wolfgang von skeptik
11-14-2007, 12:15 AM
The disturbing results of last Tuesday’s elections combine with the nation’s most in-depth polling on the healthcare crisis to demonstrate not just the left’s abysmal failure to foster class-consciousness among U.S. voters but the probability the electorate has embraced social Darwinism so thoroughly its reflexive viciousness is irreversible.
Which implies -- rather strongly in fact -- the possibility of a Republican upset-victory in 2008.
In what mainstream media labeled the most astonishing electoral outcome in many years -- maybe ever -- the allegedly "progressive" voters of Oregon rejected a comprehensive children's medical insurance program that would have been funded solely by increased cigarette taxes. The vote was a landslide 60-40 defeat for universal health care -- in this instance a proposal that would have saved the lives of countless youngsters while costing the vast majority of the state’s taxpayers exactly nothing.
The other allegedly slap-in-the-face outcome occurred just across the state line in Washington, where the supposedly "environmentalist" voters of the three most urban Puget Sound counties (including the cities of Seattle and Tacoma) spurned a public transportation measure that was the region's last remaining hope of ever freeing itself from enslavement by Big Oil and Big Automotive.
Vetoed by nearly 56 percent of the voters, the transit proposal would have raised sales taxes a tiny six-tenths of a percent -- six cents on a $10 bill -- to build an electrically-powered regional light-rail network, substantially easing the epic traffic jams that make the Tacoma-Seattle commute one of the worst in the nation. Not only would the system have thus reduced air pollution; it would have kept transit fares relatively low by taking full advantage of the fact that -- thanks to hydroelectric projects built by the New Deal -- Washington state is second only to the Tennessee Valley Authority area in having the nation's cheapest and most abundant electricity.
Reading beyond the Pollyanna euphemisms of post-election polls (“the voters were confused by negative advertising”), these outcomes prove the decisive factor was greed -- an “I-won’t-pay-a-penny-more-no-matter-what” hostility to taxation -- this fueled by a combination of simmering racism and boiling hatred of government that represents an ultimate triumph for George Bush, the Republican Party and the Big Business ruling class so represented. The results are all the more revealing in that they express the true values of some of the most dependably “leftist” voters in the nation
In the transit debacle, there were also pretentiousness, hypocrisy and additional dimensions of bigotry at work: Puget Sound voters consider themselves the most environmentally enlightened and politically progressive electorate on the planet, but 38 years of defeated or politically sabotaged light-rail proposals paints a portrait of antagonistic small-mindedness that has no peer anywhere else in urban North America. Too defiantly ignorant to recognize that buses are inflicted on us by the same industries that have blessed us with automobiles, trucks and Exxon Valdez, Puget Sounders repeatedly refuse to reduce their dependence on Big Oil and Big Automotive. Meanwhile their xenophobic hostility to “Manhattanization” -- the code-word for their curious fear light rail will by some dark cabalistic magic transform the Puget Sound region into another “Jew York“ -- proves they are no different from the benighted, reflexively fascist voters who increasingly dominate the rest of the U.S., from coast to coast and from border to border.
But the manner in which mass media was ambushed by these election results is at least understandable. Today’s print journalists are hired to fill the spaces between the advertisements, not to do research, conduct investigations or otherwise productively utilize the space between their ears. Hence proof of the escalating penury of the populace remained obscure -- though it would have been easy enough to discover had anyone troubled themselves to read only two sources: Paul Krugman’s damning descriptions of the true but hidden venomousness of present-day U.S. racism, and the in-depth public-opinion surveys conducted by the Henry J. Kaiser Foundation.
One example -- two successive paragraphs from the summary of findings in the 2006 Kaiser/USA Today/ABC News Health Care in America Survey -- should suffice:
“In the abstract, most Americans (68 percent) say that providing coverage for everyone is more important than keeping taxes down. But if the tradeoff is phrased in a way that focuses on the country’s main concern -- rising health care costs -- Americans are more divided: 50 percent say reducing costs is more important, while 42 percent say extending coverage should take precedence.”(Emphasis added.)
“Support for universal care is a prime example of Americans’ frustration with the current system, as well as the tenuousness of their support for change. Overall, 56 percent say they would prefer a universal care system to our current system. At the same time, this support is relatively easy to shake. If supporters are challenged with possible downsides of such a plan -- less choice of doctors, waiting lists, increased costs to individuals, or more limited coverage of medical treatments -- significant numbers change their minds about the program. In fact, after hearing any one of these arguments, support for universal coverage dropped to roughly a third of the public or less.” (Emphasis added.)
The full report is available here: http://www.kff.org/kaiserpolls/upload/7572.pdf
What the Kaiser study suggests -- especially the above paragraphs -- is exactly what the Oregon election confirmed: the electorate has no intention of paying more taxes, not even when the levy is inflicted on someone else and explicitly earmarked “for the children.”
Such miserliness is especially obvious when those children might be African-Americans. In perhaps the most significant mainstream protest of domestic racism since the Civil War, Krugman indicted U.S. socioeconomic policy at every level -- the huge hostility not just to welfare but, by implication, to universal health care, public education and even mass transport -- as vindictive Jim Crow bigotry now expressed via wholesale denial of social services and economic opportunity. Though the Civil Rights Movement outlawed lynching and segregation and even shamed the racists to public silence, their underlying hatreds remain as dominant as ever.
Krugman’s essay, written after the authorities abandoned New Orleans’ mostly black and low-income population to the deadly ravages of Hurricane Katrina, should be included in every eighth-grade civics book: http://www.pkarchive.org/column/091905.html
As to the public’s attitude toward government itself, survey after dismal survey tells the same story: whether in New York, Mississippi, Michigan or Alaska, a reliable 75 percent of the U.S. population regard politicians and bureaucrats as the worst habitual liars, most destructive parasites and most profligate spendthrifts on Earth.
The following quote, from the Libertarian writer Doug Casey via the website Lew Rockwell.com, is typical: “Government sponsors untold waste, criminality and inequality in every sphere of life it touches, giving little or nothing in return. Its contributions to the commonweal are wars, pogroms, confiscations, persecutions, taxation, regulation and inflation. And it’s not just some governments of which that’s true, although some are clearly much worse than others. It’s an inherent characteristic of all government.” Full text at http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig2/casey1.html
Commenting on the Oregon voters’ rejection of the children’s healthcare plan, The Wall Street Journal said on 8 November the outcome was a one-state expression of national opinion -- “in case anyone in Washington is paying attention.”
“Voters are rightly concerned about healthcare and would like everyone to have insurance, but they realize that government programs are very expensive," said The Journal's editorial page, “and they don't seem to want to pay for healthcare reforms directly through higher taxes.” Noting that most of the national media assumes universal healthcare “will both carry Hillary Clinton to the White House and march easily into law,” The Journal wryly concludes “the message from the Oregon trail is -- not so fast…” The Journal’s commentary is available at http://www.kaisernetwork.org/daily_repo ... R_ID=48741 (http://www.kaisernetwork.org/daily_reports/rep_index.cfm?DR_ID=48741)
Meanwhile a new Zogby telephone poll shows “a majority of likely voters – 52% – would support a U.S. military strike to prevent Iran from building a nuclear weapon, and 53% believe it is likely that the U.S. will be involved in a military strike against Iran before the next presidential election.” Text here: http://www.zogby.com/templates/printnews.cfm?id=1379
When combined with the Oregon and Washington election results, the Kaiser poll and Krugman’s perceptive analysis, the significance of the Zogby findings is that even among people who claim to be Democrats, fascism and racism rule the hearts and minds of America. Not that it matters -- liberty is doomed no matter which party wins -- but the failure of children’s healthcare in Oregon and public transport in Washington proves the persistent belief in a grass-roots left is nothing more than a Grand Delusion, even as the Zogby results portray a population still hungry for world conquest.
At the very least it demonstrates an electorate who would write in Caligula if he would promise lower taxes -- and of course victory in the Middle East. These are not potential leftists at all -- not even centrist Democrats -- merely unyieldingly hard-right voters who (however emphatically they may deny it) have yet to find a sufficiently merciless Republican candidate.
Which not only underscores the need for radical revision of consciousness-raising techniques and organizing plans, but also suggests Hillary’s early lead in Big Business fundraising might be nothing more than a ploy to scare up even larger donations to the Republican nominee once he is chosen.
Loren Bliss
(11 November 2007)
Edits: addition of signature and revision of 14th paragraph ("Such miserliness...") to remove misplaced modifier and sharpen focus.
Which implies -- rather strongly in fact -- the possibility of a Republican upset-victory in 2008.
In what mainstream media labeled the most astonishing electoral outcome in many years -- maybe ever -- the allegedly "progressive" voters of Oregon rejected a comprehensive children's medical insurance program that would have been funded solely by increased cigarette taxes. The vote was a landslide 60-40 defeat for universal health care -- in this instance a proposal that would have saved the lives of countless youngsters while costing the vast majority of the state’s taxpayers exactly nothing.
The other allegedly slap-in-the-face outcome occurred just across the state line in Washington, where the supposedly "environmentalist" voters of the three most urban Puget Sound counties (including the cities of Seattle and Tacoma) spurned a public transportation measure that was the region's last remaining hope of ever freeing itself from enslavement by Big Oil and Big Automotive.
Vetoed by nearly 56 percent of the voters, the transit proposal would have raised sales taxes a tiny six-tenths of a percent -- six cents on a $10 bill -- to build an electrically-powered regional light-rail network, substantially easing the epic traffic jams that make the Tacoma-Seattle commute one of the worst in the nation. Not only would the system have thus reduced air pollution; it would have kept transit fares relatively low by taking full advantage of the fact that -- thanks to hydroelectric projects built by the New Deal -- Washington state is second only to the Tennessee Valley Authority area in having the nation's cheapest and most abundant electricity.
Reading beyond the Pollyanna euphemisms of post-election polls (“the voters were confused by negative advertising”), these outcomes prove the decisive factor was greed -- an “I-won’t-pay-a-penny-more-no-matter-what” hostility to taxation -- this fueled by a combination of simmering racism and boiling hatred of government that represents an ultimate triumph for George Bush, the Republican Party and the Big Business ruling class so represented. The results are all the more revealing in that they express the true values of some of the most dependably “leftist” voters in the nation
In the transit debacle, there were also pretentiousness, hypocrisy and additional dimensions of bigotry at work: Puget Sound voters consider themselves the most environmentally enlightened and politically progressive electorate on the planet, but 38 years of defeated or politically sabotaged light-rail proposals paints a portrait of antagonistic small-mindedness that has no peer anywhere else in urban North America. Too defiantly ignorant to recognize that buses are inflicted on us by the same industries that have blessed us with automobiles, trucks and Exxon Valdez, Puget Sounders repeatedly refuse to reduce their dependence on Big Oil and Big Automotive. Meanwhile their xenophobic hostility to “Manhattanization” -- the code-word for their curious fear light rail will by some dark cabalistic magic transform the Puget Sound region into another “Jew York“ -- proves they are no different from the benighted, reflexively fascist voters who increasingly dominate the rest of the U.S., from coast to coast and from border to border.
But the manner in which mass media was ambushed by these election results is at least understandable. Today’s print journalists are hired to fill the spaces between the advertisements, not to do research, conduct investigations or otherwise productively utilize the space between their ears. Hence proof of the escalating penury of the populace remained obscure -- though it would have been easy enough to discover had anyone troubled themselves to read only two sources: Paul Krugman’s damning descriptions of the true but hidden venomousness of present-day U.S. racism, and the in-depth public-opinion surveys conducted by the Henry J. Kaiser Foundation.
One example -- two successive paragraphs from the summary of findings in the 2006 Kaiser/USA Today/ABC News Health Care in America Survey -- should suffice:
“In the abstract, most Americans (68 percent) say that providing coverage for everyone is more important than keeping taxes down. But if the tradeoff is phrased in a way that focuses on the country’s main concern -- rising health care costs -- Americans are more divided: 50 percent say reducing costs is more important, while 42 percent say extending coverage should take precedence.”(Emphasis added.)
“Support for universal care is a prime example of Americans’ frustration with the current system, as well as the tenuousness of their support for change. Overall, 56 percent say they would prefer a universal care system to our current system. At the same time, this support is relatively easy to shake. If supporters are challenged with possible downsides of such a plan -- less choice of doctors, waiting lists, increased costs to individuals, or more limited coverage of medical treatments -- significant numbers change their minds about the program. In fact, after hearing any one of these arguments, support for universal coverage dropped to roughly a third of the public or less.” (Emphasis added.)
The full report is available here: http://www.kff.org/kaiserpolls/upload/7572.pdf
What the Kaiser study suggests -- especially the above paragraphs -- is exactly what the Oregon election confirmed: the electorate has no intention of paying more taxes, not even when the levy is inflicted on someone else and explicitly earmarked “for the children.”
Such miserliness is especially obvious when those children might be African-Americans. In perhaps the most significant mainstream protest of domestic racism since the Civil War, Krugman indicted U.S. socioeconomic policy at every level -- the huge hostility not just to welfare but, by implication, to universal health care, public education and even mass transport -- as vindictive Jim Crow bigotry now expressed via wholesale denial of social services and economic opportunity. Though the Civil Rights Movement outlawed lynching and segregation and even shamed the racists to public silence, their underlying hatreds remain as dominant as ever.
Krugman’s essay, written after the authorities abandoned New Orleans’ mostly black and low-income population to the deadly ravages of Hurricane Katrina, should be included in every eighth-grade civics book: http://www.pkarchive.org/column/091905.html
As to the public’s attitude toward government itself, survey after dismal survey tells the same story: whether in New York, Mississippi, Michigan or Alaska, a reliable 75 percent of the U.S. population regard politicians and bureaucrats as the worst habitual liars, most destructive parasites and most profligate spendthrifts on Earth.
The following quote, from the Libertarian writer Doug Casey via the website Lew Rockwell.com, is typical: “Government sponsors untold waste, criminality and inequality in every sphere of life it touches, giving little or nothing in return. Its contributions to the commonweal are wars, pogroms, confiscations, persecutions, taxation, regulation and inflation. And it’s not just some governments of which that’s true, although some are clearly much worse than others. It’s an inherent characteristic of all government.” Full text at http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig2/casey1.html
Commenting on the Oregon voters’ rejection of the children’s healthcare plan, The Wall Street Journal said on 8 November the outcome was a one-state expression of national opinion -- “in case anyone in Washington is paying attention.”
“Voters are rightly concerned about healthcare and would like everyone to have insurance, but they realize that government programs are very expensive," said The Journal's editorial page, “and they don't seem to want to pay for healthcare reforms directly through higher taxes.” Noting that most of the national media assumes universal healthcare “will both carry Hillary Clinton to the White House and march easily into law,” The Journal wryly concludes “the message from the Oregon trail is -- not so fast…” The Journal’s commentary is available at http://www.kaisernetwork.org/daily_repo ... R_ID=48741 (http://www.kaisernetwork.org/daily_reports/rep_index.cfm?DR_ID=48741)
Meanwhile a new Zogby telephone poll shows “a majority of likely voters – 52% – would support a U.S. military strike to prevent Iran from building a nuclear weapon, and 53% believe it is likely that the U.S. will be involved in a military strike against Iran before the next presidential election.” Text here: http://www.zogby.com/templates/printnews.cfm?id=1379
When combined with the Oregon and Washington election results, the Kaiser poll and Krugman’s perceptive analysis, the significance of the Zogby findings is that even among people who claim to be Democrats, fascism and racism rule the hearts and minds of America. Not that it matters -- liberty is doomed no matter which party wins -- but the failure of children’s healthcare in Oregon and public transport in Washington proves the persistent belief in a grass-roots left is nothing more than a Grand Delusion, even as the Zogby results portray a population still hungry for world conquest.
At the very least it demonstrates an electorate who would write in Caligula if he would promise lower taxes -- and of course victory in the Middle East. These are not potential leftists at all -- not even centrist Democrats -- merely unyieldingly hard-right voters who (however emphatically they may deny it) have yet to find a sufficiently merciless Republican candidate.
Which not only underscores the need for radical revision of consciousness-raising techniques and organizing plans, but also suggests Hillary’s early lead in Big Business fundraising might be nothing more than a ploy to scare up even larger donations to the Republican nominee once he is chosen.
Loren Bliss
(11 November 2007)
Edits: addition of signature and revision of 14th paragraph ("Such miserliness...") to remove misplaced modifier and sharpen focus.