Congress, Obama and War-making

It is extraordinary to realize that Obama's appeal for Congressional support to attack Syria--that's what it is, really--is also one of the first retreats from imperial Presidential powers offered by a sitting President.

But it should awaken us to a fact: this isn't a democracy anymore, any more than Rome's Republic was still a Republic, after Julius Caesar marched on Rome.

The imperial presidency has grown ever since FDR, and growth was only temporarily slowed by former General, President Eisenhower. The last President to really ask for Congressional approval for a foreign adventure was Bush the First. There was a real debate, although the outcome was preordained.

Obama has not grabbed for power, so much as been advised that he has to assert it, since he's President. And, consider what he, or any President, faces: a united front of Defense contractors, Generals, intelligence experts, investors and almost anyone with money. They're almost all of them for war, any war, as long as it's profitable, and any war is hugely profitable, if you're on the right side. No one they know will ever be killed on a battlefield, or blown up by American bombs.

The Roman Empire grew for the same reason: the profits of war. While modern nations don't enslave their captives and sell them on the slave block, or openly pillage conquered cities as Rome did, they use war to win economic control, as the Bush's tried to do in Iraq: capture Iraq's oil wealth through gaining contracts for American corporations to extract the oil.

But the profitability of our last few wars hasn't met expectations. Iraq has been a bust, Afghanistan and Libya also. Is this a sign of a declining empire?

What I see is an authoritarian, elite-corporate-controlled state, in which dissent like mine is simply ignored: dissenters don't have the money to bring lawsuits, or win elections. The corporate controllers are in a position to manufacture public opinion, and, at the same time, to gain almost exclusive access to government officials wielding power. Elected officials are flattered, threatened, and overwhelmed by expensive expertise. They have to do what the powers-that-be want them to do.

In addition, we now have a surveillance state, so no one knows what the State knows about us. However, more are becoming aware that the State could know everything. It was a more primitive version of that power that enabled Stalin to build a totalitarian state under his control.

Obama isn't the Stalin his successor could be; it wouldn't be pretty, since the Empire will continue to retreat, whoever it is. And the military-security-industrial complex will control the power structure.

Unless we can break free of the corporate state, the overwhelming majority of us will be impoverished and virtually enslaved, to feed the hungry imperial maw, even more desperate as war profits dwindle and the world becomes increasingly more difficult to control.

Fascism or the Radical Left?

Two Stratfor articles, "Geopolitical Journey: An Empty Highway in Spain," and "Europe: Unemployment and Instability," suggest that there is an underlying problem of social distance and lack of empathy that leads political elites, and the German public, to continue to insist on austerity, because they don't feel the effects the recession is having on others. Germans, for example, can get judgmental about the shiftless southern Europeans, and insist that only they know what's good for everyone: more austerity.

The US faces a similar problem, because of the widening disparity of wealth. The call for austerity among Republicans expresses the preferences of the very wealthy, who want lower taxes and see no utility in "coddling" what Romney labeled the dependent 47%. So, unemployment is not perceived as a problem, either in Germany (as yet), nor among Wall Street bankers, or their socioeconomic cousins, the very wealthy. That's why almost all the debate in Washington centers on austerity: how to accomplish the Sequester more rationally, how to cut more from social programs like SNAP (food-stamps), so that debt and deficits can be reduced. This debate continues, even though there is stubbornly high unemployment, and especially high long-term employment. "Conservatives" see no reason to stimulate job growth, since the stock market is surging, profits are high, and housing prices are rising.

In Europe, the result very well could be radical politics--or worse. Not only has Italy given 25% of its votes to a new untried political party, The Five Star Movement, led by a comedian, but Hungary's right-wing government has passed a law banning all political opposition!

Unemployment rates of 27% (Greece and Spain), or even around 15% (Lithuania, Portugal, Ireland) begins to look really scary, especially when you have youth unemployment at or more than double those rates. As the Stratfor articles mention, this was the climate that created Fascism and Nazism after WWI. The response this time could be as radical, and of either the right or the left (Greek extremist parties are at both ends of the political spectrum).

The apparent quiescence in Spain and other European nations in recession could easily explode, given the seeming hopelessness faced by the unemployed, especially the youth. If I were in their shoes, I'd be tinder for anyone who started yelling that he/she could solve it.

Meanwhile, austerity and the Sequester are destroying the future of both regions.

What this may mean is that the economic/political system in which we exist could undergo radical transformation sometime soon, and it might not be pretty. However, our elites (European, American, Chinese) don't seem to have a clue, which makes all our political systems that much more vulnerable to upheaval.

If there is no transformation, we could go the way of the Late Roman Empire: monopolized wealth by today's equivalent of Roman Senators, and immiseration for everyone else.

906 in Truman's 'Do Nothing Congress', 176 in 2012

Those numbers are for laws passed by the respective Congresses: 1948 and 2012. Truman, who had been given little chance to win the 1948 election, because of the stalemate in Washington, made a nation-wide whistle-stop campaign (trains worked in those days, before the Interstate Highway system), successfully running against the "Do Nothing Congress."

That gives you an idea of how dysfunctional our national political system is today. Congress has been unable to pass major pieces of legislation, and has passed "stop-gap" measures just to "keep the lights on."

Obama is not to blame, and if he had a personality like Harry Truman, he could easily run against the "Do Nothing Congress" of today. Obama does make the point that Congress, specifically the Republicans in Congress, have played an obstructionist role.

The Republican House of Representatives has passed bills, but most of them were only statements of their agenda, with no expectation that the Senate's Democratic majority could accept them, and they haven't. The Democratic Senate, on the other hand has been stalemated by the Republican Senate minority's routine use of the "filibuster," rendering the 41 Republican Senators the controlling bloc, while the less unified and more diverse 59 Democrats (including two independents) have been unable to advance even a portion of their agenda.

A few Republicans have attempted to compromise with Democrats, to bring something workable to the floor, but, like Senator Lugar, they have been defeated in their party primaries, defeated by the accusation of "Republicans in Name Only," or RINO's. No Democrats have lost primaries for similar reasons.

Long ago, when I taught Political Science in Florida, a colleague exclaimed he'd just proven, beyond a doubt, that Democrats and Republicans in Congress voted more frequently along party lines than they did with the other party! In those days (the 1970's), this was a fairly significant finding, because Democrats and Republicans did what is now unthinkable: they worked together on important pieces of legislation. Votes were often not along party lines. Now, among Republicans, it is almost unthinkable for them to vote for any policy proposed by Democrats, even if many, like Obamacare, were originally proposed by Republicans. Democrats break ranks more often, but much more rarely than in the 1970's.

Today we have a Congress that is probably as stalemated as the Congresses that preceded the Civil War. The Republican Senate minority has been open about what they intend: to do anything possible to prevent Obama's re-election, even if that drives us back into the Great Recession and immiserates their constituents. They can always blame everything on the Democrats.

Rome's Senate in the fifth century was even less functional: the Emperors, meaning, their advisors, and Senators as office-holders, made the only meaningful decisions--usually for their own self-interest.

Run Against Congress!

Even the conservative Chamber of Commerce blames Congress for the US's fiscal inaction! Ben Bernanke has said, many times, that the Fed is only doing what it can with monetary policy, because Congress isn't doing what it should with fiscal policy. So, the Fed puts forward Quantitative Easing, keeping interest rates at rock-bottom and shifting its portfolio from short to long-term assets to drive down the price of longer-term borrowing, as well as "printing" money. But everyone knows that isn't enough.

What is really needed, Bernanke implies, and Economist Paul Krugman has stated repeatedly, is government spending on stimuli, to enliven job markets, plus bring teachers, police, etc., back to work.

Congress is split; it is split between fiscal "hawks" and "doves(?)." The former, dominated by GOP Tea Partyers, claim, like a blindered former friend of mine, that "debt is debt," and The Government must stop borrowing at all costs.

The "doves" don't know what to do, because the conservative-led media has persuaded a near majority that government must cut spending NOW. But the costs really are tangible, and the GOP's solution--cut taxes on the so-called "job creators"--isn't going to create jobs, except maybe in China, only a larger deficit, probably more speculation with the extra money freed for the speculators, and draconian cuts to the programs that allow people to hang on by their fingernails, like Food Stamps.

Krugman agrees that once we are out of this recession/depression, the US will have to begin to pay down its overhanging debt, but now is not that time. Now, the US should borrow money; it's at historically low rates, because the US is the safe harbor for troubled money the world over. Now we should spend money to re-invigorate the economy: spend it on helping states re-hire their laid off workers, spend it on rebuilding and improving our shabby infrastructure and education and spend it on new ventures, like alternative energy industries, all of which will expand the tax base.

Some businesses are not hiring because no one knows what the deadlocked government will do. But why hire if there is no demand for goods and services, anyway? If demand were injected into the economy, companies would hire workers. The Fed can't cause that; only Congress and the President can.

But Republicans are vehemently opposed to any policy that would help Obama's reelection, and vehemently opposed to any further debt. Democrats, on the other hand, are timid, and too many of them are beholden to interests that want deadlock, or little government action--except on their behalf: the selfish class, I've called them.

That's where we stand today. We could go down the road to near-permanent Depression if we choose "austerity" and tax cuts for the wealthy. That's the direction the Roman Empire took in the 4th and 5th Centuries.

Obama should run against Congress, and for a huge new stimulus, instead.

Campaigning Against the 1%

What will it take for putative progressive politicians to realize what a gift the Occupy Wall Street movement has offered them? While campaigning against "the one-percent," the OWS has begun to awaken the slumbering giant that is the American public.

I wonder, however, if elected leaders will get the message. I have a friend, Joel Tyner, who holds a position in the local legislature. He now sees his chance: he's campaigning for Congress; his opponent, the incumbent, is a Tea Party Republican elected in the 2010 wave.

I'm not sure my friend will have what it takes, which is a ton of money and good organization, even to be heard, even to be part of the electoral debate. It's no secret that the Republican will not only have sufficient campaign funds, he will also be supported, if necessary, with piles of corporate money. My friend will probably reject special interest funding, and doesn't know many likely wealthy contributors. He'll do things like hold demonstrations outside the Congressman's office; he's known for his publicized hikes to highlight political grievances, yet not even the local newspaper covers him most of the time.

The American political system, as presently constituted, favors the wealthy, and rewards those who side with them. Charles Beard, an American revisionist historian, made the case that the American Constitution was a counter-revolution by the propertied, looking out for their special interests. Their interests included "worthless" war bonds and deeds to western lands issued to Revolutionary War veterans in lieu of pay. George Washington and others bought them up for tiny fractions of their face value. The Constitution insured that the new government would protect their new lands and honor the war bonds, making the speculators--many in the Constitutional Congress--extremely wealthy.

Today we have a continuation of that tradition in Congress's immunity from insider trading laws, which is probably one of the reasons why most Congress-persons and Senators are much wealthier than their constituents.

Any reform, let alone revolution, has to overcome this. Further, it will have to overwhelm party establishments that are set up to protect special interests, rather than represent popular concerns. Only sustained popular mobilization, like the civil rights movement and the suffrage movement, has overcome the entrenched status quo. Effective leaders can help promote change, but our complicated structure tends to keep things the way they were.

If far-reaching reform doesn't happen, the American system ultimately may be overthrown by an enraged 99%; it's what happened in France, Russia, China, etc. Alternatively, the US political and economic system could continue to become increasingly dysfunctional, until it collapses of its own weight, like the Roman Empire. Rome went bankrupt because its Senators refused to raise taxes on themselves: they had extracted all the available wealth from everyone else, but had no sense of obligation to the Empire or society as a whole. Sounds like Wall Street, doesn't it?

Budget Insanity

How can Republicans believe that they'll win votes for "courage" to stand up to the poor on behalf of all those victimized rich guys? Unlike the Beatles' song, they seem to think that money can buy them love.

If Fox and corporations can spin this, then we have wholly entered into a corporate-run nation, in which only the CEO's and billionaires count--perhaps GOP activists will gain perks like the apparatchiks in the Soviet CP, or the higher ups in Germany's NSDAP. The rest of us just better keep our heads low, and work hard for our diminishing crusts of bread.

Congressman Ryan, the GOP budget boss, proposes draconian cuts to services, eventual privatization of Medicare at the likely expense to future seniors, and then proposes cutting high-end tax rates by a whopping 10%, while closing middle class loopholes like the mortgage deduction.

So, let's be clear about what he's proposing: take from the poor and middle class, who are hurting from this recession. Take from them some of the services that are enabling them to survive, take from them the loopholes that make middle class tax rates affordable, take from the people who are being thrown out of work, losing their homes--or, know they are at risk for one or both. Take from them the assurance that in their old age, their health care will be there for them.

What does this great subtraction buy? The first thing is tax cuts for the rich and corporations (almost half of which avoid paying any taxes). What will that buy? More speculation, not more jobs. The rich are already sitting on trillions of dollars; they are not investing in job creation--except possibly in places like China or Brazil.

A large enough cut in government spending to reduce the size of government, could also buy a renewed recession--unless we're lucky enough to have a real recovery before it takes effect.

Which brings us to the budget impasse on the 2011 budget: Boehner and his cohorts demand huge cuts, but they also demand programmatic cuts, like defunding NPR and Planned Parenthood. The programmatic cuts won't cut the deficit, so their argument for them is disingenuous. But the huge cuts to states, to services, to health care, to programs could be a recessionary strong right fist to the economy, especially since the tax cuts to everyone have only enabled unemployment to be pushed back a little; the elite aren't investing their gains in jobs; they're just expecting their workers to work harder--without unions, of course.

So, Ryan and Boehner, and those behind them, want to shove us on the economic path built by the late Roman Empire, in which a few own virtually everything, and everyone else is a slave or a serf.

It weakened Rome, too.

Libya, The Technological Imperative

The Turkish Prime Minister said he only wanted reassurance that NATO in Libya would be "brief" and would not "lead to an occupation." Congressional Liberal Democrats and some Republicans, both moderate and Paulian, complained that Obama had consulted with Europe, with the Arab League and with the UN, but not with them.

Even Obama hasn't articulated what he's done in any historical context, like Clinton's attacks on Libya before, in retaliation for a terrorist bombing aided by Qaddafi's government. Only now, Qaddafi massacres his own people.

So, the US was (again) in the lead in a military campaign authorized by the UN, edging a bit into mission creep, and this time it was in part because no one else has the military capability to attack a nation anywhere on the globe. Hold that thought.

The US led in the initial attack, even though Obama and Gates were clearly reluctant to engage in Libya, unless others led, because they didn't want to be involved in a 'third war in the middle east," unless they had a lot of cover.

But there is a technological imperative that thrusts the US military (quite willingly, it seems) into the lead of an operation like Libya's. So, we're damned by the huge expenditures we make on defense (offense, really), into being sucked into any mess anywhere in the world--or at least anywhere in the world where oil might be at stake.

The US spends over 3/4 of a trillion on "Defense," while no one else spends more than about 10% of that (the Chinese), and we consider that 10% worrisome. We can't afford such huge expenditures, as the stupid and vicious budget battles in Congress and the states demonstrate, but only a small minority yet says, we have to cut Defense.

Instead of cutting Defense, we cut pre-school and Medicaid, we cut Pell Grants and Family Planning--while restoring tax cuts at an historically low rate for millionaires.

Our huge Defense establishment demands money, but all that money just gets the US into more trouble. We could be sucked into a Libyan civil war, because we were the only ones with the wherewithal to quickly set up a no-fly, no-tank zone (that’s apparently what it's become). And we've already spent several hundred million to a billion dollars, just in these brief few days after the initial attack. This is when Congress is tortuously attempting to find $70 to $100 billion of budget cuts.

A conservative site noted that empires fall when they can't help getting sucked into military adventures they can't afford. Actually, it took the Romans centuries of impoverishment caused by those wars, before Rome fell, but history moves very fast these days.

Unlike Rome, though, there are an awful lot of us, both liberal and conservative, who see it coming: the Fall of Rome II.