Once upon a time we had a president that knew how to lead. Admittedly, he sometimes accomplished it by dragging congressmen by their nose.

Next we had a paranoid psychotic who thought he was a leader. Strangely, the public largely bought into his delusion.

Come the presidential election of 1976 and the people were weary of strong ‘leaders,’ the war, the economy, et al. The parties measured the mood of the public. That election cycle both parties offered non-leaders as candidates.

Four years later, the people decided they really did want a leader. Instead, they elected St. Ronny. He was a good enough actor to play the part of leader.

There is no explanation for George H.W. Bush. Perhaps people thought it was his turn. He certainly wasn’t a leader. The silver spoon in his mouth would look out of place in the mouth of a receptionist but it’s difficult to justify putting him in charge of other people.

Clinton was hardly a leader but he had consummate political skills aside from leadership. He depended on being the ultimate wonk combined with a charm offensive rare in today’s political world.

Then came The Decider. It was a delicate weaving together of the humiliation of being Cheney’s puppet with a lifelong mastery of the art of being a spoiled brat. Somehow that was perceived as leadership by an embarrassing number of Americans.

Though I still question the legitimacy of the count in 2004, the fact remains that at least a large percentage bought W’s claims of being a leader. Likely it was a matter of too many people having formed their concept of leadership based on television westerns. If it swaggered, you followed it.

The 2004 election appeared to make no sense. The polls showed the majority of the public disagreed with Bush on every significant issue. Then why would they vote for him? He claimed to be a leader and bulled on through with his positions. If the public can accept a psychotic, an actor and a wannabe cowboy as embodying leadership, it should be obvious that they have not set the bar too high.

The voters thought, or hoped, Obama would lead them to change. However, everyone has since learned that he hasn’t the temperament of a leader. His preferred milieu is the conference table, not at the vanguard of the insurgents.

He might be very effective as a negotiator if only he had someone willing to sit down and negotiate. We’ll never know.

A leader has to have a specific destination, a definite goal in mind. Negotiators work to see what they can get. And never the twain shall meet.

Surveys show that the people generally like Obama. They don’t, however, see him dealing with the problems successfully. His base is disheartened. They have lost their motivation. With extremely rare exceptions, no one leads everyone. Though the present threat to the nation is in the same range of magnitude as WWII, no one has convinced the public.

It is folly to expect to lead everyone. A leader selects those he wants to lead and gives them direction, motivation. He divides to conquer. You tell your base that their goals are sacred and tell the opposition to go to hell, or more genteelly, that they are inconsequential.

You gin up the emotion of your troops. You motivate them to get off their asses and work to get all of their allies to the polls. A motivated minority can easily outvote an unmotivated majority.

Can Obama transmute into a leader? There is no reason to expect so. He seems unaware that his present course leads only to failure. If he prevails in November of 2012 he will still not be able to accomplish the goals he holds dear.

If one looks at the presidency from an historical standpoint, successful second terms are very much a rarity, indeed, an oddity. Were it not for ego and delusions, presidents would not be inclined to seek second terms. More especially, they would not expect to accomplish in that second term what they failed to achieve in their first.

That last point is such a truism that it goes beyond the allotted two terms. In blue-skying various possibilities, it was suggested that Obama might step down for Hillary to run. The next question was whether she would be successful in getting a rational health care reform. The answer has to be that she would not even broach the subject.

She is considered to have been partially involved in its loss in the early nineties. She would not in another term, even though her own, be able to resuscitate that dead issue. Someone else can do it, but it will not be Obama or Hillary.

Obama, given another term, would be unable to get further significant changes in health care, another stimulus or anything else of consequence. The only foreseeable value of a second Obama term would be to preclude the dangers inherent in the election of any of his present potential opponents.

For some reason, as each day passes, I become more and more convinced that I am Cassandra’s biological brother.

As a special treat, I have added a presentation from former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich on what to expect from downgrades in the nation’s credit rating to various levels.

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Ah. The good old days are returning. If you can remember The Great Depression, get ready for déjà vu.

Eighty-odd, very odd, imbeciles have done more damage to this country than we can presently foresee.

You thought that you lived in a democracy. If you count Pakistan, Mexico and Iraq as models of democracy, then you’re right.

Didn’t we once have a democracy we were proud of? Now we know that an out of control minority can get their druthers by blackmail and obstruction of the democratic process.

Everyone paying attention knows that our foremost problem is the insufficiency of money flowing through the economy. So, Washington’s answer is to take another two and a half trillion dollars out of the economy.

The basic problem of too little money in the economy means the hole of unemployment gets even deeper. The only way to increase the amount of money in the economy in the long term is to create jobs. That’s important to the jobless but it is important to the country. Cut government jobs. Cut jobs of government vendors. Cut jobs where all of the newly jobless used to spend their money.

The estimates I’ve heard are for a million or so jobs lost. I think those people are wearing rose-colored glasses or have graduate degrees in wishful thinking.

The word seems to be that, even though the debt ceiling will be raised, interest rates will rise. I’m not quite certain it will but that is a possibility.

With unemployment definitely going to increase and the prospect of increased interest rates, the most obvious reaction will be a lot of red arrows in the bottom corner of your flat screen.

Stocks will fall. I’m admittedly not a fan of gambling in casinos where the house ensures you lose and counters your bets with their own. Even if you are far more reckless than I, you must realize that now is the time to cut your losses.

It would be easy to say that the direction of the stock market is irrelevant. That’s not true. It should be but it’s not. People have been trained to look at the Dow Jones. Emotion is the dominant factor in the market. That means the market reacts based on perceptions.

It also means that reactions of businessmen and the general public are dependent upon their perceptions of what the market is doing. These two aspects feed on each other. The market will go down. Businessmen and the public will be pessimistic. They will help push the economy lower.

A failure to raise the debt ceiling would have had a more immediate and obvious detrimental effect on the economy but not necessarily worse. Comparisons are not needed here because the policies being followed by Obama and most members of Congress are headed in the same direction. It seems now that a double-dip is unavoidable.

Who’s to blame? All of us. No, we’re not all as stupid as a Washington politician but we are culpable. We are not equally guilty but, in a democracy, we, the society, get the government we deserve. Perhaps we shouldn’t have tried to get education on the cheap. We have produced too many people unable to think for themselves, unable to discern nonsense, unwilling to put any effort into parsing the spiels of con men.

Well, at least we have The Housewives of Beverly Hills and the largest butts in the world. What more could you want?

Our national trait of assuming we are the greatest in all things is insufficient to maintain the illusion much longer.

Greece, Rome, France, England. They enjoyed centuries leading their worlds. The US will not get to spend a commensurate period basking in the sun.

Unless we are willing to discard those fun house mirrors and face reality, the middle class will atrophy to a point that it can no longer be the propulsive force of the economy. We will have to get used to eating the dust of those nations that respect education, intellect and other attributes that are alien to our politicians and our electorate.

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It’s about time someone got serious. It obviously isn’t going to be anyone inside the Beltway.

The politicians consider their careers and their juvenile ideologies more important than the well-being of the nation and its people. Why are we not blanketing this country with recall petitions. Why are we not exhibiting a similar, reciprocal disdain for their jobs and their well-being?

Have they finally emasculated the American people? Have they accomplished what al-Qaeda failed to do?

Lets break this down into three parts.

Who is destroying jobs?

How do you create a job in the economy? By putting money into play in the economy. How do you destroy jobs? By taking money out of the economy.

So, what are our genius leaders doing? They are cutting the money that the governments put into the economy. They may end up having to eliminate some jobs.

To ensure that, if there are any jobs created in the future, they will not put much money into the economy, they are eliminating the unions.

For some reason those teachers, firemen, policemen and other government employees don’t spend as much money when they lose their jobs. That means that those places where they used to spend money can’t afford to maintain their full staffs. The business may even fail. Who woulda guessed?

The idiots are screaming for smaller government. They are claiming that the government has grown uncontrollably under Obama. The truth? The number of  federal employees is less now than under his predecessor. Am I confused about what smaller means?

Some might claim that smaller simply means spending less than previously. Well, salaries are a significant share of expenditures. This is the second of three years that Social Security is frozen. The broken economy’s only positive is that our interest payments on the debt are smaller. Maybe they could scream at a slightly attenuated decibel level.

There wouldn’t be too much of a problem in this hour of need if we had not lived on a credit card during more normal times. Instead of paying our troops’ way in various foreign wars, we elected carny hustlers who promised us we wouldn’t have to pay for anything.

Had we behaved responsibly back in those days, we would have plenty of credit to draw on to juice the economy now. The stimulus was less than half what it should have been and only about 40% was used effectively.

An estimate expects the loss of a million more jobs if the debt ceiling is not raised. My own guess would be far higher. Also, it would mean an increase in interest rates. That would be the same as a major tax increase but the money would be going to the banks, rather than to help the government pay its bills.

Who is refusing to make jobs?

Have you tried to get a loan lately? A car loan? Okay. A loan to start a small business? You’re kidding. A loan to expand a business? No way.

The banks have nearly $2 trillion dollars available. They borrow money from the Fed to purchase T-bills. Those T-bills don’t pay much interest but they’re doing enough volume to help create record profits. By the way, those investment banks want the debt ceiling raised so they can continue their “investments.”

The non-banking corporate sector is sitting on even more funds. They are using some of it to buy back their own stock. Some is also being used to acquire other companies at fire-sale prices. These mergers and acquisitions usually result in significant job losses.

While both the banks and major corporations are flush, by ensuring the general economy stagnates, they can use that as pressure to encourage further deregulation.

Who can create jobs?

There are two parties that can create jobs and help us recover from this mess. The first is the government. They have the ability to both create and borrow money. Most of that creation is through the auspices of the Fed. That needs to be changed. The Fed needs to be eliminated or so transformed as to be unrecognizable.

The newest estimate is that we need an investment of at least $3.1 trillion in infrastructure. Actually, that’s just in highway infrastructure. Why should we spend our money that way? Because it’s not our money. Our kids and grandkids will have to pay for it. Since they have to pay for it, let’s spend their money on something that they will be able to use – while we get some jobs now.

Depending on the government to get us out of this mess is necessary to get us started; a stimulus, if you will. There is another source of jobs. It is far and away the largest source of all.

What is this mysterious economic sector? Is it the big corporations? Absolutely not. Is it the wealthiest two percent of the population? Wait while I stop laughing. Is it small business? Far less than most people believe and far less than we need. So, who? It’s the middle class.

Our economy is known by the professionals as a consumer economy. Why? Because at least two-thirds of our entire economy is based on consumption. The more we consume, the greater the number of jobs required.

Politicians of both parties have either contributed to the decline of the unions or stood by while it happened. I have never belonged to a union but one must be blind or stupid not to see their economic importance and the role they played in creating the middle class. As the unions have declined, the middle class has declined. First, it lost the race with inflation, reducing its purchasing power. Recently, there has been a marked decline in the number of people composing the middle class.

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Yes, I’m back from vacation. I know. You didn’t even realize I was gone.

Well, it wasn’t really a vacation. It was 9 days at Fall Creek Falls State Park with about 70 of my wife’s relatives. No it wasn’t as bad as it sounds.

Actually there is a little good came about while I was there. Perhaps I should relate that before preaching on the topic of the day. Each family is assigned a meal to cook. They either produce their specialty or whatever is easiest to prepare for that size of a mob. Hot dogs and hamburgers are de rigueur for the 4^th. Diet food, it ain’t.

That’s the problem. I overcame seven books on economics in the past couple of months. Why? Research on my next book.

I needed a break. So, I did some Internet searching for ideas on nutrition and downloaded to my Kindle 3 books that seemed to make sense. Okay. So it’s my form of recreation.

Actually, as age and weight have crept up I have been tested for diabetes, metabolic rate, tumors, everything. It’s nice to know I don’t have any of those problems but there were no definitive answers. Nothing seems to work.

The good news? Having just begun reading 2-3 days before the trip, I was far from having mastered the subject. Again, their wasn’t any diet food in sight. Considering those conditions, I am shocked that I lost over 7 pounds. I was not reducing calories. None of it was the fluid loss that causes many diets to look good the first week or so. The theory is that it’s what you eat, not how much and that your body will find its own ideal weight. I hope so.

I didn’t starve. I didn’t explore the great outdoors. My arthritic joints and ever-present cane have trouble navigating a round trip to the rear of a Walmart. But now, back to the topic of the day.

Dancing On The Ceiling

What is going to happen with regard to the debt ceiling? What will happen if it isn’t raised? The truth is that no one knows.

But, how do I answer the question? I am neither a prophet nor a fortune teller. They are different. Prophets don’t predict the future. Most everyone misunderstands. A prophet passes on messages from God to the people. Most fortune tellers are gypsies.

Neither Oral Roberts, nor Bob Jones, nor Jerry Falwell’s Liberty Bible College is on my résumé. I am not a gypsy. I’m just going to rely on my unfamous (infamous?) ability to see through political BS.

First, they will not recognize the unconstitutional nature of the debt ceiling law. Politicians prefer complex and obscure machinations. They offer opportunities to hide from and/or misrepresent to their constituents what they are really up to. They are not fans of Occam’s Razor.

The debt ceiling will be raised. The Republican leadership in the Congress publicly assured Wall Street that it would. The Democrats’ action was never in doubt. Both are owned by the casinos and have heard  their master’s voice.

There possibly is a horsefly, or the rear of a centaur, in the ointment. Eric Cantor has put Speaker Boehner under siege in his quest to satisfy his ego, his desire for John’s job. To do this, he has decided to sell his soul to the Tea Party. Why is it so common for a centaur to be looking to the rear?

By some counts, Eric can muster more votes from their caucus on this issue than can John. Eric hopes that will translate to votes for John’s office. That explains Mitch, over in the Senate, showing the white flag with his Rube Goldberg proposal.

Dissension among the Republicans in the House has given Obama a chance for victory. I have trouble crediting the White House with mature, nuanced strategizing but they have made a helpful move or two; even if by accident.

This hullabaloo about the debt ceiling is mere political posturing. It has been brought in to the game solely for political reasons. The last Bush raised the ceiling 7 times. St. Ronny did it 17 times – yes, 17. There should be a clear-cut severing of the problem and the play.

Obama should say that the question of the debt ceiling will stand on its own. Vote it up or down. Let the people decide who is jeopardizing the world economy.

Since I see it as almost a given that the ceiling will be raised, what remains in question is the timing. The financial world may be foolhardy gamlbers with other people’s money but they are cowards when their own neck in on the block. They are getting skittish.

One final point. The Treasury has actually borrowed more money from the Social Security and Medicare trust funds than from China or anyone else. That money may have been borrowed by Congress but it isn’t theirs.

If creditors are to get paid while others stand by, Social Security and Medicare should be at the head of the line. They are just getting back their own money. That is not the same as the oil, agricultural, drug and other industries holding out their hands for subsidies.

The President has been speaking about the possibility of Social Security checks not going out on time. That is pure political theater. It is scare tactics. No group shows up at the polls in higher percentages than do seniors. No one wants to alienate them. Enjoy the show but live in reality.

Just remember the problem. Our economy is sick because there is insufficient blood (money) flowing through the system. Sending money to China and not letting seniors put it back into our economy would be the height of stupidity.

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Oh, how I wish this were the knockout blow. Sorry, it’s not. Nothing will ever get through the thick skulls of the ideologues.

How many times must I tell you? Ideologies are oversimplifications by the intellectually constipated that appeal to the intellectually lazy and are usually wrong? Harsh? Hardly. Regrettably, my vocabulary is inadequate to do that subject justice.

Most people are merely victims. The powers that be control the media, the curriculum, the government. Sadly, any alternatives are available almost exclusively from questioning the almost universally accepted. It’s no surprise that everyone accepts such tripe as engraved on stone tablets.

I saw a report today. It stated that states making drastic budget cuts were experiencing worse unemployment and economic results than states that increased spending to deal with our financial crisis.

Wisconsin’s Governor, Scott Walker made himself the poster child for laying the blame on state employees while giving tax breaks to business. However, he wasn’t the only practitioner of this ideological absurdity.

From the report there were 24 states that took similarly drastic steps. Twenty-five didn’t. Yes, I know there are 50 states. Perhaps the statistics from that last one were not available in a timely manner. Or, it may have neither increased nor decreased spending.

Those numbers are sufficiently comprehensive for averages to account for any outliers due to a unique circumstance in this state or that. I am aware that imposing budget butchery on a state is not the only possible variable. But those variables are often found to go hand in hand with the mindset that is willing to apply such cuts.

Let’s take a look at the numbers first. Then we can analyse them.

My first thought was, of course. You cut that many state employees; the unemployment rate rises. The unemployed tend to spend less and the state cuts other spending. That means less money flowing through their economy, so it declines. Simple.

Then I looked at the numbers. The states that increased spending saw decreases in unemployment of .2%. The cost-cutting states? Increases of 1%. Was that solely due to state employees? No. Private sector employment went up 1.4% in the 25, while employment dove 2.1% for the budget cutters.

The difference in economic growth was also dramatic. There was a .5% rate of growth versus a contraction of the economy of 2.9%.

We were assured that those budget cuts would juice up the economy. They would mean that the private sector would create so many jobs we would be begging for college-educated immigrants. So? Were are the clowns jobs? We know where the clowns are. They were elected.

These little goofs probably believed what they were saying. They have never been accused of being geniuses. After all, they were just parroting the lines provided by the Koch brothers and friends. They remind me of Joe Theismann’s famous quote. “Nobody in football (substitute politics) should be called a genius. A genius is a guy like Norman Einstein.”

So why didn’t it work out as promised? There are many reasons; none of which fit in their bumper sticker ideology. One factor that is essentially a mandatory partner to such heavy-handed budget cutting is fear. The businessmen, some of the very ones ordering those cuts, saw such drastic action as portending the worsening of the economy. Ironic, is’t it? They helped create a self-fulfilling prediction.

It’s called leadership, even if is incompetent leadership. Those evincing some faith in an improvement, by investing even just a little in the economy, led the business community in the direction of hope, and engendered enough confidence to instigate growth.

The same ideology, the same people that urged the drastic cuts are the very ideas and people that created the global economic meltdown that is approaching 4 years of age, with no end in sight. Why do we listen to these people? We should be able to forget about them until their parole hearings come due.

It really is simple. The problem with the economy is too little money flowing through it. The answer is not to further reduce the flow. The consumer will hold on to what little they have until they feel the economy is improving.

The banks are making record profits without investing and with no risk. Their arms can be twisted to encourage them to invest in America and its people. The ideologues will scream that it is anti-capitalist. Good. Because that is just where the answer is hiding. Laissez faire capitalism is the problem not the answer.

Corporations have been and are being led by trepidatious leadership that inspires neither hope nor expectation of growth. The leadership on The Hill and in the Oval Office needs put the county above the Beltway games. They need to face the facts and convince business and consumers that we all need to sacrifice and invest in our futures, while kicking Wall Street out of their offices and back to Lower Manhattan.

While we seem to be lacking the intelligence to escape the clutches of ideologies, we must have leadership. None of the candidates for president nor any of the officers of Congress have ever shown any. A soft voice is acceptable . . . if it is accompanied by a big stick, and a willingness to wield it. Where is Teddy Roosevelt when you need him? Obama thinks he can handle it by being a teddy bear. It’s not quite the same.

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We need not use the word megalomania when speaking of The Rump. It’s a given. Little Donald defines the word.

He is far from being the only one suffering from that malady. Some actually believe they are special. However, most are desperate souls that, deep down, know it isn’t true but have to keep saying it, to themselves and others, because of their dread of being less than everyone else.

The latter are people who see only two possibilities: special or worthless. Given the passion, desperation and constancy of The Rump’s protestations, he seems definitely to be a member of that group.

I promise to get to the more interesting part of today’s sermon, but first I need to resort to that old public speakers’ trick. So, let’s start off with a joke, known to most of you as Donald Trump.

Few people go around shouting, “I’m smart.” The smart ones have no need to embarrass themselves so. But The Rump goes far beyond. He proclaims, “I am smart; very, very smart.” Otherwise, we certainly wouldn’t know it by his results. It must take an unusual degree of incompetence to bankrupt a casino.

Give him credit, though. He did learn the trick of letting others use his name, charging a lot for the privilege, getting lots of personal media attention (his Poor Johnny-One-Note form of marketing) and leaving his “partners” shouldering the losses in bankruptcy court.

Here is a guy who must plaster his name everywhere. Notice his plans for the White House. Then there is the Trump Washington Monument. Those 747s are just about large enough for his emblazoned name. Air Farce One. Can Trump Rushmore be far behind?

The root for this need to be larger than life can probably be explained by his obsession with building skyscrapers. He definitely puts a great deal of focus into towers. This is reinforced by the biggest and best golf course, house, etc. If I recall, the technical, applicable term here is phallic symbols. Is it possible he’s the first male to have penis envy?

The Donald said that if Obama released his birth certificate, he would provide his financial disclosure. While he claims various numbers, most commonly around $2.7 billion, financial analysts usually tag him at around $700 million, at most. Does that explain why he reneged on his promise?

He claimed he wanted to get past the birther sideshow, so he could get to the real problems we face. We got past the birther nonsense. What’s the first big issue he expounds on? Obama’s grades. How could a poor student get into Columbia and Harvard?

I’m wondering how a magna cum laude student and President of the Harvard Law Review gets classified as a poor student. If The Rump really wants to know how a poor student gets into Harvard, he might ask his son-in-law. His son-in-law’s daddy forked over a few million. That’s probably how Obama got in too.

I’m sure you’ve heard how upset he is that China is making “American products,” whatever they are. The Donald has several product lines. For some reason they all bear the name Trump. Probably the most prominent is his line of men’s clothing. They are made in China. Who woulda guessed?

I just heard today about his lying about his good fortune of not getting drafted into the Vietnam War. He said he lucked out and got a high lottery number. No. He got 4 academic deferments and, being the great athlete he has told us he was back then, was able to get a medical deferment, without an exam. But that’s okay – he’s a great patriot – he’s told us so, many, many times.

Although he’s flipped on every issue likely to be on the agenda this cycle, we can conclude that he is pro capitalism . . . when it benefits him.

Everyone agrees that capitalism is based on greed. It’s just that not everyone agrees that’s an unalloyed virtue. What is greed’s handmaiden? Self-interest. One might call it self-importance, egoism, one of the seven deadly sins. Pride is another of the deadlies, a constant sidekick. No one has ever successfully explained how someone can be a capitalist and a Christian. That’s like being a celibate and a whoremonger.

The “invisible hand” that is supposed to make the nonexistent “free market” work, being based on greed and self-interest, guarantees economic bubbles. The things that follow bubbles are what economists call recessions or depressions or crises or panics.

Since these bubbles and the events that follow them are inescapable consequences of that greed and self-interest, it seems quite a stretch to claim that an invisible hand is the benign benefactor at the very core of that particular economic system. Our great grandchildren will consider us gullible dullards for opting for such a ridiculous credo.

Those who devote themselves to such a joke have an inhuman, inhumane set of priorities. It is all about them, first, last, always. Geldt is the only measure of a man.

Given that it can only satisfy the egotistical, gullible dullards, it’s difficult to credit their claims of superior intelligence. All they have to offer as proof is wealth. There are a multitude of better measures of a man.

The very traits that bring people to their worship of capitalism and wealth, greed and self-importance, are attributes that are off-putting in healthy relationships. Someone holding the same values could, of course, find that acceptable, or even appealing.

One of these self-proclaimed special people, David Learah, former head of the National Association of Realtors, wrote a book entitled, Why the Real Estate Boom Will Not Bust – And How You Can Profit From It. The book was well-received by his peers and the public. What a smart (read: wealthy) guy. It was so generous of him to share his secrets of wealth with us – less than 2 years before the crash; the crash that couldn’t happen.

From the divinities on high, Greenspan et al., on down, there were so many of these geniuses pontificating in books, magazine articles, speeches, reassuring congressional testimony and such, that David was almost lost in that cloud of hubris.

Don’t get me wrong. These guys are not completely stupid. They either are gullible enough to accept the fanciful or just too intellectually lazy to deal with the complexities of the real world. These people are smart enough to invest a bit of their abundance in buying politicians, getting much of the laws and regulations written to their liking or getting regulators to look the other way.

In their avarice and contempt for the populace, they have so distorted our economy as to make any possible recovery a long way down the road. Born in the misery of the Great Depression, I am apparently fated to end in a similar clime. What a set of bookends.

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There are a few truisms in politics. It is obvious that the Democrats have yet to learn them. It appears necessary to take them back for a review of PoliSci 101.

Any nationwide election is multifaceted. This one was especially so. That means both the mistakes and correctives are many. I can cover them all but most of you have lives. So, I’ll touch on just the most glaring problems and their remedies.

Okay, class. There is no need to take notes. You must, however, pay attention. Truancy is its own punishment.

Friends and Enemies

Friends and enemies. There is a difference.

You dance with the one what brought you, not bought you. In 2008 Obama energized some existing constituencies. He also developed others. He had enthusiastic support from progressives, from unions, from youth, from women, from Blacks, from Latinos, from those who realized what the plutocrats and corporations had done to them and to their country.

He has spent that enthusiasm. Many of those in the groups still support him but many have put themselves at some distance. Hope and Change have been supplanted by Disappointment and Frustration.

They didn’t just decide one day to change their attitudes. It was brought about by the policies, positions and prostration of the administration. The White House and congressional delegations need to acknowledge their culpability and accept the blame. If they refuse to do so, they will lose on every point.

Not a single Republican in Congress voted for Obama. Not a single one will cooperate on the issues important to his constituency. The people that put him in office are important. Bipartisanship would be nice, but it is not the Holy Grail. It would make his job easier but its absence should not seen as his failure. Blind devotion to it will ensure his failure.

There was also the matter of trying to placate the Blue Dogs. The role they played in weakening the President was critical. They are a bunch of ideologues who actually think they understand economics and even other topics.

They love being called moderate, as though that was honorable. It may be when the center is the center but not when the entire political spectrum in this country rests on the right. It just means they are not as extreme right as some others.

The Blue Dogs paid a price. Even their constituencies didn’t see them as a recognizable political animal. They were seen as being as confused as their message. They were Republicans wearing a Democratic name tag. Of the 54 Blue Dogs, 31 are now gone and 3 others are in races too close to call. Good riddance.

Leadership

Leaders don’t always lead in the right direction. Leaders aren’t always nice. The most recent Bush was a leader. He saw himself as a leader. He told us he was a leader, or decider, or whatever. He acted as a leader.

The people accepted his claim of being a leader. Many who disagreed with him on almost every point willingly accepted his leadership.

People really, really want leadership. Admittedly, they were tired of LBJ’s and Nixon’s brands and thought they didn’t want a leader. So, both parties offered them non-leaders. The people quickly realized that they really wanted a leader. How conscious they were of what they wanted may be debated but those wants were there.

A conductor doesn’t just stand on the podium and see what happens. A conductor doesn’t expect a member of the stagehands union to thrill the audience with a virtuoso performance. He knows who to expect to contribute. He expects a concerted effort from them. He leads them.

Part of leadership is a clear objective, a clear direction, a clear message. All of that gets muddled in the attempt to bring the opposition on board. The opposition gets a free trump card by simply refusing to play. They don’t need a policy. They don’t need answers. They don’t need solutions. They just need to be seen as standing firm. Why? Because, while different leaders may follow different policies, firmness is a constant of leadership.

But, you say, we need to position ourselves and govern from the middle. Wrong. That is not the middle. It is the muddle. Perhaps Abraham Lincoln should have been advised to move to the middle. The middle is treacherous. One must be on guard on both sides. Being to the right or to the left leaves only the other side to be guarded.

Who won this election? The Republicans didn’t win by moving to the middle. They won despite making a hard right. Again, they won by displaying one aspect of leadership: standing firm. One was enough. It was one more than the Democrats evinced.

Is governing from either the right or the left the correct way? Not necessarily but it is a lot easier. And, the people will prefer it and reward it. That easier factor is particularly important when one is not very accomplished at leading. The only two accomplished leaders we have had during my lifetime were FDR and Eisenhower. Leaders are rare.

Someone will blurt out that St. Ronny was a real leader. Sorry. The Lipper was an actor. He wasn’t even very good as an actor, except he had that leader role down cold. Real leadership does require a bit of actual leading.

Talk to Them

With all of the money spent on campaign ads, it may be difficult to think that either side failed at effective communications.

It isn’t a matter of volume or money. It’s a matter of clarity. It’s a matter of selling what you have to offer or what you have done, not what your opponent says you are selling and doing. The opposition has been quite good at defining the Democrats and their products for them.

What did the voters buy? It certainly wasn’t what they thought they were buying.

The voter was concerned about the budget. They voted for politicians vowing to add a minimum of $3.5 trillion to the debt. They wanted jobs. They voted for people who stood against removing the tax incentive for moving jobs overseas.

They want to blame someone for America not being number one but voted for reduced spending on education, policemen, firemen, unemployment compensation, research on renewable energy, building a high-speed rail system, repairing roads and airports, cleaning the air you breathe and the water you drink.

They voted for politicians who want to eliminate consumer protections on credit cards, foreclosures, manipulation of the stock market and anything else the parasites want. Many voters blamed the Democrats for Bush’s and Paulson’s bailout.

They voted for people who want to eliminate Social Security and Medicare, put healthcare out of reach for 40 million people, allow insurance companies to refuse to cover people for a preexisting condition (btw, being a battered wife is having a preexisting condition) while placing no limit on price increases (remember those 56% increases attempted in California).

Somewhere the Democrats failed to get their message out. Other than the debt mostly caused by them and tax cuts, the Republicans had no message of their own. They wrote the Democrats’ message and fed the anger and fear. The Democrats deserved to lose but the people will pay a heavier price.

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All of the attention is on the Republican Pledge. Its 21 pages are supposed to tell voters what they promise.

Not really. It’s simply a distraction. They deceived the people with the Contract in 1994. The Pledge is supposed to do the same in 2010.

They will not accomplish any of the things they promise. They can not accomplish any of the things they promise.

Actually, they don’t want to.

How can I say that, after all the trouble they went to, having a lobbyist write 21 pages for them? Seeming to go to all of that trouble is what distraction is all about. You don’t distract with something that is unnoticeable.

So, where should we look? Have you paid any attention to what the candidates are talking about? That could be a hint as to what they consider important to their bases.

I’m a veteran, so I think I’ll begin there. No, I don’t use the Veterans medical benefits. I never have. Others have a greater need for those services. I rely on Medicare.

Despite what you’ve heard, the Republican leadership don’t really like veterans. WHAAAT? Yes. That’s correct. The Republican leadership don’t care for veterans. They are not enamored of Americans in general, to put a point on it.

Veterans rank their satisfaction with VA healthcare higher than any other group in the country ranks their own healthcare. Second comes Medicare. After falling off of a cliff, you come down to how satisfied people are with private healthcare plans.

So, they must really appreciate how the Republicans own the mantle of patriotism. No? How do I know that?

Veterans are not stupid. Four days after the start of the war in Iraq, the Bush Administration made serious cuts in veterans’ healthcare benefits. Yeah. That’s the way to really prove support for the troops.

The military is known to be one of the most conservative sectors of our electorate. During the last presidential campaign Obama received 6 times as much in donations from those serving overseas as did McCain, the war hero wannabe. Surprised? You shouldn’t be.

Veterans’ groups keep close tabs on what the Congress is up to. They have some lines of communication with the active troops.

During his campaign, McCain supported privatizing VA healthcare. That same idea is being pushed in this election by many, many Republicans. Zach Wamp (remember him?) actually said he wants to privatize VA healthcare but not really privatize it, all in the same sentence. He may have remembered that there are a couple of veterans in his district.

Okay, we know that, since we’ve already gotten what we want from them, veterans are disposable. Surely those tireless patriots can find more of their fellow Americans that are disposable.

Enter senior citizens.

Who needs them? Who needs grandparents? All that time wasted visiting grandma’s house could be spent playing Grand Theft Auto on your PlayStation.

We’ve already got about all of the productive, profit-making labor out of them we’re going to get. They are expensive, they are always taking up too many stalls and urinals in the rest room and they drive slowly.

Think how much money could be saved by eliminating Medicare. That pain will go away – eventually. Heart attacks are nature’s way of telling you your time is up. If you are not going to buy a new house or sell your gold teeth, you are just in the way.

Well, as long as you aren’t dead yet, we’ll probably have to continue Social Security. It needs a major overhaul, however.

The Republicans out on the hustings are harping on the privatization of Social Security. They want to put the money in the Wall Street casinos. I’m not certain that the best advice is to use retirement funds to support their gambling habits.

The Dow-Jones recently went below 10,000 and then went back above that number. The dollar has lost between 25 and 30% of its value since the first time it hit 10,000. Did you buy in when it was around 14k and now you’re looking at a realistic 8k? And when was it you wanted to retire?

Putting most or all of Social Security funds into the market would cause the market to rise. It would easily go past 20,000 within 3-4 years. It likely would go past 25k in that time frame. Why? Because there would be so much extra money chasing essentially the same amount of product.

I remember when little old ladies held blue chip stocks forever, in order to feel they had a secure retirement. Price/Earnings ratios were a good index of security. Eight-to-one or ten-to-one were considered solid. Fifteen-to-one was getting up into the risky realm.

Then the market favored 20-to-1. We began to see lots of 50-to-ones. Before the Internet bubble even 500-to-1 was not unheard of. Infinity-to-one was the result when stock prices went through the roof for companies that had never experienced a profit and showed little likelihood of ever doing so.

If Social Security money goes into the market, it doesn’t take a genius such as me to forecast another bubble. The price goes up but the profit and the underlying value doesn’t. Don’t plan on retirement.

We have already seen a great deal of retirement money added to the market. It comes mostly in the form of 401ks. Why do you think that the market is presently overvalued? A realistic Dow number right now should be no higher than 4,500, at best. The rest is hot air.

With all of that extra money, we will have a situation similar to what brought on the global economic crisis. Banks used to be able to loan $5 for every $1 they had available. Recently it has been up to $40. That means more money available for investment, doesn’t it? It isn’t real money until the taxpayer has to bail out the banks.

That money had to go somewhere and there were not sufficient places to place it. So, they sold mortgages that shouldn’t have been sold. Sub-prime. You may have heard of that.

Anyone who suggests privatizing Social Security is either intent upon robbing you of your retirement or a blithering idiot who is too easily fooled by the criminals.

So, you aren’t a veteran and you’re not a senior citizen and you don’t pay Social Security. You’re not disposable, right? Well, your job might be headed to Lower Slobovia, unless you are willing to take a pay cut. How long would you have to work to buy that new flat screen television at 12 cents per hour?

Pay no attention to the Pledge. It is a diversion. They have no intent of implementing it. If they really did try, it would have to be called the War on Arithmetic.

They say they want to reduce the deficit. They want to repeal healthcare reform. Healthcare reform reduces the deficit. They want to extend the tax cuts. There’s another $3.7 trillion of debt. They want to create jobs by not aiding small business or investing in infrastructure. See? It’s a War on Arithmetic, a War on Veterans, a War on Senior Citizens, a War on Reality, a War on the Middle Class, a War on Reason, a War on America.

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Let’s do something that the Republican Party is totally incapable of doing. Let’s be honest.

They have announced their Lemon Pledge to America, six weeks before the mid-term elections. Newt released his Contract With America six weeks before the 1994 mid-term elections.

Let’s shine a little light on their lies and cynicism.

Permit me to start this off with a reminiscence. If you are lucky, you have never heard of Zack Wamp. He just lost the Republican primary race for governor here in Tennessee.

Before that he was an 8-term congressman. Of course he ran on a pledge of limiting himself to three terms, but you have to expect that of a Republican, or most other politicians.

Zack never moved his family to the District. He lived in that C Street house of sin that is registered as a church and illegally subsidizes the rent of its tenants, all congressmen and senators.

This “church” helped hide the peccadillos of several tenants that we now know about. South Carolina’s Governor Mark Sanford lived there, not on the Appalachian Trail, when he was in Congress. Zach’s side dish hasn’t yet become public.

There is is a new book on this subject, out just this month. I have not yet had time to read it but I was impressed with an interview with the author and the reviews. It is C Street: The Fundamentalist Threat to American Democracy by Jeff Sharlet.

Although I am 20 years older than Zach, we are fellow alumni of a prep school and one of the colleges I claim as an alma mater. His family has been in real estate for decades. I was in that business for a couple of years. He was deacon of a church I attended.

Zach ran twice for Congress and lost. When the congresswoman retired, Zach was the only one with district-wide name recognition. He campaigned on the Contract With America. He used to ask me lots of questions before he won. I guess I might have been a demi-mentor. No longer.

Zach shares something other than the bachelor life in Washington with his roomies at C Street. He is a Super American. So much so that he wishes for Tennessee and other states to secede. During the governor’s race he praised Texas Governor Rick Perry for broaching the subject and said he hoped that the voters would elect Republicans in 2010 and 2012 so that the states would not have to consider secession. What was the Republican cry in the last campaign? Party First?

After the election of 1994 but before he was sworn in and took his seat, we talked. I had known Newt Gingrich about 5 years before he first was elected. I told Zach that if Newt was really serious about term limits, a key item in the Contract, all he had to do was not run for reelection. He had already been in Congress 16 years at that time.

Zach responded that the Republicans had not promised to enact any parts of the Contract. They had only promised to bring them up for discussion. They had paid for a poll to determine the top 10 issues of Americans and the majority opinion on each one. They used the results to contract with America to . . . what? Oh, according to Zach it was just to discuss those issues. Can you tell me any of those items that they actually passed? I thought not.

This time the Republican Party isn’t even going that far. Their web site asked people to click on their most important issues. Visitors did. The Party just ignored that.

What was the number one issue for the people? At 42%, stimulating the economy and job creation led the way. What trailed at the very bottom? It was tax cuts, at 4%.

So, what was the primary issue of the Republicans’ press party? Taxes, of course.

With tax cuts for the wealthy leading the way, what is their number 2? Cutting the deficit, naturally. It appears that Jesus is a Republican and is returning for a single performance, just to perform the miracle of cutting revenue while simultaneously reducing the deficit. He does this by performing the same brain wipe on all Americans that he did for John Boehner and Mitch McConnell several years back.

Next comes what they consistently call ObamaCare. If someone refers to it as ObamaCare, it really means two things. They are appealing to your emotions, rather than your brain. The other is that they are unable or afraid to discuss the merits.

Here is some of what goes into effect today, as a result of the healthcare reform:

Insurance companies will no longer be permitted to exclude children because of preexisting health conditions. Insurers also will be prohibited from imposing lifetime limits on benefits.

The law will now forbid insurers to drop sick and costly customers after discovering technical mistakes on applications. It requires that they offer coverage to children under 26 on their parents’ policies.

It establishes a menu of preventive procedures, like colonoscopies, mammograms and immunizations, that must be covered without co-payments. And it allows consumers who join a new plan to keep their own doctors and to appeal insurance company reimbursement decisions to a third party.

They are promising to repeal or defund the reforms. Perhaps they should listen to the ones who own them. According to Karen Ignagni, “It is really the Manhattan Project because of the scale and the scope.” She is the chief executive of America’s Health Insurance Plans, the trade group.

The insurance companies have been spending 30-32% of every dollar they take in on administration. The law requires that 85 cents of every dollar go to paying for care. That means the companies have eliminated thousands of jobs. They have had to retrain over half of their staffs to understand the changes and answer customers’ questions. They have had to perform major overhauls of their computer software. That is what Karen was referring to as the scale and scope.

The Republicans want to try to reverse all of that for what they perceive as political gain. Ironically, polling the public on specific aspects of the reform elicits 60-78% support for almost every part of the reform. They have objected to reality for so long that they no longer know how to do anything else.

They haven’t told us how they will override Obama’s veto. Are they convinced they will control 2/3s of both houses of Congress?

To the Republican’s dismay, a couple of facts have cropped up in the last couple of days. First, it appears that only 2% of small business owners will be effected by letting the top marginal tax rate lapse. The other fact just arrived today. It is that well over half of all people in the top 2% are better off financially than they were last year. Congratulations. Please don’t tell any average Americans though.

Well, there it is: a small dose of truth. The Republican leadership lies. They are trying to emulate their successful deceit of the people in 1994. They know that they don’t have the better argument on healthcare reform, so they feel it necessary to resort to childish name-calling. They attract, even to positions of responsibility, the radical fringe that hate America, if it can’t be exactly as they want it to be.

They hate their fellow Americans. They call them lazy when they can’t get a non-existing job. They want at least 18% of their fellow Americans to do without health care. They want to burden us with further massive debt to the benefit of millionaires. They want this, though it weakens the overall economy and puts us just that much closer to 3^rd-world status. They misrepresent every aspect of their plans.

The Democrats are not your BFFs but, vis-à-vis Republicans, it is like comparing a mud puddle to quicksand. The former gets you dirty. The other get you.

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John Maynard Keynes said, “Capitalism is the astounding belief that the most wickedest of men will do the most wickedest of things for the greatest good of everyone.”

Ben Bernanke, of the Federal Reserve, tells us that the market will cause the too-big-to-fail banks to get smaller. He assures us that the people who caused this mess just need to be left to their own devices for the problem to be solved.

Did Ben listen to Alan Greenspan’s comment that he had been wrong to think that the market and self-interest would manage everything for the best? Alan. Give Ben a call.

How long has it been since 1984, the book? Do I remember it correctly? Good is bad. Up is down. White is black.

The Obama economic team has put together another stimulus plan. Wonderful. How do they propose to do it? Put the emphasis and the money into business, so they will create new jobs.

Wasn’t it the businessmen who kept the 22% increase in productivity during the Bush administration to themselves? Household incomes went down as productivity rose. So, business should get the stimulus? They sent jobs abroad. So, they should get the stimulus? They destroyed our manufacturing base, our middle class, jobs and our economy. So, they should get the stimulus?

The idea seems to be to give them tax breaks. Hmmm. You’ve undoubtedly heard that we have the highest corporate tax rates in the world. Well, actually it’s the second highest. Those anti-business Japanese have the highest, so their manufacturing base, middle class, jobs and economy must be worse than ours. Au contraire.

Here’s another dirty little secret. It makes no difference whatsoever what your tax rate is if you don’t pay it. Over two-thirds of corporations in the U.S., domestic, multinational and foreign, pay zero corporate tax. Really? Yes, really. That means while we have the second highest tax rate, we actually have the lowest effective taxes.

How much lower can we go? Aren’t two-thirds of the corporations going to be jealous when we cut the taxes of the other third? Will we need to subsidize those already not paying taxes? Oh. It turns out we already are.

What about those small businesses? Don’t they deserve a break because they create most of the jobs? True, they create most of the jobs. But, they are heavily skewed to low-paying jobs that replaced those good jobs sent overseas. They usually don’t offer medical benefits. That should have been a major impetus for healthcare reform. Real reform would have eliminated employer-based healthcare.

The bankers are sitting on approximately $2 trillion that they refuse to loan. Most businesses have experienced somewhat of a recovery. On the whole business is showing reasonable profitability. Now they need to show their claimed risk-taking and job-creating ability. They are presently a major drag on the economy.

We are told by the plutocracy’s bootlickers that the Bush tax cut for those with incomes over half a million must remain, else the apocalypse is imminent. Facts always seem to get in the way of the do-dos. The income of more than 60% of small business owners is at or below $170,000. For those making more than $250,000 a year, a small business is not their sole, or primary, income source.

It seems we could easily cut the taxes on the leisure class. It would only cost us $700 billion plus infinite interest over the next ten years. It would provide negligible stimulus but these people aren’t really drawing unemployment. However, the big Boehner . . . objection is to a stimulus of $50 billion for infrastructure. It would create the problem of actually stimulating the economy and providing jobs.

Just leave the economy to the bankers and unemployers. The market, their supreme intelligence and the politicians they own will make everything right – for them. They have a sound bite for everything, whether or not it’s apropos. I needn’t have said whether or not it’s true. There is never a question. It is always untrue. Their playbook is 1984.

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