Please Stop Calling the Republicans the "Business-Friendly Party," As If They Were the Only Game in Town.

It’s a truism of American politics that the Republican Party is the “business friendly” party, largely because of the GOP's definition of the term as adherence to two ideas: 

1. Lower taxes, and
2. Less regulation.

The GOP's devotion to these two laissez-faire economic principles approaches the religious. In today's political climate, it's heresy to question them. And their fanaticism on the subject has led to the perception, shared by Republicans and non-Republicans alike, that the GOP has a monopoly on being good for business.

But there’s something fundamentally wrong with this equation. According to the GOP's definition, "business friendly" translates to “give ‘em what they want whenever they ask for it whether or not it’s good for them." By that logic, the parent who lets their kid subsist on pixie sticks and Hershey’s Kisses is a “kid friendly” parent. Furthermore, even leaving out all the arguments one could make about Bill Clinton and Barack Obama being among the most “business friendly” Presidents we’ve had, the Democrats’ model of public/private cooperation is, in the long run, better not only for the majority of Americans, but for business itself. 

Under its current corporate configuration, American business is fundamentally unable to look ahead. Admittedly, this accusation sounds counter-intuitive. After all, the existence of venture capital is, by definition, based on the ability to look ahead, and all the major banks and investment houses have projections/forecasting departments staffed by uncounted numbers of analysts whose job it is to do nothing BUT “look ahead.”

But by ahead, I mean way ahead. Rarely does one read projections that go much beyond the next quarter or fiscal year. Forget about thirty-, twenty-, or even ten-year projections. It’s all about short-term gain, and, again because of the corporate structure of most American businesses, there's good reason for this shortsightedness.

First, investors won’t wait decades for a return. They want returns soon, if not now. And this isn’t unreasonable, considering that most American investors are over 65 (retirees make up the largest group of investors, and the median age of the retired investor is 67). If they take too long a view, they’ll be dead before they realize it.  

Secondly, corporations are run not by proprietors, but by employees. CEOs are just as much employees as are the guys on the assembly line (albeit they do own more of the company). They serve at the pleasure of the directors and the shareholders. They aren’t thinking about their legacy, or about a business they can pass down to their children. They collect a paycheck and stock options, and, all too often, couldn't care less about what happens after they go as long as they get theirs. If the meltdown of 2008 showed us nothing else, it showed that far too many corporate executives operate under the “IBG” principle: “When the chickens come home to roost, it won’t matter, because I’ll Be Gone.” Apres moi, le deluge. 

This is why the government—a disinterested entity which does not function like a business, and, indeed, shouldn’t, and which exists not to turn a quick buck, but to look ahead for future generations of Americans—needs to take an active role. And in doing so, be a better friend to business than business is itself.

This isn’t a new idea. The government has been in the incubator business for a long time. The prime engine of 19^th century economic expansion was the railroads, which provide an excellent example of public/private collaboration. The railroads simply would not have happened were it not for the government pushing their development, providing the land, the capital, the protection (both financial and physical), and, frequently, the labor itself (such as Chinese immigrants brought here at the taxpayers’ expense, or prison chain-gangs).

As corrupt as the process of building them was—and it most certainly was, rife with sweetheart deals, kickbacks, and plain old-fashioned bribery and influence-peddling—the railroads did get built. And the ability to move vast amounts of people and products across unimaginable distances at unprecedented speed laid the groundwork for America’s 20^th century industrial primacy.  

This model provided the United States with the prime engine of economic expansion again in the 20^th century with the postwar construction of the federal Eisenhower Interstate Highway System. Again, the process was fraught with corruption, backroom deals, and shady dealing on the part of major corporations like General Motors, Firestone, and Standard Oil (all of whom had good reasons for wanting highways, not streetcars or light rail, to be built). But once again, public empowerment of the private sector had worked, again generating millions of jobs and trillions in revenue.

Massive investment in physical infrastructure isn't the only way government helps business. Virtually all of the major technological advances of the last 50 years have either been directly created, or heavily subsidized, by the federal government: microwave ovens being just one small, but lucrative, example of gadgets generated by the space program that subsequently made it to the commercial sphere. The research which eventually led  to the Information Revolution conducted at Bell Labs, the Xerox Research Facility at Palo Alto, MIT, Stanford, Harvard, etc., was funded, in large part, by your tax dollars. And profitably. Even if not immediately.

Think of the Internet. In the late 1960’s when the idea of computers exchanging data was first murkily emerging, the smart money wouldn’t have touched it any more than they would have touched a plutonium-coated leper. Most Americans didn’t know what a computer was. It was science fiction, and capital doesn’t mess around with science fiction. Thankfully, the U.S.Government (specifically, the U.S. Military, which recognized its potential as a means of military communication) funded that research, which led to the development of the prime engines of economic expansion in the 21^th century. Pretty good return on the initial investment of your tax dollars, even if it did take forty years.  

It should be clear to even the most casual observer that the Next Big Thing—the next engine of economic growth—is going to be renewable, sustainable energy. The added urgency to developing alternative energy is that not only will it be profitable--it'll be necessary. 

The first reason for this is that we’re running out of oil. Opinions differ as to when “peak oil” production, and the subsequent decline, is going to kick in. Many industry professionals believe we’ve hit peak oil already. But no one in the industry seriously doubts we’re approaching that point. Oil- shale refining, drilling in wilderness preserves, and other schemes to squeeze yet more oil out of the ground are short-term band-aids. The clock is ticking on oil. 

And secondly, the bad publicity is becoming intolerable. No serious person really doubts that rampant fossil fuel consumption is contributing, in terrifying ways, to global climate change and compromising our health. Alternative energy—wind, solar, plant-based, you name it—is going to be the juggernaut that carries us forward.

But again, the IBG-driven short-sightedness of American business leadership kicks in. In the short term, it's cheaper to just keep doing things the way we're doing them now. Peak oil may not hit for a few decades yet, and when it does—ten, twenty or thirty years down the pike—the suits now calling the shots will either be retired or dead. And it won’t be their problem.

Inevitably, when one makes this argument, Solyndra gets thrown up as, at worst, an example of bald-faced corruption on the part of the Obama administration, or at best, as an example of why the government should stay out. But supporting Solyndra, and companies like it, is what the government should do, precisely because it’s not the (immediately) profitable move, but because it’s the responsible move.

American business needs the government—not merely for the resources that an entity the size of the government can throw behind new ventures, but to save it business from itself. American business needs an entity that is not dependent upon shareholder approval or animated by the corporate “get rich now” ethos to originate and support what the “smart money” won’t touch until it becomes irresistible not to. American business needs the long-term vision of the government—an entity which is not beholden to shareholders, but to the future of the American people. 

Paul Ryan May Be Just The Dreamiest Congressman Out There, But for Pete's Sake, Quit Calling Him an Intellectual.

Republican sexuality creeps me out. Generally, they hate and fear sex, probably because that party is comprised almost entirely of Evangelicals and WASPs, two of the most repressed groups in human history. So they suppress it and hide it. But as Dr. Freud taught us, you can’t crush it down—the sexual urge will surface. So their sexuality finds expression in the disturbingly erotic attraction they evince for their candidates.  

Nowhere is this more evident than in the current orgy of gooing and cooing over Mitt Romney’s pick for VP, the dreamy, blue-eyed, fit-as-a-fiddle Paul Ryan. Read the Mitt Romney/Paul Ryan Facebook fanboy/girl pages on Facebook. Those Conservative broads just soak their collective capacious, poly/cotton, six-to-a-pack-at-Walmart panties over this guy.

“Such a beautiful family,” they sigh (SQUISH). “Look at those eyes!” they moan (GUSH). “He’s like a knight in shining armor!” they whimper (GLOOSH). And worst of all, “He’s so smart! He’s such an intellectual” (SPLURSSSSSHHHHHH).

Barring the vulgar sound effects I added purely for the sake of cheap comedy, I’m not making any of this up. These are real quotes.

The Republican fangirls (and, one can only assume, some boys) are not alone in their adoration. The mainstream media also went gaga for him, blathering about his “undeniable brilliance”, his “impressive brainpower”, and the “intellectual heft” he brought to the ticket. Which left me scratching my head. Paul Ryan an intellectual?

Bitches, please.

“Intellectual” is, like “obscenity”, a tough concept to define. But, to swipe Justice Potter Stewart’s line about obscenity, I know an intellectual when I see one. Paul Ryan ain’t one. He’s actually not very bright. Matter of fact, this twerp is actively anti-intellectual. And here’s why I think so.

1. He doesn’t have any of the traditional markers. Paul Ryan holds no advanced degrees, speaks no foreign languages, and has no significant publications to his credit. Now, while it’s not necessarily a prerequisite to have an advanced degree or fluency in a language other than one’s own, either or both is, in today’s world, a pretty good indicator.

         At the very least, having them indicates a quality that Ryan doesn’t have, namely...

2. Intellectual curiosity. Ryan exhibits none. This guy, by his own admission, hasn’t changed his opinion on anything since he was 14. If your thinking hasn’t evolved since you were 14, it’s not only a pretty good indication you’re not only NOT an intellectual—it’s a pretty good sign you’re stupid. The guy is content to believe what he’s believed since before he finished puberty. Finishing that process alone ought to change your view of the world. But not Paul Ryan.

3. Paul Ryan has no significant publications to his credit. Intellectuals generally do a lot of writing and publishing. This is how we know they’re intellectuals. The one “book” he’s participated in “writing” (the originally-titled “Young Guns,” coauthored with those intellectual heavyweights Eric Cantor and Kevin McCarthy) was ghostwritten. Again, I can’t define “intellectual,” but whatever they are, I’m pretty sure they write their own books.

4. The guy doesn’t have an original thought in his head. The much-lauded "Path to Prosperity" Ryan budget contains precisely no new ideas, no innovative solutions, or any stunning, earth-shattering revelations. Yes, the deficit is a big problem, but no one on either side of the aisle debates that. His economic philosophy, as expressed in his budget, is nothing more than a warmed-over rehash of the same tired, shopworn old supply-side, trickle-down claptrap peddled during the Reagan years—which even its architect, David Stockman, now openly disavows. Because it didn’t work.  

5. He is avowedly anti-science. The examples are legion: he thinks scientists are involved in a “global conspiracy to delude the public about climate change”; under his budget, over 1 million college students would lose Pell grants over the next ten years; he voted to take away federal funding of both PBS and NPR; and he is opposed to stem-cell research. Again, I can’t define what an intellectual is, but I’m pretty sure they aren’t anti-intellect. There is nothing in this guy’s voting record or public utterances to suggest he respects knowledge, or those who add to, gain, and share it. In fact, there’s a lot to suggest he doesn’t.

6. Bill Maher makes an excellent point about this guy, which is worth quoting in full: “Why is he the intellectual of the Republican Party? He has, from what I can see, two ideas. One, let’s stop having rich people pay taxes at all, and poor people should look for food in the woods. This is the intellectual? He’s a step up from Sarah Palin? Actually, you know, he’s more articulate than Sarah Palin, but tell me one area where he and Sarah Palin would disagree. I cannot find one area. So somehow, he’s the smartest guy in the party, and she’s the stupidest woman on earth, but they agree on everything.”

Hell of a point. Most Republicans will, at mention of the Belle of the Bible Belt, kind of grin sheepishly and admit she’s as dumb as furniture. But there’s no difference between her thinking and Paul Ryan’s.

7. Finally—and let’s let this nail close the coffin on Paul Ryan’s “intellectualism”: the dumb son of a bitch still takes Ayn Rand seriously.  He says it himself: “The reason I got involved in public service, by and large, if I had to credit one thinker, one person, it would be Ayn Rand.” 

Problem is, no serious academics or intellectuals take Ayn Rand seriously. They never did. She’s not taught in the political science or political philosophy departments of any legitimate, accredited universities. She’s a tenth-rate philosopher and a 15^th-rate novelist. If Ayn Rand is a serious philosopher, David Barton is a serious historian.

And, much like her acolyte, she also didn’t have an original thought in her head. Her “philosophy”, that “Objectivism” and “rational self-interest”, was lifted, part and parcel, from Herbert Spencer’s late 19^th century “social Darwinism”—essentially, in society, the fittest should survive and the rest of them die. Through a little misreading of Nietzsche in there—“God is dead, and let’s go beyond good and evil”—and mix in a dab of anti-Soviet resentment, and you’ve got Ayn Rand in a nutshell.

Ayn Rand appeals to the barely-literate, the mean-spirited, and the guilty. Her garbage is what upper middle-class 14-year olds who’ve heard their grandfathers bitch about welfare and extol the virtues of being a self-made man read to justify their own privileged existence.

Ryan, in his pandering bid to woo Bible-beatin’ middle America, has recently back-pedalled from his prior endorsement of the half-baked “philosophy” of this outspokenly atheistic, abortion-havin’, adulterous, altruism-hatin’ Russian radical, but make no mistake—by his own admission, he’s a big fan.

Again, I can’t define “intellectual,” but I know anyone who takes Ayn Rand seriously sure as shootin’ ain’t one.

John Stuart Mill once said, “I never meant to say that the conservatives are generally stupid. I meant to say that stupid people are generally Conservative. I believe that is so obviously and universally admitted a principle that I hardly think any gentleman will deny it.”

Being conservative isn’t necessarily a mark of stupidity—there are plenty of very intelligent conservatives with legitimate reasons for their beliefs, who articulate their views well, and who make valid criticisms of leftist thought and policy. Friedrich Hayek, Irving Kristol, John Podhoretz, P.J. O’Rourke, David Brooks, and Leo Strauss all leap to mind. I disagree with them, but I can respect them. But Paul Ryan isn’t in their company. He’s not one of them. He isn’t fit to carry their library card. 

You know, I remember a far, far distant time—2011—when Newt Gingrich was supposed to be the in-house intellectual of the Republican Party. Newt, at least, has a doctorate in history. I’ll give him that. But somehow, he’s had to give up his seat to the mediocrity in pants that is Paul Ryan.

I put in this picture for no other reason than it angers Romney and Ryan supporters. That's as good a reason to add a picture as any. 

I'll Punch You Right In The Heart If You Think I'm Poor.

The election of 2012 may well be remembered by future historians as the Fight for the Middle Class. The words “middle class” are as much a mantra to both Romney and Obama as “maverick” was to Sarah Palin. The parties are fighting like piranhas on bath salts for the privilege of being the One True Champion of the Middle Class.

But neither side is saying much about the poor.*

This is because America hates poor people.

Let’s just admit it. We hate the poor. We detest them. We make brutal fun of them at best (watch an episode of the mercifully-cancelled "My Name is Earl" or pay a quick visit to peopleofwalmart.com, if you don't believe me)--or we insult them by using some of the ugliest words and phrases in the language: “Welfare queens.” “White trash.” “Niggers.” “Trailer trash.” Our hatred of the poor cuts across racial lines. We hate and mock and fear poor whites as much as we do poor blacks. In fact, I have a sneaking suspicion that America’s perennial “race problem” is more about class than race. I think Americans hate poor people worse than we hate black people. It’s just convenient that so many black people are poor. Makes it easier for us to conflate the two categories of people we hate the most.

This disdain for the poor is so deeply ingrained in the American psyche that I wonder if it’s become part of our genetic code. And, honestly, I’m no better than anyone else.

I was recently caught in a traffic backup that put me home a half-hour later than usual. I fumed behind the wheel, inching forward, until finally I saw the source of the snarl: a twelve-year-old, rust-spotted Pontiac, hood up, smoke pouring out, stopped in the center lane.

The driver—one of those skinny, flaxen-haired, wife-beater-clad, chinstrap-bearded types that Missouri produces in such vast numbers—was standing helplessly beside his car, arms outstretched as if to say to all us angry motorists, “Hayell, man, I ain’t got no idear why she quit.”

I lost it. “Get your &#%$ing oil changed next time, you @%#ing redneck!!” I shrieked from behind closed windows, revved my engine just to let him know how mad I was, and sailed merrily on before I realized that I—a card-carrying Socialist—had just cursed a poor person for having the audacity to let his poverty inconvenience me for half an hour.

It’s not just that we hate poor people—we’re also terrified of being thought poor ourselves. Our politicians aren’t stupid. They’re appealing to the “middle class” because no one in America wants to admit they’re poor. We can stand being called “middle class.” But not even the poorest among us can stand being called “poor.”

"Socialism never took root in America,” said John Steinbeck, “because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires." Never were truer words spoken. We don’t think of ourselves as poor—and we go to great lengths to convince ourselves (and anyone who’s watching) that we’re not.

In fact, we make ourselves poorer so that we don’t look poor. We drive cars, live in houses, and buy clothes more expensive than those we need, but that make us think we look rich. The rash of outlet malls creeping over the landscape like open herpes sores exists solely so that we can wear Polo, Calvin Klein, and Ann Taylor—just like rich people wear!—without actually having to pay full price. In essence, they’re there to help us fool people into thinking we’re not broke as junkies.

~          ~          ~

I can't say for certain where this peculiarly American dislike of poor people comes from. I suspect, however, it comes from our Calvinist Puritan roots. Prosperity, to the Pilgrims and their ilk, was a sign of God’s favor. Those whom He loved would He bless with riches (which goes completely counter to everything Jesus ever preached, but don’t expect Christians to be Christlike). This idea is the source of what sociologist Max Weber called the “Protestant work ethic”: work your ass off and make all the money you can. Get rich or die tryin.’ Otherwise, people might think God doesn’t like you.

This idea finds secular expression in a phrase that's become America's nickname, its unofficial moniker: “The Land of Opportunity.” “America is the Land of Opportunity!” we tell ourselves in civics class, political rallies, and damn near everywhere else where Americans gather to tell ourselves how great we are. It’s our most sacred shibboleth. Our national Kool-Aid. It’s practically an article of religious faith. “Anyone can make it in America! You just work hard, apply yourself, keep your nose to the grindstone, don’t take any wooden nickels, and you, too, can end up a millionaire!” 

And it’s sort of true, maybe, kind of, a little. Both my grandfathers were born dirt poor, worked their asses off, and ended up doing okay (although honest labor may have had less to do with it than I like to imagine. My father is fond of saying, “Sonny boy, one of your grandpas went to jail, and the other one should’ve”).

But “The Land of Opportunity” has a dark side that is terrifying in its implication. If America truly is the Land of Opportunity, it means that if you don’t make it in America, it’s... your... fault.

Taken to its logical conclusion, if you’re poor in America, it means there’s something wrong with you. You’re defective in some measure. It means that you’re lazy. Or stupid. Or dishonest. Or immoral.

Think about how we talk about  those poor people who have the nerve to collect welfare: “They’re lazy. They’re promiscuous. They have all these kids they can’t take care of. They don’t want to work. They’re thieves. They’re all on drugs. They’re like animals, they just want free handouts. They’re just soaking up my hard-earned tax dollars.”

Cripes, who’d want to be described like THAT? Who’d want to help THOSE people? No wonder we treat the poor like lepers. No wonder we flee, not just from the physical location of the poor, but from any association with them.

What’s implicit in calling America “The Land of Opportunity” is that the poor deserve their poverty. And much of America buys it, which turns traditional values upside down. The rich have become our folk heroes—and the poor have become the villains of the American narrative. This makes it okay to treat the poor like criminals—insisting, for example, that we humiliate them by making them undergo drug tests before they get their welfare check. Or implementing a draconian “three strikes and you’re out” policy and calling it “welfare reform.” Or entertaining such inhuman proposals as scrapping free and reduced lunch programs for poor children in public schools, as I recently heard right-wing AM talk radio host Michael Savage suggest.

The truth, as anyone who cares to get beyond the current American cacophony of wealth-fetishizing sycophancy knows, is different. In most cases, people are poor for reasons beyond their control. Their jobs go away, they get sick and can’t pay for it, their families couldn’t afford to educate them—dear God, there are a zillion reasons for poverty that have nothing to do with any fictitious inherent defects on the part of the poor.  

But many of us don’t want the truth. We’d prefer to pretend. We’d prefer to idolize the rich and deny compassion to the less fortunate. We’d prefer to vote Republican, since, after all, that’s the party of the rich—like us—and that Mitt Romney, who is, after all, a millionaire (like we’ll be some day), better represents our economic interests than the party of the free welfare handouts. We’d prefer to project, through our clothes and houses and cars and stuff, the fantasy that we’re rich.  

We’d prefer to believe we’re just temporarily embarrassed members of the Middle Class.

---

* With the exception of Mitt Romney, who says, quote, “I’m not worried about the very poor.” Good on you, Mitty. I just bet you’re not.