On the Contrary

Another Sunday morning getting the straight story from our tireless media, or is that tiresome?  So I watched my usual compliment of morning news shows and got filled up with a lot of nothing.  Well there is always one exception, but I will get to that.  So without further ado:

• Arlen Specter was the guest on Meet the Press and he did not disappoint.  I do have to hand it to David Gregory, he is getting better.  He asked Arlen all the right questions and Arlen did not dodge any of them.  Arlen is definitely a Republican in the Democratic Party.  Well not the new incarnation of Republicans, but even the moderate kind are still going to be a real hindrance to change.  I am not sure what the Democrats got out of this deal if he is going to vote as he always did.  The big one is health care and he is against a government single payer system along side private insurers.  This is change?  So exactly why is President Obama going to go to Pennsylvania and campaign for this guy?  The reality is that Arlen Specter is where the Republicans were back in the 80’s and I am not sure what we would gain from trying to recreate an era that isn’t worth recreating.
• The other two guests were Joe Scarborough and Ed Gillespie, both Republicans, who were there to talk about resurrecting the Republican Party.  This was also a topic on CNN with John King.  There was no new ground here.  Joe and Ed have obviously been drinking the Republican Kool-Aid.  They think that if the party gets out of the social issues, then the conservative message can be a big tent again.  They pointed out how in the 70’s the party was left for dead, and the same in the early nineties, but they made their comeback and it will happen again.   Uh Joe, Ed?   The world has changed and small government and miniscule spending doesn’t address this new world.  The social issue of abortion, gay marriage, and religion, are not the Republican Party’s big problem.  Their problem is that the conservative mantra of small government, free markets, and cutting taxes don’t address any of our real challenges.  If they did, they would have valid alternate strategies to what the Democrats are proposing. Sadly they think that present day Republicans just lost their way allowing deficits (mainly from cutting taxes) and big government (but little regulation). The reality is that the message no longer is viable.  I wonder why reporters don’t challenge them on this instead of going along with their fiction that they just need to find a new spokesperson.  Oh well.
• Then there were the endless discussions about who President Obama would choose for replacing David Souter.  I have to tell you I hate these discussions.  They are akin to metal masturbation.  No that is not quite correct, they are mental masturbation.  It is like sitting around listening to guys talk about the perfect football team.  It means nothing and it gets you nowhere.  Instead of endless what if scenarios why don’t we just let the President fill the position and then we can carefully dissect that person and ask all kinds of inane and embarrassing questions instead of wasting them on pretend candidates who may never make the cut.  Oh I forgot.  Watching the NFL draft is great drama so I guess this fills airtime.
• Let us not forget the discussions/hysteria about the swine flu.  Oh forgive me.  For the morons who think eating pigs is dangerous, it is the H1N1 influenza.  We have had one death in the United States and the way we are reacting to this, I am beginning to understand the panic around 9/11.  Thank god we have not had another terrorist attack or judging from our over reaction to this minor scare, we would have been burning the constitution in the street.  I grant you it can be scary, but in the meantime can we just stay home if we are sick, sneeze into our sleeves, and get on with our lives?
• Finally, Fareed Zackaria on CNN’s GPS interviewed Defense Secretary William Gates and this guy is one down to earth and honest human being.  We are very lucky to have him as our Secretary of Defense.  Afghanistan is a very difficult problem and listening to Secretary Gates let me know he knows what I know.  As I listened to his descriptions of Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Iraq, and what was really possible there, I know that we are in good hands.  He is keenly aware of the Russian experience in Afghanistan and understands that troops are not the answer.  We are in for a long ride, but our troops can be very proud of their leadership.

So another Sunday morning talking about going nowhere fast.

Usually I write this blog with a general theme in mind, but Bits and Pieces are things that may seem unrelated, but lend to the overall malady in our country today:  So here are this weeks gems:

• I usually watch Meet the Press, Reliable Sources, and Fareed Zakaria’s GPS on Sunday with snippets of CNN’s State of the Union.  Except for Fareed, I had to turn them off.  On Meet the Press, David Gregory is no Tim Russert.  One of Tim’s great attributes was to let the guest fully answer a question without interrupting, in a sense letting them speak for themselves and giving them all the rope they needed.  David seems to have an agenda when he continually interrupts to challenge an answer.  He needs to step back and let his guests answer the hard questions fully without his constant interrupting to challenge, usually using the other side’s talking points.  By doing this he is being controlled by the opposition instead of conducting an insightful interview.
• Meet the Press also failed in their round table discussion as it was a reflection of the Washington echo chamber instead of reasoned consideration of the issues.  If you just repeat the arguments being made by politcal hacks, what good are you?  The hot button issue was the Obama mortgage bailout plan and the anger that some abusers might benefit.  But they focused on the anger, reinforcing it, instead of looking at the plan’s pros and cons, and alternatives, if there are any to the plan itself.  It was a waste of time, did nothing but reinforce misplaced anger, and did not inform.  Could they have one economist to bring some rationalism to this discussion of emotionalism or the political opinions of the day?
• Reliable Sources is usually a discussion of how the press is treating a specific subject, not the subject itself.  I lost interest when it was about Roland Burris, the lady who had the litter of kids in California, and other non-sequiturs.  I just don’t care.  Both of these people are just sideshows to the real issues we face and I don’t care if I ever hear of them again.  Illinois, get your house in order, and California, we already have enough mouths to fed which we can’t afford.
• Then we get to the bright light which was Fareed Zakaria’s GPS.  Here we had a real discussion about the efficacy of further military adventures in Afghanistan, the economy with real economists, and then a discussion of both the economy and world affairs in Asia from experts living in those areas.  It was the difference between the Washington echo chamber (just political talking points being rehashed) and real discussion of real ideas.  What a breath of fresh air.  I suggest for those who missed it, read the transcript (GPS).
• California is in big trouble and the recent settlement of the budget resolved nothing.  Once again we are hamstrung by small minds when they negotiated away the 12¢ tax on gas giving up $2 billion in revenue per year.  Since gas went up to $4/gallon and is now down around $2.50/gallon, who would have noticed the 12¢?   Yet this tax  would have created a fairly consistent source of revenue for the state that would also reflect our long term goal of reducing global warming.  In addition there is still borrowing in the plan to make ends meet.  Just how deep a hole do we want to dig?  We need a new State Constitution that gets rid of the mandatory spending, dumps the two-thirds majority for budgets, and gets rid of the term limits.  Why is the obvious so hard to do?  I do like the idea of open primaries and a rainy day fund.  It is a start.
• Governor Schwarzenegger noted recently that California (He is an acknowledged infrastructure fan) had a long-term transportation plan which is why the state is way ahead of any other in implementing high speed rail, but the nation does not.  If we continue to let Congress piece meal fund their states for transportation, we are never going to have an integrated, cost effective, and multi-modal transportation system.  Oh I am sorry, that smacks of government planning and is evil.  What was I thinking?
• The Republican’s lunacy of denying the stimulus money is based upon a short-term belief that all we need is tax cuts and the giant deficit they created just can get any bigger.  As one Republican recently said on CNN that went totally unchallenged, “We all know that only businesses create jobs, not government.”  They are oblivious to what happened from 1929 till 1945 as the government spending created almost all the jobs because businesses could not stimulate demand on their own.  Almost all economists recommend deficit spending right now, with a long term plan to deal with the deficit when the economy is back on its feet.

Finally I would like to leave you with a letter that was in the San Francisco Chronicle Sunday that kind of puts the whole Republican tax cut strategy into perspective (short term, painless, benefits the wealthy, and is ineffective):

“A comment on a blog included a long list of what a tax cut cannot do:  A tax cut cannot provide police protection.  A tax cut cannot provide a fire department.  A tax cut cannot build a road.  A tax cut cannot provide Social Security and Medicare.  A tax cut cannot provide care for the disabled and other vulnerable members of our society.  A tax cut cannot create city parks or preserve areas of our country’s natural beauty.  A tax cut cannot build schools or hospitals…and the list goes on.

As George Lakoff, professor of linguistics, suggested, we need to reframe the word “taxes” to take away the negative connotation.  Taxes are the dues we pay to live in a civilized society, one that does not feed selfish greed but cares for our children’s future, for those less fortunate and for the common good.”  Adeline Hope, Berkley, CA

The Republicans and their ideology are living in another time, still believing the Reagan Myth (which is a myth of giant porportions since he grew both the size of government and size of deficits), and Hoover economics which requires no sacrifice or long term plan but then miserably failed.  It is a strategy, as it was in the early 1930s, for total failure.  It appeals to the masses because it asks nothing of them, which is its appeal, while transferring wealth to the wealthy which simply makes things worse.  Haven’t we had enough?  Have we learned nothing?