The Morning Media Downgrade

Since the debt ceiling debate, the S & P downgrade of the U. S. credit rating, and the dramatic volatility that followed in stock markets around the world, there has emerged a general agreement among the diverse political commentators on The Morning Joe. First, while we need to adjust the country’s long term deficit situation, in the short term it is crucial that we focus on implementing programs that stimulate employment and economic growth. Second, the fact that the country’s possible default was used as a bargaining chip during the debate over the debt ceiling directly contributed to the S & P downgrade. As Eugene Robinson, a regular commentator on The Morning Joe, pointed out in a recent column: “It is pretty simple: If you threaten not to pay your bills, people will – and should – take you seriously.”

No one denies that it was House Republicans that decided to use the debate over the debt ceiling as leverage to get larger cuts in government spending and focus the country’s attention on the deficit. No one denies that it was House Republicans that decided to use the country’s possible default as a bargaining chip in the negotiations over the debt ceiling.  So, why are the commentators on The Morning Joe sitting around the table discussing the failures of President Obama? In this video clip you see Joe Scarborough angrily arguing at Mika Brezinzki that President Obama is too weak. Lyndon Johnson was able to keep the back benchers in congress in line.

Let’s take a step back here. One would think it is appropriate for Mika and the rest of us to blame House Republicans for focusing the country on the wrong issue in the short term and using tactics that make the problem worse. Instead, Joe blames the president for not being able to persuade Tea Party representatives to change their minds. Notice that Joe implicitly admits that the Tea Party has been wrong:  the country should have been focused on increasing employment and economic growth in the short term and the President should have been able to make the Tea Party understand.  Why don’t we hold congressmen and women responsible for their own views? Why are we blaming the president for not being able to change the minds of congressional representatives from the other party?  Why is a former congressman doing this?

In Joe Scarborough’s case it is perhaps easy to see what is going on here. Joe has been defending the Tea Party on many occasions, as in the clip below.

Joe argued for the obstinate stance of the Tea Party in the debt ceiling negotiation against the concerns of others, including his cohost. When the downgrade came and everyone around him blamed the Tea Party, Joe angrily demanded they acknowledge how the president and the Democrats were also responsible. When Mika pushed Joe on the point he responded with anger (video here).

No one was blaming the Tea Party for earthquakes in Tehran.  They were simply reiterating the point made by Eugene Robinson: the Tea Party’s use of default as a bargaining chip led to the S & P downgrade. When Mika attempted to squeeze this point in, Joe actually yelled directly at her two mornings in a row.  One of the many things Scarborough did not acknowledge is that Tea Party Supporters, like Neil Cavuto, have actually been saying that a downgrade would be good for the country.

Joe Scarborough now believes we need to consider programs in the short term that stimulate employment and economic growth, and he acknowledges that using the country’s possible default as a bargaining chip contributed to the S & P downgrade.  And Joe has spoken out more than many conservatives about the extreme elements in the Tea Party.  Joe is, however, unable to blame House Republicans for focusing on the wrong issue in the short term and for using tactics that made the situation worse.  We need to do so.

One reason the news media has not held the Tea Party and House Republicans responsible for their actions is because of concerns about the President’s leadership style.  Some conservatives and progressives have suggested that the president has not demonstrated “leadership.” He has not drawn a line in the sand; he has given speeches that outline general principles and let the congress do the real work. The suggestion then is that the president should lead by coming out with a specific plan at the outset — drawing a line in the sand — and arguing that congress should adopt his plan.

What everyone seems to forget here is that the last democratic president we had tried that approach with health care reform.  He failed miserably.   Everyone argued that he did not understand how Washington worked. He needed to be more humble and acknowledge that others have points of view that need to be considered.  Obama’s approach to leadership can easily be interpreted as a rational response to the treatment received by president Clinton. It is an attempt to show respect to congressmen and women of both parties and include them in the process of governing, an attempt that comes natural to a life-long legislator who studied constitutional law at Harvard and understands the separation of powers. This should be a fairly obvious point for professional political commentators.  It is, to put it politely, not reasonable to suggest that if Obama ‘led’ more like Clinton did on health care, he would be doing better now.

If you objectively consider the behavior of Republicans over the past two decades with democratic presidents — from the attempts to impeach President Clinton to the efforts now to make Obama a one term president —  you must eventually come to the conclusion reached by Howard Bragman, a PR representative who was recently on MSNBC (8/11/2011). As he put it, president Obama “could save a school bus full of children from going over a cliff and they will criticize him.”    The first lady advocates on behalf of healthy food choices for children during a time when we have unprecedented levels of childhood obesity and she is criticized. This is simply the way the contemporary Republican party operates.  Blaming President Obama for his handling of the debt ceiling negotiations because he was not able to win over the Tea Party is like blaming a rooster for the sunrise.  The Republicans wanted to draw this debt ceiling discussion out to command the discussion for a large part of the year and focus it on the deficit.  There was nothing Obama could have done about it.  We need to hold the Republicans responsible.

One reason the news media needs to hold the Tea Party responsible for their views is that many of them are extreme and they often do not make sense.   Consider, for example,  Michele Bachmann’s views on slavery or Sharron Angle’s views on “second amendment remedies.”  In the debt ceiling debate the concern of the Tea Party allegedly was that if we do not reduce the deficit now it could lead to an increase in interest rates in the future; however, by using the possible default of the country as a bargaining chip, they actually increased the chances that interest rates will go up now: the tactics they used undermined their stated goal.  This is not rational.  Many of us find this to be scarey.  It leads many to believe that the long term deficit could not have been the real issue; the real goal must have been to remove President Obama.  This is the only way to see the tactics used by House Republicans as not completely contradicting their objective.  Many of us find this to be scarey.

This irrationality has been a fundamental part of the Tea Party movement since its inception.  The movement allegedly started because of the concern that Obama was going to raise taxes.  Obama had made it clear throughout his campaign that he had no intention of raising taxes on families that make less than a quarter of a million dollars a year.  While in office his administration cut taxes on the middle class.  The suggestion that middle class citizens should join the Tea Party because Obama is going to raise their taxes, simply does not make sense.  Because it does not make sense in such a fundamental way, many commentators avoid saying anything about it.  They usually do not say “the entire party seems to be based on a false premise,” or “that the tactics used here completely contradict the stated goal”; commentators often limit their comments and just present each side of the issue.  Or worse, they ignore the Tea Party and focus on critically analyzing the views and actions of more reasonable politicians.

Many in the news media will now admit that they dropped the ball with the Iraq war.   They did not ask the right questions.  What you see in the videos above are examples of the ball being dropped again.   It will be a real tragedy for our country if our news media handles this recession with the same ‘professionalism’ used in the coverage of the Iraq war.  We need more journalists like Mika Brezinzki who help viewers see through the spin and hold our elected officials accountable for their actions. We need fewer pundits like Joe Scarborough who will do intellectual back flips to avoid admitting that they and their party were wrong even while implicitly suggesting that they are.   House Republican’s just took our economy hostage, hijacked the debate in our country, and drove us to the brink of economic disaster.   Political commentators who are complaining about the speech the President gave after the fact to try and restore confidence, simply do not have their  eye on the ball and are undermining everyone else’s ability to see it.

Occupy George Will: Making the U. S. Democratic

The former United States Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton once said if the U. N. headquarters lost “ten stories, it wouldn’t make a bit of difference.” Conservatives tend to be skeptical of international organizations that are not democratically elected which intervene in the affairs of sovereign nations even if they were created with the best of intentions.  This skepticism led George Will to take a principled stand against the Iraq war (2003-2010).

This skepticism conservatives have of international organizations extends to the United Nations and the European Union, among others.  These organizations threaten the right to self-rule which depends on national sovereignty.  It is in this sense that conservatives view democracy as a fundamental component of the American Project.

But conservatives also support reducing regulation on multinational corporations like BP and Goldman Sachs and giving them an unlimited ability to spend money to influence elections.  This threatens national sovereignty in unprecedented ways.  We see this tension in George Will’s opposition to international organizations and nation building, on the one hand, and his support for lifting limitations on the political spending of multinational corporations, on the other.  This tension is shared widely by conservatives and it inhibits the country’s ability to realize the democratic ideals we claim to represent and defend around the world.

The United States should not try to make Iraq democratic
In a provocative and undeniably prescient article entitled, “Can We Make Iraq Democratic?” Will lays out his case for why the United States should not and cannot make Iraq democratic.  He takes this stand in opposition to his party three years before the surge (2004).

The United States should not try to make Iraq democratic because self-rule is dependent upon the legitimacy of the nation-state.  The sovereignty of nation-states is undermined when organizations from outside the nation unilaterally impose their will on it.  Will views the Iraq war and the European Union as threatening the sovereignty of the nation-state,

“The vitality of democracy everywhere is imperiled by the impulse behind the increasingly brazen and successful denial of the importance and legitimacy of nation-states. This denial is most audacious in Europe. But because many of America’s political ideas arrive on our shores after auditioning in Europe, Americans should examine the motives and implications of European attempts to dilute and transcend national sovereignty.”

Will describes the European Union as moving more and more political decisions “beyond the reach of majorities.  Beyond democracy.”

Will sees the same spirit at work in the Versailles peace conferences (1919).  He notes that the “Laconic Arthur Balfour, who rarely seemed deeply stirred by anything, was angered by the spectacle of ‘all-powerful, all-ignorant men sitting there and partitioning continents.’”  Will’s concern is that when nations or international organizations undermine the sovereignty of nation-states, it is “an assault on self-government—the American project.”

This assault transfers “political power from national parliaments to supranational agencies that are essentially unaccountable and unrepresentative.”  “Today there is a slow undoing of the elemental human right of self-government, accomplished by the attack on a necessary concomitant of that right—the sovereignty of the nation-state.”  “The American Revolution was, at bottom, about the right of a distinctive people, conscious of itself as a single people, to govern itself in its distinctive manner, in nationhood. Here was a great eighteenth-century insight: popular sovereignty is inextricably entwined with nationality.”  This is why the United States should not try to make Iraq democratic; it should allow Iraq to decide when and how to become democratic on its own.   To do otherwise threatens the sovereignty of the nation-state on which democracy depends.

The United States cannot make Iraq democratic
The United States cannot make Iraq democratic because democracies require a democratic culture. He writes that, “it is a historical truism that the Declaration of Independence was less the creation of independence than the affirmation that Americans had already become independent. In the decades before 1776 they had become a distinct people, a demos, a nation—held together by the glue of shared memories, common strivings, and shared ideals.”  This culture cannot be imposed by external powers; it must grow from within and, “Iraq lacks a Washington, a Madison, a Marshall—and it lacks the astonishingly rich social and cultural soil from which such people sprout.”  Iraq lacks a “democratic culture.”

Before we go further, we should take a moment to appreciate how subsequent events have justified Will’s concerns about the prospects of building a successful democracy in Iraq.  These concerns were ignored by many in both parties and in the media.  Here we get a glimpse of the insight and intellectual integrity that distinguish Will’s work.

From Plutocracy to Democracy
I am sure Will would agree with one correction.  Actually the culture that gave birth to the United States was not democratic.  Initially, only white men who owned property could vote in most states.  Such restrictions were not removed in some states until 1860.  The term democracy comes from the Greek language. It means ruled by (kratos) the people (demos).  The term plutocracy means ruled by (kratos) the wealthy (ploutos).  The culture that gave birth to the United States was plutocratic.

The United States has been on a long journey toward democracy.  African American suffrage began to be realized in some places in 1870 with the ratification of the 15^th amendment.  In practice, limits on African American voting persisted until the 1960’s.  Women’s suffrage came in 1920 with the ratification of the 19^thamendment.

This journey toward democracy is nowhere near its end.  Enormous challenges remain and we have recently taken a provocative step backwards.  In terms of challenges, think of the importance of war chests: the large sums of money politicians raise to get elected.  The candidates who are unable to raise enough money are unable to make it through the primaries.  Consequently, the wealthy who can afford to spend more money supporting candidates have a greater ability to influence the decisions about which candidates are able to run for office.

This year we have an unprecedented slate of candidates that are almost completely self funded: they use their personal fortunes to fund their campaign — Rick Scott, Jeff Greene, Meg Whitman, and Carly Fiorina.  These candidates do not need the donations of others to run for office.  Because they are themselves wealthy, they can unilaterally decide whether they can run.

The reality is that most campaigns these days are dominated by television advertisements.  Wealthy candidates and candidates that represent the interests of the wealthy can purchase more ads and get their message out more often and to more people.  Rick Scott, the Republican nominee for Governor in Florida, earned millions of dollars running a healthcare company that was convicted of defrauding the government for millions of dollars.  Because of his wealth, he was able to dominate television in Florida with extremely well produced ads that used the tag line—“Let’s get to work.”  The consultant that came up with that line is a genius and I am sure she or he is well paid.

We also have evidence that the money spent on elections has an impact.  The U. S. Representative from Texas, Joe Barton, has received more money from the oil and gas industry than any other member of the House of Representatives.  He shocked the country when he actually apologized to BP.  He felt President Obama treated the company too harshly when he encouraged the company to create a $20 billion dollar fund to compensate victims of the oil spill.  John Boehner is, of course, the well tanned House Minority Leader.  In June of 1995, he provoked complaints of unethical conduct when he distributed campaign contributions from tobacco industry lobbyists on the House floor as House members were weighing how to vote on tobacco subsidies.

But our country took a big step backwards in the long road to democracy earlier this year when, in a 5-4 decision, the U. S. Supreme Court rejected the longstanding ban on corporations spending money to influence elections.  This surprising development could transform the way elections are held.  Corporations have far more wealth than individuals.  They can influence elections to a far greater degree.  Corporations are also “supranational agencies” that are not elected by or accountable to the citizens of a nation-state; they are accountable to shareholders that could live anywhere, like China or Saudi Arabia.

When we reduce the regulation and taxation of multinational corporations like BP and Goldman Sachs and remove any limits on their ability to spend money to influence elections it transfers “political power from national parliaments to supranational agencies that are essentially unaccountable and unrepresentative”–it “dilute(s) and transcend(s) national sovereignty.”  President Obama called the Supreme Court decision “a major victory for big oil, Wall Street banks, health insurance companies and the other powerful interests that marshal their power every day in Washington to drown out the voices of everyday Americans.”

“There was a vast carelessness,” Will writes, “an earnest carelessness—in the Versailles conference’s rearranging of the world.”  Will has acknowledged there was a “vast carelessness” in BP’s “rearranging” of the Gulf’s ecological and economic systems.  There was a “vast carelessness” demonstrated in Enron’s “rearranging” of the energy market in California.  The “rearranging” of our financial system by several corporations in the financial services industry has obviously been devastating to the economy.  The Supreme Court’s decision will give these “supranational agencies” more power to undermine the sovereignty of our nation-state in support of their efforts to rearrange our world.

If the “the vitality of democracy everywhere is imperiled by the impulse behind the increasingly brazen and successful denial of the importance and legitimacy of nation-states” brought about by the United Nations, the European Union, and International law, then the “vitality of democracy” is also threatened by “supranational agencies” such as BP and Goldman Sachs when they are given an unlimited ability to spend money to influence elections.

Democracy and Equality
The road to democracy forces our country to confront the conflict in our founding principles between freedom and equality: the more you have of one, the less you have of the other.  In the case of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the country limited the freedom of proprietors in order to protect the equality of African American citizens.  Will provides an eloquent defense of this decision in Statecraft as Soulcraft (1983) that has a particular resonance in the present political environment:

President Lyndon Johnson signs 1964 Civil Rights Act

“One of the most defensible, indeed most unmixedly good, deeds of modern government was in taking away one of the rights Maddox valued most…The right he was exercising was a real right – an enforceable entitlement, and an old one: the right of a proprietor to restrict his custom. In many times and places the right was, and is, acceptable. But in the United States it had too often been exercised in a way that affronted an entire class of citizens. And in the United States in 1964 the right had become intolerably divisive. So Congress undertook a small but significant rearrangement of American rights. It diminished the rights of proprietors of public accommodations, and expanded those of potential users of those accommodations. In explaining why this rearrangement was necessary, Lyndon Johnson said it was because “a man has a right not to be insulted in front of his children”…Congress was coming to the conclusion that a right exercised meanly, with ugly consequences, should yield to another, better right (p. 86).”

When multinational corporations exercise their new right of unlimited political speech it will serve as an affront to an “entire class of citizens”: those that are not wealthy and that have a right to a democratic government.  One of the most defensible steps our congress can take now is to undo the “small but significant rearrangement of American rights” recently handed down by the Supreme Court.   It should respect the diminished rights to free speech of multinational corporations that have been in place and understand that these rights must “yield to another, better right”: “the elemental human right of self-government”—“the American Project.”

Will does not agree.  In a recent article entitled, “Let us Disclose that free-speech limits are harmful,” he disputes the concerns that have been raised about the Supreme Court decision.  He criticizes the legislation Democrats have drafted to address the problem.  He notes that the legislation includes exemptions for the NRA and other influential organizations that were included simply to get the bill passed.  His point is well taken: the legislation is flawed.  But that is also evidence of the very problem the legislation is trying to address: money influences the legislative process to such an extent it is not possible for a bill to get passed that is not flawed in some way.

Will fails to acknowledge how deregulating multinational corporations and providing them an unlimited ability to spend money to influence elections gives more “political power … to supranational agencies that are essentially unaccountable” to the citizens of nation-states.  It moves more political power “beyond the reach of majorities.  Beyond democracy.”

And here we find a contradiction at the heart of contemporary conservatism.  This view is opposed to “supranational agencies” that undermine the sovereignty of nation-states for sake of some ideal like peace (U. N.) or collective economic welfare (EU) or to address the challenges of global climate change; but it supports the efforts of “supranational agencies” that undermine the sovereignty of nation-states for the sake of profit.  Conservatives do not want the U. N. or the E. U. telling citizens what to say or do; but BP can tell citizens all they want, including where, when and how they will drill, baby, drill.

Conservatives put the “elemental right of self-government” up for sale.  That is why the wealthy are their base and it is so easy for them to forget the difference between democracy and plutocracy.

“The American Project” Will describes is an ongoing process of further realizing “the elemental human right of self-government”—a journey from plutocracy to democracy.  Contemporary conservatism’s opposition to campaign finance reform is presently leading the country in the wrong direction.            

The GOP Diversifies: Considers Second Amendment Remedies

In a recent article, George Will notes that many Democrats and members of the media believe Republicans have created a political problem for themselves by nominating candidates “other than those the party’s supposedly wiser establishment prefers.” This theory, he argues, is “inconvenienced by two facts: South Carolina’s Nikki Haley and Tim Scott.” Will discusses the admirable qualities of these candidates and how they bode well for Republicans in the future.

Will’s selection of these two candidates and his decision not to talk about others, in the present political context, give us an interesting view of a struggle amongst republicans over the future of the party and the stance Will is taking on that future.

Nikki Haley

Will’s description of Nikki Haley and Tim Scott serves as a wonderful advertisement for a young, intelligent, and responsible Republican Party that has moved past the racial politics of the past. He discusses how Haley, 38, worked to have political decisions in the state made out in the open through the political process rather than behind closed doors. He also mentions that, if elected, Haley will be the second Indian American Republican governor in Dixie, joining Bobby Jindal.

Tim Scott, 44, an African American Republican, will be elected the new congressman from the heavily Republican—and 72.8 percent white—first district. Scott is a deeply religious former football player who, in 1995, became the first black Republican elected to any “South Carolina office (Charleston County Council) since Reconstruction, and in 2008 he became the first black Republican since Reconstruction elected to the state house of Representatives.”

Tim Scott

Scott states that “he has never voted for a tax increase.” He supports business and was heavily involved in bringing Boeing to the Charleston area.

So, in Haley and Scott, we find a youthful Republican Party that has moved past the politics of race and is focused on insuring the integrity of the democratic process, reducing taxes on business and encouraging economic growth.

Will’s article serves a useful purpose for the Republican Party. Most of us have not heard much about Haley and Scott; other republican nominees have attracted more attention because they have taken more extreme positions. Will also did not mention the Tea Party movement anywhere in the article. The Republican Party will also find this useful because Tea Party candidates have been upsetting the candidates recommended by the Republican establishment.

Republican Senator from Alaska Lisa Murkowski was supported in her bid for relection by the National Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee Chairman, John Cornyn.  She, however, lost to Joe Miller.  He was more conservative than her on domestic issues and he received an endorsement from Sarah Palin,  a regular at Tea Party events.

If we take a brief look at two of those republican nominees that have gathered more attention that Will does not mention, we can get an idea of those aspects of the present Republican Party that concern him and that should concern all of us.

Rand Paul is the Republican nominee for the U. S. Senate in Kentucky. He considers himself to be a part of the Tea Party movement. He is a constitutional conservative and a libertarian. He received a lot of attention when during a couple interviews he questioned whether it was appropriate for the federal government to prevent private businesses from discriminating on the basis of color.  He was provided a number of opportunities to alter his position. He held his ground.

Rand Paul

Paul also received attention when he blamed the Obama administration for being too hard on BP. When the president met with officials at BP and they agreed to create a $20 billion dollar fund to compensate those who have been affected by the oil spill, Rand said the administration was sort of putting its “boot heel on the throat of BP” and it is “really un-American.”

And then we have Sharron Angle, the Republican nominee for the U. S. Senate seat in Nevada held by current Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. On a radio show she stated that our forefathers created the second amendment to allow citizens to protect themselves from a tyrannical government. She notes that Thomas Jefferson once said that it is good for the country to have a revolution every 20 years. And she says that if this congress keeps going the way it is, “people are really looking toward those Second Amdendment remedies and saying my goodness what can we do to turn this country around.”

Sharron Angle

Paul and Angle clearly represent developments that concern Will.  In comparison, Haley and Scott represent a kind of negative that is political rather than photographic. While Paul has concerns about fundamental components of the civil rights movement like the 1964 Civil Rights Act, Scott and Haley represent a post-racial Republican Party that can effectively reach out to growing minority populations. Angle’s extraordinary references to second amendment remedies stand in stark contrast to Haley’s efforts to have the political decisions in her state made out in the open according to democratic processes.

Will’s concerns are well founded.  Paul and Angle represent a form of government where the state sides with business and uses violence if necessary to impose its will on the people. If the people, for example, elect through democratic processes a liberal or progressive president and congress, Angle believes it is alright for people to take up arms against this government. If her party were to gain control of the congress, there is nothing “logically” that would prevent her from advocating the use of violence to insure her party stays in power.  She appears to advocate putting a “boot heel on the throat of” all who oppose her view of our country.

This is not Will’s view of the Republican Party.  We have not seen a movement like this in American politics in some time. Will’s focus on Haley and Scott implicitly articulates the concern he has as a Republican about Paul, Angle and the Tea Party.  His concern should be shared by all of us.

Let the Big Godzillas Eat

In a recent article entitled “The environmental movement in retreat,” George Will describes how this movement has undergone a unique evolution: from Bambi to Godzilla.  This movement began as a small group of skeptics that were critical of how big government solutions to problems often had long term environmental consequences that were overlooked.  It has turned into a big government progressive ideology that proposes big government solutions—like cap and trade—to environmental programs that have long term consequences that are overlooked.

This evolution, according to Will, is one of the primary reasons the administration’s environmental legislation has been held up.  He quotes Walter Russell Mead, professor of politics at Bard College and Yale University, saying, “the greenest president in American history had the largest congressional majority of any president since Lyndon Johnson,” but Will notes that the environmentalists’ legislation foundered because, according to Mead, they got “on the wrong side of doubt.”

Will writes that, “environmentalism began as Bambi doing battle with Godzillas, such as the Army Corps of Engineers. Then, says Mead, environmentalism became Godzilla, an advocate of ‘a big and simple fix for all that ails us: a global carbon cap. One big problem, one big fix.’”

Mead writes of today’s environmental movement, “it proposes big economic and social interventions and denies that unintended consequences and new information could vitiate the power of its recommendations. It knows what is good for us, and its knowledge is backed up by the awesome power and majesty of the peer review process. The political, cultural, business and scientific establishments stand firmly behind global warming today — just as they once stood firmly behind Robert Moses, urban renewal and big dams. They tell us it’s a sin to question the consensus, the sign of bad moral character to doubt. Bambi, look in the mirror. You will see Godzilla looking back.”

Will concludes that the country is struggling to recover economically and now is not the time for the environmental movement to, as Mead suggests, become the “voice of the establishment, of the tenured, of technocrats.”  Will notes that these technocrats and experts have made many recommendations, “experts said margarine was the healthy alternative to butter — until they said its trans fats made it harmful.”

The moral of the story is a familiar one: big government is harmful; it inhibits free enterprise and big business—which by implication is better than big government.  This moral is however brought into unique relief by the catastrophe in the gulf this summer, the economic catastrophe the year before, and other catastrophes we have had in the past.

The part of Will’s argument that remains unmentioned is that if the environmental movement does not become part of the establishment and create regulative bodies that can effectively protect the public from big businesses, environmental decisions will be left to the “technocrats” at big businesses like BP and Enron.  Their “technocrats” are also human and fallible.  The BP experts running the Deep Horizon oil well thought it would be alright to expedite processes and overlook safety procedures.  They denied “that unintended consequences and new information could vitiate the power” of their decisions; they pressed on in order to make more money.

BP Oil Spill Louisiana

One of the reasons BP was able to cut corners is because the big government’s ability to regulate big business had been undermined under the Bush administration.  The Minerals Management Service is responsible for regulating oil companies and investigations found that during the Bush administration this agency became corrupt: evidence was uncovered that regulators were having sex and doing drugs with employees in the businesses they were regulating.  This agency made it easy for oil companies to drill where and how they wanted: they let the “technocrats” at BP make the decisions about how to protect the environment.

Conservatives like Senator Phil Gramm played a key role in deregulating the financial industry, as in the case of the Commodity Modernization Act of 2000.  This legislation kept derivatives transactions, including those involving credit default swaps, free from government regulation.  It reduced the size and responsibility of the government.  Many believe that Senator Gramm and the other “experts” that sponsored this legislation claimed “to know what was good for us” but their decisions had the unintended consequence of contributing to one of the worst economic collapses since the Great Depression.  They, like Will, simply accepted as an article of faith that we are all better off when big government gets out of the way and simply–lets big business “technocrats” protect the economy.

Back in 1996, California thought it would be a good idea to get the big government out of the way of big energy businesses, so they deregulated their energy market.  Within four years, the state began to experience significant rises in the cost of energy.  One of the arguments used to support the legislation for deregulation was that it would lead to reductions in the cost of energy.

by Steve Greenberg

Four years after the market was deregulated, blackouts began to affect customers in San Francisco.  The next year over one million customers experienced blackouts.  The Governor declared a state of emergency.  Investigations found that Enron had manipulated energy prices.  There are Enron energy traders on tape laughing at how they are making arbitrage profits by manipulating the prices in the California energy market.

We need to remember that when big government “technocrats” are pulled back, the void is filled with big business “technocrats.”  They have the same human failings as big government “technocrats” and they are unfettered by any mission to serve the public good.  They are on a mission to make profit.  We have seen the consequences of their decisions: they have been washing up on shore in three states this summer and filing for unemployment all across the country.

These multinational corporations are Godzillas.  They eat Bambis as hors d’ oeuvres.  They kill people and destroy economic and ecological systems.  They buy legislators, influence public opinion, destabilize foreign governments and their explicit goal is to make as much money as possible.

We should get big government out of the way and let these big business Godzillas eat:  that is the argument Will, Mead, Rand Paul and other conservatives are making.  Will and Paul thought the Obama administration was too hard on BP.  They claim to know “what is good for us” and that their “knowledge is backed up by the awesome power” of the free market.  If the catastrophic problems caused by the deregulation of the financial and energy industries have not led them to reconsider their faith in an unregulated market economy, we can be assured nothing in this article or the future will — “They tell us it’s a sin to question [their] consensus, the sign of bad moral character to doubt.”

Blaming Bush is so Yesterday

Meghan McCain caused a bit of a stir on “Real Time with Bill Maher” Friday. She acknowledged that George Bush was a less than perfect president, but she went on to say that the Obama administration needs to “stop completely blaming everything on its predecessor, completely, and I am really sick of hearing ‘oh, we were handed this,’ ‘we were handed this.’  I know.  Everyone knows.  But we need to move on.”

Her view is consistent with the advice political advisor Mike Murphy recently offered republican candidates moving forward: they need to focus on the future; not their record in the past.  But Meghan McCain’s expression of this view is particularly symbolic.  The 24 year old sounded like a kid who would like to borrow her parent’s car again and is really bummed out about how dad keeps bringing up the inconvenient truth that she just borrowed the car and brought it back in pieces.

President Obama has been in office for just over five months.  According to the Bush administration, the economy was in such a drastic recession last fall that the government had to step in and provide the financial services industry the unprecedented sum of 700 Billion dollars of taxpayer’s money in order to bail them out.  When Obama has taken similar steps to restore this collapsed economy, he has been pounded mercilessly by republicans who accuse him of being a socialist, a communist, and worse.

Perhaps, as McCain suggests, “everyone knows” that Bush handed Obama an economy that was in the process of an unprecedented collapse, but one gets the impression that Republicans are handling it with all the maturity of a teenager–with denial.  There has been no critical reflection on the policies that led to the collapse.  The major idea in the latest Republican budget proposal is reducing the taxes on those in the top bracket from 35% to 25%.  This, of course, is the same approach to the economy used by the Bush administration.

In fact, it is the same approach to the economy Republicans have been taking for the last century.  The share of income possessed by the top 1% of the population has gone up conspicuously during Republican administrations and in each case this has led to economic instability: at the end of the twenties we had the great depression; at the end of the eighties we had black Friday, where the stock market fell over 500 points; and now we have the Bush recession.

Ms. McCain may be “really sick of hearing” about what her party has done to our economy.  The majority of the country, on the other hand, made it quite clear last fall that we have tired of the Republican approach to the economy, among other things.  The majority of the country is having a difficult time fathoming how the Bush administration could give 700 billion of our tax dollars to the financial services industry just before he left office.  And many, like Paul Begala, are shocked at the dismissive attitude republicans have taken to the unprecedented damage their policies have done to our economy.

Before you give your daughter the keys again after she totaled your car, you make sure she understands what she has done wrong.  You make sure she has learned from her mistakes and will not make them again.  When you listen to republicans you do not get a sense that they have learned anything from the present economic collapse.  They seem to fail to understand that this economic collapse will always be directly relevant to any objective evaluation of their policies.  One, for example, would not think of evaluating the social policies that led to the French Revolution without  understanding the financial collapse that preceded it.  Until contemporary republicans clearly outline how they will change their approach to the economy, the American people have no reason to support their policies.

Meghan McCain needs to be commended for her efforts to bridge the divide between the right and the left.  She is intelligent, funny and refreshingly sincere and her voice has been a welcome addition to political discussions.  No one should blame her for the policies of her father’s party.

Her comments on “Real Time” are an accurate symbolic illustration of the difficulty the Republican party is having handling their loss in a mature manner.  They are still in the denial phase.  They still have anger, bargaining, and depression to go through before they get to acceptance.  Until they work their way through these phases and can actually come up with a good idea for fixing the problems they have created, we have no reason to consider giving them the keys again.

The Problems Facing Democracy

Since the civil unrest began in Iran, President Obama has been careful to avoid making comments that might make it appear as if the United States is meddling in the democratic processes of a foreign country.  Iranians remember that in 1953 the CIA participated in a violent over throw of the country.  The President wants to avoid giving the government in Iran the opportunity to use this unfortunate history.

Iranian security personnel gathered during a march Saturday on a street in Tehran in this picture uploaded on Twitter.

Reuters

Notwithstanding the fact that Henry Kissinger and George Will have supported the White House’s cautious handling of the issue, Republicans, always looking to gain some political advantage, have generally pressed the President to speak out more forcefully in support of the democratic protestors in Iran.  As Senator Lindsey Graham put it Sunday on This Week, “the president of the United States is supposed to lead the free world not follow it.”  While John McCain attempted to describe himself and his party as being more experienced on foreign policy, they do not appear to be demonstrating this experience according to the intellectual wing of the conservative movement.

Ostensibly the concern of the Republican Party is that democracy is a fundamental value and there is a momentous opportunity now for a more democratic society in Iran.  Senator Graham generally dismissed the concern about appearing to meddle in the affairs of a foreign country and how that might actually undermine the prospects for democratic activists in Iran.

This concern about democracy, however, seems to completely disappear when Republicans discuss healthcare.  George Stephanopoulos showed Senator Graham the results of the recent New York Times/CBS News nationwide Poll (conducted June 12-16, 2009) that showed 72% support the idea of offering citizens the choice of a government administered health insurance plan like Medicare that would compete with private health insurance plans.  He then asked the Senator whether Republicans were actually fighting to oppose the change people want and voted for last November by strenuously opposing the inclusion of a public option.

Senator Graham did not hesitate to pronounce the public option dead on arrival in the Senate.  This republican position is presently supported by 20% of the American people.  The views of this 20% have clearly had a disproportionate influence on this debate.  Here we see the influence of money and the weakness of democracy in the United States.  The big businesses involved in the health industry have made tremendous profits off the devastating rise in health care costs.  The public option is intended to reduce costs.  It will have no need to make a profit and it will be able to use its size to negotiate for lower prices.  It is no surprise that the big businesses in the health industry would be opposed to such an option.  It threatens their ability to make money.

In the Republican position on healthcare we see the importance of oligarchy over democracy.  We can also see more precisely what they think is important in Iran: it is not the freedom of citizens to democratically elect representatives that actually represent their interests; it is the freedom of U.S. businesses to go into Iran and make as much profit as possible.

The Stealth Health Care Agenda

In the recent New York Times/CBS News nationwide Poll (conducted June 12-16, 2009), 72% supported the idea of offering everyone a government administered health insurance plan like Medicare that would compete with private health insurance plans.  50% thought the government would do a better job than private insurance companies providing medical coverage.  59% thought the government would do a better job holding costs down.

The issue of whether the government should administer a health insurance plan to compete with private insurers has dominated the debate over how to reform health care.  The Republican Party and conservatives generally are adamantly opposed to providing a public option.  Their position is supported by 20% of the country.

Why are republicans and conservatives so opposed to providing a public option when the majority of the country clearly supports it?  We can get an idea from George Will’s recent article The Stealth Single-Payer Agenda.

Will argues that the unspoken agenda behind offering people the choice of a public health insurance option is that it will eventually force private insurers out of business and leave the country dependent on the public option.  Will acknowledges that “the president characteristically denies that he is doing what he is doing—- putting the nation on a path to an outcome he considers desirable — just as he denies any intention of running General Motors.”

Will considers the prospect that private insurance companies will be forced out of business by the public option to be inevitable because the “competition from the public option must be unfair because government does not need to make a profit and has enormous pricing and negotiating powers. Besides, unless the point of a government plan is to be cheaper, it is pointless.”

So, according to Will, the public option has two profound differences with private insurers that will put it in a unique position to reduce health care costs: it does not need to make a profit and it can negotiate for lower prices.   Apparently for Will this is a bad thing.  He never explains why we should not attempt to use these profound advantages to reduce health care costs.

The problem with the pubic plan according to Will is that it is public and not private.  In his view, privatizing and deregulating industries is always the most prosperous path.  He has maintained this view notwithstanding the fact these very policies appear to have led us into one of the worst recessions in the past 70 years.  He appears not to have noticed that when we privatized and deregulated more of the energy industry in the late 90s, it allowed energy companies like Enron to manipulate the market in order to maximize profits in unprecedented ways.  Take some time to listen to the Enron energy traders as they laugh about how they are making unprecedented profit off electricity just before the energy crisis they started.

Privatizing and deregulating more of the energy industry did not cause prices to go down; it caused prices to go up along with the profits of the energy companies.

Will’s belief in privatization and deregulation is so strong it requires him to overlook quite a bit.  It prevents him from noticing the argument he has made for the public option: It will indeed reduce costs.  This appears to be one thing he and the American people agree on.

A Republican Idea: Sustainable Consumption

The most significant change suggested in the republican budget plan appears to be cutting income taxes on those in the top bracket from 35% to 25%. To many this seems like the same approach to the economy used during the Bush administration and it is in part responsible for the present economic recession. The absence of any new ideas in the republican party is captured by a joke traveling around Washington D.C. these days that was shared on Meet the Press by NBC business reporter Steve Leasman. “The Republicans have found a cure for cancer.” “What is it?” “Tax cuts.”

In this vacuum there is for many a sense of denial on the right: there is no recognition that the policies they have been advocating have led to this dire economic situation; no recognition their policies led to their own administration giving the financial sector hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars to bail them out. Since no one acknowledges a problem with their underlying philosophy, they do not feel the need to come up with any new ideas. While everyone else is thinking about “resetting” our economy on a more sustainable path, many republicans believe they just need to criticize the attempts others make to improve our present situation.

There are exceptions to this rule. There are republicans like David Frum who are gently seeking to bring new ideas to the party. George Will is always reading new material. He recently wrote an article on the work of Michael Pollan that is of particular interest here because it suggests a new approach to working our way out of this economic recession. This approach acknowledges that our behavior up to this point has not been sustainable—we need to change. And it describes a uniquely conservative idea for addressing our problems that focuses on individual initiative rather than government intervention.

Many of you are already familiar with the work of Michael Pollan. He is one of the bestselling writers in the world today. He tells an amazing story about food. Most of the food we eat is actually made out of oil, given all the fertilizers, insecticides and pesticides used to produce it. By moving from multi-culture organic farming to mono-culture industrialized farming, our food production became dependent on foreign oil and it began to dramatically undermine our health, contributing to a striking growth in obesity and diabetes.

Micheal Pollan, like Alice Walker and many others, encourages people to eat locally grown organic food from multi-culture farms that do not use chemical insecticides, pesticides or fertilizers. This food is, first of all, much healthier for us to eat. Second, it tastes much better than the food “by products” to which we have grown accustom. Third, it will help our country bring the food production process back to the use of solar energy enabling us to become more energy independent and reducing our carbon footprint. Fourth, it will support the local organic farmers that are the engines of this economic growth.

Michelle Obama works in organic garden on White House lawn

This trend toward locally grown organic food was brought into sharp relief recently by the first lady Michelle Obama. She recently led the way for the creation of a garden on the lawn of the White House that presently produces vegetables that are eaten at the White House and shared with local food banks.

George Will discusses Pollan’s work approvingly in his article Where the Obesity Grows. He describes how Pollan has characterized our existing diet as having made “many Americans both overfed and undernourished.” Will closes quoting Hippocrates who he says not only “enjoined doctors: ‘Do no harm’” but also said “something germane to a nation that is harming itself with its knives and forks: ‘Let food be thy medicine.’”

Here Will advocates a classic conservative answer to a problem: a reliance on individual initiative, education and innovation rather than a government controlled intervention. He is not pressing for new regulations on industrialized farming; he is encouraging individuals to be smart about what they eat. If they are, the government will not need to “regulate” industrialized farming, consumers will. They will purchase products that are produced in ways that enhance their health rather than harm it. They will also purchase products that enhance the health of the environment and the strength of our economy by using renewable energy. When they do this, the fate of industrialized farming is determined by the market, they way political conservatives generally prefer, instead of being regulated by the government.

When the government attempts to regulate the economy to serve social ends like protecting the environment, Will and other conservatives believe it can actually make things worse. He makes this point in a recent article discussing the government’s support for compact fluorescent light bulbs. We would be much better off if the government would not try to regulate the economy: we should let educated consumers purchase the products they prefer.

Here we have the kernel of a republican idea for getting out of the present economic recession and for preventing the recurrence of another in ten or fifteen years, as is predicted by the boom and bust cycles that have plagued capitalism since its inception. We could call this idea sustainable consumption: educated consumers support sustainable businesses and the market forces other businesses in a more sustainable direction. Consumers do this when they take Will’s advice and purchase locally grown organic food.

When consumers become more educated about the environmental consequences of modes of production and this is reflected in their consumer decisions it enables the price mechanism in a capitalist economy to take into account the environmental consequences of business processes. If the consumer does not think about these environmental consequences, they can be ignored or “externalized” by a business. This will often lead the same consumers who ignore these consequences in their purchases to vote for representatives that will support government regulation of businesses. These businesses will need to be regulated because economists like Paul Krugman will argue, as he did recently in response to Will on ABC’s This Week, that market capitalism has failed to adequately take into account the damage done to the environment. A less educated consumer leaves more responsibility for regulation on the government; a more educated consumer, on the other hand, can cultivate more sustainable economic development with less government intervention.

In another article on the strength of capitalism, Will suggests “would-be price gougers are at the mercy of a public armed with information, which is what markets generate and communicate.” Information, he argues, can be used by the public to create disinsentives for overly greedy merchants. Similarly, information can be used by the public to create disinsentives for businesses that damage the environment.

The contemporary concept of sustainable development suggests that past capitalist approaches can not only ignore the environmental costs of development, but they can also ignore the social costs of development: where the rich get richer and the poor get poorer until the poor do not have enough money to buy what is produced and the economy sinks into a recession in a boom and bust pattern. Contemporary concepts of sustainable development will therefore include a focus on economic justice, which insures workers are paid and treated in a just manner. A value is placed on companies that increase profit through innovation and increases in efficiency rather than simply finding more inconspicuous ways to cut the pay for their employees. These companies enable a society to create sustainable development that is not subject to the cycle of boom and bust.

When we follow Will’s advice and buy locally grown organic food, we also support the local farmers that grow this food. They profit from their own work. This, of course, is often not the case for those who work on the industrialized farms owned or controlled by multi-national corporations. These corporations have fiduciary responsibilities to maximize profit for shareholders. One of the ideas behind the contemporary concept of sustainable development is that if we support business models that share more profit with employees, it will enhance the sustainability of economic growth by increasing the long term demand that drives growth.

The sustainable consumer would then be one who supports businesses that are sustainable in the sense that, relative to other businesses, they treat the environment and their workers well. This consumer views purchases as votes that change the society on a daily basis. This is something we are already beginning to do now that we have not been doing in the past. 54% of shoppers now consider sustainability characteristics in their buying decisions according to a study recently released by the Grocery Manufacturers Association (GMA) and Deloitte. In the past, most consumers purchased products based simply on the perceived quality of the product. As a result, many businesses were able to harm the environment and undermine the economic resources of their workers without impacting the price of their product. We can now see that this approach has led us back into another recession and a global climate crisis.

Of course, our initial efforts to become more sustainable consumers will be inefficient and inevitably fail to address the serious problems that confront us in the best possible way. This will provide us even more reason to take these steps now so that we can learn from them and improve the steps we take in the future.

What we do know now is that our past approach to consumption created conditions that led some Americans to be “overfed” while the environment and the rest of us were “undernourished.” Just as we have been hurting our selves with our knives and forks, we have also been hurting our selves with our purchases by supporting unsustainable businesses. Will’s focus on individual initiative and his suggestion that we become more educated consumers is well taken. This is something we can agree on: Let’s let our purchases be thy medicine.