Why "Conservatives" Insist on Cuts

Cutting government programs across the board, heedless of their impact, appears to be intentional on the part of Tea Party Republicans in Congress. At best, some of them may acknowledge that more unemployment isn't good, but all claim that the need to cut government is of much greater importance.

What macroeconomists like Paul Krugman, and liberal policy wonks like Robert Reich ignore is that radical conservatives have a radical agenda, which is why they don't care about precipitating more recession. In their simple worldview, any government that does more than maintain order, protect property and defend our borders is doing too much. In some of their rhetoric, doing more seems to be equivalent to doing the Devil's work.

The mass of people mobilized as Tea Partiers are largely motivated by an unformulated libertarian ideology pre-figured by Ayn Rand, but are also bolstered by American mythology of the frontier; Don't Tread On Me flags have been prominent in Tea Party demos, for example, along with the faux Revolutionary War costumes. Radical conservatives tend to be white, non-urban and older, they appear to subscribe to the idea that everyone is out for themselves, and everyone should be left to sink or swim.

Given such a worldview, cutting Head Start, Mental Health, etc. and furloughing thousands of Federal and State workers is seen as a first victory, not as an economic disaster. That's why compromise with these folks is virtually impossible as Democrats and Obama are discovering. Further, Boehner realizes that he'll only keep his Speakership if he goes along with them, not with Democrats or Obama, or common sense.

What has made the Tea Party, or radical conservative libertarianism, a viable political movement is the money behind it. Why do billionaires like the Koch brothers invest hundreds of millions in the conservative movement? It's to their interest to dismantle government, not only to cut their own tax bills, or their regulatory headaches. It's to their advantage to disarm all the protections that citizens gained through the Progressive movement, the New Deal and the Great Society.

Once people are no longer protected by government, by entities like the National Labor Relations Board (rendered nearly toothless, already), employees will be helpless when facing their employers; small landowners will be helpless confronting corporations and minorities and immigrants will be unable to claim any rights.

Rank and file radical conservatives don't realize that "Freedom" doesn't mean their freedom; it means freedom for corporations and "job creators," aka the wealthy, and the oppression and exploitation of everyone else.

That's what happened at the end of the Roman Empire, when Senators took all the wealth and power, and reduced everyone else to serfdom or slavery.

It's already happening here: Americans have lost most rights they'd won as employees: they work longer hours, are paid less and can be fired almost at will. And all of us are losing our civil rights.

Are We Trapped?

Republicans support the wealthy, the CEO's, the corporations; the worker is chopped liver. But Democrats are afraid: of the wealthy, the CEO's and the corporations--and enough are bought off, too.

Our two party system has been described as a duopoly, and when you look at the Obama/McConnell/Reid/Boehner compromise over "the fiscal cliff," you see that it is.

Remaining on the right, are the angry Tea Partiers, who distrust government in all its forms, though they're not unwilling to rip it off. Remaining on the left are forlorn progressives, who yearn for a government they can trust: they see one that's only protecting the "One Percent."

Both fringes attempt to push government more to their liking, but the duopoly has other plans: it's owned by the corporations: the banks, oil companies, media and more.

The anger among Tea Partiers is genuine, but the billionaire lobby, from astro-turf roots to media campaigns, to think tank creations, contrives its targets.

Anger on the left is at least as real, but its targets are scattered. Their anger focuses on exploitation, of, by and for the corporations, but also on government and military-style repression: they have little money behind them.

We don't have a Fourth Amendment any longer: unlawful search and seizure has been pushed aside by Terrorism and Drugs. All a local prosecutor, or enforcement officer, need do is to record everyone within electronic reach. Soon, I predict, all they'll have to do is apply to the NSA, or whatever Federal entity has become the repository, to access phone, email and Internet files on anyone "of interest." That's why everyone's online (and cloud) records are being recorded in the massive surveillance program initiated by the NSA. The justification: to intercept any terrorists before they act.

Stalin gained power by controlling information about everyone; people need to wrest that power back. And this is an issue where both fringes could/should collaborate. Tea Partiers hate the idea of government surveillance as much as lefties.

Unless "the fringes" can come together in resistance, there is no escape. Republicans and Democrats are equally implicated in the Surveillance State. Democratic Senator Feinstein and President Obama are as much a part of it as Bush II, Cheney and Senator McCain. The renewal--and strengthening--of the NDAA in December demonstrates this.

In the Fifth Century Empire, Roman Senators and German generals collaborated in controlling and repressing the humiliores.

With powers of surveillance and manipulation of information greater than Stalin ever dreamed of, the modern American state soon will leave no room for real dissent. That could be its downfall, just like the Stalinist state before it.

Like the USSR's failed New Lands wheat projects, the US plunges into fracking, oil sands and nuclear, while the rest of the world pushes ahead with solar, wind and bio-fuel alternatives.

We'll decline, driven by government-corporate induced blindness. Others will rise--if there is any livable environment left.

Falling For The Cliff

The "fiscal cliff" was a contrivance Democrats and Republicans, Obama and Boehner/McConnell, all thought would work for them. It should have worked for Obama and the Democrats.

Obama won reelection convincingly, and his most salient deficit-cutting issue was raising taxes on the wealthy with incomes over $250,000. That was part of his proposal to reduce the deficit with proper balance between expenditure cuts and revenue increases. Polls showed high levels of support. So, why did he give in to Republicans at all?

Sure, the Biden/McConnell tentative agreement is an admission by Republican Senators that they are on the wrong side of the tax issue, unemployment insurance extensions and low-income enhancers like the Earned Income Tax Credit.

On the other hand, for Democrats, trying to avoid the 'fiscal cliff' was bad strategy, because allowing tax increases to go up temporarily would have increased Obama's leverage: the no-tax-hike GOP can be assailed for opposing tax cuts, if the deadline of the fiscal cliff really passes with no agreement. Isn't it more plausible that they'd vote for tax cuts to everyone with incomes below $250,000, instead of raising taxes on the wealthy? They wouldn't even break the Norquist no-tax-hike pledge. And people wouldn't blame them for a stalemate, which growing numbers of people--and financial rating institutions--will do if they don't go along.

But, no, Obama, after months campaigning on the $250,000 figure, opens his latest bid with raising the rate to $400,000, a position Speaker Boehner had taken less than a month before.

Obama has already sounded conciliatory about cutting Social Security benefits--through adjusting the Cost of Living--yet Social Security is self-funding and its surpluses have financed some of the deficits for a long time. He's tried out cuts to Medicare eligibility, but Medicare proponents--Democratic activists--through much pressure, have persuaded him to withdraw the proposal.

Why doesn't he, or other Democrats, propose cuts to oil and coal subsidies? We have no business continuing to promote these polluters in the face of accelerating global warming.

Obama and "moderate" Democrats are either afraid of the money big oil, banks, etc. can wield against them, or they’ve been bought out by it. The same could be said of "defense" expenditures: no one spends anywhere near as much as we do on military and surveillance, yet neither Democrats nor Republicans see the mandated Pentagon cuts as an opportunity.

The US, through its dysfunctional politics and polarization, its obeisance to status quo interests and its fear of crossing capitalists, is leading the world to a violent conflagration brought on by increasingly disruptive climate change. Capitalists, said Lenin, will sell you the rope to hang them.

In fifth-century Rome, Senators even bought the rope, and applied it to their own necks.

Is Obama the "only adult in the room," or is he unconsciously submitting to bullies like Boehner? The go-round about the day of his jobs address to Congress with the Speaker of the House is emblematic--proposing Wednesday, rejected by Boehner ostensibly because of the scheduled debate of Republican Presidential candidates--accepting Thursday, which conflicts with the much more important seasonal kickoff of NFL football.

Boehner didn't act with due deference to the President, even kept him waiting for an answer for 24 hours; then Obama accepted his counter-offer, disadvantageous as it is.

I don't watch football, or any other televised sport, but it is a male institution. Isn't it likely that a lot will prefer to watch NFL's opener, rather than the President?

What is the likelihood Obama will propose dramatic new job-creating ideas? I doubt dramatic. I'm afraid he'll offer a little here and a little there, and claim he's being responsible; that's his style. Democrats are pressuring him to offer a big program. Will he dare offer ideas Republicans would automatically reject?

Obama really should have nothing to lose even if he proposed some New Deal-type jobs program. Republicans would reject any proposal, in any case. They could be painted as anti-jobs, maybe even pro-double-dip recession. Especially given last month's stagnation, the proposal would be popular: people want jobs and prosperity, not losing government services and rising unemployment. No net new jobs last month might make a dramatic proposal more likely.

But Obama instinctively seems to avoid confrontation and seek compromise, even if it means giving up his own principles (if he still has any). The odds are strongly against him proposing something like the WPA. The closest he might come would be the infrastructure bank he's already mentioned, which might provide extra money for rebuilding bridges, repairing or upgrading roads, and retrofitting public buildings like schools.

At this point, it's clear: nothing Obama proposes will see the light of day in the House, and can be blocked by the 41-vote minority in the Senate. But I can't see Obama campaigning against Congress a la Harry Truman.

No one pushed Harry Truman around.
Obama is increasingly ineffectual, in part because he allows others to push him around; it not only looks weak, it is weak.

Obama is becoming progressively like one of the later Roman Emperors. Despite his obvious intellect, he seems as incapable of leading us away from disaster as was Emperor Honorius, who retreated from Rome to Ravenna to shelter from the marauding Goths. Poets memorialized him, anyway.

Does it have to be this way? It doesn't.

Nearly a thousand picketed the White House today, to insist that it doesn't; their target was the proposed dirty oil Keystone XL pipeline from Alberta, Canada to the Gulf of Mexico.