Goodbye to All That Claptrap - And Good Riddance: Don’t Let The Door Hit You On The Way Out, Mike Lofgren!

2011-09-21T00:26:00.004-05:00

Mike Lofgren, a formerstaffer for Republicans on the House and Senate Budget Committees, has penned a ridiculous screed in which he rants about why he hates Republicans. A sadly misguided relative sent it to me, andI noticed that it had gotten some play on some of the lefty blogs, so I puttogether a debunking/fisking/response to Lofgren’s absurdities, in the hope that others might realizehow ridiculous his argument is. I’veinserted my comments in line with the original, which is indented below.

Bothparties are rotten - how could they not be, given the complete infestation ofthe political system by corporate money on a scale that now requires apresidential candidate to raise upwards of a billion dollars to be competitivein the general election? Both parties are captives to corporate loot. The mainreason the Democrats' health care bill will be a budget buster once it fullyphases in is the Democrats' rank capitulation to corporate interests - nosingle-payer system, in order to mollify the insurers; and no negotiation ofdrug prices, a craven surrender to Big Pharma.

This guy is claiming that theproblem with the health care bill was that it didn’t introduce single-payer,and claims he’s a Republican? I findthat really hard to believe. Actually, myspeculation is that Lofgren may be a Democrat, and just happened to work on theRepublican side of the aisle, but I don’t know, and it isn’t really relevant tohow awful his argument is.

The reason that there are“corporate interests” involved in the health care bill is because we need thepotential for profits to drive health care innovation going forward – noprofits means no new treatments, because there’s no way to make any money. Maybe Mr. Lofgren should read some Adam Smith.

Butboth parties are not rotten in quite the same way. The Democrats have theirshare of machine politicians, careerists, corporate bagmen, egomaniacs andkooks. Nothing, however, quite matches the modern GOP.

Given that the Democratic Partyinvented “machine politics” (Tammany Hall, the Pendergasts, etc.), I’m not surethat the comparison works as well as Mr. Lofgren thinks it does.

Tothose millions of Americans who have finally begun paying attention to politicsand watched with exasperation the tragicomedy of the debt ceiling extension, itmay have come as a shock that the Republican Party is so full of lunatics. Tobe sure, the party, like any political party on earth, has always had its shareof crackpots, like Robert K. Dornan or William E. Dannemeyer. But the crackpotoutliers of two decades ago have become the vital center today: Steve King,Michele Bachman (now a leading presidential candidate as well), Paul Broun,Patrick McHenry, Virginia Foxx, Louie Gohmert, Allen West. The Congressionaldirectory now reads like a casebook of lunacy.

Where are Dennis Kucinich,Maxine Waters, and the list of Democratic “crackpots”? Also, I’d note that none of the Republicanshe mentions are committee or sub-committee chairs…how are these folks the faceof the Republican Party? I hadn’t evenheard of some of these people, and I can recognize members of Congress by thesounds of their voices….Allen West, while he is a Tea Partier, voted FOR thecompromise bill to increase the debt ceiling, and I wouldn’t consider MichelleBachmann a “leading” candidate in the primary – her irrelevance in the debatethe other night and the fact that she’s only drawing about 4% of Republicanprimary voters is pretty good evidence of that (although Lofgren wrote this a fewweeks ago, so we’ll let this one slide).

Itwas this cast of characters and the pernicious ideas they represent thatimpelled me to end a nearly 30-year career as a professional staff member onCapitol Hill. A couple of months ago, I retired; but I could see as early aslast November that the Republican Party would use the debt limit vote, anotherwise routine legislative procedure that has been used 87 times since theend of World War II, in order to concoct an entirely artificial fiscal crisis.Then, they would use that fiscal crisis to get what they wanted, by literallyholding the US and global economies as hostages.

If this was the worry, thenwhy didn’t Harry Reid just vote to increase the debt ceiling last year whenDemocrats still had control of Congress? He could have just increased it and been done with it; instead he wanted Republicans to be forced to “own” the debt along with Obama and theDemocrats. Also, if we actually had anyPresidential leadership, Obama could have dealt with the situation in thespring, when we weren’t running up against the ceiling, but he waited until thelast minute to try and gain leverage. Republicans out-smarted Reid and Obama, using the vote as a way to putan emphasis on the fact that the government is spending TOO MUCH DAMNMONEY! Now the left is crying that aserious conversation about how much our government spends is akin to takinghostages. Maybe you agree that we shouldbe spending more than at any time since WW2, but you have to make an argument,not just complain that your opponents are hostage-takers like a whiny littlebitch.

Thedebt ceiling extension is not the only example of this sort of politicalterrorism. Republicans were willing to lay off 4,000 Federal AviationAdministration (FAA) employees, 70,000 private construction workers and let FAAsafety inspectors work without pay, in fact, forcing them to pay for their ownwork-related travel - how prudent is that? - in order to strong arm someunion-busting provisions into the FAA reauthorization.

And now we’ve moved on frombeing hostage-takers to being terrorists! Awesome….Anyone familiar with the legislative history on this issuewould know that the Republican House passed the FAA authorization; it was theSenate which refused to pass it. Theunion provisions that the Democrats wanted removed from the bill were lobbiedfor by UPS, as they were facing higher labor costs than FedEx, and wanted to use legislation to become more competitive. It’s not all business vs. the people, as both parties raise massiveamounts of money from the business community, and large corporations are happyto use their lobbying clout to benefit themselves at the expense of theircompetitors.

Everyoneknows that in a hostage situation, the reckless and amoral actor has thenegotiating upper hand over the cautious and responsible actor because thelatter is actually concerned about the life of the hostage, while the formerdoes not care. This fact, which ought to be obvious, has nevertheless causedconfusion among the professional pundit class, which is mostly still stuck inthe Bob Dole era in terms of its orientation. For instance, Ezra Klein wrote of hispuzzlement over the fact that while House Republicans essentially won the debtceiling fight, enough of them were sufficiently dissatisfied that they mightstill scuttle the deal. Of course they might - the attitude of many freshmanRepublicans to national default was "bring it on!"

Back to hostage takers….OK….Whenthe House was passing the Ryan Plan, and Cut, Cap, and Balance, where were theDemocratic plans to deal with the debt ceiling? Harry Reid and Obama just sat on their hands through the debate, anddemanded that the House send them the bill they wanted, which they failed toexplain in specifics. How is thatleadership? At one point in the negotiations, Boehner andObama had an agreement in principle on a plan that included $800 billion in new revenues. It was Obama who backed out atthe last minute and demanded that Republicans agree to a 50% increase in therevenue number. Rather than try to hit acontinually moving target, Boehner walked away from that deal, and built hisown plan which passed the House. And inthe end, it was the Republicans who got the compromise bill over the finishline.

Itshould have been evident to clear-eyed observers that the Republican Party isbecoming less and less like a traditional political party in a representativedemocracy and becoming more like an apocalyptic cult, or one of the intenselyideological authoritarian parties of 20th century Europe.This trend has several implications, none of them pleasant.

Now we’re cultists! Got it.

Inhis "Manual of Parliamentary Practice," Thomas Jefferson wrote thatit is less important that every rule and custom of a legislature be absolutelyjustifiable in a theoretical sense, than that they should be generallyacknowledged and honored by all parties. These include unwritten rules, customsand courtesies that lubricate the legislative machinery and keep governance arelatively civilized procedure. The US Senate has more complex procedural rulesthan any other legislative body in the world; many of these rules arecontradictory, and on any given day, the Senate parliamentarian may issue aruling that contradicts earlier rulings on analogous cases.

Theonly thing that can keep the Senate functioning is collegiality and good faith.During periods of political consensus, for instance, the World War II and earlypost-war eras, the Senate was a "high functioning" institution:filibusters were rare and the body was legislatively productive. Now, one canno more picture the current Senate producing the original Medicare Act than theold Supreme Soviet having legislated the Bill of Rights.

Farfrom being a rarity, virtually every bill, every nominee for Senateconfirmation and every routine procedural motion is now subject to a Republicanfilibuster. Under the circumstances, it is no wonder that Washington isgridlocked: legislating has now become war minus the shooting, something onecould have observed 80 years ago in the Reichstag of the Weimar Republic.As Hannah Arendt observed, a disciplined minority of totalitarians can use theinstruments of democratic government to undermine democracy itself.

The senate has NEVER been amajoritarian body – as George Washington once said, “we pour legislation into the senatorial saucer to coolit." Also, remember Democratstalking about the importance of the filibuster and collegiality towards the President’sparty back when Bush was President? Now,it has become a tool for “totalitarians” according to people like Lofgren. I wonder if his tune will change in 2013,when we have a Republican President again.

JohnP. Judis sums up the modernGOP this way:

"Overthe last four decades, the Republican Party has transformed from a loyalopposition into an insurrectionary party that flouts the law when it is in themajority and threatens disorder when it is the minority. It is the party ofWatergate and Iran-Contra, but also of the government shutdown in 1995 and theimpeachment trial of 1999. If there is an earlier American precedent fortoday's Republican Party, it is the antebellum Southern Democrats of JohnCalhoun who threatened to nullify, or disregard, federal legislation theyobjected to and who later led the fight to secede from the union overslavery."

So now we’re angryracists! I’m having trouble keeping allof these insults straight. Lofgren issuggesting that opposing federal legislation that you disagree with makes one aracist totalitarian….does that mean that this label would apply to people whooppose the Patriot Act, which was passed (and reauthorized over and over again)by a bipartisan majority of Congress? People opposelegislation all the time – it’s called politics, not nullification. Throwing in a historical term that isassociated with the post Civil War South is just a way to inflame passions, andhas nothing to do with the current issues we face as a nation.

Acouple of years ago, a Republican committee staff director told me candidly(and proudly) what the method was to all this obstruction and disruption.Should Republicans succeed in obstructing the Senate from doing its job, itwould further lower Congress's generic favorability rating among the Americanpeople. By sabotaging the reputation of an institution of government, the partythat is programmatically against government would come out the relative winner.

And a reputable source whom Iwon’t name just told me that Mike Lofgren is a clown. He heard this “a couple of years ago”? Was this when the Republicans had a minorityin the House, and didn’t even have the votes to mount a filibuster in theSenate even if they wanted to? And howwere they going to obstruct in the Senate without a filibuster? It seems like this is just something Lofgrenmade up to make it sound like the opinion wasn’t just his own. Also, this argument is very similar to onethat Glenn Beck makes from the other side – that Obama is seeking to destroythe American economy, and is implementing policies to achieve that goal. I give Lofgren’s argument about as muchcredit as I’d give to Glenn Beck’s theory about Obama and Cloward-Pivenstrategy – that is to say, very little. Attacking your opponents’ motives generally shows that you don’t have agood argument.

Adeeply cynical tactic, to be sure, but a psychologically insightful one thatplays on the weaknesses both of the voting public and the news media. There aretens of millions of low-information voters who hardly know which party controlswhich branch of government, let alone which party is pursuing a particularlegislative tactic. These voters' confusion over who did what allows them toform the conclusion that "they are all crooks," and that"government is no good," further leading them to think, "aplague on both your houses" and "the parties are like two kids in aschool yard." This ill-informed public cynicism, in its turn, further intensifiesthe long-term decline in public trust in government that has been taking placesince the early 1960s - a distrust that has been stoked by Republican rhetoricat every turn ("Government is the problem," declared Ronald Reagan in1980).

It’s a lot more likely thatthe reason low-information voters take a “pox on both houses” view is becausethey really don’t care about the government – they’re just trying to live theirlives. When they see that the governmentor even controversy in the news relating to politics is intruding on theirlives, they look past a lot of the “he said, she said” arguments and concludethat neither side is really looking out for them – which is a lot closer to thetruth than the arguments Lofgren is making. I would also note that Lofgren is basically trashing the electoratehere, saying that they’re too stupid to know what’s good for them. Reminds me of Berthold Brecht’s poem “TheSolution”: “Wouldn'tit / Be simpler in that case if the government / Dissolved the people and /elected another?”

Themedia are also complicit in this phenomenon. Ever since the bifurcation ofelectronic media into a more or less respectable "hard news" segmentand a rabidly ideological talk radio and cable TV political propaganda arm, the"respectable" media have been terrified of any criticism forperceived bias. Hence, they hew to the practice of false evenhandedness. PaulKrugman has skewered thistactic as being the "centrist cop-out." "I joked long ago,"he says, "that if one party declared that the earth was flat, theheadlines would read 'Views Differ on Shape of Planet.'"

The media is terrified ofbeing criticized for bias? In whatuniverse? There’s only a little bit ofirony in the fact that Lofgren cites Paul Krugman to back up this point –Krugman is a columnist for the New York Times, which is generally considered“respectable” media (I don’t agree, but that’s an argument for another day). I don’t think the Times, the Washington Post,NPR, NBC, CBS, ABC, or even Fox News are that worried about seeming biased – ifanything, their bias has become even more prominent over the last decade or so.

Inside-the-Beltwaywise guy Chris Cillizza merely proves Krugman right in his Washington Postanalysis of "winners and losers" in the debt ceiling impasse. He wrote that theinstitution of Congress was a big loser in the fracas, which is, of course,correct, but then he opined: "Lawmakers - bless their hearts - seementirely unaware of just how bad they looked during this fight and will almostcertainly spend the next few weeks (or months) congratulating themselves ontheir tremendous magnanimity." Note how the pundit's ironic deprecationfalls like the rain on the just and unjust alike, on those who precipitated theneedless crisis and those who despaired of it. He seems oblivious that one side- or a sizable faction of one side - has deliberately attempted to damage thereputation of Congress to achieve its political objectives.

Lofgren has provided noevidence for his belief that Republicans want to destroy people’s faith in thegovernment other than his anonymous source, yet he now hangs his argument onit. If this were the goal ofRepublicans, they aren’t doing a very good job, because they’re only tying theresults of the Democratic Congress in 2010 in terms of approval ratings. In fact, the reputation of Congress has beenatrocious for years now,under both Republican and Democratic leadership.

Thisconstant drizzle of "there the two parties go again!" stories out ofthe news bureaus, combined with the hazy confusion of low-information voters,means that the long-term Republican strategy of undermining confidence in ourdemocratic institutions has reaped electoral dividends. The UnitedStates has nearly the lowest voter participation among Western democracies;this, again, is a consequence of the decline of trust in governmentinstitutions - if government is a racket and both parties are the same, whyvote? And if the uninvolved middle declines to vote, it increases the electoralclout of a minority that is constantly being whipped into a lather by threehours daily of Rush Limbaugh or Fox News. There were only 44 million Republicanvoters in the 2010 mid-term elections, but they effectively canceled thepolitical results of the election of President Obama by 69 million voters.

I’m seeing this argument usedon the left as the justification for an idea – that the media should stopgiving people on the right a forum for their arguments, because they are wrong,and presenting their views only legitimizes them. But if people on the left feel they have thebetter argument, why run from the fight?

Our “democratic institutions”have lost their reputation because the government has grown to the point thatit is ineffective, not because of Lofgren’s imagined Republican bogeymen. Some countries, even democracies, requiretheir citizens to vote, which would lead to more of the “low-informationvoters” that Lofgren deplores being involved in the process – I’d say it’s farbetter to leave voting to the people who are willing to make the effort to voteon their own. The argument about the2010 election is completely dishonest – mid-terms always see lower turnout, and2010’s was actually quite high when compared with other mid-terms in thepast. It wasn’t a “cancelling” ofObama’s election, either – just putting a check on his leadership. We won’t get to “cancel” the results of 2008until November of 2012.

Thistactic of inducing public distrust of government is not only cynical, it isschizophrenic. For people who profess to revere the Constitution, it is strangethat they so caustically denigrate the very federal government that is thematerial expression of the principles embodied in that document. This is not tosay that there is not some theoretical limit to the size or intrusiveness ofgovernment; I would be the first to say there are such limits, both fiscal andConstitutional. But most Republican officeholders seem strangely uninterestedin the effective repeal of Fourth Amendment protections by the Patriot Act, theweakening of habeas corpus and self-incrimination protections in the publichysteria following 9/11 or the unpalatable fact that the UnitedStates has the largest incarcerated population of any country on earth. Ifanything, they would probably opt for more incarcerated persons, asimprisonment is a profit center for the prison privatization industry, which isitself a growth center for political contributions to these same politicians.[1] Instead,they prefer to rail against those government programs that actually help people.And when a program is too popular to attack directly, like Medicare or SocialSecurity, they prefer to undermine it by feigning an agonized concern about thedeficit. That concern, as we shall see, is largely fictitious.

Revering the Constitutiondoesn’t mean that you agree to anything that is done in the name ofgovernment. Conservatives andRepublicans generally believe that the Founders intended for the US to have alimited government, and that the functions that weren’t provided for by thefederal government could be provided elsewhere. Lofgren acknowledges that there are limits, but goes on to cite thePatriot Act, which as I have mentioned previously, was passed by a bipartisanmajority of Congress, and has been reauthorized multiple timessince 9/11, including by President Obama. He thenerratically jumps to prisons, and the injustice of so many people beingimprisoned in the US, and blames it on prison privatization, which accounts foronly about 4% of the prison population in the country.

UnderminingAmericans' belief in their own institutions of self-government remains a primeGOP electoral strategy. But if this technique falls short of producing KarlRove's dream of 30 years of unchallengeable one-party rule (as all suchtechniques always fall short of achieving the angry and embittered truebeliever's New Jerusalem), there are other even less savory techniques uponwhich to fall back. Ever since Republicans captured the majority in a number ofstate legislatures last November, they have systematically attempted to make itmore difficult to vote: by onerous voter ID requirements (in Wisconsin,Republicans have legislated photo IDs while simultaneously shutting Departmentof Motor Vehicles (DMV) offices in Democratic constituencies while at the sametime lengthening the hours of operation of DMV offices in GOP constituencies);by narrowing registration periods; and by residency requirements that maydisenfranchise university students.

We’ve now moved on to voterID laws – this guy pings between issues so fast it makes my head spin. Do liberals believe that minorities are lesscapable of obtaining ID? I’ll bet thereason for the differences between DMV offices has to do with changes inpopulation…it would make sense to add hours in places where people are moving,and close offices in areas with declining population. I’ll also bet that those GOP constituenciesare towns with Republican mayors. Residency requirements have a lot more to do with in-state tuition thananything else – it’s a big difference to the state university systems in termsof money, and the states subsidize the schools, so they want that benefit to goto kids that grew up in the state, not people that just move there for school.

Thislegislative assault is moving in a diametrically opposed direction to 200 yearsof American history, when the arrow of progress pointed toward more politicalparticipation by more citizens. Republicans are among the most shrill inself-righteously lecturing other countries about the wonders of democracy;exporting democracy (albeit at the barrel of a gun) to the MiddleEast was a signature policy of the Bush administration. But domestically,they don't want those people voting.

Does that mean that becauseDemocrats didn’t support Bush’s democratization policies, they should notsupport democracy here in the US so they are consistent? These assertions are getting ridiculous. I suppose this sort of thing is convincing topeople who already believe it, but it’s too vitriolic to actually offer anyinsight. Which brings us to….

Youcan probably guess who those people are. Aboveall, anyone not likely to vote Republican. As Sarah Palin would imply, thepeople who are not Real Americans. Racial minorities. Immigrants. Muslims.Gays. Intellectuals. Basically, anyone who doesn't look, think, or talk likethe GOP base. This must account, at least to some degree, for theirextraordinarily vitriolic hatred of President Obama. I have joked in the pastthat the main administration policy that Republicans object to is Obama'spolicy of being black.[2] Among theGOP base, there is constant harping about somebody else, some"other," who is deliberately, assiduously and with maliceaforethought subverting the Good, the True and the Beautiful: Subversives.Commies. Socialists. Ragheads. Secular humanists. Blacks. Gays [I’mnot reprinting the word he actually uses –ed.]. Feminazis. The list maychange with the political needs of the moment, but they always seem to need ascapegoat to hate and fear.

…the racism and hater charge. This entire paragraph is nothing more thanLofgren’s fantasy about what Republicans believe. If somebody wants to debate the merits ofpolicies, that’s great, but assuming that your opponents have only the worstand basest motives for their actions does nothing to solve our problems, whichis what Lofgren is supposedly upset about in the first place. Oh, and Palin was referring to “commonpeople”, and asserting otherwise is ridiculous (and I’m not even a big Palinsupporter).

Itis not clear to me how many GOP officeholders believe this reactionary andparanoid claptrap. I would bet that most do not. But they cynically feed theworst instincts of their fearful and angry low-information political base witha nod and a wink. During the disgraceful circus of the "birther"issue, Republican politicians subtly stoked the fires of paranoia by beingsuggestively equivocal - "I take the president at his word" - whilenever unambiguously slapping down the myth. John Huntsman was the first majorGOP figure forthrightly to refute the birther calumny - albeit after release ofthe birth certificate.

Ahhh, Birthers. They’re morons. It’s a silly movement, it has no relevance,and the belief that taking the President at his word represents anything otherthan taking the President at his word is just dumb “gotcha” bullshit. And Democrats have nudged up a lot closer to9/11 truthers…does anyone remember when Michael Moore, who has dabbled in“trutherism”, sat in Jimmy Carter’s box at the Democratic Convention in2004? This is sideshow stuff – tell mesomething important, like what’s your plan for Social Security, chump?

I donot mean to place too much emphasis on racial animus in the GOP. While itsurely exists, it is also a fact that Republicans think that no Democraticpresident could conceivably be legitimate. Republicans also regarded BillClinton as somehow, in some manner, twice fraudulently elected (well do Iremember the elaborate conspiracy theories that Republicans traded amongthemselves). Had it been Hillary Clinton, rather than Barack Obama, who hadbeen elected in 2008, I am certain we would now be hearing, in lieu of thebirther myths, conspiracy theories about Vince Foster's alleged murder.

There were plenty ofconspiracy theories about George Bush, too. It’s an attempt to see your opponent as not only wrong, butillegitimate. Lofgren should be veryfamiliar with it, because his entire article is about the illegitimacy ofRepublican governance. He is ahypocrite, and nothing less. It’s kindof sad, because this is actually one of the only good points he makes, and yetit is meaningless in the context of his argument.

Thereader may think that I am attributing Svengali-like powers to GOP operativesable to manipulate a zombie base to do their bidding. It is more complicatedthan that. Historical circumstances produced the raw material: thedeindustrialization and financialization of America sinceabout 1970 has spawned an increasingly downscale white middle class - withoutjob security (or even without jobs), with pensions and health benefitsevaporating and with their principal asset deflating in the collapse of thehousing bubble. Their fears are not imaginary; their standard of living isshrinking.

A lot of the period citedhere was marked by Democratic control of Congress…score another point for bothsides having a lot of blame for the current situation.

Whatdo the Democrats offer these people? Essentially nothing. Democratic LeadershipCouncil-style "centrist" Democrats were among the biggest promotersof disastrous trade deals in the 1990s that outsourced jobs abroad: NAFTA,World Trade Organization, permanent most-favored-nation status for China. Atthe same time, the identity politics/lifestyle wing of the Democratic Party wasseen as a too illegal immigrant-friendly by downscaled and outsourced whites.[3]

NAFTA hasn’t been a huge problem, though I will grant that offeringmost-favored status to the Chinese may have been mistaken in light of issueswith intellectual property and restrictions on foreign investment in China.

WhileDemocrats temporized, or even dismissed the fears of the white working class asracist or nativist, Republicans went to work. To be sure, the business wing ofthe Republican Party consists of the most energetic outsourcers, wage cuttersand hirers of sub-minimum wage immigrant labor to be found anywhere on theglobe. But the faux-populist wing of the party, knowing the mentalcompartmentalization that occurs in most low-information voters, played on thefears of that same white working class to focus their anger on scapegoats thatdo no damage to corporations' bottom lines: instead of raising the minimumwage, let's build a wall on the Southern border (then hire a defense contractorto incompetently manage it). Instead of predatory bankers, it's evil Muslims.Or evil gays. Or evil abortionists.

So after Lofgren brought outthe race card just a few short paragraphs ago, he’s now going to turn aroundand talk about how Democrats have dismissed working class whites asracist? I would use an old phrase abouta couple of kitchen implements, but that would be racist. He’s right that businesses can often standagainst enforcement of immigration laws, which is what has frustrated many Republicanson the issue of immigration. MostRepublicans don’t have a problem with a path for immigrants who are alreadyhere, but they do want to see real enforcement before we do another amnestylike the one in the 1980’s.

And then he’s back to playingthe race and hater card. Again. In the same damn paragraph where he talkedabout Democrats dismissing the concerns of middle-class white voters. See the problem here?

Howdo they manage to do this? Because Democrats ceded the field. Above all, theydo not understand language. Their initiatives are posed in impenetrablepolicy-speak: the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. The what?- can anyone even remember it? No wonder the pejorative "Obamacare"won out. Contrast that with the Republicans' Patriot Act. You're a patriot,aren't you? Does anyone at the GED level have a clue what a Stimulus Bill issupposed to be? Why didn't the White House call it the Jobs Bill and keeppounding on that theme?

Youknow that Social Security and Medicare are in jeopardy when even Democratsrefer to them as entitlements. "Entitlement" has a negative sound incolloquial English: somebody who is "entitled" selfishly claimssomething he doesn't really deserve. Why not call them "earnedbenefits," which is what they are because we all contribute payroll taxesto fund them? That would never occur to the Democrats. Republicans don't makethat mistake; they are relentlessly on message: it is never the "estatetax," it is the "death tax." Heaven forbid that the Waltonfamily should give up one penny of its $86-billion fortune. All of that lucreis necessary to ensure that unions be kept out of Wal-Mart, that womenemployees not be promoted and that politicians be kept on a short leash.

Messaging. It’s all about messaging. It doesn’t matter if the product is any good,just how you market it. Lofgren isrepeating another argument that has been making the rounds in liberal circles, whichis what caused “global warming” to become ”climate change”, and wars to become“overseas contingency operations”. Obama’s new $450 billion dollar “Son Of Stimulus” is called the AmericanJobs Act, so I’d guess Lofgren is jumping for joy. Meanwhile, Democrats are losing the policydebate.

Itwas not always thus. It would have been hard to find an uneducated farmerduring the depression of the 1890s who did not have a very accurate idea aboutexactly which economic interests were shafting him. An unemployed worker in abreadline in 1932 would have felt little gratitude to the Rockefellers or theMellons. But that is not the case in the present economic crisis. After a riotof unbridled greed such as the world has not seen since the conquistadors'looting expeditions and after an unprecedented broad and rapid transfer ofwealth upward by Wall Street and its corporate satellites, where is the popularanger directed, at least as depicted in the media? At "Washington spending"- which has increased primarily to provide unemployment compensation, foodstamps and Medicaid to those economically damaged by the previous decade'scorporate saturnalia. Or the popular rage is harmlessly diverted againstpseudo-issues: death panels, birtherism, gay marriage, abortion, and so on,none of which stands to dent the corporate bottom line in the slightest.

While Republicans and the TeaParty have plenty of complaints about Washington spending, there has beenplenty of anger directed at Wall Street and “big business” since the financialcrisis, in the sense that many Republicans, especially those who haveaffiliated with the Tea Party, didn’t support TARP and felt that banks shouldbe forced to acknowledge their losses. In the end we might have needed some federal funding to help restructureany banks that failed, but the economy would have been able to moveforward. Instead we are limping along,which is why we have to pay those higher unemployment, food stamp, and Medicaidbenefits.

Lofgren’s complaint about“wedge” issues like abortion and gay marriage is misplaced. Ironically, I hear far more about socialissues from liberals than I do from conservatives, especially lately. Republicans are almost completely focused onthe financial and economic state of our country, and the steps we need to taketo fix it. Other issues are important,but they’re on the back burner as long as the economy is struggling and ourdebt is growing at 8-10% of GDP per year.

Thusfar, I have concentrated on Republican tactics, rather than Republican beliefs,but the tactics themselves are important indicators of an absolutist,authoritarian mindset that is increasingly hostile to the democratic values ofreason, compromise and conciliation. Rather, this mindset seeks polarizingdivision (Karl Rove has been very explicit that this is his principal campaignstrategy), conflict and the crushing of opposition.

Asfor what they really believe, the Republican Party of 2011 believes in threeprincipal tenets I have laid out below. The rest of their platform one maysafely dismiss as window dressing:

Finally! I was wondering if he was just going to rantabout how horrible and hateful Republicans are by nature, or if he was actuallygoing to tell us the ways we horrible Republicans implement our horrible hate.

In essence, Lofgren’s “threetenets” are really just economic policy, foreign policy, and socialpolicy. Hey! Look at the big brain on Mike! U r soooo smrt, Mike. He just caricatures these policies in themost ridiculous way possible, and then proceeds to complain that they’reridiculous. Way to knock down straw men.

1. The GOP cares solely and exclusively aboutits rich contributors. The party has built a whole catechism on theprotection and further enrichment of America's plutocracy. Their caterwauling about deficitand debt is so much eyewash to con the public. Whatever else President Obamahas accomplished (and many of his purported accomplishments are highlysuspect), his $4-trillion deficit reduction package did perform the usefulservice of smoking out Republican hypocrisy. The GOP refused, because it couldnot abide so much as a one-tenth of one percent increase on the tax rates ofthe Walton family or the Koch brothers, much less a repeal of the carried interestrule that permits billionaire hedge fund managers to pay income tax at a lowereffective rate than cops or nurses. Republicans finally settled on a deal thathad far less deficit reduction - and even less spending reduction! - thanObama's offer, because of their iron resolution to protect at all costs oursociety's overclass.

Our deficits have been running at 8-10% of GDP…levelsnot seen since WW2. We simply cannotcontinue to borrow at that rate without the debt swallowing our economy whole;that’s reality, not eyewash (I’ll look forward to Lofgren’s suggestions on howto fix it, but I won’t hold my breath waiting). And which Obama deficit reduction package is this? The one from April with the funky 12 yearbaseline that wasn’t even scored by CBO because, in their words, “We don’tscore speeches”? About $1 trillion ofthe purported “savings” that Obama offered was for reducing the troop levels inIraq and Afghanistan before 2021, an outcome that would happen no matter what,but is included in budgetary projections based on the current baseline (funnyaccounting – another reason people don’t trust government). Republicans (and Democrats – the President’sbudget went down unanimously in the Senate) didn’t sign on to Obama’s taxincreases because they didn’t want to damage an already weak economy. The Waltons and the Koch brothers wouldn’thave been affected by the increases Obama was proposing, anyway. Increases in the marginal tax rate onordinary income doesn’t affect billionaires much, since most of their incomecomes from capital gains (more on that below).

Republicanshave attempted to camouflage their amorous solicitude for billionaires with afog of misleading rhetoric. John Boehner is fond of saying, "we won'traise anyone's taxes," as if the take-home pay of an Olive Garden waitresswere inextricably bound up with whether Warren Buffett pays his capital gainsas ordinary income or at a lower rate. Another chestnut is that millionairesand billionaires are "job creators." US corporationshave just had their most profitable quarters in history; Apple, for one, issitting on $76 billion in cash, more than the GDP of most countries. So, whereare the jobs?

Ah, the old Warren Buffettcanard. Buffett is an extreme outlier –building a tax policy around him would be like building a car specificallydesigned for 100-mph hairpin turns. Obamauntil this week had barely even mentioned capital gains taxes, which are thereal issue when considering Buffett’s tax bill. It isn’t an issue of the lower marginal rates on ordinary income signedinto law by Bush and Obama, and Buffett said as much in his interview withCharlie Rose - in fact, he talked abouthow we were punishing small business owners by taxing passive investment profitsat a lower rate than small business profits. While there might be a place for adjustments to capital gains taxes aspart of a comprehensive tax reform, Obama’s just proposing more taxes on top ofwhat we already have, and is increasing the complexity of the tax code in waysthat make it impossible for individuals and businesses to plan long-term. I would suggest that issue has a lot more todo with the amount of cash on the sidelines lately than any argument Lofgren ismaking. In fact, I’m not even sure whatLofgren’s argument is here – He jumps back and forth between individual taxesand corporate profits, so it’s hard to tell what he’s trying to say. Maybe “Apple has cash, Apple make job”? Business planning is a little more complexthan that.

Anothersmokescreen is the "small business" meme, since standing up for Mom'sand Pop's corner store is politically more attractive than to be seen shillingfor a megacorporation. Raising taxes on the wealthy will kill small business'ability to hire; that is the GOP dirge every time Bernie Sanders or someDemocrat offers an amendment to increase taxes on incomes above $1 million. Butthe number of small businesses that have a net annual income over a milliondollars is de minimis, if not by definition impossible (as they would no longerbe small businesses). And as data from the Center for Economic and PolicyResearch have shown, small businesses account for only 7.2 percent of total US employment,a significantly smaller share of total employment than in most Organisation forEconomic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries.

Does Lofgren understand howbusiness profits are taxed? Has he everheard of an S Corp? “Megacorporations”don’t pay the individual tax rate, but a lot of small businesses do because thetaxes pass through to the individual owners. And there are plenty of businesses that have over $1 million in incomethat aren’t evil multinational corporations. Maybe if we called them medium-sized businesses Mr. Lofgren would behappier? I’m also calling BS on hisstatistic here; 7.2% of people are self-employed, not working for small businesses. It appears that Lofgren, as well as the NYTimes writer in the piece I linked to here, don’t seem to understand thatsometimes more than one person works for a small business. These people are called employees, and theywould not be self-employed, but they do work for small businesses. I wouldn’t think that would be so hard tounderstand, but I’ve spelled it out here for those who are mentallychallenged. The real data is as follows: according to the Small Business Administration (a government organization), in 2007, businesses ofless than 50 people account for about 28% of employment, and businesses ofunder 100 account for about 35% of total employment. That’s a far cry from 7.2%

Likewise,Republicans have assiduously spread the myth that Americans are conspicuouslyovertaxed. But compared to other OECD countries, the effective rates of US taxationare among the lowest. In particular, they point to the top corporate incomerate of 35 percent as being confiscatory Bolshevism. But again, the effectiverate is much lower. Did GE pay 35 percent on 2010 profits of $14 billion? No,it paid zero.

Ultimately, corporationsdon’t pay taxes. They are ultimatelyborne by shareholders, employees, and customers. That said, Lofgren’s point in this paragraphis exactly why we need corporate tax reform and not a higher corporate taxrate. For every GE that has an army ofaccountants and attorneys and lobbyists out there pushing for this loophole orthat, there are hundreds of small and medium sized business (the ones Lofgren thinksdon’t exist) that don’t have these things, and are getting screwed over as aresult.

Whenpressed, Republicans make up misleading statistics to "prove" thatthe America's fiscal burden is being borne by the rich and the rest of usare just freeloaders who don't appreciate that fact. "Half of Americansdon't pay taxes" is a perennial meme. But what they leave out is that thatstatement refers to federal income taxes.There are millions of people who don't pay income taxes, but do contribute payrolltaxes - among the most regressive forms of taxation. But according to GOPfiscal theology, payroll taxes don't count. Somehow, they have convincedthemselves that since payroll taxes go into trust funds, they're not realtaxes. Likewise, state and local sales taxes apparently don't count, althoughtheir effect on a poor person buying necessities like foodstuffs is far moreregressive than on a millionaire.

OK, let’s look at the data onincome tax, as well as all federal taxes, including payroll, excise, andcorporate taxes derived through stock ownership aspresented by the CBO. In 2006, the top 1% had18.8% of the income, and paid 39.1% of income taxes, and 28.3% of all federaltaxes. The whole top 20% had 55.7% of the income, and paid 86.3% of incometaxes, and 69.3% of all taxes. The middle 20% had 13.2% of income, and paid 4.4%of income taxes, and 9.1% of all federal taxes. The bottom 20%, who had 3.9% ofthe income, paid -2.8% of income taxes (the negative number is due to EITC),and 0.8% of all federal taxes. Soeven accounting for these other taxes, the wealthy are still paying a share oftaxes that exceeds their share of income. On the issue of state and local taxes, I think maybe Lofgren should takethat up with state and local governments. Different government, different system, different taxes. Complaining that the federal government isn’taccounting for taxes that they don’t levy and don’t have control over is justbarking up the wrong tree. If you wantstate governments to have a more progressive tax structure, fine – but it isn’tthe GOP’s fault that it’s not the way you want it. Incidentally, the wealthy do account for adisproportionate amount of consumer spending, so they likely pay a highpercentage of sales taxes as well.

Allof these half truths and outright lies have seeped into popular culture via thecorporate-owned business press. Just listen to CNBC for a few hours and youwill hear most of them in one form or another. More important politically,Republicans' myths about taxation have been internalized by millions ofeconomically downscale "values voters," who may have been attractedto the GOP for other reasons (which I will explain later), but who now acceptthis misinformation as dogma.

After providing no statisticsexcept his BS 7.2% figure for small business employment, Lofgren now assertsthat the belief that the tax burden in the US is primarily carried by thewealthy is a lie. The data saysotherwise, so unless he has something more than hyperbole to back up hisassertion, I’d say it’s Lofgren who is lying.

Andwhen misinformation isn't enough to sustain popular support for the GOP'sagenda, concealment is needed. One fairly innocuous provision in the Dodd-Frankfinancial reform bill requires public companies to make a more transparentdisclosure of CEO compensation, including bonuses. Note that it would not limitthe compensation, only require full disclosure. Republicans are hell-bent onrepealing this provision. Of course; it would not serve Wall Street interestsif the public took an unhealthy interest in the disparity of their own incomesas against that of a bank CEO. As Spencer Bachus, the Republican chairman ofthe House Financial Services Committee, says, "In Washington, the view is that the banks areto be regulated and my view is that Washington and the regulators are there toserve the banks."

CEO compensation for publiccompanies is already highly transparent…it’s on almost all of the majorfinancial websites, and is heavily documented in corporate disclosuredocuments. Because of this, I’m notreally sure what Lofgren is referring to, but it may be aprovision which required companies to put something in their proxy documentsshowing the ratio of CEO pay to the average employee in the company(Sections 953 and 955). This just isn’ta relevant metric, and can be highly misleading – of course the CEO of Wal-Martwill have a higher ratio than the CEO of Goldman Sachs, but what does that tellus? That Wal-Mart hires a lot oflow-skill, entry-level workers, and Goldman hires lots of investmentbankers. It doesn’t really tell usanything about how employees are paid relative to their value, and thus is awaste of the company’s time and energy.

2. They worship at the altar of Mars. Whilethe me-too Democrats have set a horrible example of keeping up with the Joneseswith respect to waging wars, they can never match GOP stalwarts such as JohnMcCain or Lindsey Graham in their sheer, libidinous enthusiasm for invadingother countries. McCain wanted to mix it up with Russia - anuclear-armed state - during the latter's conflict with Georgia in 2008(remember? - "we are all Georgians now," a slogan that did not,fortunately, catch on), while Graham has been persistently agitating forattacks on Iran and intervention in Syria. And these are not fringe elements of the party;they are the leading "defense experts," who always get tapped for theSunday talk shows. About a month before Republicans began holding a gun to thehead of the credit markets to get trillions of dollars of cuts, these sameRepublicans passed a defense appropriations bill that increased spendingby $17 billion over the prior year's defense appropriation. To borrow ChrisHedges' formulation, war isthe force that gives meaning to their lives.

McCain wanted to go to war with Russia? That’s news to me…I thought he just wanted to provide some rhetorical(and possibly material) support to Georgia. Graham has been out front on the Syrian and Iranian issues, but don’t theIsraeli destruction of a secret nuclear facility in Syria and the continued Iranianquest to become a nuclear power show that his argument has some merit? It doesn’t necessarily mean we should go towar against either of them, but it certainly advocates a strong posturemilitarily to ensure that both countries know that we take the situationseriously.

Acynic might conclude that this militaristic enthusiasm is no more complicatedthan the fact that Pentagon contractors spread a lot of bribery money aroundCapitol Hill. That is true, but there is more to it than that. It is notnecessarily even the fact that members of Congress feel they are protectingconstituents' jobs. The wildly uneven concentration of defense contracts and militarybases nationally means that some areas, like Washington, DC, and San Diego,are heavily dependent on Department of Defense (DOD) spending. But there aremany more areas of the country whose net balance is negative: the citizenrypays more in taxes to support the Pentagon than it receives back in localcontracts.

Andthe economic justification for Pentagon spending is even more fallacious whenone considers that the $700 billion annual DOD budget creates comparatively fewjobs. The days of Rosie the Riveter are long gone; most weapons projects nowrequire very little touch labor. Instead, a disproportionate share is siphonedoff into high-cost research and development (from which the civilian economybenefits little); exorbitant management expenditures, overhead and out-and-outpadding; and, of course, the money that flows back into the coffers ofpolitical campaigns. A million dollars appropriated for highway constructionwould create two to three times as many jobs as a million dollars appropriated forPentagon weapons procurement, so the jobs argument is ultimately specious.

The military employeesroughly 700,000 civilians and 1.4 million servicemen and women, for a total of 2.1million employed. Given the $700billion budget number, that’s about $333,000 per job (and this doesn’t evencount all of the military contractors whose jobs are supported by this budget),which is less than a lot of the wasteful stimulus jobs cost, and those weren’t permanentjobs. Also, the civilian economy doesbenefit from military research – maybe Lofgren’s heard of something called the Internet, and if not, he mightbe familiar with GPS. I think somepeople have made some money off of those things, but maybe I heard wrong. We definitely could use some procurementreform, but Lofgren’s assertion that the jobs argument is specious is, well,specious.

Takeaway the cash nexus and there still remains a psychological predispositiontoward war and militarism on the part of the GOP. This undoubtedly arises froma neurotic need to demonstrate toughness and dovetails perfectly with thebelligerent tough-guy pose one constantly hears on right-wing talk radio.Militarism springs from the same psychological deficit that requires an endlessseries of enemies, both foreign and domestic.

Now we’re not just racistterrorist hostage-takers, we’re actually mentally disturbed! Armchair psychology is useless in a politicaldiscussion. I could talk about how thiswhole column is about Mike Lofgren lashing out at his former employers becauseof a deep psychological need to gain acceptance among a group now that he feelsrejection in a place where he once worked. However, since I don’t know Lofgren, I’d rather tell you why what he’ssaying is wrong instead of trying to make something up about why he’scrazy. Maybe instead of trying toanalyze people’s motivations, Lofgren should focus on why his opponents aresupporting the wrong things.

Theresults of the last decade of unbridled militarism and the Democrats' cowardlyrefusal to reverse it[4], have been disastrousboth strategically and fiscally. It has made the UnitedStates less prosperous, less secure and less free. Unfortunately, themilitarism and the promiscuous intervention it gives rise to are only likely toabate when the Treasury is exhausted, just as it happened to the Dutch Republic and the BritishEmpire.

Wespend less on the military than on Social Security or Medicare, which arefar more likely to bankrupt us than “militarism”.

3. Give me that old time religion. Panderingto fundamentalism is a full-time vocation in the GOP. Beginning in the 1970s,religious cranks ceased simply to be a minor public nuisance in this countryand grew into the major element of the Republican rank and file. PatRobertson's strong showing in the 1988 Iowa Caucus signaled the gradual mergerof politics and religion in the party. The results are all around us: if theAmerican people poll more like Iranians or Nigerians than Europeans orCanadians on questions of evolution versus creationism, scriptural inerrancy,the existence of angels and demons, and so forth, that result is due to therise of the religious right, its insertion into the public sphere by theRepublican Party and the consequent normalizing of formerly reactionary orquaint beliefs. Also around us is a prevailing anti-intellectualism andhostility to science; it is this group that defines "low-informationvoter" - or, perhaps, "misinformation voter."

And who was the Republican nominee in 1988? Not Pat Robertson. So Americans tend to be more religious thanEuropeans? I would think that would besomewhat obvious, since our country was initially settled by large numbers ofpeople fleeing religious persecution in Europe. All of the beliefs listed here are completely religious, and havenothing to do with policy (belief in evolution might involve policy, butLofgren does not reference its teaching in schools or anything thatlimited). What does a person’s belief inangels have to do with their policy views? Something like a third of the populationbelieves in ghosts – what does that say about them?

TheConstitution to the contrary notwithstanding, there is now a de facto religioustest for the presidency: major candidates are encouraged (or coerced) to"share their feelings" about their "faith" in a revelatoryspeech; or, some televangelist like Rick Warren dragoons the candidates (as hedid with Obama and McCain in 2008) to debate the finer points of Christology,with Warren himself, of course, as the arbiter. Politicized religion is alsothe sheet anchor of the culture wars. But how did the whole toxic stew of GOPbeliefs - economic royalism, militarism and culture wars cum fundamentalism -come completely to displace an erstwhile civilized Eisenhower Republicanism?

“Our government has no senseunless it is founded in a deeply felt religious faith and I don’t care what itis. With us of course it is theJudeo-Christian concept, but it must be a religion that all men are createdequal.” –DwightEisenhower, 1952

Itis my view that the rise of politicized religious fundamentalism (which is asubset of the decline of rational problem solving in America)may have been the key ingredient of the takeover of the Republican Party. Forpoliticized religion provides a substrate of beliefs that rationalizes - atleast in the minds of followers - all three of the GOP's main tenets.

So he’s going to try and tieall of this stuff together now, huh? Should be interesting…

Televangelistshave long espoused the health-and-wealth/name-it-and-claim it gospel. If youare wealthy, it is a sign of God's favor. If not, too bad! But don't forget totithe in any case. This rationale may explain why some economically downscalewhites defend the prerogatives of billionaires.

What are the “prerogatives”of billionaires? Maybe a lot ofdownscale whites support the ability of other people to make money so they canhire those downscale whites to work in their companies, but I don’t think that’swhat Lofgren is referring to. The US hasfar greater social mobility than, say, Western Europe, so a lot of middle classpeople support low rates of taxation because they aspire to someday be wealthythemselves. There are a number ofpossible motivations here, so singling out religion in the way Lofgren does issilly.

TheGOP's fascination with war is also connected with the fundamentalist mindset.The Old Testament abounds in tales of slaughter - God ordering the killing ofthe Midianite male infants and enslavement of the balance of the population,the divinely-inspired genocide of the Canaanites, the slaying of variousmiscreants with the jawbone of an ass - and since American religiousfundamentalist seem to prefer the Old Testament to the New (particularly thatportion of the New Testament known as the Sermon on the Mount), it is but ashort step to approving war as a divinely inspired mission. This sort ofthinking has led, inexorably, to such phenomena as Jerry Falwell once writingthat God is Pro-War.

The Bible has tales ofslaughter, so Republicans are violent. Soundslike the old violent video games argument. American fundamentalists prefer the Old Testament? Are they Jewish fundamentalists? Liberals love to trot out the Sermon on theMount – they should read thewhole thing; I don’t think it would necessarily fit with their views onreligion. The fact that so many liberalswho think of themselves as “intelligent” are currently passing around thisarticle, and talking it up as a cogent analysis, makes me laugh.

Itis the apocalyptic frame of reference of fundamentalists, their belief in animminent Armageddon, that psychologically conditions them to steer this countryinto conflict, not only on foreign fields (some evangelicals thought Saddam wasthe Antichrist and therefore a suitable target for cruise missiles), but alsoin the realm of domestic political controversy. It is hardly surprising thatthe most adamant proponent of the view that there was no debt ceiling problemwas Michele Bachmann, the darling of the fundamentalist right. What does itmatter, anyway, if the country defaults? - we shall presently abide in thebosom of the Lord.

Ridiculous. No comment needed, other than that if youbelieve this stuff, you are truly are paranoid conspiracy theorist. And I’m not referring to Michelle Bachmann inthat regard.

Someliberal writers have opined that the different socio-economic perspectivesseparating the "business" wing of the GOP and the religious rightmake it an unstable coalition that could crack. I am not so sure. There is nofundamental disagreement on which direction the two factions want to take thecountry, merely how far in that direction they want to take it. The plutocratswould drag us back to the Gilded Age, the theocrats to the Salem witchtrials. In any case, those consummate plutocrats, the Koch brothers, are pumping large sumsof money into Michele Bachman's presidential campaign, so one ought not maketoo much of a potential plutocrat-theocrat split.

Lofgren seems to besuggesting that both groups want to go into the past, so they’re both inagreement. Huh? Is this a movie with a Delorean in it? Theoretically, plutocrats would want smallgovernment so they could make money; theocrats would want big government sothey can control people’s lives. We’regetting towards the end here, and all Lofgren is doing is serving upad-hominems so that liberals can sit at home and nod their heads in agreement, “Ijust knew they were evil, and this proves it!”

Lofgren links to an article discussing the $35,000 Bachmann has gotten from Koch-linked organizations. I think he's referring to the same Koch Brothers who gave $20million to the ACLU to fight the Patriot Act. They definitely must be consummate plutocrats who onlycare about themselves and their money…it’s not that they’reprincipled believers in limited government. That’s too simple. There must besomething more nefarious afoot here. CATO,the Koch-funded think tank, also opposed the Iraq war in 2003, so I’m not surehow Lofgren squares all of this – wasn’t he just saying that religion hadsomething to do with it?

Thus,the modern GOP; it hardly seems conceivable that a Republican could havewritten the following:

"Shouldany political party attempt to abolish social security, unemployment insuranceand eliminate labor laws and farm programs, you would not hear of that partyagain in our political history. There is a tiny splinter group, of course, thatbelieves you can do these things. Among them are H. L. Hunt (you possibly knowhis background), a few other Texas oil millionaires and an occasional politician orbusiness man from other areas. Their number is negligible and they arestupid." (That was President Eisenhower, writing to his brother Edgar in1954.)

Republicans have talked aboutreforming Social Security, not abolishing it. They’ve talked about ending extensions of unemployment insurance, notending it all together. They want toscale back some of the labor laws, not eliminate them. Farm programs are far less relevant than theywere almost 60 years ago when Eisenhower wrote this, which is a reminder that politicalenvironments change, so we probably shouldn’t put too much into one quote froma much different world than the one we live in today. Wasn’t it Lofgren who just said thatRepublicans wanted to take us into the past, and now he’s pining for 1955? Are you sure there isn’t a Delorean in thismovie?

Itis this broad and ever-widening gulf between the traditional Republicanism ofan Eisenhower and the quasi-totalitarian cult of a Michele Bachmann thatimpelled my departure from Capitol Hill. It is not in my pragmatic nature tomake a heroic gesture of self-immolation, or to make lurid revelations ofpersonal martyrdom in the manner of David Brock. And I will leave a more detailed dissection offailed Republican economic policies to my fellow apostate Bruce Bartlett.

Totalitarian cultists…you cantell we’re getting to the end here; Lofgren is re-using his insults. Lofgren left Capitol Hill because he hatesMichelle Bachmann, and he’s going to leave it to others to shed any light onwhy he thinks Republicans are wrong on the economy…which is probably best,given his lack of ability to understand the difference between being self-employedand working for a small business.

Ileft because I was appalled at the headlong rush of Republicans, like Gadareneswine, to embrace policies that are deeply damaging to this country's future;and contemptuous of the feckless, craven incompetence of Democrats in theirhalf-hearted attempts to stop them. And, in truth, I left as an act of rationalself-interest. Having gutted private-sector pensions and health benefits as aresult of their embrace of outsourcing, union busting and "shareholdervalue," the GOP now thinks it is only fair that public-sector workers giveup their pensions and benefits, too. Hence the intensification of the GOP'sdecades-long campaign of scorn against government workers. Under thecircumstances, it is simply safer to be a current retiree rather than aprospective one.

No one is contemplatingtaking away pensions already earned by federal workers, so Lofgren’s excuse forleaving doesn’t add up. There have beendebates on public sector pensions, but in every case involving larger entities(i.e. Wisconsin), it’s focused on workers making a little bigger contributionto their pensions and health care. IfLofgren really left a good job in Washington because he might, at some point inthe future, have to pay a little more towards his pension and health care seemsa little odd. The irony is, he’sprobably one of the people that says rich people won’t change their behavior inresponse to changes in tax policy, but he’s retiring on the theory thatpossibly he maybe will have to pay a little bit more at some point.

Ifyou think Paul Ryan and his Ayn Rand-worshipping colleagues aren't after yourSocial Security and Medicare, I am here to disabuse you of your naiveté.[5] They willmove heaven and earth to force through tax cuts that will so starve thegovernment of revenue that they will be "forced" to make "hardchoices" - and that doesn't mean repealing those very same tax cuts, itmeans cutting the benefits for which you worked.

You can agree or disagreewith Paul Ryan, but he’s one of the most bold and honest members of Congress interms of explaining and attempting to offer solutions for the budget issues weface. Ryan also does all of this in apretty calm and good-natured way, given how heated the political climate isright now. After trashing his opponentsand calling them every name in the book, for Lofgren to paint Ryan as anextremist is pretty rich. Maybe Lofgrenneeds to look in a mirror if we wants to see extremism and intolerance.

Duringthe week that this piece was written, the debt ceiling fiasco reached itsconclusion. The economy was already weak, but the GOP's disgraceful game ofchicken roiled the markets even further. Foreigners could hardly believe it:Americans' own crazy political actions were destabilizing the safe-haven statusof the dollar. Accordingly, during that same week, over one trillion dollarsworth of assets evaporated on financial markets. Russia and China havestepped up their advocating that the dollar be replaced as the global reservecurrency - a move as consequential and disastrous for US interests as any thatcan be imagined.

Foreigners have been worriedfor years about the safe-haven status of the dollar, ever since our tradedeficits blew out after the dot-com bust, and especially since the Fed engagedin quantitative easing in an attempt to boost the economy over the last coupleof years. The evidence of this has beenthe rise in the price of gold and other commodities, and the fall in the dollarto near-record lows against other global currencies. And China and Russia have been advocatingmoving away from the dollar for a few years as well – pinning it on the debtceiling debate is incorrect, and shows a very limited view of the economiclandscape, driven more by media headlines that by attention to real markets.

IfRepublicans have perfected a new form of politics that is successfulelectorally at the same time that it unleashes major policy disasters, it meanstwilight both for the democratic process and America'sstatus as the world's leading power.

Thank God I’m done withthat. Lofgren really doesn’t have acogent argument here – he just seems to ping from issue to issue, expressinghis loathing of everything that the GOP stands for. Rather than really address the policies onoffer from Republicans, he just latches on to his own perception of what theGOP must believe in their hearts, and proceeds to attack that. But swatting down straw men and assigningmotives to others doesn’t add to Lofgren’s argument, it only shows that he hasvery little command of the facts and data that are driving the currentdebates. In one of the few instanceswhere he offers facts or figures to back up his argument, he flails badly. His inability to even understand thedifference between self-employed people and people who work for smallbusinesses is sad, and even sadder whenyou remember that this guy was working for REPUBLICANS on the BUDGETCOMMITTEE! Maybe it’s better he left,because he doesn’t seem to have done well with numbers.

Ranck And File

Your Tax Dollars At Work!

Goodbye to All That Claptrap - And Good Riddance: Don’t Let The Door Hit You On The Way Out, Mike Lofgren!

Quote Of The Day

Quote Of The Day

Going To A Candidate's Debate...

Too many details!

Studying for the big night on Thursday....

2.0...or maybe it's 3.0....Ehhh, Whatever....