THROUGH 83 YEARS I’VE SURVIVED MANY LOSSES. Some fairly good jobs, not all lost voluntarily. Parents. My second wife died. Then my lady companion of 18 years. Earlier, my first wife, our son’s mother, parted from me twice. We later divorced. In all, we survived tough times emotionally, and often unemployed or under-employed during Republican regimes. It is well documented that public economy and populace tend to suffer under Republicans and prosper under Democrats. I refer to the middle and working classes. Rightists in power rig things for property owners and big wealth, worrying only enough about little folks to keep the mobs with pitchforks, ball bats and bricks at bay.
Eisenhower’s terms were not too bad. They inflicted a lasting, rotten effect foisted on the world by John Foster Dulles and his brother Alan, who covertly ran Machiavellian crusades to save “capitalism” (that is, predatory capitalism) from both the Eastern Bloc and “under-developed” nations that would sooner turn all the way left than get robbed by U.S. corporations offering minimal wages to campesinos in exchange for maximal resource-rape and oppression. For us, those recessionary eight years were far from the best years of our lives.
Nixon’s work mixed very good with bad, but again favored the wealthy. Reagan’s years, like Nixon’s, were highly frustrating. Reagan split consensus, tilting us the wrong way again into hard times for all but the well-off. Elder Bush held things down. Clinton made mistakes but took us out of the red. Bush the Younger screwed us up so badly we have yet to fully recover. Obama has been good for people in spite of insanely biased, racist opposition.
Oh, what hope I had for Obama. He had a decent year or two before reaction flat-lined progress and dropped us in a hole of two unfinished wars started by Cheney’s neocon PNAC crowd, whose ideological fish-to-fry-in-the-sky set us on an imperial course fraught with unclear risks and devastating expenses good only for The Few, such as the Military-Industrial-Banking-Complex of increasingly ill-famed corporations. The Afghan war went stale without victory while force was wrongly shifted to Iraq. Our real losses are framed by what might have been done instead of enriching the arms industry, whose warped “trickle-down” feeds too many of the wrong things, considering the balance of our national need. Ah, well.
Reflecting over election results so far, things are not totally bad. Yes, the Koch brothers’ financial “galaxy” has turned the tables on democracy and progress for the next two years, aided by a not-so-subtle program of opinion-engineered foolishness and the GOP’s inclusion of tea party adult-children who were led into the “magical mountain cave” — whence they do not emerge — by the Pie-eyed Pipers. Together with the GOP’s cynical enlistment of evangelical fundamentalists against the future freedom of women, health care for all and safety from ancient errors in language, mind and emotion, we shall suffer great, temporary damage, wrongly from the right.
Hear that big squawking start? What else could be expected of such people? They know everything but their essence. Yes, with special upbringing and stunted growth, they have no idea of the immense thing they never grasp due to staying lost, often for life, in Standard Metaphysical Delusion — unless of course they cynically ignore the bad effects of punching the buttons of vulnerable victims, buttons they built and continually re-install by repeated mention to their daisy chain of badly conditioned creatures.
President Obama can slow the headlong plunge back to the turn of the last century by veto power, which though they may often over-ride it, will keep the most radically backward in check by democratic caucus stonewalling. Turnabout will be fair play, and need not play fair. Perhaps it will suffice as a holding action until the real hammer strikes those big, dark money-men and their addled followers in 2016, when the electorate again wakens and stands all the way up, the 50 percent of sensibly holistic voters joined by swing voters against the 30 percent of hard-right voters and, say, the other half of that late-deciding, unsure 20-30 percent.
A few indications appeared in this election that in spite of the Koch Empire’s addictive financial cocaine-injections into vulnerable bloodstreams, humanity in its profound numbers will prevail over the narrowminded and greedy. The GOP will be swept out of office along with yesterday’s middle-aged, naughty, gray-haired children. Reconstruction, then, will reach all the way to fulfilling the goal of true Progress, with gently persuasive re-education of the radically Wrong into full understanding of civilization, its history, discontents and nonetheless glorious possibilities. Ah, we hope.
Oh, yes, hear ’em start the choir against unrealistic, utopian hope and how much better they know reality than we do, who sense the far, fair vista? Okay, start up the player piano for ‘’em, Mabel: How about “Gimme That Ol’ Time Religion, It’s Good Enough For THEM.”
Robert Shelby is a Benicia writer and poet who was the city’s poet laureate from 2008-10.
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Clinton made mistakes but took us out of the red.
lol.
Apparently all of your worldly readings did not include Econ 101.
Econ 101 for (Repugnican) dummies:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2012/09/05/the-clinton-economy-in-charts/
Money quote: Of the post World War II presidents, only Truman (4.8 percent), Kennedy (5.2 percent) and Johnson (5.1 percent) achieved higher average growth rates.
Shelby stated: ”Clinton made mistakes but took us out of the red”
And everyone of those administrations supported free market, capitalism. Unlike the present administration. Look at the policies not the politics, Hank!
And the Reagan Administration had the greatest growth rate from 1984 through 1988.
Yes, Reagan had the greatest growth rate from 1984 to 1988. Unfortunately he was the only president we had at the time.
As for historical growth rates, his remains a poor showing in comparison to several other presidents, as the charts I linked to above indicate.
Dennis, for a change, try actually saying something useful instead of just taking “pot-shots”? Your input from Wonk=blog was interesting, but did not, as usual, close your case.
Yes, Clinton’s work may not, per-se, have reversed our balance from red to black, but when the Bush crowd came into office, our books WERE “well into the black.” You can’t argue that away.
Robert stated:”Clinton’s work may not, per-se, have reversed our balance from red to black, but when the Bush crowd came into office, our books WERE “well into the black.” You can’t argue that away.
I am going to ignore your usual snideness Robert and attempt to talk some logic to you. Specifically :
Clinton first term: the debt increased by $1,018 Billion (27%)
Clinton second term: $401 Billion (7%)
A net increase in the national debt of 136% over eight years.
In one year (2000), Clinton did reduce the overall debt by 2.1%.
At no point was the nation “in the black” (debt free).
In one year there was a “budget surplus”. To attain the surplus, Bill Clinton borrowed money, robbing Peter to pay Paul.
You will not accept the above as true, and frankly I am not going to bother citing sources for the above, as you won’t pay attention to them anyway. Instead, answer two basic questions:
1) In what year of the Clinton Presidency was our nation debt free (“in the black”)?
2) How can one claim to be in ‘the black’ if one borrows money to do so?
You Robert are a ‘wordsmith’ and I will hold you to being specific in the words that you use, especially when making false claims regarding the democrat Presidents you idolize.
Correction:A net increase in the national debt of 136% over eight years.
That should be 36%, not 136%
Robert it sure took you a long article written with words not commonly used. All just to tell us you are a Liberal Socialist Progressive and very anti Conservative. You apparently missed the last election. Dems are swimming in circles and will lose the 2016 Presidential election. Sorry Robert you are going to have to live with that fact.
Translation: Derp.
Hank apparently you also missed the 2014 election.
No I am well aware that 19 percent of the country likes Republicans.
Ah, poor little Bobbie Dead-Sea, we we’re all present for the mid-term, but you, as usual are 80-degrees off and 80% out of whack, as well as CHILDISHLY WISHFUL about WHAT IT REALLY MEANS. Do pull your pans up around your waist?
Beyond the lesser evil mantra—
From the above article:
“Oh, what hope I had for Obama.”
From the article below: A deeper more profound analysis for Mr. Shelby, our citizen voters, city staff and our appointed and elected representatives to seriously contemplate…
“And what did Corporate America get from the Democrats, Obama, and Republicans during the first six years, 2009-2014”?
“Bankers and bigtime investors got a $14 trillion bailout by the US central bank, the Federal Reserve. That multi-trillion dollar virtually ‘free money’ injection produced record profits, stock & bond market capital gains, record corporate dividend payouts & stock buybacks, and the greatest surge in income—95% of all net income gains since 2009—for the wealthiest 1% population in all of US recorded history.”
“US businesses and wealthy investors in general got more than $5 trillion in tax cuts passed in 2009, 2010, and again in 2012 for the next ten years.”
“Oil and energy companies got a green light to frack gas and oil without interference throughout the USA, a free hand to dump coal ash and chemicals in US rivers at will poisoning US drinking water supplies for countless local communities, and permission to continue to emit thousands of additional tons of dangerous metals into the US atmosphere that continues to cause an epidemic of various human nervous system diseases and disorders.”
“Simultaneously, voting rights and basic civil liberties of American citizens were progressively chipped away at the margins in dozens of US states; journalists and government corruption whistleblowers were hounded, harassed, and indicted by Federal and State attorneys general alike: police militarization and military tactics against US citizens became common practice; and spying and electronic surveillance on innocent US citizens were taken to new extremes. Most Americans today are not even aware of the extent to which their democracy has been restricted and dismantled under the Democratic party controlled Congress of 2009-10, the joint Democratic-Republican Congress of 2011-14, and the Obama administration.”
“And now all that is about to get worse”!
https://zcomm.org/zcommentary/the-republican-congresss-new-agenda/
There is nothing deeper or more profound about this.
Hank, YOU ARE ABSOLUTELY CORRECT. Do be sure to read my Blogpost #250? Email to me your email address, and I’ll make sure you receive my reports & essays if they don’t get into the FORUM.
rmspoet@gmail.com
Beyond the lesser evil mantra—
From the above article:
“Oh, what hope I had for Obama.”
From the article below: A deeper more profound analysis of the two party duopoly for Mr. Shelby, our citizen voters, city staff and our appointed and elected representatives to seriously contemplate…
“Barack Obama as ‘Jimmy Clinton’”
“A Pattern of Democratic Presidential Capitulations”
“Capitulation to corporate interests by Democratic presidents in their final two years in office has become a pattern in recent decades. It is what occurred in 1978-80 with Carter and in 1998-2000 in the case of Bill Clinton. Obama’s track record to date already shows a willingness to concede time and again to corporate interests on economic policy, and to the military-industrial complex and Neocons on foreign policy. ”
“In recent decades a pattern has emerged with Democratic Party politicians in office — Democratic presidents in particular. It goes like this: After Republicans wreck the US economy with policies ensuring their wealthy benefactors and corporate friends get richer even faster by ruining the economy, Democrats come in with promises to clean up the wreckage. Despite having a clear voter mandate and control of both houses of Congress and the Presidency in 1976, 1992, and again in 2008, Democrats repeatedly fail to clean up the mess. Corporate America and the wealthiest 1% are bailed out quickly, but not the rest of the country—i.e. the working classes.”
In the following years Democrats then try to govern by placating, compromising, and cutting deals with the resurgent radical right and corporate interests.
“Concessions by Democrats further benefiting corporations and wealthy investor households (i.e. still more business tax cuts, more free trade, more social program cuts, more destruction of retirement systems and healthcare privatization, etc.) and still more Democrat-led military adventures follow (i.e. Carter’s bungled air invasion of Iran, Clinton’s attack on Somalia and Serbia, and Obama’s further attacks on Afghanistan, Libya, and ISIS-Syria).”
More truth telling below, if you dare?
http://jackrasmus.com/2014/10/01/barack-obama-as-jimmy-carter/
Will, you know very well, the fact that the bungled hostage retrieval in Iran, on Carter’s watch, did not mean Carter was at fault. Army seniority tends to dictate who gets to take on which projects, and Murphy’s Law can take over at any time. As for Clinton’s bringing us into the black, that was Murphy’s Law NO. 2, ( i.e., in reverse.) “If anything can happen serendipitously for the best, sooner or later, it will. [This one law, in fact, accounts for universal or multi-versal existence.]
Beyond the lesser evil mantra—
From the above article:
( Bill)”Clinton made mistakes but took us out of the red. ”
No mention of Hillary Clinton by Mr. Shelby? A curious omission.
More information and news of the “darling of the democrats” for Mr. Shelby, citizen voters and our appointed and elected officials to consider…
“Strange Bedfellows: Hillary and Henry”
“Hillary and Henry sitting in a tree. K-I-S-S-I-N-G-E-R”!
“It says a lot about former secretary of state and presumed presidential aspirant Hillary Clinton that she’s a member of the Henry Kissinger Fan Club. Progressives who despised George W. Bush might want to examine any warm, fuzzy feelings they harbor for Clinton.”
“Clinton acknowledges differences with Kissinger, but apparently these do not keep her from saying that “his analysis … largely fits with the broad strategy behind the Obama administration’s effort over the past six years to build a global architecture of security and cooperation for the 21st century.”
“Beware of politicians and courtiers who issue solemn declarations about building global architectures. To them the rest of us are mere “pieces upon a chess-board.” Security and cooperation are always the announced ends, yet the ostensible beneficiaries usually come to grief. Look where such poseurs have been most active: the Middle East, North Africa, Ukraine. ”
http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/11/21/strange-bedfellows-hillary-and-henry/
“Matter,” in spite of your professional education and intelligent effort to be fair,
you’ve dropped the ball, here.
Hank and Will, WE DO NOT DISAGREE ON MUCH, if anything, really. I don’t know where Will got the idea I’m so sold on Hillary, I’M NOT.
‘Bertie Livesay, I truly am sorry you’re so poorly literate and weakly reasoned. You’re not a really bad guy.