By: fried fish in ALEA
Tue, 02 Aug 11 1:52 PM

Msg. 05543 of 05546

Hi TKC,
I have been out of the coutry for a week in canada fishing. I have found your commentary here quite disturbing and interesting at the same time. What I find disturbing is the body politic's lack of historical economic knowledge and willingness to swallow the tea party meme(s).

I find it also intersting that we have a ton in common in the evolution of our thinking. I have a conservative family and economic background, but do not recognize these principles in today's tea party republicans or really mainstream conservatism for that matter. We have gone SOOOOOO far to the right that I think Alea nailed it when he said he thinks most American's are unaware of how far we have drifted from the cultural political values we grew up with during the 1960's - 1980's.

What conservatives want today is to evisorate what is left of the safety net, the new society, and ouur collective social institutions like public health care, public education, etc...

On the econimics side, as a college level economics instructor, what I can tell you is that there is no escaping the age old formula of GDP = (C)onsumption + (I)nvestment + (G)overnment + (Exn)net exports.
So what do we have here, a trade deficit so exn is a negative component to GDP. Ah, Consumption and private investment spending has gone down dramatically during this "great recession". So, the only component that has any capacity to be manipulated to stimulate the economy is (G)overnment spending, and we (tea baggers) are slashing that as we push ourselves head long into a depression. There is not a single shred of evidence that these out of whack tax rates are stimulating economic growth. They are certaintly concentrating wealth, but with corporate profits at record levels and with no substantial additions to employment taking place we are entering a phase of permanent 10-15% unemploymet and we don't know if that is sustainable for social and political stability.

The scary component to all of this is how our system of checks and balances has been so radically breached. The Supreme Court, the role of the fillibuster and now add debt ceilings negotiations to the growing list of tools now weilded by the tyranny of the minority. It was Federalist paper number 51 where it was once said that we must safeguard ourselves from the abuses of concentrated power:

"But the great security against a gradual concentration of the several powers in the same department, consists in giving to those who administer each department the necessary constitutional means and personal motives to resist encroachments of the others. The provision for defense must in this, as in all other cases, be made commensurate to the danger of attack. Ambition must be made to counteract ambition. The interest of the man must be connected with the constitutional rights of the place. It may be a reflection on human nature, that such devices should be necessary to control the abuses of government. But what is government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself. A dependence on the people is, no doubt, the primary control on the government; but experience has taught mankind the necessity of auxiliary precautions. This policy of supplying, by opposite and rival interests, the defect of better motives, might be traced through the whole system of human affairs, private as well as public. We see it particularly displayed in all the subordinate distributions of power, where the constant aim is to divide and arrange the several offices in such a manner as that each may be a check on the other that the private interest of every individual may be a sentinel over the public rights.."

What the tea party is expressing is the notion that private rights and economic policy it embodies surpasses any collective or public ambition to share in the benefits of wealth created within our once great nation. The dividing up of the carcass of the U.S. seems to be their interest, the rest of us be dammed. Public services, public goods are for some strange reason now portrayed as the enemy to our citizens, yet this meme has a curious yet unexamined origin. I mean after all, when you discuss the quantity and quality of public goods in an honest intellectual manner, any U.S. citizen who has traveld abroad comes home with an increased appreciation for the national infrastructure our progressive tax system has enabled. From public health to universities, roads, schools, libraries, even mosquito abatement districts these tax funded public goods have lead to an increased and shared level of nationa prosperity.
Furthermore, the average citizen wants more, not less of these public goods to be distributed to them. Obviously, the meme that took root in the 1980's and has since flurished to disable the public sector is that "all taxes are bad" as embodied by the tea party and their clueless leader Mr. Norquist.

Supreme Court justice Oliver Wendal Holmes once said "I like taxes, with taxes I buy civilization".
What I am curious about is what the tea baggers vision of our country is after the distruction of what they call these "liberal institutions". After all, they are American institution that have served our collective interests better than any other system of government the world has ever seen. In a real sense, the tea baggers represent an American assualt or treasonous attack on our own citizens, and the disablement of the American system of values and our institutional way of life.

Some of the only questions I have left include: How much more damage will be inflicted, can it be overcome, and how long will the upcoming depression and the pain it will wreak on our society last? Will our democracy survie this assault on its own people? Will the populace awaken in time to make real change at the voting booth? To me the next six months in Wisconsin will be a national barometer of wether or not the teap party gets swept aside by a rising tide of anti-republican voters, or whether apathy or Faux news propaganda will allow the minions who control Governor Walker to walk away with a crippling permanent defeat of the social institutions of the state of Wisconsin.

If you do not know much about this state, as a neighbor of mine form Illinois, I can tell you that the progressive tax sytem there, its incredible local and state university systems are now in great peril. Every small town in Wisconsin has had over the last twenty years a great local high school built, and their university system is really second to none. I have talked to so many Wisconsin citizens over the last few months and they are beyond outraged. This assault on Wisconsin institutions, the middle class, and thier school is not what they voted for when they elected Walker. Now the dirty work in the electins must be carried out to reflect the over reach by these tea partiers. So far early indications are that the republican party in Wisconsin is in real trouble, but the next month will tell the tale.

As I have said here many a time, I am not historically a liberal. So I do not see this board as having a liberal bias. I see this board as a place to have honest discussions of where our policy makers are taking us as a country. I can tell you that Hari Seldon was once one of the most ardent republicans you would ever find anywhere. After the Bush presidency and all of the destructive policies it embodied, he has now also come to the same conclusion I have, the republican party is not our father's republican party. The republican party is now a party of exclusion, fear, war, greed, anti-taxation, anti-union, reduction or elimination of civil rights and liberties and in essence attacking all of the institution that made this a great country.

I will never vote for a republican again as long as I live no matter how much of a free market capatalist I may be. It boggles my mind that in these desperate times people vote their pocket book as if they are the rich element of society that a progressive tax system would target. The average Joe has nothing to fear from these tax increases on the ubber wealthy yet votes to protect them and their millions or billions while their own families and their children's futures are being placed in real jeopardy.

TKC, I hope you walk the pavement for the democratic candidate who challenges you tea party representative. No matter how uncomfortable it may make you feel, you now know what they really stand for and you have an obligation to all of us to send a member to congress who will not embrace the reactionary political views of the far right wing of the republican party. And besides, you will get over that dirty feeling in a few weeks, because deep down you know a government needs to serve its people, not the corporations who also share our boundaries.

When the Republican leadership gleefully threatens to send us into default, there is something seriously wrong with our system of government and the make up of the voting members of these institutions. The only hypocrisy of this current crisis anyone should focus on is the seven times the republicans voted without a whisper of crisis when president Bush raised the debt limits to fight his wars. Now suddenly the debt ceiling is used as a weapon to hold the rest of society hostage and to extract huge government spending cuts after the same republicans voted for huge deficit spending during the Bush debacle. There needs to be an electoral revolution over this hypocrisy. The party of NO needs to be devistat4ed in the 2012 elections. I don't hold out much hope, for the elecorate is too ignorant to vote in its own interests.......

FF

DO SOMETHING!