Category: Republicans Page 2 of 3

Ron Paul Hysteria

On January 3, 2012

So, I’m noticing a ton of attacks on Ron Paul from progressives. The reason is simple enough, Ron Paul is great on some key things the left cares about, and horrible on others. His last ad in Iowa says he’d ban abortion, for example. On the other hand, he wants to withdraw all troops from foreign wars and bring back the troops from America’s far flung military bases. And he’s the only candidate to unequivocally state that he would never order the assassination of Americans.

Paul’s economic policies are straight up insane, and would throw the world into a full catastrophic Great Depression, even worse than the one we’re in now and worse than the one in the 30s.

But the problem is that current policies by more “mainstream” candidates just get to the same place more slowly. And maybe not even that much more slowly. Numerian thinks this could be the year of the big crash, for example, one where even the first world has food shortages and so on.

We’re going to get there. There is a consensus for austerity amongst the transnational developed world elites which is breathtaking in its unanimity, imperviousness to argument and lack of regard for democratic niceties. There is no consensus on how to deal with the oil bottleneck, no plan for actually dealing with the leveraged debt overhang, no understanding of how to create real growth, as opposed to bubbles. If they do manage to hang on, what will happen is a huge non-conventional oil boom (read Fracking) and that will devastate ground water and turn large areas into wastelands. Nor will it last all that long or feel all that good (it’ll be better than now, but probably not even as good as the best Bush years.)

After that I see no scenario in which things don’t crack up, completely.

So Ron Paul will cause a crack up, possibly a little bit ahead of schedule. That sucks for old people who might have died before the world went to hell, but for young people, you might as well get it done.

But Ron Paul also might do some real damage to the military industrial complex. There is no route forward for the US which does not require taking that misallocated effort, and using it for other things. So this is necessary.

Also the movement of manufacturing and other expertise overseas means that the US labor force is a wasting asset. The longer the decline goes on the fewer people there will be with the skills to bootstrap back up, the less of an industrial base other than defense there will be, and so on. Infrastructure will be more degraded, not less, and so on. So from that point of view, cracking up sooner, rather than later, is preferable because it leaves a clearer path to the future.

But let’s move back to the title. The reason Ron Paul causes hysterics is he pits interest group against interest group, morality vs. morality. He’s a different kind of lesser evil. If Afghans got to vote in the US election, who would they vote for? How important is Habeas Corpus to you really? What about pot legalization? Etc… Ron Paul is awful on some issues, and very good on others. Are abortion rights more important than dead Afghans and Pakistanis at weddings? (I don’t claim they are, or aren’t, I simply note Paul forces you to make that choice.) And Paul would end all bank bailouts. Hate the banksters? Think they’re the key problem? Paul’s your man.

Obama is objectively awful. Paul is objectively awful. But unlike Romney, Paul is objectively awful in different ways than Obama. Romney would just be Obama, but slightly worse. If you’re going to choose a lesser evil, you might as well choose Obama. But when it comes to Paul vs. Obama the equation changes.

And that’s why many progressives are attacking any other progressive who says anything good about Paul, because Paul threatens to split the left, and because Paul makes progressives decide what they value most.

What the Debt Limit Crisis Should Have Taught You

By Ian Welsh

On July 31, 2011

Comments

This is not primarily about the Tea Party

It is about what rich donors want. The Tea Party does not even have the amount of muscle progressives do. Progressives can bring tens of thousands of people out, the Tea Party can rarely even get above 1,000. They are a convenient excuse to do what the Beltway and the oligarchs already want to do.

Where are you going to go?

Both Dems and Republicans are onside with cutting Social Security and Medicare. They are only third rails if there is someone else to vote for.

The deals being offered will cause a second downleg of the Depression and a worse one

We’re in a Depression. This is fact. Anyone who doesn’t call it that is gutless, stupid or uninformed. This will make it worse, not just for the US, but for the entire developed world.

Representatives work for the people who pay them

That isn’t really you. They don’t become multi-millionaires on their salaries, you know. It’s their donors, the people who hire their wives and children, the people who fund their campaigns, the people who give them good jobs when they leave government. If you want Reps and Senators to work for you, you must pay them better, you must fund their campaigns (and sharply limit outside funding) and you must make it illegal for them to EVER make more money in a year than their government salary (index it to an average of the median wage, the minimum wage, and CPI). You should do what Canada used to do and give them a good pension after 6 years. You DON’T want them worrying about their next job, or what they’ll do if they’ll lose.

Point being, they don’t work for you.

This is a representative plutocracy

I believe Stirling Newberry, in the early 90s, pointed this out first. Politicians are paid by people other than you. You are the product. Think of this as the Facebook rule, if you aren’t paying for something, then you are the product. The rich pay politicians to rangle you. The amount of salary and public funding most Reps get is trivial compared to how much money they get from donors, even during their time in elected office, let alone after they leave. You are the product, not the customer, of DC politicians. They do not represent you, and you should not expect your interests to be looked after except as an afterthought. When the oligarchs all agree that something needs to be done (like cut entitlements), it will be done, no matter how unpopular it is.

This “Crisis” is what Obama wanted

Again, if he didn’t, he would have raised the debt ceiling in the lame duck. Nancy Pelosi was always very good at getting those sort of basic housekeeping bills through. It would have passed. Period. Obama wanted to cut SS and Medicare, and he needed a “crisis” in order to do it. He also needed a Republican House, which he had, because his policies during 2009 and 2010 didn’t fix the economy.

You should have been working on nothing but primarying Obama since the day after the midterms

If you don’t understand why, I can’t help you.

There is no war but class war

Break the rich, or they will finish institutionalizing aristocracy. Period.

A blast from the past and a reminder about the future

By Ian Welsh

On April 24, 2011

Comments

Courtesy of the Black Agenda Report:

As election year 2008 began, Obama took the most pro-banker, laissez faire capitalist position on home foreclosures of the three major Democratic presidential candidates. John Edwards backed a mandatory moratorium on foreclosures and a freeze on interest rates, while Hillary Clinton supported a “voluntary” halt and $30 billion in federal aid to homeowners. But Obama opposed any moratorium, mandatory or voluntary, and balked at cash for homeowners and stricken communities

You don’t always get what you vote for, but the surprises aren’t usually on the upside. Obama was given the opportunity to be the new FDR. The financial crisis was a huge opportunity to break the power of the financial industry and the rich for a generation, and in so doing make it possible to have an economy which worked for everyone, to fix America’s energy problems, and to have universal healthcare.

Instead what happened is that Obama bailed out the rich and the financial industry, who were bankrupt, then refused to prosecute them for systemic fraud. He did so in a way which left, by and large, the exact same class of people in charge of the financial industry, made the remaining banks bigger and more powerful, restored the wealth of the rich to pre-crisis levels and restored their profits. Meanwhile employment has still not recovered (ignore the unemployment rate, it is a lie), wages are flat or declining, real inflation is through the roof, the price of oil is skyrocketing and the current discussion in DC is how much the poor and middle class should get screwed out of their Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, in order to keep the rich filthy rich. Oh, and how much tax cuts the rich should get.

America is in terminal decline. There may be a lot of ruin in a nation, as Adam Smith wrote, but that amount is not infinite. The next chance you get to turn this around you will be starting from a much worse position. A lot more pain will be unavoidable.

Obama is not turning things around, what he is doing is negotiating with Republicans how fast the decline will be, and how much and how fast it is necessary to fuck ordinary Americans in order to keep the rich rich. If Obama wins another term, he will continue to negotiate the decline, then, odds are very high, a Republican will get in, and slam his foot on the accelerator of collapse.

This is why Obama must lose in 2012. I would prefer that he lose to a Democrat in a primary, then that Democrat wins, but he must lose regardless. If he loses to a Republican, then 2016 you get a chance to put someone in charge who might do the right things (or even just some of them.)

No, those odds aren’t good. They suck. Every part of them sucks. And even if you get a Dem in 2016, you’ll probably choose the right most candidate, just like you did last time, and he’ll go back to negotiating with Republicans over what parts of the corpse of America’s middle class they should dine on next. “No, no, eat one kidney first, they only need one to survive, so that’s not too cruel.”

But it is still your best chance. Otherwise you’re looking at full, Russian-style collapse. What comes out the other end, I don’t know, but you really won’t enjoy getting there.

And yes, if a Republican gets in in 2012, that’ll be awful. Just awful. But it’s not like a Republican is never going to be president ever again. That’s not on the agenda, that’s not possible. It will happen, and he will substantially cater to the Teabaggers. He will trash your country. That’s baked into the cake now, all you can choose is how soon it happens, and work to replace him with someone who might do the right thing.

Remember, the question is not “if” this will happen, it is when. The sooner you get it over with, the sooner you have another chance to get it right, and the less decline the US will have suffered. If President Teabag gets in after 4 years of Obama, the US will be in better shape at the start of his wrecking than it will be if he gets in after 8 years of Obama. Obama is a disaster, who is making things worse, not better. He’s just making it worse more slowly than a Republican.

Cowardly Republicans attack woman

By Ian Welsh

On October 25, 2010

Comments

One guy headstomps her while another one holds her down. Wanna-be stormtroopers without the guts to take on someone who can fight back. Find out their names, and publish them, so that they can be held up as the gutless wonders they are.

Update: The curb stomping coward turns out to be Tim Profitt who appears to be Rand Paul’s Burbon Country coordinator. Charges have been laid, and an arrest warrant issued. The guy who held her down while she was head stomped appears to have been Mike Pezzano. As far as I am aware he has not been charged with battery yet.

How the Next 4 Years Will Play out

By Ian Welsh

On October 24, 2010

Comments

2010 – Republicans take control of the House. The Senate remains in Democratic hands, but the margin is reduced.

2011 – Bush’s tax cuts are extended. Social Security is slashed. This is done at Obama’s behest, so that Dems get blamed for it.

2012 – The Republicans take the Senate (this is virtually guaranteed, 2012’s geography is awful for Dems). They retain the House. They probably take the Presidency.

2013 – in charge of the judiciary, Congress and the Presidency, and with hard right crazies as a substantial caucus, the Republicans finally repeal the new deal. SS is turned into privatized accounts (older folks will keep most of what they have), Medicare is slashed going forward, regulatory agencies like the EPA are cut to the bone, education is turned over to the private sector as the Feds withdraw virtually all support for public schools and move to a voucher system. A new bubble (the last one) is inflated at all costs by Bernanke. Massive slashing of the federal civil service occurs, programs which are not slashed are transferred down to the States, where corruption is easier.

2014 – President Teabag starts a war somewhere to keep pump up the military Keynesianism. Said war is used as an excuse to even further curtail civil liberties.

If the Republicans don’t win the presidency in 2012, no big deal, they’ll still control Congress and the Supremes, and they’ll get him in in 2016. Obama will do much of what they want anyway, and get the blame.)

Liberals aren’t real people—or crazy

By Ian Welsh

On August 29, 2010

Comments

As Bill Scher points out, Beck’s rally was pathetic:

Glenn Beck: 87,000, Louis Farrakhan 837,000 ’03 anti-war protests 1,000,000

But the media chooses to massively highlight Beck’s pathetic numbers. Why is that?

The two answers I see are as follows. The media has a right wing bias and Beck’s followers include a number of crazies, his movement has the implicit cloud of violence hanging over it, and it’s smart to pay attention to idiot ideologues with guns.

How’s that Mid Term Looking ?

By Ian Welsh

On July 4, 2010

Comments

Some fairly depressing news for Dems (via Digby):

Hart and McInturff then looked at the change among the most-interested voters from the same survey in 2008. Although 2010 is a “down-shifting” election, from a high-turnout presidential year to a lower-turnout midterm year, one group was more interested in November than it was in 2008: those who had voted for Republican John McCain for president. And the groups that showed the largest decline in interest? Those who voted for Barack Obama — liberals, African-Americans, self-described Democrats, moderates, those living in either the Northeast or West, and younger voters 18 to 34 years of age. These are the “Holy Mackerel” numbers…

And yes, I fucking told everyone so. (Notice that that post was left to die, because back then serious people knew that the Republicans were dead for a generation so it wasn’t worthy of front page space.)

Why are people so stupid?

During a base election year the smart thing to do is to demotivate the base. Really. Honest.

Assuming, of course, your main goal is to restore the rich’s wealth, push corporate profits to record highs and to continue war as usual. And you really don’t care that much what happens in elections, because you personally will be taken care of by the wealthy whose interests you served.

So maybe it’s not Obama and Dems who are stupid.

Another Progressive pundit clueless on the effect of unemployment on elections

By Ian Welsh

On May 11, 2010

Comments

Um, dude, no, Boehner is right, and you’re wrong, when it comes to the real world (h/t Cujo)

That was odd, wasn’t it? The disconnect makes it seem as if GOP talking points are lacking in flexibility, unable to adapt to changing circumstances. When the economy was losing jobs every month, Boehner would say, “Where are the jobs?” Now that the economy has added more than 200,000 jobs in two consecutive months for the first time in four years, Boehner is still saying, “Where are the jobs?” It suggests the would-be Speaker isn’t paying attention to current events very well.

When The Economy Interferes With An Election Strategy

Ok, depending on how you count it, the economy needs to add about 140K to 150K jobs JUST to keep up with increases in the population. About 8.4 million jobs were lost in the last recession. At a rate of, say 250,000 jobs/month, it will take 7 years to both put everyone back to work, and to sop up population increases.

For people in the ordinary economy “where are the jobs?” is a perfectly valid question, and it is a perfectly valid election strategy, because even if the economy starts regularly producing jobs at over 300,000, when November rolls around, the vast majority of people who need a job, still won’t have one.

Here’s my prediction: as a percentage of population, employment will not recover before the next recession. 80%+ of all productivity increases will go to corporate profits, and wages will stagnate.

Boehner is right to ask “where are the jobs?” Both as a matter of fact, because there aren’t enough jobs, and as a matter of electoral strategy.