Every once in a while, I come across a study that “connects dots”–that makes previously disparate bits of information tell a new and different story.
I had one of these “aha” moments when I came across a Roosevelt Institute report titled “Dirty Deals: How Wall Street’s Predatory Deals Hurt Taxpayers and What We Can Do About It.”
According to the report, Wall Street and several major financial corporations have “engaged in a systemic effort to suppress taxes.” My first reaction to this was disbelief–not because I harbor any illusions about the business practices of Wall Street, but because I didn’t understand why they’d bother to lobby for generalized tax cuts. What would motivate such efforts? What’s in it for them?
Here’s the missing piece: when it is difficult for cities and states to fund even basic public services–let alone ambitious but necessary projects– out of tax revenues, banks can take advantage of that situation by offering state and local governments “creative” (albeit predatory) municipal financing “deals.”
Predatory financing deals prey upon the weaknesses of borrowers, are characterized by high costs and high risks, are typically overly complex, and are often designed to fail.
Ironically, the money that flows to Wall Street and its partners in these transactions often ends up costing taxpayers more than they’d pay by way of a responsible tax rate imposed by elected officials–and elected officials are accountable to voters in ways that Wall Street wheeler-dealers are not. (The report notes that taxpayers “do trillions of dollars of business with Wall Street every year.)
We have a perfect example of the way this works right here and now: Indianapolis’ proposed Justice Center. I’m in favor of the project, but as I’ve noted previously, I’m extremely leery of the “creative” and highly privatized way in which the city proposes to finance it. The terms “high costs,” “high risks”, and “overly complex” certainly seem apt.
The predatory practices highlighted in the Roosevelt report are made possible by voters’ stubborn belief in a free lunch. We want public services, but we don’t like paying for them. So “creative” politicians work with Wall Street to give us “creative financing” that allows us to pretend we’re getting a bargain.
A post-election article from the Houston Chronicle begins with a provocative projection that will comfort people depressed about the midterms:
Few things are as dangerous to a long term strategy as a short-term victory. Republicans this week scored the kind of win that sets one up for spectacular, catastrophic failure and no one is talking about it.
What emerges from the numbers is the continuation of a trend that has been in place for almost two decades. Once again, Republicans are disappearing from the competitive landscape at the national level across the most heavily populated sections of the country while intensifying their hold on a declining electoral bloc of aging, white, rural voters. The 2014 election not only continued that doomed pattern, it doubled down on it. As a result, it became apparent from the numbers last week that no Republican candidate has a credible shot at the White House in 2016, and the chance of the GOP holding the Senate for longer than two years is precisely zero.(emphasis mine)
The article follows this declaration with a matter-of-fact rundown of the electoral college votes–where they are and what a winner will need. His bottom line:
The next Presidential election, and all subsequent ones until a future party realignment, will be decided in the Democratic primary. Only by sweeping all nine of the states that remain in contention AND also flipping one impossibly Democratic state can a Republican candidate win the White House. What are the odds that a Republican candidate capable of passing muster with 2016 GOP primary voters can accomplish that feat? You do the math.
The key to understanding that paragraph (not to mention our toxic political environment), is “What are the odds that a Republican candidate capable of passing muster with GOP primary voters”….
As the article convincingly demonstrates, the crazies who appeal to the GOP’s current base are winning in bright red, frequently gerrymandered, mostly rural districts. The problem is, those crazies have now become the (embarrassing) face of the Republican party nationally–making it impossible for the party to win national elections.
We ought not take too much comfort from that.
I have said it before and I’ll say it again–this country needs two adult, sane political parties. Right now, the GOP is controlled by a base that is neither adult nor sane. Unless the remaining Republican grown-ups (whose ranks are thinning) can reassert control, there will be no rational “loyal opposition” to keep Democrats focused and honest, no healthy competition to ensure that all ideas get thoroughly vetted, and no place to go–no alternative to vote for– for the disaffected.
America needs a rational GOP. We had one once, and I miss it.
Every so often, I use this space to share the perspectives of my cousin, a scientist and cardiologist.
Like so many medical professionals, he used to be a reliable Republican; he’s now appalled by the way in which the Grand Old Party has deserted science and especially by its total capitulation to politics over sound medicine. In a recent post to his own blog, he addressed the GOP’s refusal to confirm a stellar candidate to the post of Surgeon General.
In March of this year, President Obama nominated a highly qualified candidate, Vivek Murthy, to be the nation’s next Surgeon General, but the nomination was not advanced to a confirmation vote in the Senate because conservative lawmakers and the National Rifle Association found his reasonable views on firearm regulation unacceptable. Thus a highly respected physician with impressive credentials who would have been an outstanding Surgeon General was rejected solely for political reasons. Although I, for one, believe that the regulation of firearms does indeed qualify as being a health/medical issue (see my post of May 30, 2013), it certainly should not constitute a “litmus test” for qualification for such a position.
Ya think?
Bottom line: The office of Surgeon General is vacant because a highly qualified doctor has pissed off the NRA by saying something that every sentient being understands to be true: gun violence is a public health issue.
No one in the GOP–and damn few Democrats–are willing to stand up to an organization so far out of the mainstream of public opinion that itsown members think it is too extreme.
Our political system is so broken, it may be beyond repair.
One of the people whose writing I very much admire is Phil Gulley. I first encountered his essays in The Indianapolis Monthly, but I subsequently learned that he contributes to a number of other venues, and recently I came across a really profound piece he wrote for Salon.
These paragraphs, particularly, struck me:
The merit of a position can be gauged by the temperament of its supporters, and these days the NRA reminds me of the folks who packed the courtroom of the Scopes monkey trial, fighting to preserve a worldview no thoughtful person espoused. This worship of guns grows more ridiculous, more difficult to sustain, and they know it, hence their theatrics, their parading through Home Depot and Target, rifles slung over shoulders. Defending themselves, they say. From what, from whom? I have whiled away many an hour at Home Depots and Targets and never once come under attack.
What drives this fanaticism? Can I venture a guess? Have you noticed the simultaneous increase in gun sales and the decline of the white majority? After the 2010 census, when social scientists predicted a white minority in America by the year 2043, we began to hear talk of “taking back our country.” Gun shops popped up like mushrooms, mostly in the white enclaves of America’s suburbs and small towns. One can’t help wondering if the zeal for weaponry has been fueled by the same dismal racism that has propelled so many social ills.
Although I agree with Gulley about guns, I think I responded so strongly to these paragraphs because I have become increasingly despondent about the unbelievable (at least to me) resurgence in overt racism since the election of Barack Obama.
Let me get a couple of caveats out of the way first: yes, it is perfectly possible to disagree with President Obama without being a racist. Not every such disagreement, or strong criticism, is fueled by racist animus. And although the election of a black President is not, unfortunately, a sign that we are a post-racial society, it is a sign that America has made progress.
That said, after Obama’s election, and before he even took office, the rocks lifted and what crawled out should shame us all.
It began with internet “jokes” about watermelons and “uppity” African-Americans, with Fox News “commentators” charging that Obama was the “real racist” and vast amounts of similar garbage that fed the accusations of the “birthers” (a black man by definition couldn’t be a “real American”). Long-time bigots like Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck had a field day, as we might have expected, but the pushback we also should have expected wasn’t exactly resounding.
It has become acceptable again to share racist sentiments in “polite company”–to tell “jokes” or make aspersions that had previously (and thankfully) gone underground.
A California man claims he was defending himself last year when he ran over a black man, killing him, following an altercation outside McDonalds.
Joseph Paul Leonard Jr. burned rubber for 23 feet before crashing into 34-year-old Toussaint Harrison during the June 6, 2013 incident, reported the Sacramento Bee.
Leonard, now 62, got out of his pickup and kicked Harrison several times in the head with his steel-toed work boots, authorities said.
“Just because we got Obama for a president, these people think they are real special,” Leonard said after his arrest.
These people.
When the President nominated Loretta Lynch to succeed Eric Holder, twitter feeds exploded with racist comments. White supremacists recently rallied outside Dallas, “to protect the American way of life.” George Zimmerman and Trayvon Martin. Michael Brown and Ferguson, Missiouri. A noose around the neck of a statue of a famous civil rights figure at the University of Mississippi. The list could go on for pages–indeed, examples routinely dot my Facebook feed, as friends post everything from insensitive behaviors to horrifying incidents–most accompanied by sentiments like “words fail.”
Words do fail.
I understand that people resent losing privilege and hegemony. I recognize that social change can be profoundly disorienting, and that the gun-toting, race-baiting bullies are frightened and lost. But ultimately, the bullies aren’t the problem. The “nice” people who forward the emails, who chuckle approvingly at the “jokes,” who claim to hate the President because he’s an unAmerican Nazi-socialist and not because he’s black, the elected officials who have made it their sole mission is to keep this President from achieving anything, no matter how good for the country, no matter that their party thought of it first–those people are the problem.
When people talk about “backlash,” they are generally referring to a reaction to something–an effort to undo or reverse a previous change.
Backlash is thus the proper term to apply to the movement that began in the mid-1960s, in reaction to social disruption caused by anti-war activism, feminism and the civil rights movement. Middle-class whites, especially but not exclusively in the South, resented the erosion of their social dominance and banded together to fight what they saw as the increasing secularization and liberalism of American society.
Paranoid fringe groups like the John Birch Society and similar “patriot” and “Christian” groups gradually took over the national GOP. Political scientists tell us that Reagan’s election in 1980 solidified right-wing conservative efforts to transform the political landscape of America. Since 1980, the GOP has become less and less genuinely conservative—and more and more radically reactionary.
African-Americans understand the implications of this takeover (much more on that in tomorrow’s blog). I’m not so sure that LGBT folks do.
After all, although the racism at the heart of the backlash has become impossible to ignore,the LGBT community is celebrating years of increasing acceptance. Same-sex marriages are widely if not universally recognized, and a majority of Americans support them. Popular culture is inclusive and affirming. Civil rights are being extended, albeit slowly.
As a recent post from The Daily Beast noted, “Today, unlike ever before, most Americans have openly gay friends, colleagues, and family members, and most approve of same-sex relationships. Young people are overwhelmingly gay-friendly, leaving little doubt which way the trends are going.”
So, as Alfred E. Neumann (Google it) used to say, “What—Me Worry?”
As the Daily Beast and other sources have reported, however, this rosy picture has plenty of thorns:
The Texas Republican Party has officially endorsed so-called “reparative therapy,” a quack regimen that reputable psychiatry roundly condemns. (How considerate! The Texas GOP wants to ensure the availability of “therapy and treatment for those patients seeking healing and wholeness from their homosexual lifestyle.”)
In Oklahoma, a conservative candidate for the state House of Representatives, has quoted Biblical passages that (he says) prescribe the death penalty for homosexuals. On a Facebook post, he wrote “I think we would be totally in the right to do it.”
Mississippi just passed a measure being considered in several other states that would “protect religious liberty” by allowing people to act on their “sincere religious convictions” by refusing to do business with gay clients or customers.
More disturbing, the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals recently broke what had been a string of pro-equality federal appellate rulings and upheld state bans on same-sex marriage, giving hope to those who want to roll back the clock on LGBT rights.
As I look out at our increasingly contentious, toxic political environment, I see a distressing number of frightened, old, furious, deeply threatened white heterosexual males. On my good days, I interpret their hysterical reaction to social change—their racism, their homophobia, their sexism—as the “last throes” of the old order of things. A backlash with unfortunate but ultimately temporary effects.
On my bad days, I worry that the vast amounts of money they are spending, the religious “authority” they are wielding/perverting, and their fanatic persistence will carry the day.
