Since we’re asking rhetorical questions of ill-defined groups of people, i have a few for conservative-land…

Question 1: If we’re to be so afraid of creeping socialism, how come nobody in conservative-land is complaining about the redistribution of individual wealth through the state for the benefit of the military industrial complex? It sure looks like we could cut close to $1 trillion in taxes every year if we weren’t supporting big government Pentagon mismanagement.

Question 2: How come when i visit conservative-land i hear so much about the philosophy of Ayn Rand, but nobody ever talks about her near-militant atheism? She said that the non-existence of God is self evident, and i find it difficult to reconcile her philosophy of extreme individualism with any belief in a higher power. What gives with the picking and the choosing?

Question 3: Why does conservative-land insist on conflating corporatism with capitalism?

Question 4: If conservative-land is so big on free markets, why is it for locking up non-violent participants in the drug market and pouring billions into constraining that market?

Question 5: What exactly are conservatives conserving?

Preemptive Calling of Bullshit: Don’t tell me that it’s about “values” or any derivation of “God, mom and apple pie”.

This was not founded as a Christian nation. It was founded by a bunch of Masons back when Masons weren’t “everyday people” who took care of the gas money for the Shriners’ awesome little cars. They considered themselves heirs to a secret wisdom going back to at least ancient Egypt, and they were serious about it. The only mention of religion in the Constitution is to guard against it, and in the Declaration of Independence Jefferson choose “their Creator” rather than “God”. He could have just written God and everyone would have understood, but he didn’t, did he?

No, don’t give me the Pilgrims bullshit story either. They weren’t persecuted in England. The English got tired of the Puritans running the country like a 17th century, Christian Taliban and took their political power away. The English went back to dancing and celebrating Christmas, and the Puritans left to build their holy land in the New World. They weren’t alone in the wilderness either. Those banks have been fished by Europeans for a long time. The fishermen didn’t help them because the Puritans were self-righteous assholes. Our Masonic founders were trying to protect us from them, deal with it.

I’m pretty sure that darkies, Mexicans, homos, Muslims and commies have moms too.

Apples weren’t wholesome until the temperance movement. Johnny Appleseed was a capitalist paragon, staying two seasons ahead of the settling movement. Not only would he claim the choicest bit of land in a likely location, he would plant apple seeds. Apples don’t come true from seed (every Macintosh you’ve ever eaten is genetically identical to every other Macintosh on the planet). The chances of getting an eating apple from a bag of seeds are about the same as winning the lottery. All those apple trees that Johnny sold were used to make cider, which, with no processing beyond setting up, becomes booze in a short amount of time. Johnny was a drug king-pin and his apples were the scourge of good, Christian society.

So spare me all that. I’m conservative enough to believe that bullshit shouldn’t be worshiped but rather composted and spread on the field to grow more grass to feed the cows that i’ll eat as steaks.

Question 6: My visits to conservative-land have indicated that a good many people their realized that Bush was a fraud during his first term. So tell me, why the fuck did you all vote for him again?

No, you can’t turn that last one around on me. I’ll admit to voting for Obama, but i never would have done it if conservative-land hadn’t nominated a crazy old man with a history of treasonous behavior and health problems backed up by Sarah Palin. What fucking choice did i have?

But i’ll tell you this, with Isis as my witness, barring a massive and unlikely turn by the Obama administration, i won’t be voting for him again. This was the Dems last chance with me, and they blew it.

I don’t speak for liberal-land. I don’t want to speak for liberal-land. I speak for my own cranky, misanthropic damned self. As far as i’m concerned, if you managed to unite mainstream liberal and conservative-lands into one big happy family, it still wouldn’t be able to pour piss out of a boot with the instructions written on the heel. I’ve been plenty critical of Obama, so you can drop the “partisan attack” cry and answer my questions.

Bonus Question: Exactly when will conservative-land start opting out of all the socialism run amok and quit cashing social security, medicaid, disability checks, etc?

Bonus Question 2: For eight long years we were all told to respect the office of the Presidency while the President’s godless, Trotskyite advisers took away our civil liberties, started wars at every opportunity and used the Constitution to wipe their collective asses. So tell me, how does conservative-land now feel it’s right and proper to argue for military coups, impeachment and assassination?

For a second, let’s set aside any arguments over whether or not Rowling’s work merits such a lofty honor and do something that we simply don’t do enough these days. Let’s dig beneath the surface silliness and examine the deeper implications of what this revelation really means.

Put simply, would you be worried about “encouraging” something you didn’t think was possible? It’s one thing to want to discourage, say, meth use or binge drinking or texting while driving or unprotected sex. Those things are real and they have real, observable consequences. If Rowling’s books were encouraging angel-dust-fueled arson sprees, we’d all be advised to support the former president and his merry band of loco parentis.

But did they see witchcraft as real? (Sure, practitioners of Wicca and other neo-paganisms indulge in the craft, but for a variety of reasons I think we have to assume that’s not what Bush was concerned with. After all, Rowling doesn’t talk about real-world Wicca, and real-world Wiccans don’t fly through the skies of London terrorizing the Mugglery. Whatever the real world’s witches may or may no be up to, it has so far proven very unHollywood-worthy.)

So, do we then conclude that President Bush and his cronies wanted to discourage children from learning how to change each other into rats? From flying around on brooms? From trying to outwit dragons? From teleporting via fireplaces? From sneaking around under invisibility capes?

Certainly these are the sorts of things that we’d want to keep our children away from, I suppose. But while Dubya may have resisted the corrosive effects of education, there are rules of logic and he is not magically immune to them. By definition, one wouldn’t actively discourage children from something that was in fact impossible. Not unless one were absolutely barking, anyway. It might theoretically be dangerous for young children to attack the Xyrxalian Star Fleet on Pegasus-back, for instance, but you don’t recall any Executive admonitions on the subject, do you?

Still, let’s remember, the Bible says that witches are real. Former Alaska governor and vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin consulted freely with a witchbusting “minister.” The shenanigans at Hogwarts are barely more outlandish than some of what went on in the White House when Nancy Reagan, wife of Bush’s intellectual hero Ronald Reagan, was in residence.

And we’re talking about a man who believes that God commanded him to run for president.

Therefore, I believe we have every reason to believe that our former president did, in fact, view the kinds of powers imagined by Rowling in her best-selling series to be plausible.

Since this is America, we have to respect his faith.

Q: Let’s say you’re sick with a potentially deadly disease. Who do you want for a doctor?
A: The smartest, most experienced and highly qualified expert in the field.

Q: You’re looking to invest your life savings. Who do you trust to handle your money?
A: The brightest, most agile financial mind I can find.

Q: You’ve been selected to participate in a “private citizens in space” program. Who do you want in charge of building the rocket?
A: The most brilliant and reliable engineers in the nation.

So far, so good. One more.

Q: You live in a time of unimaginable complexity and danger. Who do want to be the leader of the free world?
A: Somebody I can have a beer with. You know, a regular guy, a Joe Sixpack.

It’s said that people tend to get the leaders they deserve, and I can’t imagine better proof than the United States. At present we’re watching as a new president attempts to arm-tackle an array of national political and economic crises of evil supervillain jailbreak proportions, and at this early stage it’s far from clear that he’s Rushmore-bound.

• He may or may not get health care reform passed, and if he does it may or may not be as comprehensive as the programs pursued by previous arch-progressives Richard Nixon and Dwight Eisenhower.
• He may or may not bog us down in a vastly expanded quagmire in Afghanistan, although at present only an idiot would bet on him meeting his campaign promises regarding getting the heck out of Iraq.
• He may or may not decide to honor the pledges he made to the gay community.
• He may or may not spearhead a green revolution that saves the species from itself.
• And his economic policies may boost us to new, unprecedented levels of universal prosperity. Or they may plummet us nards-first into a meat grinder of a global recession so epic it will make the Great Depression look like a weekend in the Hamptons.

So the jury is still out on Mr. Obama. But… While past performance is no guarantee of future results, there’s also that thing about those who don’t understand history being doomed to repeat it. And America’s history of electing dolts, buffoons, scoundrels, knaves, low-jackers, pig-fuckers, gomers, dog-whistlers, Kloset Klansmen, recidivists and sheep pimps to the Highest Elected Office in the Land does not make one optimistic about the prospects for Barackapalooza. I’d love to be wrong, but let’s be honest. An indicator that can pick a loser 100% of the time is every bit as valuable to the shrewd investor as one that always picks the winner, and the Electoral College is as reliable a Finger of Doom as the world has ever seen.

Let’s review, shall we?

George W. Bush: Worst president ever? Dumbest president ever? Hard to say for certain, although put me down for “hell, yes.” The nation apparently elected a string of semi-housebroken wombats in the 1800s, and contemporary polling feels obliged, in the name of “balance,” to humor the estimations of conservative “scholars” who rate him the sixth-best ever. For my money, that opinion alone is sufficient for the credentialing institution to revoke the PhD, but such is the price we pay for the privilege of living in an society that not only tolerates fools gladly, it gives them television shows.

Bill Clinton: In so many ways, Clinton was the archetypal president of our age. He was the distilled, undiluted essence of the modern political animal. He was like everything in Washington, only moreso. And I don’t mean that in the good way.

Bubba may not be the man who invented the Republican wing of the Democratic Party, but he was damned sure the one who established it as the only wing that mattered. The irony, of course, was that he was reviled by the GOP. I’ve always wondered if the source of that rage was that Clinton was a better Republican than they were.

In addition, he cheapened the office at every turn: whether renting out the Lincoln Bedroom to the highest bidder, pardoning Marc Rich or “hiking the Appalachian Trail” like mink freebasing Viagra, it seemed as though his every action left us feeling the need for a shower. From the poor house to the penthouse to the whore house, we’ve never seen anything like him. God willing, we never will again.

George HW Bush: It’s still hard to fathom how this mealy-mouthed little wimp stumbled into the White House. All the Democrats had to do in 1988 was find a candidate with a pulse. Instead, they trotted out Mike Dukakis, a man with all the charisma and passion of an accountant on a phenobarbital drip.

Bush the Elder was the latest incarnation of an established and thoroughly corrupt dynasty, and between him and his fuckwit kids there is no better argument, could be no better argument, in favor of a 100% inheritance tax. If they’d had to earn anything on their own merit their only entree into a country club would be as assistant assistant assistant greenskeepers reporting to Carl Spackler at Bushwood.

Ronald Reagan: Wow. Where to start. Back in the 1960s Marshall McLuhan, in writing about where television was taking the culture, predicted Reagan in terms so accurate that you’d think you were reading a history instead of a precognition. The only thing missing was the name and home address. The failing in McLuhan’s analysis, if there was one, was this: as cynical as he was, the reality turned out to be even worse than he feared.

Ronnie was as anti-intellectual a leader as we could have imagined prior to Dubya. A man who somehow managed to remain immensely popular despite the fact that most Americans disagreed with his policies. One of the most corrupt collections of advisors, staffers and appointees in history. And the man who represented the grand triumph of years and years of scheming by wealthy conservatives bent on by god rolling the rich-poor gap back to feudal levels. An intellectually void, amoral cesspool of a human being who will nonetheless go down as one of our “great” presidents.

Jimmy Carter: Carter has the distinction of being one of the very few politicians that Hunter Thompson ever said anything nice about, and his record since leaving the White House has made clear what an outstanding statesman and humanitarian Carter really is. History will not mark him down as the most adept practitioner of the presidential arts, however, and for those who bemoan the erosion of the line between church and state, let’s remember just how very publicly Baptist Jimmy was. Now, thanks in part to him, we’ll never get the smell of the fundamentalists out of the furniture. (Which reminds me – Phish is playing four dates at Red Rocks, so those of us who live in downtown Denver are hoping the wind isn’t blowing straight west-to-east for the next few days.)

Gerald Ford: Nice enough guy, seemed like. For a politician and all. But he wasn’t ever elected.

Richard Nixon: Please tell me we don’t really need to talk about this one.

Lyndon Johnson: Ever heard of Vietnam? It’s hard to recall the last time somebody took an idea so bad and managed to make it even worse. He does get credit for important civil rights legislation, at least.

Still, in the final analysis he was a president from Texas with a lust for illicit, unwinnable wars. If that reminds you of somebody else, don’t blame me. I’m just reporting the facts.

John F. Kennedy: He invaded Cuba, and once the troops started landing he changed his mind. He nearly got us into a hot nukular shooting war. Then there was that Vietnam thing – he and LBJ can share this honor. Marilyn Monroe was either a plus or a minus, depending on where you stand with respect to the marital infidelity issue.

Ultimately, though, the only thing that saved his legacy was death. Had he lived to serve out his term(s) he’d be judged today based on his record, which falls somewhat short of the legend.

So, when was the last time America elected a president it could be proud of? By today’s standards Ike isn’t looking bad at all, and his two predecessors, FDR and Truman, also score high marks.

If you look at that chart in the link above, it seems like maybe the country’s ability to elect somebody half decent runs in cycles.

Let’s hope that’s the case, and that the wheel is turning back in our direction. Because damn, America is due.

These 27 nominees contributed $144,431 to President Obama and $57,900 to once-rival and now Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, reports the center. They have bundled (collected, as middleman, donations from others) at least $5 million for the president’s campaign and at least $1,782,500 for the president’s inauguration.

The president’s most recent nominee as ambassador to Germany, former Democratic National Committee finance chair and former Goldman Sachs executive Philip D. Murphy, and his wife “have contributed nearly $1.5 million to federal candidates, committees and parties since 1989, with 94 percent of that sum going to Democrats, according to a Center for Responsive Politics analysis. They also contributed an additional $100,000 to Obama’s inauguration committee.”

But this isn’t the real news. According to figures kept by the American Foreign Service Association, President Obama is making political patronage nominations to ambassadorships at twice the rate of the previous nine presidents.

The president has made 59 ambassadorial nominations as of July 1, according to American Foreign Service Association records — 35 are political nominees (1 confirmed, 19 nominated, 2 announced, 2 rumored); 24 are career Foreign Service nominees (4 confirmed, 21 nominated, 4 announced, 6 rumored).

According to the association, 110 of the current 175 ambassadorships are filled by career Foreign Service professionals (63 percent) and 45 by political nominees (nearly 26 percent). So far, the president’s record on nominations is reversing that ratio.

About 60 percent of President Obama’s ambassadorial choices so far, according to the association’s data, have been non-career, or political patronage, nominations. That’s nearly twice the average percentage of political nominees in previous administrations. The 40-year average, from presidents Kennedy to Clinton, for nominees is 30 percent political patronage and 70 percent career Foreign Service, according to the association.

Even President George W. Bush, who led the previous nine presidents in political patronage through ambassadorships, made only 36 percent of his 370 ambassadorial nominations political.

In its “Statement on Ambassadors,” the association argues:

The primary authority for choosing Ambassadors rests with the President, and the United States has a long tradition of public service by private citizens. This is appropriate and valuable, and private citizens should continue to serve in the diplomatic field. However, the value of this tradition of public service is undermined when individuals are chosen as ambassadors primarily for the size of their contributions to political campaigns, or for their personal friendship with the President. [emphasis added]

Twelve days before he took office, President Obama said:

I want to recruit young people into the State Department to feel that this is a career track that they can be on for the long term. And so, you know, my expectation is that high quality civil servants are going to be rewarded. You know, are there going to be political appointees to ambassadorships? There probably will be some. [emphasis added]

So far, some is an understatement. If the president continues to nominate political loyalists and fundraisers at this early rate, he’ll easily surpass President Bush’s 36 percent rate of political nominees. Perhaps the Senate, which must confirm nominees, should take note of this trend.

It’s been entertaining watching American public “discourse” since the election. (I use that word in its broadest, most ridiculous sense, since nothing that hinges so completely on self-absorption, rank ignorance and pathological dishonesty can be accurately characterized by such a noble word. But indulge me. I’ve been working on my irony lately.)

On the one hand you have conservatives fainting dead away that we’re now in the clutches of a “socialist” president. Never mind that these folks wouldn’t know a real socialist if he was gnawing their balls off. Never mind that most of these folks think “socialist” is the French word for Negro. Never mind that Obama demonstrably is to socialism what Joe the Plumber is to brie-sucking Northeastern intellectualism. As arch-conservative TV pundit Stephen Colbert says, “this is a fact-free zone.”

On the other you have the righteous outrage of the progressosphere, which feels six different kinds of betrayed by a president who promised them the moon and stars and has now left them to what looks like at least a four-year walk of shame. If I might borrow from an old fraternity joke, imagine the following scene from the Oval Office:

Barack: Hey everybody, what’s the difference between a progressive and a toilet?
Rahm: I give up, Mr. President.
Barack: The toilet doesn’t follow you around after you use it.
[Entire Cabinet]: HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!

A few days ago Chris Bowers, one of the progressive blogosphere’s smarter and more influential voices, announced that he was becoming a conservative Democrat. His reasoning was compelling. Let me sample a bit for you (and encourage you to go read the rest as soon as you’re done here).

You can “endorse someone other than a Democrat for President, and then have the Democratic leadership do whatever it takes” to keep you in the Party. “You get ten times the media mentions that one gets being a progressive.” You get “more money, too. You can proclaim that you are a conservative Democrat, and still have small, progressive, grassroots donors be by far your top contributors.” You can “hold up, water down, and threaten whatever Democratic legislation you want” with no consequences at all. “You get frequent meetings with the President and proclamations that he is one of your own.” If you bitch about it you get “threats about never hearing from the White House again.” You’re “far more likely to receive a major cabinet appointment. Not even counting the Republicans, New Democrats outnumber Progressives in President Obama’s cabinet by 7-1.” And that’s not nearly all.

Okay, so maybe Bowers isn’t really abandoning his fellow progressives. Maybe he was just being a smart-ass to make a point. I can’t say I approve of such tactics, but hey, my old pal Jonathan Swift was known for the occasional snark, so who am I to judge?

The point is that progressives have a beef with the new fauxcialist administration, and regardless of what you think about their issues, their analysis or their personal hygiene, a review of the facts certainly justifies their pique. Think about it.

• Obama the Campaigning Man was pretty clear in his disdain for the Defense of Marriage Act. Obama the President has apparently decided that gay rights can wait. (Don’t Ask Don’t Tell? Don’t bother.)
• Candidate Obama was balls-to-the-wall about greening the economy, and I mean yesterday. President Obama, whose favorability rating is running better than 2-1 for, seemed unable or unwilling to expend some of that political capital on the just passed ACES bill, which many experts think will accomplish diddley (or worse). (Again, whatever the eventual reality about this bill turns out to be is irrelevant – the point is that Obama did not act in accordance with the more progressive stance he had taken earlier.)
• And what about health care? A recent New York Times/CBS News poll showed overwhelming support for “a government administered health insurance plan like Medicare that would compete with private health insurance plans.” How overwhelming, you ask? Overall 72% were in favor of the “public option,” and 57% said they’d be willing to pay higher taxes to get it. Hell, 50% of Republican respondents want it. So, you have very high approval ratings. And you certainly have a significantly greater mandate than George the Conqueror did after nipping John Kerry in 2004. You have significant majorities in both houses of Congress. You have overwhelming popular support for a public option. And you can’t get it done? Seriously?

I’m sitting here trying to figure out why corporate America, which would stand to benefit tremendously from having the burden of insuring the citizenry lifted from its shoulders, isn’t in open revolt. (That part of corporate America that doesn’t include the insurance industry, I mean.)

It has been observed that the Republicans seem to be more effective with a minority than the Dems are when they have the entire country by the balls. GOPpers derail the train by threatening a filibuster, but the Democrats can’t seem to head off a bad idea with a damned-near buster-proof majority. How the hell is this possible?

This, of course, is what’s known as a “rhetorical question.” The butt-obvious answer is that the contemporary Democratic Party is not really a party, at least not in the same way that the GOP is. Instead, it’s a bizarre amalgam of progressives, “moderates,” bipartisan fetishists, “New Democrats,” DINOs and opportunistic Republicans (see Specter, Arlen). The median at present lies significantly to the right of Richard Nixon, who despite the recent revelation that he was in favor of abortion in the case of half-breed fetuses, posted a record that would make him pretty darned progressive by 2009 standards. (Good thing you dodged that bullet, huh Mr. President?)

Ultimately, Bowers and other frustrated progressives are right. The Democratic party just isn’t that into them. They’re useful when votes are needed, but are utterly incapable of leveraging that into actual influence. As far as the “responsible” centrists are concerned, progressives are the late-date with no self-esteem, the unwitting fat chick at the pig party.

So, what to do?

Playing along isn’t working. So how about rounding up all the members of the Progressive Caucus (and their many allies around the country) and opting out? Leave the Democractic Party. Form a third party of their own (or just join the Greens). All of a sudden the Democratic Party has a numbers problem. All of a sudden they lose majority status, chairmanships, agenda-setting stroke, etc.

I’m no expert on the rules of the American legislature, so I’m sure there are nuances I’m missing. Nonetheless, I imagine the Republican wing of the Democratic Party would wet itself. And in the short term this could be very good for the GOP, which would find itself in the plurality.

Longer-term, though, it seems like the progressives can make an argument – and one that is supported by some actual evidence – that they represent the will of a goodly slice of the American public. Even better, given how the youth vote seems to be trending, they can also argue that their hand is going to strengthen over time. Are these premises accurate? Hard to say. But they are testable hypotheses, and the posit is certainly plausible enough to be worth examining.

Maybe the remaining Dems respond by making the reality of the situation official and decamping for the GOP. Maybe the Blue Dogs and the “moderate” wing of the GOP abandon those pesky snake-handlers on the right and form a new “centrist” coalition. Who knows. If that did happen, however, America would at least have the refreshing luxury of an opposition party that, you know, opposed. We could get all that corporatist DC clutter, which thrives because it dominates both parties, up for a real referendum. What a campaign hook – America vs. the Beltway.

Part of me says “what if it backfires?” But the other part of me looks at the state of the current union, at the looting of the last eight (or, depending on your taste for the long view, 29) years, at the energy way too many Americans have to devote to worrying about what happens if they get sick or injured, at the staggering cost associated with continuing to fuck around with the environment, at the fact that millions and millions and millions of citizens have no hope at all of financial solvency, at the knee-buckling stupidity of a populace that’s been victimized by a brilliantly conceived War on Education, at…. Fuck it. You get the picture.

Off your knees, progressives. The worst that happens is more of the same. At the least do us the favor of dying on your feet.

President-elect Barack Obama has pledged to change the way Washington works and curb the influence of lobbyists. … During the campaign, federal lobbyists could not contribute to or raise money for the campaign. … [T]he president-elect is taking those commitments even further by announcing the strictest, and most far reaching ethics rules of any transition team in history.”

Presumably, that means President Obama wishes to end the pay-to-play philosophy that pervades the practice of politics. Well, he’s got some explaining to do, because what he promises is not always what he does.

Case No. 1: Yes, the president said he’d nominate some of his financial backers as ambassadors. But the number’s growing. According to the Center for Responsive Politics:

President Obama announced another 10 names for ambassadorships last week, and in doing so, he awarded another set of big donors and bundlers with plum positions representing U.S. interests abroad. The new nominees for ambassadors to Belize, Belgium, Liechtenstein, Romania and Switzerland — along with their spouses and dependent children — have contributed at least $637,800 to federal candidates, parties and committees since 1989, CRP has found. Nearly that entire sum has gone to Democrats, including $32,775 to Obama himself and $8,300 to former primary opponent and now-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. These individuals also brought in at least $1.1 million for Obama’s presidential bid as bundlers, and at least another half-a-million as bundlers for his inauguration.

To date, this brings the contribution histories of Obama’s ambassador nominees to roughly $1.8 million in donations since 1989. The 19 ambassadors that CRP has found in our campaign contribution database, along with their spouses and children, have given more than $98,200 to Obama personally, bundled at least $3.4 million for his 2008 presidential run and bundled another $1.4 million for his inauguration.

Do these nominations transgress on his promise of change? Well, these people paid — and now they get to play. To be fair, however, presidents have rewarded financial backers with ambassadorships since the birth of the Republic. Let’s wait a bit and see how his record stacks up against the nomination histories of Presidents Bush I and II and Clinton. But President Obama’s nominations of financial backers are troubling in light of his promise of change.

Case No. 2: Jeff Zeleny, a White House correspondent for The New York Times, reported this earlier this week:

When President Obama arrived at the Mandarin Oriental hotel for a fund-raising reception on Thursday night, the new White House rules of political purity were in order: no lobbyists allowed.

But at the same downtown hotel on Friday morning, registered lobbyists have not only been invited to attend an issues conference with Democratic leaders, but they have also been asked to come with a $5,000 check in hand if they want to stay in good favor with the party’s House and Senate re-election committees.

The practicality of Mr. Obama’s pledge to change the ways of Washington is colliding once more with the reality of how money, influence and governance interact here. He repeatedly declared while campaigning last year that he would “not take a dime” from lobbyists or political action committees.

So to follow through with that promise, Mr. Obama is simply leaving the room. [emphasis added]

I have written about campaign finance for years. I never expected any politician, including President Obama, to live up to any promise to curb the influence of money in politics. Is he following the letter or spirit of his promise of change with regard to political money? Or has he merely developed a system of sidesteps to maintain the appearance of sticking to a promise?

Does this matter? Should we care that the president of the United States promises reform over the influence of money in politics but balks at bold, transparent steps to achieve it? Yes, on both counts.

Surely he will seek re-election. Recall, please, that presidential candidates in the 2008 cycle spent $1.8 billion. That’s more than double the $883 million presidential candidates spent in the 2004 cycle.

Is there any reason to believe — with out-of-power Republicans wanting back in and a Democratic president seeking re-election — that the cost of the 2012 election won’t be twice as high as 2008?

President Obama will need a boatload of bucks. He may philosophically wish to curb the influence of money in politics, but he will continue to be ruled by the need for the money to maintain power … as his opponents will be in their attempts to regain power.

On the president’s “Ethics” page at the White House website, this phrase is repeatedly used: “in the spirit of transparency …” So far, it’s mere fiction.

He will continue the charade of “stepping out of the room” because he needs the money. Can’t say I blame him … but I expected better.

That’s the conclusion of three University of Kansas professors who undertook an empirical analysis of the American Jobs Creation Act of 2004 to study rates of return for money spent on lobbying, reported The Washington Post in an April 12 story by Dan Eggen.

This law — this shady excuse for a law with a name only charlatans could love — allowed companies that had earned profits overseas to inexpensively bring that money back into the States. The customary tax rate on such profits was 35 percent. But this elegantly named process — repatriation of profits — gave companies a one-time chance four years ago to haul the money home, paying only 5.25 percent.

The act was a tax holiday sought by a coalition of companies, primarily big pharmaceutical and high-technology corporations, all because they sought to pay little or no taxes on profits generated overseas — and they concocted a successful scheme to pull it off.

Mr. Eggen summarized the Kansas professors’ study:

The largest recipients of tax breaks were concentrated in the pharmaceutical and technology fields, including Pfizer, Merck, Hewlett Packard, Johnson & Johnson and IBM. Pfizer alone repatriated $37 billion, representing 70 percent of its revenue in 2004, the study found. The now-beleaguered financial industry also benefited from the provision, including Citigroup, J.P. Morgan Chase, Morgan Stanley and Merrill Lynch, all of which have since received tens of billions of dollars in federal bailout money. [emphasis added]

Critics argued that the act would benefit multinational corporations to the detriment of domestic firms, reported Jonathan Weisman of the Post in August 2005. Even the Bush White House was dubious over the alleged economic benefits of the bill:

“There will be some stimulative effect because it pumps money into the economy,” said Phillip L. Swagel, a former chief of staff on President Bush’s Council of Economic Advisers, which had opposed the tax holiday. “But you might as well have taken a helicopter over 90210 [Beverly Hills] and pushed the money out the door. That would have stimulated the economy as well.”

In 2006, Washington Post business columnist Allan Sloan wrote of Ford Motor Co.’s abuse of the misnamed act:

It’s almost enough to make you laugh — bitterly, of course. Here was Ford Motor Co. announcing yesterday that it had cut 10,000 jobs last year and that it will cut up to 30,000 more. But shedding jobs at muscle-car acceleration rates didn’t stop Ford from pocketing hundreds of millions of dollars courtesy of the American Jobs Creation Act. … Hello? How can you simultaneously cut jobs and benefit from the American Jobs Creation Act? Welcome to the wonderful world of Washington nomenclature. [emphasis added]

Mr. Sloan estimated that Ford saved $850 million in taxes, not the $250 million the company suggested in its press release.

So how did corporations that don’t believe in paying their appropriate share of taxes finagle this?

Here’s one story, as reported by Mr. Eggen:

The provision was championed in part by the Homeland Investment Coalition, a group of companies and trade associations that was formed to push for the repatriation holiday. The Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA), one of the disbanded coalition’s members, said in a statement Friday that “repatriation of profits provided a new source of investment for American companies.”

“PhRMA supported the legislation four years ago as part of a broad business coalition because of the additional economic benefits the bill would provide,” senior vice president Ken Johnson said. “It meant jobs and skilled training for American workers, as well as a shot in the arm for local economies.” [emphasis added]

This coalition of multinationals had worked on getting its profits home earlier— and falsely articulated its intent regarding jobs. In 2003, seeking support for the then-named Invest in the U.S.A. Act of 2003, the coalition sent a letter to Sen. Chuck Grassley, chair of the Senate Finance Committee, and Sen. Max Baucus, ranking member. The letter said that “The $135 billion currently offshore that would be invested in America would benefit the U.S. economy by increasing domestic investment in plant, equipment, R&D and job creation” among other benefits, including investments in emerging technologies, funding for pension plans hurt by stock market declines, and, especially:

“[i]mproving the long term financial strength of U.S.-based companies by reducing domestic debt loads, strengthening corporate balance sheets, and lowering corporate bond rates; increasing dividends to shareholders (which can be productively redeployed); and raising equity market valuations by increasing funds available for share repurchases.”

Parse it any way you wish — creating jobs was the intended political cover for any member of Congress to sign on as a co-sponsor of the legislation.

But did the American Jobs Creation Act of 2004 actually lead to a net gain in jobs? Nope. Did it provide “a new source of investment for American companies”? Not even close. And supporters of this tax holiday tried to get another such tax break. Reported Mr. Eggen:

… the Congressional Research Service and others have since found that many companies cut jobs in the wake of the tax break and that nearly all the money was used for stock buybacks or dividends. Supporters failed in a bid to include a similar tax break in this year’s stimulus legislation, and a Senate subcommittee has launched an investigation into how companies used their tax savings under the 2004 program. [emphasis added]

Any congressional investigation lags reporting by The New York Times by four years. An August 2005 Times editorial said:

A month ago, Hewlett-Packard announced it would lay off 14,500 workers by November 2006. Meanwhile, the company is about to repatriate $14.5 billion in profits it has in overseas accounts at a measly tax of 5.25 percent — an 85 percent discount off the normal corporate rate. The cut-rate repatriation, offered by Congress to American companies that bring profits held in foreign lands home in 2005, was sold to the public as a one-shot deal to generate cash for new hiring. But as its critics warned, the tax cut is functioning instead as a handout for America’s most profitable companies.

Hewlett is just one example. Normally, the tax on a $14.5 billion repatriation would be about $5 billion. Because of the bargain rate in 2005, Hewlett expects to pay roughly $800 million. Hewlett also expects its layoffs to cost the company about $1 billion. Thus, in Hewlett’s case, the tax holiday has not only failed to create jobs, but has also more than covered the cost of cutting workers from the payroll.

Dozens of other companies are also bringing billions home with no mention of new hiring. [emphasis added]

Drug companies especially needed to bring the overseas profits home — but not, as the act’s name suggests, to create jobs. They had big financial problems looming. Patents on brand-name drugs worth billions in sales were about to expire, leading to competition by companies producing generic versions.

Upcoming patent expirations for [Pfizer] include Lipitor in 2011, ‘the little blue pill’ Viagra in 2012, and the allergy medicine Zyrtec in 2012 as well. The loss of these patents would see Pfizer losing more than $14 billion in revenue. [emphasis added]

During the last six months of 2004, as the bill was manuevered successfully through Congress, the stock prices of drug companies were falling, in part because of scandals over the safety of drugs that had long been approved by the FDA. For example, government regulators said Merck & Co.’s arthritis drug Vioxx may have led to more than 27,000 heart attacks and sudden cardiac deaths before it was pulled from the market in October 2004.That happened just two weeks before the American Jobs Creation Act was signed into law by President Bush. Merck badly needed its overseas profits, if only to deal with what might be a litigation bill of $10 billion to $15 billion.

Merck, like other companies, also had developed what Motley Fool columnist Robert Steyer in February called

a version of Pfizer’s “Lipitor disease” — a best-selling drug with limited remaining patent life accounting for a huge percentage of revenue:
• Merck lost protection on Fosamax early last year.
• Merck is seeing protection disappear by 2012 on the two drugs that made up 40 percent of revenue through the first nine months of 2008 — Cozaar/Hyzaar and Singulair.
• Bristol-Myers’ Plavix, creating 27 percent of 2008 revenue, gets chopped in 2011.
• Lilly’s Zyprexa, bringing in 23 percent of last year’s revenue, is also done for in 2011.

Big Pharma knew long before 2004 it needed to get every last dollar of overseas profits back into the States — at the lowest tax rate possible. It had to shore up declining revenues and dividends to stockholders — and to fuel big mergers, which it saw as the best cure for Lipitor disease.

But job creation? Merely a fig leaf for public consumption to make this tax holiday palatable to politicians. Jobs were lost, not created.

By August 2007, as the AP graphic shows, pharmaceutical companies had announced thousands of jobs cuts just two years after the repatriation of overseas profits.

Four years ago, Mr. Weisman of the Post reported others were lining up at the tax-break trough:

Procter & Gamble Co. intends to bring home $10.7 billion, and Johnson & Johnson Inc. has an $11 billion plan. Schering-Plough Corp. could bring back $9 billion. This week, Hewlett-Packard Co. announced it will repatriate $14.5 billion in the second half of the year, mainly for “strategic acquisitions,” said Ryan Donovan, an HP spokesman.

Strategic acquisitions made possible by a jobs creation act? More than 800 companies took advantage of the tax break.

Here’s another way to examine passage of the 2004 act. Cui bono politically?

Apparently, the congressional sponsor and 40 co-sponsors did. Let’s look at how just one member of the coalition — the pharmaceutical industry — sought to influence members of Congress through donations to their campaigns.

The Ways and Means Committee, by constitutional fiat, is the chief tax-writing committee of the House of Representatives. The 2004 bill was primarily a creation of the House.

Former congressman Bill Thomas (R-Calif) served as chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee during the run-up to the bill’s passage. He’s listed as the prime House sponsor of the American Jobs Creation Act. During his congressional career, the pharmaceutical industry gave his campaign more than $407,000.

The bill had 40 sponsors. All but one were Republicans. A review of the campaign contributions records of these 40 men and women aggregated by the Center for Responsive Politics showed that since 1998, the pharmaceutical industry has given their campaign committees $4.49 million. Of those 40 co-sponsors, 14 served on the Ways and Means Committee: They have received, since 1998, $2.5 million from Big Pharma.

Recall that, thanks to the act’s tax break, Pfizer repatriated $37 billion.

Former Rep. Nancy L. Johnson, Democrat of Connecticut (where drug-maker Pfizer has a significant research and development presence), received more than $692,000 from Big Pharma between 1998 and her departure from office. She is now a senior public policy adviser (er, lobbyist) for Baker, Donelson, Bearman, Caldwell & Berkowitz and serves on the Pfizer U.S. Health Advisory Board.

The bill had no serious opposition in Congress. The Senate voted 69-17 on the bill; The House, 207-16. Their acquiesance allowed an average rate of return of 22,000 percent for the corporations who lobbied for this bill, say the Kansas professors.

If $1 invested in lobbying earns a $220 return, as the Kansas study suggests, then the pharmaceutical industry has invested, for the 41 sponsors and co-sponsors of the American Jobs Creation Act of 2004, about $4.5 million. That’s a return of $990 million. That’s pretty good ROI for buying only 7 percent of the members of Congress.

WASHINGTON (CNN) – Coming soon to a battleground state near you: a new effort to revive the image of the Republican Party and to counter President Obama’s characterization of Republicans as “the party of ‘no.’”

CNN has learned that the new initiative, called the National Council for a New America, will be announced Thursday.

It will involve an outreach by an interesting mix of GOP officials, ranging from 2008 Republican presidential nominee John McCain to Jeb Bush, the former Florida governor and the younger brother of the man many Republicans blame for the party’s battered brand: former President George W. Bush.
…
“However, this is not a Republican-only forum,” reads the letter announcing the new effort, a copy of which was obtained by CNN from Republican sources involved in the effort. “While we will be guided by our principles of freedom and security, we will seek to include more than just our ideas.

“This forum will include a wide open policy debate that every American can feel free to participate in,” the announcement letter reads. “We do this not just to offer an alternative point of view or to be disagreeable. Instead, we want to ask the American people what their hopes and dreams are. Since January, the President and the Democratic Majority in Congress have – rightfully so – put forward their plan for the future, now we must listen, learn and lead through an honest, open conversation with the American people that will result in building policy proposals that will yield the best results for our nation’s long-term success.”

“Rebranding” is a term we seem to hear more and more of these days, and as a guy who works in marketing let me say, from the bottom of my heart, how sorry I am. Because verily, “branding” and “rebranding” are much abused terms. Worse, the people doing the abusing are usually industry “professionals” who ought to know better.

Properly understood, a brand is a real, if intangible thing. It lives in the relationship between a product/service/entity and its constituencies and it speaks to the essence of the thing these people are gathered around. Unfortunately, modern-day “branding” all too often puts the cart before the horse. Instead of lasting, credible brands that emerge from the reality of the product and the actual value that customers find in it, we instead lead with the messaging and try to tell people what the value is, irrespective of whether it reflects, even marginally, the reality of the thing being branded.

Remember “compassionate conservatism”? That was a brand, and I’ll leave it to you to draw your own conclusions about reality vs. messaging in that case.

At its best, rebranding acknowledges the need for real change. Maybe time has passed the old brand by, or maybe the old product/service/company failed in some way that destroyed trust in the brand. In any case, effective rebranding speaks to the market honestly and with humility, saying “we’re going to do things differently from now on and we invite you to be a part of it with us.”

At its worst it, changes the logo and name and carries on its merry way. As my colleague Chris Mackowski noted, “new lipstick, same pig.”

In any case, much can be learned from studying the people involved. So let’s have a look at the new faces, the change agents, driving the dawn of a new day in the Republican party:

• John McCain
• Jeb Bush
• Haley Barbour
• Bobby Jindal
• Mitt Romney
• John Boehner
• Eric Cantor
• Mike Pence
• Mitch McConnell
• Jon Kyl
• Lamar Alexander

Errrm, meet the new boss, same as the old boss?

So, how optimistic should we be about the prospects for change here? We can ask ourselves a couple of basic questions, I suppose.

• Have these people, since the inauguration of Barack Obama, acted in ways that suggest new directions and vision, or have they dug in their heels and acted precisely as the past 30 years have taught us to expect Republican leaders to act?
• Given what we know of these men, is it more plausible to believe that they’re genuinely interested in changing the party’s reality or that they’re more interested in changing the party’s image?
• Do they want a different and better reality for all Americans or do they want Americans to continue doing their part to assure the continuation of the same power elite-driven hegemony that brought us to our current state?

We’ll know the GOP has really “rebranded” when we see action demonstrating that there’s been a fundamental shift in the party’s values. Show, boys, don’t tell.

Until then all we got is a press event. Pardon me while I go round up the usual suspects.

_____________

UPDATE: Apparently Sarah Palin was invited to join the dog/pony show but never responded.

Darnit.

We do not want this war, this violence, and we’re ashamed that the President of the United States is from Texas. – Natalie Maines

I don’t even know the Dixie Chicks, but I find it an insult for all the men and women who fought and died in past wars when almost the majority of America jumped down their throats for voicing an opinion. It was like a verbal witch-hunt and lynching. – Merle Haggard

Last night over dinner the subject of The Dixie Chicks came up, and I got mad all over again. Which is unfortunate, because when you think about artists that talented the last thing on your mind ought to be anger. But still, it’s been six long years now since “the top of the world came crashing down,” and I can’t quite free myself of my rage at the staggering ignorance that led so many Americans to piss on the 1st Amendment by attempting to destroy the careers of Natalie Maines, Martie Maguire and Emily Robinson. Frankly, I don’t know how Natalie can make it through a performance of “The Long Way Around” or “Not Ready to Make Nice” because I can barely listen to the songs without wanting to take a folding chair to every goddamned corporate radio executive and program director in America responsible for driving them from the airwaves.

No doubt that this makes me a lesser man than I should be. I can’t imagine that the Chicks would approve of my violent impulses (which, I have to admit, are a little too literal for my own comfort), given the grace with which they have navigated the turbulence surrounding their lives in recent years. In truth, they haven’t taken the long way around so much as they have taken the high road, and I regret that I’m not quite worthy of the example they have set for those of us trying to lead civilized lives in the midst of so much willful ignorance.

In recognition of their willingness to risk their careers speaking truth to power and for their courage in facing the backlash (which included death threats, let’s remember) that’s all too frequently aimed at uppity women in the less advanced corners of our nation, Scholars & Rogues is proud to honor The Dixie Chicks as our latest Scrogues and accord them a place in our masthead of fame.

And, if it isn’t obvious, then I’ll apologize in advance for not being up to the standards that Natalie, Martie and Emily have set. They’re not to blame for my tribute to them.

What Did the War on The Dixie Chicks Teach Us About Our Freedoms?

Some time back I read a story in the international press about the rise of fundamentalist Islam in one of Europe’s leading nations – I believe it was the Netherlands, but can’t recall for certain. They’re apparently facing the prospect that one day this minority could grow to the point where it could go to the polls and, using the legitimate engines of the democratic system available to it, vote to eradicate the nation’s religious freedoms. A politician was asked what should be done in this case. His answer was that nothing should be done – it must be allowed, since it would be the result of a democratic process.

Quite a conundrum, that. What to do when democracy is used to dispose of democracy? Obviously America is under no immediate threat from organized Islamist voters, but we do have our own Christian Taliban problem, don’t we? What should we, here in the Land of the Free^®, think about those who do not value actual freedom of religion? How many Americans would we send off to die to preserve the free speech rights of those who’d squelch the free speech rights of their fellow citizens? What should a true patriot do when confronted with the reality that the tools of liberty are being used against Lady Liberty herself?

My own code of ethics has always said that you cannot allow a barbarian to use your civilization as a weapon against you. A man who insists on fighting according to a set of honorable rules while his opponent is using a tire iron to liquefy his testicles deserves what happens to him. In my angrier moments I’ve said that no, you don’t fight fire with fire. You fight fire with a flamethrower.

But that’s just me, and you’ll recall from earlier that I’m perhaps not to be taken as a role model. Still, we do live in a nation with many who do not share our respect for Constitutional freedoms. Exactly how many I can’t say, but I feel comfortable with “millions and millions.” It’s certain that without such people we’d not have had to endure eight years of Bush/Cheney thuggery.

I’m Not Ready to Make Nice

I made my bed and I sleep like a baby
With no regrets and I don’t mind sayin’
It’s a sad sad story when a mother will teach her
Daughter that she ought to hate a perfect stranger
And how in the world can the words that I said
Send somebody so over the edge
That they’d write me a letter
Sayin’ that I better shut up and sing
Or my life will be over

I’m not ready to make nice
I’m not ready to back down
I’m still mad as hell and
I don’t have time to go round and round and round
It’s too late to make it right
I probably wouldn’t if I could
‘Cause I’m mad as hell
Can’t bring myself to do what it is you think I should

This was the message – “shut up and sing.” You’re not being paid to think, you mouthy little bitches, you’re being paid to entertain us. Now dance, girlies. God Bless America.

History will validate, with a minimum of controversy, the sentiments Natalie Maines expressed at the Shepherd’s Bush Empire theatre on March 10, 2003. Hopefully the record will point to our present moment and note that already the momentum had shifted and that within a generation people would have an impossible time imagining how such an affront to freedom was ever possible. Hopefully.

For the time being, “mad as hell” doesn’t begin to describe the indignation that those of us working to move this culture forward by promoting genuinely intelligent and pro-human values ought to feel, even now. I won’t tell you how to think and act, of course – you have a conscience and a brain, and you can be trusted to take in the information and perspectives around you and form an opinion that you can live by.

But for my part, I have a message for the “shut up and sing” crowd: I’m not ready to back down and I never will be. Your values are at odds with the principles upon which this nation was founded and true liberty cannot survive if your brand of flag-waving ignorance is allowed to thrive. You will not be allowed to use the freedoms that our founders fought for as weapons to stifle freedom for others.

You have declared a culture war, so here’s where the lines are drawn: I’m on the side of enlightenment, free and informed expression and the power of pro-humanist pursuits to produce a better society where we all enjoy the fruits of our shared accomplishments.

What side are you on?

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

In a perfect world, the stock market would decline another 70 or 80 percent along with the shuttering of about that fraction of our nation’s banks. Yes, unemployment would rise as hundreds of thousands of formerly well-paid brokers and bankers lost their jobs; but at least they would no longer be extracting wealth at our expense. They would need to be fed, but that would be a lot cheaper than keeping them in the luxurious conditions they’re enjoying now. Even Bernie Madoff costs us less in jail than he does on Park Avenue.

Alas, I’m not being sarcastic. If you had spent the last decade, as I have, reviewing the way a centralized economic plan ravaged the real world over the past 500 years, you would appreciate the current financial meltdown for what it is: a comeuppance. This is the sound of the other shoe dropping; it’s what happens when the chickens come home to roost; it’s justice, equilibrium reasserting itself, and ultimately a good thing. [emphasis in the original]

Lest you reflexively dismiss Rushkoff as a crackpot, let’s be clear on something – he’s a very smart and thoughtful man. Whether you ultimately choose to buy his argument or not – and I’m guessing the “nots” will carry this one handily – he’s making some important points about the house of cards we now find collapsing around us, points that we’d do well to understand as we set about picking up the pieces and rebuilding.

I want to make an observation about the article and conclude with a couple of responses.

The Army of Ludd

First the observation: Rushkoff’s position aligns him with the neo-Luddite movement, and he is not alone in advocating it.

I don’t mean “Luddite” in its commonly (mis)understood, pejorative sense – there are few words in the English language that are more frequently misrepresented. A brief history lesson illustrates the point. The original Luddites revolted against technological advances in the British textile industry from 1811 to 1816. While the term “Luddite” popularly connotes someone who is anti-technology, the actual rebellion was more critically aimed at technology which threatened the sanctity of culture (Rybczynski, Pynchon). Their reaction was not against progress per se – they themselves gladly used the newest weaving technology available, and were “interested in innovation and technical improvements to make their work easier” – but were instead opposed to the dehumanizing dislocations of the industrial economy.

At the turn of the 19th Century, factory looms were the latest innovation, and a factory job meant arriving at dawn for a 15 to 18 hour working day, and the door was locked behind you in the morning and not opened until the end of the shift. To the Luddites, the factory looms spelled the end of a way of life, of craftsmanship, of community and of family (Murphy).

From the perspective of modern-day Luddites, the “original rebels against the future” reacted against technological encroachments on the natural order of human society.

The Luddites had no objection to many technologies such as the carding engine and the spinning jack that supplemented human labour, but were not a threat to their livelihoods. By contrast, the inhuman machines that characterised the Industrial Revolution were new and different in that they were independent of nature, of geography, and season and weather, of sun, of wind, or water, or human or animal power. They not only destroyed jobs, but marked the beginning of an environmental catastrophe (Ludd).

As I was reading Rushkoff’s polemic I couldn’t help thinking about one of today’s leading neo-Luddite voices, Kirkpatrick Sale. I first encountered Sale when working on my dissertation, and his take on the Internet was scalding. For instance, in response to the popular claim that the Net would foster a stronger democracy, finally enabling a truer Jeffersonianism than was ever possible before, Sale replied that, “You can’t democratize – you can’t control – a technology that was established for other reasons.” Created for control and consumption, “This technology does not come with democracy in it” (Robin).

As it turns out, Sale has some thoughts on our current economic situation, as well. Last November, in delivering the keynote before the Manchester Convention, he invoked Thurber (“If you live as humans do, it will be the end of you”) and characterized the 2008 election as a boxing “match fought between two big palookas.”

What can you say about a system that spends nearly a billion dollars and takes two years every four years to produce two palookas to run for high office? What can you say about a system that allows that money effectively to let corporate America buy politicians of so-called “both” parties to serve at its bidding for the next term of office?

What can you say about a system that openly, blatantly proves that its politicians are craven lackeys of the financial plutocracy by having an administration that could invent and a Congress that could pass a measure that robs the public treasury of a trillion dollars, for the benefit of financiers and bankers who created the mess this money is supposed to fix ? And what can you say when that open, blatant admission of corruption, vice, graft, and evil is met by no roar of outrage, no righteous uprising, but passive acceptance by the great majority of the so-called citizenry, who go on to elect a man who thoroughly supported it?

The United States has never shown itself to be more unmanageable and incompetent, more venal and degraded, more undemocratic and ungovernable, than in the last three months.

I don’t want to put words in Rushkoff’s mouth, but I’m not hearing much here that I think he’d quibble with, especially in light of Sale’s comments just last month in Counterpunch.

We’ve got two choices. One is the Lincolnesque way that Obama seems to promise: government subsidies for the larger corporations and banks (as Lincoln pushed in his day, especially for the railroads), refurbishing of the infrastructure (ditto), nationalization of the financial system and reckless printing of currency, increased centralization of the government and its hold on the economy, continuation and expansion of warfare and the war machine (all ditto). That is a continuation of the past, and it is amazing that the nation largely does not recognize it as a recipe for continued collapse. It is in fact not sustainable, nor is the environment in which it is floundering.

The other way is to rejigger, to dismantle, the entire system.

If this all seems a bit radical to you, let’s at least acknowledge the good faith of the authors, who clearly yearn for a better, more sustainable and just way of life for us all. Let’s also acknowledge that it gets harder by the minute to refute Rushkoff’s assessment of our system: “We do not live in an economy, we live in a Ponzi scheme.”

So what went wrong? Nothing. The system worked exactly as it was supposed to.

Bernie Madoff and AIG may be the faces of the crisis as reported by the corporate media, but surely we’re all smart enough to understand that we didn’t get where we are because of them. Surely we’re intelligent enough to distinguish between the disease and a couple of symptoms.

The solution? Well, in Rushkoff’s view (shared by Sale and a great many other extremely intelligent commenters out there), Obama is making it worse, not better.

President Obama may be smarter than most of us, but he’s still attempting to rescue the very institutions that robbed us in the first place. He’s not a socialist, as conservatives may be arguing, but he is a corporatist. Using future tax dollars to fund government job programs is one thing. Using future tax dollars to give banks more money to lend out at interest is robbing from the poor to pay the rich to rob from the poor. [emphasis in the original]

So, he says, “let it die.”

The Natural Trajectory of Complex Systems

In 1995, Wired’s Kevin Kelly conducted an interview with Sale, and if ever there’s been a one-on-one between two people with more divergent views of the world, I’ve never seen it. At one point, Kelly asks Sale “why are we here? What are humans here for?” The exchange tells us a lot about Sale, and also, I would suggest, about Douglas Rushkoff.

Sale: [Pauses.] To exist.
Kelly: So, what would be a measure of a successful human culture?
Sale: That it’s able to exist in harmony with the rest of nature.

Rushkoff’s closing comments don’t herd us all back into caves, but they do, very explicitly, advocate what we might call a “simpler way of life.” I suspect a lot of us find a certain allure in this, especially now, when the dire complexities of our economic meltdown weigh heavily on us.

History, though, teaches that there’s an inexorable tendency toward more complexity in societies, and if we study what has gone before we can see a pattern: growth, increasing complexity, [something goes wrong], call for return to simpler way of life. Lather, rinse, repeat. Complexity theorists believe that Newton’s second law is countered, in some contexts (biological sciences, economics, social structures, etc.) by an as-yet-unstated law explaining the drive toward ever-higher orders of organization (Waldrop). Obviously economies are one area where we have seen an unrelenting pressure toward greater complexity, and it seems an elementary enough observation that as complexity increases, our ability to fully perceive the system in question and predict its consequences diminishes. If we add the principle of “sensitive dependence on initial conditions” – aka the “Butterfly Effect” – to the equation (which we certainly should) our inability to comprehend, predict and control very quickly becomes functionally infinite.

The problem, as I see it, isn’t the complexity of the economic system per se (although I agree that we have to be careful about what are essentially autonomous systems). Instead, it’s the political economy serving them. Put another way, what we need isn’t necessarily a simpler way of life, it’s a more pro-human set of guiding principles for the “complex adaptive system.”

I say this because idealizing some moment in a simpler past is always easy, but a close examination of that moment in context almost never reveals it to be the utopia it’s imagined to be. If we look at Rushkoff’s pre-corporate banking moment we’ll find that we knew a lot less back then about things like medicine, for instance. On the health front – infant mortality, life expectancy, succepitibility to communicable disease, and overall quality of life – we’re a lot better off than we were. This matters because economic systems don’t exist in a vacuum – without the massively complex growth in our economy, it’s likely that many other elements of our society would be closer to 1509 than 2009, as well. The small, localized economies that Rushkoff wants to return to weren’t capable of generating the massive resource pools necessary to tackle many of the large challenges we’ve overcome in the last 500 years.

We know that complex adaptive systems operate according to fundamental bottom-up rules. That is, they are not governed (at least not effectively) by lots of tinkering and commanding from on high. Instead, there are a very few fairly simple foundational principles, and in the case of our current system one of those rules driving the behavior of capital appears to be something along the lines of “seek out and remain in close proximity to other capital.” Or maybe this rule isn’t even needed, since chaos theory has taught us enough about “attractors” to know that things accumulate – especially things like money and power.

In any case, what I think Rushkoff wants is a system where the basic rules keep wealth from accumulating in too few hands, instead seeking broader and more level distribution patterns.

If you’re thinking that somewhere in the past few paragraphs this discussion got really academic, you’re probably right, because regardless of whether Rushkoff is right in what he thinks he wants or I’m right in correcting his aim, no plan currently on the table in Washington is going to arrive us in either place. And while I do regard Mr. Obama as someone acting in good faith (by politician standards), and there’s no question that he was the best of the viable options on the ballot in November, he’s certainly the corporatist that Rushkoff accuses him of being. This shouldn’t need illustration, but if it does, ask yourself whether Obama appears committed to saving and “fixing” the existing system or, as Rushkoff advises, letting it die and replacing it with something else entirely.

And now, an honest discussion of the costs

Rushkoff understands that getting from Point A – where we are now – to Point B – his ideal economy – will be hard. He acknowledges that it will be painful.

As painful as it might be to watch, and as irritating as it might be to those with shrinking retirement savings, the collapse of the centralized corporate economy is ultimately a good thing. It makes room for a real economy to rise up in its place. And while it may be temporarily uncomfortable for the rich, and even temporarily devastating for the poor, it may be the fastest and least violent way to dismantle a system set in place for the benefit of 14th Century monarchs who have long since left this earth.

There are a number of moving parts in that graf, so let’s take them one at a time. And in doing so, let’s afford him the benefit of the doubt.

…the collapse of the centralized corporate economy is ultimately a good thing. It makes room for a real economy to rise up in its place.

Perhaps. More on this in a minute.

And while it may be temporarily uncomfortable for the rich…

“Temporarily” is a prediction that we simply have no foundations for. I’ve been reading Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s The Black Swan of late, and I recommend it highly for those engaged in predicting anything about anything.

…and even temporarily devastating for the poor…

What I just said about “temporary.” Also, we’ll talk in a second about that word “devastating,” because I’d like us to walk away from this discussion clear-eyed about exactly what it means.

…it may be the fastest and least violent way to dismantle a system set in place for the benefit of 14th Century monarchs who have long since left this earth.

Yes, it “may” be. Or it may be the surest path to the most violent civil war the planet has ever witnessed.

Like a lot of people, I oscillate back and forth between my idealist and pragmatist poles. There are moments when I can be dreamier than a doe-eyed schoolgirl and other times when my cynical side would give the shivers to Machiavelli himself. As I read Rushkoff’s modest little proposal I found myself torn. The part of me that lives in Magic Wand Land recognizes the fundamental corruption that Rushkoff describes and believes passionately that we’d be better off living in an economic system that served us all. Truth be told, “Ponzi scheme” is a mild descriptor for our current hegemony, and there are lots of people who deserve worse punishment than they’re likely to get (for that matter, worse than is allowed by the 8th Amendment).

My pragamatic side can’t get past the path from Point A to Point B, though. The only term in Rushkoff’s whole essay milder than “Ponzi scheme” is “devastating.” If we “let it die,” yes, it will be hard times for “hundreds of thousands of formerly well-paid brokers and bankers.” It will also be tough on a lot of other people. For instance:

• Millions will lose their homes. And not just the millions in trouble right now. All of them and millions more.
• When the stock market declines another 70-80%, we’ll go from a nation where pensions are at risk to one where nearly no one has any retirement cushion at all. Any money that isn’t hidden under a mattress will be gone.
• Forget universal health care – good luck finding health care period. Yes, all those doctors will still exist but their practices and hospital facilities will be history. Maybe a few will be able to get out the door with something more than their little black bags, and if you know one you may be able to barter for care should you or someone in your family fall ill. If not, pray that the doc in question is a saint and isn’t worried about having to feed a family.
• And about feeding a family – if you’re not a farmer, you’re in trouble, because the whole infrastructure is going to collapse. No more supermarket – you’ll either be a farmer or a hunter-gatherer.
• Got a gun? Because you’re going to need one. When your choice is steal or die, steal is going to win a lot of times.
• It’s hard to say whether what emerges at this point is really war, because the sides may be a little fuzzy. Organized civil war is one possibility, but heavily armed neighborhood gang warfare is another.

In other words, people are going to die. Lots of people. Children are going to starve to death in the streets. Maybe your children, but if not, almost certainly the children of someone you know. And since America is so central to the global economy, let’s try not to imagine what happens in areas that are already impoverished.

If we’re lucky enough, at some point, to emerge from this holocaust, it’s pure fantasy to assert that a “real economy” is what results. It’s at least as plausible to suggest that instead we’ll wind up with a system that makes the Bush/Cheney years look like Mother Teresa at Disneyland by comparison.

Think I’m painting a dark picture here? Fine – feel free to explain how Rushkoff’s prediction is more plausible, given what you know about wealth, power and basic human nature.

The Problem with the Future

If I’m landing on Rushkoff a bit hard, I hope it’s at least clear just how much I agree with him concerning both the problems we all face and our desire for a more sustainable, equitable economy. I also applaud him for having the courage to step up and say these things in a public forum, because let’s be honest, not everybody out there is going to be willing to hear the core message. I wonder how many readers never made it past the first sentence.

However, I don’t have a magic wand and neither does he. Perhaps he believes that the price we’d have to pay to “let it die” is worth it. Maybe he’d look hard at the possibility of hundreds of millions dying – and maybe more – and still say that in the long run that would beat the alternative. There are those who argue that our planet is horrifically overpopulated and that the best thing for both it and us (”us” being the species) would be if all but a few million people were to die.

In the long term, in the macro, perhaps these things are true. But if so, and if that is in fact the argument, then let’s acknowledge the full weight of the word “devastating,” which describes the epic brutality of what would happen in terms so tame it barely qualifies as a euphemism.

Further, let’s demonstrate a little more humility about our ability to predict the future. I’ve always been pretty utilitarian, but have had to accept that doing that which will result in the greatest good is a fine goal, but it’s so afflicted with uncertainty and unknown, uncontrollable variables that it’s an impossible course, literally.

I’m sorry that I can’t offer up a solution here, because I know that would be comforting for some (and would give others an even larger target to shoot at). All I can really do is suggest that as we address our economic system, we do so with those foundational principles I mentioned earlier in mind: does a particular action serve the interests of the hyper-wealthy or does it structure the investment so that it seeks broader distribution and geater equity?

That may be all we can do.

____________
UPDATE: Since I posted this piece I’ve been contacted by someone at Arthur Mag named Jay. A quick glance at their masthead suggests that this is probably the editor, Jay Babcock, who is writing to accuse me of shamefully misrepresenting Rushkoff’s positions. (And “shameful” is his word, not mine.) There is a follow-on to the original essay, in which Rushkoff seeks to clarify his positions, I assume because the response he’s received has convinced him that people are missing the point. I recommend this piece as well as the original.

Now, to Babcock’s charge: First, I can only respond to what Rushkoff writes. If his position is somehow different from what’s in the essay, it’s hardly my fault for “missing” it.

However, I don’t think this is what’s happening. I think Rushkoff makes his case clearly and coherently and I can’t see where I have misrepresented it at all. If I have, I quote liberally and link to the original, and am glad to amend if I’ve inaccurately portrayed the intent of the essay.

Second, I think Babcock is the one who misunderstands what’s going on, and in Rushkoff’s second article I think I see the source of the confusion. There are a couple spots that illustrate. First:

For reasons I cannot understand, people seem to think that my explaining this phenomenon somehow means I want us to go back to a hunter-gatherer stage. Or that I long nostalgically for a return to a late-middle-ages lifestyle. Or that I am somehow renouncing my earlier enthusiasm for new technology and media.

Nothing of the kind.

And here:

When I say it’s okay if the Dow Jones goes down another 70 percent, I’m not calling for an apocalypse. I’m calling for the re-balancing of the speculative economy.

In both cases Rushkoff is correct. Nothing he wrote in either place suggests that he wants to return to the wilderness, nor is he hoping for an apocalypse. Instead, he has a vision of a re-balanced economy based on genuine commerce instead of a rigged game of speculation.

My reaction above makes clear that I think what he’s suggesting would cause the bad things I describe to happen, however. Not that it was Rushkoff’s intent, but rather that it could/would be an unintended result. I didn’t spend all that time talking about uncertainty, our inability to predict and the Butterfly Effect for no reason. My point is that as much as I share his sense for what our economy ought to be, and as much as I sympathize with his assessment of our current rescue policies, I do not believe that his proposed course of action – allowing the market to die, an epic crash where it loses up to 80% of its value, etc. – will get us from Point A to Point B. Or that if it does, it will do so at anything like a tolerable cost.

This, Mr. Babcock, isn’t misrepresentation. It’s a basic disagreement over implications. If you’re going to write people to harangue them about intellectual dishonesty, you’d do well to know the difference.

I have asked Babcock to show me examples of where I have misstated Rushkoff, and as of this update said examples have not arrived. If a credible response eventually does turn up in my mailbox I’ll note it and offer a reply here. ____________
UPDATE 2: It’s Sunday and the ed. at Arthur mag, as anticipated, still hasn’t stepped up to back his charge that I was misrepresenting Rushkoff’s positions. He did, however, make time to delete my comment on the post and a follow-up comment I made a few minutes ago, so his lack of response to my request isn’t because he’s taking the weekend off.

I think I may write Rushkoff directly and invite him to respond here if he so chooses. I may even go so far as to invite him to post at S&R if he likes. He hardly needs us, but we could provide him a with a marginally larger audience and an editor who knows the difference between legitimate disagreement over outcomes and intellectual dishonesty.
____________

• Ludd, Eliza & Ned. “New Luddite: Challenging the Legitimacy of Science and Technology.” November 1995. World Wide Web. February 4 1999.
• Kelly, Kevin. “Interview With the Luddite.” Wired June 1995.
• Murphy, Gary Lawrence. “Are We the Neo-Luddites?” February 1998. World Wide Web. February 4 1999.
• Pynchon, Thomas. “Is It O.K. to Be a Luddite?” New York Times Book Review October 28 1984: 1, 40-41.
• Robin, Michael. “Technology for the Coming Millennium: Progress, Technology and Society According to Kirpatrick Sale.” MicroTimes March 4 1996: 138-144, 282-284.
• Rybczynski, W. Taming the Tiger: The Struggle to Control Technology. New York: Penguin Books, 1983.
• Sale, Kirkpatrick. “Lessons From the Luddites: Setting Limits on Technology.” The Nation June 5 1995: 785+.
• Waldrop, M. Mitchell. Complexity: The Emerging Science at the Edge of Order and Chaos. Simon & Schuster, 1992.

It’s  been suggested before that Jon Stewart is perhaps America’s most trustworthy journalist. Which is nice for him, but not so good for the rest of us, because he’s not a journalist. He’s a comedian. He’s David Letterman. He’s Larry the Cable Guy. He’s Phyllis Diller. He makes his living by making people laugh.

But here he is, once again stepping up and telling truth to power in ways that seem spectacular to us. (And make no mistake – money is power in America, and media conglomerates are among power’s most critical brokers. So stomping the balls off of Jim Cramer does, in fact, constitute speaking truth to power.)

The relevant part of that last paragraph occurs toward the end of the first sentence. What Stewart did has been the talk of the entire fucking world in the last 48 hours. He, a guy with a TV show, hauled a man out into the town square who has done, by omission or commission – your choice – grave damage to countless Americans. Whether Cramer contributed to the insanity that has led us to our current economic apocalypse directly or whether his worst sin is that he did not use his platform to call out the guilty in advance, he and his employers played a noteworthy role in facilitating our financial crash. And we, the citizenry of the information-logged society in the history of the solar system, stand agog: motherfucking WOW! Did you SEE that?!

This is the tragedy. We’re as staggered at the occurrence of actual journalism as we would be by the sight of Rosie O’Donnell clubbing Donald Trump to death with her boobs. The fact that the only journalism in recent memory has emanated from Comedy Central is … well, it’s like shooting novocaine into the leg of a quadriplegic, really.

Cap and Bells

It’s never been easy – or profitable, or even safe – to speak truth to power. America circa 2009 isn’t the first place when the ordained channels have failed to convey to the people an accurate accounting of the events shaping their lives. In fact, what we’re dealing with now is more reflective of the historical rule than it is the exception.

Throughout most of history you’ve had to search for the truth about power in indirect commentaries: literature, and especially speculative genre fiction, for instance. Comedy. Art. The forms allow a person with a point of view to express it while maintaining a sheen of plausible deniability. “Oh, no, your majesty, I wasn’t writing about your munificent presence! The malevolent criminal monarch in my story is something I imagined might exist in a less just society on a planet in another galaxy.” It’s good to remember that science fiction and fantasy are never about the future or other worlds – they’re always about here and now.

And there’s the very old tradition of the fool. The jester, in his classical incarnation, was the only one in the court who could get away with telling the truth. The fact that he was a certified nutball removed enough credibility from his words that he could say serious things without being taken seriously. He was fine so long as he didn’t slip into lucidity.

Put another way, the truth has always been there if you knew where to look and understood the code. 2009 isn’t a lot different from 1009 in that respect, I imagine. There can be a price to be paid if the wrong person says the wrong thing in the wrong way. Once upon a time the price might be that your loved ones would get to watch your head being paraded around on a pike. Now the price might be something as pedestrian as losing a job opportunity or having your reputation perma-slandered by a vicious partisan noise machine. But there’s always risk, so the citizen bent on telling the truth needs to understand the context.

Clowning America

Throughout the Bush years any journalist with the temerity to act like an actual reporter paid a price. The default was loss of “access,” and that was pretty terrifying to most on the best because your ability to survive was going to be hindered if you couldn’t get anywhere near the newsmakers. This wasn’t the worst that could happen, of course. Ask Joe Wilson or that mealy-mouthed cocksucker Scott McClellan (not a journalist by any means, but a good illustration of the point) what happened when you hit the Bush/Cheney mob a little too close to home. At best, it took courage and hopefully enough cash-on-hand to sustain you through some hard times.

Clearly that wasn’t the only place where the institutions of the Fourth Estate lacked, and continue to lack, courage. As Stewart makes brutally clear in his 20 minute-plus dismemberment of Jim Cramer – a man not heretofore known for being short on words or self-confidence – finding malpractice in the field of financial journalism (my new favorite oxymoron, by the way) is about as tough as finding loose morals in a whorehouse. Think about it. You have CNBC, FOX’s biz news, the Wall Street Journal, the financial sections of hundreds of newspapers, and how many more business “news” outlets. How many of them were warning you of the things that we’re now told were more or less inevitable? (Told by some, I should say – others are still trying to say there was no way we could have predicted this. Which is bullshit – I know some very sharp people who predicted it, but they don’t have TV shows, in large part because they’re the sorts willing to tell the truth about rigged games. Maybe they should have put together an irreverent ventriloquist act or written a fantasy novel.

Media as far as they eye can see, so much media, so much “analysis,” and not a drop of journalism in sight.

It’s true that Jon Stewart isn’t the first funny guy in history to be the best available source of reliable reporting on the social, political and economic condition. But most of those places didn’t have democracies. Most didn’t have a free press. And none of them had more access to information or channels of distribution than we do.

“Journalism is no worse off now than it was during the reign of Caligula” is a true statement, but it’s not the sort of thing an advanced society should have to settle for, either.

Let’s get Jon Stewart the Peabody. Then a Pulitzer for The Onion. And why not a Nobel for the karma-obsessed lead in My Name is Earl?

If that’s the world we’re willing to accept, it’s the best we deserve.

The response? The USA PATRIOT Act. It authorized expanded powers for US intelligence and law enforcement agencies including surveillance capabilities, broadened the definition of “terrorism”, increased border security and gave the Treasury the ability to stop money laundering the world over.

But its authority is so broad that it can lend itself to abuse. It gives power to wiretap and spy on law-abiding American citizens including monitoring what they read at the library, “sneak and peek”  without a warrant, and access to medical and financial records. Plus, this large bill was being quickly pushed through Congress without giving it full consideration or even being read by those voting on it.

Now imagine if almost every Democratic member of Congress voted against the Act based on those reasons. Or perhaps they didn’t trust this new, untested administration to do what is right. Or maybe they did it to just make a point about party unity. Would there be a public outcry? Would the pundits say that the opposition party did not grasp the enormity of the situation and that in this moment of peril it is better to “shoot first and ask questions later”? With the great danger the country is in, would it be better to err on the side of giving too much power to the government to deal with the crisis than too little?

Remember your mental answers to those questions as I change the circumstances slightly.

Let’s zoom back to the present day. The national and world economies have never been in as bad shape since the Great Depression. We have been losing a half a million jobs a month since the election and now 4.81 million people collect unemployment benefits, the highest number in at least 40 years. Consumer confidence is at a 29-year low. The Dow has lost a quarter of its value since September. The financial sector has $1.17 trillion in defaulted loans on its books which lead to a 12.4% reduction in housing prices. 1 in 9 US homes are now vacant.

The response? The $787 billion economic recovery package. It offers the largest tax cut in US history,  $272 billion for the working class. $58 billion to jump-start green energy infrastructure and another $90 billion to shore up traditional infrastructure – from bridges to roads to levees and transit. There’s $100 billion to boost welfare and unemployment, $112 billion for health care in Medicare, electronic medial records and preventative care. And then there’s billions for school reconstruction, greening federal buildings, Head Start, buying foreclosed homes, and laying down broadband for the entire country.

But this is a big bill. At a heft of over 1000 pages it has the biggest price tag of any stimulus bill ever debated in Congress. And that debate didn’t include many Republicans; only the very moderate got to influence the bill significantly while the more conservative members got their ideas heard out but never implemented. But this bill is so large it would fundamentally change the size and scope of the government’s influence in American lives. And like the PATRIOT Act, this thing blazed through Congress and no one had a chance to read it all.

Now the Republicans had their equivalent of the PATRIOT Act sitting in front of them. So what would they do? What if almost every Republican member of Congress voted against the Act based on the above reasons? Or perhaps they didn’t trust this new, untested administration to do what is right. Or maybe they did it to just make a point about party unity. Would there be a public outcry? Would the pundits say that the opposition party did not grasp the enormity of the situation and that in this moment of peril it is better to “shoot first and ask questions later”? With the great danger the country is in, would it be better to err on the side of giving too much power to the government to deal with the crisis than too little?

Some might balk at equating 9/11 with the current economic crisis. But its impact and reach are very similar. There was a lot of talk about going into the depths of another Great Depression, but the institutions and foundations laid down after the Great Depression would prevent that great of a collapse. Just like there was a lot of talk about 9/11 being another Pearl Harbor, but we were then facing a coalition of highly militarized, fascist countries actively attacking America and invading its allies.   Now we are facing a small number of fanatics with light arms. You can compare the two by type but not size.

Let me put it in an SAT equation:

Pearl Harbor : 9/11 :: Great Depression : today’s major recession

Our country has faced worse in the past and it is entirely within our capabilities to deal with our present crises. And while the Democrats were willing to take on 9/11 on the Republicans’ terms, the Republicans aren’t willing to tackle this economic crisis with the Democrats holding the reins. Every single House Republican voted against this bill along with all but three Senators. This is either because the Republicans don’t appreciate the dire straits that we are in, they had issues about the substance of the bill and way that it was pushed through, or they are more concerned with with their party than their country. My guess that it is a little of all three.

But … I doubt it. An obstacle lies squarely in the path of politicians’ ability or willingness to act sensibly and selflessly. That obstacle is money. Or, rather, the pursuit of it to grasp and maintain power, prestige, and wealth.

Despite any number of outrageous conflations of influential wealth and influenced legislation, and despite the protestations of the masses with fewer dollars over the power of the few with many dollars, and despite the laughable “reforms” Congress attempts occasionally, money is not going to leave politics.

Wishing won’t make it so. Neither will endless, whining posts by bloggers like me. Money is part of the DNA of politics and will remain so (thanks, in part, to the Supreme Court’s decision to strike down the “Millionaire’s Amendment” in McCain-Feingold).

“We need transparency,” yell the populists, the progressives, and those just plain pissed off. “We need more disclosure,” they shout.

Sure. Why not. Badger Congress into writing legislation uninfluenced by lobbyists that would produce more transparency and more disclosure of all that money. (Hope the Senate gets around to allowing electronic filing of campaign finance reports …)

That, of course, is unlikely, because so much money is involved — and so much power. Full, easy-to-access transparency of every political dollar means easy-to-access identification of those who may be trading donations for access to legislators. Ditto lobbying expenditures.

The Democratic and Republican parties along their hench-committees — the national committees, the congressional campaign committees, and the senate campaign committees — collected more than $3 billion for the 2008 election cycle — and more than $12.8 billion since 2000, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. That does not count fundraising by individual congressional and presidential candidates, which is likely billions more.

Many of our representatives in Congress began their political careers running for statewide offices back home. Well, in 2008, that was pricey, too. Fundraising for all candidates and committees — governors, state House and Senate seats, other statewide posts — exceeded $1.9 billion, according to the National Institute on Money in State Politics. Since 2000, according to the institute’s data, state political races have accounted for $13.1 billion in fundraising.

That’s about $46 billion in political spending in just eight years (and doesn’t count lobbying expenditures aimed at state legislators and state agencies).

Some months ago, I argued that, because the paltry public funding raised through the IRS check-off represented so little money, Congress should add $10 billion a year to the federal budget to pay for every single election in the United States. The public, I argued, must outbid the monied, corporate influence seekers who fund political campaigns in exchange for access to politicians unavailable to you and me.

Well, I must have taken a Phelps-sized bong hit before I wrote that post. The likelihood that Congress would approve public financing of political campaigns so substantial that office seekers would forego any other campaign contributions is damn small. Non-existent, in fact. The lobbyists whose influence depends on infusing money into politics will not let that happen.

Since 2000, lobbyists have spent $20.3 billion to lobby Congress and federal agencies (most notably, regulatory agencies), according to the center.

Sadly, politics operates in a world inhabited by money raised through lobbyists and other influence seekers and peddlers, bundlers, 527s, inauguration committees, state and national party campaign committees, convention committees and, probably, leftover Nixon bagmen.

It’s difficult, too, to tell the difference between a politician and a lobbyist, because they’re often the same person. Revolving Door, a study of the nexus between governing and lobbying by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, found that “17 of 24 former Bush Cabinet members have taken positions with at least 119 companies, including 65 firms that lobby the government and 40 that lobby the agencies they headed.”

It’s not just former executive branch members selling access for profit. Since 2005, 195 members of Congress have fled Capitol Hill for K Street to become lobbyists — and cash in on their access to their former congressional colleagues. And don’t forget the senior congressional staff members that flit back and forth from K Street to Capitol Hill.

Since the early ’90s found former House Speaker Tom DeLay gaming the system to secure and hold GOP power, politics has become a multi-billion-dollar industry. There’s so much money to be made by so many entities, from the broadcasters who sell air time for ads, to political consultants who poll the populace and design the ads, to the companies that provide computers and phones, and even caterers. In the business of politics, there’s plenty of money to go around.

Writes Robert G. Kaiser, associate editor of The Washington Post, Feb. 2:

Washington is broken: Lobbyists and special interests have turned our government into a game that only they can afford to play. They write the checks, and the citizenry gets stuck with the bill. Politics is no longer a mission; it’s a business.

All of this is damn disgusting. Plenty of folks are fed up with the role of money in politics. So consider these two points:

1. Money will remain in politics and in fact increase.
2. People are fed up with the behavior of those pouring money into politics and profiting.

At what point will Fact 2 erode the impact of Fact 1? Not soon, argues Mr. Kaiser in discussing President Obama’s pledge to curb lobbyists’ influence in D.C.:

But slowing the revolving door will not be nearly enough to dismantle the Washington culture of money, lobbying and self-dealing that has metastasized over four decades. This culture has created multimillionaires and provided a grand style of life to thousands. It has helped moneyed interests protect their status and privileges, undermined government regulation of business and turned our elected officials into chronic money-chasers. Real reform will require more than presidential fiat.

But consider the failure of former Sen. Tom Daschle’s failed nomination for an Obama Cabinet post because the solon-turned-sinecure was too dumb or too selfish to pay about $140,000 in income taxes on a car service provided by an influential friend. Because of Sen. Daschle’s moronic — or arrogant — mistake, the public learned that his carefully crafted common-man image was merely an artifice.

Consider, too, the similarly errant, stupid tax behaviors of Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, who failed to pay $34,000 he owed until offered a cabinet job. And the idiocy of Nancy Killefer, “chosen to be the White House chief performance officer, who once had a $900 lien placed on her house for failing to pay unemployment taxes on household help.”

Has the outrageous, callous behaviors revealed of politicians and political wanna-bees cracked the public’s tolerance for business-as-usual Washington, D.C., politics?

Perhaps. But I’ll bet you $46 billion over the next eight years it hasn’t.