Anyone who has had major surgery can understand the pain and frustration that follow the surgery itself. The pain is often greater than expected and the recovery may take longer than the doctor first indicated. Even if the surgery was successful and saved the patient’s life, that is sometimes small comfort to one who is still experiencing severe pain and sleepless nights.
That analogy occurred to me last evening as I was listening to neighbors at a civic association meeting complaining about the miserable state of the economy. When it is explained that things would have been far worse without the “surgery” — the patient could have died, for example — they don’t want to hear any of it. They are angry and have made up their minds that things are going down the tubes because of this wretched “doctor” and that’s that.
Ironically, the people complaining the most are usually not the ones who had to undergo the surgery. Many of them have good paying jobs or are retired and have the benefit of a good pension. But, if logic were to hold sway, they apparently want to go back to the pre-surgery days when the country’s financial condition was moribund. Or they want the doctor to stop the pain and make things better immediately. Not tomorrow, or next week, but now. That’s an interesting ironic twist in itself, considering that many of these complainers think government in general is absolutely useless.
For the sake of perspective, let’s take a look back and see where things stood when the “doctor,” a.k.a. President Obama, took office in early 2009. Robert Samuelson, a respected columnist who writes about financial and economic matters for the Washington Post and Newsweek, among others, says that when Obama took office, “the economy and financial markets were in virtual free-fall.”
Samuelson, who is anything but a shill for the White House — in fact, later in this same column he faults Obama for not wanting to extend the Bush cuts across the board — claims that “only a rabid partisan can think that Obama’s policies had nothing to do with the reversal.” And, he cites the much-maligned “stimulus,” the rescue of the automobile industry, and the “stress test” for large banks as critical moves helping to pull the country back from the brink.
Without government’s aggressive response, he writes, “gross domestic product (GDP) would have dropped 12 percent instead of 4 percent and 16.6 million jobs would have been lost instead of 8.4 million.” Those are not Samuelson’s own estimates — they are estimates of respected analysts Alan Blinder of Princeton and Mark Zandi of Moody’s Analytics. And, they are consistent with figures I have seen elsewhere.
Yet, during the Q&A portion of the civic association meeting last evening, when a local resident called the stimulus nothing but a pork barrel disaster and a waste of money and the local Congressman dared to disagree, using statistics to buttress his argument, the resident threw up his hands and walked out.
Health-care reform gets the same reaction. A government takeover of the “best health care system in the world,” claims House Minority John Boehner. Sure it’s good, if you’re a Congressman or a retired civil servant, as I am. It’s great. But what about the estimated 30-40 million Americans who don’t have health coverage because they can’t afford it or they have a pre-existing condition? And what about the fact the current system is unsustainable over time, claiming an estimated 40 percent of GDP by 2050 instead of the already high 17 percent today?
But, silly me, why introduce logic? Logic doesn’t matter in today’s “civil” discourse, any more than it does in sports, such as trying to convince Boston Red Sox fans that the Yankees are better, or vice versa. Team or party affiliation is essentially tribal, often having nothing to do with reason. As a former Nebraska Senator famously said during the Watergate scandal: Don’t bother me with the facts; I have made up my mind.
This is apparently the mood of a large segment of the population — as exemplified most dramatically in the Tea Party movement — and many politicians are working hard to stoke these fires to keep fear and anger alive. That leaves few options for those of us who believe that the economic recovery, however slow, is moving in the right direction and that we have the right doctor on duty. At a minimum, we should make sure we vote and encourage like-minded friends to do the same. Maybe even pick up a few independents in the process.
If we throw up our hands and do nothing, we’ll deserve what we get.
Wednesday, September 22, 2010
Wednesday, September 15, 2010
Beyond the Pale
This political season has no monopoly on lunacy or dirty tricks, to be sure, but it’s got to rank pretty high on that all-time list — or low, depending how you look at it. The examples are numerous — but let me pick just one off the top.
Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich is reportedly a smart, visionary fellow, but you would never know it sometimes by the loopy things that come out of his mouth. You tend to expect more intelligent things from Gingrich, but sometimes he slips off into an ethereal region all his own. For example, he and others have recently been reported to have charged that President Obama is surrounded by Keynesian nitwits, or words to that effect. That’s a strange charge in any political season because most people don’t have a clue what “Keynesian” means.
On the surface, it supposedly refers to the economic philosophy of John Maynard Keynes, the noted British economist who has greatly influenced economic policy throughout the world. For one thing, he advocated using fiscal and monetary measures to alleviate the impact of recessions and depressions. Both Democrat and Republican administrations have turned to Keynesian policies when the economy went into a tail spin. Most of us think only of the actions taken by President Franklin Roosevelt during the Great Depression and President Obama in the recent Great Recession. But, President George W. Bush also turned to Keynesian measures with his tax cuts in 2008 to stimulate the economy and with the Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP as it is better known, also enacted during the latter part of the Bush Administration.
So, why use that charge against President Obama and his team? I suspect the real reasons are more sinister than first meet the eye. First of all, as noted earlier, “Keynesian” is unfamiliar and sounds foreign, so to many people it must mean something bad, reminding me of the campaign tactic attributed to the late Senator George Smathers from Florida who once allegedly accused his opponent of practicing monogamy and his actress wife of being a thespian.
Then, just this morning it occurred to me that the word “Keynesian” sounds like “Kenyan,” as in somebody from — you got it — Kenya in Africa. Too much of a stretch, you say? Don’t forget, a ridiculously high percentage of Americans still believe President Obama wasn't born in this country and is therefore an illegitimate President. So, there is fertile soil out there for sowing such seeds. More to the point, Gingrich and others picked up on the charge by the conservative thinker Dinesh D’Sousa that the reason Obama doesn’t “get us” real Americans is because he is really a frustrated Kenyan anti-colonialist. I am not making this stuff up. It’s all there in print and TV for those with eyes to see and ears to hear.
Like the George Smathers’ incident, it would be funny if it weren’t so sick and pathetic. This is an important election coming up in November and with the U.S. still in a troubled economy and facing other huge problems, domestically and around the world, it’s no time to turn to xenophobes who are fanning the flames of fear and bigotry to help “take back America.” Take it back to “where” is not clear. Apparently, back to some utopian America that existed at some time in the misty past. If so, I missed it. I go back 72 years and the good ol’ days weren’t all that good. Trust me —I was there.
\
This country needs to move forward, not backward, and this election is about the proper roles of government and the private sector and which party has the best chance of taking us there under the current circumstances. To me, that’s an easy call.
Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich is reportedly a smart, visionary fellow, but you would never know it sometimes by the loopy things that come out of his mouth. You tend to expect more intelligent things from Gingrich, but sometimes he slips off into an ethereal region all his own. For example, he and others have recently been reported to have charged that President Obama is surrounded by Keynesian nitwits, or words to that effect. That’s a strange charge in any political season because most people don’t have a clue what “Keynesian” means.
On the surface, it supposedly refers to the economic philosophy of John Maynard Keynes, the noted British economist who has greatly influenced economic policy throughout the world. For one thing, he advocated using fiscal and monetary measures to alleviate the impact of recessions and depressions. Both Democrat and Republican administrations have turned to Keynesian policies when the economy went into a tail spin. Most of us think only of the actions taken by President Franklin Roosevelt during the Great Depression and President Obama in the recent Great Recession. But, President George W. Bush also turned to Keynesian measures with his tax cuts in 2008 to stimulate the economy and with the Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP as it is better known, also enacted during the latter part of the Bush Administration.
So, why use that charge against President Obama and his team? I suspect the real reasons are more sinister than first meet the eye. First of all, as noted earlier, “Keynesian” is unfamiliar and sounds foreign, so to many people it must mean something bad, reminding me of the campaign tactic attributed to the late Senator George Smathers from Florida who once allegedly accused his opponent of practicing monogamy and his actress wife of being a thespian.
Then, just this morning it occurred to me that the word “Keynesian” sounds like “Kenyan,” as in somebody from — you got it — Kenya in Africa. Too much of a stretch, you say? Don’t forget, a ridiculously high percentage of Americans still believe President Obama wasn't born in this country and is therefore an illegitimate President. So, there is fertile soil out there for sowing such seeds. More to the point, Gingrich and others picked up on the charge by the conservative thinker Dinesh D’Sousa that the reason Obama doesn’t “get us” real Americans is because he is really a frustrated Kenyan anti-colonialist. I am not making this stuff up. It’s all there in print and TV for those with eyes to see and ears to hear.
Like the George Smathers’ incident, it would be funny if it weren’t so sick and pathetic. This is an important election coming up in November and with the U.S. still in a troubled economy and facing other huge problems, domestically and around the world, it’s no time to turn to xenophobes who are fanning the flames of fear and bigotry to help “take back America.” Take it back to “where” is not clear. Apparently, back to some utopian America that existed at some time in the misty past. If so, I missed it. I go back 72 years and the good ol’ days weren’t all that good. Trust me —I was there.
\
This country needs to move forward, not backward, and this election is about the proper roles of government and the private sector and which party has the best chance of taking us there under the current circumstances. To me, that’s an easy call.
Tuesday, September 7, 2010
Will We Ever Belong?
Sadly, that’s what many Muslims are asking themselves these days, according to a Sept. 7 New York Times article. This as a result of the furor over the proposed Muslim Cultural Center near Ground Zero and a recent New York Times poll, which showed that even the diverse, cosmopolitan city of New York harbors a discouraging high level of suspicion of Muslims, about the same level as that following 9/11.
Along with this is the rising level of vandalism at mosques and harassment of Muslims around the country. According to the Times, a spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations, suggests the level of violence is probably higher than reported because victims are “reluctant to go public” with these kinds of hate incidents for fear of retaliation. So, instead, many Muslims are low-keying it, staying inside, and asking themselves: Do we belong here?
Not surprisingly, some politicians are shamefully fanning these flames of fear and mistrust while their timid counterparts are sitting on their hands saying nothing for fear of being hurt politically. Regrettable, but hardly surprising. Moral courage is not a hallmark of politicians.
But, where are religious leaders? Why aren’t they speaking out and condemning this outrage? What do they have to fear, except perhaps a dip in the Sunday collection? The U.S. Catholic bishops, for example, are not reluctant to speak out when it comes to other moral issues they consider important, such as abortion, stem-cell research, and gay marriage. Then, why aren’t they raising their voices in support of the moral and constitutional rights of Muslims, who are in the same boat as Catholics were just a few decades ago when Catholics’ loyalty to this country was being seriously questioned?
N.Y. Archbishop Timothy Dolan has offered his services to help mediate a compromise between those proposing to build the Muslim Cultural Center at Ground Zero and those opposing it. What’s there to compromise? Religious liberty? Sounds like surrender or defeat to me.
Once you start compromising on such essential matters as religious liberty, it’s a slippery slope and ultimately no one is safe, bringing to mind the famous statement of Pastor Martin Niemöller about the inactivity of German intellectuals following the Nazi rise to power: “They came first for the Communists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew. Then they came for me and by that time no one was left to speak up.”
Meantime, the political purveyors of fear and bigotry are having a field day fanning the flames, with only a few religious leaders from other faiths willing to rise up in opposition. Unfortunately, that’s the way it always seems to be, as the Irish poet William Butler Yeats so wisely observed years ago in his poem The Second Coming: “The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.”
Along with this is the rising level of vandalism at mosques and harassment of Muslims around the country. According to the Times, a spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations, suggests the level of violence is probably higher than reported because victims are “reluctant to go public” with these kinds of hate incidents for fear of retaliation. So, instead, many Muslims are low-keying it, staying inside, and asking themselves: Do we belong here?
Not surprisingly, some politicians are shamefully fanning these flames of fear and mistrust while their timid counterparts are sitting on their hands saying nothing for fear of being hurt politically. Regrettable, but hardly surprising. Moral courage is not a hallmark of politicians.
But, where are religious leaders? Why aren’t they speaking out and condemning this outrage? What do they have to fear, except perhaps a dip in the Sunday collection? The U.S. Catholic bishops, for example, are not reluctant to speak out when it comes to other moral issues they consider important, such as abortion, stem-cell research, and gay marriage. Then, why aren’t they raising their voices in support of the moral and constitutional rights of Muslims, who are in the same boat as Catholics were just a few decades ago when Catholics’ loyalty to this country was being seriously questioned?
N.Y. Archbishop Timothy Dolan has offered his services to help mediate a compromise between those proposing to build the Muslim Cultural Center at Ground Zero and those opposing it. What’s there to compromise? Religious liberty? Sounds like surrender or defeat to me.
Once you start compromising on such essential matters as religious liberty, it’s a slippery slope and ultimately no one is safe, bringing to mind the famous statement of Pastor Martin Niemöller about the inactivity of German intellectuals following the Nazi rise to power: “They came first for the Communists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew. Then they came for me and by that time no one was left to speak up.”
Meantime, the political purveyors of fear and bigotry are having a field day fanning the flames, with only a few religious leaders from other faiths willing to rise up in opposition. Unfortunately, that’s the way it always seems to be, as the Irish poet William Butler Yeats so wisely observed years ago in his poem The Second Coming: “The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.”
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