Submitted By: Mike Spindell, Guest Blogger
When I awoke a short time ago my mind was in its usual morning fog that slowly dissipates as I go through my wake-up routine which includes laying out the 35 or so pills that I take to stay alive. That fog mentally is usually a jumble of wide ranging short thoughts that are later forgotten as the fog lifts after my first coffee. On the way to the bathroom for my morning ablutions I found myself thinking about the biggest news all week which had been the shutdown of the government and the crisis that ensued. Suddenly, as an idea arose that woke me from the fog. Political Theater, it is all political theater. The threatened shutdown by the Republican Congressman, led by John Boehner et. al. was merely a show whose purpose was to destroy the publicity that would have surrounded the inception of enrollment in the Affordable Care Act (ACA) dubbed by the conservative PR geniuses “Obamacare”. How obvious this was took my breath away and also gave me some chagrin that it took me so long to see this con job in the making, while I mulled over the ramifications of a government shutdown. As the President has said and as some Republican have opined the GOP’s great fear regarding “Obamacare” is that it will succeed. Since enrollment was scheduled to begin on October 1st, without the shutdown speculation dominating the news cycle there would have been much publicity on the beginning of people enrolling in the plan. There would have been actual discussion of the plan and not just the cacophony of misinformation deftly spread by well placed conservative rumor mongers, broadcast blaringly on FOX News and flacked by the innumerable leaders of the “Tea Party”. Our mainstream media would play their continuing game of false equivalence by blithely accepting all information as being equal and not bothering to supply context when lies are told in the service “informing” the public.
Instead we have a manufactured crisis that sends the ACA to the back pages of virtual news media and we have faux layoffs and service loss endlessly debated. Now in truth this thought make me even a little sad for those “Tea Party” congresspeople that haven’t been let in on the nature of the game, nor their role as pawns in the manipulations of some the wealthy elite in this country. As I explained awhile ago in these guest blogs: http://jonathanturley.org/2011/08/02/tea-party-and-the-myth-of-a-grassroots-movement/#more-38049 and http://jonathanturley.org/2013/02/16/tea-party-a-phony-movement-mantled-as-legitimate/ the so-called “Tea Party” is not a grassroots movement, but the creation of the Koch, via an organization known as “Freedomworks” which they fund. On the Bill Maher show last Friday night one of his panel guests was the President and CEO of “Freedomworks” Matt Kibbe. From my perspective he was debunked by the panel, particularly Congressman Alan Cranston. What caught my attention though, was that Kibbe was at one point railing about how big government was run by insider lobbyists. None on the panel, or Maher, were perceptive enough to call him out on this since he is the quintessential lobbyist for the Koch Brothers. To my mind there is nothing to see here folks, move along and allow yourselves to be distracted by yet another manufactured crisis, designed to prevent you from actually evaluating the health care plan that is now available to you without adequate health care, or who are paying far too much for what should be a basic right of citizenship, health care. The Affordable Care Act is not my ideal of what American health insurance should be about because I believe in the “single payer” system used in most civilized nations. However, it is far better than what we already have and because of that should be fairly evaluated by the public. Perhaps though that fair evaluation will never get a chance since there are those who consciously work to distract us through propaganda, mythology and political theater into supporting what is in our own worst interests.
After I had written and posted this to my surprise I discovered this article in The New York Times. “A Federal Budget Crisis Months in the Planning” http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/06/us/a-federal-budget-crisis-months-in-the-planning.html?hp&_r=0 . A short excerpt:
“WASHINGTON — Shortly after President Obama started his second term, a loose-knit coalition of conservative activists led by former Attorney General Edwin Meese III gathered in the capital to plot strategy. Their push to repeal Mr. Obama’s health care law was going nowhere, and they desperately needed a new plan.
Out of that session, held one morning in a location the members insist on keeping secret, came a little-noticed “blueprint to defunding Obamacare,” signed by Mr. Meese and leaders of more than three dozen conservative groups.
It articulated a take-no-prisoners legislative strategy that had long percolated in conservative circles: that Republicans could derail the health care overhaul if conservative lawmakers were willing to push fellow Republicans — including their cautious leaders — into cutting off financing for the entire federal government.”
Perhaps my subconscious was channelling, but it seems that my idea through the morning fog has some weight to it.
Submitted By: Mike Spindell, Guest Blogger
Bron: No, monarchy is not okay. Didn’t I say Democracy was a good thing?
Large corporations are not okay either.
As for being evil geniuses: Perhaps you failed to notice they DID NOT go out of business (except for Lehman Brothers which was purposely cannibalized by its peers), they DID get bailed out to the tune of literally trillions, which, by the way, others made as part of their trillions in lost bets. I thought you were an engineer, are you truly this arithmetically impaired?
The trillions lost by them were trillions gained by others, and then they got trillions in bail outs from the taxpayers using what amounted to blackmail, which was a robbery. The same thing about the much lauded “turnaround” in the auto industry, that failure was the result of sucking billions in profits out of an industry until it was killed, and then having the government resurrect it to great acclaim: All while ignoring the sociopaths counting up the green they had been irresponsibly draining for decades, planning to stick creditors and stockholders and auto-industry employees with the empty bag of defaults on debt.
As for your other minimizing claims, you live in a fantasy world where you recast tyrannosaurs as just some sort of big friendly dogs.
Tony C wrote: “… they DID get bailed out to the tune of literally trillions…”
[cough, cough]… uh, are you using a little hyperbole here or am I missing something?
Maybe you got confused and was thinking about the bailout that our nation needs from President Obama’s out of control spending and Obamacare? That is certainly in the trillions of dollars.
The bailout distributed $608 billion to 936 recipients. The companies returned $371 billion and paid $183 billion in revenues resulting in a net loss thus far of $53.6 billion.
http://projects.propublica.org/bailout/list
That $53.6 billion loss from the bailout 5 years ago is only about half of what has been identified as Medicare fraud happening EACH year.
http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/Articles/2013/07/24/The-Government-Is-Wasting-More-Money-than-You-Think
The upside is that some of this is still being paid back because these so-called “evil corporations” have this mentality of turning money and labor into profit, whereas the government has this mentality of taking taxes from taxpayers and wastefully spending it, even if it is for airplanes that are never used.
DM: Most of the Republicans in Congress are passionate and logical, you just do not realize what they are being passionate and logical about, because it is not in their best interest to tell you that. Except for a few true morons like Bachmann and Gohmert, they (like their Democrat counterparts) have no real interest in achieving the goals they claim. Their “incompetence” in getting to those goals (on both sides of the aisle) is a convenient fiction, nothing else. You should have noticed by now that when it comes to giving away hundreds of billions of dollars to corporate interests (like the bank bailouts and drilling rights and immunity to telecoms) Congress has very little trouble coming to a consensus.
tony c:
So monarchy is ok but large corporations arent? It is ok to be able to basically own a person if you are king but if you pay them or charge a buck for a hamburger you are exploiting them?
I know that some companies dont treat their people well but that really isnt earth shaking, I know some governments that dont treat their people well either. The governments which treat their people poorly can shoot them and often do, corporations dont usually shoot disgruntled employees nor do they keep them from going to another corporation with barbwire and machine guns.
The largest corporation does not control armies and atomic weapons. They have little real power, oh they can pollute a well or maybe even have an individual killed [which I doubt] but they cant do much else. The big banks didnt even have enough sense to say no to the housing bubble.
You want me to believe those people are evil geniuses when most nearly went out of business and had to be bailed out?
Bron: No, what appeared out of “whole cloth” was more like unprecedented leverage with the Industrial Revolution and the invention of “engines” that would replace muscle labor. Also, the inception of the middle class and markets that would eventually be measured in the billions of customers. How many individual buyers have by now bought something from Exxon or McDonald’s or Walmart?
The first “million dollar” CEOs did not appear until the 1920’s; unless you count the literally Royal business enterprises of Kings and Emperors. Before the Industrial Revolution, the leverage to create giant global businesses (like Exxon or McDonald’s) was quite rare and typically required the endorsement of a country’s leader.
Unlimited greed was certainly present, especially in the conflation of Royal States engaged in for-profit business, but the ability to exercise it was rather limited; even for Royalty: Fellow Monarchs did not always take kindly to trade or exploitation of their subjects (because their subjects were their property to exploit). The growth of Democracy (a good thing) combined with the Industrial Revolution (also a good thing) has had the unintended consequence of opening the door to trans-national companies that can game the fragmented patchwork of world wide governance to avoid all law and morality; even laws against slavery, both actual and effective. That is a bad thing, and due to greed unadulterated by empathy or compassion for its victims.
tony c:
you act like like greed just appeared in the early 19th century out of whole cloth.
There is a problem with out government, it goes back to the mid 19th century when the wealthy sent their sons to Europe to study. They brought back intellectual garbage and it worked its way into our society. The result of that intellectual garbage is what you see.
DavidM:
“You might think that the stakes are high enough for Republicans to put in some serious time trying to clarify their message. As the great economist Alfred Marshall once said, facts do not speak for themselves. If we are waiting for the Republicans to do the speaking, the country is in big trouble.
Democrats, by contrast, are all talk. They could sell refrigerators to Eskimos before Republicans could sell them blankets.
Indeed, Democrats sold Barack Obama to the American public, which is an even more amazing feat, considering his complete lack of relevant experience and questionable (at best) loyalty to the values and institutions of this country.”
“Today, the Democrats’ buzzword is “clean” — as in the endlessly repeated statement that Republicans in the House of Representatives should send a “clean” bill to the Senate. Anything less than a blank check is not considered a “clean” bill.
The Constitution gives the House of Representatives the responsibility to originate all spending bills, based on what they think should and should not be funded. But the word “clean” is now apparently supposed to override the Constitution.”
http://jewishworldreview.com/cols/sowell100813.php3#.UlQ6ZRA4xGM
Bron:
Yep. Sowell is right again.
I saw Will Cain on CNN earlier today. Wow! He was great. Passionate and logical. I wish the Republicans in Congress were like that. We really need it right now.
Thank you, Any Guest Blogger.
Any Guest Blogger: I have a response to Bron in limbo somewhere…
Bron: The Dutch East Indies company was not something the founders could plausibly extrapolate to Exxon, Walmart, JP Morgan, Bank of America, McDonald’s, Microsoft, the manipulation of a hundred million mortgages, etc.
I believe it was Adams I was reading, his thought as to why Congressman would refrain from self-serving behavior is that they lived amongst the people they represented and would have to return to their farms and community and trade as honorable men. Really? Did it occur to him a single company could simply pay the Congressman a few million in a sweetheart real estate deal, and that would be worth it to prevent legislation that would cost the company hundreds of millions in, for example, safety precautions to keep them from exposing workers quite so wantonly to carcinogens? Did it occur to him that after getting insanely rich the Congressman could live anywhere in the world they wanted?
Apparently not, he thought “honor” would cover that contingency.
Bron says: The corruption stems from the idea of unlimited government.
No it doesn’t. Corruption stems from greed, period. And three branches of government are clearly NOT a restraint on tyranny, since our President claims the executive right to simply declare an American citizen a terrorist and have them assassinated without charges or trial by the CIA on American soil or not. And also claims the right to search and seizure without a warrant, the right to declare journalists enemies of the state, the right to listen to your phone calls and store them forever, and on and on.
I don’t know what you’ve been smoking, Bron, but it has damaged your brain. This government we have was NOT the Founder’s idea. Their idea did not work, and in a time of crisis and vulnerability for us (World War II) the ever-ready profiteers seized opportunity and succeeded in a corporate coup. Eisenhower warned us about it, we did not heed that warning because, as we always are, we were successfully distracted from the big picture by our own near-sighted concerns, fear mongering, misplaced trust and bread and circuses.
The founder’s idea was majority rule (by various thresholds depending on the scope of the rule); that idea is quite explicit in the Constitution and their writing. Obamacare passed by majority rule, and according to the founder’s ideas, should be implemented on the schedule passed. Their idea is the minority loses, if they cannot become a majority they lose.
They do not mention the idea of a filibuster or minority blockade or blocking the vote. They believed in voting, counting the votes, and decisions being final and irrevocable until another vote actually overturns it. This, what is happening now, does NOT comport with their ideals in the least.
News from the VA regarding burials at National Cemeteries:
What the hell is a “reduced schedule” when you have dead bodies to bury? Stack them up in a storage shed?
I know it is still morning, but I think I need a stiff drink.
And by the way, did I mention the exclusive congressional gym and spa is open and fully staffed?
I see that the 2012 Nobel Prize winner in physics has been furloughed because of the shutdown. Dr. David Wineland is a quantum physicist with the National Institute of Standards and Technology.
Dr. Wineland has been deemed nonessential. “On the organization charts I’m just another worker, another non-essential,” Wineland told The Washington Post.
In other news, I see the exclusive gym and spa for congresscritters at the US Capital is up, running and fully staffed.
Tony C:
Dutch East Indies Company comes readily to mind.
There are now 2 competing philosophies of government in DC, limited government and unlimited government. Prior to that there was unlimited government and those who capitulated to that view.
The corruption stems from the idea of umlimited government.
3 branches of government is a restraint on tyranny. There are a large number of people who believe Obamacare is unconstitutional and wish to stop it. They are being represented. Those who like Obamacare are also being represented. Seems like the founders ideas are working.
Well said, Tony.
Bron: What you propose is tyranny.
It is not what I “propose,” it is what I think can happen. And I do not believe the government is functioning as our founders intended, I do not think they ever seriously entertained the idea of an imperial presidency or hundreds of multi-national corporations all far richer than King George able to buy elections and politicians at will.
I think if they HAD seriously entertained those ideas, they would have put something in the Constitution to prevent our current dilemma. I think they would have worded the Interstate commerce clause more carefully, I think they would have put some restrictions on defining the boundaries of districts to prevent gerrymandering, I think they would have, for one, made explicit the idea that once a law is passed it is de facto funded, or perhaps would have required laws to be explicitly funded as part of their passage.
As much as I think government is an absolute necessity and can be a force for good, like all forces it can be used to accomplish evil ends, and I think our particular government has been selfishly hijacked by multi-national corporations intent upon subjugating the world toward their own ends.
This is the outcome of economic and social evolution without rules, monopolies and cabals of the elite using their economic and physical power to subjugate everybody not born into the royal family.
The founders, as prescient as they may have been, failed to engineer a government immunized against pervasive greed on a global scale they probably could not have imagined, long before the Industrial Revolution.
Their idea of different branches competing with each other fails when corruption exceeds a certain threshold and the participants collude to throw the fights. I think what we see is pro-wrestling, a pretense of anger and rage loosely scripted, playing to their fans and enraging their opponent’s fans with insults, with each side quietly taking their agreed upon share of the box office (campaign donations) while serving their overlords (the billion dollar corporations).
Believe this puppetry is real at your own expense.
Excellent food for thought, Tony. Thanks for that.
OS:
Thomas Sowell is all about truth. I look at his Harvard education as proof that one can go to Harvard and not become corrupted.
He is probably one of the top intellectuals in America today by virtue of intelligence and writings.
You may not like what he says but he has plenty of common sense and reverence for truth.
“He is probably one of the top intellectuals in America today by virtue of intelligence and writings.”
I would never say that Thomas Sowell is stupid. He is merely a sublimely ignorant man who cannot see anything but his own limited world view.
Tony,
I doubt seriously that Mr. Obama will declare a constitutional crisis; at least not in the form suggested by many. The House leadership would love for him to do that because it would give them an excuse to start impeachment proceedings. For all his shortcomings, no one ever accused him of not being a master strategist, and usually the smartest guy in the room. At the moment he seems to be a rope salesman, giving the radical Republicans all the rope they need.
Thomas Sowell is walking, talking proof that a Harvard degree does not imbue one with either common sense or reverence for the truth.
As for Fox, they never were anything but a cable channel created for the sole purpose of propaganda disguised as a news organization. As several research papers have shown, people who get their news of the world from Fox are less informed than people who don’t watch TV news at all.
DavidM, you are the poster boy for confirmation bias. Your picture ought to accompany the Wikipedia entry for it.
http://www.princeton.edu/~achaney/tmve/wiki100k/docs/Confirmation_bias.html
tony c:
“He can cite a Constitutional crisis, and demand the Supreme Court weigh in on the principle that a passed law is inherently and implicitly funded by its passing, in perpetuity until it is repealed, and immune to budget constraints in the execution of its stated purpose.”
there is “legislation by appropriation”, you can find examples of it. It is legal and has been done before, that is a matter of fact.
That is why we have 3 branches of government whether you like it or not, any one of which has the right to tell the other 2 to pound sand. Our government is actually working as the founders intended.
What you propose is tyranny. It sounds like a 21st century Reichstag fire to me.
DavidM:
have you seen this Thomas Sowell article?
“But we do know who had the option to keep the government running and chose not to. The money voted by the House of Representatives covered everything that the government does, except for ObamaCare.
The Senate chose not to vote to authorize that money to be spent, because it did not include money for ObamaCare. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid says that he wants a “clean” bill from the House of Representatives, and some in the media keep repeating the word “clean” like a mantra. But what is unclean about not giving Harry Reid everything he wants?”
http://jewishworldreview.com/cols/sowell100413.php3#.Uk7qyhA4xGM
What I take away is that whatever is being defunded which doesnt have to do with obamacare is being done by the president. if Sowell is correct, and I have little reason to doubt him, the shut down of national parks and monuments is a giant publicity scam.
Bron wrote: “if Sowell is correct, and I have little reason to doubt him, the shut down of national parks and monuments is a giant publicity scam.”
Exactly right. It is the Democrat way of maintaining a distraction so that the Congressional dialogue about funding Obamacare will not happen.
It seems strange to me how so many keep characterizing the Republicans as using leverage or holding the President hostage. The only way that is even remotely true is if Congress is expected to rubber stamp every resolution that the President wants to pass. In other words, the votes of Congressmen mean nothing, so don’t read the resolution or bills, and just vote them through because your President wants it. What kind of check and balance system is that? It is corrupt Chicago politics. The ones screaming about the Republicans not voting their way are all corrupt. Thanks for the link to the article.
DM: ou don’t get to be such a popular news outlet like Fox News by being an arm of the Republican party.
For the record I don’t watch any of them; not FOX, not CNN, not MSNBC.
Because none of them are NEWS outlets, they have all become less reliable, literally, than comedy shows: Jon Stewart is the most trusted news man in the country. Really, that is no joke; Google “Jon Stewart” +”most trusted”.
FOX gets ratings for the same reason other fictional shows get ratings, the level of entertainment and faux conflict they provide. You (and anybody watching MSNBC) might as well be getting your news from Chewbacca, at least that would be more entertaining.
Or from Stewart and Colbert; which is my personal preference.
Ratings do not indicate respect, ratings indicate entertainment value. Once television “news” shows get beyond reporting simple facts and videos, they are no longer “news.” Opinions and editorial and panel debates and arguments are entertainments, nothing more. Even if they are well reasoned and civil: They are not reporting something new that has happened or changed, they are not news.
DM says: and Candy Crowley seemed to be holding her nose in distaste through the interview.
The fact that this bothers you proves to me you have no interest in the news, you are emotionally invested in the viewpoint of Ted Cruz and identify with him to the point that Crowley’s distaste feels like a personal attack on you. You are not interested in news, you are interested in confirmation of your viewpoint by people in power without dissent. Does it bother you that Ted Cruz and others in his party treat liberals with disdain? Of course not, the evidence is in your own disdain for NBC. Disdain is fine by you as long as it remains one-sided, as long as it is your disdain for the opinions and feelings of others, it is only when your disdain is returned in kind that you cry foul.
Tony C wrote: “you are emotionally invested in the viewpoint of Ted Cruz and identify with him to the point that Crowley’s distaste feels like a personal attack on you.” … “Does it bother you that Ted Cruz and others in his party treat liberals with disdain? ”
Ted Cruz is new to Congress. I have never met him and know very little about him, so I have no emotional investment in whatever Ted Cruz says. He somewhat spearheaded some of this fracas in Congress when he filibustered in the Senate. Because the Senate is holding up funding the federal government, I am very interested in hearing what Cruz thinks about all this. Also, he is a Tea Party supporter, so I gain more insight to hearing the Tea Party position when I listen to him.
Crowley’s position did not feel like a personal attack on me. I was just very interested in what Cruz had to say, and her attitude was a minor distraction, just as it was when she came to President Obama’s defense with false information during the Presidential debates. To her credit, she apologized for that.
I have never seen Cruz treat liberals with disdain. Do you have an example of that? His interview on CNN was very respectful toward liberals.