The spectacle of British Petroleum literally killing off the Gulf of Mexico before our eyes while the Obama Administration apparently believes that BP is honorable enough to be trusted to dutifully clean it up is depressing beyond belief. Hearing Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal complain about the lagging federal response after he built his political career trashing the federal government is just too pathetic and stupid to even bother to ridicule.
Despite the seriousness of our current economic and ecological crises, the views of people like Rand Paul and Rush Limbaugh still dominate the discourse. Their ideas frame the debate about current events and political issues, and set up narratives that are impervious to logical argument or even common sense. They idealize Capitalism with the same level of ideological rigidity and devotion as the Khmer Rouge idealized Maoism. Fuse their extremist laissez-faire ideology with a retrograde and downright mean version of right-wing Christianity, and what you get is a toxic stew of superstition and disastrous real-world public policy prescriptions. Like the Texas State Board of Education purging textbooks for children of any ideological impurities, we're surrounded (it seems) with stupid people screaming loudly for stupid policies that are designed in one way or another to produce a generation of stupid people.
What is one to make of Rand Paul saying that President Obama's mild criticisms of BP are "un-American?" Or Limbaugh's claim that the oil catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico is the Sierra Club's fault? A "family values" Christian conservative congressman films an "abstinence only" video with his married mistress; an anti-gay co-founder of the Family Research Council orders a young male prostitute with the click of a mouse. "The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity."
"Libertarians" should at least be for relaxed drug laws, checks on the government's "anti-terrorism" powers, and in favor of a woman's right to choose. But we don't even get this. Instead, we get runaway corporate power and a government that is weak where it should be strong (regulating corporations) and strong where it should be weak (crimping civil liberties).
The United States seems to have already begun its own "lost decade." But unlike Japan, the U.S. is expending its precious resources on fighting two debilitating wars and maintaining a declining empire. If we're lucky we will be "lost" only for a decade.
In California, the "moderate" Republican governor just proposed eliminating the entire welfare program, which is a move that no politician from either party would attempt except during an extreme economic and fiscal crisis. It's the "shock doctrine" on steroids here in Sacramento.
The country is still reeling from what the Wall Street banks put it through and now a criminally reckless oil company creates a major ecological disaster that will take decades to clean up -- if it ever can be cleaned up. Trust me: In the end, BP is not going to pay for the costs of this spill.
When President Jimmy Carter's approval rating plummeted he decided to speak to the nation in a primetime television address where he attempted to explain the economic insecurity that was increasingly gripping American society. "It is a crisis of confidence," he said. "It is a crisis that strikes at the very heart and soul and spirit of our national will. We can see this crisis in the growing doubt about the meaning of our own lives and in the loss of a unity of purpose for our nation." The press dubbed it Carter's "malaise" speech (though he never used the word), and it was an unmitigated political disaster. In 1976, Carter, the nuclear engineer and Georgia peanut farmer, had come to Washington as a fresh face promising to lead the country out of the depressing era of Vietnam and Watergate. Three years later, he had become heavily identified with a dreary status quo that nobody seemed to like, least of all Carter himself.
By 2012, President Obama could very well find himself in Carter's predicament. A nation traumatized by this kind of prolonged and serious economic uncertainty, along with a political class incapable of doing much about it, has already spawned a wave of irrational politics. A new generation of politicians could emerge who compound the crisis by pushing a new set of misguided public policies such as destroying Social Security, which, like eliminating welfare, has been a dream of some ideologues for decades.
Follow Joseph A. Palermo on Twitter: www.twitter.com/N/A
Frances Beinecke: President Obama, Give the Spill Investigation the Right Mandate
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Unfortunately while Americans thought that they were playing on a level playing field, the elites had the game rigged so that they could not lose, and they were playing for keeps.
The only way we get to go back to the start of the game is by revolting against the guys who won and won't give the money back. Do Americans have the sand to do it? Remains to be seen. But the elites are still grinding the American people into the dust and laughing all the way to the bank while they are doing it.
Are Americans ready to get off their knees yet?
They believe that If stupidity got us into this mess, then why can't it get us out?
http://www.marketoracle.co.uk/Article9446.html
This is the national emergency of our times
They trashed the planet, took everything and haven't given a thing of themselves. They've had their cake and ate it too... no more cake for them.
But here's the problem. There's enough money in the system to pay for the Boomer retirement - there just won't be enough left after we're done paying for their retirement to sustain the system. In one last epic %$^ YOU to the rest of America the Boomers will take down our social programs in the same way that they destroyed everything else around us.
Bravo Boomers. Save the encore.
To allow this debate to be used as fodder for class warfare will do little to solve the problems and allow Congress to duck their responsibility in the mess.
Only if Obama (who had nothing to do with the mess) tackles ALL points of the problem will have the moral authority to lead. Otherwise, he is nothing better than those who got here to begin with.
That is one heck of a job.
Dr. Palermo always brings up interesting points about Governor Schwarzenegger. The governor is an interesting contrast because while he seems very progressive on environmental issues he wants to destroy the economic foundation of the state by eliminating social programs, thus, making it a fancy Alabama. I do not understand his thinking.
Also, the Dr. is right about libertarian thinking. Where is their criticism that the Bush reforms went to far to curb our civil liberties. A real libertarian is not so pro corporate power as is Rand Paul, not to pretend that it is a workable philosophy. It is not.