Dollars and Sense

By Judith Gayle | Political Waves

It’s still jobs, jobs, lack of jobs that preoccupy us, and rightly. We’ve been told the President has a plan, but whatever it is, it won’t be enough. It can’t be. What he inherited has left him few options, and I’m tired of hearing about how this economic mess is all Obama’s fault. Whatever his failings or talents as a national leader, he didn’t create this horror story, and I don’t believe he takes any joy in it, which is more than can be said for some others working in the halls of Congress. Here are a few charts that make that truth very evident.

The right is remarkably accomplished at projecting its considerable sins onto others, but after a decade as overtly dramatic as the one presided over by George W. Bush, you’d think there would be enough of us out here in the wasteland to stop the Republican noise machine. Somehow that never happens. According to the Republicans — the squeaky wheel, as it were — it’s liberal conspirators like you and me that have brought this nation to its knees with communist ideology, socialist inclinations, unreasonable business regulations and give-aways to the great unwashed. In order to get clarity on the whole of the last decade, then, I think we should reduce it to dollars and cents.

If we took a long look at the ledgers, perhaps we’d get a sense of how many greed-inspired corporate cuts it actually took to bleed our wealth away. That isn’t so straight-forward, of course, since the Dubby’s books were cooked in clever ways like debt not disclosed or held over to be popped into another column farther down the road. Pubs are traditionally very good at this kind of creative bookkeeping while Dems are more often honest to a fault and, ultimately, faulted for their honesty. Obama suffers this syndrome.

With the 10th anniversary of 9-11 just around the corner, we’ll have an opportunity to review not only the shocking circumstances that routed a complacent America — seemingly so long ago — but also our response to them. Most of us have finally accepted the reality that the whole of that misadventure was simply, to use present-day vernacular, a fail. For those of us who watched prayerfully, hoping for tragedy to catapult us into a new national maturity and global awakening, it was certainly that and more. The word used most often to describe the Bush response is “squander.”

Our golden opportunity — not only to grow as thoughtful, self-reflective human beings but also to renew international relationships and cement friendships — wasn’t just squandered, it was thrown willy-nilly into a shitstorm of flag pins, bullhorns and testosterone. Overnight we became partisan bullies, babbling idiots fearful of things that go bump, our minds fine-tuned to consider Orwellian proclamations reasonable and reasonable dialogue treasonous. All of this was carefully orchestrated by oil interests with help from the Israeli lobby, AIPAC, and their Neocon henchmen in a plot to advance the dreams of the merchant class: control of vast energy resources.

The lures of domination and profit were irresistible. Expansion, colonial-style! Growth, the life’s blood of commerce! We were so deluded that we thought we could resurrect the long-dead vision of crusaders questing in the land of the Prophet without paying a price in blood and hatred. We were so arrogant we didn’t even need an excuse to go after the oil, and we didn’t count the cost. The oil wasn’t ours, but nobody cared. We deserved it because we were pissed. We used 9-11 as an excuse to let loose brutality and ambition unbecoming to our nation’s better instincts.

Under the watchful eye of Dick Cheney and his cadre of private contractors, we quickly slid toward amorality. Wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross, we became the antithesis of an ethical, thoughtful nation. Many who knew better went along; as Upton Sinclair so aptly wrote long ago: “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it.” Somewhere in the halls of common consciousness it was decided that we deserved whatever we wanted because we were exceptional and ruthless enough to go after it, and because, on the heels of a decade flush with profit, greed is good. We no longer seemed to count the cost of anything, letting our bankers run amok like wanton profiteers and our corporations merge and mingle in ways only a Carnegie or a Rockefeller would appreciate. Some of us railed against the puffed and posturing George W. while his crew of faithful dismantled the government, bit by painful bit, the one thing Bush truly accomplished in this new century. I imagine that when the economy eventually turned toxic, collapsing from the inside out, bin Laden — wherever he was — must have laughed his ass off.

Of course Pakistan hid him, don’t be silly. Then, as now, in countries we regard as less advanced than ours, reports of corruption are commonplace. In those exotic cultures, bribes must cross palms as the cost of doing business with government agencies and their representatives. Part of our challenge in Afghanistan, for instance, has been to get the police department weaned off of graft and payola as part of their salary. In Iraq, the “surge” against al Qaeda that earned General Petraeus fame and political fortune was bought from tribal entities with their weapons drawn and their hands out. The billions wasted by military contractors in the Mideast would look good in the nation’s piggy bank about now, but we can’t even track the amount that was spent or what, if anything, we received in return. That so few questioned the amount of money thrown at these international problems, while every cent is being parsed today, speaks to the tradition of hypocrisy that the right enjoys, ignores, and never bothers to defend. Truth be told, a hint of motivation can be found in the money, itself: when loyalty can be bought by the highest bidder, democracy finishes a poor second.

Here in our own country, nothing so crude has been allowed for generations. Overt bribery hasn’t been fashionable since Teddy Roosevelt fought the good fight against corruption in the Gilded Age. Instead, we have lobbying groups, as well funded as small countries, routinely writing their own business-friendly legislation. Bribes aren’t passed in crumpled envelopes in the dark of night, they arrive as checks for campaign contributions from corporations who have now been given the autonomy of personhood. The art of the deal has been reduced to a quick exchange of funds and a good-faith confirmation that when politics gets too rough, the lobbying firm will have lucrative employment opportunities for an ex-legislator with connections.

As Jane White notes in America, Welcome to the Poorhouse, between 1998 and 2004 no fewer than 42% of former House members and 50% of former senators, along with countless congressional aides, became registered lobbyists. Obama’s early attempt at discouraging lobbying interests from infecting his administration yielded to the pragmatic needs of the day: the gene pool from which he has selected is thick with both lobbyists and Clintonistas.

Is there life after public service? Ask former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, former House Majority Leaders Dick Armey and Dick Gephardt, former Attorney General John Ashcroft: lobbyists all. Indeed, the number of lobbyists culled from Congress has more than doubled in the last year, giving outgoing legislators a chance to double their income while using their list of contacts and experience as committee members. With the t-evangelicals losing popularity at an enormous clip, it must be comforting to know that whatever punishment for ideological purism they might suffer in 2012, a nice warm berth awaits on K Street.

Truly, until we take the money out of the election process — along with profit out of Medicare, and general all-around nest-feathering out of the governmental system — we are destined to spin in our own toxic juice. Even now, the Republican dream for our future involves almost total privatization of everything government provides, from education to the penal system to issues of wilderness and wildlife, all turned into resources for the mindless gobbling god of capitalism.

Capitalism contains the seeds of its own suicide, of course. Any discussion of sustainability has to factor in capitalism’s Achilles heel, which is a slavish lust for growth and new markets. It took thirty years of deregulation and a perfect storm of events to create our current situation. And while it appears that corporations are still making money hand over fist, laughing all the way to the Caymans, how much longer can this sustain itself?

The poor have little to spend and the narrowing middle-class is afraid to spend what little it has left. According to the news, no new jobs were created this month. According to a recent study, this level of unemployment might linger until 2016. I don’t believe that, but I’m also pretty sure we’re never returning to that old greed-is-good level again, either.

Some say it’s a waste of energy to fix blame for our financial woes on any one ideology; there’s no time to spare on finger pointing. But I want to point a finger — in fact, I want to shake my fist. Our situation is a direct result of Republican think-tanks, policies and the witless faithful marching in lock-step year after year. This situation has come to us because we wouldn’t wake up, grow up, and get real. And now Bush’s legacy threatens to repeat itself in the rhetoric of one very popular and belligerent Mr. Perry, another candidate running on the don’t-mess-with-Texas ticket. Let’s remember how we got here. Let’s double down on reality and make sure most American citizens have been exposed to it.

On this Labor Day weekend, working class citizens have few protections and many worrisome prospects. Those who have a job will do anything to keep it, Upton Sinclair-style. Unions are weakened to the point of anemia, seeking new ways to direct their remaining influence, and small businesses that depend on a free-spending population are being boarded up. This current situation is not sustainable, with capitalism savaging its own bony carcass.

It will take a stunning event to break the hold this level of anxiety has on us, something as potent to our consciousness as 9-11 (and hopefully not as scary.) Maybe it will be some great event that gives us all a light bulb over the head, eh? One way or another, there is something on its way. You can feel it, can’t you? There is a grand experiment going on in the universe, and I hope you won’t be surprised to learn you’re a crucial part of it.

Mahatma Gandhi told the world, “As human beings, our greatness lies not so much in being able to remake the world — that is the myth of the ‘atomic age’ — as in being able to remake ourselves.” It isn’t the fiscal picture that needs to change, or the way Wall Street does its accounting, so much as what each of us think about prosperity and contribution. What needs to change is how we see money, how we see safety, how we promote commonwealth and take care of one another. What we’re being asked to do is really clear, isn’t it? As we make our way through this discomforting period, we need to keep steady, keep loving, keep hope. Once we’ve made that journey, we will be a changed people, and perhaps that’s the great event, itself. Ultimately, what needs to change is us