Taxpayers first

The nasty guy released his detailed budget for the fiscal year starting in October. It is disappointingly, but expectedly, nasty. Cuts to just about everything except Defense and Medicare and a good chunk of the gutted Education budget designated to go for school choice efforts (see why that is a bad thing here and here). Nasty through and through. I’ll let you read your favorite news source to see the depths of the nastiness.

Many hope Congress won’t be nearly so drastic. It depends on how much they feel they must respond to voters. So far this year that record isn’t good. Even if what Congress passes isn’t “drastic” it will cut the social safety net. But the nasty guy’s budget is what all GOP Congresscritters would like to enact if they thought they would survive the next election.

What really annoyed me was the language used to describe this budget.

Mick Mulvaney is the Director of the Office of Management and Budget. That means this nasty budget is something carries his name and blessing. In presenting it today he said this budget will be “putting taxpayers first.” He also said:

Taking money from someone without an intention to pay it back is not debt. It is theft. This budget makes it clear that we will reverse this larceny.

He has the audacity to say the poor and working poor are thieves? This is an amazing amount of chutzpah. The poor? Really? Let’s go back to something I wrote a year ago about who the thieves are.

I wish for words stronger than “audacity” and “chutzpah.” I even checked a thesaurus and didn’t find something strong enough. Brazen? Gall? Nerve? Arrogance? Though a phrase from my time in the auto industry comes to mind: “He could bowl with those balls.”

On to that odious phrase of “putting taxpayers first.”

Many of the people paying taxes are the working poor. I’ll come from another angle: 73% of of those on public assistance are the working poor. They have a job. They pay taxes. Yet their employer is so stingy they still can’t get by and need assistance for basics such as food and shelter. This budget does not put these taxpayers first. It actually makes their situation much more precarious. And Mulvaney accuses these people of theft when it is their bosses who are stealing wage and productivity gains the workers made possible. And the GOP in Congress are promoting that theft by refusing to raise the minimum wage to a living wage.

And then we get to those who don’t have jobs because their local schools were a mess because of underfunding, who can’t afford a car and don’t have public transportation, who can’t afford child care, who can’t work because they can’t afford healthcare, who can’t work because…

Because Mulvaney and the people whose bidding he does have stolen the future of person after person.

But what annoys me most is the implication that the government should value taxpayers higher than anyone else. Part of that is a ranking thing – that taxpayers as people are worth more and should be ranked higher than others. And part of it is the idea that taxpayers don’t have to share. They can separate themselves from the rest of us. The well-being of the country as a whole doesn’t depend on us working together.

This is a blow to building community, to the reality that we’re in this together. We need to take care of one another. We are one nation.

Compassion through misinformation

This past Tuesday was the 40th anniversary of Roe. v. Wade. The New York Times had a story on the latest piece of the battle for women's choice. The number of Crisis Pregnancy Centers is increasing. These are places that claim to present a "compassionate approach to the issue." But nearly all don't have actual medical staff and don't disclose they aren't medical facilities. They cannot offer effective pre-natal care. They refuse to acknowledge one possibility is abortion and are sometimes dishonest in pushing a woman to carry the pregnancy to term. These facilities do not fall under any regulations. A commenter tells the story of a woman who wasn't pregnant going to one of these places. The nurse did an ultrasound and soon returned with an image of a fetus, asking the patient to give it a name.

There are also reports of the number of restrictions on abortion so that soon the right to choose is in name only.

Hardworking, uncomplaining, and non-mooching

Quite a while ago my father gave me the March/April issue of Washington Monthly. I've been reading it when my computer gets bogged down. That means I've read a lot of it (though I'm not done yet) but mostly only a couple paragraphs at a time. There are a couple articles to bring to your attention.

Steven Teles reviews the book The Tea Party and the Remaking of Republican Conservatism by Skocpol and Williamson. My comments are based on the review, not on the book. Teles (as well as the authors) think we should accurately understand the Tea Party because they are creating structures so that they will stick around for a while. The authors spent time visiting Tea Party meetings to get the unfiltered story of what the members really want.

Though the Koch brother have dumped a lot of money into the national Tea Party, the local chapters don't see that money and aren't beholden to Koch influence. They should be able to stick around when the Koch money disappears.

Most Tea Party members are white, older, and middle class. A basic principle in their politics is government is great when it helps people like them -- hard working, uncomplaining, non-mooching, patriotic and such -- with programs such as Social Security and Medicare that are "earned" through paying taxes. But government is a threat when it helps people who have not worked and thus don't taxpayer support.

That may not be racist (and the members say they aren't) but it can easily come across that way -- government benefits are for us (white, middle class) and not for you (black, poor). This sounds a lot like conservative principles that Terrence Heath talks about in which your moral worth depends on your wealth and government services are only for the morally worthy.

Many Tea Party members treat the Constitution the same way they treat the Bible. The text is inerrant and any person should be able to read it and understand the literal meaning.

Back in the Bush II years the GOP talked about limited government, then betrayed those principles with continued pork-barrel spending, expansion of Medicare through Part D, massive regulatory programs, and "compassionate conservatism" outreach to minorities and immigrants. Add to that the economic collapse as Bush was leaving office left Tea Party members with no trust in the GOP leadership. That led to their demands that those they elect to Congress shall not compromise. Alas, they don't understand how government works, even just the dry mechanics of getting a bill passed -- or truly understanding what is in most bills.

Teles suggests the local Tea Party chapters would have greatest effect by turning a watchful gaze on local government to examine where the mayor and council throw needless regulations in the way of business and violate personal liberty and property. They might get liberals to help.



The Washington Monthly cover article discusses what Obama has accomplished in three years and why Obama isn't getting the credit. The article was written by Paul Glastris. There is also a list of Obama's top 50 accomplishments (though I don't see a link).

Some of Obama's accomplishments will only be appreciated many years from now. Part of it is because what Obama did is only a kernel of something that will grow into great benefit. An example is the Affordable Care Act. Many provisions don't kick in for another couple years. And the Act is only the first step in a big change in how we do health care. Obama is derided for not being able to make it all happen at once. Another example is the American Recovery Act, better known as the stimulus. Yeah, the amount of money was too small, but other provisions -- such as the way money was rewarded -- will have long lasting effects.

Another reason why Obama doesn't get the credit is he didn't implement solutions the way his base wanted him to. Obama's bank rescue didn't include prosecution of Wall Street tycoons, but did get the banking industry working again and put regulations in place to lessen the chance of it happening again (though I wonder if the recently signed JOBS act undid some of that work). Another example is the auto bailouts. Those came with lots of restrictions, such as improved gas mileage goals, which mean car companies might actually make small cars at a profit. The article gives several more examples.

A third reason why Obama doesn't get much credit is because he is very reluctant (or perhaps not very good at) tooting his own horn. He could very easily do that by putting his accomplishments in context with his long-term vision.

Has Obama made mistakes? There have been no scandals (until recently with the Secret Service and that is minor). His policies have had no horrible unintended consequences (even saintly Washington had the Whiskey Rebellion). He has taken huge risks when warranted, such as the capture and killing of Osama bin Laden. But Obama has let the GOP roll over him too many times and has neither mastered the political games of Washington or been able to change them.

Obama's place in history? Looks pretty good. Maybe within the top ten presidents. But his legacy is very much dependent on being reelected. If he fails at that the GOP will expend a great deal of effort undoing what he has done and there will be no long-term benefits.

Nostalgic for Bush?

A decade ago Bush campaigned on the phrase Compassionate Conservatism. It was annoying to hear him praise a governmental program that helped the poor, then cut it in the next budget. At least Bush gave the impression of being clueless of the effects of his actions. Who would have thought we would be nostalgic of any aspect of the Bush years?

But that is one aspect we can yearn for. According to essayist Terrence Heath, conservatives of today don't even bother with the pretense of being compassionate. Many of their words reveal just how much they don't care about the rest of us. The rest of Heath's essay delves into the one group that was ignored in the tax/stimulus deal that Obama just signed. Those are the unemployed who have already used up 99 weeks of unemployment insurance. It ain't pretty.

If a little deregulation is good...

The lead (not cover) article in Newsweek is "The Fall of America, Inc." by Francis Fukuyama. America has a "brand," a particular set of values we project and the rest of the world has, until recently, wanted to imitate. Two of the biggest ideas of the brand were unregulated capitalism and liberal democracy.

After the Great Depression and prior to Reagan governments thought the more programs and regulation they offered the better things were for their citizens. However, welfare states and red tape were proved to be dysfunctional (as shown by Communism). Reagan and Thatcher cleared a lot of that away and while they made it easier to fire workers (and made the economy more chaotic), it also made it easier to hire them. That led to three decades of growth.

The problem is that Reagan's pragmatism became dogmatic ideology. Just because tax cuts and deregulation set the stage for growth doesn't mean that even more tax cuts and more deregulation will mean more growth. Clinton raised taxes and the economy still grew. This fallacy was masked because foreign governments were so willing to buy up our debt, leading Cheney to proclaim, "deficits don't matter." But the dollar dropped and the credit markets have frozen, proving Cheney wrong.

The goal of exporting liberal democracy has been around since at least the end of WWI and until Bush II has not been controversial. But Bush's claim of liberating Iraq for reasons of democracy has been seen as a cover for Imperialist goals.

The next president has a lot of work to restore our brand. And one important ingredient is to replace dogma (on both sides) with pragmatism.

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If you remove regulation what stands against greed and corruption besides conscience? The recent credit crash showed us that when it is always legal to make a buck and there are no bad consequences to making a buck, people are going to rake in the bucks until disaster happens. Then the perpetrators will moan about the corruption their deregulation made inevitable.

Do the deregulators honestly believe their efforts will build a better society? Does self-interest drive society to its greatest heights? Is raking in money good for the society as a whole or just for the one pulling in the bucks? Do the people who are left behind deserve it? (I wrote about that just a few days ago.) Perhaps they aren't greedy enough? Isn't having a conscience giving the other guy an advantage?

If greed equals profit, then capitalism says any personal enrichment can be justified as a contribution to the society. What rises to the top of society isn't the fittest, but the unfit -- those who only know how to enrich themselves and know how to influence lawmakers to aid in protecting their money and removing constraints to make more.

If deregulation is the goal of conservatism then what we're living through now is success. Even in this "success" McCain is calling for reform. What does he really mean? Perhaps he claims the fundamentals are sound to reassure businessmen that the market will take care of itself and he need do nothing. Perhaps he'll do the bare minimum. Perhaps he'll call for more deregulation. All of which will lead us back to where we are now.

Greed is moral

How does one translate greed into moral superiority?

Over the last couple weeks while Henry Paulson was demanding Congress act now to bail out Wall Street there were competing voices in that Congress that said what Paulson proposed is not the best way to rescue the economy but the urgency compressed the legislative timeline so much their own proposals were not heard. There were also lots of blogsphere voices claiming that Paulson's proposal would only enrich those who caused the fiasco in the first place. That's when I began to think that none of the plans were laid out in much detail for public consumption (not that I nor many of my fellow citizens are well enough versed in economics to tell much about any plan) and that all of the plans could be a particular Congresscritter's way to enrich their own fat cat constituent and themselves as well. Alas, there is no way to evaluate that so one should just rely on those who know better. But they have a pretty poor record of acting in the best interests of the country instead of those at the top of the economic heap. Sigh.

Part of that record isn’t just financial. I wrote before on the comments of Terrence Heath who has been poking at the conservative believe that the wealthy have money because God gave it to them because they are morally superior. By the same logic those that didn't have money were morally inferior and not worthy of the blessings of God (or of rich people). It couldn't be because they were greedy, could it? Heath showed how that belief affects many aspects of society, including the aftermath of Katrina. Why spend money rescuing people who don't deserve it?

Heath has expanded that concept another step. First he pokes around with the idea that has popped up lately that blacks or gays were the cause of the financial meltdown (if I could only remember what I did with the trillion I'm accused of squandering). If the country would only get its moral house in order (and gays know what that means) or if banks would stop coddling minorities then God would smile on us and we'd all be rich again (or at least the rich would be rich again).

God supposedly bestows wealth on the faithful. That's an idea at least as old as America's sense of Manifest Destiny -- we were given the wealth of North America because we deserved it. But the poor face the financial equivalent of ex-gay programs. God wants you to be straight/wealthy and if you don't succeed it is because you didn't try hard enough or believe hard enough or because you are so deeply flawed that God has given up on you. Strange that those who are already straight/wealthy don't face that dilemma.

That idea is the "prosperity gospel." If you believe God he will make a way for you to be wealthy. Alas, that appears to have contributed to the subprime mess. God wants you to be wealthy so he hid your bad credit score from the eyes of the mortgage officer and blessed you with your first house. Never mind you'll never be able to pay for it. And if you put an extra large offering in the plate this morning God might be able to hide a few more unhelpful numbers.

Just a pastor-enrichment scam? Maybe not. At least while the party lasted. Many who had seen themselves as useless did get a sense of empowerment for a while. Until they were encouraged to use their house as an ATM to subsidize lavish living. Then a pastor's empowerment became a pastor's irresponsibility. And the faithful didn't fare so well -- which put them back under the cloud of being morally inferior

But while that party lasted those who were rich -- and thus by (their) definition morally superior -- were free to demand deregulation, raid public coffers, and blackmail the peasantry so they could keep and increase their money. It wasn't immoral because they were morally superior. Soon there was nothing left to defraud the public out of. So the last source of money is future generations. They'll be paying our gargantuan public debt for a long time. They'll also be paying through not being able to buy other things -- like retirement and health care -- because that money is paying off that debt.

Better a bleeding heart than none at all.

The title is from a bumper sticker found near Austin, TX, a very liberal city in a very conservative state. Conservative columnist George Will comments on that sticker and those like it saying, "the facts are a hostile witness." He cites data from a report by Arthur Brooks at Syracuse University titled "Who Really Cares: The Surprising Truth about Compassionate Conservatism." Conservatives are much more likely to donate to charity than liberals. He later refines this to religious conservatives (secular conservatives donate least). The reason appears to be religious affiliation -- and the percentage of Democrats who describe themselves as having no religion has quadrupled since the 1970s. Will also muses that Dems seem more likely to let government do their giving for them. Their own giving can't make up for a government that properly cares for the poor. In this discussion I note Will does not make a distinction between conservative government and conservative individuals. As I've noted with Katrina and other issues, our conservative government seems uninterested in helping the poor.

Contrast that with ideas taken from a review of two books of essays on the state of conservatism today. The Reagan years brought together four segments of conservatism, smoothing over the conflicts between them:

"Traditionalists value continuity, order and hierarchy; libertarians prize personal freedom and social spontaneity; neoconservatives blend the New Deal’s idealistic spirit with conservatism’s muscular nationalism; and religious conservatives fight relativism, secularism and immorality. … Libertarians and traditionalists disagree on the relative importance of liberty and virtue; many neocons care not a fig about abortion, while religious conservatives often seem to care about little else. "

But Bush has been playing each off against the others, getting all four strands upset with him and each other. Will the conservative movement as a whole survive? Opinions vary.

To point up the contrast between conservative government and individuals: Would a religious conservative government care more about the poor? (Alas, such a government would care a great deal about what goes on in bedrooms.) Would a less religious government not chase so many Dems away from religion and personal giving? When I wrote before of the conservative belief that "people who are better off are better people" and the poor deserve what they get, which branch of conservatism is talking?

The moral hazard of dropping off the keys

I've written before about ethics of compassionate conservatism and the strange ethical solutions it appears to produce. The goal of the American Dream was owning a home. That leads to a more stable society in many ways. Some (including Bush) have also talked about an ownership society, one in which the average person (at least average middle class) has a stake in the economy both through home and stock investments. Those dreams and that ownership took hits during the dot-com burst and the Enron meltdown. Now we have a house meltdown. Many home buyers were sold interest-only mortgages. If the price of the house rose, the homeowner won. If it fell, the bank lost. Many homeowners were essentially renters, having little or no equity in the place where they lived. They crunch the numbers, see they owe more than the house is now worth, and see there is no way to get back above water. They even see repairs to the house not as improving their asset, but shelling out money -- absorbing costs -- to maintain someone else's property. Their solution: mail the keys to the bank and leave. Some even trash the place on their way out. Actual rent is usually cheaper (though with landlords defaulting and banks kicking out tenants rental properties are getting harder to find). It is better to default on the house then the credit card (that used to be the reverse). Americans are finding the dream betrayed. A candidate who dares to tap into this anger could go a long way this fall. By walking away thwarted homeowners find they may have lost out, but they can take their bank down with them. Those interest-only loans are like loaded weapons left in every house. Banks find it aimed at themselves. The Bushies find the weapon aimed at their buddies and only now must they act.

Bailing out the mortgages creates a moral hazard. Think of it this way: One man dug a hole to capture a second man, then the first man falls in as well. Which do you rescue and why? The Bushies are quite content in rescuing only the first man. The first man is the bank that made a bad loan on risky assumptions. The second man is the average homeowner. The homeowner isn't helped because economists say it is a moral hazard to not pay for the consequences of your risky actions. But with the bailout of Bear Sterns, who engaged in risky behavior as well, they are avoiding the consequences of their risky behavior. Most of the management gets golden parachutes while most of the staff gets a pink slip. No moral hazard here? Any government help of the common man and you get screams of "socialization!" especially in socialized health care. But now we get socialize wealth care -- the transfer of money from the government to select private citizens.

Responses to a conservative rant

A progressive baited a conservative and was repaid with a rant about how liberals are really socialists -- no surprise in the exchange. The progressive then posed the question: How would you answer this guy? The answers are worth reading, especially the one that lists several bible passages about what Jesus and others had to say about the rich and the poor (yeah, you either must read the comments in this entry or look them up yourself):

Matthew 19:20-22

Luke 14:12-14

2 Corinthians 9:8-10

James 2:6-7

Proverbs 18:23

Matthew 19:23

Luke 6:24

Luke 16: 13-25

Deuteronomy 15:4-11

And they call themselves Christian.

Parasites and Leeches

I wrote a couple months ago about the view that conservatives think the Katrina response has been appropriate, though from my viewpoint it has been a disaster. Here is confirmation of the conservative's take. This is from Neal Boortz, who said it on his own Neal Boortz Show which is from Cox Radio Syndication. Speaking of the poor people who needed to be rescued after Katrina hit New Orleans, he said:

" That wasn't the cries of the downtrodden; that's the cries of the useless, the worthless. New Orleans was a welfare city, a city of parasites, a city of people who could not and had no desire to fend for themselves. You have a hurricane descending on them and they sit on their fat asses and wait for somebody else to come rescue them. 'It's somebody else's job to get me out of here. It's somebody else's job to save my life. Not mine. Send me a bus, send me a limo, send me a boat, send me a helicopter, send me a taxi, send me something. But you certainly don't expect me to actually work to get myself out of this situation, do you? Haven't you been watching me for generations? I've never done anything to improve my own lot in life. I've never done anything to rescue myself. Why do you expect me to do that now, just because a levee broke?'

And then [John] Edwards [in New Orleans to withdraw from the presidential campaign] said, yeah, it was Washington's problem, it was all Washington's problem, it was all George Bush's fault. You had a city of parasites and leeches, and that's George Bush's fault? So, boy, I need to slow down. I'm saying too many of the things I actually believe today."

As a commentator translates, their poverty makes them undeserving of help. Some people shouldn't survive and their poverty, which means they were unable to get out of the way, identifies them as unfit for survival. Thus helping them is immoral. It is simply nature's way of cleaning up, of clearing the way for more affluent housing and owners.

That same conservative viewpoint has brought us have a spreading AIDS crisis among the poor of Washington DC and a horribly inadequate evacuation plan for our capital that would be needed in the case of a dirty bomb or bioterror attack.

This essay came to my attention through another by the same author. The credit crisis and impending recession is now hitting the middle class. These people were supposed to have a sustaining job and a house. With that one had arrived, one was secure. One was no longer one of "those" people, a parasite and leech like the people in New Orleans. But the bottom has dropped out. Interest rates on the house loan have reset. The house itself is worth less. And layoffs are looming.

And yet, talk in Washington is that some people don't deserve to be rescued from their predicament. They should be left to drown, identified by their lack of economic resources. Their middle class status is smoke and they find they are one of "those" people after all.

Christians get on my nerves

It seems some conservative churches are reviving the old practice of shunning. The story in this posting is about a 71 year old woman in a Baptist Church in Allen, Mich. She declared the new pastor needed to follow church bylaws and appoint deacons. The pastor countered since there were only 12 members it wasn't necessary. She insisted. He declared she was not properly submitting to authority as the bible said she should and had her arrested, escorted out, and told not to return. This pastor said what a lot of conservative churches have been saying: not only should the church define morality, it must enforce it too. Liberal churches who preach acceptance are only leading their members astray. This story demonstrates that while 72% of Americans say a supreme being exists, the same number say the church is full of hypocrites and 44% say "Christians get on my nerves." When travel was limited a shunned person led an isolated existence and that was frequently enough to get them to reform. Force me to leave the church? I'll go find a community where I'm wanted.

Defining conservatism

Who is a conservative and what is being conserved?

A starting place:

One of the key differences between liberals and conservatives is their view of the essential nature of man. Liberals believe that man is essentially good and given the right environment, will mostly do good. Conservatives believe that man is basically bad, and lacking proper discipline and guidelines, will mostly do bad. Liberals wonder what we can change for the better; while Conservatives worry that changing what stands will almost always be for the worse.

Since our country and culture is so diverse it would be difficult to conserve much of anything beyond the Constitution. But just that allows us to conserve:

limitations of the powers of a Federal government, protecting the rights of the people by preventing congress from abridging freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of assembly, freedom of religious worship, the right to bear arms, preventing unreasonable search and seizure, cruel and unusual punishment and self-incrimination and guaranteeing due process of law and a speedy public trial with an impartial jury

And the Constitution says that list may not be complete.

But there is a much older tradition that people want to conserve. It includes:

religious intolerance, persecution of minorities, genocide, manifest destiny, might makes right, slavery, racism, sexism, white supremacy, Christian militarism and imperialism and homophobia

I know which set I want to conserve.

Successful Katrina response

After Hurricane Katrina, FEMA instituted policies to get money into victim's hands quickly. These policies were immediately overruled, with the reason given that FEMA needed to thoroughly review the requests to make sure they weren't fraudulent. But those reviews did nothing to stop the fraud, which produced one of the most extraordinary displays of scams and bungles in modern history ($2 billion and counting). The other effect is that low-income housing is not getting rebuilt in New Orleans, to the point that many agencies have stopped their attempts. New Orleans will be less black. A commentator feels this matches conservative philosophy quite well: People who are better off are better people. The poor got that way because they are bad people. It is their own fault. Helping them only reinforces their badness and takes money away from the good people. Can the government help people? Yes. Should it? According to conservatives, no, it shouldn't. Therefore conservatives make sure that it doesn't help them, even though it can. Thus the Katrina response is a success. Quite a contrast to what I understand of Christianity. For the record, my Christmas card photo was me on a Katrina work mission.