Nicely Stated
What comes of this moment will be determined not by whether we can sit together tonight, but whether we can work together tomorrow. –President Barak Obama
When I was a kid I attended a church camp and learned a song. It only had two phrases: “Praise ye the Lord” and “Alleluia.” The boys sang one phrase and the girls the other, and we were encouraged to compete with each other with regard to volume. In addition, when one group was singing it stood up while the other quickly sat down. The result resembled a reciprocating engine and achieved noise levels similar to those produced by high school basketball fans stomping on bleachers.
Every time I have watched the State of the Union Address in recent years I have been reminded of that song. The President would say something his party liked and all its members would stand up and applaud. Occasionally he would say something supported by the other party and its members would stand. Often a member, especially of the opposition, thought something sounded good and started to stand, but first hastily glanced at the party leader to make sure it was appropriate. The bouncing up and down and the jerky hesitations were entertaining but didn’t enhance the message.
It was a little different this time. Recognizing the extremes to which partisan bickering has poisoned our national debate, and recoiling from the recent tragedy in Tucson that had stricken close to home, many members of Congress chose to sit next to someone from the other party and not in blocs on their sides of the aisle. It was a symbolic gesture but one that many of their constituents, myself among them, found greatly refreshing.
Oh, yes, the members still bounced up and down, and just about every sentence President Obama uttered was applauded by one group or the other or both. It took him over an hour to give a 30-minute speech. But there was a significant feeling that at least one impediment to comity and compromise had been removed.
President Obama’s speech Tuesday was conciliatory in many ways as well, so Republicans had a number of opportunities to stand and applaud. He obviously recognizes that voters want him to work with the opposition to solve the many problems we face.
Both the Republican rebuttal, given by Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI), the new House Budget Committee chairman, and the Tea Party rebuttal, from Rep. Michelle Bachmann (R-MN), who can usually be counted on to say something bizarrely belligerent, were unusually cogent and avoided the usual “social conservative” rhetoric that has polluted public discourse for decades. I didn’t hear abortion mentioned in any of the three speeches, and only the president mentioned gays and immigration, and just briefly. Bachmann, who recently described Obama as “the first non-American president,” stayed on-message with the other two and avoided ad hominem and “birther” nonsense.
The message, of course, is that we have great economic difficulties. Each of the three offered solutions, and while they differed to a great extent, it’s clear there is significant common ground. I found this truly refreshing; perhaps it’s because the Republicans now control the House and will be held accountable for its actions.
President Obama called for new investment in technology to bring about the next industrial revolution, citing past achievements in space and the development of the Internet, both of which spurred the economy. He called for improvements in education and the development of new infrastructure such as mag-lev trains and the next generations of renewable energy and high-speed communications, as well as rebuilding existing infrastructure, as ways to make this happen. He extolled the benefits of pure research in a newly-competitive world.
He called upon Congress to revise the tax code. “Over the years,” he said, “a parade of lobbyists has rigged the tax code to benefit particular companies and industries. Those with accountants or lawyers to work the system can end up paying no taxes at all. But all the rest are hit with one of the highest corporate tax rates in the world. It makes no sense, and it has to change.”
Get rid of these loopholes, he said, and the corporate tax rate can be lowered. This would make U.S. companies more competitive with the rest of the world.
He admitted that some government regulations do more to stifle business than to protect the public, while others are unnecessarily duplicative, and offered to work with lawmakers to revise them. But he made it clear that some regulations were necessary, including those recently imposed on the financial industry, and that he would resist efforts to dilute them.
The president got a well-deserved laugh when he said, “I’ve heard rumors that a few of you have some concerns about the new health care law.” The House, of course, has wasted most of its first weeks this session tilting at that windmill. Obama made it clear he wouldn’t allow a return to the status quo ante but agreed that “anything can be improved.” If there’s something wrong with it, he said, “let’s fix what needs fixing and move forward.”
That probably didn’t assuage the Republicans in the least, but it’s certainly a statement of political fact. If the GOP wants to abolish the health care law, it will have to win the 2012 election, and win it big, to do it.
Obama offered a number of cost-cutting measures. Republicans interviewed afterwards decried them as too little too late, but they represent fertile ground for compromise, and that’s a start.
Has civility returned to Congress? There are some hopeful signs. Let’s see if they work together tomorrow.
Wednesday, January 26, 2011
Friday, January 21, 2011
Our Political Parties - V
Declining to State
You must pick one or the other although neither of them ought to be what they claim. –Bob Dylan.
I’ve scarcely mentioned one the biggest political blocs of all, the self-styled independents. They don’t rate an initial capital letter because they do not exist as a political party. They are defined by what they are not.
In my state, people who don’t choose a party when they register to vote are referred to as “Declined to State.” It makes them sound like they’re trying to hide something. I think “Unaffiliated” is a kinder moniker, and a more precise term.
Whatever you call them, unaffiliated voters are a big percentage of registered voters, about 30%. The biggest group of all, of course, is composed of those who don’t vote or don’t even register. At least the independents participate in the process.
In presidential election years, usually a little over half of the voting-age population actually makes it to the polls. Some years it will break the 60% barrier. In off-year elections, it’s usually less than 40%. (See http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0781453.html for statistics from the years 1960-2008.)
The breakdown of Republicans, Democrats, and independents is roughly one-sixth of the eligible population each. Every year a few members of each of the two major parties choose to vote for the opposition candidate, but most of them stick with their own parties. That means that the independents are actually deciding general elections. The problem is that they have no voice in primary elections.
In order to win, a candidate from either party has to keep his party’s voters motivated and convince a majority of the independents that he is the best choice. Many good candidates who could put such a coalition together never get the chance, because the views of party members don’t always match those of independent voters. The result is a complicated dance to attract party members during the primary season without alienating independent voters who will be needed the following November.
I can understand why many people choose not to participate at the party level. They may see the parties as unnecessarily partisan and vociferous, but ironically they help make them that way by not getting involved and diluting the venom. Others simply find politics uninteresting. I can understand that. I feel the same way about sports, and ballet, and whatever the heck Lindsay Lohan does besides get in trouble. I can’t tell you who won the last World Series, or what teams are still in the running for the Super Bowl, but I can give you a pretty accurate list of the U.S. senators whose seats will be up for election next time, and which ones are likely not to run. Different strokes for different folks.
Some say we should have more than two parties, but no one seems to be able to put a viable third party together. Ross Perot came close, as did George Wallace before him, but there never seems to be a critical mass. Even if someone did succeed in creating a viable third party, I’d bet that it would soon replace one of the existing parties rather than compete with them both.
So I expect independents to remain a major force in our government for the foreseeable future, and I think that’s a good thing. A candidate from either party who sticks too closely to that party’s core message won’t make it. The party faithful may not support compromise, but their candidate has to. Independents haven’t found it desirable or comfortable to register in either party, so neither party line will attract their votes. The large number of independents requires candidates, especially presidential candidates, to espouse a less partisan approach and speak to the issues that concern the unaffiliated at the moment.
Two days after he barely won the 2004 election, George Bush, Jr. said, “I earned capital in the campaign, political capital, and now I intend to spend it.” Just after the 2010 election, the new house speaker-apparent, John Boehner, said, “The American people spoke and I think it’s pretty clear the Obama-Pelosi agenda is being rejected by the American people.”
Well, Mr. Speaker, maybe that sentiment will work better for you than it did for Mr. Bush, but I doubt it. “The American People” in this case were a motivated Republican base and a majority of the independents who chose to vote this time around. If there was a mandate, it was for more jobs and a better economy. It remains to be seen if the tactics of the GOP in the House will bring those things about to the satisfaction of the independents who supported its candidates, or if they will decide to do so again in 2012.
Even the biggest landslides in recent history represent the votes of only 25% to 30% of eligible voters, and in no case was the winning party able to duplicate its success two years later.
Those of us who have chosen to be Democrats should remember that if we win next time around and avoid saying that it’s pretty clear the Boehner-McConnell agenda is being rejected by the American people.
You must pick one or the other although neither of them ought to be what they claim. –Bob Dylan.
I’ve scarcely mentioned one the biggest political blocs of all, the self-styled independents. They don’t rate an initial capital letter because they do not exist as a political party. They are defined by what they are not.
In my state, people who don’t choose a party when they register to vote are referred to as “Declined to State.” It makes them sound like they’re trying to hide something. I think “Unaffiliated” is a kinder moniker, and a more precise term.
Whatever you call them, unaffiliated voters are a big percentage of registered voters, about 30%. The biggest group of all, of course, is composed of those who don’t vote or don’t even register. At least the independents participate in the process.
In presidential election years, usually a little over half of the voting-age population actually makes it to the polls. Some years it will break the 60% barrier. In off-year elections, it’s usually less than 40%. (See http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0781453.html for statistics from the years 1960-2008.)
The breakdown of Republicans, Democrats, and independents is roughly one-sixth of the eligible population each. Every year a few members of each of the two major parties choose to vote for the opposition candidate, but most of them stick with their own parties. That means that the independents are actually deciding general elections. The problem is that they have no voice in primary elections.
In order to win, a candidate from either party has to keep his party’s voters motivated and convince a majority of the independents that he is the best choice. Many good candidates who could put such a coalition together never get the chance, because the views of party members don’t always match those of independent voters. The result is a complicated dance to attract party members during the primary season without alienating independent voters who will be needed the following November.
I can understand why many people choose not to participate at the party level. They may see the parties as unnecessarily partisan and vociferous, but ironically they help make them that way by not getting involved and diluting the venom. Others simply find politics uninteresting. I can understand that. I feel the same way about sports, and ballet, and whatever the heck Lindsay Lohan does besides get in trouble. I can’t tell you who won the last World Series, or what teams are still in the running for the Super Bowl, but I can give you a pretty accurate list of the U.S. senators whose seats will be up for election next time, and which ones are likely not to run. Different strokes for different folks.
Some say we should have more than two parties, but no one seems to be able to put a viable third party together. Ross Perot came close, as did George Wallace before him, but there never seems to be a critical mass. Even if someone did succeed in creating a viable third party, I’d bet that it would soon replace one of the existing parties rather than compete with them both.
So I expect independents to remain a major force in our government for the foreseeable future, and I think that’s a good thing. A candidate from either party who sticks too closely to that party’s core message won’t make it. The party faithful may not support compromise, but their candidate has to. Independents haven’t found it desirable or comfortable to register in either party, so neither party line will attract their votes. The large number of independents requires candidates, especially presidential candidates, to espouse a less partisan approach and speak to the issues that concern the unaffiliated at the moment.
Two days after he barely won the 2004 election, George Bush, Jr. said, “I earned capital in the campaign, political capital, and now I intend to spend it.” Just after the 2010 election, the new house speaker-apparent, John Boehner, said, “The American people spoke and I think it’s pretty clear the Obama-Pelosi agenda is being rejected by the American people.”
Well, Mr. Speaker, maybe that sentiment will work better for you than it did for Mr. Bush, but I doubt it. “The American People” in this case were a motivated Republican base and a majority of the independents who chose to vote this time around. If there was a mandate, it was for more jobs and a better economy. It remains to be seen if the tactics of the GOP in the House will bring those things about to the satisfaction of the independents who supported its candidates, or if they will decide to do so again in 2012.
Even the biggest landslides in recent history represent the votes of only 25% to 30% of eligible voters, and in no case was the winning party able to duplicate its success two years later.
Those of us who have chosen to be Democrats should remember that if we win next time around and avoid saying that it’s pretty clear the Boehner-McConnell agenda is being rejected by the American people.
Friday, January 14, 2011
Our Political Parties - IV
Ethical Cleansing
I am not a member of any organized political party. I am a Democrat. –Will Rogers, 1879-1935.
In my experience, the Democratic Party is like a bus. Those who get on first every four years get to drive, but they have to pay for the gas, too. If they don’t, someone else takes over and the rest of us are happy to be along for the ride. Sometimes we get as far as Washington.
Traditionally, the Democratic Party is the party of Labor, of the common people. Common people may be common, but they’re incredibly diverse, and you will definitely find all kinds of people at a Democratic meeting or rally or barbecue.
A simplistic view of the difference between Democrats and Republicans is that the former are fighting for something and the latter against something. Consequently, the words “liberal” and “conservative” have some validity in describing them. When they’re at their best, the Democrats are working for their vision of fairness and equity, strengthening the middle class, and reducing poverty. At their best Republicans are working for their vision of fairness and equity, protecting the upper class, and keeping Democrats from going overboard in their efforts.
Years ago my brother-in-law signed up to run for country commissioner in our little county on the Republican ticket. If he had signed up as a Democrat, we would have welcomed him with open arms along with anyone else willing to run for the seat. But he chose the GOP, and he didn’t consult with the county chairman or the other powers-that-were at the time. They had already chosen someone else to run for the position and they were not happy with this impertinent upstart.
Despite their best efforts, he won the primary. In retaliation, those powers-that-were redoubled their opposition in the general election. This time, they won. They got his Democratic opponent elected, and considered it a victory.
I have always considered that incident indicative of the differences between the two major parties. It’s one reason I’m a Democrat. When we’re at our best, we encourage participation from all sorts of people and we make rules, sometimes ridiculously complex rules, that give everybody a voice in the process.
In recent years the Republican Party, at least those members led by Limbaugh and his clones and the Tea Party, has been “purifying” itself to make sure everybody in the party who holds office or speaks out toes the party line. Everyone has to be for tax cuts for the rich and famous, prayer in school, capital punishment, and automatic weapon ownership, and against abortion, immigration, health care for the poor, wardrobe malfunctions, and so on.
This purification is sowing the seeds of the party’s demise. My greatest fear is that the Democrats will follow suit.
In the last primary election, MoveOn.org spent a lot of money trying to defeat Blanche Lincoln, the Democratic senator from Arkansas, because not all of her votes fit in with MoveOn’s version of the party line. (She opposed the “public option” for health care.) Sen. Lincoln had a hard fight without such assistance because it was a Republican year and because Arkansas is not a safe Democratic state. She managed to limp through the primary and a subsequent run-off to get the nomination, but was defeated soundly in the general election by Republican John Boozman.
I don’t think Lincoln had a chance this year, but I think MoveOn’s efforts were against the party’s long-term interest. We Democrats need to be inclusive, or we’ll end up pure – and irrelevant. Such “ethical cleansing” on the GOP side will drive people out of the party, and many of them will end up as Democrats – unless the Democrats do the same thing. Then they’ll end up as independents poxing both our houses.
Instead of trying to purge our party, let’s build it up. There’s one constituency of the Republican Party that has been disgruntled in recent years: the fiscal conservatives. Our party has a better record in that regard than the GOP, at least since the Bush, Jr. years. If we take up that mantle, and make it clear that we are for social justice within a financially sound system, some of those disaffected people can feel comfortable on our side of the aisle.
One of the things I find most annoying about the GOP, especially in Congress, is its lockstep mentality. Trying to get Democrats to sing in unison is like herding cats (or as author Ari Berman put it in the title of his recent book, Herding Donkeys). I like that. I’d sure like to see a few more Republican legislators crossing the aisle when they recognize that a pending bill is a good one. But their party tends to be very retributive when this occurs. Consider the fate of Sen. Arlen Specter: a Republican Party that doesn’t have room for Arlen Specter is a Republican Party in trouble.
Capitalists, conservatives, corporations, and the cautious deserve a voice. I think a healthy Republican Party is good for the Democratic Party. Despite its recent gains in Congress and across the country, I don’t think the Republican Party is really that healthy, and I don’t think that’s good for my party either. We are forced to respond to the loud but largely irrelevant tirades of the GOP’s lunatic fringe, and it dumbs down the discussion.
We have very pressing problems in this country, and it will take rational compromise from both sides to solve them. The longer we delay the worse they get.
I am not a member of any organized political party. I am a Democrat. –Will Rogers, 1879-1935.
In my experience, the Democratic Party is like a bus. Those who get on first every four years get to drive, but they have to pay for the gas, too. If they don’t, someone else takes over and the rest of us are happy to be along for the ride. Sometimes we get as far as Washington.
Traditionally, the Democratic Party is the party of Labor, of the common people. Common people may be common, but they’re incredibly diverse, and you will definitely find all kinds of people at a Democratic meeting or rally or barbecue.
A simplistic view of the difference between Democrats and Republicans is that the former are fighting for something and the latter against something. Consequently, the words “liberal” and “conservative” have some validity in describing them. When they’re at their best, the Democrats are working for their vision of fairness and equity, strengthening the middle class, and reducing poverty. At their best Republicans are working for their vision of fairness and equity, protecting the upper class, and keeping Democrats from going overboard in their efforts.
Years ago my brother-in-law signed up to run for country commissioner in our little county on the Republican ticket. If he had signed up as a Democrat, we would have welcomed him with open arms along with anyone else willing to run for the seat. But he chose the GOP, and he didn’t consult with the county chairman or the other powers-that-were at the time. They had already chosen someone else to run for the position and they were not happy with this impertinent upstart.
Despite their best efforts, he won the primary. In retaliation, those powers-that-were redoubled their opposition in the general election. This time, they won. They got his Democratic opponent elected, and considered it a victory.
I have always considered that incident indicative of the differences between the two major parties. It’s one reason I’m a Democrat. When we’re at our best, we encourage participation from all sorts of people and we make rules, sometimes ridiculously complex rules, that give everybody a voice in the process.
In recent years the Republican Party, at least those members led by Limbaugh and his clones and the Tea Party, has been “purifying” itself to make sure everybody in the party who holds office or speaks out toes the party line. Everyone has to be for tax cuts for the rich and famous, prayer in school, capital punishment, and automatic weapon ownership, and against abortion, immigration, health care for the poor, wardrobe malfunctions, and so on.
This purification is sowing the seeds of the party’s demise. My greatest fear is that the Democrats will follow suit.
In the last primary election, MoveOn.org spent a lot of money trying to defeat Blanche Lincoln, the Democratic senator from Arkansas, because not all of her votes fit in with MoveOn’s version of the party line. (She opposed the “public option” for health care.) Sen. Lincoln had a hard fight without such assistance because it was a Republican year and because Arkansas is not a safe Democratic state. She managed to limp through the primary and a subsequent run-off to get the nomination, but was defeated soundly in the general election by Republican John Boozman.
I don’t think Lincoln had a chance this year, but I think MoveOn’s efforts were against the party’s long-term interest. We Democrats need to be inclusive, or we’ll end up pure – and irrelevant. Such “ethical cleansing” on the GOP side will drive people out of the party, and many of them will end up as Democrats – unless the Democrats do the same thing. Then they’ll end up as independents poxing both our houses.
Instead of trying to purge our party, let’s build it up. There’s one constituency of the Republican Party that has been disgruntled in recent years: the fiscal conservatives. Our party has a better record in that regard than the GOP, at least since the Bush, Jr. years. If we take up that mantle, and make it clear that we are for social justice within a financially sound system, some of those disaffected people can feel comfortable on our side of the aisle.
One of the things I find most annoying about the GOP, especially in Congress, is its lockstep mentality. Trying to get Democrats to sing in unison is like herding cats (or as author Ari Berman put it in the title of his recent book, Herding Donkeys). I like that. I’d sure like to see a few more Republican legislators crossing the aisle when they recognize that a pending bill is a good one. But their party tends to be very retributive when this occurs. Consider the fate of Sen. Arlen Specter: a Republican Party that doesn’t have room for Arlen Specter is a Republican Party in trouble.
Capitalists, conservatives, corporations, and the cautious deserve a voice. I think a healthy Republican Party is good for the Democratic Party. Despite its recent gains in Congress and across the country, I don’t think the Republican Party is really that healthy, and I don’t think that’s good for my party either. We are forced to respond to the loud but largely irrelevant tirades of the GOP’s lunatic fringe, and it dumbs down the discussion.
We have very pressing problems in this country, and it will take rational compromise from both sides to solve them. The longer we delay the worse they get.
Friday, January 7, 2011
Our Political Parties - III
The Brand New Party
This piece of rudeness was more than Alice could bear: she got up in great disgust, and walked off; the Dormouse fell asleep instantly, and neither of the others took the least notice of her going, though she looked back once or twice, half hoping that they would call after her: the last time she saw them, they were trying to put the Dormouse into the teapot. –Lewis Carroll (Charles Lutwidge Dodgson), 1832-1898
What a bizarre phenomenon is the Tea Party. It seemed to spring forth, like a toe fungus, in 2008 – coincidently an election year. There is no national headquarters of this organization: every chapter – indeed, every member – seems to be autonomous. Although the message is obscure, the common themes seem to be concern over the national debt and deficit, support for the Constitution, opposition to waste, fraud, and abuse, and a preference for smaller government.
It sounds like just what the Republican Party needs, doesn’t it? At first glance it seems to be an association of fiscal conservatives, a constituency who have found the GOP disappointing in recent years. Perhaps it could be the vessel of retribution for the profligate wealthy, or at least a balance to their astonishing excesses.
But look closer. They all seem to be White folks, generally older White folks, and they all seem to be very mad about something. Surely it is the wild-eyed fiscal insanity of recent years, when stockbrokers and bankers, abetted by free-market legislators who had systematically dismantled long-standing regulations of their industries, went berserk and almost took us into worldwide depression.
Well, no. These people are mad, but not about that.
A group of Teabags actually held a rally in the town nearest to mine last year. I happened to drive by just as it was winding down. I saw that several people were displaying signs, but I could only read one as I passed. It said, “Forget Your Dogs and Cats – Spay and Neuter Your Liberty!” I have no clue what that was supposed to mean, but I’m sure it was heartfelt. It’s typical of the disparate and convoluted messages of the Tea Party.
Look yet closer and you’ll see something else: a tendency to blame Barak Obama for our economic ills. Many of the Teabags profess to be particularly angry at Obama’s bailout of the banks.
Uh, well, uh, that happened a couple of months before Mr. Obama took office, didn’t it?
Shh! Don’t confuse them.
I think the real cause of their anger is Barak Obama himself. He’s a Muslim and he wasn’t born in this country and, well… dammit, he’s Black!
Oh, shoot. We’re back to the xenophobes again.
Nonetheless, Tea Party wingnuts won some primaries last year, and a few of them made it through the general election. GOP establishment types lauded and kowtowed the movement (and provided some generous funding for it), but there’s mutual suspicion between the two groups. They do seem to be in unison, though, when they disparage the President and those who support him.
So, no. This is not a group of fiscal conservatives. Their support of the Constitution is also limited. The distillation of their message seems to me to be that if George Bush, Jr. did it, it was just fine, and if Barak Obama did it, it’s unconstitutional.
I am a Democrat, as should be quite obvious by now, but I really believe we need a healthy Republican Party, or at least a healthy second party. But while bigotry and corporate idolatry may have gotten the GOP a slug of new seats in Congress, those seats are by no means safe. How the Republicans act in the next few months will determine whether the pendulum swings back at the next election, and if it does, the party will find it difficult to regain its present strength.
The Republicans have taken over the House of Representatives, and now they will be responsible for its success or failure. They are in their third day in the majority. They have read the Constitution aloud, promised to repeal the health care act, decided that tax cuts are not subject to “paygo” restrictions, and threatened to shut down the government when it reaches its current credit limit in just a couple of months. The rhetoric is flowing and they claim the November election gave them a breathtaking mandate to do these things. We’ll see.
Perhaps they should have followed the lead of the new Senate, where on the first day a number of Democratic members proposed changes in the Senate rules that would reduce the mind-numbing inaction and institutionalized logjams that have plagued it in recent years. After this heartening display, the Senate recessed (as opposed to adjourning, so that the first day would continue when it reconvenes) until the next day – which it determined will be on January 25th.
The House may get into a lot of trouble before then, but the Senate won’t be making any blunders at all. As the senators left town they looked back at the House, which was trying to put the Dormouse into the teapot.
This piece of rudeness was more than Alice could bear: she got up in great disgust, and walked off; the Dormouse fell asleep instantly, and neither of the others took the least notice of her going, though she looked back once or twice, half hoping that they would call after her: the last time she saw them, they were trying to put the Dormouse into the teapot. –Lewis Carroll (Charles Lutwidge Dodgson), 1832-1898
What a bizarre phenomenon is the Tea Party. It seemed to spring forth, like a toe fungus, in 2008 – coincidently an election year. There is no national headquarters of this organization: every chapter – indeed, every member – seems to be autonomous. Although the message is obscure, the common themes seem to be concern over the national debt and deficit, support for the Constitution, opposition to waste, fraud, and abuse, and a preference for smaller government.
It sounds like just what the Republican Party needs, doesn’t it? At first glance it seems to be an association of fiscal conservatives, a constituency who have found the GOP disappointing in recent years. Perhaps it could be the vessel of retribution for the profligate wealthy, or at least a balance to their astonishing excesses.
But look closer. They all seem to be White folks, generally older White folks, and they all seem to be very mad about something. Surely it is the wild-eyed fiscal insanity of recent years, when stockbrokers and bankers, abetted by free-market legislators who had systematically dismantled long-standing regulations of their industries, went berserk and almost took us into worldwide depression.
Well, no. These people are mad, but not about that.
A group of Teabags actually held a rally in the town nearest to mine last year. I happened to drive by just as it was winding down. I saw that several people were displaying signs, but I could only read one as I passed. It said, “Forget Your Dogs and Cats – Spay and Neuter Your Liberty!” I have no clue what that was supposed to mean, but I’m sure it was heartfelt. It’s typical of the disparate and convoluted messages of the Tea Party.
Look yet closer and you’ll see something else: a tendency to blame Barak Obama for our economic ills. Many of the Teabags profess to be particularly angry at Obama’s bailout of the banks.
Uh, well, uh, that happened a couple of months before Mr. Obama took office, didn’t it?
Shh! Don’t confuse them.
I think the real cause of their anger is Barak Obama himself. He’s a Muslim and he wasn’t born in this country and, well… dammit, he’s Black!
Oh, shoot. We’re back to the xenophobes again.
Nonetheless, Tea Party wingnuts won some primaries last year, and a few of them made it through the general election. GOP establishment types lauded and kowtowed the movement (and provided some generous funding for it), but there’s mutual suspicion between the two groups. They do seem to be in unison, though, when they disparage the President and those who support him.
So, no. This is not a group of fiscal conservatives. Their support of the Constitution is also limited. The distillation of their message seems to me to be that if George Bush, Jr. did it, it was just fine, and if Barak Obama did it, it’s unconstitutional.
I am a Democrat, as should be quite obvious by now, but I really believe we need a healthy Republican Party, or at least a healthy second party. But while bigotry and corporate idolatry may have gotten the GOP a slug of new seats in Congress, those seats are by no means safe. How the Republicans act in the next few months will determine whether the pendulum swings back at the next election, and if it does, the party will find it difficult to regain its present strength.
The Republicans have taken over the House of Representatives, and now they will be responsible for its success or failure. They are in their third day in the majority. They have read the Constitution aloud, promised to repeal the health care act, decided that tax cuts are not subject to “paygo” restrictions, and threatened to shut down the government when it reaches its current credit limit in just a couple of months. The rhetoric is flowing and they claim the November election gave them a breathtaking mandate to do these things. We’ll see.
Perhaps they should have followed the lead of the new Senate, where on the first day a number of Democratic members proposed changes in the Senate rules that would reduce the mind-numbing inaction and institutionalized logjams that have plagued it in recent years. After this heartening display, the Senate recessed (as opposed to adjourning, so that the first day would continue when it reconvenes) until the next day – which it determined will be on January 25th.
The House may get into a lot of trouble before then, but the Senate won’t be making any blunders at all. As the senators left town they looked back at the House, which was trying to put the Dormouse into the teapot.
Thursday, January 6, 2011
Our Political Parties - II
The Grand Old Party
Alas, the storm is come again! My best way is to creep under his gaberdine; there is no other shelter hereabout: misery acquaints a man with strange bedfellows. I will here shroud till the dregs of the storm be past. –William Shakespeare, 1564-1616
The Democratic Party is the party of Labor, and the Republican Party is the party of Capital. That statement is true, but woefully incomplete.
First of all, it should be obvious that there are a lot more laborers than there are capitalists. As a matter of fact, the percentage of the wealthy in this country has been shrinking considerably in the past four decades, even as the percentage of wealth they control has risen. How in the world can the capitalist party gain the support of so many laborers?
The history of the Republican Party is indeed a saga of strange bedfellowship. It actually started as a vehicle to express moral outrage at the institution of slavery, and moral outrage has been one of its recurring themes since that time.
Republican leaders would probably rather their party be called conservative than capitalist, and there is a lot of common ground between the two terms. Those who have wealth did not get it, and cannot keep it, by being liberal. Such people who are cautious in their financial dealings are likely to be cautious in social matters as well. They tend to dress like each other and look askance at those whose attire is less conventional. They tend to favor keeping the various institutions of society just the way they have been.
Social conservatives tend to resist the endless, unstoppable change that has characterized the history of humankind. I am sure that there were such people who decried the construction of the Pyramids of Egypt as profligate and unnecessary; more recently their counterparts have decried and bemoaned everything from the shocking display of ankles by women, to the pernicious influence of the nickelodeon, to the degenerate fads of pointillism and cubism, to the decreasing amount of fabric devoted to articles of swimming wear, to the debauchery of the music produced by such impertinent dastards as Beethoven, Joplin, Gershwin, Sinatra, Pressley, and Dylan, to the imposition of the designated hitter rule, and on and on.
And that’s not a bad thing. Society needs a certain amount of inertia. As far as I know the construction of the Pyramids was indeed profligate and unnecessary, unless they had a purpose we have yet to discover. Most of us would agree that change is not necessarily for the better. We may decry the loss of civility, the proliferation of filthy talk, the degradation of women, the “dumbing down” of our educational system. We are all conservative to some extent.
What really worries me about the Republican Party are the “values” it currently espouses. Most of these, in my mind, are xenophobic hatred and bigotry: fear or loathing of Blacks, Jews, Muslims, homosexuals, artists, “eggheads,” Catholics, Mormons, poor people, immigrants, Hispanics, and I’m tired of thinking of more because it’s too easy to do.
But many of the people who hold these “values” actually think of them as moral. Many of these people are aligned with the GOP although, thank God, not all Republicans share their prejudices. Nonetheless, it’s pretty hard not to at least pay lip service to these “values,” especially when Rush Limbaugh and Faux News are ready to expose you as heretical if you do not.
To my mind there are a number of different constituencies of the GOP:
1. The very rich and those who wield corporate power.
2. Fiscal conservatives.
3. The well-to-do who have the attitude of “I made mine; let them make theirs.”
4. Those who aspire to be wealthy and think becoming Republicans will help them do so. (It’s amazing how many there are. In my opinion, they are deluded and their party affiliation goes against their own self-interest.)
5. Those who feel threatened by change (including xenophobes).
6. Those who are against abortion.
Probably the largest group is #5, while the smallest is certainly #1. But all the prizes are through door number one, and it is the rich and the corporate power brokers who really exercise the power in the party. As incontrovertible evidence of this, witness the fact that during the recent lame duck session of Congress, every single Republican senator signed a letter to the majority leader saying that absolutely nothing would be passed until all the Bush tax cuts were continued. Barak Obama campaigned to let these expire for everyone with incomes over $250,000, and he was elected by a big majority. During the Senate debate, New York Democratic Senator Chuck Shumer offered to raise that limit to $1 million. There wasn’t a single taker on the GOP side.
That was a display of the real power in the Republican Party.
The cohesion of the several constituencies I’ve mentioned is quite fragile, and I believe it portends the doom of the Republican Party as we know it. Fiscal conservatives, especially, have had a difficult time sticking with the party in recent years while those few powerful people behind door number one have engaged in the biggest hog slop in history.
The 2010 election was a real victory for group #5, but its influence is waning, nonetheless. Today’s young people are far less likely to be bigots than their parents and, especially, their grandparents. African Americans and homosexuals and immigrants and all those other bugbears cause little consternation to the younger generation. As the bigots die off, the GOP will suffer unless it changes its focus. Today’s young people do not listen to Limbaugh or watch Faux News. They listen to music and watch Jon Stewart.
Thank God for that!
Alas, the storm is come again! My best way is to creep under his gaberdine; there is no other shelter hereabout: misery acquaints a man with strange bedfellows. I will here shroud till the dregs of the storm be past. –William Shakespeare, 1564-1616
The Democratic Party is the party of Labor, and the Republican Party is the party of Capital. That statement is true, but woefully incomplete.
First of all, it should be obvious that there are a lot more laborers than there are capitalists. As a matter of fact, the percentage of the wealthy in this country has been shrinking considerably in the past four decades, even as the percentage of wealth they control has risen. How in the world can the capitalist party gain the support of so many laborers?
The history of the Republican Party is indeed a saga of strange bedfellowship. It actually started as a vehicle to express moral outrage at the institution of slavery, and moral outrage has been one of its recurring themes since that time.
Republican leaders would probably rather their party be called conservative than capitalist, and there is a lot of common ground between the two terms. Those who have wealth did not get it, and cannot keep it, by being liberal. Such people who are cautious in their financial dealings are likely to be cautious in social matters as well. They tend to dress like each other and look askance at those whose attire is less conventional. They tend to favor keeping the various institutions of society just the way they have been.
Social conservatives tend to resist the endless, unstoppable change that has characterized the history of humankind. I am sure that there were such people who decried the construction of the Pyramids of Egypt as profligate and unnecessary; more recently their counterparts have decried and bemoaned everything from the shocking display of ankles by women, to the pernicious influence of the nickelodeon, to the degenerate fads of pointillism and cubism, to the decreasing amount of fabric devoted to articles of swimming wear, to the debauchery of the music produced by such impertinent dastards as Beethoven, Joplin, Gershwin, Sinatra, Pressley, and Dylan, to the imposition of the designated hitter rule, and on and on.
And that’s not a bad thing. Society needs a certain amount of inertia. As far as I know the construction of the Pyramids was indeed profligate and unnecessary, unless they had a purpose we have yet to discover. Most of us would agree that change is not necessarily for the better. We may decry the loss of civility, the proliferation of filthy talk, the degradation of women, the “dumbing down” of our educational system. We are all conservative to some extent.
What really worries me about the Republican Party are the “values” it currently espouses. Most of these, in my mind, are xenophobic hatred and bigotry: fear or loathing of Blacks, Jews, Muslims, homosexuals, artists, “eggheads,” Catholics, Mormons, poor people, immigrants, Hispanics, and I’m tired of thinking of more because it’s too easy to do.
But many of the people who hold these “values” actually think of them as moral. Many of these people are aligned with the GOP although, thank God, not all Republicans share their prejudices. Nonetheless, it’s pretty hard not to at least pay lip service to these “values,” especially when Rush Limbaugh and Faux News are ready to expose you as heretical if you do not.
To my mind there are a number of different constituencies of the GOP:
1. The very rich and those who wield corporate power.
2. Fiscal conservatives.
3. The well-to-do who have the attitude of “I made mine; let them make theirs.”
4. Those who aspire to be wealthy and think becoming Republicans will help them do so. (It’s amazing how many there are. In my opinion, they are deluded and their party affiliation goes against their own self-interest.)
5. Those who feel threatened by change (including xenophobes).
6. Those who are against abortion.
Probably the largest group is #5, while the smallest is certainly #1. But all the prizes are through door number one, and it is the rich and the corporate power brokers who really exercise the power in the party. As incontrovertible evidence of this, witness the fact that during the recent lame duck session of Congress, every single Republican senator signed a letter to the majority leader saying that absolutely nothing would be passed until all the Bush tax cuts were continued. Barak Obama campaigned to let these expire for everyone with incomes over $250,000, and he was elected by a big majority. During the Senate debate, New York Democratic Senator Chuck Shumer offered to raise that limit to $1 million. There wasn’t a single taker on the GOP side.
That was a display of the real power in the Republican Party.
The cohesion of the several constituencies I’ve mentioned is quite fragile, and I believe it portends the doom of the Republican Party as we know it. Fiscal conservatives, especially, have had a difficult time sticking with the party in recent years while those few powerful people behind door number one have engaged in the biggest hog slop in history.
The 2010 election was a real victory for group #5, but its influence is waning, nonetheless. Today’s young people are far less likely to be bigots than their parents and, especially, their grandparents. African Americans and homosexuals and immigrants and all those other bugbears cause little consternation to the younger generation. As the bigots die off, the GOP will suffer unless it changes its focus. Today’s young people do not listen to Limbaugh or watch Faux News. They listen to music and watch Jon Stewart.
Thank God for that!
Thursday, December 30, 2010
Our Political Parties - I
Capital and Labor
Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed.
-Abraham Lincoln, first address to Congress, December 3, 1861
Every generation encounters similar problems, but each tends to coin new terms to describe them. Sometimes it’s a good idea to look back, to apply classic terms to current problems and get a new (albeit old) perspective.
Words long used to describe the two major forces in an economy are Capital and Labor. Writers in past centuries recognized that a balance is needed between the two, and that if one or the other gets the upper hand the situation eventually gets out of control.
We need only look at the recession that began in 2008 to see what happens when Capital gets too much power. The French and Russian revolutions are classic examples of Labor getting the upper hand, to excess.
People with money, that is, people with assets like money, or gold, or property, or corporations, will always do their best to make more money, more assets – to become richer.
Those who work for a living will always do their best to get paid more and work less, and to have more comforts and benefits while they do work and at home. It’s also important to note that these same people often aspire to become Capitalists themselves, however unlikely that aspiration may be.
There are those who say these two opposing forces will create their own equilibrium. That might be true in a world where those two forces were the only ones in play, but in our world we have government in the middle, and that changes the equation.
Those who understand the world financial system realize how close we came to a total meltdown of our global economy right at the end of the Bush, Jr. Administration. If government hadn’t stepped in, in a big way, the Capital world would have collapsed. That wouldn’t have benefitted Capital or Labor, but Capital would have been reduced so substantially that Labor could have equalized the balance, or at least had a shot at doing so, as they both struggled to recreate a functional society.
In other words, Capital would have learned a painful but valuable lesson.
In this case, however, the lesson that was learned wasn’t helpful to Capital. The people who had been straining the economy with their profligacy were rewarded for doing so. Their deficiencies were made whole by the U.S. government and its counterparts across the world, and they are right back where they were, straining the economy as if nothing had happened. Government can affect the balance between Capital and Labor in several ways including taxation, regulation, and intervention. We just saw the greatest intervention in human history, which itself was brought on by the dismantling of regulation.
Now, regulation is back. On July 15, 2010, the U.S. Senate squeaked out by one vote final passage of a massive financial regulation bill which was quickly signed by President Obama. Some say this bill doesn’t go far enough, and others say it’s overkill, but only time will tell if it will do what it is supposed to do. Much of the bill “passes the buck” to regulatory agencies that are charged with studying the situation and creating new rules. It will be complicated, and lots of provisions in both the new law and the new rules will be grist for the legal mills for years to come.
But that’s a good thing. Bankers and stockbrokers and insurers (and the three groups have merged to a great extent in recent years) will have to create their ingenious new schemes within a framework of regulation and transparency, and that is real progress.
It seems that Capital gets into trouble when it starts to look at money as a commodity. In the recent debacle, it seemed to view the stock market, and all the other markets, as slot machines. It was easier to play the market than it was to improve the efficiency of the corporation or the quality of its products.
It used to be that the stock market was the way entrepreneurs obtained financing to build or expand businesses that actually made things. The business was the important thing, the stock market just a tool. What was important to the directors and executives was the long-term survival of the business. In recent years the market has taken the center ring, with the businesses just the means to provide short-term profit. Who cares if Amalgamated Widgets exists next year? What’s important is that AW’s stock, and director and executive compensation, go up. If AW is on a downhill slope, says the common wisdom, do everything possible to keep that fact from the public, and be sure to sell your stock before the truth comes out.
We brought this on ourselves. After the stock market crash in 1929, irate legislators put lots of protections in place. They didn’t let stock brokerages and banks and insurance companies perform the same functions or own each other. They established strict rules about reserves required for lending and they regulated all aspects of securities of all sorts. Over the years since that time Capitalist legislators have hammered away at these regulations, claiming that they were just obstructions from a bygone era that weren’t needed anymore. They eventually got their way, and proved themselves wrong.
It’s that balance between Capital and Labor that is important. Labor did pretty well after World War II, but by the 1980s had begun to lose ground. (The real point at which the middle class started its decline might have been in 1965, when the U.S. stopped making precious metal currency – it was at that point that the dollar became an imaginary entity and all the old rules got thrown out. A dime from 1964 contained less than ten cents’ worth of silver. Now its silver content is worth about $1.50. You may have had only two dimes to rub together, but they were 90% silver.)
In the last three decades the middle class has shrunk and many full-time workers simply do not make enough to live on. Meanwhile, those who had the money to speculate in real estate and stocks and pre-1965 silver coins made a killing.
One of the most pernicious fantasies of Capital is that it deserves its hard-won perquisites. There was widespread outrage when Wall Street got bailed out and then, before the ink was dry on the new money poured into its coffers, used it to pay bonuses to the very people who had brought it to the brink. What! the people cried. These are the very dastards who caused the loss of a huge proportion of our savings, our mutual funds, our IRAs, our jobs! How dare they pay bonuses for failure?
But, but! the Capitalists responded. If we don’t pay them well, they’ll take their exquisite expertise and cross the street to work for our competitors! We must compensate them well for their acumen!
Do you remember that? The electorate didn’t. It kicked the bums out – the bums who had been in office for 22 months, doing their best to shore up the levees and keep the economy going – and replaced them with the very same Capitalist losers, or their henchpersons, who had brought them to ruin.
Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed.
-Abraham Lincoln, first address to Congress, December 3, 1861
Every generation encounters similar problems, but each tends to coin new terms to describe them. Sometimes it’s a good idea to look back, to apply classic terms to current problems and get a new (albeit old) perspective.
Words long used to describe the two major forces in an economy are Capital and Labor. Writers in past centuries recognized that a balance is needed between the two, and that if one or the other gets the upper hand the situation eventually gets out of control.
We need only look at the recession that began in 2008 to see what happens when Capital gets too much power. The French and Russian revolutions are classic examples of Labor getting the upper hand, to excess.
People with money, that is, people with assets like money, or gold, or property, or corporations, will always do their best to make more money, more assets – to become richer.
Those who work for a living will always do their best to get paid more and work less, and to have more comforts and benefits while they do work and at home. It’s also important to note that these same people often aspire to become Capitalists themselves, however unlikely that aspiration may be.
There are those who say these two opposing forces will create their own equilibrium. That might be true in a world where those two forces were the only ones in play, but in our world we have government in the middle, and that changes the equation.
Those who understand the world financial system realize how close we came to a total meltdown of our global economy right at the end of the Bush, Jr. Administration. If government hadn’t stepped in, in a big way, the Capital world would have collapsed. That wouldn’t have benefitted Capital or Labor, but Capital would have been reduced so substantially that Labor could have equalized the balance, or at least had a shot at doing so, as they both struggled to recreate a functional society.
In other words, Capital would have learned a painful but valuable lesson.
In this case, however, the lesson that was learned wasn’t helpful to Capital. The people who had been straining the economy with their profligacy were rewarded for doing so. Their deficiencies were made whole by the U.S. government and its counterparts across the world, and they are right back where they were, straining the economy as if nothing had happened. Government can affect the balance between Capital and Labor in several ways including taxation, regulation, and intervention. We just saw the greatest intervention in human history, which itself was brought on by the dismantling of regulation.
Now, regulation is back. On July 15, 2010, the U.S. Senate squeaked out by one vote final passage of a massive financial regulation bill which was quickly signed by President Obama. Some say this bill doesn’t go far enough, and others say it’s overkill, but only time will tell if it will do what it is supposed to do. Much of the bill “passes the buck” to regulatory agencies that are charged with studying the situation and creating new rules. It will be complicated, and lots of provisions in both the new law and the new rules will be grist for the legal mills for years to come.
But that’s a good thing. Bankers and stockbrokers and insurers (and the three groups have merged to a great extent in recent years) will have to create their ingenious new schemes within a framework of regulation and transparency, and that is real progress.
It seems that Capital gets into trouble when it starts to look at money as a commodity. In the recent debacle, it seemed to view the stock market, and all the other markets, as slot machines. It was easier to play the market than it was to improve the efficiency of the corporation or the quality of its products.
It used to be that the stock market was the way entrepreneurs obtained financing to build or expand businesses that actually made things. The business was the important thing, the stock market just a tool. What was important to the directors and executives was the long-term survival of the business. In recent years the market has taken the center ring, with the businesses just the means to provide short-term profit. Who cares if Amalgamated Widgets exists next year? What’s important is that AW’s stock, and director and executive compensation, go up. If AW is on a downhill slope, says the common wisdom, do everything possible to keep that fact from the public, and be sure to sell your stock before the truth comes out.
We brought this on ourselves. After the stock market crash in 1929, irate legislators put lots of protections in place. They didn’t let stock brokerages and banks and insurance companies perform the same functions or own each other. They established strict rules about reserves required for lending and they regulated all aspects of securities of all sorts. Over the years since that time Capitalist legislators have hammered away at these regulations, claiming that they were just obstructions from a bygone era that weren’t needed anymore. They eventually got their way, and proved themselves wrong.
It’s that balance between Capital and Labor that is important. Labor did pretty well after World War II, but by the 1980s had begun to lose ground. (The real point at which the middle class started its decline might have been in 1965, when the U.S. stopped making precious metal currency – it was at that point that the dollar became an imaginary entity and all the old rules got thrown out. A dime from 1964 contained less than ten cents’ worth of silver. Now its silver content is worth about $1.50. You may have had only two dimes to rub together, but they were 90% silver.)
In the last three decades the middle class has shrunk and many full-time workers simply do not make enough to live on. Meanwhile, those who had the money to speculate in real estate and stocks and pre-1965 silver coins made a killing.
One of the most pernicious fantasies of Capital is that it deserves its hard-won perquisites. There was widespread outrage when Wall Street got bailed out and then, before the ink was dry on the new money poured into its coffers, used it to pay bonuses to the very people who had brought it to the brink. What! the people cried. These are the very dastards who caused the loss of a huge proportion of our savings, our mutual funds, our IRAs, our jobs! How dare they pay bonuses for failure?
But, but! the Capitalists responded. If we don’t pay them well, they’ll take their exquisite expertise and cross the street to work for our competitors! We must compensate them well for their acumen!
Do you remember that? The electorate didn’t. It kicked the bums out – the bums who had been in office for 22 months, doing their best to shore up the levees and keep the economy going – and replaced them with the very same Capitalist losers, or their henchpersons, who had brought them to ruin.
Wednesday, August 13, 2008
The Mastodon in the Breakfast Nook
I am 60 years old. In my lifetime, the human population on the earth has more than tripled. As of today, August 12, 2008, it stands at 6,716,344,516.
If we were algae, we’d be a red tide. If we were locusts, we’d be a pestilence.
It’s difficult to imagine a contemporary human problem that isn’t exacerbated or even caused by overpopulation. Despite that, we don’t talk about it. We don’t even whisper about it. We certainly don’t think about it.
Martin Luther King, Jr., who died in 1968, laid out the problem: “What is lacking is not sufficient knowledge of the solution but universal consciousness of the gravity of the problem and education of the billions who are its victim.”
The population has doubled since he said that.
Population explosions of one species or another are common, and nature has its ways to counter them. In our case, it will probably be disease that cuts us down to size. We’re overdue for a pandemic influenza or other virus.
Every human being born on this planet has needs: space, water, food, energy, dignity, education, employment. Worldwide, governments do a poor job of providing these needs. They are based on money and power, not on people.
As a consequence, billions of people live without clean water or adequate food. They are vulnerable to disease, and disease will come to them.
And then it will spread. One freshly-infected passenger on one international flight could bring a plague that would be distributed across the nation before he noticed he was sick.
I’m not making a Malthusian argument. In 1798, Thomas Malthus suggested that human population growth would exceed the ability to raise enough food. So far, that hasn’t been the case. There is enough food to go around. The problem is that it doesn’t go around.
The current energy “crisis” is inextricably linked to overpopulation, as well. We seem to have sucked up about half of the easily recoverable oil in the world. That means the second half will be harder to get and continuously more expensive.
Let’s look at one baby boy, born today in some backwater like Darfur or Patagonia or Lapland. He is going to need a certain minimum amount of energy during his lifetime. He, and about seven million others who are born each month, will need to obtain water, cook food, wear clothing, have a place to live, and so on. I think we’d agree that he will need to go to school, have access to medical care, and get a job.
All of that takes energy, and what that one baby will need over his lifetime is both his energy “footprint” and his basic human right.
Our current system is depriving so many people of this right. If we continue, many of them will die, many will have their intellects impaired by malnutrition, many will get sick – and many will turn to rebellion and terrorism.
China has seen this looming disaster and is doing something about it. Childbirth in China is severely limited. But no other country I know of is confronting the problem. In most countries, anyone proposing any limit of any kind on reproduction would be subject to castigation. Such a proposal also challenges more than one religion, wherein “be fruitful and multiply” is considered a command of deity.
Some countries are actually losing population. They would be logical candidates for immigration, but the people who come from somewhere else are always different, and thus frightening, at least to some.
Around 2012, there will be eight billion people in the world, if trends continue. We’ll reach nine billion about 2040. That’s a lot of footprints.
I have no doubt that we humans have the wherewithal to solve the problems we face. When England ran out of firewood, coal mining began. We’ll find new energy sources, better methods of food production, new ways to purify and conserve water. But will the distribution of such advances be equitable?
We need to start thinking of each birth as a moral commitment to provide that child with basic human needs, or at least access to them. We should have started thinking that way a long time ago.
I’m not arguing for communism, either. Individual enterprise should be encouraged, and people deserve to be paid well if they do good work. But there are certain minimum needs, such as potable water and adequate food, the provision of which is an essential duty of government.
That’s a demand-side response, and it gets harder and harder to achieve while we continue to ignore the supply side. Increasing population is the biggest problem our species faces at this time.
If we don’t solve it, nature will do it for us. It won’t be pretty.
If we were algae, we’d be a red tide. If we were locusts, we’d be a pestilence.
It’s difficult to imagine a contemporary human problem that isn’t exacerbated or even caused by overpopulation. Despite that, we don’t talk about it. We don’t even whisper about it. We certainly don’t think about it.
Martin Luther King, Jr., who died in 1968, laid out the problem: “What is lacking is not sufficient knowledge of the solution but universal consciousness of the gravity of the problem and education of the billions who are its victim.”
The population has doubled since he said that.
Population explosions of one species or another are common, and nature has its ways to counter them. In our case, it will probably be disease that cuts us down to size. We’re overdue for a pandemic influenza or other virus.
Every human being born on this planet has needs: space, water, food, energy, dignity, education, employment. Worldwide, governments do a poor job of providing these needs. They are based on money and power, not on people.
As a consequence, billions of people live without clean water or adequate food. They are vulnerable to disease, and disease will come to them.
And then it will spread. One freshly-infected passenger on one international flight could bring a plague that would be distributed across the nation before he noticed he was sick.
I’m not making a Malthusian argument. In 1798, Thomas Malthus suggested that human population growth would exceed the ability to raise enough food. So far, that hasn’t been the case. There is enough food to go around. The problem is that it doesn’t go around.
The current energy “crisis” is inextricably linked to overpopulation, as well. We seem to have sucked up about half of the easily recoverable oil in the world. That means the second half will be harder to get and continuously more expensive.
Let’s look at one baby boy, born today in some backwater like Darfur or Patagonia or Lapland. He is going to need a certain minimum amount of energy during his lifetime. He, and about seven million others who are born each month, will need to obtain water, cook food, wear clothing, have a place to live, and so on. I think we’d agree that he will need to go to school, have access to medical care, and get a job.
All of that takes energy, and what that one baby will need over his lifetime is both his energy “footprint” and his basic human right.
Our current system is depriving so many people of this right. If we continue, many of them will die, many will have their intellects impaired by malnutrition, many will get sick – and many will turn to rebellion and terrorism.
China has seen this looming disaster and is doing something about it. Childbirth in China is severely limited. But no other country I know of is confronting the problem. In most countries, anyone proposing any limit of any kind on reproduction would be subject to castigation. Such a proposal also challenges more than one religion, wherein “be fruitful and multiply” is considered a command of deity.
Some countries are actually losing population. They would be logical candidates for immigration, but the people who come from somewhere else are always different, and thus frightening, at least to some.
Around 2012, there will be eight billion people in the world, if trends continue. We’ll reach nine billion about 2040. That’s a lot of footprints.
I have no doubt that we humans have the wherewithal to solve the problems we face. When England ran out of firewood, coal mining began. We’ll find new energy sources, better methods of food production, new ways to purify and conserve water. But will the distribution of such advances be equitable?
We need to start thinking of each birth as a moral commitment to provide that child with basic human needs, or at least access to them. We should have started thinking that way a long time ago.
I’m not arguing for communism, either. Individual enterprise should be encouraged, and people deserve to be paid well if they do good work. But there are certain minimum needs, such as potable water and adequate food, the provision of which is an essential duty of government.
That’s a demand-side response, and it gets harder and harder to achieve while we continue to ignore the supply side. Increasing population is the biggest problem our species faces at this time.
If we don’t solve it, nature will do it for us. It won’t be pretty.
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