It’s not that I don’t care about Park Service workers, but
264,000 women and children were cut off from the supplemental food aid program,
WIC, in North Carolina this week. Until Congress passed and Obama signed the “National
Avoidance of Embarrassment Act” grieving military families, coping with the loss of their husband or wife, father or mother, and struggling to bury
their loved ones, were forced to go searching for charity to provide proper burials for
those lost in Afghanistan. The purpose for of US involvement in Afghanistan
is now shrouded in uncertainty, but even as the loved ones ask why, America tells
them you are alone. Even as the families wonder whether theirs will be the last to die
for a cause no longer noble, except for political expediency, America cannot be
bothered to care. Military leaders testified in Congress months ago that a
shutdown would prevent the payment of burial benefits. We could ask that those
feigning surprise to be ashamed, but the next battle is too near.
Shame never enters the lexicon of those who sit in governance along the
Potomac.
Reopening national parks wouldn't move me at all. Let the lady in the harbor stare across the closed fence of her border. Let
her be the only one left in America still willing take in “your tired, your
poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free”. Let her stand as a
monument to our selfish stupidity. The idea that public opinion can be bought
by opening the public parks repulses me. Americans have adopted the language of cable TV, all victories and losses calculated in political terms. Whether we, as citizens, assist grieving families, or feed poor women
and children does generate the same zing. The decency we show each other is the true measure of who we are, but by that measure our
record is awful.
Then just when you thought, just when it appears that the scale on which we measure our values is permanently damaged and irreparably, it turns out we can sink lower. As I write
this Congress is considering ways out of the Shutdown crisis. Republicans love cutting
taxes. They can always be used as red meat for the lion. The tax most commonly discussed for action
these past days has been the medical device tax. This is a 2.7% tax, on items
that are commonly marked up hundreds of percent. In 1982, yes that’s 1982, the
NY Times reported that Medicare paid for 80 to 90% of all pacemaker
implantations. According the Times, the actual cost of manufacturing one was $600 in 1982, but medical device companies were routinely charging the hospitals $2,000 to
$5,000. These cost were then passed
directly onto the Federal Government and paid through Medicare. Today,
pacemakers costs can start at $12,000 and some range in price many multiples of
that. In what other area has technology gotten more expensive?
That is the economic backdrop for the face saving measure, the
“National Avoidance of Embarrassment Act II”. This is the way out of
the Shutdown impasse now being formulated in Congress. There will be a delay in the device tax for two years, a
complete cave to a narrow special interest group who’s lobbyists did not go
home during the shutdown. That is a how low we have sunk.
Poll numbers notwithstanding some continue to wallow in the
mess of slime and uncertainty they have created, some are still calling for an
end to Obamacare. But the real failure springs from the narrow selfishness of
our collective humanity. Keith Ellison made me cringe yesterday, when he said
repeatedly that the truckers attempting to shut down traffic in DC in protest
of Obamacare ought to vote their self-interest. Don’t these truckers need good
roads and good health care, he wondered? Fair questions. But have we lost so
much our sense of community, that the only interests that people can be
motivated to pursue at the ballot box is those that can be defined as their
self-interest? Is there no interest greater than our own that we could support
with our vote? Ellison’s priorities are no different than mine, but his language if spoken by a wealthy Republican, say a Romney, for example, would be front page news.
Shutdowns come and shutdowns go, but the community based commitment to our fellow citizens is being shredded daily. Racial ethics continue to boil beneath the surface. Some talk of the black community in Chicago and elsewhere and what “they” do, and what “they” haven’t done, and what “they” ought to do with their bootstraps. I understand not all of these comments are spoken with racial bias, but it seems they are heard and repeated with deeper and darker hues of bias. Those who suggest that “our” community is suffering (as opposed to “their” community) are classified as naive liberals, often dismissed with the label. When the conversation moves to class, the condemnation grows louder. Anyone who suggests that poor people, especially the working poor, are suffering disproportionately in our society, they are met with a fuselage of indignation from wealthy and powerful interests claiming class warfare. Class lines are even more noxious in our national dialogue than race, often because they are released from the stigma of race. The white emperor has issues, but the rich emperor is willing to fight for his, and the financial resources he can raise to field his army is great and even now expanding. In Roman times, the vast army was fielded from those in society dispossessed and in search of validation, the ancient equivalent, perhaps, of bigots and truckers.
Shutdowns come and shutdowns go, but the community based commitment to our fellow citizens is being shredded daily. Racial ethics continue to boil beneath the surface. Some talk of the black community in Chicago and elsewhere and what “they” do, and what “they” haven’t done, and what “they” ought to do with their bootstraps. I understand not all of these comments are spoken with racial bias, but it seems they are heard and repeated with deeper and darker hues of bias. Those who suggest that “our” community is suffering (as opposed to “their” community) are classified as naive liberals, often dismissed with the label. When the conversation moves to class, the condemnation grows louder. Anyone who suggests that poor people, especially the working poor, are suffering disproportionately in our society, they are met with a fuselage of indignation from wealthy and powerful interests claiming class warfare. Class lines are even more noxious in our national dialogue than race, often because they are released from the stigma of race. The white emperor has issues, but the rich emperor is willing to fight for his, and the financial resources he can raise to field his army is great and even now expanding. In Roman times, the vast army was fielded from those in society dispossessed and in search of validation, the ancient equivalent, perhaps, of bigots and truckers.
America has always had segregated communities. We have a
long history of allocating services unevenly to those of different social
classes. But this is the worst of who we are. Money and power and the corruption they create are the source of the gridlock in Washington. It’s certainly not new. Race is the armor and shield, by which
a poor white and poor black circle each other in anger and humiliation, prepared
to fight. Distracted, neither questions those with wealth and power. The People's House, repeated ad nauseam by Boehner and his lieutenants, has become an Orwellian façade to cover the fact that more than half of the Congressional class of 2012 is a millionaire.
Americans increasingly condemn those with neither wealth nor
power, laying all our woes at the feet of the poor, hungry, and dispossessed. For
as many times as talking heads postulated the causes of the miscommunication
and intransigence, how many times did anyone note the explosion of campaign
cash flowing into the Potomac City and postulate that as a cause? Both parties
feed at that trough, leaving neither motivated to shine a light on it.
Any talk about American greatness is distorted through the
prism of wealth. Our national wealth has been horded into the hands of a
narrower and narrower cabal. From their bunkers they fire “Americans for
Prosperity” salvos. It is not only the Koch Brothers, their wealth derived from environmental
toxins, and lack of worker safety. They are just the meanest and ugliest of the
villains, but they are not alone. Kapra’s, Mr. Potter, in his decrepit
wheelchair and mossy blanket, would have been a victim if “It’s a Wonderful
Life” were remade today. A few real estate transactions and some questionable
cultural choices? WTF? Really? That’s
all you got?
In the run-up to the collapse of Lehman, and the near
collapse of the world economy, trillions of dollars of dog-sh** investments
traded hands. The bankers were the first in line, got in early, and when they
needed to get out the government built a $700 billion bridge called TARP back
to their moated mansions. Few remember the Tea Party originally formed at the
grass roots as a response to the TARP legislation which was all in for the
bankers and provided nothing for the homeowners screwed by predatory lenders and their masters on Wall Street.
The credit rating agencies like Moody’s and Fitch made
millions as well. Matt Taibbi has written extensively of their role in the con. These are the agencies that now set the standard of value for
US bonds, for whose pleasure the president and a handful of semi-sane
Republicans are trying to dance. The financial interests showered money on
Washington and continue to do so today. Medical device makers are just small
time players in this game, but their impending victory is just a sign of what
we are as a governed people: Last in line for consideration. For if there is an
organized financial interest and an issue, the interest with the donations will
always be heard first and last. It is not clear who speaks for the American
people in either party.
Those who really care have become timid, and in ways
prudish. When weighing “on the one hand” against “but then on the other",
sometimes there is no other hand. Dan Rather's excellent book, "Rather Outspoken" goes into some detail to explain the corrosive effect of large corporate interests in news gathering organizations. Sometimes the man telling the story is
wearing a fancy suit even as he picks your pocket, destroys your community, and
loots your home.
We see the hurt in our communities, but we no longer “dream things
that never were and ask why not.” We are too busy bickering about bullshit. We
talk about what is good for the President, and how this plays for the dems, the
GOP, and their base, but ignore real human suffering. Politicians from both
sides of the aisle postulate that the real pain is coming, as if a pregnant
woman clutching the hand of her small child in search of food is not pain
enough. That she is often a 10th generation black women only makes
the pain more searing. It ought to shame us. Instead facts like that are used
to shame her.
I acknowledge that I am a liberal. On this blog and on FB in
the places I post, I know my views are more easily accepted. I acknowledge that
I come here for reassurance and affirmation, depressed and frightened about
where the center of the country resides now. Many of us are anachronisms. We
are more liberal than the general population by several measures. With little effect, we pillory
the other side with our meme’s and outrage. But if we go into communities in
Georgia, or South Carolina, or even, Brooklyn New York, we would be despised
other. Though we share woes and anxieties and bills, we vote for our party and “they”
vote for theirs. Each party then polishes their arguments and disagreement down
to a fine nub of inactive gridlock. Then once all the blood has been spent the
only victor, the one that comes out on top, is the medical device industry. In Georgia
or on the Uppper West Side, who voted for them?
Economic liberalism had its last gasp in 1968. Then we lost
Bobby and Martin within two months of each other, and many of our fellow
travelers set off in a drug fueled binge of nihilism. Those who did not, those
who kept up the fight like Leslie Cagan, the mother of 1,000 protests, and Medea
Benjamin, of Code Pink, become unfashionable, in ways even more so than the dreadlocked
middle-aged white guy in the tie-dyed shirt and purple sweat pants who stayed way
too long on the Haight.
I feel increasingly isolated from the American dialectic of
left and right, liberal and conservative. I agree with those who say that we
are spending money we don’t have. I’m tired of hearing the President’s
supporters keep talking about the President’s claim to historic reductions in
deficit spending. Are we so jealous of our victories that we cannot acknowledge
that the Republicans pushed much of it on him?
The deficits are going down, but every honest person in the
country knows they are going to start going up again at the end of this decade.
Entitlement reform is coming, today, tomorrow or in two weeks or two years, but
it is coming. Income inequality is an oozing wound on our national conscience
or ought to be, that does not mean that the current rate of growth in Social
Security, and more acutely Medicare, expenditures is sustainable. Do we not have the means to
both put entitlements on a more sustainable path even as we address that
oligarchic nature of wealth in this country (and around the world) and sets plans to slowly reconfigure the
economic construction of our society?
The President absolutely needed to defend his signature
program, his legacy, Obamacare. Traffic on the Federal site is five times what
was expected, which suggests a lot of interest for a program we are told
Americans hate. It’s amazing that the president got his plan passed before this
shitty environment enveloped all of us.
But his record of reform in almost all other areas is
ineffective or incomplete. He reformed the college loan program, removing predatory financial
interests, but then buckled to Republican pressure on rates. He got Dodd-Frank passed, but four years
later has yet to get the regulations written. The president hit a right-wing roadblock
on the environment and global warming, but he has been far too timid. He has
moved on CAFÉ standards for mileage and emissions from coal plants, but the
latter especially stands on less than firm ground for the long term. And he has
presided over an explosion of investment in fossil fuels, especially in
environmentally unsound fracking. In 2012 he ran on the increase in output he
presided over, essentially stiff-Armed the environmental movement. He seems to think
indecision on the Keystone pipeline, something a Republican president would
almost certainly overturn, is an adequate policy. Financial interests lie at the core of almost
all these battles, sometimes lining up with the president, sometimes, actually
almost always with Republicans, and in rare cases dividing their support
between the parties. Voters get their say every two or four years, but lobbyists,
weighed down with campaign cash, never stop talking.
Obama has been an effective bulwark against the right wing
crazies in Congress, but from climate to employment, to the budget, or campaign
finance reform he has accomplished little else. I will defend Obama as a good
man, and undeserving of much of the crap that has been splattered across his
presidency. I will even say there are elements of greatness in him, but he has
not been a great President. To be a liberal do I have to defend him?
Even as plans are laid to cut supplemental food aid, and
chop kids out of Head Start, the Pentagon budget remains a bloated
embarrassment. Early child education, something every person of means provides
for their kids, has become a plaything for politicians to bandy about. Head
Start has many limitations, but in a lot of cases it may be the only chance
that a kid has to break the cycle of poverty which is their family tradition.
Must it be sacrificed for another boat or plane?
It is long past cliché that our national priorities are
f***ed up. Our community, our nation, is not willing to provide food or housing
for the poor. Simultaneously we refuse to provide the means such as education
to fight their way from poverty. We tell people to get off welfare and get a
job even as we acknowledge there are no jobs, especially for low skilled
workers with inadequate education.
For me I am in another place now. I am a liberal. I despise
what the right has become, but hold no particular pride for this President or
for the state of liberalism as a political force with a moral core. I define my
liberalism in the way I think about race, and gender and sexual orientation. I
define it in the largess, the sense of decency and honor I would like to see in
our society. I'm a crazy liberal on guns, and a libertine on a host of issues from drugs to immigration. I do not believe we're too poor to accomplish real reform, and
lift millions from poverty and desolation. Our imagination is cramped and our sense of community is dented, both in ways for more profound then the limits of our wallet. We just don't like to admit it. I acknowledge that money cannot
solve every problem, it cannot even cure poverty. But if applied with love and
compassion it can ease suffering.
Even to liberals the poor who live us among us are nameless, faceless, statistics. We no longer demand our Democratic President even talk about them. God Bless him, Keith Ellison was arrested this week while demonstrating for immigration reform. So much of the rest of the Democratic establishment has drifted away slowly from the subject, just as they did with gun control, and almost any commitment to Social Justice. Nothing to see here, get off the corner, Johnny. Move along, move along.
Even to liberals the poor who live us among us are nameless, faceless, statistics. We no longer demand our Democratic President even talk about them. God Bless him, Keith Ellison was arrested this week while demonstrating for immigration reform. So much of the rest of the Democratic establishment has drifted away slowly from the subject, just as they did with gun control, and almost any commitment to Social Justice. Nothing to see here, get off the corner, Johnny. Move along, move along.
This country is too rich to be so freakishly cheap and
extravagantly selfish with our resources. After Lehman and TARP, every one of those
Gucci loafers just wandered back to Connecticut with the millions they
literally swindled from Congress and the pockets of their customers. From there
they used their upper crust superiority to try to push one of their own, Romney,
into the Presidency. Manipulating the process to get one of their own right back into the Whitehouse after the debacle of 2007-2008 would have been stunning defeat for America. They lost that one, and now sit in bitter recrimination fighting among themselves.
Meanwhile, in America, one in four who live in poverty. They are never the
subject of political dialogue, except in the context of bootstrap lectures. 50
million require supplemental food aid. This is raised as a campaign issue only to pillory
their shiftlessness. One must never speak of the the hole in the recovery they represent.
7-1/2% unemployment seems locked in as the new normal. Much of this is both chronic
and endemic, caused by the collapse of manufacturing and Government jobs,
once sure paths to the middle class. Even as the infrastructure crumbles and America lags further and further behind in educational standards, no
plans or proposals are in place to solve the employment problem or any other. Instead
we get a two-year delay of a tax on medical devises.
Is it any wonder that the song that plays in my head on constant
rewind these days is “Everything is Broken”?
Everything is Broken, Bob Dylan, Oh Mercy, 1989
Charlotte Observer, Cuts to WIC, Oct-08, 2013
CNN, Fisher House to the Rescue for Military Death Benefits,
Oct-09, 2013
