Olympia Snow and The Absent Congress

A seat in the United States Senate is something many men and some women are willing to spend millions for. Of course, most of them are spending other people's money, but still, they want to be there.

Olympia Snow recently decided it was not a job worth having. 

Now, she is hawking her book about the dysfunction in Congress and she is associating with some organization which is supposed to be dedicated to improving the function of Congress.

Among her recommendations is Senators should actually stay in Washington and work with other Senators, rather than flying home Thursday morning and not returning until Tuesday. 

The advent of air travel has meant Congressmen and Senator can go back to their home states, and many argue this is desirable, so the elected can stay in close touch with those whom they are supposed to be representing.  But the problem with Congressmen and Senators who are so tightly joined to their home constituencies is these elected few do not spend enough time in Washington to get anything done in the city they were sent to do battle in.  When a Senator spends only 2 1/2 days in Washington, he or she cannot become part of a functioning governing machine in Washington, cannot get to know other representatives, cannot form working relationships, cannot get seduced by the comraderie of the governing class.

Some would argue this is a good thing, but having seen the other side of this coin, Mad Dog can say one reason for gridlock in Washington is the absence of the Representatives and Senators who are supposed to be doing the work of Washington. They are simply missing in action. 

It's all good and well to stay in close contact with them what's sent you thar, but if you don't engage in the organization and the process you can't very well help the government do much for the folks back home.

Of course, there are all those T Party, Rand Paul types who argue we should push things exactly in the direction of an absent government in Washington, D.C.

But if you are interested in effective, competent government, then you have to keep the elected representatives in their offices in Washington, or, at the very least, in the bars and restaurants and swimming pools of Washington, where they can wheel and deal and horse trade so government can actually accomplish something.

If it were up to Mad Dog, he would require all Senators and Congressmen remain in Washington, even (and especially) on weekends and not be allowed to leave the District of Columbia, until the Congress adjourns. 

New Hampshire: The Shire Looks at the World

Mad Dog once had a photo of a group of children of different races, arms around each other, smiling into the camera in his office.  This was some years ago, and things may have changed, but it struck Mad Dog that whenever an American adult looked at that picture, the American would smile back at it.  But when a German or Frenchman or Italian or often, a Brit would look at it, not so much. People from these places, when they looked at the picture at all, often did so with knitted brow, narrowed eyes, and did not look pleased, much less smile back.

Not exactly a controlled experiment. Just an impression. 

But it did strike Mad Dog as a sort of gut check, unvarnished study. In Mad Dog's warped mind, it seemed Americans had internalized the Star Trek ideal of a multiracial society working together in harmony on the same spaceship earth, whereas Europeans may not have, or at least some Europeans.

Like many studies, this one may have returned the results Mad Dog wanted to see, rather than the more complex truth of what is actually out there.

Mad Dog has just returned from two weekends "abroad," one in New Orleans, one in New York City.   These quick visits drove home a point he had not thought about for some time:  New Hampshire is a very white place.

In fact, Maine, Vermont and New Hampshire, in that order, are the three white-est states among all 50 states. Utah and Rhode Island, once among the most white are no longer, with only 80-85% whiteness, presumably, in the case of Utah, owing to Hispanics and in Rhode Island's case, more research needs to be done.

But as Mad Dog walked around the streets, through the parks of New York City, and felt the vitality, the energy, the sheer exuberance of the place, he realized a very strange thing--something he would never have expected he would have even given a thought: Mad Dog missed seeing colored folks, missed just saying hello to colored folks, missed their presence. 

He also realized that in every society he has ever lived, somebody occupied the bottom rungs of the socio-economic ladder.  When he was growing up below the Mason Dixon line, that place was mostly occupied by African Americans, but AA's are no longer in that position. In Washington, DC and in New York City you see plenty of affluent minority folks.

In New Hampshire, Whites occupy the bottom rungs. They tend to be people from large families, often broken homes, and they tend to be under educated. They are straight out of the pages of Grace Metalious and Peyton Place.

Mad Dog is not suggesting New Hampshire import colored folks. But, if this observation means anything for our state, perhaps it means if we are homogeneous in some ways, perhaps we ought to make a special effort to reach out to the rest of the world, and to be sure we hear other opinions, and we ought to make an effort to explore the world beyond our cozy little shire.

We already do this, of course, with the Music Hall, the nearby Ogunquit Playhouse, and by going to movies and by watching cable TV, those of us who can afford cable TV.

And it must be remembered, New Hampshire voted for a Black man (mixed race actually) twice. Mr. Obama took every town on the seacoast (save New Castle) in the first election and did almost as well in the second.  There were racial epithets, snide banners, nasty bumper stickers, but ordinary, white, New Hampshire tradesmen and housewives, who Mad Dog met while canvasing during the weeks running up to the election, made no mention at all of Mr. Obama's race, only his policies. Many, if not most of them, thought he had tried to do the right thing, and been thwarted by stubborn Republican resistance. 

But when Mad Dog talks to his co workers, he is struck by how little interest they have in the world beyond the shire.  He tried to get them to listen to National Public Radio, but, as one commented, "I tried, but it was always about news from some place in Africa or some country I'd never heard of and will never go to."

One of my co workers has never been on an airplane. Her husband has only been out the the states of New Hampshire and Vermont once, to fly to Wisconsin. (Another very white state.)   

These people show no sign of overt racism. They simply have no opinion of or experience with people of different races, people who come from different cultural backgrounds.  When they go to college, traveling to Keene or Plymouth, New Hampshire seems a long haul. Somethings they consider Maine or Rhode Island. 

One wonders when this will change, and when it does, how, and in what direction?

Benghazi: The Movie. The Hearings. The Witch Hunt.

So the Republican leading the ongoing, interminable hearings in the Republican House of Representatives has released his movie poster for the hearings. Can an i Tunes release be far behind?

The big star most recently was a State Department official, Gregory Hicks, who was demoted afterwards. Knowing a little something about bureaucratic vindictiveness, it is not hard to believe Hilary Clinton might just stick it to anyone who was not Hilary Clinton who had the temerity to speak to the press.

And so, we have begun to discover, what?  Did Mr. Obama launch the attack on Benghazi to cover up the secret files housed there which proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that he was born on Mars? Did Hilary Clinton launch the attack because she was having an affair with Ambassador Stevens and he was about to pull a Monica Lewinsky?  Did Hilary and Mr. Obama arrange for the hit on Ambassador Stevens because he was actually their love child and they could not afford for that news to get out? 

Or, did Hilary Clinton send the ambassador to a poorly defended outpost and then try to cover up the report she had been negligent in protecting her own staff by demoting Mr. Hicks and by ordering her underlings to report this was a spontaneous, thus unpredictable act of violence?  And if this is so, should Ms. Clinton be scratched as a potential Presidential candidate because, obviously, she is not great at responding to the totemic 2 AM phone call?

Or, did Mr. Issa have a love child with Ms. Clinton, i.e. Mr. Hicks, and Mr. Issa is very indignant Ms. Clinton laid the heavy wood on Mr. Hicks and demoted him?

The plot lines are legion.  This soap opera could go on as long as "As The World Turns."
Stay tuned. Brought to you by the RNC, The Rush Limbaugh Show and the Watch-out-for-those-black-helicopters .com blog.

Mark Sanford: He Is Risen

There are no second acts in American lives.
                            --F. Scott Fitzgerald


One might argue Mark Sanford's election to his old House of Representatives seat is not a second act but just a continuation of the first.

One might argue this is simply the second act of "House of Cards."

Mad Dog would argue, Mr. Sanford's election is no surprise. The surprise would have been if he had been defeated.

What were his offenses? 
1. He cheated on his wife. No disqualification there: JFK, Clinton,Henry Hyde,  you name him.
2. He lied about cheating on his wife, about where he was when he was not on the Appalachian trial. Clinton lied about Monica Lewinsky.
3. He flew down to Argentina and to various assignations on  government money.
Now, that might matter, but the man is all about saving the government money, and about not being Nancy Pelosi or Barack Obama, so we can forgive him that youthful indiscretion.

The misperception of the Bible thumping voter is that he or she could never forgive a man who violates his sacred marriage vows, said before God, on the wedding alter. But the South Carolina voter is not the New England Puritan. The South Carolina voter knows he's a sinner. He's embraced a culture and a history of slavery. He's happy to sell tobacco to Asians.  He can forgive a lot. 

What he cannot forgive is being Barack Obama, being judged by sanctimonious Northerners and a federal government which wants to take his money, or tell him what he is doing is immoral, injurious or wrong.  

As that great South Carolina Representative to the Congress of the United States, Francis Underwood, once said, "What you have to understand about my people is that they are a noble people. Humility is their form of pride. It is their strength; it is their weakness. And if you can humble yourself before them they will do anything you ask. "

Niall Ferguson, John Maynard Keynes and the Homosexual Hypothesis

Niall Ferguson: Wishful Historian

"During a question-and-answer session after a prepared speech at the Altegris Strategic Investment conference in Carlsbad, Calif. on Thursday, Ferguson was asked to comment about Keynes, an influential 20th century British economist who advocated government spending as a way to make up for lagging demand in a down economy.
Ferguson suggested that Keynes philosophy was shaped by his homosexuality. Keynes, therefore, had no children so he wasn't as invested in future generations as others might be, Ferguson said."
--from the Internet

If history is just one long argument, then we might judge the history offered by any author as a wish list of the way he thought the world ought to have happened.

This is no where more apparent than in the pronouncements, writings and expostulations of Niall Ferguson, Oxford PhD, professor of history at Harvard and gadfly about the nation, who created a dust up recently attacking not just the economic theories of John Maynard Keynes, who had the temerity to suggest that when free market, capitalistic economies were tanking, the government might do some good by rescuing the capitalists from their own folly by pumping money into the economy. Ferguson, a disciple of Margaret Thatcher and other right wing ideologs, thought this heresy unconscionable and offered a psychobabble historical explanation for Keynes's theory--saying that anyone who wanted government to ride to the rescue in the short term, could not possibly care a whit for the long term consequences, which would ultimately be doom and gloom, and anyone who had no concern about the long term must not have children, because, of course, only people with children could possibly care about the long term. 

And since Keynes was homosexual, and had no children, he could not possibly care about the future.

Whew! Got that?

Of course, Keynes may well have been a homosexual, but he was also married, had a wife and his wife lost a child in a miscarriage, so we might further conclude, having lost his own individual genetic contribution to posterity, Keynes had no further use for the future.

Ferguson really does  not like Keynes: Feruguson suggests elsewhere the main reason Keynes was dismayed by World War One is it swept away all the young men Keynes liked to pick up for sexual adventures, and sent them off to the trenches, where they died in heaps, and so Keynes had a personal stake in the war.

One wonders how Ferguson and historians like him get that sort of insight. Do they prowl through diary entries?  "No young men on Picadilly Street today. All off at the war. Damn this war! No gay escapades this week! Damn this war!"
Or, perhaps, Ferguson interviewed old friends and acquaintances of Keynes:  "He was all in a snit about the war, don't you know? Took the cream of the crop. Meant he had to go home to his proper wife. Didn't like that one bit."

Or, perhaps Ferguson simply had a graduate assistant plow through biographies of Keynes.

The fact is, Ferguson has been adviser to John McCain's campaign, and the professor is a member of the Hoover Institute--ah, now there's a fine, upstanding trickle down hero, Herbert Hoover--and wherever you see a gathering of right wingers drawn together, you are apt to find Mr. Fergusson writing history for them.  

Stella Tremblay has been drinking from the same cup as Professor Ferguson, as every right wing whacko must.  The gospel according to...Ms. Tremblay, Mr. Ferguson, and every telling of the way things happened somehow bolsters the view of the current world held by the right wing.  Even today, former Senator Jim Demint (R-SC),  who now heads the Heritage Foundation, brings forth a "study" which shows exactly what the conservative Heritage Foundation suspected all along:  That immigrants cost the nation more than they contribute. Those derned immigrants, showing up at emergency rooms, getting hospitalized, getting welfare, a real drag on the federal treasury and on the economy. We told you so! And now we have a study to prove it! And it's all true. We know it's true because we did the study our own selves!

Actually, you have to give the right wing some credit for breadth of personality. They range all the way from Lindsey Graham who says really absurd things while sounding like an idiot, to Niall Ferguson, who says really absurd things and sounds oh so British and intelligent. 

So Ferguson says history shows us government spending leads to long term financial collapse. It's been 80 years since The Great Depression which was ended by government spending. 

Paul Krugman:  Substance Over Style

"Krugman argued that Ferguson's view is "resurrecting 75-year old fallacies" and full of "basic errors". He also stated that Ferguson is a "poseur" who "hasn't bothered to understand the basics, relying on snide comments and surface cleverness to convey the impression of wisdom. It's all style, no comprehension of substance."
--Wikipedia article on Ferguson



But in the end, it's the substance not the style, as Mr. Krugman reminds us. Lunacy riding about in an aristocratic hat and cloak is still lunacy.

The old ditty, the first casualty of war is the truth.
Same can be said of the right wing historian.

Stella Tremblay: New Hampshire's Very Own

 Thank God we have at least ONE state representative from the state of New Hampshire who is willing to stand up for justice in defense of truth, and to face the powerful NWO sellouts who will pillory and vilify her without mercy, until she is driven from office, Mark my words, her removal is already being planned. Soon, Zionist dollars will flow prodigiously in an attempt to to create a ruse to push her from office with a recall election, or failing that, they will insure her defeat with unlimited funding to back a suitably compliant opponent in the next election. Tremblay, first elected in 2010, was born in Italy .Maybe that's why she's willing to speak her mind and do the job she was elected to do. Thinking Americans, who realize the grave danger we now face, need to rally to the support of any state or federal politician who is willing to speak the truth and stop this treasonous sedition in its tracks....] By Jim Haddadin jhaddadin@fosters.com



Where is Gail Collins when the Granite State needs her?
Or The Onion? Or Jon Stewart or Stephen Colbert?

Really, does any state, even South Carolina, have anyone to match the Republican Representative from  Auburn, New Hampshire?

Ms. Tremblay recently made a name for herself on national websites by claiming the Boston bombing was actually a federal government black ops plot, that one of the victims, shown in a wheel chair holding what was left of his left leg (the fragment of his tibia clearly visible), did not look to be in pain, which was, Mad Dog can only guess, meant to suggest his injury was bogus, despite the photographic evidence, and that those victims who wound up in various Boston hospitals were all part of some grand government plot, a grand fiction, like the moon landing and President Obama's Hawaiian birth.

The website, "Granite State Progress," lists Ms. Tremblay's votes in the legislature and there are no surprises here:  Votes to require the University of New Hampshire to investigate every student who might be an immigrant to be sure they are not illegal, votes to endorse the Arizona immigration law--with its racial profiling--votes to de-fund Planned Parenthood, votes to de-fund any hospital which is in any way connected to abortions, which would cost New Hampshire billions in federal matching funds.

She is the genuine Tea Party, frothing Free Stater, on-what-planet-do-these-people spend-the-majority-of-their-time article. 

And she's all ours. Actually, if Mr. Haddadin is correct, she was born in Italy, but she is as American as apple pie and Olive Garden.

Mad Dog has been moved to pick up that splendid volume by Richard Hoftstader, The Paranoid Style in American Politics, which demonstrates, if nothing else, that Ms. Tremblay is nothing new, only freshly amusing. 

She is also a prodigious historian, who has rendered opinions about Frederick Douglass and his opinion of the allusion to slavery in the U.S. Constitution, and opinions about Woodrow Wilson, who, she says, believed with Hitler in the destiny of the Aryan race to rule the world. Actually, if you read Howard Zinn, you might find something to this portrait of Wilson the racist.  It is curious how often the Tremblay sort of mind alludes to history.  It is as if by talking about a version of history which is different from what we all learned in high school she can make claim to an insight the rest of us lack, an insight which should inform our understanding of where we are now.  So, if we know that Frederick Douglass actually believed slavery, then we can believe what the government and the media are now telling us about the Boston bombings is untrue.

Ms. Tremblay informs us, in somber and pregnant tones, that we really need an independent inquiry into the so-called Boston bombing, because we cannot believe what we've been told thus far, and it really was, presumably, all staged on a back lot in Los Angeles, and nobody was actually blown up, and all those hospitals and doctors are just actors or part of a vast conspiracy.

Can you imagine what her living room must look like? Can you imagine what Auburn, New Hampshire must be like?  Mad Dog may have to drive out there and spook around.  It's probably crawling with federal agents on their cell phones to the black helicopters circling overhead. 

Can you imagine how much fun it would be to simply follow her around with a microphone?  Why hasn't anyone done this?  

Where is Michael Moore, when you need him?

Richard Hofstader, Columbia University

 

Economics 101

Paul Krugman, Who Knows of What He Speaks

Don't know much about economics, other than what I read in the New York Times, the New Yorker and what I see on "The News Hour."

Economics is not like biology--it is not an experimental science. Oh, we do economic experiments all the time, but we cannot hold enough variables constant to call it a science. It is not clear that, for all the numbers economists throw around, you really need to understand those numbers to understand the basic economic forces and concepts.

It must mean something  that Mad Dog can now watch a discussion of economic policy and Mad Dog can finish the sentence of each participant. It must mean we are hearing the same arguments over and over again.

Last night, on the "News Hour" they had some stooge from the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, DC, and a man from some Boston institute discussing our economy. The Boston guy says, "When you have a recession, an economic slow down, that's when you do not want the government to stop spending. The national economy is not like a family budget. Sometimes deficit spending is a good thing. It's an investment in the future. You get people working, repairing the infrastructure,  paying taxes, spending and then you can back off, pay down the deficit and restore balance. But if the European experience shows anything, it is that cutting government spending at the beginning or in the middle of a recession just makes things worse." 

To which the American Enterprise Institute guy replies: "Deficits are bad. When you allow the deficit to grow to over 45% of GNP you simply run out of money to spend. This Kenseyian argument, that we should spend our way out of a recession, is a recipe for disaster." 

This very same argument has been going back and forth since at least the years when Andrew Mellon was the Secretary of the Treasury arguing that a Depression purges the system of bad blood, bad, lazy people and is just what the doctor ordered for a country which needs discipline. He was Herbert Hoover's secretary. Hoover said all along there is nothing government can or should do in hard times. Hoover lost that argument to FDR and the Republicans lost the White House for the next 4 elections.

Republicans ever since have argued the only way Roosevelt got America out of the Depression was to get into a world war and unemployment went from 20% to close to 0% in a year.  And, of course the implication of that was--war is bad, so anything associated with it must be bad.

The fact is, what that wartime government spending  demonstrated is economically, the effect of government hiring vast numbers of people was capable of pulling us out of the Great Depression and that good economy persisted for decades after the war, with deficits going down when people were working and paying taxes.  May have been we put a lot of undeserving people who were wicked and mean to their children back to work, and we rewarded an undisciplined American population, but it sure was good for the economy, and government spending did not result in disaster but relief and prosperity.

So why, Mad Dog asks, are we still debating this issue?

Do we really still need to debate whether or not the heart pumps blood to the brain?

Do we need to discuss whether or not metal airplanes can fly or whether or not metal ships will sink?

Do we really need to listen to David Stockman, people from conservative "think" tanks proffer these antediluvian ideas on national TV, radio and newspapers?

When will we get tired of listening to idiots?