2011: A Liberal Looks Back With Hope

With Christmas upon us and the New Year celebrations just around the corner, today seems as good a time as any to take stock of 2011. Sifting through all the crazy stuff that happens over the course of any one year in search of a few gold nuggets is a tried-and-true endeavor for correspondents through the ages. What's a liberal's perspective? Here's a few 2011 outcomes worth toasting as we ring in the New Year.

Occupy Wall Street: Power to the 99%

Let's raise our glasses to the courage and perseverance of the hundreds of thousands of individuals who are making the Occupy movement a change mechanism for working people around the world. Though the establishment has used raw power to temporarily evict the occupancy's encampments, the Occupy army's fortitude enduring the hard concrete of Zucotti Park and the hot anger of our entitled Wall Street welfare queens — not to mention our newly militarized, pepper-spray spewing city police forces — during late summer through late fall cannot be underestimated. Occupy has reframed the conversation about the vicissitudes of our global economic fortunes in a profound way. Occupy puts a human face on the growing disparity between the extremely rich 1% and the rest of us. By its use of nonviolence within its provocatively unapologetic mission, Occupy is sharpening public understanding of the high stakes of the economic policy battles to come. The anti-labor, pro-corporate elitist, billionaire-funded far-right Republican Party may have sapped the life from our middle class and deepened the pain for those least fortunate citizens over the last 30 years. But because of Occupy, the battle lines are being redrawn, giving moderates and liberals alike a fighting chance against the greed merchants aligned against us. We truly are the 99%, whose only real demand of our elected leaders is protection from the immoral exercise of wealth and power that, more than anytime perhaps in recorded history, threatens anyone who earns a paycheck. Thanks, Occupy.

Osama, Libya, and Iraq: Who's Tough on Terror?

What a difference a presidency makes. Let's give thanks for having a president who made good on his promise to end a godforsaken eight-plus-year occupation of Iraq that ended with 4,486 U.S. soldiers killed, 32,226 seriously wounded, according to U.S. Liberal Politics — casualties set in motion by one of the most immoral presidential administrations in this nation's history. In stark contrast, here's a toast to the Navy Seal assault team's bravery in bringing the al Qaida leader to justice with a Obama-approved surgical strike and without a single American loss. And, let's not forget one more "Hail to the Chief" for ending another reign of terror, that of Muammar Qaddafi with a truly united NATO military assist for Libya's ragtag rebels. Why we went to war in Iraq may never make sense in hindsight, but the message from the Obama administration in putting an end to the occupation this month, aiding Libya's freedom fighters over the summer, and taking out Islamic extremists throughout the year is clear — a progressive president is no slouch when it comes to protecting Americans from terrorist threats, no matter where they try to hide. Can you imagine where we might be under a President McCain? Yikes!

The Arab Spring: Where Credit Is Due

There are many reasons for the outburst of protests that broke out at the start of 2011 in Tunisia and spread to Egypt, Barain, Syria and elsewhere among the dictatorships of the Arab world. But certainly one key element has been President Obama's clearly articulated call for peaceful progress among Arab nations in 2009, and his words of support for Egyptian citizens who faced armed thugs in Tahrir Square following the downfall of Hosni Mubarak in February. Here's what the president said on Feb. 11 in underlining his admiration for that honorable overthrow: 

"For in Egypt it was the moral force of nonviolence, not terrorism, not mindless killing, but nonviolence, moral force that bent the arc of history toward justice once more."

Again, what would a belligerent President McCain be saying in such circumstances? More than likely, "Bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb Iran!"

The New Obama: Major Mojo Man

Nobody ever said being president of the United States would be easy, least of all for this country's first African-American president. But the "Hope" appeal that won him that honor also has set up Obama to be held to a different, higher set of expectations — those of conciliator, consensus-builder, and cool customer in chief. Faced with his formidable natural appeal and post-election popularity, Republicans quickly figured out how to take political advantage of the young, optimistic leader: disparage him, call him a liar in front of millions of Americans, question his birth certificate, his love of this country, his management skills, even his blackness. Obama himself abetted them, at first seeming to acquiescence on too many liberal causes. His approval numbers, by the mid-summer showdown with Congressional Republicans over the budget continuing resolution, slid into the low 40% in some polls. Then, remarkably, Obama caught a break in the overwhelming attention paid to Occupy Wall Street protests. The Main Stream Media could no longer ignore the true origins of our economic maelstrom: right-wing, trickle-down economics and tax breaks for the rich hadn't delivered the promised jobs or prosperity, and calls for more of the same began sounding hollow. Facts on Obama's own success in job-creation began countering the right's blatant lies about those successes. By September, Obama wisely put together his broadly popular American Jobs Act and took it to voters to explain its benefits. It fit the new positive economic narrative nicely, while Congressional Tea Party types led Republicans in rejecting Obama's job-creating effort in its entirety, leaving little doubt who is supporting the middle class and wage earners at all incomes. The battle lines have been drawn for 2012. I like our chances.

Happy holidays, one and all! See ya next year.

A Liberal's Class Warfare Call to Arms

"When a regular person has to deal with financial problems in his day-to-day life… he doesn't remember the massive problems" of the past. "The indignation that person has is usually turned against the current authority." 

– Vladimir V. Putin, speaking at his United Russia Party Congress, Nov. 28 from the New York Times

"Just remember, the higher a monkey climbs on a pole, the more you can see his butt."

– David Axelrod, President Obama's chief campaign strategist, referring to Newt Gingrich's rising poll numbers, 

Dec. 14 from the New York Times

Both opinions cited above carry important lessons President Obama should heed as he formulates a strategy for the 2012 election. The Putin Principle, let us call it, is a blunt reminder that voters often penalize whoever is in office for their current situation, regardless of where the blame ultimately should rest. Axelrod's flip remark on Tuesday about a potential opponent's exposure to public scrutiny should be pasted on the Obama-Biden Chicago campaign headquarters wall in giant type as a reminder of how ridiculous such comments sound, and how off-putting, uncouth and counterproductive they are in this challenging economic and political environment.

"Obama + Dems: Fighting for the middle class" should be the only campaign bumper sticker and commentary coming out of the Democrats' re-election headquarters. Every effort should be made to focus voter attention on the big picture. Because, believe it or not, long-term economic trends favor progressive Democrats even at a time when joblessness remains high. Nothing should get in the way of a Democratic message supporting a resurgent middle class. But let me be clear: That campaign will require a long, hard, well-thought-out concerted effort by all to gain favor in the coming months, without distraction, without apology and without monkey-butt gazing.

To understand why, let me revisit the Putin Principle. For the truth in his statement about voter sentiment in Russia is, alas, undoubtedly true in America as well. It's only human nature. In spite of the majority of thoughtful, reasonable, well-educated people among the U.S. voting population, the election of a president likely could be turned into a plebiscite on the sitting executive. If Republicans have their way, here's how simply they will frame this next general election: "Are you better off than you were four years ago?" If that oversimplification takes hold, Obama-Biden can kiss their second term goodbye, based on polls today indicating that about 70 percent of Americans believe the country is headed in the wrong direction.

Democrats up for re-election or running for a first term both should embrace this voter sentiment of disgust rather than run away from it, as might seem to be the logical response. The single question Obama-Biden and all Democrats need to hammer home to voters this year is: "How is that trickle down, tax-breaks-for-the-rich Republican government working out for ya?" That counteracts the previously cited Putin Principle, and also frames the election with a long-term perspective by homing in on decades of destructive conservative Republican policy that somehow seems to get swept under the rug while the decades-old "tax-and-spend liberal" attacks remain as fresh as the day they were concocted.

The difficulty in this approach, I will concede, can't be underestimated. For one thing, 70 percent disapproval of our country's direction encompasses a variety of complaints among people from all walks of life. For another, the two-party system remains evenly split  over how our economic difficulties should be addressed. For every Tea Party whiner who wants to end health care reform and drown a shrunken federal government in the bathtub, there's a committed liberal fighting big money's, big corporate's and big oil's incursions on the American Dream.

Sure, Obama-Biden could tout their successes hunting down al Qaida terrorists and bringing the Iraq war to an end. But our longest war isn't in the Middle East or Afghanistan. Our longest war is stateside — class war. It's a war Democrats have avoided to their detriment. It's a war of ideas largely lost to the plutocracy's purchase and takeover of financial policy and mass media punditry, defining tax cuts and privatization as simple, painless fixes for the middle class and so-called job creators. The policies have been abject failures, yet live to fight another term.

It is high time for a Democratic counterattack on the class war front and a willingness to engage for the long haul. What we must explain to all voters this year, no matter whether from the Blue or Red states, is that their votes next November to "throw the rascals out" endanger a repeat of  the results of the 2010 elections, where reasonable incumbency was replaced with Koch brothers funded, far-right-wing extremism (witness Wisconsin, Ohio, Michigan and Florida). While we can appreciate our differences on such topics as gun control and immigration, Democrats must challenge all voters who remain openminded to put aside those concerns in order to save our country from a doubling down on the trickle-down economics programs that continue to dominate Republican talking points and would certainly take us further into insolvency should Republicans take control of both houses of Congress and the White House. 

We must enlist all Democratic activists squarely into an army of class war warriors, and invite all Americans to join our economic and moral struggle for equal opportunity and a continuation of job creation already started by Obama-Biden, which has been vastly successful at turning around the eight of the weakest years in job creation history of Bush-Cheney administration. We must do battle on offense against the party of aristocratic wealth, while promoting the Democratic party's longstanding historic role as a friend of wage earners and anyone who believes in upward mobility. The cherished values of liberals and progressives — fairness, opportunity, investment in people, responsible stewardship of  our precious resources — transcend party. These weapons need to be the ones with which Democrats fight with laser focus in 2012. These represent our moral high ground as well as our fundamental identity. These goals will reflect our optimism about the future. And they will help counteract the Putin Principle.

Finally, forget opponents who appear to invite a little monkey-butt gazing. Come November 2012, only the fate of the American Dream hangs in the balance. We need never lose sight of those stakes, nor our role in making the dream real for millions of real Americans.

Obama's Israel Policy Hiding in Plain Sight (Just Not on Google)

If you ever wonder what Republicans want to make the American voter aware of on any particular day, just Google it. Today I typed in "obama israel policy" and found page after page of links to coverage of Republican presidential candidates commenting at the Republican Jewish Coalition Forum on Wednesday. Here's some of what the right's echo chamber on steroids looks like on Google's search results following the forum: SFChronicle.com, BusinessWeek.com, abcnews.com, foxnews.com, cbn.com. realclearpolitics.com, dailycaller.com, observer.com, bachmann.house.gov, gopusa.com, usnews.com, weeklystandard.com, etc. Mixed in are links to videos by the likes of Rep. Peter King (on the Don Imus radio show), as well as tape of Newt Gingrich, Mitt Romney, Rick Perry, and Christopher Hitchens, the conservative author. Even Gene Simmons, the Kiss rocker who was born in Israel (under the name Chaim Witz), gets into the act. All in the name of disparaging President Obama's Israel policy.


This is what we get in today's all-you-can-eat media universe. Bloviating Republicans making nice to supporters of Israel while denigrating Mr. Obama's nuanced handling of Middle East issues in his first term. It was not what I had expected from the Google search "obama israel policy." What I had hoped for, but never did find, was a link to any document stating the president's actual Israel policy (a paid link to the generic Obama presidential website notwithstanding). Without context, you can be sure Republicans today are once again happy warriors, doing their best to discredit Obama's foreign policy achievements in the Middle East, distorting or lying about his strategy for bringing about resumption of peace talks between Israel and Palestinians, and taking unbridled pleasure in saber rattling with regard to the nuclear threat posed by Iran's potential development of a nuclear bomb.


It's all talk, and especially for this crop of Republican presidential wannabes, it's all crap.


Republicans seem more than gleeful about taking aim at Mr. Obama's somewhat tougher stance on Israeli settlements in Gaza and the subsequent cool reception by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during his visit to Washington last spring. Basically, Republicans want Jews to believe that the GOP is going to be tougher on Arabs and Iran, while also implying they would put less pressure on Israel than the Obama administration, which is clearly frustrated by Netanyahu's reluctance to go back to peace talks and has stated so, both privately and in some public pronouncements by administration officials.


Republican frontrunner Newt Gingrich argues, with virtually no evidence, that the United States is undermining Israeli security by pressuring Israel to make concessions to the Palestinians and to negotiate with Turkey and Egypt without putting equal pressure for reforms on those nations. He further charges that Mr. Obama's policies are weakening Israel by interfering in its internal affairs in criticizing the building of Israeli settlements within Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories. Republicans also slam the administration's efforts to keep Iran from going nuclear, calling them "weak." Even the Obama administration's tough new sanctions on Iran, with most allies' support,  haven't impressed the Republicans, who accuse Mr. Obama of taking military action against Iran off the table. To that charge, I say, "Bravo, Mr. Obama."


But let's face facts: Republicans see the current situation in the Middle East as just one more political opening, like Christian orthodoxy about abortion. In this case, they're more than willing to exploit Israel's fear of a nuclear holocaust at the hands of Arabs for its potential to split off the 70 percent support Jews gave the president in 2008. Basically, they want Jews to believe that Republicans are going to be tougher on Arabs and Iran while also implying they will apply less pressure on Israel than Democrats to return to the bargaining table. "Gingrich: He'll go easy on Israel!" This is what passes for Republican policy talk these days: A bumper sticker in favor of appeasing an old friend, with no strings attached. But even history professors like Gingrich have short memories. For it was after all a Republican, no less than Iraq invader-in-chief President George W. Bush, who in 2003 made the Gaza settlements an issue and threatened to pull U.S. funding back unless Israel ended those questionable developments inside what are assumed to be Palestinian territory once an agreement were signed. So who's kidding whom?


Make no mistake: Israel is our one true friend in the Middle East, and we need their support and cooperation. But they owe us, too. We gave Israel about $3.1 billion in foreign aid in 2010, which is comparable to the combined total for Jordan, Egypt, Turkey, and the Palestinian Authority. Moreover, Israel is an extremely important strategic ally, with the strongest military force in the region. Supporting Israel lets us protect our interests (including access to oil) without committing our own troops. The Israelis themselves are standing strong against Iran’s nuclear threat. They also provide us with intelligence gleaned from their network of agents all over the Arab world. In short, we need them as much as they need us.


But, I do agree with the Obama administration's attempts to move the needle on peace talk. They won't come about through any Republican effort to make nice with Benjamin Netanyahu or his successors. Someone has to get tough with both sides, and if you agree, Mr. Obama is the only person running for president qualified for that job. That is Obama's policy and commitment. To peace. With all apologies to Google, of course.

Anti-Intellectualism: A Republican Winning Strategy?

Charles, a Liberal Outposts reader from Virginia, wants to know why Michelle Bachman this week denigrated President Obama, as well as her fellow Republican primary opponent Newt Gingrich, by calling them "professorial." When did being a professor become a liability in this country, he asks, and why is anti-intellectualism such a hot-button political score?

Thanks, Charles. As the spouse of a popular professor at the second largest public university in the nation, University of Central Florida, I've often pondered this issue. I and my lovely wife, a professor of social work, witnessed the 2008 Republican presidential campaign attacks on Mr. Obama's community organizing credentials with great dismay. Now, as your questions suggest, it appears the 2012 Republican presidential candidates are doubling down on their blatant tactic of discrediting credentials by vilifying the most scholarly among us as being dangerously smart.

Charles, let me pose a question: Why is anyone surprised by this anti-intellectual attack mode? Whenever a series of unfortunate events in America has tested our faith in our country's cherished institutions, Republicans have used the emotional bludgeons of religion, fear, and bigotry to exploit voter uncertainty and prejudices for their own power-grabbing gain. Anti-intellectualism is just one more effective arrow in their political quiver being used to target an increasingly bifurcated voting public.

With the exception of Mr. Gingrich's scholarly past, the Republicans running to replace Mr. Obama --  who was editor of the Harvard Law Review and taught Constitutional Law at the University of Chicago -- have decided to redefine the word "intellectual" into a generic slur. That's why it was okay for Hermann Cain to boast of not knowing the name of the leader of Uzbekistan. Why it was not unexpected when Rick Perry's idea of criticizing Mr. Obama's diplomacy abroad was to accuse him of trying to outsmart everyone else in the room. Why no one was surprised when Sarah Palin laughed off her erroneous description of the midnight ride of Paul Revere and made up the word "repudiate." Why, despite our current stubborn unemployment figures, not a single Republican candidate for president could raise his or her hand during one debate in support of a proposed $10 of spending cuts for every $1 of tax increases to address our long-term budget deficit.

Why do Republicans run away from smart public policy in favor of dumb-and-dumber rhetoric? Ironically, it has to do with intellectual and political dishonesty. The GOP discredits and mocks intellectual thought as a matter of political expediency. They do it because it has worked in the past and they believe it can work again.

For one depiction of this strategy, allow me to introduce the observations of my liberal and favorite intellectual hero, the Nobel Laureate economist and The New York Times columnist Paul Krugman. In August 2008 he wrote:

"… Know-nothingism -- the insistence that there are simple, brute-force, instant-gratification answers to every problem, and that there's something effeminate and weak about anyone who suggests otherwise -- has become the core of Republican policy and political strategy. The party's de facto slogan has become: 'Real men don't think things through.'"

This tendency by the GOP to promote emotive, black-and-white pronouncements in leu of the nuanced proposals of our more thoughtful Democrats works because enough voters buy into it. It's uncomplicated. Unlike intellectuals, who ask questions and examine issues to discover facts hidden below the surface, today's anti-intellectual conservatives actually mock such rigor. By defining today's complex problems in the simplest terms, Republicans are taking advantage of today's polarized populous by interpreting any evidence contradicting their version of reality as bogus and by attacking the Democratic messengers, many of whom happen to hold advanced degrees from America's premier seats of higher learning.

Of course, many Republicans in pursuit of Mr. Obama's job are no dummies. They, in fact, sometimes are the products of those same Ivy League universities (George W. Bush was a Yalie, after all). So the tactic of identity politics -- "aw, shucks, I'm just as undereducated as you" -- by conservatives is a ruse meant to play on the anti-elitist, anti-intellectual attitude among certain voting blocks. It's the politics of resentment, allowing Republicans who favor tax breaks for the wealthiest 1 percent to curry favor with lower and middle-class voters whose tendency is to distrust their better-educated brethren.

The dishonesty in the Republican approach today and their reasons for pursuing it has never been clearer. Contempt for elites and thoughtful policy discussions in the 2012 election cycle is allowing Republicans to avoid being blamed for the 2008 recession, and, in fact, shift the blame onto the Obama administration. Never mind that their past policies failures (Taft-Hartley, trickle-down, job-killing NAFTA, tax breaks for the wealthy) promoted the vast and growing divide between economic haves and have-nots that is powering the Occupy movement. Never mind that their campaigns are backed by billionaire oil companies like the elitist, opera-loving Koch brothers, all the major banks that were bailed out to the tune of $700 billion by the Bush/Cheney administration, and well-connected pro-corporate business organizations such as the Chamber of Commerce. Never mind that if elected president, a Republican in the White House will join a Tea Party putsch on the federal programs most cherished by the very Americans whose support they seek -- Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, unemployment benefits -- not to mention the departments of Commerce, Education, and, uh, that other one Mr. Perry wants to kill if he can remember it.

Republicans, then, are acting totally in character by marshaling an anti-intellectual stance for their 2012 campaigns. They are depending on the electorate's growing frustration with power elites -- Obama, Congress, banks, corporations -- to make a case for their election that is simplistic (flat tax, 9-9-9, double electrified fence on the Mexican boarder), emotion-driven, and often at odds with provable facts.

Over the course of five decades, Republican policies have led America into what can rightly be called a cul-de-sac of despair. Today, their Fox News and Limbaugh-driven mantra has made the politics of resentment a house guest who never leaves. Their deceitful campaigns' success a year from now depends almost entirely on a crass manipulation of reality, an ability to rationalize their party's sordid policy record, and their ability to bilk votes from citizens who, for reason left for another post, regard knowledge with suspicion and liberals as "not like us." It is no wonder they've gone anti-intellectual. Their political lives depend upon it.

OWS 1st Death: When Will They Stop the Police Abuse?

OCCUPY'S 1ST VICTIM  Jennifer Fox, 19, was told by doctors that the death of her 3-month-old fetus resulted from damage from a kick and pepper spray administered by police.  Photo: JOSHUA TRUJILLO / SEATTLEPI.COM

I wish I didn't have to say, "I told you so," but it appears the first death has come to an Occupy participant after police kicked and pepper-sprayed a woman while attending Occupy Seattle on Nov. 15. The woman, Jennifer Fox, has reportedly suffered a miscarriage. OWS Seattle Miscarriage 


News of the death spread yesterday even as new evidence of police-abuse video surfaced on the internet following pepper spray attacks on University of California Davis campus. Police actions throughout the U.S. that cross the line into unprovoked and violent suppression tactics are making a mockery of the supremacy of 1st Amendment right to peaceable assembly.


As I wrote here on Nov. 2 in an open call to federal officials, "Stop playing politics with the lives of our citizenry and call for an end to the unjustified attacks on OWS's exercising its Constitutional First Amendment actions."


If necessary, federal officials should call out the National Guard to keep our citizens safe from rouge law enforcement forces. This is the patriotic, moral, liberal tradition of civil rights protection every American (even the unborn) demands.

What's a Liberal Winning Strategy in 2012? Moral, Humane Courage

I have some good news today for our liberal-minded Washington leaders in need of a big dose of moral clarity: What ails our democracy can be fixed by adopting ancient Chinese political thought from wise men such as Mencius, Xunzi, and Confucius. Their roadmap to political power and success, basically, favors the adoption of "moral humane governance" over "economic imperialism" and "militaristic intervention" at home and abroad as its core concept, according to Yan Xuetong, dean of the Institute of Modern International Relations at Tsinghua University.

The Chinese philosophers arrived at their crucial insights, Yan writes in today's New York Times, after studying the histories of those three governance types and concluding that the pursuit of moral humane authority at home and abroad inevitably wins the hearts and minds of the people. When followed with singular focus, this roadmap should make plain what liberals stand for and how our idea of morality and humane governance differs profoundly from the ideologies of our conservative opponents. A few examples:

• Liberals, by which I mean Democrats and most Independents, seek to create a desirable environment and standard of living for all its people by promoting benevolent policies favoring the general welfare while controlling the excesses of free markets. Conservatives, though, seek to govern in a militaristic fashion both in domestic and foreign affairs, promoting the fragmentation of our society and leading to vast gaps in political and economic power between the haves and have-nots.

• Liberals believe government promotes the greater good, and accept the responsibilities and costs that that belief infers. Conservatives believe government itself is problematic and are incapable of admitting to both the causes and costs of massive bank failure, growing income inequality, and steep, long-term unemployment that resulted from their political mismanagement.

• Liberals realize that our country's moral authority in international affairs demands humane treatment of our enemies even if that moral stance is not reciprocated, because exercising strong moral authority wins friends and inspires people around the world. Conservatives disparage those rules of international engagement and insist on the right to follow immoral practices, such as the Bush-Cheney lying about weapons of mass destruction as justification to invade Iraq and their water boarding of prisoners of war, carried out despite strong objections by American citizens and the international community.

• Liberals in touch with morally informed leadership are able to differentiate between nuanced government control and intrusion into personal privacy. Thus, liberals advocate the protection of women's reproductive rights as far more humane than the intrusive anti-abortion hardliners, who would let their moral rectitude on this issue result in our country going back to the era of back-alley procedures while never taking responsibility for the certain deaths and unwanted births that would result from ending a woman's privacy rights as currently embodied in American law.

Liberals in the past have let themselves be redefined ad nauseum with "tax and spend" and "big government" labels created by the right-wing oligarchs who now hold our society hostage both in Congress and in state governments. It's time we become the change we seek. Our country can no longer afford Republican-supported militarism, violence against its own citizens, and class warfare that has left us on the brink of economic and moral insolvency. This should be the laser focus of the Democrats and Independents seeking office in 2012.

Let us look ahead, then, aided by the wisdom of ancient Chinese political  philosophy, to the strong, courageous leadership that only liberals will deliver, and the renewed sense of America's strength and harmony that once made us the envy of the world. Past political warfare shows that only the party that embraces moral humane policies, not financial or military dominance, will thrive, and so too will our country.

Republicans to Obama: Take Your Hands Off Our Federally Funded Pizza

What I am about to advocate here is heresy among most of my liberal friends, yet I feel uniquely qualified to put to rest a question raised by recent Congressional action regarding our nation's school lunch menu: Is pizza a vegetable? The short answer: No friggin' way. I am certain of this because I was born and raised in New Haven, Connecticut, where I enjoyed two of the grandest brick-oven Neapolitan apizza (yes, that's the real word for it and it's pronounced ah-Beetz) establishments in the world -- Frank Pepe Pizzeria Napoletana and Sally's Apizza, both of which routinely attract hordes of customers who line up outside on the Wooster Square sidewalks in bitter winter for a chance to consume their hot, heavenly creations.

The pizza-as-vegetable issue bubbled up in Congress earlier this week when lawmakers successfully added language to an Agriculture Department funding bill to block newly rewritten rules, first proposed in January by the Obama administration, that would have increased the required amount of tomato sauce per slice (to more than one-quarter cup) in order for pizza to remain on the department's approved list of vegetable servings for America's school lunch program. Schools participating in the $11 billion U.S.D.A. program receive federal funds and commodities only when they adhere to the department's nutritional guidelines, which are meant to provide one-third of a child's daily nutritional requirements. Those rules are quite extensive and can be reviewed at this State of New Jersey web site.

The U.S.D.A. effort to meet children's nutrition needs is laudable, especially at a time when childhood obesity has, ahem, expanded. By including pizza on its list of qualified servings of vegetables, past administrations were utilizing the broadest interpretation of that food group's definition because, well, pizza is king in the nation's school cafeterias. Counting it as a vegetable provides school dietary directors one highly effective weapon in its arsenal of healthy offerings.

If you are old enough, you may remember President Reagan's laughable call for ketchup to be included on the list of approved vegetables. That didn't fly. In contrast, the new U.S.D.A. school lunch overhaul under President Obama included a more generous portion of tomato paste in a comprehensive set of guidelines, such as cutting calorie-laden starches, reducing salt and adding more real fruits and vegetables, designed to help enhance children's health. If enacted, the new U.S.D.A. rules for school lunches would have added $1.36 billion annually to the program. That may sound expensive, but it amounts to 14 cents a meal.

The Republican-led, food-corporation-backed response in Congress this week prevented any of those health improvements from reaching America's kids by blocking funds to implement the new guidelines. So the news was all bad. Improving kids' health loses out to blatant Republican politicizing of the school lunch program. And pizza remains, at least for now in the eyes of Uncle Sam, a veggie. For liberals and conservatives alike, sanity remains on the menu nightly at Sally's and Pepe's. Just don't call it a vegetable.

A Balanced Budget Proposal in Name Only

Here's today's riddle: When is a balanced budget amendment not balanced? When the current crop of do-nothing Republicans in Congress proposes it.

To see why, let's first review some budgeting basics. A budget is a plan that projects income and spending for a discrete time frame, which typically spans a week, a month, or a year. In its simplest form, budgeting encompasses two basic estimated monetary amounts: income and spending. In a balanced budget, both of those numbers are equal. Here's a quick example: A person who earns $4,000 a month projects spending of $4,0000 a month. That is a balanced budget.

Simple, right? Perhaps for your family, yes. You might have two or three sources of income with regular amounts coming into your bank account. You certainly have regular bills to pay, as well as some optional spending to consider, making the spending part of the equation more of a guessing game. Over time and through experience, though, even that number is relatively easy to arrive at.

Budgets are estimates, then, derived from a process of review that considers historic amounts of known income sources and predictable spending commitments. In order for a budget to achieve balance on paper, all that's necessary is a pencil and eraser. In the real world, though, the only road to balance is to earn adequate income to cover your expenses and spend only the money you've earned.

And, as night follows day, balancing a budget always works out perfectly, right? Well, no, never has as far as I'm aware. That's because a budget is a plan, and achieving equilibrium is, to say the least, problematic. If your car battery suddenly dies, you buy a new one even though it wasn't included in your budget estimates. If your spouse gets ill and has no more sick leave left, your income falls short of the expected, budgeted amount. When the economy tanks and one of you is out of work for weeks or months, you do what more Americans than ever have done over the past decade: pull out the credit card.

A budget that anticipates all such unknown spending circumstances is a rarity, but a good budget plan usually comes close to achieving balance when it acknowledges such uncertainties, builds in a buffer, and encourages flexible reactions along the way to adjust for such challenges. Moreover, a good budget plan sets up guiding principals for making such adjustments on the fly without much argument over how to proceed.

OK, now that we have that down, let's look at the federal government's situation and the Republican Balanced Budget proposal. Like any other family, the United States has income and spending. It derives its income from taxes collected and depletes those dollars with annual spending to run the government, fund numerous programs for the general wellbeing of its citizens, and pay the interest on its loans. The estimated receipts for fiscal year 2012 (which began in October) are $2.627 trillion. Spending proposed for fiscal 2012 totals $3.729 trillion -- a difference of $1.1 trillion.

That single-year deficit amount, incidentally, equals the level of reductions mandated to take place if the Select Committee on Deficit Reduction fails this year in its efforts to take a $1.5 trillion slice out of federal spending over a 10-year period. Whether certain draconian spending cuts are even necessary has economists on opposite sides. Many argue that targeted deficit government spending, such as proposed by President Obama's American Jobs Act, could spur jobs and economic growth, leading to enough growth in tax revenues to wipe out the deficit over the next decade. Support for those predictions comes not only from historic data collected on the Great Depression-era budgets during the President Roosevelt era but also more recently from President Clinton's two terms, which by the year 2000 delivered federal budget surpluses.

But facts have never stopped Republican fiscal folly, nor would stimulus spending fit the longtime Republican strategy called "starve the beast" that is designed to shrink the federal government by denying Congress of needed tax receipts. Under President Reagan and both President Bushes, Republican in Congress cut taxes, thus decreasing U.S. government's income, in hopes that less money in government coffers would force Congress to cut spending. Instead, deficits under Republican rule have soared because they dropped any pretense of trying to balance the budget. Who doesn't recall Vice President Dick Cheney arrogantly declaring, "Deficits don't matter."

Of course, they do and they don't, depending on how the underlying economy is behaving. But that hasn't stopped the Tea Party-infected Republicans. Their latest House bill calling for a balanced budget would only restrain spending, while effectively taking the other half of the equation -- tax revenue increases -- off the table altogether. In fact, the balanced budget proposal would continue to permit tax cuts regardless of their effects on the deficit. In calling for an amendment, Republicans don't appear to have much chance of victory, because passage requires a three-fifths majority in both houses of Congress, and still has to pass the high hurdle of ratification by three-quarters of state legislatures.

Which raises the question: Why do Republicans bother bringing up a sure to be defeated Constitutional amendment proposal at all? Let me give you this explanation, revealed today by Bruce Bartlett, an adviser in the Reagan and Bush I administrations. “The truth is that Republicans don’t care one whit about actually balancing the budget,” Bartlett writes in a blog for the New York Times. “They prefer to delude voters with pie-in-the-sky promises that amending the Constitution will painlessly solve all our budget problems.” Bartlett concludes, "The idea of mandating a balanced budget through the Constitution is dreadful. And the proposal that Republican leaders plan to bring up is, frankly, nuts."

P.S. To understand our country's dilemma with budget balancing and the voters own part in fostering the nuttier aspects of it, I pass on the results of a recent poll by Politico: It finds that Americans support increasing taxes on the wealthy and corporations (increasing income) 66% to 31%, while they oppose cuts to Medicare 76% to 19% (increasing spending). To quote a political savant, "Oops!"

Lennon Was Right: Life Happens While We're Making Other Plans

Sometimes, fate catches up with us despite our best efforts to run away. I am reminded of that point this morning after my wife, Eileen, and I enjoyed a lovely evening in the charm-drenched, upscale small town of Winter Park, Florida, joined by a longtime friend of mine, Chris, and his lovely wife, Mary. During the 1960s, Chris and I had bonded as best friends over timeless obsessions: a teen fascination with pretty girls, the many high-horsepower offerings from Detroit, and grades that would lead us to coveted college student military deferments that saved many of us from a growing quagmire in Vietnam that killed more than 50,000 of America's young men.

Our stomping grounds, a rough, working-class part of New Haven, Connecticut, called West Hills, was no guarantee of inheriting the American Dream. Homes there were cheap, small and cramped; fathers worked as cops, teachers, mechanics, house painters, and butchers, as well as drunks and philanderers; and moms were, well, mothers, wives, saints. It was the 1960s; youth was on the rise as a force to be reckoned with. The Beatles and Rolling Stones were our adoptive American Idols, and a young president was our Camelot knight in shining armor who stood between us and the threat of certain nuclear annihilation.

As we faced our high school years, Chris and I embraced the diversions of youth even as the losses mounted: John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Robert F. Kennedy, all cut down by assassins. Some of our close friends and family members came home from their Southeast Asia nightmare, maimed physically and mentally, if they returned at all. We learned to look away, and to keep moving ahead of the wave threatening to overtake us. Counting the number of Corvettes and Porsches passing by and imagining owning one was a self-serving lifeline in an age of social upheaval and insanity.

After graduation, Chris and I took different paths that would foretell a far longer separation in the years ahead. I went away to study journalism at Syracuse University, while Chris stayed in New Haven and earned a degree in civil engineering. We got back together briefly in 1975 when Chris served as best man at my wedding. After that, Eileen and I lived in Baltimore for a couple of years, while Chris worked in Philadelphia. We reunited for what promised to be a carefree Bicentennial celebration in the birthplace of our country's independence, but it was apparent the time apart had already begun to thrust us further into personal separate places. Eileen and I shortly after moved from Baltimore to Central Florida to pursue career opportunities and raise a family. Chris went back to New Haven and a successful career as a construction manager for Yale University and a family of his own. The Bicentennial weekend proved to be our last visit for more than three decades.

Then in 2010 Chris came across my profile on LinkedIn and e-mailed me. Only months later, in May of this year, my father died. Chris was there by my side for greatly appreciated emotional support during the wake, funeral and burial. Some things in life happen for reasons we can never fathom, yet we must acknowledge them as the little miracles they certainly are. Chris's return was one of those moments for me. A father gone, a friend reconnected.

So it was fond childhood memories, but no heavy baggage. And, of course, even with my current foray into blustery blogging about politics and governmental morality within LiberalOutposts.blogspot.com, Eileen's meaningful glance with burning eye contact at one point reminded me there should be no talk of politics or religion. The reasons for our long midlife separation no longer matter.

As we sat down last night at a fantastic Thai restaurant called The Orchid, the world of West Hills seemed light years behind Chris and I. The four of us aging yuppies had fun recalling our younger selves, the bluster of youthful victories won and disasters averted. Each of us understood the important ground rule for occasions such as this: friendships are fragile, perishable, and problematic, but also precious and worth preserving.

We Are the Moral Majority

You have to admit, the two major news stories breaking this week -- the reported homosexual relations by a football coach and boys on the Penn State campus and the accusations by at least five women of sexual harassment by former National Restaurant Association head and Republican presidential frontrunner Herman Cain -- contain the ingredients for a potentially salacious media orgy that could last for the rest of the year. Just to be clear, I am not writing about them today to further fan the flames.

Instead, I want to make a moral point that goes beyond the particular parties or indignities in both these cases. It is that we owe it to ourselves as a freedom-loving, justice-seeking nation to re-examine our attitudes about how the powerful few exploit the less powerful among us.

Such an examination should confront a truth about human nature too often ignored in our public debates. Primarily, we must discover how can we better confront and vanquish vast inequities imposed by money, power, influence, and large institutional barriers of protection. We have to decide whether we want fairness, honesty, transparency, and justice when confronting the imbalances between the haves and the have-nots.

In doing so, we must face such questions as: How can we revive the performance of our once-envied institutions in promoting the common good while also protecting those who haven't the resources to defend themselves? When our courts allow vast, faceless institutions of commerce to exercise the same fundamental rights as citizens, how do we ensure those corporate monstrosities are prevented from unduly compromising the rights, privileges, and opportunities of the individual? When we witness people in authority compromising the dignity of the young and less powerful, how must we respond?

I believe -- and I suspect a large majority in America would concur -- that our current public institutions and leaders of commerce, lawmaking, leadership, information dissemination and jurisprudence today are far less likely to perform their public responsibilities than in past generations. Explanations for why this is so may abound in the blogosphere, but really, in some respects, we are all to blame, because, having been lured into apathy by the false promises of the powerful, wealthy and privileged few over the last 40 years, we have abdicated our democratic ideals for short-term gains. Post World War II, many of us have forgotten, let languish, or never discovered the part of our human nature that supports nurturing behaviors designed to protect our species from the predators among us. Whether they are hidden within a famed college football program, sit on a bank board or Congressional committee, or vie for the nomination for president, such predators must be uncovered, disarmed, and punished without apology.

To turn to the political implications of this, I say to both parties: Denial is not a party plank. Moral leadership derives from a fundamental truth: We are all born equal in the eyes of God. But I insist on recognizing who among us most contributes to our moral decline. Under cover of a "survival of the fittest" canon,  Republicans and Tea Party supporters often profess hearing a calling from God yet continue to favor draconian measures to end federal support for the old, the poor, the sick, the hungry, and the homeless. Such cuts may feel justifiable to the far Right and many confused American voters in an era starved of rational conservative economic and political thought. But no political party should silently stand by, as Republicans did recently, after presidential debate attendees called out in favor of letting poor uninsured sick people die and booed a gay American soldier stationed in the Mideast. That is no more acceptable than leaving the scene of a child rape without trying to stop it or report it to police.

Nobody is arguing Democrats are morally pure, having given us both a Clinton-stained Monica Lewinsky blue dress and Anthony Weiner's crotch-gazing Twitter photo. Say what you will about the ineffective leadership within both governing parties in Washington; it hasn't been liberals and Democrats calling for drastic budget cuts on programs for America's most needy citizens. Liberals, progressives and Democrats have a long history advocating for programs that feed, house, defend and educate the underclass. That political legacy -- going back to Roosevelt's New Deal and Johnson's Great Society initiatives and continuing with Clinton's balanced approach to welfare reform and Obama's efforts to make health care more affordable -- explicitly defends minorities from the ravages of the better-off majority.

Moral courage shown in support of the most vulnerable among us is a fundamental value of Democrats and liberalism, and it is one value in which I encourage all openminded readers to become fully engaged.

Power to the People, Literally

Now that Occupy Wall Street has succeeded in raising our awareness of the growing exploitation by the top 1 percent of earners of the other 99 percent, I am ever alert to examples of big, monopolistic, tone-deaf public companies putting profits ahead of people. After two big storms have hit with devastating effects on my birthplace in New England, I have found a big example -- Northeast Utilities and its subsidiary Connecticut Light and Power.

As of yesterday, almost 500,000 CLP homes and businesses were without power following the earlier-than-usual snowstorm that hit the northeastern U.S. at the beginning of the week. Why the large impact and slow recovery? Mostly, it is because the company has trimmed back its maintenance spending by better than 25 percent in the last three years, records show. The storms may have been acts of God, but the lack of tree trimming around power lines that were taken down by the storm was an act of a greed machine, CLP, that took in $3 billion from customers last year while charging the highest electricity rates in the continental U.S.

Large public utilities, historically profitable even in less troubled economic times, are a license to print money in today's "corporatists are people" political reality. Northeast Utilities is no exception. As power service came back to CLP's customers, the head of the company was calling for rate increases to cover the repair bills.

What can people in such circumstances do? Organize within their communities and seek to take ownership of all of its public utilities. Such action may not turn the lights back on right now, but if local folks were running into their utilities chiefs down at the local grocery store, maybe those managers would better remember who is funding their paychecks.

The Washington Voice OWS Needs

In a time of broad public support for Occupy Wall Street amid violent attacks on OWC encampments by municipal law enforcement, I find it extremely disappointing that President Barack Obama, Attorney General Eric H. Holder, Jr., and most every other elected official in Washington have yet to call on city authorities nationwide to stand down in their provocations against OWS protests.

OWS assemblies have been subject to weeks of violent, likely illegal, and certainly U.S. Constitution-defying strong-arm tactics by municipalities from New York City to Oakland, so far with very little comment or blowback by the usually voluble political class and commentariat in our nation's capital. This silence is deafening, considering that one Oakland OWC attendee, Iraq war veteran Scott Olsen, had his head cracked open by a flying projectile which had been launched by police under orders from Oakland's Mayor Jean Quan.

To give credit where credit is due, Quan came out later to deplore the results of police action there. Tennessee officials capitulated after protesters went to federal court to end the illegal curfew and arrests of dozens of Occupy supporters, who argued those actions violated their rights to free speech and freedom of assembly. And Oakland's Citizens' Police Review Board is launching an investigation into police action there that resulted in Olsen's fractured skull.

Also, to be fair, Manhattan federal District Attorney Cyrus Vance, Jr., investigated on Oct. 31 after NYC Policeman Anthony Bologna pepper-sprayed some women taking part in OWS two weeks before. But apart from these few municipal reactions to uphold protestors' rights and protect their safety, our nation's political leaders have gone silent.

Mr. Obama -- and for that matter all sitting Congressional officials -- with all due respect, what are you waiting for? Stop playing politics with the lives of our citizenry and call for an end to the unjustified attacks on OWS's exercising its Constitutional First Amendment actions. Our people have every right to seek redress of economic and social injustice, and every right to expect official government action supporting and defending those First Amendment protections -- even when it means shielding them from aggressive police procedures.

Let freedom ring without the need for pepper spray, tear gas, rubber bullets and stun grenades. Wasn't that our official stance in defense of the Egyptian uprising? Didn't we support NATO action when Col. Muammar Qaddafi threatened to wipe out his own citizen protestors in Libya? What's good for Egyptian and Libyan citizens is good for Americans, no? If necessary, send in the National Guard to protect our fundamental right to peaceful assembly. What are you waiting for -- dead bodies in our streets?

Bank Tanks Debit Card Fee

The banksters blinked. Bank of America, along with most other large banking corporations, has dropped a $5 fee for debit cards that was supposed to be imposed this fall. It's not much to celebrate, though. Like Netflix and its dopey and dead Qwikster spinoff for DVD rentals, this is only good news because the biggest banks won't be taking a planned course of action that promised to add to customers' 3-year-recession blues while padding the banksters' bottom line with virtually no effort.

You'll still be better off if you get your money out of places like BOA, Chase, Citi, Wells Fargo, and the like. BTW, this Saturday is Bank Transfer Day. Organizers suggest you put whatever savings you have left at this point into credit unions and community banks instead of the big bankster systems. They're still offering virtually no interest on savings deposits, anyway, and there are plenty of better alternatives in our local markets.

Don't think you're breaking the banksters' hearts by leaving, though. Our deposits in banks today are worthless to banksters. Listen to what Don Sturm, the owner of American National Bank, was quoted as saying in Sunday's NY Times when asked about checking and savings deposits: "We just don't need it anymore. If you had more money than you knew what to do with, would you want more?"

FDIC-insured accounts are being overrun with cash taken out of risky investments, and there's still no stomach for lending among banksters since the 2008 recession. So we sit in a standoff of declining demand and confidence. It's going to be years before we can get back to some kind of normal business picture after the Bush-era mortgage-lending defaults, deregulation, socialism for the rich in Republican tax cuts for the wealthiest 1%, investment fraud at the highest levels of finance, and a decade of anemic job creation and shrinking paychecks for the rest of us 99%.

Obama's a Gamer

"It is hard to look good when things around you are going bad. It is harder still when you are the brains and emotional rudder of the enterprise and little seems to be going as planned. It is most difficult of all when devastating failure is imminent."

That's New York Times sportswriter Bill Pennington commenting this morning on NY Giants quarterback Eli Manning, but he could also be describing the plight of President Obama as he faces the 2012 presidential election.

Like Manning, Obama helps his team win, but isn't loudly claiming credit or given his due when he seizes victory from the jaws of defeat. Also like Manning, Obama leads a team (the federal government) that can't get its act together or meet the new challenges it faces.

Despite his team's shortcomings, the President today is often the only guy on the team who seems to have a clue. Like the Giants under Manning's steady leadership, the U.S. government's highlight reel of stellar plays almost exclusively belongs to Obama in an otherwise dreadful performance by a Congress that deserves its 91 percent disapproval rating.

Finally, of late, Obama also deserves credit for making an impact on his own through executive orders that will at least in part address problems that Republicans fail to acknowledge, let alone seek to remedy.

Let's let Giants guard Chris Snee's comments about Manning sum up President Obama's impact on his team: "Because he's not loud or fiery, people think he doesn't lead, but that's just being short-sighted. We get a lot of confidence from him, from knowing that if we give him time to make his reads and see the field, good things will happen. His cool and his calmness -- it has a lot of impact on the whole team."

When you think about it as Pennington has, even when things are going badly, President Obama has made his team look, if not great, at least competitive.


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Location:Maitland FL

It's the Narrative, Stupid

In recent years, I've been appalled with the disinformation of our political narrative generated by the 24-hour corporate media, which favors flame throwers over statesmen and rabble over reason. So, I'd like to begin today to use this blog to formulate a narrative of our current political and economic situation using research (isn't Google fantastic?), reasoning, human psychology, economic reality, and common sense. My bias, as such, is that I respect facts and conclusions based on substantive debate, but abhor ideological mythology masquerading as such.

By all accounts, the American economy today remains crippled but hangs tough, in recovery from one of the most disastrous failures of our mortgage loan and investment banking systems in history during the presidency of George W. Bush. Latest figures show that third-quarter growth in the overall economy rose 2.5% -- not a huge jump, but significant nonetheless after a full two years of economic contraction nationwide. Today, while banks are back in business paying huge bonuses and corporations sit on $1 trillion in profits, we still suffer from high unemployment, which stubbornly remains at over 9%. Private sector job growth has improved since President Obama's 2009 Economic Recovery Act passed Congress. That help became law while Democrats controlled the House of Representatives and had the 60 votes needed in the Senate to override a Republican filibuster. After almost three years, the Democratic 2009 stimulus has done its job, creating more than 2 million jobs while providing $340 billion in tax cuts for small businesses. However, with no further public funds forthcoming, state and city budget shortfalls have led to job cuts among public services workers such as teachers, police and firefighters, further adding to public sentiment of economic pessimism.

Meanwhile since the 2010 election--in which Republicans won the majority in the House of Representatives 242 Republicans to 192 Democrats and Senate Democrats lost enough seats to ensure incessant Republican filibusters would prevail--legislative gridlock has ensued. The election, far from pushing the political culture toward reasonable solutions, guaranteed one thing: that Republicans would have more power to pursue a blatant political goal of blocking any further fiscal stimulus, such as President Obama's American Jobs Act, while also seeking to defeat the president in the 2012 election.

Republicans made one argument in 2010 that resonated with voters as the economy continued to tank: "Government is the problem, and Obama and the Democratic majorities in Congress are in charge." Their plan was to avoid political promises or any substantive proposals that might distract voters from their campaign attacks on Democratic incumbents. Said Neil Newhouse of the Republican polling firm Public Opinion Strategies, "The smart political approach would be to make the election about the Democrats." Explicit in this argument with Mr. Obama still in the White House was the promise that Republican majorities would present a roadblock to Democrats' longtime stance as defenders of federal action at all levels of American life. Without a great deal of introspection, voters took the bait and backed some of the most anti-government conservatives in the modern era.

Today, the result of that election is Republican-led gridlock. The 2010 voters who backed Republicans, therefore, must ask themselves before the next election whether or not their choices at the ballot box were in the best interest of our country.


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Location:Maitland FL

To Big To Jail Goes National

Some of you may recall on Oct. 4 I Facebook-posted my slogan and poster. Well, today I learned the "Too Big To Jail" slogan is used as a section header in a book released today, With Liberty and Justice for Some, by Salon writer Glenn Greenwald. He is a former Constitutional and civil rights litigator and is the author of two New York Times Bestselling books whose columns appear regularly at the online publication www.Salon.com/writer/glenn_greenwald/.

Republican Government Is the Problem

"Government is the problem," President Ronald Reagan famously said. He was correct, but not in the way many Republicans today would have us believe. Here's why:

Today, our government faces a stagnant recovery with anemic private-sector job growth along with the loss of public service jobs due to decreases in tax revenues. The two parties in our political discourse have proposed competing roadmaps to address the issue: Republicans fight for tax breaks to incentivize job creation and argue that additional federal stimulus spending for job creation only adds to our growing deficit; Democrats call for passage of job-creating legislation to immediately pump $435 billion into our economy at a time when people and businesses show a continued reluctance to spend, while they also point out that solving the deficit problem is important, but only after addressing the more pressing issue of job losses that spun out of control during the George W. Bush administration.

So far, the economic battle is at a stalemate, while the political battle rages in Washington, D.C., where filibusters in the Senate by the Republican minority ensures President Barack Obama's American Jobs Act, or most any part of it, will not be allowed to pass by a simple majority of 51 votes. This, despite a broad swath of public sentiment measured in polling that a majority of Americans agree with many of its tenants. Which side is correct? Is this another case where Reagan's battle cry rings true? Maybe, but not necessarily as he intended.

As famed economist John Maynard Keynes said in a 1930 investigation into the causes of the Great Depression, "We do nothing because we have not the money. But it is precisely because we do not do anything that we have not the money." The competing conservative argument at the time was to remind federal officials that employment levels are determined by the price of labor, that supply creates its own demand, and that savings automatically translate into investment. Sound familiar? It's trickle down before Reagan's scriptwriters got a hold of it.

But wait, the conservatives also argued that attempts at large-scale spending invited not only runaway inflation but also tyrannical socialism. Again, ring any bells? America, under President Franklin D. Roosevelt, eventually agreed with Keynes and undertook many major spending programs to spur economic growth after the Herbert Hoover administration's hands-off policies proved to be an abject failure. Far from leading to a tyrannical state, Roosevelt's stimulus policies created immediate job opportunities and went a long way toward bringing America back from the brink of ruin during a time when government was perhaps the only entity capable of injecting money into the system. Our country went on to three decades of unprecedented economic growth under rational leadership. Only when the Reagan era ushered in a turn away from these policies supporting a strong middle class did the American economy come unglued.

What of the warning about the rise of socialism by the conservatives at the time? Never happened. Yet the charge lives, especially in the radical Tea Party signs skewering Obama. In his day, Keynes fought the socialism fearmongering by reminding supporters of classical economic theory that the rise of National Socialism in Germany prior to WWII was fueled not by big government but by mass unemployment and a failure of capitalism. Prosperity through the pursuit of full employment, Keynes argued, was the best way to achieve an independent citizenry and assure them of a vibrant democracy.

Today, Keynes would tell us the do-nothing right-wingers are creating an environment where the socialist threat they profess to abhor could rear its ugly head in the months ahead if nothing is done to address the jobs issue and growing earnings inequity between the very rich and the rest of our wage earners. In other words, Keynes today would say government, in doing nothing, is the problem, and would warn that a swing toward social anarchy not unlike the one in pre-WWII Germany is a distinct possibility unless our government takes an active role in turning around the jobless recovery of 2011.

Jail the Criminal Money Men

Put Them in Prison: A poster I dreamed up calls for investigation, prosecution, conviction and jail time for financial destruction CEOs of Wall Street and mortgage companies who have thrown us into a great recession. Courage!

Taxes Double for the 99%

Facts behind Occupy Wall Street: This graph shows the results of Republican success in slashing the tax rates for the rich (green bars) while the 99% rates have doubled.

Truth About Obama Job Creation

Obama Job Record vs. Bush: Republicans who oppose President Obama's jobs bill keep repeating a lie that his first stimulus "didn't create a single job." Well, here's another fact check that begs to differ. The chart shows that the crisis in job losses created under Bush/Cheney has been turned around by Obama/Biden. If you think otherwise, it is because a vast right-wing communications campaign keeps promoting lies and repeating them until all to many people start believing them. OWS has begun changing that radical right-wing narrative. The truth is one of the biggest threats to the Tea Party-led mendacity. OWS 99%ers, keeping America honest.

How Wage Earners Have Been Shafted

Facts behind Occupy Wall Street: This graph shows how the income of America's top 1% (red line) soared while the wages of the other 99% of Americans (blue line) lost ground for the last three decades, but particularly since 2003. This gap is the primary reason why the Occupy Wall Street movement is spreading, supported by almost 80% of Americans in a recent poll.