Author: statusquobuster

In trying to understand how so many Americans adore people like Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity, Sarah Palin and Rush Limbaugh I have come to this critical understanding: Poorly educated, terribly informed, intellectually deficient and downright stupid people need idols.  They feel angry, frustrated, ignored, cheated and disillusioned by so much going on in American society.  They find the emotional, political and philosophical rants by talk show, loud mouth celebrities matching and justifying their feelings.  Of course, those celebrities work hard to fan the flames of all that unhappiness and discontent, and also perpetuate ignorance and hate.  They sell stupidity to gullible dummies, teaching them who to blame for their misery.
I am no conservative or liberal and I know I sound terribly condescending and will be viewed as an elitist by those dummies, not that they read much by those they do not idolize.  However, I have spent considerable time following what these demon idols say and write to seriously investigate whether I might be missing something of value.  But all I see are huge quantities of totally incorrect and distorted information, absolute nonsense, outright insanity, abuse of logic, exaggerations, toxic half truths, intentional disinformation, racism and bigotry, and extreme political views that have no connection to reality and offer no workable solutions to the nation’s complex problems.  Slick sound-bite slogans push propaganda substitutes for verifiable facts.

How to understand how so many people can listen to such celebrities and not feel as nauseous as I and so many other Americans feel when listening to them?  Clearly we must accept the disturbing fact that there are many millions of suffering Americans that are mental midgets, a sign of the dumbing-down of America.  No surprise really when you remember there are millions of people wasting their money on gambling, lottery tickets, cons and scams, junk products and unhealthy foods, or unable to qualify for decent jobs because of a lack of knowledge and skills.  Either they were born stupid (a harsh but true statistical reality) or the many ups and downs of life have robbed them of any critical thinking ability to see through the idiocy that these purveyors of poison peddle while making obscene millions of dollars.

Consider recent Pew Center Research poll results that showed 18 percent of Republicans do not know that the Democrats control the House of Representatives and 35 percent do not know who the Vice President is.  Research has found Fox News butchers facts and its devotees are the most ignorant, and in recent years Republicans have overwhelmingly gone to Fox to get their news and information.  Note: 80 percent who regularly listen to Rush Limbaugh or watch Sean Hannity are conservative.  I’m not saying that “No truth, just spin” should be the Fox motto, but it sure fits.

I can easily relate to the many people treated unfairly, unjustly and even brutally by the political and economic system.  But those who have drifted over to the dark side of the right-wing, conservative arena and become addicted to the rhetoric of delusion have nothing in common with those that once made the United States a noble nation worthy of respect.  Their idols talk a lot about the Founders and Constitution, but share none of the fine qualities of those that created our republic.  They also pick and choose what parts of the Constitution to adore, mocking the rule of law.

As an independent, I too am extremely critical of the political and economic system and how the middle class has been purposefully harmed by a rich and powerful Upper Class that has turned the nation into a plutocracy serving the greed of individuals and corporations.  I want revolution and true reforms.  I condemn both major political parties and see elections as useless anachronisms.

I too feel disenfranchised, full of dissent and disgust with broken government, broken educational and health care systems, crumbling inadequate infrastructure, widespread corruption and dishonesty, and an economy dispensing inequality and injustice.  Yet, try as I have, I cannot see any merit in what these powerful right-wing demigods dish out, all done to pump millions of dollars into their pockets and pump up their egos.  They sell themselves as the defenders of the downtrodden and abused, but this is just a con game designed to keep millions of dollars coming to them and their fellow fat cats.  When their supporters vote for Republicans they vote against their own economic interests, unless they are rich.

These false populists are fundamentally no different than the evil elite forces that this fraction of the population despises.  Perversely, they have become a part of the ruling class they routinely condemn.  They are the worst kind of idols, manipulating and soaking their audiences and admirers.  They pitch poisonous, hateful and addicting fast food rhetoric, words as pleasing as salt, sugar and fat laden foods and as eagerly gulped down.  This results in mental capacity becoming as clogged as the arteries in overweight and obese Americans.

What is evil?  Right-wing hypocritical hucksters pitching messages of values, morals, freedom and patriotism crafted to sucker the least informed, emotionally stressed and unintelligent Americans for the sake of power and money.  These idols live like royalty (for example, Limbaugh makes $60 million a year and Beck $35 million) while their loyal fans treasure fantasy expectations and block out information that would cause too much pain by piercing the delusions they have succumbed to.  By putting their faith in false idols they become unknowing victims of the media corpocracy profiting from these idols.

What a culture, where so few can take advantage of so many and make fortunes doing it.  The real goal of the demon idols is to further divide the nation, not fix it and make it better.  Why?  Because divisiveness is what sells and makes them big money.  Shame on them.  Those who worship them need more worthy heroes if they really love their country and want to make it better for all its citizens.  The rest of us need to ignore the false idols and their followers, showing them no respect whatsoever, condemning them at every opportunity.

In recent days the idea of using the Article V convention option in the Constitution received support in an article by Texas US Senator John Cornyn published on the Fox News website.  He noted “Recent polling suggests that a plurality of Americans support a convention to propose a Balanced Budget Amendment to the Constitution if Congress will not do so.”  He made a good case for using the convention option by saying it “would be part of a national conversation that could last well beyond one or two election cycles. The very length of the convention and ratification process would allow the American people ample opportunity to judge proposed reforms, and ensure that they would strengthen the checks and balances that have served our nation well.”
A few days later, on the pages of the Wall Street Journal a strong case was made for a “repeal amendment” that would give state legislatures the power to veto federal laws, something worth proposing.  Though the oped by a professor and the Speaker of the Virginia House of Delegates did not say so, obviously Congress would never propose such an amendment.  That means using an Article V convention whereby state delegates could propose new amendments just as Congress has done, which the Speaker has acknowledged elsewhere.

At the same time a policy report from the Goldwater Institute recommended that “states seriously consider” using the convention option “to restrain the federal government.”

So the issue of using this convention option that Congress has refused to convene despite hundreds of state applications and that establishment powers on the political left and right have long opposed merits serious examination.  Start with this: Americans overwhelmingly say they love and respect the Constitution and usually specific amendments, though often different ones on the political left and right.  Three frameworks help understanding why most Americans oppose using the Article V convention option.  Two explain why convention proponents have not been able to impact most opponents that fit these two frameworks.  I offer a third framework or plan of attack which I believe will work.

First, consider the craziness framework.  Many Americans have been taught to fear using the convention option, even though it has never been used.  They are irrational.  This is like being afraid to eat the fruit of the constitutional tree first planted by the Founders even though no one has ever tasted or been harmed by the fruit.  Such people stubbornly think they are acting rationally; I think they are crazy and irrational.  This delusional thinking based on what is imagined to might happen is not easily changed, because such people have been purposefully and successfully brainwashed.  They have an emotional block.  

Rather than fear a runaway convention, people should fear our runaway politicians and government.  As quoted in the Goldwater Institute paper Ann Stuart Diamond pointed out that the interpretation that an Article V convention would or could rewrite the whole Constitution “is often a rhetorical ploy to terrify sensible people.”  The convention can only offer specific amendments.  It is time for Americans to recognize their fear of a convention as having no basis in fact.  And that those promoting fear themselves fear the reforms in government that a convention could propose.

Second, consider the analytic framework.  Many Americans use what they think are rational, substantive arguments.  Convention proponents use facts based on the exact language in Article V or other historical facts to objectively contradict wrong-headed thinking.  But correcting the record has not worked sufficiently, largely because opponents invent their own facts, ignore correct ones, and consume disinformation disseminated by convention opponents.  They have an intellectual block.  Cognitive dissonance works to prevent the pain of accepting new information incompatible with their negative views about a convention.

We should not invite, respect or participate in arguments by opponents that fit these two frameworks.  We should, in particular, recognize and condemn morally offensive fear mongering used intentionally by convention opponents.  Convention opponents seeking protection of their ability to influence the political system and selling fear and disinformation must face their constitutional guilt.  

Converting convention opponents to proponents requires a paradigm change, which is very difficult.  However, the current justified high level of dissatisfaction with government, politicians and both major political parties and the strong desire for reform of government justify use of a new approach.  

The patriotic framework better gets to the root of the problem from a rule of law perspective.  Rather than condemn convention opponents as irrational or ignorant, we condemn unpatriotic constitutional hypocrites.  When they openly oppose the convention option they are constitutional traitors.

With the patriotic framework we take advantage of frequent strong public support for constitutional amendments not proposed by Congress, including these: In 1996, 74 percent of Americans favored a constitutional amendment to limit the number of terms that members of Congress and the US Senate could serve.  In 2005, 76 percent favored an amendment to allow voluntary prayer in public schools, and in 1983 81 percent favored it.  In both 2000 and 2004 61 percent favored amending the Constitution so that the presidential candidate receiving the most popular votes would win, replacing the Electoral College.  In 1995, a balanced budget amendment passed the House but failed to meet the two-thirds requirement in the Senate by a single vote; this year there is a strong national movement to get it and a number of other amendments that would surely earn broad public support.

The basis for the new framework is this: Virtually everyone professes respect and admiration for the US Constitution and knows that it includes a process for amending it.  But if someone opposes using the Article V convention option, then he or she is an unpatriotic constitutional hypocrite.  When they openly oppose a convention they are a constitutional traitor replacing the Founders thinking with theirs, putting themselves above the law.

Moreover, it is impermissible to pick and choose what parts of the Constitution are supported and obeyed.  Similarly, elected public officials who swear obedience to the Constitution cannot pick and choose which parts to obey.  Such behavior makes a mockery of the supreme law of the land, the rule of law, and our constitutional republic.  Silence by public officials on the issue is cowardly opposition to using the convention option.

No one can accurately forecast exactly what a convention would propose, but we do know that continuation of the status quo will not eliminate the corruption and dysfunction sustained by the two-party plutocracy.  The two major parties are rejected by 58 percent of the public for not effectively representing them, but a convention is far more attractive than forming a competitive third party.  Many reforms can only be achieved through constitutional amendments that Congress will never propose; this is inarguable.  Voting in elections to get reforms is passé.  A hard truth to take, but one that an increasing number of Americans have begun to accept.

Amending the Constitution in our modern world should compete with ordinary elections.  With Internet news, blogging, email, tweeting, texting and myriad other forms of instant communication, holding a convention is a new way to satisfy public thirst for true reforms, not promises.   Amending the Constitution can be done relatively quickly.  Of the 27 amendments to the Constitution, seven took one year or less to become the law of the land because of public engagement.  The 26th amendment (giving the right to vote to 18 year-olds) took only 3 months and 8 days to be ratified in 1971!  Public pressure works.  It will work for and against specific amendments.  Americans deserve the constitutional opportunity that Congress has deprived them of.

Americans must be taught this: Just by being in the Constitution the convention option demands public support.  Citizens are obliged to support it.  People cannot be allowed to have it both ways and be two-faced and hypocritical.  Embrace the convention option or be openly and aggressively condemned for unpatriotic hypocrisy and behavior that undermines the sanctity of the Constitution and the rule of law, both crucial for maintaining the integrity of our republic.

Trust is the crucial issue.  So many Americans have lost trust in their government and politicians but far less so in their Constitution.  Trusting the Constitution means trusting the Founders’ wisdom in providing the Article V convention option.  They anticipated the day when citizens would lose trust in the federal government, which has surely arrived.  The convention option bypasses Congress, the President and the Supreme Court; it gives power to the states and citizens.  Wisely, ratification by the states is required for any proposed amendments from a convention, providing a hedge against dangerous amendments.   When it comes to reform and making government work for we the people, the greatest risk for the nation is not using the convention option.

What political powers on the left and right fear and oppose we the people must demand.  They are guilty constitutional traitors.  We must be courageous patriots.  There is no room for compromise with convention opponents.  We must shame and embarrass them; they are lousy citizens.  The time to argue about specific amendments is when the convention is in session and delegates must contend with public sentiments and later when proposed amendments are considered for ratification by states.

We cannot know with certainty whether holding a convention would revitalize the nation.  But refusing to use the convention option as a constitutional path to reform disrespects and undermines our constitutional republic.  The sorry state of the nation demands that we do more than just talk about it.  This year every candidate for the House and Senate should be compelled to publicly support using the convention option.  Lack of support for it should be grounds for defeating them.

[A shorter version of this article was presented at the Thomas M. Cooley Law School Article V symposium in Lansing, Michigan on September 16, 2010; contact Joel S. Hirschhorn, a co-founder of Friends of the Article V Convention, through delusionaldemocracy.com.]

For years I muttered mentally to myself about the insanity of Americans electing George W. Bush president.  Now I go through the same agony about the craziness of the nation electing Barack Obama president.  As much as I thought Bush was a manipulated second-rate politician that carried out the terribly destructive policies pushed by Cheney and other conservative corporate shills, now I feel equally angry that so many voters fell for the slick rhetoric and lies of Obama.  Disgust produces public thirst for change and Obama was wickedly brilliant at selling change.  When voters are so easily victimized what does democracy amount to?
All this tells me that any nation that can elect such inept people president can also elect other people that appear to have no right or chance to be president of the United States just as Bush and Obama once appeared before they were sold to the public.  That is what is so frightening about the future of this nation.  The two-party plutocracy with its stranglehold on the American political system has the power to elect presidents that are an insult to the great ones that once served the nation with pride and competence.

I keep searching for explanations why millions of American voters make such bad electoral decisions.  Are they just so stupid, uninformed and distracted that they fall for endless political lies?  Have Americans become so easily manipulated and fooled by advertising and brilliant political campaigns that they can be sold terrible presidents as easily as unneeded, low quality and unhealthy products?

Yes, all this seems too true.  Delusional voters have produced our delusional democracy which strongly favors corporate, wealthy and elitist interests over ordinary Americans.  This explains frightening economic inequality and the demise of the middle class.  In the late 1970s, the richest 1 percent of American families took in about 9 percent of the nation’s total income; by 2007, the top 1 percent took in 23.5 percent of total income (less than 5 million people).  Two-thirds of the nation’s total income gains from 2002 to 2007 flowed to this sliver of households, which saw a rise of 62 percent, compared to 4 percent for the bottom 90 percent of households.  Today, the median male worker earns less, adjusted for inflation, than he did 30 years ago.  A corrupt bipartisan system gave us this.  Is this the change you were waiting for?

Considering Bush and Obama from a right-left perspective misses their several critical commonalities.  Both have wasted the nation’s wealth and lives on two ludicrous, unnecessary wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.  Both turned out to be pretty good communicators during their presidential campaigns but quite lousy after they became president.  The more intelligent and articulate Obama is particularly striking in being totally lackluster when it comes to addressing major issues and crises and building public support for his policies, which now explains his very low approval ratings.

Both pursued public policies and government programs that preferentially benefit corporate and other special interests, especially the financial sector.  This is no surprise because both depended on huge amounts of corporate money to get elected.  They both have responsibility for the economic meltdown that still exists for a large fraction of the nation.  A large majority of Americans correctly see the nation on the wrong track, but more importantly it is hurtling down the wrong track, which President Obama ignores, because he lacks solutions.

What may turn out to be the most disturbing similarity is that Obama may get elected for a second term just like Bush accomplished despite uninspiring performance.  If there is anything more disturbing than electing awful politicians with no real record of accomplishments it is reelecting them for a second term!  More than anything else this demonstrates the absence of true, effective political competition and the ability to brainwash and manipulate voters.

For years I hoped that some third party presidential candidate would emerge, capture public confidence and offer a true reform program to repair our nation.  But sadly the political system has been so corrupted that no third party presidential candidate stands a chance against the two-party plutocracy.  The biggest nonsense is that the US is the greatest democracy on Earth.  There are many other democracies where multiple political parties give citizens far more choices than Americans have.  It pays to remember that no nation ever copied the government structure of the US.  Instead, other democracies where citizens also have freedom use parliamentary structures with far more political choices and even the ability to more easily get rid of rotten leaders.  Here we suffer with disappointing presidents for far too many years.

The most fascinating aspect of our constitutional republic is that one constitutional path to get true, deep reforms of our government and political system has never been used.  This proves how powerful, entrenched interests on the right and left have maintained a corrupt, dysfunctional and costly system.  Very, very few Americans know anything about the option in Article V of the Constitution for a convention of state delegates that could propose constitutional amendments.  You can learn the facts at the Friends of the Article V Convention website.  The one and only requirement for a convention has long been met but Congress refuses to obey the Constitution.  They fear it.  We need it more than ever.

A constitutional scholar such as President Obama could make history by openly demanding that Congress convene the first Article V convention.  But that would require dropping the constitutional hypocrisy that he and so many others have.  The rule of law is a farce when an important part of the beloved Constitution is ignored.

[Contact Joel S. Hirschhorn through delusionaldemocracy.com.]

Consumer confidence is terrible; citizen confidence is worse: Only 11 percent of Americans have confidence in Congress.  No surprise there is record-setting anti-incumbency anger rampant among Americans.  But the sad truth is damned if you do and damned if you don’t vote for incumbents.  

The problem is that the reformers, populist outsiders, tea party candidates, surprise primary winners and others expecting to oust incumbents in the coming mid-term elections for members of Congress and state governors and other officials mostly suck.  Why?  They are nutty, ignorant, dishonest or racist.  

Pathetic US Senate candidates like Alvin Greene on the left in South Carolina and Sharron Angle on the right in Nevada, for example, are intellectual nits and an insult to a once envied political system.  And in Memphis, Tennessee Willie Herenton, who is African-American, sells black racism to oust two-term incumbent Congressman Steve Cohen in a primary, telling blacks to not vote for his white opponent.

Many ambitious candidates drained the economy to become super-rich.  Is this any time to trust people who have taken advantage of our corrupt corporate system to run the government and serve those they have previously taken advantage of for personal gain?  Will anger about the corrupt, dysfunctional government system be sufficient for voters to turn the government over to people who have nothing in common with most Americans?

Consider California.  Meg Whitman, a Republican candidate for governor wants to beat the familiar, incumbent-like Democrat Jerry Brown, now attorney general, and was previously the chief executive of eBay.  She has outspent all other self-financed candidates across the country by using $91 million of her own money to knock out Steve Poizner, who spent $24 million of his own money, in the Republican primary.  California is big, but $91 million and likely even more!!  She will greatly outspend Brown.  And Carly Fiorina, a Republican who is challenging Democrat Senator Barbara Boxer in California, has the audacity to claim on her website that she will “fight for every job” if elected even though, as chief executive of Hewlett-Packard in 2003 she cut about 18,000 jobs and did little good for the company.  She has already spent $5 million.  Are these people worthy of public support?

Consider Florida.  Republican Rick Scott, the former head of Columbia/HCA Healthcare — an awful large hospital chain that paid $1.7 billion in fines for fraudulently billing government programs like Medicare — has become the front-runner for Florida governor.  He supposedly is worth about $200 million.  He was ousted by his own board of directors in 1997 amid the nation’s biggest health care fraud scandal.  He loaned his campaign $22.9 million during the period from April 9 through July 16 and spent $22.65 million of it.  In contrast, he received only $415,126 in contributions.  Bill McCollum, his Republican opponent, raised a little over $1 million during the reporting period and spent about $1.7 million.  He has raised $5.7 million since he announced his campaign last year.  He has less than $500,000 left.  Democrat candidate Alex Sink, with no primary opponent, raised $1.1 million for the reporting period and has raised $7.3 million so far.  Is Scott better qualified because of his wealth and ability to advertise more?

Also in Florida is Jeff Greene who wants to be US Senator, a Democrat who had been a Republican with a strange gang of friends like Mike Tyson and Heidi Fleiss.  Incredibly, most of his fortune, estimated at $1.4 billion, came from derivatives that let him profit from the collapse of subprime mortgages which helped tank the US economy.  He lives in an oceanfront mansion when he is not on one of his yachts or his plane with gold seat-belt buckles.  He recently reported taking a paltry $3,036 in outside contributions, while lending himself — and spending — $5.9 million in the second quarter.  Recent polls found Greene roughly even in the primary with Democrat Representative Kendrick B. Meek, who had been the party favorite and took 18 months to raise a similar amount.  Incumbent-like candidate Governor Charlie Crist still leads as an independent in a three-way general election.  Greene boasts that now is the moment for self-financed candidates. “If 2008 was the year of change, 2010 is the year of frustration,” he said.  But does frustration justify voting for these characters?

And then there is Linda E. McMahon, a Connecticut Republican who made her fortune in professional wrestling before her Senate run.  She has stated a willingness to spend $50 million of her own money to win the election, a lot of money for such a small state, and has already spent $21.5 million.  A television ad declares “politicians have had their chance, and blown it” while her jobs plan “is backed by experience.”  She became president of the WWF as a legal maneuver to save the company in 1993, because her husband was indicted for distributing steroids to his wrestlers.  Cleverly, she blew the whistle and told regulators something few in the industry would admit: wrestling matches were scripted shows and not athletic competitions that required the kind of oversight that, say, boxing required.  The financial benefit was that her wrestling business operates in 29 states without supervision by state athletic boards or commissions, saving the company licensing fees.  She served only a few months on the state Board of Education and then became a candidate.  She supports policies that favor the rich and advocates offshore oil drilling.  She faces Democrat incumbent-like Richard Blumenthal, now attorney general of Connecticut.  Is her wrestling business experience really the basis for being a great senator?

Voters should remember this: None of these characters are legitimate populists, progressives or reformers with a political record to show their true capabilities or positions.  Why trust them?  Would they perform better than incumbents?  I don’t think so.  More likely, they would serve elites and corporate interests.  In the past very few rich candidates have won office (just 11 percent), but considering the anti-incumbency sentiment this year, big money may prevail.

Is the evil you don’t know really better than the evil you do know because of failed government experience?  Are some incumbents worth support?  Or will many Americans admit that voting no longer can fix and reform our battered democracy and stay home?  I think I will.  There are just too many fools and idiots voting that offset the votes of informed and intelligent citizens.  Maybe if voter turnout was totally abysmal, say 20 percent, maybe then we would get the reforms or revolution we need by de-legitimizing our government.

A loss expected to happen next year looks smaller than that same loss happening next week.  Worse yet, a loss or catastrophe that may happen (indeed, is highly likely to happen) decades away is essentially invisible, unthinkable or unworthy of attention now.  In other words, humans suffer from an intrinsic thinking defect best described as time blindness.  It is the inability to correctly foresee and take seriously long term consequences of current actions.  
No wonder that people easily spend decades eating unhealthy foods or living a sedentary lifestyle, or both, without appreciating or internalizing the inevitable negative and serious health impacts, from heart disease to all kinds of cancers, for example.

No wonder that all kinds of technologies that offer immediate rewards or benefits are embraced while long term negative impacts are easily ignored.  Maybe cell phones really do cause brain cancer.  Maybe deep ocean drilling for oil will fail and cause exactly what we are now witnessing in the Gulf of Mexico from the BP fiasco.

But we like cell phones and we refuse to take the many actions to rid society of its addiction to petroleum and so we willingly accept our time blindness no matter how many experts and researchers try to warn us about the terrible long term impacts.  In other words, near term benefits blind us to long term costs.  As economists might say, those long term costs are heavily discounted.

It is not just that individuals are time blind, but that there is collective time blindness.  It is so powerful that conventional institutions we think of as protecting people and society are impotent.  That’s how powerful time blindness is.

Worse yet, the really smart people know how to take advantage of mass time blindness.  Think of business and corporations that create mass market products and technologies that seduce people because their negative consequences fall victim to deeply imbedded time blindness.  Think of all the Ponzi schemes that have victimized so many people out of many billions of dollars.  By the time that negative impacts occur it startles and amazes people as if they could not have been predicted.  Wrong!  In all cases of catastrophes and crises there is always a record of some people correctly forecasting them.  But they are ignored.  Why?  Time blindness.  That vision of an awful, deadly future becomes invisible because of our time blindness, or it merely is seen as fantasy, speculation or entertainment.

Want another example?  Try the classic one of over population: Too many humans on planet Earth using too many resources.  Those not falling prey to time blindness have been trying to warn humanity for a very long time that a lower birth rate and fewer people would actually result in high quality of life for people, with less social conflicts, wars and terrorism.  Also think global warming or climate change.  Though there are clear impacts now, major calamities will become future shocks because of so much time blindness.

We ignore time blindness at our peril.  The real lesson of the BP oil disaster is far more significant than merely one technology or one incompetent and immoral company that wrecks havoc and pain on so many people as well as ruining so much of the natural environment.  We need to spend a lot more time understanding intrinsic time blindness as a kind of mental disability, and how to teach people to avoid it.  One person has been doing just that for decades.  Check out the work of Jack Alpert at skil.org.

The middle class is dead.  The US has produced a self-sustaining two-class society.  Most Lower Class Americans are in bad or uncertain economic shape but the rich and powerful Upper Class crowd keeps making and spending money as if there has been no recession.

Talk about a possible double-dip recession misses the larger reality: For many millions of Americans the first recession is still here; there has been no recovery for them.  Too bad President Obama cannot comprehend that.  Nice that only 23 percent of people believe that his policies have made economic conditions better.  Maybe they got the change they were waiting for.

A new survey by the Pew Research Center provides disturbing data that no amount of lies from politicians can refute.  Without a lot more consumer spending, remember, the US economy will not regain lasting health.  The scope of the economic shock is shown by the 60 percent of Americans that have cut down on borrowing and spending.  And nearly 50 percent are in worse financial shape because of the economic downturn.  Forty percent of adults have tapped savings and retirement accounts to make ends meet.  Nearly 25 percent have had to borrow money from someone.  Ten percent have moved back with their parents to survive the economic tsunami, and that rises to 24 percent for workers between 18 and 29 years old.

More and more Americans now recognize that retirement will have to wait.  For those 62 and older and still working, 35 percent have postponed retirement.  That jumps to 60 percent as a likely action for working adults between ages 50 and 61.  Replace the golden years with the disappointment years, especially when inevitable reduced Social Security and Medicare benefits hit hard.

For those still lucky enough to have jobs, the Commerce Department reports that the personal savings rate in May — the part of wage income that goes unspent — rose to 4 percent, the highest amount in nearly a year, as anxious consumers faced continued economic woes, such as fears about losing jobs or homes, affording food and health care, and a tumbling stock market.

And always remember that the official jobless rate of just under 10 percent is pure bunk; it really is close to 20 percent nationally, and a lot worse in many places and for African-Americans and Hispanics.  The average time for being without a job is now six months, with many more people jobless for a whole lot more, often several years.  All this means suppressed consumer spending and continued high home foreclosure rates.  No big surprise that consumer confidence crashed almost 10 points between May and June.  Welcome to high anxiety.

Also keep in mind that even as the general consumer spending shows little life, the Upper Class keeps on living it up.  Gallup reported “Upper-income Americans’ self-reported spending rose 33% to an average of $145 per day in May — up from $109 per day in April 2010 and May 2009, and the highest monthly average since November 2008.”  The rest of the population’s self-reported spending averaged $59 per day in May.  So, rich Americans are spending nearly twice as much as the vast majority of Americans every day.  Indeed, Tiffany reports sales up 17 percent in the jeweler’s most recent quarter.  Overall US luxury sales, says MasterCard SpendingPulse, jumped 22.7 percent in March, over the previous year.  The increase in luxury buying appears to be coming almost totally from the “ultra-affluents,” those households making over $250,000 a year.  Their first-quarter spending increased 22.6 percent, meaning that they have returned to spending at pre-recession levels.

And here is a gem of a new statistic.  In 2009, the Economic Policy Institute reports that the typical working American with a four-year college degree took home $1,025 per week, $5 a week less than Americans with a four-year degree took home, after adjusting for inflation, in the year 2000.  How’s that for progress?

Meanwhile, almost half of U.S. companies that reduced or suspended their contributions to employee retirement plans during the recession haven’t restored them.

The ultra ugly truth is that there is very little hope for the US economy providing true prosperity for the vast majority of people in the foreseeable future.  Unemployment will remain high and consumer spending will remain low except for the wealthy.  Economic inequality is terrible and punishing most Americans who should forget about that fabled American dream.  To visualize America’s staggeringly unequal distribution of wealth, suggests University of Tennessee at Martin historian David Barber, envision a 100-seat auditorium filled with 100 people.  If seating in that auditorium reflected our current wealth distribution, the single richest person in the hall “would be able to spread out smartly” over nearly 43 seats.  The poorest 60 would have to squeeze into just one.

As government deficits continue at historic high levels there will be even more pain as local and state governments cut employment and services.  All the economic impacts of the BP oil spill in the Gulf region will continue to expand and reverberate and it is doubtful that enough money will come from BP to those in pain soon enough to prevent catastrophes for millions of people.

Some impacted people may turn to religion as if God has not already shown total disdain for humanity.  Some will delude themselves that voting for certain candidates in the coming midterm elections will help.  Others will bury themselves in various distractions or choose to believe the political lies of President Obama and other politicians.  [How did all that federal stimulus spending work for you?]  Perhaps far more Lower Class people [Are you in denial about your Lower Class status?] should consider the advice of the deeply cynical: Kill Yourself.  If only politicians would take that advice.

Happy Fourth of July.  Time to try and remember the good old days.

After listening to a number of speeches at a national conference of progressives I come to this conclusion: Progressives are more than eager to take credit for electing President Obama and even to complain about the many failures of him and his administration.  They overwhelmingly feel that his campaign promises were far, far better than what he has delivered.  They are disappointed.  They are frustrated.  They are sad.  But ultimately they are also cowards.
Why do I say this?  Because they seem completely incapable of using straightforward language to criticize Obama.  They resist saying he has lied to the public, betrayed progressives and sold out to corporate interests.  Most importantly, they do not want to openly confess and proclaim that he has been a sham government reformer.

At a time when progressives are working hard to get candidates for the US Senate to oppose Democrats they deem unacceptable in current primaries, they show no willingness to open the door wide to creating the circumstances to get someone they view as a better progressive to compete against Obama and keep him from winning a second term.

In other words, they seem intellectually incapable of concluding that Obama no longer deserves their support based, for example, on the hard, painful facts that he has persisted in wasting the country’s wealth and lives on two useless wars, he never cleaned up the regulatory system in the Department of Interior that allowed BP and other companies to escape effective regulation in the public interest, and he never fought for a public option in the health care reform legislation.  While he was eager to bail out Wall Street he has shown no courage in saving Main Street.  He has accomplished nothing effective to create private sector jobs and stands idly by as the middle class continues to slip down into the lower class.

Progressives admit that Obama is a consensus builder while hesitating to go all the way and scream that bipartisanship chasing and consensus building have overwhelmed adherence to reformist and populist principles.  They seem blind to the reality that the success of the tea party movement results from a failure by Obama to seek necessary government reforms that would show him to be a true change agent working to create better rather than bigger government.

If progressives do not have the courage of their convictions how can they expect Obama to have the courage of his supposed convictions?

The hard truth for progressives is that Obama has shown that he is just another politician playing the same old, corruption games and caving in to many special and corporate interests.  Obama surrounded himself with a number of people who had no progressive credentials whatsoever, including his Chief of Staff, Treasure Secretary and top economic advisor.  No surprise therefore that the Obama White House plays all the same old games that maintains corrupt and dysfunctional government.

Just as so many Americans have woken up and are demanding criminal prosecution of BP and making them pay fully for all of the terrible environmental and economic impacts their greed has produced, progressives should be leading the nation in condemning Obama.  Now is the time for progressives to admit that they are not getting the changes they were waiting for and never will get them from Obama.  Progressives need to find the courage to openly say that one term is enough for Obama.

Better to create the conditions for someone else to become the reformer so many Americans want in the White House.  Otherwise progressives may wake up to Republicans scoring very big in the coming mid-term elections and also offering up someone to take over the White House.  Unless progressive are willing to take some risk they risk losing even more than they already have lost.  Don’t stay with a loser.  Seek a real winner.  Someone people in the tea party movement might support.

[Contact Joel S. Hirschhorn through delusionaldemocracy.com.]

Money is power.  Each of us has it to varying degrees.  Our challenge is to use our spending to advance worthy goals.  Right now we see economic power being used against the state of Arizona because of the awful legislation recently passed that makes it all too easy for police there to seek proof of citizenship from virtually anyone they choose.  Many groups and government entities have already cancelled conferences and other activities in Arizona, sending state and business leaders into a frizzy.  They deserve to suffer as do the vast majority of Arizona citizens that supported the legislation.  Every American that professes love and respect for the Constitution should avoid spending their tourism and other kinds of spending in Arizona.
Economic boycotts can be very powerful and change the world for the better.  Sadly, too few Americans use their personal spending power to advance worthy goals.  An immediate opportunity is for people to stop buying BP gasoline.  After all, it is clear that BP acted irresponsibly and likely criminally in using offshore oil drilling technology that posed enormous risks to public and worker safety as well as our natural environment in the Gulf of Mexico and possibly far beyond.

Make BP suffer where it hurts, where it can truly harm them.  Send a clear signal that we will get revenge as consumers with an environmental conscience.  An immediate boycott of BP could do much to make the company compensate the incredible number of people that will suffer very much because of the humongous oil spill that should have been prevented.  We cannot depend on BP acting responsibly; nor can we count on the government or the courts for delivering timely justice.

So simple.  While you may not have opportunities to stop spending in Arizona you are more likely to stop spending at BP outlets.  If you can influence decisions by others to stop spending in these two ways, then do it with strength and passion.

There is a Boycott BP page on Facebook.  Show your support.  Over at the Public Citizen website you can sign a petition: “Take the Beyond BP Pledge! Drive a car? Like the occasional fountain drink? Send a clear message to BP by boycotting its gas and retail store products. Don’t spend a cent of your hard-earned money to feed the bottom line of a corporation that has a sordid history of negligence, willfully violates environmental regulations, and is spewing thousands and thousands of barrels of oil a day into the Gulf of Mexico.  I pledge to boycott BP for at least three months.”  Public Citizen has also created a Facebook group “1,000,000 Strong to Boycott BP.”

“Boycott BP into bankruptcy” – said Cindy Sheehan.  Amen.

A short while back John Antczak on Huffington Post complained that there is “no apparent sign of a consumer backlash at the pump like the boycott triggered by the Exxon Valdez spill 21 years ago.”  He also noted that “owners interviewed by The Associated Press across the country say it’s been business as usual since the April 20 explosion on a rig off Louisiana began unleashing 200,000 gallons of crude a day.”  However, this too must be noted: It took 40 days for outrage to coalesce into a one-day national boycott of Exxon stations.

Note that n the West, BP sells gas under the long-established Arco brand.

According to BP’s website, there are more than 10,000 BP-branded gas stations in the U.S. and 1,500 under the Arco name.  BP says it sells more than 15 billion gallons of gasoline in the U.S. every year, second only to Shell.

Americans seem to find far too easy to justify buying at BP or Arco because of convenience or low price.  But everyone should see this choice as a moral one.  If you continue to pump money into the BP coffers you are acting immorally, stupidly and anti-environmentally.  Either you have a conscience or not.  Make the marketplace work to punish those that deserve to be punished.

[Contact Joel S. Hirschhorn at delusionaldemocracy.com.]

As a materials and manufacturing engineer with decades of experience with failure analysis of manufactured products, and as an owner of a Toyota vehicle, I am saddened by the lack of expertise and insight shared with Congress and the public about the sudden acceleration problem.
When products fail due to a systemic design, materials or manufacturing flaw, large and statistically significant levels of problems emerge fairly rapidly.  This is definitely not the case with the Toyota problem.  With many millions of Toyota models on which even more millions of miles have been driven, if there had been an inherent materials or manufacturing design defect, then we would have seen untold thousands of cases of sudden acceleration.  It literally would have been virtually a daily event happening all over the country in many Toyota models.  But, in fact, little more than 1,000 Toyota and Lexus owners have reported since 2001 that their vehicles suddenly accelerated on their own.  This is a tiny, minuscule percentage of Toyotas.

This infrequent runaway car problem is not analogous to a serious case of bacterial contamination of a major food product causing many thousands of cases of food poisoning in a relatively short period.  It is even more difficult to find the cause of.

Understanding this nature of defects also means that the so-called solutions of replacing floor mats and gas pedals are sheer nonsense.  Indeed, it did not surprise me to read today that there have already been cases of sudden acceleration in cars that had received fixes by Toyota.  More than 60 Toyota owners have complained to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration about cars already repaired under the two major Toyota recalls, saying they aren’t fixed and their throttles can still race out of control.

While recognizing the agony and suffering of sudden acceleration accidents and deaths it is also necessary to appreciate the statistically rare occurrences of this problem.  Only by doing so is it possible to understand that the ultimate explanation – and solution – to the sudden acceleration problem will be a non-systemic flaw or defect in a critical component.  In other words, either a random defect in a material or some unusual and infrequent deviation in a manufacturing process of some critical component.  Only such a situation can logically explain so few sudden acceleration problems in so many millions of cars being operated for many more millions of hours and miles.

In my professional opinion, the likely scenario is a defect in a semiconductor chip used in the electronic control system.  A defect that was caused by some infrequent flaw in a raw material or manufacturing process that would not show up in routine quality control testing of raw materials or components.  That so many different Toyota models over many years have been found defective signifies the likelihood of a particular problem component made in a specific factory that has been used for quite a while.  Moreover, the defect obviously does not ordinarily impair vehicle performance but only manifests itself under some infrequent conditions, as yet undetermined.

Rita Taylor of Fort Worth, Texas experienced runaway acceleration, took her car to a Toyota dealer, and had the floor mats removed.  A few months later she had another frightening runaway episode.  Ditto for Eric Weiss in California, who also had a second episode months after the first one and after removing the mats.  Others who have not died and kept using their Toyotas have also had repeat events.  Thus, perfectly normal vehicle performance is possible between runaway events.

Make no mistake, the precise cause of such a sporadic event is incredibly difficult to pin down and even more difficult to remedy.  An extremely intense and costly investigation is necessary.  It is the classic needle-in-the-haystack problem.

If my thinking is correct, then it is sheer folly to believe that replacing floor mats or gas pedals can solve the sudden acceleration problem.  However, there is one aspect to the sudden acceleration problem that also is crystal clear and, in some ways, even more aggravating than the acceleration problem.  This is the absence of an override system that absolutely prevents fuel being fed to the engine when brakes are employed while a car is accelerating.  It is gratifying that the federal government is seriously considering requiring such an override system in all vehicles.  An effective override system might, in the long run, be a faster and more cost-effective solution than chasing-the-defect strategy, especially for retrofitting many millions of vehicles.

Alternatively, finding the cause of the sudden acceleration problem requires a standard failure analysis methodology, namely to obtain absolutely every Toyota vehicle that has experienced sudden acceleration.  Then meticulously examine through microscopic and other types of analysis and testing all critical components of the electronic system (called by Toyota the Electronic Throttle Control System with intelligence).  Think of it like an autopsy.

This does not appear to have been done.  To the contrary, the firm hired by Toyota tested several ordinary vehicles and components.  One of the primary authors of the Exponent report said they did not examine any vehicles or components that had the unintended accelerations.  This makes no sense whatsoever if the defect is rare and, therefore, its finding that there was nothing wrong was meaningless.  Worse, it was a deception and distraction.

[Joel S. Hirschhorn has a Ph.D. in Materials Engineering and was formerly a full professor of metallurgical engineering at the University of Wisconsin, Madison and a consultant for many corporations, such as IBM, Texas Instruments, Polaroid, and RayOVac, and has served as an expert witness in many legal proceedings.  He was a senior official at the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment and the National Governors Association and is the author of several nonfiction books and hundreds of articles

Can you trust national averages?  As bad as the jobless data you hear are, you have not been told the whole truth.  If you think the terrible impact of America’s Great Recession is shown by an official unemployment rate of about 10 percent, think again.

Economic inequality and the myth of Reagan trickle down logic are shown by new data from the Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern University in Boston.  The report noted: “What has been missing from the public debate over the labor market crisis is an honest and detailed analysis of which American workers have been most adversely affected by the deep deterioration in labor markets.”  The researchers found a correlation between household income and unemployment rate in the last quarter of 2009:  Look carefully at these numbers and see how unemployment rises as income drops:

$150,000 or more, 3.2 percent
$100,000 to 149,999, 8 percent
$75,000 to $99,999, 5 percent
$60,000 to $75,000, 6.4 percent
$50,000 to $59,000, 7.8 percent
$40,000 to $49,000, 9 percent
$30,000 to $39,999, 12.2 percent
$20,000 to $29,999, 19.7 percent
$12,500 to $20,000, 19.1 percent
$12,499 or less, 30.8 percent

Ten times worse unemployment in the lowest class than in the highest class!  Truly amazing and disheartening, don’t you think?  And you can also infer that in some hard hit geographical areas the poorest people and people of color are being even more adversely impacted.  And don’t think for a minute that things have really improved in 2010.

The report summed up the situation: “A true labor market depression faced those in the bottom…of the income distribution; a deep labor market recession prevailed among those in the middle of the distribution, and close to a full employment environment prevailed at the top.”  People at the top remain winners no matter how bad the whole economy.  Why?  The wealthy Upper Class controls so much of the political system and benefit from countless government policies.  They may lose something in an economic meltdown but not enough to suffer significantly.

Conversely, those at the bottom of the economic system with no political power are experiencing something as bad as the Great Depression, with no end in sight.

What pundits don’t emphasize is that government policies that do not target lower income groups are a failure and disgrace.  Worse than destroying the middle class, we are creating a Lower Class like that found in third world countries.  Indeed, compared to places like China and European nations, America’s poor are suffering about as badly as anyone on the planet, except for a few dismal places like Haiti.  Needing food handouts, losing homes, missing health insurance, and lacking jobs mock the American Dream.

Wait; there is even more bad news.  When underemployment is factored in — part time workers that want to work full time, and those who have stopped looking but want a job — the picture gets even worse.  In the lowest group, the underemployment rate was 20.6 percent, compared with just 1.6 percent in the highest group.  So the total in the lowest class is 51.4 percent (3.7 million people) compared to 4.8 percent in the wealthy class (530,000 people).  Also consider that last November nearly 20 percent of all men between 25 and 54 did not have jobs, the highest figure since the labor bureau began counting in 1948.

Now you know why the constantly noted official jobless rate for the nation of 10 percent and 17 percent when underemployment is counted are a joke, or is it a purposeful deception, like a truth bubble?

How can jobs be created for the lower economic classes?  You hear very, very few new ideas from politicians.  It comes down to federal spending that better targets job creation to the lower income groups, and waiting for more general consumer spending, especially by the more affluent, to create more low level jobs, mostly in service areas.  But we need specifics and better legislation.

Consider this green energy fiasco.  A huge amount of federal stimulus money provided for building wind farms.  It is creating jobs in Chine to build wind turbines, not in America.  In fact, 80 percent of such federal funding is going overseas.  All because Congress and the White House did not ensure a made-in-America requirement.  Was a backroom deal made to keep China happy so that they would keep loaning us money?

When the poorest people suffer so disproportionately as compared to the wealthiest, perhaps only violent revolution will fix America’s dysfunctional, broken and delusional democracy.  Will President Obama cite the above frightening data in any public forum to make the case for stronger federal efforts?  What do you think?

The high numbers for the lower income people mean that no amount of government action, in even five years or more, will solve jobless problem, because no amount of economic growth can possibly create enough new jobs.  The US would have to produce 10 million new jobs just to get back to the unemployment levels of 2007 – impossible for many years.  So, politicians will keep making things look better by citing the national average.

[Contact Joel S. Hirschhorn through delusionaldemocracy.com.]