October 2015 Archives

Dear America,

Hillary Clinton having shown her mettle at the Democratic debate this week, her next test will be her testimony before the congressional Benghazi committee, which has already been discredited by one of its leading lights, former presumptive Speaker of the House, Kevin McCarthy, and by a military man fired by the committee for his refusal to persecute rather than investigate.  As Ms. Clinton said at the debate, the committee is a naked attempt to legitimate the Republicans' political operations against her, and there are now two insiders who have said so.  As long as she doesn't present them with an unanticipated gaff of profound proportions, this testimony is just an exercise in illumination of the Republican Party's quintessential partisan corruption of our democratic processes.  But while Clinton is more or less home free, the hearing is just one of two showcases for Republican ineptitude and political reprobation.  There is still the matter of electing a new Republican spear catcher to be Speaker of the House.

Most notable in this latter struggle is the fact that The Speaker's gavel has been a sought-after implement of power for two centuries now.  You may remember in the past...the recent past considering John Boehner's rise to, and struggle to keep, the position...that there has always been more than one aspirant to the "throne" and the politics of the majority party have been evinced in the news that has emanated from what is in general an intra-party contest.  But now, and for the first time in my memory, while there are two aspirants, Chaffetz of the Tea Party and Webster of who knows what other than obscurity, neither of them has a chance.  The only person who might be elected is so wary of leading his own party that he has steadfastly refused to be considered.  I have never heard of someone being begged to be Speaker of the House, much less of anyone saying he would not serve when asked.  Between Benghazi and this hot-potato Speakership debacle, the Republicans are wearing their baser instincts and qualities on their collective sleeve.  That old-foot shooting pistol is loaded for bear this time, and I don't see how the party can fail to shoot off at least a few toes before the next presidential election in 2016.

Ryan's position is entirely understandable given his own ambitions and the constituencies rearing their heads within the Republican caucus.  As to the former, there has been only one Speaker who has been elected president: James K. Polk in 1844.  While Ryan has never shown a particular presidential ambition other than accepting the wing-and-a-prayer nomination for the Republican vice-presidential spot on Mitt Romney's ticket, he is only 42, and after this stint on the House Ways and Means committee, of which he is the chairman, he will have a lot of "congress cred" that could easily be converted to presidential timber.  The conventional wisdom is that he has always wanted to chair the Ways and Means committee and that now that he is there, he has no other ambitions, but how many times have you heard that one.  But whether Ryan's arm gets sufficiently twisted that he commits presidential suicide by becoming Speaker, and whether he has higher ambitions or not, the Republican struggle to find a willing victim is telling, and sooner or later, the American electorate will have no choice but to notice the effete and epicene nature of the party.  Their only tactic of choice is vilification of the opposition with a claim to be on God's side in every respect as a backdrop.  But the American people are in favor of a woman's right to choose, a more liberal immigration policy under which those who contribute to our society are welcomed in as citizens, fairness in the work place and a more equitable system by which to allocate wealth than the one that the Republicans have cobbled together over the past 35 years.  That Republican legacy includes a tax law that the progenitor of the "modern" Republican Party, Ronald Reagan, bragged about simplifying, calling his re-edification of U.S. tax law "the new American Revolution" by dint of its putative simplicity.  Since then, sops for the wealthiest Americans have crept in along with some that Reagan himself designed, like lower taxes on capital gains than on real, earned income.  And I am convinced that there is a limit to the ability of the Republicans to fool some of the people all of the time with this supply-side, let's let the rich deduct their jets from their taxes so that they can create more jobs nonsense; note that they never explain the connection between the rich getting richer and the prosperity of the rest of us other than to postulate that the rich are magnanimous and they will do the right thing by investing their wealth in our future.  So, the cloak of righteousness behind which they hide seems to be wearing a little thin and frayed around the edges, which means that whether they like it or not, this problem with electing a Speaker allows the American people to see behind the curtain.  My guess is that they won't like what they see.

Your friend,

Mike

Dear America,

I watched both of the previous Republican debates...at least for as long as I could stand it...and now I have watched most of the only Democratic debate (I was watching on my Roku and some kind of malfunction in the CNN feed caused the last half hour or so to be inaccessible).  In fairness, I must admit that I am a Democrat in the same way in which Bernie Sanders is--I vote Democratic because the party's ticket leans closer to my preferences than does the Republican--but still, it seemed to me that the quality and character of the Democratic effort far surpassed that of the Republican debates because the quality and character of the candidates was so far superior to what the Republicans are offering.  There was no one like Donald Trump on the stage for one thing, and that is always a plus.  In addition, the candidates who wanted to be taken seriously spent very little time on their resumes and addressed the questions asked rather than the ones they wanted to address.  And there seemed to be more substance to both the questions and the answers when the Democrats debated than there had been on the occasions of the Republican debates, and the Democratic increment over the Republicans was not just a shade of difference.  It was Huge, to quote Donald Trump.  Then there was the lack of cat fighting among the Democrat candidates, which was profoundly notable in my opinion, especially when contrasted with the thumping attempts of the self-lauding Republicans both times they got together.  It may be that civility isn't important in politics, at least if you ask Republicans.  They seem to like gutter-wallowing fights rather than substantive debate, but I find myself wondering whether any Republicans watched the Democrats last night, and if they did, were they thinking, how come the Democrats got all the thinkers.

If any Republicans watched, they would surely have noticed that there was very little hypothetical talk about supply-side economic effects, easily summed up in the idea that if we help the rich, it will be good for the rest of us.  Instead, the Democrats univocally decried the concentration of wealth in the hands of a few would-be oligarchs, documentation of which is accessible on the internet if you look at reliable resources, a phenomenon that is undisputed by the Republicans as far as I am aware.  Commentators have been acknowledging that we are back to the place we were at when the rapacity of the big banks and their clientele drove our economy over the brink and into the abyss, and it's even worse now than it was before the last depression in 1929.  There is even more wealth inuring to the top 1% now than was accruing in their bank accounts in 2007 when the whole catastrophe befell us, and the Democrats on the stage last night not only pointed that out, they proposed ways in which to deal with it: modification of the tax code, more equitable access to higher education including relief for those who are in debt now and for those who will be in debt for tuition and fees in the future if nothing changes, free tuition at public institutions of higher learning paid for with higher taxes on the rich, health care reform, family leave for childbirth and illness, Social Security reform to make the program more helpful for those near the bottom of the wealth scale and a general emphasis on real opportunity for all rather than the simulation of it that the Republicans think they are advocating  in the form of support for entrepreneurs and big business.  Even on the issue of foreign policy there was far less jockeying for position than there was candid assessments of the situations in Syria and Ukraine as well as the international outlaw practices of Vladimir Putin and the Russians.  The unwillingness of the Democrats to embrace the jingoism and blustery chauvinism of Republicans like Trump, who thinks he can prevail on Putin with nothing more than the force of his personality, was univocal and, while the assertiveness that each candidate might employ in the formulation of American foreign policy under the aegis of his or her administration might have varied, but there was no braggadocio about American might and the role it should play nor was the notion of bloodying Putin's nose ever suggested.  Instead there were varying approaches from a no-fly zone advocated by Hillary Clinton to Bernie Sanders' insistence that the Arab states in the region unify and confront ISIL and Assad, the brutal dictator that everyone is trying to overthrow in Syria.  There was divergence of opinion on the nuclear deal with Iran, but no one called anyone else stupid on account of it.  And in the end, even the least competent of the candidates--Lincoln Chaffee and Jim Webb in my opinion--did not resort to diatribes and demagoguery, like Carly Fiorina's diatribe about one of the Planned Parenthood videos that had film of an abortion appended to it even though the video was supposed to be about funding of abortion rather than its true intent: to oppose abortion in general.

I guess that what it comes down to is that during the Democratic debate, there was nothing but critical thinking in evidence: no personal vituperation, no invidious comparisons with other Democrats, no sloganeering and no pandering to the baser instincts of the constituency meant to be affected by the debate.  It was like a cocktail party versus the children's birthday party with the clown and the bouncy house in your back yard.  It was like a symposium rather than a celebrity roast.  It was grown ups talking rather than kids exchanging barbs in the school yard at recess.  I just hope that at least a few Republicans were watching, and that they are willing to look beyond dogma to really think about things...with their own heads rather than someone else's.

Your friend,

Mike

Dear America,

I don't know if John Boehner is smart enough to have engineered the position in which he finds himself today--frankly, I doubt it--but after Kevin McCarthy's withdrawal from the election for the next Speaker of The House, Boehner is top dog, not just in name this time, but in reality...or perhaps more aptly the top cat...the one in the catbird seat.  McCarthy, who was Boehner's chosen successor, demonstrated his unworthiness almost immediately by confessing for his party the cardinal sin that the Democrats had been accusing them of committing collectively for a couple of years now: prurient intentions.  McCarthy confirmed that the Benghazi hearings in particular, but by implication the email "scandal" as well, were designed to take Hillary Clinton down...McCarthy never mentioning some other higher purpose to legitimate the effort.   The public hectoring of Hillary Clinton so as to deprive her of the inevitability of nomination as the next Democratic presidential nominee, not to mention election to the office, was one of those unsavory, sub rosa political enterprises that is as plain as the nose on Pinnochio's face but none-the-less impossible to prove.  And if they were to be honest (not a likely prospect no matter what the issue) they would admit that they don't really think they can beat her if she prevails in her party, so all this Benghazi breast beating over...I don't know what it's over to tell you the truth...was a sort of cabalistic scheme, but they don't have to know.  Their ostensible presumed successor to Boehner did it for them.  With McCarthy gone, the two next most likely prospects-- and neither of them is particularly likely--are Jason Chaffetz, who is himself one of the Machiavellians tormenting Clinton, and a guy ironically named Daniel Webster who is even deeper entrenched in the Tea Party movement than Chaffetz.  One of those two guys will be the choice of each of the forty or so members of the rebel alliance within the Republican Party, which means that neither has a chance in hell of winning because there are at least enough rational Republicans to prevent it, though not enough to prevail with regard to a choice of their own.  And in light of this shambolic advent that is like a beacon illuminating the dysfunction of the Republican Party, who emerges?  Well it seems that John Boehner's 'da man now.  What an opportunity for both the Republican Party and Boehner, who probably would like to leave behind at least one accomplishment about which he can brag to his golfing buddies.  So the important question isn't whether he was smart enough to create the chance to do something significant, it is whether he is smart enough to conceive of that significant something and make it happen.

Even Republicans are now admitting that for a Republican Speaker of The House to be elected, Democratic votes are going to be needed.  But as everyone knows, the Democrats aren't going to cast those votes out of largess.  They want a two year budget deal...as do those in the Republican establishment who see that crippling government, even spendthrift government, only hurts them.  And before they vote on the latest trade deal, the Democrats are going to oppose President Obama's attempt to make nice with the countries of the Pacific rim by sending them some of the jobs that NAFTA didn't already send packing to Mexico.  Both sides have leverage if they can find a way to work together, and with a common purpose and their purpose in pursuing it being service to the nation (my tongue is in my cheek now) the ancillary benefit might just be the routing...once and for all...of the rebellious palace guard that thinks it comprises the de facto junta that is running the nation, refusing to admit that the only way they are running us is into the ground.  Think about it.  If by submitting to real pragmatism, rather than condemning it as the capitulation that became the political slur by which the vipers in their bosom rose to an absurdist kind of control, a temporary palliation of a bad situation...well, a strategy could be born here that would genuinely serve the nation by becoming the template for consensus formulation for the foreseeable future.  We might see laws being passed because votes will be allowed.  People who wouldn't dare now to admit their true motivations for fear of the Republican guillotine coming down on their heads courtesy of the irrational reactionary constituency of the Republican Party might give in to the realization that they are not nearly in the national main stream and vote with governance in mind.  We could have the kind of working majority that admits of the possibility that no one knows or gets everything, and from that might come the reemergence of honesty as a salient political credential.  Go get em' John.  Win one for the guy who played The Gipper.

Your friend,

Mike

Dear America,

A Pew research poll released this week evinced the will of the American people on what has become the cynosure of the conservative political movement.  Pew found that by a margin of 60% to 40% we want any new budget deal to include funding for Planned Parenthood.  Of course, that begs a question, but unfortunately, it is a different question for each of the factions in our politics, and still another for those of us who cast our votes every other November.  The central question for us American democrats is, whose will are the members of congress supposed to be implementing.  If you ask the forty or so hard-core conservatives in our House of Representatives, it is their will that counts because, after all, they are the righteous in our society...the values politicians...the modern apostles.  For them, this issue is about  Obamacare for one thing, but primarily about abortion, and their erroneous belief is that by forcing the defunding Planned Parenthood they can prevent the organization from providing abortions.  But in reality, Planned Parenthood is about many more things than providing abortions, and besides, their private, charitable funding provides the funding of their abortion related activities, always has and always will, since it would be a violation of the "Hyde Amendment"--the federal statutory proscription of the use of federal funds for abortions--for Planned Parenthood to use federal funds to do so.  In fact, the federal funding in question is primarily Medicaid and Medicare charges for health care services, primarily for women, and neither program pays for abortions anyway.  So this recent scrum over the issue is a red herring intended to show the power of the small but vocal minority of the Republican party that would presume to tell us all how we should live on the basis of their own positivism and sanctimony...the secular majority be damned.

But speaking of the devil, the question for those ideological tyrants who managed to overthrow John Boehner is, how do we put this issue up on the board again, and their answer is that in their weakness, their party was unable to pass anything but a two month temporary budget agreement.  So, they will take another shot at Planned Parenthood in December when the next budget deal is up for consideration and the next speaker of the house will have to deal with them.  The question for the Republicans is, what are we going to do to protect our party from the internecine destruction that this small core of recalcitrant, would-be, self-appointed keepers of the American ethic are perpetrating.  Personally, I don't care if the Republican Party survives given its current modus operandi of obstructionism and propagandistic prevarication.  But it concerns me that Machiavellians like Ted Cruz have become the leaders-in-fact of this movement, and they are demagogues who seem to capture the imaginations of the weakest thinkers in our society.  A motivated majority of fools is just as dangerous as the majority of fascists that they think they rightfully fear.  The rest of us may constitute an electoral majority, but what if we don't?  What if some blathering bombast like Donald Trump, or worse yet, a clever, facile ayatollah-like demagogue like Ted Cruz actually becomes president?  With that in mind, I hope the Republicans find an answer to the question that they should be asking themselves now that there is data to demonstrate that their mainstream more closely represents the will of the American people than does the fanatical cabal that thinks itself entitled to control the Republican Party from the back bench minority position that they currently occupy.  It may occur to the Republican mainstream that, for the first time, they should elect a Democrat for Speaker even though no majority party has ever allowed such an outcome, which brings us to the Democrats.

Speaking of the Democrats, thus far they have been consigned to the back room because they don't have sufficient votes to do anything in their chamber.  But it may be that their plight is their advantage.  With elections impending and campaigning in earnest about to begin, they can probably say next to nothing and take back at least The House, but will they use that advent to promulgate rules changes that will prevent the kind of stalemate that has paralyzed both houses of congress for more than a decade, and thus prevent the reiteration of the kind of tyranny of the minority that we are seeing right now.  Maybe they will see that the democratic process in this country is the ideological analog to the free market in our capitalist society.  If they can muster the courage...and the will...to get rid of the filibuster in The Senate and a raft of rules in The House that permit the Speaker, and therefore the ruling party to prevent votes on issues when they don't want to be known for the votes they would cast if they had to--in other words trust us Americans to re-elect those who do what we want and cast out those who don't--we might all get what we want, including the Democratic Party.

Your friend,

Mike