I just finished a great read, “After Shock,” by Robert B Reich – former Labor Secretary under Bill Clinton. (remember, when the economy produced over 22 MILLION jobs in just 8 years?!)  I had the pleasure of receiving the book at a lecture (about the book) Reich gave in Portland, Oregon.  The man is VERY short in stature, BUT very LARGE in ideas – some of which I’m not sure I agree with, but his “take” on our economic struggles I found to be “right on.”  The crux of Reich’s argument is that what ails the economy is not a debt gone wild or jobs being shipped over seas or the list of other common complaints, but it’s the rise of wealth to the “top” at the expense of the middle class causing a terrible imbalance where those in the middle class (the bulk of America’s consumers) have lost the wherewithall to purchase what our economy is capable of producing.  Therefore, the idle factories, the gross levels of unemployment, etc. (I hope I paraphrased that well – without insulting Reich)

In the course of making his argument Reich provides similar statistics to books I’ve recently finished by Joseph Stiglitz and Kevin Phillips which parallel what’s going on in this republican assault on our economy to what took place in the early 1900’s as America’s greedy business leaders led us into the Great Depression.  They’re doing it all over again and this time they’ve figured out how to buy their way into the heart of our media, how to buy one congress person after another (mostly, but not entirely, republicans er “tea partiers”), and how to turn an absurd argument that almost guarantees a declining future for America’s middle class into what could possibly end up being more tax breaks for the rich, more right wing judges for our courts, less wages for America’s workforce, and a bunch of embarrassing “leaders” in congress.  Remember, it will take 6 years to purge people like Sharron Angle, Christine O’donnell, Rand Paul, Joe Miller, and the others from the senate if America’s voters are STUPID enough to send them there.

If the voters take a GIANT step backwards on November 2nd, the great ideas of people like Reich, Stiglitz, Paul Krugman, Phillips, and other moderate to progressive voices in the economic community will be even more silenced than they have been in the past 10 years.  I’m starting to get the feeling that Barack Obama is beginning to realize some of the political calculations made by his “team” in the past 20 months were a bit off base, to say the least.  He’s ginning up the “troops” at the last moment – and thankfully, because I hope they turn out in large numbers – at least large enough to preserve the democratic majorities in both houses of congress – and I hope Obama becomes more assertive in fighting for the true progressive agenda should the democrats hold onto their majorities.  The way I look at it, instead of kissing up to republicans for a few votes that won’t be forthcoming, the democrats should eliminate the filibuster in the senate and FORCE the republicans to say NO to legislation that the public favors. 

For example, I believe there is an even stronger MAJORITY of Americans today as opposed to when the legislation was passed who would back a move to open up Medicare to ALL Americans – including people like me who already have medical coverage (during the so-called health care reform debate something approaching 3 in 4 Americans supported the “public option”).  I read the other day that 81% of Americans are opposed to the “Citizens United” Supreme Court decision which will always identify the Roberts’ Court as part of the business lobby – the democrats need to pass legislation which, at the very least, prevents the foreign money and the secret money being infused into our election process.  Just the prospect that republicans would NEVER even think of doing that (remember, Mitch McConnell – the republican leader in the senate – was in the courtroom applauding the decision when it was made) should be enough for any THINKING American to vote against ALL REPUBLICANS.

Citizens United could be the “catalyst” these right wing thugs use to attempt to impose some form of fascist regime on the rest of us.  Make no mistake that these republicans are all about POWER and they’ll grab it by any means possible.  That’s not to say that there aren’t problems on the other side.  In fact, I believe if the “tea party” would have adopted a true grass roots progressive agenda, they’d be on the verge of taking over the congress.  The problem they can’t run from is that too many in their midst are OVERT RACISTS and their only agenda is defeating a sitting president (because his father was Black) plus, ironically, they are being funded by the very people they’re railing against – the large corporate interests which derailed this economy in the first place.  To me, that shows how intellectually devoid (OK Lars, there’s your opening) their movement is.  They are taking money from the corporations who’ve been ripping us (and them) off for years and somehow think they’ll get away with voting against these corporations once in Washington!  Talk about your naivete!

Reich very accurately points out that the middle class in America has been under assault for over 30 years.  The real period of prosperity was somthing like from 1947 until 1968 – that is, for most of that time “real wages” were rising in accordance with productivity and inflation.  Put another way, workers were not losing ground and were able to maintain their “standard of living.”  It was in the 60’s when American households started requiring two incomes to maintain that standard and women began to “work for pay” in increasing larger numbers.  Reich points out this was necessary for the family’s income to keep pace with its expenses.  When two jobs became an issue, people began working longer hours – in many instances two jobs – to make “ends meet.”  This was a phenomenom of the 80’s and early 90’s.

When people couldn’t work any more hours they started to BORROW money to keep up their standard of living.  Credit Cards became routine – I myself am still to this day getting two to three offers a day for 0% credit cards that I’m “pre-approved” for.  Plus, the Federal Reserve, which all these economists say has been throwing money at the problem for years – which is a large reason for the “boom and bust” cycles, lowered interest rates in the 2000’s to the point where homes became like debit cards – people (including me) kept refinancing their homes as interest rates continued to drop to the point where there was no equity left and now we’ver managed to get to the point where all these solutions to the problem that the middle class is not earning enough have “hit the fan.”  There are no more short term options like we’ve been using for the past three or four decades and it’s time to face up to the problem.

And, while I’m telling you DON’T VOTE REPUBLICAN, there is a lot of complicity in the democrats.  Should they manage somehow to turn away this republican “tide” I would recommend to President Obama a different approach to governing in the next two years.  (If the republicans wrest control of Congress, we’re going to be depending on Obama to have the courage to pen a lot of VETOES)  Let me go back to when Obama took office.  I’ve been complaining since day one about Rahm Emanuel, Tim Geithner, and Larry Summers as his close advisors.  Emanuel and Summers are now gone, but Geithner is still there.  The man was instrumental in the policies which led to the collapse of 2008 as the head of the New York Fed (he’s in the “in crowd” with Goldman Sachs) and he was heavily involved in orchestrating the TARP bailout which not only allowed the “too big to fail” banks not to FAIL, it allowed them to get even BIGGER!  Much of America’s outrage is aimed directly at that moment in time, and I’m simply surprised that Obama doesn’t recognize the image problems he creates by keeping Geithner around.  Please don’t try to convince me he’s the only person qualified to do this job.  If he would resign, they’d have a qualified replacement in a matter of weeks.

The level of corruption in Washington DC is almost beyond imagination.  In my last post I said that Karl Rove and his associates were going to be controlling something like 500 MILLION DOLLARS in this mid-term elections – most of it from unnamed sources.  What I’ve read since then is that the total spent on this MID TERM election will approach $4 BILLION.  Are you kidding me?  That’s a lot of obligations for our congressional leaders to keep track of.  Honestly, I’m going to assume there’s no one who might happen on this site who wouldn’t undertand that the people putting that kind of “dough” into the election expect a handsome return on their investment.  Do you think that might be why they want to remain anonymous?  This whole process is beginning to make me sick to my stomach as I’m watching it closely – but, then tonight I visited my grandchildren and remembered – sick to my stomach or not – I’ve got to keep writing, keep talking to people (I think I’ve convinced at least 5 or 6 FORMER republicans to vote against the thugs who are acting like wolves in sheeps clothing), and – most importantly – keep writing to Obama and the democrats to encourage them to actually take up an agressive fight against these right wing authoritarian obstructionists.

What I don’t think Obama fully understands is there is a large body of Americans who will stand strongly behind him if he “leads the charge.”  Trust me, no matter the results of this election, these people (republicans) won’t go away easily.  They have to be THOROUGHLY DEFEATED!  That is why I railed so about Obama’s pardoning of the Bush administration two years ago.  Their deeds need to be EXPOSED to the public so that the public knows exactly what’s been going on.  I keep wavering from thinking Obama has, unfortunately, bought into so much of what Bush was doing that he can’t allow investigations (because they would reflect poorly on him) to him not being combative enough.  Well, we need someone who’s combative – someone who thrives on the HATE that is inevitably going to be coming from the “right.”  In the 1930’s FDR said something like “I wear their hate with a badge of honor” (my paraphrasing) – The only way to FIGHT this corporate BEHEMOTH is to be agressive and force them to expose their selfish motivations to the general public.  Reich calls what emerged from the New Deal as the “Basic Bargain” for the middle class.  That is, wages would be sufficient for workers to buy what they could produce.  That bargain is badly broken and the main culprit is the policies of the tax cutting for the rich by the republicans – starting with Reagan.  Their claims that tax cuts for the rich stimulate the economy have NO basis in FACT.  During Bill Clinton’s eight years in office the economy made huge gains despite the FACT taxes were modestly increased on the “rich.”  The interesting irony of all that, even the rich, who were paying higher taxes, came out ahead of the alternative.  The way we’re going, not only is the American economy likely headed for stagnation at best and another true depression at worst, but these rich people who HATE taxes will be gaining less in the long run as well.