As one of those Republicans for Obama (who is still behind the President), I hold a helpful perspective on how the White House, and Organizing for America might act dynamically to quench the rising tide of "buyers remorse" now erupting in Town Halls across the country and mass marches on Capitol Hill.
Make no mistake, this is not some 'last gasp' of the racist, reactionary 2% of the population who are evolutionary throwbacks. It is an expression of conscience representing at least 20% of the population. If you do not short out their intellectual momentum, it will grow, and fester, and blossom into political victory, just as the Progressive cause did during the Bush years.
(more...)
The President can truncate this by returning to his pragmatic approach to much-needed, universally desired, non-ideological Reform.
Progressive ideals and goals are not inherently inconsistent with Libertarian philosophy. At the end of the day, what is important is to better care for the sick, feed the hungry, educate the children, protect the environment, and bring hope and opportunity to the downtrodden. When you let these causes become synonymous with advocacy for the Bureaucracy - or, rather, MORE of it, you are seen to place the interests of Big Government above those of the poor, the sick, the hungry, the elderly, students, trees, animals, and the human Future.
The anger in the streets is not coming from the Republican Orthodoxy, its coming from people of principle for whom corrupt Republican oligarchs helped grow the Bureaucracy and National Debt over eight years of profligate GOP administration, after the [spectacularly Conservative] Balanced Budgets and National Performance Review of the Clinton era. They werent McCain supporters in the primaries, they were the Ron Paul insurgency. Except for a handful of knuckledraggers, most are as eager for fundamental Reform as any of the anti-establishment progressive who supported President Obama to begin with. It is more effective to co-opt them than to confront them.
If you want to permanently cleave this discontent from political opposition (a death knell for the Republican Party), and marshal it behind Progressive objectives, it can be done. There are many things that President Obama can do which would neutralize the [spurious] "Socialist" label, and set him apart from the cancer of Bureaucracy and the ever-more-pervasive widespread popular fear of Big Government. Some are things which he promised to do during the campaign, some are just common-sense. In some cases, its a question of 'cherry picking' key constituencies that have - by default - fallen in with the opposition over the course of the year. In any event, if you cant quash the "Big Government" subtext, you wont get the reforms in Health Care, Environmental Energy, etc. actually passed into law that the nation so desperately needs.
In the hope that President Obama will succeed in restoring the national movement for reform and unity which we all joined in seeking his election, I offer a few suggestions for practical actions the White House could rapidly initiate, to defuse the ticking timebomb of rancor, fear, and loathing now infecting our body politic.
1. CALM THE FRIGHTENED SENIORS - Opposition to the President rises proportionately with age, in large part because of fears over changes in Medicare (whether real or imagined). A major campaign promise was to eliminate income taxes on Senior Citizens earning less than $50,000 per year, a tax change representing a mere $12 Billion in lost annual revenue. So do it, and pay for it, Now. To pay for it, impose a Tax on U.S. pharmaceutical exports (or intellectual properties if manufactured overseas) where the foreign unit price is below that at which the same drugs are offered to American consumers. Few political leaders will publicly defend the pharmaceutical industry on the direct issue of domestic price gouging, where the tax would both reduce domestic drug prices and pay for tax cuts to what is a key Republican constituency.
2. HAPPY MOTORING - The $70 Billion in [undeserved] auto industry bailout spending have left the government with a basket of securities and loans whose liquidity is limited and likely to grow only incrementally, and over a long period of time. Nobody believes that government bureaucrats should vote these shares in either General Motors or Chrysler, as it lacks the knowledge base to properly deal in matters of corporate finance and governance. Now that we've fed the dinosaurs in Detroit, lets do something to ensure a future for the U.S. automotive industry. Establish an independent National Transportation Foundation, incorporated under a non-profit congressional Charter, and place into it the stocks, bonds, and loan securities received in exchange for the bailout money, as its Permanent Endowment. Commission this institution to become a primary source of Venture Capital for emerging entrepreneurial technology ventures in the Automotive, High Speed Rail, Aviation and related transportation industries. The Progressive Automotive X-Prize is now being sought by more than one hundred domestic new car manufacturing ventures, each of which have >100 MPG vehicles under development; several are already in production. President Obama promised to create 'Green Jobs' in the private sector; here's how...Use that portfolio of Detroit securities to leverage investment in America's real automakers of the future. Entrepreneurship is 'Progressive' [in that it distributes opportunity based on anyone's initiative rather than the inherited wealth or entitlement of a privileged few], and high tech Venture Capital is anything but 'Socialist'. The clean, green vehicles of tomorrow have to come from somewhere, and it wont be Detroit.
3. THROW THEM A BONE: GO AHEAD, 'AUDIT THE FED' - While the Federal Reserve is probably not the lair of satanic ritual infanticide that the wingnuts insist, Ron Paul is right in his suggestion that it should be subjected to independent external Audit, like other responsible financial institutions. Over the course of the past year, we have seen sufficient examples of federal complicity in unjust enrichment by executives in the financial community as to indicate a likelihood of corruption within the Fed. The Fed has no political constituency on the Right or Left, nobody will defend it, least of all from the [quite reasonable] contention that it should be audited on a regular basis, like every bank, holding company, brokerage, insurance company, mutual fund, and public company in the United States. President Obama promised Transparency and Accountability in the banking bailout aftermath; here's how...The audit will probably find evidence of waste, fraud, abuse, graft, and embedded corruption - at some level. The wingnuts will protest that there is more of it, still uncovered, and that the audit report is a 'whitewash' (they'll probably be right and it probably will be), however, for a great majority of their followers [fellow travelers who merely smell a rat at the fed from reading any newspaper and not being brain-dead], such an audit will win many points for the President for addressing these concerns in a prudent and non-ideological manner.
4. "ITS THE BUREAUCRACY, STUPID!" - Health Care and Education reform, among other priorities, must be paid for within the existing budget, since the new tax revenues (by returning to Reagan era tax rates on those making over $250k/yr) will be needed just to keep the deficit from destroying the country through escalating spending on 'fixed' entitlements. Since fixing them further probably wont happen (as Pres. Bush found out, the hard way), the alternative is to free up resources by culling the bureaucracy itself. Among the roughly one million federal employees which the government itself recognizes as "non-essential", are those employed in the rampant duplication among conflicting agencies engaged in 'international trade promotion' (USTR, USTDA, OPIC, etc.), 'econometric research publishing' (BLS, EIA), 'natural resource management' (BLM, USGS, USFS, etc.), 'marine resource administration' (NOAA, MFS, USCG), and it goes on and on and on. Despite being brought under the umbrella of the Department of Homeland Security, a dozen bloated redundant intelligence agencies are still more preoccupied with feuding over turf between them than any of them are with al-Queada. Reorganization, consolidation, and streamlining to eliminate turf wars, duplication, and waste makes sense for anyone who actually wants to achieve the objectives for which all these agencies were established in the first place. President Obama promised "Better Government rather than Bigger Government"; here's how...Instead of plodding through 21st Century problems with 20th (and 19th) Century organizational hierarchies, tear down the bureaucracies, eliminate the overlap, combine like functions, and reduce the size and cost of the government, in order to make it work more effectively at those purposes which have broad public support. Pres. Clinton reduced the federal civilian workforce by 250,000 positions, modernizing it in the process for greater performance; Bush just hired more people and threw money at problems. Which was the real 'conservative'?
5. FISA REDUX - Cheney's protestations to the contrary, absolutely nothing says "Big Brother" like electronic domestic surveillance over American citizens by their own government. Libertarians are more fumed over that than Progressives, and it goes right past the squishy moderates in the Republican leadership, to the very heart of Right-Wing fury over the all-powerful State. There is no conceivable terrorist act (including nukes) which could be any more corrosive of the American character than what has been done by the fascists in the name of 'national security'. President Obama promised to correct the constitutional abuses of the Bush Administration; here's how...Stand up against 'Big Government' by defeating the upcoming FISA reauthorization - but, this time, frame it in a context those concerned over government power and intrusiveness can understand, rather than the fear-mongering rhetoric of the previous administration.
6. "WASTE, WASTE EVERYWHERE, AND NOT A STOP TO THINK" - One administration after another pays lip service to endemic structural problems within the system that hemorrhage tens of billions of dollars annually, to no good effect - and, indeed, to the practical detriment of everyone and our future. We still pay farmers not to grow food through warped agricultural subsidies - while the world bursts with hungry people. We still pay helpless poor women to have ever more children, through warped social welfare policies - while the world bursts with hungry people. We still pay to keep 250,000,000 acres of barren federal land out of production (in addition to those reserved for environmental conservation) through warped asset management - while the world bursts with hungry people. Based on Carbon impact alone, these three federal dysfunctions are profoundly unsustainable. When the fiscal impact is also taken into account, it amounts to sheer lunacy. But when the social costs and consequences are factored in, the abject inhumane cruelty of it, how can anyone, Progressive or Libertarian, support such policies? President Obama promised to reign in the waste and corruption of federal agricultural programs, focus direct assistance on higher education, and prudently manage federal resources for all, rather than the monied few; here's how...Jettison the farm subsidies, the ghetto breeding program, and the land management quandary, in favor of global nutrition, stable families, and entrepreneurial farmsteading for the 21st Century. Call it "Agrarian Reform" if you must, but it makes for Smaller Government, Lower Spending, Less Federal Meddling in Agriculture, Population Reduction, Carbon Sequestration, Fiscal Responsibility, and Ending Transgenerational Poverty, to the benefit of millions of American Poor, Starving Foreigners, and the very respiration of Planet Earth, itself.
7. 19TH CENTURY FIEFDOMS FOR 21ST CENTURY SCIENCE - No field of federal endeavor is more rife with waste, duplication, mismanagement, and abuse than the science and technology research establishment. In profoundly redundant competition with one another, DARPA, NSF, NIH, NASA, DoE, NIST, AFOSR, NRL, INSCOM, and other agencies subsidize research into hazardous disciplines widely considered 'toxic', from genetic modification and synthetic biology, to robotics and nanotech, to neuroelectronic interface and artificial intelligence. Even within these fields, leading experts engaged in the actual research warn that the potential outcomes are not only unpredictable, but very likely, eventually, to lead to catastrophic conclusions. With more than $135 Billion spent each year by the federal government on research and development, the very least that this (or any) Administration owes the public is a modern, strategic, comprehensive approach to its management, and an assurance that public money is not being spent to create new techno-horror problems for future generations to contend with. Moreover, it can be broadly agreed that R&D in many fields, from Genetic Biotechnologies to Cybernetics in Neuroscience can be left to the enormously wealthy industries they represent, to conduct at their own expense, rather than as 'corporate welfare' from the taxpayers. President Obama promised to return federal science policy to pragmatic, professional, goal-directed oversight; here's how...A new, more mature and sensible federal approach to science, which swept away the above referenced alphabet soup of conflicting fiefdoms, and focused the first $100 Billion on legitimate priorities (i.e. Environmental Energy), would provide enormous savings, practical progress, reduced bureaucracy, smaller government, less meddling in private sector technology markets, and would help postpone the Technocalypse, if even briefly, in the hopes that humanity might prevail in the end.
There are many more examples one might cite, but surely these have made the point. The "Big Government" that the Tea Party protesters worry about is not something that Progressives need to defend in order to pursue worthy 'liberal' social objectives; in many cases, a Progressive Libertarian 'synthesis' is possible. President Obama can pop the balloon of hot air which now threatens to carry away all meaningful discussion of his agenda, with just a few carefully chosen initiatives that subvert - and assimilate - the most fundamental contentions of his opposition.
He came to Washington to find a 'third way' out of the contentious polarizing diode politics of the past; Republican/Democrat, Left/Right, Liberal/Conservative, Old/Young, Straight/Gay. Let Obama be Obama and get on with that, instead of tugging him in different [fruitless and unsupportable] directions for factional political gain. Does the future hinge on "Public Option" in Health Insurance? Stop being ridiculous.
Can we have our Reform now, please? YES WE CAN.
