South Carolina Isn't Funny Anymore

I came away from a political meeting last night shaking my head.  I'm working on grasping the destructive politics of the US Congress, and I believe a good bit of it can be understood by the concept of: "Follow the Money".

But here in South Carolina, that doesn't even work.  We refuse federal dollars (that our taxes have paid into) to build infrastructure that would make our state more appealing to the businesses we claim we crave.  We join the rest of the country in mocking a governor for eight years (re-electing him just to be sure we aren't missing something), and then elect a woman who reflects the same goals and values.

I believe South Carolina operates under the assumption that, if banging your head against the wall isn't working, it's only because you aren't banging it hard enough.

Is it the "good ole boys" that just get angry because y'all in the Yankee states are trying to prove they're wrong?  Because they don't even seem to want to do what is good for big business, other than keep cutting their taxes.  And of course, the worse our schools and roads and neighborhoods get, the more tax incentives they have to offer to compete with other cheap labor (oh, I'm sorry, freedom to work) states.

And our voters, ever the product of a poor education system that teaches compliance and acceptance of minimum standards, continue to be grateful that smooth talkers like Lindsey Graham and Jim Demint defend their right to be from one of the states with the worst education system, highest level of teen pregnancy, and greatest numbers of working poor (that are lucky to be employed at all).

So how do we even begin to figure out how to change any of this mess?

Well, our neighbor, North Carolina, is having troubles of its own.  And they have figured out a way to begin to turn things around:

 

So now that we are so pathetic we don't even rise to the level of laughingstock, I guess we can either declare war on North Carolina, or wake up and start to support people and programs that will begin to dig us out of this hole.

Too Many Fires

As long as our corporate right-wing legislators continue to sing the same chorus of the same song, our defenders are left scurrying around trying to put out fires.  I read my political email and we have a smorgasborg of destruction:  abortion, health care, guns, budget cuts.  So many fires for so few people to try to put out.

And then we have Obamacare, which appears to be heading to that bastion of partisanship, the Supreme Court, after a Bush appointee in Florida decided you couldn't make people buy health insurance.

Don't get too comfortable with getting health care for those pre-existing conditions.

And the real solution to mass shootings like that in Arizona is more guns, and especially for members of Congress.  They might as well, they act like cowboys.

So we have a president who is either in it with the elite, or is really, really naive about how vicious is this fight.

One of the more comedic effects of Obama's love affair with the republic party is listening to Mitch McConnell kissing up to his new bud.

And while Jim Demint appears to be keeping a low profile, having figured out that the less he says, the smarter he sounds, it is positively fright-night to hear Lindsey Graham, the other half of the dynamic duo from the economically devastated state of South Carolina giving his opinion on what needs to be done.

Last year the headline from the State of the Union was "'You lie' Wilson", and this year we have the technical gaffe of Michelle Bachmann's camera crew during her Tea Party rebuttal to everyone else.

Oh, and everybody liked Obama, especially the independent voters, and that is really the audience he is trying to capture, because they may not know what the hell is going on, but at least they are willing to change their votes.


But at least it's February, folks, and at some point the heating bills will be lower -- to compensate for the price of gas going up.

Boehner's Jobs Avoiding House

You might be wondering why HR 3 has nothing to do with creating jobs.  I would have been confused about this just a short while ago.  But in a horror-movie kind of way, the more I see it, the more inevitable the right-wing strategy becomes.


Just as the republic party screamed about reducing the deficit, except when they were screaming about cutting taxes for the wealthy, and about abolishing the estate tax so that people who did not earn the wealth of the wealthiest .05 percent get to keep every penny.  Just as those right-wing critics who attacked Obama for the Wall Street bailout fight him with every breath over every proposed reform of Wall Street.  Just as Boehner and McConnell and friends insist on stretching the poor and middle classes ever further beyond the ablity to live, much less live well, while insisting on huge corporate entitlements for oil, pharmaceutical, insurance, banking industries.


And before their less well-healed constituents can say, "Wait just a minute, what about the deficit?", in comes the vote to repeal Obamacare, in which the republic powers that be just plain old refuse to believe the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office's finding that it would save rather than waste government money.  Because the health care "debate" in the summer of 2009 brought so much fear and confusion to the issue, it will continue to be a popular song in the republic playlist.


Which has to be followed by an anti-abortion bill.  Again, no fan of the facts, it creates the falsehood that abortion is a scourge of the country, made common by government funding (which in fact does not exist).  Not relevant of course, that abortion has been on the decline, affecting less than 20 out of 1,000 women.  We need to keep beating this dead horse, because it fuels the fears and anger of the right-wing contituency.  Without ever addressing the fact that inadequate income, housing, health and education are the primary factors in unwanted pregnancies, not the availability of abortion services.


So why this strategy?  First of all, fanning the flames on social issues, in other words, that the sins of the poor are what are bringing down the country, always take attention away from the sins of the wealthy.  And, most important, it is the wealthy that pay for protection from Congress.


As long as we have a Supreme Court that gives corporations the rights of individuals without the responsibility, as long as lobbyists are payed grand salaries to deliver grand promises to our congress, until we elect an honest politician to fight for campaign finance reform AFTER the election, we will continue to see the party of wealth and power attack the freedom and wellbeing of the poor and powerless.  It is an easy fight to manipulate, and it seems to win every time.

The More Things Change

I was disheartened by the time I finished reading The Wrecking Crew by Thomas Frank.  It is an amazing history of the political right-wing, going way back, but especially since the Reagan years.  Apparently, the crazy, incoherent philosophies of people like John Boehner have all been choreographed by movement ideologues for decades.  It is no accident that the goal of the last Congress was to say no, and halt the movement of the Congress.  And it worked.


A party united is what the corporations that own our politicians paid for, and Frank documents the intricate relationship that has developed among corporations, lobbyists and members of Congress.  The Gingrich House exists today, Boehner's contract on America an echo of that penned by Gingrich.


If it seems strange that the Boehner promises, from transparency to jobs, have fallen by the wayside, and after the symbolic death of Obama's Affordable Health Care Act our House is now tackling issues like abortion, that is also a part of the plan.  While their social base is getting fired up about issues like abortion and gun rights, the fact that jobs are not being created is left for the upcoming election, when Obama and the Democrats will be blamed for the failure.


We all laughed when, after the 2008 landslide, the republicans, as united as ever, insisted that it was their agenda demanded by the American people.  But it worked.  Tossing out the words "socialist" and "nazi" can still get you mileage when the voters are too scared and exhausted to know better.


After I finished reading The Wrecking Crew, I decided to go back to Molly Ivins' collected essays on the Clinton years, You Got to Dance with Them What Brung You.


What I most remember from my first reading of this collection at the end of the 90's, is that it wasn't funny.  Molly Ivins, who made us laugh with the riotous stories of the Texas lege, wasn't laughing.  That Bill Clinton caved and compromised on so many issues critical to the welfare of the American people, I believe it broke her heart.


Making deals to benefit the corporations while cutting benefits to the poorest and youngest Americans.  Paving the way for those corporations to take jobs and dollars overseas, while slashing salaries and benefits for their workers back home.  Downsizing.  Increased productivity.  Record salaries for CEO's.  Record profits for Wall Street.


I supposed it's fitting reading for January, when our President has just allowed cuts to the payroll tax that funds Social Security and Medicare while continuing the huge tax cuts for the top one percent of American earners.  Talking about extending social security retirement age being on the table, while the very wealthy (top 1/2 of one percent) maintain the right to pass millions of dollars, untaxed, to their heirs.


What would Molly say if she were still with us?  Maybe she would just shake her head and again say, "You got to dance with them what brung you."

A Cold-Blooded Debate

When I saw my PCCC ad against extending the social security retirement age on YouTube, I was dismayed at the first crazy mean-spirited comments.  Basically, a couple of idiots contended that I should stop whining and get a job, and that I was just lazy.  Amazing that they could even write, given their listening skills.

I knew, from my son's comments regarding a recent Rachel Maddow YouTube video, that there is a vast membership of idiots in YouTube; apparently the anonymity allows them to do the internet equivalent of crank phone calls.  What a riot, showing the world how stupid we are, they must think.  Let's publish really ugly things about people and then laugh like crazy.

I recalled that Maddow has a wonderful healthy attitude about all this, making wisecracks on her show, once saying something like she felt flattered that the insult involved her actual political philosophy and didn't involve calling her a man.

But then there was the Keith Olbermann interview with Jonathan Alter on Countdown.

It was amazing that I was there, not just on national television, but on Countdown, in the middle of an analysis of the battle to make changes to social security.  I have great respect for Alter, and in fact his comments regarding what Obama might say Tuesday night and why were thoughtful and made a great deal of sense, although I hate the politics that are controlling this discourse.

I was stunned, though, when he made it personal.  "That woman in the ad...she made it sound as if Lindsey Graham wanted to take away her social security."

Well, no I didn't.  I actually said, "...people like me just won't make it."

And in fact, whether it be next year (which the republicans dare not even propose) or in forty years (which they will), people like me will still exist, and will be in great pain when they retire, whether it be at age 62 (when when they wouldn't even be eligible to collect full benefits) or age 70.

Alter failed to hear the real argument, because he works up in the stratosphere where health care is plentiful and affordable, and you take taxis if you don't feel like walking, and when your job makes you tired, there is no one there making sure you punch in and out and take no more than your allotted 15 minute break.

One of the snarky comments either on YouTube or one of the online articles about the ad was that I should quit and go on disability (which, according to other snarky comments, would make me one of those people sucking the government tit, regardless of the tax dollars I put in to the disability fund).

As ugly as the comments of the anonymous internet cranksters are, I am far more offended by the personal tone to Alter's criticisms.

Because, you see, I know that Lindsey Graham is not going to take away my social security.  What he will do, however, is make my children pay by working longer for less.

Big, Bad Government

Because it's big, our federal government has always been an easy target.  When the price of fuel goes up, when there is a coal mine disaster, when children are inadequately educated, it is the federal government that, somehow or other, ends up shouldering the blame.

President Obama is an easy victim here, because he has accepted that he is responsible for the welfare of the country.  Entirely.  Gulf spill?  Unemployment?  Global climate change?  If the man isn't fixing it, he needs to be drummed out of office.

What he needs to do is to start holding the people responsible for the state of the country.  Including the voters, but especially corporations.  (The media is also responsible, but I'd be willing to let Jon Stewart handle that.)

We may be spending an insane amount on the wars that George W. Bush screwed up, but a big part of those dizzying numbers is the graft of the corporations that supply everything from arms to food to mercenary guards and soldiers.

The cost of health care of course is primarily insurance industry profits, but there are also pharmaceutical companies and durable equipment (wheelchairs for example) manufacturers plundering government coffers.

And we can't stop it because these big industries pay far more to lobbyists to bargain (buy off) legislators, to prevent our government from pursuing the most efficient, cost-effective plan.

Indeed, regulation is constantly under attack by corporate lobbying, and has been since Reagan began to strip regulatory agencies in the name of good business in the eighties.  And now we have Susan Dudley, among other conservative defenders of "small government", i.e. unregulated industry, complaining about the cost of regulation.  Dudley was W's controversial appointment to the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs; she infamously opposed the EPA's 2008 analysis of ways to control greenhouse gasses.

Susan Dudley is one member of the huge conservative army determined to take the federal government apart, one bill or regulation at a time.  Tax cuts followed by demands to reduced the deficit, underfunded education followed by thunderous accusations that public education does not work, and the anticipated upcoming effort to defund Obama's health care law are just a few of the many many ways the right wing will continue to provide "proof" to voters that government is bad.  It has to be -- it's the way they want it.

That Fact-Killing Health Care Bill

I don't like the Affordable Care Act.  It is yet another boondoggle for the health insurance industry, a compromise wherein the big powerful group gets a whole lot bigger and more powerful, and the rest of us get, well, a little more health care.

Yet we needed that little bit more health care so desperately that we allowed the big guys to bully us into accepting it as better than nothing.

And, according to the Congressional Budget Office, ObamaCare will actually serve to decrease the deficit.  It makes sense, if the insurance companies are being forced, kicking and screaming, to provide health care to those who would turn to the government because they had no health care.  And then there are those who are only remaining employed because they need the health coverage, who would retire and open up jobs for people currently unemployed and for whom the government must give assistance, meager though it is.

So when a pollster asks if I'm happy with ObamaCare, or, as Rasmussen calls it when they poll, "the health care bill", I can either say yes, which isn't true, or I can say no, which is also not true.  What I do know, is that the republic party wants to repeal the whole thing.  And I am fairly sure, based on past behavior of the same old gang of republicans that is running things now, if that were to happen, there would be no health care reform.

No more ability to insure with pre-existing conditions.  No more allowing children up to age 26 to be included in a family's health care plan.  No more incentives for small business owners to insure their employees.

People stuck in jobs because to move or retire could mean loss of insurance benefits.

Now let's assume that the repeal of ObamaCare is defeated.  Could this mean less profit for insurance companies?

I think not.

Because with all the hot air over Congress regarding health care, the health insurance industry will be well protected.  Unlike the rest of us, they will have lawyers and members of congress, republican and democrat, figuring out ways to minimize the harmful effects that the devastating loss of profit will have on the industry.  After all, it was nearly a year ago that we learned that the health insurance industry earned record profits (56%) in 2009 over 2008, and no one expects that profits will have dwindled in 2010.  Health care bill or not, it is fairly certain that the primary purpose of the health care industry is going to remain increasing its profits.

No matter what else you may think about our Congress, it is safe to say that they are in business to protect the corporate sector.  All the rhetoric you are hearing about the "job-killing", "job-destroying", "job-mangling", "job-insert-scary-adjective here" bill, the bottom line is that the jobs that are being protected are those of wealthy insurance CEO's -- oh, and of our members of Congress.