Election reflection

I maintain that in an oligarcy such as ours, elections are nothing more than a pressure relief valve. Yesterday felt like January 1, hangovers all about. All of the celebrations of November 6 has all of the impact of a New Year’s Eve party. Back to work now. Nothing has changed, folks.

2006 was a referendum on Iraq, and Democrats took control of the House and effectively the Senate, and thereafter funded a “surge,” or expansion of that war. In 2008 the Democrats took control of the executive, and effectively had a “veto-proof” senate*, and thereafter became the party of aggressive war, terror, military spending, torture, Gitmo and other secret prisons, tax cuts, indefinite detention and even assassination of Americans. Obama has transformed the party in total to its perceived opposite.

All indications now are that in addition to all of this, the Democrats will now become the austerity party. It is an Orwellian body snatch, so perhaps you can understand how, on Tuesday evening as I saw the happy faces and wild celebrations, I thought of Donald Suherland letting out that awful howl, and turned to an old episode of Spin City. At least that show is reality-based.

I was a long-time activist with the Montana Wilderness Association in my years up there, and preservation of the roadless lands of the Last Best Place is an emotional issue for me. MWA went down the Pew/quisling path, or maybe I was too dense to see that they weren’t that effective anyway. I’m not a genius, you see. However, Jon Tester’s senate victory up there could spell the final solution for those lands, turning them over to the chainsaw jackals.

It has been a long, hard fight in Montana, and it ain’t over, but as my friend Steve Kelly reminded me, Montana’s BFF in the Senate was New Mexico’s Jeff Bingaman, now retired. Ron Wyden takes over that post. Bingaman had bottled up tester’s PR-encoded “Forest Jobs and Recreation Act.” I don’t know what to expect from Wyden, but know that Tester is long bought, so that Wyden is the last best hope for The Last Best Place.

Montana forests are only marginally productive from a timber harvest standpoint, and the “jobs” that Tester claims to care about will never materialize. Oligarchical politics requires use of code words in public, and “jobs” means “profits.” Along those lines, “Hope and Change” means “fill in the blank,” “terrorism” means “resistance,” and “War on Terror” meant “War of Terror.” There is an ongoing war on workers and the so-called “middle class.” It is called “austerity,” and it is the next great thrust of the oligarchy, spearheaded now by Democrats. Attacks are coming on Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. Democrats, once champions of these programs, are now the attack dogs.

It’s pretty disgusting, so you can imagine that as I saw the dew-eyed faces so relieved at Obama’s victory, I felt deep sadness. America is a low-information land, and TV news is the culprit. I watched Jon Stewart last night ridicule FOX news as one of their anchors went down to the basement to challenge the people calling the elections. I thought “Stewart! It’s show business fer chrissakes! They have to do that for their viewers, just as you have to ridicule Sarah Palin for yours.” But Stewart is no genius either. Remember his “Rally to Restore Sanity?” Even Bill Maher saw through that stupidity

There are new office holders all over the land, but public opinion is under the same management.
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*In the Senate 60 votes are required to pass all legislation. Democrats complain that Republicans use this rule to block them on important legislation. Democrats put that rule in place. See how it works?

38 thoughts on “Election reflection”

  1. Wyden is no gem, to be sure. He’s the only Democrat who has publicly signed onto turning Medicare into a voucher program. He also hails from Oregon, the largest timber-producing state in the nation last I checked.

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  2. Sen. Wyden is funded by big timber, and has Weyerhaeuser, Roseburg, Stimson, Plum Creek, Georgia-Pacific, International Paper, Boise Cascade — well, you get the picture. Montana’s dead-standing lodgepole is peanuts, and annual growth rates average 25%-35% of Oregon’s. Wyden and Tester are “timber” Democrats, brothers in crime against nature, and the survival of our (only) planet.

    The 60 vote rule is easily sidestepped. Look for a “rider” to pass anything controversial. It partially neutralizes the press and citizen opposition. Remember, one of Tester’s proudest legislative accomplishments, the wolf-delisting rider, was attached to a “must-pass” spending bill. Baucus and Tester both have logging bills pending designed to reduce Montana’s 6.4 million acres of roadless public forest by slightly less than 2 million acres. Riders have been their vehicle of choice to pass anti-environmental bills for special-interest friends. Ironic I think that Montana hunters support their own demise by failing to hold Tester’s feet to the fire after the election. What is the matter with Kansas, anyway?

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  4. Laughable.

    When other countries stop loaning us money who will man the gates in the wilderness or for that matter on “roadless roads”? Who will check your ATV for the proper sticker, measure your camp sites distance to the stream, evaluate your chain saw muffler?

    The silver lining about this election is the fact that economic armageddon arrives sooner rather than later.

    You state that this is the party of “austerity”?

    What proof of that? Welfare up, disability up, unemployment up, food stamps up, bailouts up, HC major up, free phones up, federal housing up, State and Fed pensions and salaries up, Fed and State workers up.

    Need I go on?

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    2. What makes you think that other countries are going to stop loaning us money? Especially when we are empire?

      Of course, if you think that economic armageddon comes with loss of empire, then bring it on, the sooner the better.

      As to “austerity”, just wait till the grand bargain between obama and congress gets struck. Or do you advocate the upcoming sequestration? Austerity measure either way, dictated by the monoparty, endorsed by the chief executive officer.

      Oh and a little fact checking:

      Fed and State workers up? Wrong.

      Unemployment up? Wrong.

      I could go on, but you get the point. Living in a fact-free universe has its perks, I guess. Methinks somebody still just has a hangover.

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        1. We could have a conversation here, Biggy, and even be in agreement, if your ideas did not begin and end at party boundaries. You really think they are different, and that is the problem I wrote about in the post above that you are responding to.

          If you read the post above.

          Your notions about wilderness are utilitarian, price-of-everything-value-of-nothing type thinking.

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          1. Wouldn’t you say my earlier statement sums up a “no difference notion”?

            “The silver lining about this election is the fact that economic armageddon arrives sooner rather than later.”

            I had hopes but then I’m a realist. The tipping point has been met, there’s no turning back. The middles of both parties have melted together intertwined into a death spiral.

            JC’s wishes full-filled.

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          1. So what? Please give some data-based support to your idea that government spending has in any way created or exacerbated our problems.

            To do this, I suggest you go to other countries, compare government spending to GDP, and do an analysis of relative health, and then provide specific economic reasoning as to why government is a problem.

            No links. Your opinions, so you fookin’ support them with your fookin’ thinking.

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            1. No need to argue Mark. I’m on your side.

              We need to get everybody into govt unions everybody on their payroll ASAP.

              Only then can we all experience economic nirvana.

              After some culling, of course.

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                    1. Are the markets thinking black and white right now Mark?

                      2nd big down day in a row, CNBC now says (day after election) another looming recession.

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                    2. Aye, carumbra! B/W thinking means you cannot think in anything other than all or nothing. Our current situation appears to be a depression brought about, or triggered by the housing crisis, or private excess. Normally in such a situation government needs to stimulate demand, since lack of demand is the underlying problem. Your solution, austerity, only exacerbates the problem, and will make matters worse. Since we only have one political party, austerity is coming no matter what. We’re fucked.

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                    3. Talk ’bout B/W, austerity is all ready here Mark.

                      QE1-3, printing money is a form of the “A” word.

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                    4. Just a tad wrong on that. Anyway, “austerity” as the two parties intend to implement it is an attack on SS and the Medi’s. It will hurt a whole lot of people, won’t help anyone.

                      The formula for economic health is money changing hands, and that means putting money in the hands of people who spend it. That’s why unions are beneficial. High marginal tax rates on passive income, maybe 70% or so, are useful too, as they prevent disinvestment. Low tax rates encourage investors to pull money out of enterprises. Low tax rates also encourage speculation, part of the reason behind our bubble economy.

                      There’s a reason why the New Deal worked, and why we’ve had a road to perdition since 1980. It’s not B/W, of course, but just a general prescription for what ails us. What your people have given us has been destructive.

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          2. Old USA Today info. Can’t you even go to the source for data, and learn how to use some real statistics?

            From the BLS, government employment lost 13,000 jobs from september to october, 2012.

            Go have another drink… best cure for a hangover like yours.

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            1. Looks like the “Labor Participation Rate” peaked out at the end of Clinton’s last term, and begin its slow slide under Bushonomics.

              But again if you’d use current stats, you’d see that the over the past 2 months, the rate has rebounded by .3%. There was a net loss of 2.5% during Bush’s term. It’s only dropped 2.2% under Obama, and is headed back in the right direction, for a net loss of 1.9%.

              You really need to take a stats class, BJ. I get tired of having to school you everytime you pull a chart or number out of the fox/drudge/breitbart playbook.

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              1. Looking at your own graph it bumped up higher in 1/10, still went down. Christmas employment perhaps?

                The overall trend is down. Stock market down. CNBC says looming recession. Same with the CBO.

                The bump you currently see was based on the possibility of a business friendly adm. Now That Ocare is a fada complete we’ll experience even more negative growth.

                But real question is who does this hurt? The corporation and their handlers, the self sufficient farmers and ranchers? Stock traders? People who saved for a rainy day?

                A little, but nowhere compared to the majority of people who voted your way.

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                1. Please be scientific. Tell us what policies are causing the problems we face, far more severe than even you seem to now, and how these policies cause these problems. Your thinking appears muddled to me; you somehow think that because right wing democrats are in charge instead of right wing Republicans, that the policies they advance, which are the same policies as in place before, have caused the depression.

                  I have a much better, clearer explanation, but you’re not ready for it.

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                    1. Maybe politicians will smarten up and decouple health insurance from employment. That’s one of the benefits of single payer BJ. You should think about it.

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                2. “the majority of people who voted your way.”

                  Oh, you mean we have a third party president now? Huh, I must have slept through the vote tallies.

                  Don’t try and hang O-policies on me BJ. My vote went elsewhere.

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  5. BJ,

    You want more private-sector employment, right?
    So do I. End “free-trade” agreements now! Those jobs left the country. And your solution is to blame public service workers, and cut the fraction of jobs that remained? Crazy myopic, don’t ya’ think? You won’t hear the corporate media even whisper about NAFTA, GATT, WTO or CAFTA. Not a peep. Ever wonder why?

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      1. You wanna propose a VAT to replace the CTR?

        And a carbon tax will become talked about more and more, especially when a bunch of old reaganites pull it off the shelf and dust it off as a preferable alternative to cap and trade.

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  6. BJ,
    More low-wage jobs perhaps. Mexico’s local agricultural sector has been destroyed; those displaced workers headed north. Self-employment has dropped by nearly half. End NAFTA and the “drug war” and a lot of your problem with “illegals” (poor people) goes away. Mexicans with money have no problem entering the U.S.

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