January 07, 2010
STOP THE INSANITY, NEWT
Even by Republican standards Newt Gringrich’s commentary in the current issue of Forbes is remarkable for its cunning and mendacity. The piece, co-written by Dan Varroney, chief operating officer of Gringrich’s political advocacy group American Solutions, is titled “Stop the Insanity.” If only the former House Speaker would heed his own advice.
In the article, which lambasts “the government’s” (code for the Obama administration) $787billion stimulus plan for providing “few or no incentives for private-sector job growth,” Gingrich relies on a favored technique of the conservative right: convoluted statistical analysis that links the plan to increases in the national debt and unemployment. “Since the first authorization of these four stimulus packages, the national debt has increased by $2.9 trillion while the unemployment rate rose to a 26-year high before backing off slightly to 10%.”
Yeah, right. And since the first authorization in February 2008 I’ve lost 10 pounds and gotten more gray hair.
But the GOP’s new math doesn’t stop there. Additional stimulus, according to Gringrich and Varroney, would not create jobs but instead “lead to even higher budget deficits.” Real job creation, they contend, should start “with the goal of a balanced budget” — and (though not mentioning him by name) a return to the fiscal discipline not seen in government since the Democratic administration of President Bill Clinton! “From 1995 to 1998 federal spending rose by an average of 2.9% per year, the lowest increase since the 1920s. We can apply the same principles that worked at that time to create jobs and balanced budgets.” In a delicious bit of irony, their call for financial sobriety amounts to a repudiation of Republicans’ Reagan-era spendthrift policies, which were trumpeted in 2002 by then-Vice President Dick Cheney: “Reagan proved that deficits don’t matter.”
Predictably, Newt’s plan for rebuilding American jobs and business calls for smaller government, less taxes and more domestic oil drilling. Just what you would expect from a revolving-door Washington insider who “pulled in an impressive $8.1 million in the first half of 2009, a cash haul that enabled the former speaker of the House to finance a robust political operation that includes at least 17 employees,” according to Politico.com. Major contributors include oil interests and anti-labor groups such as the Workforce Fairness Institute, a business-backed group opposed to the Employee Free Choice Act.
When you know who’s bankrolling his operation, Newt’s ideas and opinions are revealed for what they really are: more of the same fake populism that sparked the recent Tea Party demonstrations against health-care reform and that Republicans will intensify in the run up to the 2010 elections.
Whether they will be able to recapture one or both houses of Congress depends on how vulnerable the public is to the non-stop propaganda coming from the right-wing media echo chamber, which now reverberates throughout the mainstream communications network with equal decibels.
Posted by Alias at January 7, 2010 12:10 PMNewt is really someone we can trust to be honest and forthright.
Posted by: Richard at January 7, 2010 10:16 PMMore stimulus, less stimulus, too little, too much, who cares? It's just the same circular argument. You're right, Newt should take his own advice and "STOP THE INSANITY."
But he won't, because he just can't help himself.
"Whether they will be able to recapture one or both houses of Congress depends on how vulnerable the public is to the non-stop propaganda coming from the right-wing media echo chamber, which now reverberates throughout the mainstream communications network with equal decibels."
People's vulnerability to propaganda is the prickly point, as it is almost impossible to combat in the current environment we're all forced to operate in.
Republicans are masters at taking advantage of loopholes in the law and manipulating the system to create vacuums in public knowledge and perception that they can then fill with their propaganda. Politicians in general, along with their cohorts in the media, are influence peddlers with access to the public ear through the media's vast communications network, whereas we, the people, can only preach to the choir, at best. Our voices of dissent are never heard by those who have the power to enact real change. They're too invested in maintaining power itself.
Access to the people, by the people, or lack thereof, is the problem that has to be remedied, and this has to be done through the Net, in a network designed to work on a geographic basis. Unrecognized as it may be at this point, I believe local-based "people" networks are the new frontier.
The ability to speak to our neighbors across the fence, so to speak, where at least one person, or a few, can hear us, a few who can be persuaded to join in a quest or mission, people with boots on the ground who can act on words, rather than merely sound them out into the void where deeds remain suspended, that is what is lacking. Until we can speak to each other, inform, debate, reason and persuade each other, to act locally, and pass it along virally within a network, where ideas can make contact with reality, mass-propaganda of all political stripes will prevail.
A case in point might be Arianna Huffington's campaign to "MOve Your Money" from the "too-big to-fail" banks to small local community banks. This is a brilliant idea and is gaining some traction in the blogosphere and social media. People are tired of talking. They're desperate to act, they want to make a difference. They want something to change. If Arianna's idea goes viral it might send a message, expressing public anger, but it is unlikely to shut down the big banks nationwide, since they really don't care that some people are angry, as long as most remain passively in their grip.
Think of what could be done, however, if people had access to each other in their local community, where they could persuade each other to move their money from let's say one Chase branch to a local community bank up the block. Shutting down one branch would make big news, and potentially have a ripple effect nationwide.
Thomas Jefferson said "Democracy is impractical outside of a town." I don't think he was arguing for provincialism, he was speaking about a practical reality that is as true now as it was then. While the buzzword is "too big to fail," the reality is that everything is just too big to exist without artificial efforts to prop these institutions up. The banks, the state of California, the Federal government, big multinational corporations, big media, are all bloated in size, over leveraged, top heavy, and essentially out of the reach of ordinary citizens (just how they want it). Most of the problems we're faced with really revolve around questions of scale.
The solution for us (the people) is to scale down and demassify our society. Don't look to politicians or venture capitalists to do this. They are inherently married to large scale operations. It's a system that was engineered by 19th century industrialists to keep power and profits in the hands of the few. No, we have to do this ourselves, from the bottom up. Once we do, the likes of Newt and their specious arguments won't matter. They won't even be heard. We'll all be too involved and attuned to listening to each other and acting together, to waste our time on useless partisan rhetoric.
The Net is our power tool. We only have to develop more efficient ways to use it to unleash the "power of the people."
Say no to Newt and yes to the Net.
I like it.
Politics is local!