acerbic

Just in time for Halloween, a little post on what seems to scare Americans (or at least, Palin’s brand of “Real Americans”) most: Socialism and Marxism.

*SHUDDER!*

No, really. Okay. A couple quick points.

• I haven’t read Das Kapital, but I have wanted to rather badly for the past six months. But I’d like to quote the author of Das Kapital: a Biography, Francis Wheen: “(A wall street banker to a friend of his): Oh, yes, we all read (Marx) on Wall Street.  No one understood Capitalism better.”
• Marx was deeply conflicted, in his work, because on one hand he was describing that Capitalism was more powerful than any other system in the world, and knew it wouldn’t go away completely, but his books seem to be his wishful thinking that it would. (i.e. even Marx found Marx to be a little over dramatic.)
• News Flash: Marx wasn’t a “Marxist” in the sense that most people mean it. From Russia to Albania, his work has been “reinterpreted” (i.e. totally ignored except for the revolution parts).
• Marx’s own motto was – hmm, similar to Buddha – “Question Everything.”
• Rand totally destroys socialism/Marxism in its purest form in a parable in Atlas Shrugged.  But AS is itself a parable about Capitalism in its purest form, and I could tear that down in five minutes.  Writing silly stories about PURE political systems is irrelevant, and I wonder why only the Repugs can get away with it — or at least, are the only ones who are taken seriously; when I hear some smelly guy with a duct tape wallet in a coffee shop ranting about Scary Capitalism, he makes me want to slap him, not attend his rallies…

Having more than a passing interest in Marx and/or Socialism is not a crime.  And frankly, someone who knows a lot about a system that – YES, in its purest form does not work – but is the diametric opposite of the the system that we are in, THAT IS COLLAPSING RIGHT NOW AS WE BLOG, would be a fan-freaking-tastic asset to have in our government, let alone in the White House.

All right, I’m gonna hit “Publish” now and wait for Michelle Bachman’s Anti-American Evil-Doer Finding Squad to come get me…

More on Marx here.

Pollster.comis now saying Ohio has moved from “tossup” to “lean Obama”. Slate has a great flash map that shows the current status of every state. To sum up, our boy Obama is doing pretty well for himself.

What amazes me is how many formerly red states are changing to “tossup” or “lean Obama”. Colorado and New Mexico are leaning blue and the polls indicate Obama has a fighting chance in Missouri, North Carolina, Virginia, and Indiana. This is quite a change and I think we have the economic crisis to thank.

I haven’t been hearing much about abortion or gay rights or flag burning lately. Ditto for affirmative action or welfare. I’ve been watching Grandpa and Caribou Barbie (apologies to Stephanie Miller) flog the same tired “Obama palls around with terrorists. Obama wants to lose the war. Obama is a black guy.”

Here’s the thing; Bill Clinton was right – it is the economy, stupid. That’s the first, last, and middle issue. Nothing clarifies the matter like an economic meltdown. We’ve had a luxury in this country for the last 30 years. We really haven’t had many major recessions. There was one in 1991-92 and look what what happend to George H.W. Bush —> gone. See ya. Wouldn’t wanna be ya. 

With all this (relative) economic peace*, people have allowed themselves to be confused about what the issues actually are. The GOP teamed up with the Fundies to hide their pro-business, screw-the-worker agenda. And it worked for a very long time. 2004 was a fine example of that. For 30 years, God, Guns ‘n Gays have been the only issues.

Now it’s turned back to cash, check or charge. People are scared and pissed off. 401(k)’s are destroyed, home equity is gone, unemployment is rising. No one cares about creationism, they have to worry about making their next house payment or credit card payment, both of which will be ballooning in the coming months thanks to some very pro-business legislation.

You know what I have to say? Thank God. It’s about freaking time. People complain that Washington was asleep at the switch while this mess was brewing. Well, the electorate was as well.

*I don’t actually think the past 30 years have been good economically, but that’s the subject of another post.

So very glad the bailout passed and saved the market.

oh…wait. It didn’t work. The Dow fell 800 points today. Maybe the markets think this bailout won’t work. Funny, all those people who called their congresspeople thought the same thing.

Final step in the abject failure of the Bush Administration.

There is a consistent message out there in RightWingLand regarding the housing crisis. In a nutshell it goes something like this:

First from the Lovely and Delightful Ann Coulter

Under Clinton, the entire federal government put massive pressure on banks to grant more mortgages to the poor and minorities….

Instead of looking at “outdated criteria,” such as the mortgage applicant’s credit history and ability to make a down payment, banks were encouraged to consider nontraditional measures of credit-worthiness, such as having a good jump shot or having a missing child named “Caylee.” 

Column here.

And from the Suave & Debonaire Larry Elder:

The Community Reinvestment Act, passed in 1977, mandated that lenders lend to high-risk borrowers — or else.

Column here.

The talkers and the pundits have again boiled an exceedingly complex economic problem into simple talking points. With ease, they boil it down to “Everything is the fault of Bill Clinton and his Democratic Cronies (great name for a band).”

It’s not my intention to explain the entire crisis. I imagine Ph.D students will be writing disertations about it for years. However, I do wish to make a couple of bullet points for use against the RightWingLand theory.

• A major cause was the huge increase in speculative or vacation home purchases. According to the National Association of Realtors in 2005 40% of all residential transactions were for a second or investment property. In 2006 the speculators left the market and amazingly, residential real estate prices started to collapse.

• This speculation was mostly caused by the availability of easy credit. Credit that came from two main places: historically low interest rates (Thanks Allen Greenspan!) and non-traditional securtization (Hello CDOs!) These two items created an incentive for banks and non-bank entities to originate loans and sell them off in the secondary market. Hence the famed NINJA (no income, no job, no asset) loans. Aside from Greenspan flooding the economy with cheap credit, the federal government had nothing to do with this. Oh, except they didn’t regulate CDOs and require transperancy.

• Regarding the Community Reinvestment Act: according to testimony given in the House of Representatives only 20% of all subprime loans were given by institutions that fell under the CRA’s jurisdiction.

• According to the same testimony, 35% of the people with subprime loans could have qualified for a traditional loan. Yes, people need to get second opinions and research their options, but this points to predatory lending. 

• Finally the CRA was passed to eliminate redlining. That is, the practice of excluding entire areas regardless of the credit worthiness of any individual borrower. It did not mandate loaning to high risk individuals. I will agree that the act’s purpose has been modified over the years, but that was the primary purpose.

Hopefully this will help you out as you face the Dittoheads. The holiday season will be here soon and a lot of us have to face our conservative families. I’ll do my best to keep us prepared.