Well, duh!

I haven't posted lately because I try to avoid belaboring the obvious. but I'll make an exception this time to reassure my readers that I'm still alive:

• Voter suppression works, as demonstrated by Brian Kemp, the new governor of Georgia.  
• "Florida Man" can be a woman, as demonstrated by Brenda C. Snipes, election commissioner of Broward County.   
• Nancy Pelosi will be Speaker again, if only because nobody else is willing to take all that grief; but she's also the only one capable of doing the job at this time.   
• MbS personally ordered the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, but the Tr*mp Administration will find a way to ignore that fact.   
• Fox News and Russia's TASS news agency are locked in a bitter struggle to determine which can be more slanted and misleading.   
• Nobody has any clear idea of how to cope with the ecological catastrophe that is California.   
• Matt Whitaker is an affront to the rule of law, but then so is the rest of the Tr*mp Administration.   
• You can't fight a trade war with China and expect them to maintain sanctions against North Korea at the same time.

On the home front...

Opting Out
Opposition is growing to Arne Duncan's "data based" approach to "saving" American education by obsessively testing schoolchildren and using their scores to "evaluate" teachers and schools.  Hooray for all those parents choosing to "opt out" of the testcapades for their kids. The children of poverty who are supposed to be the chief beneficiaries of the testing regimen will continue to score poorly, no matter how many "failing" schools are closed and no matter how many "incompetent" teachers are fired.  The most important key to educational achievement is the security and predictability of a middle-class lifestyle, a lifestyle denied to more and more children as more and more Americans are pushed out of what used to be the American middle class.

Minimum Wage
More Americans can enjoy "middle-class" lives when more Americans are able to live comfortably on their earnings.  Right now, our low-wage workers — even those lucky enough to have steady, full-time jobs — have to depend on food stamps and Medicaid just to scrape by.  Too many are only one or two unpaid sick days away from financial catastrophe, and they know it.  They and their children need and deserve real security.  Raising the minimum wage to $15/hr is not enough to restore the American middle class, but at least it's a step in the right direction.

As I've said before, raising the minimum wage will not lead to lay-offs, because employers know they maximize profits by employing the smallest work force needed to get the job done.  If forced to pay their workers more, employers must either accept lower profits or raise the prices of their products.  The affluent will scarcely notice any price increases, and better paid workers will have more money to spend.  Only the most poorly conceived and managed businesses will fail.

Democracy
To the extent it exists in the USofA, democracy doesn't work very well.  People struggling to earn a living, or to claw their way to the next level of economic success, don't have a lot of time to peruse the "important issues" that are supposed to determine the outcomes of elections.  Candidates win elections when they have the financing and skills to promulgate sufficiently convincing lies, or to distract our attention from political decisions that actually might have an impact on our lives.

The classic Clinton approach, "polling over principle," is endemic in our current system.  We expect political candidates to say the things we want to hear.  What they actually do once in office is unlikely to have more than cosmetic resemblance to what they say in order to win.

Bibi plays the race card (again)

Bibi stirred up a shit storm of paranoia and racism in the final days of the election, mirroring the game plan of his Republican allies in the United States.  Oy, gevalt, Arab citizens are voting!  Feel afraid, very afraid!  Democracy (it should be understood) is not to be trusted.

Ignore the fact that Arabs are just 20% of the population, and that they refuse to form coalitions with any of the "Jewish" parties because that would imply some level of approval of the occupation of the West Bank and the destruction of Gaza.  Arabs voting has to be dangerous.

Now that Bibi has come right out and said there will be no two-state solution (not that there ever was any real doubt where he stood), I suppose we can expect settlement expansion to accelerate.  Europeans, who recognize apartheid when they see it, will become even less supportive of Israel.  It really ought to be time for the USofA scratch its ass and say, "Well, duh, yeah, it looks a whole lot like apartheid to us too."  Will it happen?

Unlikely.

The USofA will continue to mouth platitudes about the creation of a Palestinian state, but the solution to apartheid is not establishing a string of powerless, "self-governing" Arabic-speaking Bantustans and calling it a country.  The solution is full integration of all Palestinians into the Israeli state, with all the rights and opportunities of full citizenship.

It might not be a "Jewish state" anymore, but, at least, it would be a democracy.

Elections

It is kind of pathetic how Abdel Fatteh el-Sisi (aka Abdul Fattah al-Sisi and some other transliterations from the Arabic) extended the voting period because hardly anybody was bothering to vote for him.  Well, that's what happens when everybody knows the outcome in advance.  (Hell, I could be hanging out at the souq with my homies, drinking qasab.  Why bother?)

Chocolate King Petro Olekseyevich Poroshenko seems to be the new leader of Ukraine.  Okay, he's just another oligarch, but he seems to be pro-EU and his main factory is in Russia.  Go figure.

Europeans don't much bother to vote in elections for the European Parliament, but the populist anti-EU crew seems to have been more active than in the past.  Except for Hungary, I don't see the right-wing crazies winning any governments in Europe — albeit, adopting the Euro so early was a total screw-up.  It is easy to understand why, say, the UK and Germany don't want their labor markets overrun by Romanians and such like, but when you make your bed, you have to lie in it.

Election Day!

Egypt, Greece, and France held elections yesterday, with mixed results.

In Egypt, needless to say, the Supreme Military Council (aka military junta) stripped the soon to be elected president of all his powers even before the first vote was cast, so nobody really cared what happened.  What will Muslim Brotherhood candidate Mohammed Morsi do with his empty title?  Beats me.  Is it time to to heat things up again in Tahrir Square?  Maybe — but Egypt could make Syria look like Luxembourg.

In Greece, fear triumphed, mildly, over hope (or anger) with the "victory" of the New Democrats — who really are not all that different from the Clinton-Gore New Democrats of the USofA.  Obama may be thinking about genuinely joining a religion so he might more effectively pray for a financial turnaround in Europe.  So far, New Democracy has not managed to form a government.  I suppose Pasak will join in by tomorrow or the next day, provided the alleged "socialists" are offered enough graft — but that coalition will be very fragile.

Greece could be facing new elections in a matter of months, unless the Germans get the steel rods out of their asses and let Greece ease up on its current austerity program, which has driven the country into depression.  In case you hadn't noticed, Germany is the country that has profited most from the euro — the euro is worth a lot less than a deutschmark would have been worth at this point, and that has been the primary factor driving Germany's export oriented economy for many years.  The losers were the net importing Eurozone countries of the south.  As I suggested last November, the best way to save the euro would be to kick out the Germans and generate some healthy inflation.

The good news is that Hollande and his Socialists have solidified their political control in France, creating a counterweight to Merkel and the Germans with regard to austerity.  If it's not too late, the Greeks, Spaniards, and Portuguese will appreciate Hollande's efforts.  It might even cheer the sad, suffering Irish a bit.  Countries cannot afford to watch their best and brightest young people emigrate because there is no work at home.

Things fall apart;

....................... the center cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the land...

It's really disheartening how frequently and aptly one can quote Yeats these days.  What passed for the center in Greece took a clobbering as Greek voters moved both left and right.  In a couple of days, we'll get to find out if the leftist coalition, Syriza, can form a government now that New Democracy has failed to do so.  It doesn't look good; both because New Democracy was awarded an extra fifty seats in the 300 seat legislature because it squeaked into first place, and because the Communists refuse to join any coalition government.

Next, the Socialists get a turn to fail, and then there will have to be a caretaker government while new elections are held.  At that rate, it doesn't look good for Greece getting the next installment on its bailout.  A Greek default — which just about everybody expected was inevitable anyway — might do the trick of loosing "mere [economic]  anarchy upon the world."

François Hollande disrupted a decades-long pattern of French incumbent victories by defeating Sarkozy — despite Sarkozy's pandering to first round supporters of Marine Le Pen.  In both Greece and France,  "the worst," demonstrating quite a bit of "passionate intensity" helped the quasi-fascist Golden Dawn and National Front parties lay claim to influence that will not be ignored.

Yes, left and right, voters were voicing their discontent with German dictated austerity measures — and, in a larger sense, with the plutocracy that came to replace the natural "center" over the past three decades.  They are tired of having their lives twisted this way and that for the sake of a cabal of big banks, hedge funds, and multinational corporations.  The question remains, though: do they truly understand who they hate and why they hate them?

Election Season

Tomorrow there will be elections in France, Greece, Italy, and Germany.  In November, there will be elections in the United States.  Not everybody may see just how those elections are interconnected, but if they don't, at the very least, they ought to try. The European voting should be seen as a plebiscite on austerity, the modus operandus of the European Union since the financial debacle.

The Italian elections are local but, like last week's local elections in the UK, may be an indicator of how the electorate is swinging.  The elections in Germany are for the Schleswig-Holstein region, and have the potential to push Angela Merkel out of power if the Social Democrats and the Greens do well and are able to form a coalition.

There is a lot more attention, of course, to the national elections in France and Greece.  Polling shows Francois Hollande, the Socialist, leading Nicolas Sarkozy.  France, unlike a bunch of other European nations, isn't quite in official recession yet — but the handwriting is on the wall.  Hollande says he wants European action to stimulate growth, and it seems the French populace is responding to that message.  The question, at the moment, is what kind of winning margin he can achieve (assuming he wins.)  Nobody knows which way the National Front (the Tea Party of France) will turn, if they bother to vote at all.  It would be very amusing is they went for Hollande.

The Greeks have sufficient parties and political schisms so that it is possible that no coalition government might be formed.  Most of Europe is hoping that the socialist Pasok party and the conservative New Democrats (makes you think of Clinton) gather enough of the vote to form a coalition government (!) that can pander to the Germans enough to keep Greece in the Eurozone — but the situation is really crazy.

At the moment, the United States too is in austerity.  The (inadequate) Obama stimulus has run its course; the Fed is standing pat; the states continue to dump cops, teachers, motor vehicle clerks, etc.  According to the most recent figures, job growth appears to be slowing.

The Republican answer to this is more austerity — albeit, unlike the Europeans, Republicans refuse to raise taxes (especially on the very rich), and hope to "balance the budget" on the backs of the poor.  The example of Europe sliding down the economic drain means nothing to the corporate elite, the rentier class, and the rest of the plutocrats.  Hell, it won't hurt them.

The vast majority of America (including Democrats) consists of economic illiterates.  Pointing out that so-called "balancing the budget" by decimating government is exactly what failed in Europe will do little good.  I really hope Obama has a plan — however shifty and devious — to overcome the stupidity of the American people.  Needless to say, I also hope that, somewhere in his heart, there is a little "Old" Democrat who will do the decent thing when he no longer has to worry about re-election.

The Ryan Budget

The 2012 budget proposed by Paul Ryan has received a good deal of press attention for its audacity, with many comments on how "politically risky" it is. Well, it ought to be risky — in point of fact, it ought to bring the Republican party crashing down in the 2012 elections — but Republicans don't seem all that concerned. Once again, they are counting on the overwhelming economic ignorance and the pathetic intellectual laziness of the American people.

Yes, they want to bring the top tax rate for the rich all the way down to 25%, and the deductions they plan to eliminate are those most beneficial to the middle class. The cuts they propose have an inordinate impact on the poor, children, and the elderly. Don't even bother to ask about the estate tax. As usual, their policy advances the further transfer of wealth to the very rich from everybody else.

Are Americans really stupid and lazy enough to buy into it?

Maybe. Well, probably, especially since the Democrats are not likely to make significant efforts to educate and motivate them. The president wants to amass a billion dollars for his 2012 campaign, and given his penchant for pissing off his base over the past two years, he'll have to get almost all of it from Wall Street and other big donors. Watch for some of his signature "compromises," and be ready to put your fingers down your throat.