What America Needs Now

Americans are going over the fiscal cliff.  But all is not lost.  Obama will work out a compromise wherein middle class Americans will not end up paying higher taxes.   This will buy time and good will.  Enough to defuse the automatic spending cuts, perhaps two weeks after they begin.

On a deeper level, what is it about American politics that prevents the winner of the U.S. presidential election and his party from implementing the majority will of the nation?   Why is it that the Republicans can still wield so much power?   The answer is, because America does not have a third party.

The advent of a third political party would mean that Democrats could woo such a party to overcome the rich, white old men of the GOP to effect what a majority of Americans want.

What America needs now is a third political party.

Presidential Campaign Spending

I just read in the Globe and Mail that six billion dollars will have been spent on all the campaigns during the run up to today's U.S. elections (Six Billion Dollar Campaign).  Six BILLION.   And for what?   The presidential campaigns were so fiercely fought, it was like watching a tug of war between two teams of strong men, each huffing and puffing and jockeying to and fro, only to end at a stalemate; with neither side having won a convincing victory.  In the end you could have decided it all with a coin toss.

Six billion dollars is enough to allocate a hundred dollars to each of the bottom 20% of Americans.  That buys a lot of groceries for a family of four, who would get $400; or a pretty decent Christmas.

Instead, that money went primarily to TV ads that will pay media and advertising executive salaries.  The money gets recycled high up in the food chain.   I guess that's okay because most of it came from even higher up the food chain.

But think about it: Wouldn't it be better if all or substantially all of that money could be used to feed the hungry?

Not only does it seem unconscionable that so much money is being wasted on U.S. elections, even more of an issue is that U.S. democracy is being hijacked by big money, the so-called Super PAC's.

Six billion dollars.   With nothing to show for it.   Except, perhaps, a numb if not embittered public that struggles to make sense of it all.   What a waste!

Romney Wins First Debate

Mitt Romney won the first presidential debate, by all accounts.   Mitt appealed to the plain Americans in the middle, the undecided Geralds and Gladyses of Ohio, and the Rustys and Britneys of North Carolina, the ones who are not necessarily inclined to go to the president's campaign website, as president Obama, ever the intellectual, in contrast, implored them to do, to study his economic plan or anything else.   No, Mitt appealed to their yearning for a strong America, where jobs are once again in abundance, where its citizens are prospering and where the Chinese are being beaten back.   In fact, Mitt sounded a lot like Ronald Reagan (save for the remark about PBS and Big Bird), with the same straightforward, folksy way of communicating and bonding with the television audience.   In fact, he even stole Reagan's economic plan, it seemed to me.   Here was Mitt describing trickle down economics -- voodoo economics to some -- the way Reagan did in 1980.   Where did this come from all of a sudden?

The one thing you can count on with Shifty Mitt is that he will tell undecided Americans what he thinks they want to hear because his only goal is to win.  Unfortunately for those undecideds it makes it tough for them to determine what Mitt Romney really stands for.   Is it what he officially says in public debates, for instance, or is it what he does, such as pay as little personal income tax as he can get away with.  Is it how he acts in public, all smiles and hugs, or is it how he dismisses non tax-paying Americans -- the so-called 47% -- like he did behind closed doors at one of his fund raisers?

And why did Mitt change his explanation so many times about that damning "47%" comment?   Why didn't he and his campaign team craft a smarter response soon after the fund raiser video was leaked that fateful Monday night in September?   Why didn't Mitt say, right from the start, that what he meant by his remark was that he was focused on capturing the votes of the 53% that pay taxes, given that so much of his campaign revolves around tax relief for America, and not that he was disinterested in helping the other 47%?   I have to conclude that, either Mitt's team let him twist in the wind, or Mitt didn't listen to them in damage control sessions, or that Mitt hadn't yet truly latched onto trickle-down economic theory.

Anyway, Mitt has been so inconsistent, so devoid of details, so hypocritical in his actions, that most Americans, including the Geralds and Gladyses in Buckeye country, will remember what another former president, one George Dubya, said (or at least tried to say): "Fool me once, shame on you...."(Fool me twice, shame on me!).

They won't be be fooled by Romney's latest attempted incarnation: that of the late Ronald Reagan.  Which is why the polls are still on Obama's side.

It's Game Over For Romney

Despite the fact that Romney was the best of a bad bunch running for president among the GOP candidates, and couldn't hold a candle to Barack Obama, he still had a shot at the presidency because of the sorry state of the U.S. economy.   Until Monday night, that is.

Monday night is when a leaked video displayed Romney's true colours -- yet again.

The man was caught on video declaring that 47% of Americans don't pay taxes, that they basically sponge off the other 53%, and that they will vote for Obama because he'll keep the gravy train rolling for them.

This kind of statement is offensive and egregious on so many levels, especially coming from such a privileged man who grew up in a privileged family, and who scarcely knows what economic hardship is.   It hurts especially badly because this man has admitted to paying less income tax than most middle class Americans (what's left of them, anyway).

Romney has just thrown away the presidency.   It's game over for him.   What an idiot.

Why Republicans' Behavior Borders on Treason

The Republicans have stonewalled the president and the Democrats at every attempt to improve the present unacceptable condition of the United States of America.   The country is nowhere near full employment, poverty is rising, the rich are growing richer, the middle class is experiencing a loss of wealth, retirement is becoming an impossible dream, and a watered-down but still necessary version of a universal healthcare law is being challenged by Republicans who don't need one themselves, and don't care for those who do.

The Republicans' motive for tearing down initiatives that can only improve their country is greed, as Nobel Laureate Paul Krugman writes in his book, End This Depression Now (the book).   It's not enough that most of them are in the privileged top 1% of Americans or that their friends are.   They want to put more distance between themselves and the other 99% by cutting aid to the poor and unemployed, and by cutting taxes to the rich.   Growing income inequality in the United States is a fundamental problem and the Republicans are working like the devil to increase it!

As the Republicans have eroded public education they have preyed on the ill-educated with their professed faith in God and Jesus Christ yet, I ask, is this how Christians treat one another?   And they have obfuscated the masses with their messages about protection of American jobs in the coal industry rather than supporting policies to counteract climate change which is already intensifying storm damage, droughts and wildfires across the United States.  Is this leadership?

Republicans took the nation to the edge of a cliff last summer when they refused to allow expansion of the debt ceiling.   Why?   To supposedly make a point that "fiscal responsibility" is the right way to make America better again.   First, fiscal responsibility during a depression, as Krugman states in his book, means increasing federal spending to aid unemployed Americans, to aid underwater homeowners, to aid ailing states, counties and municipalities, to support health, education and welfare programs (rather than cut them when they are most needed).   That's what it means to be fiscally responsible when times are tough.   Second, if Republicans truly want to rein in federal debt then why object to ending the Bush tax cuts to the rich, the ones who don't need tax cuts?  Why?  Because of their greed.

Republicans support less regulation and oversight of banks and tax cheaters, as this New York Times editorial explains today (Gut the regulators).

And if you want to really stack the deck in your favour, you appoint Republicans to the Supreme Court to vote in favour of your political ideology, even if it dismembers the pillars of a fair and more equal society.  That's what George W. Bush did for America, among other things.

If you feign your support of Christianity, if you make it harder for the masses to get an education, if you baffle them with bullshit and pretend to support job creation, you can regain control of all three branches of government and do pretty much what you want.   And just in case someone challenges what you want in court, you make sure the highest court in the land is a Republican one.   That is the Republican agenda of 2012, my friends.

Republicans used to get that what was good for America was also good for them.   The only catch was that it would take time, generations perhaps, for the full manifestation of that approach.  Today's Republicans only care about what's good for them now.   They couldn't give a crap about the future.   So, the rest of the country can be damned.

And therein lies the treason.

Toronto Politics

Toronto elected a new mayor last year, Rob Ford, a man who ran on a pledge to radically change politics in Toronto for the better (sound familiar?) by cutting wasteful spending, and by being a champion of the common man.   His rival, George Smitherman, an intellectual though pragmatic politician, an allegedly gay man (it didn't help that his alleged homosexuality was advertised as something akin to blasphemy by some homophobic Taliban-like ethnic group, three days before the election), was an early favourite, presumably because his message to carry Toronto into the 21st century was very sensible.

Anyway, Mayor Ford, who campaigned to reduce waste, wasted no time, ironically, in introducing a more expensive plan to build a subway instead of an already-approved light rail line through Toronto.   In his first order of business, the new mayor decreed that the meticulously planned light rail project would be scrapped in favour of his own subway plan, which would deliver one quarter of the benefit for four times the cost.

Here we are a year later and, after wasting a year arguing about it, Toronto's councillors have sensibly voted against the mayor's plan.   Now, finally, wisdom has prevailed.

Or has it?   This is Toronto, after all.  This is 2012.   Anything can still happen.  

For over a quarter century, the fate of Toronto's local city centre airport, located in Toronto Harbour has swayed to and fro, from expansion to outright closure and conversion into a park.   For years proponents of the airport have argued for permission for jets to land there, and for a bridge to be built to the island (one must board a ferry to travel across a small channel to use the airport in what can only be described as deliberate pain).   Local residents have thus successfully managed to block such expansion, against the wishes of the majority living in metropolitan Toronto.   The result has been a vastly underutilized piece of Greater Toronto Area infrastructure.

In the end, as I've often said, democracy can be messy.   Toronto got a mayor who is clearly ineffective.   Why?   Perhaps because not enough people cared to vote.   Perhaps because candidate Ford's message resonated with the working men and women of Toronto.

Personally, I believe a big reason democratic elections return anomalous results is because too many voters are just plain ignorant.

In Toronto, I predict it will be at least three years before a shovel goes into the ground on any new transit line.  How will that have served anyone?

Why Iran Isn't Ready For The Nuclear Club

Iran is in the news a lot, especially this week as Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, meets with U.S. president Obama tomorrow, in an attempt to convince Obama that Israel is right to strike Iran's nuclear weapons program before Iran succeeds at getting a nuclear bomb.  And who can blame him?  After all, Iran's president, Ahmadinejad, on October 26, 2005, stated that Israel should be wiped off the map.  In a flurry of reactions to his statements, consensus seemed to be that, despite what, exactly, he meant or didn't mean by his statement, Ahmadinejad really didn't like Israel in his backyard, on Palestinian land, as he put it.  If anyone ever doubted what his true beliefs were, two years later, in 2008, on the celebration of Israel's 60th birthday, Ahmadinejad said, "Today the reason for the Zionist regime's existence is questioned, and this regime is on its way to annihilation."

Meanwhile, along the way, Iran has steadfastly denied, since at least 2005, that it is trying to make a bomb; rather, that it's developing uranium enrichment facilities of its own so that it doesn't need to depend on other nations for the fuel to power its nuclear power plant, which went into service in September, 2011, and so that it can make the radio isotopes necessary for cancer treatment.   While the current sanctions against Iran suggest that there could be a modicum of truth to Iran's concern about uranium supply, it's hard not to imagine that Iran is really forging ahead with aspirations of one day having a nuclear bomb.

Sadly, as is often the case in dictatorial regimes like Iran's, the people do not necessarily share the same values as their leaders.   Following a June 2009 general election, in which the vote was rigged in favour of the incumbent dictatorship, there was six months of protests and rebellion in the country, aided by young Iranians using facebook and twitter and other social media, opposing the outcome of the election.   It was suddenly muted when activists were jailed or put to death, fully two years before the "Arab Spring".   Maybe this time will be different.   Just yesterday, Iranians cast their ballots yet again in a general election.   Here's hoping that the brush fire that smolders in the Arab world will ignite lasting change inside Iran.

Meanwhile, the international trade sanctions that president Obama's administration has led against Iran are intended to weaken Iran's governing regime.   Unfortunately, however, they may backfire by further alienating Iran's people and by galvanizing them with their leaders against the "evil American empire".

So how will this all play out?

The answer to Israel's very understandable mistrust of Iran is to trust the United States because, to pre-emptively attack Iran would invite chaos, finger-pointing, crisis escalation and, very possibly, an attack on Israel by nations not entirely friendly to it.  Economically, it would raise the cost of oil, thus strengthening Iran and OPEC and weakening the West.  All of this would undermine U.S. and western allies' strategy to disarm Iran and to broker peace.

Longer term, the real answer is for Iran's people to overthrow their regime and elect a comparatively moderate government that wishes to play by western rules.   Until they install leaders who are not lunatics or until the present Iranian regime agrees to mothball uranium enrichment facilities within Iran, their country will never be completely trusted with nuclear power, it will be under extreme surveillance, and it will face economic hardship, or worse.   The only other way out of this is for the Iranians to openly embrace the Russians or Chinese as their military guardian, suitably consummated with free trade and other economic ties with one of those countries, in exchange for dismantling any nuclear weapons program Iran may have or may ever wish to have.

The Other Rick: (Santorum)

The Iowa caucuses demonstrated that Rick Santorum is capable of winning Americans' nomination for the Republican candidate for president of the United States this November 6.   And why not?   He's a man who's adopted the moral high ground all his life and, especially now, when the office of the president is up for grabs.

Rick Santorum trained as a lawyer and a politician.   He's been very successful at both vocations.   Privately, he's been described as a social conservative and a devout Catholic.   He is a staunch pro-life advocate and an opponent of gay marriage and any kind of sex that's different from heterosexual sex between a man and a woman in a loving marriage.   Those are old fashioned American values, wholesome ones to many, and, yes, they appeal to a lot of honest folks.   And they are no doubt a big reason why this man garnered so much support among his party members in Iowa.

But along with those 'wholesome' values there are some troubling indicators in Rick Santorum's DNA.

For starters, Rick Santorum likes money.   According to Bloomberg Businessweek, he took over $200,000 from a Washington DC conservative advocacy group, $150,000 from Consol Energy, the nation's second biggest coal company, and nearly $400,000 in director fees and stock options from Universal Health Services, one of the largest private healthcare companies in the U.S., in 2010 and 2011.   Perhaps more telling, Santorum's drive for higher earnings extended to his sponsorship of legislation, while he was in office, that would profit companies in his district and state, companies like weather forecaster, Accuweather, even as he was attacking the U.S. National Weather Service and its government funding.

Talking about the weather, Santorum's views on science are also pretty cut-and-dried.  Global warming (or, at least, rapid climate change caused by man-made emissions of CO2, etc.) is false; evolution is an imperfect theory, and intelligent design is what really happened.

On global threats, Santorum believes religious fundamentalism (i.e. radical Islam) is the single biggest threat which needs to be extinguished with brute force.  For him that means occupying Iraq and Afghanistan indefinitely.  And it means bombing Iran if it doesn't stop its development of nukes.   Perhaps someone ought to tell Santorum that, ironically, those same fundamentalists share his views on sex.

Most disturbing of all, though, is the way he and his wife handled the tragic death of one of their children, born twenty weeks premature, when Santorum's wife contracted a severe infection during pregnancy.   The necessary delivery of the child culminated in the baby's death, unfortunately, two hours after delivery.  But then, after sleeping with the dead fetus in their hospital room overnight, the Santorums somehow were allowed to take the child's body home so that they could show it to their children.   Now, perhaps we, who are fortunate enough to have never suffered the death of a newborn cannot comprehend how the Santorums felt but, I ask, doesn't it seem a bit strange to bring a dead fetus home to let young siblings coddle it in their arms?  Wouldn't bringing the children to the hospital to grieve the death of the newborn child have been a more normal way to go about it?

And I guess that's what's most disturbing about Rick Santorum.  Not only are his opinions a bit too far out in right field, he's ready to live some of them and take the heat if they go against the grain.   While that may be okay in his private life, it's not okay in the office of the president of the United States -- as in bombing Iran, for instance.   I'm afraid Rick Santorum is capable of actually starting another war.

Radical Islam?   That's nothing compared to a radical president (abetted by other radicals in government) armed to the teeth, as America is.