For All It's Worth-less

The United States is at a stand still.  The GOP is only going to pass symbolic measures in the House, the Senate will pass nothing at all, and the President is running out of Executive Orders to issue.  I think it is pretty clear to the general population that Obama will win again in November quite decidedly, but he will not have majorities, and certainly not super majorities in Congress.  If you are a Romney hopeful, just listen to the guy speak and try to find where he has an actual idea for the country...it's not there.  Quite frankly, Obama is a superstar politician who will not be unseated by a guy who loses pretty much every contentious race he is in.  The guy almost lost to Rick Santorum, is he really going to have a shot against Obama?  No.  But, the GOP saw this coming 20 years ago.  They shrewdly positioned themselves to be in power in 2000 and 2010 to gerrymander their districts and embed a majority in the House and at least a blocking force in the Senate.  So far, I have offered nothing of substance in this post, these are all things we know.  This brings us to 2013, another year of deadlock.  The country is not going to deal with 4 years of deadlock very well, and the GOP knows it has to deliver something to be able to point at as a victory and show they are seeking progress.  The Dems will do anything as long as there is a ton of money thrown at it and it can be tied to a special interest group of some kind.  So let's seek compromise.  

The Keystone Pipeline is a proposed oil line that would run from Edmonton to Houston, pretty much straight down the center of the country, connecting Canada to Mexico.  Of course the environmentalists are up in arms, and the oil companies are claiming poverty, so the lines have been drawn.  This is the United States though, where there is profit to be made, it will be made, sorry tree huggers.  The GOP will end up getting its way on this one, as they should.  The pipeline will be newer than the old, hopefully making it more safe, and will create tens of thousands of jobs for decades.  There really is no dispute to that, and that is why the President pushed his decision until 2013, so he didn't have to break the news to his base.  

High-speed rail has been a pipe-dream of the left for decades.  This relatively clean technology would help shift us away from cars and increase the ease of movement around a vast country that has to curtail its fossil fuel consumption, simply as a financial necessity.  As other countries develop, the cost of oil and coal will continuously rise and transportation costs will become a larger and larger percentage of our economy.  High-speed rail technology has progressed considerably, with trains that ca go over 350 mph.  Rail has also become so smooth, the ride is nicer than the highways.  The problems with high-speed rail are numerous, but primarily it is about cost and access.  There have been rumblings for years about high-speed rail coming to the northeast corridor, or a line from LA to Las Vegas and similar projects that pop in and out of the political arena.  The problem with these projects is that they are too small and have too little impact for the money they would require.  If you have driven in Boston anytime over the past 25 years, the Big Dig should show how inefficiently and slowly things move in congested space.  The truth of the matter is, Americans are very individualized people and they like having their own car.  The idea of riding in a train with hundreds or thousands of people is surely some kind of socialism.  However, what we have seen is that people travel less and less, and they tend to stay closer to home as gas prices rise.  This problem will only compound itself in the coming decades.

So we have two platforms that are diametrically opposed to one another, neither of which is a true solution for the country.  The resolution in Washington DC has been to shelve both ideas.  Instead, they should combine them.  One of the most difficult parts of putting up high-speed rail is the land grants needed on either side of the rail.  Also, the major cost of the rail is its base.  Tons and tons of concrete and building materials have to support the trains, it's not like throwing down iron rails and hammering them together anymore.  With a massive project we can bring those costs down, as opposed to short routes which will not drive such a discount.  It seems, though, that the same obstacles that inhibit rail are required for the Keystone Pipeline.  Space on either side of the line, solid foundation, and a direct path for transit are all things that both projects require.  

The United States has built its legacy on infrastructure and innovation.  This endeavor would encompass both and require millions of laborers for decades.  I propose the Congress gets together and allow for the Keystone Pipeline conditional upon the construction of high-speed rail on top of the line.  Not only would this further protect the environment from the pipeline by encasing it in the base of the line, but it would also generate the innovation necessary for the structure.  This 1800 mile track through the center of the country would be quite expensive, but there is already private enterprise involved, oil companies.  They have a vested interest in completing the pipeline, and are already fiscally committed to the construction costs, so there would be an offset to the project on the whole.  I think oil companies have representatives in DC who can work out the details with the Congress.

The object of this high-speed rail would certainly be called into question.  It seems to make no sense to put such a huge, expensive project in the middle of a relatively empty part of the country.  But ask the people on Route 66 what happens when transportation routes change.  They will tell you, people move to where the traffic is.  Ask the people of Boulder City, NV, which was established only to build the Hoover Dam, they will tell you, construction jobs build lasting communities.  All the towns and cities that would spring up right where we need them to spring up would also help balance the country.  People would move inward instead of to the coasts, easing the strain on the environment as well as the economic strain that occurs when everyone is concentrated in one area.  As the pipe/rail line neared completion, in 20 years or so, other lines would go up.  High-speed rail would be considerably cheaper and easier to construct and cities like Chicago, St. Louis, and Denver would erect connections, starting a race throughout the country to become connected to the rail line.  The projects would be endless, the work would be constant, and the result would be a cleaner, faster, more united country and continent.  We should understand more and more as Europe slowly breaks off into pieces again, that the countries we should be most concerned with are the ones we are connected to.  Bringing fluid transportation of oil, people, and goods north to south could kick off the same type of expansion and development as the trip out West.  And the Oregon Trail didn't even have a pipeline running underneath.

All's Fair in Taxes and Penalties

When I post on this bog I try to have new material on a new topic.  There is nothing more aggravating than reading a re-hash of a blogger's last post.  Typically I try to watch the full news cycle, get frustrated with a topic, and develop a comprehensive post to address the issue from my perspective.  I start this post in this manner because the topic of this blog is the same as the last.  Nothing has changed and the Occupy Wall Street movement has disjointedly been arguing what I have been saying for some time now.  The imbalance of wealth in our country is unhealthy, unfair, and unsustainable.  We have all seen the charts and graphs of income and asset disparity in the past 30 years.  It is no secret that the rich have gotten grossly rich and the poor are bordering on Third World status.  There are hundreds of thousands of people all around the world who are fed up and protesting in the streets.  The problems that have come about due to the immense economic imbalance are so vast and permeate literally every aspect of societies world wide that the protesters' message can be vague and too broad for the news to accommodate.  Instead, the news puts its own interpretation on the sit-ins, usually asserting that the protests are about lack of jobs.  Rather, what we are seeing is the people rising up against the established norms of capitalism in a global marketplace.

Last week on 60 Minutes they interviewed the Obama appointed CEO of General Electric, Jeffrey Immelt.  Immelt has turned around GE and made them profitable after the company was on the verge of bankruptcy a couple years ago.  Immelt proudly told 60 Minutes that GE has moved from 10% of its business being done overseas to 60%.  He touted the company's massive expansion into Brazil and toured factories GE has established in Latin America, arguing that producing the goods in Brazil instead of the US makes the company more competitive in the marketplace by lowering costs.  60 Minutes also toured a factory in the US with Immelt, employing about 250 Americans at 13-17 dollars an hour.  Asked about why the pay was so low for a high-tech, high education job like building turbine engines, Immelt admitted that at 13 an hour they received 50,000 applications, so the company would have no reason to pay more when they can get labor at such a low rate.  This is indicative of the problem in the structure of Capitalism.

The world has gotten smaller.  We now live with computers in our hands, able to access the entirety of human knowledge in an instant.  Machines have become cheaper and more efficient than most laborers.  None of this is anything new.  Developing technology has always reduced the need for labor and opened up new marketplaces which require a new workforce.  However, as the world has grown smaller and transportation of goods and technology has become instantaneous, the labor force has also become global.  Telemarketers in India, shoe companies in the Philippines, car companies in Mexico, and the like is a transition we have all witnessed over the past 30 years.  Corporations will always move to the best option for their bottom line, after all, it is their legal obligation to make as much profit as possible for their stockholders.  The only way a corporation will expand in the US is if there is economic incentive to do so.  This is Capitalism.

The question for the government becomes how to encourage that incentive.  Certainly we have the labor force ready to go.  People here are still more educated than those in Brazil, China, and India.  Consumerism, while down for the past 5 years, is still stronger here than anywhere else in the world, and most importantly, there is no place on Earth where the desire to consume is greater than in the United States.  However, with the ease of transportation of goods, free trade, and the increased globalization of corporations, there is no reason to produce products in a place with relatively high labor costs, massive legal exposure, and outlandish medical costs when a simple trip to China can alleviate all those issues.  The only people who lose are the American people, as capitalism only recognizes profit and is blind to national identity.

As the unemployment numbers remain high the labor force is forced to take lower wages and fewer benefits.  We have passed the point where this becomes problematic for the society to which we are accustomed.  About half of working people contribute nothing to the Federal coffers through income tax as they make too little to pay in.  These people have seen no wage increase in over 30 years while the prices of commodities has more than tripled in that time.  This translates into people working to afford food, clothing, shelter, and a means to get to and from work.  There is no expendable income to purchase a new refrigerator from GE.  Without expendable income the greatest consumers the world has ever known are unable to do what we do best, buy.

The system as we have it today is completely upside down.  The goal of the government in relation to the marketplace should be to encourage consumption across the board in order to grow the economy through demand.  No corporation is going to build a new facility because they have lots of money and nothing to do with it, they will only produce what is needed to fulfill demand.  In a country where states are co-dependent on each other for success and the borders are sealed by nothing more than signs that say "Now Leaving New York" and "Welcome to Connecticut" there is a vital need for a stronger Federal government.  The separation of states has produced things like sales tax and other regressive taxes on goods that directly target the consumer base.  Of course, Federal taxes on consumables are just as bad for the economy.  When a person making 25,000 a year (like one of Immelt's new hires) they are being disproportionately penalized for most of what they buy.  That is to say, the 3 dollar tax per month on their phone bill is a much greater proportion of their income than the same tax is on Mr. Immelt himself.  Yes, they may be paying the same amount for the same service, so it seems fair, but in proportion to their income, the tax is imbalanced.  The same goes for all sales taxes, gas taxes, and the like, all the way down to registering your car at the DMV.  We all know the cost of goods is relative to how much money we each have.  A night out at The Olive Garden to some is slumming it, to others is an unattainable dream they hope to satisfy once a year on their anniversary.  However, as we persist in penalizing every dollar spent instead of focusing simply on the dollars earned, we end up in the current situation of losing half of the consumer base.

My outlook is that the country desperately needs two paths to correct itself.  First, we need a massive national project.  Something that gets a million people or more working on one specific thing we can look back on and feel accomplished about.  I believe a nationwide irrigation project would be brilliant.  We know the storms and floods are going to keep coming, and if channels of water into Texas don't get Rick Perry's support, then he really does think the rapture is coming soon.  Second, we need to broaden Federal responsibilities so states don't have to have sales taxes and do not privatize every aspect of government.  When private companies take over garbage collection, prisons, fire fighting, etcetera it costs the consumer more and is once again disproportionately targeting those who have the least money to spare.  A broader Federal system can eliminate sales taxes altogether, putting more money in the pockets of those who need it most.  As the bottom half of the country has more money, they will purchase more goods and services.  No, they might not be standing in line at Morton's Steakhouse, but I bet there would be a wait at Outback. 

The mobilization of the American consumer will drive demand so vastly that jobs will have to be created to satisfy the needs of the extra 100 million people added to the purchasing class.  As the system becomes more centralized it can become more simple as well.  Eliminating deductions altogether would be more in line with true capitalist principals, as nothing would be encouraged by tax incentives.  Only reinvesting into a business or paying a higher wage to employees would allow the business to take less profit and avoid higher taxes. 

To me these solutions seem quite obvious.  Lower taxes and penalties on the most amount of people to encourage consumerism, and the people at the top will create more jobs in order to satisfy demand.  Unfortunately, the silly idea of supply side economics has permeated our schools and political system for so long that people don't realize it only works on a global scale.  Of course GE will build factories in Brazil if we don't require them to pay any taxes here in the US.  We should not be surprised or discouraged at that, we need to have corporations that are global.  But if the people here in the US have to compete one to one with third world countries, 99% of us will be living in one soon.

The More the Wearier

Much time has passed since my last post.  In the interim many thoughts have passed through, paragraphs have been drafted, but no substance has emerged.  The world has seen a devastating earthquake in Japan, tornadoes that stay on the ground, relentless flooding, and Jeter’s 3000^th hit since I last ejaculated my opinions in this format.  While my absence has been a product of many things, laziness not the least of them, I pen this blog only when I feel I have something important and well versed to contribute.  Certainly there are many who spew every thought that enters their minds onto the computer screen loving the sound of their own key strokes, opinion after opinion flowing freely into the never-ending internet space, their position on the Kardashians being just as viable as their interpretation of the global marketplace.  I try to keep the self-love at a relative minimum, so I will not speak on every topic that hits the news.  But I digress, having more pressing matters on my mind.

There is a general malaise amongst the American people during this economic recovery.  People are bored with the idea of bringing back the economy and have become more involved in their own comfort than in contributing to the whole.  Of course there are many reasons for this, not the least of which is the lack of leadership by our President, but the most of which is the lack of real opportunity or upward mobility.  The years since Bush have ticked by.  Many people have returned to work or come to the realization that they will not find the kind of work they once had.  The country has settled into the idea that 8% unemployment is a goal and the norm has shifted from the 5-6% we had experienced previously.  Taxes have not been changed in any real way, and spending has come down dramatically for non-defense discretionary projects, which is the real measure of how much the government is investing in the people.  Of course, the Limbaughs of the world say that as more and more people have entered the food stamp roles and unemployment benefits have been extended, we are closer to socialism than ever before.  I tend to agree. 

The United States operates as a controlled capitalist economy.  There are certain rules and regulations that halter the progress of pure capitalism, but we are among the most liberal of countries in that regard.  Much of the genius of the system is that we have relatively low tax rates as compared to the rest of the world.  This freedom of cash that we as citizens enjoy makes for a heavy consumer based economy.  The main reason we use 25% of the world’s resources with only 5% of the world’s population is that we consume at a rate the world has never seen before.  Heck, we buy so much stuff we can build the economies of China and India simultaneously by exporting production of the goods we desire.  If there are any doubts in your mind about how much Americans consume, just go to any Wal-Mart at 3am and bear witness.  This New World where the streets are paved with gold has been attracting people far and wide for centuries with the promise that through hard work, dedication, and creativity anyone can have whatever their heart desires.  That dream has been dead for some time now.  We fill bubbles to remind us of what it was supposed to be.  Savings and Loan bubbles, tech bubbles, dot com and real estate bubbles, to name a few, are how we have fabricated previously non-existent capital so we could find a way to get all those things we wanted, but had not earned.  No way would the United States ever stop growing, bigger, fatter, more consumption constantly.  Even if we have to fudge the numbers, we will find a way to eat the whole pie.  Having all you could ever need and most of everything you ever want is, after all, what makes this country great.  But our consumption has shifted dramatically and is the biggest indicator of our decline.

For the past 30 years the theory has been to give money to the “job producers” at the top and resist at all costs government interference in the marketplace.  The theory being, as we all know, if the people at the top have lots of money, they will build things that create jobs for all the little people.  This has not worked in our country since we entered the Global Marketplace.  Businesses have found cheaper labor than the American people can provide, and corporations always move to the most economically effective position.  What we have seen instead is the shift of wealth almost entirely to the top echelons of society and businesses adapting to the new model.  No longer are stores geared to accommodating as many people as they can and moving the most units.  Instead they are designed specifically to entice that certain cadre of people, be they from the US, Russia, or Dubai, to buy their products even though they are grossly overpriced for their utility.  Of course, there have always been high and low quality items and all those in between, but they used to be obtainable by a much larger percentage of the population, depending on how they chose to spend their money.  While it is true that not everyone could ever go to a 3 star restaurant every night, there was a time when they could save up and go for a special occasion, just once.  Now, for too many, there is no hope of that. 

The issue has become, most importantly, that while the price of goods has skyrocketed, wages have not moved.  Jobs have changed from long term careers into performance based races to the biggest money grab before being dismissed.  People have been making so little for so long they are complaining that teachers make more than them.  Unions have been totally decimated as well because corporations do not have the public good as a priority.  One look at the NFL and NBA lockouts will show that.  Truly, the owners do not mind if there is no season, their profits will go up and they know eventually the guy with the biggest bank roll can last the longest.  Screw what is right or what is better for the sport or society, the main objective is to have more money.  How much?  More.  And the bottom line is the bottom line.  The decisions in a capitalist society are always made by the bottom line.  No heart, no emotion, just numbers.  Business is business. 

The main driver of our economy is consumerism.  The only way to recover a capitalist society is to encourage more people to consume more products.  Quite simply, the richest people cannot alone consume enough to support the entire system.  With the cost of commodities continuing to rise, people’s consumption of leisure goods is way down.  Too many people are only able to afford food clothing and shelter for us to continue to consume the non-essentials which keep our economy going.  An individual corporation is never going to see increasing wages as a benefit to its bottom line, unless there are tax incentives for employee pay, and disincentives for disproportionate profits.  If we do not create a platform where the great majority of the people are keeping, spending, and recirculating the wealth of this country, people will become disinterested in working, learning, and dreaming.  The nation will continue spiraling into an abyss of servitude to those top echelon people from around the world, which will result in malaise, revolt, crime, and eventually, socialist policies, assuming democracy remains intact.  In order to avoid that fate, corporations need to see themselves as intertwined entities, reliant upon each other for their survival.  Reliant, that is, on the employees of one corporation being paid enough to buy the products of another, and visa versa.  It is incumbent upon us now to encourage this co-dependent mentality amongst ourselves and promote it from within.  The idea that people are protesting teachers wages while their own bosses make billions is absurd.  Instead, we need to form more unions with reasonable demands for job stability and wage increases, eliminate policies that target consumerism such as sales tax and taxes on specific products, eliminate deductions on income tax which only top earners can utilize anyway, target directly the profits and dividends of businesses to encourage them to recirculate their money by increasing wages and reinvesting capital, and double the minimum wage.

We live in the richest country in the history of the planet.  We got there by looking at the neighbors and striving to have a bigger TV, boat, car, or what have you.  Not enough of us live next to the Kardashians to be able to envy them.  Our neighbors have been Foreclosed.

Mine, All Mine!

There is a huge disparity between the classes that not everyone recognizes, and it is worse than most imagine.  In the discussion of class most people think rich, poor, middle, but it's not quite that simple these days.  Pundits and politicians talk about the "Middle Class" making somewhere between 75 and 125k a year.  They talk about the upper class as starting at 250k and speak little more of it.  No one addresses the poor, that doesn't get ratings, no one likes to talk about the poor.  The reality "on the ground" as it were, is the averages are heavily weighted.  These days the American economy is like an NFL contract.  Totally performance based, no security, and workers can and do get fired constantly with no need for explanation.  More and more states are now becoming "right to work" states, meaning "right to fire" to employers.  Jobs that used to have salaries and benefits have turned themselves in to commission based or freelance positions.  The business community will tell you this is the only way they can hire Americans and still be competitive in the global market place.  There has been no movement in the real wages of 95 percent of Americans for 30 years!  That is not to say the standard of living has not changed, it certainly has.  People are able to buy more things, move more units off the shelves, as prices for technology and goods have come down over time.  This placation has kept the American people silent, because for most of us, as long as we can buy a few things at Walmart every couple weeks, we see ourselves as blessed, well-off, or at least doing better than that sorry family in aisle 26.

The reality is that there has never been greater distance between the people and the ownership class (not that they aren't people too).  The reason we are seeing disagreement in Wisconsin is people look at 50k plus benefits as a job they could never get in the private work force.  Our leaders and our news outlets all tell us our country is broke over and over.  We are thankful for the opportunity to work for the 30k that most jobs pay, just so we don't fall into the ranks of the unemployed, where we would be totally forgotten in the abyss of American poverty (about 15 percent of the country, by the way).  What needs to be focused on is the highest levels of our society and the distance they are creating between themselves and the people.  That distance has become unhealthy and one way or the other will be reduced one way or the other if the polarization continues this way.

It is this author's contention that Communism is a bad system of government, and I don't think I will have much of a problem saying that.  Well, the father of the brand, Karl Marx, argued the need for Communism would come about naturally through unbridled Capitalism.  Marx postulated that as companies swallow each other, keep wages low and profits high, and eventually get so big they are supporting an irreplaceable pillar in the economy, the corporations would gradually become the government.  This transition could be made peacefully or through revolt, but eventually there would be a great even-ing out of wealth.  The United States has, for the past 30 years, been allowing corporations to do whatever they like in the name of greater profitability, justified by the theory that as our companies do better, so does our populous.  But we are out of balance.  We are at a point now where the ownership class has to have some fear of being toppled.  It cannot be too much of a jump for the argument to be switched away from teachers and police and onto the people themselves.  Soon enough someone will say, "maybe it's not that they get too much, but instead that the corporation I work for should pay me more and give me better benefits (especially if I have to work 50 weeks a year, 40 plus hours a week)."  I just don't see arguing against public employees as having legs politically. 

Last week Fox told me something interesting--of course my interpretation was different than theirs, but it was their fact.  Whenever Fox has a fact it's global news.  Of the top 10 political contributors in the country, 3 were unions, and they overwhelmingly supported the Democrats.  The other 7 contributors were individuals.  They are all Republicans.  If there was ever a better display of economic disparity, a better gauge of what interests each party holds, there is nothing better than that.  The Democrats, as problematic as they are, use most of their time supporting working people, unions, the poor, minorities, etc.  Basically 99 percent of the country.  The Republicans represent the other side.  Most all their money comes from super rich people who, through manipulation of social issues and easy labels for their theories (ie. trickle-down) are able to convince half the country to vote against their own interests.  Let's be clear about how far "the people" are from that other side.  The average American household makes about 38k a year.  There are about 11,000 families in the US making over $5.5 million a year.  That translates into over 100k a week.  The top 400 income earners took home an average of $89 million last year.  About $243,000 a day.  Translation, the richest people make in a day what the average American makes in 7 years.  Those top end people alone hold over 40 percent of the entire nation's wealth.  Obviously the ownership class will always have more, as well they should.  There must be reward for accomplishment.  That reward, and greed for it, is what drives innovation, entrepreneurship, and is at the core of personal liberty.  However, in order to avoid uprising and to maintain social order, the people need to share in the accomplishment of the country.  Saudi Arabia decides to spread the wealth of the nation by writing a check.  European countries give away health care, have shortened work weeks, extended vacations, and subsidized higher education, among other things.  These benefits are always paid for by the rich, usually through taxes.  The working class is typically left alone.  The price of owning the world is that you have to keep all the ants happy.

Obama now is faced with a difficult situation in Wisconsin.  He has to show he is standing up for unions without opening the door to allowing federal employees to collectively bargain.  He also cannot be seen as interfering with state affairs or the Republicans will paint him as a dictator--hey, he is from Kenya, remember?  Adjusting the tax code to have levels beyond 250k is a decent first step, but does nothing for labor.  What will help labor is to finally put an end to the disgusting money grab that takes place at the top end of corporations at the expense of giving salaries, bonuses, and benefits to employees.  The health care plan was a good first step, but what will make more of a difference is raising the minimum wage.  Without drastic steps heavily weighted toward the working class, we run the risk of falling into chaos.  Oddly, it is through injection of Socialist principles into our Capitalist structure that will protect the country from eventual Communism.

Eyes on the Prize

Just as the deficit has become a topic where only the spending can be discusses, labor has become an issue where only entitlements have been discussed--salaries, benefits, right to organize, etc.  I would argue that part of this change is due to the left not having new ideas and benefits they want to extend to workers, so there is no counter-balance.  However, the majority purpose for the switch toward defending the ownership class is due to Fox having a stable, consistent, and constant message for the country.  It doesn't matter what you say, as long as you keep saying it and saying it loud, people will listen.  The left doesn't need Olberman--he's no different than Maddow, and not as impassioned as Ed--but for that he speaks in lofty language, making people feel the left is arrogant and haughty.

Fox is genius.  They have pundits like O'Reilly and Beck, then they splash in "news guys" who are outrageously biased themselves (you can tell just from their facial reactions).  Beck says something, O'Reilly reports on Beck, the news guys start their segment with, "its all in the news today that..." and spew whatever crap Beck started off with.  Then they throw on the hottest news team on the planet.  Those women, airbrushed and plastic-ed up for HDTV, never a hair out of place, find a way to be empathetic to the ruling class and think arguments for the working class are silly or disgusting.  Just watch Megyn Kelly for one day, you will see how stark the comparison is just in her expressions depending to whom she is speaking (woohoo! Didn't end that with a preposition!).  One of the most important aspects of the Ailes machine is the kick to commercial.  Every Fox anchor does it, they are crafty professionals to say the least.  In an effort to bring equal time to a segment they allowed to be dominated by their Republican colleague, they will finally let the opposition speak for about 20-30 seconds--an eternity in the news industry these days.  The opposition is heard and ready for reply, but the anchor will throw a lasting dig, something to cut the entire argument in half--well, if you want Communism in this country and are ok will murdering babies, I guess we just disagree...We'll be right back and when we return the panel will join me to demonize the last guy's comments even more.  Cut to commercial, sell gold, insurance, and medicine.  Back to Fox, Beck reviews the news he helped create, taking an even more drastically right position, and round and round it goes.  Bill O'Reilly is now looked at as the most balanced person on Fox.  Someone explain that to me right after you explain the tides to Bill.

Calling the Shots

I was did the whole cycle this weekend, as usual.  That is to say, my TVs are in a continuous stream of Fox, MSNBC, and CNN and I make sure to catch Maher and Meet the Press to balance it out.  When I say balance it out so many may think both are liberal and with MSNBC and CNN, why do I need more liberal bias for my opinion?  Well, because Fox is on message when MSNBC is on Lockup.  Fox is selling small government and gold when CNN has Piers Morgan delving into the deep insights of the Kardashians.  Fox is warning us of the Muslim Brotherhood's inevitable infiltration of the Egyptian revolution.  The are setting the stage, the agenda. 

Bill O'Reilly the other night had a Democrat and a Republican on to discus the budget.  Bill prefaced the interview with a diatribe about the nanny state and how everyone expects the government to take care of them, warning of a Grecian downfall.  I forget who was being interviewed, but remember that it was a pale, balding Democrat set far away from Mr. O'Reilly, sandwiching a gorgeous blond woman with a perfect smile who was almost holding hands with the host.  To his credit, and almost as a set up, the Democrat started talking about raising the revenue in the country with increased taxes.  That was brought up just in time for the beautiful blond to blurb that taxes dont bring up revenue, Bill agreed, then kicked to commercial.  Upon return (I switched away, but couldn't bring myself to care why Bob Barker was on CNN), Mr. O'Reilly had a wonderful posture on the subject.  Allowing the uneasy Democrat to make his point again about how taxes at the upper level need adjustment, Bill cut him off.  The topic is the budget.  Not taxes.  Budget means how much money the country spends, so all it addresses is how much money the government can cut to reduce the deficit.  The idea that the country might take in revenue was a different conversation for a different day.  I recalled at that moment how Bill Maher mentioned that the top 400 income earners in this country made as much as the bottom 100 million earners last year.  That's what I mean by balancing it out. 

Meet the Press started with David Gregory telling the country that the discussion it was having was about spending cuts.  That would be the topic, the Republicans set the topic, he even admitted, and the hour would be committed from that point on to which budget cuts were better than the other.  Obama adding to the defense budget and cutting the non-military discretionary budget (basically everything he has control over) was not enough for the Republicans, and he should have known it wouldn't be.  With a majority in the Senate and huge approval ratings for a very popular President, much is being conceded to the Right. 

A TEA Party woman was arguing on Fox that the teachers in Wisconsin are getting too many benefits.  Her argument was that as a small business owner she did not have the ability to collectively bargain for better health care rates and pays about $800 a month for her family of four.  My head almost explodes as I recognize the irony that the organization she is speaking from was formed in response to a government program that would create competition and greater equality in health care, especially for small business.  Fox then flips to a gorgeous woman mentioning that state employees get benefits and pay they would not otherwise get in the private sector.  Host agrees without question, cut to commercial.  Beautiful. 

The rebellions in the Middle East are not about human rights.  They have little to do with foreign policy or freedom.  The true cause of the revolts is the cost of food.  Many are starving, others have to devote their entire income to feeding their families.  The people look up and see their leaders experiencing the most lavish of lifestyles while they perish.  This is not the first time we have seen the Proletariat raise up, nor will it be the last.  What we need to see in our own country is that our ruling class is not the politicians.  The status quo is not ruined by one party or another.  Instead, it is the removal of the upper class from the discussion.  The ruling class in our society are the billionaires and corporations whose opinions and agendas are put at the forefront of the discussion of our national situation instead of our much more serious issues of energy dependence, education, health care, poverty, and infrastructure. 

"We have to live within our means," is the new mantra on Fox these days.  Remember, the budget is only what we spend, not what we take it, that has been made clear.  Those words make people scared.  The people at the lower levels of the income structure already feel they are living within their means.  So do those in the middle and even upper middle classes.  When politicians and pundits say, "live within our means," they instill a general fear in the majority of people that there will have to be some sort of cutting back in their lives.  I am waiting for someone to argue "means."  There are an awful lot of people in this country making and holding a whole lot of money.  They have been for 30 years, reaping essentially all the benefit of the Conservative policies of the past 30 years.  This has gone on without much resistance as the standard of living in this country has accelerated greatly over the same period, mostly due to cheap foreign labor and technological innovations. 

Soon though, if the trend of stepping on every single worker and eliminating their right to assemble continues, if the national guard is called in in Wisconsin, if the government continues to try to fund itself on a equal plane as if this country has no socio-economic tiers, if we keep allowing the channel with the most consistent message spouted by the most beautiful people call the shots, we are in for a greater fall than Egypt.  With enough downward pressure, those TEA Party people will stop arguing that government employees do have the right to have better benefits, and start arguing that they deserve those benefits as well and those people who are living the dream while they clean their sheets are going to have to pay for it.  How far do we have to go until this revolution?  It is my hope we never get there and correct ourselves before collapse, but one thing is for sure: you had better not have Americans going hungry.

No Taxes, No Spending, No Service

They said they would, and now you have to deal with it.  The Republican Party is shrewd.  They get in office and spend money they don't have.  They lose an election, then run again on fiscal responsibility.  Well, the things they cut when they get back in are not the same things they spend money on.  In fact, they raise alarms about debts they created which may or may not be things to panic about, then cut all the programs that actually help the economy in favor of tax cuts that do nothing.  We are seeing this play out in Wisconsin right now. 

Tens of thousands of people, mostly state employees, have been protesting inside and out of their capitol.  They are fighting what would amount to about a 7 percent decrease in their wages (13 percent net decrease if you consider the loss in benefits) brought about by the desire to balance the state budget.  Now, it is important to realize, Wisconsin is not the only state in the spending slashing mood, and it is also not a poor state.  In fact, the average wage earner in Wisconsin makes about $3100 more per year than the average American.  The problem is that there just is not enough money coming in to the state coffers to pay for the things the people have come to expect.  This seems like a simple idea, and it is.  The solution is to either get more money coming in or reduce the amount of money going out.  Now, cutting programs such as helium storage or studies on wild boars and whatnot are easy.  Usually they are a few million bucks here and there that were pork-barreled in to get a bill through at an earlier date.  Nowadays, though, there just aren't those programs around to cut.  Nowadays, we are down to teachers, fire fighters, police, infrastructure projects, and the like.  The things government provides that people forget are government while they are railing against all government (oddly those people usually have an American flag on them somewhere, despite hating everything the government has ever done other than lower taxes).

So now the other side is protesting.  No more TEA Party rallies needed, the Republicans won, so they just have to put crazy back in the bag for another few years.  Cut off some heating assistance for the poorest of the poor, eliminate some scholarships, and the Republicans will appease those people long enough to get them to vote on their side again next time.  The real cuts, though, go to the core of the American way of life.  Fewer teachers, furloughing state officials, taking away benefits from fire fighters and the like.  The Republicans have framed the argument so well, saying they have no option but to cut.  The only other way would be to tax, and that can't happen, the people don't want that.  And the Republicans are right.  The state budgets are in dire straits.  Budgets do need to be brought to more manageable levels and should not be running deficits.  And if Republicans were to raise taxes, the entire premise of their party would dissolve.  Unfortunately for them, public funds are spent on the masses.  Money that goes to schools effects most people in the state.  Police, fire fighters, nurses, Planned Parenthood, construction projects, etc. all have direct effect on the masses.  And the masses are coming out.  Too bad they forgot to on the day it mattered back in early November. 

My hope in all this is that the teachers don't go back to work.  It would be a pleasure to see fires burn entire neighborhoods and riots rage without police presence.  People, especially those in the midwest, need a little taste of anarchy to remind them what tax dollars really pay for.  Wisconsin is one of many states that has seen disproportionate growth at the top and stagnation at the bottom (read Pulling Apart: Wisconsin's Growing Income Inequality on cows.org).  The lowest income earners have gone from about 18,700 to about 20,100 during the past 30 years, whereas the top tier has gone from about 88,800 to 120,400 during the same period.  The growth, just like the rest of the country, has been concentrated at the top with no management of that disparity.  Because there are always more people at the bottom than the top, the disparity has to be balanced with increased taxes on the top percentile in order to continue to educate, fund, and sustain order. 

People need to recognize there is a difference between wasteful spending and spending in general and that taxes are not something that just comes out of their paycheck and disappears into the mist.  It seems the American people have been placated and coddled so much they have forgotten what exactly taxes pay for.  Maybe a prolonged strike will remind them.  Hopefully it goes long enough that the kids can't graduate this year for lack of school days.  Maybe that will be enough of a wake-up call for people to get it.  Watching the Democrats in that state flee in order to prevent a quorum is so appropriate after the 4 years of the same thing by the Republicans in the US Senate.  The people of Wisconsin are lucky their representatives have enough concern for their state to stand up even when the electorate did not do so for them.  One thing about the Republicans though, they did think this through.  With all these cuts they are going to force though, they are definitely going to need all those guns.