Kiss Me, I'm Irate

Ever since FDR – and especially since Truman, whose battles for his Fair Deal programs not only closely resemble today’s political battles but included one of the same ideas, universal health care – the American political right has espoused a bizarre philosophy that is a curiosity on the world stage: the government is bad. Specifically, they claim, because it cannot do anything efficiently or perhaps do anything right at all. At various times since this has been applied to social policies, economic policies, and even military.

First, my characterization of it as bizarre and curious. It is bizarre because historically most government programs – especially social programs and those that the right deride as “entitlements”, though there’s a lot of overlap – are safer, fairer, and more efficient than their private counterparts. For that matter they’re even more popular. For example, Medicare – our very own government-run health care – is consistently the highest rated health insurance provider in the country and though it suffers slightly on efficiency largely due to neglect (fraud, mainly – though new systems and guidelines to reduce fraud as well as unnecessary expenditures are in process in a big way starting a few years ago), and Social Security – every citizen’s guaranteed retirement package – is hugely popular even as it slides towards bankruptcy in the next couple of decades largely due to (you guessed it) neglect (a trend it would take only a fraction of a percent increase in the SS tax to reverse). And while many people choose additional private products to augment government programs (add-on insurance plans and IRAs, respectively) the core government program provides them a fallback because Medicare will never cancel your coverage because you go to the doctor too many times in a year and SS is reliable, unlike the markets.

I mentioned military back there, too. Private military contractors have a place, and there was a great story a while back about their work on infrastructure – communications and supply lines and such. Their place is not combat. It is not security patrols that result in civilian casualties and the PMC proceeds to shrug off and it is not guarding the embassy, a job traditionally, effectively, and efficiently performed by the US Marine Corps. The most powerful (all-volunteer, natch) military on the planet does not need to hire mercenaries.

The way in which this prophecy of failure becomes self-fulfilling when the right is in power is obvious if you look for it.  The policies espoused by the right lead to the failure of government.  Policies like tax cuts (which are the least effective form of government “spending” in every single study ever done about them) particularly when only for the rich – let me say right here that trickle down is bull – under rightist presidents since Regan, the gap between the rich and the poor has grown at an alarming rate and the middle class has trended toward the poor end of the scale… while under relatively leftist (centrist, really) presidents it’s slowed somewhat.  Tax cuts are an at once simple and egregious example of this – they exist under the theory that government won’t spend the money properly, and they are self-fulfilling in that since they result in defunding government programs which then teeter towards failure, they make government spending ineffective.  Furthermore they don’t do a damn thing for the economy – higher take-home pay as a result of tax cuts is generally saved (particularly by the rich) or used to pay off debts (particularly by the middle-class), both of which are economically worthless.  Well, savings and investment could result in a boost to the economy far down the line and lowering debt results in a reduced loss to the economy because interest paid on debt is economically useless, but the government can spend that money far more effectively (as mentioned before, studies consistently show that tax cuts are a lousy way to spend money – a significant portion of the stimulus bill was tax cuts, which the CBO recently graded as the single least economically effective program – by a huge margin – in the stimulus package).

Now, I don’t personally think this is malicious or even usually intentional, though there’s a growing faction on the left that feels it is malicious.  But there it is – rightist policies weaken government by crippling revenue streams while doing nothing to control spending.  This is why deficits have skyrocketed under Republican presidents and been brought into check under Democrats, a trend particularly pronounced since Reagan, whose miserable failure of an economic policy is still espoused by the various factions of the right (primarily Republicans and Libertarians, and if teabaggers had any idea what the fuck they were talking about they’d be talking about Reagan too) and painfully exemplified in the succession of Clinton – who led the country to a budget surplus for the first time in decades – to Bush II who through at least one war we had no business starting (at the cost of virtually abandoning the other war he started, no less) drove the country into a budget deficit of well over $4oo billion.

The same thing even comes up in health care.  When they’re not admitting to doing everything they can to prevent anything whatsoever from passing, the right is spewing nonsense about why.  The only coherent reason is will hurt insurers, which first off is bull since the legislation represents, in part, a massive earmark to the insurance industry, and second fuck ‘em.  The insurers are the problem with the system, or at least the biggest one.  The other reason that isn’t a bald-faced lie (lies: death panels, rationing, “end of life order”s from end of life counseling which actually deals with living wills, and so forth) is that government can’t do anything right.  Despite the fact that every country that has implemented some form of single-payer or socialized health care system provides a higher level of care to all its citizens for less spending per capita than we spend to cover 86% (a generous estimate – I think the number is actually lower) of our population (and many of the insured are still not protected in the United States because even with insurance the copays, cost-sharing, and deductibles are so incredibly high that anyone from any other country in the industrialized world is stunned by them), that wouldn’t work in the US because we’re special.  That bit is the already twisted doctrine of American Exceptionalism taken to an illogical, twisted extreme – not only are we better than the rest of the world, we’re so much better that we’d fail at implementing a system that’s been an unqualified success in almost every other industrialized nation, who have already implemented it.

Ask yourself, do you really want people who don’t believe in government running it?  I mean, you wouldn’t want a communist running a Fortune 500 company or an atheist as the pope, although both of those would be hilarious for those of us on the outside looking in.

I’m not much for posting about politics most of the time, but there’s one thing this election I really want to share my opinion on: the presidential race.    I strongly support Obama.  I think his policies are more solid, and the thought of his VP as president doesn’t terrify me.  That being said, I support people making their own choice. So let’s talk politics.

Maybe you’re voting McCain because you believe his policies to be better, and that he is simply the right man for the job.  If your decision is based on your opinions of policies and positions, this post is not for you.  You are voting McCain for the right reasons, no matter how much I disagree, and I’m not going to try to change your mind because that comes down to opinion.  Go ahead and stop reading now, or not.

If you’re voting for McCain because Obama is black, you plain and simple don’t deserve to vote.  Get out of my country.

If you’re voting for McCain because Obama is Muslim or an Arab, or somehow not really American, not only do you not deserve to vote, I’m more than a little surprised you’re able to read this post based on the intelligence you display with that opinion.  I’d point you to snopes.com (not even a political site) or factcheck.org (nonpartisan, run by a university) but you’ve obviously already made up your mind to ignore the facts.  Besides that, I’m too lazy.

If you’re voting for McCain because of Obama’s association with Ayers or ACORN, you need to take a closer look.  Obama was eight years old when Ayers was associated with Weather Underground, his closest associations were serving on an education reform board beside Ayers (along with a number of prominent educators and Republicans – you don’t see McCain attacking them, though) and living in the same neighborhood, and Ayers is now a respectable politician in Chicago (as much as politicians in Chicago can be respectable, anyway).

ACORN is a nonpartisan organization that happens to have a project that involves hiring people in need of work to stand on street corners and the like and get people to register to vote.  It’s a perfectly legitimate organization, and legitimate activity.  Some of the people they hired unfortunately submitted illegitimate registrations as opposed to actually going out and getting people registered.  The organization that hired them had nothing to do with that, and it’s unfortunate that it’s getting caught up in the unscrupulous actions of a few of its employees.

If you’re voting for McCain because of his choice for VP, what the hell are you thinking?  Palin was just a couple weeks ago found in violation of several ethics rules in Alaska (her saying that the report “vindicated” her? a rather bold lie, given the report is public), and while mayor she had a reputation for getting rid of people who stood up to her and filling the ranks of her underlings with friends and acquaintances.  She’s the one that stands idle at rallies while her supporters cry “terrorist” and “kill him”, referring to Obama.  This is not a person you want anywhere near the white house, much less as vice president.

Meanwhile McCain pays lip service to a clean campaign, calling on his supporters to respect Obama (he was booed for that, by the way) while his campaign continues to run baseless attack ads on Obama’s very thin association with Ayers and his association with ACORN, an organization guilty only of trying to increase turnout of potential voters.  This means one of two things: either McCain is really just paying lip service, or he can’t even control his own campaign.  Do you really want him as president, either way?

I know this post isn’t likely to change anyone’s mind, but if you’re one of those swing votes, I hope it will swing you towards Obama.

An interesting thing is happening with this round of Presidential elections, but it’s something that’s been growing in Congress as well. The candidates aren’t acting like leaders. And the congresspeople aren’t acting like, well, congress.

You may ask why I say this. It’s simple, really. Presidents lead. That is their purpose. They may try to bend to the will of the people somewhat, but they do what’s right, or try to. It wasn’t Congress that signed the Emancipation Proclamation, or who ordered the US Military to protect the racial integration in an elementary school as the state governor tried to block it with the National Guard. Nor was it Congress who ordered the invasion of Afghanistan, or for that matter Iraq. Say what you like about President George W. Bush, and believe me, I myself could say a lot, but he is a strong leader.

Likewise with Congress – a ruling body intended to reflect the views of its constituents. Certainly to do what’s right – that’s why we don’t vote everything by popular vote – but also to follow their constituents’ will. Congressmen are not supposed to, say, earmark $223 million of federal funds for a bridge to an island of 50 people (that’s $4.5 million each, if you’re counting) that don’t want it. Thank you Senator Ted Stevens (he makes such a great example of someone who should be impeached, yet when he threatened to quit Congress if funds were diverted from said widely hailed “bridge to nowhere” for hurricane Katrina relief efforts, they tweaked the wording so he’d stay – that’s another post).

Now, a final word on the Presidential candidates running for next fall. I can’t blame them for not acting like strong leaders. This country is afraid of strong leaders right now (or so they think), because look what happened last time we elected one. We wound up in a war we probably can’t win, meanwhile stem cell research programs were set back years.

The fact is, the country isn’t afraid of strong leaders. If a single candidate could take hold and rally the United States behind a cause, or even just an opinion, they would win by a landslide. Hell, if a candidate could just decide what the hell they believe and stand for, they could probably win because right now America needs someone to believe in.