The Question

Calhoun’s Cannons for November 3, 2012

It’s hard to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it.

     Upton Sinclair

O.K. Congress, The Question: Is New Jersey wet enough for you?

It’s a fair question for an elective body that is filled with Climate Deniers, including some of whom are serving on, of all things, the science and energy committees. Really?  Science Committees?  Only in America.  

New York Governor, Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat, already has an answer.  Ditto, New York Mayor, Michael Bloomberg and so, I suspect, does Republican New Jersey Governor, Chris Christie, who originally stumped for climate-change derider, Mitt Romney.  But now Christie’s standing next to President Obama and no doubt thanking his lucky stars that Mitt Romney didn’t get a chance to defund and privitize FEMA.  Well, of all the governors and mayors in America, who better than these guys to start  coming up with answers to that basic question.

In the great Blizzard of 1888, New York was totally paralyzed and decided that it had better put all its utilities and a good chunk of its transportation underground so as to not get caught again by snow.  So it dug tunnels and subway tubes and criss-crossed its landscape with what are basically huge underground pipes that are now filled up with water.

Water.  Rain and storm surge from a rising sea level, all of which arrived last week and will continue to arrive with increasingly ferocious regularity.  Unlike their Washington counterparts, Cuomo, and Bloomberg and, I suspect, Christie get it.  And are now finally discussing the obvious – New Jersey has now become our New Normal and we’d better deal with it.

Which is a shocking statement of fact that had a good many conservative Washington Pols twittering nervously.  The House of The Koch Brothers is a flimsy carbon burning structure that stays alive only because of our corrupt and corrupting election processes.  Pols gotta dance with them what bought ‘em and nobody pays better than Big Oil and Coal.  So it’s no wonder that so much of Congress is blind, willfully blind, embarrassingly blind, destructively blind, hiding in the closet with their money and their eyes scrunched shut, thinking the storms won’t find them there.

And now here comes The Guvs and the Mayors, like some kind of modern day Alice in Wonderland pointing out the obvious – Your house, my house, all our houses are nothing but a pack of cards.  They cannot hold. 

The Pentagon figured that out a few years ago.  They’ve been writing White papers for some time detailing exactly how Global Climate Change is a severe national security threat.  The Seabees know about pipes and tunnels and sea surges and high ground.  They’ve been looking at the coasts of America and what they’ve been seeing for some time now is New Jersey, writ large. 

Ditto for the insurance companies.  More quiet samizdat White Papers have been making the rounds: Private insurance companies are realizing that they cannot cover their bets, cannot afford to keep writing paper like they have been, too many “at risk” properties, too many “pre-existing conditions,” too many “New Jerseys” and “fire-stormed” Colorados and “crop-loss” Iowas.  Which means that Americans will soon find that they will no longer be “in safe hands,” and the fine print in their various insurance policies will start getting smaller, more expensive, and more convoluted until translated into the obvious:  Sorry, we no longer cover that . . . whatever it is . . .  and neither does any insurance company in the world.   

Welcome to Climate Change America. Where pivoting seriously to non-carbon burning energy will be expensive while NOT pivoting will be even more expensive, because, one way or the other, Mother Nature will be paid.

And so the Question to Congress. Is New Jersey finally wet enough for you?

Alice in Demo Land

Calhoun’s Cannons for Sept 7, 2012

            Three days of the Republican convention.  Three days of the Democratic convention.  And I have just one question:  What the hell happened to this country?

            Really.  How did the ethos of work hard, help your neighbor raise his barn and he’ll help with yours, build for the future so your kids will have it better than you,  get transmuted into the ethos of Ayn Rand:  Money equals success, taxes are theft, go raise your own damned barn, and the next generation can look out for themselves?

            When did we stop being a nation of hard-headed pragmatists – pay your bills, grow your business, invest in the future – and turn into air-heads willing to believe voodoo economics, the “trickle-down” fake theories of David Stockman who later admitted that he made it all up?  In a consumer/capitalist society, trickles go upward, not down.  Henry Ford figured that out years ago.  He paid an unheard-of living wage so his workers had enough money to buy his product.  No salaries, no buyers; no buyers, no factory; no factory, no Henry Ford.

            When did companies move out of what economists call “the virtuous circle of growth?”  Back in the day, Frank W. Abrams, chairman of Standard Oil of New Jersey, wrote, “The job of management is to maintain an equitable and working balance among the claims of the various directly affected interests groups . . .”  i.e. stockholders, employees, the community, the public, the nation as a whole.

            The Virtuous Circle resulted in and sustained the middle class, encouraged ongoing prosperity for the maximum number of people, ensured stability, kept Ayn Randian greed in check.  How quaint it seems now.  In its stead, we have Gordon Gekko, the rapacious Bainer whose overriding goal is to maximize profits for a small number of stakeholders, push all value to the first-quarter bottom line, loot the company and scamper for the Cayman Islands, with all that rapacious, short-sighted behavior rewarded by hefty bonuses and favorable back-room-written tax laws.

            How could anyone think that such behavior wouldn’t lead to bubbles and theft and corruption and crash?  Did the average American somehow think that he would be exempt from the destruction that was heading his way?  Is that why he kept voting into office wholly-owned Corporate Pols who would promise him pie then vote into law policies that would actually deliver dead flies to the working and middle class? 

            Was it because the Kool Aide the Ayn Randers were delivering was a slow acting poison?  A drug that dulled the mind so nobody noticed until it was too late? Or was it because The Big Lie always works? 

            And when did we become a country that decided Big Lies were acceptable? Lie about war, lie about Wall Street, lie about anything, since winning and holding power at any cost was the only thing that counted.  And if you were rich,  famous and brazen enough, you could get away with anything.  Who would stop you? After all, as a Republican operative once famously said, “We create our own reality.”  Is that what turned the old Republican party of fiscal responsibility and prudent conservatism into math-challenged Neo Know-Nothings waving vaginal probes? 

            So here we are, Battered Wife Nation, a country poisoned by fake reality – trickle-down “job creators,” my ass -- hammered into believing that the majority of us don’t deserve anything – no decent health care, no decent wages, no decent schools, or roads or bridges.  We were told that all that mattered were the stock market numbers and we believed that lie.  We were told that unions were to blame for our jobs being shipped overseas, so we hated unions.  We were told that teachers and firemen and government workers were blood-sucking leeches, so we kicked them into the street.  We were told that black people and brown people were either the enemy who would steal our outsourced, non-existent jobs or were “welfare queens” stealing our taxes, and we believed that.  We were told that more tax breaks for the wealthy took priority over helping our unemployed neighbor, helping the poor and the old and the sick, and we believed that, too.

            We forgot our civics lessons; if you want a better congress you have to vote in better congressmen.  Instead, we elected clueless monkey-wrenchers, ideological hacks and wing nuts, then wondered why nothing reasonable got done.  And when outrage and blunt honesty was the only sane response to the disaster our apathy and inattention had called down on upon our heads, we were told we should shut up and accept our downsized serfdom with a smiley face and grab our own bootstraps.  Pluckiness was demanded, not fierce, righteous anger.  It was Mr. Mcawber over Madame Defarge.

            So, here we sit, sick, hurting, and befuddled at the corner of Battered Wife Nation and Enough Already! with the hour late, real economics (arithmetic, not theory) and real Mother Nature (hot enough for you?) bearing down on us – two actual real realities that do not deal in lies, care nothing about ideology and take no prisoners.

            Happily, one antidote arrived at the convention.  Former President Clinton, the Big Dawg himself, got down off the porch to call out and fact- check the Republican’s false narratives with the cheerful exactitude of a finger-waving schoolmarm. So now we’ll see how many people were tuned in and paying attention and how many were watching football on another channel.

            Which, come to think of it, is pretty much how and why we got into this mess in the first place.      

                 

Game Unchanged

Calhoun’s Cannons for March 13, 2012

Humans are the only animals who will follow unstable pack leaders

                                                  Cesar Millan, the Dog Whisperer

            Sarah Palin and John McCain have both said they didn’t intend to watch HBO’s “Game Change,” an account of their run for president and vice president in 2008.  I’m sure they think the made-for-HBO movie would trash them and anyway, who wants to be reminded of  such embarrassments? While the film does hold them to account for their hubris and blind ambition, overall, they are treated with sympathy; players caught in a win-at-all-cost ethos that did not end well.    

            At the time, like most of the nation, I was stunned when Sarah Palin blew out of the north, her clueless optimism and oddly un-political family in tow, and with the first few national speachs, blew McCain’s train off the track and permanently shoved national politics into a lethal mash up: “American Political Idols Dance With The Stars.” 

            Overnight, Palin’s adoring fans overwhelmed the straight talking express, McCain became that-guy-with-Sarah, and Democratic candidate Obama suddenly had his star-power, media-savvy, crowd-stirring, Great Communicator match.  Yes, half the country watched Katy Couric ask Sarah what newspapers she read, saw her draw a blank and said WTF?? 

            But the other half flocked to her rallies, enthralled as she cranked up the dog whistle music.  Suddenly, those too often forgotten or dismissed by the Washington elite were being told that they were the real Americans, their values were the real American values. And they responded with adoration to their self-styled Mama Grizzly. Sarah! Sarah!   Even Tina Fey’s dead-on comic portrayals could get no traction with those crowds to point out the appallingly obvious:  McCain’s an old man, he’s had cancer once, Palin is one heart-beat away from the Presidency.  This woman is not qualified.

            Even Dick Cheney – Dick Cheney! – called the choice “reckless.”

            But Steve Schmidt, McCain’s political strategist “got it” right in the middle of the campaign, if this film is accurate.  The belief that his candidate had to win no matter what drove him and McCain to make that Hail Mary, stunningly reckless gamble on Palin. It was a choice that made a mockery of McCain’s campaign slogan, “ Country First.”  As they would sadly find out, it was always Palin First.

            And that, for me was the most puzzling part of this whole affair.  How self-blind do you have to be to get a phone call out of the blue asking you to run for the second highest office in the land and with nary a qualm say, “You betcha! Sure. I’ll be a great Veep.  Heck, I’d be a great President.  When do we start?” 

            A normal person would say, “Sorry.  I’m not qualified.”  But an egotistical narcissist with no capacity for reality checks would have no problem. Or somebody in the grip of some delusional religious mania: “God told me to run for office.”  Or maybe a cynically ambitious sociopath who knows the American voter can be Elmer Gantried into buying anything.

            Or, perhaps, it was as simple as the L.A. Times television critic, Mary McNamara suggests: “The film, obviously, belong to (Julianne) Moore, who works hard to make Palin not so much fatally ambitious as one of those naturally confident people who believe that confidence and faith are the most important ingredients of success; ability or even competence can be learned on the job.”

            Except when it can’t.

            As the movie makes clear, after trying to educate and fill in Palin’s gaping information void, her handlers finally gave up, realized she was a natural “red-light” actor, and just wrote Cliff Notes scripts for her – talking points, summaries, buzz words and phrases.  Which solved some of the most glaring problems of an extemporaneous Sarah, but sill left her handlers with a serious disconnect: Imagine an unprepared student who just skims the topic and memorizes key points and phrases but who then over reaches and overloads the mashed-up answers into nonsense.  That would go a long way towards explaining Palin’s distinctly odd and incoherent verbal rambles.

            Overall, the film was extraordinarily kind to Palin, showing a plucky woman working hard to do her bit but who was pushed beyond her capabilities and into overwhelm until she finally decides to go rogue and quickly becomes a distraction and then a liability to a campaign heading for the cliff. 

            But the film didn’t bother to do any more than hint at the deeper political problems the McCain/Palin campaign illustrated:  A cynical win-at-all-costs mind set, a philosophically bankrupt political party bereft of any new ideas but determined to cling to power for no other reason than a need to cling to power, and a dangerous conflation of bread and circus entertainment with cynical beltway politics, all tapping into America’s dark dog-whistle, social-values heart. 

            It is the same disease that’s infected the Republican Party’s primary election and the plague will arrive full blown in both political parties come November, all fueled now by unlimited, secret PAC money – Democracy as a fully financed corporate block-buster TV special.   

     Bring on the dancing bears.