Day 754 Wednesday January 30, 2019 840 Days to Go
I feel like I’m in the part of a really bad B movie where they are trying to show the narrator/protagonist is having a bad trip on drugs. There are quick flash cuts with disconnected dialogue and rain-bowed kaleidoscopic colors pulsing. Various voices are speaking. Certain bits of dialogue are repeated. Then there’s a shot of the person twirling around trying to get a grip. Luckily, for them, the next scene shows them waking up in a cold sweat clutching the sheets, breathing heavily and looking around. (They are asking themselves the question, which is never stated but R. Crumb’s COMIX repeatedly asked (and answered) “What does it all mean Mr. Natural?” (“It don’t mean shit.” says Mr. Natural.) )
Okay, Here we go. I’ve got three things swirling around in my brain:
1. A really bad tortured analogy that doesn’t make sense, like waking up from a dream that doesn’t make sense when you try to tell someone about it. That kind of “doesn’t make sense” thing. It involves Steve Mnunchin and a disconnected voice like that of the narrator of one of those doggie treat ads that is trying to funnel the thoughts of a dog wanting the doggie treat. That “Who’s a good boy?” voice and the dog going crazy saying, “Me! Me! Me! Gimme the treat! Ya ya ya gotta have it!”
2. The guy yelling in the background as Howard Shultz is trying to make the case for his running for president, “Go back to Davos you egotistical fuck!” (or something like that.)
3. How the Democratic presidential race for president is trying to be portrayed in regards to Harris, Warren, and AOC.
And the conclusions I draw from the three themes above.
Let’s start with Steve Mnuchin. He apparently has said that for the second year in a row the Federal government will have to borrow a trillion dollars to cover the cost of the tax cut to the wealthy. “Who’s a good boy?” “Me! Me! Me! Gimme. Gimme. Gimme.”
Okay, this is the party that claims to be conservative, and fiscally responsible. How they get away with that is beyond me. The Republicans always since Eisenhower outspend the Democrats. As Bill Clinton said when Hillary was running the biggest complaint the Republicans have about the Dems is “they don’t clean up the mess fast enough.” There’s another more sinister interpretation, and that is that if the government spends so much money that they can’t borrow anymore the government will be forced to shrink. Then the Republicans can go after what they call entitlement programs. Things like food stamps and Pell Grants and the National Endowment for the Arts. Many of the people who espouse this view are also of the Christian view that there is a coming apocalypse and when that happens Jesus will come down from heaven and we will all be lifted up; or at least the good white people. To facilitate that, certain things have to happen, one of them was moving the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem. The idea being that if you can make the situation worse, then when it gets really bad a change will come that will be really good. I equate this to the old cartoon of the two guys in lab coats in front of the college double row of three blackboards all filled with equations and one of the fellows is saying, “and then a miracle happens.”
Or as the boss in Office Space says in a long drawn out breath, “Yeaaah, I’m going to have to disagree with you on that one.”
Let’s deal with former Starbucks CEO Howard Shultz. He’s thinking of running for President as an independent. The guy yelling at him in the background summed it up really well. “Go back to Davos you egotistical billionaire.” Frankly, I gotta hand it to Shultz, how was he able to make people get hooked on that crappy coffee? I mean there are a lot of coffee shops in this country. Why was his able to succeed spectacularly? I don’t get it. Didn’t get it, and probably never will. Shultz raises an interesting question that will, I think, define how a lot of the Democratic candidates will be portrayed by the media in this season of presidential lotto. But before we get to that let me point out that we have been warned about people like Shultz: billionaires who want to do good after making all their loot. That’s nice. However as Robert Kuttner points out in the title of his book “Can Democracy Survive Global Capitalism?” and Anand Giridharadas points out in his book “Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World” and how the guy that yelled at Shultz – IF YOU THINK THE RICH ARE GOING TO SAVE YOU – FUGGETABOUTIT! That ain’t happening. Yes, they might do some good work. Look at Bill Gates. Yes they may buy a newspaper to keep it from going under – look at Jeff Bezos. But if you think for a second that they are willing to give up their wealth, or a substantial portion, the answer is no, no, NO! Giridharadas (he’s the youngish looking Indian guy with the whitish hair dyed and waxed straight up in a Guy Fierie style that appears on political talk shows from time to time) makes the point that what the rich are doing with their good intentions is co-opting the role that governments have traditionally played in certain sectors. While the idea sounds nice and we can all say, “Aw, isn’t that nice,” the problem is that the people, ie government, needs to do these things if we really want to preserve our way of life and not be beholding to some rich f,f,f,f….person. Kuttner looks at this problem through the lens of global capitalism. Companies – theoretically serve at the pleasure of the people. If you take a class in your local community college about “How to Start a Business,” you will be told that a company gets a license to operate within that political entity under a certain name. You have to apply for the name, register it, etc. You serve at the pleasure of the government entity blah blah blah.
While this may be true for a nail or muffle shop, international businesses are different, so are football teams. Let’s start with football teams because most of us are more familiar with their rapacious behavior. Hey, we can also throw into the mix the Amazon search for a new headquarters or warehouse or whatever it was that had so many local cities begging like that dog in the ad for the treat. Or that great conservative wonky governor of Wisconsin, Scott “do I look like a dork on a motorcycle?*” Walker.
*Yes, Scott. You look like a total dork. On or off a motorcycle.
What international businesses, huge business like Amazon and football teams all have in common is the ability to manipulate governments to give them incentives to come to that locale to do business. Why cities throw millions and billions at football owners to have something that ultimately costs their tax base bazillions of dollars is beyond me. The bigger the company, the bigger the government they can screw with. So there’s Scott Walker – poster boy for economic idiocy. Not only did he enact Koch brothers Sam Brownback type Republican economic plans that left the state in dire straits, but to make sure they’d be suffering for years to come he made a deal with Foxconn that will cost Wisconsin approximately $240,000 per every employee FoxConn hires. Look it up in wikipedia. The deal? You meet certain targets Foxconn and we’ll pay you $3.8 to $4.0 Billion dollars. FoxConn said it will initially hire 3,000 people going up to 13,000. FoxConn is known for making similar pronouncements in the past and not living up to them. Independent economists looking at the deal say that if all the terms of the deal are met Wisconsin might – might – break even by 2043. Good going Scotty! The other thing Foxconn is known for is putting nets around the tops of its building so employees can’t kill themselves diving off the top of the building and taking a header. I hope the Wisconsin plant provides a diving board, better known as a plank, for Mr. Walker. Okay, I’m dreaming.
The point is that big companies can shift resources around faster than government entities can keep up with. They and rich individuals are loath to part with their money. In fact, both groups will go to extremes to hold onto their money. Companies have moved headquarters to remote islands. Rich individuals have stashed money in Panama. Why? To avoid losing any of their money.
This is the point of Nancy MacClean’s book “Democracy in Chains.” It’s not enough to hide your wealth from the government, become the government and change the rules so you can keep your money. (This seems to be the cornerstone of what people call Libertarianism.) The thinking is that the voters are really out to get your money and you have to talk in circular patriotic terms that hide your real game plan, which is to so bind up the government that legislators can’t do anything about it, Hence, the idea of “chains.” In other words: you can’t depend on politicians and judges to stay bought so you gotta change the constitution so that it’s much harder for those individuals to take action against your wealth. These folks went down to Chile when Pinochet was in power and helped him push through a new constitution, which the current leader discovered when she wanted to make changes was not able to do so. Game, Set, Match.
Now we get to how the Democratic candidates are being portrayed by the right, the Shultzes of the world, and the press – all to the detriment of those candidates. Words that are being used to describe Warren, Harris, and AOC are: “radical,” “far left”, “too liberal,” and the most dreaded word of all “socialist.” Throw in a few phrases like “I don’t think the American people are ready to accept …” and we’ve got a smear campaign, a hit job, a piece of work that Lee Atwater or Roger Stone or Karl Rove would be proud of.
What has Warren said that is so radical? “Tax the Rich.”
What has AOC said that is so radical? “Tax the Rich.”
What has Harris said that is so radical? “Tax Relief for the Middle Class.”
Wow. Hum. Why would Warren say something like that? Oh. They have all the money. So, where else are you going to get it? And, btw, the rich have been tipping the scales in their favor a little bit each year since 1980, when Reagan got in.
Why would Cortez make the rather modest suggestion that a higher tax on that portion of income that is in a year over a huge amount? Because that’s what worked before under Eisenhower? (Naw, because it makes sense.)
Why would Harris suggest tax relief for the middle class? Because they’ve been getting screwed by the wealthy since Reagan.
Yet these ideas are called “too liberal” and someone like Shultz is saying he’ll do a more moderate plan. Like Trump before him, he’s rather vague on specifics or exactly how he would do any of this, but trust him. He grew up in the projects and clawed his way to the top of the most successful coffee shop chain in history. But as we saw with Mr. Art of the Deal’s success or claimed success – success in business does not necessarily translate to success in government. As I pointed out yesterday look to Coolidge (“the job of business is business”) or Trump (“You’ll get tired of winning”) to see the failure of those kind of people.
Special note: yesterday I also included Hoover in with Coolidge and Trump. That isn’t fair to him. He was an engineer. He was very successful at keeping the people of Belgium and the Netherlands feed during their occupation by the Germans. People thought this success would translate into being a good President. Unfortunately, it did not. He, like Gerry Ford, was overwhelmed by the job of President. It also shows that a person can be successful in a singular endeavor and not be able to handle the multiple demands of a job like President of the United States.
After Hoover, Franklin Roosevelt came in. The country was in the worst economic condition it had ever been in. This was brought about by one huge factor – the tightening of credit by the banks in the early 1930s following the crash of the stock market in 1929. In other words, the economy went from bad to worse due to the rich not willing to contribute. FDR had to pry it out of them. He tried all kinds of things. We need an FDR now.
PS A programming note: The 2020 election is November 3, 2020 – 642 Days away from today, January 30, 2019.
Inauguration Day is January 20, 2021 – 720 Days away.
How I arrived at the figure of 840 Days to Go is a mystery to me. I assume I forgot to cross off the hundreds digit and reduce by one at some point and that maybe I did that subtraction error twice on the ten’s place, but I don’t know.
Starting with my next screed the “840 Days to Go” will be replaced with (if it was today) with
“642 Days to the 2020 election and 720 Days to Inauguration Day”
PPS Yakumo Bridge at Nagata Shrine, Kobe, October 1934 by Kawase Hasui at VMFA
642 Days to the 2020 election and 720 Days to Inauguration Day
K Goodwind says
Have you addressed the private meeting between Trump and Putin? No notes from the meetings. Yet the Russians took notes.
Why does Agent Orange get away with this?
On another note, I’m in for Warren. She seems to have the best grasp of the situation. Kamala is coming up with some baggage but don’t know if it’s the
Scurious Republicans bad mouthing her. AOC is good but not weathered.
I think politicians need to get a crust around them to protect them. It’s called wisdom.