I was wrong: people really are content with our political system

Looks like it's time for a mea culpa.

It seems Americans are overwhelmingly content with how our political system is functioning.

I believe there were only four candidates who were on the ballot in enough states to form an electoral college majority. Democrat Obama, Republican Romney, Green Jill Stein and Libertarian Gary Johnson.

If you wanted a candidate who represented real human beings (presuming you didn't consider corporations to be such), if you wanted someone who opposed militarism and if you wanted someone who opposed corporate control of government, there were only two choices: Stein and Johnson. They were very different candidates but they were the only candidates who were pushing those fundamental conditions needed to make America into a true republican democracy.

I thought the time was right for a decent smaller party showing. People were very lukewarm about Obama and Romney. The last few years saw some very significant grassroots movements in the Tea Party (which we forget really was grassroots originally before it was hijacked by the far right money machine), by Occupy movement and the Ron Paul insurgency inside the Republican Party. This was anti-establishment discontent we hadn't seen since the days of the Vietnam aggression. Johnson and Stein were two very active, substantive candidates. They were aggressive in their use of social media (whose influence on politics is vastly overstated but in the face of a media blacklist, it was the best they could do). Each represented a significant demographic: true small government advocates dissatisfied with Republican hypocrisy on the issue and progressives disillusioned with Obama's complete abandonment of their agenda. I knew the media blacklist would be a significant barrier but I still Johnson and Stein had a reasonable shot to get 5 or 6 percent of the vote between them.

They actually combined to get 1.3 percent of the vote; all smaller candidates only combined for 2 percent. Now, 1.3 and 2 percents were orders of magnitude greater than the amount of media coverage they received, but it was still only 2 percent who voted for real change of some sort or other to our political system. 

Thus 98 percent of voters voted to fundamentally preserve the status quo.

Americans complain about divided government but elected another divided government.

Congress has an approval rating of 21 percent but 90-something percent of incumbents were re-elected, as is usually the case.

People complain about both Democrats and Republicans but over 99 percent of members of Congress will be of those two parties.

Everything bad piece of public policy Americans complain about was enacted by Republicans, Democrats or, more often, both. Every 'onerous tax,' every 'job killing regulation,' every billion wasted on corporate welfare, every war of aggression that you complain about was enacted by one or both of the parties supported by 98 percent of the voters.

From this, I can draw one of two conclusions. Either Americans are actually fairly satisfied with the functioning of our political system or they are unhappy but aren't really interested in doing anything about it. Either way, the incessant whining is not compatible with either of these two options. If you're happy, why are you whining? If you're unhappy, then go beyond whining and try to do something about it.

I was wrong. I believed people when they said they wanted certain things or held certain values. But I guess was wrong to assume they'd vote for those things or values. And of course, some truly did. But from what I can tell, most didn't. Most voted against a candidate, not for one. That's their prerogative. And I'd be wrong to say I don't understand the reasoning. But I simply fail to see how change will every happen if only 2 percent of the people are willing to make it happen. 

Or maybe they really don't want it to happen. Maybe they are not interested in any sort of real change on the federal level. So be it. I accept that's democracy. Just quit whining when you get what you choose.

Now people need to take the next step and quit whining about what they don't want or are not willing to change.

Want smaller government? You got it!

One of the easiest ways to get elected is to promise smaller government and lower taxes. It sounds great as rhetoric because it's removed from context. In first world countries, there is an equation, a link between taxes paid and services to citizens provided. Different countries define that equation in different ways but it's there in every developed country. One of the most brilliant things strategically the American far right has done is to break that link, to focus only on the undesirable part (taxes) without discussing their relationship to the desirable part (services).

I'd have less problem with the smaller government/lower taxes rhetoric if its espousers were honest about the consequences. Yeah, they sometimes use rhetoric like "We all have to make sacrifices" (all usually meaning the 99%) or "tough choices have to be made. But it's all passive tense stuff, vague, nebulous and deliberately evasive. Just once, I'd like someone to have the guts to run for office on the platform of "crappier roads" or "higher crime."

Here are a few examples I've heard in the media recently about people who got their desire for smaller government...

-School districts across Indiana are getting rid of busing;

-Some municipalities are dealing with budget shortfalls by turning off streetlights;

-Warren County (NY) tried to seriously scale back its meals for seniors program until town supervisors (all conservatives) in the municipalities affected revolted.

It's funny how everyone loves smaller government and lower taxes when it's a theory but a bit less so when it actually affects them (THEM!). No wonder conservatives typically avoid being completely honest about the *full* consequences of their rhetoric.

Occupy vs the Tea Party

"When I give food to the poor, I'm called a saint. When I ask why they are poor, I'm called a communist." -Archbishop Dom Helder Camara.

The American political system pretty much boils down to the craven and corrupted Democratic Party, the venal and corrupted Republican Party and smaller parties who are mostly well-intentioned but don’t show the tiniest desire to become remotely electable (bearing in mind there are thousands of public offices below the presidency). What a depressing state of affairs. No wonder there’s so much frustration and anger that’s been expressed via the non-partisan Occupy movement and the formerly non-partisan Tea Party.

The Tea Party has been taken over by the Republican Party (the Dems would love to co-opt Occupy but they haven't succeeded yet), but there are still strains within it that remain independent and certainly the anger that originally animated it was organic; most of them are part of The 99 Percent too. The left likes to look down their noses at the Tea Party as comprising The Other, ignorant, racist rubes, but this ignores what the two movements share.

Both the Tea Party and Occupy reflect the anger of ordinary people against a corrupt system that serves the elites and not the people... or rather, at the expense of the people. The main difference lies in the response. The objective of the Tea Party is to starve government of money, since cash is what feeds the beast of corruption. Occupy's is to re-direct that money so it's used in a more humane manner. Both want to blow it up. One wants to replace it with something better; the other believes that something better is not possible so replace it with nothing.

Both really diagnosis the same problem, but offer different prescriptions.

Thoughts on yesterday’s elections

Green gubernatorial candidate Howie Hawkins got more than the 50,000 votes required to secure ballot status for the Greens for the next four years. This will allow Greens all across the state to run for all public offices much more easily and offer an alternative to the corporate Democrats and Republicans. It also established the Greens as the third party in New York state and the top non-corporate party. Thanks to all who voted for him and a progressive agenda and, by extension, for multipartyism in NYS.

Before 2009, the last time Democrats controlled all three of the governorship, Assembly and Senate was 1935. So it was entertaining to hear state Senate Republican leader Dean Skellos act like his party has had nothing to do with the mess that is NYS. The two corporate parties have run the state into the ground in that most sainted of manners: bipartisan. It's time for some multipartyism, courtesy of the Greens.

It was also amusing to hear Sen. Skellos say that we needed a GOP senate to act as a check on the corruption in Albany. A check on Joe Bruno-style corruption?

It was maddening to hear all these liberals rave about Andrew Cuomo. Do they even have a clue what he ran on? I mean, besides the empty “Change Albany” rhetoric. Guys who will act as a check on Wall St. excesses do not get oodles of campaign cash from Wall St. Guys who run on progressive agendas do not get endorsed by the far right New York Post. Remember that, more often than most people want to believe, you really do get what you vote for.

I went to vote and I saw a bunch of cameramen and photographers outside my polling place. So I was prepping myself for the red carpet walk which they obviously wanted me to do. But then this tall red-headed guy with his family comes walking out and all the paparazzi follow him instead. Some Congressman Murphy guy, apparently. I suppose that’s the modern media for you: all substance, no style.

I remember that when Tea Party candidates won primary elections, many liberals were gloating, sure that they would get slaughtered in the general election. As that famous Bard, Lord Dark Helmet of the movie Spaceballs, said, “Evil will always prevail because Good is dumb.”

I don’t think much of most Democrats but am still very disappointed at Russ Feingold losing. When the Profiles in Courage of the last 50 years is written (a slim volume to be certain), Feingold's lone vote against the Patriot Act in the face of post-9/11 hysteria will be one of the chapters.

I love how all the media outlets declared Andrew Cuomo, Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand the winners only a few minutes after the polls closed despite reported vote totals of 0 for all of them. Only in the punditocracy is 0 > 0.

If the only way you can get elected is to buy office with your own fortune or to buy it with corporate America’s fortune after they buy you off, is it democracy or oligarchy?

How come no one is demanding to see Marco Rubio’s birth certificate? Or for that matter, John Boehner’s?

Those running on the purported agenda of ‘smaller government’ and ‘less spending’ won big last night. I wonder what amount of the military budget, which by itself accounts for 52% of all discretionary federal spending, these principled spending cutters will slash.

Hobbling journalism's crutch kicked away while foreigners offer a glimpse at the Tea Party's vision

I’m no fan of the Tea Party-backed Carl Paladino but... I do take a little joy from the fact that the polls, the modern substitute for actual journalism, were spectacularly wrong.

The polls had this a neck-and-neck race between Alan Alda-look-alike Paladino and Rick Lazio in the race for the GOP nomination for governor of New York.

Paladino won by 24 points.

Though Larry Sabato, the resident political science expert used by pretty much every national media outlet, pointed out that anti-incumbent fury wasn't quite as lethal as you might think.

As he Tweeted: Final tally: 417 Sens. & Reps. renominated, 7 lost (98% won)

And speaking of the slash-and-burn approach advocated by Paladino and other self-proclaimed small government types, Canada's MacLean's magazine has a profile of what Tea Party's vision would look like. Collapsing bridges, street lights turned off, cuts to basic services... sounds like paradise!

The BP disaster is the logical result of the Tea Party ideology

"When I give food to the poor, I'm called a saint. When I ask why they are poor, I'm called a communist." -Archbishop Dom Helder Camara.

Over at Alternet, Jim Hightower has a great piece on the BP catastrophe. The title speaks volumes: 'Who the Hell's in Charge Here? BP Disaster Caused by a Nasty Mix of Government Impotence and Corporate Rule'

Hightower notes that [t]he explosion of BP's Deepwater Horizon well was the inevitable result of deliberate decisions made by avaricious corporate executives, laissez faire politicians and obsequious regulators.

The catastrophe is often described as an accident. And I wouldn't characterize it as deliberate. But when a disaster of this magnitude is the result of incompetence, greed and negligence, the word 'accident' seems grossly inadequate.

Much like the financial collapse, the cataclysmic oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico is the very logical outcome of the corporate parties' ideology of de-regulation for its own sake.

Conservatives have spent the last 30+ years de-legitimizing all forms of government authority (except the military of course). They've spent decades preaching that businesses should be able to do whatever they want without the 'tyranny' of regulation, that the market would sort everything out neatly in every case.

It's perfectly legitimate to debate whether the state should be micromanaging x or y. Even much of the left believes that New York state government, for example, has far too many regulations that have no good reason for existing.

But conservatives have taken it much further than simply getting rid of the stupid regulations. They've pushed the un-nuanced idea that ALL forms of (non-'security') government authority are inherently illegitimate.

Just as it's wrong to say that regulation is inherently good, it's also dangerous to say that all regulation is inherently bad. I believe state authority should be exercised only when other options don't work or are not viable. But I don't exclude this option in all cases. Government regulation shouldn't be the first option, but it shouldn't be automatically excluded. Ideology should be a guide, not a straitjacket.

Disasters like the financial collapse and BP catastrophe are the inevitable result of the cult of less government for its own sake. If you want more of them, vote for Tea Party candidates.

I wonder why you don't hear Sarah Palin chanting "Drill baby drill" anymore.

Update: as an anonymous commenter pointed out, my last statement apparently gave the quitter too much credit. Why Republicans pay attention to empty celebrities like her is beyond me?

The hypocrisy of small government types

Supporters of GOP president candidate Rep. Ron Paul, most of whom are libertarians, amuse me. They seem to have an almost messianic belief in the man, in a way that reminds me almost of a cult. They vaunt his intellectual purity in a party whose watchword is intellectual deceit.

The libertarian wing of the GOP is virtually irrelevant. The party's fortunes are now split among the corporatist, militarist and theocratic wings, all of which promote big government.

You can't blame them for trying, I suppose. The progressive wing of the Democratic Party is largely dead, but a few noble souls are trying to keep the flame alive.

What's interesting is how many folks on the left I've heard praise Paul. He believes (supposedly, but we'll get to that latter) in the dismantling of big government, something you'd think progressives would find anathema. However, many on the left are taken by his foreign policy positions. He opposes militarism and imperialism as well as the wars against civil liberties and Iraq. He's in favor of a non-interventionist, non-meddlesome foreign policy, which makes virtually unique among prominent or even semi-prominent elected Republicans.

I'm no libertarian but you have to wonder if he's all he's cracked up to be.

An acquaintance of mind is part of the Ron Paul cult and he posted a press release from the good doctor (Paul is a practicing MD). The press release stated:


The U.S. House of Representatives reports that Congressman Ron Paul has once again run his Congressional office in a frugal manner, and he will likely return tens of thousands of dollars to the Treasury once again this year. Preliminary estimates forwarded to Paul’s office indicate he has about $75,000 left in his account... [the Congressman's chief of staff] said that the purchase of new equipment, staff changes and postal rate increases made it especially difficult to restrain spending this year. “Considering Congressman Paul’s efforts helped to land nearly $50,000,000 in appropriations for crucial projects in this part of Texas last year, we are most pleased that we were able to once again get the job done under budget.”


The last comment illustrates the Fundamental Hypocrisy of most of the people who pretend to want smaller government. Even someone who acts like the king of small government can't help but boast about the tens of millions of dollars in pork he's brought to his district.

And that's the point. I'm sure that in the eyes of Paul and those in his district, none of that " $50,000,000 in appropriations for crucial projects" constituted pork. All the wasteful spending was limited to the other 434 congressional districts.

And this is exactly why government continues to expand, even when the self-proclaimed small government types are in charge.

All of my projects are "crucial." It's the other guy's projects that are "pork." My bike path is a wonderful addition to the community. The other guy's bike path is a boondoggle.

So the "taxpayers' best friend," as Paul's supporters call him, saved us $75,000 in office expenses but cost us 667 times more in pork/"crucial projects."

Thanks for nothing.