Two Years of Change After the Train Wreck

How can I get you to vote in the next couple of weeks.

You've heard the reports: The Republicans are counting on a mid-term landslide to return their candidates to Congress.  They're counting on the frustration of voters of a growing but still small conservative constituency to be so outrageous and noisy -- promulgating lies and innuendo -- that voters who supported Obama's election two years ago will lose heart and stay at home.

I find this tactic really annoying, and it's making me mad.  Really! This is the party that screwed us, and now they're trying to get back in power.

But maybe I'm being too harsh on the Republicans.  Is that possible?

So I started doing a little research on the history of Republican actions -- using their words and reports -- to see if maybe I'm just being too partisan.

I wanted to see if maybe I missed something that might change my mind.

The following clips are -- except the last one -- I found on YouTube.  What I found might help you decide to get out and vote.

The Warnings in 2006

In 2006 -- after six years of Bush-era economics -- economist Peter Schiff was warning that we were heading for a massive recession.  But it wasn't the message that the US wanted to hear.  In fact, Bush economists were telling us that everything was hunky-dory.  Listen to this debate. It's amazing how the two world views diverge: One listing out the reasons for concern, and the other pooh-poohing those concerns. It was a heated debate, so the piece is long.  But watch it.  If you memory of that time is a little flakey, this will bring it back into focus.




My view in 2006
So what was my personal response to the dire warnings that the housing bubble was going to kill the economy?  Like every good American, I listened to the Bush economists, and I went out an spent more!  We bought a second house, and piled on more debt.  It was a nice house, and it helped us out at the time.  But as the housing bubble started to collapse, it became harder and harder to find a buyer for it when we needed to sell.  Fortunately, on a bright day in September of 2008, it finally sold way below what we paid for it.  Our teeth gritted, we lost at least $20,000 on the sale.  But the day the papers closed, we didn't realize how lucky we were.  Why?

The Meltdown Melts Down

Because the very next day Lehmann Brothers collapsed.  And the Dow Jones Industrial Average took one of the biggest nose-dives in history, dropping well over 400 points on a single day.

Remember that day, in September of 2008?



Goodness! But isn't Henry Paulson watching this?  Aren't the Republicans concerned?  Well here is Hank Paulson's response to the crisis:



"It's Not Our Fault"

So it wasn't their fault. It was, according to Paulson, because he couldn't go to Congress -- then in the hands of the Democrats -- to ask for help.

And yet, a few weeks later, that's exactly what Paulson and Bush did. And then Bush explained this thing called TARP to the nation.

Below is the entire address to the nation that Bush gave to us.  In it, he details not only what's going on, but how we got to that state of chaos, and what they were planning to do about it.

Watching this clip is really kind of sad, because for the first time, it seems, Bush actually seems to take some interest in the economy and the real lives of Americans. 



But wait, isn't Bush's address right out of Peter Schiff's portfolio?  Didn't he say the same things?

Well, yeah. His economic policy of "no-regulation" created an environment by which the entire financial structure of the US was threatened.  Everybody -- from Wall Street to Main Street -- was suddenly about to go down the drain.  So they had to act, and they intended to act swiftly. 

The TARP: The Fed to Save Us All!

Bush and Paulson made us a pledge: The troubled assets would be purchased from the banks by the U.S. Govt, and the Govt would hold onto them until their value rose, at which time they would be resold at a profit.

Sounds good, doesn't it? Crisis averted? Right?

Well, not exactly.  Just a few weeks later, Paulson changed the rules: Instead of actually buying the failing assets -- the mortgage backed securities -- the Govt would simply buy the banks for a period of time, letting the banks keep the assets on their books.  This would let the banks reap the benefits of any upward shift in the housing market, and later -- ideally with the money they gained from those sales -- they would buy back their businesses from the Govt.

Nationalizing the Banks -- The real bailout.

But wait! Isn't that the bailout that Bush said he wouldn't support?  Isn't that "Nationalizing" the banks themselves. Well, yeah.  Sort of.  Except the Govt. wouldn't buy all the banks.  In fact, it just meant that the Govt was going to bail out Wall Street.

And when asked about this, Paulson had this to say:



Before Obama
All this happened before Obama even took office. And if you're a conspiracy theorist, you might conclude that the Republicans -- knowing that the Democrats were going to win the election in 2008 -- decided to trash the country's finances so badly that nobody could fix it before the 2010 elections.  (Personally, I don't think that even the Republicans could be that diabolical, but there are some people out there who do.) 

So what did the country look like before Obama was sworn in? The following video, made in October of 2008, tells the story:



What the Republican's Help For America

Obama inherited a three trillion dollars budget deficit when he was sworn in.  The country was mired in two wars. The economy was on life-support.  The unemployment situation was (and is) devastating households, while Health Care costs were rising at a such a rate that 17% of the population had no insurance coverage.  Moreover, the infrastructure of the nation -- both physical and educational -- had been allowed to deteriorate to its worse condition since the 1930s.  


Normally, one would think that both legislators from political parties would see the challenges facing the country, roll up their sleeves, and go to work.  

But it didn't work that way.  Here's a political video purportedly representing where the Republicans were at in  March of 2009:



What the Democrats Did.

So, with no help from Republicans, what did the Democrats accomplish in the two years since Obama was elected?

Here's an abbreviated list of laws signed, aimed at rebuilding the U.S.

• American Recovery and Reinvestment Act - Signed on February 17, 2009
  
• Small Business Act Temporary Extension - Signed on March 20, 2009
  
• Serve America Act - Signed on April 21, 2009
  
• Special Inspector General for the Troubled Asset Relief Program Act of 2009 - Signed on April 24, 2009
  
• Helping Families Save Their Homes Act - Signed on May 20, 2009
  
• Credit Card Accountability, Responsibility, and Disclosure (CARD) Act of 2009 - Signed on May 22, 2009
  
• Veterans Health Care Budget Reform and Transparency Act of 2009 - Signed on October 22, 2009
  
• Worker, Homeownership, and Business Assistance Act of 2009 – Signed on November 06, 2009
  
• Human Rights Enforcement Act of 2009 - Signed on December 22, 2009
  
• Emergency Aid to American Survivors of the Haiti Earthquake Act - Signed on January 27, 2010
  
• Jobs for Main Street Act, 2010 - Signed on February 24, 2010
  
• Medicare Physician Payment Reform Act of 2009 - Signed on February 27, 2010
  
• Hiring Incentives to Restore Employment (HIRE) Act - Signed on March 18, 2010
  
• Health Care and Education Affordability Reconciliation Act of 2010 - Signed on March 30, 2010
  
• Haiti Debt Relief and Earthquake Recovery Act of 2010 - Signed on April 15, 2010
  
• Haiti Economic Lift Program Act of 2010 - Signed on May 24, 2010
  
• Disaster Relief and Summer Jobs Act of 2010 - Signed on June 03, 2010
  
• Small Business Act and the Small Business Investment Act - Signed on June 17, 2010
  
• Preservation of Access to Care for Medicare Beneficiaries and Pension Relief Act of 2010 - Signed on June 25, 2010
  
• Homebuyer Assistance and Improvement Act of 2010 - Signed on July 02, 2010
  
• Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act - Signed on July 21, 2010
  
• Unemployment Compensation Extension Act of 2010 - Signed on July 22, 2010
  
• Credit Card Accountability Responsibility and Disclosure Act Effective Date  - Signed on July 27, 2010
  
• Temporary Extension to the Small Business Act and the Small Business Investment Act - Signed on July 30, 2010

We still have a long way to go -- especially with unemployment at record percentages.  But there's been a sincere effort to rebuild the U.S., and considering the size of the hole that was dug by Republicans, we've made some real progress.

The idea of returning Republicans to power in either the House or the Senate is madness.  But that's what they're selling.

We have to get out and vote.
It's easy to see we're still on the way out of this mess.  It's easy to mistake progress in this atmosphere of lies and innuendo as no progress at all. 

But please consider where we've been, and how far we still have to go.  We're coming through a valley of despair right now and it's hard work.  But we're headed in the right direction.

Maybe you don't like Obama. 

Maybe the Bush years look really romantic, with all the money we were borrowing, and all the junk we were buying.

Maybe the Republican ideology has its attractions.

But the idea that a nation without government or a nation with a government of business hedonists will be our salvation is crazy!  And that's crap Republicans is serving.

It's really important to vote, to keep the momentum going.

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A Facebook Page for Duch - Kaing Guek Eav

Kaing Guek Eav (Duch) is an assassin. He oversaw the detention, torture, cruel death of an estimated 14000 Khmer citizens.  Today his sentence for the crimes he committed equates to less than one day for every 2 people he murdered.  

Anyone who has visited the Tuol Sleng prison knows that this sentence is a travesty. 

Tuol Sleng was originally a public school in  Phnom Penh.

After the Khmer Rouge victory in April 1975 Duch and his men set up prisons throughout the capital including the infamous Tuol Sleng prison.  As the party purges increased towards the end of the Democratic Kampuchea period, more and more people were brought to Duch, including many former colleagues including his predecessor at Tuol Sleng, In Lon. Throughout this period Duch built up a large archive of prison records, mug shots and extracted "confessions".

The routine was atrocious. Any person who fell under suspicion within Democratic Kampuchea was sent to Tuol Sleng.  Suspicion was enough to send you there.  Once at Tuol Sleng, you were photographed and sent through a serious of interrogations that always included torture.  The purpose of these interrogations was to get more names of individuals who were suspicious.  This included relations, children, acquaintances, anyone. If you survived the torture, you were taken out to a ditch, and a hoe was embedded in the back of your skull. Your body was thrown into a mass grave.

14000 people suffered through this routine. 

How do you imagine the impact today?  Think about these:

• If you came under suspicion today, you would never see your family again.
• You would be tortured daily until you gave up the names of every person you have ever known.
• If you had a baby with you, it too would die.
• Your parents, brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, cousins would be implicated.
• You would end up providing these names in full knowledge that they would be following you to this end.
• Eventually, the torture would overwhelm you and there would be nothing that you could recall.
• Then you would be led out to a field where you would dig your own grave, be told to kneel down, and your end would come.

So I created a Facebook Page for Kaing Guek Eav.

This is it:

Daniel Schorr, I'll miss you....

Daniel Schorr passed away yesterday and already I miss him.  He was the feisty, principled journalist who was number 17 on Richard Nixon's famous enemies list.  In fact, he was the reporter who revealed that such a list actually existed, and I imagine his surprise and pride at discovering his name on it.

He literally worked his way up through the ranks of broadcast journalism from the ground floor, starting by sending in tips to a local newspaper at the age of 15.  Then he worked his way down through the same industry to end his career broadcasting on NPR.  His concerns were my concerns -- as a citizen and a student of American politics.

His sonorous voice on TV or radio tended to sound professorial as he grew older, but he earned my respect as a viewer and a listener year after year.  As I learned to listen to him over so many years (and one had to really learn to listen) he became, for me, a kind of extension of the voice of Edward R. Murrow -- the extension of the idea that a primary role of journalism is to speak truth to power.

I was listening in my car to his last broadcast on NPR, just a few weeks ago, wondering how much longer I would hear his voice. I found myself stopped at the intersection, saying to myself "Thank God NPR is keeping his voice alive  after he was driven off of broadcast TV." His commentary was as strong on the last broadcast as it had always been. Only Bill Moyers today garners a similar respect from me, and right now Moyers too has gone off the airwaves. 

Schorr's contribution to journalism is difficult to understand in the current climate of corporate broadcasting and the daily Internet news cycle.  He was not particularly photogenic. His voice had a slightly unnerving quality about it.  He was not funny -- rather a bit erudite.  But his commentary provided context, knowledge, and insight -- and not a small amount of wisdom -- as he laid out his perspective on current events.  He seemed to muse about what was happening, sometimes awestruck that his craft had sunk to such depths of frivolous nattering. When so much was at stake for humanity, how can shows like Entertainment News and the Daily Show represent the heart of reporting today?

He reminded us that there is a kind of insanity in the reporting of current events today that too often propels personality demagoguery in journalism.  He was not of that school: Indeed, he seemed to go against that grain.  His reporting and commentary demonstrated that journalism should be more about substance than style; that news anchors and reporters should actually think about what is being said before they open their mouths or read a prepared script.  His instincts were often right: We're living in an age of propaganda now, and not an age of information delivered through news broadcasts. But sometimes he was wrong, and we took him for a honest person, fooled like the rest of us, by the twists and turns of history.

If there were truly an enemy of the Conservative Right, Schorr seemed willing and capable of taking on the role, without bowing to mud-slinging.  When something was wrong -- as is so often the case -- Schorr looked for the historical angle to describe it, and then constructed an argument, often nuanced and detailed, to cut it down to its bone.  But the Progressives couldn't take him for granted either. If he disagreed, they were warned that trouble was in the offing. His commentaries on the Obama Administration were filled with such warnings.  His continual critiques of the Clinton Administration were also usually on the mark.

But most of all, it was a sense that he couldn't be bought or co-opted.  I think that's why radio and NPR became his final formats for expressing himself: Corporate sponsors could no longer reach him; Politicians could not intimidate him.  They couldn't influence his words.  Instead, they chose to try to marginalize what he was saying, believing no one really cared any more.


I cared.


I will miss Daniel Schorr.  His voice was the voice that glued a past excellence in journalism to its present sad state, and I -- as a writer working in a completely different realm -- admired him.  I admired his detailed reporting, his thoughtful commentary, and his feisty sense of right and wrong.

More importantly to me, I admired his courage to speak truth to power.