Pox on Politicians

Anybody who thinks that either of the two major political parties has some sort of monopoly on virtue has just not been paying attention.

The Republicans fell for Obama's budget gambit. Having signaled that they wanted a 30 billion dollar cut in the budget number as far back as February, they now refuse to take yes for an answer and want to take a further step back to 60 billion. Zeno's Law in action once again. The arrow can never hit the mark, if the target keeps sliding back in an infinite number of half steps.

Boehner is keeping a game face on but the reality is that the House Speaker is having an uncomfortable crucible experience and can't deliver his own promised votes. Serious egg on that face now. If I am Harry Reid, I will now wonder how anybody will ever be able to rely on his word again.

These tea bagger zealots were swept into office on the promise of upsetting the status quo. Now they are behaving like anarchists, trying to turn everything upside down. And I don't really blame them, since the deficit is clearly unsustainable and they are doing what they said they would do if elected.

Yet it is also clear that there is a lack of maturity and political wisdom in their stance. There is talk of the few remaining Republican centrists and moderates forming a coalition with the Dems against some of the more draconian measures being pushed by the freshmen. Triangulation 101.

It is always easier to attack the institution than to govern the institution. The outsiders are inside now and they are supposed to make things work. And they seem to be failing miserable, hence an imminent showdown and shutdown. Because you have to compromise now and then, especially with an evenly divided electorate. Obama is outmaneuvering them like a pro, now threatening to veto the one week band aid that would drastically cut programs.

I would be remiss if I didn't point out that Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell were weeping crocodile tears for Medicaid and Medicare in 2009, accusing Democrats of endangering senior citizens and putting the programs in jeopardy. The programs they themselves now want to abolish. Priceless. It is getting hard to track all of this stuff without a scorecard.

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I think that there has been a horrible miscalculation on the part of the right in unmasking their anti union agenda so quickly and in-artfully, without a clear mandate to do so. In a time of skyrocketing corporate profits, tax cuts for the upper earners and many businesses moving jobs offshore, the new villains are the middle class, teachers, cops and firemen. I predict that the GOP will pay dearly for this during the next turn of the wheel.

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The Democrats have also been guilty of their fare share of perfidy and moral queasiness. The Secretary of Defense just made a hasty trip to Saudi Arabia to mollify our Sunni oil spigot, who have their keffiyah's in a twist over U.S. support for the recent popular uprisings in the region.  Rightly or wrongly, we do show our allies how fleeting our support for them is in a rather mercurial fashion.

Next I suppose will be Israel. Obama has named Samantha Power a Special Assistant to the President and she runs the Office of Multilateral Affairs and Human Rights as Senior Director of Multilateral Affairs on the Staff of the National Security Council. This potential successor to Ms. Clinton has consistently excoriated Israel in her writings and has in general turned a blind eye to Palestinian terrorism. If she becomes Secretary of State, they will be sleeping with one eye open in Jerusalem.

Certain municipalities have been decimated by the unions and ridiculous pension programs. Taken to the cleaners. Vallejo went bankrupt and 74% of their budget was allocated for paying police and firemen salaries and pensions. Gray Davis was a slave to the Prison Guard Union that seemingly ran the show in California during his tenure. These packages are obviously unsustainable. Voters have themselves to blame for electing spineless politicians who are unwilling or incapable of taking a hard line in negotiations. But I don't see how that calls for doing away with collective bargaining. Bargain. It takes two sides.

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We can't keep spending like we have been and we need  to work together and address our problems and find real solutions. But we won't get there if the right insists on trying to dismember the New Deal and the Great Society while they reward the Goldman's, J.P. Morgan's and other creepy banks and corporations who helped get us into this current mess in the first place.