brainiac conspiracy

War of The Gargantuas

The green one is good, the brown one is bad, but sometimes you still can't see much difference in them:

Only 38 percent of those up-for-grabs Americans have favorable views of Obama's economic plans, with a majority (54 percent) disapproving. The good news for the embattled president? They aren't much more impressed by Romney's economic ideas---47 percent rate his approach unfavorably, with just 35 percent in favor.

Now I know both campaigns relish the opportunity of framing the upcoming battle for the White House as a clash between starkly opposing visions of the role of government in our lives, and in the case of certain cultural/social issues, that's certainly true more often as not. But on the greater matters of macroeconomic policy---like, where all of our money goes and who gets to keep it---the voters in their wisdom haven't bought into the apocalyptic bullshit. Can't say I can blame them because, frankly, neither have I.

---Vitelius

The Fix is In

Shocked, shocked I tell you, to hear that they're not planning to raise taxes without the obligatory display of bipartisan consensus:

The strange thing about my plan is that even though almost every single Democratic member of Congress agrees that taxes should be higher than they are now but lower than full expiration would make them, this plan is not the consensus Democratic approach . . . Instead the party seems to be in the grips of a dangerous obsession not with increasing tax revenue but with getting Republicans to vote for an increase in tax revenue.

This assumes Democrats in Washington are operating in good faith. They're not, any more than the Republicans. The reason why they haven't voted to raise taxes is because their leadership doesn't want them to raise taxes. Because raising taxes on rich people would be partisan and shrill, because it might adversely affect fundraising, and because the signature achievement of the current two-term Democratic administration (assuming it wins in November) will be the same as the signature achievement of the last two-term Democratic administration: To reach across the aisle and End Welfare as We Know It™. Which type of welfare? I'm guessing block-granting Medicaid to the states, but you can take your pick among food stamps, Medicare, veterans' benefits, etc.

But that's how it is going to go down if the President wins re-election, let's not kid ourselves. Unless, by some fluke, Democrats actually win control of both houses of Congress, but I don't see how that happens at all. Much more likely is an all-Republican Congress and a Democratic White House.

Like I've said before, given the current Beltway political culture and the current state of our campaign finance laws, our people are simply not to be permitted the luxury of liberal government anymore. Because the dominant power elite in Washington will only countenance its existence if it reaches across the aisle in a spirit of cooperation, and plunges millions of Americans into states of abject poverty.

But hey, in return liberals get gay marriage and contraception! What, they want more? They're overreaching.

---Vitelius

Sure Didn't See That Coming

But it's kinda intuitive that if you drive millions of your neighbors into abject poverty, they're not going to be buying as much of your stuff as they used to:

German industrial orders fell by 1.9% in April. That is the biggest drop since last November, and worse than expected (economists had predicted -1.1%).

---Vitelius

What They Mean

When the Friedmans and Brookses talk about the need for our government to enact big, bold ideas to spur structural economic reforms, it's code for our government giving them more of the things that benefit them (e.g., lowering their top marginal income tax rate) and giving other people less of what doesn't (Medicare, Social Security). Of course they realize that if they actually said what they really meant, most people would hurl them down the stairs, so they resort to speaking elliptically, if at all, about some vague and ill-defined need for "entitlement reform" that some sensible centrist like Mike Bloomberg could deliver to a nation in need of good governanace. But it's just a variation on the time-honored mantra that's recited regularly by our privileged classes: Give us more of your money because we're entitled to it.

---Vitelius

Transparency in Government

It's great in theory, but of course much of government work, especially in areas such as foreign policy, sometimes requires at least a temporary veil of secrecy for reasons of trust and privacy between negotiating parties. It's perfectly understandable, particularly when the intentions of both sides are basically good, such as when ironing out the details of a nuclear-weapons reduction treaty, to name one example. On the other hand, sometimes our leaders keep secrets from us for the simple reason that if the particulars were released, our people might not be to thrilled to know what sorts of deals were being struck in our name:

Wyden said that his office was locked out of information about a trade pact in the works known as the Trans-Pacific Partnership. The deal, which involves eight other Pacific nations, includes broad details on government contracting terms that would ban "Buy American" preferences for U.S. manufacturers, and intellectual property standards that would increase prescription drug prices abroad. Those positions have drawn criticism from American labor unions, domestic manufacturers and international public health advocates.

---Vitelius

The Rising Tide That Lifts All Boats

Tom Friedman has got to be sporting some serious wood over this:

Only Mexico’s middle class has grown over the past 30 years in North America, while income disparity has increased in Canada and the United States, according to a study here out Tuesday.

“Mexico’s middle class has benefited from urbanization, greater female employment, improved education and better social programs,” said economist Lars Osberg, the author of the report by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA).

In the study Osberg, a professor at Dalhousie University, tracks the rise and fall of income inequality in the three North America Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) partners.

Similar trends in Canada and the United States helped maintain middle-class growth until the 1970s, Osberg said, but those trends “have since run out of steam.

“Globalization, technological advances, a drop in unionized work, and a deregulated labour market have contributed to stagnant real incomes for most in Canada and the US since the 1980s,” he said.

Osberg said that income disparity “has accelerated” in both Canada and the United States.

“This combination of stagnant real incomes for most people and a rapid rise of the incomes of the richest one percent in the United States and Canada has produced steadily increasing income inequality---to a level that hasn’t been seen since the 1920s,” he said.

“Increasing inequality is not a sustainable trend,” Osberg warned. “When those at the top keep amassing income, their growing savings have to go somewhere.”

This is why I find the entire "Is private equity good or bad capitalism?" discussion that's in vogue at present to be, frankly, a bit of a joke (and Tim Noah's take is one of the more thoughtful ones I've read this week) since the entire point of private equity---like the financialization of banking and the globalization of trade---is to maximize value for shareholders. Period. If you're not a shareholder, the objective is to minimize your value as a laborer or employee. In the zero-sum game our job creators abide by, that's simply how it works.

In the case of private equity, this means by necessity transforming acquired companies into ATM machines wherein revenues that could be used to invest in things like capital improvements or re-training for workers are instead diverted to pay dividends for shareholders, management fees to the private-equity guys, and interest payments (and tax deductions) for the banks. Employee compensation? Health-care coverage? They're a drain on profitability. And on your ability to siphon money away from the business and into the partners' pockets. There's nothing "creative" about this "creative destruction"---it's only "creative" in the way it rewards its backers. What it "destroys" is worker compensation.

Think about it: even the companies that people like Mitt Romney like to boast about saving, like Staples and Domino's, are minimum-wage service companies with low pay, shitty benefits and high employee turnover; by contrast, a lot of the "failing" companies, like Worldwide Grinding and GS Industries, were old-school industrial outfits with (ahem) a unionized workforce and higher pension and overhead costs. To say these companies were "failing" and needed the "creative destruction" of private equity is a ruse; if these people really believed in self-correcting markets, they wouldn't be engaging in leveraged buyouts of "troubled" companies at all; instead, they'd allow these companies to, well, fail, then acquire them in bankruptcy liquidation for pennies on the dollar. But they don't do this for a simple reason: Because they'd have to make a long-term commitment to rebuild the business, because revenue streams would be meager for the short term, and because those union workers in those troubled companies would still expect the same pay and benefits they had before the Chapter 11 filing. And that all goes against the business model. Why? Because you can't return the kinds of huge profit margins you've promised to your investors (that's how these people get banks to lend them so much money, by portraying themselves as financial alchemists who can turn shit into gold) by making serious long-term investments in the business and by paying people a living wage, with pensions and health benefits and all those other things that are a drag on short-term profitability.

I guess the point I'm trying to make is: I think you can draw a direct correlation between the accelerated Romneyfication of our private-sector economy and the stagnation in wages the rest of us have experienced over the past quarter century. Bluntly put, our betters have decided that most of us cost too much to employ, demand too much from them in wages and benefits, and we need to be put in our place. Which is to say, a rung or two above your typical maquiladora worker, and no higher. There were times in our past when we could rely on our government to intervene on our behalf to correct this imbalance, but unfortunately, we don't live in those times anymore.

---Vitelius

American Unity Theater 3000 v2.0

We still need a Sensible Centrist political party in this country, one that will level with Americans without needless pandering: A party dedicated to dealing with voters honestly and forthrightly, to remind us that if our economy is ever to recover and our deficits are to reduced, shared sacrifice is going to be required from all of us. Especially true from those of us who'd like to be paid more than subsistence wages:

[T]he mayor told a local radio program that requiring businesses that get taxpayer subsidies to pay their workers a little bit more is just like a centrally planned economy. “The last time we really had a big managed economy was the USSR, and that didn’t work out so well,” Bloomberg said.

---Vitelius

Circling The Wagons

Looks like the Serious Persons have made their decision: they're going to solve the deficit problem once and for all, and the little people will get to pay for it:

“Our party’s problem is, we are always reluctant to give up the gains of the past to create the future,” Bill Clinton told the audience at the Pete Peterson’s fiscal summit. “Democrats are reluctant to commit to longer-term health-care savings; they don’t want to touch Social Security.”

Clinton went on to attack Republicans for becoming a far more extreme and ideological party, making compromise nearly impossible. But he brought up the same point time and again: “My party is not blameless.”

Rep. Xavier Becerra (D-Calif.), a former member of the supercommittee, echoed the same sentiments at Peterson’s deficit-reduction confab. In responding to legitimate fears that Republicans would privatize or eliminate social services,“maybe Democrats worked too hard to protect those programs from devastating cuts and in doing so, perhaps that has kept us from trying to come up with a smart budget,” Becerra admitted.

Democrats say they took these criticisms to heart during the supercommittee negotiations, initially proposing $400 billion in savings from Medicare — half through benefit cuts and half through provider cuts. Democrats point to such proposals as evidence of their party’s willingness to compromise and incorporate a diversity of views, blaming Republican intransigence for the deficit-reduction talks’ ultimate failure. “We have a lot of people in our party who will not be drummed out if they depart from the conventional wisdom,” Clinton explained.

No, but there will be a small army of Democratic rank-and-filers---present company included---who will drum themselves out of the party as the just-like-wrestling endgame plays itself out:

1. Supercommittee members reach bipartisan consensus to slash Medicare and Social Security in exchange for eliminating "tax loopholes" like the earned-income credit that working-class people rely on;
2. House Republicans go back on their word, vote unanimously to kill the proposal;
3. Republicans blame Democrats for attempting to destroy Medicare and Social Security and for waging class war against working people;
4. Uncritical news media echo Republican claims throughout the land;
5. Serious Persons wonder aloud why Democrats won't address Republican concerns;
6. President Obama appoints bipartisan commission to study the problem;
7. Bipartisan commission recommends inflicting more punishment on sick, poor and old people;
8. Then this.

When are these people ever going to learn that they're not going to win a mandate to govern by co-opting policies that voters despise?

---Vitelius

Slow Learner

Et tu, Bill?

Bradley praises the efforts of Americans Elect in his book. Though he laughed off the thought of being the group's candidate and accurately predicted they would likely not get field a candidate this year, the former senator said Americans Elect is on the right track.

"The people behind it are people that really want to try to have innovation in democracy. And indeed that's what we need, we need innovation," said Bradley.

"It'll be a little bit like 'Field of Dreams,' you know. If you build it will they come? Maybe they'll come, maybe they won't come." he continued.

"I think that it's indicative of the power of the two parties, discouraging and also indicative that not many people even know about Americans Elect. But the interesting thing would be how would that play in 2014."

Jesus. And to think I voted for this guy in the 2000 primary.

Sorry, Bill, but the reason why not many people know about American Unity Theater 3000 is because not many people care to know. Because it was the answer to a question no one besides the Serious Persons have asked, or, in the parlance of our job creators, it had no brand value because there was---and is---no consumer demand for it. I think this only proves what some of us suspected 12 years ago, namely that Bradley is one of those contrarian Democrats who enjoys tweaking his nose at his own side every now and then. In the wake of the Monica Lewinsky debacle, he might have had a point to make, but nowadays it's just being cantankerous for the sake of cantankerousness, which means nothing anymore since we already have an abundant share of neoliberal concern trolls.

---Vitelius

Sorta Good, Sorta Not

As a rule, an increase in consumer spending in the middle of a recession is a healthy sign that people have more money to buy stuff, which provides stimulus to communities, increases tax revenues for governments, helps to create jobs in general, etc. On the other hand, when people are primarily spending borrowed money because they can't afford the cost of their kids' education, well, that's really not the awesomest thing in the world. Especially when you consider what our overlords are likely doing with all the rising piles of student debt that will never be repaid because there aren't any jobs.

And to think there was a time when you could attend college for free. But that, of course, was back in a frivolous time before we wised up and started relying on the wisdom of markets to determine whether our degrees were worth more than a computer, a robot, or some telemarketer in Mumbai. Good times!

---Vitelius

A Pox on All Their Houses

Why are so many Americans so poorly informed?

Hatch will likely survive and Lugar may, too, though his prospects seem more bleak. But the message has been sent to Republicans who are already getting threats of primary challenges from more conservative alternatives in 2014: Sens. Lamar Alexander, Susan Collins and Lindsey Graham.

Politicians are survivalists. With rare exception, they do what it takes to survive elections.

This dynamic is hardly unique to Republicans, as much as President Barack Obama and Democrats want voters to think otherwise.

Centrist Democrats got that memo in 2010---they saw how labor almost took down Sen. Blanche Lincoln, who ended up getting crushed in November anyway.

The only thing missing here is the obligatory cri de coeur for President Bloomberg.

Honestly. This kind of reporting reduces the art of politics to a numbers game, not a policy game. Of course, if the story focused on the actual policies that the respective parties were willing to accept, and the legislative tactics each party was willing to employ to enact them, this brand of fair and balanced "both sides do it" journalism would shrivel on the vine, because, well, you know why:

We understand the values of mainstream journalists, including the effort to report both sides of a story. But a balanced treatment of an unbalanced phenomenon distorts reality. If the political dynamics of Washington are unlikely to change anytime soon, at least we should change the way that reality is portrayed to the public.

Our advice to the press: Don’t seek professional safety through the even-handed, unfiltered presentation of opposing views. Which politician is telling the truth? Who is taking hostages, at what risks and to what ends?

Also, stop lending legitimacy to Senate filibusters by treating a 60-vote hurdle as routine. The framers certainly didn’t intend it to be. Report individual senators’ abusive use of holds and identify every time the minority party uses a filibuster to kill a bill or nomination with majority support.

This really isn't all that difficult to do. But it would require outfits like Politico to hire people who don't give a shit about whether or not they're on the Beltway social A-list to do their reporting for them.

---Vitelius

Light Blogging Day

The family is demanding my attention today. Wouldn't bother me so much if they brought more value to our relationship than a computer, a robot, or a telemarketer in Mumbai.

---Vitelius

One For The MTA

I had to catch a Metro bus in L.A. last week. The paved street along Wilshire Boulevard was in such poor condition that I felt as though I was riding on one of those Magic Finger beds they used to have in low-rent hotels back in the 1970s. I traveled on the Rapid, our sorry excuse for a fast bus, on which I had so many dropped calls on my cellphone and which was so overpacked with teeming masses of brown people, you'd think I was stuck in the middle of the developing world, not traveling from the Miracle Mile to Koreatown. When I got to the Koreatown stop, the escalator in the subway station was broken, so I needed to walk down a flight of stairs---a clear danger when you're trying to text-message your editor at the same time.

Maybe you’ve gotten used to all this. I haven’t.

My bus driver, a round-faced man with large, fleshy hands, shook his head. "Economy gets bad, more people take the bus," he noted. "Too bad we can't get more money from the government, otherwise we could run twice as many lines all day, and they'd be full up of riders."

"Our country needs a renewal," I replied.

"Ain't that the truth," my driver nodded. "Ain't gonna happen anytime soon, though. Poor Obama, he can't do it alone, what with all them fool Republicans holdin' him up."

The bus shuddered over another pothole. My cellphone dropped another call.

"But it's not just the Republicans," I interjected. "Today, neither party is talking seriously enough about the taxes that will have to be raised or the entitlement spending that will have to be cut to put us on sustainable footing. That’s why we need an independent Presidential candidate---like straight-talking, socially moderate and fiscally conservative Mike Bloomberg---who could challenge both candidates by speaking honestly about what we need to restore the foundations of our global leadership before we implode."

My driver laughed. "What do you mean we, white man? Who ya spoofin'? You wanna fix Washington? Get rid of all the muthafuckin' crazy people."

I got off the bus at Fairfax. The traffic signal at the intersection was out, traffic was snarled in all four directions, and a homeless man on the corner asked me for money. My mind rushed back to that conversation on the bus, and of our country's urgent need for entitlement reform.

---Vitelius

Variations on a Theme IV

Who needs Dick Clark anymore? The hits just keep on coming!

Whitmire is an angry man. He is among a group of voters most skeptical of President Obama: noncollege-educated white males. He feels betrayed—not just by Obama, who won his vote in 2008, but by the institutions that were supposed to protect him: his state, which laid off his wife; his government in Washington, which couldn’t rescue homeowners who had played by the rules; his bank, which failed to walk him through the correct paperwork or warn him about a potential mortgage hike; his city, which penalized him for somebody else’s error; and even his employer, a construction company he likes even though he got laid off. “I was middle class for 10 years, but it’s done,” Whitmire says. “I’ve lost my home. I live in a trailer now because of a mortgage company and an incompetent government.”

While I was cutting and pasting this text a minute ago, the following e-message showed up in my Inbox:

From: Barack Obama ([email protected])
Subject: Clooney and me

Baron --

I think it's safe to assume that an evening at George Clooney's house is something you're not going to want to miss.

He's getting involved because, like you and me, he cares deeply about the work we still have left to do -- so you're sure to have a thing or two to talk about.

I'll be there, too.

Any donation you make today will automatically enter you to win and join us on May 10th:

https://donate.barackobama.com/Clooney-and-Me

See you there?

Barack

Sigh . . .

Given the existing dialectic of our celebrity-political complex, where the ideologies revolve (more or less) around the twin poles of George Clooney and Ted Nugent, I guess my vote is still safely with Team Democrat for the foreseeable future, as unenthused as I am about it. But I'm beginning to wonder if we won't look back, ten or twenty years hence, at the election of 2008 as our last legitimate chance to check the metastasizing level of cynicism that has been an ever-more-prominent feature of the American political psyche since the Vietnam/Watergate era, and whether the administration's failure to interpret its mandate hasn't doomed us to a irreversible descent from a state of collective disbelief and distrust into the realm of outright hostility towards ourselves and our institutions. I can't speak for Johnny Whitmire, but I know I didn't cast an eager vote for a liberal black man named Hussein so corrupt financial institutions could keep bilking investors and stealing houses from people, so an ever-mushrooming national surveillance state could continue its intrusions into Americans' lives, so our nation's chief executive could claim the unilateral authority to assassinate American citizens for any stated reason, or so we could all be required under penalty of law to hand over our dwindling cash pile to some private insurance company for health care that fewer and fewer of us can afford in the first place.

Most of all, I didn't cast my vote the way I did so that the Johnny Whitmires of this country---and there are millions of them---could be downsized out of economic existence so a few dozen corporations and a few thousand families could enrich themselves beyond all reason off the state-sanctioned misery and suffering of people like him. That, in a sentence, is the world that we live in---the same world that Hope & Change™ inherited, and has preserved intact---and Team Democrat is as responsible for it in its own way as Team Teahadi. Perhaps that helps to explain why the crazy people's standard-bearer has a legitimate shot at winning the White House despite being personally loathed like no other political figure since Nixon.

Bottom line, people voted for radical and systemic change four years ago. They didn't get it. And frankly, it's hard to fault them for believing that now, they never will.

---Vitelius

Our Little Brown Brothers

Things sure were a lot better in the old days when their countries were all run by military juntas. But then the generalissimos slowly went away, and the people started demanding democracy, and their elected leaders started giving the campesinos lots of stuff they actually wanted---like instituting land reform, and nationalizing natural resources, and restricting free trade, and spreading around the wealth in general via state pensions, subsidies, etc. But as their betters in Washington and Europe have established, giving people what they want is not the objective of democratically elected governments anymore, so the apostates need to be taught a lesson:

[T]he price Argentina may pay in the long run for nationalizing YPF could be high.

The little foreign investment Argentina receives could dry up. And it remained unclear how Argentina, which is short of cash, will come up with the billions of dollars needed to jack up crude production and develop its recent finds of shale oil and gas.

Spain’s prime minister, Mariano Rajoy, on Tuesday warned other investors a the World Economic Forum in Mexico: “What happened yesterday could happen to any other investment.”

---Vitelius

Helping Poor People is Bad for The Economy

Might sound kinda cruel, but I'm having a difficult time trying to figure out why anyone would bother publishing an account like this unless it was to advance the argument that governments shouldn't intervene in the marketplace to keep the basics of everyday life affordable to the lower orders because, well, because the local capitalists job creators want more money for their goods than poor people can afford. Now, shortages (and inflation) can be caused by a variety of factors, and price controls can and do contribute to commodity shortages---it happened here during World War II as government requisitioned stuff like coffee and rubber for military use---but they can also yield positive outcomes, i.e., by preventing mass starvation. But since Chavez has been relentlessly pimped by our media and policy elites to become America's Leading Hemispheric Boogeyman whenever Castro croaks, no government policy of his can contribute anything of social utility:

[W]ith inflation so crippling, many shoppers at those stores said the inconvenience was worth it.

“It’s an enormous help,” said Ana Lozano, 62, a retiree who takes in ironing to supplement her pension, who was waiting outside the Santa Rosalía grocery. “That’s why there’s such a long line.”

---Vitelius

My Own Private President

The sensible centrists out there---you know, the smart set that pines for a Third Way politics that people hate and who yearn for some Unicorns Elect Party that most voters don't care about---complain early and often about paralyzing paralysis and partisan gridlock and broken government and how things can't get done because both sides view each other as pond scum, and if only we could find a bold centrist leader who can bridge the partisan divide, etc. It would be easy to characterize this sentiment as a kind of Rotary Club messianism at play, but I think that's too charitable a definition. Because:

What the Unicorns Elect people really care about most is promoting political leaders who are just like themselves, i.e., rich people from privileged backgrounds who will promise them smooth roads and efficient trains and universal wireless access and all the bells and whistles of infrastructural awesomeness, and never, ever ask them to pay more taxes for the privilege. Who pays instead? The lower orders, of course, via cuts to their entitlement programs that we simply can't afford anymore. I mean, what other reason/motivation could there possibly be? Logically, the sensible people should want to play for Team Democrat because that team's in favor of everything they claim to want. So why aren't they? The way I see it, because they're either imponderably stupid, insatiably greedy, or patently dishonest. I'm going with Door #3.

---Vitelius

He's Seeking the Center

Just like the serious persons said he would all along. Can't imagine what he'd sound like if he, you know, ever tracked to the right.

I mean, do you really have to read any further than

Speaking to Larry O'Connor on Breitbart TV . . .

To get an idea where his party's ideological center is these days?

But I digress. Within 24 hours I'll bet a cup of Java to anyone who reads this that I can summon, somewhere, a fresh piece of news-analysis from a leading American news publication asking when, oh when, will the Real Romney grace us with an appearance. We're going to be bombarded by them from now through the GOP convention.

---Vitelius

They Don't a Shit About Centrism

No matter what all these Third Way/Citizens Elect concern trolls in our chattering classes say. What they really want is a government that will never, ever, ever threaten their positions of power and privilege. That's the working definition of "centrism"---using the power of government to protect the broken state that they were largely responsible for breaking, and making sure that the burden of rebuilding the national economy will be borne by everyone else but themselves. It's not a very uplifting set of principles, and it's probably why no one outside the Village is listening to them.

---Vitelius

Also Too, Greedy Little Sadists

The Juice Master wonders:

Why our elites and media elites have such sheer contempt and hatred for social security. It’s there for everyone! It’s a solid government program which gives everyone the peace of mind that no matter what, there will be some money available for you to take care of yourself in your most vulnerable years. It’s such a miniscule portion of the taxes we pay, and for the ultra-rich screamers who hate social security the most, it’s a negligible portion of their income, and it’s capped! It’s not money wasted on fraud and abuse, it’s extremely efficient with the kind of overhead any charity or organization in the world would die to achieve, and it’s just an amazing program.

What I'll never understand is how such a selfish and punitive proposal that sprang from a small clique of rich and well-connected businessmen and which relied on the discredited arguments of a pair of hack economists, became accepted as an emblem of civic-minded virtue. And the sad truth is, the Liberty Leaguers, the Hayekian cranks and their think-tank/media progeny been gradually winning the war of ideas, in tiny and barely discernible increments, for over 70 years now, and truth to tell, they're still winning the battle now. How do we know this? Every time you hear someone who's smart enough to know better remind us of the urgent need to embark upon "entitlement reform," that's another notch on their bedpost.

Of course it doesn't help that appealing to Americans' basest and shabbiest instincts has a proven track record of political success.

How to fix? Honestly, I have no idea anymore. I'm almost of the mind that we will need to repeat the meltdown of 1929-33, with 25-percent unemployment and rural America reduced to an uninhabitable desert all over again, to remind people---and Red Staters in particular---about (a) why programs like Social Security were started in the first pace, and (b) the wisdom in preserving them and keeping them fully funded, even if it means raising lots of taxes on rich people to do it. And who knows, that may very well happen, depending on whose forecasts you believe. But given the current ideological divide that exists in the Village in our time, where a Democratic President governs to the right of Richard Nixon and his Republican opponents govern to the right of Francisco Franco, it's hard to see where the light of common sense---let alone the the light of history---ever seeps into the chambers of a ruling class that has become hardwired over a generation or so to judge every government social-welfare program by the rules of market pricing and return-on-investment. About the best we can do for now is keep stalling for time until a new generation of Better Democrats can be groomed and recruited for service. But it's going to take some time either way, and we are slowly running out of it.

---Vitelius