Free trade and the decline of the American middle class

I increasingly hear people who support free trade talking in very pessimistic terms about the decline of the middle class and their inability to envision improvement in this trend. For example, I listen to the podcast "Left, Right and Center" and Matt Miller, the moderator who was in the Clinton Administration and has never said anything (that I've heard) to question free trade (in fact, even the leftist voice on the show supports free trade), has been very pessimistic about middle class prospects since the economy crashed.

Unfortunately, none of these voices seem to be making a connection between free trade policies and the decline of the middle class. Many, including Mr. Miller, go as far as to tie the middle class decline (at least in part) to competition with China and India. So with that perspective, why on earth aren't these voices making the obvious step of questioning the wisdom of free trade? Well, that's largely because most political pundits drank the Cool Aid, most of them work for Corporate conglomerates that benefit from offshore exploitation, and many have--or aspire to attain--such wealth that they financially benefit from the exploitation. With most of the media refusing to see the light, it's left for the American people to figure it out on their own. By the time we figure it out as a country (clearly many individuals get it), so much American money will have funneled to China and India that it will be too late. And the fat cats that made a fortune out of the transfer will just smile knowingly and feign pity (or at least a handful will pretend to care).

It's becoming increasingly obvious that the corporate interests that make so much of their money off of exploiting cheap, offshore labor (and more often off-shore tax breaks) have such influence in Washington that is not going to change until it's too late. The only scenario that I can imagine at this point is for American's to get so pissed off that enough of them refuse to buy Chinese (start with China and then build from there). Only enough Americans would have to participate to build credible competitors and then it would start eating into corporate profits enough to make it unprofitable to move overseas. But even that seems close to unimaginable, given the zombie shoppers in Wal-Mart. I did a quick search to see what kind of sites are out there encouraging non-Chinese made purchase, and I can't find anything! Unbelievable!!! There is no web site www.dontbuychinese.com! How is this possible? Did the Chinese purchase the domain to keep it from establishing? Seeing this makes me almost certain we are headed toward American economic catastrophe, the likes of which will make 2008 look like a warm-up. But just maybe...maybe...some of these pundits will finally get it and start speaking out about the pitfalls of outright free trade before it's too late. Matt Miller? Anyone?

Sara Palin and the crybaby conservatives

In his 2005 article "The New PC: Crybaby Conservatives" in The Nation magazine, Russell Jacoby describes how conservatives are constantly whining about liberal bias in college classrooms. He describes attempts to bully professors on college campuses across the country to remove liberal perspectives and increase conservative perspectives. As Jacoby points out, conservatives "are at least as prickly as any other group when it comes to perceived slights. After years of decrying the 'political correctness police,' thin-skinned conservatives have joined in; they want their own ideological wardens to enforce intellectual conformity." But since the 2005 article, conservatives have become increasingly thinned skin whenever criticized or satirized, as demonstrated by Sara Palin's recent reactions to Dave Letterman and the Family Guy.

Keep in mind, conservatives have attacked political correctness for decades, claiming that political correctness has left us vulnerable to terrorists acts, proliferated welfare, ruined our education system, among other vast claims. Of course, the rants against political correctness by conservatives haven't faded. They continue alongside the whining that David Letterman, college professors, and comedy shows are not sufficiently considering the feelings of conservatives before speaking (a.k.a. political correctness). But at some point, someone has to point out that you can't have it both ways.

I've been inclined toward political correctness for a couple of decades. I like comedy, but there are lines that shouldn't be crossed. I love Sara Silverman, but some of her jokes definitely make me cringe. And I didn't particularly like the Family Guy's spoof on Trig Palin (though it wasn't nearly as bad as I expected based on the coverage). But in not liking the Family Guy's spoof, I'm being consistent with my own standards that I've followed for at least 20 years. Conservatives, on the other hand, constantly flip back and forth, depending upon what they find advantageous. If you speak out against the Family Guy, you sure as hell better have also spoken out repeatedly against Rush Limbaugh and Michael Savage, who's hateful and bigoted rants (that have gone on for years) make the Family Guy (which is doing a comic spoof) look like Barney.

Unfortunately though there's really nothing new here. It's just one more example of conservative hypocrisy, which has become so anticipated that the media doesn't even recognize it any more. As a result, they repeat Palin's rants repeatedly and never put them into perspective.

Is it just rhetoric or not? More on conservative hypocricy

"Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!" These words tend to either make conservatives cry or piss their pants. For more than 20 years, conservatives have cited this statement (by Ronald Reagan) as playing a key role (I have heard it claimed as THE key role) in the downfall of the Soviet Union. Of course many of Reagan's other words (e.g. morning in America) are also used to describe what a great President Reagan was. But now conservatives have been on the attack for months saying that Obama is just out there giving good speeches, but that words aren't actions. You can't claim that Reagan's speeches rallied a nation and caused the USSR to disband, and then turn around and dismiss Obama's speeches as contributing to nothing.

The Massachusetts Miracle

When Scott Brown defeated Martha Coakley for Ted Kennedy's Massachusetts Senate seat, the media ran with stories of a conservative upswing, a backlash against Obama, and a 2010 repeat of the 1994 GOP congressional take-over. No doubt, Republicans were elated and Democrats were distraught. Nevermind all of Coakley's blunders--it really was a huge upset and definitely signaled some serious shifts in public attitudes. But there is a very good chance that we'll look back at this as a miracle of another kind.

The Massachusetts upset will undoubtedly embolden Republicans to claim that Americans love their policies and they will continue to do everything to keep the Democrats from accomplishing anything, therefore basically shutting down the government for the next 9 months. With their new 41 seat minority in the Senate, they will now be able to filibuster anything they want, without the help of conservative Democrats. Given that this congress has already filibustered much more than any other congress ever has, I'm guessing that we ain't seen nothin' yet. I think we can anticipate GOP extremism like we've never seen before.

Combined with the fact that Democrats look as if they may finally be getting a clue (based on Obama and Biden's recent performances) and have begun to expose the Republican hypocrisy, I think the political picture may look a lot more balanced come November. I'm pretty sure that American's don't want to go back to the George Bush/Tom Delay days. And the GOP is doing their best to remind them of those days. When the dust clears in November, the American people will have realized that Republicans had effectively been able to stop the policies for which they had elected Barack Obama on, and I don't think that they are going to be too happy about it.

Without the Massachusetts miracle, the GOP would have continued to whine for the next year and Dems would likely have had significant losses in November. But I think we'll look back at that race and realize that it was a game changer of a kind that the media has entirely overlooked.

National Dept

Why the extreme hatred toward Obama?

Conservatives are REALLY ANGRY at Obama. The vitriol has been profound since summer. But what exactly has Obama done that has driven all of this anger? Most of what we hear is completely generalized anger of how un-American he is (e.g., he's a socialist), without any specific policy complaints. The lack of specificity by the critics, but especially in the media's reporting of it, has really been bothering me. Conservatives seem angrier than liberals ever did at Bush and he lied us into a war, ignored warnings that terrorists wanted to fly airplanes into US buildings, allowed Enron and Banks to rip us off, cut taxes for those making record profits, etc. What has Obama done that is as bad or worse than that?!? Here is my attempt to understand specifically what has conservatives so upset about the Obama Administration.

Taxes
You have to start with the tea parties, which has been the center of conservative anger. And the tea parties must be about taxes, right? After all, their namesake, the Boston tea party, was about taxation without representation. But Obama has CUT taxes for 95% of Americans and kept them the same (so far) for the remaining 5%. Since the tea baggers weren't protesting Bush's tax rates, then we know taxation can't be the source of the anger. Right? Unfortunately, it probably is for some. A recent poll showed that 24% of American's believed that Obama has raised their taxes. Only 12% believed that Obama had lowered their taxes.

National Debt/Deficit
This is one of the few specifics that I actually ever hear about. But this is an outrageous and hypocritical criticism coming from conservatives, who support the party of national debt. Over the last 60 years, the presidents that have primarily driven up the national debt have been Reagan (especially Reagan!), Bush, and Bush Jr. I don't hear them bashing the Reagan presidency for his debt. Don't believe me on this? Go to Google Images and search "national debt" to see numerous graphs of the national dept(see example above). These three presidents are the only ones since WWII that have had an increase in the national dept as a % of GNP. The national debt is such a mainstay of conservative policy that Dick Cheney stated that "Reagan taught us deficits don't matter."

Bailout
The bailout is another criticism I've heard of Obama. For the most part, this is a ridiculous criticism since the bailout was passed under the Bush Administration. As a senator running for president at the time, Obama supported it, but so did McCain and Palin. So it's clearly not fair to lay this at his feet. I would agree that he should have forced some reversals of Bush policies in how it was administered. However, I think he's addressing much of that by proposing taxes on the big banks that got us into the financial crisis and then begged for the bailout. Of course, conservatives will likely oppose these taxes when it comes time, therefore removing any sliver of legitimacy them may have to criticize Obama on this issue.

Stimulus
Obama passed the stimulus and conservatives have effectively confused the stimulus with the bank bailout (which passed under Bush). The stimulus was a bill to put American's back to work and virtually every economist agrees that it has helped, though there is obviously debate as to how much. Given the talk of one year ago, that we were heading into a potential depression, it seems obvious to me that it has helped immensely, but no one can name exactly how many jobs have been added. There's no question that it's a lot though. Conservatives have purposely confused the stimulus with the bailout, because few people like the idea of throwing money at bankers (which is what Bush did), but most people like the idea of throwing money out there to create jobs in a time of growing job losses (what Obama did). Do conservatives hate Obama for the stimulus? Probably, but they'll never tell you that without talking about the bailout at the same time.

So what is it that has conservatives so angry? I've not addressed the socialist label, mostly because I want to hit that head-on in a future blog. But obviously Obama isn't trying to convert our economic and governmental system into socialism. My shoes, shirt, pizza, television, computer, milk, paper, car, camera, music, movies, etc. are all made by private companies and no American politician has even hinted at questioning that. Of course there was, at one point, a public option in the health care bill. But most Americans supported that (at least initially when 77% of American's said they wanted health care reform) and it has now been abandoned anyway.

So why the extreme hatred? Well, it obviously has a lot more to do with lack of control than with specific policies. If it were about policy, I think we'd hear more specifics and less angry cries of socialism (or Nazism). Of course, there may be worse motivations behind the hatred and while I hate to go there, I'm not sure how you can ignore it given the level of hatred that really is directed at little more than his character.