From High to Low

This morning was one of those bird singing Cinderella moments.  Later this afternoon, the bird was mortally wounded.  Another pretty typical day in supporting high speed rail in the US.

First this morning.  If you have a minute and want to see some really cool CGI, check out California’s high speed rail website.  I did this morning.  You really don’t have to imagine anything as they show really fast trains going between downtown transit hubs past growing interconnected cities.  Click Trip Visualizations and choose some fun start and end points.  Watch Fresno buildings grow or see the underground station in San Francisco come to life.  No long trips to exurban airports.  No long security lines and taxiing waiting to go somewhere.  No big taxi fees trying to get from the airport back into downtown.  Just happiness. http://goo.gl/S6r1R

 

Then came the low, which was the news that as part of the Republican budget cutting awesomeness, $1.5B in high speed funding was cut in the 11pm negotiations between Republicans and Democrats on Friday.  http://goo.gl/z3TCA That’s a nearly 20% cut from the original $8B that was suppose to be spent, which itself barely scratched the surface of Chinese investment. (see earlier Moogaz post on New Jersey)

Another case of massive short sightedness.  In a race to increase short term profits for the rich and incorporated through historic low tax rates, the Republicans are willing to cut off all long term investment simply because it’s Obama’s idea.     A far cry from the days in 1956 when the Senate passed the Federal-Aid Highway Act, establishing the interstate system to be funded by a 3 cent gas tax, by a vote of 89-1.  Yes, 89-1.  http://goo.gl/kdvIJ  Eisenhower's own words:

Our unity as a nation is sustained by free communication of thought and by easy transportation of people and goods.

And in his 1963 memoir, he added:

More than any single action by the government since the end of the war, this one would change the face of America. ... Its impact on the American economy - the jobs it would produce in manufacturing and construction, the rural areas it would open up - was beyond calculation.

The same can be said of high speed rail.  Now if people would just stop shooting the bird.

Showdown

We’re headed into a showdown and the government will soon be shutting down.  Make sure you impress your neighbors and friends by wielding these 11 facts from the Moogaz.  Bold points are the elevator lines.

1. The budget bill is for 2011.  That’s right. This year.  Congress couldn’t get its act together last year because of the election and since then they haven’t been able to agree on anything.  So here we are, in the middle of the year with no budget.  Seven stopgap measures has already been passed, the last one is due to expire Friday.  On Friday, the government shuts down.

2. Budgets have to start in the House.  This one did, which is why it’s called House HR 1.  The House is run by Republicans now, split really into two factions: the Tea Partiers led by Paul Ryan and the rest led by Boehner.  Democrats are in the minority but not in the Senate.  Harry Reid still runs the Senate.  Montagues.  Capulets.  Someone’s bound to die.

3. Tea Partiers said they wanted to cut $100B from the 2011 budget.  That was last Novermber.  Now we’re in April so they’ve prorated it to $60B.  Democrats have been willing to meet in the middle at $30B but Boehner can’t be seen as leaning left or he’ll get eaten by the primary monster in the next election.  Or lose his Leader position.  Or both.  He’s the proverbial rock.  Paper beats Rock.

4. For the guy next door who bugs you about numbers, $60B versus $30B is 4% versus 2% of 2011 Discretionary spending.  Discretionary spending is 14% of all spending.  So we’re talking about a battle over 0.28% of the Federal Budget.  That’s like arguing over buying a pair of shoes when you make $60K/year. http://goo.gl/73O31

4. Keep in mind that 50% of this Discretionary spending is Defense.  Republicans want to increase their budget by $8B; Democrats want to lower it by $1B.  The Montagues want tanks. The Capulets want middle class relief.

5. Republicans added riders to the House bill HR1.  These are amendments that don’t really have to do with the budget but ride along.   Nobody likes the riders.  They include:   http://goo.gl/NGy2a  The Montagues want to drive their tanks over the environment and anything remotely nice.

6. Keep in mind that earlier as part of a budget deal, tax breaks for high income earners were continued.  Rich people are cool.

7. And GE pays no income tax. Big businesses are cool too.  Jobs jobs jobs. (unless you work for a school or are doing something good for somebody; then your job is stifling job creation)

8. The economy is in a recession, people are being squeezed by higher prices and stagnant wages, and the top 1% has accumulated all of the wealth of the last 20 years.  But this budget proposes to cut:

• Cuts the EPA budget by 1/3rd – no more environmental protection (think BP oil spill). Actually the whole list of EPA cuts is even more fun to read: http://goo.gl/VJtW3
• Cuts UN funding and international assistance  (think Libya) http://goo.gl/dFHcO
• Cuts to Americorps and community programs: http://goo.gl/SLHza
• More cuts where I couldn’t find a damn list on the Internet to put here

Well, a lot of cuts. Even sports fisherman agree: http://goo.gl/GdetX  This all falls into point 8.  Which is that I hardly see any cuts to business or moneyed interests.  Cut taxes for the rich because they’re not rich enough [pat on back].  Now let’s cut programs for everyone else [go team].

9. Oh wait, the bill also wants to cut the new regulations that would regulate Wall Street.  Because Wall Street, with its record profits and vanishing regulation, really needs a break. That Bernie Madoff is a nice guy; what ever happened to him?

10. All of this starts over again when we debate the 2012 budget and the upcoming debt ceiling bill.  In a new look at mandatory spending, Paul Ryan would like to cut assistance to the poor and elderly and “restructure” Medicare.  Read this as slash and burn all in the effort to keep tax rates at “historic” 18 percent levels (0% if you’re GE :)).  He calls it the Path to Prosperity, unveiled today:  http://goo.gl/MqZ3h Paul Ryan has Congressional Health Care so he’s not worried.

11. By Saturday, one side will start losing.  I feel like it will be us.

There’s More People out there Like Me

A few weeks ago on a Friday like today I belted out an antithesis to our current malaise which is conservative do-nothing capitalism-rules-above-all philosophy.

While it generated some nice hits, I felt a little bit like its message rippled out like throwing a pebble in the ocean.  This morning I was excited to find that someone out there has the exact same feelings as me and sums it up nicely in this post on Thought Catalog. http://goo.gl/oC1RU

I particularly love these paragraphs:

Is it really true that we assess the economic success of our country via the GNP? But if we’re making more money and getting less and less for it — less education, less healthcare — then isn’t that the sign of a failing economy? Isn’t that obvious, even to one such as myself with no economic training?

San Francisco public school teachers are furloughed once a month. I’m not making this up. Thirty miles from here is Google, Yahoo, Apple, Genentech, and Facebook. And teachers are furloughed. Uh, hmn, doesn’t it seem like corporations are getting away with something — like not paying enough taxes?

How about we say: you can form a corporation but once your valuation exceeds a billion dollars, you have to give the schools in your own fucking neighborhood enough money to pay the teachers and provide a lunch other than mad cow meatloaf?

I wonder out loud … where is this middle class rage going?  I feel like I constantly am reading charts about how wages are stagnant and how the top 1% has reaped all of the rewards of the last 30 years of capitalism and yet the only rage manifesting itself is in cutting middle class programs under the disguise of fixing the deficit.  Boxed up and supported by plugged in business lobbyists and messaged to death by Republican TV talking heads.

My guess is that liberal leaning middle class angsters are actually caused-out.  We’re the ones in the community groups fighting for recycling or street improvement programs.  We’re the ones selling cookies to raise funds for school or in the meetings protesting cuts to community pools and parks.  We have to constantly fight business interests and threats to our environment.

Given  all that, we’re exhausted.

Conservatives don’t have this baggage.  If everything is left to the individual, why fight for anything.  They are the proverbial bullies in the back of the classroom, disrupting everyone but adding no value. 

Adding value is hard to do.  Much harder than being a bully.

Vernal Pools and the Trifecta

In case you missed the election of Tea Partier LePage to the Blaine House last November, the Press Herald today wonderfully illuminated the conservative shift Maine has taken.

The top left article describes how Maine’s AG is going to join a Florida-initiated anti-health care bill lawsuit.

The top right article goes into the wonderful relationship the Blaine House is forging with national civil rights groups.

And in the bottom right article, the governor wants to bulldoze vernal pools. 

At Scarborough Downs, we’d call that a trifecta.

For a minute, let’s explore the vernal pools article.  Make no bones about it, this administration wants to remove any barrier to development.   Need to bulldoze Bambi to build a WalMart.  Do it.  Need to steamroll a salamander to build a business park with no bus access miles from downtown.  Get out of the way.  In a LePagian world, developers lay down a hunk of cash and whatever they want is instantly built regardless of its impact to the surrounding community or environment.  Jobs trump everything.

The cool thing about the game Civilization is that you choose what world you want to build.  Choose Genghis Khan and you get a warrior society that scorches and burns.  Pick Caesar and you build temples and get culture.  The point is that our environment is dictated by the choices we make.

The current administration would turn Maine into Florida.  Need a 6 lane highway connecting plazas and gas stations.  Do it.  Need a low density housing development called Woody Corners where everyone has to get in their SUVs to go a tenth of a mile to get to the gate.  Build it.  Pretty soon you have everything the world can offer, and nothing. 

It’s important that we give communities tools to fight rampant development from developers that care very little about the world we live in and very much about the money in their pocket.  And it’s important that we choose our words carefully with groups that help underrepresented people in a state that could use more underrepresented people.  And it’s important that we help Mainers with health insurance, and at the least not fight the efforts of people trying to do the same. 

Anyways, the Press Herald glaringly, and sadly, shows us what elections are about.  So choose carefully.

Camouflage Hats, Glory, and the Heartland

No doubt this is what Eric Andreessen had in mind when the Internet was created.  Wait for the Johnny Cash middle part, it’s awesome.

None of the Above

If you haven’t seen Brewster’s Millions, you should.  If only because the Tea Party is the modern Monty. 

Monty is a run of the mill guy, worn out pitcher in a depressed New Jersey city, who loves his friend Spike.  He’s your average Joe.  In a race between two established candidates, our average Joe has to spend $30 million in 30 days.  He starts out running as a candidate only to realize that he doesn’t really want to be a politician, he just wants to throw the bums out.  And this is the modern Tea Party, $30 million in 30 days to throw the bums out.

Unfortunately, when the Tea Party wakes up from their party on November 3rd, they’re going to face the same hangover Monty felt.  And there’s no $300 million from George Burns (although come on, doesn’t Boehner look exactly like this guy).

My Dad sent out a well intentioned email summarizing the Tea Party angst.  Surprisingly, I kind of felt myself drawn to the early pieces.  It was like rooting for Monty.

Politicians are the only people in the world who create problems and then they [sic] campaign against them.  Have you ever wondered, if both the Democrats and the Republicans are against deficits, WHY do we have deficits?

Of course then the forwarded email gets Fox Newsisized. There’s your standard Nancy Pelosi reference (we need a villian).  And a list of taxes in case you forgot that there was a hunting license fee.  But it’s the end that sheds light on the Party of Tea.

Not one of these taxes existed 100 years ago, & our nation was the most prosperous in the world. We had absolutely no national debt, had the largest middle class in the world, and Mom stayed home to raise the kids.

That’s when I’m like WTF? 

None of these taxes existed 100 years ago.  Well neither did airplanes.  But ok, you don’t like taxes. NOBODY DOES.  This is where most journalists end their amazingly probing inquiries (sarcasm) of the Tea Party.  But the debt?  How many times do Democrats have to say that it was the Bush tax cuts that created our current debt?  Or the Bush wars.  Or the let’s stop watching Wall Street policies.   And the largest middle class?  Take a look back at an earlier post on income inequality; it’s amazing that the Tea Party and the rich-supporting Republicans are even remotely on the same page.  If you really want a strong middle class, you really should be supporting unions and eliminating tax cuts for the rich, not exactly your conservative plank.  Conservative policies DO NOT HELP the middle class. And mom staying home with the kids.  Hi, welcome to the 2010s.  But if you really want mom staying home with the kids, Sweden (we know all Tea Partiers love Sweden) pays for it.

The point is that the Tea Party is a throw the bums out party who’ve aligned themselves with the devil (George Burns, Oh God you Devil, get it?).  In thrusting up the Republicans, they’ve demolished any hope of actually solving the problems they care about.    And in the meantime, we’ll be choking on cigar smoke.  And Hackensack will still have a train running through the outfield.

If it is Paul LePage

Really?

"If it is to be, it is up to us?" If it is to be why do we need to do anything?

I'm so confused.

Hmmm … those Crazy Tea Partiers

I read a post today by James Kwak (what a horrible name for a serious economics author).  In it, he looks at a book called Winner-Take-All Politics and argues that the rich have been accumulating power in Washington since the 1970s to the detriment of the middle class and the historic Democratic party.  The post is worth a quick read but here’s a couple of highlights:

Hacker and Pierson cite studies showing that public opinion on issues such as inequality has not shifted over the past thirty years; most people still think society is too unequal and that taxes should be used to reduce inequality. What has shifted is that Congressmen are now much more receptive to the opinions of the rich, and there is actually a negative correlation between their positions and the preferences of their poor constituents (p. 111). Citing Martin Gilens, they write, “When well-off people strongly supported a policy change, it had almost three times the chance of becoming law as when they strongly opposed it. When median-income people strongly supported a policy change, it had hardly any greater chance of becoming law than when they strongly opposed it” (p. 112). In other words, it isn’t public opinion, or the median voter, that matters; it’s what the rich want.

That shift occurred in the 1970s because businesses and the super-rich began a process of political organization in the early 1970s that enabled them to pool their wealth and contacts to achieve dominant political influence (described in Chapter 5). To take one of the many statistics they provide, the number of companies with registered lobbyists in Washington grew from 175 in 1971 to nearly 2,500 in 1982 (p. 118). Money pouring into lobbying firms, political campaigns, and ideological think tanks created the organizational muscle that gave the Republicans a formidable institutional advantage by the 1980s. The Democrats have only reduced that advantage in the past two decades by becoming more like Republicans–more business-friendly, more anti-tax, and more dependent on money from the super-rich. And that dependency has severely limited both their ability and their desire to fight back on behalf of the middle class (let alone the poor), which has few defenders in Washington.

The culmination of these years of moneyed influence is clearly the financial fallout and Great Recession.  

So what about the tea party?  Related to many of their core constituency, I have the ability to put a first person perspective on the group.  And what appears as a libertarian fringe group may actually be the lower middle class revolting against the culmination of this high-end power grab.  A quick scan of their crowds shows an older, more uneducated cohort clearly more disenfranchised by recent economic conditions than the rich.  In their ideals, we see the lower class protest.  They firmly can’t stand Washington, they want economic laissez faire policies (really just a return to prosperity of a time ago), and the roots of their discontent are sown in job losses from the Great Recession. 

If this is true, how did the Democrats lose this group?  How have Republicans, whose leader Boehner is a well known country club congressmen who openly loves lobbyists, come to represent the lower middle class struggling for better income equality?  Could it be that the rich have learned to completely manipulate this group united in its lack of education and conservative social values (think Fox News).  Any party who can openly support tax relief for the top 1% while openly not supporting policies that help the middle class deserves credit for a well oiled brain washing machine.  Its historical parallels are likely the yellow journalism machines of the late 19th century.  How funny is it that those times were marked by immigration issues and high rates of technology growth.

Anyways, here we sit at the election of 2010 and the lower middle class is about to topple the very government working in their favor.  Ironic.  When will the emperor's clothes come off?

A Shorpy Followup - Fuel

Think our current fight to reduce fossil fuels is a late twentieth century creation?  From Shorpy, here’s a post on the Fuel Administration circa 1919.

According to a comment on the post and Wikipedia, the Fuel Administration was a government response to a major shortage of coal in the weaning years of WWI.  The organization had broad powers to regulate prices and distribution of coal.  Garfield was appointed by Wilson to head the agency.  Beyond regulating demand, its most famous legacy is Daylight Savings Time.

I wonder given the current Tea Party context how popular a similar organization would be for conserving oil?  Even Progressives might find the concept difficult.  It speaks to how conservative the nation has shifted.

Experimental MuGaz Cartoon Take 1

Introducing Mu. Mu’s vacationing in Louisiana this week.  He’s an independent who has a conservative friend Chuck and an independent friend Sedrick.

Tranquil Land of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

This post is great. 

I wanted some quote about the lunatic fringe in here.  Henry Louis Mencken, the 19th century journalist who coined the Scopes trial the “monkey” trial had a good one: “the lunatic fringe wags the underdog,” which when you read the post you’ll see in full bloom.

Mencken had some other great quotes too … here are my favorites:

“Love is like war, easy to begin but very hard to stop”

“The theory seems to be that as long as a man is a failure he is one of God’s children, but that as soon as he succeeds he is taken over by the Devil.”

“There is something even more valuable to civilization than wisdom, and that is character.”

Anyways, good post above.