On the Contrary

I am a little person.  No not in stature, I am a fairly big guy, but in political impact.  I have none.  I have always been a doer.  I make a fairly good living because I am good about the details of making something work.  I am fairly perceptive at what is actually going on, but generally I have lived in the shadows of those who chart the strategic course of things.  Generally speaking, I have found my strategic sense, much better than those that are in charge. At least most of the roads taken are not the ones I would have taken, and the results for our country have not turned out well. I saw my frustration at being dismissed as a little person being played out on Meet the Press and CNN’s GPS. It was a contrast in all that is wrong with how we think and I wonder if anybody noticed it?

Fareed Zakaria had as his guest Matthew Hoh, who recently resigned from the State Department Staff in Kabul in protest over our policies there.  Matthew was a marine in Iraq and then a State Department staffer in Afghanistan.  So he saw the area, its conflict, and the people from the ground level.  He was a little person dealing with the day-to-day realities of what really is going on over there.  He actually had to carry out and deal the realities of policy.  Apparently he was offered a position on Ambassador Holbroke’s staff, but in the end he realized that he would have little effect on policy and the direction we were headed would result in more deaths, both Afghan and American, with nothing to show for it.  The transcript of the interview is available at CNN.

What Mr. Hoh described was the reality of Afghanistan.  There is no Afghanistan people as such, just a very rural country with local tribal communities that resent all intrusion into their lives, whether that is the Afghan government, foreign fighters, or the United States.  These people don’t want to be protected; they want to be left alone.  The war as he saw it was an ongoing civil war that has been going on for more than 35 years.  We were simply taking a side in that civil war, and more troops would mean more insurgents, and the war will go on forever.  He found no parallels to Iraq where it was a more urban community where control was greatly simplified.  This is a gross summary and if you care about where we are headed, if you care about those brave Americans we send over there to die, you need to read this transcript or watch the interview.  His final observation is that we need to reduce our presence, not increase it:

ZAKARIA: What will happen if we do not go with the McChrystal plan, or we go to a very small troop increase? What will the troops who are there now do? And should we actually draw down some of these troops?

HOH: Oh, I do believe we should draw down. I do believe we should recognize we’re in a civil war. I do believe we should recognize our priorities are the defeat of al Qaeda and the stabilization of Pakistan.

I’m by no means a Pakistan expert. But increasing troops is only going to fuel insurgency. We need to stop our combat operations in areas where we are fighting people only because they’re fighting us.

Otherwise, it’s going to be 2013, we’re going to look back four years, and we’re going to say, what have we accomplished? What did we get? What was this worth? What did we get out of this?

We might be able to stabilize the Afghan government in five to 10 years with a lot of resources. I believe we can militarily defeat the Quetta Shura in two to three years with a lot of resources and a lot of dead.

However, is it worth it? What do we get out of it? What’s the benefit of us doing it? It doesn’t politically defeat the insurgency in the south. And it doesn’t, more importantly, it doesn’t defeat al Qaeda.

Then I watched Meet the Press and the discussion between Pundits David Gregory, Andrea Mitchell (just back from Afghanistan), and Pentagon correspondent Jim Miklaszewski about Afghanistan.  The country they were talking about was not the same one that Mathew Hoh was talking about.  Miklaszewski talked as though General McChrystal was a personal friend and that all they needed to do was to provide security for the people.  The construct of what Afghanistan was all about was totally different from the reality that Mathew Hoh presented.  And then I got it.  These people know nothing except the image that has been carefully crafted for them and the narrow confines of their own experience.  They have no on-the-ground, in the dirt, personal experience of the reality there.  They are important people.  You have to get really dirty to really know something.  They are creatures of what they are told, not what they have experienced.  They view Afghanistan through the lens of their own experience instead of the alien reality of the real Afghanistan  and what is possible there.

So Matthew Hoh is one of the little people.  He sees reality as it is because he has had to live it, not through the lens of a need for victory, or military supremacy, or some belief in a quick fix or political ideology.  He spoke truth to power and they tried to co-opt him by stroking his ego with a promotion up the chain.  He saw it for what it was, selling his soul for ego with little chance to effect change.  He is only a little person to those in power.  To the rest of us, he is indeed a very big person.  He did not sell his soul for power and advancement.  Thank you Mr. Hoh.

From my perspective there is one more important lesson here and not just about Afghanistan.  It is about how the little people get co-opted when they speak truth to power and how those in power who can really make a difference are mostly those that sold their soul to get that power.  They are not in power to make major changes, but to carry the flag of those who co-opted them.  How else do you explain our Afghanistan, financial, economic, energy, and climate policy?  The way forward is obvious.  But those in power don’t like those answers.  Those damn little people.

This Sunday with the visit of Pakistan’s President, Asif Ali Zardari, and Afghanistan’s President, Hamid Karzai, to the White House, it was predictable that they would appear on Meet the Press.   What was also predictable with these two leaders is that we are in a world of hurt.  First and foremost these two guys are ultimate politicians and that is exactly what a nation does not need when it is facing critical choices.  As in our own country the choices are big and scary.  If you are trying to stay in power by mollifying the greatest number of your constitutes, the choices you make are going to be less than the change needed.  When facing real crisis, leadership needs to be bold and these guys are quietly treading water in a flood of trouble.  Take the Swat valley compromise that has totally collapsed as the reality of the Taliban rule is finally dawning on the Pakistanis.  But considering that this hoped for peaceful compromise threw the rights of the Swat valley occupants at the mercy of the Taliban, we can see how desperate and morally bankrupt the Pakistani leadership is.   In Afghanistan, President Karzai cannot seem to admit any error in his leadership while the real problem is government incompetence and corruption leading to a Taliban resurrection.  We are in deep doo-doo.

George Stephanolopous on ABC’s This Week was interviewing John McCain and once again I thank my lucky stars he is not the president.  John faults Obama with not coming out with a full plan to close Guantanamo before announcing the closure.  With thoughts like these we would have had nothing happen under a McCain Presidency.  Had President Obama laid out the reality of closing Guantanamo (charging those that can be charged, releasing the rest, and some in the U.S.) it would have been too big a pill for most Americans to swallow.  Set a date, work out the details through comprise and debate.  McCain pointed out that 10% of releasees have returned to the battlefield, but George, as usual, failed to challenge this number and have McCain name names.  The reality is one or two have.  Considering the recidivism of our own prisons, either way this is a great number.

John still thinks the Republican Party is a big tent organization that can attract new members if it just hews to its basic principles.  John still cannot face that his basic principles are exactly what are being rejected by most Americans as they see their country in disarray.  The round table discussion was sad, because these are all journalists of yesterday.  There was not one iota of an original thought, except maybe from Robert Reich when he question how our economy was going to recover since we can’t go back to wild lending.  They couldn’t stop interrupting each other as they pressed old solutions to old problems or in the case of George Will, trying to make some non sequitur conservative point.   Please, I am begging you.  Find some young blood that sees the world as it is, not as it was.

Fox News Sunday had Newt Gingrich on and his ability to dissemble always amazes me.  What he cleverly does is lay out a premise (all detainees at Guantanamo are criminal terrorists) and then lays out a solution that is imminently rational if you buy the premise.  The premise however is fatally flawed.  He wants to investigate Clinton lawyers and was shocked, shocked, shocked that attorneys that had represented terrorists (his pejorative term) in private firms were asked to work in the government under Obama.  Gee, I guess Newt will decide for us which people are entitled to due process and anyone who does not agree with him is unpatriotic and should be barred from government service.  There were so many over simplifications and outright misrepresentation of events in this interview that went unchallenged that it is hard to call this a real interview.  Enough of Newt Gingrich.  Anybody who thinks he brings anything new to the table does not understand a political egomaniac.

On CNN’s GPS (Fareed Zacharia) the Dali Lama was interviewed, but I got nothing earth shaking other than soon people will figure out that violence is not the way.  Well we humans have been around for about 40,000 years now and maybe it will just be a little longer.  Probably more revealing was the debate between an American, a Pakistani, and an Indian which allowed you to start to understand the complex web of distrust between India and Pakistan that paralyzes action on both their parts to solve the Taliban problem.  They are continually posturing themselves for the best position when America does withdraw and they see every move as how to gain an advantage over one another instead of mutually supporting each others stability as the best way for peace.  Maybe the Dali Lama was right.

The  final interview was on Face the Nation with Bob Schieffer with Darth Vader.  But i will write a whole blog about that one because it was just too rich.  Another Sunday I should have spent wine tasting.  Oh well. 

For those of you who are repeat readers you know that I like to sum up the Sunday talk show chatter and see if anything besides the usual Washington echo chamber is on anybody’s agenda.  So I started with Meet the Press who had White House Chief Economist Christina Romer and House demagogue Eric Cantor (R-VA).  It was two interviews you could fast forward through.  Dr. Romer pitched the administrations way forward and Representative Cantor told us they had it all wrong.  Yawn.  Once again we had politicos pitching their politics instead of a reasoned discussion about the way forward.  Let’s face it, if Christina thought we ought to be more aggressive she would never say it since she must push the administration plan, and Cantor, while full of criticism, had no plan of his own.  This interview is a reflection of the chattering classes on cable.  No new ground or any rational look at the policies and the way forward, just the same old dueling political ideologies.  No wonder we never make any progress.

I then ran through (DVR) Reliable Sources (no transcript available) because I knew they were going to talk about John Stewart’s roasting of CNBC and Jim Cramer in particular.  The reason the Daily Show and John Stewart are so important to this country is that he takes the obvious, points it out, and makes fun of it.  Mainstream media is locked in their echo chamber and they are missing the real stories that are staring us in the face.  Enter John Stewart.

Well the panel discussion was interesting with most of panelists recognizing that Stewart was calling out mainstream media for not paying attention to the real story, how did all the experts miss the coming downturn.  Of course, there was Tucker Carlson claiming that this was just a liberal hack job on Cramer.  My how the Right continues to be blinded by their politics.  Sooner or later one would have to ask how this coming major catastrophe in our economic lives was so ignored by the financial community.  But Tucker can’t go there since all he sees is liberals ruining his perfect country.  Why do they have this guy on anything?

To me this story was the epitome of all that is wrong with our media.  The conventional wisdom is that nobody saw the economic disaster coming, but this is belied by a little research on the actual reporting which shows that there were financial journalists (and economists) who were warning of this coming meltdown.  But what became painfully obvious in the Camer interview is that most of the mainstream financial journalists were tools of the financial community.  Their reporting depended on access to the movers and shakers in the financial community and their access was dependent on their echoing what their masters were telling them.

Sadly this same dynamic is at work in the mainstream media as well and is why reporting is so much an echo chamber.  What we get are media talking heads who are tools of the political parties.  Their talking points, questions, and criticisms are part of the carefully crafted political dialogue that they just parrot.  So what we get for news is that same old arguments with no real factual or rational basis to judge them.  I guess the best way to say it is that our news has degenerated into a game of spin with the media nothing more that echo chambers for that spin.  Puppets driven by their puppet masters.  At least it is cheaper than doing real research and background.

Then there was Dick Cheney on CNN telling us that we are less safe today because of the Obama administration following the rule of law and even more important, that the administration is using this economic crisis as an opportunity to expand government.  I have a feeling that you need to watch John Stewart tonight, because the irony here is unbelievable and John King (CNN correspondent) just went along for the ride instead of questioning any of these highly dubious claims from a man who has almost destroyed law and order.  Is it just me or did waiving habeas corpus, rendition, torture, warrantless wire tapping, enemy combatants, and military tribunals not expand the power of government beyond anything we have ever seen?  Did attacking Iraq and now seven years of unending war while al Qaeda rebuilt in Pakistan make us more or less safe?  It is incomprehensible that we still give this man deference instead of challenging his “facts” every step of the way.

There was as usual a bright side and it was once again from Fareed Zacharia on GPS.  I cannot say enough about his approach to discussing important issues.  He rarely ever has on political flacks pitching their spin, but international subject matter experts to give their perspective on various issues.   I won’t bore you with the details, but this is one show where you can really learn something and question some of your own preconceptions.

Alas, this morning the news was all about public anger over AIG and the bank bail out.  Anger, anger, anger.  Although it is a real emotion that many of us are feeling, emotion is not what is going to solve this crisis and I have yet to hear (except on blogs such as the Baseline Scenario) what our real options are.  Do we have an option to public spending for stimulus and is what we have done enough?  What does history from the Great Depression or the Japanese lost decade tell us?  What are possible scenarios to bailing out the banks and what are the pros and cons?  What happens if we do nothing?

Oh, I agree we have heard these arguments, but only as political talking points.  Where are the economists (mainstream) and what can they teach us?  We are not being educated by our press.  They are failing as journalists.  How many of you know the real crisis in Europe that could make our problems infinitely worse?  The press once again are simply acting as an echo chamber of the political spin.  Oh by the way did I mention that the financial analysis and advice for our way forward is being giving by the same talking heads that missed the whole economic crisis?  When will it ever end? When will we ever learn?  Where have all the flowers gone?

What is on everybody’s mind, the Economy, was the focal point of discussion this Sunday morning, but the discussion was more political than policy based.  On Meet the Press we had Lindsey Graham and Chuck Schumer laying out familiar political positions.  Yawn.  The round table discussion was a little more interesting in that they included Liaquat Ahamed, the author of Lords of Finance, who raised the issued that back in the 1920’s the failure of a major European bank was really the beginning of the Great Depression.  He raised the issue of the collapse of the Eastern Europe Economies and the fact that while we are looking inward, this is a global crisis and focusing on saving us may not save us even if we do all the right things.

On GPS we had an eclectic group led by Niall Ferguson (Assent of Money) who was arguing that our expanding of the deficit to solve the slow down in our own country will actually exacerbate the problem as it robs capital from the rest of the world.  What they didn’t tell us was that if that is the case, what is the way forward.  David Frum was trying to make the point that this wasn’t the Republican’s fault.  I do think they made a very valid point that the real problem is global, but decisions on how to solve it, whether in China or America, is political and thus locally focused.  Meanwhile John McCain is railing against the earmarks in the budget (less than 3%) as though this is our problem.

Reliable Sources took on the real issue of whether the press and CNBC were trying to use instantaneous market fluctuations as unfair evaluations of the President’s policies.  The answers were sadly predictable based upon the pundit’s political persuasion.  The automaton from the Washington Times (conservative Washingtown voice) thought it was just fine, while the rest of the pundits thought we may need to step back and wait and see.  She (the Washington Times blogger) even tried to play down the Jon Stewart satire of CNBC’s financial predictions that went bust (See Two Pieces of Wisdom from Jon Stewart).  Sad that politics blinds us to our own failures in logic, myself excluded of course.

So what have learned?  Not much.  Apparently most Americans are looking for a quick fix in America for a global problem that will probably get much worse before it bottoms out.  What we really need is to understand just how serious the problem is, that the problem and the solution are global, and a general agreement on the way forward.  The political arguments we are having are the cart before the horse when we should first listen to dueling economists and historians so we understand the problem. What we are getting now is moderate steps in one direction, amid political arguments that we are all tired of.  When the Sunday shows start bringing in historians and economists, maybe then the political babble will end and we can have a rational discussion about the way forward.

For what it is worth here is my two bits:  Ignore the Republicans.  Doing what Herbert Hoover did in 1929 is not a way forward.  They are locked in their political ideology and their ideas, or lack thereof, are a result of mental constipation.  It is a global problem, but I am not sure that the U.S., even if we knew the correct solution, could bring the EU and China along.  The one example we have of getting out of this is the Keynesian solution, which is deficit spending.   When we did massive borrowing to run World War II, we did it all internally by borrowing from our own citizens.  The conventional wisdom is that we will be borrowing from the Chinese this time and they may redirect their money to their own problem, forcing us to raise interest rates to get the required cash.  Unless you haven’t noticed things are getting very bad in China and unrest is quite possible.

Having said that, we could always print money which causes inflation, which if things get bad enough, may not be such a bad idea since inflation forces people to buy things since they need to spend their money before it is devalued.  At any rate I think we need to proceed with the Obama solution which has three legs; stimulus, banks, and housing, only much more aggressively.  As Tom Friedman wrote in one of his columns when he described the scene in Jaws where one of the major characters (Richard Dryfus) sees the shark for the first time and tells the boat captain, “we need a bigger boat”.  Well, we need a bigger stimulus package.

The next stimulus package will be about the size of the last one, but forget the tax cuts and focus on investments that will create jobs that will be about the economy of the future.  That would be infrastructure, education, energy, and climate.  We need to get that in place right now and the only infrastructure spending would be either repairing what has to be repaired or new green transportation systems.  Continuing to build transportation systems that are petroleum centric is counterproductive.

For the banking system, ditherating is not an answer.  The fear of a domino effect must be overcome (or ameliorated) and we have to identify and remove the bad debts out of the system (along with the present management structure).  Investors, bondholders, and taxpayers must all share in this burden (read pain).  Whether this is some form of the bad bank/good bank scenario or nationalization, it must be done quickly.  One aside here:  One guest on GPS raised the issue of class anger in the United States.  We let the rich get richer because we believe the lie that we would all profit and they squandered everything.  It will be imperative that those who profited from our downfall are seen to pay dearly in fixing the system or there will be rioting in the streets.

Finally the same medicine is going to have to happen in the mortgage industry.  Decide on a reasonable interest rate for all loans, say 4%-5% and establish it.  Then re-evaluate the market worth today of the property and reset the principle balances.  Use a liberal value assuming some middle ground between the present principle balance and a realistic actual worth.  Those that can qualify for these new loans, then fine.  Those that can’t get foreclosed on.  Waiting for the marketplace to do this under foreclosures just extends our problems.  Note that this is almost a double-edged sword because once this is done, much of the banking problem settles at what those toxic assets are really worth and what the federal government should insure them for.  This not only settles the worth of the Collateral Debt Obligations (CDOs) but the Credit Default Swaps (CDSs) and allows us to estimate the real worth of these investments.

Okay, maybe these ideas are a little naïve considering the complexity of the problems, the interconnectiveness of our economies, and the impact of global problems, but why aren’t we having this discussion instead of endless discussion about what is politically possible instead of what needs to be done and making it politically possible?

As much as I see this as a global crisis, and although we need to stay engaged and try to work with the EU and China to solve the problems, the real place where our actions can make a difference is at home.  The critical issue is that this must be our focus and we need to get on with it, aggressively.  Any other delay or Republican obstructionism, and we are doomed. Note there is a bright side.  If we have a global depression, Iran won’t be able to afford nukes, North Korea will starve, and Al-Qaeda will be broke.  This says to me it is really time to start solving our own problems instead of saving Iraq and Afghanistan from themselves by emptying out our treasury.

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?

This is from an interview with Fareed Zakaria on GPS last Sunday. JEFFREY SACHS, PROFESSOR OF ECONOMICS AND DIRECTOR, COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY’S EARTH INSTITUTE:

“I do think the era of big tax cuts, whether for stimulus or other things, are over. We’re going to have to grow up and understand that we need taxes to pay for basic government services. We’ve been neglecting that for a long time.

We’re going to have to come back to reality. We’ve been in fiscal unreality even before the crisis. Now the crisis is going to make all of this more dramatic. We’ll have large budget deficits, as Fred and Sebastian have said.

The scope for big tax-cutting – the McCain ideas are absolutely surrealistic. They are completely outside of anything sensible.  Rich people are going to have to pay taxes again. That’s just going to be part of America once again.

We’ve been trying to run a government on about 17 percent of national income in taxation ever since the Reagan era came in. It’s been a myth all the way along. We’ve been borrowing heavy amounts all through the period.

You can’t squeeze government when you take into account Social Security and Medicare, Medicaid, military, the interest on the debt – things that have to be done. When you see all the other things that we care about, the quality of our lives, all squeezed into a tiny little amount, which is what’s happened for almost 30 years now, we’ve run out of that game.

So, this is not only a financial crisis, it’s the end of the Reagan era. It’s time to grow up again and understand that we’re going to have to pay taxes – rich people first – and that from there, we’re going to have to use those revenues for the things that count: health, education, infrastructure, energy.

This is not an invitation to ignore our future. It’s an invitation to start thinking seriously about it again.”

Well there it is.  The party is over and we have to pay for what we want in the future, not to mention pay for what we have already consumed when we embarked on the great Ronald Reagan free ride.  Dr. Sachs went on to say that in reality, there should be no tax cuts for anyone.  We have to embark on a whole new direction and we need to start responsibly paying for it.  I totally agree.  Tax cuts usually just fund additional purchases (and not effectively) of foreign produced goods and like the last tax rebate, many people just saved it.  It’s time to start spending on things that build our future.

I can hear it now from my conservative friends who have bought the low tax mantra that all we need to do is to reduce waste and abuse, and cut wasteful programs, and my taxes are already too high.  But when you touch one of the programs that they benefit from they squeal like pigs.  Every study ever done says that at best you could cut maybe 3%-5% out of the budget in real waste.  Like earmarks, it makes a good story but the reality is we want more than we are willing to pay for.

The bottom line here is that conservatives are just very, very selfish.  The present system has work well for them and has made many of them rich and they fail to feel any responsibility for the majority of our citizens who have suffered under their economic policies.  They will hang on to their beliefs to the very end because it has served them so very well.  Here is a real email conversation I had with one of them I had on Wednesday that emphatically illustrates my point:

HE: Double standard is applied to us.  I am voting “white and my wallet”.

ME:  And making the same mistake you made voting for George Bush.

HE:  Wrong!  I made a fortune and kept it.

Me:  While the rest of the country atrophied

The rest of the rant was about how we established two democracies in the Middle East, won the war against Al Qaeda, and that water boarding works.  Do we live in two different worlds?  You bet, but in mine reality has finally hit home with the market crashing to demonstrate the bankruptcy of Republican economic promise of low taxes, no regulation, and making the wealthy wealthier will make us all wealthy.  There is a level of selfishness here that is the hallmark of conservative thinking.  I am glad their time is almost over. They have almost destroyed our dear country. Or as Dr. Sachs put it:

“This is not an invitation to ignore our future. It’s an invitation to start thinking seriously about it again.”