The National Bureau of Economic Research tells us the Great Recession is "over." In fact, it ended in June 2009! Hip, hip, hooray! The only thing this announcement reveals is just how out of touch, cruel, and compassionless those who view human society through the lens of quantitative measurements can be.
Numbers don't begin to tell the whole story. The Great Recession's forced idleness on millions of people make the demagogue's job easy to excite the passions of the mob. They then channel this white-hot rage into directions that benefit the very elites that brought on the economic catastrophe in the first place. Sweet.
The country is still clearly shell-shocked by the events of 2007-2008. What came after the Wall Street bailout was a textbook "shock doctrine" downsizing of the public sector at the exact time the country needed it most. The private sector failed so miserably under George W. Bush when the nation's wealth was relentlessly looted and redistributed upward. It's amazing that people calling themselves "conservatives" could get away with ruling so recklessly and paying no heed to the deep crisis their delirium of greed was destined to cause. Yet in 2010, through political alchemy, the lead weight of economic insecurity is being transformed into electoral gold for the Republican Right.
We really started to lose it as a nation when CNN and NPR and the rest of the news media decided to allow right-wing demagogues to throw out all manner of lies and non sequiturs on their shows without ever being challenged or even acknowledged. David Gregory of Meet the Press is masterful at this game; he makes the anemic Tim Russert look like Edward R. Murrow. The result is a toxic political stew full of genetically engineered monster Red Herrings, straw men the size of skyscrapers, and a post-Citizens United discourse where America's ruling elite seems determined to turn the whole country into a bunch of miserable wage slaves.
The Democratic Party, (the "Rahm Emanuel/Ben Nelson Party") has proven itself (once again) to be weak and pusillanimous even when it controlled the Congress and the presidency and had a young charismatic leader who won a much larger share of the vote than Bush ever did. There were substantial accomplishments relating to health care, student loans and financial regulations, and finally naming Elizabeth Warren to a position worthy of her talents is a welcome move, as is the departure of "Mr. Derivative" himself, Larry Summers.
But it really doesn't matter now.
The home foreclosures, cutbacks and lay-offs continued unabated, and along with the orchestrated attack on public institutions that followed the state and local budget deficits, most Americans saw no appreciable difference in their standard of living over the past two years except downward.
We didn't even get a reaffirmation of the role of government in society that many of us foolishly expected. Education Secretary Arne Duncan continues to bash public school teachers, and White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs bitches about the "professional left" that won't be happy until we have "Canadian health care" and "close the Pentagon." Can anyone imagine a Republican press secretary, such as Ari Fleischer, trashing the base of the GOP going into a midterm election?
But the demagoguery is not only directed against domestic targets like "Obamacare" and Democrats. It also has a foreign policy component. Newt Gingrich fomenting anti-Muslim paranoia or New Yorkers protesting an Islamic center in Manhattan are only part of the problem.
Turn on C-SPAN and you'll see a different kind of demagogue of the more refined and erudite variety: War hawks and defense "intellectuals" from elite bastions like the Washington Institute, Brookings Institute, Heritage Foundation and American Enterprise Institute speaking about Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq as if they are abstractions, units of analysis where only weighing U.S. "strategic" options matter.
Like the economists who tell us the Great Recession is over when unemployment is nearly 10 percent, these "defense" and "intelligence" scholars willfully ignore data that doesn't neatly fit into their models, such as the violence, terror, and devastation the policies they advocate inflict on the lives of the real people who reside in those countries. These "intellectuals" are just as responsible for fomenting anti-Americanism in the Muslim world as the craziest preacher who might burn a Quran. They've also provided the rationales for saddling a generation of American soldiers with the impossible task of kicking in doors and killing "militants" among vast civilian populations while trying to win "hearts and minds." In the safety and comfort of their air-conditioned offices, defense intellectuals do everything they can to keep that grant money rolling in no matter how much damage they do.
Unfortunately, it's far too late to fret about America's image in the Muslim world. George W. Bush and his Democratic enablers (apparently misreading Sam Huntington) thought it would be a good idea to bring on a "clash of civilizations." The only true beneficiaries have been the defense corporations that were looking for new market opportunities after the Soviet Union fell. President Obama tried to chill out the situation with his Cairo speech early in his presidency, but his escalation of the wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan and his re-branding of the war in Iraq have probably erased much of the good will he might have garnered.
The news reports indicating that nine years after 9/11 there are people in the United States who still single out Muslims for abuse are probably a secondary concern to those who live in places where drone and helicopter attacks and car bombs have become a part of everyday life.
The think tankers and "defense" strategists go to great lengths to erase the Iraqis and Afghans and Pakistanis from their calculations, choosing instead to analyze U.S. "strategic" considerations. But this emphasis on geopolitics is misplaced and anachronistic: Why does American foreign policy have to be so "strategic" nowadays? There's no global chess game or rivalry going on with the Soviet Union anymore.
Just like the bloated military budgets and weapons systems that are still being produced that were designed to counter the Soviet Union, so too are the ideas and "strategies" concocted from these think tanks and policy institutes. They're geared toward an enemy that no longer exists. Substituting a "civilization" for a nation-state, the Soviet Union, is probably the stupidest reorientation of American foreign policy in the country's history. A new world order emerged after 1991, yet the paradigm that informs America's relations with the rest of the world still remains frozen somewhere around 1979. And the people of Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan (along with many Americans) are the ones who pay the price.
Follow Joseph A. Palermo on Twitter: www.twitter.com/N/A
We need Washington to understand the importance of Main Street and to support economic development initiatives that make opportunities for artists’ businesses.”
Unemployment is not the only evidence of the recession’s lingering impact, Rosen adds. Shuttered retail stores in cities large and small tell the story, too.
“History has shown that many small towns have become top arts destinations because artists have built creative communities and districts that attract cultural tourists.
“Confidence will return only when the vacancy signs come down on Main Street,” says David Levine, executive director of the American Sustainable Business Council, a coalition of business networks.
Historically, 70 percent of all new jobs in this country are created by small businesses, which in turn means that local economies prosper more because more of those dollars stay in their communities.
Arts entrepreneurs want to aid local recovery, but often are self-employed or employing fewer than 20, Rosen adds.
“When the Small Business Administration is focused on the needs of the smallest – the art entrepreneurs and the studios that are micro-manufacturers – then we'll see a different type of economic development model, one that restores beautiful Main Streets and builds communities,” Rosen says.
American Made Alliance, wendy@rosengrp.com, 800-432-7238, ext. 226.
If we roll over and accept that unemployment in excess of 10% is "the new norm," if we accept more frequent crumbling of highways, the return of paved secondary roads to gravel, the collapse or closure of more and more bridges, and the prospect of longer and more frequent power outages, then we deserve the America that results from that acceptance. At that point, we must stop walking around, thumping our chests, and declaring our nation the 'greatest nation on Earth."
The Republicans and TEA-baggers rattle sabres endlessly against "out of control government" and pine for unfettered capitalism and corporatism to be the order of the day. We just lived through nearly a decade of barely regulated, undertaxed corporatism. In the eight years of the Bush administration, we experienced a net loss of jobs, but the corporate masters would have us believe that it was some sort of Golden Age.
President Obama appears tone-deaf to the anger of the people who voted for him. His cabinet and advisory boards are packed with Clintonistas and their policies smack of more-of-same. Billions for the banksters, nothing for the middle class but extinction.
I'll take Buffett's opinion over the government report.
Economic activity ceased to decline in the quarter ending 2009. The current NBER continues: "the committee did not conclude that economic conditions since that month have been favorable or that the economy has returned to operating at normal capacity."
Why is this so difficult to understand? It is a technical definition. You may quibble with the measurements, but if you accept them, the US economy emerged from recession in June 2009. These comments are nothing more than saying, "That's not my definition of a recession." Well, fine, if you have your own definition, choose another word. The word "recession" is already spoken for.
We have about five or ten hard years ahead of us.
Then the media and plutocrats got to work with divide and conquer....
In Obama's realm, populist anger is something like a sword. It is a tool. Using it should not be feared. It is not inherently good or evil because of what it is. Only in the way it is wielded can such judgements be made. If you are confronted with your enemy, and forced to defend yourself, take up your sword and use it. For if you do not, you will be struck down by it.
Sadly, this is a lesson Obama and the Dims have repeatedly failed to learn. And now it's going to cost not just them, but ALL of us dearly.
Americans should not have to live in indentured servitude because the economy cannot provide a job for them at a living wage, often because the banks and corporations use their undue influence in the political process to shape the economy for their own purposes, not for the good of the country.
I have seen it done with mine own eyes. The bank's inside counsel draft the legislation and then pass it on to congressional staffers that they have quid pro quo relationships with, often the staffers and bank's attorneys went to the same schools, and the bills are then introduced into committee in the form drafted by the banks. No national purpose was served by this legislation. In fact, the bill has served to cause many who tried to better themselves through higher education to wind up as indentured servants slaving away for banks. American's families are impoverished and generations will live in poverty because the banks pay legislators lucrative rewards in the form of campaign contributions and high paying jobs. These private loans, because of little regulatory oversight, often become unpayable because the interest and fees increase to an amount larger than the original loans.
The only reason former students are discriminated against in bankrupcy (other bank loans and gambling debts are dischargeable) is because students have no lobby, and the corrupt political process favors the disproportinate influence of the banks which use the legislative process to do their own bidding.
Have you BEEN to public school? Why is it we want to replace every single employee at Morgan Stanley, and give every public schoolteacher a raise? It SHOULD be a proud career, but those roles today are largely filled by incumbent losers - my dad was until recently one of them.
The challenge of much of the progressive agenda is to avoid rewarding those responsible for the current state of affairs in the course of trying to provide proper motivation to future folks.
It's a shame, but a fact, that we only have two major choices:
* Pay the incumbents more, and let the mediocre tenure crowd set weak standards and push smart new teachers out with unions.
* Fire everyone and start over.
We're never going to fund public education better until it becomes necessary for more than 10% of the teachers to give a care. That goes for Kindergarten to University.
So for her and all the other really great, dedicated teachers, let me say, F.O.A.D.
I'm saying it sucks that we basically can't get rid of the bad teachers because of an emotional attachment to the decent ones. I'm in that boat with you. But in every other failed endeavor we as a society have no such qualm..
But continuing to row around in circles isn't getting us anywhere. I heard all your arguments when I WAS unbridled youth but yanno what? We were higher ranked internationally in math and science at that time.
Our education system sucks and having returned after kicking off a fulfilling career to try and finish my degree, at multiple institutions, I find that almost noone brings their "A" game.
The system leans toward the lazy student and instructor. The same things that make your wife sad make the student sad. But she continues to allow things to decline for her students every year.
And let's be honest, it's as easy for a teacher to want education to be better as it is for a college sophomore to want to save the whales. Neither requires any action, but yields moral high ground.