Puking over Republicans

I’m noticing one overriding fact in writing about Republicans as they leer towards the end of their convention. I feel more and more nauseated by having to watch them, listen to them, sniff their pasty souls and outrageous deceptions. As one vivid example, Republicans have spent the last year and more raising alarms about the chief problem facing our country: the deficit. We owe trillions of dollars, is their mantra, and Obama has been the most irresponsible president in history in running up that debt. But as Matt Taibbi pointed out in a hard-hitting article in Rolling Stone yesterday (Aug. 29), it is actually Republicans, and Mitt Romney in particular, who are the debt mongers. Here is what he says:

"Mitt Romney is one of the greatest and most irresponsible debt creators of all time. In the past few decades, in fact, Romney has piled more debt onto more unsuspecting companies, written more gigantic checks that other people have to cover, than perhaps all but a handful of people on planet Earth."

What Taibbi is referring to, of course, is Romney’s reign at Bain Capital, the “private equity” company he headed for years, and through which he made his big money. That’s because the way “leveraged buyouts” (LBOs) work is by the gathering of a small amount of capital (by companies like Bain) with which to borrow huge amounts of money (borrowing a lot with only a little is called “leverage”) from the likes of Goldman Sachs, so they can take over a given company. One example Taibbi uses is the buyout of KB Toys. In that case, Bain put up $18 million of its own, and then borrowed no less than $302 million from investment banks to complete the deal. Then Bain induced KB Toys to “redeem $121 million in stock and take out more than $66 million in bank loans - $83 million of which went directly into the pockets of Bain's owners and investors, including Romney.” Long story short, KB Toys went into bankruptcy (because, you see, the company is saddled with the huge debt Bain borrowed to buy it, and has to pay it off, often an impossibility, even after laying off half its workers), while Bain earned a return of “at least 370% on the deal” or up to 900% if the assertion of Big Lots, LB Toys’ former parent company, is correct. In dollar terms, that is, Bain added more than $300 million in debt to KB Toys, and took out more than $120 million in cash via fees and other perks. As usual, they managed to do this by giving big bonuses to the company’s top managers: “CEO Michael Glazer got an incredible $18.4 million, while CFO Robert Feldman received $4.8 million and senior VP Thomas Alfonsi took home $3.3 million.” Of course, mere workers were left with no jobs and no money at all when the company, formerly a successful maker of things, went belly up.
Now we have Mitt Romney, and his current attack dog, Paul Ryan (but really, doesn’t Ryan look like some bug-eyed Disney cartoon?) excoriating President Obama for piling up $5 trillion in debt. This is the Republican mantra. Debt will bring down our country. Debt is the cancer eating away at the American dream. Government simply can’t afford to spend any money on frills—by which they mean, of course, social programs like Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, or any kind of welfare programs whatever (other than corporate welfare, of course). Austerity, that’s the only way to get out of our debt crisis. And the fact that Mitt is the great debt creator himself, or that economic history has proven that austerity fails to solve depressions, and in fact makes them worse—because the problem, as Paul Krugman has pointed out endlessly, is that austerity reduces employment, and people without jobs can’t afford to spend money, so businesses don’t invest, having no one to sell to, hence the depression—matters not a jot. Romney and most Republican movers and shakers, that is, are investors. And investors make their money by being paid back in currency that is more, not less valuable. If money that debtors pay back is less valuable, then investors lose. This is the whole story in a nutshell. The deficit becomes the prime concern of the investor class because they fear that inflation rises from it; and inflation, whether it be rising prices, or an increase in the money supply (which is what finances stimulus programs to put people back to work), cheapens the value of the dollars they have invested. Being paid back in cheaper dollars is a loss to them. What they really want is to be paid back in more valuable dollars—the result of deflation. They can’t opt for too much deflation, of course, because that would bring down the whole system. But enough deflation to bring sufficient pain to the poor bastards who have borrowed from them, and a somewhat greater return on their investments, is just right. This is the core of the “hard, courageous” choices they pretend to make as leaders: pain and deprivation for the working stiffs, the ones who borrow, so the investor class and financiers can have ever bigger cars and houses and yachts and private schools for their precious offspring.
This makes the upcoming election starker than any in recent memory. If the Republicans manage to convince the benighted American public of the rightness of their deficit analysis, and win this election to put Romney in the driver’s seat, with a Republican congress to allow him to implement his austerity program (austerity for you and me, that is, not for the investor class who can count on lower tax rates and bigger loopholes in which to hide their money), watch out. The nation will be even more the plaything of the moneyed class, while the so-called “entitlement” programs that keep the unemployed from falling off the edge entirely, will be decimated. We simply can’t afford them, will be the Republican rationale. Which is to say, we simply can’t afford the poor.
What we will be able to afford are even more and bigger mansions for the likes of corporate raiders like Romney, and even better financial deals for his backers—the Goldman Sachses, the Morgan Stanleys, the Citigroups, and dear old Sheldon Adelson. I may need a whole blog to cover the latter—the most foul, scabrous creature that has appeared on a national scene since Charles Dickens was portraying them in his novels—but here, suffice it to say, this is the guy who earns his money running a gambling empire, the Sands Corporation, that is even now under investigation by the Justice Department for allegations of bribery (in China) and money laundering (everywhere). Nice fellow. And Adelson has said in no uncertain terms, that he will personally spend at least $100 million to get Republicans elected not just to the presidency, but to Congress as well. If he succeeds, of course, there will be a new Attorney General, and (he no doubt hopes and intends) his legal problems will go away. There will also be a more generous and cooperative (read ‘obsequious’) policy towards Israel’s Likudniks, as well as a more aggressive policy towards Iran and other Israeli “enemies” like Syria, Lebanon, the Palestinians, and just about the whole middle east.
In short, a disaster. So while earlier I had suggested that it might be time for progressives to start thinking in terms of third-party candidates, the situation has become too dire for that. Obama must win a second term. Otherwise, we will be buried beneath a deluge of corporate money and power the likes of which we haven’t seen since Rockefeller, Carnegie, Morgan and their fellow robber barons ran the government as their own private fiefdom—though not even then would they have dared put one of their own, nakedly proclaiming his greed, in the White House.

Lawrence DiStasi

GOP to Akin: Abort! Abort!

Some use science for certain
While others use guesses
To open the curtain
On life’s many messes
But Missouri’s Todd Akin
Spit out a new theory
That I guess he had taken
From a man old and weary
Uttered without fact
By a misguided quack
The spinning continues;
The safety net unravels
And the poor have no menus
While the leaders bang gavels




Wow. I knew that the GOP was entertaining some extreme positions on issues, but I had no idea that they did not know where babies come from. First, Akin was off the GOP reservation when he spoke of “legitimate rape.” The preferred party language is “forcible rape.” His theory, taken from a physician (no joke) is that under the stress of “legitimate” or forcible rape, a woman’s reproductive system shuts down and she will not become pregnant. The idea behind all this is that the GOP wants no exceptions to allow for abortions, even for rape or incest. In fact, Jack C. Willke, the physician who proposed this bizarre 14th century theory was a surrogate for Romney in his 2007 presidential bid. Don’t laugh just yet. GOP insanity may be deliberate.

They seem to wait for a reaction and, if it is too negative, they back away and offer up reactive disclaimers; “Akin was way off base and should drop his bid for the Senate.” Nobody has disclaimed Willke, the quack physician who offered the “theory,” or Paul Ryan who co-wrote extreme social engineering legislation with Todd Akin. Akin and Ryan are upset that their anti-woman bills are being described as anti-woman. One of those bills they co-wrote specifically attempted to narrow the definition of rape; hence the very careful use of ”forcible rape” by the GOP to propel the notion that rape is more acceptable as long as it is not forcible. This would mean that statutory rape or rape of anyone unable to give consent would be treated differently in order to forbid all abortions. It also creates the subordination of the raped woman to the GOP “small government” and even to the fetus in cases of pregnancy through rape. There are approximately 32,000 reported pregnancies due to rape in the United States each year. The actual pregnancy rate for rape victims is 6.4%, incidentally, and that is more than twice the rate of pregnancy due to consensual sex despite the unscientific proclamation by Akin, a member of the House Science Committee. The rationale: rape victims are usually younger and in their more fecund years. Nonetheless, this feigned GOP horror at Akin’s screw-up is questionable. The only difference is Akin’s deployment of “legitimate.” Otherwise, the GOP position is identical with both Ryan and Akin. The original version of H.R. 3 would have narrowed that exception to cases of "forcible rape." Perhaps the GOP doth protest too much, especially while advocating small government.

Hypocrisy abounds in this fertile climate. Not only are the leading Republicans throwing Akin under their bus, but they are silent on a related issue of healthcare. If I were to ask you for the only major difference between the Affordable Care Act and Romney’s Massachusetts healthcare bill, would you know that Romneycare pays for abortions while Obamacare does not? Yet we now see Cardinal Dolan (top US Catholic prelate) ready to speak out at a right wing rally headlined by Paul Ryan. That hypocrisy is difficult to understand since Ryan has been outspoken in support of Ayn Rand (the atheist egoist) who condemned government but applauded abortion. Not incidentally at all, Rand, staunch opponent of the common good and powerful advocate for individualism and the free market took Social Security in her latter years although she condemned it in her writings. Aid for the poor? Never. Let them fend for themselves. This is the Ryan offering with a sprig of vouchers thrown in for color in the presentation to the people. Will Cardinal Dolan condemn Ryan for taking the safety net from under the poor? Right! That is why Ryan invited him, of course. And if you think that Dolan has the guts to do so, then I would ask why he has not already done it since the Conference of Catholic Bishops has already condemned the GOP platform planks that threaten the poor. We already have a poverty rate so severe that 30% of children in these United States go hungry every day. Let the poor be better shoppers, then they won’t be hungry. Think of it like Ryan’s vouchers for healthcare. If they are good shoppers, then they can pocket what they don’t spend on food. Hmm, thought for food. That is a new approach. Even the New Testament implies that that we need bread since “Man does not live by bread alone….” Ryan is billed as the thinker for the GOP and he credits Ayn Rand as the biggest influence on his life, so we begin to know what he is thinking. So now we await his rationale for the trickle down theory that has never worked. Economic Darwinism. I can’t wait. Maybe we simply did not give enough to the top tenth of the top 1% to fill their money reservoir. They need more to start the trickle. Surely, that will do it if the government they love to hate can control the riots from the losers in the new economic model, or is it the old and failed economic model of the 20s?

In the meantime, we suffer through pseudo-science and Science R Us research purchased by the Koch brothers. There is no global warming. There is no harm to pollution. Carbon is a vegetable? This would be humorous if only it were not true. It would be harmless if our citizens did not believe it. Alas, we have FOX News quoting the same purchased “scientists.” One of the bought scientists recently rebelled. Richard A. Muller, physicist of the University of California stated: "Three years ago I identified problems in previous climate studies that, in my mind, threw doubt on the very existence of global warming. Last year, following an intensive research effort involving a dozen scientists, I concluded that global warming was real and that the prior estimates of the rate of warming were correct. I’m now going a step further: Humans are almost entirely the cause.” The Koch’s probably won’t hire him again, and FOX won’t quote him.

We have a recent study from the non-partisan Tax Policy Center that shows, if GOP/Romney policy is implemented, that he would keep the current Bush tax cuts and cut rates an additional 20%. He would eliminate investment taxes completely for households making less than $200,000 and abolish the alternative minimum income tax. There are no details as to how the budget would be balanced given this clear decline in revenue. The study shows that eliminating tax breaks to offset the drop in rates would hurt the middle class. Elimination of deductions such as mortgage interest will reduce home ownership. The net effect is a tax cut for high-income households coupled with a tax increase for middle-income households. The study assumes that the GOP will not change its policies, although if voters catch on, they may be forced to modify their policies on the run.
We have the Religious Right preaching that we have dominion over the earth, but largely forgetting good stewardship of this earth. They also preach obedience, but that lesson may be hard to hear by the hungry over the growling of their empty stomachs. I do see a possibility of repeating the harsh government of the 20s with violence in demonstrations and enforcement and possibly even sanctioned repression. I hope that never happens, but the mechanisms are there and so are the developing conditions of providing people less and less to lose. In a 22 August Pew report this year, the share of income for the middle class had fallen from 62% to 45% from 1970-2010. Net worth fell to $93,150 from $129,582. Good jobs were outsourced overseas by Bain, GE and others and most recently some medical services are being outsourced to India and China through our own high-tech communications systems. With tax incentives for investment and for out-sourcing work, what jobs will remain or be created? Can China both fill our pot-holes and the holes in the stomachs of the poor?

How long can this go on without seeing it play out in the streets? The GOP wants Akin to abort his run for the Senate, but that has not changed their agenda as they continue to pound the House gavel and to restrict voting by the old, young and the poor, as in PA. A GOP leader has guaranteed a Mitt victory.


Peace,
George Giacoppe
24 August 2012