December 2015 Archives

Dear America,

We are coming up on the end of another year, and after at least fifteen years of partisan, internecine political maneuvering, we, the American people, don't seem any closer to rectifying the dysfunction than we have been for the past decade and a half.  We continue to be encamped ideologically, and I must confess that I am no closer to voting to accommodate those of the opposite camp than they are to voting to accommodate me.  Frankly, I don't know where it will ever end, or even if it ever will.  The Republicans continue to take positions that seem inimical to the life, liberty and happiness of the vast majority of us, Republican and Democrat alike, but the party loyalists insist on putting party affiliation before reason.  For example, American corporations continue to ship our jobs over seas and the consequence is an employers labor market, which in turn keeps wages down.  The solutions are few, but simple.  First, tax profits taken by American corporations abroad.  Second, impose tariffs on goods imported to this country, even if they are made by American companies.  Third, disallow deduction of labor costs if they are incurred overseas.  Fourth, we can eliminate the R&D tax credit.  Note the word credit...not deduction, but credit.  Corporations that engage in research and development can deduct their expenses, just like any other expenses: payroll, advertising, improvements of physical plant and the like.  But in addition, they can take a portion of their R&D costs off their tax liabilities as well.  In other words, they get to double dip on some of their R&D expenditures by subtracting them from income before calculating their tax liabilities, and then subtracting a portion of them again after that calculation from the amount of taxes they owe.  An analog for the individual might be that if you pay medical expenses in excess of 7.5% of your adjusted gross income (you used to be able to deduct everything over 3%, but St. Ronald increased it to 5% in 1982 and in 1986 to 7.5% when he supposedly gave us all tax relief in what he called "a second American revolution") you get to deduct all or some of that overage from your adjusted gross income before figuring your tax.  But if medical deductions were treated like R&D expenses, you would then be able to subtract some of that deduction from your tax bill as well.  You would get to reduce your tax liability in two ways instead of just one, but no one is proposing that we individuals get such a boon...only corporations, and according to the IRS, mostly corporations with $250 million or more in gross income...the big guys.  We little guys get bupkis.  And last, but certainly not least, we could treat capital gains like ordinary income and get rid of the deficit right quick.

With just those measures, we could balance the federal budget, begin paying down the national debt, specifically the debt owed the Social Security and Medicare trust funds, and reductions of benefits would be obviated for even longer than the two and a half decades for which the Social Security Trust is currently funded.  The value of the  American worker would be enhanced, and as a result, many of those jobs delegated to foreign labor forces would come home, maybe even making the minimum wage unnecessary as we approached full employment because workers could command more pay.  There will always be a need for a minimum wage to protect workers in the service industries--$15.00 an hour in todays currency at least--but otherwise, the market itself might bring workers to the point that one job per household would be enough to provide what was needed to at least stay out of poverty.  In addition, we could stop letting hedge fund operators pay only 15% income tax and make them pay what the rest of us pay on what we take home, and we might generate enough of a surplus that we could actually begin to relieve the tax burdens of us ordinary Americans.  All of that together is nothing short of leveling the playing field so that the rich are less powerful and the rest of us at least can live decent lives in peace in exchange for the wealth we generate for the lucky few.  It all seems so imminently fair...and obvious...that I don't know why we American voters don't see it and insist that our politicians act on the inequity in our division of wealth in these ways, or even in some others.  But instead, we keep electing the same people who keep doing the same things.

I used to tell my kids when they were little that mistakes were like sticking your finger in a fan.  If you are at all reasonable, you don't stick your finger in it a second time.  But the way in which our government--currently dominated by conservatives, and Republicans in particular--operates, we are guaranteed to be required to keep swimming upstream for the rest of our lives.  To put it concisely, allowing conservative Republicans to prevent a progressive course for our nation--and when not in the majority, they did so with procedure even when they were in the minority, at least until recently--is like a whole nation sticking its collective finger in a huge fan...over and over again.  But it's about to be 2016, and we get another shot at it.  Maybe the majority of us will see to the heart of all this by November and turn it off instead.  Happy New Year...I hope.

Your friend,

Mike

Dear America,

The Republican platform is based on one premise and a proposition derived from it.  The premise is that the Obama administration has not just been a failure; it has been a disaster for the country.  The derivative proposition is that if you want more of the same, vote for Hillary Clinton.  The Republicans running for President never seem to state with any credibility in what fashion the Obama administration has failed the country...at least they never do so in anything but a conclusory fashion, positing the premise as if it were a fact without supporting it in any cogent way.  They say that "Obamacare" has been a disaster for the middle class, or that The President has failed to form a strategy in the fight against ISIL.  They claim that his administration, in tandem with the Dodd-Frank Act, has unnecessarily burdened finance with regulations that are inimical to American prosperity, and that regulations in general--from the EPA in particular--will kill the economy if left in place.  However, assuming that Republicans who vote aren't blindly trusting idiots, someone at some time is going to begin asking what they mean by that.  They'll ask, if Obamacare has led to tens of millions of previously uninsured people getting health insurance, and thus health care, how has it been a failure.  And they'll want to know how constraining the financial industry, which sank the country and the world into near-depression with naked speculation inspired not by business prudence but by sheer avarice, can be a bad thing.  And as to ISIL, they might begin to scratch their heads the next time they hear a Republican pule about The President lacking a strategy, and point out that he keeps on saying what he is doing and why.  He even gave a speech to the country about it, laying out what he is doing and his rationale, in other words, his strategy.  That's what  a strategy is, isn't it?

So, anticipating that the Democrats will do nothing to rebut these hollow arguments being launched by the Republican, arguments that are more of an ideological balloon than a factual "canon" ball (excuse the pun, but sometimes I can't resist), I want to point out some things myself.  I think that the Democrats are really doing what the Republicans should have done fifteen years ago when they controlled the entire federal government.  And their failure to do them is the real reason that things may not be that great right now.  The real reality, if you'll excuse the use of a pleonasm for rhetorical purposes, is that our president has had to spend the eight years of his administration, seven already having transpired, digging us out of their hole rather than creating one himself.   The four main areas of Republican hyperbole are the war against ISIL with a subtext about getting rid of Assad in Syria, financial regulation, environmental regulation as well as regulation in general, and the Affordable Care Act.  Let's start with the last one first.

The ACA was the best that President Obama could prevail on congress to do--and I fault the Democrats for this as well as the Republicans.  It was primarily the insurance subsidization plan we call Obamacare.  His goal originally was a single payer system like Medicare imbedded in the law as an option for everyone who wanted it.  Single payer is a model employed by almost all of the other thirty most industrialized nations, and despite Republican claims that what we have is better, we rank near or at the bottom of that list of countries in all meaningful categories including infant mortality, cancer and heart disease morbidity and mortality and life span.  As to the claim that single payer systems lead to long wait times for care and poor quality, our nearest neighbor, Canada, isn't having that experience, and I am willing to bet that you would  be hard pressed to get a repeal of Canada's system past the voters there.  So, what President Obama wanted wasn't what we got, but it was the best he could do...and the reason we don't have a better system despite the fact that during the Bush administration more than 60% of Americans supported a single payer system, is that Republican politicians and blue dog Democrats didn't want it, so they misled the public and created an internecine movement against it.  Next is the ISIL-Assad strategy.

There isn't much to be said about that.  The president has stated his policy over and over again, and even when claiming that he hasn't, the Republicans haven't yet come up with anything that could be called more distinctive than a variation on the Obama theme.  Similarly, as to regulation, the Republicans haven't said anything about how we would prevent the mine and environmental disasters that big business has continually inflicted on states like West Virginia even with regulations, if we eliminated regulations altogether.  And as for Dodd-Frank, it is the pale orphan sibling of the Glass-Steagall Act, which kept us safe financially from the predation of the 1% and the finance industry for almost seventy years, and it gives banks more freedom to keep doing what they did than I, or for that matter Glass or Steagall, would have allowed.  If the American people ever realize that--Martin O'Malley is counting on them doing so because that is his most distinctive platform plank--no Republican will ever utter such an idea again...if he is smart.

So, all in all, it seems to me that if the Democrats ever decide to defend themselves, they will probably do pretty well in 2016, and then the country will do better in 2017 and 2018.  While the Republicans want everyone to think that our economy is still sinking because of the Obama policies, almost no administration has come to fruition on account of Mitch McConnell's stated objective in 2009--that President Obama serve only one term--and the molding of a partisan strategy, assiduously adhered to by the party, that conformed to that stated goal.  Still, unemployment is down to 5% and we have better employment than most of Europe, if not all of it.  So, Merry Christmas, America.  We are doing well enough that the Fed is beginning to raise interest rates so as to prevent the economy from running too hot.  Considering that the Republicans created the mess, and have tried villainously to keep it going until the next election, we seem to be doing alright.  Now, all we have to do is spread the word.

Your friend,

Mike

Dear America,

I was going to watch the Republican debate this week, but every time I see one I am reminded of the clown car at the circus, and then I don't take them seriously.  But some of them are dangerous, so I didn't watch the debate just so that I wouldn't start taking the 2016 election for granted.  And it was probably a good decision based on the news accounts, which suggested that the whole affair was just more of the same, and not just more of the same as we have been getting in 2015.  It seems like a rerun, albeit with new characters, of an old slap-stick comedy from 2008 or 2012.  The debates in 2015 are populated by a cast of characters that I wouldn't want to run Hewlett-Packard, much less the United States...just like in 2008.  But this year, the persistent front-runner who never seems to get sufficient support to be a threat in the general election, but who is becoming more and more inescapably the likely Republican nominee, isn't just a patrician buffoon who drives around with his dog in a cage strapped on the roof of his car who has an elevator in his multi-million dollar Florida vacation home just for his wife's Cadillac.  This time, we don't just have a multi-millionaire whose father bequeathed him a fortune but who thinks he is a self-made man none-the-less.  This time we have a billionaire who thinks those things, even though if he had just put his inheritance in the bank he would have been where he is now in terms of wealth...but without multiple bankruptcies on his record.  And not only is he richer than last election's millionaire businessman, he is dumber and more outspoken about it.  Donald Trump is so obviously a fool in every respect that his popularity defies reason...even for most Republicans.  The experts and insiders have been predicting his political demise for months and months now, but he just gets more and more support from what I used to think of as the lunatic fringe, but what I now recognize as the mainstream of the Republican Party.  Donald Trump is what the Tea Party has been wishing for, and if he ever were to get elected, we would have a complete set in Washington: a White House, a Senate and a House of Representatives controlled, albeit not numerically, by zealot reactionaries.

This quote has been attributed to Abraham Lincoln since about twenty years after his assassination:

As a result of the war, corporations have been enthroned, and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working on the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands, and the republic is destroyed. I feel at this moment more anxiety for the safety of my country than ever before even in the midst of war. God grant that my suspicions may prove groundless.

Attribution of this quote to Lincoln is by scholarly consensus a canard.  The reasons given by various "scholars" for their incredulity with regard to such attribution vary in every way from elegance to lack thereof, and in reality, they are immaterial.  I believe that the source of an idea is not necessarily significant, especially if the idea has its own merit and needs no cachet from an author for it to be so.  In this case, it seems to me that whether or not the attribution is apocryphal, the author, no matter who he was, was onto something, and unfortunately, the premonitory nature of the quote is both striking and inductive of consternation.  The leading Republican is a very rich man, more by dint of fortuitous birth than of any talent or ability.  He seeks power by pandering to the worst fear and passions of a portion of the population that seems to think that fascism is acceptable  if it's in the name of a good, American cause...like ethnic purity or religiosity, both of which we have seen used by fascists before.  He is becoming a juggernaut, and even those whose nomination he seeks are seemingly powerless to stop him.  The social policies he proposes are ignoble, and he virtually manifests the danger of the concentration of wealth in the hands of the few, but the establishment continues to do no more than blithely rely on good karma for salvation.

It may not have been Lincoln who warned us of the danger we face.  But it matters not from whence the portent came.  It has come to fruition, and its favorite son wants to be president.

Your friend,

Mike

Dear America,

I have tried to research the issue  of Syrian refugees, or even Syrian

immigrants, committing acts of terror, but so  far I  haven't found anything comprehensive.  However, in the information that I have found, there is no

reference to a  single instance of a Syrian--refugee, naturalized citizen,

green card holder or citizen of the United States from birth whose ethnic origins go back to Syria--committing an act of terror or being tied to one.  There have been

several Bosnians, Uzbekistani's, Somali's, Pakistani's (like Farouk and

Malik in San Bernardino) and people of other extractions, notably including

at least two recent home-grown American military veterans and several

misguided all-American boys and girls, but  no Syrians.  So, how is

barring Syrian refugees from entering the country supposed to serve to

prevent acts of terror?  In fact, if Syrians are prone to committing acts

of terror, the things we are doing seem to have been 100% effective in

preventing them from doing so, so how is barring them from entering this

country as they flee from war going to do any better?  Further, how is monitoring Mosques going to serve any purpose?  As to excluding Muslims from immigration to the United States, we have to consider excluding all Christians too if that kind of classification is to be employed, because the statistics show that more Americans have been killed in terror attacks by Christian fundamentalists than by Muslim fundamentalists in the United States.  And if we are going to be guided in this exclusionary fervor by events worldwide, we had better start considering excluding Belgians and naturalized Frenchmen before we turn to excluding Syrians if we are being guided by propensity for terrorist activities.  So much for Donald Trump, but as for President Obama and the efficacy of his policies, consider this.

In his speech this past week, he outlined and explained his rationale for policies, including limited involvement in the campaign against ISIL, in clear detail.  The implications of his speech were these.  If Islamic extremism is going to be defeated in the middle east, the people of the middle east have to accomplish it or it will never endure.  Further, with a coalition of military forces acting, the exposure of the United States to terrorism is diluted, and without focus, the ISIL campaign becomes one against The West, not just us.  But to the extent that we are to continue to be involved in the battle against jihadist terrorism--to augment it with our military might either in the form of air power or men on the ground--congress must assent in order to legitimate the national effort rather than excusing itself from taking a position by continuing to point at The President with every criticism of his limited approach.  If they want more, they have to say so, and since the power to declare war reposes solely on them according to the constitution, which conservative Republicans claim to be bound by, their declaration in some form, even a new AUMF since there is no formally recognized nation to declare war on, is a sine qua non for the legitimacy of the American effort in Iraq and Syria.  Finally, The President propounded a mandate for Muslims around the world.  If they want to be included in this society and all others without distinction from everyone else, they must become active proponents of the extirpation of Islamic jihadism.  It is not sufficient for them to occasionally do so by condemning a specific act of terror.  They must become open and declared activists in the repudiation and exposure of jihad perpetrators here and abroad, including vocal and constant condemnation of ISIL en masse.  The Muslim community must state its position and restate it constantly, as the rest of the civilized world does, in order to be believed.  To live among us, they must show that they are with us, and thus become an integral part  of "us" not just as Americans, but as members of international society.

So as for Trump, Graham, Cruz and the rest of the xenophobes running for the Republican presidential nomination, they have nothing to add to President Obama's formulation of a plan to defeat ISIL...or at least they haven't added anything yet.  They can call Mr. Obama's strategy whatever they like, but they have yet to come up with a better idea...or even a civilized one.

Your friend,

Mike

Dear America,

This is what I don't understand about the American politics surrounding the Syrian conflict, which includes the efforts to oust Assad and destroy ISIL.

On September 14, just after 9/11 when the World Trade Center was destroyed with passenger jets, the American congress authorized military action against terrorism with what is now referred to as the AUMF: the Authorization for the Use of Military Force, and that led to what were tantamount to declarations of war by President W first on Afghanistan, and then in 2003 on Iraq.  On both occasions, harboring al Qaeda operatives was at least part of the pretext for war.  No one ever talked about the congressional abdication of its constitutional powers relative to declaring war, though it sometimes got mention as time passed.  And since the core purpose of the AUMF was to fight terrorism wherever in the world it was found, it continues to be the ostensible authorization for deployment of American arms and forces in Iraq, and now in Syria, where we have only a handful of soldiers fighting, or at least advising along with considerable air power.  But President Obama has asked congress to update, or pass a new, AUMF to specifically authorize him to deploy forces in Syria and what is now a putatively free country, Iraq.  The Republican congress has obdurately refused for what I can only assume are partisan reasons, yet they, and their aspirants to the presidency in particular, continually castigate President Obama for not doing more in Syria and Iraq with regard to fighting ISIL.  Concomitantly, they complain that they can't trust President Obama because he has used what amounts to prosecutorial discretion, executive power no matter what you call it, to limit the effects of current immigration law on young people who are in this country illegally through no fault of their own and have lived virtually all of their lives as Americans...going to school, working and paying taxes...just like the rest of us.  So, the Republicans have been criticizing President Obama for both using too much executive initiative and not using enough at the same time.  Now the other side of this coin.

This has been going on for at least three years, ever since the civil war in Syria began.  While the Republicans complain that we should have declared war on Assad like we did on Saddam Hussein and the Afghani Taliban, who controlled Afghanistan in 2001, all the while refusing to give President Obama the authority to act, the Democrats have declined to call them on it.  Some Democrats even agree with the Republicans that the President should have done more to overthrow Assad, but none of them ever point out that doing so would be the overstepping of constitutional checks and balances because congress has refused to authorize such a military action.  As it is, President Obama has deployed American military force abroad without congressional input much less action in the form of authorization of such actions...about which they never complain, incidentally...but no Democrat ever points out that the only things we are doing in furtherance of what seems to be the Republican goal of ridding the world of Assad and ISIL are being done despite the fact that the Republicans refuse to authorize even that much of an effort.  The President has even gone so far as to send congress a draft of what he wants them to authorize him to do, but they still refuse.  And as in the case of the Affordable Care Act and Dodd-Frank, they have been unable to propose their own alternatives.  In other words, the Republicans have decided that no action is better than any on both the Middle Eastern front and the Wall Street front.  So why isn't any Democrat pointing that out.

I'm hoping that the lack of zeal for response to partisanship with partisanship is a coherent strategy.  That's what the Republicans say they want from The President...a coherent strategy in Syria and Iraq, and that's what I want from the Democrats relative to the Republicans' coherent strategy of demanding a coherent strategy from the other side while offering none of their own.  But as far as I can tell, if the Democrats do have a strategy, it is only one of two possibilities.  Either they are trying to take the high road so that they can boast to the electorate that while the Republicans have descended into partisan hell in an effort to regain control of the Presidency, the only branch of government that they don't already control, or they are waiting to point out the internal contradictions in the Republican focus on President Obama's policies even though they are the obstacle to him doing anything more, and despite the fact that he isn't running for anything anymore anyway.  The former strategy is a little subtle for my taste and smacks a bit of "can't we all just get along."  Such exhortations never work.  But if the Democrats are just waiting to spring until a Democratic nomination is sewn up, that might work.

Of course, we are facing odds here.  How often have the Democrats united to do the smart thing.  I am reminded of Brad Stupack and the Stupettes when Mr. Obama was trying to get congress to pass a health care law that is not what he wanted but was the best he could get out of congress at the time.  Stupack and the other "Blue Dog Democrats," otherwise known as Republicans in Democrat clothing, basically sabotaged any chance of a single-payer system and damn near sabotaged the Affordable Care Act over a demand for assurance that the Hyde Amendment, a forty year old prohibition of use of federal funds for abortion, applied to the Affordable Care Act as if there was a possibility that it might not.  Thus, the question really boils down to this: when it comes to the Democratic Party, is there any way that a smart plan can get an amen.  My fingers are crossed.

Your friend,

Mike