Posted inPolitics: National

The debates we’re not having

As masterful as President Obama's health care speech was, he operates in a nation that is increasingly losing the capacity to govern itself. The blurt of the loutish South Carolina Republican congressman, calling the president a liar, something I have never heard in listening to presidential addresses before that body since JFK…well, that's the least of the problem.

Health care reform foundered on the vicious lies of a well-organized minority and, apparently, the simple-mindedness of the American people (all manipulated by the health industries' hundreds of millions of lobbying dollars). The side dish was the ongoing hyperventilation over the president's citizenship or lack thereof. Then came the hysteria over his "indoctrination" of schoolchildren from a harmless speech (two other presidents have done this, with no controversy). All this from a minority of nuts — and their reactionary masters — who nonetheless dominated the television from which most Americans get their "news." This is how we spent our summer. One would never know who won the election last fall.

Think of all we're not discussing. Not even thinking about as a nation.

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Posted inPolitics: National

Let’s look at the fundamentals of the American economy

Republican John Sidney McCain III is trying desperately to back away from his "fundamentals of the economy are strong" line, even going so far as to say he meant American workers. But not so fast. In fact, it is the fundamentals of the American economy that are in dangerous trouble. Let us count the ways. I’m going to have to give you some straight talk, my friends:

1. Debt. The nation is deeply in hock to creditors worldwide. We used this line of credit to finance the housing bubble, wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, tax cuts to the richest Americans, rebate checks that went into the ether and the privatization of hundreds of billions of dollars in government services. It’s paying for the bailout of Bear, Sterns and it stands to take a devastating shock from Freddie and Fannie. From government to business to consumers, Americans are debtors, and most of the debt has been pissed away on war, sprawl, speculation and corruption, as opposed to building something for the future.

As the economist Nouriel Roubini has pointed out, the current account deficit in the ’90s came back as investment in private innovation, but for the past eight years it has been used to finance deficit spending and debt. Moreover, now much of this debt is held by nations that do not necessarily wish us well, including China and the petro-states such as Saudi Arabia.

This situation dangerously limits our options in foreign policy. It makes it a near certainty that living standards will take a big hit as we have to pay it back. Remember, when the Soviet Union collapsed, the first people in the door were the bankers, wanting to be repaid for the debt the Bolsheviks defaulted on after the 1917 revolution.

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Posted inPolitics: National

The mess we’re in

The FDIC, one of those "liberal" "socialist" things foisted on free-market America by Franklin Roosevelt, had to step in Friday to avoid a major bank run. More failures are expected and — dirty little secret — only about $2.5 trillion of the $7 trillion deposited in U.S. banks are actually federally insured.

Seven trillion sounds like a lot. But Americans are in hock to $12 trillion in mortgage debt as housing prices have collapsed, the last big factory of America (making houses) has all but shut down, and foreclosures are reaching records. The Iraq war will cost another $3 trillion. The U.S. national debt is $10 trillion (nearly double from 2001). That ought to tell you something about the mess we’re in.

What’s being little reported about the seizure of IndyMac "Bank" is that the institution is a bastard child of Countrywide, Angelo Mozilo’s death star of subprime calamity (now a boulder around the neck of Bank of America). IndyMac was spun off because it was collatoralizing mortgages too big to be sold to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, now on federal life support. The bubble was so huge, fed by so much fraud and bad policy, that the barons had to find "innovative" ways to keep it going.  And all that time, the regulators waved it on. This is the mess we’re in.

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Posted inPolitics: National

American foreign policy, shackled

In the ever-desperate effort to keep you distracted, the corporate media are forced to scrape quite deep today, telling you that the husband of an obscure senator had sex with a prostitute in a Troy, Mich, motel. What on earth don’t they want you to know?

Things like the erosion of American latitude in foreign policy — some might even call it sovereignty. And it’s all our doing, whether through our thoughtless votes at the ballot box or our votes in what we buy and how we live.

We’re supposedly committed to a war on terror, or a struggle against "Islamic fascism," to use the "conservative" phrase. But who is the biggest sponsor of terror? Our friends, the Saudis. This news comes not from some conspiracy site but from the Bush Treasury department, which reported quietly that Saudi Arabia remains the largest funder of al Qaeda and other extremists.

Meanwhile, nations are talking about boycotting the opening ceremonies of the Beijing Olympics to protest China’s horrendous human rights record. Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel apparently will not be there. You can bet President Bush, the leader of the Free World and a man who pledged to support democracy across the globe, will attend.

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