Is it hypocrisy or irony?

Got to hand it to the Republicans in the House (and their fellow travelers running for president).

They took the House in November, mainly due to economic anxiety and concerns about unemployment (plus, they had a very motivated base that felt they had to take the country back from a foreign-born Muslim president).  

But since taking office they have spent most of their time squawking about the deficit, or in places like Wisconsin and New Jersey trying to take away collective bargaining rights from public employees - economic liabilities that do not create wealth such as teachers and fire fighters.

Complaining about the deficit is code for two things: cutting taxes for rich people, and cutting programs that help non-rich people.

And the union attack is politics plain and simple.  In the wake of the Citizens United decision that allows unlimited corporate contributions, unions and the role they play in elections - both money and people - have never more important.   You take away unions and you take away lots of power from the Democrats.  It's a reprise of the late 19th century policy to break the backs of Native American culture and resistance by wiping out the bison from the plains. 

No more food for plains Native Americans, no more Native Americans.  No more unions, fewer Democrats.  And without unions, Dems would have to raise money exclusively from the same set of economic winners who are socially liberal but fiscally more conservative.

I wonder if after March 4th, the deadline for passing a spending bill to keep the government open, the focus will return to jobs and the economy.

Besides the hypocrisy of running on jobs and governing on helping rich people pay fewer taxes, there's the irony that if you cut the size of government - local, state or federal - you put people out of work.  Government is not some machine that eats money and automatically prints reports and buys toilet paper and tanks.  People - employees, Americans - do that.  And though corporations are raking in record profits they are NOT hiring Americans (those capitalist bastards!).   

And the only way to meaningfully cut the size of government or spending is to gouge defense, or cut Medicare. Medicaid, and/or Social Security.  Everything else is window dressing, hypocrisy, irony, lying - or a cynical ploy to cut taxes and attack unions. 

The last thing the economy needs is more people out of work.  And that's the bottom line here.  Jobs are more important than deficit reduction and tax cuts.  That should be the focus of the executive and legislative branches of government in Washington and state capitals.  

Finally, one last point.  Dems in the House have done a good job of messaging on the lack of action on job creation by the new Republican Congress.  Of course, the minority party does not get much air time on the news.  I just wish Obama would stop engaging the Rs so much when they repeat their mantra on the deficit.  

How hard is it to pivot on this?  "Well, reducing the deficit is an important issue, but my number one concern is putting Americans back to work.  Therefore, I urge Republicans in Congress to work with me on getting that job done first, THEN working on cutting spending."   See how I slipped the word job in there?

Or, "The last thing we need is more folks unemployed, so I urge my colleagues in Congress to only cut programs that DO not cause lay-offs or job losses in the public sector."

See, it's easy!

Have To is better than Want To

This morning in church, Father Steve’s sermon focused on the cross. I won’t give a complete review of his homily, but one of his core messages was “often times we need to do what we have to do rather than what we want to do.” And by doing so, we will be more fulfilled and happy and accomplished. 


A good lesson for our entire congregation, but of course I can think of three other bloggable topics from Father Steve’s sermon.


First of all, that old Hellenic bugaboo – Turkey. I have no patience for Greeks who reflexively blame or condemn Turkey. I’m not happy that they have Constantinople, but history is history. And like most Greeks, at least Greeks in Greece, I hope that one day Turkey joins the European Union.  


But if they want to join the EU, Turkey has to admit that the Armenian genocide happened, guarantee religious freedom, recognize the government of Cyprus and withdraw Turkish troops, among other things. 


I’m picking on the Turks because this week the Turkish government officially protested the House Foreign Relations committee passing a resolution condemning the Armenian genocide. The official Turkish government policy is that the genocide never happened. Of course, there is no legitimate debate on the first genocide of the 20th century, one the dissolving Ottoman Empire got away with. 
  
Implicit to joining a union of European states is that you give up some of your sovereignty in order to conform to the European – and western - standards.  But Turkey’s ultra-nationalism (to say nothing of European misgivings about including a Muslim country in its ranks) seems to make EU membership impossible. 


A few months ago 60 Minutes profiled the petty and mean-spirited restrictions on the Orthodox Ecumenical Patriarch in Istanbul. The EU charter prohibits that kind of religious persecution, but the Turkish government continues to keep the Patriarchate under its thumb despite the consequences for EU membership.


They want to keep acting like blind nationalists, but to make Turkey better they have to acknowledge the genocide, appreciate the history of the Patriarchate in Constantinople and guarantee religious freedom for non-Muslims, and recognize the government of Cyprus (which, after all, is an E.U. member).


Two, the elected officials and others who keep harping on the size of the deficit, if they are serious about this issue, need to either raise taxes to increase revenue or stop talking about this issue.  


I’ve blogged this before, but discretionary spending on so-called big government programs is only 3 percent of federal spending.  A catch phrase for hypocritical deficit hawks is “I want a government small enough to drown in a bath tub.”  Well, unless the bathtub is the Pacific Ocean that’s not happening. The only way to fit our government into a metaphorical bathtub is to undertake unrealistic and dramatic cuts in defense spending and Social Security/Medicare, or stop paying interest on the debt.  


Getting people back to work – and paying them unemployment insurance – is more important than deficit reduction. It’s also a way to shrink the debt long term since unemployment insurance spurs spending, and in America’s service economy consumer spending leads to jobs.  Jobs lead to more taxes and revenue, and revenue leads to deficit reduction.  


Deficit hawks want to shrink government, but to really reduce the deficit they have to support more government spending on job creation. 


Finally, as the entire world knows Greece’s economy is in crisis. But despite some protests in the streets – and let’s face it, Greeks will protest anything; when Jesus comes back they’ll protest that – polls show more than 70 percent of the public supports the long-overdue cuts to Greek government spending (FYI, the Greek government sold $7 billion worth of bonds last week, so others seem to support what the government is doing, too). 


So it appears Greece, of all people, is doing what they have to as opposed to what they want to.