Jumping before it's too late

We’ve seen riots and demonstrations by students in Britain and in France but why not here?

Could we have an example of an American frog being slowly cooked in a pot whose water is gradually getting hotter?

You know the story. If the frog is thrown into boiling water, it jumps out. That’s what’s happening in Europe where there’s been a sudden shock of severe government austerity measures.

But in this country, the socio-economic water temperature has been rising ever so slowly for years. The increases in tuition have risen steadily for 25 years but have relentlessly far outpaced inflation. Likewise health care costs.

Likewise the slow but steady growth in the gap between rich and poor. Likewise consumer debt. Likewise the stagnation in the middle class. Likewise the decline in our schools. Our federal deficit as been building and growing for more than a decade.

The other reason young American frogs aren’t jumping around in anger is that they enthusiastically elected a president perceived to be a cool, rational progressive. The Obama presidency is not seen as “hot” waters, unlike the two terms of Bush/Cheney.

If there was an American jolt, it happened nine years ago on 9/11. After that, everything else was part of a national, irrational response. Talk about jumping around!

Because America has no draft, young Americans, particularly college students, took little or no action. Sure there were marches and demonstrations but with time that energy was defused and re-directed into politics (“The Politics of Hope” "Change We can Believe in!") and away from the streets.

As unemployment grows, the jobless have reason to be grateful for war. The military is this nation’s employer of last resort. Seen in this way, war is a our “healthiest” economic sector. And the military-industrial-financial-media ruling class is thriving while young, formerly unemployed Americans are “working” — and dying — far, far away.

The Obama administration simply transferred war from one dysfunctional nation to another. Opposition to the war in Afghanistan has been softened by the president’s very public hand wringing and media-staged, patriotic speeches to the hapless troops.

If there’s been a visible, angry reaction in this country, it has been that of the Tea Party. Tea Party activists have been suffering from sudden stove-top heat (unemployment, foreclosures, mounting debt) of the last three years, but they jumped into the hands of a pseudo-movement cynically financed by the very forces causing the anguish.

In short, the Tea Party-goers were duped, as they are now finding out. Did the Tea Party faithful really want to extend the tax cuts for the rich? Did they really want to help out the Wall Street flimflam artists who made this mess, reaped billions from it and then plowed a share of their winnings into the Fall’s Congressional campaigns — and the Tea Party?

Did the Tea Party followers really want to end unemployment benefits? Did they really want to drive up federal deficits?

With less than two years to the presidential election, my guess is that the energy that might otherwise show up in the streets will be siphoned into various political campaigns. The corporate media are already shaping the “horse race.” The political windbags and pundits are already grooming candidates. Soon they will be slowly paraded from the paddocks to the starting gates.

You can be sure bets are being placed.

Expect left and right wing “extremist” candidates to tap into rising, but well-contained political energy. Also expect the primaries to result in “extremist” presidential candidates’ losing to “stay the course” middle-of-the-roaders, presented as cool, rational, “trust us” leaders.

Read: Obama, Bloomberg and Romney.

Congress, on the other hand, will continue to be a countervailing, unmanageable zoo of conflicting, implacable, hard-line interests. But that’s another story.

As for the frogs in the pot, us, the heat — literal heat, if you consider global warming — will slowly, ever so slowly, continue to rise. Will we jump before it's too late? And where, exactly, where we land?

The "Commander-in-Chief" chat

There must come a time in every presidency when the generals whisper to the president that they, not he, are in charge — whenever they choose to be.

Call it the “Commander-in-Chief” chat.

My guess is that seasoned presidential candidates probably get this hush-hush lecture long before they hit the campaign trail. Who knows, it could come with the assignment of the secret service detail.

And who knows what the consequences of bucking the generals (and the intelligence establishment) might be. Conspiracy theorists will tell you that JFK learned the hard way.

What we are getting now is the “soft” (or is it semi-soft?) way.

General David Petraeus, following in the footsteps of his predecessor, General Stanley McChrystal, has been publicly questioning President Obama’s withdrawal plans in Afghanistan. The general’s election-year timing is politically perfect to weaken the president.

Here’s a president who is reeling from domestic problems he didn’t create, and along comes Petraeus to question Obama’s military policy.

It’s a lose/lose situation for the president.

If Obama sticks with his stated July 2011 drawdown plan in Afghanistan, he can expect to suffer whatever the generals (and the spooks and the arms merchants) dole out.

If he goes along with them for the inevitable “quagmire” escalation and accompanying public protests, he can pull an LBJ and simply not run for a second term.

The problem with wars in fractured places like Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan is that once you get into them, you’re stuck — and end up making matters worse both here and there.

These are not words that generals, or presidents, like to hear.

Reframed news blames the messenger

The Obama Administration is reacting exactly the way the last Bush Administration would to WikiLeak's revelations, ("Afghan War Diaries, 2004-2010,").

What's happening in the current news cycle is "reframing" the news. The Administration's spinmeisters are shifting the media focus from message to messengers.

That's to be expected in a political, bureaucratic culture of deceit. Both administrations have been publicly embarrassed by the disasters they have created — Obama in Afghanistan and Bush in Iraq (and to a lesser extent Afghanistan).

The indignation of the White House and the Pentagon ("How dare the media tell the truth?") only underscores our problem. When our leaders wrap themselves in the flag of "national security," they only make us less secure.

Generals, politicians, pundits, think-tank defense "analysts" and administration "security officials" who describe the disclosures as a threat to the nation and the troops have it exactly upside down. These disclosures clearly show that the White House and the Pentagon are the real threats to our security.

Our government, to whom the military is supposed to answer (one wonders. . .), needs to be reminded that it is acting in our name. That's "we" as in "We, the people."

And "We, the people," are paying a heavy price for tragic, futile attempts at nation building far away.

In these troublesome times, the nation we should be building is our own.

So we should be grateful for the WikiLeaks disclosures. Particularly grateful should be the soldiers who suffer and die because of our failed policies.

Thank you to WikiLeaks and the media that amplified these revelations.

And shame on those who vilify the messengers of truth.

A just society as executive compensation

Tuesday, New York Times columnist David Brooks attacked the Obama administration for placing limits on executive compensation.

He called the effort a “fatal conceit” that is doomed to failure.

Brooks, and most who address this madness, overlook a key fact.

If lining their own pockets drives executives to their decisions, it stands to reason that the corporate decisions will be based on how much the executives can game the system to reward themselves.

The result: decisions that feed executive greed and to hell with the rest of us. We’ve seen plenty of those kinds of decisions recently. Hence the response of the Obama administration.

If there’s a problem with the government’s approach, it’s that it ignores the bankrupt values that drive the system.

We need leadership that makes decisions not for personal gain but for societal good.

By “good” I mean paying a living wage, offering meaningful work, providing universal health care, protecting the environment, providing affordable housing, maintaining justice and security, and educating children and adults alike.

Those are the rewards of leadership. Not vacation chalets in Aspen, yachts in Barbados, mansions in Scarsdale, private jets at the ready, country clubs, penthouses and jewels.

And certainly not compensation that is 500 times that of the average worker.

No, the rewards for the powerful should be nothing more than this: a modest, adequate salary with basic benefits and the knowledge that one’s leadership has helped create of a better, more just, sustainable society.

Ultimately, it comes down to a question of values. Talk about fatal conceit. What do our corporate leaders believe in? Themselves and their personal wealth or humanity and the future of the planet?

The government must come up with a way to ensure that the latter, not the former, values prevail.

The whys of shout-outing and outshouting

What’s with the unruly shout-outing at meetings with members of Congress? Why the uncivil mobs?

The cause is a convergence of confusion, fear, ignorance, surrogate politics, communication fragmentation and cynical, strategic disinformation.

No one, not even the members of Congress, can get their minds around this issue with all its moving parts. The result: Confusion, which well-financed interests groups are only too happy to nurture into fear.

Some of those interests are the same people who brought us Swiftboating, the partisan mob disruption of the 2000 Florida vote recount and now the “birther” distraction.

The nation's vulnerability to such forces wouldn’t be possible it the health reform issue hadn’t become a dense fog of legislation. Suggestible protesters see their worst fears in the miasma Advocates of change, who have joined the shouting, cling to their highest hopes with no idea of consequences.

No one, from the president down, has a clue where all of this is headed. That is scary — as are the mindless shoutfests with their references to violence.

Ten years ago, we might have had a media investigation of the forces at work. Someone might have followed the money trail — and there is a money trail. Someone might have dispassionately dissected the complex health-care issue. (I'm open to suggested links....)

Now, we are now paying a terrible civic and societal price for a shattered media. The result is that few read or listen to opposing views. Minds close and the mouths open. The models for discourse are celebrity blabbers — the Rush Limbaughs, Bill O’Reillys and Keith Olbermanns of media land.

My guess is that growing unemployment may also be at work. Some of the shouting rabble are no doubt paid provocateurs, I don’t like to cite race as a cause for opposition to the president, but in parts of the land, some may be fueled by latent racism.

In any case, right-wing Republicans are already treating the healthcare issue as a test vote on the entire Obama agenda. If you voted against Obama, it’s time to storm the White House. “Socialistic Obama-Care” is the rallying cry. (Quick now, define “Obama-Care” Pause....)

I don’t know what the cure is for our sick, expensive, inequitable, burdensome healthcare system. But I do know that I’m not going to find the answer at the politically charged forums being held this August, the cruelest of months in this trouble-plagued time.

Winning full support for the next stimulus package

I’m not a big fan of majority rule when it comes to crafting legislation. By definition, it produces winners and losers and is bitterly divisive. You might even say it works against effective governance.

In the case of the recently passed stimulus package, the losers were the Republicans, who now will sit back and hurl darts at what happens. In short, with their eyes firmly fixed on the November 2010 elections, they will work to ensure a disaster we can’t afford.

The system should give them better things to do.

This may be what President Obama had in mind as he struggled to win bi-partisan, or even better, non-partisan support for the stimulus package.

He just didn’t craft the legislation in the right way.

So here’s a modest suggestion for the next time the president takes a run at Congress for stimulus money. And, believe me, he will.

For purposes of discussion we’ll use the familiar number from the current stimulus package.

Here is a politically, ideologically and geographically equitable formula for distributing the $787 billion. Divvy the billions up by congressional district, using population and need as determinants of exact amounts.

The House of Representatives has 435 members whose districts are determined by population, hence the House is the “people’s” branch of the legislature.

We’ll get to senators in a second.

For simplicity’s sake, and leaving out the question of the districts' varying needs (unemployment, lack of health insurance, foreclosures etc), let's just divide the $787 billion pie into 435 pieces.

That works out to $1.81 billion for each congressional district.

There you are, Representative, do with the district's $1.81 billion what you will.

If Republicans want it all applied to tax cuts in their districts, as most say they do, I say, go for it.

If Democrats want to apply it to schools, health insurance, bridges, pot holes and housing, have at it.

In some cases, neighboring congressional districts with interdependent economies might cooperatively pool their money. Count on governors and mayors to have a few suggestions too.

Oregon has five congressional districts so the state would get $9.05 billion — without dealing with any adjustments for “need.” (With those factored in, we might get $10 billion, but let’s not go there.)

The over-arching theory: Who knows (or should know) the needs of local people better than an elected House member does?

Senators present a problem because they aren’t elected by proportion of the population, yet they have to approve any stimulus package. One way to deal with them would be to reserve a senatorial pot of money for them to use in their state as they see fit. How about a half billion per senator? I know, I know, it's not fair that Montana and California (each with two senators) get the same amount, but we have to do the best with what we have.

That’s $50 billion for the entire 100-member senate. Of course the number is, as always, up for negotiation. Senators being senators, they will probably push for at least half of the entire package. That’s a grossly inequitable idea on its face but let’s leave that to the politicians.

Once you get into dividing the whole amount among all federally elected officials, you will probably have to set aside a few billion for the elected president and his administration to put into federal programs.

Finally we get to the most important part.

The program would track the success (or failure) of each representative’s use of the money.

Pre-stimulus baseline statistics measuring the economy, health care, education, jobs, economic growth, environmental factors etc. would be established. Then, three months before the next election, in August 2010, figures would be released to show what changed (or didn’t change) as a result of how the money was used.

Because of the pre-election timing, the results would be politically, as well as economically, telling. Using the before-and-after comparisons, voters would decide whose approach is best and who is worthy of re-election.

Beyond that, we might find out what actually works — and adjust accordingly.