November 2014 Archives

Dear America,

I felt truly thankful yesterday, Thanksgiving 2014.  My son and my daughter came to the house for dinner as did my father-in-law with his significant other, and as did my brother-in-law with his family, including a niece in college, another about to go and a nephew who seems to be finally coming into his own.  We are all healthy and possessed of sufficient creature comforts that we have no complaints; we are well fed, well clothed and warm, all with prospects for the same as of next Thanksgiving.  Similarly, most families in the nation celebrated their good fortune, and the day was a success for tens of millions of us, at the expense of course of several million turkeys.  But there were still millions of us for whom Thanksgiving was just another day with less than they need, many who couldn't afford a turkey for Thanksgiving, much less to feel satisfaction about the lives they lead or their prospects for next Thanksgiving.  And speaking of turkeys, much of the suffering in our nation is a function of what our Congress has or hasn't done for those people with less than they need...for them or to them.

There are, for example, the long-term unemployed whose unemployment compensation ran out late in 2013 while the Republican House of Representatives and the filibustering Republicans in The Senate hemmed and hawed about extending their benefits, overtly stalling in early 2014 by making untenable demands until it became apparent that they had no intention at all of granting the extension that they purported to be considering, not matter what conditions were met by the opposition.  Then there is the resistance to the Medicaid expansion created under the Affordable Care Act that could get several million Americans covered for medical care that they cannot afford now...also not in the offing because Republican governors or legislatures--and I must point out that all those states where Medicaid has not been expanded are controlled by Republicans--are electing not to participate.  And of course there is immigration, which is favored by a majority of the American people who realize that the participation in our economy, if nowhere else in American life, of undocumented residents of this country is a sine qua non for our Thanksgivings in that they tend to do the jobs that American citizens won't.  More than fifty years ago there was a documentary called "Harvest of Shame" that made that point clear, and those of us who were around at that time remember, as should the Republicans in Congress who not only failed to act on reform that would allow such workers to stay here but have been threatening The President because he acted administratively to at least partially ameliorate the hypocrisy entailed in the prevailing anti-immigration policy.  There are the military men and women abroad still fighting two wars--Afghanistan still and Iraq again--that were brought to us by a Republican president who was trusted by our federal legislature to exercise good judgment before leading us into those wars.  No doubt they and their families are thankful to the Republicans.  As to the future, there are the millions who will die of asthma, emphysema and various cancers because our Republican politicians resist as a matter of principle...a virtual religious tenet...any effort to control the industries that pollute our air and water, as the Republicans have vowed to do now with regard to new EPA regulations mandated by executive order to control mercury and other heavy metal pollution from coal fired power plants, even though switching to gas is now not just feasible but good for the American economy because we can produce so much of it here.

But perhaps I shouldn't be bashing the Republicans and their friends in business and industry.   Maybe I should be thankful on Thanksgiving for Black Friday shopping, during which people have been seriously injured, and yes even killed, because of the worst in us...the manifest selfishness...that it evokes.  And maybe the employees who missed Thanksgiving with their families yesterday because they had to work in retail stores should be thankful for the extra chance to earn a few more hours of minimum wages that aren't as worthwhile as they were even fifty years ago.  I know that the CEO's of those retail stores were thankful for their Thanksgiving dinners at home with their families...while the undocumented immigrants served them their turkey.  And of course, the USO served turkey dinners to our troops overseas as well, so what do they have to complain about.  All in all, Thanksgiving yesterday was a success as it is every year.  At least it was at my house, and at yours too, I'm sure.  But what if next year the Republicans figure out how to take even more from the common folk?  What if next year, we are among those other people?  If we are, don't look at me.  I didn't vote Republican.

Happy Thanksgiving.

Your friend,

Mike

Dear America,

I was skimming the channels yesterday and I came across what appeared to be a conservative governors' symposium at which Scott Walker and Rick Perry were speaking.  I could only stomach a few minutes of their self-congratulatory partisan narcissism, but they made a point that is worth considering.  The public went Republican in 2014 while they seemed to have a greater affinity for Democratic positions: "Obamacare" is disliked by a majority, but only a minority wants it repealed; the majority of Americans want immigration reform, which we don't have only because John Boehner, the Republican House Speaker won't allow a vote that he knows would result in passage of a senate bill sent to The House almost two years ago; and while most Americans bemoan the growing disparity of wealth between those at the top and those in the middle (those at the bottom seem to have been forgotten by everyone), they elected more Republicans whose party opposes increasing the minimum wage because, they say, it is bad for business, which is a euphemism for the well-to-do whom the great majority if Americans begrudge their dubiously gained prosperity.  There is a good question in all this.  Why can't the Democrats succeed, not only in getting elected but in accomplishing what the majority seems to want?  During the first six years of W's administration, the Congress was controlled by his party, and at that time, more than 60% of Americans wanted a single-payer system of healthcare, but that's anathema to the supply-side Republicans and so, they did nothing about our selectively available health care system.  Then in 2006, I assume because of their failure to act on healthcare, among other things, the voters threw them out and elected Democrats who controlled Congress for the next four years--albeit only in theory--during which we at least got the Affordable Care Act, which Americans seem to recognize as being better than nothing.  But in the course of the next three elections, the American voters invited the Republicans back into power...at least in both houses of Congress...and all the while, the Republicans have been promising more of the same politics that got them ousted from power in 2006 and 2008.  Are we confused or stupid?  That's not a rhetorical question; I really don't understand.

Obamacare is a perfect example of the ambivalence of the American electorate.  During the Clinton administration, Hillary was charged with the task of putting together a commission to investigate the ways in which our healthcare system could be made to serve everyone, including the forty odd million who couldn't afford insurance.  Her inquiry looked like it was leaning toward any one of a few different single-payer alternatives, but the Republicans proposed a free market alternative that ultimately turned out to be what eventuated under the next Democratic president.  I'm sure you remember.  Obamacare, though it didn't have a name then, was first proposed by the Republicans to preempt any attempt to institute a government run single-payer system that Hillary Clinton's commission might arrive at as the best alternative.  But in case you don't remember, just recall that Mitt Romney made his bones in Massachusetts by overseeing the promulgation of that state's "Romneycare," which was the line-for-line precursor of "Obamacare"--no matter how much Romney denied it when he was trying to become president--and in Massachusetts it worked, which is to say that it will work in the United States as a whole if the Republicans will stop defaming and trying to sabotage it.  All this should be obvious because it isn't opinion; it's documented fact...so much so that, except for reminders of the Republican etiology of Obamacare, all of it is in the news in one way or another every day between legal challenges to the law and Republican derision that they fall back on when they can't think of anything else derogatory to say about The President.  But the voters turned a blind eye to history as it was being made and invited the viper into their bosom...again.  Do we think that the Republicans have changed since last time?  I doubt it, because every time they get the chance they let their conservative freak flag fly, ala Scott Walker and Rick Perry at that symposium I couldn't stand to watch.

Now, a second congressional committee has found that there was nothing exculpatory in the events before, during and after the Benghazi attacks in Libya two years ago.  Yet, Republican Senator Lindsey Graham characterized this second report--the result of a bi-partisan subcommittee investigation led by a Republican and conducted by a subcommittee of the House Intelligence Committee--as "full of crap" and wants a joint subcommittee of the House and Senate to do another inquiry as John McCain, who is waxing ever more "crackpot-ic" as he ages, encourages Graham to run for president.  It used to be that Graham was the voice of reason among conservative Republicans, but now even he is grasping at straws in the name of partisanship.  He's like a dog with a bone when it comes to this Benghazi fantasy that the Republicans are trying to foist on the American people, and I don't mean that as a compliment on their tenacity, but rather as the observation that they don't seem to have the sense of a bull dog when it comes to the opposition.  But then, what does that say about those of us who continue to vote for politicians like him?  With each election since 2010 I keep hoping that sanity will prevail among the electorate and that we won't continue making the same mistake time after time, but with each election it becomes more difficult to be hopeful.  To paraphrase a modern sage, when will we ever learn.

Your friend,

Mike

Dear America,

This fixation on the Keystone XL pipeline mystifies me.  I guess for the Republicans it is natural since the oil business wants it, but for everyone else, there is really nothing to commend it to us as a nation.  If you start with the fundamentals of the oil industry it becomes clear almost immediately that outside of the creation of, at best, thirty or forty thousand temporary jobs building it for about two years, and possibly as few as only 2,000, it has no function but to add to pollution of the environment and raise oil company profits.  It will not increase the American oil supply or reduce the cost of gasoline, though that erroneous presumption on the part of the public at large is what the Republicans and the oil industries in Canada and the United States are relying on.

The first fact necessary for reaching a sound conclusion on the pipeline is that it is illegal to export oil from the United States.  So, none of the oil itself will leave the country as oil per se.  That much of what the president of TransCanada Corporation said was true, though it was a prevarication since it won't be staying here either.  That is because it isn't illegal to export gasoline and other refined fuels, which we already do to the tune of over a hundred twenty million gallons per day from the refineries on the Gulf Coast.  Thus, what TransCanada's oil sands oil will provide is more petroleum for refining into gasoline and export, not more gasoline for us, and refining is a dirty business itself.  Then there is the fact that we already import more oil from  Canada than we do from any other country, so the pipelines necessary for consuming the current imports are already sufficient.  So, why do we need the Keystone XL if the oil is just going to be refined and exported; why can't they do it in Canada?  The oil sands from which that particular crude oil will come are in Alberta, Canada, half the distance from the ocean as the gulf coast is from Alberta.  It would be safer and more direct to build a refinery in British Columbia, the Canadian province that lays between Alberta and the Pacific, so that the countries of the pacific rim could be supplied, and with only half the transport across land and with half the ocean transport as well.  Of course then, American oil companies would be cut out of the profit except for the extent to which they have interests in Canadian enterprises.  So, outside of a few temporary jobs that would put us right back where we are now in terms of unemployment in two years, what's in it for us except more pollution and higher corporate oil company profits?

Well, I know what's in it for the Republicans.  They have been trying to hang this thing around President Obama's neck since it was proposed a couple of years ago.  And that's an effort that pays Republican dividends, as it did during the recent elections, because President Obama doesn't explain anything to anyone, and thus all these factors that are inimical to the pipeline will never come to light for most people because he won't make the essential effort to point them out.  And for the most part, no one else has a sufficient platform from which to do so without so much conservative static that the American people won't hear and understand, which is now important.  On Tuesday the bill, having been passed in the conservative House, was defeated in The Senate by a vote of 59-41.  It was democratically passed, but the Republicans were hoist by their own petard as the vote was a failure to pass the cloture motion that every important bill goes through now instead of a straight up or down vote.  The Keystone XL pipeline was killed in The Senate by a filibuster, and that seems like just deserts for the Republicans, but the word still didn't get out as to why Keystone is a bad idea.  However, I did hear sound bites on NPR from two senators that made the point.  The independent senator from Maine, Angus King, was especially persuasive in that he is a genuine independent in his thinking, which he made clear during the entire interview, but when it came to the Keystone pipeline he said the same things that Senator Ed Markey from Massachusetts said: there's nothing in it for us.  While Markey pointed out that the oil flowing through the pipeline would be sold abroad--though he didn't mention the fact that it would have to be refined in Texas and Louisiana refineries first--King said it all more tersely, and thus more effectively.  He also said that the oil would be refined into fuels and exported and that he didn't see how this country would benefit, but then he hung a label on it that, if he is smart, President Obama will use.  He said that America was just "a weigh station" on the pipeline project, and that is it in a nutshell.  Of course, the American people love nutshells; that's why the bills that run through congress all have names that include words like "American" and "patriot" in them.  So, if President Obama gets on television during prime time the next time John Boehner pules the Republican Party line to the effect that the project means thousands of jobs for the American people, and he hangs the "weigh station" label on the project--if he points out that the number of jobs involved is anything between the 42,000 the Republicans claim and the 2,000 claimed elsewhere, all of either total being for only the two years during which the pipeline is being built--the Keystone XL pipeline might turn out to be the albatross hanging around the Republicans' neck instead of the Democrats'.  But as I've said before, what are the odds.

In the final analysis, the pipeline goes hand in hand with the rest of the Republican strategy, which oddly enough follows the Obama model: explain nothing.  But there is an effective response to be made, and it involves communication with the mass of American voters.  The Republicans are focusing on the notion that President Obama is poisoning the relationship between The White House and Congress, which will in turn result in nothing being passable in Congress.  But that translates to, "if you make us mad, we won't do anything for the country," and the Democrats, President Obama in particular, must do the translating for the American people.  That's how the debacle of the 2014 election will be reversed...by making it clear that the Republicans have but one objective and that is thwarting President Obama and the Democrats, and that they will do it, and have been doing it, by denying the American people what they need and claiming that it is someone else's fault.  It will be interesting to see what happens in terms of politicians' public standing in consequence of the defeat of the Keystone pipeline because the debate over it is what all of the issues come down to politically: the facts.  And since the Democrats got 'em this time, they should be flaunting them.

Your friend,

Mike

Dear America,

Very shortly after I saved my entry for last Friday, David Brooks was on the radio and on television reaffirming his conservative credentials, that is, he wasn't allowing some latent liberal streak to surface, but rather was cleaving to the same conservative political self-service as has poisoned this country for the past fifteen years.  And like Brooks, John Boehner, Speaker of The House, was proclaiming that he wanted The President to compromise when all he really wanted was for The President to yield.  Once again, conservative Republicans initiated a movement to repeal "Obamacare," and once again, they threatened to impeach The President if he initiated executive actions on immigration while claiming to want to pass immigration reform of their own, which they only need to vote for in The House if they truly want it because a bi-partisan bill has been there for their approval for a year and a half now.  What's more, at least a few voices have been pointing that out, yet they continue to spout hypocrisy like Old Faithful spouts steam, all of which just goes to prove something I say ad nauseum the day after every election.  On election day, the American people get exactly what they deserve, in the case of 2014, more phony claims of a desire to work with the Democrats to go along with more intransigence on the issues in reality.

During the W. Bush years, at least for the first six of them, the Republican Party controlled both The White House and Congress.  Also during those years, more than 60% of the American people were in favor of a single payer health care system.  And among the ideas that had been floating around in that regard was universal Medicare.  After all, the system was already in place and was tried and true over the course of half a century.  In addition, while the Medicare system is supported by a trust fund that costs the federal government nothing just like Social Security, the fund is imbalanced because it is supported by all, but because the young and not-yet-retired have to also provide health insurance for themselves, it can't be financially supported at a level necessary to sustain the balance of income and expenses incurred by the fund necessary to keep the fund solvent in perpetuity.  But that problem would be solved as would the problem of the unmet need of the American people for universal healthcare like that provided in all of the other industrialized countries.  If everyone were eligible for Medicare, the system could be supported at the necessary level by everyone because other health insurance would no longer be necessary.  And also because membership would be universal, it would be supported by the healthy as well as the infirm.  Voila! Problem solved...but did the Republicans propose such a plan? No-o-o.  So all this palaver about the will of The People that we are hearing now was demonstrated then to be nothing but pretense, yet, after two congresses...four years...the Democrats were thrown out of the majority control they gained in 2006 and Republican recalcitrance designed to ensure the failure of the Democratic agenda became the rule.  Enough Republicans were elected to The Senate to allow the filibuster to shut the institution down, and the Republican House became the least productive congress in history along with Congress...including The Senate...as a whole.  In 2010 and 2012--now in 2014 as well--we got what we voted for, and hence what we deserved.  It's a mystery to me.

How can a country that favored universal health care under a conservative administration and Congress now be opposed to the nearest thing to it that could be politically achieved: Obamacare?  Actually, despite Republican touting to the contrary, the majority of the American people are not opposed to Obamacare.  They want it preserved, but changed.  Yet, in spite of overt Republican pledges to repeal it--remember, repeal is opposed to the will of the American people--they have increased their power to the effect that not only do they control The House, they control The Senate as well, and not just because they have the votes to prevent the Democrats from doing anything.  They have majorities in both houses and a pledge from the leadership of the Democratic Party that the Democrats won't do the same thing to the majority party that the Republicans did to them when the Democrats were in the majority, that is, the Democrats have pledged not to kill every Republican initiative with the inertia of filibusters and withheld votes like what Mitch McConnell and John Boehner orchestrated over the past six years.  In reality, push has now come to shove.  The Republicans can do what they want.  The only remaining issue is whether they actually want anything or not.

In this age of instantaneous communication for almost everyone who wants it, we can all keep our members of Congress informed as to what we want, and there is no excuse for us if we don't.  In Connecticut, we have an entirely Democratic congressional delegation...that is, our representatives and senators are all Democrats.  They know what the people of this state want already, but they have been powerless to get it for us because of partisan opposition.  But in most other states, Republicans hold sway, so it is up to the citizens of those states to let their delegations know what they want.  I hope they do it.

Your friend,

Mike

Dear America,

I wonder sometimes about David Brooks, the New York Times editorialist.  He seems to have a liberal within him struggling against the staunchly defended reasonable-conservative character he professes to be.  Today, for example, his column was about "agency," which translates to autonomy in colloquial terms, and he cited the life of George Elliot, a literary figure of the nineteenth century who assumed a man's name though she was a heterosexual woman, perhaps because she was  frustrated by her lack of feminine wiles and beauty and the resulting ennui of the men on whom she set her sights.  Brooks characterized the rejection by one of her desired paramours as a liberating event that gave her agency, or the power and the desire to act without regard for the opinions of others, men in particular.  It was her "to-hell-with-it" moment in vulgar terms, and from then on she wrote and did as she pleased, in complete control of her work and her life.  As I read the piece, it occurred to me that Brooks was saying what I intended to say today about Barrack Obama, but The President was never mentioned.  It makes me wonder if Brooks is that subtle that he left to others to extract from what he wrote a liberal notion which his conservative ego refused to acknowledge...at least publicly: that the Republican narcissism that McBoehnell is evincing has liberated President Obama, and that he will now be--paradoxically in the last two years, the lame duck years of his presidency--the real Barrack Obama.  It is my opinion that such is exactly what will happen now, and that it is a shame that Mr. Obama didn't feel this sense of liberation the first time he experienced such a moment...in 2010.

For six years, Barrack Obama has been the Rodney King of American politics, admonishing us all to "just get along."  Don't misunderstand that observation: it is not intended to diminish the character of Mr. King and Mr. Obama in their moments of supplication to a rampaging mass, which in both cases seem to me to have been noble.  Obama's de facto admonition to cooperate politically, which was manifested in diffidence and conciliatory tone, is indeed analogous to King's effort to instill calm in a socially combusting moment, and was just as ineffective in mollifying the rampant forces at work to undermine his goal as was King's, but the intent was to be admired.  However, the Republicans responded like the Sendakian "Wild Things," creating bumptious and fractious turmoil in our government just as frustrated rioters expressed themselves in Los Angeles after the acquittal of the policemen who committed the King beating.  And the efforts of both King and Obama came to the same result: naught.  But The President appears now  to have come to the conclusion that he cannot accomplish the comity that he sought, and since electoral politics will never again be a factor in his presidency, or his life for that matter, he has abandoned the attempt to cultivate his adversaries and is not bent on pursuing the goals that he convinced us during his elections were right.  The liberal Obama has been unleashed, and the smarter Republicans seem to know what they have wrought.

There is an argot that Washington politicians employ when they don't want to say what they are thinking, and Mitch McConnell hinted at it during his remarks about The President's stated intent to announce executive changes to immigration law imminently rather than giving Congress a chance to act.  He said that the definition of a political gaff was when a politician accidentally told the truth, and he then scrupulously avoided doing so by paring down his opposition to President Obama's stated intent to a civil, acceptable signal.  Instead of taking the Boehner approach of rattling his sword, McConnell noted that if the President acted by executive order, that is, unilaterally, his orders might only last for the remainder of his presidency.  He didn't go on to say that he should wait until Congress had a chance to act, probably because he knows that the recalcitrant House of Representatives, led by Boehner, won't do so.  In fact, minority leader Pelosi noted something that I have pointed out before: that if Boehner were sincere he could just call for a vote on the third, bi-partisan immigration reform bill sent to The House by The Senate over 400 days ago.  Boehner never responded, but he never does...at least he never does honestly.  And apparently, even Mitch McConnell knows that, and he has now obliquely admitted it, which has the ancillary effect of validating President Obama's apparent resolve.  The President is right to act as he sees fit now, because if the lesson of the past six years hasn't sunk in yet, it never will, and the Obama years will amount to nothing, and that is the paradox I am talking about.

The Republicans have wasted six years of both Obama's time and all of ours trying to re-ascend to control of the legislature, and they hope to the presidency in 2016.  Now they have accomplished the first half of their ambition, but they realize that to realize the second half, they have to retreat from their fist-shaking aggressive position and themselves practice what they have hypocritically preached to President Obama.  With nothing more to lose, President Obama has been empowered by the recalcitrant opposition that thwarted him for the first six years because they have now overreached, and like Alice in Wonderland, they have gotten what they wished for and now have to deal with it.  They are the proverbial dog who has caught the car he was chasing, and it may be that they will now recognize that they too have nothing to gain by continuing on their old course.  Maybe now some good things will happen.  I wonder if that's what David Brooks was saying too.

Your friend,

Mike

Dear America,

Last Friday, the leaders of Congress got together with President Obama at the White House, and once again, The President evinced the qualities that have led to the decline not just in his popularity ratings, but in the hope that we progressives had when he took office.  John Boehner, who seems to me to be the most baldly brazen speaker of The House in my life time with the possible exception of Tip O'Neill, brandished his sword once again, warning the sitting president of the United States that he would rupture his relations with congress...the Republican House of Representatives specifically...if he issued executive orders to modify immigration policy so as to reduce the numbers of deportations that are presently occurring in lieu of immigration reform.  Boehner's position is that executive action in that regard would be usurpation of the powers of Congress.  The President's response was simply to reiterate his determination to act if congress doesn't, but part of congress has acted.  The Senate, which is also divided closely between Republicans and Democrats in the 113th Congress, has passed three bills, the last one overwhelmingly bi-partisan, and sent them to the House of Representatives for passage there.  But none of them has been put up for a vote by Speaker of The House Boehner.  And the reason that he hasn't put any of them, especially the last, most bi-partisan one, is that he knows it would pass and President would sign it.  Before the election, he believed along with many in his party, that they couldn't vote no and still win seats because congressional districts are much more conservative than the states they are in as a general rule.  Thus, though many Republican Senators felt that they could vote for immigration reform because it is favored by the majority in both the nation and most states, that isn't the case district by district because of Republican "gerrymandering."  In other words, the Republican Party has been hoist by its own petard because you have to be pretty damned conservative to even get nominated by the Republicans thanks to the way in which they have stacked the electoral deck on the state level, which is the effect of gerrymandering and always has been, but I digress.

As to President Obama's response to Boehner's audacious threat, The President once again put on his conciliatory face and vowed to work with Congress toward the end of immigration reform, and I don't have an objection to that effort at collegiality despite the avowed and demonstrated resistance to his efforts that Congress has displayed for the past six years.  It may be just a gesture, but what else can a president do.  However, with regard to Boehner, the problem isn't just partisan politics.  He is out of control, and no one seems to be pointing that out.  If I were President Obama, I would have said to him, if immigration reform through cooperative effort were a possibility, you would have allowed a vote on the bi-partisan bill The Senate sent you in April because as you know, it would pass.  The work of devising a framework for reform has already been done, but the reality is that you don't want it...not the Republican Party, but you.  Since we are pointing out consequences to each other, let me point this one out.  Our constitution provides for only one office with veto power: mine.  If there is someone in this room who is usurping the powers of another branch, it's you...not Harry Reid, not Mitch McConnell...you.  So, if you are sincere about cooperating to reform our immigration laws, put that bill up for a vote as Harry Reid and Mitch McConnell did, because if you don't, I will go on television and point out that you are vetoing immigration...you personally; that you are exercising a veto power that you have only because of rules that you and your colleagues enacted so that you don't have to do what is democratically favored by the majority in the nation.  I will explain to the people of this country that there is a regular order of business in The House of Representatives, and that you and Eric Cantor, God rest his political soul, passed a special order of business that allowed only you two to bring those Senate bills to votes, even though the regular order of business allows any member of congress to do so, and that thus, there is only one man in America who is responsible for the failure of Congress to act on immigration, and that's you.  The 2014 election is over, and you and your party won, but 2016 is just around the corner, and the prospect for what you want instead of immigration reform won't last beyond that election, so make up your mind.  Pass one of the senate bills before they expire at the end of the lame duck session in January or live with the consequences...and I'll make sure you do.

That's how I would have handled Boehner's bad-ass routine if I were president...with one of my own.  Because when the President of the United States speaks, it has always behooved everyone in the room to listen...or at least it did until Barrack Obama was elected.

Your friend,

Mike

Dear America,

There's no use complaining about the decision that the American people made on Tuesday.  But I can't help wondering why they did it.  The last time we had a Republican legislature on the national level they passed bills, and a Republican president signed them, that enabled an accretion of wealth at the top levels of our society that is deleterious to the economic progress of the rest of us as individuals, and surely, America, you remember that because the effects are still with us.  And for the eight years since--during which the Republicans have had and exercised a veto power over everything that the Democrats have tried to do except for the Affordable Care Act that was passed into law during the few months of the lame duck session of 2010--we have experienced a putatively Democratic-in-name-only legislature, and then a putatively Democratic Senate with a definitely Republican House of Representatives, that has had no function but to thwart President Obama...not the Democrats, but President specifically.  The result of this de facto Republican hegemony has been an economic disaster from which all but the very rich have not really recovered and perhaps never will, two wars that have lasted almost a decade and a half in one case, and a level of acrimony and pure spitefulness that has never been seen before.  Now, we have given the Republicans control of the legislature again, though their control of The Senate is also only putative if the Democrats decide to reciprocate for the Republicans' recalcitrance over the past six years.  The sniping has already begun just one day after the election; Mitch McConnell has warned that The President's statement of his intention to amend immigration policy with executive orders if the congress doesn't act portends to be a "red flag to a bull."  But at the same time, both sides are professing a renewed intention to cooperate across party lines.  My guess is that it isn't going to happen, and recent history certainly supports my presumption.

I don't like being a pessimist, but in this instance, I can't help myself.  President Obama held a news conference on the day after the election...during the business day.  I only know about the news conference because as I was cruising through the vapid channels on my television that night, I happened across it on C-span.  No one watches C-span who isn't a part of the government itself, and even they don't watch it at night.  What that suggests is that President Obama will continue in his diffident, if not pusillanimous, way for the next two years by refusing to present his ideas to the American electorate at a time--prime time on television--and at a place--the White House in either speeches or press conferences--at which he can make a significant impression on the electorate.  Frankly, I consider the Obama administration to be the worst thing that has happened to progressives since FDR died, and not because of opposition to the progressive platform.  Obama is a progressive, but he has pursued progressive goals with such reticence and innocuousness that I can only conclude that at heart, he is nothing but a political poltroon rather than the night errant that he purported to be when he ran for office in 2008.  There is no point in saying that I am disappointed; who cares whether I am disappointed.  I don't even care.  But the damage done to the progressive movement has been profound.  The majority of the American people have now been inoculated against it by the half-hearted exposure they have had to it since Barrack Obama took office.  It's going to take something profound to reverse the inuring of a nation to what is best for it and most reflective of who we are.

But there is still time.  If The President will "screw [his] courage to the sticking place," as Lady MacBeth counseled her husband, "...we will not fail."  Obama must confront the policies and practices of the Republican Party by going to "The People," and not at noon time in a factory in Ohio.  That just allows the news media, including Fox and CNN, to cherry pick his remarks for the most provocative words and phrases without putting them in context.  The President must present his case live in prime-time on the major networks so that no one is free to characterize what he says or repeat it elliptically so as to turn it on its head.  It is not the nation that needs him most.  It is his political creed, and if he doesn't buck up and do his job--which is as much to stand powerfully for what he believes as it is to just articulate it--he will be a failure despite "Obamacare," which in spite of Republican characterization is a success, though far short of the single payer system we need.  Barrack Obama is destined to go down in history right above George W. Bush and Herbert Hoover on the list of effective presidents, and that is at the bottom of the list no matter who is making it.  If I could gain Obama's ear, I would say, we progressives are your choir, Mr. President.  Speak to us, and everyone will hear you.  That's the only way to change your fate.

Your friend,

Mike 

Dear America,

It's the day after election day now, and as I always say, the country got what it deserves.  The Republicans will be firmly in charge of the federal legislature, and for what it's worth, the Connecticut legislature along with those of many other states.  All progressives have in their favor is a president whose diffidence is what has led to the ruination of the Democratic Party thus far.  But just as past is prologue, so is the present, and those who claim to be knowledgeable about politics are already projecting that the Republicans will be big losers in 2016...small consolation at present, but in the long run, I think the 2014 election will turn out to be a good thing.

The Republicans are already talking about cooperation in congress, as if they have been for it in the past and now can demand it from the position of the majority party.  But the fact is that cooperation only means "give me what I want and I'll call it even" to the Republican Party.  That is their creed, and it always leads to short term gains for them, at least over the past fifty years that has been the case.  Still, the maneuvering in Washington will continue to be internecine for the nation as a whole, and the Republicans will cry their crocodile tears over it...blaming the Democrats for everything and refusing to acknowledge that supply-side economics has been a disaster for everyone but the richest Americans, and for the nation as a whole except for the now infamous 1%.  Yet, with all that in mind, this is an opportunity for the Democrats that is unparalleled in recent history.  The Republicans now have what they want: control of congress.  And the onus is on them to do something with it.  At the same time, The Democrats have an opportunity to change the system so that obstructionism by the minority party cannot thwart the majority party in its quest to do the bidding of the electorate that sent them to Washington, and simultaneously, hypocrisy can be suppressed to the point that it no longer can yield political gains.  Of course I am talking about the first day of the 104th congress on which The Senate can change the rules.  Now, while the Democratic progressive party has a backstop in the veto power of the President of the United States for the next two years...in other words for the entirety of the 104th congress...they can advocate for the exercise of the "nuclear option" and end the filibuster as a political ploy by which to institutionalize "gridlock," otherwise known as obstructionism.  It is near certain that Mitch McConnell and John Boehner will remain in power, McConnell now being the leader of the majority in The Senate instead of the minority.  And if the Democrats hand them carte blanche by sponsoring the elimination of the filibuster, they have too choices.  The first, and most likely, is to decline to accept it, but that is risky because every time the Democrats exercise their filibuster rights the way the Republicans have without conscience for the past six years, they will have no one to blame but themselves, and the Democrats can blame them with impunity for the failures that will inevitably follow their ascent to control of congress just as they did when the Democrats took control.

The other option...that is accepting the challenge to end the filibuster as a political ploy that eviscerates democracy in The Senate by allowing the majority to prevent the implementation of the majority party's platform...will make the Republicans responsible for everything they legislate over the next two years, and when the American people get a taste of that, we will finally have a real election based on what the American people actually want rather than what gerrymandering and political manipulation of the legislative process make possible for the minority party.  Mind you, the Democrats are as guilty of manipulation of the system in favor of their positions whether they are in the majority or not, just as the Republicans have done in the recent past...and flagrantly so.  The bottom line is that the American people could better chart the nation's political course if the effect of every election was to empower the majority that the American people elect rather than empowering the minority to demagogically alter the course chosen by the electorate and make that choice seem mistaken by doing so.

It is time for the Democratic Party to show some foresight by holding the Republicans' feet to the fire once and for all by demanding that they do what they are going to do and take responsibility for it rather than blaming all failures on the opposition.  If I were President Obama, I would address the nation before the next session begins and tell the American people that I acknowledge that they want what the Republicans are offering them, and that while I wouldn't foreswear the veto entirely, I would exercise it with great restraint in deference to the popular will.  Then, each time the Republicans passed a law that favors the 1% at the expense of the rest of The People, I would go on television again and explain to the people what the new law will do to them...and that I was going to sign it unless the Republican majority asks him not to...and then let the people decide whether to make it clear to their representatives that they don't want the law if indeed they don't.  It is time that everyone bore responsibility for what he does, including us voters.  But of course, what are the odds that the Democrats and our diffident president will seize this opportunity.  Unfortunately, as I noted at the start, past is prologue in this instance too, and I have no doubt that once again, the diem won't get carpe'd.

Your friend,

Mike