No one asked me, so here it is:
Going Back To Failure Ain't A Grand Idea
My belief is that re-instituting George Bush's policies would have brought on
an almost instant depression instead of a recession that we seem to be
stumbling our way out o, too slowly but gaining. The recession wasn't wholly
Bush's fault, but his emphasis on deregulation certainly helped the banks get
too big to fail, very fast, while he stared on in
incomprehension while Darth Cheney did whatever Cheney does—pull the strings?
Financial affairs absolutely must be regulated, and no bank can be allowed
to grow too large to fail. Supposedly, we learned that in 1929, but that
generation is mostly gone now, and the lesson has trickled down and disappeared--about like the good from Reagan's trickle down effect. Those banks already in that category need to be forced into more elemental business structures so that a failure doesn't present a row of dominoes that continue to fall.
Bush's reactions included stimuli and TARP, for which Obama has already taken
the heat, but neither was truly big enough to give instant relief. Romney was, like
WalMart, a roll-back type. And as at WalMart, rollback was mostly bullshit.
Why The Republican Loss
The Republicans, at least according to current conventional wisdom, have twice
now been voted down because they refuse to admit that our society is no longer
made up of mostly white people with a few blacks tossed in to pepper the stew.
Some of those peppers are now chilis, and the LBGT community has grown in
power, so that's three large, and growing, groups that went the other way. Add
to that Romney's arrogance--his 47% remark was meant only for the elite, and
helped to destroy his candidacy when it was released--and his wife's similar
attitude: "You people have enough information", which, "we"
generally agreed we didn't. Us peasants. I still believe Romney's refusal to
release more than two years of tax returns was a sign that he was hiding things.
It wouldn't have looked fantastic for a super-patriot to have paid no income
tax for most of eight or ten years, so he refused to release his returns. Yes,
it would be legal. But the lack of patriotism, the actual anti-Americanism, it
would show would have destroyed his campaign on day one of the release. So, no
release. The counter-arguments about Obama's college records was asinine.
When on earth have school record releases been a requirement for the
Presidency? Only in the minds of the Tea Party. That particular argument again
hurt the Republicans. It does seem, too, that a great many Republicans are
afraid of women, to the point of disliking them and making it evident where
they can be overheard, after passing laws many women feel intrude on their persons in ways not done to men.
The best event of the entire election cycle: Karl Rove's on-air meltdown when
Obama was declared the winner early by Fox. The little worm deserved everything bad that
went through his mind then, including wondering if the Kochs would hire a hit man
for the guy who pissed away 300 million Republican generated bucks on a
"can't lose" proposition and then lost. He's so oleaginous, it won’t
be surprising if he finds a way to reinsert himself into the party, though. And
now, Gingrich is stumping around wondering how it happened. It strikes me as
odd that the Republicans who attacked Romney the hardest during the primaries
don't understand that those very facets of his personality they pointed up were
the problem. Hell, the Democrats could have won going away if they'd just
re-aired the Republican primary commercials and speeches about Romney.
Prognostications..But Not from Me
As to what the future brings fiscally, no one has any real ideas. We all have a
lot of hope, but until he of the orange face, Boehner, manages to form some
kind of working relationship with both President Obama and the rest of his
party, we're stuck with what we've had for too much of the past four years: maladroitness
and something very close to the gridlock DC residents face driving to work
every morning. Eventually, they get there, though, and I won't know if the U.S.
will. If we get two more years of "Party of No" from the Republicans,
I'd almost bet half will be voted out of office in 2014.
Of course, term limits provide at least a partial solution. Unfortunately, the
very people who would implement term limits are those who are staying in
Congress and becoming professional politicians. I don't believe that kind of
political scene was what the Framers intended, but there's nothing to prevent
it in the Constitution. Probably the only way it can be done is a grassroots
movement that allows the incumbents to remain as long as they are reelected.
The next elected officeholders get out in a single term. Of course, that poses
another problem for the incumbents: what happens if people pay attention and
vote them out! If they came back two or six years down the road they'd only get
a double term or whatever is allowed. Personally, I'd like to see a three-term
limit for Congressmen, two terms for Senators and a single six year term for
President. That would stir some stumps.
I don't expect anything like that to be enacted in my lifetime, even if I live
to my Aunt Eugenia's age of 97.
Tough Times
I disagree on
the times currently really being all that tough for most people, though many of
us are in—er, reduced circumstances. Thinking back to what I've been told of
the Depression, our Great Recession has been a minor inconvenience for many and
a disaster for very few, relatively speaking. I go into VA and almost no matter
the time of day, the roads flow with vehicles, restaurants are busy, malls are
overflowing, and money is moving. I pulled into a Hardee's (a regional fast
food chain with great biscuits) last week to get a biscuit and some coffee, and
the line circled the building and went into the street. We still don't go out
for dinner on weekends because of the crowds at decent restaurants. I look
around and the vehicles I see today are still those no one with a grain of
sense buys and drives any more--which shows how few have a grain of sense, I
guess. SUVs and four door pick-ups in abundance. I know there are those out
there who cannot afford to change--hell, I'm one of them, with this damned
Taurus POS station wagon. We owe too much on that to get rid of it for another
year, while it continues to drink gas at a 23MPG clip.
Certainly I'm more cramped for cash than I'm used to. My 2008 book on woodshops
never came close to paying back its advance...the timing was terrible as
everyone was worried about every buck, and few people wanted to spend time
dreaming of, or building, a hobby woodworking shop. No trade publishers since
have been up for my ideas. I have two books and an article plan up on Amazon.
So far, sales are abysmal, at best. That is mostly my fault. I have yet to find a key to selling the books
that doesn't make me feel like a charlatan or jackass or both. I realize that
with the Internet, I need to put my personal feelings aside, and do the clown
act, the door-to-door sales bullshit, but I thought I had bailed out of that
after an abortive few weeks selling encyclopedias in NYC. In 1962. Like a great
many people my age, I've been brought up to be reticent about most of my
accomplishments. I didn't even realize that my middle nephew didn't know I'd
been in the Marines until I asked him something about his local Marine Corps
League detachment. Marty was born during my last year in the Marines!
Messing with SS and Medicare
I paid into Social Security from the time I was 14 until some time maybe 52
years later, plus a couple years since I "retired". Yet that is one
of the programs Boehner and his ilk wish to tear apart, that and Medicare are
on their chopping block. There certainly need to be changes, with the foremost
being a removal of the top income limits for the deductions. That's nearly a cure
alone. Medicare needs to be allowed to do as the VA does: bargain for prices on drugs and services.
Losers and Winners
Tim Kaine beat up pretty well on George Allen. It is to be hoped that Allen
will now go back to practicing corporate law where he might actually do some
good, if good is what corporate lawyers do. He was one of the least fiscally
responsible governors we've had in recent years: I guess he inherited that from
his father. George Allen Sr. was touted by the then owner of the Redskins (Jack
Kent?) as having been given an unlimited budget which he then exceeded. The nut
doesn't fall far from the tree. Allen was a pissant Senator for his term, too,
voting for expensive program after expensive program.
We've been behind on education, but, so far, no one has tried to get much of a
tax passed. It wouldn't make it in our current climate. Of course, we've got
Republicans all over the place touting a new voter ID card, with photo and
laminated, for all eligible voters in the country. I think that's maybe 200
million people. It strikes me as nuts that the party that wants to save money
around the clock is wildly in favor of doing something that would be very
expensive for a problem that barely exists. It's a little like replacing all
the plumbing in a home because one faucet is dripping. At a rough estimate,
each ID would cost about six bucks. That's includes hiring people to shoot
photos, take in the info and print it out, then laminate it all. I mean, what's
a billion bucks between friends? The saying--Sam Rayburn's?-- that "a
million here, a million there and sooner or later it adds up to real
money" may be changed to "a billion here, a billion there" today.
It all beats an added two or three cents gasoline tax to improve our roads...doesn't it? I don't think so.
Electoral College
This time around, we had no real reason to complain
about the electoral college after the
election, and, while Romney led, Fox was delighted with it, as was Rove. I'm
not really convinced one way or the other on this one. It does provide for some
neat moments, as with Rove's babbling breakdown on Fox, but otherwise, it's
probably not necessary. We do need to do something about those areas where it
takes too long to vote. Places around the country, all urban though often small
urban like Roanoke, had waits of upwards of 90 minutes, some many hours. If
that continues, election day needs to be made a Federal holiday (and we really
don't need any more Federal holidays, though this one would be once every four
years, because the lines do not build as badly for other elections).