A Puzzle Wrapped in Riddle wrapped in a Mystery

The title of this piece is how one of the authors of a new book Winner-Take-All Politics: How Washington Made the Rich Richer – And Turned It’s Back on the Middle Class describes their magnificent work about how the incomes between the majority of our citizens and the richest of the rich reached that point. Most of us know the numbers by now that the top 1% of the top 1% in this country have half the wealth of this country. Also these ultra rich are pretty much in control of the government which many now call a plutocracy rather than a democracy.

The authors, Jacob S. Hacker and Paul Pierson (Hacker is a professor of political science at Yale and Pierson is also a professor of political science at the University of California, Berkley) talk about how foreign trade, financial globalization, changes in technology in the workplace, and the highly educated at the top, which are usually blamed for our inequitable situation are not the real culprits in the saga, rather it is American winner-take-all politics that has created this winner-take-all economy.

They go back to the 1970’s when a Democratic president and congress (Lyndon B. Johnson) made major changes that transformed politics. It really takes off under the Reagan administration when big business and conservative ideologues deregulated all they could, cut taxes for the rich and labor unions were defeated as major players in politics. It continued under Bushes as well as Clinton. It comes to a head during the Obama administration.

In essence winner-take-all politics shows how the political system has been hijacked by the rich at the expense of the middle class. They also theorize how democracy might be rebuild to serve the interests of the many rather than the few.

This is not a quick read as I have discovered but a very worthwhile and important book in understanding what has happened in our country. The Christian Science Monitor poses the question while reviewing the book as to how Republicans and Democrats are behaving like Sunnis and Shiites in Iraq.

Their numbers can be mind numbing such as 2009, a good year for Wall Street when the 38 top firms earned 140 billion. Goldman Sacks paid its minions $600,000 per person.

I encourage you to read and you will find reviews all over the internet. You can even listen to the authors themselves on YouTube and the link below.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=547d2Ge_j2o

Who Poisoned Wisconsin?

I like “Who do its” mysteries to tickle our deductive processes, the thrill of trying to solve the crime before the end of the book or the TV program or movie. But a “who done it” where you can’t find out the culprit, the poisoner, the bad guy is frustrating. There are slew of websites describing such unsolvable “who done its” right now. The culprit in this piece is Wisconsin, but it is going on throughout the country and people seek to find out about “dark money” and who is behind it and for what purposes?

One of the sleuths on the Wisconsin case is Mike McCabe who has an office in Madison called Wisconsin Democracy Campaign. He has searched the money trails in Wisconsin political campaign history and found some very interesting things. He predicts there may be about $80 million spent on the recall here is the cheese state. Big money, most of which we do not know where it originates, probably most outside of the state.

McCabe talks about the good old days when the late Bill Proxmire, a U.S. senator for 31 years who declined campaign contributions and never spend more the a couple of hundred bucks in any of his 6 campaigns. He just campaigned and met people all over the state proud of his blisters and calluses from hand-shaking. Republican Lee Dreyfus, governor from 1979 to 1983 was known for his beat up red bus and traveling band to campaign.

Big money did not enter the picture until the mid 1990s and the 2000s with governors Tommy Thompson and Jim Doyle. As late as 1995 you could track down every dollar donated.

And, of course, now we have the Supreme Court 2010 Citizens United decision and the dams have been broken for big money to dominate elections. The dark money, money from unknown sources pours in enriching the media.

So be careful of the cheese you eat it may be tainted with the poison.

At little data for you:

Total raised by super PACs (so far): $218 million 
Ratio of spending by conservative super PACs to liberal super PACs: 7.7 to 1 
Total raised by Barack Obama: $217.1 million 
Total raised by Mitt Romney: $97.9 million 
Total raised by congressional candidates: $639.4 million 
Total raised by state candidates: $378.6 million

Sources: Center for Responsive Politics, National Institute for Money in State Politics

And then we have the ravings of big money billionaires whining about being found out in their giving, if they are found out. i.e. “This idea of giving public beatings has been around for a long time…You go back to the Dark Ages when they put these people in the stocks or whatever they did, or publicly humiliated them as a deterrent to everybody else—watch this—watch what we do to the guy who did this.”
— Frank VanderSloot, CEO of the direct-marketing company Melaleuca, speaking to Politico about the public humilation of being a Romney megadonor.

And we learn that $1 billion planned to be spent by conservative groups for the White House. Politic reports that $400 million from Koch brothers dark-money efforts.

Half of Scott Walker’s comes from out of state Dark money according to Mother Jones.

“Hey big spender, spend a little a little time with me.”

Some of you will recall Peggy Lee singing this song written by Cy Coleman and Dorothy Fields and was a song in the musical Sweet Charity.

Mitt Romney seems to be singing his version of the song about President Obama saying, “Since President Obama assumed office three years ago, federal spending has accelerated at a pace without precedent in recent history.” There are a whole lot of people out there that believe this is absolutely true. After all, the Republicans have called the Democrats the “tax and spend” party for countless years. Where’s there smoke there must be fire right? Wrong!

On May 22, 2012, Rex Nutting, international commentary editor for the financial website MarketWatch wrote this just never happened. In fact, federal spending has risen “slower than any time in nearly 60’s years.” That is since the Eisenhower years. That is with even adding $140 billion in stimulus to Obama rather than Bush where it began.

Adjusted for inflation this is what it looks like.

President	Fiscal year baseline	Last fiscal year	Average percentage increase per year
Johnson	1964	1969	6.3
George W. Bush	2001	2009	5.9
Kennedy	1961	1964	4.7
Carter	1977	1981	4.2
Nixon	1969	1975	3.0
Reagan	1981	1989	2.7
George H.W. Bush	1989	1993	1.8
Clinton	1993	2001	1.5
Obama	2009	2013	-0.1
Eisenhower	1953	1961	-0.5

Adjusted for inflation Obama is the second lowest. Or, Nutting pretty much nailed it. You also have to note that congress kept Obama spending rate lower than he wanted.

In my opinion, we should be doing more New Deal spending to get the economy rolling.

Many of you have seen the following on Facebook.

FCC Votes for Disclosure Rules for Political Ads

That sounds great does it not? Finally, at long last it will be revealed who is buying all the ads that run incessantly on TV. The PACs will be identified and the public will who is doing what and in what amounts. This is what ProPublica wrote May 29, 2012. A time for rejoicing yes?

Well perhaps not. Of course, the broadcasters are not exactly thrilled with the ruling causing them to name their great cash cows. So, they have sued to stop the rule. And even if their lawsuits fails the earliest the broadcasters would have to give out the data would be in three months – July. And then it could be delayed even further into the summer or the fall or longer yet.

Why will it take so long? There is a law called the Paper Reduction Act. There is a lot to deal with in describing what this act does but I won’t go into here. You can look it up if you are interested.

What we do know is that the lobbyists for the National Association of Broadcasters argued that the proposed FCC rule would run afoul the Paper Reduction Act. The upshot of all this is those with big money can slow down a process that is clearly in the public interest. This is not exactly something new but more than irksome at best. Information that would be helpful to voters may be blocked until it is of no use to them.

[The FCC is the Federal Communications Commission.]

Does Fact Checking Help?

I just wrote a three page article on things that were true, untrue, half true and blatant lies based on information primarily from PolitiFact.org and a bit from truthout.org. Then I tossed it.

Now I definitely believe that when we hear all the garbage spewed forth on TV and elsewhere in political ads, we do need to check out whether they are true or not. That is why we have website like those I mentioned above. But I wonder how much affect they have. How many people read them? How many folk they are just another form of bias?

Perhaps we should all just listen to Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert each evening to get at what is going on. They seem to me to be the least biased reporters on the air and they are comedians.

In spite of fact checkers and regular Newspapers and TV which give some news along with hype and entertainment, none of this seems to affect the ad producers at all.

The lobbyists and the PAC machines blithely go ahead spreading misinformation and negativism potent enough for the populace to think of mass suicide. They know they control most of government and they want to keep the common person addled, so they don’t have a clue as to how to stop these huge political machines.

But for some odd reason there are those of us who regularly go to the fact checking sites and seek out as much first hand information and truth we can find. Some of us write blogs about it thinking we might have a tiny influence by debunking or supporting those that seem to tell the truth the most.

However, every now and then you run into somebody that seems trustworthy, thinks clearly, and speaks truth with eloquence. I’m thinking Elizabeth Warren. I hope she wins her election we need her and a bunch like her.

Auction Politics

I recently saw this exercise on the Psychology Today blog. You get a group of people and auction off a $20 bill. The opening bid is $1 and climbs at one dollar increments. It’s a winner take all scenario. But here is the catch. Both the winner and the runner up (the loser) have to pay.

Now does that sound like politics or what? Of course, there is more than a $20 involved.

U.S.A. Not Dependent on MidEastern Oil: Good or ?

The new hot spots for oil deposits now seem to be in the Americas, both North and South. As a result we are less dependent upon foreign oil, particular that from the Mideast; so this is a good thing right? The Washington Post just did a article on it as well as other news agencies.

I’m not at all sure about all that. First there is the problem that a good deal of the oil in the U.S. is oil available by fracking; a process whose impact on the environment is unproven and may prove to be very dangerous. Even the dictionary in my word processor does not even know the word. The oil in South America is more traditional, so that I see as a good thing in a sense.

But the real danger of the so-called good news in that it gives us a false sense of danger past. Ah, we’ve got new oil at hand which we can even export so we don’t have to worry about developing alternative energy sources. That, I believe could be disastrous thinking. All fossil fuels are limited and those who supply it have less than stellar records of economic and ecological responsibility. So, I worry that with more available oil research and development of alternative clean energy work will be delayed even though it is obvious needed and a better source for the future.

Every silver lining has a cloud.