It gets propagandized talked about a ton. How much do you know about the Federal Budget? Try this.
I was a dazzling 7 for 12, which I think would be an ‘F’ in common parlance. Humbling.
Laboring
Whether it’s the right to pollute or the right to exploit workers, our modern oligarchs want it. And they want it for free. Do your kids’ teachers have the right to collective bargaining? Your firefighters? Here’s a map.
Hmm… Notice anything?
And here’s a label, one among many, to look for.
Eat It
Tomorrow is another meal. Dr. K, today:
The moral is clear. Republicans don’t have a mandate to cut spending; they have a mandate to repeal the laws of arithmetic.
How can voters be so ill informed? In their defense, bear in mind that they have jobs, children to raise, parents to take care of. They don’t have the time or the incentive to study the federal budget, let alone state budgets (which are by and large incomprehensible). So they rely on what they hear from seemingly authoritative figures.
And what they’ve been hearing ever since Ronald Reagan is that their hard-earned dollars are going to waste, paying for vast armies of useless bureaucrats (payroll is only 5 percent of federal spending) and welfare queens driving Cadillacs. How can we expect voters to appreciate fiscal reality when politicians consistently misrepresent that reality?
It’s all backwards, all the time; belt-tightening should happen when things are flush; spending sprees (aka stimulus) when prices are up, energy costs are high and people are out of work. The huge surplus that GW Bush inherited way back when from BC? Used to fit the narrative cut taxes immediately. Because the gov’t shouldn’t have extra money. But tell people they should save for rainy day and balance their checkbooks.
Green, I’m telling you.
Spending their Dime
Climate Progress has both the skinny and the ‘gras’ on what the Koch brothers are getting for the quarter mil they dropped on members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee:
The House Energy and Commerce Committee plans to hold a hearing Wednesday to discuss blocking the Environmental Protection Agency’s ability to reduce carbon dioxide pollution. We can expect the same old half-truths, misstatements, and outright lies from the new majority, with an extra dose of special interest pandering.
So… they line up a slew of paid contestants people to testify that it’s all a hoax, but how does this come off? What does it look like to the average non-Fox viewer, non-Rush listener? What about the perception that they might be protesting a little too much? Do they begin attacking teh Globalwarmingisrealism as a threat to America that must be eliminated? Into the mike? You and I might think this is already happening but… this is a formal committee process where these charlatans have to speak clearly and on the record. I think it will take more than a mere refutation of the facts as construed to get the Koch brothers’ point across; they’ll feel the need to go on the attack to stop the traitorous EPA from protecting the common right of access to clean water and air. Because it won’t be enough to merely hold the line and play one side, and because that’s what they actually are paid to believe. And to do.
I smell overreach.
Rappers, Deficits
This is a hilarious headline, but I think it, and the accompanying photo, should go with the story below. Insert witty segue along the lines of ‘Lesbians, Dwarves Clash over New Tax Laws’.
Because along those very lines, we have this new Deficit Commission, charged with, seemingly, suggesting the most craven ideas coming out of Talk Radio available. For a good overview of the leaked fail work of the new DefCom, Kevin Drum, via TPM:
To put this more succinctly: any serious long-term deficit plan will spend about 1% of its time on the discretionary budget, 1% on Social Security, and 98% on healthcare. Any proposal that doesn’t maintain approximately that ratio shouldn’t be considered serious. The Simpson-Bowles plan, conversely, goes into loving detail about cuts to the discretionary budget and Social Security but turns suddenly vague and cramped when it gets to Medicare. That’s not serious.
There are other reasons the Simpson-Bowles plan isn’t serious. Capping revenue at 21% of GDP, for example. The plain fact is that over the next few decades Social Security will need a little more money and healthcare will need a lot more. That will be true even if we implement the greatest healthcare cost containment plan in the world. Pretending that we can nonetheless cap revenues at 2000 levels isn’t serious.
Check the rest, plus the nice chart, and share with your friends, because remember: Thanksgiving’s just around the corner.
Is Luck a Skill?
This is a crucial point – also crucial, too, is that it does not undermine capitalism but does expose its chief weakness, which itself eerily resembles it’s great strength. Funny that.
Green does not equal smarts or vast expertise, and probably should denote rougher trade qualities like foolhardy gumption. The minute we get too sensible about things is the minute we turn toward convention. The rich we have now are bold mostly in the outlandish links they’re willing to go to protect their winnings, in common parlance. Of course our new billionaire overlords, who believe in nothing so much as their own genius, know nothing but to go into a crouch, expand their fortunes and spend millions to save their billions from the gov’mint. Acute failure of imagination. Symptomatically nouveaux riche – the only question is will they be able to hang onto their green cushions long enough to learn to doubt the perfection of its comfort?
Talking about the Whether
It’s funny to talk about journalists giving money.
First, MSNBC host Keith Olbermann was indefinitely suspended when the Web site Politico revealed that Olbermann had donated to three Democratic candidates.
Politico’s post included this statement from MSNBC President Phil Griffith: “I became aware of Keith’s political contributions late last night. Mindful of NBC News policy and standards, I have suspended him indefinitely without pay.”
Now, the Web site The Wrap is reporting that Fox News Channel host Sean Hannity and MSNBC host Joe Scarborough have also donated to candidates.
As the site reports: “This year, Hannity gave $5,000 to Rep. Michele Bachmann’s (R-Minn.) political PAC and $4,800 to New York Republican John Gomez’s unsuccessful congressional race.”
I found the idea of Murdoch giving the republicans a $1 million donation kind of silly – and a lot redundant. I mean, the in-kind contribution of a single-minded, 24-hour cable puke-funnel would appear to be the balance, if not tip it. Tacking on a measly Mil for them to buy new forks after you’ve already cooked the food and set the table seems a little… crass and patronizing, not that the party much cares if they’re seen as lackeys. Just wanna be seen. Thanks for playing.
So, per the above report, Olbermann’s problem wasn’t a matter of whether he gave, but the “to three democratic candidates” part.
Right now, and over the past thirty years, it has been corporations that have loosened most of the conventional, if increasingly Orwellian, memes into society. Most prevailing ideas about health, wealth management, insurance, risk, taste and comfort have originated as some flavor of perception-shaping effort on behalf of a product or service. And we’ve greatly accepted them into our nostalgias, tagging the years and decades of our lives with brand names and theme park visits like blog posts. This has, of course, been extended into, some might argue it has in essence become, the political arena. I recommend a halt to these proceedings. Olbermann could’ve really made news with hearty contributions to O’Donnell, Angle and Rand Paul. Then the corporate ideologues wouldn’t know what to think – hippies and CEOs would both be scratching their heads, wondering who the sucker is at the table, who’s mark of the double-play wacko. That’s the kind of confusion that needs to be sewn.
Damn – I thought I had a semi-free weekend. Now I’ve got to White-paper my new de-consulting firm: Tricks of the Tirade.
Transformational Means
Also known as Getting Green(tm), or the means to transform the way a region (or country, or planet) is powered:
WASHINGTON — Google and a New York financial firm have each agreed to invest heavily in a proposed $5 billion transmission backbone for future offshore wind farms along the Atlantic Seaboard that could ultimately transform the region’s electrical map.
The 350-mile underwater spine, which could remove some critical obstacles to wind power development, has stirred excitement among investors, government officials and environmentalists who have been briefed on it.
Google and Good Energies, an investment firm specializing in renewable energy, have each agreed to take 37.5 percent of the equity portion of the project. They are likely to bring in additional investors, which would reduce their stakes.
So, in the span of a week PK writes about the non-existent stimulus spending, and the tunnel that won’t be built (not in a day, not in a year or 10) and so we should begin to get a genuine idea of what a lack of progress looks like by now – with more where that came from. But the problem is one of perception and purposeful misunderstanding. We’re basically using money as prism but seeing all the wrong things through it. Yes: projects are expensive. But they put people to work and we have no other choice but to constantly improve and fine-tune our physical infrastructure anyway. And while it’s easy to demagogue supposedly high-dollar fiascos like the financial bailout of last year, how about recognizing the fact that it will actually cost $0? Why, you ask? Now you’re getting green.
The New Train Hold-up
Authentic frontier gibberish leadership:
In his State of the Union address this year, the president called for building high-speed rail, and backed up his words with $8 billion in stimulus money, distributed to various states, for rail projects.
But Republican candidates for governor in some of the states that won the biggest stimulus rail awards are reaching for the emergency brake.
In Wisconsin, which got more than $810 million in federal stimulus money to build a train line between Milwaukee and Madison, Scott Walker, the Milwaukee County executive and Republican candidate for governor, has made his opposition to the project central to his campaign.
Makes you proud to be a North American. Among many, one question is whether some non-trivial number of voters already believe this is the way to go or are these guys – and these are mostly guys – able to convince them. I mean, what’s the appeal of thumbing your nose at hundreds of millions of dollars coming to your state for infrastructure upgrades and expanded capabilities also known as huge quality of life improvements? Sure, running against the black socialist president might poll well, but c’mon man. A huge country full of big cities connected only by interstates and airports. How far does resentment toward fancy European transportation systems actually take you? Maybe the real question is, how long does it take to get there?
Billions of Ways to Be Wrong
When you’ve got enough of it, green means being able to influence elections, muddy the water on issues of the day, even fund fake grassroots movements, aka Tea Parties (R.I.P), all to stoke your corporate agenda while you call it libertarianism. Huzzah! Jane Mayer has a well-written and well-reported piece in The New Yorker on the Brothers Koch and their exploits. You should read it all; it’s like contemporary American history in the making:
In a 2002 memo, the Republican political consultant Frank Luntz wrote that so long as “voters believe there is no consensus about global warming within the scientific community” the status quo would prevail. The key for opponents of environmental reform, he said, was to question the science—a public-relations strategy that the tobacco industry used effectively for years to forestall regulation. The Kochs have funded many sources of environmental skepticism, such as the Heritage Foundation, which has argued that “scientific facts gathered in the past 10 years do not support the notion of catastrophic human-made warming.” The brothers have given money to more obscure groups, too, such as the Independent Women’s Forum, which opposes the presentation of global warming as a scientific fact in American public schools. Until 2008, the group was run by Nancy Pfotenhauer, a former lobbyist for Koch Industries. Mary Beth Jarvis, a vice-president of a Koch subsidiary, is on the group’s board.
Naomi Oreskes, a professor of history and science studies at the University of California, San Diego, is the co-author of “Merchants of Doubt,” a new book that chronicles various attempts by American industry to manipulate public opinion on science. She noted that the Kochs, as the heads of “a company with refineries and pipelines,” have “a lot at stake.” She added, “If the answer is to phase out fossil fuels, a different group of people are going to be making money, so we shouldn’t be surprised that they’re fighting tooth and nail.”
I’m as guilty as anyone of narrowing my focus at times and missing the big picture. But the big picture is huge and often difficult to grasp, and it’s good to be reminded that it’s not conspiratorial to think know that some people with means count on this, too, as just another tool in the pouch. Remind yourself that it takes some work to stay informed, that the 1st amendment is a kind of cautionary note, freedom in reverse – not to do nothing, but a responsibility to do more. Way more. Just to find out what you need to know. Especially when we’re as peopled with highly motivated oligarchs as we are. Besides the many other things they are, the Kochs’ activities equal exhibit A for the estate tax. 99.3% at least.