The Two-Party/Class System: Jefferson Unintentionally Got it Right

When the US was in its seminal political stage, it had to deal with the idea of the two party system. George Washington famously warned against partisan politics forming after he left office. Yet, Washington was basically a Federalist on the side of Hamilton and Adams who believed in a strong central government to help the nation grow through the promotion of the banking and merchant class. Thomas Jefferson was the leader in opposition and thereby became the champion of the Democrat-Republican party. Many founding fathers, especially on the Federalist side worried about the idea of political parties because it would divide and stagnate the country. Jefferson and the Anti-Federalists were initially opposed to political factions as well, but they saw no other way to gain political power than to organize as a cohesive party and attack the staunch federalists. In a letter to Henry Lee in 1824 Jefferson wrote:

"Men by their constitutions are naturally divided into two parties: 1. Those who fear and distrust the people, and wish to draw all powers from them into the hands of the higher classes. 2. Those who identify themselves with the people, have confidence in them, cherish and consider them as the most honest and safe, although not the most wise depositary of the public interests. In every country these two parties exist, and in every one where they are free to think, speak, and write, they will declare themselves. Call them, therefore, liberals and serviles, Jacobins and Ultras, whigs and tories, republicans and federalists, aristocrats and democrats, or by whatever name you please, they are the same parties still and pursue the same object. The last appellation of aristocrats and democrats is the true one expressing the essence of all."

Although Jefferson may have struggled with his own aristocratic desire for power and moral inconsistencies, what he wrote to Henry Lee is inspiring to those who wish to oppose the consolidation of power by the few. In modern American politics nearly all tend to agree that authority in the hands of the few is the antithesis to democracy and liberty, but the questions that arise next is where the schism occurs. To be clear, I do not mean the schism between modern American politicians, which is mostly just a distraction. Nearly every member of our federal and state governments are in one political party, the business and corporate party. The menial arguments over the "role of government" taken up by these people is merely a facade to gather more political power and wealth for their own benefit. The issues they debate are of little consequence to those who fund their campaigns and actually write legislation. These are mostly social issues and the "culture war" that has the mainstream media in a frenzy.

There is a real divide among the people without power. In modern American politics, the working class American appears to be in two ideological camps, one that thinks government has too much control and should allow free enterprise to guide the economy, and the other camp blames corporate power which funds our elected officials causing them to represent corporate interests above the people's interests. These camps are referred to as right and left respectively in American political semantics. I think most people on the right will concede that corporations have too much power over politicians, but the divide comes when the ideology of the right says that government should absolutely leave businesses alone. They should not support business nor limit business. Sounds like a reasonable argument up front. The issue I take is that the nature of capitalism in a democratic society in an ostensible fashion inevitably leads to monopoly, consolidation of power, and money thrown into the political system in such an obscene way that it becomes virtual Fascism. That is where we are now. Our system was designed with checks and balances that mean absolutely nothing when a small amount of very wealthy people lobby and throw money at every check and balance. Corporations send lobbyists to write the laws for legislatures, they contribute money to elect judges to benefit corporate interests, and they offer regulators jobs with huge salaries at their companies after they deregulate for them. (see Meredith Attwell Baker joining the Comcast lobbying team after she led the approval of the Comcast/NBC merger as FCC commissioner. http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/05/11/f-c-c-commissioner-to-join-comcast/)

Once deconstructed, the divide in American political thought among the masses is only symptomatic. The true divide is between the people who on large think they live in a democracy with mild corruption, and the people who actually have a voice who are the corporate leaders of GE, Exxon-Mobile, Haliburton, Bank of America, Walmart, Lockheed and Martin, etc. The working class may get scraps from the table on issues that no corporation has an interest in, but on policies that would favor the American public that come into conflict with corporate interests you can be certain that the policies will either be counter to the public's interests and desires, or an extremely diluted version of what the public wants (i.e last year's federal healthcare reform). Thomas Jefferson was absolutely right. To use his words to reiterate my point there are really two parties that matter in America right now, "1. Those who fear and distrust the people, and wish to draw all powers from them into the hands of the higher classes. 2. Those who identify themselves with the people, have confidence in them, cherish and consider them as the most honest and safe, although not the most wise depositary of the public interests." Most politicians today, Democrat and Republican, are in the former party. Whereas the public is overwhelmingly in the latter, but with very little power/wealth. Whether Jefferson knew it or not, he was talking about a bourgeois and a proletariat party. anti-federalist southerners at the time were surprisingly egalitarian in their economic theories (equality for white men at least). The capitalist ventures of merchants and bankers were despised as perverting liberty by consolidating political power by means of economic dominance.

It doesn't matter if it is a government holding all political and economic power like that of the anxious Middle Eastern dictators, or if a select few corporations control all power, the results are devastating for the people.

Investing in Education in Corporate Owned America

Last night the President spoke of investing in America's future. As an American I don't care. As a global citizen I am terrified. For politicians, investing in our future means that they are investing in the growth and consolidation of the giant corporations that have our elected leaders in their pockets. This means more foreign conflict, aggressive economic sanctions against third world people that do not comply with American privatization, and more unregulated destruction to the environment. That last one is caused by the industry that profited the most last year, big oil. I will address that in a moment, but first one thing Mr. Obama said really stood out to everyone was his sputnik reference. He stated:

"Half a century ago, the Soviets beat us into space with the launch of a satellite called Sputnik. We had no idea how we'd beat them to the moon. The science wasn't there yet. NASA didn't exist. But after investing in better research and education, we didn't just surpass the Soviets; we unleashed a wave of innovation that created new industries and millions of new jobs. This is our generation's Sputnik moment."

This is quite true. The Cold War brought tons of money to the universities in order to beat Soviet technology and create more advanced weapons. Our university’s and likewise our economy flourished. Investing in higher education and government projects like NASA certainly played a large role. My issue with the President's reference here is that this will not happen again. Not only because it is impossible to get any significant change through our inept political process, but also because using artless patterns in history for making important policies today is frustratingly short sighted. Indeed the Cold War competition motivated the government to invest in these programs, which in turn created jobs and a new class of intelligent Americans, but this is not 1957. This is 2011, and corporate America has its grip on every decision of the government especially in education and scientific innovation.

The most promising new industry that we should invest in is green energy. I cringe when I say “new” because green energy has been trying to make a revolution in America since the 1970s. To give you an idea of how much progress we have made take a look at this clip:

http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/wed-june-16-2010/an-energy-independent-future

(Note: I know it's a comedy show and all that, but honestly who doesn't agree that the Daily Show is a better source of news than anything else on cable?)

The most striking point is at the end of the clip. Richard Nixon set a goal of getting America off foreign oil by 1980, and since then each administration has set more timid goals when it comes to energy. Why? Because the oil companies make more money than any other industry in the world (http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/global500/2010/).

We can't invest in America in the same way we invested in the 1950s and 1960s when more and more money is thrown at our politicians by greedy companies seeking less rules and more profits by any means necessary. Those means include starving third world countries, assassinating foreign leaders that get in the way (see CIA assassinations in Latin America and overthrow of the Shah of Iran). They also include destroying the air, forests, and oceans.

The investment in education starting in 1957 was a major success at creating the critical thinkers and mass student movements of the 1960s and 70s. Since then, as colleges privatized and demanded more and more money from students and focused their resources in financial and business arenas, straying from social sciences, we have become an apathetic and politically unaware nation. My generation fails to question any of this treachery by corporate America, and our universities backed by our corporately owned government have played a major role. This is outlined wonderfully in an article by Terence Ball entitled The Politics of Social Science. He states:

“Survey researchers discovered that most Americans are politically ill informed, inactive, and apathetic. By “traditional” democratic lights, this was cause for considerable alarm. Yet, according to the newly emergent “elite theory” of democracy, it is widespread political participation that poses the greatest danger to democracy. Fortunately, an antidote is readily available. That antidote is apathy. Widespread apathy allows well educated and affluent “democratic elites” to have a disproportionate say in the shaping of political possibilities.”

In other words, a government controlled by corporate money (which many define as fascism) is not interested in critical thinkers capable of changing the world. It wants universities to produce obedient workers in the financial and service sectors, not innovators that will challenge the energy giants. They don't want critical thinkers that criticize the way our economic system works. The corporate owners that control the politicians (less than 1% of the population) are the ones that benefit enormously from that system, while the rest of us are given less education, lower paying jobs, pathetic benefits, and longer hours of work. Meanwhile, we are told by the mainstream media that we should feel bad for complaining, and that if we are not rich then we have no one to blame but ourselves. The president's sputnik reference was a nice poetic display, something Mr. Obama is great at, but it is nothing more than theater. It is the false idea that our government has our interests in mind and that it is not motivated by the pistols to their heads held by big oil, the banks, insurance companies, and all the rest.

The Business Puppet President We Can Believe In

Every time President Obama makes a new appointment to his staff, particularly the economic staff, the left is outraged and puzzled at this clear breach of his campaign promise to change how Washington works and to punish those responsible for the financial disaster. The newest array of such appointments are as follows: William Daley from JP Morgan Chase as White House Chief of Staff. Gene Sperling from the Goldman Sachs payroll to be director of the National Economic Council. Eileen Rominger from Goldman Sachs named director of the SEC's Investment Management division. General Electric Chairman and CEO Jeffrey Immelt is going to be chair of the president's Council on Jobs and Competitiveness. Immelt’s appointment has come under scrutiny just as many of the others. He’ll retain his position at the helm of GE, creating a potential conflict of interest. As one of the nation’s largest corporations, GE has a variety of business and issues before the federal government, including media mergers, military sales, environmental cleanup, and a $16.1 billion bailout in 2008. While Immelt is being introduced to us by Obama as someone who can create jobs, the United Electrical Workers Union says GE has closed 29 plants in the United States in the past two years, laying off around 3,000 workers.

This is not surprising to me at all. His business friendly appointees were never surprising to me. It seems to me that the people that voted for Obama fall into these categories: Group A thought he would create a magical world of love, peace and flowers. Group B voted for him because he was a democrat and they compulsively vote for that party no matter what. Group C did not want someone as dumb and out of her mind batshit crazy one heartattack away from the Presidency. And group D, which is the group I fall under was the group that thought maybe this guy will actually enact some of the change he promises. Group D really got the bare minimum of what we expected. An eventual and painful repeal of DADT, the most watered down, nearly insulting piece of health care reform, watered down financial reform, a timid stimulus that was almost half tax cuts and didn't help to create sustained growth, and the list of mediocre achievements goes on.

The Obama supporters say give him a break he's done a lot with the Republicans saying no to everything. I agree, the right made it hard for him to accomplish anything meaningful. But this is not an excuse for his staff appointments. His business oriented staff is a slap in the face to all that voted for him, and there is no excuse. There is only explanation: Both parties are made up of businessmen and lawyers, or puppets of such men. No one represents the working class, that is the overwhelming majority of the people. Whether you are a republican or a democrat, if you belive in public services or not, you are NOT being represented by anyone that has your interests in mind. Democrats ally with businesses to make regulation rig the game for whichever lobbyists spend more money. Republicans do the same, but then try to lower taxes for the wealthy too. It is a giant club of businessmen that 99% of the people are not in. We have corporate owners, and for us to be shocked by Obama's appointees is unbelievable. We shouldn't be shocked or surprised, we should be outraged that this is still going on. Outraged that we are still accepting these chains, even willfully putting them on and locking them, while our corporate icons drag us from one side of the town to the other, stealing back any of the scraps they gave us that we desperately clasp. I believe that the disparity of wealth in our world is a perfect example of this. I welcome argument and calls for hyperbole.

What is wrong with the world?

What is wrong with the world? I feel that in the deepest areas of my heart I know the answer to that question. From my empirical view of the world and careful consideration of multiple ideologies compounded with economic, social, and cultural facts, I can begin to at least write a scattered response to the question of what has been so baleful to this world. Our political economic discourse revolves around two ideological camps: those who want the “free market” to have control of the economy, and those who want a sizable amount of government intervention and regulation. This is at least the discourse of the western world, most notably contentious in the USA.

It is estimated that by 2015 the USA will be in $18 trillion of debt. When looking at the view of conservatives and government overspending, that estimate can easily be manipulated for their cause. But if we examine the root of that deficit, it stems from our days of living beyond our means that began in the early 1970s, when the “free market” was in full swing. Compared to our tea-baggers of today Richard Nixon would have been considered a Commi, but his economic policies were rather centered on small government and free market capitalism, straying away from the Keynesian approach begun by FDR. It was thought, and still is, that our excessive debt would be corrected in the world economy through the free market. What happened? We just sunk in to more and more debt. The free market made it much more profitable for American corporations to use cheap labor in other countries to make their products. The result: Americans don’t make anything anymore… that is, except debt. Consumer culture under free market ideologies made it not only tempting to live beyond your means, but practically impossible to live otherwise. As corporate profits rose, the wages for an American worker stagnated. Corporations found a way to save on labor, meanwhile financial institutions found ways to milk as much as possible out of the American that needed to borrow money in order to live up to the culture of consumption.

Can we blame the consumers? Many will say yes. Corporations certainly try to push some of the blame away from themselves and on to the consumer. But when the American Dream is pounded in to your head, and you work hard but do not reap from the benefits of your labor because of that wage stagnation (even though the overall economy is growing) the only sensible thing to do for a person who strives to meet that middle class American dream is to borrow and live that life with the belief that your hard work will pay off. The hard work seldom paid off, and now those Americans who created what they thought would be only a temporary artificial version of the middle class dream, never brought the dream in to reality. Instead, their picket fence dreams turned in to a homeless nightmare.

Will this teach people to live frugally? It seems to have taught some, but the majority of people are still obsessed with accruing material wealth. That is a cultural facet that has been rooted in us since the end of World War II and the rise of the Disneyland dreamworld. It has carried in to 2010 as Americans watch and invest their time thinking about rich housewives on TV bicker about petty nonsense. Our obsession with rich celebrities, including these useless people on sickening reality TV, grossly overpaid athletes, and greedy CEO’s who have no regard for human welfare and the environment, may just overshadow the lessons we should learn from the economic crisis, and the problem of living beyond your means.

So, what is wrong with the world? Well I answer this rather superficially and of course with an Americentric attitude, but I believe that the American culture, economy, and political system is so pervasive in the world that it is difficult not to focus on the west when answering such a vague and interpretive question. When it comes down to it, the problem facing the world is that the vast majority of the people are uneducated, and those that are partially educated through western school systems are not taught to think critically about the world. They are not taught that every component of their life has been molded by political and economic policies of the past and how they interact with popular culture. It is no wonder that most Americans would rather watch what I consider pornography (a word that is defined as obscene writings, drawings, photographs, or the like, esp. those having little or no artistic merit), than watch or read anything that has to do with complex ideological debate.

We can go even further and say that this lack of education is caused by the out of wack system of profits and unregulated global capitalism protected with guns and nuclear weapons. However, there are people, many people, who can see the world critically and attempt to develop solutions to our problems. Complaining about the fundamental issue of the entire social system is useless. It’s too big to change immediately. In fact, I’m not even sure a ubiquitous social system even exists. But there are many macro and micro systems that are in dire need of reform. It is up to those that have been blessed with the education in not only knowledge but in critical thinking as well to teach the broader public. The internet has been a great tool for this, but it is often countered with backwards, ignorant, and racist ideology as well. I may have defined what I think is wrong with the world, but I can merely come up with possible answers. But I don’t think the answer is going off the grid as some of my friends have insisted. That will not solve anything. Part of the answer is to confront these demons that have ruled this world for far too long. These demons are fear, ignorance, apathy, and greed. We can fight those demons with unsullied education, exposure through non-profit journalism, and care for all forms of life. It is not one person or group of people we need to confront, it is a culture that rewards greed, stupidity, and glorifies apathy, and edaciousness. I believe it can be done, and I will work for my entire life to find others who feel the same way, and to teach others that accepting the world as it is, is the greatest demon we face as a species.

Howard Zinn: Historical balance

It has been about a week since I heard the news that Howard Zinn passed away of a heart attack at 87. Although Zinn had a long and fulfilling life it was a bit shocking to me as I found him to be someone who would live forever. For the next two hours I searched the web for any material, articles, news stories, anything relating to the late historian. I found some heart-felt reflections by many people, historians and other s who felt the world’s moral spirit got lighter as Zinn left our world. Unfortunately, and not surprisingly his name was not mentioned on any mainstream media outlet. Some op-ed pieces in a few major newspapers, but that was about it. Along with the praise for ZInn, came a flood of people taking the opportunity to bash the historian for his biases and his “abuse” of a scholarly field. I found this to be especially disturbing. Not only because the man had just died, but because they were full of such contempt for a man who has changed an entire generation’s view of American history.

Anyone who knows me well enough knows that Zinn is the reason I want to teach history. I am not unique in this story. I have met many people at school and elsewhere that have had their entire minds changed by Zinn’s famous book, “A People’s History of the United States.” I’ve also met many people, including myself who have been led to become activists based on Zinn’s work and inspiration. For those who don’t know much about Zinn, his message was clear: Throughout US history there was a whole ton of racism, class warfare, sexism, and other forms of oppression. People often fought these obstacles and sometimes they won. Without radicals in our history we would not have had abolition when we did, women would not have had the right to vote, black people would still be segregated, we would have stayed in Vietnam much longer ect ect. To me, that is the most important thing to take from Zinn.

Yet, as the week went on I found just as many Zinn bashings as I did Zinn accolades. The most alarming of the bunch was an article called “America the Awful,” by a historian named Ron Radosh. His premise was that Zinn was not a historian at all, he was a “propagandist.” He says this due to the fact that Zinn claims to serve a higher purpose with his writing. Rather than presenting some analysis of the past that only scholars are going to read, Zinn uses the past to urge people to solve the problems of the present. He does not do this in a way that distorts history, nor lacks evidence, or anything else that he is accused of by the intellectual right. Zinn presents this like any historian would. Those who disparage Zinn act like the left historians are the only ones to use their craft for some political purpose. I also find it obnoxious that there is this idea that because someone lets their bias be known in historical writing that they are writing "bad" history. That's nonsense. Every piece of writing has a bias and I commend Zinn for having been up front about it.

He never once said this is the be all end all of American history. The title of the book is "A People's History of the United States" not "A Complete History of the United States from Everyone's Perspective" It's also a fleeting history, and intended for non scholars, so he inevitably is going to have to leave stuff out and make it accessible to the public. Any mainstream history does the same thing. It does not make him a "propagandist.” Zinn used history for something much greater and more meaningful than most "scholars” and that is the most courageous thing I find anyone in academia has done.

Every historian interprets history differently, something you learn in your intro classes. Zinn's work shows the voices of the past that are usually left out of our historical memory. Radosh says he presents the people as weak and always succumbing to the will of those in power. To me that says he has not read anything written by Zinn, and it suggests that his view of Zinn is solely based on Zinn’s reputation.

Our textbooks and most other mainstream history present our leaders and powerful businessmen as heroes and idols. Zinn brings them back to earth and shows that, like those in power today, they were often not willing to give up their power and wealth for the sake of the people. Howard Zinn brought balance to mainstream American history. His work indeed needs to be complemented with other works. It should not be taken as the definite history, but there is no history that should be taken as a complete history. Unfortunately, not everyone is a scholar, and they indeed do take certain books as the only historical reality, but there is no reason to bash Howard Zinn for this reality.

Howard Zinn will always be in my heart, not just as an aspiring historian, but as an activist and an intellectual who had the courage to practice what he wrote about. His legacy is comprehensive, his spirit will be with an entire generation of activists and writers. Howard Zinn’s death not only shocked me as I thought he could live forever, but it also put two contrasting emotions in my heart: fear that there wouldn’t be anyone to take the torch, but also hope. His death has given me hope that people will start talking about him again and will pick up his book and read his message. It gives me hope that they will see the wretched position of our ancestors and see that they often responded by breaking unjust laws, and fighting back in the masses. We need that today as much as we needed it in any other period of history. Our politicians are bought off by corporations, we continue to wage war for resources and markets, we have something called drone bombs where people in the US control remote bombs that indiscriminately kill innocent people on the other side of the world. We lose aspects of our democracy daily and it seems like most people don’t care. They don’t care because they flood their brains with mindless entertainment, and are misinformed about their own society.

I had the pleasure of being able to see Howard Zinn speak at The College of New Jersey in 2007. I wasn’t even officially enrolled in the school yet, but I snuck in to the lecture room to hear the man speak in person. His lecture was entitled “Bringing Democracy Alive.” His idea was that those who organize and break unjust laws are the most patriotic of all. We don’t currently have a true democracy. We have a corportocracy. My hope is that we use Zinn to look in the past at those who were fed up with their oppressive situation and rebelled. As Zinn put it, when people without any guns, power, or wealth organize and get together for a certain cause they can create a movement that no government can suppress.



-Greg

David Brooks' idea of Populism in the US

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/26/opinion/26brooks.html?hp

This is a very interesting assessment of populism, but my issue is that as long as corporations are given more and more power over politics (ie the recent supreme court decision) then none of this will matter. The more closely a corporation is thought of as a person in te...rms of the constitution, the more freedom they really have in our political system. They inherently have more money than the individual citizen, so even though they don't have voting power, it doesn't matter because they now have more power to get politicians elected than any individual or groups people with limited funds.

In a perfect fair system it is not right to wage a war on the M.B.A's, but that's not the system that is in place. That sort of populism does exist because corporations have the economic power over policy-making. Our voting power is very limited to what candidates corporations will allow to be exposed on a mass scale.

Why We Are Not Getting Real Health Reform: Financial and Political Capital

It’s rather fitting that I am writing a piece about health care while I am fighting a cold and unable to sleep at 2 in the morning. So, I apologize in advance if any of this is incoherent. The following is a product of my inability to sleep as well as the failure to breathe out of my nose. Fortunately for me, I am in the middle class and can afford to go to a public college that gives me decent health insurance for very limited costs. Regrettably, most of the country is not this well off.

According to a recent study Harvard University linked 45,000 deaths in the United States to inadequate health insurance (http://prescriptions.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/09/17/harvard-medical-study-links-lack-of-insurance-to-45000-us-deaths-a-year/?scp=2&sq=harvard&st=cse). That’s roughly three September 11ths a year. I’m not too sure how anyone can read this study and not be outraged. It is an apparent indication that we need serious and pragmatic health care reform in this country, and very quickly. Instead of honest debate and legislation we have gotten the same political jabbering and lobbying that is at the core of all of our Country’s problems.

Now, what makes this debate even more frustrating is the combination of public and media controversy. We have seen people on the right going to town hall meetings, marching in D.C., opposed to any reforms put out by the Democratic Party. At the heart of all of this I do not see angry American’s fearful about “socialism,” rather, I see a bitter Republican Party, and Conservative movement trying very hard to get political vengeance. Let’s think back to the eight years prior to Barack Obama’s presidency. In the white house was George W. Bush, who was perhaps one of the most controversial and impugned presidents in United States history. He was slammed by the left at every opportunity, conceivably, most of all regarding the war in Iraq. From the start of that war, the left had used similar tactics that the right is currently using against the Democrats about health care (with smaller numbers indeed, but with the same, if not more media attention). In my opinion, Afghanistan is not “Obama’s war” right now. Although later Afghanistan might be his defining foreign affairs moment, it is health care that has taken national stage and will define the beginning of Obama’s presidency.

With that in mind, look at what the right is doing. Some on the far right have berated the President as a Nazi. Joe Wilson, a member of congress, has interrupted a major political speech on reform. Last but not least, right-wing media personalities such as Glenn Beck have gone as far to call Obama a racist. All of this leaves me rather skeptical when I see genuine conservatives out on the streets, many of which are clearly uneducated about politics, and history. For instance take a look at this YouTube video documenting the 9/12 rally in Washington:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lUPMjC9mq5Y&feature=topvideos

People referring to the president as “socialist,” “communist and “fascist” interchangeably reveals my concern. Even in the 1960s Obama’s proposed reforms would not have been chastised by the right with such false proclamations such as “socialist.” What these protests led me to think was how closely they resemble some of the protesting against Bush regarding Iraq. I was certainly part of those protests, and truly believe in such a right, but I find the root of the current protests to be very disingenuous.

I believe that those who lead the right are bitter about the Bush years. Bush was so widely scrutinized that it truly hurt the Republican Party. This is what I mean by political capital. Therefore, in an attempt to counter attack, the right has chosen to do the same that the left did to Bush, this time it’s about health care reform. The problem here is that Bush’s invasion of Iraq was based on clear lies, sent American troops into harm’s way, and killed countless innocent civilians. Obama’s health care reform, although far from perfect, is an attempt to save lives.

The Republican politicians, and leaders (not necessarily the people doing the marching, I don’t want to completely chastise them), are bitter about losing the election and about the left tearing apart its previous leader. In the case, the media has taken on a huge role in this. Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Bill O’reilly, our good buddies, have thrown out disastrous lies about health reform. These include claims of death panels, socialism, destruction of Medicare, ect. In essence they have built a right wing army that hold up posters of Obama as Hitler, and call Obama a racist. This leaves the legitimate educated right who have real helpful concerns in the dust.

So why is this happening? Well, like I said before the right is bitter, but they also need to gain political capital. Unfortunately, the leaders of the right are TV and radio pundits looking for ratings, and people like Joe Wilson trying to get reelected. The right needs to be legitimate again, and this is how they are doing it: through hysteria, lies, and anti-intellectualism.

I do not believe that those on the ground actually protesting Obama are disingenuous. I believe they are misled patriots. They are misled by people seeking political capital in order to get reelected at a time when conservative ideology is not very popular in the United States. The Democrats are far from innocent in this debate. They had an opportunity to give us real reform proposals, but due to their own concern for political capital, and insurance lobbyists that fund campaigns they gave us limited reform proposals. I guess they did not count on the right garnering so much momentum, because now it seems like we are getting practically no reform. Personally, I wish to see a single-payer system, but the Democrats blew that one, so my hopes were for some step toward caring for every single American.

What breaks my heart about all of this is that intrinsically, health care should be about helping people. Instead, the debate has been run by corporate lobbyists, conservative celebrities seeking ratings, political capital, and left wing ineptitude. We are supposed to be the freest, most democratic, and wealthiest nation on earth, yet we allow nearly 45,000 to die each year because our politicians and corporatocracy have too much financial and political investment in our current system. Yet, there is hope. The left can fight back. The true left. Those who were always skeptical about Obama, those who pay attention, and those who desperately want real health care in this country must fight back

Arlen Spector and the Two-Party System

The big political news of the last few days is the switch of Senator Arlen Spector from a Republican to a Democrat. The reason why this is so important is that it gives the democrats 60 votes in the Senate (baring the ongoing recount in the Minnesota senate race). This of course gives the Democrats the power to break a filibuster, and more easily get their legislation passed.

Indeed, this continues to signify the shift in American politics and perhaps the public to the left. However, our country has created such a dichotomy of Democrat and Republican or Liberal and Conservative that the shift just goes back and forth. After 8 years of clear policy failures we are seeing the cycle shift back to the left. This cycle seems to me to be a function of an educated majority. Let's face it, we don't really have the best education system in the world. In fact, it's quite inefficient. While our children are not being effectively taught math or science, we have also neglected to provide them with a real and honest education in history, civics, and economics.

Our lack of history allows for the public to easily get swept up with war rhetoric, our lack of economic education allows for an uneducated mass of people scratching their heads at a very complex but important economic crisis. Finally, the lack of civics has allowed us to continue to elect incompetent and corrupted leaders from the same two ruling parties.

Now this may be a generalization, but there is something fundamentally wrong with a two party system, especially when the public is so uneducated and apathetic toward the process. One of the biggest issues is local and congressional elections. In 2006 80,975,537 people cast their votes for the mid-term elections. The number of people eligible to vote was nearly 220,000,000 people (and the voter turnout that year was good relative to recent congressional elections before it). This means that well over half of the eligible population does not vote for our lawmakers, and an even smaller amount actually voted for the person who is suppose to represent a large portion of the public.

So here we are with a Republican switching to become a Democrat and most of the country doesn’t care. Why? Is it because they are lazy and apathetic? Many certainly are, but the majority of the people are just not educated very well. Many see two parties that do not realistically relate to most working class people. Democrats and Republicans are fundamentally the same, with small deviations on certain issues. Neither party represents or even tries to carry out the will of the people. Yet, these people remain in our government mostly through an ever-exhausting tradition.

The election of Obama put a lot of faith in the Democratic Party. In the end, as we are already seeing, the message of hope and change was a fabulous marketing strategy by the Democratics. To give credit to Obama, he has not deviated from his campaign. The issues that were discussed (although very rarely during the campaign), have been addressed consistently. The problem here is that elections are never about the issues because both candidates seldom have the same ideas as the majority of the public. The problem is that the majority of Americans want to fully leave Iraq (as oppose to keeping “non-combat” troops), they want the government to look into a single-payer health care system, most want the Bush administration to be brought to justice for torture. They want better education, more regulation and to address climate change. And the list goes on. The problem here is that many think that the president is the one to look to in order to carry out these initiatives. People need to have a better understanding of the democratic-republican process, and to make informative votes for congress. I don’t mean to suggest that voting is the main answer, in fact I think voting is somewhat useless in a two party system, but the two party system is not permanently embedded into the legal structure of the country. We do have the ability to create more parties; it will just take a deeper grassroots effort. We saw a huge grassroots effort with Obama, but once most of those people realize how Democrats and Republicans are all part of a very similar agenda, they will hopefully put their efforts towards real change in American politics.

Lessons from the Great Depression

I decided my first post should be this essay I wrote about the Great Depression and our current economic crisis. It's very broad, but it touches upon a lot of ideas that I will most likely write about more thoroughly at a later date. Enjoy:

In understanding the current economic downturn, many pundits, reporters, and average citizens have looked at the Great Depression to calculate the severity of today’s crisis. Many have claimed that the world, particularly the United States, had lost its historical perspective and no one was able to predict the unfortunate events of 2008 that left the world economy in a tangled mess. In actuality there were many, such as New York University’s economics professor Nouriel Roubini, who did predict the housing bust, the trouble of sub-prime loans, the decline of consumer confidence, and the ensuing recession. Nevertheless, these predictions went unnoticed due to the large sum of quick cash being made around the world. Therefore, in trying to develop a recovery plan for a situation that increasingly looks more and more like the Great Depression, there needs to be a careful understanding of the Great Depression, its causes, and finally its recovery.

The most important thing to note about the Great Depression, as well as this crisis, is that there was no one single cause. Both affairs occurred due to many factors occurring under adverse circumstances. Even then, some may try to pinpoint “main” causes, but historians continue to dispute what factors should be emphasized when evaluating the causes of the Great Depression. Likewise, it is impossible to identify a prime cause for the current economic situation, especially since it is still unfolding. In mainstream thought, the Great Depression began after the stock market crash of 1929. This is dangerously short-sighted. If this were the only cause, we would be in an even more vulnerable position now because the stock market is considerably larger than it was in 1929. Thankfully, that was not the only cause of the Great Depression. Some historians may suggest that the origins of the Great Depression began during the industrialization of the late nineteenth century, but for our purposes we will begin immediately after World War I.

Just like our current economic crisis, there were those who predicted the Great Depression, but were ultimately ignored. John Maynard Keynes was one of those disregarded prophets. In The Economic Consequences of Peace, Keynes warns that the harsh penalties given to Germany after World War I would negatively affect the rest of the world economy. He writes, “If the European Civil War is to end with France and Italy abusing their momentary victorious power to destroy Germany… they invite their own destruction, being so deeply and inextricably intertwined with their victims by hidden psychic and economic bonds.” Unfortunately, the leaders of Europe did not listen to Keynes and the deep economic ties were exposed due to the harsh demands on Germany and Austria-Hungary. Similarly, all of the warning signs for our sharp economic downturn were ignored, despite several economists’ predictions. Furthermore, what Keynes recognized was that the world economy was too integrated for nationalism to have any sort of positive effect on the financial system. For the current crisis, there was no major war that exposed economic globalization; the profound global economic ties were known, but simply overlooked.

The economic ties of the 1920s, just like today, were essentially based on loans. After World War I the United States was considered the world creditor. They had loaned England so much money during the war, and England loaned so much money to France, Italy, Russia, and other allies. However, since all of these economies, except the United States, were devastated by the war, they looked for German reparations to help pay back Britain and the United States. To further confuse this economic mess, the German economy was in utter chaos, so the United States loaned Germany money to ease their incredible inflation and to help pay back the allied powers. This intergovernmental debt left the world economy in an unstable house of cards, waiting for one card to fall. The cards certainly began to fall rather quickly, and nearly simultaneously. From what is known about the current crisis, there is a similar intergovernmental credit disaster. In fact, it is even more complex than the one that led to the Great Depression. The private financial institutions of today devised a complex scheme of packaging loans and trading bad assets. It is commonly thought that this begins with the so called sub-prime loans that were packaged and traded by financial insurance companies. Since these companies are so global this mess has not only affected the United States; it has caused financial disaster to most of the world. In terms of overall national debt, in our current crisis, the players are reversed. It is the United States that is in enormous debt, and now it is Germany and China that are giving credit. In American thought, it is usually considered that the Great Depression was a product of the United States. This is clearly a fallacy, and one of the most important things we can learn from the Great Depression is that it was a global crisis, caused by global affairs.

The interconnectedness of the global economy was a main reason why the depression was so vast in scope, but historians have calculated many other causes for the downturn, and these causes are very comparable to today’s crisis. Four main factors that are considered are: consumption, investments, net exports, and government policies. The main argument for the “underconsumption” cause is that during the 1920s, labor production grew rapidly as a result of technological advances, but this increase was not reflected in rising real wages. Therefore, as productivity increased and more products were put out into the market, but people no longer had the means to purchase the products, there became a waste of capital and production. This argument for a Great Depression cause is very much comparable to today’s crisis. A study by the New York Times showed that real wages were at their lowest share of G.D.P. on record in 2006, while corporate profits were at their highest share since the 1960s. This disparity between real wages and corporate profits is significant, but certainly not the only cause of either economic downturn.

Like the current economic situation, the Great Depression had some roots in the housing market. Investment began to decline as early as 1926 following a housing boom. As Attack and Passall point out, this decrease in the housing market was in part caused by the slowing of immigration and the fewer number of families. Although the current crisis has much to do with the housing market, where it differs from the Great Depression is that this housing bubble burst due to the complicated and risky behavior of financial institutions. Another factor discussed by Attack and Passall is net exports. This factor more than any other shows how interconnected the Depression was. The United States had been the world’s leading industrial exporter, but after the war, the European market drastically declined. One way of addressing this problem would be for the United States to import more from Europe, but this was unrealistic because of the simple fact that the there were no European products that the United States wanted. After all, the United States was the leading industrial producer of the time, so there was no incentive for Americans to import from Europe. As mentioned earlier, the United States’ role is currently reversed. The problem of net exports is now that the United States is in the position of Europe. The United States has not been an exporter nation for many years, but in order to get out of their debt, like Germany needed in the 1920s, is to receive capital through exports. The problem is still the same, but reversed, with China in the United States’ prior role. There are no products that the United States could export to China, which would help America pay back their current massive debt.

As mentioned earlier, the Great Depression was not solely provoked by the stock market crash of 1929. These other factors allowed the crash to be so devastating, but it did not end there. The government understood that there was a significant recession and that they needed to take some action to ease the economic downturn. Unfortunately, the model that was used was the recession of 1920, which was very short and not exceptionally damaging. The thought at the time was that the 1929 recession would be very similar and the same policies would relieve the situation. Like other explanations for the depression there are contending views. Usually this falls into two different camps: the government did too much, or the government did too little. Under President Hoover, there were indeed public works projects and other government spending to try and offset decline in private consumption. In addition the government cut taxes to help stimulate the economy. These measures may have alleviated the situation at first, but by cutting taxes while spending, the government loses revenue. This led to a budget deficit of $2.7 billion in 1932. The solution to the deficit was to raise taxes, and to raise taxes in a time of recession ultimately makes the recession worse. According to this view, the failure of governmental policy exacerbated what might have been a less sever recession.

Since the current crisis is still uncertain, it is practically impossible to fully compare the eventual recovery of the Great Depression with today, especially since this is indeed only a comparison and not a suggestion that we are heading toward another Great Depression. However, the attempts that are being taken today to solve our economic problems certainly resemble the measures that were taken during the 1930s. The Obama stimulus plan, which is inevitably political, has taken measures to funnel money into education, environmental and energy issues, public works, and other spending that parallels the New Deal. Some of the New Deal spending is what created much of the infrastructure that we have today. The biggest lesson to learn from this is that the United States needs to maintain its infrastructure and continue to make innovations in areas such as transportation, construction, and energy sources.

Economics ultimately ends up being political. The current economic crisis is very much at the whim of how the United States responds. It is a global affair, but the United States has such a significant economy, but has also been slower to respond to the dilemma. This has been in large part due to a deep ideology and a trepidation about anything that might be considered “socialist.” The biggest lesson we can learn from the Great Depression is that we need to cut these deep rooted ideological ties and act in a pragmatic way to solve the current situation. Every economic crisis is different, and thus the responses should be made by understanding the situation and developing policies that are suitable to the problem. What worked for the Great Depression, most likely will not work today. In fact, what is considered the biggest factor that led the world out of the Depression was the military industry and World War II. Today, the United States spends more money than any other nation on the military. In fact out of every tax dollar, 37 cents is used for the military. Therefore, this crisis needs to be treated carefully and new ideas need to be allowed into political economic thought. History does not repeat itself, but what we can learn from the past is that every action we have today will drastically affect the future in ways we need to take very seriously. We can either look at the Great Depression as a looming potential reality for the future, or use it to learn the complexities of not only the economy, but also of human and political actions.