Morning Joe 9/15/2011 -- Political obscurantism

On Morning Joe today, the guests were Jim Cramer, Paul Ryan, Carl Berstein, Joe Klein, Chuck Todd, Rick Stengel, then regulars like Barnicle and Geist, and of course there was Mika and Joe. What was clear today is that the political class has reduced analysis to obscurantism. Both sides in the political realm do it, but the Left/Center have mastered the art of obscurantism -- it helps to keep the public off balance and to avoid ever having to lay out a set of principles -- plus it allows politicians and pundits to dodge  tough issues. The only person on the show who was clear and principled was Paul Ryan, and he was a breathe of fresh air. Ryan called for an end to corporate welfare and tax looholes by reforming the tax code. The people around the Morning Joe table all agreed, but when it comes down to reducing the power of government none of them will beat the drum for limited government.

The conversation fluttered from Obama's failures to Obama's continued popularity in spite of his failures (based on one Reuter's poll which is contradicted by other polls). Just about everyone agreed that the jobs plan fell flat, but then it was stated that Obama is addressing national solutions while congress is worried about re-election. Obscurantism is what the political class does when the facts are too harsh and reality too unfriendly for their purposes. Pundits have no problem contradicting themselves, saying one thing one minute and another the next. It's clear that many Americans are dissatisfied with government, but pundits manufacture different reasons for the dissatisfaction to avoid admitting that statism itself has failed -- Obama inherited a mess; political division prevents the best plans from succeeding; people like Obama personally, but they believe government is out of touch; Obama doesn't understand the realities of business, but business is out to profit at the expense of the poor; taxes are too high on businesses, but not enough businesses pay their fair share -- on and on it goes, with no clear analysis of any one problem, with the result being doubt and confusion. Ryan forced a moment of clarity, but it soon vanished when Ryan was gone. In the end, the question they ask is whether the Right, with Rick Perry as the model, is too extreme.

So, if the Left and the Center are accused of being biased, they can point to the times they criticized Obama and progressive policies, but in the end the choice is between an extreme Rightwing or a more moderate status quo. The political class wants to save the statist system and the Washington game. You hardly ever hear the principles of limited government and free market promoted as an alternative to government planning and engineering -- it's always a matter of who can plan or engineer the best in government.

Rick Stengel and Time Mag have Perry on the cover, and Stengel was defending Perry as a man who's tapped into public dissatisfaction -- Mika asked Stengel what he was doing, and there was a moment of insider winking. What Mika was asking is -- Rick Stengel, are you talking up Perry because you'd love to see Perry and Obama as the choices in the 2012? Stengel slyly smiled. Oh, isn't the insider game so interesting? Scarborough caught on and began pressing Stengel and Klein about Perry's extremism, because Scarborough believes that between Perry and Obama, Obama will win in landslide, and Scarborough wants a Centrist candidate on the Republican side. The political class doesn't care which party wins, although they prefer Democrats, as long as the statist system is kep intact. Democrat politicans care, of course, because they want to maintain their power, but those who make their living in the political realm just want the status quo protected because it would upset their lucrative gigs if government became limited and the private sector became empowered.

Morning Joe 9/7/2011 -- the tension is mounting

On Morning Joe today there was the usual Rick Perry bashing and the, recently, customary analysis of how Obama needs to Go Big or Go Home. The tension is building for media sleight of hand regarding Obama. I predict that after Thursday Obama will have his groove back as the new Comeback Kid, channelling FDR and kicking ass. Hoffa set the stage with a left hook, and now Obama will deliver the knockout punch-- the Tea Party will be yesterday's puny obstructionists and Republicans will fall one by one as Obama delivers Hope and Change at last. Well, maybe not that dramatic, but you get the drift -- it's on, and 2012 is in gear. Media will do their best to portray Obama as a transformative figure bringing America back to her former greatness, but this time with a kinder, more humble heart and a collective will to sacrifice for the common good.

It's not an accident that much of this will coincide with 9/11. The media can't help itself, it's politically absorbed. The Morning Joe show today could have had cut-out cardborad representations and recordings of its guests and nothing much would've been different -- it's the same old tired conservation leading up to the transition of Obama into a new President, and the fall of the Republican Party. The problem is that the public doesn't pay much attention to Morning Joe and Tina Brown or Tom Brokaw or Joe Scarborough or Mike Barnicle or Rick Stengel. There are two worlds -- the political realm and the private realm, and the two are drifting further apart. In the political world, the players are looking for marketing gimmicks to create a believable illusion, while in the private realm people are looking for real solutions and a way out from under the oppressive thumb of government.

Morning Joe 8/25/2011 -- Short term spending on jobs

Morning Joe today was not all that interesting -- they mainly rehashed the talking points on the Left -- but what is interesting are the talking points and what they say about America. Al Sharpton, Sam Stein and a few others on the Left talked about jobs and short term spending. S.E. Cupp represented the Right point of view, sort of. The Morning Joe quests promoting short term stimulus spending are right within our current statist system, the only option open to us is more stimulus, because our statist system has prevented private sector excpansion and hiring. If we aren't going to make systemic changes which give businesses confidence, then all we can do is raise taxes and rely on government to create jobs. This is the current dilemma -- if we go forward with our current system and current regulatory push, we'll have high unemployment for years to come at around 8% if government spends money to create inffrastructure and green energy jobs, and in order to do this taxes will necessarily go higher to fund the spending.

The Left is saying that although government needs to get spending under control, now is not the time to cut spending, but if government continues on the statist path, there will be no good time to cut spending because we'll be in a state of constant stagnation requiring more and more taxes to pay for government efforts to prop up the economy as best they can. Currently, our system of government intervention in the economy doesn't allow for robust private sector growth, the creation of new innovative businesses or the creation of new wealth. Our system will attempt to redistribute the current amount of wealth, but there will be little creation of new wealth, at least not wealth that stays in the country and is invested in the country.

Our choices are between the current statist system or a free market. No one trusts that a free market will work, at least not enough people believe this currently to demand limitation of government power and a separation of State and Economy. We're stuck with a dependency on government intervention and the political class is currently demanding Big Things be done by government to create jobs. I've written many times here that this is what was building through all the debt crisis debate -- a huge campaign on the Left to take the next big step to consolidate statist power and complete the government's control of the economy. This might sound hyperbolic, but unless there's a concerted effort to stop the expansion of State power, it will grab more and more power -- the system is set on automatic for this to happen.

Republicans have resisted the expansion of State power recently, but, historically, Republicans have failed to follow through with their periodic resistance -- there has been Republican rhetoric but little real action to change the statist system and fight hard for a free market. Many Americans are still unclear about what a free market entails and think small tweaks to give the impression that government power is being curtailed at times are real -- they aren't real. In order to make systemic changes we need actions that the political class now calls radical and irresponsible. Progressives have staked there opposition to the Tea Party, and as Maxine Waters said, the Tea Party can go to hell and the progressives are prepared to help them go to hell. None of this was talked about on Morning Joe in these terms, but this is the underlying battle which presents our choices.

Later on Morning Joe, Rick Stengel brought his new rag issue of Time mag on and promoted Fareed Zakaria's article praising Obama's Libyan campaign as opposed to Bush's awful mistake in Iraq. Zakaria is declaring Libya a success which will become the model for future American interventions in foreign countries. It's a cheap video game whereby gamers bomb brown people and never get a scratch. It's surprising that Zakaria is praising such a dangerous turn in foreign interventions. Plus, we have no idea how Libya will turn out and how many more people have to die before the situation is somewhat settled -- so Zakaria's political opportunism is pathetic, yet Morning Joe guest chose to ignore Zakaria's cynical partisan disregard for real people in favor of a boost to Obama.

Morning Joe 8/4/2011 -- Statist failure

The Morning Joe crowd should be put on suicide alert -- they made themselves depressed with all the news reflecting statist failure. Scarborough has the 3 step answer, though -- make billionaires pay the same rate of taxes as their secretaries, end the wars and deal with long term debt issues. In order to make billionaires pay the same tax rate as their secretaries, government would need to raise the capital gains tax, or lower income tax to the current capital gains rate -- I choose the second, but I'm assuming Scarborough means the first option. Scarborough really doesn't mean we should raise the capital gains tax rate, he's just talking and not considering that billionaires mostly pay capital gains tax -- it's a confused populist message aimed at stirring up resentment toward the rich. It sounds good to imply that billionaires are somehow getting a break that no one else gets, but this isn't typically the case -- it's just that billionaires don't receive a paycheck each week with income taxes taken out.

I agree with Scarborough that we need to end the wars, but that's in the works already -- we have to to go further and develope a non-interventionist doctrine which keeps us out of places like Libya, Yemen, Pakistan and all the other nations where we interfere. We should also close all the military bases around the world and announce our retirement as Global Cops.

Addressing long term debt is a very good idea -- this means reforming entitlements. Rick Stengel was on from Times Mag, and he was praising an ariticle written by Fareed Zakaria in which Zakaria does his international dissing of America, making fun of the American people who "want Big Government and low taxes". Entitlements in America were designed and enforced by politicans a long time ago, and money has been forcefully taken out of the paychecks of workers -- then Big Government spent way more than it's taken in. To blame the American people for this is a tad condescending and arrogant. Actually, people don't want Big Government, but if they are forced to pay into a government program that promises benefits for paying in, then, yes, people expect the promises to be kept.

So, how do you deal with entitlements? Currently, the Democrats are only dealing with Medicaid and Medicare by cutting what healthcare providers can receive -- price control. This never works, and it will create a situation where in order for Obamacare to work, government will have to take on complete control of healthcare. Scarborough surely rejects privatizing the healthcare industry and the entire welfare state, but aside from privatization, nothing will work in the political realm, and the consequences of intervention will lead to more government control and more money extracted from the private realm.

Rick Stengel and Harold Ford said a big problem is that a minority of extremists in government, the Tea Party reps, guided the whole debt ceiling battle, and that these extremists are dangerous to America. Ford said that the TP reps will lose in the next election. Mika, to her credit, said that the TP reps didn't hold a gun to anyone's head, and they are backed by their constituents. Actually, all of them are wrong, because the premise is wrong. The TP reps didn't get what they wanted -- the status quo establishment types got what they wanted -- a bill that does nothing but raise the debt ceiling by a record amount. This on Morning Joe is what passes as political analysis -- spin, obscurantism and the attempt to marginalize the one group in DC with integrity, the TP, limited government reps. Incredible.

Underneath the dishonesty of the Morning Joe participants, practically all from the Left and center, though, is a depressing realization that statism is failing, but this is what they can't admit.