortion causes breast cancer. Birth Control pills cause prostate cancer. Deny global warming. Rejection of evolution.)

5. Unmoved by facts (President Obama is responsible for the downgrading of the US credit rating--when Standard & Poor's, who did the rating specifically said it was the Republican "political brinkmanship" that moved them to downgrade. Ryan calling Obamacare "government controlled health care," when in fact it is a private insurance company boon and the government option was thwarted. Ryan saying President Obama hurt Medicare by funneling $716 billion away from it--when in fact that very number was in Mr. Ryan's own plan.  This list goes on--see the NY Times 8/31/12 for a list under "Facts Took a Beating in Ryan's speech.")

6. Undeterred by new information (Always)

7. Hostile fear and demonization of education: (See anything by Michele Bachmann, or see the testimony of the New Hampshire Tea Partyers who call it "government education, indoctrination and socialization.")

8. Need to control women's bodies.  (Do we really need to elaborate here?)

9. Febrile xenophobia (Ditto)

10. Intolerance of dissent.

11. Pathological hatred of the United States government.

12. Tribal mentality.

There is Jon Stewart and there is Stephen Colbert. There is Paul Krugman and there is Gail Collins. And now there is Alan Sorkin. 

And then there are the women I work with every day, who do not know any of these people and have never watched The Daily Show, the Colbert Report, or The Newsroom. They do not read newspapers. They do not listen to TV news. 
And, they vote.

But their husbands do listen to Rush Limbaugh.

The question for us, between now and November is: How do we change this?

Paul Ryan and Medicare: Hiring the Fox to Guard the Hen House

YOUR HENS ARE IN GREAT DANGER! YOU NEED SOMEONE YOU CAN TRUST TO GUARD THESE PRECIOUS INVESTMENTS.


Since each of these programs was hatched, the Republican Party has been trying to steal into the hen house and snatch them away.

Now, Paul Ryan says, "Trust me. I can save these imperiled birds."

How smart do you have to be, Farmer Brown?

Live Free or Die. 

Paul Ryan Saves The Drowning Dolphin!

                                   WE HAVE TO SAVE FLIPPER!  HE'S DROWNING!


Paul Ryan and the Republicons are not the first to invent a crisis which requires dire action to remedy.
In the 20th Century there was a little band of merry men who burnt the Reichstag and used that smoking parliament building to win an election and seize power.
So now it's the sky is falling, the dolphins are drowning and we have to save Medicare and Social Security.
Of course, neither is in any real danger from within. 
Both programs are healthy and likely to remain so. 
Social Security has been so healthy the government has been borrowing from it's coffers for years.
But if you hold Flipper's head below the water, you can drown the poor mammal. He's got to come up to air to breathe.
Good going, Paul. You're right there to lend a helping hand.

Republicons vs A Republican

George Bernard Shaw observed, "Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it."

Today I heard Mitt Romney say he is convinced of American exceptionalism--that we are different and better than all other countries on earth.

Abraham Lincoln called America the last best hope of mankind, but when he said that he was speaking of a country which was the only true democracy on the planet. England was evolving into a constitutional monarchy, but, for the most part, the American experiment was the first real, large scale effort to forge a republic, "If you can keep it," as Benjamin Franklin said.

Lincoln called himself a Republican.  He would be appalled to see the Republicans of today--John Boehner, Eric Cantor, Mitch McConnell, Mitt Romney. These are men who would say the slaves would free themselves if only government regulations did not constrain them.

But, to go back to GB Shaw, "Democracy is a device that ensures we shall be governed no better than we deserve."

And we have been discovering just how little we deserve a good government lately.

What I cannot understand is why we are so undeserving, what makes us so stupid that Rush Limbaugh is a man who commands the attention and adulation of 15 million listeners daily. 

During the Civil War, soldiers who were educated, if at all, in one room school houses looked at their choices, looked back over three years of dreadful carnage and did not choose to vote for the glamorous George McClellan, but they voted for Lincoln. They chose well, but why? How did they reason and reach the decision that saved the Republic?  Could our soldiers, will our citizens be able to see through the wall of lies to the truth?

I am not sanguine.

Part of the argument this time is not about union or slavery or even rape or contraception and abortion. It's about the economy. The Republicans persist in selling the idea that all we need to do is to reduce taxes and, like pixie dust, everything after that will miraculously turn happy.

They will trot out economists to say it's all true.

But, as GBS remarked:  "If all economists were laid end to end, they would not reach a conclusion."