Food for Thought

The election is over and the people have had their say. It is said that for the democrats, the election was theirs to lose and they did. The one thing the democrats really can not stand, it seems, is to have the opportunity to achieve their agenda. Our president, as I and others I have published here have pointed out, failed to either recognize the depth of this recession or lacked the courage to do what needed to be done to stimulate the economy.

He seems to be a pragmatist rather than a balls out leader. I am hoping he finds his cojones now that he has nothing more than a second term to lose.

Our president can also not call the wars in Iraq or Afghanistan Bush's wars any longer; nor can he explain why we are in Afghanistan at all at the cost of $200 mm dollars a day. I am a supporter of this president; but I have been saying for some time that he missed the severity of the recession and should already be out of Afghanistan.

It is also clear that while he had both houses he was abandoned by the independents and the so-called blue dog democrats. For example, good old Ben Nelson from Montana rode his horse in, had his mask on, his guns out and held up the president till he got what he wanted. Great support Mr. Senator! Along the way he made himself and the president appear as though they are wheelers and dealers willing to compromise beyond propriety and good sense.

There were and are three issues: Jobs, Jobs, Jobs!

The president, using the advice of the trio who brought us the recession, Summers, Geithner and Paulson, under estimated the recession and simply did not create a large enough stimulus package. And the one he did create never reached the ordinary working person. Stimulating the economy really amounts to spending money until business, which is sitting on $2.5 trillion in retained earnings, invests in its companies again. Thereby creating jobs, thereby putting money in peoples' pockets, who then spend it and voila, the economy is stimulated.

Now we shall see the likes of Rove, Cheney, the American Enterprise Institute, McConnell, Palin, Bachman, Boehner and Paul run the country. Here is their mantra: reduce the size of government( agencies that regulate- hmmmm been there done that haven't we!), cut all discretionary spending across the board, keep the Bush tax cuts intact, and repeal the health care reform law.

Couple of hints on what this means. Cut discretionary spending means cutting everything but Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security and Defense( 70% of the budget). This means cutting education, monies allocated for research and development grants, monies for infrastructure projects. Anybody seen the shape New York City's East river bridges are in lately? And, cutting monies dedicated to alternative fuels. Oh well, we don't need them anyway since climate change is a political ploy invented by liberals. Every one agrees they can cut earmarks which frankly amounts to a rounding error considering the size of the U.S. budget.

Here is the light at the end of the tunnel: the republicans put up Palin as the presidential nominee in two years. Need I say more? Meantime we go to hell in a hand basket and the American people see that. Watch this next one. We are about to go through redistricting which means with a republican house the democrats will be screwed until at least the next census.

Keep hope alive, please, and push back every where you can. Demand that the platitudes the Tea party and Republicans have been expounding be fleshed out with specifics on what they will do to end the recession and reduce expenses.


A little scary when the republican leadership says their agenda is to be sure President Obama is a one term president. Therefore, they will offer nothing constructive hoping he fails. Then when we have another republican in the white house, we can go back to the care and feeding of the wealthy and perhaps eight more years of Rove, Cheney, a Bush-like president so we can run up eight more years of deficits and find other countries to invade and spread democracy.

Gary Tomei offers a thought:

There are differences between us and every other country, and I'm not prepared to advocate any other country's system, but this does provide food for thought. We should not assume that we can not learn anything from any source that does not originate from within our borders.

Capitalism Uber Alles: How the American Working Class Got Brainwashed

. . . Our country has long been admired for its extraordinary social mobility, but as Arianna Huffington points out in Third World America, Canada, Germany, Denmark, Norway, Finland, Sweden, and France now have greater social mobility -- university education is free, or at minimal cost in Western Europe. Compared to other advanced industrialized countries which all provide universal health care, we are at the bottom in life expectancy and infant mortality. Americans have three months unpaid parental leave -- Swedes have 13 months, paid. Unlike Western Europeans, we have no government legislated paid vacations. In Germany, the world's largest exporter after China, workers get 6 weeks a year off. Americans average 13 days.

American conservatives delight in predicting the imminent demise of socialistic Western European benefits. But these benefits are part of the social contract within which all major European political parties, including conservatives, operate. While large national debts are leading to some cuts in benefits, these cuts do not represent reneging on that contract, just as cuts to education in the U.S. do not represent reneging on government funding for education -- which is part of our social contract.

A look at the divergence in political thinking between Western Europeans and Americans provides much of the answer to why we lag so far behind. . . .

☞ Think about it: We are more than triple their population – and we have all those amazing agricultural exports – yet Germany, with its 6-week vacations, universal health care, and strong labor unions, outcompetes us in the world market. How can that be?

We’re number one! But in obesity. China now has the world’s fastest supercomputer.

Can the solution really be to borrow $700 billion to extend tax cuts on income above $250,000? Get rid of the minimum wage and social safety net, cut back on education, deregulate polluters, and increase military spending?

Food for thought.
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