My Birthday: State of the Nation

Image via Wikipedia

Good mornng. Its November 5th and its now 49 (not 48 like I thought earlier today. My mother corrected me!!) years old for me. How many more to go? Well, that all depends of course on fate and decent decisions.
I was browsing the Web since I am driving and slept in till 6:30 this morning. I saw an article in the Atlantic and one article was called Billy Joel Explains the Election. In it Marc Ambinder explains how the deindustrialization of the Midwest and Rust Belt states has decimated the old Democratic Party base, Labor. Hard working middle class people losing their jobs that had benefits and salaries that could pay for a comfortable middle-class living. His take on that Billy Joel song Allentown:

Billy Joel, in Allentown, caught the moment decades before it happened... the last time the economy in Pennsylvania transitioned away from coal and steel. Educated, hard-working people. The generational tension. The sense that the next generation will be worse of than the current one. The lack of an economic foundation. The sense that they've been abandoned by the powers that be. (The union people went awaaaaay).... So long as this state of affairs persists, the entire stretch of land, from Indiana to Pennsylvania, will be competitive nationally.

Quite the Political Stew we have today :(

This has led to frustration and anger that has been repeated by the media ever since the Health-Care bill was debated in Congress last year. Some of this this frustration has been used by wealthy corporate(and oil) interests to fund the Tea Party and make HUGE political contributions to fund the campaign against Obama and Democrats. The Koch brothers have been big contributors to the Tea Party movement since its inception back in February 2009 when CNBC's Rick Santelli went on a rant about Obama's plan to help folks unable to pay their mortgage. In it he mocks "losers" who can't pay the mortgage. Its the typical class warfare that Republicans have employed for years. Now with FOX News (The Pravda for Republican Party)and the 24 hr news cycle its pitted Americans against each other. Check this out and see for yourself:


Paul Krugman of the New York Times wrote on October 31st 2010 about Mr. Santelli and his ilk. Mr Krugman states the issue quite correctly and clearly. He states that "Debt Moralizers" are winning the battle of ideas of how to treat the economy during this, the worst recession since the Great Depression. He states that during a deep recession when private companies and individuals have slowed or stopped spending, the govt needs to take up the slack. I will let Mr. Krugman take over:

“How many of you people want to pay for your neighbor’s mortgage that has an extra bathroom and can’t pay their bills?” That’s the question CNBC’s Rick Santelli famously asked in 2009, in a rant widely credited with giving birth to the Tea Party movement.
 The message is the same: debt is evil, debtors must pay for their sins, and from now on we all must live within our means.
And that kind of moralizing is the reason we’re mired in a seemingly endless slump... 

So what should we be doing? First, governments should be spending while the private sector won’t, so that debtors can pay down their debts without perpetuating a global slump. Second, governments should be promoting widespread debt relief: reducing obligations to levels the debtors can handle is the fastest way to eliminate that debt overhang.
But the moralizers will have none of it. They denounce deficit spending, declaring that you can’t solve debt problems with more debt. They denounce debt relief, calling it a reward for the undeserving.
And if you point out that their arguments don’t add up, they fly into a rage. Try to explain that when debtors spend less, the economy will be depressed unless somebody else spends more, and they call you a socialist. Try to explain why mortgage relief is better for America than foreclosing on homes that must be sold at a huge loss, and they start ranting like Mr. Santelli. No question about it: the moralizers are filled with a passionate intensity.

I will finish with a nice quote from the Auburn Journal which explains the foundations of our political and national state of affairs:

Tea Partiers may share the Kochs’ hatred of taxes, big government and Obama, but there’s a difference between mainstream conservatism and a fringe agenda that tilts completely toward big business, whether on Wall Street or in the Gulf of Mexico, while dismantling fundamental government safety nets designed to protect the unemployed, public health, workplace safety and the subsistence of the elderly.

Yet inexorably, the Koch agenda is morphing into the standard G.O.P. agenda, as articulated by current Republican members of Congress including the putative next speaker of the House, John Boehner, and Tea Party Senate candidates like Rand Paul, Sharron Angle, and the new kid on the block, Alaska’s anti-Medicaid, anti-unemployment insurance Palin protégé, Joe Miller.

Their program opposes a federal deficit but has no objection to running up trillions in red ink in tax cuts to corporations and the super-rich; it apologizes to corporate malefactors like BP and derides money put in escrow for oil spill victims as a “slush fund”; it opposes the extension of unemployment benefits for workers and it calls for a freeze on federal regulations in an era when abuses in the oil, financial, mining, pharmaceutical and even food industries (among others) have been outrageous.
The Koch brothers must be laughing all the way to the bank knowing that concerned working Americans are being manipulated into aiding and abetting their selfish interests.

As Billy Joel sings in Allentown:

To get at least as far as their old man got.
If something happened on the way to that place
They threw an American flag in our face, oh oh oh

Billy Joel - Allentown (Official Music Video). Watch more top selected videos about: Billy Joel

Related articles

• Chris Matthews, Keith Olbermann Mock Rick Santelli (VIDEO) (huffingtonpost.com)
• Live within your means, neighbor (nowpublic.com)
• Danny Schechter: After the Election, What About the Economy? (huffingtonpost.com)
• CNBC Promotes Election Coverage With Rick Santelli's Tea Party Rant (mediaite.com)
• Best economy reads: Is Canada a refuge for bad managers? (theglobeandmail.com)
• Billy Joel Is Kind Of Hateful, Awesome (blogs.forbes.com)