There Is No Plan

Sarah Palin either didn’t have the stomach for the fight or she listened to the wrong advice, and paid attention to the polls, and commentary from the lazy lamestream media. I find it hard to believe it was the former and almost certain she felt she couldn’t win, because she believed she’d enter the race as a second tier candidate. But the rise of Herman Cain, an utterly flawed, intellectually inadequate and often loopy candidate, from the third tier to first (temporarily) shows just how discombobulated and incoherent the GOP base truly is. They don’t know what they want.

All of which tells Thereisnoplan, that far from being settled as a race, this thing hasn’t even started yet. There’s hope for everyone in the game, from Newt to Huntsman too, although Cain probably has more chance of scooping the nomination than Huntsman has. Palin would have entered the race last, the way she probably wanted it, and would have risen up the ranks fast. Why? Because she’s a celebrity in a media-saturated world, and she actually gave a stump speech in Indianola, Iowa, that made a lot of sense – that’s not a misprint. It tapped into the America-wide turbulence that every other candidate has failed to understand.

I admit that I watch Palin like other people watch the hip-swinging of the Kardashians. But I feel she made a genuine mistake, and what was a really boring contest, is now about to become utterly soporific.

Let's keep this simple.

The next major political party should be called The American Party.

We need to tap into the future.

Why should we call it this?

Because it invites unity, it invites common ground.

It’s something that old and young, rich and poor, black, white and brown, gay and straight can support.

It’s something that deserves our support. We love our country. This party represents our country. It will be a flag-waving, patriotic, unabashedly American Party, that can redraw party lines in America. Who would you vote for The Democrats, The Republicans, or The Americans?

What are TAP’s core goals?

In honor of the Republican Party of 1860, TAP will also restrict its platform to a single page, for easy digestion.

• The assertion of Federal Rights, and the advancement of a Social Democratic Agenda for the United States.
• A stated belief that all that TAP does is about future generations – not our own.
• Reorganization and expansion of cabinet posts to better address core domestic issues.
• Just but sensible fiscal and monetary policy, simple loophole free tax code, progressive taxation, including triggered income tax holidays in certain circumstances. A corporate tax structure that incentivizes repatriation of jobs to the US, and penalizes outsourcing. The right for every citizen to decide where they’d like a given percentage of their taxes to go. Investment earnings to be treated as income.
• A strong industrial policy built around unashamed support for American manufacturing businesses based in the fifty states. Long term aim to reverse US trade deficit. Potentially punitive audits for US based companies to check how much US labor and resources they use.
• A rewrite of the Securities and Exchange Act. Full cabinet post to enforce the law. Major restrictions on derivatives trading, securitization, currency trading, commodities trading, and a reenactment of Glass-Steagall, and enforced restoration of partnership status for investment banking.
• Establishment of a fully funded Cabinet post for the rebuilding of US infrastructure, and enforcing compliance of related legislation such as the Clean Air act.
• Robust environmental, consumer protection and a green agenda. Increase federal gasoline taxes, reduce fossil fuel usage, and aggressively support American businesses in the markets that result.
• A Century Constitutional Charter, to rebuild and modernize the US Constitution over the next 100 years. An immediate constitutional Amendment to end of money in politics at every level, and in every way, and to make public all election funding, and to ban paid lobbying of any kind, city, state or federal.
• An activist foreign policy built on extending American strategic interests through humanitarian support. A stronger US role in Africa, reduced role in Europe and the Middle East, except as regards Nuclear proliferation. A more aggressive economic and diplomatic stance on China, based on enforcement of WTO regulations. Support for Mexico, Haiti, Cuba and Latin America.
• Legalization, regulation and taxation of all drugs, under a full cabinet post.
• Halving of the Pentagon budget. Removal of forces from Europe and closure of many US and non-strategic foreign bases. Establishment of a new quick-strike structure to US armed forces, based on attack aircraft, long range missiles, and deeper special forces. A new GI bill to help vets get back into civilian workforce after reduction of Pentagon budget. Overhaul of intelligence services.
• Robust Immigration Policy. 1. Unbreachable border between Mexico and the US  2.Full citizenship for illegal immigrants with no criminal records (and a tax amnesty) if they take the oath within three years. Full enforcement of immigration law to prevent illegals beyond that threshold from gaining employment. Higher bar to US immigration beyond that point.
• Fully funded Medicare for all. Period.
• Modernization, revitalization and full funding for Public education, with beefed up cabinet position. Less testing. More stress on character development, and parental education as a function of education. Assertion of National standards and a federal mandate for a given level of state funding. Pre-school education and after school classes for all kids. School funding to be weighted by law towards schools in poorer neighborhoods. Establishment of a trade school and apprenticeship system, backed by Federal funds. Private colleges to be restricted by law.  Increased support for public universities, particularly in engineering. Reform NCAA.

Oddly convergent in their anger, incoherent visions and ambitions, the silent and frightened majority of economically traumatized middle class Americans is flanked by the Tea Party on the right and the Occupy Wall Street Brigade on the left. Both of these movements are attempting to tap into a populist surge that seems to have the entire world in its grip right now. It’s no coincidence that Neo-Liberal economics, flawed, abused, undermined and plundered, is beginning to approach its day of reckoning, and consumerism is now being seen as a bill of goods.

When he arrived in the White House on a wave of “change” in January 2009, America projected its hopes on this mild-mannered, consensus building manager. Obama would fix the situation. Sadly it soon became clear that the ship of America has a jammed rudder, a big leak, and is on course to squander its vast human, natural, productive and institutional resources on the shoals of wanton profiteering and the injustices of globalization. He could do nothing with the tools at his disposal. Gamely the President tried to work with Congress, only to be let down by recalcitrant moderate Democrats, who insisted on dissipating legislation into a shapeless, only vaguely useful, and eminently avoidable goo. The lobbies, stronger than ever, did their work, supported by Supreme Court decisions so political and craven that they would make a grown man wince.

And here we are, headed towards a double-dip recession, the markets running riot, the deficit hawks winning the battle of White House hearts and minds, and our poor President listening to the counsel of a Treasury Secretary who keeps Lloyd Blankfein on his speed-dial, and a Chief of Staff who’s last resume entry was JP Morgan Chase. He even let Elizabeth Warren, the most able of the economic fighters walk to fritter away her skills on a run for the Senate. Talk about fiddling while Rome burns. And now, the President covers the country imploring the people to tweet their representatives to pass his very reasonable job’s bill.

The truth is that all this is coming a little too late. In late 2010, the President backed down from canceling the Bush tax cuts there and then.  And the new Republican House, given its strength and moxie by the brownshirts of the Tea Party, were then able to stare down the Oval Office, again and again. Even the debt deal, so carefully crafted by the White House, looks like just another maneuver that will be ignored. And now the storm is deafening, and nobody is listening to the President. In other words, he didn’t get ahead of the story, which just happened to be the biggest story of all. It’s a story which strikes at the very heart and soul of this country. Money, who gets it, and what they do with it.

What should the President have done?  He should have said, again and again and again and again, that Wall Street Is The Enemy. He should never have continued the bailout until Wall Street, chin deep in the sucking quicksand was begging for mercy, and he extracted real concessions from them. Derivatives trading banned, Consumer practices reformed, Securities trading curbed. Investment banks returned to partnership status, and Glass-Steagall restored. He should have toured the country like Mother Theresa at soup kitchens and in foreclosed homes, giving genuine relief on mortgages and bankruptices. He should have given huge tax breaks to business to add jobs at home, and fined them for outsourcing the same jobs abroad. He should have got away from DC and spent his time with the people. He should have said there’s too much bad stuff going on at home for us to mess with Iraq and Afghanistan and the Middle East. We’re getting out. We’re taking a break. We’re focusing on fixing things back home. And he should have lambasted the GOP as the true purveyors of “class warfare”, accusing them of using the poor to support the rich. He should have done this each and every day, five times a day, tirelessly, convincingly, incessantly. He should have become the leader we wanted him to be.

His silence right now is deafening.

Nobody with a heart can deny the universally insidious, corrosive, parasitic, and indeed cannibalistic nature of Wall Street. I believe it is actually the second biggest threat to Civilization – after Global Warming – to which it has handily contributed. But relying on a sparse, face-painting mob of earth muffins to lead the charge is inviting disdain. Wall Street has only been silenced once before – and that was by Government as a result of Wall Street Crash and associated Depression, a charge led by an erstwhile establishment figure, FDR, who quite literally invited its hatred. You can’t destroy a hydra like Wall Street without a concerted, government inspired dose of reverse-engineered Machiavellianism.

Throughout history, the incoherent mob has achieved precious little, despite its penchant for placards, slogans, brick-tossing, flat-screen stealing and noise. It can be a tool of change in the hands of the strong, and focused, as Gandhi + MLK to an extent showed – in combination with a concurrent push by Government in line with awareness and will to act on a historical watershed, or a clear and profound injustice like post-slavery psuedo-legislation in the Slave States or women’s suffrage – but it lacks the brainpower to be the instigator.

Without the right positioning and appeal to the wider majority of fence-sitters, this kind of “boots on the ground” activism can be, and often is, counter-productive. In a case like this, the first blow must be a good one. Because, in the facile, media-swilling, superficial echo-chamber world we live in now, your first shot defines you. The Wall Street Occupation has moral outrage on its side, and should have the support of most Americans. The fact that it doesn’t suggests that it hasn’t exploited even a fraction of the political tools at its disposal.

Finally, I believe that political activism has a new and more powerful friend than the mob. The hacker.  If you’re going to take on Wall Street, don’t shoot your wad with something that the champagne-swillers on the balcony can smirk at from above. Hack the computers they sit at. Hack their bank accounts. Hack their trading models. Hack the exchanges. Bring the system to a standstill the right way. If someone from IT had shown up behind the smug traders on that balcony and said, “guys, you’d better come and see this”, they’d snort those bubbles faster than you can say “You’re fucked, mate”.

We need to take a lesson from Wikileaks. Because when Wall Street leaks, it leaks money. And that’s something that the rich really hate.

The Egyptian Army does not want to renew hostilities, hot or cold, with Israel. It’s too busy making money for that. But a disgruntled mob, frustrated that the removal of Mubarak may turn out to be nothing more than a symbolic moment, and a rearranging of chairs are venting their anger on the standard enemy that, ironically, Mubarak himself fomented for years (despite the peace treaty).

The horrible truth is that despite the excesses of the Mubarak regime, it helped Egypt make great leaps economically, and provided a certain – realpolitik – stability in the region. Pluralism seems an awfully long way from the Egyptian wavelength right now.

This could be the beginning of the clash between the Army establishment and the popular uprising that is beginning to seem inevitable.

The BBC reports…

Obama was forceful enough tonight to make it clear that the GOP has to make a choice. Putting aside the details of the plan – which could have been more focused – If the GOP in Congress block the Obama jobs plan, Obama will do his best to tar them with ownership of the crisis. If they don’t, they’re handing the President a victory, and an election boost next year. What they’ll probably do is to employ a version of their standard “accept with unacceptable conditions”. That could muddy the waters just enough to parry Obama’s otherwise quality political move.

There’s one other problem here. The President is going head to head with a GOP House majority that revels in its lack of national popularity, whereas the President requires national popularity to be reelected. It’s an unfair fight in that respect, because the GOP’s Presidential candidates escape with little if any collateral damage.

Rick Perry is in the process of dismantling Mitt Romney. He’s sucked the air out of the race, and made it very hard for anyone else to get traction. Bachmann’s initial mo has stalled, Huntsman is finding it hard to get any purchase at all, and Palin would find it very hard to dislodge Perry from front-runner status if she decided – belatedly – to run. She had her chance before he declared, but now he’s in, it’s going to be very heavy sledding (pardon the pun) for her to take a winning bite out of a very restive GOP primary base. Ron Paul is only considered electable by that GOP base, Gingrich is on life-support, and rest of the line-up right now are seat fillers at best.

Of course, it’s early days, and the race hasn’t even begun in earnest, but Thereisnoplan regards Perry as a very, very major threat to Obama. He’s playing dumb for the primaries to help lock up the knuckle-draggers, and has already courted the Evangelical vote with his “The Response” lam-o prayer meeting at an echoing, half-empty Houston Texans Stadium. He’s working the tough Texan BS for the primaries, but my suspicion is you’ll see a much more polished and thoroughly All-American Perry if he gets the nod. His ability to adjust on the fly suggests he’s no fool, and as a cliched American foil to the polyglot professorial Obama, he’ll be very effective. He’s also eminently capable of walking back some of his more outrageous statements about Medicare and Social Security, along with his hints about Secession. He might even turn those switches to his advantage. He can ‘pivot’ to ‘compassionate conservatism’ with ease because of his (totally fake) Evangelical credentials. In short, while he’s got weaknesses, which could lay him low, he’s also got many, many weapons in his arsenal.

And there’s another string to Perry’s bow too. He’s white, which – because he’s facing an African-American President – means he needs a woman or a minority candidate on his ticket. The only two practical choices among women are Palin and Bachmann, both of whom are very bad fits for Perry, which means he’ll go minority, which means he’s almost certain to choose Marco Rubio.

Rubio brings huge power to a Perry led ticket. He’s the young, clean-cut, acceptable face of right-wing lunacy, likely to play a classic protege to the “wise” Perry. He’ll also have naive Latino voters nationwide voting for him in droves, ignoring their own economic and social interests to vote for a guy who speaks Spanish and will play up his heritage every chance he gets. Florida will be a lock, Nevada and the Four Corner states will almost certainly go Red, and even California will be in play, drawing big resources from Obama’s campaign that will have to focus on the North East in the eye of a major economic meltdown.

The threat of a Perry-Rubio ticket highlights a critical issue. It’s become clear that all the attempts to talk the Economy into a recovery have failed, so Obama is now vulnerable from a mainstream GOP candidate, who has the power to reach the center. There are others too. George Allen, Jeb Bush, and Chris Christie, are all bad news Republicans with the potential to appeal to Independents. It’s not just Huntsman and Romney who could give Obama a run for his money now.

Obama needs to find his mojo fast, and his Independent direction is the only sure way to go – as distasteful and essentially useless as it is to all sensible supporters of the New Left. Obama’s bloodless, professorial approach to government has proved to be a problem. Just being the only “adult in the room” is not enough to get you elected in America. You need some fire in your belly too, and it’s not certain that the low-energy President hasn’t had it shaken right out of him by the sheer enormity of the task he’s faced over the last two and a half years.

The problem is that a non-ideological centrism is hardly the stuff of whistle-stop fire-branding across America. By definition it’s kind of boring. As much of a contradiction in terms as it might seem, Democrats will have to push hard to claim and hold the centrist ground that seems, more than slightly, to be slipping away. One, shocking and rather distasteful way for bi-partisan obsessed Obama to do that would be to outflank the GOP by putting a Republican on the ticket. Biden has to go. He can’t stand as a presidential candidate in ’16, which means the Democrats would be losing an incumbent advantage should Obama win next year. Biden’s old, he’s regarded poorly, and he’s not ambitious. He should be asked to step aside and will likely accept. That opens the way to an aggressive centrist choice by Obama. The obvious two names are Scott Brown and Jon Huntsman. The only Democrat who comes close to having the same impact would be Jim Webb, but with a GOP guy as Veep, Obama would have no problem establishing his centrist bona-fides, and his choice of running mate could insulate him against what are likely to be vicious “socialist” attacks from the right.

At this point, with the current against the Dems economically and politically, and with the House and Senate likely to stay or go Red next year, regardless of our own brand of Democratic politics, we simply have to hold on to the veto pen, which would be the only thing between America and the serious beginning of the end of its social contract. Thereisnoplan has come to realize that Obama’s dull, technocratic centrism is a far, far better alternative to what the hyenas have in store for us. It’s also the only game in town right now.

Left and Center must unite. We’re fighting a rear-guard action. Little Round Top.  20th Maine. Hold the line or die.

The time to trash the President for his failures is over.

Donate to Obama 2012.

Jubilation Now. But What Happens in Ten Years?

The liberation of Libya from Gaddafi’s “Green Book” insanity is the beginning of at least a ray of hope that Arabs could begin to catch up with the rest of the developed and developing world. Saudi Arabia is tougher nut to crack, of course, but the last thing that Riyadh wants is to see Libya’s transformation be successful. They’re hoping against hope that tribalism, factionalism, and incompetence deal a blow to its hopes of transformation.

Libya’s proximity to Europe and its huge oil wealth at least give it the chance of bucking the trend so far apparent in the “Arab Spring” that it’s been a rather drab, superficial affair, in which one set of despots has merely given way to another, in uniform, usually.

But behind all the flag waving, behind the obvious success of the US and its Allies in maneuvering Gaddafi out of power with a frankly excellent display of surgical air power, and superb work giving the rebels a semblance of command and control is a horrible specter.

Time.

Read the rest of this entry »

Cool it, Cassandra.

So let me get this straight.

The President and a bunch o’ pundits said that if we defaulted on the debt ceiling we would have been downgraded, and cried catastophe whenever they got the chance, with Geithner,  Goldman Sachs’ favorite bagman, leading the chorus of Cassandras.

Putting aside the fact that the debt ceiling was a technicality and that our bills would have continued to be paid over time, we didn’t miss out on the debt ceiling – and we were still downgraded.

So the President’s Debtageddon scenario came to pass.

And what happened?

The markets plummeted – mainly because of some bad economic numbers and the Euro Debt Crisis – and then bounced right up again. Stocks are pretty much where they were. And most importantly – the yield on a 10 year note hit its lowest point in history, as everyone flooded into ‘downgraded’ treasuries.

Moody’s and Fitch’s Rating Agencies ‘shrugged off’ what their buddies at S+Poorhouse decided to do, which is bad news for S+P, who now look like outliers (with the accent on the ‘liars’).

It’s becoming increasingly clear that there would have been no debtageddon, and the President’s use of the threat totally backfired. Read the rest of this entry »

Bring Back Da Man

The wheels are coming off the wagon of the Obama presidency.

He needs to get a grip quick or he’s going to be painted with the Carter curse – that horrible, contagious sense people get that the President is essentially a powerless passenger, lacking will, lacking a decisive, well, plan.

The latest and most strategically crucial mistake he has made was simple and profound. By essentially buying into the false narrative that America is facing a fiscal crisis – which it isn’t – Obama is accepting an impossible task as being decisive in whether he’s re-elected. His job is to pump-up America and explain why we’re not in trouble, not to swallow the GOP narrative that we are.

The view that he’s pathologically wedded to compromise, or a Wall Street stooged are all true but played out. It’s too late to worry about them now. The truth is, he’s the President. And the President has a pen that can at the very least keep the insanity at bay. Yes, he missed a huge opportunity to be the change agent he promised to be.  But what he ‘should’ have done is now a moot point.

We need to get this guy re-elected.  Read the rest of this entry »