Wednesday, October 23, 2013
The Tea Party Demagouges
Bravo, Tea Party, Bulwark for Nonstop Demagogues
Yet let us dwell not in easy gloating that patriotic rightwingers didn’t just fail (though the sequester holds) but fell on their smug fat faces, triggering a deluge of disapproval. Instead, behold we see today’s exceptionalism by “true Americans,” with bragging rights unmatched by any other public entity. Who else would have traded mere gridlock (old stuff) for the drama of hostage-taking wherein the thugs, oddly enough, took themselves hostage? Now that’s news, if not humor, even in Washington.
Name another gang that so fluidly uncovers new heroes to replace fallen champions: like Halloween cemetery goblins, an inexhaustible parade of goons and buffoons marches on. Here finally is what the Tea Party does best: pinpointing pinheads of demagogic dogmatism, an army of toy Christian soldiers marching as to war, okay, the wrong time at the wrong time. No one, after all, is perfect, even God’s chosen.
Let us also celebrate, if only for the historic record, the staying power of this temper tantrum. What else caused gobsmacked pundits to scour history for kinship, whether Confederate crusaders for slavery, racists fuming over civil rights, Bible-thumpers furious at gay, minority and women’s right, or simply tin-ear cranks bemoaning Social Security and Medicare? This mayhem, alas, has various silver linings: the extended TP third finger offended both the Union majority and its own party leaders. Bring it on, tea baggers, the sacred gospel of leaping first and having your brains fall out.
Rightwing Messiah Catapult
Of course, success reflects how many swamps the Tea Party dips into, already recruiting Palin and Bachmann, or Trump and Herman Cain. And every one a bona fide know-nothing who instantly turned know-it-all, with unimpeachable skill-sets. True, no Texas yet has dislodged Ms. Palin as the least prepared, most bizarre national nominee ever from a major party. But not from lack of trying. At least Cruz won’t quit early: he’s having such fun discovering how his mischief gets him national coverage.
So far, Cruz falls short in turning his slapstick into Joe McCarthy rampages, in part because the Texan achieved in months what McCarthy took years to accomplish: severe Senate condemnation and national disgrace. However Cruz razzle-dazzled the House, his Senate career as power broker is over before it started, crash-landing after a single launch. His noble sacrifice managed, in fact, to combine three huge negatives without one offsetting positive: No! to government operation, No! to keeping our AAA credit, and No! to Obamacare, not so strangely more popular as a result. Three whiffs are a political strike-out, whatever the TP fundraising gains. That crippled maverick won’t hunt.
Further, if doomed shenanigans put House control at risk, or spur extremist challenges to incumbents, then establishment Rethugs will be forced to pony up unplanned millions for damage control – and that’s just to sustain the status quo. What if Cruz’ fiasco waylays needed funds away from winnable Senate battles? Like Palin, Cruz’ charisma is a double-edge sword: attracting media also means your demise maximizes damage to a fractured, leaderless party. Hammering wedges into already painful splits looks like a permanent minority tactic. Further, a tumult of House misrule not only jeopardizes the GOP majority but sets up what Democrats haven’t done since Truman: win three presidencies in a row, against all odds.
After all, the sweep of Tea Party failures grows by the week: this rump can’t govern, slurs good government, lies with abandon (with crude, instantly-checkable deceit!), won’t compromise with clear majorities, and glories in a Confederate-like, unchristian dives into racism laced with scorn for the downtrodden. Did I forget utter flops at fiscal management, failed foreign affairs support for military nightmares, bloated defense spending and unpopular surveillance of anything that moves. All dished out with the gravy of laughable conspiracy theories on Obama, the dead-end of Benghazi, and my favorite: the hoax of climate change that thunders nearer and threatens all of mankind.
Other than discredited non-ideas (trickle down, taxes are evil, government a menace, especially the EPA and the ACA), what will the TPGOP sell that hasn’t long passed its expiration date? Hatred of Obama willy-nilly fades when the next white candidate surfaces. What benefits acrue from rearguard defiance of gay rights, or women’s rights, or voting rights? Or talking up Romney-friendly tax folly that grows deficits then applied, absurdly, with TP bludgeoning of government when bills come due?
Finally, Cruz isn’t only the latest “phony,” in Catcher in the Rye terms: he’s already drawing unusual slap-downs, as when Harry Reid dismissed this “laughingstock.” Republican Peter King, among many other GOPers, is no less withering: “if you come up with a strategy that’s going to shut down the government of the United States, and you have no way of winning, you’re either a fraud or you’re totally incompetent,” King told CNN, “We are not going to allow Ted Cruz to hijack this party.”
Losing Hand, Bah!
On top of which, this one-horse pony will fall hard by refusing to admit defeat, nor learn from failure: “The American people rose up and spoke with an overwhelming voice,” he bellowed with no link to “outer” reality. Nor will Cruz prosper when all sorts of idiotic threats come forth, such as from the Values Voter Summit: “We’re nearing the edge of a cliff, and our window to turn things around, my friends, I don’t think it is long. I don’t think it is 10 years. We have a couple of years to turn the country around or we go off the cliff to oblivion.” Into oblivion is where Cruz is going headlong as a national leader.
Before oblivion, we shall all be saved, however, according to Cruz’ extremist evangelical pastor-father. That preacher humbly anointed his son the anointed one to redeem America. In his honor, let’s join in, with a stirring anthem in which holy warriors are permanent soldiers, for life is war. Not to worry: victory is assured for “at the sign of triumph” Satan’s host does flee, just like Cruz’ growing troops of enemies.
Onward, Christian soldiers, marching as to war, with the cross of Jesus going on before. Christ, the royal Master, leads against the foe; forward into battle see his banners go! At the sign of triumph Satan's host doth flee;
on then, Christian soldiers, on to victory! Hell's foundations quiver at the shout of praise;
brothers, lift your voices, loud your anthems raise.
Published: Tuesday 22 October 2013
Only the hype of the free-market media keeps much of America believing that "winner-take-all" is preferable to working together as a community.
Public Beats Private: Six Reasons Why
Public systems, when sufficiently supported by taxes, work for everyone in a generally equitable manner. The following are six specific reasons why privatization simply doesn't work.
1. The Profit Motive Moves Most of the Money to the Top
The federal Medicare Administrator made $170,000 in 2010. The president of MD Anderson Cancer Center in Texas made over ten times as much in 2012. Stephen J. Hemsley, the CEO of United Health Group, made almost 300 times as much in one year, $48 million, most of it from company stock.
In part because of such inequities in compensation, our private health care system is the most expensive system in the developed world. The price of common surgeries is anywhere from three to ten times higher in the U.S. than in Great Britain, Canada, France, or Germany. Two of the documented examples: an $8,000 special stress test for which Medicare would have paid $554; and a $60,000 gall bladder operation, for which a private insurance company was willing to pay $2,000.
Medicare, on the other hand, which is largely without the profit motive and the competing sources of billing, is efficiently run, for all eligible Americans. According to the Council for Affordable Health Insurance and other sources, medical administrative costs are much higher for private insurance than for Medicare.
But the privatizers keep encroaching on the public sector. Our government reimburses the CEOs of private contractors at a rate approximately double what we pay the President. Overall, we pay the corporate bosses over $7 billion a year.
Many Americans don't realize that the privatization of Social Security and Medicare would transfer much of our money to yet another group of CEOs.
2. Privatization Serves People with Money, the Public Sector Serves Everyone
A good example is the U.S. Postal Service (USPS), which is legally required to serve every home in the country. Fedex and United Parcel Service (UPS) can't serve unprofitable locations. Yet the USPS is much cheaper for small packages. An online comparison revealed the following for the two-day shipment of a similarly-sized envelope to another state:
-- FedEx 2-Day $19.28
-- UPS, 2 Day $24.09
USPS is so inexpensive, in fact, that Fedex actually uses the U.S. Post Office for about 30 percent of its ground shipments.
Another example is education. A recent ProPublica report found that in the past twenty years four-year state colleges have been serving a diminishing portion of the country's lowest-income students. At the K-12 level, cost-saving business strategies apply to the privatization of our children's education. Charter schools are less likely to accept students with disabilities. Charter teachers have fewer years of experience and a higher turnover rate. Non-teacher positions have insufficient retirement plans and health insurance, and much lower pay.
3. Privatization Turns Essential Human Needs into Products
Big business would like to privatize our water. A Citigroup economist exulted, "Water as an asset class will, in my view, become eventually the single most important physical-commodity based asset class, dwarfing oil, copper, agricultural commodities and precious metals."
They want our federal land. Attempts at privatization were made by the Reagan administration in the 1980s and the Republican-controlled Congress in the 1990s. In 2006, President Bush proposed auctioning off 300,000 acres of national forest in 41 states. Paul Ryan's Path to Prosperity was based in part on Republican Jason Chaffetz' "Disposal of Excess Federal Lands Act of 2011," which would unload millions of acres of land in America's west.
They want our cities. A privatization expert told the Detroit Free Press that the real money is in urban assets with a "revenue stream." So Detroit's most valuable resource, its Water & Sewerage Department (DWSD), is the collateral for a loan of $350 million to pay off the banks handling the litigation. Bloomberg estimates a cost of almost half a billion dollars, in a city where homeowners can barely afford the water services.
And they want our bodies. One-fifth of the human genome is privately owned through patents. Strains of influenza and hepatitis have been claimed by corporate and university labs, and because of this researchers can't use the patented life forms to perform cancer research.
4. Public Systems Promote a Strong Middle Class
Part of free-market mythology is that public employees and union workers are greedy takers, enjoying benefits that average private sector workers are denied. But the facts show that government and union workers are not overpaid. According to the Census Bureau, state and local government employees make up 14.5% of the U.S. workforce and receive 14.3% of the total compensation. Union members make up about 12% of the workforce, but their total pay amounts to just 10% of adjusted gross income as reported to the IRS.
The average private sector worker makes about the same salary as a state or local government worker. But the median salary for U.S. workers, 83% of whom are in the private sector, was $18,000 less in 2009, at $26,261. Inequality is much more pervasive in the private sector.
5. The Private Sector Has Incentive To Fail, or No Incentive At All
The most obvious incentive to fail is in the private prison industry. One would think it a worthy goal to rehabilitate prisoners and gradually empty the jails. But business is too good. With each prisoner generating up to $40,000 a year in revenue, the number of prisoners in private facilities has increased from 1990 to 2009 by more than 1600%, from about 7,000 to over 125,000 inmates. Corrections Corporation of America recently offered to run the prison system in any state willing to guarantee that jails stay 90% full.
Nor do privatizers have incentive to maintain infrastructure David Cay Johnston describes the deteriorating state of America's structural foundation, with grids and pipelines neglected by monopolistic industries that cut costs rather than provide maintenance. Meanwhile, they achieve profit margins of over 50%, eight times the corporate average.
As for public safety, warning signs about unregulated privatization are becoming clearer and more deadly. The Texas fertilizer plant, where 14 people were killed in an explosion and fire, was last inspected by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) over 25 years ago. The U.S. Forest Service, stunned by the Prescott, Arizona fire that killed 19, was forced by the sequester to cut 500 firefighters. The rail disaster in Lac-Megantic, Quebec followed deregulation of Canadian railways. At the other extreme is the public sector, and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), which rescued hundreds of people after Hurricane Sandy while serving millions more with meals and water.
The lack of private incentive for human betterment is evident throughout the world. The World Hunger Education Service states that "Harmful economic systems are the principal cause of poverty and hunger." And according to Nicholas Stern, the chief economist for the World Bank, climate change is "the greatest market failure the world has seen."
6. With Public Systems, We Don't Have to Listen To "Individual Initiative" Rantings
Back in the Reagan years, a stunning claim was made by Margaret Thatcher: "There is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families." More recently, Paul Ryan complained that government support "drains individual initiative and personal responsibility."
That's easy to say for people with good jobs.
Individual initiative? Our publicly supported communications infrastructure allows the richest 10% of Americans to manipulate their 80% share of the stock market. CEOs rely on roads and seaports and airports to ship their products, the FAA and TSA and Coast Guard and Department of Transportation to safeguard them, a nationwide energy grid to power their factories, and communications towers and satellites to conduct online business. Perhaps most important to business, even as it focuses on short-term profits, is the long-term basic research that is largely conducted with government money. As of 2009 universities were still receiving ten times more science & engineering funding from government than from industry.
Public beats private in almost every way. Only the hype of the free-market media keeps much of America believing that "winner-take-all" is preferable to working together as a community.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)