My Tea Party Rant

“…I find cheap populism oddly arousing.” Jon Stewart, The Daily Show

As we stumble down the home stretch to the mid-term elections, it’s Tea Party this, and Tea Party that...maybe it’s time we take a close look at this political movement and its various (mostly) self-identified candidates. 

Exactly what do these folks represent?  Are they your standard issue libertarians—low taxes, small government, no foreign entanglements, and legalized marijuana—folks who typically disdain both of the established political parties?  Are they Republicans on steroids—an arch conservative social agenda married to laissez faire economics?  Or, fundamentally, are they an expression of the national id--angry people shouting to an indifferent heaven, “I’m mad as hell, and I’m not going to take this anymore!” (quote from the 1976 film Network)?

For those who didn’t see Network during its original theatrical release, Howard Beale is a fictional evening news anchor who is fired for poor ratings.  He doesn’t take it well. During one of his final broadcasts he threatens to kill himself on air.  Immediately pulled by the network, he is given a reprieve to make a dignified farewell.  Instead he uses his last evening on air to declaim that life is “bullshit.”  Ratings go through the roof.  Suddenly Beale is a marketable commodity and he keeps his job.  Later when he broadcasts “I’m mad as hell…,” it becomes a rallying cry for the discontented all over America.

...which gets us to this weird connect between the event credited with igniting the Tea Party phenomenon and the Howard “I’m mad as hell…” Beale character.  On February 19, 2009 Rick Santelli, a CNBC analyst and former derivatives trader, is asked on air what he thinks about the Homeowners Affordability and Stability Plan.  This was the Obama administration’s attempt to keep financially-strapped subprime borrowers in their homes.   Santelli, reporting from the trading floor of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, was waiting for this pitch.  He jumped into a tirade during which he called foreclosed homeowners “losers,” complained that he and the good people on the trading floor with him would be paying their (irresponsible) neighbor’s mortgage, compared the present USA to Cuba, and threatened to organize a Chicago Tea Party.  It was good TV and generally a lot of fun to watch (see below). 

Before you know it Santelli’s 5-minute rant, as it became know, went viral. White, irate, middle-aged Americans began decrying Obama’s creeping socialism and buying “Don’t Tread on Me” paraphernalia.  There is some question as to whether this was a staged event, what is known in lobbying circles as “astroturfing,” i.e., faking a grass roots event, but I’ll give Santelli the benefit of the doubt that he was genuinely venting his frustrations. 

Still, there’s more than a whiff of hypocrisy when a Wallstreet insider, like Santelli, berates overextended homeowners and conveniently ignores the Wallstreet institutions that primarily benefitted (to the tune of $700 billion) from the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP). 

Jon Stewart brought some balance to the debate when he aired his counter-rant on March 5^th.  As political satire it deserves an A+, simultaneously deflating Santelli’s balloon and making CNBC reporting team ("the best of the best") out to be a bunch of smug journalistic hacks.

But I digress…not many white, irate, middle-aged Americans are likely to give The Daily Show much credence, or, for that matter, watch it.

As it stands now, 19 months or so after the Santelli rant, the Tea Party movement has divided the Republican Party into candidates who owe everything to the movement, e.g., Christine O’Donnell, and “establishment” candidates who had viable campaigns whether or not they garnered Tea Party support.  If the former have success in November, we’re likely to see more of the same…so let’s look at what they stand for beyond the anti-tax rhetoric.

Rand Paul--Tea Party candidate for
U.S. Senate in Kentucky

Of the better known names, Christine O’Donnell, the GOP Senate nominee in Delaware, is a prima facie flake, or, to quote Karl Rove, “There were a lot of nutty things she has been saying that don’t add up.”  Let’s invoke the mercy rule and move on.

Rand Paul is seemingly a more substantive Senate candidate in Kentucky.  His dad, Congressman Ron Paul, is probably the best-known libertarian politician in the country.  It’s pretty clear Rand is a chip off the old block.  In the world of Ayn Randian libertarians, which presumably Rand would count himself among, the free market solves all ills.  Any use of government power to regulate markets and restrict personal freedom is a step towards socialism, which may explain why Tea Partiers throw this word around so casually. It goes without saying, then, that taxes should be low, so as not to feed the government “beast.”

While I appreciate the libertarian world view as a sometimes useful counterweight to solving all societal problems through legislation; in the mind of true believers, like Rand, the logic of undiluted libertarianism has profound consequences.  Name a large federal program, federal institution, or international organization and Rand probably wants it abolished, including the Department of Education, Department of Energy, Environmental Protection Agency, Social Security, Medicare, Federal Reserve, IRS, NATO, UN, WTO…you get the point. 

Lester Maddox autographing
ax handles

To cite specific examples of his thinking…Rand Paul sees environmental issues as essentially questions of private property, i.e., own a mountaintop in western KY and want to extract coal by lopping the top off and dumping it in the valley—it ain’t nobody’s business if I do.  Government action to restrict greenhouse gases is a leftist conspiracy against capitalism. Obama was too tough on BP Oil—in Rand’s own words “maybe sometimes accidents happen.”

On civil rights Rand channels the ghost of Lester Maddox, the Georgian restaurateur who won notoriety and eventually the governor’s office by brandishing ax handles at the door of his Pickrick Cafe to keep out would-be black patrons. Rand contends the Civil Rights Act of 1964 applies only to publicly funded institutions, not to private businesses like the former Pickrick Cafe. He would apply the same logic to the Americans with Disabilities Act.

“I think it’s a bad business decision to exclude anybody from your restaurant—but, at the same time, I do believe in private ownership."       from Louisville Courier-Journal interview with Rand Paul

Rand Paul advocates open carrying of firearms and is endorsed by the Gun Owners of America.  I cite this group as it's goes quite a bit beyond the NRA, believing that gun ownership is a Christian duty in order to resist an “unconstitutional” federal government.  Needless to say, this group has much in common with the militia-survivalist crowd.   



A creepy Brownshirt wannabe
at a Kentucky Rand Paul rally

 

[Writing these lines I recall Meleanie Hain, the mom in central PA who garnered 15 minutes of fame toting a pistol to her daughter’s soccer game.  The other parents as well as local law enforcement didn’t take well to this.  A legal brouhaha ensued.  About a year later her husband murdered her with a handgun and then killed himself.]

Rand Paul declares himself “100% pro life,” and opposes abortion even in the case of rape or incest.  It follows that he’s no fan of embryonic stem cell research.  By the way, neither of these positions is particularly libertarian. 

In fact, on a host of other social issues Rand Paul is more arch conservative than libertarian.  He wants to construct some sort of underground electric fence across our southern border and rescind the portion of the 14^th amendment granting citizenship to persons born in the United States (this is the Citizenship Clause, the purpose of which was to overturn the Dred Scott decision which held that black people could not become U.S. citizens). He insists on characterizing illegal Latino immigrants as criminals.  While technically true—obviously they’re breaking a law by crossing the border—their motivation for entering the country is the same as every immigrant group that has preceded them: to build a better life for themselves and their family.
  

Apparently he once favored legalizing medical marijuana, a common libertarian position, but more recently changed his mind (maybe his original position doesn’t sell well in Kentucky). 

No big surprise, Rand opposes any kind of gay marriage. And I'm not even going to look up his position on Don't Ask, Don't Tell.



Sharron Angle--Tea Party candidate
for U.S. Senate from Nevada

 Moving westward we find Sharron Angle, like Rand Paul a pure product of the Tea Party movement, now neck-in-neck with Harry Reid for his U.S. Senate seat.  Her positions on economic and social issues are substantially the same as Rand Paul's.  Her public words and past affiliations suggest the roots of her politics come from the Christian Reconstructionist movement, the fundamental tenet of which is that present day American government does not conform with biblical law....Yea, I don't get it either, but apparently the bible prohibits such things as Social Security, education policy, property taxes, etc. Here's Sharron explaining it all in an April 2010 interview:

“And these programs that you mentioned — that Obama has going with Reid and Pelosi pushing them forward — are all entitlement programs built to make government our God. And that’s really what’s happening in this country, is a violation of the First Commandment. We have become a country entrenched in idolatry, and that idolatry is the dependency upon our government. We’re supposed to depend upon God for our protection and our provision and for our daily bread, not for our government.”

Couldn't have said it better myself.

Rick Santelli probably cherishes his footnote in history as the standard bearer of the Tea Party movement, but what he got for his money, so-to-speak, is a bunch of wacko candidates for high office in places as disparate as Delaware, Kentucky, and Nevada.  These candidates share a quasi religion-inspired antipathy towards modern government.  And their solution, essentially, is tear it all apart. 

A NY Times survey of Tea Party backers showed most want smaller government. But here's the headscratcher: in follow-up interviews this same group rejected cuts in Medicare and Social Security, the two largest entitlement programs.  So how then do you make government smaller?  Here's the thought process of Jodine White, a 62-year old Californian, one of the survey participants:

"That's a conundrum, isn't it?  I don't know what to say.  Maybe I don't want smaller government.  I guess I want smaller government and my Social Security.  I didn't look at it from the perspective of losing the things I need. I think I've changed my mind." 

Well, Jodine, this is grown-up thinking and it's what the rest of the Tea Partiers need to do.

Weekend Notes

Over the weekend I finished Niall Ferguson's The Ascent of Money, an  economic history that examines the role of financial innovation as a prime mover in world events from 14th century Medici family in Florence, Italy to present (I picked it up on the "buy 1, get 1 half price" table at Borders).  Given all that has happened in this area of human activity recently, it's worth reading, although it doesn't quite live up to the hype.  Apparently the book was written as a companion to a PBS documentary of the same name. 

As might be expected it's more anecdotal than comprehensive history. The picture Ferguson paints is a world where financial innovation (banking, bonds, insurance, etc.) alternates with financial crisis; yet, somehow, the arrow of progress remains pointed in the forward direction, a testament, I suppose, to capitalism's "creative destruction."

Ferguson addresses the current economic crisis, but I sense he wishes his book could have waited until the crisis played itself out (or maybe that's just another book).  One factoid from his afterword that passed the 24 hour test (that is, I remember it 24 hours later): without the expansion of household debt associated with home equity loans, the real growth rate during the Bush presidency would have been about 1% per year.  A 1% growth rate doesn't create enough jobs to accomodate the number of Americans entering the workforce every year.

Switching gears...I found myself sitting in my driveway Sunday afternoon listening to the story of Adrian Schoolcraft vs the NYPD on This American Life (aired 9/10/2010)/].  Schoolcraft was a New York policeman who found himself at odds with his supervisors over their goal to improve the precinct's crime stats by making more busts--justified or not--and reclassifying crimes.

There are two stories here.  One is the perverse effect of the NYPD's use of the COMPSTAT program to track crime.  Originally a tool to help the NYPD assign resources (with apparent success cutting crime), it morphed into a method for evaluating the performance of precinct commanders--no improvement in crime stats, no promotion.  Precinct commanders responded by giving their police officers (illegal) arrest quotas.  An almost identical practice was woven into the storyline of HBO's Baltimore police drama, The Wire.

[Note: this should be a cautionary tale for those who advocate using achievement test scores to evaluate teacher performance.]

...which leads to the human interest story. Adrian Schoolcraft, a footsoldier in his precinct, chose not to cooperate.  He did this partly for moral reasons, i.e., it's wrong to wrongfully arrest an American, and partly because it undercut his ability to do good policing.  If he harassed the local citizens with petty arrests to puff up his crime stats, then he was unlikely to win their cooperation when it came to a serious crime. 

What makes this story unique, and also makes for great radio, is that Schoolcraft secretly recorded everything that took place in his precinct as this story unfolded, up to and including the moment when his precinct commander and a dozen cops arrive at Schoolcraft's apartment, after which he finds himself involuntarily committed to a pysch ward.

Lastly...Slate Magazine republished a remarkable story from 2002.  It concerns the actions of David Karnes, a former US Marine staff sergeant, on the September 11, 2001 ("An Unlikely Hero," published 9/10/2002).  Briefly, and I recommend that you read the original story, Karnes heard the news about the World Trade Center while working in his Connecticut office.  He went home, put on his Marine uniform, which he kept pressed & ready, and then drove into Manhattan in his convertible Porsche 911.  Apparently impressed by his uniform (or maybe the car), the police let him through the barriers around the WTC.  Karnes spotted another Marine, Sergeant Thomas, near the burning pile of debris that was Building 7, the 47-story building next to the twin towers.  Authorities had ordered rescue workers off the pile which they deemed too unstable.  Nevertheless Karnes and Thomas began their own search & rescue mission and eventually located two Port Authority cops buried 20 feet under the debris.

A reporter (whose name I forget) imbedded with a U.S. Marine unit in Fallujah, Iraq some years ago observed that when gunfire erupted nearby, he dove for cover, while the young Marines he traveled with piveted in one motion and sprinted towards the developing firefight.  Whether it's training, self-selection, or institutional culture...these Marines, including the aforementioned Sergeant sKarnes and Thomas, are wired differently than most of us.  I'm glad they're on our side.  Buy a Marine a drink the next time the occasion arises. Semper Fi.

The Age of Foolishness

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness...  --opening line of Charles Dickens's A Tale of Two Cities

As I commence what I hope is an enduring journal about politics, policy, and the consequences thereof, my mind conjures Charles Dickens’s oft-quoted quote about it being the best of times and the worst of times…seems like most of us think it's the worst of times.

In the summer of 2010 just about every adult in America is looking for someone to blame. Usually that someone is affiliated with governance. Political ads are starting to clog the airways. We are only a few months from the mid-term elections when America invariably tells the new president that it’s not having as much fun as when the two were dating.

President Obama's Inauguration January 21, 2009

No sooner had one and a half million people gathered on the National Mall to welcome President Obama then an ostensibly anti-tax, hardcore libertarian movement emerged under the moniker The Tea Party in opposition to everything on the new president’s agenda (apparently it’s highly inappropriate to call them “Teabaggers.”)

Self-Explanatory

Symbolically the last combat troops just departed Iraq, leaving a still politically divided country and 50,000 non-combat (by definition) U.S. troops. Despite regular suicide bombings and their attendant casualties, there seems a glimmer of hope that Iraq will gradually get its act together. Mission accomplished—sort of.

The same optimism doesn’t apply to Afghanistan, where eight years after we defeated the Taliban on the battlefield, we face a reinvigorated insurgent enemy. At home we grow unsure about the best path to follow. I, for one, can’t fathom why any Afghan would wish to dwell in a land that resembles the 15th century with cell phones.

Both wars speak to the feud between Islam and modernity, with the United States and Europe the representatives of modernity. In New York City we debate the moral propriety of building an Islamic mosque/community center two blocks from Ground Zero. Who is financing a mosque on prime Wall Street real estate? And are we talking north-south or east-west blocks—there’s a difference?

About Iran…what can I say, President Ahmadinejad (pronounced afterdinnerjacket) would be a joke, but, you know, he, the mullahs, and their Brownshirt minions actually torture and kill people and verge on acquiring nuclear weapons. Somehow this sucks all the humor out of it.

Iran's Revolutionary Guards--I get teary-eyed when I see a good goosestep

South of our border is a de facto war between organized crime and the Mexican State. The death toll of 22,700 over 3+ years suggests that it is more real war, similar to the insurgent conflicts of Iraq and Afghanistan, than police action. Today I read in the back pages of the Wall Street Journal that Mexican marines discovered 72 murdered migrants on a ranch in the state of Tamaulipas. No, that’s not a typo—seventy-two. Apparently it is the handiwork of the Zetas, the most thuggish of the Mexican gangs. It is particularly troubling (to me anyways) that these criminal enterprises are able to break down the institutions that create and maintain civilized society in Ciadad Juarez and the other border towns that control the flow of drugs into the U.S.

In the Gulf of Mexico a hole in the ocean floor spewed oil for 3 months. The corporate entities involved—BP, Transocean, Halliburton (hey, say hello to Dick Cheney for me), et. al.—demonstrated collective incompetence both on the day the rig exploded and for weeks thereafter. The only positive is America now appreciates (or should) the technical difficulties and risks inherent in deep-sea drilling. Predictably the industry opposes a modest 6-month drilling moratorium while we figure out what happened and how to prevent it from happening again.

Deepwater Horizon Oil Rig Fire

Expect to hear the same thing from the Iowa industrial egg farms that recently recalled 500,000,000 salmonella-laden eggs.

A gay federal judge overturned Prop 8, which banned gay marriage in California. By most accounts the initial legal defense of the act was pathetic. Stand by for the fireworks as this case moves toward the Supreme Court.

Elin--Yea, I don't understand either

Another omen…Tiger Woods finished 78th or thereabouts at Firestone Country Club earlier this month. Now he and Elin are officially divorced. Maybe Tiger can get back to having regular sex and see if it helps his golf stroke.

Which brings us to the Big Enchilada—the great financial crisis of 2008, or was it 2009, well 2010 ain’t turning out so hot…who knows exactly when it will end. With the passage of time we’ll come up with an appropriate name for it. I like My Big Fat American Recession. Suffice it to say, it’s fueling most of our political discontent.

This, in a nutshell, is our age. Arrogance, avarice, ignorance, incompetence, mischief, and plain old-fashioned evil dominate the headlines. Is it the worst of times? Certainly not. As Dickens suggested we rarely see our own times clearly—we want to speak in superlatives.

Behind the scenes there is evidence that the grown-ups among us, some of whom are politicians, are cleaning up our mess and putting the house in order. My goal with this blog is to promote the kind of civil discourse that helps people arrive at consensus behind policies that really promote the public good.

Let’s see if it works.