The Howling

I find it more and more difficult to ignore the old rule, "Those that know the least, speak the most."
This evening's PC by the President is barely more than 2 hours old and already the troglodytes of both right and left are forming skirmish lines. Like rival troops of ideological monkeys.

The funny part is that this isn't really the president's problem(s), per se. Its the Legislature. The core conflict between the left and right wingers comes down, unfortunately, to ideologies. Democrats are largely convinced that they have a mandate to do whatever they think is best; undoubtedly they also have more than a little revenge in mind. After all, they spent years under Bush being marginalized, isn't it time to return the favor? Abso-fragging-lutely not.

This is a huge part of what Obama was talking about during his campaign. Yes, the Democrats have a majority, a large one that is no doubt painful for most Republicans to acknowledge. That doesn't mean we want them to ram a leftist agenda through. That doesn't mean we want them to "punish" the right. I strongly suspect that a vast majority of the Democrats in Washington at the moment are at least a little drunk with power; they need to get over it now or the subsequent sociopolitical hangover is going to knock them on their collective asses and find the Republicans quite possibly back in charge. That sort of wild legislative vacillation will undermine and horribly destabilize the authority of the Federal Government.

By the same token, Republicans need to get their collective heads out of their collective asses and recognize two vital and immutable facts about the current state of affairs: A, they are in the minority right now because of their own reckless, excessive and exclusionary policies and B, that the American people are not going to be bought off with tax returns. Let's call a spade a spade; regardless of their popularity and various levels of usefulness, tax cuts amount to bribing the public. In the current climate cutting taxes will have only minimal stimulative usefulness because the people will save rather than spend most of it and once it's spent the money will wind up being deposited in banks which are not lending and therefore will not continue circulating, fueling growth. The party has allowed itself to become prisoner to a sort of economic ideological extremism which has in turn caused them to lose sight of at least one of their core principals and a basic law of economic realty.

Ronald Reagan once characterized government as "the problem". This has mutated into a perception among many that government is "the enemy". The so-called advocates of the free market have as their mantra, "government doesn't create jobs" and they repeat it ad nauseum, as if saying it often enough will cause it to be so. In a way this is true, although the statement becomes, "government won't create jobs". Obviously the government does in fact create jobs; what they mean to say is "government does not drive the economy". Nor should it, as has been very publicly acknowledged by everyone from the President on down; we all saw how well that worked in Soviet Russia. What the vast majority of Republicans (voters and politicians alike) seem to be hung up on is the idea that the government should or even can intervene in the current crisis; particularly they object over the spending of public funds. I cannot tell you how many times I have been in some random truck stop or warehouse listening to people complain that,"I don't see why I should spend my money to solve other people's problems."

What these people, both in and out of Washington and Wall Street, seem to have trouble with these days is the idea of "The National Interest". They can't seem to understand that if we, as a nation, don't commit resources to breaking the various log jams in the financial system and getting people employed again that the continuing losses will drag the rest of us right down too. This is the economic equivalent of Benjamin Franklin's warning that, "We must, indeed, all hang together, or most assuredly we shall all hang separately." To illustrate; Why should a diner waitress in Arkansas care about the failings of a bank in NYC? That bank supplies the revolving loans that supply a toy manufacturer's payroll in Toledo. If that manufacturer goes bust he no longer supplies goods to a retailer in Texas, who then cancels his shipping contract with my employer, who then stops sending one more shipment past that diner in Arkansas where I like to stop for a night's rest and particularly good stack of pancakes in the morning. So now that waitress is short by that much less in tips. Now multiply that out and don't forget all the people being laid off at the bank, toy maker and retailer and you start to get a sense of things. In short, this is the other side of Uncle Ron's "supply side" economic theory. Personally, I find it hilarious that that most vocal proponents of supply side, the Republicans, are now decrying the same spiderweb effect from the various public works projects being financed by the ARARA Bill.

Let's don't act like this is a purely Republican problem though. There are more than a few projects included in the correct Bill that are questionable. Personally I'm a bit confused by the DoD spending for anything _other_ than weatherizing and other energy efficiency projects. Also there are provisions being made for WIC and school lunch programs; not unworthy projects, but things that should be going through the normal appropriations process. There are other examples, I encourage you to read it through. Nobody can deny that, although the President is honestly and correctly saying there are no earmarks in the Bill, the Democrats have been trying to add far too many ornaments to this particular tree and not giving enough room for some the very good Republican ideas on tax relief in specific, targeted cases.

In the end, this is more or less a done deal. At this point what we are seeing is mostly a great deal of sound and fury. What we ought to be focused on, going forward from this moment is making absolutely bloody certain that nobody misappropriates any of this money and that we having the greatest possible public scrutiny. The president mentioned the establishing of a funds tracking website. Another key point is for us, the American Public, to keep in mind that we are in part responsible for this fiasco; a large part of the financial crisis was fueled consumer credit and inflated real-estate values. There is absolutely nothing wrong with spending and making a nice life for yourself but it vital to stay within your means and not try to push yourself to the edge. Leave a buffer so that when the economy does turn sour (as all economies must at times) you aren't suddenly faced with massive obligations that you can't meet.