Cynicism, the Technocrat, and Solar Panels in the Desert

In a Great Recession, we’re surrounded by cynicism.  The market may not rebound.  Jobs are lost.  We’re doomed to fail to China.  Truthfully, these fears and worries were always present, but in a hopeful economy the doubts are suppressed.  In a Great Recession, all we have is doubt.

Hold that thought for a minute.

Today the White House announced that it will return solar panels to its roof.  This is good right?  It reinforces the push for renewable energy.  It falls in line with stimulus investments in clean energy and Obama’s mandate that Federal buildings go green. We should be happy.

But then creeps in doubt.  Didn’t we already install these things during Jimmy Carter’s presidency?  Wasn’t Jimmy Carter a failure?  Aren’t Obama’s poll numbers in the bag?  Oh God, what if Obama is Jimmy Carter? 

What starts out as a nice little technocrat decision to add a solar panel back up to the roof is actually a doubt megaphone.   And you can be assured that the cynicism police will be out in force – I can already hear the piercing shrivel of Megyn Kelly.

And this is where Obama is failing us.  (No, not that Megyn has a y in it, but yes that’s a problem)

In a Great Recession where all there is is doubt, we need bold confidence.  It isn’t enough that the stimulus has good things in it or that we’re making small but good steps, we need to know where we’re going.  America goes through the past like Mallory goes through diapers. They crave the future.  To quote Michael J Fox in American President “People want leadership, Mr. President, and in the absence of genuine leadership, they'll listen to anyone who steps up to the microphone. They want leadership. They're so thirsty for it they'll crawl through the desert toward a mirage, and when they discover there's no water, they'll drink the sand.” 

Well, all we have right now is sand.  Someone tee up a mirage please. 

How inspirational COULD it have been if Obama wrote an executive order mandating that every Federal building would have solar panels in 5 years?  Now that’s a mirage I could sink my teeth into. 

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?

Our House is a Very Very Fine House

I always wonder if the Great Depression felt black and white.  Did people realize they were in the Great Depression?  Were bread lines the norm for everyone? 

This morning’s labor report clearly lays out that the jobs recovery will be a long slog. But what is the norm for our generation.  25% of Americans will have been out of work for some period during the Great Recession.  And those remaining or back in the work force will have lower wages.  But on this Labor Day, I’m going to Georgia’s soccer game.  I’m having a BBQ.

Robert Reiche writes a brilliant piece in the Times today where he articulates the true cause of the Great Recession.  Yes it was precipitated by Wall Street, but the heart of our collective pain starts with computers and satellites and policies that concentrated wealth. 

There’s too many things to buy nowadays and too much competition abroad to have the salaries necessary to buy those things.  And government can’t encourage thriftiness because consumerism drives the economy which drives tax revenues.  So we’re left with this malaise.  Hungover, fat, and too poor to buy breakfast all at the same time.  What will be the picture of our generation 50 years from now.

The true promise of the Obama election was to turn around the clock on these bread and butter issues.  Healthcare, college grants, infrastructure, energy economy, bank reform are pieces of the new New Deal, but people just need a chicken in every pot and a fireside chat to tell them things are going to be great again.  Still waiting on it, for now I’m watching soccer and having a BBQ.

All the World is a Stage

It’s true the title came from a brief encounter with a sauced ivory tusk trader at Brian Buru’s, so if you’re out there – cheers (and please stop trading in illegal shit).  But alas, this post is for Robert Gibbs, who although not sauced, needs to take a cue from melancholy Jacques and just return to the forest. 

 

In the latest jest from our fool, Gibbs launches a tirade at the house of Progressives (thanks be to Huff Po).  Well apparently, he’s bitter from watching too much cable.  Aren’t we all?  A true fool can rise above the cackles of London and draw a crowd.  Here, we have a fools impersonator.  He has a microphone and some lines but no direction.  His ink well is a pint low and everyone’s leaving the Globe theater to see the gladiators fight over on Fox TV. 

Great press secretaries can create or kill stories.  When Pierre Salinger was asked about Mr. Kennedy having an affair, he replied (courtesy of WaPo) “Look, he's the president of the United States. He's got to work 14 to 16 hours a day. He's got to run foreign and domestic policy. If he's got time for mistresses after all that, what the hell difference does it make?” End of story.

Sure, it’s the Presidents that have to lead.  But without a great muse, what do we remember of the kingdom?  It’s time for Gibbs to go.

And for those interested, here’s the whole opener to As You Like It.

My State

First, nice post Grant.  Read that article a few days ago and was as equally impressed.  There’s two underlying wants driving Politico’s original article: 1) for someone, somewhere to start liking Obama like they did during the campaign and 2) for Obama to become Josiah Bartlett (or Roosevelt).  In the meantime, people need to just be happy because anything less than those two things will be disappointing.  Which is why this weekend was so cool.

Good Stuff

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2010/07/15/us/politics/AP-US-Financial-Overhaul-Highlights.html?hp

It’s Getting Real

Several cool things are converging in Washington.

1) Obama’s Executive Order in December 2009 which directs departments to make their content more “transparent, participatory, and collaborative”.

2) Stimulus initiatives – like this one on page 136 of the Stimulus Bill (HR1) that directs $40M to be “allocated at the discretion of the HHS Secretary provided, That the funding … shall be used to accelerate the development and dissemination of research assessing the comparative effectiveness of health care treatments and strategies”

3) Health Care Bill mandates (somewhere in here)

Taken together, we’re finally starting to see some of the benefits of a government working on a problem.  Today, the HHS is announcing  http://www.hhs.gov/open/ which provides a central repository for health related data sets, tools, and records including standards on health related data.

It’s not glamorous. It’s data.  But it’s government working.  And that’s cool.

If Keith Posts in a Forest, Can Anyone Hear Him?

Here's a fun video that the WH puts together once a week. This week's was pretty vanilla but I imagine other weeks are more lively. It's the West Wing aspect that's cool. The only thing missing is C.J.

http://www.whitehouse.gov/photos-and-video/video/west-wing-week-hang-your-hats