The 99%

Some weeks ago Mad Dog wrote about some really amazing pie graphs which showed in a very visually striking way the astonishing reality of wealth distribution in the United States.

Now we have the 99% crowd, apparently motivated by the same images, in streets from New York to Boston and beyond. What exactly brings them to the streets is not so easy to discern, but clearly, a common theme appears to be outrage at the few how have so much, while the many have no jobs and no prospects.

Last night, on The News Hour, a man from a "conservative think tank" said that if you really think about the 99%, they are objecting to the fact that some people make only $500,000 a year, by which he meant in the upper 10-20% of the wealthiest Americans there are people making that much but they do not make it into the upper 1%.

Nicholas Kristoff floated another figure in the New York Times: the 400 wealthiest families in the USA own more wealth than all the wealth owned by 90% of the population.

Different ways of looking at who owns how much.

For the conservative think tank guy, he is very smug about how you slice and dice the numbers, but if you look at those pie graphs, there is no real argument. This looks worse than the distribution of wealth in Marie Antoinette's France, and smug rich conservative Republicans can say "Let them eat cake," all they want to, but they ignore what everyone else can see and they do it at their own peril.

Those pie graphs ought to be printed on T shirts and handed out at super markets by Democrats here in New Hampshire and everywhere around the country. They ought to be on bumper stickers. Don't explain too much, just put up those pie graphs and let people ask you about them.

And while we are printing up T shirts, let's print a few with Got Medicare? Thank Democrats on the front and Got Social Security? Thank Democrats on the back.

And when we get closer to November 2012, Frank Guinta, Medicare Killer. Kelly Ayotte, Medicare Killer. (I know she's not running but maybe we can shame her into resigning. Hey, Republicans live in a dream world, why can't Mad Dog?)

If the 99% movement means anything, it's that class warfare should be alive and fed and nurtured. The only class warfare we've had thus far has come from the rich against all the rest of us.

FDR, Obama and the Tearful Wah Wah Republicans

One important quality of leadership is the ability to recognize when you can reason with your opponent and when you cannot, when you have to stop talking and hit him between the eyes.

Even our greatest President was guilty of not realizing when his opponents had stopped listening. Listen to his first Inaugural Address given when seven states had already seceded. No cannon had fired on Lincoln's Fort Sumter, but every Southern voice was rife with rancor. And Lincoln's response? "Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection." And he appeals to "The better angels of our nature."

Sounds like President Obama appealing to John Boehner to come by and play a round of golf, to Mitch McConnell to drop by the White House, while McConnell, lips dripping with the venom of contempt, says from the floor of the Senate his first priority is not healing the nation's economy, but his first and highest and only mission is to remove President Obama from office.

Consider how another great President began his First Inaugural Address: "Our distress comes from no failure of substance. We are stricken by no plague of locusts...The rulers of the exchange of mankind's goods have failed through their own stubbornness and their own incompetence...Practices of the unscrupulous money changers stand indicted in the court of public opinion, rejected by the hearts and minds of men."

Was this President Obama speaking? If only. No, this was Franklin Roosevelt.
Look how skillfully he alludes to the Bible, the plague of locusts, the money lenders in the temple. He doesn't have to thump his Bible, he knows his Bible, and he brings the weight of morality into play.

Oh, the class warfare!

"Stripped of the lure of profit by which to induce our people to follow their false leadership, they have resorted to exhortations, pleading tearfully for restored confidence. They know only the rules of a generation of self-seekers."

Again, look at the imagery of these phrases. The Republicans are tearful, weak, wringing their hands, sobbing that there is nothing they as elected government officials can do--only the private sector, those mysterious, fabled, unseen captains of industry and commerce can rescue us; we cannot take action ourselves to help ourselves. We need to await the arrival of white knights on horseback to slay the dragons of recession and unemployment. This describes John Boehner and Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell and Eric Cantor as clearly and precisely as it described their Republican ancestors. They are all cut of the same pin striped cloth.

"Restoration calls, however, not for changes in ethics alone. This nation asks for action and action now."

Well, here we do hear something familiar. Finally, Obama begins to echo Roosevelt. Pass my jobs bill and pass it now.

"It can be accomplished in part by direct recruiting by the government itself, treating the task as we would treat the emergency of a war, but at the same time, through this employment, accomplishing greatly needed projects to stimulate and reorganize the use of our natural resources."

Hear an echo in this chamber? Has Obama not re invented this particular wheel with his hope for jobs in the green sector, jobs in clean energy, jobs to rebuild infrastructure?

"Finally, in our progress toward a resumption of work we require two safeguards against a return of the evils of the old order; there must be a strict supervision of all banking and credits and investments; there must be an end to speculation with other people's money."

No, that is not Obama speaking. Were it only. That's Roosevelt in 1933.

If those who do not study history are doomed to repeat it, have we not found ourselves sliding down that path to a repetition of the Great Depression, with the Wah Wah Republicans crying great howls of protests about government Regulation, Roosevelt called it "supervision." Regulation got us into this horrible Recession the Republicans all wail, from Susan Collins to Olympia Snow to Rick Perry, they all read from the same hymn book. Oh, government's the problem.

But listen to FDR, and let us hope, President Obama catches some of his fire.

The Numbers Don't Lie

I'd like to know where Nicholas Kristoff gets his numbers.
He says:
1. The 400 wealthiest Americans have a greater combined net worth than the 150 million Americans who make up the bottom half.

2. The top 1 % of Americans possess more wealth than the folks who make up 90% of the nation.

I've tried finding this from the IRS website, but the IRS is more concerned with income, which, of course, especially in the case of the really rich, does not tell you much about "net wealth," which includes things like the value of stocks held, real estate and other stuff I can hardly imagine.

But if it's true, that should make quite a pie chart. That pie chart should be printed on T shirts and handed out by Democrats at super markets.

It might make some sense of the Wall Street protesters, or maybe not. Right now, I can't really quite understand those protesters. I remember protests from the sixties which looked a lot like this Kumbya crowd, but there was never any doubt what brought all those people to the national Mall in the 1960's--there was this thing called the Vietnam war. There were always people in the crowd who were vegetarians, save the planet, save the tiger, save the whales , but there was one unifying theme: Get out of Vietnam. These guys, not so much.

This protest of the "99%" reminds me of the guy in that movie who throws open a window and leans out and shouts, "I'm mad as Hell, and I'm not going to take it any more."

He could be a mad as hell Tea Party guy. You have to say what you want changed.

A depression era fighter (Raging Bull?) was asked about the pounding he took in the ring, and why he went back in, time after time. He couldn't make a living outside the ring, given the massive unemployment, but making a living in the right was brutal. Didn't he feel it was ultimately pretty discouraging, and he replied, "At least in the ring, I know who I am fighting."

Which was the problem in the Depression and now, you cannot understand who is hurting you. At least in the ring, there is clarity.

But if you have 1% or even 10% owning as much as everyone else combined, no matter how they got that wealth, something is wrong, big time.

Elizabeth Warren, Bless her, is saying what Democrats should all be saying--Okay rich guys, you 1-10% you got your wealth through a system the rest of us gave you, with our sweat. You transported your goods using our roads; you found your customers on the internet the government provided; you used the money our government prints, for Pete's sake.

Pay your share.

And, oh yes, remember it was the Republicans who repealed all those laws which were passed after the Depression to prevent another Depression, and they damn near succeeded in causing another Depression. You know who to punch out for that.

Wah Wah Republicans Enter the Twilight Zone

This is really getting fun. Rick Perry just came out with his plan to revive the ailing American economy: It turns out the disease is a pestilence called the Environmental Protection Agency and all we have to do is to kill the EPA and look right below our own feet for the wealth which lies there to make us all rich.

And, Governor Perry tells us, this plan of his, drilling in the Artic, drilling offshore, drilling baby drill will create 1.2 million jobs! Yikes. Why didn't anyone else think of this?

Actually, his job plan will create only 9,432 jobs.

How do I know? Where does that number come from? I know that number because I just now made it up, just like Rick Perry did.

These Republicans, they always have some number, usually a very big number, to throw at you. Where do they get those numbers from? I used to wonder. I don't wonder any more. I know. They get it from where they live--in La La land. They live in Fantasyland.

As T.S. Eliot observed: Humankind cannot stand too much reality.

The other problem with reality is it's damn hard work figuring out how it really works. Engineers know this. Doctors learn it, in spades, because when they don't understand reality, they watch people die right in front of them. If you are a doctor, it just doesn't work to just claim something is true and to really really have faith in it. If you are wrong, all the faith and dreaming in the world won't help.

Now, you are wondering when I am going to get to Herman Cain. He at least presents a real plan: He's going to tax your groceries at 9%, which will be added to any local tax. In New Hampshire, that's usually zero. But it means that a sales tax finally will come to New Hampshire after all we've sacrificed to avoid one. So you go spend $100 at Shaw's and your bill is $109. You buy a $1000 TV and you give the government an extra $90, a $10,000 car and you throw in $900 for "Tax and Tags," in addition to whatever you pay your state.

This actually does not bother his Republican audience, because, let's face it, for most of them, those 9% add on's are chump change. And if they see their income tax go down from 34% to 9%, they come out ahead.

It's only the family trying to live on $40,000 who really feels that hit. David Brooks says that Herman Cain's 999 plan raises taxes on the middle class by 32%. There you go with those numbers again. Trot out a number and everyone nods his head, docilely. Oh, you have a number, must be true.

Give me that old time Fantasy any time.

I could learn to love Republicans. It's like going back to the sixties, smoking hallucinogens, feeling really groovy.

Now, if they could just come up with some good music.

Romney and the Dog

It may not be the most pressing question of the 2012 campaign, but I have to ask: Just how did the story about Romney tying his dog to the roof of his car come out?

Gail Collins, who is reliably droll, sane and a writer of great restraint, cannot restrain herself. It just keeps bubbling up from her primative cerebral centers, and it seems to come out of nowhere and she just cannot stop it. It appears in nearly every column, no matter how unrelated to dogs or cars or travel or even taxes or the economy.

I mean, there is only one possible source I can imagine, unless a policeman stopped him and created some sort of record.

But short of police involvement, or a some really improbable person with a cell phone camera, the only source for that story could have been Romney himself or someone in his family.

Any way you slice it, the fact the story came out at all is the really bizarre part.

I know I could look this up on the internet, and likely, some day I will. But right now, reading Gail Collins about this is just too much fun.

In fact, every discouraged Democrat ought to simply link to Gail Collins and Paul Krugman and start each day reading them. It's almost enough to make one believe there are well springs of truth, virtue and reality still percolating up through the scum and muck of the Republican vituperation and disingenuousness which passes for thought on the right.

Wah Wah Republican Follies

I missed the candidates' debate last night. Detroit was playing Texas. But I heard the headlines and the sound bites this morning.

It seems they all agreed on the big issue: The economy is in the doldrums because--one guess now, and remember these are Republicans talking: Oh, yes! It's the government!

Not just the government, the federal government.

Forget about those bankers making loans to deadbeats and people who were well meaning but incapable; forget about those Wall Street sharpies who were selling securities using those really worthless mortgage loans as security; forget about the European union implosion; forget about, most of all, those two big whirlpools over there called "Iraq" and "Afghanistan" where we spent in one week what it would cost to fund healthcare for every American for about a year.

Naw, none of that even exists--can't hear about it, can't see it and sure cannot talk about it, because Republicans stick to the script. Have been doing that since they discovered a guy named Reagan who was just great as long as he stuck to the script. And ever since then, they all do.

Except maybe for Chris Christie, who is, as Mara Liasson tells us is, "Authentic." Which means he does stray from the "Government is bad. Government is the problem not the solution. Government regulations are the problem killing the economy. Government is discouraging the almighty Job Creators." Sometimes he says something that doesn't sound as if it came out of the Republican/Fox News word processor, something you haven't heard on Rush or Glenn or Sean.

Speaking of which, did you know Elizabeth Warren is a parasite who doesn't care about her host?

That is, as opposed to all those parasites who are quite considerate of their hosts.

And here I thought Ron Paul was the designated authentic Republican.

But I'm not done with Mara Liasson. During the last presidential campaign I listened to NPR every day and whenever Mara Liasson came on I kept thinking my radio had somehow jumped the dial to Fox News. Her reports had sixty second sound bites from Sarah Palin (you remember Sarah) and a three second snippet from Barack Obama sounding as if he was choking on a biscotti. She is the great stealth bomber of the Fox News crowd. Apparently, she has the zealotry of the convert: In high school, growing up in Scarsdale, New York (fertile Fox News spawning ground) she helped form the Scarsdale Alternative School, which sounds like some kind of Hippie response to the button down privileged elitist environment of Scarsdale, but what's in a name? Then, after Brown, where they actually have a transgender dormitory, she shipped out to San Francisco, where she was, one can only imagine, traumatized by the liberal scene in Haight Ashbury and so flipped out she ran right over and joined Fox News and hasn't looked back since. Somehow, I suppose in some guilt ridden attempt to add "Balance" to NPR news,NPR hired her back which is like Abraham Lincoln hiring Jefferson Davis as his press secretary after the war, in an attempt at "Balance." Anyway, Mara thinks Chris Christies is "Authentic." That's like calling snake oil "Natural," and you know, natural is always healthy and good for you.

One thing which was really fun was hearing Michelle Bachmann tell Herman Cain that a 9% sales tax would lead to a value added tax, which came out of the same orbit as her friend who told her HPV vaccine causes mental retardation. Mitt Romney, ever the centrist, said the simple 9-9-9 formula is, in fact, simplistic, and simple answers to complex problems are often ineffective. Now that, coming from a Republican, is news.

How about the simple answer: The problem with the economy is the government. Just get the government off the backs of the people and we don't have to do anything else. Is that not the Republican line? Very simple. Joe Sixpack can learn that right quick. We don't want to stray to that Democratic quamire called "Complexity," now do we?

Here's a simple formula: Vote for Brain Dead Republicans, they may be zombies, but there is very little batch to batch variation and you know what you are getting.

Wah-Wah Republicans: Given 'Em Hell, Barry

Here among my friends in New Hampshire precious few know the name Eric Cantor. Which means, of course, too few follow Jon Stewart or the essential Stephen Colbert.

So, I will have to make an introduction: Mr. Cantor is a Congressman from Richmond, Virginia--you remember Richmond, capital of the Confederacy, then once the feds regulated them out of slavery (the 13th and 14th amendments), they turned their entrepreneurial spirit to the cultivation of tobacco--anyway, he is the latest attack dog for the Republican party.

Yesterday, on the Squawkbox, an insufferable morning show with an officious right wing host who has all the qualifications of a right wing agitator, good hair and a pugnacious style, Mr. Cantor inveighed against President Obama's road trips around the country during which the President brings attention to Republican senators and congressmen who refuse to tax millionaires and who have targeted Medicare and Social Security as public nuisances.

"Stop the campaigning. City after city, yeah. Listen, there's no question that that's what happened. Immediately, the next day after the speech was given, he came to Richmond, my district, and then that bridge in Ohio. Right. It's like somebody going around the country picking a fight. The country doesn't need that. I mean people are angry in this country. Middle class does need to see leadership in Washington. It's not inflaming division but instead focusing on solutions, that's what we're trying to do."

This amounts to what Paul Krugman has called, "The Panic of the Plutocrats," i.e. the politicians and right wing talk show hosts who reliably serve the interests of the wealthiest hundredth of a percent. Mr. Cantor has attacked the Wall Street protesters as mobs who are "Pitting Americans against Americans," and he invokes, as do all Republicans any complaint about not taxing millionaires as "Class warfare."

Stephen Schwartzman, chairman of the Blackstone Group, compared an Obama proposal to close a loophole that lets some millionaires pay absurdly low taxes to Hitler's invasion of Poland.

And George Will inveighed that Elizabeth Warren, the Democratic contender for the current Republican senate seat in Massachusetts, has a "collectivist agenda." Rush Limbaugh went one better, as he called her "a parasite who hates her host. Willing to destroy the host while she sucks the life out of it."

I defer to Mr. Limbaugh and his Republican cronies, who are the experts on sucking the life out of their hosts.

These are the people, Krugman observes, who are not Steve Jobs. They invented nothing, made nothing. They got rich by peddling complex financial schemes that brought us the wonderful world of financial collapse, and they paid no price. They are like the spider wasps, who suck their host dry, then move on. "Their institutions were bailed out by taxpayers...They continue to benefit from explicit and implicit federal guarantees--basically they're still in a game of heads they win, tails taxpayers lose...This special treatment can't bear close scrutiny--and therefore, as they see it, there must be no close scrutiny. Anyone who points out the obvious, no matter how calmly and moderately, must be demonized and driven from the stage...So who's really being un-American?"