Smash, Grab, and Don't Look Back: A Looting on Pennsylvania Avenue

“Nobody can know the full consequences of their actions, and history is full of small acts that changed the world in surprising ways.” Rebecca Solnit

You’re going to hear this a lot over the next year or two from Trump and his handlers and enablers: The tax reform we passed in 2017 is the single greatest piece of legislation in American history! It returns more money to the middle class than any tax cut ever has, and it insures that small businesses and family farmers will not lose everything they’ve built when they die.

And blah, blah, blah, and many other lies, too. If there is any good economic news to be had -- not to fear, it won’t be news of real jobs being created, industries returning to the Ohio River valley, or wage growth, it will likely be the rising stock market, fueled by corporate purchases of their own stock (with the money they are not paying in taxes) -- the GOP will say that the tax cuts are the reason. And if the economy runs off the rails, the talking points are already written: Obama’s fault, naturally, the black guy who wasn’t even a real American left the country in a mess. (In any case, Obama’s two terms are being erased, goodbye ACA, the Iran Nuclear arrangement, the Paris Climate Accord, rules to protect the environment, regulate the banks, etc.)

Trump will undoubtedly begin comparing himself to FDR and LBJ, claim that his tax cuts are as great an achievement as the major parts of the New Deal, and way better than the Civil Rights Act, and that it was all done to help the little guy.

No mention will be made that the GOP-controlled House and Senate rammed these bills through the legislative process like thieves during a blackout: backroom, closed door meetings, favors exchanged, promises made, no public hearings, shoddy analysis, lines of corporate bagmen lined up in the halls for their share of the spoils, flat out lies in the press. The GOP wins because it cheats -- it cheats to get elected through gerrymandering and voter suppression, and it cheats when it controls the levers of power.

Has fucking the American people over ever been so easy?

When the Democrats controlled both houses during the first Obama term the Republicans contorted themselves to block, delay, derail, and undermine Obama’s legislative agenda -- tepid as it was -- even though Obama had what Donald J. Trump will never have, a legitimate mandate from the electorate. All’s fair in love and politics. Shoe now on the other foot and as these disgraceful bills moved I heard nary a peep from the Democrats about the corrupt process.

Oh yeah, for a year or two the propaganda is going to come thick and heavy, laced with deadly, mind-numbing, truth-obfuscating BS. The attacks on Social Security and Medicare will come, the huge burden of these “entitlement” programs (paid for by worker contributions, so technically not entitlement programs at all) will be blamed for bankrupting the nation, ruining our credit standing in the world, our competitiveness, the deficit! Only one possible solution -- strict austerity for the slovenly poor and wage earning class. Cut, cut, cut. The war machine, energy extractors, lords of finance, and the wealthy in general will be exempt from the austerity blues, of course, walked around the velvet rope and right into the VIP section, bitching about the profligate ways of the unwashed masses as they go. Gilded, baby, gilded everything.

The people knew this was coming. Destruction is all Trump and his mafia can do. They cannot build, erect, create, or imagine anything but violence and destruction. They are pirates loose in port, drunk, crazed, rabid, horny, and mean; they’ve got the keys to the armory, the courts, and the treasury, no one to answer to, nothing to slow their roll. In the time it takes to pour a flagon of rum half the town will be in flames.

History says Trump and the GOP will overreach, go too far, grab too much, and the pendulum will swing back toward the safe center, where capitalism, militarism, and imperialism reign. We can change the hands on the levers, a good, necessary step, but until enough Americans realize that we must change the game if we are going to have any chance of surviving climate change and every ill this man-made threat brings in its wake, just changing the party in charge won’t get it done.

A society is reasonably just if its people don’t have to die for access to health care, decent housing, meaningful jobs at living wages, courts that act independently of politics and ideology, education, food, assistance when disaster strikes, and a fair opportunity to address their legitimate grievances.  

Get ready, people, hard times are coming.

Black Bill

So, Obama isn’t a Democrat after all.

The signs have been evident for a long time, starting with Obama’s reluctance to prosecute criminal bankers, to make good on his promise to shut down the colossal embarrassment that is Guantanamo prison, and his willingness to abandon a public health care option before debate even began.

Obama drifted further from his base by expanding drone warfare in Pakistan, cracking down on whistleblowers at home, and waffling on his support for real action on climate change. He talked about “clean” coal when he knew full well that no such thing exists; he expanded oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico -- after the Deepwater Horizon disaster.

Obama is the black reincarnation of Bill Clinton, a Democrat ever willing to abandon the party’s long standing principles in favor of a slick deal with his political opponents and campaign contributors. Let’s not forget that Obama surrounded himself with Clintonites in his first cabinet, including alumni like Lawrence Summers, Rahm Emanuel and Hilary Clinton herself. Like the consummate snake oil salesman that he is, Obama used soaring rhetoric about hope and change to get people – particularly young voters -- excited enough to elect him, and then, once in office, he methodically abandoned every one of his rhetorical positions in favor of “bipartisanship,” which means, of course, terrible proposals and awful legislation, or, more often than not, no legislation at all.

Obama has now made a budget proposal that offers to reduce Social Security benefits -- long a goal of political conservatives who abhor any government initiative that actually works as it was designed to -- in exchange for GOP concessions on tax hikes on the wealthy. Is this a savvy ploy to gain political advantage, the equivalent of a jujitsu move? Is Obama a master pragmatist? Or does he really believe the only way to save Social Security in the long run is to castrate it in the short run?

I don’t know.

What remains of the political left is angry with Obama, but we are an impotent, disorganized lot easily ignored or discredited by the corporate media. John Boehner and his little henchman, Eric Cantor, are probably giddy at the prospect of finally starting the process of dismantling Social Security as we know it, and even more ecstatic that a Democratic president opened the door. Wall Street bankers and money managers are salivating at the thought of the millions in fees they stand to rake in if Social Security is changed from a public trust to a semi-private one.

I’m not surprised that Obama bends his base over a chair and sodomizes it; he’s a stooge of Wall Street, as are most Democrats and almost all Republicans. Politicians of whatever stripe pay lip service to the will of the “American people,” and then proceed to do exactly what their masters tell them to do.  My own congressional representative, Lois Capps, who I believe is a decent person, nearly always votes with the president. I start every letter or e-mail I send to her like this: “You don’t represent me or my interests, and I know you never will, but you’re the only game in town…”

Our political duopoly is rotten, rotten from within, corrupted by money and influence peddling. The Obama campaign spent billions of dollars in 2012 to convince voters of how different he was from Mitt Romney, and of course Obama is different, but the differences are not as stark as his spin-machine wanted us to believe. Obama lives comfortably on the center-right of the political spectrum, rubbing ideological shoulders with financiers and bankers, playing golf at the country club with neoliberals and oil company oligarchs.

Obama is Black Bill, Clinton’s brother of another color.  

At the Expense of the Many

My family and I watch the fireworks arc over Stearn’s Wharf on the 4th of July. The beach and waterfront are jammed with people and the air is heavy with the smell of a hundred BBQ grills. Traditional American rah-rah music plays from a loudspeaker on West Beach. Most of the people sitting on the sand around us are speaking Spanish. Cameras flash as the sky overhead bursts into bright green, red and gold; I see faces illuminated by the light from cell phones.

Happy birthday, America.

On this holiday night I want to think about what is right with our country, but so many things are out of whack that I can’t focus on the positive – two wars dragging on, the long term implications of the massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, the tanked economy, the largest prison population in the world, and the perils of climate change. This is what I’m thinking about as the fireworks rise up and explode.

How do citizens change a system dominated by two political parties who tap dance to the same corporate drummer? How do we restore a healthy balance of power between capital and labor, government and big business, domestic needs and geopolitical realities? How can we fight against the enormous power wielded by corporate lawyers and lobbyists?

Under the guise of taming the Federal deficit, President Obama’s blue-ribbon deficit commission is mounting a rationale to reduce Social Security benefits, raise the retirement age (again) or both. The campaign is built on fabrications since Social Security is actually a program that pays its own way and does not contribute to the deficit, but don’t bother telling that to the commission members who have concluded (in advance) that reducing Social Security will send the right message to the financial markets. In other words, it’s once again more important to place the perceived needs of the financial sector over those of millions of average citizens.

Are we going to stand for this?

There are far better ways to reduce the Federal deficit than eviscerating Social Security, which, by the way, has been the Holy Grail of GOP conservatives for decades. How about cutting the bloated defense budget, reducing the number of U.S. bases that straddle the globe? How about eliminating subsidies for Big Oil?

Our society is structured for the enrichment of the few at the expense of the many. For the most part, the people we elect to do our business make a mockery of representative democracy. There are, to be sure, some bright, committed people in Congress, but they are overshadowed and out numbered by mediocre partisans. It took many years to bring this society into being, and it figures to take many years to unravel it in favor of something more just and sustainable.

If you want to know what a nation values, you need only watch where it spends its resources. As the fireworks soar through the summer sky, I ask myself how this country can always find money for war but rarely for peace; I ask myself why taxpayer subsidies for profitable corporations arouse little or no ire, while help for the needy or a dignified retirement for senior citizens drives the political right into a self-righteous frenzy.

The finale has begun. Boom, boom, boom, red, green, gold, star bursts and molten streamers, and the voice of Lee Greenwood singing Proud to be an American echoing on the loudspeaker. I don’t feel that pride. Instead I feel a sense of loss, of wasted opportunities, and I wonder when the people will say, “Enough.”