It’s time for a little dose of reality. We are daily bombarded with rants from both sides of the political spectrum as we try to sift through the information concerning how the deficit in this country got out of control. To have any sort of perspective on the problem we need to go back to 2001 when Bill Clinton was leaving office. At that time the Congressional Budget Office estimated that the US budget would actually run a surplus of some 800 billion dollars a year for the years 2009-2011. What has actually happened is that we are now running an annual deficit of some 1.2 Trillion dollars a year for those years. This difference in these two amounts is a 2 trillion dollar headache for the United States and one that the current crop of politicians on both sides are steadily proving themselves incapable of understanding, much less rectifying the situation. What happened? How could the Congressional Budget Office have been so far off in their estimate?
Republicans would have us believe that the Obama administration with its socialist tendencies and out of control spending habits has destroyed our economy. Democrats would have us believe that tax cuts for the richest Americans and lobbying efforts by the largest American corporations have decimated the ability of the US to raise revenue needed to pay our bills. As is usually the truth in politics, there is a grain of truth in both explanations but neither of them addresses the real problem, which is that our economy is suffering from of one of the worst economic disasters in the history of financial disasters. I have already addressed these issues on several posts (What Really Happened, Magic Beans, A Swing to the Right, Tax Philosophy ) so I won’t bother to go into them in a great deal of detail again but we have to understand the problem before we can come up with a solution and the soapbox prima donnas on both sides of the aisle are either incapable of understanding the issue or unwilling to deal with the reality that we are in serious trouble here and it is not going to be easy to put the pin back in the grenade.
Let’s take a look at where the deficit numbers come from, the discrepancy between what the CBO predicted and what we actually have taking place right now. The largest part of the difference came from two unexpected economic downturns. The first happened in 2001 and was a small recession compared to the second one but it was a downturn and it affected projections of both spending and revenue. When the economy goes down and unemployment goes up two things happen at the same time. The money the government takes in from tax revenues drops and the money it pays out in social programs goes up. Unemployment payments, welfare payments, Medicaid payments, and all forms of social services bear the brunt of the fact that people who aren’t working become dependent on social programs to survive. At the same time, tax revenue that isn’t being generated from these same people goes down. It is a double edged sword; one made worse by the fact that most Americans health insurance is through their employer so when they lose their job they lose their health insurance as well and the government then gets to foot the bill for their medical expenses. The second economic downturn which started in 2007 right before the election that put Obama in office was much more severe and much more damaging to both the US economy and the budget deficits because of both the longevity of the downturn and the universal severity of the problem.
Clearly, Obama can hardly be blamed for the economy he inherited no matter what the conservative right would have us to believe. It happened before he was elected and he is still trying to deal with the effects of this problem. We can argue whether he has dealt effectively with the problem but it is incontrovertible fact that the problem itself is one that he inherited from George W. Bush and the Congress in place while he was in office. How much of the current deficit problem is directly attributable to this economic downturn is a matter of some disagreement but most economists agree that it is by far the largest part of the current deficit issue; in the range of some 37% of the 2 trillion dollar deficit miscalculation of the CBO. This means that some 740 billion of the difference between the CBO’s estimates and reality is a direct result of the economic downturns that occurred before Obama’s election.
Another large chunk of the problem came from two programs that George W. Bush pushed through Congress. You remember him and his buddy Cheney who confidently boasted that Reagan had already proved that deficits don’t matter. While this is obviously a remark made in total ignorance of economic reality, it is part of the the same fable that Republicans have been telling since Reagan was in office. According to the Republican mantra that has been around since Reagan the answer is cutting taxes no matter what the question might be. Cutting taxes stimulates the economy which allows it to produce more revenue according to Reagan’s idea of economics which the first Bush president accurately described in a debate as “Voodoo Economics”. Unfortunately, he neglected to explain this fact to his son who believes to this day that what we need are more tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans. The truth is that the Reagan years doubled the deficit which is something that was deemed impossible previously without a major war like WWII. I have trouble understanding how even the most ardent Reagan worshipers gloss over the fact that he doubled the deficit in peacetime the first time we tried tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans. As a matter of fact, cutting taxes didn’t stimulate anything but the second phase of Reagan improvements which involved spending massive amounts of government money paying large corporations to develop military hardware did. This is exactly why the economy took off, it was the largest influx of government money into the economy we had seen and it worked like a charm as long as you ignore the fact that it doubled the deficit.
Getting back to the present situation, George W. Bush pushed through two major programs that had devastating effects on the deficit. The first was the Reagan mantra of cutting taxes on the wealthiest Americans. This of course had the same effect that it had in Reagan’s years; it caused a loss of tax revenue that led to significant deficit increases. Interestingly enough, Republican believers in the tax cut mantra still believe it is the answer today even though we have a lot of statistical data that proves it takes increases in revenue along with decreases in spending to lower deficits. All one has to do is compare the Clinton and Bush Sr. years to the Bush Jr. and Reagan years to see this in action but it really is as simple as addition and subtraction. Any child knows you don’t increase the amount of water in a bucket by punching a hole in the bottom of it. The second program that Bush pushed through was the Medicare Prescription Drug Act which basically increased the amount the government program would provide for paying for drugs for Medicare participants. While this is a much more noble cause than tax cuts for the wealthy it was implemented without a hint of how it was to be financed so naturally it just added to the deficit. The net effect of the Bush Tax cuts and the Prescription Drug Act changed the CBO’s predictions by some 33% (660 billion dollars of the 2 trillion) by the time the increases in interest payments on the debt it created are added.
If you add the 33% to the 37% you come up with some 1.43 trillion of the difference between the CBO’s prediction and what we are actually seeing. Try to keep in mind that this number is composed strictly of policy mistakes that were put in place before Obama’s election. It is interesting that the harshest critics of the deficit issue today are some of the same people who actually caused both of these problems to happen through de-regulation of the financial industry and tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans along with a Prescription Drug Act that was passed without any hint of how it would be financed.
Does this mean that Obama has no blame in the current fiasco? I would say that there is enough blame to go around for everyone but we will continue to look at actual numbers to see where the 2 trillion dollars difference between the CBO’s estimate and today’s reality was created. Another 20% of the difference can be found in Obama’s support for the continuation of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan combined with the continuation of the Bush tax cuts along with the Wall Street Bailout that Bush signed and Obama supported. In other words another 400 billion of the 2 trillion dollar difference can be traced directly to these three policies that Bush put in place and Obama continued to support after his election. Many of Obama’s supporters were disappointed with his continuation of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Without knowing the security information that Obama became privy to upon arriving in the White House it is hard to make judgments about his decisions along these lines. We can further question his support of the Wall Street bailout but most reputable economists believe that it was necessary to keep the international economy from a devastating collapse; one that we are still not completely sure won’t happen in the near future I might add. Extending the Bush tax cuts was unmistakably a bargaining tool that Obama used to get support for some of his other programs but I personally believe it was a bad deal and one that can be shown mathematically to have increased the deficit problem when we need to go the other direction. In any case, if you add the 400 billion to the 1.43 trillion above you come to a 1.83 trillion dollar figure or some 90% of the current deficit problem and we still have not gotten to any of the Obama programs that conservatives want to convince us are the root cause of the deficit.
Obama is not without blame in the current crisis. The stimulus bill that he helped push through Congress to get the economy going added another 7% to the difference between the original CBO estimate and the 2 trillion dollar deficit we have. Obama’s health care bill that he pushed through has also added to the problem, along with his initiatives on education, energy, and other social programs added another 3%. In other words, Obama’s programs which conservatives see as the socialist part of his agenda have added a total of 10% (200 billion) to the deficit problem.
To recap; policies and economic problems that occurred during the 8 year term of George Bush are the direct cause of 70% of the deficit problem we are faced with. Obama’s support for/ and extension of Bush policies added another 20%. Obama’s programs that he has personally pushed through add another 10%. The end result is that we have a 2 trillion dollar difference between what we should have in our deficit and what we are actually faced with and we are now faced with the reality that we have to deal with this issue before it gets any larger. There are only two ways to decrease the deficit, increase revenue and decrease spending. Unfortunately, we are now faced with such a severe problem that we will probably have to do both in large and painful increments to see our way clear of this issue. There is always the possibility that the economy will turn around and start to grow at a fast rate which will necessarily narrow the difference between what we take in and what we spend. Unfortunately, the deficit issue has grown to such proportions that growth is probably not possible without first cutting into the deficit. It still remains to be seen whether we can change our economic policies to actually deal with the issues that caused the economic collapse that triggered the biggest part of the deficit.
Tuesday, July 19, 2011
Thursday, July 14, 2011
The Family Leader Pledge
It’s getting close to election time again. Unfortunately, this means that all the fringe lunatics from both sides of the political spectrum will start pushing hard for their own particular agendas. It is interesting to watch closely how such throwing around of political weight actually affects the candidates. Naturally, the far religious right is right in the middle of the fray already. A group in Iowa calling itself “The Family Leader” has already managed to get caught making hash of historic fact and getting at least two of the Republican candidates to sign a pledge that is chocked full of misinformation and factual errors. It always amazes me what the perceived promise of large groups of voters will entice candidates to adapt as policies.
The Family Leader is actually a splinter group of the much larger “Focus on the Family” group run by James Dobson that has a long history of trying to set the agenda for conservative candidates on a right wing religious footing (See earlier post, Focus on the Family? ) Both groups like leading with the idea of being centered around “family” values but are actually only interested in pushing right wing Christian values as is evidenced by information on both of their websites if one takes the time to actually read their propaganda at its source. This is neither surprising nor new for anyone who has taken the time to look into exactly who is funding the Tea Party groups in the country today (See earlier post Tea Party of the Religious Right? ).
Beliefs
The FAMiLY LEADER champions the principle that God is the ultimate leader of the family. Our goal at The FAMiLY LEADER is to honor and glorify God – not a political party, not a candidate, and not a program. The FAMiLY LEADER is a Christ-centered organization that will lead with humility and service to strengthen and protect the family.
Hardly a broad based family organization if you take them at their word here. Obviously, unless you believe that God is the ultimate leader of your family you aren’t welcome in their “family”. In case you want to interpret their use of the term God in some generic way they further define this is a Christian organization with the bit about being Christ-centered. Jews, Bhuddists, Islamics, nor any other widely held views about who or what God is are incontrovertibly disowned in the second paragraph on the website. It is not a family organization at all, it is a Protestant Christian organization specifically aimed at influencing political elections and processes. This becomes even more obvious when one looks into the PAC mission statement on the same webpage which states that they seek to elect conservatives with a biblical world view. While I don’t begrudge them the opportunity to influence elections there is a widespread epidemic in this country of organizations working under the guise of religious organizations according to their tax structure and political organizations in actuality but I will leave that be for the moment.
Recently the Family Leader made headlines for a pledge it was trying to get candidates to sign in order to receive their support in Iowa. Two of the leading Republican candidates signed the pledge immediately after it came out as they were obviously anxious to garner whatever votes this organization could swing their way as a result. Michelle Bachmann and Rick Santorum both signed the pledge immediately upon being presented with it. While it isn’t surprising to see two Republican frontrunners anxious to be more conservative than anyone else running it doesn’t say much for their level of understanding when they both signed something that is so plainly discriminatory and controversial without bothering to read it first.
The very first tenant of the document gives away the intention of the document and the mentality of those who wrote it:
Slavery had a disastrous impact on African-American families, yet sadly a child born into slavery in 1860 was more likely to be raised by his mother and father in a two-parent household than was an African-American baby born after the election of the USA‟s first African-American President
Obviously, it is a backhanded slap at our current president which is only to be expected from any conservative group as most view him as something between the anti-Christ and a socialist intent upon destroying the very fabric of our culture. Anyone who couldn’t smell something wrong after reading this salvo isn’t very astute to begin with. In the first place, slavery in the United States did not recognize the right to have a family so there was technically no such thing as an African-American slave family in 1860. The institution of marriage was not recognized as something that slaves in the United States had a right to participate in. Recognition of slave families would preclude the right of slave owners to sell them separately and we should make no mistake in understanding this was a routine practice for slave owners. Beyond that, in ALL cases slaves had no right of ownership of their own children as it was a routine business practice to separate slave children from their parents at birth. Ownership of slave children was legally bound to the ownership of the parents. In other words, the slaves not only had no right of marriage they also had no right of ownership of their own children who could and often were sold outright with the parents having no say in the matter. In other words, there was absolutely no family unit recognizable to children born into slavery in 1860 and almost no possibility that they would be raised in a two parent household. It would be hard to make a statement more patently and irrefutably false than this one so I wondered where such an idea could come from.
There is a footnote in the pledge with reference to where this particular nugget of information came from. It is a report written to study the effects of marriage on African American families titled “The Consequences of Marriage for African Americans”. This report studies the effects of marriage on socio-economic status amongst African Americans and is an interesting read. However, it is NOT a source that covers anything to do with children born into slavery in 1860. As a matter of fact, the earliest data referenced in this report was taken in 1880 and 1910, fifteen and forty five years after the elimination of slavery in the United States. According to the report only minor changes in the basic numbers of two parent households in the African American occurred before 1950. Much the same can be said for white two parent households in this country as well but I am getting off the subject.
Not only is the original statement in the pledge factually incorrect, the report that was supposedly the source of the statement contains no information whatsoever that relates to it. The Family Leader website has this quote in bold letters on its mission statement page:
“…we do not use deception, nor do we distort the word of God. On the contrary, by setting forth the truth plainly we commend ourselves to every man’s conscience in the sight of God.”
-2 Corinthians 4:2
Obviously, to the people at The Family Leader deception has a different meaning from that the rest of us understand as there is not even a grain of truth in their original statement concerning children born into slavery. Whoever wrote the statement plainly does not understand very much about slavery, nor have they bothered to read the information they use as source material to support the statement. In any case, after the media noticed that two of our leading candidates for president had signed a pledge containing such idiocy the good people at The Family Leader took this section out of the pledge and issued the following statement:
“After careful deliberation and wise insight and input from valued colleagues we deeply respect, we agree that the statement referencing children born into slavery can be misconstrued, and such misconstruction can detract from the core message of the Marriage Vow: that ALL of us must work to strengthen and support families and marriages between one woman and one man." The Family Leader added, "We sincerely apologize for any negative feelings this has caused, and have removed the language from the vow.”
This is a good example of the right wing’s idea of an apology. Obviously, there are some people at The Family Leader who have trouble understanding the English language. The statement is not one that can be misconstrued; it is a statement that is totally and completely without factual basis. Not only is it a flat out lie, it has nothing whatsoever to do with the material it purports to use as source information. None of this is surprising or new but we should start to be aware of the propaganda efforts that are currently underway in this country to convince the American public that this country was based upon some biblical worldview when the truth of the matter is that most of the founding fathers were secular humanists who were no less terrified of the involvement of religious institutions in our government than they were of monarchy and dictatorships. The far right and the religious fundamentalism is no less dangerous in this country than it has been in any other part of the world and groups like the Family Leader and Focus on the Family who are providing much of the financial muscle behind the Tea Party can only easily be defeated by dispersion of the truth. After all, propaganda can only be effective if its antithesis, factual information, is forcibly silenced.
The Family Leader is actually a splinter group of the much larger “Focus on the Family” group run by James Dobson that has a long history of trying to set the agenda for conservative candidates on a right wing religious footing (See earlier post, Focus on the Family? ) Both groups like leading with the idea of being centered around “family” values but are actually only interested in pushing right wing Christian values as is evidenced by information on both of their websites if one takes the time to actually read their propaganda at its source. This is neither surprising nor new for anyone who has taken the time to look into exactly who is funding the Tea Party groups in the country today (See earlier post Tea Party of the Religious Right? ).
Beliefs
The FAMiLY LEADER champions the principle that God is the ultimate leader of the family. Our goal at The FAMiLY LEADER is to honor and glorify God – not a political party, not a candidate, and not a program. The FAMiLY LEADER is a Christ-centered organization that will lead with humility and service to strengthen and protect the family.
Hardly a broad based family organization if you take them at their word here. Obviously, unless you believe that God is the ultimate leader of your family you aren’t welcome in their “family”. In case you want to interpret their use of the term God in some generic way they further define this is a Christian organization with the bit about being Christ-centered. Jews, Bhuddists, Islamics, nor any other widely held views about who or what God is are incontrovertibly disowned in the second paragraph on the website. It is not a family organization at all, it is a Protestant Christian organization specifically aimed at influencing political elections and processes. This becomes even more obvious when one looks into the PAC mission statement on the same webpage which states that they seek to elect conservatives with a biblical world view. While I don’t begrudge them the opportunity to influence elections there is a widespread epidemic in this country of organizations working under the guise of religious organizations according to their tax structure and political organizations in actuality but I will leave that be for the moment.
Recently the Family Leader made headlines for a pledge it was trying to get candidates to sign in order to receive their support in Iowa. Two of the leading Republican candidates signed the pledge immediately after it came out as they were obviously anxious to garner whatever votes this organization could swing their way as a result. Michelle Bachmann and Rick Santorum both signed the pledge immediately upon being presented with it. While it isn’t surprising to see two Republican frontrunners anxious to be more conservative than anyone else running it doesn’t say much for their level of understanding when they both signed something that is so plainly discriminatory and controversial without bothering to read it first.
The very first tenant of the document gives away the intention of the document and the mentality of those who wrote it:
Slavery had a disastrous impact on African-American families, yet sadly a child born into slavery in 1860 was more likely to be raised by his mother and father in a two-parent household than was an African-American baby born after the election of the USA‟s first African-American President
Obviously, it is a backhanded slap at our current president which is only to be expected from any conservative group as most view him as something between the anti-Christ and a socialist intent upon destroying the very fabric of our culture. Anyone who couldn’t smell something wrong after reading this salvo isn’t very astute to begin with. In the first place, slavery in the United States did not recognize the right to have a family so there was technically no such thing as an African-American slave family in 1860. The institution of marriage was not recognized as something that slaves in the United States had a right to participate in. Recognition of slave families would preclude the right of slave owners to sell them separately and we should make no mistake in understanding this was a routine practice for slave owners. Beyond that, in ALL cases slaves had no right of ownership of their own children as it was a routine business practice to separate slave children from their parents at birth. Ownership of slave children was legally bound to the ownership of the parents. In other words, the slaves not only had no right of marriage they also had no right of ownership of their own children who could and often were sold outright with the parents having no say in the matter. In other words, there was absolutely no family unit recognizable to children born into slavery in 1860 and almost no possibility that they would be raised in a two parent household. It would be hard to make a statement more patently and irrefutably false than this one so I wondered where such an idea could come from.
There is a footnote in the pledge with reference to where this particular nugget of information came from. It is a report written to study the effects of marriage on African American families titled “The Consequences of Marriage for African Americans”. This report studies the effects of marriage on socio-economic status amongst African Americans and is an interesting read. However, it is NOT a source that covers anything to do with children born into slavery in 1860. As a matter of fact, the earliest data referenced in this report was taken in 1880 and 1910, fifteen and forty five years after the elimination of slavery in the United States. According to the report only minor changes in the basic numbers of two parent households in the African American occurred before 1950. Much the same can be said for white two parent households in this country as well but I am getting off the subject.
Not only is the original statement in the pledge factually incorrect, the report that was supposedly the source of the statement contains no information whatsoever that relates to it. The Family Leader website has this quote in bold letters on its mission statement page:
“…we do not use deception, nor do we distort the word of God. On the contrary, by setting forth the truth plainly we commend ourselves to every man’s conscience in the sight of God.”
-2 Corinthians 4:2
Obviously, to the people at The Family Leader deception has a different meaning from that the rest of us understand as there is not even a grain of truth in their original statement concerning children born into slavery. Whoever wrote the statement plainly does not understand very much about slavery, nor have they bothered to read the information they use as source material to support the statement. In any case, after the media noticed that two of our leading candidates for president had signed a pledge containing such idiocy the good people at The Family Leader took this section out of the pledge and issued the following statement:
“After careful deliberation and wise insight and input from valued colleagues we deeply respect, we agree that the statement referencing children born into slavery can be misconstrued, and such misconstruction can detract from the core message of the Marriage Vow: that ALL of us must work to strengthen and support families and marriages between one woman and one man." The Family Leader added, "We sincerely apologize for any negative feelings this has caused, and have removed the language from the vow.”
This is a good example of the right wing’s idea of an apology. Obviously, there are some people at The Family Leader who have trouble understanding the English language. The statement is not one that can be misconstrued; it is a statement that is totally and completely without factual basis. Not only is it a flat out lie, it has nothing whatsoever to do with the material it purports to use as source information. None of this is surprising or new but we should start to be aware of the propaganda efforts that are currently underway in this country to convince the American public that this country was based upon some biblical worldview when the truth of the matter is that most of the founding fathers were secular humanists who were no less terrified of the involvement of religious institutions in our government than they were of monarchy and dictatorships. The far right and the religious fundamentalism is no less dangerous in this country than it has been in any other part of the world and groups like the Family Leader and Focus on the Family who are providing much of the financial muscle behind the Tea Party can only easily be defeated by dispersion of the truth. After all, propaganda can only be effective if its antithesis, factual information, is forcibly silenced.
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