The One Thing To Know

I'm one of those strange people who have never had the desire to have or raise children and luckily my wife is also one of those strange people.  Some of the reasons for this have been mentioned in another blog post.  Despite bearing no offspring I've often thought of some of the lessons I would try to teach to a young child based on my own life experience.  The truth is, kids or no kids, I feel like we all have an obligation to pass on some of the hard earned wisdom that has been gained through experience.  In theory the human race should be evolving for the better with each generation as the mistakes of the previous ones are avoided and knowledge is passed on.  It doesn't appear to be working out quite that neatly but it's a good thought.

Regarding the advice I would give, the first thing that comes to mind can be conveyed in two words.

Be kind.

That's more than a little cliché and too simple to be very interesting but I honestly can't imagine a more important value to instill in our little human beings in the making.  If anything will make the world a better place to be, it's more love and kindness.  Hat tip to the Beatles for preaching this message to millions of adoring and impressionable fans all over the world - all you need is love.

The problem with my simple advice of "be kind" is that part of just about anyone will be asking, "what's in for me?".  Well there is a lot in it for you.  There is now scientific evidence proving there is something in it for you, but don't take anyone's word for it, just try it and find out.  Be your own scientist.  Life is one big experiment.  Test the hypothesis and see what you get out of it. 

Knowing that there's a part in many of us that will still not have the 'what's in it for me?' feeling satisfied, and intrigued by the challenge of coming up with some less cliché words of wisdom, I'd like to contribute another small nugget. 

This one is meant to appeal purely to the sentiment of self-interest but will make being kind and everything else a much easier proposition.  Unfortunately I can't summarize this one in two short words or even two long sentences but if I were given the opportunity to tip off a younger version of myself to a concept that would make all of life flow much more easily, this would be it:

There is a part of you that is already whole, happy, peaceful, and perfectly at ease at all points within the wide range of human experience, from the beautiful to the horrifying.  Seek out this part of yourself with every ounce of effort you can muster.  Pardon another cliché, but look within.  Be still and quiet.  Take it on faith at first.  Just know that it's there and it thrives no matter what life may throw at you; and life will throw many things at you.  There will be very low and scary points and also very happy and exciting points, interspersed with periods of boredom or melancholy.  The range of human emotions and experiences is vast and there is no escaping the fact that to some degree you will find yourself at every point along that spectrum.  Just know there is that part of you that is perfectly at peace and happy regardless of outer circumstances.

Put another way, develop an inner life.  Start out with the simple faith that within yourself is this perfectly happy and peaceful awareness that is always present no matter what happens 'out there'. From that starting point seek out this part of yourself.  There are many things you can do to progress from faith to firsthand experience. The most effective is to meditate.  Learn to be still and quiet and to let all of the mental activity naturally quiet down and become familiar with what remains.  Be there for extended periods of time.  That's the most direct route.

There are many helpful references that you can consult to assist with this primary objective of cultivating an inner life.  Read and absorb the teachings of Jesus, Buddha, and more modern authentic teachers of spirituality like Ramana Maharshi, Nisargadatta, Ramakrishna, Paramahansa Yogananda, and their contemporaries such as Eckhart Tolle, Roy Eugene Davis, and Adyashanti.  These are just a few. There are many others, dozens if not hundreds of teachers that essentially have the same message presented in their own unique way. If eastern sounding teachers/teachings turn you off, there are western teachers as well.  We all possess a unique set of personality characteristics and some presentations will appeal or click with us better than others.  The point is that there are plenty of helpful guides out there if we feel inclined to consult with external sources in our effort to discover this part of ourselves that is always whole, happy, at peace, and untouched by external circumstances.

It isn't necessary to put this in a religious or spiritual context.  Religion has discredited itself over the millennia and a number of people are uncomfortable with the idea of spirituality, and if either of those apply to you, just think of it as a psychological exercise.  Again, know there is a peaceful and still center within you and find it.  The repetition here is intentional because it is the main message and theme of this post and if I could pass anything on to my own children or any that I might influence - this would be it.  Adults too.  I sincerely feel like it is the most valuable piece of advice that could be offered.  It will make every other endeavor that much easier.

This isn't the same as the grand, impossible sounding idea of Spiritual Enlightenment.  It's practical and accessible to anyone and doesn't require an excessive amount of intelligence or material wealth. If you can begin to know that part of yourself that is already whole and is untouchable by outer circumstances, it will be an invaluable refuge when times are hard and a necessary grounding force when everything seems to be going perfectly. 

In an effort at clarity here are some more characteristics of this part of you that I am referring to; nothing can be subtracted or added to it, it requires no one's approval, it is there in all of it's fullness and wholeness even when everything else seems to be falling apart, it is deeper than any temporary emotion or feeling that you may be experiencing at any point in time, it could be said that it is perfect or flawless. Also: it is always 'there', it is the silent witness to everything happening inside and outside of you, it is unchanging, and it is what you have in common with every other living being in the universe.  If any of that sounds too new agey or out there for your personal tastes, just overlook it.  I am just trying to outline something and paint a picture and I'm limited by my own personality and perspective.  Different adjectives and descriptions may work better for your disposition but the general idea is the same.

Nothing can fully exempt any of us from the perils and fragility of the human experience but what I am describing here can definitely smooth the way.  I personally haven't perfected living from the state of consciousness I am referring to but I have enough experience with it to know what I'm talking about and to confidently say it is the most valuable thing I could 'give' to another human being. (You can't give someone something they already have, but you can alert them to the fact that they have it.)

The end result of this pursuit is the intuitive and pervading sense that at all times, in every circumstance, all is well.   That doesn't mean all problems go away or that everything will always be perfect on the material or emotional level. It means they don't have to be and you are still okay.  All is well.  But please do not take my word for it. Experiment and find out for yourself.  Be patient but be diligent. 

So there it is. My words of wisdom to my non-existent children (or anyone else who's interested).

I could probably tighten this up and make it more concise but this will do for now.  Be kind. All is well.

Piercing The Veil

I’d like to take some time here to describe a world that I’m pretty familiar with.  It’s a sort of parallel universe that is similar to ours, but different.  The people who inhabit it know certain things.  They know that Barack Obama’s presidency has been a total disaster.  They know he is the worst president ever in the history of history. Ever.  In this parallel world, inhabited by these people who are privy to things the rest of us are not, there are some indisputable truths. 

Some of them are as follows:  Obama is the worst president in the history of the world. (Maybe I’ve already mentioned that one.) Obama has wrecked the American economy and the entrepreneurial spirit.  His policies have ushered in an age of government dependency and socialism.  He has put an unprecedented tax and regulatory burden on America’s job creators and its middle class.  He has increased the national debt and deficit at a rate never before seen in the history of the United States.  His foreign policy has been a disaster.  After going on an apology tour to Muslim countries where he apologized profusely for American values, he lowered America’s standing in the world by signaling that he was a weak and indecisive leader of the free world.  He’s been weak on terrorism.  He hates the military.  He hates Christians.   He especially hates Christians that are in the military.   He’s a radical.  It’s obvious to everyone.  He’ll be a one termer. Probably lose the election by a landslide, just like Jimmy Carter.  He’s the black Jimmy Carter; biggest mistake America ever made.  After all, everyone knows that O.B.A.M.A. stands for “One Big Ass Mistake America”!

I might have gotten a little carried away towards the end but that is a general outline of the parallel universe.

Now, if you don’t inhabit that rarified plane or are otherwise unfamiliar with it, some of that stuff might sound a little crazy or extreme.  You might get the impression that only really crazy and extreme people would believe those things, but you would be very wrong.  You see, I am familiar with this other world because I know many people who live there.  And most of them are not crazy or irrational or unreasonable at all.  Many of them are very smart and even educated.  They’re good people, many of my own friends and family.  (To be fair, a few of them really are certifiably batshit looney, but not many!)

This is a fascinating thing to me.  Because while I am intimately familiar with this world where everyone knows – just knows! – these types of things to be true…I reside outside of this world.  To me, each and every one of those “truths” mentioned above, are easily debunked luminous piles of horse shit.

To put it simply, anyone who is well informed from a variety of sources can quickly see that any and all of the statements above are either just flat wrong or at best are wildly exaggerated.  There is objective, empirical, publicly available data that deflates most of the truths of our aforementioned alternate reality.

This parallel information universe has some names.  Bill Maher calls it The Bubble.  John Stewart refers to it as Bullshit Mountain.  Even a prominent conservative, Julian Sanchez, wrote a piece several years ago describing it as “epistemic closure”.  Whatever you want to call it, it is a closed circuit information loop - an echo chamber that operates outside of the established parameters of science, math, even history. 

And some very good, otherwise smart people get stuck there; close friends and family of mine, people I respect. 

All snark and sarcasm aside, I have exerted a great deal of effort at times to penetrate this bubble.  I’ve found myself genuinely concerned and confused at the power and hold this phenomenon has on people.  It’s like quicksand or a black hole for critical thinking.  That sounds insulting, but I am not trying to be insulting.  I’m just stating my personal experience and this is how it appears to me.  The right wing media, which, for the most part I think of as Fox/Drudge/Limbaugh/Beck has a cult-like hold on the minds of far too many of my fellow Americans.

I’m bringing this up now for a reason.  During my career of trying to free minds from the Conservative Matrix I have tried to combat fantasy with reality by referring people to facts and figures.  Things like changes in the unemployment rate, or debt added by the various presidents, or number of regulations enacted by one president versus another, or stock market and corporate profit data…in regards to Obama, basically anything that just shows that the kinds of wild exaggerations and assertions I listed above aren’t exactly on the mark.  I’ve tried put things in historical perspective, provide some context.  

Sometimes this is successful. Usually it is not.  In terms of changing someone’s perspective with this method, my success rate is probably somewhere around 5%.  Meaning maybe one in twenty people have come around.  That doesn’t mean they suddenly love Obama or become a liberal. (Which isn’t what I’m after anyway.) It just means they acknowledge the problems with the kinds of claims I mentioned above; the beliefs that are gospel to the conservative faithful.  They take a more critical look at the information sources that they’ve relied on to form their worldview. 

All I’m ever really after is trying to get people to agree to a common reality.  Philosophical differences will always be there and that is fine.  Smart and principled people can debate those differences intelligently.  But statements like “Obama has added more taxes and regulations than any president in history” have no place in an intelligent discussion.   We have hard data on this.  There’s history. We can count and compare the number of regulations.  We can look at the tax rates and the taxes collected.  We don’t have to conjecture.  I’m glad that we don’t all agree and debate is healthy and necessary.  But having one half of the population that lives in its own made up reality is not healthy. It’s terrible for democracy and representative government and makes it impossible to solve actual problems. 

I’m a little off on a tangent, so what’s my point.  We’ve just had an election and what and how it all happened serves as the perfect illustration for the existence of and the dangers of The Bubble. 

Some of us could see this coming.  This shock and disbelief, what must have felt like being shoved into the Twilight Zone for our friends and family who reside in the parallel conservative universe.  Now I won’t even lie here. I had no idea who was going to win the election.  When Romney chose Ryan as VP my best guess was that he just handed the election to Obama, but that was just an educated guess.  After Obama’s first debate it was really in question.  

I truly thought Obama was going to win when it came down to it, but I wasn’t confident enough to make bold proclamations on Facebook or anywhere else.  Most importantly, I didn’t rely on my gut feeling or for one news source for polling information when I was trying to gather facts and get a sense of who could win.  I used a wide variety of sources, which is what I do.  Nate Silver at 538 has a great track record.  There were several other good polling aggregators out there as well.  There was data.  And the data was always clear: Look for a very close popular vote but Obama has Ohio, and therefore the election, in the bag.  That never changed throughout the final few weeks.  Even as Dick Morris and Michael Barrone of Fox, and Peggy Noonan of the Wall Street Journal were somehow, with a straight face, predicting a landslide Romney victory. 

George Will and several others were too.  People inside the Echo Chamber believed them.  Those of us outside shook our heads as usual.  And as usual, the conservative media attacked the messenger(s) when they didn’t like the message.  “The polling is biased.” “Nate Silver is effeminate and has a girly voice.”  The usual shallow, inane, bullshit attacks on anyone who dares to intrude on right wing reality.

This isn’t a gloat post.  This is a post about hope.  It’s a hope that the millions of people who were convinced to ignore any outside information to the contrary and buy into conservative media’s version of reality will use this experience as a wake-up call.  I saw it first hand.  People who were genuinely shocked, surprised, baffled; it just can’t be. How can it be?  There were literally tears shed. 

It didn’t have to be this way for the people that were on the losing end of this election.

That’s all I’m saying.

A short venture outside of the parallel universe and into the wider world would’ve given these people a more realistic expectation and they would’ve been better prepared to handle the possibility that Romney wouldn’t win by a 30% margin. Even Romney and his campaign were utterly shocked and I have to wonder how that is possible.

For all of us, there is a danger in believing our own bullshit.  The right believed its own bullshit and was blindsided en masse.  This was a visceral experience for many conservatives, a deep, and really a cruel disappointment.

So…friends, family, and anyone else out there who has been ensnared by The Bubble.  Please, please, take this as a learning experience and escape from the world where math and science don’t count if they conflict with your view point, where any news source that doesn’t toe the party line is biased.  It’s a wide, wide world.  Exciting and scary at times, sure.  But please come back to the world of facts.  Join us in reality.  Even if we disagree, we need you here.   

Debt By Prez

I created these two charts out of curiosity and really just as a reference for myself but thought I’d go ahead and publish them here.  This is the United States and the president is not a dictator which limits the usefulness of a simplistic comparison like this but it is still interesting and instructive. The president is the single most powerful individual in government.  They set the tone and provide the leadership that moves policy one direction or another. 

Since republicans are breathlessly criticizing the president for increasing the national debt and claiming, as usual, to be the party of fiscal responsibility, this data seems especially relevant.  To put it simply, there is no historical basis for giving the republican party any credibility on the subject of decreasing our debt.  If past performance is any indication of future results, we should expect the opposite.  At least over the course of my lifetime debt has grown much faster under republican presidents than under democrats.

Reagan is the one who really jumps off the page here; the deified standard bearer, universally praised for being the ultimate crusader against big government, and yet, no president in recent history has even come close to exploding the national debt in the way he did.  More than just an actor, Reagan must have been a master of mass hypnosis, as even in death millions of Americans have a completely inaccurate view of his presidency.  

The fact that the hero of the American right is someone who managed to preside over a debt increase of 189% tells you a lot about the modern American right.  I think it's no coincidence that this hero was a professional actor.  He ushered in the ultimate political con-job, “trickle down economics”, a wet dream for economic elites that was so cynical even George H.W. Bush referred to it as Voodoo Economics. It almost feels like a cruel joke that a republican presidential candidate is able to sell this same failed formula thirty years later.  I am continually amazed at how there never seems to be any real political consequences for republicans when their ideas and policies fail miserably.  

Our Cartoonish Electorate

Its election season which means every few hours a graphic or post like the one above pops up on my Facebook news feed.  As a native and resident Texan whose friend list is full of other Texans, almost all of the political posting falls somewhere along the spectrum between Obama is the anti-Christ and Obama wants to eat your babies.

To say the least there’s not much in the way of diversity of political thought ‘round here. That’s okay though.  As I’ve said before on this blog, political views are determined mostly by geography. You can’t necessarily hold the geographical group think phenomenon against people.

Now back to my picture.  See anything wrong with it?  Nobody on the Facebook thread that I copied it from seems to.  Instead, there’s just the usual chorus of people piling on with comments like “So True!” and “Amen!” and "Damn socialist!"

It should also be pointed out that several of the people commenting on the thread are pretty engaged politically.  So what’s wrong with the cartoon?  Well, everything.  Literally. 

Let’s look at each bucket in turn:

AIG

The AIG bailout occurred on September 16, 2008, three and a half months before Obama took office.  The federal government, under president George W. Bush, allocated $85 billion of U.S. Treasury funds so AIG could honor it’s collateral obligations. (Most of that money was paid to Goldman Sachs incidentally.)

Banks

The Emergency Economic Stabilization Act Of 2008 (aka the bank bailouts) was signed into law in October of 2008, at the request of the George W. Bush administration. $700 billion of U.S. Treasury funds were allocated to purchase toxic assets from the too-big-to-fail banks.  Again, two months before president Obama took office.

Housing

I can only assume that this one is supposed to represent the collapse of the housing bubble.  The housing bubble began to deflate in 2007 and the volume of subprime mortgage lending peaked between 2004-and 2006.  By mid to late 2008 the U.S. economy was in free fall, soon to be followed by the global economy.  Once again, all of this occurred before Barack Hussein Obama became president.

Autos

The initial auto industry bailout was initiated by president George W. Bush in December of 2008.  $17.4 billion of U.S. Treasury funds were allocated to prevent GM and Chrysler from going into what president Bush referred to as “disorderly bankruptcy”. Here's his speech announcing the bailout.  Obama did expand the auto bailout later in 2009, so we can at least give the Obama-hater who drew this cartoon a little credit there.  But once again, the initial policy was implemented before Obama became president.

There’s also a bucket that says “Ins.”.  I have no idea what that is supposed to be so I won’t comment on it.

So every single policy or event that this cartoonist is trying to attribute to Obama actually occurred while George W. Bush was president.  You try to point this out and without fail the reply is “When are you people going to stop blaming Bush!”. 

If this type of thing was a one-off occurrence I wouldn’t have bothered talking about it here.  But it’s rampant. It’s every day, all the time.  And I offer it up as further evidence that right wing, Obama-hating America lives in an alternative universe, an information bubble that is impervious to basic, factual understanding of real life, verifiable events.   As bit of a political loudmouth I feel like I’m in a constant game of whack-a-mole with the phantom creations of the conservative echo chamber. 

I’m only 35 years old so maybe my historical sample size is too small, but the level at which this president gets blamed for all of the disastrous policies and consequences of his predecessor  feels unprecedented. The blind and hysterical hatred that is directed at him is wildly disproportionate to his accomplishments or lack of.  Regardless of one’s political leanings cartoons like the one above shouldn’t be going viral on social media.  Even a casual familiarity with the news would be enough for anyone to quickly see how ridiculous and misleading it is.  But here in the land of mass political amnesia, with our oh so selective interpretation of reality, this thing becomes gospel.

Regarding the person who posted this on Facebook, I kindly pointed out the inaccuracies and said what I often say in these cases:  If you guys are upset with stuff that He Who Must Not Be Named George W. Bush did why don't you just say so and use HIS name and put his picture on your cartoons?  You can imagine the response I got.

In Which I Agree With Bill O’Reilly

Saturday night the wife and I sprang for the $4.95 to watch the live internet streaming debate between Bill O’Reilly and Jon Stewart.  (Yes, we are party animals.)  One of the questions was:  “What do you think is the most fundamental problem with the public political discourse?”  O’Reilly’s answer: “Capitalism.”

It’s a good thing I was drinking because I might’ve collapsed in surprise at being in total agreement with ‘The Mayor Of Bullshit Mountain’. O’Reilly explained how lucrative it is to be a professional hater – an assassin – as he called it.  Now granted this is a bit like Ronald McDonald pinpointing French fries as the culprit behind America’s obesity problem, but he has a point.  The highest paid media personalities are the ones most adept at working their audience into a blind rage every evening.   

Bill O’ even suggested that a lot of times these haters don’t even believe the stuff they are saying, they’re just playing to their crowd.  I’ve said as much before myself.  The problem is that their allegedly massive audiences actually do believe what they are saying.  And these are the people voting in primaries and driving the discourse. 

Although I basically agree with Bill here, I think he’s only partly correct.  Capitalism, or the fact that the haters command these huge followings, is more of a symptom than the root cause.  I blame the people who dial in to these pontificating buffoons more than the pontificating buffoons themselves.   Taken one step further, I blame an educational and cultural system that produces such a large number of people who are only interested in tuning in to media that reinforces their pre-existing beliefs and caters to their prejudices and biases.  

The haters are just offering what the market demands.  There is so much anger and frustration out there.  The haters tap in to that and channel it in ways that are appealing to their listeners/viewers. It’s really mental laziness and lack of intellectual curiosity that make the success of the haters possible.

Hard news doesn’t sell and thinking for one’s self takes some effort which is why both are notably absent from the national public dialogue.  The cable and radio haters don’t offer much in the way of actual news and they do your thinking for you.   In a complex and diverse world with complex and diverse problems they offer simple explanations and even simpler solutions.  Add in their masterful ability to play to the innate human need to feel victimized and you have a winning formula.

So yes, O’Reilly is right.  Capitalism is dragging down the public discourse.  But capitalism comes down to supply and demand and it’s obvious there is huge demand for dumbed-down, vitriolic, one-sided ‘info-tainment’.  I hate to say it but my conclusion would be that the public discourse has degraded because the public itself has.

A 'Job Creator' Speaks

A Bloomberg article that I read today sent me to the blog of former American Airlines chairman and CEO, Bob Crandall.  The piece was about economic inequality in the US, a subject that I think is THE major issue of our time, and mentioned that even a successful, wealthy, and well-respected ex-CEO like Crandall was decrying the negative impacts of so much wealth concentrated at the top.  Naturally this piqued my interest and I promptly made my way over to his blog and read the most recent dozen entries or so.

Sure enough, this one-percenter makes some of the same observations and points that have seemed so obvious to me and many others.  What makes it noteworthy is that this is yet another prominent business leader making statements that are blasphemous to American right wing ideology, an ideology that probably 40% of the population takes as gospel, even as they are ravaged by the real-life consequences of its policies.  It’s one thing for a bearded hippie living in a tent near central park to point out that the US is turning into a banana republic, but something else entirely when ex CEOs of iconic American corporations and billionaire investors do it.

I appreciate and support the Occupy Wall Street movement.  These are people who, regardless of their image or social status, at least understand the source of the problem.  They get who’s screwing them.  They are vocal and visible and reminiscent of the real people-power type of mass movements that were so successful at initiating social change in the 1960s.  That is a great thing.  And one conclusion that I’ve come to after five or six years of studying politics and power like a mad scientist is that positive social change starts from the bottom up.  The people influence the leaders who are in a position to make public will a reality.

So Occupy is great, but the mere fact that most of them are students or people who are otherwise not working a nine-to-five makes them easy for the media and much of society to marginalize.  Sadly, there are millions of people in this country who just don’t think you count as a real human being with valid concerns unless you’ve had to “make a payroll”.  An entire political party subscribes to this view.  Nevermind the absurdity that only a small percentage of people who belong to that party actually meet their own criteria for being a worthy citizen. 

Bob Crandall is not the kind of person that the usual suspects can assail with the sneering “take a shower and get a job” line of attack.  When someone of his social standing is willing to put aside their own narrow self-interests and openly discuss truths that are uncomfortable and inconvenient to his class, I find it encouraging and I think it should be applauded.  The cry of “class warfare” is used by the very people who are successfully waging it. It’s nothing more than an attempt to shut down the discussion and far too often it works.  But when people like Crandall lend their voice to this cause, the efforts to turn it into a thought crime become less effective.

Other business leaders have weighed in on this issue, most notably Warren Buffett who made the statement: “There’s class warfare alright, but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning.”  There’s also venture capitalist Nick Hanauer who gave the must-see TED talk where he refers to  trickle down economics as the biggest political con in history.   And the big boogeyman of the American right, super-capitalist billionaire George Soros, also has a few things to say on the subject.

Buffett, Hanauer, Soros, and Crandall are not the kind of people who can be brushed off by so-called conservatives as shiftless government dependents or socialist agitators.  Although to be fair, I’ve seen them try, usually with pretty laughable results. (Ex: “But Buffett is just an investor, he hasn’t created any jobs!”…What? So you mean it’s possible to become the wealthiest human being on earth and not be a ‘job-creator’? Hmmm...)

Each of these individuals has directly or indirectly advocated policies that would personally cost them money.  They’ve acknowledged that the system is rigged in favor of people in their position at the expense of people who are not.  They’ve admitted that such an imbalance of power and wealth has serious negative consequences on society.  Why?  My guess is that they feel a sense of responsibility and obligation to the country that allowed them to achieve such dramatic success.  Does it upset others in their social class who do not feel that sense of responsibility? Of course it does.  There will always be those who, despite their obscene wealth, think of nothing but getting more, whatever the impact that has on everyone else.  Unfortunately, in terms of the one-percent they are in the majority.  And that makes the Buffetts and Crandalls out there even more important to those of us who would like to see positive change.

Getting back to Bob Crandall’s blog, here are some of the points he brings up which I think are spot on:

•  26 of the country’s top CEOs personally made more money than their company paid in taxes in 2011.  This is absurd and is a perfect example of the unfairness of tax laws and the need for changes   in corporate governance rules.
•  In order to address major problems and the looming national debt, the very wealthy and corporations need to pay higher taxes.  The Bush tax cuts for incomes over $250K should be allowed to expire and the estate tax should be re-instated.
• The right likes to complain that the corporate tax rate is too high, 39% they say.  But statutory tax rates are different than effective tax rates and the effective rate (the one that actually reflects the percentage paid) of US corporations is roughly 12%.  As an example, Apple, now the world’s richest company, only paid a 9.8% tax rate in 2011.
•  The US government needs to spend more money in the short term to stimulate demand. Our infrastructure is outdated and crumbling and with interest rates at roughly 0%, now would be a great time to invest in some much needed improvements and put some people to work.

      I predict that as time goes on and the gold-plated, diamond encrusted, elephant in the room becomes even harder to ignore, more people like Bob Crandall will look beyond the self-interest of their own socio-economic class and speak up on behalf of the greater good.  Then maybe we can quit pretending that this is a discussion about envy and treat it like the very real threat to American democracy that it is.

Romney - Man Of The People

What kind of political blowhard observer would I be if I didn’t say something about Wednesday night’s presidential debate?  Meant to do this sooner but we’ve had technical difficulties for over a week now.  Very spotty internet service from AT&T broadband.  I’m sure it’s the government’s fault somehow.

Anyhow, I’ll try to be brief.

This debate was a snoozer.  One candidate must have agreed with me because he looked like he needed a nap. He seemed bored and a little irritated to even be there.  That would be our president.  The other guy came off like he’d been downing Red Bull all afternoon.  If they were trying to provide contrast they succeeded in that regard.

So Romney “won”.  Obama was blindsided and frankly, so was I.  The Romney who has been campaigning the last twelve months was not the same guy who was on stage Wednesday night. Not in demeanor, but more importantly, not in policy.  Or so he’d have us believe. It’s pretty easy to win a debate when you change your major policy positions on the fly and simply deny any of the negative things associated with what you’ve proposed. I can’t blame Obama too much. I have no idea how you are supposed to debate with that.  It’s frowned on to look your opponent in the eye and say “Governor, with all due respect, you are completely full of shit.”

Romney started off with the standard right wing chorus: regulations and taxes are killing the economy.  Less than fifteen minutes later we got to hear about how he loves regulation, especially for Wall Street.  Then there was the big tax discussion that took up most of the debate.  Romney says he will cut tax rates, especially for the wealthy, but don’t worry.  He promises that that nobody, especially the wealthy, will actually pay less taxes. So don’t be concerned about those tax cuts impacting the deficit.  Healthcare was a big topic too.  Romney of course will ‘repeal Obamacare on day one’.  But again, don’t fret. He’s keeping all the good parts.  Romney miraculously turned into Mr. Middle Class seemingly overnight.  He was determined to use the phrase “middle class” more than Obama. It would’ve made a good drinking game.

In short, it appeared to me that Romney’s strategy for beating Obama…was to sound more like Obama.  A man in love with regulation who is determined to see that the wealthy don’t pay one less penny in taxes because they are ‘doing just fine’, who thinks of nothing but the well being of the middle class and wants to make sure that health insurance companies can’t deny people with pre-existing conditions. 

Look – if the republican strategy for winning the presidency is to pose as a democrat, we are winning. 

I won’t bother with all the factual inaccuracies (one count had Romney at 27 lies misstatements in 38 minutes) because anyone can look that up.  But even if he was sincere, here is someone claiming that the United States can solve its debt problem, create twelve million jobs, give everyone awesome healthcare, and nobody anywhere will have to sacrifice a thing.  And we all get a free pony. 

Maybe in a country where football and little honey boo boo get more attention than politics people will fall for this all gain no pain fantasy.  Maybe nobody will dig into the details and see that Mitt Romney’s healthcare “plan” does indeed prevent insurance companies from discriminating against people with pre-existing conditions – but only for people who have not had a lapse in insurance coverage, a provision that is already law. In other words, no change there.  Maybe nobody will pick up on the fact that this person who claims to be so serious about lowering the deficit and debt never denied that his proposal calls for increasing the already outrageous military budget by $2 trillion dollars.  Maybe nobody will ask how that gets paid for (and find out that it doesn’t).  Maybe nobody will question the mathematical impossibility of cutting taxes by 20% without lowering actual revenues.  Maybe they’ll overlook the fact that eliminating every single loophole and deduction would still not make up that 20%.  Maybe nobody will scratch their head at how the guy who has spent his entire campaign breathlessly decrying regulation just stood behind a podium in front of 17 million people and literally said the words: “I like regulation!.” Maybe nobody will note how utterly ridiculous and laughable it was, when asked for a single specific thing he would cut to lower the deficit, all he could come up with was to defund Big Bird.  Maybe they won’t realize that funding for public television and radio makes up a whopping .00014% ($135M) of the total budget, or question why he wouldn’t touch the $7 BILLION of government subsidies that go the oil companies.

Sorry for all the maybes but it would take a massive amount of cognitive dissonance and selective listening to even begin to think that is a serious person with a meaningful vision.

Yes, Obama flubbed the thing and ignored a wagon load of low hanging fruit. I think part of it was falling victim to the baffled by bullshit tactic that was deployed against him but that’s no excuse for his terrible energy level and demeanor.  As someone who remains convinced that a Mitt Romney presidency will be George W. Bush Act III, I sincerely hope that next time the president is rested and better prepared to deal with a guy who will say anything on the fly.