Know-Nothings Skulk Back to Do Nothing

They're b-a-a-ck.  With polls showing only about 12 or 13 percent of the American population that think they're doing even a halfway decent job, members of Congress are returning to Washington. They will raise the money for their campaigns they didn't finish raising while they were on vacation not holding town halls.  They will continue doing what they do best: taking up space and oxygen pretending to represent their constituents and writing legislation crafted by corporate interests.  They will be either passing bad laws or blocking good ones. They will be jockeying for position in front of cable TV cameras.


 What I would like to know is this: just who are these people in the Twelve Percent Congressional Fan Club? The pollsters won't say, except that they're a cross-section of "likely voters".  In other words, anonymous, allegedly breathing humans over the age of 18.  But I am willing to bet they include members of Congress, their families, the lobbying industry and the Forbes 400 List of the Wealthiest Americans, along with pranksters who get their kicks spoofing the pollsters who call during the dinner hour.  Even this 12 percent approval rating is overly generous:

The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey of Likely Voters shows that just six percent (6%) of Likely U.S. Voters rate Congress' performance as good or excellent - for the second straight month. Sixty-six percent (66%) say Congress is doing a poor job, up five points from July and the highest negative rating since March 2010. (To see survey question wording, click here.) Only nine percent (9%) of voters believe this Congress has passed any legislation during the past year that will significantly improve life in America, the lowest finding in nearly five years of surveys. Prior to the latest finding, this number ranged from 11% to 29% since November 2006.

Among the first items on the Congressional agenda is the Senate Banking Committee's confirmation hearing for Consumer Financial Protection Bureau nominee Richard Cordray.  A five time "Jeopardy" champion, Cordray has already proven his ability to rapidly respond to vacuous questions.  In this case, though, the result is a foregone conclusion.  Republicans have already vowed to block any nominee because the big banks which own them hate consumers.  President Obama could have recess-appointed Elizabeth Warren long ago.  But Majority Leader Harry "Give 'Em Hell Whatever They Want" Reid feebly allowed pro-forma sessions throughout Recess Time, thus giving the president whatever it is he really wants.  (Which appears to be holding on until Election Day and playing along with the play-acting which passes for a functional government.)

But back to Rasmussen -- it doesn't look good for either Congress or the generic human being, from the point of view of the telephone pollees.  A majority think the average Tea Party member is smarter than the average member of Congress!  Voters are evenly divided between those who think Rick Perry's desire to make Washington inconsequential in our lives is a fine idea and those who think he's nuts.  Most voters think it's better to be labeled a liberal than a conservative -- but think politicians labeled conservative are the absolute best!

In other words, either the people who don't hang up on pollsters are complete dorks, or the polling methodology itself is fatally flawed. Either way, we are so screwed. Politicians look at this stuff and try to find meaning in it, even though they claim not to. Results like these go a long way in explaining the bipartisanship addiction of Barack Obama, for one thing. He is like the Pushmi Pullyu in "Doctor Dolittle".  Two opposing points of view add up to one weird character pleasing nobody.

Taking Stock This Labor Day Weekend

Guest Post by Jay -- Ottawa

What can I say?  Obama’s long list of betrayals and our repeated howls – yes, both his stuff and our stuff, two halves forming one absurdity -- are getting tiresome.  

Here we go again with this week’s reversal of EPA standards on air quality, the latest item to be appended to the “Obama Scandals List” (see Blog Roll to your right).  And the Administration’s rationale for such perfidy?  Clean air kills jobs.  Yeah, right.  

Obama negotiates another raw deal for the people in time for Labor Day.  Piecemeal give-backs by Labor in return for Management concessions: such is the way in labor-management negotiations today.  In order to get more jobs from corporate world we have to “give back” our lungs to the corporate world.  Akin to belt-tightening, so Karen calls it – what else -- bronchiole-tightening.

The human psyche can absorb just so much Beckettian tragicomedy before everything seems unrelentingly absurd.  Words and civic action to restore reason end in futility.  We lately discover all the levers available to us are connected to nothing.  Unless you choose to go down the road of barking madness or culpable ignorance, the only reasonable attitude in face of Obama’s Act I is cynicism.  I can’t wait to vote for him again in 2012 for Act II as the lesser of two evils.  That’s what the stronger souls who are still operating on the plains of reason and pragmatism are advising us to do week after week, despite betrayal after betrayal.  Four more years for the Man Who Turned Himself (and the country) Inside Out!  We’ll find out in January 2013 which word comes after cynicism.

At first – that is, shortly after January 20, 2009 – we were merely confused.  Was Obama up to something clever?  A deep game?  Some kind of political jujitsu?  Why on earth was he choosing a hawk for Secretary of State?  Why Wall Street enablers like Summers and Geithner to help Main Street back on its feet?  Why a senator in the pay of the private health insurance industry to lead a reform away from the profiteering of private health insurance?  Why Obama’s expansion of war while basking in the glow of the Nobel Peace Prize?  Why the stretch-out of Guantanamo and the shrinkage of the Fourth Amendment?

 Obama Doctrine?  It boils down to surveillance and assassination by drones, complemented by routine violations of sovereignty by crack teams with the right stuff.  Some of those drones cruise day and night over the Homeland itself.  More I cannot say because it’s so secret. 

Most of us who tune in to this blog are no longer confused.  As a few analysts have insisted, Obama is not incompetent.  He has not been duped, “turned” or cowed.  The 2008 Democratic champion for reform was always a man from the enemy camp.  In 2008 the military-industrial-financial-security complex maneuvered a Trojan Horse into view with the help of its media complex, and we fell for it.  To do what Obama has done repeatedly tells us he lacks integrity and decency at his core.  We now realize we’ve been had.  Obama is most comfortable ingratiating himself before moneymen.  As long as they have his back he can ignore the polls.

It’s come to this: Most of the people in power today ignore “we the people,” whether we vote for them or vote against them, whether we tune in or tune away, whether we petition, campaign and demonstrate en masse or remain docile and stay home.  What social contract? 

We are in for a long season of pain.  For a few years we were like the patient who refuses to accept the diagnosis from the insistent doctor.  Why can’t we do or not do the political equivalents of smoking, devouring sugar and fat and never exercising and yet not get away with it?  The national myth tells us it’s impossible for America to stroke out like other empires.  There was only one Dark Age in history, right?  Some of us, like the Tea Party faithful, have turned to quacks.  Chris Hedges on the other end of opinion advises us to hide away in small self-sufficient communities of like-minded people well apart from the corporate-dependent, corporate-supporting majorities unwilling to give up the insupportable life style that’s killing us and the planet itself.  Take an Amish or Mennonite or Shaker friend to lunch to learn more.

 Finally, after a season of denial, we are – quite supinely, considering the viciousness of the assault against us in the class war -- reaching the point of accepting decline, deprivation and pain as constants, the new normals, companions on the long grey road ahead.  If an American fruit vendor, Tunisia style, were to immolate himself before the gates of the White House or on the steps of the Capitol or the Court, nothing would happen.  Hundreds of tragedies unfold every day in this country.  This year almost as many soldiers have died by suicide as were killed by the enemy.  Thousands of Americans who once lived in houses are gravitating south better to endure their new life under the stars.  We tolerate these trends because we ourselves have not been bankrupted – yet -- by unemployment, the theft of retirement savings in Wall Street accounts, a tricky mortgage or the hospital bill of a spouse.  Solidarity is a strictly Polish thing; individualism is the American thing. 

As for the “American Exception,” that turned out to be nothing more than a blip in history, the short years from around 1945 to 1980.  Is it too late to salute those years of middle class advancement on this Labor Day?  Anyway, it’s over.  Hang up your dignity.  We are being herded back to the old imperatives.  Oligarchy, the default mode of political organization since the beginning of time, is once again back in place just about everywhere.   

Yes, yes: Frailty, thy name is Obama.   

But, to be fair: Frailty, thy name is the electorate, whole and entire. 

Happy Labor Day.

  

Tighten Your Bronchioles: You're in the O-Zone

As expected, President Obama has caved to his CEO buddies, and big business "job creators", and his boss John Boehner, and canned the EPA's new clean air standards.  Demanding respiratory health in an economic recession is just asking too much of the corporation persons, said the president in a Friday news dump.


In his usual biparti-speak style, Obama said he is committed to clean air, just not at this time, and certainly not at the expense of the peace of mind of the business community.  Just hold on, try to breathe the ozone until 2013, and he'll look at reducing pollution levels then.  After the campaign, after those same businesses have donated about a billion into his war chest.


I guess Malia and Sasha don't have asthma.  They don't live in inner cities, where substandard housing, mold and pollution are major contributors in raising the childhood asthma rate to historic levels.  The EPA estimates that without the tough new pollution standards that are now shelved, thousands more people will die of asthma attacks and exacerbation of respiratory diseases every year.  Emergency room visits will skyrocket. American morbidity and mortality rates will rise even further up the list of most unhealthy third world countries. Global warming is making pollution worse.


Way to go, Barry.  Have a cigarette with your pal Boehner and maybe you'll feel better.  And don't forget to ignore the hundreds of Tar Sands pipeline protesters getting arrested in your front yard either.






What a Drag



Barack the Bizarre

So, I was only half paying attention to the latest who-dissed-who crap in Washington yesterday, with Obama and Boehner playing dueling playdates again.  The usual "I'm the adult and you're not, so there!" stuff that the people suffering through one of the worst natural disasters in American history couldn't care less about, especially since about a million are still without electricity, internet and cable.

Tropical Storm Irene and mass disaster have been flooded out by "Boehner Stiffs Obama on Joint Session!" on the front pages.  People at the end of their ropes have been replaced by pundits gasping "Is Obama Playing a Game of Rope-a-Dope over Speech?"  and "This Has Never Happened Before in the History of American Political History" hysteria.

So late last night I had just finished writing my "Eric the Dread" post about how Cantor doesn't care about disaster victims, when I decided to check my email one last time before turning in.  There was a message from "Barack" with the title "Frustrated".  Wow, I thought to myself, the president is writing to all the people in the federal disaster zones to offer us a few crumbs of presidential sympathy. But was I ever wrong.  Here is what he (or a campaign flunky) wrote:

Karen --

Today I asked for a joint session of Congress where I will lay out a clear plan to get Americans back to work. Next week, I will deliver the details of the plan and call on lawmakers to pass it.

( I didn't get what I wanted so I am bitching to you. I am also not making you privy to any of my so-called plans. They suck, but my soaring rhetoric can make anything sound good.  You'll just have to wait).

Whether they will do the job they were elected to do is ultimately up to them.

( I am running against the generic Congress, not the Republican Congress, or even against any of the Republican candidates. If you don't get your precious jobs bill, it's all on those Democrats and Republicans -- not me. I am completely ignoring the progressive emergency Jobs Bill introduced by Democratic Rep. Jan Schakowsky. Whether I do the job I was elected to do is not ultimately up to me.  It's somebody else's fault. It's my job that is ultimately at stake here).

But both you and I can pressure them to do the right thing. We can send the message that the American people are playing by the rules and meeting their responsibilities -- and it's time for our leaders in Congress to meet theirs.

(Triangulate with the voters against Generic Congress.  Invite them to join my exclusive "Adults Only" VIP Club of Populist Insiders.  Break out in a rendition of Helen Reddy's "You and Me Against the World.")

And we must hold them accountable if they don't.

(Or else.... what?  Send them to their rooms?)

So I'm asking you to stand with me in calling on Congress to step up and take action on jobs.

No matter how things go in the weeks and months ahead, this will be an important challenge for our organization.

(Put Country before Party, but Organization ("Obama for America") before Country).

It's been a long time since Congress was focused on what the American people need them to be focused on.

I know that you're frustrated by that. I am, too.

(I pretend that my base of purist idealogues is not at all frustrated with Moi.  If they can no longer worship me, I shall play the Pity Card).

That's why I'm putting forward a set of bipartisan proposals to help grow the economy and create jobs -- that means strengthening our small businesses, giving needed breaks to middle-class families, while taking responsible steps to bring down our deficit.

(Even though I just called out Congress for being a bunch of whiney brats, I shall still cling to my bipartishit delusions.  Oh, and growing the economy and creating jobs is code for Trickle Down Reaganomics.  I know, I know, it's been debunked as a theory, but maybe if I keep repeating it over and over and over, I will make it so.  And I simply can't discuss jobs without taking those responsible steps to slash your social safety net.  I need an adult plan that has to be grand to calm down the Markets.  We're in this together, you and I.  The Markets rule all of us, so let's be team players and go along to get along, ok?)

I'm asking lawmakers to look past short-term politics and take action on that plan. But we've got to do this together.

I will deliver this message to Congress next week, but I'm asking you to stand alongside me today: (inserts link simply requesting name and email only).

(A ploy by my campaign to see just how dwindling my base of support really is).

More to come,

Barack

I don't know if Ezra Klein saw a copy of this missive, but he sounded about as disgusted as I've ever heard him this morning:

To paraphrase economist Brad DeLong, last night was one of those nights when you remember that even taking into account the fact that our political system is performing worse than you could possibly imagine, it's performing worse than you can possibly imagine. Washington has made many more consequential missteps than this one. But few of them have been so thoroughly depressing, so insistent on showing us us, with brutal clarity, what the greatest nation in the world has come to.

Read his whole post. I think it's time we all get together and start our own mass triangulation movement.  This is no longer about Republican vs. Democrat.  This is all about Them vs. Us.  You know.... the Class War.

   

 

Eric the Dread

It could always be worse.  Eric Cantor could actually be your congressman. Contrary to urban legend, Cantor does indeed have among his constituents people who can't stand him.  And the feeling is mutual. Just yesterday, he unleashed both public and private security on two separate groups of voters just to avoid having to talk to them.  He didn't even grace them with his famous lip-curling sneer.


Next Time, Take Out Some Earthquake Insurance!


The first episode occurred when a small group of women wearing identical "Can'tOrWon't" tee shirts entered one of his district offices for an appointment. Cantor was a no-show. While they were trying to get him on the office phone, the cops showed up, saying they were responding to a complaint of a disturbance.  The women left and the officers made sure they did. Check out the video. You tell me if this group posed a terrorist threat. Of course, the way they insist on calling him "Can't-or" probably does nothing to endear them to the sensitive Eric.


Later on, when another group of constituents showed up for a private town hall at a Richmond Holiday Inn, Cantor had hired bouncers already on hand for this Tea Party  invitation-only affair to eject the crashers.  Here they are,  demonstrating in the parking lot.  (Think Progress has more. The progressives had actually booked space in the hotel and were later asked to leave by the Holiday Inn. Now there is talk of a national boycott against Holiday Inn.)

Last year, there was the beating of a Democratic constituent by a Cantor thug bearing a striking resemblance to a character from "The Hills Have Eyes."


What a way to end a summer of Cantor love.  His trifecta of heartless rebuffs in the name of some phoney fiscal ideology to victims of a tornado, an earthquake and a tropical storm all in the space of just a few months not only alienated every decent person on the planet, it even made New Jersey Governor Chris Christie mad. One of the nastiest GOP governors who ever lived thinks Cantor is way beyond mean and nasty.  All this, on top of his temper tantrum success at dominating Debt Ceiling Crisis Theater and not holding a single public town hall for his whole August vacation. He brings a whole new meaning to the term "Recess Bully".


Young Gun Eric has been shooting some major blanks.  He appears to be suffering from the hubristic and usually fatal disease of Republican Overreach. Never having won an election with less than 59 percent of the vote, his confidence knows no bounds.  As one blogger put it, Cantor is best understood when you view him as a lobbyist posing as a legislator.  He is all about the money.... for himself and for his oligarchic compatriots and for his fellow reps.  He got where he is today, and his party tolerates his repulsive whining and demands, because he knows how to get money.  Piles and piles and piles of it.
 He was a protege of former House Speaker and convicted felon Tom DeLay, and was one of his most ardent supporters until it no longer served his own interests. He slavishly called DeLay "Boss". And then there was the star-crossed friendship with lobbyist and convicted felon Jack Abramoff, who once named one of his famous deli sandwiches after Eric Cantor.  Eric joked about it at the time, bragging about how he changed it from a tuna stacker to a roast beef on challah because that "exuded Jewish power." Then Abramoff was indicted -- and suddenly Eric denied even knowing anything about the alleged sandwich. (Larry David used the sandwich saga as the basis of an episode of "Curb Your Enthusiasm", even though, Cantor-style, he has always denied the connection). Just to make sure people believed him, Cantor achingly announced he was giving all his Abramoff cash to charity.


We all complain about the stenographic mainstream media dutifully parroting the wit and wisdom of the nefarious politicians, but Cantor more than has them in the bag.  His state's "paper of record", the Richmond Times-Dispatch, is owned by a media conglomerate directed by Cantor's very own wife Diana, a former Goldman Sachs vice president. Every time the newspaper runs an article (usually favorable) about the congressman, it adds a caveat at the bottom, revealing the relationship and at the same time denying any conflict of interest.  All in the name of being fair and balanced, naturally.


Some of the stories are truly hilarious, and they usually fall into the category of Eric or his staff excusing the latest gaffe, explaining the latest lie, or waxing indignant that someone even dared to call Wonder Boy a hypocrite.  My favorite is when Cantor tried to weasel his way out of explaining how his wife accepted a TARP bailout for a bank she also runs.  Her taking the money was purely accidental and a con game perpetrated on her by the government!  They fooled the poor woman, by golly.  A staffer called it "a freak coincidence" that Mrs. Cantor's bank received a $267 million bailout from legislation her husband helped push through.  She said she had no idea where the money came from, and certainly never lobbied for it.


But once in awhile, there's a slip-up and Diana Cantor's paper prints the truth. Somehow, "Politifact Virginia" managed to hack into the paper's website (or so Eric might have us believe) last October and award him with their top "Pants on Fire" liar rating when he said that "in the past two years the Democrats have spent more money than this country spent in the last 200 years combined." 


 And Politifact was duly aghast, writing: "That's wrong no matter how you slice it! And it's not just wrong -- it's ridiculously wrong. We rate the claim Pants on Fire."


The AP awarded Cantor its "hypocrite of the week" honors when he became majority leader this year and promptly increased spending on his own staff by 16 percent, at the same time he was positioning himself as a deficit hawk.  All told, Cantor has raised staff salaries by a total of 81 percent since he was elected to Congress.


Another memorable headline in Cantor hypocrisy says it all: "Stimulus Dollars Have Not Produced Jobs, Cantor Says, While Hosting a Jobs Fair With Companies That Received $52 Million to Create Jobs." (ThinkProgress).


Feeling depressed, angry, bored by all of this? Take heart.  Out of the miasma of the Virginia swamps arises one E. Wayne Powell, a former military intelligence officer and progressive Democrat who is mounting a serious challenge to our favorite crooked politician.  Nobody has ever seriously challenged Cantor before. The man is entrenched in the corrupt system. But Powell is starting early, has tons of support and is raising money. And he doesn't look like a Spineless Democrat!  He looks like he could easily take on Cantor's hired thugs.  I eagerly anticipate the debates Eric will cancel out of his customary cowardice, and his inevitable McCarthyesque downfall, and a reprieve from more egregious nastiness to come out of one politician in 10 years than in more than 200 years of the entire history of American politics. Let Politifact check that claim out, and I can guarantee they'll award it the golden halo of veracity. 
  

Powell the Powerful: Knuckle Sandwich Maker?


Update 9/1:  There is yet another Democrat vying for Cantor's seat.  His name is David Hunsicker, a combat Air Force veteran who flew missions in Vietnam and a progressive whose first priority is jobs -- and who's also an advocate of Medicare for All.  You can learn more about him here.

Irene Aftermath

The full scope of the disaster in the Northeast is just now becoming clear, with some roads  slowly reopening, electricity and internet  being spottily restored and people venturing out to inspect the damage.  It's a scene of utter destruction. 

But to give you an idea of the spirit that reigns in these parts right along with the devastation, here is a film made by Jo Ostrander, a resident of the little town of Shokan in northern Ulster County, NY.  This whole area is known as "greater Woodstock".  I call it the Dried Lentil Belt.  Much of the region is populated by hippies who never left after that epic weekend in 1969, along with a lot of artists and craftspeople.  One of the towns  pictured in the video is Phoenicia, recently named the "sixth coolest small town in America".   The award winning indie film, "You Can Count on Me" and the cult horror classic "Wendigo" were filmed there.  

This area is not wealthy, not by a long stretch.  Average household income in Phoenicia is about $22,000.  Nearby Margaretville has been figuratively underwater for years, with close to 20 percent of the population living below the poverty level.  Now it's literally underwater.

I can now count among my list of accomplishments the fact that my neighborhood has been named an official federal disaster area by the president.  But of course, the austerian politicians want this flood-ravaged region to tighten its belt and share the sacrifice.  If any federal money is forthcoming for repairs of infrastructure and humanitarian aid, they want us to cut back in other ways.  They also want to raise taxes on the victims of this catastrophe, having just now noticed that nearly half of poor people haven't been earning enough to pay taxes.  So maybe they can wrest a compromise from the White House  trading a few dollars of storm damage relief for a reduction in food stamp benefits or the earned income tax credit.

Maybe they should also reflect on the fact that the dams are bursting, and torrents of polluted water flow downhill to Wall Street.  The drinking water of the oligarchs originates in this disaster zone.

Update: Marie Burns of RealityChex.com is at least temporarily back online from Disaster Zone Central. Glad to hear she is ok.

Floodville, cont.

Posting has been and will be intermittent, due to ongoing power outages and/or loss of the internets. Outages were actually increasing today, since trees continue to fall on power lines. An entire subdivision not far from me was evacuated because a little creek transformed into a raging torrent ruptured a gas pipeline. A cloud of gas is still wafting above the Hudson Valley somewhere.

Anyway, in checking in to the news today after being in an information vacuum for the past 24 hours, I am glad to see The Times is finally noticing that New York extends past the five boroughs and there is a major freaking catastrophe going on.  Many of our towns, including in our neighboring Vermont, are literally cut off. So far, reported deaths have been surprisingly few, given the epic scope of this disaster. But I am afraid many isolated people in isolated areas have been lost or remain stranded without anybody even noticing. Power may not be restored to many until next week.  And the locales affected were already underwater, economically. 

I have to say I am worried about our friend Marie Burns of RealityChex.com -- she was in her cottage in one of the devastated areas upstate and we haven't heard from her. If she could get out, I know she would post in a McDonald's or other WiFi area.  So I have a feeling her road may be blocked. Since vehicles can't get through, volunteers are searching the area on foot. The last I heard from Marie, she was as well-prepared as she could be, stocked up on food, water, etc.

Here are some more photos from the local paper. Why do some parents think it's a cute idea to have their kids pose waist-deep in flood waters? 

P.S.  Having just gotten the internet and electricity back, having endured a horizontal lashing of 10 inches of wind-driven rain, I received an email from my apartment management stating they are going to power wash the outdoor area and to bring in all my loose belongings. I think they must be related to the people who tell their kids to go outside and swim in the fun new water park in the front yard.