Portsmouth Herald Showcases the Republican Song and Dance: Susan Collins Style

Yesterday, the Portsmouth Herald published a 20 paragraph, two columns letter from Senator Susan Collins (R-Maine) with some surprising news: Over-regulation by Washington is the reason we are having economic problems.

I wonder where she got that novel insight?

This does sound familiar, as you hear it ad nauseum from virtually every Republican, as if they are reciting Hail Marys.

Why did she feel compelled to repeat these flabby canards?

I was under the apparently mistaken impression our economic woes had something to do which a more complex morass of what was happening in the world wide economy. (Perhaps Senator Collins has not heard of a certain little brouhaha in a place called Europe, and Greece in particular. ) And mixed in that brew are two wars (led by her own party) and a financial meltdown visited upon us by a lack of regulation.

And I seem to recall there a little problem with greedy bankers and stock brokers who sold rotten mortgage backed securities which caused both the housing market and world markets to crash?

If this is true, perhaps the Senator is confusing the disease (greed, and its fellow traveler, unscrupulous behavior) with the therapy (vigorously enforced regulation.)

But now we have a United States Senator, who people have been fond of describing as a "Moderates Republican" screaming about regulations holding down the economy. (Maybe this is like one of those fraternity stunts you have to do to be taken into the club. You know, like running around the quad in your underwear in the snow, shouting, "Beware the Sky is Falling!)

Senator Collins certainly sounds as if she knows: “Crushing new regulations,” are on their way: More than 4,200 new rules 845 affect small business with economic impact of $100 million each costing 90,000 American jobs. Wow! And Senator Collins has been talking to “businessmen” and “Job Creators” who tell her “Uncertainty generated by Washington is a big wet blanket on our economy.”

Perhaps, if she had listened more closely, she’d have realized the kind of uncertainty they are talking about is the kind created when her own party, the Republican party, initially refused to allow FEMA relief payments for flood victims in Vermont and elsewhere. When the Republicans try to control and regulate—no FEMA payments until we cut something from government programs —well that’s just responsible government action. And talk about uncertainty: Let’s spend the summer closing down the government by dreaming up a problem (as if we don’t have enough already) called the “Deficit.”

I keep looking for the specific regulations which are dragging down our economy and Senator Collins offers only two examples: Walnuts and boiler emissions.

Let’s take the case of walnuts; it’s something I actually know about. Senator Collins says, “Washington claimed the walnuts were being marketed as a drug, so the government ordered the company to stop telling consumers about the benefits of nuts.”

Oh, bad government! Down boy! Good walnut sellers. Good boy.

The problem with the Senator’s argument is there are no persuasive, double blind, controlled prospective trials to confirm any of the claims made for walnuts (avoid heart disease, improve blood sugar control in diabetes.) There are lots of claims made for a variety of foods, but these are studies which leave a lot to be desired, scientifically. How many walnuts do you have to eat a day to raise your HDL cholesterol? Is the effect transitory or sustained? Does this actually result in an outcome we care about, like reduced heart attacks? Or do people simply gain weight and start smelling like walnuts?

But the lack of evidence never stopped the walnut purveyors from making those claims. This is part of the culture of commerce, which in this country trumps the culture of science every time. If you have a "scientific claim" which can be turned into cash, the Republican Party and the folks in the money chain are rooting for you, whether or not the claim is phony. Every day I see on TV advertisements for FRUIT LOOPS as being good for your child’s health because of their fiber content! Imagine if the government tried to stomp all over those Job Creators at the Fruit Loop Company for deceptive advertising.

But deceptive advertising is nothing that bothers Ms. Collins or her party. They do it all the time.

Just consider the case of her partner, across the river, Kelly Ayotte who voted to kill Medicare and then claimed the Republican party was not trying to kill Medicare, it was just “Improving” it. Improving it, by converting it into a coupon care program. So you would get, say $8000 a year to spend on whatever your little heart desires for medical care, and you’d save the government a bundle of money and help keep the big bad Deficit away. Of course, if you needed a coronary bypass that year, the bill would be somewhere in the neighborhood of $200,000. But, hey, $8,000 is a start. Your children can chip in. And you could sell your house.

I don’t know much about boilers, but the Senator from Maine tells me the regulations had something to do with the Environmental Protection Agency, which her party believes to be a Democratic anti business machine and the EPA is at it again, regulating “emissions” from these boilers which will cost 90,000 jobs. I don’t know, maybe she’s right. Whenever she trots out big numbers, you know she must know what she’s talking about.

But then again, think about those walnuts.

Republicans: The Anatomy of Hate

My wife remarked I would have lasted about thirty seconds as a psychiatrist. Coming from her, this was a compliment. During her nursing training she had to do a rotation on psychiatry, in a very famous psychiatric hospital, Payne Whitney, in New York City and she said it was all she could do to stop herself from just slapping some of her depressed patients. "Man up," she wanted to say. "Just stop whining and pull yourself together."

So ours is not a household given to a lot of psychobabble.

On the other hand, when I look at the Republicans who are most prominent, from Rush Limbaugh, to Rick Perry, I cannot help but notice a few shared characteristics which one might describe as a syndrome of the hater.

Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity, all very poor students. All, presumably, told at some tender age they were not the sharpest blades in the drawer, and you can just see them trying to prove all those doubters wrong. You see them struggling to change that past of humiliation.

And Rush, one has to admit, is a man with some pretty obvious reasons for self loathing. He is, after all, grotesque, physically. This is not a kind or socially correct thing to point out, but it's sort of the 800 pound gorilla when it comes to Rush, and for that matter Glenn. Pretty obvious insecurity and inferiority complexes just lighting up like neon.

Rick Perry, ditto. Not because he is physically grotesque. Not because he knows he is not going to walk out of the bar with a woman and he's over compensating for physical unattractiveness, but he was, as he freely admits, a dimwit in school. He tries to get past this by joking about it, as if to say, having been a dunce, well that doesn't mean your not smart, because, obviously, I've written this book which displays just how smart I am. I can see Social Security is a Ponzi scheme and ought to be executed, Texas style.

Rush Limbaugh hates the undeserving poor, the welfare queens who want to rape the system and free load off the hard working American Taxpayer. Mitch McConnell shares that hate and so does Rick Perry and Michele Bachmann. All the Republicans do. They hate the poor who are poor because they are undeserving and trying to live like parasites on the American taxpayer.

They are not simply derisive, they actively hate these fellow citizens. They hate criminals who commit heinous crimes and they want to kill them. Rick Perry has never lost sleep over killing prisoners on death row. And he is dead certain (excuse the pun) he has never executed an innocent man, that's how sure he is of the Texas courts.

In his certainty, Rick Perry shares this characteristic with all the big time Republicans, Mitch McConnell, John Boehner, Paul Ryan, Glenn, Rush, Sean, Michele. In fact, it is a source of some fascination and wonder to Democrats about just how sure these Republicans are of everything.

But there is nothing new in this.

Just after World War II, Jean Paul Sartre looked at the anti Semite. "Anti Semitism is a way of feeling good, proud even," Sartre observed. "It is not unusual for people to elect to live a life of passion rather than reason." The hater does this out of a "Longing for impenetrability. The rational man groans as he gropes for the truth; he knows that reasoning is no more than tentative, that other considerations may intervene to cast doubt on it...The Anti Semite has chosen hate because hate is a faith."

Democrats over the past three years, have agonized over the inability of Democrats, of the President in particular, to come up with a coherent, cogent and simple response, a catchy little catechism like the Republicans have: "Regulations, tax and spend, driving up the deficits for our grandchildren to pay. Government is not the solution; it is the problem."

Why don't we have a catchy little riff like that?

It's Bertrand Russel's plaintiff question: Why is it the stupid are cocksure, and the intelligent full of doubts?

Well, I guess the answer is, because the Right is always sure it's right. And the Left, well, they are pondering.

But Democrats have got to get beyond all this.

We may not have all the answers, but we do know this: The Republicans, for all their surety are wrong. They stamp their feet and throw tantrums, but what they are really saying is, "We cannot and will not do anything! No!" They are saying government cannot help. No. We will not allow it!

And Democrats, from the time of Herbert Hoover and the Great Depression know that government will fail, but it will try again, and it has to try and keep trying until something works. And eventually, something will work. And we call the successes Social Security and Medicare and The Interstate Highway System and the Internet and the Atom bomb (heaven help us) and a dead guy called Osama Bin Laden.

If you keep trying, eventually, something works.

Democrats Build Bridges; Republicans Build Riches (For Themselves)

We really need some marketing in the Democratic Party.
The Republicans are so good at this: They turn Estate Taxes into Death Taxes.
They turn a recession into an Obama Recession.
They turn Affordable Healthcare Act into Obamacare.

Well, you get the drift.

And then, in the best tradition of advertising and Mad Men, they all pick up the chant and keep hammering it home so whatever they say becomes received wisdom.

They could decide the earth is flat, and the world was created in 7 days and sell that.
But wait, they already did that.

And evolution is just a theory like creationism and everyone deserves to carry a concealed weapon and if it weren't for government regulation and taxes on the rich, the Job Creators would make a new world in six days and rest on the seventh and create all the jobs in the universe and all the creatures and Sarah Palin would be President and Michele Bachmann the Secretary of the Departments of Education, Health and Human Services and State; but wait, there would be no Department of Education and no EPA either. And Rick Perry would be Secretary of Defense because he looks so good with that six shooter.


And Mitch McConnell would be Senate Leader and John Boehner would be Speaker of the House and President of Congressional Country Club.

What a world we would have then.

It just makes me so excited and rapturous to think on it.

So there's a bridge between Kentucky and Ohio which carries 3% of all the nation's GNP, and it connects all the truck traffic from Michigan to New Orleans and it backs up for miles every day and we just cannot fix it because, Doncha Know? The Deficit! We cannot spend money to do this because we have to live within our means, and we cannot and will not raise taxes and it's all these government regulations which keep us from doing anything at all.

We are just paralyzed.

And we are just helpless, helpless, helpless because we are under control of the Republicans.

Rapacious Republicans. Selfish Republicans. Tea Party Republicans. Tax anyone but the rich Republicans. Medicare killers. Social Security killers. The party of hate and fear.

And just when you began to think, well, they're not all so bad--Susan Collins and Olympia Snow, after all. But look at them. Those two women vote just as John Boehner and Mitch McConnell tell them to vote and they will campaign for Rick Perry and Michele Bachmann.

And nary a one of them is loyal to the United States of America. They are only loyal to the Republican Party.

Congressman Paul Ryan Instructs

Some times you got to love National Public Radio. Today Michele Norris asked Congressman Paul Ryan why he so opposed increasing taxes on the rich and he said, as Republicans now all say whenever they get the chance, the rich people are not rich people, they are "Job creators," and if we annoy them with taxes and hamstring them with "Regulations" they will simply stamp their feet and refuse to hire any of the poor people who need jobs and who the government should definitely not hire to do any sort of work (because that would drive up the dreaded deficit.)

And here's where it got good: Ms. Norris asked him, very politely, well, if keeping taxes low on the rich "Job Creators" is the secret to getting the Job Creators to hire, why had they not been hiring after years of some of the lowest tax rates we have ever set for the rich--currently at 32% for the top incomes. We have had eras when tax rates were much higher and unemployment was much lower, so why were those rich Job Creators willing to hire when they were paying higher taxes then, but not now?

Representative Ryan responded that actually the tax rates for the richest Job Creators once reached a low of 28%, a non sequitur about which, sadly, Ms. Norris did not press him.

He went on to recite the usual cant about how those magical, unspecified "Government Regulations" were keeping rich Job Creators from feeling secure about the future, and how the deficit, (which Republicans created with low taxes and high war expenditures) was making the JC's unwilling to risk hiring. It was all the fault of misguided Democratic Party policies.

He described himself as a policy man.

We all remember his most famous policy: Replace Medicare with a coupon system. You get an $8,000 coupon every year to put toward your medical expenses. That ought to just about cover the anesthesiologist's bill for your by pass. So they can put you to sleep but not fix your heart, because the surgeon has a bill and the hospital, too. But that coupon system sure would save the government a lot of money.

So now this is the best the Republican party's best policy man, their chairman of the House committee on budgets, monetary policy and all things financial, can come up with.

I couldn't help thinking, as I was listening, who exactly are these Job Creators? I mean, is there a directory of Job Creators? Do they have a convention? Do they all belong to the same country club? Do they have a Face Book page? Does Paul Ryan have them over for a prayer breakfast every Monday?

And what, specifically, are those frightening, stultifying "Regulations" which have so paralyzed these Job Creators they have simply refused to hire their fellow citizens?

I had some very good friends in Washington, DC who ran a real estate development company with about thirty employees. They bought up parcels of land in Silver Spring, Maryland, intending to develop it but then a huge corporation made them an offer for this land they simply could not refused. Every one of the three partners became a multi milloinaire overnight. One of them cashed in and moved to horse country, Virginia, retiring at the age of 45. But two others kept the company going. And when I asked one of them why he hadn't simply bought himself a country estate and started traveling and riding horses in hunt club events, he looked at me, a little surprised. "Well," he said. "We've got thirty people depending on this company for their jobs. And they like developing projects, building homes and offices and shaping the future. This is a company, well, I'm not running it for me. I'm running it for them, for the people who work in it and for the people they are going to put in homes and in communities."

This guy, remember is very rich. Doesn't have to work. And he's a freaking Communist! Warren Buffet if not the only rich dude out there with a conscience and a sense of doing socially responsible work.

I would venture to say, this guy is the real patriot in the house.

You may be wondering who those kids in the picture are. They are kids from a middle school in 1927, and most of them lived in tiny apartments with their parents and didn't know they were living in poverty because everyone around them lived about the same way. And some of them, probably most, grew up to own big houses and cars and send their kids to college because a rising tide raised their boats, as the country went through the Depression and the World War and they were part of that community which hung on together and got the country through it all and built a future for themselves and their cohort. They paid their taxes and never complained.

Michele Norris asked Mr. Ryan about his claim hat President Obama was engaging in Class Warfare by suggesting we increase taxes on the rich. She said, actually aren't you the one who is engaging in class warfare by asking the question, by making the issue of spreading the tax burden more evenly into a class question?

He just laughed and said he didn't see that at all.

Check out Congressman Ryan's hairline. That simian look may tell you something about him, and about those who travel with him in that right wing party on Capitol Hill.

Let's All Kill Grandma

So let's talk about Medicare and Social Security.

These are things we call "Entitlements," or as the Republican Party says, "Government sponsored Ponzi Schemes."

We really cannot afford to pay for either, because we insist on government living within its means.

And we cannot live within our means, especially if we have no means because means means taxes, and as Republicans WE ARE AGAINST TAXES.

So when Grandma gets to the hospital, unable to breathe and we are told she needs a heart bypass procedure, which costs somewhere between $100,000 and $200,000, we would have to sell her house and get a second mortgage on our house and would grandma really want that?

We can't ask her because she so short of breath she can't answer.

But, we can use the coupon for $8,000 which Paul Ryan gave us and that will bring the cost down to well, $192,000, so that will help.

Well, maybe she can make it without the surgery.

But there's another problem. If we take her home and she does survive, that Social Security check isn't coming any more, because you know, we had this problem with the deficit.

And I know that was a big problem because my brother is over in Iraq and he tells me he can see where all the money is going. And he says his buddies in Afghanistan say it's even worse over there--they are just exploding money over there, literally.

But Kelly Ayotte is all for spending over there, because, well she's a patriot. And she looks so sweet.

Now Mr. Guinta is on the same page as Senator Ayotte. She got to vote against Medicare and he's just sorry he didn't have the same chance.

He is pretty happy though, because he's now a finalist in the Joseph McCarthy look alike contest.

Frank wasn't really sure who Joe McCarthy was, but when he was told Joe was a Republican, he liked him immediately. Joe was one of the best Republicans at finding bad people in the federal government. He had lists of bad people, and he kept changing them and updating them. He hated government spending, too. So he and Frank are sort of soul mates. Actually, they all are, Joe and Kelly and Frank and Mitch, all separated at birth, but now reunited under that great big Republican circus tent.

Makes you sort of proud to be an American.

The Bridge to Somewhere

The Brent Spence Bridge connects Mitch McConnell's state of Kentucky to John Boehner's state of Ohio and both connect to our state of New Hampshire in one very important way, and that is through the great state of mind of Herbert Hoover: Government cannot be the solution.

The bridge carries a stunning percentage of the load of truck traffic from the upper midwest but there are back ups lasting hours as the huge volume of traffic in trucks and passenger vehicles try to squeeze through a structure meant to carry less than an half the traffic it now bears.

Now you would think, well this is a no brainer, build a new bridge or at least expand this one.

Then again, consider the brains of the Republican senator from Kentucky and the Republican Representative, and Speaker of the House, from Ohio.

The people on both sides of the bridge cry out: "Build a bridge," and the Boehner/ McConnell braintrust says, "No taxes."

The people upstream from the bridge, in Wisconsin, Michigan and Indiana say, "We are strangling, build a bridge!" And McConnell/Boehner say, "Government is the problem, not the solution."

"Our businesses are withering on the vine because we cannot get our goods to market," cry the small business people who want the bridge. "We must make government live within its means," say the Republicans.

Now, I suppose you might argue, okay build the damn bridge, without taxes, let the private sector build it.

That's been suggested for roads. Sort of like the railroads--sell the private companies land cheap an let the barons of industry profit. Trouble is bridges for profit mean tolls and the whole idea is to keep traffic flowing, not holding it up, so, in general, bridges tend to be non toll structures. They are things which connect us, and so Democrats like them on an existential basis and Republicans, who are more fond of moats and walled communities and country clubs where the rich can hide from the hoi polloi and not sully their manicured fingernails with the dirt of the land, well, Republicans really don't like bridges much, existentially speaking. They are not bridge builders.

Actually, as in most things, there is symbolism and there is nuance.

When it comes to bridges, even Republicans can sometimes see that government spending may not always be bad. In fact--I cannot believe this story, but it was on the internet so it must be true--Rand Paul is flying to Kentucky on Air Force One with the President, (despite the cost to the Treasury of the airplane feul, )and he says he's doing this to lobby the President to spend some money on building a new bridge.

Imagine that! He says if the President can lobby the "Democrat party" for the funds, he'll lobby the Republicans.

Of course, if I were at the President's elbow I'd whisper into his ear: "Tell him you'll lobby for the bridge if he can say 'The Democratic Party' three times." I mean, the man is asking for help and he still can't bring himself to say Democratic.

These Republicans, once upon a time they could not pronounce "Negro" and said "Nigrah" instead. Now they take great glee in referring to their opponents as "The Democrat Party" rather than the name the Democrats use. These are the same guys who kept calling Muhammed Ali Cassius Clay. They never understood Howard Cosell, when he said, "In this country a man has a right to be called by whatever name he chooses for himself."

But back to the bridge: When Republicans want something, well maybe there is a place for government. But for jobs, the environment, the middle class, healthcare, Social Security: We have to live within our means; No taxes; cut spending is the only answer to jobs, the economy and the deficit.

We are for the private sector, the Republicans say. Let the private sector do it.

But the reality is, when the public sector builds a beltway around Washington, DC, the private sector booms. When the public sector builds a subway and light rail system, wherever a subway station pokes its nose through to the street above, the small business spring up.

If you build it, they will come.

But the Republicans have decided we cannot do anything here in Congress, other than cross our arms and stamp our feet and shout "No!" (Except for bridges in Kentucky.)

No to Medicare, Kelly Ayotte says. It costs too much. No to bridges, if that means spending money.

What ever happened to, "It takes money to make money?"

I guess that's a concept which is a bridge to nowhere.

The Bully Pulpit: The Playground Bullies

Mitch McConnell, Rush Limbaugh, Rick Perry, are the classic playground bullies. They are, for personal reasons, not entirely sure of their own manhood, so they puff themselves up and spout out the sort of tough sounding stuff which attempts to substitute braggadocio and in your face for real courage. Theirs is a sort of substitute courage, the loud mouth.

And of course, from the time we first got to know him, Barack Obama is the perfect target for the playground bully, who looks for the kid they can wale on,--he so obviously will not hit back.

So, President Obama proposes a jobs bill and McConnell says it's a poor substitute for leadership.

Rick Perry says he never lost sleep over any of the record number of prisoners he's sent to the Texas death house. Why should he? He's a tough guy. Of course, the governor of Illinois stopped executions in his state once he realized through the efforts of the Innocence Project, which revealed, using DNA evidence, the innocence of so many people on death row the governor had to admit, our jury system is so flawed we should not be killing people if there is any doubt at all.

Today a prisoner will be executed even though the witnesses against him have recanted their testimony.

You see a movie like "Conviction" and you see how courts and police make mistakes and would rather than admit it, they'd put an innocent man to death.
Then there's the sheriff of Maricopa County, Arizona, who parades prisoners in pink underwear through the streets and some of these guys have not even had their day in court. But the sheriff is a real tough guy. He's real tough when he's surrounded by armed deputies, you understand.
But then, that's the essence of the bully. He is never going to stand across the mat and face off against another man, who could take him down. He's only tough when he's safe, rich and Republican.