Independent Caucus

Just Quickly..

Just a quick thought.  It's clear from hearing Sarah Palin stump this morning, as broadcast over POTUS radio on XM, that the issue she and Senator McCain have chosen to campaign on in this final week is budgetary and fiscal conservatism.

In short, if the Democrats - and here I really mean all of them, collectively, but obviously Obama and Biden most specifically - don't quickly and forcefully slam them to the mat on that one, then they deserve to lose, whether they ultimately do or not.

Nearly all of the $10.5 trillion (and climbing) in national debt resulted from the budgets submitted by Presidents Reagan, George H.W. Bush, and George W. Bush.  Nearly all.  All, for all intents and purposes.

The last Republican president who was a budgetary and fiscal conservative was Gerald Ford, and before him, Richard Nixon.  And, before him, Eisenhower.  So, you can see from that list, that, once upon a time, Republican presidents could make some claim, beat their breast a bit, and with good cause, to being a fiscal conservative, but no Republican president since and including Reagan can.  Only Democrat William Jefferson Clinton can.

I'd like someone to show me the percentage of Reagan's budgets (all 8 of 'em), George the First's (4) and W's (8) that Senator John McCain voted against.  These would be the major budgetary appropriations bills, the one's which tie directly to the budgets prepared by those Presidents and sent to The Hill, and which fund the various departments of the Administration, e.g. Defense, Interior, Energy, Housing and Urban Development, and so on.

How many?  You can bet a month's salary it was all or nearly all of 'em.  John McCain joined the House in '82, just two years into Reagan's eight.  He moved to the Senate in '86.  He has been there, in the Congress, for nearly ALL of the time in which America saw her national debt go from effectively nothing to $10.5 trillion.

Whether they win or not, if Senators Obama and Biden do not forcefully, and with a level of ridicule and indignation at or exceeding this post, slam Senator McCain and Governor Palin for attempting in the final week of the campaign to cast themselves as legitimate heirs to, and reliable stewards of, fiscal conservatism, then they don't deserve to win.  If they don't either riducule them or laugh themselves silly, either one, then they really don't deserve to win.

Political Parties And The Financial Crisis - Preamble

Firstly, let's consider a few fundamentals of our two major political parties and this crisis:

• They are built around philosophical fundamentals regarding the role of government, especially, the central government.

• Since there are only two, each views matters of public policy in dichotomous terms, where the other party is the opposition, the enemy; a phenomenon generally referred to as “partisanship”.

• Partisanship has perhaps grown worse in recent decades, or perhaps it's always been bad, but it is at a high level, currently, as demonstrated by aggressive efforts on the part of the two major parties, and the various media who clearly favor each, to frame the cause and cure of the current financial crisis in terms which indict the opposing party and advance their own, rather than advance an informed, academic understanding of the problem.

• In this effort, the parties are using a favored and effective tactic of recent years, which is to offer up, as causes for the crisis, red herrings which indict the other side - their primary goal - and continue offering them so long as any given red herring has yet to be broadly and sufficiently debunked across the general public and the media. As the financial crisis is still relatively new, few red herrings have been debunked, and so continue to swim freely among us.

Red herrings are imaginary fish which swim among the real ones and make it hard for us to tell the difference.  Their invention is premeditated and intentional, and their goal purely to divert and distract for as long as possible in to order to advance some selfish aim.  This is why I say again, during time of crisis, to amplify phony causes (or cures) for personal gain, especially, to attempt to increase the national political power of the Democrat or Republican parties, is treacherous and deeply offensive to anyone who loves this country.  But the problem is rife, and now major media players are part of it.

The great and fundamental flaw of the two national parties is that each has grown to equate “love of country” with “the advancement and empowerment of the [Democrat / Republican] party”.  This is their fundamental flaw; and as they are the two dominant national parties, it is America's fundamental flaw, fundamental problem, and fundamental threat to good and effective government.  And unless anyone believes American can long prosper and compete without good and effective government, then party-first rather than America-first motives on the part of our national leaders and media threatens our very prosperity.  As for the financial crisis specifically, it reduces the likelihood of a broad national consensus developing around actual causes and actual cures, and therefore of effectively responding to the current crisis or averting the next one, while increasing the likelihood that the financial crisis will divide and polarize America further politically.

Make no mistake, polarization is the goal of the two national parties, and they do what they can to advance it daily, through the media, through speeches delivered on the House and Senate floors, through press conferences, by whatever means, and they are forever trial-testing new things. This is what many like Nancy, Harry, Barney, Chuck, Howard, and Mitch, John, Mike, and media people like Rush, Keith, Bill, Donna, do every day.  They hate the other side.  They need you to hate them too, as it advances their goal - which, if not obvious by now, it never will be - is to polarize this country and hoard power; hoard it, so that they can then wield it.  This is fundamentally counter to how policy is made in the other facets of our lives which involve people and competing interests, including work, friendships, relationships, marriage, and raising kids.  With these relationships, the goal is not to discredit the other side, but work with them, and craft solutions which solve the problem and make the relationship stronger.

The two major parties have nearly lost their ability or willingness to do this.  Their great obstacle – since they reside at the poles – is that most Americans reside and still reside in the center.  But, with the media on-board now, the political center has shrunk, shrunk enough that "purple" is no longer used to describe the vast majority of Americans, but a minority “swing” vote in a country dominantly “red” or “blue”.

If true, then the two major parties are succeeding, because the middle is also their enemy.  The middle only helps them if it converts to their side.  “Middle” policies are not acceptable to those who reside and govern at the poles - that includes our leadership.  And polar leaders in the Congress have done everything they can in the drawing of Congressional districts - a power which under any concept of separation-of-powers should never have resided with them – to draw them in such a way as to make the “middle” irrelevant.  The middle is the enemy of anyone charged with drawing legislative districts.  For this reason, strongly “middle” ZIP codes are divided up and merged with partisan districts shaped more like fractals than anything making any geographic sense.

So, the first task in writing about this financial crisis is to unmask the red herrings, turn them actually red, instead of the generally fishy color they currently have.  And as this post has already reached “max-length”, that effort will be next time.

I'm actually not trying to draw out writing about this topic because it's hard.  It is hard.  But it's being drawn out because lately my blogging time and reading time has been crowded out by other time.  I actually woke up at 3:30 am this morning for no apparent reason.  Something I rarely do.  But decided to take advantage of it and at least get started on this effort.  For me, getting started is pointing out the obvious – that those who seek to understand, solve, and avoid a similar crisis in the future will first need to quiet the political noise which does not seek any of those things, but is the latest trial effort to shrink the center.

If there are indeed fanatics in this country, they are not religious fanatics, but Democrat and Republican fanatics who view nearly everything related to power and governance through a dichotomous lens, us or them, with us or against us, effectively, the righteous or the infidel.  Both parties when in charge - with the recent and limited exception of the Clinton administration and Gingrich Congress, who worked together to forge effective policy in some key areas like balancing the budget and Welfare reform - have royally mucked things up.  And what's sad and incredible is they don't even see it, won't even acknowledge that under their policies we have lost our manufacturing base; become energy-dependent; knowingly and persistently set tax collections below spending, and borrowed for the difference, to where we are saddled now and for years with a huge annual interest payment, and a principal which is beyond huge; diminished national savings and weakened the American dollar with persistently low interest rates to a point where it is at risk of losing its position as the world's reserve currency, with dire economic impacts for this country should that happen; and seen the middle class shrink, along with our educational performance on an international scale, when a large, growing, and educated middle class is the key indicator of any prosperous society.

If you agree with me, then you fear the fanatics of the Democrat and Republican parties, who also happen to be many of our national leaders, see them as unwittingly unpatriotic, and see debunking them as the first step toward any real solutions for our country, including this financial crisis.  That first step, my attempt at it, will be next time.  Sorry for drawing things out and being away so long.  Back soon.

Doing Some Reading on the Financial Crisis...

Well, I have been, and I hope you have been too, and I hope when I write my next post you come forth with all you have learned, and comment, comment, comment, because this is important stuff, really important for our country, and we need the benefit of collective knowledge.

I say "when I write my next post" because I don't have time to write it now, this daggone thing of work and employment getting in the way, though allowing me not to add to the mortgage crisis by defaulting on my own.  So, probably the wrong time to rue job and a paycheck.  But I've read some good stuff, and will bring it all forth best I can soon (tonight?..hopefully).  And whereas I often, mostly out of pure expediency (read:  laziness), don't cite sources (always willing to provide them if asked, however, hoping I've built up some credibility with you all at this point), I'm going to cite them in the next post, because of the phenomenal swirl of views and coutervailing views out there on the subject, and the political implications in a presidential election year of a particular set of views becoming the generally accepted and prevailing ones.

That is to say that powerful people with political goals want the blame for this crisis to be worn like a cape by those of the opposing political view.  In an age of journalistic laziness, 24-hour news cycles, and media consolidation, where fact-checked reporting is already difficult to come by, the abject reach for political power motivates an even greater amount of unfair, incomplete, partisan, disproportionate, if not flat-out dishonest reporting.  As I've commented before, those authoring the worst of these, during a time of crisis - financial, military, or any other - are traitorous to the core for making the advancement of their own personal, political ambitions more important than a good national decision.

So, that paragraph was my statement-of-the-obvious, which a good editor would quickly click and delete, but I'm going to leave in just because I can, and because its obviousness asserts its ubiquity, and the degree to which we all must be alert to it, and to not fall prey (become just as lazy or willing to readily accept one position or another which, perhaps, conforms with our default view at the time, or our default political ideology).

So, up next will be the "best-of" articles I've come across, with links, and the best collective summary of them which I can muster - the root causes (because there is more than one) of the crisis, and the best policy strategies for addressing it.  And I hope to that post you will add your comments with embedded links to the articles you have found to be good.

People throw around the word "crisis" too often, too casually.  But this one really is.  We need democracy to work in this case.  It will only work if enough voters invoke self-reliance and educate themselves and each other.  It will fail us if we fail ourselves, since at the core of democracy is an informed electorate.  This is an issue where we need to be informed.

Ron Paul is Right

The more I hear and read, the greater sense I get that the economy has reacted, now, finally in quite obvious fashion, like a patient whose meds have become increasingly out of balance.

It's brought me to the conclusion that in the blame game the Fed is most culpable, more so than greedy borrowers, lenders, or investment banks.  I realize, after the fact, that with that view I have joined the Ron Paul camp on this issue.

With any problem, blaming human nature is never my first choice. It's like blaming water for seeking the path of least resistance.  It is far wiser to lever basic and reliable human nature in formulating rules, laws, regulation, and culpability/liability.

So I don't first reach to blame greedy borrowers or lenders for the crisis.  That is a fact of nature, and one on which capitalism, pure capitalism, is based.  I don't want to change that, mainly because I can't.  That change can only be advanced by prophets.

I'll stop here, that this problem began and was sustained right up until crisis by bad fiscal and monetary policy on the part of the Bush administration and Fed chiefs Greenspan and Barnanke.

The real estate bubble has the key common factor with past bubbles, including 1929, that being a flush money supply and low interest rates, i.e. cheap credit.

Whatever their motivation - I personally think it was Bush wanting to keep the economy humming so that Americans would not feel any economic pain from the enormous cost of the Iraq war, and that he would therefore have a freer political hand to wage that war - Bush and the Fed collaborated to both print money and keep interest rates persistently low.  Human nature responded to that with a spending boom and the incredible, spiraling housing boom, which is now spiraling back.

Barnanke sold his soul, as an acknowledged expert on the Great Depression, by being a party to this following Greenspan when he clearly knew better.

Barnanke should resign.  The Republicans should lose the White House.  Those should be the first punitive prescriptions for these mistakes and bad policies which now threaten the entire financial system and all of us.

After that, as with 1929, a careful study should be done, and a comprehensive set of reforms and laws enacted, a set which will be incomplete unless it includes fundamental reform of the Fed.