"If the people believe there's an imaginary river out there, you don't tell them there's no river out there. You build an imaginary bridge over the imaginary river."
This is the quote that prefaces the book "The Invisible Bridge" by Rick Perlstein. It is attributed as "Advice to Richard Nixon from Nikita Khrushchev."
The book is a doorstop, some 800+ pages. If you have time to read only one book, this is the one you should read. As the subtitle says, it chronicles the time -- bridges the time -- of "the fall of Nixon and the rise of Reagan."
If you have been sitting here in 2015 scratching your head and wondering how we got here from the amazing sixties, this is the book that will clear it up for you. Yes, we had Roe v. Wade, and civil rights legislation, ended the war in Vietnam and began to end pollution and save the planet. We had desegregation, a war on poverty and more kids went on to college than ever before. But we liberals never saw the backlash coming. The abortion wars began as soon as they ended, fires fueled by rage at the Supreme Court justices that made a woman's right to abortion the law of the land. It was in the 70's that the textbook wars began, with a mild mannered Christian woman named Alice Moore speaking up at a Texas school board meeting, and refusing to back down until school boards in Texas and across the country removed books that offended with their words of sex and science, integration and art. Evolution was banned from textbooks and classrooms, as well as "The Grapes of Wrath." Lest we yanks feel smug, it was in Boston where fierce rioting went on over school busing. "Two groups of people who are poor and doomed and who have been thrown in the ring with each other," was how columnist Jimmy Breslin described the battles between whites and blacks. And in today's headlines we have a dozen odd republican candidates for president keeping those same wounds open. They may be using Mexicans instead of African Americans, but their followers I assure you see them as pretty much the same problem. You can't publicly pledge to send blacks back where they came from these days, but ending Obamacare and the Voting Rights Act is nearly as satisfying. While Hillary is wasting her time apologizing for emails, we must know that this has nothing to do with what is going on with the upcoming election. Remember that big brouhaha over Obama's 2008 comments on guns and religion? We need to go back and listen to those comments again:
"You go into these small towns in Pennsylvania and, like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing's replaced them. And they fell through the Clinton administration, and the Bush administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not.
And it's not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy toward people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations."
Yes, they continue to cling to their guns and religion, and they are fueled by opportunistic politicians. And what we see is craziness and rage. We see nobodies like Kim Davis regaled as a hero for refusing to obey the law and used by fools like Mike Huckabee to promote his own small-minded religious agenda. And those people who live in their own ignorance and isolation thrive on the narrative that the freedom of others to live differently will deny them their religious freedom. And there you have that invisible bridge. There won't be better jobs and the kids will either bail out or follow in the footsteps of fear and denial. And the politicians will continue to pretend that they care about "religious freedom" while they deregulate and cut taxes for the rich. And they will cut services to those same isolated small towns, health care and education, roads and schools, police and firefighters, blaming the government. These pols have created and perpetuated this vicious cycle, wherein ignorance leads being frightened and vulnerable to lies and manipulation, which leads to more isolation and ignorance. What is different now than it was in the 70's is that we have a Supreme Court that has been molded by the right-wing to reflect that bizarre religious paranoia. Since Reagan the Supremes have formalized the union between corporate power and religion. Small businesses haven't noticed that they have not been included in all the freedom of speech that is being bought, and politicians are giving them nothing but lip service. But the pols have taken up the fight for the religious fanatics. Because while they are wasting time and dollars with votes and court battles to end Obamacare, voting rights and Planned Parenthood, they are seeming to serve those small town old-timey values while their real constituents, the billionaire capitalists, are allowed to continue to freely run the country.
...or, just how many millions of dollars are you worth?
Halloween is just around the corner. This year's scariest costume is going to be Bernie Sanders, the socialist. I just saw Michael Steele, that faux intellectual, on C-Span interviewing another conservative, i.e. wealthy, republican. The inevitable question came up about "redistribution of wealth." The answer being, if they are going to take all my money and give it away, I will no longer have the incentive to work to make that money. Yeah, well, we've been hearing versions of that tune for a long time now. It comes as the "job creator" myth, wherein if you let rich people keep their money they will grow their businesses and hire more people. Also known as the "trickle down" theory of the Reagan years. Turns out, it only trickles down when the rich folk pee all over us. It seems odd to me that the middle class has had to work harder for less, but we continue to work hard. More jobs, fewer benefits, worse health, less mobility. Kids who can't afford to go to college. Elderly who would eat cat food, but it's as expensive as tuna. Working poor who have to turn to food stamps, who have to go to work sick and leave their kids home alone or get fired. But we keep working. And yet the Koch brothers, should they be required to pay a smidge more of their wealth to the government so that the middle class and the poor can breathe a little easier, well, they just might get discouraged and throw in the towel. Take their marbles and go home is more like it. The wordsmiths of the right wing have been all over this, telling lies and calling the fight for income equality "class warfare," the estate or inheritance tax renamed "death tax," turning "socialism" into a bogeyman. If we want to see a Democrat in the White House after 2016, we need to understand the reality of income inequality and the bizarre wealth gap that exists in America. Robert Reich, economist and sketch artist extraordinaire has a number of simple and eloquent youtube videos that tell the story. Jon Oliver has had a few entertaining and informative segments that illustrate, for example, how we have all been led to believe the "death tax" should be abolished even though 1) it does not affect 99.86 percent of us, 2) you don't pay a penny under 5.3 million dollars and 3) the people who would pay the tax actually didn't earn it. Here's the thing about this redistribution of wealth nonsense. The rich pay a lower percentage of taxes than the poor and middle class. They are able to hide wealth in tax shelters and have loopholes designed expressly in which to hide their wealth. It is a gross falsehood that the poor do not pay taxes. Here in South Carolina, food is taxed. The inequities that persist in auto taxes in SC were documented in February in the Post and Courier: the sales tax bill, regardless of the value of a vehicle cannot exceed $300, and then cars are assessed an annual property tax. Each year I pay over $30 on my 2003 Mitsubishi, 180,000+ miles and counting. Because legislators refuse to increase property taxes on the wealthy and stop giving away the store to corporations, we are forced to keep voting to raise the regressive sales tax to pay for needed improvements to our schools and libraries. Our politicians have been schooled well in nurturing our ignorance and giving us a false sense that they are protecting our interests. That is why we continue to elect those who promise to cut taxes and reduce government. We see how government doesn't work, because the combination of giveaways to corporations and reduction in services becomes the self-fulfilling prophecy of bad government. When opponents wake up to Bernie Sanders, and they will, socialism will come front and center as the dirty word of the 2016 campaign, and along with it the threat that the government is going to take the wealth away from all those hard-working job creators. Don't let them get away with this nonsense. Paying people a living wage, making sure that our children are well fed and educated, bringing our infrastructure, from electrical grids to the internet, into the 21st century, that is the job that government should be doing, and those who have gotten rich from our hard work should help finance it. So this Halloween, when someone jumps out from behind the shrubbery and yells, "redistribution of wealth!" I plan on saying, "Oh, thank gods, I was afraid you were Donald Trump."
Yes, we all laughed at John Boehner yelling "Hell, no!" on the House floor after Obama's win. And then there was the fiasco after the 2012 republican loss wherein they all stood in a circle and jerked off to the tune of, "We have to figure out how to say the same thing, but make it sound different." You know that tune. Just like Tim Scott's voting record, the republicans have gotten away with blocking and stalling any Democratic program that might succeed. But wait. Last week heralded a new day for bipartisanship, as Congress passed the bill that would "permanently" fix the threat of doctors refusing to accept Medicare due to lower rates of reimbursement. Jon Stewart mocked the national moment of joy expressed at Congress at last getting together to do their job. I am wondering, on the other hand, what we gave up in order to get those fools to agree. Because what has been happening in Congress lately is a series of compromises that make the republicans look like real leaders while our Democratic goals and programs are being eroded. Take the Human Trafficking Victims' Fund that just passed the Senate with 99 votes. In March, this bill got bollixed up because the creeps in the republican party tied it to an anti-abortion amendment. Fortunately somebody woke up and read the bill, and the media attention killed that sleazy plan. Or so we thought. These days, it seems that everybody wants to stop human trafficking, although it seems to me that this has become a term that can mean anything to anybody, and I doubt that the republican supporters are really planning on helping Mexicans who have been abused by coyotes after paying their way into the country. But whatever we think it is, fighting human trafficking is so hot that a bill was even passed into law and signed by Governor Haley in South Carolina on April 2 of this year. In the Senate, the compromise over which everyone is taking bows, involves splitting funds in a way that in no way no how can money for "health services" be spent on abortions. Never let it be said that a Democrat would be unwilling to compromise when it comes to a woman's right to have an abortion. Been abused? Raped? Coerced? Have some "health services" sans abortion. And then there is the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which could be subtitled "a million ways to die at the hands of the republican congress." The plan seems to be that the more Senator Elizabeth Warren works to increase protections from big banks and their hi-jinx, the more creative become the wordsmiths in the republican party, assisted of course by Wall Street, ALEC, and all those other helpful denizens of the one percent. So as Warren calls for more regulation and demands for accountability, the House has passed a bill which would require additional advisory boards (including what they call "small business") and to offset the cost of these boards, has PUT CAPS ON FUTURE FUNDING OF THE CONSUMER FINANCIAL PROTECTION BUREAU. So thanks, Ronald Reagan, your plan to strangle government continues to thrive. All I am saying is, this new era of "bipartisan politics" that has dawned in Washington is Democrats being roped in and hornswoggled. If you want to know what is really going on, follow the comments of those who are opposing all these great moments in unity: Bernie Sanders, Maxine Waters, Elizabeth Warren. Now is the time to find the truth-tellers on the left, and not those who are either so naive or so concerned with being re-elected that they will compromise away the things we have fought for, like financial reform and women's rights. When you see a 99-0 vote, ask yourself what we've lost, because the chances are pretty darned good that we have.
This is what the debate for South Carolina US Senator was not: it was not slick (despite the matching suits worn by Tim Scott and moderator Charles Bierbauer). There were not a lot of fancy words or high-minded philosophies. After all, this was South Carolina. Instead, the responses by all three candidates were predictable, and if we did not know the candidates, left us with very little information other than how comfortable each was in front of the camera. It turns out that the women, Independent candidate Jill Bossi and Democratic candidate Joyce Dickerson, shared similar views on most topics. Both are strongly pro-women, pro-choice, both in favor of strengthening benefits for seniors and veterans. They also (along with Tim) threw out the ever-popular "secure our borders" and "improve education" because who would not? If you know Joyce at all, you are probably aware that she is not a formidable public speaker. She has the tendency to occasionally mix up words. But her understanding of politics and her democratic beliefs are strong ones. I can see her in the Senate fighting for the middle class, as well as for those who are struggling to earn a living wage, and for children with inadequate health care and nutrition, and students who are unable to compete because of our government's unwillingness to commit to education. If the race had been between Jill Bossi (I) and Tim Scott (Tea Party Republican), Bossi would get my vote easily. But what concerns me about Bossi is her emphasis on her willingness to compromise, to find the middle ground, in an America where there have been too many compromises to an uncompromising right-wing. Our middle ground is far right of where it was in the 60's and 70's, and our environment, our health care, our education, our infrastructure, have all suffered the results. Bossi emphasizes her business creds, and I fear that once in Congress she would be all too eager to lean toward the big business dollars and lobbyists that would come her way. Jill Bossi says she wants to institute a "fair, flat tax," a term that sends chills up and down my spine. Tim Scott, on the other hand, for all his grooming by the big guns that control him, when left to his own devices, will talk about pretending to work alongside "everyday people," clueless as to the condescension. Right from his introductory comments, he talks about wanting to be in the US Senate so he can spend time with his family, and help build a future for his nephew. Clumsy, maybe, but he pretty much lets us know with this Freudian slip that the rest of us "everyday people" don't feature much in his consciousness. Matter of fact, please go to C-Span and listen to his introductory comments, because I just can't do them justice. You really do want to hear him say in regards to Washington, that if it weren't for relatives, people wouldn't like him at all. But let's please get back to the issues. Actually, not the issues, just the platitudes, because that is what Tim is all about. Somebody invented something called an "Opportunity Agenda" for Tim, and if you listen to him talk about it, you will walk away wondering just what he's going to do to create all this opportunity. Because he won't tell you. The answer to the economy is creating "certainty" and "stability" in the workplace. Now you know this doesn't mean certainty and stability for the workers. This is just Tim Scott bullshit for cutting corporate taxes and deregulation. Which has continued to drag us into the dark ages since Ronald Reagan's handlers first packaged it for the American people. Of course, Scott called upon the evil Obamacare and was even told to bring up Dodd-Frank, as in "Dodd-Frank and Obamacare" as reasons why our country was failing. Like Mark Sanford debating the cardboard Nancy Pelosi, this is a matter of throwing out red meat to the snarling and brainless base. I am hoping that more than a few of us heard him and said, "say what???" Apart from just the stupid pat phrases, there were the bizarre "facts," like that our corporate tax rate is ten points higher than the rest of the world. Or that through Nikki Haley's leadership Spartanburg and Greenville are at nearly 100% employment. And responding to the comment about his missed votes, that he has a "99% voting record" -- whatever that means. Scott goes on to say that he "voted to reduce interest rates on student loans," which plain old made my head spin around. So I looked it up. HR 4628, prettily called the "Interest Rate Reduction Act," also repeals parts of the Affordable Care Act... establishing and appropriating funds to the Prevention and Public Health Fund (a Fund to provide for expanded and sustained national investment in prevention and public health programs to improve health and help restrain the rate of growth in private and public sector health care costs). Rescinds any unobligated balances appropriated to such Fund. This bill had something in it for nearly everybody to hate, from those on the right that opposed keeping student loan rates low, to those on the left who opposed this sneak attack on essential parts of the Affordable Care Act. In fact, the only group that officially supported the bill was the Christian Coalition of America. Which made it good enough for Tim Scott. Funny, though, how Scott made it sound like it was the student loan part of the bill he was supporting and not the strangling Obamacare part.... Oh, my, I wish I was a better writer, I could write a comedy and a tragedy on Tim Scott. What's most important about the Senate debate for me, however, is that I got to hear just how lame he is next to the two smart women running against him. I also had the chance to hear Jill Bossi, who was well-spoken and has lots of good ideas. But not enough. Joyce Dickerson may not have had time to rehearse for the debate because she appears to be spending every moment of her waking day running to different parts of the state to introduce herself to voters. She is running on a shoestring, and doesn't have the staff to prep her and polish her. But I prefer my candidate without the polish. She is knowledgeable and caring, and she is not in it for the money or the power. She is not likely to sell us out for business interests, and she understands the difference between healthy compromise and caving in. So I will continue to support Joyce Dickerson, and I hope you will as well.
Have you heard the scandal about the surfer on Food Stamps? If you haven't you aren't paying attention. Crime fighters at Fox News are all over it. They found a guy who is proud of the fact that he is cheating the government. And James O'Keefe played a pimp in order to kill ACORN.
We have become a country far too easily duped. This is the place where Wall Street Banks break the law and figure by the time they get caught they will have made millions (or billions). This is the land of corporate welfare, where the Koch brothers, ExxonMobil, and Wal-Mart write the rules so that they can legally pillage and plunder. And create a nation where the numbers of poor and hungry grow each year. Ronald Reagan invented the welfare queen, and the tall tale worked so well for him that the republican party -- funded by corporate America -- has fed off it ever since. Because of Reagan's dream, shared by corporate America and the right wing, hard working Americans have been seeing their dreams dashed. Less likely these days to wish for wealth than health care, insecure Americans prove an easy target for the myth of the welfare queen. Just as with the other battles we are fighting for what should be our rights as Americans -- the right to vote, the right to a living wage, the right to medical privacy -- as long as we are struggling just to keep from losing those battles, we are unable to focus on the real financial criminals in our society. As long as Fox News and Markwayne Mullin can get us riled up about the Food Stamp recipient that eats steak, we won't even notice that our children's future is being stolen by the wealthy and powerful. So we need to keep reminding people of where the real corruption lies. Maybe surfer Jason Greenslate really exists, or maybe he's another wannabe James O'Keefe. What he is not, is the person who is draining our economy and living high off our tax dollars. You will need to look to our Congress and folks like Wal-Mart's Waltons to find the real guilty parties. Let's help focus on the real problems, and get the American people back on track.
