aintsobad

Imposition 2012-Roosevelt, Wilson, Lafollette, Taft

   Teddy Roosevelt was a Progressive Republican who occupied the White House for seven and a half years. He left it to William Howard Taft, a man the size of Rhode Island before all the beach erosion. Taft was a premier machine politician in the day when patronage was king. 

   Robert Lafollette was the hand-picked candidate of the Progressive Republicans for the 1912 presidential election. He was a stem-winding political orator with the support of all those who would have supported Teddy Roosevelt, except Roosevelt was not running again, would not run again, could not be inveighed upon to run again.

   Then, Taft let someone in his administration attack Teddy Roosevelt as a pawn of the giant steel trusts of J.P Morgan, J.D. Rockefeller and Andrew Carnegie. Teddy Roosevelt did not take kindly to being pilloried as a soft-minded fool deceived by the giants of industry. 

   Taft, who had grown so large his few friends feared for his life, had made an enemy of a friend. Teddy Roosevelt was not a good man for an enemy.

   Roosevelt began to leak word he might run. He just might run as a Progressive, if Lafollette would step aside. He would have to win the Plains States because the South was solid for the Democrats in those days and the Northeast was sewn up by Taft's partronage. Roosevelt would have to sweep the Plains states and then let the West decide. The West would swing the election if Roosevelt would run.

   And the West loved Teddy.

   And the final beneficiary of all this Republican schisming and buffoonery was Thomas Woodrow Wilson. Wilson distinguished himself as "statesmanlike" during the vicious Republican debates. His practical atheism did not much hurt him and his outright racism was a must where the Democrats were then solid.

   Roosevelt did run, after months of disclaiming his affection for the job. Taft defeated him at the Republican convention by parliamentary chicanery. Roosevelt ran anyway, on his own ticket, apart from Taft and the Republicans. Taft later whined that as many as a million Republicans had crossed over to vote Democrat because of their fear of the Progressives and as many more stayed home.

   Taft and Roosevelt lost to Wilson. Wilson led the nation in and through WW I and into the Treaty of Versailles. Exhausted, he suffered a crippling stroke, while yet in office. 

   The weather change in American politics became a general fusion of the Progressive Republicans and Moderate Democrats, out of which came the party shift during the Great Depression. Out of all this came another Roosevelt, Franklin, Democrat Ascendancy and the New Deal.

   In 2012, exactly a hundred years later, we may be watching another significant party change. The Republicans have savaged one another so badly they may have a brokered convention, with Senator Santorum playing the part of Teddy Roosevelt, Mitt Romney as the non-incumbet Taft and Mr. Obama, serene and somber, waiting on the wounded and divided to come out of the GOP convention, Wilsonian in his demeanor.

   In his second term, Mr. Obama will have to address the budget deficit with higher taxes on the wealthy and corporations. He will have to continue to prosecute the conflict with state sponsored terrorism around the world. The American system of health provision will be brought under stricter control or it will fall in on itself. 

   The GOP might have done this, as well, but it lacks the one leader. Mr. Gingrich has been here too long, Mr. Santorum has probably come too late and Mr. Romney has no clearly stated purpose for running for the White House, except he seems to want to be President. This will not do.

 

Opinions expressed here are mine alone.

Although opinions here are mine alone, I wish to offer this insight for a few recent posts. My history major friend, Michael Reynolds, of Marion, Ohio, caused me to think of the party shifts in American presidential politics. I curse you for this, Michael, as you have kept me up late at night reading and rereading some of the great texts. And you have made me think. Curse you. Curse you.

Imposition 2012-A Muslim and a Mormon

   Senator Rick Santorum attacked President Obama's theology this weekend. The surging Pennsylvania Senator cited President Obama's "crazy theology," not "based on the Bible," a theology that "elevates the earth over man." 

   Senator Santorum came back to say he did not question the President's faith. He does accept the President as a Christian.

   I am personally glad we got that all settled before the general campaign begins. Perhaps we will not have to hear about Mr. Obama's Muslimness anymore if Mr. Santorum continues his successful campaign against the undeniably Mormon Mr. Romney.

   Imagine, in America, a general presidential campaign where we must choose between a Muslim and a Mormon. The horror. 

   Mr. Santorum, a devout Roman Catholic, is obviously positioning himself as an acceptable religious choice between two seeming extremes. A fellow with a Muslim sounding name, ebony of skin, against a rock-jawed Mormon, who is either from Mexico, Michigan or Massachussetts,  are the supposed front runners, though Mr. Romney is faltering badly for someone who has spent so much money.

   We are going to have to argue religion before this ends. Religious people will get a chance to answer some tough questions. We can do the nation a favor if we answer them thoughtfully and well.

   Mr. Obama is not a Muslim. He is a baptist kind of Christian, won to faith in Jesus Christ by his pastor, who is apparently a veteran of the USMC, loud and sometimes profane. You remember the video, I suppose.

   Mr. Romney is a Mormon, from a long line of Mormons. He is supposedly a devout Mormon,  but not fanatical. It appears Mr. Romney is also a "Moderate Republican" who can "govern from the center" but he is also "severely conservative," which may or may not be akin to being "severely addled," or "severely odd," or even "severely hypocritical."

   Mr. Santorum is a devout Catholic. As such he would accept the pronouncements of the Pope as a god on earth, the papal bulls from previous ages, the church councils and then the Bible, complete with the extra fourteen books of the Apocrypha, including Bel and the Dragon. 

   Mr. Obama is a Christian with a solid family life and a good education. He came from the depths of society to get an Ivy League education and win the presidency. He is a decent man with good basketball skills. I still don't know why he smokes cigarettes.

   Mr. Romney is an adherent of Mormon theology, which is a work in progress. Mr. Romney's theology includes beliefs that Jesus and Satan are brothers, his own soul was pre-existent and, if he does well, he will one day be God over his own world. In the governor's office in Massachusetts, Mr. Romney enacted universal health care which became the model for the federal government's revised health care reform plan. Apparently, except for controlling health care costs, Romney-care is doing a lot of good for the people of Massachusetts.

   Mr. Santorum is a former Senator from the state of Pennsylvania, defeated by Robert Casey, Jr, in 2006, by a margin of 59% to 41%. Mr. Santorum's anti-abortion, anti-birth control, deficit reduction and strong early stand against Iran's hawkishness mark him as a conservative's conservative. In the debates he did not show himself as particularlys statesman like but he may have just reflected his opposition. At the very least, one would have to say he did better than Mr. Perry, has less baggage than Mr. Gingrich and did not try to effect a $10,000 wager while on stage. 

   Mr. Santorum also has a long standing marriage and a large family. No one has seriously questioned his personal morality.

   In the 2008 election we saw one man run as a Post-Modern, Mr. Obama. We saw a refined woman run as a Modern, Mrs. Clinton. We watched one man run as a Traditional, Mr. McCain. The nominative clash in 2012 will apparently feature a Roman Catholic, Mr. Santorum, a Mormon, Mr. Romney, and a Free Church Baptist Christian, Mr. Obama. If the election is decided on who has the least crazy theology, which one will America choose?

   Let us hold out some hope that the election is no decided on Popes, Temples or Profane Preachers. 

Imposition 2012-A Democratic Government and a Moral Economy

   We have dreamed for some time of an America with a democratic government and a moral economy. Representative democracy is difficult, unwieldy and frustrating. A moral economy is not achievable without stringent regulation.

   A moral economy under a democratic government would be strictly regulated rather than sporadically punished and reluctantly rescued from it own excesses. Competition ought to be promoted but not at the expense of workers, or, worse, those whose skill sets do not fit the current economy. 

   An economic engine or institution that is "too large to fail" is a trust, or a monopoly. Democratic government has recognized the danger of trusts in a representative democracy for decades. In fact, the presidential administrations most admired by most Americans are those that set limits on trusts, regardless of party. Theodore Roosevelt was a Progressive Republican, Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman were Democrats; all of them were trust busters. 

   There were others.

   As the GOP splits into two factions, Progressive and Reactionary, assuring the Democrats the White House, the House of Representatives and perhaps even the Senate in 2012, it would be well to remember this lesson of history. A moral economy is not a managed economy so much as it is a regulated economy, with institutions kept small enough they can fail if they are inept or crooked, without taking the rest of us down.

 

 

Opinions expressed here are mine alone.

Imposition 2012-The Obama Failure

   President Obama had a signficant opportunity to change the way America overcompensates persons who make their living from "money instruments." There is little doubt a change needed to be enacted. A multi-billionaire, Warren Buffett, even called for higher tax rates on his bracket. 

   President Obama chose Timothy Geithner to be his Treasury Secretary, Lawrence Summers to be his primary economic advisor and left Ben Bernanke at the Federal Reserve, while setting Paul Volcker aside, again. Geithner and Summers were Wall Street Insiders with a long history of failures and overcompensation. Bernanke should have been set aside for Volcker, who was a hard money, hard credit man during his time at the Federal Reserve, meaning he knew a nation could not borrow its way out of debt.

   The White House spent a great deal of time sending mixed signals to the major players. GM was bought out and its chairman forced out of office, though he had led four hundred thousand employees who made over seven million units. The Obama belief seemed to be this; those who work in the fictional fields of CDOs and CDSs are geniuses, while hard industry leaders are morons.

   Mr. Obama could have reversed the field in the major American lending institutions to the more established standards of banking, involving things like collateral. Instead, he let Tim Geithner convince (then)n Senator Chris Dodd to amend pending lending regulations to prevent any cap on compensation for top financial executives, effectively pursuing "business as usual." 

   Mr. Obama out-Republicanned the Republicans in the matter of financial regulation. He utterly failed the people who elected him. In addition, Mr. Obama proved his 2008 campaign slogans about "hope" and "change" were only slogans.

   For all that, the GOP cannot put forward a man or woman willing to run who can beat Mr. Obama this fall. Let us hope Mr. Obama does better for the country in his second term.

 

 

Opinions expressed here are mine alone.

Imposition 2012-Ron Paul, the Libertarians, the Tea Kettle Party (Just Blowing Off Steam) and the Occupiers (Physically Present, Morally Vacuous)

   Perhaps it is a Party Shift we are seeing. The GOP and the Democrats are one party, now, which should be called Huge Money. Perhaps we are seeing a nascent movement, out of which will come a "You Gotta Throw Us a Bone Now and Then" party.

   In November, Mr. Obama will win reelection because the GOP cannot find a person to run against him who is both electable and different from Mr. Obama. Again. Mr. Romney invented socialized medicine as governor of Massachusetts. He invested heavily in deregulation while at Vulture Capital. He and Mr. Obama disagree about the size of tax cuts for the rich and corporations but  not about the cuts themselves.

   One party. Huge Money. Super-Pacs. Free speech but at a huge cost.

   Perhaps the Libertarians, Occupiers and Tea Partiers are the tip of the globally warming iceberg. They agree on some key areas, like foreign policy (no more adventurism) while we spend our treasure on the home front. The Occupiers want jobs, as do Libertarians and Tea Party folks. Some of their people move back and forth interchangably, with one over-arching motif. They all feel left out of the process by the Democrats and the GOP. 

   We have not actually seen a full party shift since Teddy Roosevelt. If he had not died, Teddy might have been president again. His Progressive Party might have made a real change in national interests prior to WW I. 

   Kept out of leadership (but forced to pay) long enough, even sheep like Americans will eventually decide utitility is diminishing at the margin. Perhaps all of these "movements" fueled by social networking are actually one movement. Perhaps these are the "Fed Ups."

 

 

Opinions expressed here are mine alone.

Imposition 2012-Ron Paul and the Libertarians

    In personal polling, Republicans say the most important thing in a relationship is to have someone who agrees with them.

   This explains Mitt Romney.

   Mitt agrees with everybody on everything. Everything. All Republican ideas are Mitt's ideas. At the Conservative Assembly last weekend, he agreed, in order, with Ronald Reagan, George Bush I and II, Abraham Lincoln, John McCain and Sarah Palin. Sarah said Mitt did not agree with her and that it was too late for someone to walk in talking like a conservative or trying to spin his record to look like a conservative and she meant Mitt.

   Mitt agreed with her.

   So, we have figured out Mitt and his appeal.

   The two main contributions of the Romney campaign, no, three, are these:

   We now know about Private Equity firms. PE firms buy a company, borrow money against its assets, push in new management, take management fees and then declare bankruptcy when the old firms fail because of all the new debt brought in by the PE companies.

   We know now about Super-PACs. Super-PACS take in enormous amounts of money, tax deductible, but not regulated. They can literally change the face of elections by the excercise of very expensive free speech. One starts to see what McCain-Feingold was all about.

   We now know all the words to "America the Beautiful."

   Thanks, Mitt.

   What about Ron Paul? Dr. Paul does not really agree with the Democrats but he really does not agree with the GOP. What in the name of Harold Stassen is he doing at the Republican debates?

   Ron Paul is actually recreating the Reagan Republicanism that Reagan mostly talked about but did not enact. Ron Paul is trying to out-Reagan Reagan.

   For Libertarians, necessity is a virtue. The push of history is based on hard personal experiences in the past they have overcome with hard work, individualist initiative and pluck. This is precisely what Stephen Colbert mocks in the title of his book, I Am America. And So Can You.

   Or some such thing. 

   Libertarians hate any kind of social collective. Facebook must drive them insane, except that everyone gets to have their own account. For the Libertarian, their own early suffering is paramount in their politics, even if it is only imaginary. All altruism other than that which is personal and tactile is actually abuse of power masquerading as compassion.

   Here is their point (and it slogans well): Individuals can be heroes but only individuals who are heroic loners can be heroes. No one else is admirable, least of all those who would move forward in a united front. This makes winning elections enormously difficult because it makes it necessary for millions of rugged individualists to show up at the same place on the same day and do the same thing.

   Libertarianism works if the world is really big, loosely connected and with poor communication. If there are things like cell phones for ten year olds, lap top computers and moving pictures, Libertarianism is pretty much squashed. If we can see each other and unite around the most loosely held common needs, we need something more than slogans.

   When the planes hit the towers in New York, Texas saw it and sent aid. When American troops went into the Middle East, Texas did not get to say, "Well, after all, those weren't our towers."

   We are stuck with each other. Deal with it. Rugged individualism is on the way out. Collectivism, in the guise of large political parties, is the wave of the present. 

   You can like Ron Paul. You can independently celebrate some of his ideas and the way he energizes people with ideas.

   You just cannot vote for him.

   Seriously.

 

 

Opinions here are mine alone.

Imposition 2012-The Libertarians and the GOP

   Libertarians live on ideas. They may not be strict Contrarians but Libertarians are drawn to ideas. They do not subscribe, which a large portion of Republicans say is their most desired trait in a mate or a friend or a candidate. Libertarians are not Subscribers.

   Yes, I prefer people who do their own thinking. Subscribers, perpetual non-thinkers, are not my kind of minds.

   However, there is a difference between different thinking and dangerous thinking. The Foreign Policies of the Libetarians give me pause because, I think, they are more dangerous to the world than the Mayan calendar.

   So, the GOP does not benefit from the incursion of the Ron Paul Libertarians as they do from the Tea Party. The last new idea from the Tea Party was "We Hate Obama." Libertarians have tons of new ideas, most of them thoroughly unworkable and all of them somewhat off center.

   Libertarians say, "No more foreign aid. No more. Not a penny. Not to anyone."

   Really? No aid to Israel? Elect that. 

   Slogans as political thought sound really, really good. No foreign aid.

   Of course, without American aid, Israel ceases to exist, much to the chagrin of Holy Land Tourists, Evangelical Preachers and, well, American Jews. 

   Utopianism, as with all Isolationism, only works if the world is not connected. Distances have to be vast and information hard to get. This is not the world we live in today. The Contrarian, Isolationist, Utopian imagination (Read Atlas Shrugged or The Fountainhead) idolizes the individual, be it citizen or nation, but such imagination is dangerous in the real world. Libertarian thinking can bring about irreversible events with cataclysmic consequences.

   If, for instance, a nation dependent on American aid stops getting that aid, it is impossible to recreate that nation after its neighbors rush in to destroy it. The nations that do not fall because we withdraw then look to other supporters who can rush in for pennies on the dollar bringing with them all their influences. 

   The GOP does not do itself any favors leaning on the Libertarians. I am not sure America would benefit from their thinking, either.

 

 

Opinions expressed here are mine alone.

Imposition 2012-Mitt, Did You Ever Think, They Just Aren't That Into You?

   Whomever told Mitt Romney to recite or sing "America, the Beautiful," as proof of his conservatism and love of country should tell him to stop now and not start again. He might as well recite "Muskrat Love" to announce his joy with the outdoors.

   To listen to Mr. Romney speak at a national Conservative political rally reminds me of a boy asking a girl for a first date after he has already struck out with her sister, her best friend and her maiden aunt. This is not going anywhere.

   Or, is it?

   This might go to a brokered  convention where an acceptable candidate emerges from a smoky back room, wreathed about by smiling power-brokers, himself (herself?) wearing a wry grin, as if greatness had suddenly been thrust on him/her. A brokered  convention, which was once the norm, might produce what PACs and Primaries cannot produce. In this case, that would be a candidate who has no excess personal baggage, no oddball foreign policy theories, no record of waffling. You know, a politician who might become a statesman, like Nixon or Reagan.

   Nixon, sans Watergate, whose first six years was arguably the most productive Presidential term in 20th century American history of the recent vintage. The EPA, Clean Air and Water Acts, the beginning of the end of the Viet Nam War, the overtures to China et al, made "Nixon to China" the American political catch-phrase of the 2oth century.

   As for Mr. Reagan, please repeat with me the number of Attack/Negative Ads run by the Reagan campaign in 1980. Zero, Nada, None. Mitt and Newt cannot get out of Iowa without each one pointing out the other has zits. 

   Mr. Reagan simply said, "What we have done the last four years is not working. What we will do the next four years will work. Vote for me." And, they did. Mr. Reagan then embarked on a tax and spend campaign that expanded the federal government in every direction. He made government work for people, a lot of us.

   I am not sure either Mr. Nixon or Mr. Reagan could be elected today. We will not talk to our chief antagonist, Iran, a backward, undeveloped, totalarian regime, like the one Nixon took on in the '70s. We just rattle our swords. Mr. Reagan would have a harder sell with his pro-Choice, Anti-Capital punishment history. Mr. Reagan's tax cuts favored people with money, as tax cuts tend to do, but he paid everyone. Work-fare did not come along until Mr. Clinton.

   You can look it up.

   As for Mr. Romney, well, no matter how many roses you buy her, Mr. Romney, the GOP will not likely be your Grand Old Gal.

 

Opinions expressed here are mine alone.

Imposition 2012-Coming Apart

   A new sociological study of white people in America shows a clear divide between the actual middle class and the imaginary middle class whites in America. It is a revelaing study.

   The author's data clearly shows that people who have not adopted the secular life style of the 1960's through today have actually tended to stay in the middle class, while those who have practiced a secular life orientation have tended to fall behind.

   The life style followed by most prosperous but not always advantaged people includes these things:

1. They get married.
2. They stay married.
3. They are religious, usually very religious.
4. They work a lot of the time.

   Ward and June would be better off today than Dan and Roseanne, starting from the same starting point. 

   The author of Coming Apart: A Study of White People In America, 1960-2010, says middle class white people who are in the actual group should be judgmental. Apparently, intolerance and insensitivity toward white people who are too lazy to seek education and too uneducated to find decent work is preferable to a simple shrug of the shoulders. He insists actual middle class Americans should get downright preachy (I'll have work forever!) toward those who will not train , will not work, get into one relationship after another and never, ever settle down to make themselves prosperous.

   Greed is good. Insensivity is preferable. You should judge.

   Somewhere, John Foster Dulles is smiling.

 

Opinions expressed here are mine alone.

Imposition 2012-Children, Move Out

   Too few families are forming.

   That is, too many young people are unemployed or underemployed. They are delaying education and marriage. They live with parents or some other housing provider.

   Housing will continue to be depressed as long as we cannot put young people to work at real jobs. Some kind of benefits package will have to exist. If the companies will not be able to pay these benefits one way, history says the various cash strapped governments will have to make them pay another way because there is too much separation between the 99% and the top 1% of money makers.

   The employment rate in America in pure, raw numbers is flat even for the last eleven years. As the population grows steadily the flat rate of employment and degeneration of wages depresses the economy. One would think even a Democrat or a Republican could see this. They do, we are told, but spend all their time cashing PAC checks, avoiding the Big House while running for the White House and blaming the other Party.

   If you believe, as I do, that government has to regulate Capital so that it does not become Too Interlaced to Fail, but that government cannot be the largest employer in the nation without exorbitant tax rates and depression of the private sector, then a fundamental change has to come. Our policy making elite must include more people and better minds. The Tea Party and the Occupiers will not do but we should focus on their issues rather than match their extremes.

   Please keep in mind there are no smart business people anymore. All of the policy making elite are the people who got us in this mess. Adoration of the policy makers at the governmental center and worship of the private sector money-grubbers is Industrial Age thinking. Look at the policy making elite in this nation. They are mostly the same people from pre-Recesssion times, only in new positions. No one who was uber-involved in the financial melt-downs is in jail because of it. Bernie Madoff does not count because he only cheated his clients, not the whole world.

   A logic professor once told me, "I never actually studied logic. I read some books, watched some films, went to some seminars. I decided to give my students the essentials of logic. Then, when they started to ask questions I could not answer, I would just snow them with technical jargon."

   Our ruling policy elitists have repeated the basics, the ABCs of financial policy making, traded chairs and when we ask why, they start to talk about CDO's and CDSs. They are confidence men, or con men, who have mastered the art of illusion. The pea is under that shell, isn't it? Oh, no, watch, the hand is quicker than the eye.

   Meanwhile, children in America huddle with their parents far past adolescence. 

   Who are you going to believe? Our policy elite or your own eyes?

   Now, you kids move over.

 

Opinions here are mine alone.