February 2013 Archives

Dear America,

I used to respect David Brooks, the veteran opinion author for the New York Times.  He seems to read everything and his erudition, I assumed, extended into all of his areas of interest and informed his writing as did his seemingly conservative-to-moderate political sensibilities.  But lately I have noticed a tendentiousness to what he says, even a conservative dogmatism that is not only destructive of his credibility, it brings his character into question.  I have written to him once or twice at The Times, and of course I make no assumptions with regard to whether he even noticed my attempts to contact him, but on those occasions I pointed out to him that Social Security has never added to the federal deficit or the national debt except to the extent that the federal government has had to pay back the principal on bonds representing loans made under compulsion of statutory law by the Social Security Trust to the federal general fund.  Thus, Social Security has no more contributed to the national debt or the deficit than has the Chinese government or any of the many sovereign investment funds that buy U.S. Treasury instruments.  But Brooks doesn't need me to tell him that.  All he has to do is inform himself as to the Social Security statutes, including the 1939 amendments to the Social Security Act, which wouldn't require of him that he spend as much time on the process as he does on reading ten pages of any of the arcane tracts that he seems to relish enough to cite them in his op-ed pieces.  If he's going to reference obscure academicians and policy wonks, why not refer to something objective like the statutory law on this particular subject of interest to which he returns over and over again.  But instead of informing himself, he persists in his ignorance in that regard, and last Friday, along with his false claim that President Obama had never proposed a way to avoid the sequester, he reiterated the conservative canard that reforming "entitlements" like Social Security was the only way to successfully address our deficit spending problems.  That's two falsehoods in one column...two too many, and neither one excusable or justifiable, but both of them too big to ignore.  You can read The President's deficit reduction proposal on the internet at the White House website, just as you can read the Social Security statutes at various websites including Social Security's; it would be easy to know the truth.  And because such is the case, I can draw no conclusion other than that Brooks is willing to engage in bald mendacity in service of his conservative cause, which renders him nothing more than another conservative shill for a point of view that serves only those who don't need serving anymore.  Brooks is just another hack for the Rcc (Republican conservative complex).   I feel bereaved.

It is true that later in the day...after his column had been read by enough people who apparently pointed out to him the availability of the Obama deficit reduction plan...he published an addendum to his column...a half-hearted, perfunctory sort of P.S....admitting that the deficit reduction plan was on-line for anyone to read, but excusing himself for his shameful, deceitful failure to acknowledge it by distinguishing it from a plan to avert the sequester specifically, as if reducing the deficit weren't the raison d'être for the sequester in the first place.  It was nothing but caviling...reliance on a distinction without a difference...to justify his blatant intellectual dishonesty.  A guy who thinks and writes like that isn't someone whose work I want to read, so I'm off David Brooks for the foreseeable future, but if I can't read Brooks for an honest opinion anymore, what Rcc columnist can I read.  I like to hear a balance of opinions in politics.  Listening only to my own preachers and the other members of the choir leads to insular thinking, and that in turn leads to taking the wrong turn once in awhile...sometimes more often than that.  The problem is that conservative columnists are so busy fooling themselves that they can't help trying to fool everyone else.  Even those on television...especially the most popular ones...are intellectually dishonest, partly because so many of them lack the education necessary to inspire critical thinking.  Dana Loesch is an example, as is Rush Limbaugh.  Neither one of them even bothered to get a bachelor's degree, not that a degree makes one a critical thinker, but in the course of getting one you can't help but be exposed to some of them, and thus at least knowing what critical thinking looks like, and therefore recognizing, one hopes, when you're not doing it.  But if you listen to people like Loesch and Limbaugh speak you can hear that neither one of them is even interested in analysis.  They are megaphones for the truly dangerous among their partisans, like Karl Rove before his fall from grace (which was not a function of a change in his thinking but only of its failure to yield results), whose motives I still don't understand.  I can't trust their thinking because neither one of them seems interested in anything but the opportunity to amplify the party's point of view, no understanding or analysis necessary.  They seem more fixed on self-promotion than progress toward a true understanding of how things work, and while self-promotion doesn't seem to be Brooks' purpose, his failure to acknowledge the truth suggests the same kind of intellectual sloppiness, if not disingenuousness that the others carry as cardinal traits from generation to generation.  Given that people like Glenn Beck are the best the tier of conservative thinkers below Brooks can offer, I suppose we should be thankful to The Times for bringing him to us, but if he's just the Ivy League version of those other conservative apologists, what of significance really distinguishes him, and more importantly, what does he have to offer us?

Your friend,

Mike

Dear America,

In the last fiscal deal between Republicans and Democrats, the top 1% of income-receivers (I hesitate to say income-receivers rather than earners because it's hard to believe that Paris Hilton earns what she reports on her taxes), who make in excess of $400,000, suffered...if that's the right word for a person making that much money who has to give up $16,000 of his income to the taxman...a 4% tax increase.  President Obama had wanted the top 2% of income-receivers to be exposed to that tax increase, but he gave up half of what he wanted to get the other half.  However, that didn't do much to reduce the deficit and the national debt--$80 billion out of $1 trillion next year.  So now we face the advent of the "sequester," the across the board 10% budget reduction for all federal spending, and the Republicans are demanding spending cuts, saying that they will brook no more tax increases because the president already got his tax increase.  But the argument is fallacious...not just misleading but fallacious...because the Republicans purport to be protecting the middle class with that position when no such thing is the case.  What they fail to mention is that we all got a 2% tax break for two years when they agreed with the Democrats to reduce the Social Security tax withholding, which most affects those making under $106,000, the group that 97% of us are in.  But part of the deal that limited The President's intended tax increase on the rich actually increased the taxes...or discontinued the tax reduction...on the income of the vast majority of Americans, and did so disproportionately on us in the lower middle class.  So, the Republicans managed to penalize the 97% by protecting the 99th percentile plus a few from the 98th ...those making between $100,000 and $400,000 who were spared the income tax increase The President wanted...from the 4% tax increase now being paid by only the richest 1% of us.  In other words, we on the bottom paid for some of the wealthiest people in our society to be exempted from tax increases.

It is true that the 2% tax increase that we 97%ers suffered goes somewhere other than the general fund, which is where the 4% more now being paid by the top 1% goes.  But despite the fact that such is the case, if the Republicans had really wanted to reduce everyone's taxes, they would have demanded that the Democrats replace the two percent Social Security tax hike we all suffered with a two percent reduction in the income taxes of the bottom 97% by also imposing the 4% increase on those in the ninety ninth percentile making between $250,000 and $400,000.  That's what they want isn't it...lower taxes for all Americans...or is it just the rich they want to protect?  (That's a rhetorical question; of course it's just the rich they want to protect.  I mean, just look at their record lately.)  So, why are they so confident that the American public will side with them on this latest fit of recalcitrance?  Because they are publicly touting their position as standing up for all of us, and they assume that we are all too stupid to think about it and see the ruse for what it is, that's why.

The fact is that President Obama, while he didn't cause the sequester in the first place as the Republican claim he did, did ask for more in tax increases on the rich before more spending cuts could be imposed.  Thus, the half loaf he got in the last deal with the Republicans wasn't near enough to justify more than the $2.5 trillion in spending cuts already made during the last two budget negotiations between The White House and the Republicans in congress, who still may not be able to do just whatever they want, but they can, and do, stop the Democrats and The President from accomplishing anything progressive.  In the vernacular of the day, the Republican position is bogus, dudes.  The current status of the spending cuts versus revenue increases effort is that spending cuts have outnumbered tax increases by about three to one: $800 billion in tax increases over the next ten years compared to $2.5 trillion in spending cuts over the same decade.  That's what started out as being fair...at least in the minds of Democrats: one quarter revenue for three quarters reduced spending.  So now, we are back to square one when it comes to making further progress in eliminating the remaining $7 trillion or so in deficits that we are looking at during that period.  That means that if anyone else is to get hurt by spending cuts, the rich have to pay commensurately more.  So tax reform is not too much to ask, and it certainly wouldn't be a concession to the Democrats.  It is, at a minimum, the quid pro quo for deeper cuts to federal programs, including defense incidentally, which is the Republicans' sacred cow, not to mention their patrons' cash cow.

In the end, the point of this convoluted exegesis is that contrary to the Republicans' bellowing about their ox being gored, so far the program of revenue enhancement and spending reductions is just about where it ought to be if we are going to compromise on all this.  Personally, I would rather see taxes go up for the rich even further, not necessarily to the 90% level they were at in the post-WWII era, but considerably higher than they are today.  Studies show that people do not alter their investment strategies until the tax on their gains approaches 50% or more, and common sense says that is so.  After all, would you refuse to invest your dollar if you could earn only fifty cents with it instead of sixty five?  So slowing down the economy by raising taxes on those with the most money to invest would take a lot more in tax increases than anyone has proposed...anyone except me of course.  The corollary is that the virtually universal opinion of economists is that reducing government spending too much at a time like this will slow down the economy and cost jobs...not just new ones, but old ones too.  In this case, a penny saved is not a penny earned.  Three quarters of a penny is.

Your friend,

Mike

Dear America,

In that the nation is still immersed in the debate over gun control in the wake of the Newtown massacre, the appearance in the Hartford newspaper on Sunday of a description of the Lanza family was a matter that probably still interests us all.  It is the portrait of a family that is not far out of the mainstream, but in which there appears to have been something latently ominous.  It is probably the case that there is something latently ominous about every family until something profound happens and it is no longer latent, but such is certainly the case with the Lanza family.  There will be something related to the newspaper article on "Frontline," the PBS program that delves into such things, and thus there is no need to recapitulate the article in the Hartford Courant here, but I would be surprised if that ominous thing is not apparent to others when they see it.  Actually, it is not one thing, but a conflation in one family of a series of things: money, divorce, a divorcee who seemed quite involved in a social life that took her off on her own fairly frequently, a child with affective and/or cognitive problems, a lack of judgment on the part of the parents and perhaps most importantly, guns.  It wasn't that the parents of Adam Lanza are or were bad people that precipitated Adam's rampage...at least as far as anyone can see at this point.  Nor was it that there were guns in the house, because there are guns in at least half the houses in this country.  But the admixture of the fuel for the Newtown murders and the person capable of committing them was something that I believe would have been apparent to anyone exposed to them, especially Adam's mother, Nancy, and ironically, it was here insouciant obliviousness to this dangerous mixture of ingredients that cost not only the lives of twenty children and six other adults, it cost her own life as well, and that of her son, whom she professed to love.  And all of that together is the reason why we need gun control.  As individuals, we are not always capable of seeing the forest for the trees, so the government has to see to it.

Here are a few of the things that Lanza's father and mother ignored, or even facilitated, that should never have been allowed to come together.  Adam was afflicted with some condition or constellation of symptoms that were within the range of those characterizing autism.  At one point it was apparently diagnosed as Asberger's syndrome, but there was another component to his condition that made him averse to being touched, among other things.  That aversion extended even to his mother's touch, and in consequence, he was withdrawn even from her, apparently to her sorrow.  And he apparently was addicted not just to video games, but to the most violent of them, at least he was by the time he committed mass murder.  The police found in the game room at his home thousands of dollars worth of such games, all maintained in a basement game room in which Adam was permitted to spend hours, and even days unsupervised.  His mother, a middle aged divorcee wanted to enjoy her life, and in furtherance of that understandable desire, she spent days away from home leaving Adam by himself with no sign of parental supervision other than prepared meals left for him in the refrigerator while his mother went off to Boston to watch the Red Sox or see shows, stay in the best hotels and eat at the finest restaurants, all of which she could afford given the more than twenty thousand dollars a month that she received from her former husband.  And then there were the guns.  She kept a few in the house, including at least one hand gun and of course, the infamous assault rifle, all apparently purchased after her she and her husband became estranged, but it appears that he had an interest in guns as well, and the family, which includes Adam's older brother, used to shoot as a family activity before the divorce.

So, we have parents who were interested in guns and shooting, and a child who was not interested in much else as far as anyone could tell, except technology...computers and such...which probably made him even more isolated than his psychology by itself would have.  We know now that all these things together were a lethal combination, but the question begged by that fact is, what could have and should have been done about it.  What could have been done to prevent the explosion of violence that ultimately resulted.  The "could-have" part of the question is irresolvable.  Registration of those guns wouldn't have kept them out of Adam Lanza's hands absent other measures.  And even if the assault rifle had been against the law, there were other weapons that an assassin as determined as Adam Lanza appears to have been would have let suffice, and no one is even mentioning the possibility of banning guns in toto, or even hand guns specifically.  Since Adam never showed signs of violent potential until he committed his crimes, the grounds for his involuntary commitment weren't even present, and prior restraint of any kind is as un-American as national humility.  So the could-have question is an open one, though the answer to it is probably that you do all those things--ban guns of some kinds, ban large magazines, require registration, require some form of education for all those who insist on owning and possessing guns, regulate video games, or at least label them more graphically and more--but the "should-have" question remains.  That one, I believe is easier to answer.

All those things we could have done, we should have done, and especially the education part.  If  Lanza's parents had been forced to confront the fact that, while their son wasn't inevitably violent, the potential was there, they might have thought better of the choices they let him make with regard to the ways in which he was allowed to entertain himself, and about the decisions they made, such as exposing him to lethal weapons of any kind.  Then there is the mental health issue.  Should we, as a society, allow people as impaired as Adam Lanza seems to have been to wander about without making some kind of organized effort to help them cope with, and adapt to, a world that to them may well seem a chaotic and hostile environment to them.  We make more of an effort to get the homeless off the street on cold nights than we seem to have made in Adam Lanza's case even though he was right in our midst for his entire life wearing his neuroses on his sleeve until they became psychosis and murder.  I think there is a tendency to look at such people and conclude that they are just too much trouble to deal with, too much money and personal investment to do otherwise, at which point we tend to then shut them out and walk away from them.  The problem is that in doing so, we invite the kind of trouble, both for them and for the rest of us, that Newtown now represents.  But this isn't a matter of how much it will cost, either in terms of dollars or effort.  It is a matter of survival...at any cost.

Your friend,

Mike

Dear America,

If Marco Rubio is the best hope that the Republicans have to regain the confidence of a majority of voters, we will have a Democratic congress in 2014.  He is a pure Tea Party advocate of laissez-faire government, and the American people have spoken on that subject.  Calling it trickle down economics or the free market doesn't change the diversion from the precepts of civil community in a nation into something civil in itself.  Rubio stands for social Darwinism, but even on that score, he doesn't understand, nor does the Tea Party or the Republican conservative complex (Rcc), that even natural economic selection is now impossible because the economic deck is immutably stacked unless government intervenes.  Money is in the hands of a very few, and money is power in a capitalist society, which isn't a bad thing if constraints impose the burden to use wealth wisely, justly and magnanimously, but we don't have that here, do we.  The proof is in the opposition to a minimum wage of just $9 per hour: barely enough to allow the individual who receives it to earn income in excess of the poverty level.  Yet, corporate executives are receiving compensation at obscene levels never seen before...Jamie Dimon, for example, being paid $23 million per year as his firm, J.P. Morgan, presides over the derivatives market and indulges in misfeasance that costs shareholders billions of dollars.  And the corporate misfeasance, or even malfeasance, that is rampant in American finance is institutionalized in things like the derivatives market, which is nothing but high stakes poker for people who have too much money.  It led to this depression we are still digging out of, yet those in power do nothing about it.  All of that is the pudding in which the proof that our society is structurally unfair is baked.  Yet those few who possess so much and have so much power would conspire to prevent the working poor from ever having decent lives on the pretext that if they just work hard...presumably harder than they are working to clean bathrooms, sweep floors and flip burgers already...they too can be rich.

But foregoing diatribe and social commentary, the minimum wage issue demonstrates the failure of the Republican Party to adopt a body of economic policy that serves our society at large so as to make themselves a viable political party in America.  The rationale behind their opposition to an increased minimum wage...even minimal increase in the minimum wage...is counterintuitive, and in the case of issues like this one, intuition is all there is.  The purported empiricism of agents of the political parties like the American Enterprise Institute or the Heritage Foundation is nothing but a myth regardless of whose side they or you are on.  But simple arithmetic tells the tale.  If capitalism is based on incentive, the minimum wage isn't one if you can't live above the poverty line when you earn it.  And if that is the case, no employer who pays the minimum wage can expect loyalty, or even diligence for that matter.  Then there's the other side of the equation.  While sub-poverty wages do get spent in their entirety on survival, they provide less economic stimulus than wages that allow a higher standard of living until the wages in question reach a level that allows savings.  And while I can't speak for you, it is only since both of my children finished college and one of them moved out that saving was possible, so wages well into the mid five figures stimulate the economy dollar earned for dollar of gross domestic product.  Thus, more wages means more jobs, more consumption, more profit and thus more need for inventory that can be satisfied by reinvestment.  Fifty two thousand dollars per year is a thousand dollars a week, and that translates to $25 per hour for a forty hour week.  Until we get to at least that level, dollars earned are being spent, and thus recycled, creating wealth for all, including the workers whose lives take on the character of being worth living.  Therefore, until we are talking about a $25 per hour minimum wage, we aren't asking too much, in my opinion.  The Rcc mantra on the subject is that an increase in the minimum wage will reduce profit and lead to less hiring.  But the question is, are jobs at the current minimum wage worth creating, and more importantly, are they worth having.  If you can't survive on that kind of wages, why work for them. 

But there is a moral side to all this as well, and it is essentially the values equation that the American people are resolving at this point in our history.  Are we a society of three hundred million individuals, or are we a society of three hundred million Americans, joined at the conscience by a higher calling than making money unfettered.  Are we a community in which the community, while it may not come first, has real and meaningful significance in all of our lives.  Can we survive claiming that we are the exceptional nation on earth when we tolerate such inequity in our economic system that those with more than they need can determine with moral impunity that those with nothing should not have more.  Does that inequity rise to the level of iniquity, and is God going to get us for it.

Your friend,

Mike

Dear America,

For all the Republican agonizing over how to reinvigorate their "brand," they have changed very little.  The rhetoric they continue to use to push their philosophy on a people that has rejected it is identical to that which lost them the last election.  And now that it is behind them and The President has been inaugurated, they have reverted even to type by adopting an attitude of righteous indignation and false claims that they have already given at the office and need give no more.  While they yielded on the debt limit this time, they reserve the right not to the next, saying that The President got his tax increases--$80 billion per year for the foreseeable future, at least until the Republicans take control of congress and reduce rich people's taxes again--even though the spending reductions agreed to by our progressive president have amounted to three times that over the next ten years; according to them, that is not enough.  The rough parity between spending cuts and revenue increases, otherwise known as tax increases, that was the starting point of the fiscal debate is never mentioned anymore.  The topic has now been transmogrified into the incessant criticism of the programs that the Republican conservative complex (Rcc) characterizes as "entitlements."  And even though Social Security has financed about $2.5 trillion of the national debt with our money paid into a trust fund by its benefactors...us...from which a guaranteed annuity is to be paid out to the eligible beneficiaries...again, us...the Rcc continues to claim that deficit reduction starts with such programs.  However, in the cases of some of those programs, that claim is contrived.  In fact, last night on the eve of both Lincoln's birthday and the State of the Union address I was on my way to bed when I came across what seemed an impromptu conclave of former Senate budget committee members who agreed that entitlement reform was the next priority in the quest for a balanced budget.  At first, I thought they might be referring only to those programs that are not based on anything but general fund expenditures, but no, that wasn't the case.  There was a graph on which entitlements were lumped together on one colored line and there were two more lines reflecting the course of the deficit and the national debt, both of which were obviously affected by the entitlements line.  And when these former leading lights began to speak about the graph, not only did they suggest that "entitlement reform"--nothing but a euphemism for reduction of benefits whether people need them or not--is the only way to get our national debt and the federal deficit under control and they specifically referenced Social Security.  And in that vein, the phrase "chained CPI" was uttered during the Sunday morning talk shows by a Republican political advisor, and no one seems to be talking about the fact that as far as revenue is concerned, The President, and therefore we, got only slightly more than half a loaf from the recent agreement on tax increases on the top 2% in the form of the same tax increase, but on only the top 1%.  

So it falls to those of us who care to continue to rant about the differences between the entitled and rich people, and to add emphasis to the observation that we are debating taking money from those least able to afford it and we are preserving the surfeits of those who need it least.  But beyond that, the arguments on which the Rcc relies with regard to many of the programs in question are specious...I would argue misleading...to begin with.  Social Security is the best example, but it is far from unique in that regard.  The Republicans rely on the CBO's (Congressional Budget Office's) estimates on this subject with regard to their claim that changing the basis on which cost of living increases are calculated for Social Security recipients will reduce the deficit.  But they have rigged the calculation by imposing accounting rules on the CBO back in the seventies that require them to include Social Security with general fund revenues and expenditures when calculating the deficit even though by law, Social Security is what they call "off budget."  In fact, the period during which it was on budget was an aberration prompted by Lyndon Johnson's desire to balance the budget during his administration, which lasted for a couple of decades, but was then reversed because it was the accounting trick that the Rcc claims the Social Security Trust is.  The Trust was created by statute for the sole purpose of funding Social Security in 1939, and its only source of revenue is "payroll taxes" imposed independent of income tax assessments for the specific and sole purpose of funding Social Security and nothing else along with the requirement that The Trust lend that money to the federal government in lieu of special bonds and notes until the money was needed to pay benefits.  But now that time has come and the Republicans don't want to have to pay the money back right now.  That is why the chained CPI keeps coming up.  If Social Security benefits are cut in that way, they will be reduced over the course of about twenty years by 6% or more, and 6% of not enough, which is what Social Security is for most recipients, is even less.  But the general fund will be spared having to repay a commensurate amount to The Trust, thus reducing federal expenditures for any given year.  What the Republicans leave out is that while it may reduce the deficit in any given year, it just defers the repayment of the portion of the national debt that the general fund owes to The Trust.  Thus, employing the chained CPI to make the Social Security Trust Fund solvent for a few years more just transfers to the next generation the portion of the national debt that would otherwise get paid now.  Now that is an accounting trick, but this one isn't just a numbers game.  This one hurts people who can little afford the cost of eschewing additional taxation of those whose money goes into the stock market because they can't possibly spend it all.  And while the emphasis in entitlement reform conversations led by the Rcc usually falls on Medicare and Medicaid, with regard to the latter there is a trust fund problem but even there, The Medicare Trust still has a credit balance, albeit a small one...perhaps five years worth instead of the nearly thirty years worth in the Social Security Trust.

As to Medicaid, there is no trust fund, so the solution proposed by the Rcc is to flat out reduce benefits for the health care of those eligible for Medicaid benefits, even though that reduction takes the form of what Paul Ryan and his conservative colleagues call "block grants."  That is a euphemism for transferring the burden of Medicaid benefits to the states, which they cannot afford and most of them have already demonstrated that they can't by declining to enhance their current programs under the Affordable Care Act.  But addressing the real problem--the actual cost of medical care and its availability to those without ample resources--is off the table for the Rcc.  We got health insurance reform instead of a single payer system because the Rcc doesn't want those who profit from medical care to the tune of 18% of our gross domestic product to have to pay more taxes or earn less money.  Many of those people who provide health care are in that top 2% of income recipients, and they pay for the campaigns of the Republicans in congress who make these things happen...or not as in the case of the filibuster-impaired Senate.  The Rcc doesn't care that the next most expensive industrialized nation when it comes to health care is Germany, which only pays somewhere around 10% of GDP, nor do they care that most of the rest pay significantly less than even that number.  They don't care that medical care yields longer lives and less infant mortality and disease-based morbidity in those countries either.

In short, the Republican campaign to reduce Social Security and other entitlement program benefits is spurious and outright deceptive, and it continues with unabated intensity even though the Rcc is trying to characterize itself as kinder, gentler and more inclusive.  But immigrants die of disease if they cannot afford medical care too.  An no matter how hard they work producing our food and caring for our children, they need medical care whether they can afford it or not.  And most of all, we Americans need honesty from our politicians, not revised image making.

Your friend,

Mike

Dear America,

It appears that the children of Newtown, where the massacre of children, teachers and administrators occurred just two months ago, will be singing at the Grammy's.  It seems there is no end to which the American media are willing to exploit these children, and for that matter to which we as the viewing public are.  It was just a month or so ago that the local authorities in Newtown made a public plea for people to stop sending and bringing Teddy Bears to the school; they had no use for anymore Teddy Bears.  After all, how many Teddy Bears can a child take comfort from.  The piles of Teddy tribute were seen on the local news here in Connecticut, and on the national news as well, so the surfeit was plain for all to see.  Presumably, people stopped sending the toys to Newtown, and I thought at that time that perhaps the sensationalism that allowed things like Anderson Cooper's interview of the smiling parents of one of the victims just a day after she was killed might have ended...but no.  Now we are going to be treated to the cherubic voices of those who survived, and their parents must approve or the children couldn't go to the awards ceremony, which I also assume is where they will be performing.  I try to avoid cynicism, but as you know if you read these letters regularly, I am often unable to help myself, and unfortunately--I say unfortunately because I am talking about young children who don't know that they are being used--this is one of those occasions when I can't.  The parents of these kids will probably swell with pride, which used to be a sin by the way, when the children take the stage, and, giving them the benefit of the doubt, they probably haven't thought much about how perverse this whole thing is.  But I wonder if there will be any mass murderers created by this hoopla and its psychological impact.  I wonder how many of them will be affected on the subconscious level by the fact that one can get fifteen minutes of fame by being associated with a heinous crime and its victims.

The temptation is to excuse the parents on a sort of "they know not what they do" theory.  After all, it isn't hard to assume that they mean their children no harm, and that they wouldn't use their children's unfortunate fame just to get them on television so they can rub elbows with a celebrity like Ryan Seacrest, who will be at the Staples Center but will interview the children live by satellite.  But that is what they are doing, and it contrasts with the more sagacious decision made by the town to close the elementary school at Sandy Hook so as not to continually roil the memories of that horrible event in December.  That's where my cynicism comes in.  I keep thinking, if they knew enough to minimize the reminders of that horrible day at Sandy Hook Elementary by closing a whole school, why don't they know enough to keep their children out of the limelight at the Grammy's, which will shine on them only because their classmates and teachers were slaughtered.  Frankly, it seems more like vicarious narcissism than naivety, or even simple mindedness not to make that connection, and the people responsible for the awards program are no less culpable.  Putting those children on display is about as shameless and mercenary as anything I can recall, and as far as the media executives who decided to do this are concerned, not only is there no excuse, this is what they do...witness Anderson Cooper crawling all over those people the day after the shootings.  There was nothing more to know about them and no benefit to anyone from his being there other than indulgence in either producing or consuming the sensationalism that he created.  In the case of the Grammy's, however, the vices of the media are laid even more bare.  They are using small children to pump up ratings, and not to trivialize this whole thing, but what makes anyone think that there is anything special about the Sandy Hook children's chorus.  In fact, the children will be performing live, but viewers apparently will also hear the chorus on a recording of "Somewhere Over the Rainbow," which they made to "help the community heal."  How allowing them to engage in such overt pandering is beneficial to them I cannot understand, even though the proceeds from this whole thing are going to some athletic center that apparently was used for briefly by the community for purposes related to the shootings.

What lessons are these children learning, I wonder.  And I also wonder if anyone has tried to find out from them how all of the fuss over them is making them feel, much less whether it is good for them.  I wonder how often over the rest of their lives these children will tell people that they were "Sandy Hook Kids."  I wonder how many of them will feel a sense of distinction over the fact that they were there, rather than feeling the bereavement--which we would hope would wane over time--that one normally would experience on account of such an experience.  I wonder whether any of them will develop a need in the future to be acknowledged as they are being acknowledged now, and I wonder whether that isn't the kind of need that inspires the kind of atrocity that they just saw and heard their friends go through.  While they are singing an inspirational song for what is ostensibly a good reason, they are finishing up with "Call Me Maybe," a pop sensation that could serve no purpose but to entertain.  And if there is some noble purpose in having these children appear on national television, I wonder how that purpose is served by making the kids a secondary pop sensation.  Only time will tell.

Your friend,

Mike

Dear America,

On Sunday, George Stephanopoulos interviewed Harry Reid, the Majority Leader of The Senate.  Naturally, the topics of interest were the pending and contemplated legislative initiatives that are going to be pursued over the next year or so: immigration reform, gun control, taxes and spending primarily.  And in the context of that discussion, the issue that continually arose was whether the Republicans would thwart the administration's and the Democrats' attempts to pass legislation.  Strategies came up as did popular sentiment, and Reid maintained a sanguine attitude on all of them.  The American people want this or the American people have expressed their will on that was the refrain he kept uttering.  But Stephanopoulos never brought up the failure of Reid and the Democrats to change the filibuster rules in any meaningful way...also a matter that should have been dealt with if popular sentiment is the governing factor in how the parties vote.  The people of this country want their senators to cast votes, not eschew casting their ballots through the use of dilatory procedural tactics like the filibuster.  The relevance of that omission on Stephanopoulos's part is that if Reid had led the effort to eliminate the sixty vote cloture requirement and restore the simple majority as sufficient to end debate, none of those other questions would have been necessary.  The only reason that there is any doubt about immigration now that the Republicans have been electorally drubbed in the most recent election is that forty one votes...that is forty one Republicans...can still kill any bill for any reason, and if there is one thing at which the Republicans are willing and eager it is fabricating reasons to vote no.  Even the fact that while eager, they are not necessarily adroit at contriving objections to proposed Democratic legislation doesn't stop them from endeavoring to excuse themselves for captious reasons.  The next election is two years away, and they are no doubt banking on two things: the short memory of the American people and their ability to obfuscate the real issues with specious arguments that they repeat over and over until they have been heard often enough to ring true to those who tend to think with the heads of others rather than their own.  In short, if immigration and gun control fail...immigration in particular...Harry Reid is to blame for not taking the ability to obstruct out of Republican hands.  So why isn't anyone talking about that.

The reason is that the media...the electronic media in particular...have let the subject drop.  It was news for one day, but even though it will be at the heart of most political news at least until the next session of congress begins and the rules can be changed with a simple majority it is news no longer.  It is the most important story to get short shrift from the media that I can remember.  We hear over and over again about some college football player who thought he had a girlfriend in someone he had never met, and they even report about the investigation into what went on as if it mattered at all, but Harry Reid gets a free pass.  If that adolescent athlete had the brains, he would probably wonder why that is, but brains don't appear to be his long suit.  But Stephanopoulis and Diane Sawyer, Scott Pelly on CBS and Brian Williams on NBC?  They're supposed to be informing us about what is important.  Does their failure in the case of Harry Reid's apostasy on the subject of the filibuster mean that brains are not their long suits either, because if it's not that, I can think of only one other explanation: ratings.  We are getting news determined by how many people will watch it rather than by what we should and need to know;  And some Americans think that the registration of their guns is the major threat to their liberty.  Speech is free in this country, but what we are getting from the news media isn't.  It is costing us our national political judgment.  The purpose of a public school system is to ensure an educated populace, and that should be the purpose of the licensed news media...but it isn't.

In any event, Harry Reid is at the center of any failure that may befall the social initiatives that the Obama administration may take in its second term.  We'll see if he reverses that legislative legacy if and when the Democrats retain control of The Senate in 2014.  Bit in the meantime, we can all expect rough going.  The Republicans will continue to put the success of their party above the welfare of the nation, and they will continue to covet a larger share of the common weal for a smaller number of their patrons by linking that aggregation of wealth in the hands of the few to social values, with which it has noting to do in reality.  And as an adjunct to that values linked campaign, they will do what they can to thwart progress in the other direction.  That's what they have done for the last four years and more, and since nothing has changed in terms of the political opportunities at their disposal...especially in The Senate...we would be whistling in the dark to expect anything else for the next two year.  Thanks a lot, Harry.

Your friend,

Mike