FDR Solved the Housing Crisis, Iceland Did, Ireland Is Doing, Why Do Republicans Block It?

Republicans Attracted to Repulsive Sights, Liberals Avoid Them

It is said that conservatives and liberals do not see things in the same way. Recent findings make that clear—quite literally. In a series of experiments, researchers closely monitored physiological reactions and eye movements of participants shown combinations of pleasant and unpleasant images on a screen. To gauge subjects’ physiological responses, electrodes measured subtle skin conductance changes indicating an emotional response. The cognitive data were gathered by fitting subjects with eye tracking equipment that captured even the most subtle of eye movements while the images were on the screen.

1. Conservatives had stronger reactions to and looked longer at the unpleasant images like an open wound, a crashed car or a dirty toilet than liberals
2. Liberals had stronger reactions to and looked longer at the pleasant images like a beach ball or a bunny rabbit than conservatives.

Conservatives seem to focus on and respond more to negative stimuli while liberals focus on and respond more to positive stimuli. Conservatives responded physiologically more to images of Democratic politicians—presumed to be a unpleasant to them—than they did to presumably agreeable pictures of Republicans. Liberals, on the other hand, had a stronger physiological response to Democratic figures—presumed to be an agreeable stimulus to them—than they did to images of the Republicans, presumed disagreeable to them.

Ultimately the research suggests Republicans are rubberneckers, attracted to unpleasant and gory sights, while liberals find even thoughts of such horrors unpleasant. Who then seems more likely to be a warmonger, a torturer or apologist for torture, and a believer that the pacific Jesus Christ of the gospels is really Rambo Jesus? No prizes for this one.

Anybody recognize this?-

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

It is the very beginning of the Constitution of the United States, of what is called the Preamble to it. This opening sentence declares clearly the purpose of the constitution, and you will note it includes “establish Justice”, and “promote the general Welfare”, not to mention “insure domestic Tranquility”.

It is easy to understand why rich, right wing demagogues like Rick Perry do not want to accept these fundamentals of the constitution, but why on earth do ordinary US citizens listen to these greedy Republican half wits, spouting off their own interests while confounding the foundational law of the USA. The whole selection procedure is a farce. None of them care who get selected as long as they stick to the right wing game plan. Their slight interest is to go down in history on the list of presidents, but they have no intention of serving “the people”—only their own people. They are selfish frauds. Humiliate them!

The 30 Year War Against The American Dream: Henry Schoenberger

Henry Schoenberger, the author of How We Got Swindled By Wall Street Godfathers, Greed and Financial Darwinism, subtitled The 30 Year War Against The American Dream, points out that the OWS protests simply display the plethora of anger around in the USA. The level of poverty is now at its highest level ever—the poor are angry. The successful elderly planning on retirement after a lifetime of hard work are being hit—elderly retirers are angry. Young entrepreneurs, the foundation of our future economy, and those in their prime, whose enterprise should be creating new jobs to give a living to ordinary folk and a first step to the young—even many of those are angry.

Capitalism, as an economic philosophy, is only 200 years old, based as it is on the book by Adam Smith (1723-1790), the title of which is always given now as The Wealth of Nations, published in 1776. The United States declared its independence that same year.

Since then, the abuse and misuse of Capitalism has paralleled the use and abuse of Democracy.

Henry Schoenberger

Smith is often presented by right wing libertarians, Republicans, neoliberals, and assorted conservatives as the model entrepreneurial hero. Yet, he first held the chair of logic at Glasgow University, and then in 1752 became its chair of moral philosophy. So he was really one of those timeserving wasters lolling around a university with students and living off someone else's hard earned income! That, at least is how the right wing regard university teachers and research workers.

In 1759, he wrote the Theory of Moral Sentiments about the standards of conduct that hold society together, explaining how benevolent human motives and activities lead to a society beneficial for all, and thereafter a virtuous circle. Adam Smith had a lifelong interest in the value of morality for the public good. In his book, The Wealth of Nations, he expressed a belief that allowing the entrepreneur to pursue his own interest essentially unfettered would lead to the betterment of all because it would lead to the better use of resources, including time. He never imagined that his theories could be so distorted by the ultra rich cornering one particular resource to the detriment of most of the rest of us—money!

Darwin published his book on the Origin of Species 85 years after The Wealth of Nations, and, although most Protestant pastors in the USA and their theologians who run the Republican Party cannot now abide the thought of evolution, for the first century of so they loved it. The survival of the fittest was a perfect expression of capitalism. So Darwin's theory applied even within human society. It was not restricted only to the wild.

This extension of Darwinism into society was dubbed “Social Darwinism”. It even made it respectable for the protestant churches to abandon Christianity—Christ blessed the poor and damned the rich—but now Social Darwinism made it clear, they thought, that God meant the rich were blessed and the poor were damned! It was a creed that was soon attacked by social scientists, and began to fall into disrepute. Reaganomics and deregulation revived it.

We all need to know a little about economic theories to understand the fallacious arguments advanced today for unfettered greed. For thirty years after WWII, the rate of growth of the incomes of rich and poor were broadly the same. John Maynard Keynes, before the War had shown how economies can be controlled by regulation, such as using taxation to slow down growth when the economy was overheating, and feeding back into feeble economies some of the tax take to boost spending during recessions. It worked wonderfully well.

Controlling self interest worked for decades in the aftermath of the Great Depression. The top tax bracket went up to 90% and still the ultra rich survived, but so did our middle class and our society was not demoralized. There was enough concern on both sides of the aisle to pass Civil Rights legislation and CEOs did not earn more than 40 times the average wage in their industry.

Henry Schoenberger

Interestingly, it was a closer match to Adam Smith's teaching than libertarian capitalists like to admit. Smith knew that regulation was sometimes necessary, and did not pretend otherwise. He believed that once the boundaries were suitably set, and the operators accepted them, then they would work to better themselves and society as a whole through the so called “invisible hand”. The trouble is, when things work well, smug, greedy people always want to try their luck at extending the conditions to their advantage.

That is what Reagan in the USA and Thatcher in the UK tried in the 1980s. In what was imagined as an economic “Big Bang”, a bonfire of the regulations was arranged on both sides of the Atlantic, neoliberalism became the watchword, and Social Darwinism was born again. Survival of the fittest became survival of the richest. In the last thirty years, the workers and even some middle class have lost income, the better off middle classes have maintained theirs, and the rich have multiplied their riches several fold!

In 1776, Adam Smith could not have seen that unregulated Wall Street financiers enjoying tariff free transfer of money anywhere in the world could manipulate markets and the rewards they had from them to the advantage of themselves as a new Brahman class in the supposedly classless western societies. Greed became endemic. Like the living dead they sucked the economic life blood—money—from the middle and working classes. The insatiable greed and selfishness of the rich has killed millions and millions of jobs, people's savings, their livelihoods and increasingly their lives, quite contrary to the ideas of the capitalists' holy book, The Wealth of Nations, by their innocent prophet, Adam Smith. Henry Schoenberger sums up:

Wall Street is a problem because for 30 years it has practiced innovative financial investment at the expense of our economy. Wall Street has turned away from real investment based on innovation for capital formation to create jobs to benefit our economy. Wall Street Trojan megabanks are a major part of the problem.

Government ought not to be the problem because it is the role of government to regulate, to ensure that the balance of society and its economy are right. Our governments neither guard the public good nor the public. The politicians lack all morality themselves, themselves infected with the zombie infection endemic among the rich and aspirants to riches, with the taste for more and more blood, salivating at the thought of more victims, us, and more dollars, ours.

Schoenberger points out that Goldman has inveigled the government at the highest level for three decades. The OWS movement should demand the removal of any Wall Street executive from any important government post, and equally that government servants should be banned from transferring their allegiance to Wall Street until 10 years after leaving government. Consulting and “Atlantic Bridge” style “charities” and think tanks should be illegal as soon as they get near to government in any direct way, or even indirectly, if the influence can amount to bribery, or any similar illegal approach. That applies too to lobbying, nothing more than approved bribery.

High Street deposit banks must be severed from the high risk investment banks. Bonuses should be illegal. As compensation they must be treated as pay and seriously taxed. Taxes must reflect the reality that 1 percent has 40 percent, so that taxation is at least fair by percentage, and preferably progressive, so that richer people should pay a higher percentage. If a rich man faced with a 60% tax rate gets a rise of $1 million, are we seriously to believe he would refuse to work rather than receive $400,000 after tax.

Schoenberger concludes it “is the time for a movement to kick out all members of congress who vote against jobs! And stop wall street godfathers from taking advantage of the 99% who do not practice unbridled greed!”

Should the Poor be allowed to Die, or the Rich?

Al Dahler, a retired Air Force veteran highlights in the Virginia Newsleader the latest propaganda of Republican bloodsuckers. According to Robert J Samuelson writing in the Washington Post, America’s budget deficit is the fault of elderly Americans, people who are too greedy—they depend on social security and medicare to keep themselves alive. The Wall Street bailout had nothing to do with it. Irresponsible tax cuts for the 1 percent of Americans, who are already so well off they haven’t a clue what to do with their money, are also innocent of blame. The US permanent war economy, that has gotten worse since Bush and Cheney held the reins of power, naturally has no role at all in wasting the country’s wealth. The fault, according to the unspeakably selfish US right wing, rests with the poor and old folk, who should recognize they taking up some of the wealth that the rich could salivate over counting it again.

The poor have always been at fault. The conservative gospel is that the poor, the unemployed, the people unable to afford health insurance and the handicapped are scroungers, refusing to work to better themselves as all Americans should. Did they, the greedy rich? Some may have done but most have inherited wealth left to them by their enterprising fathers, grandfathers and even more distant ancestors. Far from money trickling down, the rich employ clever managers, not being clever enough themselves, to accumulate more money in exchange for a share of it called bonuses.

These rich billionaires have nothing in common with any of the remaining 99 percent of the population, but they fool those with aspirations to riches, many of the middle classes, and those unable to see that they are dupes of the rich, encouraged in their American Dreams, but with zero chance of ever realizing them. The Republican lie is that everyone is responsible for themself only and their immediate family, having no responsibility for anyone unable to work because they are elderly, sick or simply unable to get a job in the face of millions of unemployed better able and qualified than themselves.

These conservatives, so fond of boasting of their godliness, would have joined the crowds demanding the crucifixion of their “Lord” Jesus Christ, had they been there at the time. After all, this Jesus wandered around with a gang of ex-workers, ex-fishermen, ex-tax collectors and even ex-prostitutes, and, although described as the son of a carpenter, he never seemed to have built anything of wood himself. Moreover, he repeatedly backed the poor against the rich, so was obviously in the opposite camp from the parasites who drain us of our our fair share of the national product.

They have just enough religion to make them hate, but not enough to make them love others.

Jonathan Swift, paraphrased

If the Christian God were incarnated today, he would be organizing and addressing the OWS demonstrations, and once the state decides to clamp down on the occupiers of Wall Street, he as a leader would have had his death sentence again.

Veteran Dahler noticed that the sentiments of president F D Roosevelt were closer to those of Jesus than the odious hypocrites calling themselves Republicans. He said:

The test of progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much. It is whether we provide enough for those who have little?

It is as plain as day that for the last thirty years the US has ceased to progress, and has instead slid backwards. Republican candidates, trapped by the hypocritical piety of the religious right, have to deny the validity of the theory of evolution, because these so-called Christians have decided that their God is so feeble He cannot bear it. Yet despite it they do believe in evolution applied to society. It is wrong that the cleverest and most ruthless ape should eventually have human brains, but it is right that the cleverest and most ruthless entrepreneurs should have all the wealth—give or take a percent or two. They call this application of “nature red in tooth and claw” to society “Social Darwinism”.

Society exists to protect each of us from the hazards of living separately in the wild. Being together allowed us to use our intelligence and our new found ability to respect each other and cooperate together to do remarkable things like building civilization. It required us to be concerned with others in our society even when they were not coping too well. Without assistance from us, they would have seen no sense in remaining with us, and our ur-band of mutuality would have soon fallen apart.

That is what these Republicans are advocating now. They have no concern for the poor and those unable to cope with pressures that most of the wealthy 1 percent could never imagine experiencing day in and day out. Jesus Christ ordered Christians to help the poor or be damned. But now Republicans cry in outrage that elderly people should have medical care as a reward for having contributed to society all their lives. They say they owe them nothing. Their idea of society owes them nothing. They have outlived their welcome and should do the decent thing and die! If they do not, then they will be charged large premiums to cover their health insurance, and as they will not be able to afford such expenditure, they will die in any case through being deprived of care. Limited health care leads to shorter lifespans, relieving the pressure on the social security system, and leaving more money for the rich to stash away.

President Obama and Secretary of State Clinton are fond of encouraging people in countries whose regimes they do not like, mainly because they assert their right to what is their own, to riot and even rebel, as in the case of Libya, to establish their basic human rights. Well, we have human rights too, and if Arabs have a right to rebel and kill their former leaders, H G Wells must have been correct to say that we have the same right. Wells, author of War of the Worlds, was a mild mannered man but wrote in despair, towards the end of his life, that we shall get nowhere in bringing about a fairer world until the rich were swinging from the lamp posts. Indeed, if it is a necessity in Libya, then why should it not be a necessity in the US? The fact is that revolution is one way societies end when they become too unjust. The greedy 1 percent of the USA are inviting their own destruction.

They could pay off much of the national debt themselves if they wanted to avoid it!

Scientists, Republicans and Democracy

A 2009 study of US scientists by the Pew Research Center found that:

1. 6 percent consider themselves Republicans
2. 55 percent consider themselves Democrats
3. 39 percent consider themselves independent
4. 9 percent consider themselves conservative
5. 66 percent consider themselves liberal or very liberal.

It seems scientists have no affection for conservatives and Republicans, perhaps a good reason why Republicans are now the anti-science party. Or maybe scientists simply reject Republicans because they are anti-science (Chris Mooney, The Republican War on Science). Science denial today is more pronounced on the political right, which, unlike the center-left is far more likely to question climate change, evolutionary theory, and biomedicine.

One reason for the latter is that Republicans now depend upon fundamentalist Christians in the South and the Midwest to get elected at all, and this means they have to pander to biblicist posturing on creation and evolution. Psychologists have repeatedly shown that highly intelligent, educated people reject religion as childish and unreasonable. As our leading scientists are necessarily intelligent and educated—quite unlike far too many Republican candidates for high and even presidential office—they are not likely to be impressed by those who think Bronze Age myths deserve more respect than modern science.

Washington is a magnet for unprincipled spinesless worms keen only on their own political and financial progress, and not on serving the people, or doing so only to the extent that they will benefit somewhat incidentally from doing so. Such men get their rewards from the mega rich whose wealth bankrolls the party, and put themselves in a position to receive them by pandering to the lowest common denominator of their electorate.

We are seeing what J S Mill, in a work much admired by right wing libertarians (Liberty) feared most of all, the oppression of the minority by the majority—the dictatorship of popular opinion. The right wing media feed the intolerant dogmata of the ignorant and their representatives by forcing into prominence false “controversy” on supposedly liberal grounds. Needless to say, Mill was against such false liberalism. Feeding false ideas to suppress true ones is not liberal, it is fascist. It is the “Big Lie” method of the Nazi propagandists.

Fascism is elitism, and elitism never supported democracy and liberalism. When the elite has all the money, it has all the power. In particular it owns the media, and so controls popular opinion, controls the financial apparatus, and controls where the jobs are. If the media cannot fool enough people, the banks and corporations will destroy their lives, by foreclosing on their homes, or by shipping their local factory somewhere else, often not even in the USA.

Liberty is expressed metaphorically as letting a thousand flowers bloom, not covering every acre with the same monocultured plant. Liberty is tolerating a plethora of views, not forcing one, usually wrong one, on to everybody, like it or not. That is the theocracy that the fundamentalists aim for, and the wealthy elite will gladly go along with it, if it means they keep their wealth and power.

Scientists are among those who can be relied upon generally to see what is going on, and to question it. The professional bodies of scientists ought to be standing candidates for office. They can aim to, at least, set a high intellectual and moral standard for candidates. If the electorate rejects them, it deserves what it gets.

The British Labour Party in 1931 put in its election manifesto that the electors had before them the choice to plan their economy or to perish. Hugh Dalton, a Labor minister, wrote:

By a majority of two to one they voted for perishing.

In the next twenty years under the victorious right wing government, the depression continued and led into WWII. Today, Americans have a similar choice. To get and preserve a liberal society, you do not vote libertarian, you vote liberal.