That hysterical screeching you may have heard this morning was probably the once and future presidential candidate, Mitt "The Wit" Romney, son of former Nixon cronie George Romney, a widely vilified figure of early 70's facism and erstwhile governor of Michigan, back when it wasn't a failed state. Mitt took a run at the presidency last time around, only to be hoisted on the red-hot petard of his own version of government health care devised while he served as governor of Massachusetts. Well, that and the fact that the mean-boy far right was deeply suspicious of him, thinking he was a softy at heart and probably sympathetic to all sorts of distasteful things like immigrants. So Mitt took off the kid gloves this morning and loudly proclaimed Obama a failure for his inability to improve an economy struggling to get to its feet like a second class boxer gone down for the last time in round nine. Well Mitt, I'm here to tell you that "failure" might be a little strong and, in case you're interested, to explain why. Sarah, Michelle, some of you other blithering idiots; pay attention cuz this will take a few minutes.
Since the republican party as a whole is, as usual, slavishly lapdancing for whatever fiendish corporate rainmaker is throwing the most dollar bills, they probably know full well that the US economy is in deep shit and unlikely to recover fully for a long, long time, if ever. But they have a vested interest in making it be Obama's fault, as if he has been sole responsible for the situation in which we find ourselves. Shame on you guys and gals; political yearning and expediency doesn't forgive all such sins, you know. But in the hope of stirring some reasonable political discourse, I will put forth this brief but stunningly accurate summation.
After WWII we were the last country standing, in an industrial sense, and therefore had the run of the place. We could make all manner of stuff and, because everybody in the US was working, someone would buy it. It didn't matter that much if it made sense - witness gigantic tail fins on autos and the emergence of electric can openers - it would sell. And with no foreign competition quality didn't matter any more than a sense of good design. The party hats were on and everybody had a cigarette.
Over the intervening 60 years a lot has changed. As other nations recreated their industrial capacity the captains of industry, knowing how to make a buck and exploit people at the same time, moved more and more of their operations to foreign producers. Or foreign producers sprang up on their own, chasing greenbacks for all they were worth. One way or another, much of the US industrial capacity went into decline. Americans by this time were used to the idea that they were the chosen ones and entitled by God to have the good life - two cars, mom at home with the kids and dog, color TV's and a stiff martini at the end of the day. But a problem started to appear when fewer and fewer manufacturing jobs were available because now there wasn't enough money for every middle class family to have all that stuff and buy a new car every two years, etc. So we also started to build things like highways and bridges and airports, all while promoting the American Dream of homeownership. Now the middle class jobs would be carpenters and plumbers and all manner of construction workers. That worked for a while.
But the income of the middle class worker has been stagnant in real terms since the 70's. Living the dream American life was slowly more and more enabled by the sale of cheap goods from overseas - from those manufacturing facilities we had decided weren't worth keeping any more, or weren't sensible from a cash flow persepctive. Go to Wal-Mart and virtually everything you buy is from China. Workers there make $2.00 a day churning out plastic containers and cheap textiles, pots and pans - and the American middle class can continue to have the illusion of the American Dream because they can go shoping and buy stuff. Wall Street has been on an unrelenting upward trajectory since the 60's. The corporate clowns are getting rich and have somehow sold the notion that they shouldn't have to pay taxes and the Tea Party knuckleheads are their storm troops, agitating for less government even as many of them become more dependent on it. This part of the story I really can't explain. It almost seems to me that the racism that lies barely hidden under the big old flag the tea party people are waving has trumped their own best interests and that is truly hard to understand. Kinda like using a .45 to get the fly off your nose...
The housing bubble was unsustainable and once it burst it revealed that the dream American life was a hollow shell built on a whole series of illusions. For ten years Americans had been living off their homes as faux equity and loose credit provided splurge money akin to the bowl of coke at the party at the rich guy's house. Hey, it's free right? Why shouldn't I have some? We've got rich and poor but the middle class is shrinking to the point of disappearing and yet they seem to support the Paul Ryans of the world who want to cut their benefits while cutting taxes for the wealthiest 1% of taxpayers and increasing the defense budget. WTF?
Back to today - or better yet, 2009 - when Obama actually started trying to govern when the shit was still flying off the fan blades and we were on the verge of a mass curl into the fetal position, and fear and dread were thick in the collective vibe everywhere. Two thirds of the economy is consumer spending but the consumer wasn't buying "stuff" anymore; they didn't have the money, their house wasn't worth shit anymore and their 401k was about to be decimated. If the consumer doesn't spend we're dead meat and we've all been too freaked out to do much of anything but hunker down and cross our fingers. That's what Obama faces now in trying to "fix" the economy - people with no savings, no equity, no buying power and no job. And the elephants say they could do better if only we'd agree to some more tax cuts for corporations.
The elephants all say that lower taxes are the solution and while we're at it, let's cut off services for the poor and run all the illegals off and maybe some of the legal immigrants too - hell, they're foreigners. And cut waste from the schools and salaries for the damn teachers who can't seem to teach our kids anything anyway. But don't touch the defense department because - well, we're busy as hell fighting for our freedom in the freakin' desert in godforsaken Afghanistan and plus we also need new aircraft carriers and a new 21st century fighter plane because the bad guys hanging around in the caves get really scared when those suckers fly over going really fast.
On one hand I almost want to see some donkey of a republican win in 2012 because for sure we could say I told you so, you stupid bastard. But that's too much like what they want to happen, for people to just say, fuck it, and stop paying attention to them, let them have their way. I think I'd rather see if by some miracle we can turn the corner enough to get our feet under us and find a way to proceed to the end of the century without turning into France under Louis the XVI. But no matter what, we need to understand that this ain't going to be like it was for the last 30 years; we've been fooling ourselves into thinking that we're the only country great enough to have Levis jeans, Sony Playstations and indoor toilets. That ship has sailed...
Since the republican party as a whole is, as usual, slavishly lapdancing for whatever fiendish corporate rainmaker is throwing the most dollar bills, they probably know full well that the US economy is in deep shit and unlikely to recover fully for a long, long time, if ever. But they have a vested interest in making it be Obama's fault, as if he has been sole responsible for the situation in which we find ourselves. Shame on you guys and gals; political yearning and expediency doesn't forgive all such sins, you know. But in the hope of stirring some reasonable political discourse, I will put forth this brief but stunningly accurate summation.
After WWII we were the last country standing, in an industrial sense, and therefore had the run of the place. We could make all manner of stuff and, because everybody in the US was working, someone would buy it. It didn't matter that much if it made sense - witness gigantic tail fins on autos and the emergence of electric can openers - it would sell. And with no foreign competition quality didn't matter any more than a sense of good design. The party hats were on and everybody had a cigarette.
Over the intervening 60 years a lot has changed. As other nations recreated their industrial capacity the captains of industry, knowing how to make a buck and exploit people at the same time, moved more and more of their operations to foreign producers. Or foreign producers sprang up on their own, chasing greenbacks for all they were worth. One way or another, much of the US industrial capacity went into decline. Americans by this time were used to the idea that they were the chosen ones and entitled by God to have the good life - two cars, mom at home with the kids and dog, color TV's and a stiff martini at the end of the day. But a problem started to appear when fewer and fewer manufacturing jobs were available because now there wasn't enough money for every middle class family to have all that stuff and buy a new car every two years, etc. So we also started to build things like highways and bridges and airports, all while promoting the American Dream of homeownership. Now the middle class jobs would be carpenters and plumbers and all manner of construction workers. That worked for a while.
But the income of the middle class worker has been stagnant in real terms since the 70's. Living the dream American life was slowly more and more enabled by the sale of cheap goods from overseas - from those manufacturing facilities we had decided weren't worth keeping any more, or weren't sensible from a cash flow persepctive. Go to Wal-Mart and virtually everything you buy is from China. Workers there make $2.00 a day churning out plastic containers and cheap textiles, pots and pans - and the American middle class can continue to have the illusion of the American Dream because they can go shoping and buy stuff. Wall Street has been on an unrelenting upward trajectory since the 60's. The corporate clowns are getting rich and have somehow sold the notion that they shouldn't have to pay taxes and the Tea Party knuckleheads are their storm troops, agitating for less government even as many of them become more dependent on it. This part of the story I really can't explain. It almost seems to me that the racism that lies barely hidden under the big old flag the tea party people are waving has trumped their own best interests and that is truly hard to understand. Kinda like using a .45 to get the fly off your nose...
The housing bubble was unsustainable and once it burst it revealed that the dream American life was a hollow shell built on a whole series of illusions. For ten years Americans had been living off their homes as faux equity and loose credit provided splurge money akin to the bowl of coke at the party at the rich guy's house. Hey, it's free right? Why shouldn't I have some? We've got rich and poor but the middle class is shrinking to the point of disappearing and yet they seem to support the Paul Ryans of the world who want to cut their benefits while cutting taxes for the wealthiest 1% of taxpayers and increasing the defense budget. WTF?
Back to today - or better yet, 2009 - when Obama actually started trying to govern when the shit was still flying off the fan blades and we were on the verge of a mass curl into the fetal position, and fear and dread were thick in the collective vibe everywhere. Two thirds of the economy is consumer spending but the consumer wasn't buying "stuff" anymore; they didn't have the money, their house wasn't worth shit anymore and their 401k was about to be decimated. If the consumer doesn't spend we're dead meat and we've all been too freaked out to do much of anything but hunker down and cross our fingers. That's what Obama faces now in trying to "fix" the economy - people with no savings, no equity, no buying power and no job. And the elephants say they could do better if only we'd agree to some more tax cuts for corporations.
The elephants all say that lower taxes are the solution and while we're at it, let's cut off services for the poor and run all the illegals off and maybe some of the legal immigrants too - hell, they're foreigners. And cut waste from the schools and salaries for the damn teachers who can't seem to teach our kids anything anyway. But don't touch the defense department because - well, we're busy as hell fighting for our freedom in the freakin' desert in godforsaken Afghanistan and plus we also need new aircraft carriers and a new 21st century fighter plane because the bad guys hanging around in the caves get really scared when those suckers fly over going really fast.
On one hand I almost want to see some donkey of a republican win in 2012 because for sure we could say I told you so, you stupid bastard. But that's too much like what they want to happen, for people to just say, fuck it, and stop paying attention to them, let them have their way. I think I'd rather see if by some miracle we can turn the corner enough to get our feet under us and find a way to proceed to the end of the century without turning into France under Louis the XVI. But no matter what, we need to understand that this ain't going to be like it was for the last 30 years; we've been fooling ourselves into thinking that we're the only country great enough to have Levis jeans, Sony Playstations and indoor toilets. That ship has sailed...
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