Thanks Rick

I didn't listen to the President's speech Thursday night, partly because I had a meeting to attend and partly because I've ceased caring. Of course not listening to the president's ideas about reviving the economy by putting people to work seems to a matter of pride in this part of the swamp and one squints when asked "didja listen to to President?" with that certain tone. The proper answer is of course, "hell no!" Why should I care about a country wherein this sort of idiocy is called "patriotism?"

Of course I didn't listen to Rick Scott, our Governor/Medicare Fraudmeister either -- hell no. I save such things for later and I prefer to read that kind of news rather than to be waterboarded with it. That way I can take a deep breath when I read that before the speech, he snarked that there wouldn't be anything for Florida in it and my TV was safe from having my foot through the screen when I read that it's likely he'll turn down 7.5 Billion allocated to improve and upgrade our infrastructure. That's money that would employ a lot of people who would spend their income in Florida and make Florida more attractive and accessible to the tourists upon whom our economy depends.

It wouldn't be the first time Ricky has turned away an opportunity. He refused to accept 2 billion to build a high speed rail line - you know the kind of thing other countries we feel superior to have. The kind of thing that, once again, would boost tourism and tax dollars. Oops - I used the magic word tax and Rick doesn't like taxes. Of course he doesn't like employment and he doesn't like the President and isn't about to let him do anything about employment because the only way to get out of a recession is to make sure the state doesn't take in a dime and to fire so many employees and cancel so many necessary projects that hardly anyone has enough income to require them to pay any taxes.

And then you cut costs more which puts more people out of work which means they spend less and so less gets made and companies go out of business and fire more people so there are still fewer with any money to buy anything -- and by and by everything gets better. Don't get it? you must be a liberal, or so the Teabrains tell me and I'd rather argue with a toadstool than with the kind of fungi and pond scum that make up that seething ferment. I mean, who can afford to care any more?

Pillars of wisdom

It seems to me that there are two kinds of Americans these days: the uninformed and the misinformed although one has to allow for considerable interbreeding. Is this more true than it used to be or are they just more self assured now that we have multi-billion dollar industries devoted to supporting both mental conditions?

At any rate, it's increasingly customary in the world of blogging in these latter days, to suffer unrestrained and personal attacks in proportion to how well one backs up one's thesis with facts and figures and of course the fury is loudest when one of the fragile pillars of the Republican temple are leaned upon. So let's have another go at it and see what happens. Having been subjected to the unending right wing Jeremiad about the massive public debt and the question of who bears responsibility for it, I thought it interesting to show what the U.S. Office of Management and Budget can tell us about where we are now.


First and most obvious of all is that we're nowhere near the level of debt we had by the end of WW II, although that may be as expected, but that debt fell sharply and almost uninterruptedly until Ronald Reagan established forever the two regnant principles of Republican policy: Debt doesn't matter and tax cuts pay for themselves by creating businesses and jobs. Looking above, it's hard to see the evidence. High marginal taxes of nearly three times as high as today's were in effect as the debt fell, Debt began to rise sharply in response to Reagan's tax cuts and what the chart fails to display is that unemployment during the Teflon years rose to 9.6%, essentially the current levels we have today. Neither does it show that no new private sector jobs were added during the years of the Bush II tax cuts.

Again, what you don't see is how expensive the S&L collapse under Bush I was or how quiet was the Right about Bush's bailout of an industry that collapsed largely because of deregulation. Uninformed? Misinformed or just hypocritical?

We can see elsewhere however, that during the Clinton years, characterized by hysterical outrage at the "confiscatory" tax structure of the Democrats, employment soared and the debt sank, not to resume it's climb until the Commander Guy outdid even Reagan in illustrating that, no, tax cuts don't pay for themselves, don't create jobs and do as they did in the 1920's precipitate bubbles, busts and recessions.

So, I'm waiting for the slurs about my parentage, defective IQ and the rest of the typical projectiles, or at least the catechism of unsupportable maxims we've heard from every Republican since the debt began to climb, but it's my story and I'm sticking to it.

A poor sort of memory

Once I built a railroad, I made it run, made it race against time.

Once I built a railroad; now it's done. Brother, can you spare a dime?*

No, I'm not that bad off by any means, but there was a time, not long ago, when I bought yachts and sports cars and houses on a whim; gave houses and condos to my kids without the slightest worry and used the Queen Mary the way some people take the bus. I should have worried. I should have heeded the warning I gave my handful of readers: George W. Bush and the Republicans are playing a shell game with the economy. They're the house, we're the rubes and the house always wins.

Of course I was laughed at. I no longer hear from the guffawing gulls who insisted I was further to the left than Chairman Mao, that the market was sound, the war was going to pay for itself, that "Liberals" were not only focusing on the negative, but trying to precipitate a market panic just to make St George the Genius and God's favorite son look bad so they could bring on an era of Socialist/Fascist oppression. They've long since invented a new mythology to hide what they said and did; how I was right and they were wrong.

Of course we Liberals were being quite conservative in worrying about the fact that Reaganesque tax cuts have always done just what they just did again: worrying that trying to finance the most expensive war ( toldya so) we've had by depending on a solidly disproved dogma, by borrowing abroad rather than domestically and firing anyone who suggested fiscal or military foresight, worrying that the light at the end of the tunnel only they could see, was only the fires of fiscal hell.

Debt doesn't matter,
Don't you know,
St. Ron the Reagan told us so.

The born-again believers are washed clean and born again into a new mythos, one where the Black Satan caused the massive recession which continues to deepen because of government spending that used to be good but now is bad. That means that economists who say that not only has a 1929 reprise been averted, but it's slowly getting better are the new Liberals talking down the economy by talking it up. If you're a TeaParty twit, you need things to be getting worse and indeed they do believe. They need to believe that their taxes went up with Obama and believe they do.

'The market is up, all's well with the world' won't be their Christmas carol again this year. Even though the market is up -- the Teabaggers think it's not and is going down. They insist the recession is deepening, that we have a tyrant in office and they insist their taxes are up when they aren't. They still rage about Death Panels and rally around the Witch of Wasilla like she were Joan of Arc.

That means that a conservative approach to economic realities is once again seditious, once again farleftliberal propaganda and those liberal people from Business Week must be talking up the economy to undermine freedom, prosperity and free enterprise.

"If Obama was a Republican, we would hear a never-ending drumbeat of news stories about markets voting in favor of the President." says Dan Greenhaus, chief economic strategist for Miller Tabak + Co.

It's just the kind of farleftliberal stuff you might expect from an institutional trading firm in Jew Controlled New York rather than the illiterate hordes sucking up seditious stupidity from the teats of Mother Fox who know better.

"It's a poor sort of memory that works only backwards," said the Queen to Alice,

but of course she wasn't American and couldn't be expected to understand.


* "Brother, Can You Spare a Dime," lyrics by Yip Harburg, music by Jay Gorney (1931)

Comic Relief, Sorta

I just have to share it with you, dear Zoners. The knowledge of this gem is too precious to keep it only to myself.

From NYT

All This Anger Against the Rich May Be Unhealthy

By PAUL SULLIVAN

BEATING up on the wealthy seems to be the order of day. I suspected that. But a recent Wealth Matters column touched a particularly raw nerve. It looked at how even people with sizable fortunes were concerned about money in this recession and the impact that could have on the rest of us.

Readers rejected the attempt to understand the concerns of the rich.

“That’s so stupid that you ought to be slapped for it,” one woman wrote. My favorite began: “Bowties and Reaganomics are for losers. You can cry for the rich all you want, the rest of us will be happy to see them get taxed.”

The vehemence in these e-mail messages made me wonder why so many people were furious at those who had more than they did. And why are the rich shouldering the blame for a collective run of bad decision-making? After all, many of the rich got there through hard work. And plenty of not-so-rich people bought homes, cars and electronics they could not afford and then defaulted on the debt, contributing to the crash last year.

But in this recession, anger flows one way. Eric Dammann, a Manhattan psychoanalyst, theorizes that a lot of people are angry that the rules of the game seem to have changed.

“There’s always been envy and hatred toward the rich, but there was also a strong undercurrent of admiration that was holding these people up as a goal,” Mr. Dammann said. “This time it’s different because it feels like it’s a closed club and the rich have an unfair advantage.”

What is troubling is that the anger has hardened for some into a suspicion that all wealthy people are motivated purely by self-interest, said Brad Klontz, a financial psychologist in Hawaii and a co-author of the forthcoming book, “Mind Over Money: Overcoming the Money Disorders That Threaten Our Financial Health” (Random House).

“The script goes like this: Money is bad, rich people are shallow and greedy, and people become rich by taking advantage of others,” Mr. Klontz said. “But the same people who say money is bad say money is connected to their self-worth — they wished they had it and you didn’t.”

In boom or bust, envy is natural, and the desire for a level playing field is understandable. But so too is the desire to do better financially, to the point where it seems at times to be hardwired into our national psyche. “To revile the rich is to revile the American dream,” said Robert Clarfeld, president of the wealth management firm Clarfeld Financial Advisors.

This resentment was so palpable, I started to wonder if it was having any effect — were the wealthy aware of it, and if they were, did they care?

Continue and, whatever you do, stay healthy! Which means do not get angry at the rich. They have enough problems as it is.

====

To help you get healthier, I encourage you to see this Elizabeth Warren's interview where she says that "bank bonuses make (her) speechless." While you are listening to her, remember to breathe deeply and repeat some relaxation mantra -- for example, "I love the Trumps!" or "Goldman Sachs is awesome!" or whatever works for you.

If you can get through the whole segment without blowing a gasket, you are quite healthy, my friends, and you can start focusing your anger on the real culprits here -- the poor, who destroy this wonderful country of ours and its robust economy through their willfully negligent poverty.

If not, we'll think of some more advanced techniques for you.

For example, Dr. Dammonn, the Manhattan psychoanalyst interviewed for the article (an aside: these guys have the highest fees in the helping profession) has this useful advice, should you be ready for the more advanced exploration of your clearly irrational anger at the rich:

People who get caught up in this paranoia spend all night reading these blogs, and six months later they haven’t done anything to better themselves. Even if they’re right, there is a lot of wasted energy put into this. They need to look at the mistakes they’ve made in their life.

Ouch. Paranoia!* And Dr. Dammonn is an expert, so surely he would not throw clinical terms willy-nilly here. If you're angry at the rich for, say, ruining our economy, your lost house and your unemployment, while you watch them pocket unprecedented bonuses yet again, you are obviously paranoid, what else?

Besides, instead of criticizing the poor rich, you should look at yourself and focus on your own mistakes in life. Why, if you didn't make horrendous mistakes, you'd be rich too, just like the rest of us.

Well, OK, the rich are not totally heartless, not all of them. I'm sure Dr. Dammonn would like to help you to uncover your mistakes. But be mindful of the fact that psychoanalytic treatment requires several sessions a week and the fee per session may be as high as your mortgage.

You may also try to uncover those mistakes on your own -- in that case, the book(s) peddled in the article and other services of their authors should be helpful too. IF you can afford them.

And whatever you do, think of the children! Listen to the good psychologists, they know what they are talking about:

Mr. Klontz is even more concerned that this obsession with money and blame will affect children. He said the risk is creating a generation that distrusts investing and associates wealth with greed.

“People in their 20s have watched their parents lose their money and now they think, ‘You can’t trust banks, you can’t trust anyone.' ”

Oh no, we certainly would not our young people to distrust banks! Because if you can't trust banks, whom can you trust?

And this quote, from yet another expert, quite possibly beats them all:

“To revile the rich is to revile the American dream,” said Robert Clarfeld, president of the wealth management firm Clarfeld Financial Advisors.

Damn right. But why stop there? Let's just tell it like it is: To revile the rich is un-American and unpatriotic. Downright treasonous.

*That takes me back to the good old days of the Soviet psychiatry, where dissidents and most of those who had a beef with the system and did not believe the official propaganda telling people that they lived in the best of all worlds, were officially diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia and other assorted mental maladies. The diagnosis was often followed by mandatory inpatient treatment designed to cure the "sick" of his or her dangerous delusions.

This piece, so heavily and readily supported by the opinions of mental health experts is no different in its shameless pandering to the established ideology and attempts at pathologizing those who do not buy it.

Cross-posted at The Middle of Nowhere.

LETS GO VIRAL (WITH A MONDAY UPDATE)

You are invited to steal this picture. Drag and drop it to your desktop. Share it with friends. Post it on your blog if you are as annoyed as I am with Tempest in a Tea Bag Day.  All rights are hereby waived.

Our national debt is currently $11 trillion dollars.  Deficit spending by three, successive Republican administrations accounts for $9 trillion of the total … a whopping 82%.  Tempest in a Tea Bag Day is a deception whose real agenda is to blame GOP transgressions on Democrats and obstruct plans to fix our economy.

Nine out of 11 trillion dollars in total!  What an interesting ratio.  It reminds me of another 9/11, but undoubtedly any reference to the terrorist attack of 9/11 would surely offend (although the insinuation is damn tempting).

So go ahead: Steal this picture, post it, and go viral.

MONDAY UPDATE:
A special thanks to our friends and colleagues who supported this effort during the weekend: Brain Rage, Captain Fogg, TAO, Green Eagle, Shaw Kenawe, Generik Brand, and others too numerous name here.  Our friend, The Deranged Leftwing Baker, went even further by adding this graph to embellish the above:

(Double click to enlarge; back button to return)

Sometimes a clever cartoon makes a complex topic even simpler and more dramatic: