Author: chasdarwin

Active in Americans United, Center For Inquiry, and ACLU

Who’s on first?

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Once again, our President has been misquoted in the mainstream.  From HuffPost, on The View:

“Elisabeth then asked if Senator McCain felt vindicated at having called the fundamentals of the economy strong during his campaign, only for President Obama to use similar language recently. “Yeah, I think so,” Meghan responded. “It’s ironic it’s the exact language and the exact terms he used earlier. I am sure he does feel vindicated.”

However, Obama did not use exactly the same language as his former rival. “If we are keeping focused on all the fundamentally sound aspects of our economy, all the outstanding companies, workers, all the innovation and dynamism in this economy, then we’re going to get through this,”Obama said last week. McCain simply stated that the “fundamentals of our economy are strong.”

Once again, what the President, who choses words with care, actually said, and, what was paraphrased, are far apart.

see; http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/03/16/meghan-mccain-on-the-view_n_175319.html

Unity 09 looks just fine

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Expanding on Unity 09 – a Progressive Democrat group – from last week: 

“Unity ’09 comes at a time of increasing coordination on the left, including an effort this week by the Democratic National Committee, Obama’s grassroots network and other groups to defend Obama’s budget and attack the GOP as obstructionists.   But Unity ’09 is setting a broader, and longer-term agenda, aiming to exert grassroots pressure on lawmakers in their home states over the next several years on the entire spectrum of political issues. 

“When progressive activists are working in concert and the right is forming a circular firing squad, you know it’s a new day,” said consultant Paul Begala, who said he’s not involved in the new organization. ”

“Unity ’09 is, informally, the field organizing compliment to another new organization, Progressive Media , which launched a month ago to coordinate the liberal groups’ messages and their attacks on Republicans and on critics of Obama’s policies. That group’s 8:45 a.m. daily conference call has helped bring such unlikely groups as the League of Conservation Voters into an effort to cast Rush Limbaugh as the leader of the Republican Party, and has coordinated attacks on two leading critics of Obama’s health care plans.”

see: http://www.mlive.com/us-politics/index.ssf/2009/03/unity_09_dem_groups_quietly_al.html

The way we were

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In a turning point of the 1980 Presidential campaign, the Republican challenger asked:

“How many of you are better off now than you were four years ago?”

Examining some unemployment rates:

Nov, 1976:  7.8% – Carter elected.

Nov, 1980: 7.5% – Reagan elected.

Nov, 1982: 10.8% – Mid term elections

Mar, 1989: 5.0% – Best value under Reagan/Bush

Nov, 1992: 7.4% – Clinton Elected

Apr, 2000: 3.8% – Best value under Clinton

Dec, 2000: 3.9% – Bush appointed

Nov, 2008: 6.8% Obama elected

Summarizing:

o More were better off in 1980 than 1976.

o Things got much worse under supply side economics, before they got better

o The lowest unemployment rates were after the Clinton administration edged up the tax rates on the highest incomes.

It might be mentioned that:

o These are national – they might have been better or worse in some areas than in others.

o The rate always understates the true unemployed.

Industrial output lowest since WW II

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From an article in Yahoo finance,  “…a 0.7 percent fall in manufacturing output, which pushed the operating rate at the nation’s factories down to 67.4 percent of capacity last month, the lowest level on records that go back to 1948. ”

If anyone tells you the economy is not slow…

see: http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Industrial-output-drops-in-apf-14648351.html

Culture wars trumped security: economy trumps culture wars!

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Frank Rich, in todays Times (NY, not London), notes:

“SOMEDAY we’ll learn the whole story of why George W. Bush brushed off that intelligence briefing of Aug. 6, 2001, “Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.” But surely a big distraction was the major speech he was readying for delivery on Aug. 9, his first prime-time address to the nation. The subject — which Bush hyped as “one of the most profound of our time” — was stem cells. For a presidency in thrall to a thriving religious right (and a presidency incapable of multi-tasking), nothing, not even terrorism, could be more urgent.When Barack Obama ended the Bush stem-cell policy last week, there were no such overheated theatrics. No oversold prime-time address. No hysteria from politicians, the news media or the public. The family-values dinosaurs that once stalked the earth — Falwell,Robertson, Dobson and Reed — are now either dead, retired or disgraced. Their less-famous successors pumped out their pro forma e-mail blasts, but to little avail. The Republican National Committee said nothing whatsoever about Obama’s reversal of Bush stem-cell policy. That’s quite a contrast to 2006, when the party’s wild and crazy (and perhaps transitory) new chairman, Michael Steele, likened embryonic stem-cell research to Nazi medical experiments during his failed Senate campaign.

What has happened between 2001 and 2009 to so radically change the cultural climate? Here, at last, is one piece of good news in our global economic meltdown: Americans have less and less patience for the intrusive and divisive moral scolds who thrived in the bubbles of the Clinton and Bush years. Culture wars are a luxury the country — the G.O.P. included — can no longer afford.

Not only was Obama’s stem-cell decree an anticlimactic blip in the news, but so was his earlier reversal of Bush restrictions on the use of federal money by organizations offering abortions overseas. When the administrationtardily ends “don’t ask, don’t tell,” you can bet that this action, too, will be greeted by more yawns than howls.

Once again, both the president and the country are following New Deal-era precedent. In the 1920s boom, the reigning moral crusade was Prohibition, and it packed so much political muscle that F.D.R. didn’t oppose it. The Anti-Saloon League was the Moral Majority of its day, the vanguard of a powerful fundamentalist movement that pushed anti-evolution legislation as vehemently as it did its war on booze. (The Scopes “monkey trial” was in 1925.) But the political standing of this crowd crashed along with the stock market. Roosevelt shrewdly came down on the side of “the wets” in his presidential campaign, leaving Hoover to drown with “the dries.” In our own hard times, the former moral “majority” has been downsized to more of a minority than ever. Polling shows that nearly 60 percent of Americans agree with ending Bush restrictions on stem-cell research (a Washington Post/ABC News survey in January); that 55 percent endorse either gay civil unions or same-sex marriage (Newsweek, December 2008); and that 75 percent believe openly gay Americans should serve in the military (Post/ABC, July 2008). Even the old indecency wars have subsided. When a federal court last year struck down the F.C.C. fine against CBS for Janet Jackson’s “wardrobe malfunction” at the 2004 Super Bowl, few Americans either noticed or cared about the latest twist in what had once been a national cause célèbre.

It’s not hard to see why Eric Cantor, the conservative House firebrand who is vehemently opposed to stem-cell research, was disinclined to linger on the subject when asked about it on CNN last Sunday. He instead accused the White House of acting on stem cells as a ploy to distract from the economy. “Let’s take care of business first,” he said. “People are out of jobs.” (On this, he’s joining us late, but better late than never.)

Even were the public still in the mood for fiery invective about family values, the G.O.P. has long since lost any authority to lead the charge…”

The religious right is alive, well, and working from the bottom up, but they no longer have the culture wars on their side.

see: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/15/opinion/15rich.html

Democrats closing ranks…

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Let’s make Will Rogers wrong!

From YAHOO NEWS: “http://news.yahoo.com/s/politico/20090315/pl_politico/20008

“A broad coalition of left-leaning groups is quietly closing ranks into a new coalition, “Unity ’09,” aimed at helping President Barack Obamapush his agenda through Congress.”

“The online-based MoveOn.org is a central player in the nascent organization, but other groups involved in planning Unity ’09 span a broad spectrum of interests, from the American Civil Liberties Union to the National Council of La Raza to Planned Parenthood, as well as labor unions and environmental groups.

The group is still in its early stages, and its organizers have adopted a secretive posture: Several of the people involved did not respond to emails over the last two days, even though one of them, former MoveOn executive director Eli Pariser, has programmed his MoveOn email account to assure correspondents that he is using the account for messages “including Unity ’09 work.”

“But Unity ’09 is setting a broader, and longer-term agenda, aiming to exert grassroots pressure on lawmakers in their home states over the next several years on the entire spectrum of political issues.

“When progressive activists are working in concert and the right is forming a circular firing squad, you know it’s a new day,” said consultant Paul Begala, who said he’s not involved in the new organization.

Unity ’09 is, informally, the field organizing compliment to another new organization, Progressive Media , which launched a month ago to coordinate the liberal groups’ messages and their attacks on Republicans and on critics of Obama’s policies. That group’s 8:45 a.m. daily conference call has helped bring such unlikely groups as the League of Conservation Voters into an effort to cast Rush Limbaugh as the leader of theRepublican Party, and has coordinated attacks on two leading critics of Obama’s health care plans.

But while Progressive Media is an in-house project of two existing organizations, the Center for American Progress and Media Matters, Unity ’09 requires more commitment from its members in the form of a $25,000 contribution to the group’s future organizing campaigns, a source said.”

It gets even better: “The new organization is likely to stir fears among conservatives already feeling organizationally outgunned and flatly alarmed by the new progressive infrastructure.

“This, ladies and gentlemen is, a threat to America,” Fox News‘s Bill O’Reilly said, responding Saturday night to POLITICO’s report on the birth of Progressive Media and its morning conference call. “The Obama administration would be wise to avoid this crew. If the new administration gets involved in this, it would be like the Nixon dirty tricks squad.”

N.B.: Will Rogers used to quip:  ” I don’t belong to an organized political party – I’m a Democrat”.

Our New Deal:What Obama and Congress can learn from the Depression of the 1930’s

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“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it” (George Santayana).

“Those who control the past control the future, and those who control the present control the past” (George Orwell).

On Nov. 5, 2008,I decided that our situation was closer to 1933 than 1993, and decided to reinvestigate the New Deal, which was the name Pres. Roosevelt gave to the programs of Relief, Recovery, and Reform that defined his administration.   The changes included relief for the unemployed, recovery of the economy by: Keynesian spending;  agricultural aid; direct help to industry; and reform of business, finance, and housing.  In addition, Social Security – a series of insurance programs to help the elderly, protect the survivors who lose a wage earner, and provide for the disabled – was established, and support for organized labor became law.  Some of the programs were invalidated by the Supreme Court, but many remain to this day.  The effects of the New Deal?

The GDP recovered to exceed the 1929 level by 1936, and then took a dip in 37-38, recovering to climb on war spending.

Social programs, such as Social Security, unemployment insurance, and the FHA are still in place.

Financial reforms, such as the FDIC, SEC, and others are also still in place.

Organized labor, strengthened by the Wagner Act, enabled many blue collar Americans to increase their standard of living in the post war economy,  and consume more of what America produced.

When The Roosevelt administration yielded to conservative pressure, and reduced spending in 1937, the economy took a dip.

The TVA, and other infrastructure programs, were successful in both providing gainful employment, and in providing needed facilities.

What are the lessons?

o Keynesian spending does work, provided it is not too little.

o Relief, in the form of safety nets, does work.

o Don’t listen to conservatives: it was their polices that got us where we are.

o A crisis can provide the moment for major reforms – ignore those who say we should not try to do too much.

o As J.K. Galbraith observed ( in “The Affluent Society”), strong unions negotiate good wages, which enable workers to consume more of what they make.  (It might be noted that the relaxation of regulation and dilution of wages are major contributors to our current economic problems.)

While it could be argued that the US economy did not recover fully until WWII, I offer:

o If we had kept spending in 1937, there would have been no drop.

o The strengthening and expansion of the central government under the New deal provided the precedents, methodologies, and structures that were necessary for the massive efforts required to win the war, which ended with the US as the most powerful country in the world.  (It may be noted that new centralized programs we create under the Obama administration will help us bring our infrastructure, education, economy, energy polices, and health care systems into the 21st century, and then maintain them for generations to come.)

As for those who say the new Deal failed? Perhaps in their short sighted view they oppose relief and strong unions, but they cannot disagree that the US economy, up until we became dependent on Middle Eastern Oil, and paid dividends rather than modernize, was on top of the world.

In closing:

“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it” (George Santayana).

“Those who control the past control the future, and those who control the present control the past” (George Orwell).

We chose Which family ?

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Palin vs. Johnston:  In “Joe the plummer” terms: “If you are going to talk the talk, then you had better walk the walk.” 

John Ridley observes in HuffPost: “From the time that “Family Values” became an empty phrase regularly trotted around the political arena with all the reverence of the last surviving soldier of a war that was never actually fought, the totality of the family which occupies the White House has reached the same level of curiosity as the quadrennial question of whether or not a presidential candidate can bowl above one hundred.  The shocking, never-saw-it-coming implosion of the forced relationship between Bristol Palin and self-described “f***in’ redneck” Levi Johnston underscores the fact that America sent the right family to Washington.  With regard to Bristol and Levi, regardless of how loving, committed, devoted and generally available a parent is, no parent can guarantee how far an apple will fall from the tree. However, knowing that, no parent should seek higher office on the rhetoric of abstinence only/ sanctity of marriage/gays-are-ruining-family-for-us so let me impose my “values” on you for you. Especially when the empirical evidence is those “values” do not work beneath the very roof from which they are being espoused.” 

Make that Correct, Better family, not the ‘right’ family, as ‘right’ is usually wrong!

 

 

see: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-ridley/obama-v-palin-america-pic_b_174868.html

Let’s avoid 1937 this time

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After the Keynesian spending and relief programs of 1933-36 were very successful, the Roosevelt administration backed off spending in 1937, and the US economy took a dip.  How to avoid that?

  o Don’t listen to Republicians

  o Learn from History, and spend enough

Q: How do those who have added billions and billions to the debut since 1981 have the audacity to question spending?

A: Its not spending the GOP questions, its spending to help human beings.

For more see: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/03/13/1937-haunts-democrats-dur_n_174358.html

Wagering on our environment

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Using reasoning like Blaise Pascal’s famous ‘wager’ ( see: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/pascal-wager/), let’s use that approach in dealing with our environment, and global warming.

Starting with the observation that warming is occuring, there are two possibilities:

A: Human activity(production of carbon dioxide) is having an impact, or

B: It is not.

We have two alternatives:

1: We can reduce our carbon dioxide output by reducing our use of fossil fuels.

2: We can maintain our current policy of using oil and coal.

Arranging into a table:

A                                                B

1: Use non-fossil fuels:   Win& Win – see A1 below                  Win – see B1 below

2: Use fossil fuels              Lose & lose Lose- see A2 below    Lose  – see B2 below

A1: Win & Win: Not only do we protect the future of our species, but we improve sustainablity and reduce dependence on other countries.

A2: Win:  We improve sustainablity and reduce dependence on other countries.

B1: Lose & Lose: We have an unsubstainable economy, dependent on other countries, and the future of our species is threatened.

B2: Lose: We have an unstainable economy, dependent on other countries.

With these results, our decision must be to reduce the use of carbon fuels.  In addition, applying Occam’s razor: (see

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/occam’s+razor),

we don’t even need the supposition that global warm is occuring- it is still a benefit to convert to non-fossil fuels.  Q.E.D.