Tea Party leading the world off the cliff – The Economist

18 Comments »

• Graeme says:

  1 August 2011 at 11:31 pm

  Great cartoon! I have to say, though, that I think some one in the USA has got to point out that if they keep spending way more than they’re earning, they will soon be like Greece…

• poormastery says:

  2 August 2011 at 11:22 am

  One would hope that Mr Obama was leading the debate…

  Is there nothing there but bold sounding rhetoric? Is Obama the new Carter?

  The Democrat alternative to the Tea Party economic policy is what, exactly?

  Bankruptcy, I suspect.

  As in NZ from 1984, the US must embark upon potentially decades of fiscal discipline. Taxes and spending responsibilities should be passed down from the Federal to the State level.

  The Federal government in the US should confine itself to being in charge of defence and setting the regulatory framework, and limited fiscal transfers. Local government should serve most of the people’s public service requirements. A country like the US is too big to be run in centralised fashion.

  Although I do not like the Tea Party’ social programme (actually I generally hate it), with regards to their economic policy, they are largely correct?

  Rgds,
  *poormastery*

• Peter Aranyi says:

  2 August 2011 at 11:58 am

  Hi poormastery. I think your comment “The Federal government in the US should confine itself to being in charge of defence…” hits a point.

  I think Imperial America’s “wars” in foreign lands can be seen as more to do with transfer of America’s wealth to the “Defense Industry” (Halliburton, Lockheed etc) than anything else.

  Cheney/Bush and their pals/constituency have, I think, profited enormously as America has paupered itself to fight the ‘evildoers’ and Muslimists.

  GWB combined those trillions of dollars of unplanned-for ‘defence’ expenditure with tax cuts … hello deficit, goodbye balanced budget.

  While I have expressed some disappointment with Obama on some issues, I still regard the ‘hospital pass’ he received from the outgoing administration and the subprime crisis as the defining/limiting issues for his presidency.

  As for the phoney ‘debt crisis’ — is Obama the ‘loser’? Do you think? Really?

  – P

• poormastery says:

  2 August 2011 at 6:37 pm

  I would agree that the US Defence budget needs to be cut (dramatically). Entitlements (Medicare et al) also need to be cut to eventually balance the budget. With US unemployment near 10%, raising taxes substantially would not be a wise option.

  The debt crisis is not phoney – I would disagree completely with this characterisation. The US is on the road to bankruptcy. It is the people of the US, rather than Obama, that will be the real loser if this issue is not addressed vigourously and in timely fashion.

  George W Bush bequeathed a terrible budgetry position to Obama. This does not excuse the fact that Obama has not seriously addressed the issue, and indeed has made the budget much worse.

  Rgds,
  *p*

  • Peter Aranyi says:

    2 August 2011 at 6:53 pm

    A financial ‘crisis’ it is, indeed. Of course things are fundamentally out of control. The phoney crisis part was the 2 August ‘deadline’ to lift the [corrupt, artificial, notional] legislatively-set ‘debt ceiling’.

    I vaguely remember an old pre-Obama joke whose punchline was: ‘What can I do about that? I’m only the president of the United States.’

    Glenn Greenwald, no fan of Obama, wrote an interesting piece:

    The myth of Obama’s “blunders” and “weakness”

    http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2011/08/01/debt_ceiling/index.html

• poormastery says:

  3 August 2011 at 10:06 am

  Mr Greenwald’s take is the opposite of that expressed in the cartoon. They can’t both be correct?

  The debt ceiling may be “corrupt, artificial, notional”, but a line in the sand had to be drawn soon, because it is indeed the case that “things are fundamentally out of control” with US fiscal policy.

  In my view, the Tea Party has been very influential in shifting the dire US fiscal deficit and debt debate to being the foremost US issue. For this, they deserve some credit?

  Rgds,
  *p*

  • Peter Aranyi says:

    3 August 2011 at 10:31 am

    In my view, the Tea Party has been very influential in shifting the dire US fiscal deficit and debt debate to being the foremost US issue. For this, they deserve some credit?”

    Hmmm. That’s not how I see it, poormastery. The Tea Party is just the latest outworking of the hold-you-to-ransom, intellectually bankrupt and dishonest, play-chicken extremism (‘We destroyed the village in order to save it’) that has a long pedigree in US politics.

    I identified the arms industry (‘defence’) as a beneficiary of the deficit budget spending in the US.

    Here’s a recent article identifying the regionalism of the Tea Party and linking it to Southern states/defence industry…

    The Tea Party, the debt ceiling, and white Southern extremism

    BY MICHAEL LIND

    The Tea Party movement takes its name from the Boston Tea Party of 1773, when American patriots dumped British tea into Boston Harbor to protest British imperial power. But while New England was the center of resistance to the British empire, there are few New Englanders to be found in today’s Tea Party movement. It should be called the Fort Sumter movement, after the Southern attack on the federal garrison in Fort Sumter in South Carolina on April 12-13, 1861, that began the Civil War. Today’s Tea Party movement is merely the latest of a series of attacks on American democracy by the white Southern minority, which for more than two centuries has not hesitated to paralyze, sabotage or, in the case of the Civil War, destroy American democracy in order to get their way. …

    http://www.salon.com/news/tea_parties/index.html?story=/politics/war_room/2011/08/02/lind_tea_party

    I’d be interested in how a history scholar such as yourself sees this thesis. I find it convincing, and in the context of the pig-stupid partisanship present in US politics, the hate-mongering and divisive manipulations of the conservative backlash to the civil rights reforms and social change of the 1960s … which saw the South switch from Dems to GOP (exploited/aided by Richard Nixon and cohort) … it makes sense.

    What do you think?
    – P

• poormastery says:

  3 August 2011 at 6:33 pm

  I despise the social policies of the Tea Party, and find the rascism of many members disturbing. This is why I could never support them. Obviously, the heartland of the Tea Party is essentially Southern redneck rather than Boston liberal.

  Nonetheless, I live in arguably the best governed country in the world (Switzerland). How do the Swiss do it?

  The Federal government does virtually nothing here. Most taxes either go to the the Canton (Swiss equivalent to Province) or to the Gemeinde (village). Direct democracy is utilised to agree public spending. It works. I see this approach as the solution to the US fiscal policies.

  The Tea Party wants to reduce the power of the Federal government, and return the powers to the States. I think it is a good idea, even if most of their members are highly unpleasant.

  Rgds,
  *p*

  • Peter Aranyi says:

    3 August 2011 at 8:01 pm

    Thanks, poormastery. I genuinely appreciate hearing how you see this.

    I think the US has a quite different self-image (‘superpower’, ‘moral leader’, ‘world police’) to Switzerland, or anyone else for that matter. That self concept has in the past led to a desire on the part of some for absolute military supremacy and overseas/imperial intervention — overt and covert — the pursuit of which bankrupted USSR etc …

    “The Tea Party wants to reduce the power of the Federal government, and return the powers to the States. I think it is a good idea, even if most of their members are highly unpleasant.”

    The trouble with that is the determination and resilience of those very rednecks you allude to who would, I predict, legislate back in the hateful discrimination which was pried so painfully from the white South by the civil rights reformers of both ‘sides’ in the 1960s & 70s.

    The ‘union’ of the United States, so applauded by all and sundry, is, it seems to me. a tissue-thin veneer at times — which is the point of the Salon article on white Southern extremism.

    The Tea Party is a trojan horse, and intellectually bankrupt to boot, IMO.

    – P

• poormastery says:

  4 August 2011 at 12:41 pm

  “I think the US has a quite different self-image (‘superpower’, ‘moral leader’, ‘world police’) to Switzerland, or anyone else for that matter.”

  I would respectfully disagree with your point. The US swings from completely isolationist to rather interventionist from period to period.

  As you no doubt know, the yanks didn’t join WW1 until 1917, and didn’t join WW2 until Pearl Harbour which was almost in 1942…

  Nonetheless, recently (George W Bush) was an interventionalist, so laterly at least, you statement is reasonable.

  Personally, poormastery prefers a US engaged with the world. The US has too much to offer the world to be isolationist…

  Indeed, I am perhaps the last man standing who supports the US as the “global policeman.” One Division of Marines could easily have saved a million lives in Rwanda? Make it so…

  This evening, I had a huge debate with a Canadian who thought that the liberation of Iraq was all wrong. Apparently, Iraqis would be happier if Saddam and sons were still in power? Bullshit.

  What I find annoying is how these peaceniks always think their views are morally superîor, because they advocate doing nothing about anything. Double bullshit.

  “Sovereign State”? Imaginery lines on a map. “Nationalism is an infantile disease. It is the measles of mankind.” (Einstein). We are all part of humanity. No man is an island… (Donne)

  “Illegal war”? Give me your complete list of legal wars. Apparently, there has never been one, but this nonsense repeated ad nauseam apparently gives you a good excuse to support doing nothing.

  “International law?” – see previous comment.

  “Others are worse”? Yet two wrongs can never equal one right. This is the best the isolationists can offer??? …

  Do nothing? Or try something? Succeed or fail? Or don’t even try?

  Poormastery says try. Poormastery says engage.

  I went to China just after Tiananmen Square. The Chinese government are totalitarian fascists – completely nasty. If you don’t like the way the US governs as world policeman – wait until these guys get global hegemony…

  Anyway, I digress. You say:

  “The trouble with that is the determination and resilience of those very rednecks you allude to who would, I predict, legislate back in the hateful discrimination which was pried so painfully from the white South by the civil rights reformers of both ‘sides’ in the 1960s & 70s.”

  Pretty weak, Peter.

  Racism is not so much about legislation. It is about an (ignorant) belief system. I see no material chance of such legislation from the Tea Party as you suggest.

  Furthermore, the better treatment of racial minorities is unikely to be materially about legislation changes. Rather, improved treatment is about tolerance and enlightened attitudes of the majority. You want to change the world? The only thing one can be sure of changing is oneself (Huxley). Legislation won’t do it…

  You continue:

  “The ‘union’ of the United States, so applauded by all and sundry, is, it seems to me. a tissue-thin veneer at times — which is the point of the Salon article on white Southern extremism.”

  I support succession everywhere and anywhere for those that want it, where a majority vote can be found (Basque country, Scotland, Northern Ireland, Quebec et al).

  If a majority of the people in the Southern States of the US want independence, this is fine by me.

  I think I have disagreed with all your points so…

  Enuff!
  *p*

• Peter Aranyi says:

  4 August 2011 at 2:10 pm

  Cheers poormastery. Thanks for the robustness of your reply. I’ll come back to you.

  In the meantime, the NY Times has compiled a fascinating page of graphics about US debt, including this one which highlights, in part, the cost of war and ‘world police’ activities back to Ronald Reagan’s administration:

  

  and this on the number of times the ‘debt ceiling’ has been raised without the vapid brinksmanship the white Southern extremists concocted against the US’s first black president …

  

• poormastery says:

  7 August 2011 at 11:57 am

  On the subject of US defence spending, I would say:

  1. There are a lot of revisionist theories about the Cold War, but my view is that I am pleased that the US spent so much money on the military until 1989 when the Berlin Wall went down. Winning the Cold War freed one quarter of the world’s population from the indignity and harshness of totalitarian rule.

  2. The US has always used military spending to provide employment. It is their form of welfare. It is better to have the US youth in the Marines than unemployed?

  3. Europe (and NZ, for that matter), have benefitted greatly from the US investing so heavily in defence – it has allowed them to spend virtually nothing, and rely on US interventions (whilst simultaneously complaining about US actions). We can see this now in Libya, where British and French interventions have so far proved pretty ineffective. The US has carried the cost of global policeman, so others haven’t had to spend this money or cost in lives.

  4. Of course, the US no longer has the money to be global policeman, so the interventions are coming to an end. I suspect that the US will become isolationist. Be careful what you wish for! I predict that the same people who whined about US interventions in the past will be calling for US action in the future, but the US will be isolationist again.

  Rgds,
  *p*

  • Peter Aranyi says:

    7 August 2011 at 5:19 pm

    “… it has allowed them to spend virtually nothing, and rely on US interventions (whilst simultaneously complaining about US actions)”

    Agreed. The hypocrisy has been extreme.

    I grew up in the 70s when Soviet Union’s dominance (in every way) of Eastern Europe was tangible. Invasions/repressions of Hungary, Poland, Czechoslovakia were a demonstration of the viability of the ‘Domino theory’ that the US was countering in South East Asia and in South America — by fair means and foul.

    More foul than fair at times, it seems, as we learnt of illegal activities such as CIA funded coups and assassinations and other skulduggery in the background. Was this the cold war?

    Like you, I celebrated the collapse of the USSR in the European ‘theatre’. Of course. It was a blight, an occupation and theft from European citizenry terrorised and oppressed by historical enemies.

    But it could be said that during that time, the US sabotaged democratic political ‘reform’ (a loaded word, I grant you) all over the world, to fight that cold war … like Ortega in Nicaragua because the Sandanistas were ‘Marxist’ … and favoured hard men like F. Marcos in the Philippines. The Shah in Iran, and (gasp) Sadam H. in Iraq because, despots that they were, they were anti-communist. And that’s all that mattered.

    The war by proxy in Afghanistan (Joe Wilson’s war — BILLIONS spent fighting the Russians and arming the mujahideen like, cough, Osama Bin Ladin) along with the Reagan Administration’s/Ollie North Iran Contra stuff and god-knows-what else … do you think they were a good use of superpower strength, poormastery?

    Employing the unemployed — you’re not seriously suggesting that’s a good use for an army?

    – P

• poormastery says:

  7 August 2011 at 11:19 pm

  The CIA interventions and wars during the Cold War have to be seen in the context of the time, in my view.

  All wars, whether hot or cold, have instances of crimes against humanity, or at the very least questionable conduct. War is by its nature a messy business.

  The carpet bombing of German and Japanese people from Dresden to Tokyo (and of course the nuclear bombing of Nagasaki and Hiroshima) during WW2 might be examples of what you call “foul” means of winning a war? They probably are at that. Wars may often start with a sense of idealism, but they tend to end with pragmatic and realistic actions.

  In summary, I think that overall the US policy of fighting communism in proxy nations was indeed a good use of superpower strength. The good guys won in the end.

  Mistakes were made, and the cost was high, but as John F Kennedy would say:

  “The cost of freedom is always high, but Americans have always paid it.”

  Rgds,
  *p*

  • Peter Aranyi says:

    8 August 2011 at 9:10 am

    It’s fitting that you mention the massively over-reciprocal(?) bombing of Germany and Japan towards the end of WW2. Kennedy & Johnson Secretary of Defense (newspeak for Secretary of War) Robert McNamara features in a film you MUST see if you haven’t on these matters — The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fog_of_War

    In it he recounts a conversation with the leadership of the US military in WW2 re the firebombing of wooden cities in Japan (civilian as opposed to ‘military targets’) and records the contemporary conclusion: ‘If we lose the War, our actions will be seen as war crimes.’

    I own a DVD of the doco in which he presents his eleven lessons:

    R.S. McNamara’s eleven lessons of war

    1. Empathize with your enemy
    2. Rationality will not save us
    3. There’s something beyond one’s self
    4. Maximize efficiency
    5. Proportionality should be a guideline in war
    6. Get the data
    7. Belief and seeing are often both wrong
    8. Be prepared to re-examine your reasoning
    9. In order to do good, you may have to engage in evil
    10. Never say never
    11. You can’t change human nature

    They’re all relevant to this discussion but two:

    5. Proportionality should be a guideline in war
    and
    9. In order to do good, you may have to engage in evil

    seem particularly so.

    On the subject of ‘just war’ McNamara identifies the issue of ‘proportionality’… this was why the carpet bombing seemed gratuitous and criminal.

    “In summary, I think that overall the US policy of fighting communism in proxy nations was indeed a good use of superpower strength. The good guys won in the end.

    The end justifies the means? Fight fire with fire? Do evil to do good?
    I see your point.

    Gee, poormastery, doesn’t even recent history shows us that road lead to the excesses of Abu Graib (sp?) and Gitmo and the disintegration of any moral ‘right’? Isn’t there ‘some sh*t we just won’t do?’

    “Mistakes were made … “

    Yes. Or not. Consider the possibility that what Dwight D Eisenhower in 1961 called ‘the military industrial complex’ has gained a central influence on the levers of government in the US … and has encouraged/driven/engineered the diversion of more and more federal money into ‘private’ hands …

    Until the latest of our world conflicts, the United States had no armaments industry. American makers of plowshares could, with time and as required, make swords as well. But now we can no longer risk emergency improvisation of national defense; we have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions. Added to this, three and a half million men and women are directly engaged in the defense establishment. We annually spend on military security more than the net income of all United States corporations.

    This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence — economic, political, even spiritual — is felt in every city, every State house, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society.

    In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the militaryindustrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.

    We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.

    http://www.h-net.org/~hst306/documents/indust.html

    It’s a bit like the conversation we had earlier about the danger of becoming like your ‘enemy’ or that which you oppose/despise.

    If this global financial crisis dethrones the US Empire, what will history say were the causes? The United Kingdom was effectively bankrupted by WW2. It’s been downhill since then, although the alternative result is unthinkable.

    The ‘War on Terror’ is just the new demon used to scare US lawmakers into voting more and more federal funds [read: ‘debt’] towards the privately-held tell-whatever-lies-you-need-to military industrial complex.

    Now that the Cold war is over — with its generations of alarmist fabricated ‘missile gap’ misinformation — the ‘defence’ industry (beneficiaries of the ‘war footing’) needs another bogeyman. If Al Queda didn’t exist, would they invent it?

    – P

• poormastery says:

  8 August 2011 at 11:06 am

  For sure, the “War on Terror” (read hiring morons for homeland hoopla) is utter drivel, and the US should cut military spending. On this, we agree.

  I have never said that the ends justify the means. Nonetheless, before engaging in something like dropping nuclear weapons on Japan, you have to do some sort of cost / benefit analysis.

  Personally, if it had been up to me, I would have dropped the nuclear weapons on Japan, and I would have followed Bomber Harris’ policy regarding carpet bombing German citizens.

  Perhaps this means that I have become like my ‘enemy’ the Nazis / Japanese in WW2, disintegrating my moral ‘right’?

  So be it. As Clint would say in The Unforgiven:

  “They had it coming.”

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unit_731

  Rgds,
  *p*

  • Peter Aranyi says:

    8 August 2011 at 11:34 am

    Re the nuclear bombs: Yes. That appears to have been the right decision.

    The fire-bombing did not work. Part of ‘The Fog of War’ film records the military ‘punishment’ and suffering the Japanese people endured and yet surrender appeared unthinkable. It was certainly not forthcoming.

    Hiroshima and Nagasaki were ‘circuit-breakers’ that broke through, saving the wasted expenditure of tens, maybe hundreds of thousands of lives if conventional war had continued.

    I had never heard of Unit 731. Crikey.

    As for the Germans/Nazis: what stopped their military actions was military defeat and exhaustion of their military resources. That defeat and occupation. Nothing else.
    – P

• An inside view of the political madhouse | The Paepae says:

  5 September 2011 at 12:13 pm

  […] It’s not just about the Tea Party. Way bigger. Like ThePaepae.com on Facebook or follow us on Twitter. Share […]