Month: August 2011

Depending on if you like him or hate him, Texas Governor Rick Perry became either a cause célèbre or a bête noire this past weekend.  His brave and/or ignoble act was to give the keynote speech before an estimated 8,000 people at Response, a Christian prayer rally that took place in Houston.  The event, which attracted extensive national publicity despite drawing fewer participants than many high school football rallies, has been seen as a defining moment for Perry and his Christian, faith-based politics.

The argument over Perry’s religious fervor has taken precedence over a discussion of his political stands, which is the way the national news media rolls nowadays.  Why discuss economics and civil rights, when personalities are so much more fun?

But apart from the entertainment value of focusing on Perry’s devoutness, the news media quietly helps him with this approach to his possible candidacy.  If the argument is should someone this devout run for office?, Perry has a better chance of garnering votes than if his stand on issues were to be the focal point of his potential candidacy.  We have freedom of religion and separation of church and state, which means there is only one answer to the question, should a man this religious run? Yes, why not!  By posing the Perry candidacy in terms of his devotion to his lord, the media helps all of us to justify and approve the candidate.

As usual, though, the media posed the wrong question.

The right question would be: what are his stands on the issues?  Now perhaps his brand of religion affects those stands, but it’s not the religion that matters, it’s the opinions.

Here, then, is what Texas Governor Rick Perry’s thinks about key political and economic issues:

• Consistently supports lower taxes and fights higher taxes, especially higher taxes on the wealthiest citizens.
• Wants to solve the U.S. debt problem by cutting government spending and lowering taxes on the wealthy even more.
• Does not believe in global warming and opposes all regulation of greenhouse gases and other emissions.
• Supports school vouchers, which bleed the public schools by giving money to parents to send their children to private schools.
• Supports the teaching of the disproved theory of intelligent design in science classes.
• Voted against health care for community college faculty in Texas.
• Opposes abortion and gay marriage and supports the death penalty.
• Has spoken of the possibility of Texas seceding from the union.

With a platform as ill-informed and right-wing as Perry’s is, who cares what religion he practices?  It’s not his faith that stinks like a fish from head to tail, it’s his politics.

Reverting to the last election now: Finally the academic world has caught up with OpEdge.  Regular readers will remember that I said the 2010 election cycle would come down to who voted and who didn’t.  I said it frequently before and after the election, which gave Republicans seven new Senators and control of the House of Representatives and 29 state legislatures.  I kept pointing out that the news media was overestimating the strength of the Tea Party and that all Democrats had to do was figure out a way to get their non-voting constituencies—the young, poor and minorities—to the polls to win the election.  They didn’t and they lost.

Now Professor Larry Sabato of the University of Virginia has written a book, Pendulum Swing, which backs me up.  Professor Andrew Hacker of Queens College analyzes and agrees with Sabato’s findings in the latest New York Review of Books.  Nice work, guys, but try to remember for next time—winning an election has always been and will always be about who turns out.

On the surface, three stories in today’s New York Times seem completely unrelated, but all reflect the underlying theme of our epoch: the politics of selfishness.  In each story, someone or some group acts in its own selfish best interests, disregarding the interests of the nation. 

Let’s start with the simplest example of selfishly acting in one’s own interest: “N.R.A. Sues Over Bulk Gun Sales Rule.” The beginning of the first paragraph says it all: “The National Rifle Association filed a lawsuit on Wednesday challenging a new federal regulation requiring gun merchants along the border with Mexico to report bulk sales of certain semiautomatic rifles…” The NRA calls it “a blatant attempt by the Obama administration to pursue their gun control agenda…”

Obviously, it’s in the best interests of the NRA and the two gun dealers it represents in its lawsuit to be able to sell as many guns as they like to whomever they like with no restraints whatsoever.  But the greater security of the United States and our neighboring ally Mexico is at stake.  The Obama Administration is trying to stop drug cartels from loading up on weapons for their wars against each other, the police and innocent victims.  The sales that the Obama Administration is trying to prevent shouldn’t be made, and the NRA knows it.  But they are too selfish to care.

Moving on now to a story on the Times front page symbolizing the last shoe dropping in a national rip-off of historic dimensions. This time, the headline conveys the essence of the story: “Even Marked-up, Luxury Goods Fly Off Shelves.”  In this article, we learn that the rich “are again buying designer clothing, luxury cars and about anything that catches their fancy. Luxury goods stores, which fared much worse than other retailers in the recession, are more than recovering — they are zooming.”

The article focuses on luxury shoes, one pair costing $2,495, up from $1,575 in 2008.  I understand that a good custom-made pair made of shoes for a diabetic or someone with foot abnormalities can cost $500 or $600.  But when the cost of footwear exceeds $2,000, much if not most of the cost comes from the perceived added value, aka the sizzle— the brand name, sense of exclusivity, treatment by the sales staff.

And where are the ultra-wealthy getting the extra bucks to spend on these frivolities?  It’s from the low tax rates on their incomes and wealth, which have increased the federal deficit and impeded job creation since they were enacted in the Bush II years. 

The way the wealthy got their most recent infusion of extra cash reminds me of an old soft-shoe dance routine.  The first shoes on the ground were the cuts to federal spending at the beginning of the year and the Republicans’ recent price for raising the debt ceiling.  The final step is this giddy spending binge described in the Times. 

Studies show that tax policy has led to a transfer of wealth from the poor and middle class over the last 30 years.  Other studies show that nations decline when wealth is transferred up the economic ladder.  Surveys show that the will of the people is to raise taxes on the wealthy and continue and grow government job-creation and social safety net programs.  But these facts mean nothing to the ultra-wealthy and their many elected factotums.  Again, they’re just too selfish to care.

Speaking of factotums, what do you think of the good little soldier Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta balking at cuts to our bloated military budget?  Again, let’s let the Times article, titled “Pentagon Sounds Alarm on Threat of Budget Cuts,” tell the story: “Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta and top Pentagon officials said that large cuts to the Pentagon budget — which has more than doubled since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 — would imperil the nation’s security.” With Osama bin Laden out of the way and no really large or powerful enemy at hand (except perhaps North Korea and our own ally, Pakistan), do we really need to be spending twice as much as before 9/11?  These numbers, by the way, don’t include any of the trillions of dollars that we have diddled away fighting goalless and useless wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Panetta is a long-time Democratic operative who goes where he’s needed.  His past positions have included Head of the CIA and White House Chief of Staff under Bill Clinton.  Surely he knows that federal government spending created the Clinton boom years and a budget surplus (before the housing bubble).  And where did the Clinton Administration get the money?  It came from raising income taxes and cutting defense budgets.  It was called the “peace dividend,” and it worked.

Panetta knows these facts, but instead of acting in the country’s best interest, he protects his turf and the military contracts of private companies that spend millions of dollars a year in lobbying and contributing to the campaigns of elected officials.  Panetta, the Defense Department and the contractors collectively pursue their own best interests, no matter what it means to the country they are supposed to be protecting.

The commonly stated theory behind the almost criminally selfish acts described in these articles is that if everyone in society seeks his or her own best interests, society as a whole will thrive.  This bunk is a misunderstanding of out-of-context statements by the Scottish 18th century economist Adam Smith, but it justifies the predatory behavior of the wealthy and the powerful.  And it won’t stop until we stop electing politicians that place the interests of the wealthy above those of the other 95% of us.

For those looking for actions of their own to stem this tide of selfishness, I suggest that you do not support any official who does not explicitly advocate raising income taxes on those earning more than $250,000 and on most capital gains.  We should also be insisting that candidates support moves that strengthen unions and public schools, rebuild our infrastructure of roads and invest in alternative fuel technologies and mass transit.  But at this point, raising taxes on the wealthy has to be the litmus test.

Congress has now passed and the President signed the anti-growth, anti-jobs program that resulted from Republicans blackmailing the country about raising the debt ceiling.  And lo and behold!—the stock market tumbles and the rumblings about losing our Triple A credit rating increase.  Do you think maybe large institutional investors know a little something about the impact on any economy of reduced government spending?

Now here comes the happy face crowd to tell us that it won’t be such a big deal if the U.S. bond rating deteriorates a little.  So far, most of the stories diminishing the impact of a lower rating say that interest rates will only go up a little bit.  As usual, the New York Times is leading the mainstream news media, with an article by Eric Dash on the first page of today’s business section titled “AAA Rating Is a Rarity in Business.”

The premise of the Times article is that most businesses don’t have AAA ratings and they get along just fine.  Paying the slightly higher interest rate of a slightly lower credit rating opens up new business opportunities for the companies.  The article quotes the analogy of a senior bond manager from a company that sells bonds: “It’s like going from a Rolls Royce to a Mercedes—not from a Rolls Royce to a Yugo.”  The article goes so far as to claim that many companies see the gold-plated AAA rating as a “financial straightjacket,” because maintaining it means they have less access to funds.

The failure of logic in the salesman’s analogy and Dash’s broader article is to compare a government to a business.  First of all, a business can cease to operate, but if a government ceases to operate for any other reason than annexation by another government, then anarchy soon ensues: no security force, no emergency services, no judicial system, no infrastructure repair. 

Furthermore, no business has the size of the United States economy and no business represents so large a share of the world’s economy.  It’s not even close.  When a company sees its credit rating drop a little, it pays slightly higher interest rates, which means goods and services for which it borrows money cost more.  But when the interest rates rise on a country’s bonds, every one of the country’s businesses, nonprofit organizations and individuals borrowing money will find themselves paying more.  Because most businesses borrow for cash flow or capital needs, the prices that consumers pay for goods and services go up.  Even a quarter of a percentage point boost in government bonds can constrain an economy.

As illogical as the happy face argument about losing the AAA rating is, another comparison Dash makes in the Times version of this canard is odious:

“Just as many consumers relied on their credit cards to finance a higher standard of living, companies took on more debt to reap bigger returns.”

As an anti Dom Irrera might say, he means it in a good way.  To support the idea that lowering your credit rating leads to good things for countries as well as companies, Dash invokes the idea of consumers living and spending beyond their means.  Haven’t many consumers faced hard times these past few years because they spent beyond their means with money they borrowed on severely overvalued houses?  A good business borrows for one of two reasons only: 1) To invest in expansion, product development and renovation; 2) To meet short-term cash flow needs.  The analogy for consumers is to borrow for education.  The business equivalent of “spending beyond your means” is to borrow money to pay key executives more money.  We all know some big companies did that and still do, but we wouldn’t consider it a good business practice. 

What I find so objectionable is to advocate that it’s okay for people to finance their high life with debt.  It makes sense, though, that in a Pollyannaish and Panglossian article about the possibility of the United States losing its status as the very least risky investment in recorded history, the writer would find space for a subtle reminder that taking on debt to consume is a good thing.  After all, in our society the primary goal in life and path to happiness is to spend, spend, spend, spend!!

Consider these numbers:

• Approximately 2,225 people killed a day on average: That’s the number Stalin killed if we accept Robert Conquest’s high estimate of 20 million total Stalin victims over his rule of approximately 25 years.
• Approximately 6,000 people killed per day on average: That’s the number we get if we accept Timothy Snyder’s estimate of the number of people the Nazis slaughtered and arbitrarily say that it all occurred during World War II (which raises the average per day).
• Approximately 30,000 a day: That’s the number of people who died in Mao’s Great Famine, caused by the Great Leap Forward, between 1958 and 1961 if we take the high estimate of 32 million; the low estimate, by the way, is 18 million.

Two more numbers: One act on one day—the dropping of a rudimentary atom bomb— killed 140,000 at Hiroshima.  Three days later, another atom bomb killed 80,000 at Nagasaki.  Virtually all the victims were civilians: children, mothers, elementary school teachers, factory workers, hair stylists, florists, senior citizens.

It’s both horrifying and shameful to contemplate that “the land of the free” debased itself by magnifying the barbarism of Hitler, Stalin and Mao in two one-day orgies of mass killing. 

I was reminded of what I believe are the two most shameful moments in recorded human history when I saw “Hiroshima Ground Zero 1945,” an exhibit now showing at the International Photography Center in midtown Manhattan.  The exhibit displays some of the 1,100 photographs that the U.S. government had 7 photographers take of Hiroshima in the aftermath of the war.  The government ordered the photos as visual evidence for a report on the impact of atomic bombing and the changes to buildings and civil defense procedures needed to prepare for a future attack. 

In the exhibit we see only destroyed infrastructure: schools, homes, factories.  But each photo seems to whisper the pain of the dead and injured.  The collective impact of these lifeless photos reminds us that certain acts are so horrific that the act itself puts those who committed it in the wrong, no matter how just the cause or rational the reason.

Those who try to justify the dropping of atom bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki argue that more Americans would have died winding down the war if we had pursued more conventional options. Their argument falls apart, though, when you consider that the Japanese were already pressing for surrender and remember that at the time the U.S. was engaged in a massive program of conventional bombing of the island nation.

The trump card in the debate is the inhumane nature of the act itself.  Even if we were to believe that the U.S. government was not fully aware of the destructive power of the atom bomb before Hiroshima, they certainly knew of it immediately afterwards and should have stopped any plans for Nagasaki.  As many historians have noted, the real reason to drop the bombs was to show the Soviet communists that we had the power to level their country.  For these somewhat suspect geopolitical ends, we as a nation resorted to savage butchery of our fellow human beings.

The construction and deployment of the atom bombs involved many people, but only one man made the decision to drop them, and that was President Harry S. Truman.  By doing so, he should have guaranteed himself a dishonored place along side Hitler, Stalin and Mao as one of the worst villains in history.  Instead, he is generally rated as one of our greatest presidents.  For example, among 17 recent surveys, Truman rates on average as the 7th greatest U.S. president.  But I rank him dead last, by virtue of his decision to use the ultimate weapon of mass destruction and then continue to develop even more vicious weapons during peacetime.

In a few days we are going to celebrate the 66th anniversary of the Hiroshima bombing.  There are many things we can do to commemorate the day.  We can attend a rally, sign a petition to dismantle all nuclear weapons, contribute to organizations lobbying to end nuclear weapons and write our elected officials about the issue.  But let’s not forget to curse Harry Truman for defiling our country with the sin of mass murder and making a mockery of our public ideals. 

And let’s also not forget to feel a personal sense of shame.  Even if most of us were not alive at the time, it is still our country and our history, and that makes it our moral responsibility to remember and to ask the rest of the world for forgiveness.