Building America

Ken Mandel, a former Rutgers classmate of mine, produced a compelling documentary film last year titled Building Alaska.  There, he describes the history, trials, and tribulations of transforming the infrastructure of this frozen wasteland into one that supports a growing economy that is constantly re-inventing itself, providing thousands of jobs to both Alaskans and residents of the “lower 48.”

As blogger Dave Johnson points out, and as has been confirmed by the Bush track record, the conventional wisdom that businesses create jobs is nonsense.  It is demand that creates jobs, and without demand, businesses contract and jobs disappear.  This is the situation that Barack Obama inherited, and to a large extent still exists today.

The history of Alaska’s infrastructure, and by extension Alaska’s employment rolls, has been driven by a constantly-changing demand.  At the turn of the twentieth century, the film points out, gold, silver, and copper were discovered in interior parts of Alaska and the Yukon, and the only way to get the precious material out to the market was via overland routes to sea ports in southern and southeastern Alaska.    Visionaries such as Michael J. Heney and E.C. Hawkins provided the dreams and impetus to build railroads that were deemed impossible to construct, and later, roads over melting permafrost.  Building bridges over gorges in subzero weather where half the year the daylight is short presented challenges  unique to Alaska.  Budgets were tight, and compromises had to be made, but the resulting railroads, automobile highways, and later the oil pipeline were all expensive, challenging investments that provided significant boosts to Alaska’s economy.

Looking back to my childhood years, we have had visionaries like Heney and Hawkins who provided me and my generation with bold infrastructure improvements to help make the American economy the strongest in the world.  Today, we take it for granted that we can drive from coast to coast without encountering a traffic light, but it was not always this way.  Our Interstate Highway System was championed by President Eisenhower (a Republican) and was modeled after European highways such as the Autobahn.  Locally, Robert Moses was also a visionary who developed many of the bridges and roads in the New York metropolitan area.

Unfortunately, today our short-sighted politicians and businessmen don’t understand the importance of infrastructure investment as we allow our current bridges and roads to crumble under inadequate maintenance, and defer or cancel much needed projects such as the ARC tunnel, high speed rail, and air traffic control modernization.  On paper, we may be balancing our budget in the short term, but we are mortgaging our future and the economy our grandchildren will inherit.

Today’s tea party politicians are calling for extension of tax cuts for the wealthy that will add $700 billion to our deficit, will not create a single American job, and will leave the nation with nothing to account for those dollars.  We would be orders of magnitude better off if we were to apply those funds to infrastructure projects that would create American jobs, put people back to work, generate significant tax revenue, and provide our children with the same type of legacy that our parents left us.  Twentieth century Alaska had its visionaries.  Where are the twenty-first century visionaries for America? 

NJ Dem's Marketing Fail

Cross-posted from BlueJersey.com

Markos Moulitsas ("Kos") posted a diary today entitled "Barack Obama's marketing fail."  It points out how some of the mainstream media are twisting the results of the recent Deficit Commission announcement to pin the blame on the president for proposed cuts to social programs.


New Jersey Democrats are also failing at the marketing of their message to the mainstream media.  Case in point: today's Philadelphia Inquirer article on how Pennsylvania governor-elect Tom Corbett hopes to emulate Chris Christie.

The Inquirer is one of the more politically balanced newspapers around.  Its editorial page is slightly left-of-center, but it has carried far right columnists like Rick Santorum.

In its reporting on what our governor has done with the budget deficit, the Inquirer states:

"Because Christie plugged that budget hole without raising taxes, he raised enough eyes round the country to catapult him from Jersey pol to national figure."  (emphasis mine)

In discussions with several of my friends, it is clear that this is the common wisdom - Christie has cut taxes.  Democrats have to do better in debunking this falsehood.  According to the Home News Tribune, when you take into account the deferral of the homestead rebate, this year's property tax bill will average out to a 23.5 percent increase.  And of course, other taxes and fees such as the NJ Transit fare increase are rising faster than inflation.

It's ironic that Barack Obama, who lowered taxes on the middle class, is getting a bum rap from the mainstream media, while Chris Christie, who tells seemingly credible lies, is getting the royal treatment.

"All The Leaves are Brown, and the Sky is Gray"

America is about to enter some difficult times.  The recent election of corporate-sponsored Tea Party Republicans will have a deleterious effect on the middle class, the poor, our overall economy, and the quality of life throughout the country.  Will America slide further into the status of a banana republic as Nicholas Kristof posits in today’s Times, or is there a glimmer of hope?

Throughout the last half of the twentieth century, California has been a bellwether for trends in American society, both positive and negative.  The conservative revolution gained traction when Ronald Reagan was elected governor in 1966.  Proposition 13 was enacted in 1978.  It eviscerated California’s education system, and is the model that the conservatives and the current Tea Party crowd is following in their quest to eliminate needed government services.  The Golden State led the effort to promote clean air by enforcing automobile emission standards which were subsequently adopted by several states and the federal government.  And despite the fact that a ballot initiative to legalize recreational use of marijuana recently failed, residents have been able to legally use weed for palliative care for over a decade.  California’s Silicon Valley was the birthplace of our nation’s economic boom before corporations moved most of their semiconductor manufacturing operations offshore.  What starts in California eventually takes root across the nation.

Now, maybe – just maybe – the recent election results in California may indicate how things will play out in the national scene over the next decade.  Democrat Jerry Brown will return to the governor’s office after 28 years despite the $163 million self-funded campaign of his corporatist opponent.  Barbara Boxer’s re-election to the Senate will retain one of the few voices of reason in that otherwise dysfunctional body.  There’s nothing wrong with electing career politicians if they have a proven track record of serving their constituents.  And both houses of the California legislature are in Democratic hands.  (Generally, one-party rule us unhealthy, but when the opposition party is hostile to government, do they really deserve to be in government?)  In this month’s election, Californians also passed a constitutional amendment which removed the unworkable requirement that budgets must be passed with a two-thirds majority, ensuring that a small minority of legislators can’t block progress.

It is said that California is like a granola bar.  Once you remove the fruits and nuts, all you have left is the flakes.  And there’s still plenty wrong in parts of the Golden State.  Now that his party is in the majority, Southern California representative Darrell Issa will commence a series of witch hunts in the House of Representatives, investigating every Democrat who breathes, and we will be revisiting the folly of the Clinton impeachment as Issa and his fellow birthers divert the president’s attention from the serious business of governing.  Nevertheless, California is on the right track.  Let’s hope that history repeats itself and the country follows California’s lead before the Tea Party drives us off a cliff.

GOP Health Care Plan Revealed

WASHINGTON January 14, 2011.  Today, the Republican leadership of the House of Representatives revealed their long-awaited alternative to what they refer to as “Obamacare”.  The new program, dubbed “Citizen Physicians Corps” has received overwhelming support from the Tea Party and the insurance industry executives who drafted the legislation. 

Explaining the “Citizen Physician” program, Speaker John Boehner used an analogy to the political system with which he is intimately familiar.  “We have seen that government and managerial experience along with education are not guarantees of success.”  The House leader continued, “Philadelphia Eagles Jon Runyan's congressional victory against the experienced Harvard-educated lawyer John Adler and perennial candidate Christine O'Donnell's surprise primary victory over beloved veteran congressman Mike Castle are but two examples that show that experience and education count for very little.  If it's good enough for Congress, it's good enough for health care.” 

House Majority Whip Eric Cantor provided details of the program.  “Why do physicians need to go through expensive medical school followed by years of internship and residency to perform even the simplest procedures?” he asked.  “This is driving costs upward when our doctors need to pay back their six-figure loans.”  Instead, Citizen Physicians will be required to take a two week correspondence course followed by a simple test.  “We don't want just anyone to become a citizen physician.  So we test them three times.”  Cantor continued, “In each test, we see if they can distinguish their ass from a hole in the ground.”  (Editor's note:  Please do not confuse this with Jon Runyan's tax-exempt donkeys or Chris Christie's Tunnel to Nowhere.)  “If they get it right two out of three times, they are qualified.” Cantor went on, “members of the Citizen Physician Corps will be paid minimum wage so that we are able to drive down medical costs.  As part of the program, we have exempted them from medical liability so that the expense of malpractice suits is eliminated.”

 Cantor added, “In order to protect people's tenth amendment rights, the use of citizen physicians will not be mandatory.  Those who can afford to employ elite college-trained surgeons are still free to do so on their own.”

To achieve maximum cost savings, the program will start with those specialties that are the most expensive.  A one-year pilot program will be kicked off next month to get citizen physicians started in the area of neurosurgery.  While vociferous criticism was raised by the American Medical Association, Cantor remarked, “You don't have to be a rocket scientist to do brain surgery.”  Real rocket scientist Congressman Rush Holt (D-NJ) was unavailable for comment.

The Glass is Empty

While reporting on last night’s disaster, liberal outlets from MSNBC to BlueJersey.com (which I write for), have been trying to put a positive spin on the election even as they report the end of “change we can believe in.”  Yes, Harry Reid held back the nuttiest of the wing nuts.  Yes, Rush Holt, one of the few remaining progressives held back the well-financed campaign of a Tea Party candidate in New Jersey.  But overall, this election has set America on a course from which it may never recover.

In January, two of the three branches of government will be controlled by the extreme fringe.  With a dysfunctional Senate virtually tied, the House of Representatives and John “Hell No We Can’t” Boehner will control the legislative agenda.  (And Boehner will be second in line for the presidential succession after Joe Biden).  Even before the election, the Republican leadership treasonously stated that their first priority was to stop President Obama, and it looks like they succeeded.  Maybe the Tea Partiers relish gridlock, but in today’s world, doing nothing really means accelerating backwards.

The radicalization of the other branch of government, the Supreme Court, started decades ago when Ronald Reagan put Antonin Scalia on the court.  The Bush nominees further radicalized the Court, and the two liberal Clinton justices are in their 70s.  Even Barack Obama’s two justices are less liberal than the ones they replaced.  And in today’s Senate environment, don’t expect any additional Obama nominees to be any better.

With the Fourth Estate firmly in the hands of its corporate masters and Republican operatives, that leaves only the President standing between the destructive Tea Party agenda and the revitalization of the middle class.  While he made great strides in his first two years, they fell far short of the potential of what could have been had the president been more effective in dealing with a congress controlled by his own party.

Some pundits posit that the political system follows a pendulum – swinging from left to right periodically.  But the leftward swings have been short-lived, and a better analogy would be that of a saddle – what physicists call an unstable system.  Think of a marble in the center of a saddle with a small depression at the point where the cowboy’s tuchus sits.  You can move it an inch or two in one direction and the marble will move back to the low point in the center.  But if you move the marble too far – past the lip of the depression – it will fall to the ground.  We may have just moved the American political system too far in one direction.

So it’s time to hunker down.  America survived Ronald Reagan.  We may even survive the havoc wreaked by George W Bush – that’s too early to determine.  Whether America can survive the takeover of its government by the Tea Party and their corporate sponsors is now our biggest worry.

The GOP Majority

What happens when a party that hates government gains control of the government?  I’m afraid that we’re about to find out.  Political pundits predict that the Tea Party Republican coalition will take control of the House, and the Democratic margin in the Senate will be reduced to a few votes.

First, the Senate.  Even if the split is something like 53-47 in favor of the Democrats, we will really have a Republican-controlled Senate.  Senators like Ben Nelson, Blanche Lincoln (if she is re-elected), and Joe Lieberman are acolytes of the Republican philosophy, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see Joe become a Republican if it would solidify his power base.  Even with a near super-majority in the current term, the Senate has become so dysfunctional that it is irrelevant.

So what will happen in the House?  First, with their new-found subpoena power, look for endless expensive investigations of dubious “crimes” such as their witch hunt which brought down ACORN.  There are those who say that the GOP will start impeachment proceedings against Barack Obama, but I don’t think they will.  The public is sick and tired of partisan bickering, and charging the president with spurious “crimes and misdemeanors” and spending millions of dollars on an impeachment proceeding that would never be consummated in the Senate would backfire.  The Republicans may be mean-spirited and in the pocket of Corporate interests, but they are not stupid.  Bill Clinton was impeached during an economic boom.  Proceedings against Obama with today’s problems would not go over well with a public that expects the GOP to solve problems, not create more.  Instead, the Republicans will be happy for numerous small victories that play well with their base.  Their pending control of the House will set the cause of gay rights back a decade.  Unions will be eviscerated, and the gap between the “haves” and “have-nots” will increase as the middle class disappears under the Republican economic policies that caused the Great Bush Recession.  More jobs will be sent to China and Vietnam.  The Internet will become another tool of corporate interests as Net Neutrality becomes a thing of the past.  Tea party crazies like Michele Bachman will assume leadership positions as Speaker Boehner welcomes them (and their corporate benefactors) into the fold. Other witch hunts will result from the Republicans' new-found power, and these will be closely coordinated with Fox's reporting for maximum impact.

So what can Democrats and Progressives do?  First, those in power, including the President, need to grow a spine and stand up to the draconian and regressive policies of the GOP.  This needs to be integrated into a much more effective messaging initiative to help the American public get past the GOP cheerleading of the media and start to vote in their own self-interest.  And Democrats need to establish an effective grass-roots organization in all 50 states to start to turn things around in 2012.  This will be more difficult than in 2008 because for the most part, the GOP will control redistricting, voting machines, and much of the media.  But there’s strength in numbers, and if the Democrats start on November 3^rd, there’s still time to save the country.

---

One of the closest and most watched House races in the country is in New Jersey’s Third Congressional District between incumbent Democrat John Adler and ex-footballer Jon Runyan.  Adler won the seat two years ago and is the first Democrat to represent this area since the 1880s.  Runyan is a Chris Christie protégé and buys in to the Tea Party platform on most, but not all, issues.  I’ll be covering this evening’s Adler party on BlueJersey.com and tweeting under the deciminyan account.

Did Someone End the Wars and Forget to Tell Me?

Noticeably absent from the political discourse leading up to next week's election is any discussion of the two or three wars that our men and women in and out of uniform are currently fighting.  With only a few exceptions, this year’s congressional races are ignoring our wars in the Middle East.

Republicans, naturally, are focusing their campaign on the slow pace of our ability to extricate ourselves from the Bush Recession.  Although President Obama and the stimulus package have slowed the hemorrhaging of jobs, the turnaround has not been fast enough to satisfy everyone.  The GOP’s game plan in ignoring the wars is a smart one for them – making sure the public does not remember that it was the Republican president and vice-president that brought us into these wars under false pretenses.  In fact, had John McCain and Sarah Palin won in 2008, we might be fighting today in Iran as well as Afghanistan, Iraq, and Pakistan.  And war is good business for Republican benefactors like Halliburton and Blackwater.  So they’re happy to keep this out of the realm of public discussion.

Democrats are naturally fragmented on their approach to the wars.  While the maxim “it’s the economy, stupid” dominates the campaign strategy, most Democrats are not leveraging the fact that the biggest drain on our economy is the four trillion dollar extravaganza in the Middle East.  We are building infrastructure in Iraq using foreign labor, while our infrastructure here is crumbling and American jobs are not being created.

President Obama declared the combat mission in Iraq to be over, albeit without the grandiloquence of Dubya’s “Mission Accomplished” photo op.  Yet, the streets of Baghdad are still dangerous, and unless we change our policy, American troops will be in harm’s way for years to come.

Like in the ‘60s, some Democrats are reluctant to speak out against the wars because they are afraid of being accused by the pro-war faction of not supporting the troops.

So despite the fact that American (and Iraqi and Afghan and other) men and women are dying, and despite the fact that war is no longer the choice of last resort, this election is not about the conflicts.  We are letting our status as a military superpower diminish our status as an economic superpower as we pump more lives and treasure into these adventures.

Once the mid-term election is over, we will begin the long process of the 2012 presidential election.  Will these never-ending wars finally become an issue?  Will a lame duck President Obama finally act as Commander-in-Chief and unequivocally direct the military to accelerate withdrawal?  Will the normally bellicose Republican Party finally become fiscally conservative and realize that the way to fix the economy is to make the same draconian cuts to the defense budget as they promote for education and social programs?  Or like in 1968, will there be viable anti-war presidential candidates and an uptick in anti-war demonstrations that the media can’t ignore to help drive the political establishment toward a more realistic and economically viable approach to dealing with those that wish us harm?  Realistically, it doesn’t matter who carries the anti-war banner.  But someone has to.