Stimulus and the Fear of Success

You would think that most people would want the stimulus package to succeed and rescue our economy, but it appears that the chief motivating factor for the Republicans’ opposition in Congress to the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act was the fear that it would succeed. This would explain why they offered so many lame arguments which they must have known were pure baloney. The principal incentive of politicians is survival. Success in turning the economy around could and will lead to even more Democratic success at the polls.

The Republicans in Congress spoke as if they had never heard of John Maynard Keynes. Keynes, the most influential economist of the 20th century, advocated the government’s use of fiscal and monetary measures to mitigate the adverse effects of economic recessions and depressions. Both Democratic and Republican presidents have adhered to Keynesian economics. Today’s leading economists are Keynesians.

In their debates, the Republicans decried parts of the stimulus bill that they declared to be wasteful spending. The total cost of the programs that they criticized amounts to no more than 2% of the total bill. Moreover, Republicans sought to amend the bill with added appropriations that would have cost more than the parts to which they objected.

Among the parts of the stimulus bill that the Republicans claimed to be wasteful is $500 million for flood reduction projects on the Mississippi River. In addition to the fact that that money will produce thousands of new jobs, it will also help relieve the New Orleans area of the threat of disastrous floods like the one produced by Hurricane Katrina. The Republicans also criticized the provision of $850 million for Amtrak. Here again, the money will produce thousands of new jobs and lower the use of automobiles, improve the environment by lowering auto emissions, and ease our dependence on foreign oil.

The Republicans opposed many parts of the bill that would create thousands of new jobs while attacking serious problems including health problems facing Americans. They opposed $650 million for wildfire management, $412 million for the Center for Disease Control, $500 million for the National Institutes of Health, $88 million for the Public Health Service, and billions more to fight various health problems including smoking, STDs, alcohol abuse, and lead-based paints.

In their arguments against the stimulus bill, the Republicans robotically repeated certain fallacious talking-points in the hopes of capitalizing on the ignorance of their most uneducated constituents. One of the talking-points was the tired canard that governmental spending did not solve the recession experienced by the Japanese in the 1990s. Leading economists have explained that the Japanese recession lasted so long because the Japanese government waited too long before infusing massive amounts of money into the system. Instead of making one big push to pump-up the economy with economic shock therapy, Japan spread its spending out over many years, diluting the effects. American economists believe that the lesson of Japan is that spending to revive the economy must come in quick, massive doses, and be continued until recovery takes firm root.

Another canard served-up by Congressional Republicans and swallowed by simple-minded citizens was that the New Deal did not help cure the Great Depression of the 1930s. Nonsense! Every well-informed person knows that the New Deal, inaugurated by F.D.R. when he took office in 1933, put millions of people to work and profoundly improved the economy of America. By May, 1935, industrial production was 22% higher than in May 1933. Commerce Department data shows that the economy grew at an annual rate of about 13 percent from 1933 to 1937 and more than 10 percent from 1938 to 1941. Except during the 1937-38 Recession, unemployment fell significantly every year of the New Deal. Also, Gross Domestic Product grew at an annual rate of around 9 percent during Roosevelt's first term and around 11 percent after the 1937-38 dip.

The Republican alternative to the stimulus plan was not a better plan. It was misinformation, obfuscation, and blather.

Easter and Jesus

Easter is coming. The holiday was named “Easter” after Eostre, the Saxon goddess whose feast was celebrated at the Spring equinox. Ancient people would not be surprised at our celebration of the resurrection of a living god at this time of year. The death and resurrection of gods was a well known scenario in ancient myth.

The death and resurrection of the Roman god Attis was celebrated on March 25th. Attis was the son of Cyble, known as “The Great Mother,” whose worship was introduced into Rome from Phrygia (in today’s Turkey) around 204 BC. The Greek god Dionysus was killed by his enemies and died. He descended into Hades and arose again from the dead. He ascended into heaven and sits at the right hand of Zeus. His festival was celebrated in the Spring around the time that we now celebrate Easter. Other gods and goddesses who died and arose again from the dead are Adonis, Mithras, Persephone, Semele, Heracles (or Herakles), Osirus, Tammuz, Ishtar, and Melqart.

Christians today believe that Jesus is the omnipotent and everlasting god who created the universe. The Catholic Church and others believe that as the “Son of God,” Jesus is a manifestation of God himself through the Holy Trinity. The idea of a holy trinity did not originate with the Christians. Hundreds of years before the birth of Jesus, the Egyptian goddess Isis was worshipped along with her consort Sarapis and their child Harpocrates (Horus), as members of a Holy Trinity.

Some of the biblical scholars whose work is widely respected have questioned many of the biblical accounts of Jesus’ life. For example, they say that the Gospels falsely portray Jesus as one who was a frequent and harsh critic of the Pharisees and who broke with their rigid, stale, and even false piety. Many scholars agree that such stories cannot be true. They say that the slanderous descriptions of the Pharisees in the New Testament are not authentic. They were written at a much later time when the Pharisees were in rebellion against Rome. At the time of Jesus, the Pharisees were respected by the Jews. They were not a bunch of fanatical fundamentalists, but a group of pious Jews who taught many of the same things as Jesus.

While it is possible that Jesus differed at times with the Pharisees and their observance of ritual purity, the Pharisees frequently differed with one another. Debates between Jesus and Pharisees would have been nothing unusual. Some scholars claim that Jesus himself was a Pharisee. They have pointed-out that Jesus’ teachings appear to be taken directly from the great Pharisee and sage, Hillel. He may have been a member of the so-called “School of Hillel.” Hillel was from the liberal wing of the Pharisee sect. He interpreted the law as allowing exceptions to the rules in order to adjust to modern times and economic circumstances.

Jesus’ message, that the Kingdom of God is at Hand, was not new. It expressed the common hope of the Jews of his time. His healing of the sick was a common practice in his time. His exorcisms were a traditional function of the Pharisees. His use of parables was typical of the Pharisees’ method of teaching. His Sermon on the Mount was strictly in accord with Mosaic Law. His teachings expressed traditional Jewish beliefs. The Lord’s Prayer is derived from the Kaddish prayer of the ancient synagogue. He affirmed the widely influential exhortation in Leviticus 19:18, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”

Scholars argue that Jesus never intended his teachings to apply to non-Jews. He did not preach to the Gentiles or tell his disciples to go out and convert the Gentiles. He did just the opposite. In Matthew 10:5-15, Jesus says to his disciples: “Go nowhere among the Gentiles, and enter no town of the Samaritans, but go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” Scholars point-out that Jesus did not refute the Mosaic Law or create a new law. He taught strict adherence to the Jewish Law. In Matthew 5:17-19, Jesus says: “Think not that I have come to abolish the law and the prophets; I have come not to abolish them but to fulfill them. For truly, I say to you, till heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the law until all is accomplished.”

Scholars also say that Jesus did not intend to found a new church naming himself as the Son of God. He was the leader of a group within Judaism. The few passages in the Bible that support the idea that Jesus wanted to start a new church are not based on anything Jesus said but on ideas that were developed long after his death. Jesus wanted to renew Judaism, which already had a Temple, priests, worship, and sacrifices. Jesus believed that the Kingdom of God was at hand and that the end of time was coming. He certainly did not wish to form a church that would last for centuries. Most of these scholars believe that the founding of a new church was basically the work of St. Paul.

Senator Voinovich and the Republicans

Senator Voinovich and the Republicans in the House of Representatives have betrayed and abandoned the desperate, desolate, unemployed workers of Ohio. In name of Republican orthodoxy, Voinovich and the House Republicans voted against The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, also known as the stimulus bill. That bill will bring billions of dollars of aid to unemployed workers in Ohio and around the nation. It will invigorate the economy and create millions of jobs. It will do all of this in spite of the opposition and heartless philosophy of Voinovich and his fellow Republicans. God forbid that the government of which they are a part should come to the rescue of the forlorn workers of Ohio. The Republicans appear to be willing to let the unemployed people of Ohio hang out there twisting in the wind, jobless, without income, food, shelter, health care, or hope.

I wonder if Senator Voinovich or any of his fellow Republicans in the House have ever been out of a job through no fault of their own. I wonder if they, in their warm comfortable homes, with salaries of $174,000 per year ($193,400 for Rep. Boehner), broad expense allowances, health insurance paid by the government, and generous retirement benefits, have any idea of the suffering of the people who were laid-off by General Motors, DHL, Delphi, and dozens of other companies in Ohio. Can they even remotely understand the anguish and pain now being suffered by the unemployed people of Ohio?

Ohio's statewide unemployment rate hit 7.8 percent in December 2008, the highest level in more than 22 years. Wilmington Ohio stands to lose 8000 jobs as a result of the closing of the DHL transportation hub. Dayton lost 7,800 jobs in 2008 because of layoffs by GM, and others. Ohio lost over 118,000 jobs in 2008. The number of unemployed workers in Ohio in December 2008 was 465,000.

Those Ohio workers did not do shoddy work! They were not negligent, sloppy, lazy, inefficient, or indifferent. They were among the most skilled workers in the world. They worked their hearts out for many years. What did they do wrong? At the very least they are entitled to unemployment compensation. But remarkably, the state ran out of unemployment funds last year and had to begin borrowing federal funds in order to pay unemployment claims. According to the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services, there were 145,151 new unemployment claims for December 2008, by far the highest total in the last three decades.

The stimulus plan which Voinovich and the House Republicans voted against provides more than $60 billion to add 20 extra weeks of unemployment payments and will increase those payments by $25 per week. It will boost the food-stamp programs and provide housing assistance programs and other aid for the hardest-hit Ohioans. It provides $24.7 billion to cover 65% of the cost of health insurance for the unemployed. It allocates $29 billion for highway construction projects, $16 billion for investments in public transit, $11 billion to renovate the nation’s electrical grid, and $54 billion to help the states defray expenses.

The stimulus package was supported by most Republican governors including Charlie Crist of Florida, Mitch Daniels of Indiana, Jodi Rell of Connecticut, Arnold Schwarzenegger of California, and Jim Douglas of Vermont. It was supported by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and hundreds top CEOs including the CEOs of IBM, Intel, Motorola, Honeywell, Xerox, Kodak, Corning, and Aetna. It was also supported by the great majority of the nation’s leading economists including Nobel Prize laureates such as George Akerlof of U.C. Berkeley, Robert M. Solow of M.I.T., and Joseph E. Stiglitz of Columbia.

When I saw the 60 Minutes program about the painful loss of jobs in Wilmington Ohio, I was deeply moved. I do not understand how the Republicans could harden their hearts to the sad plight of those good people. The Republicans showed party unity, solidarity, conservative philosophical purity, and lock-step party discipline. What they failed to show was human compassion--and courage.

What I Stand For

I have dedicated my life to fighting ignorance and superstition. Everywhere I go, I find people who believe in things which cannot be proven by science or reason. I would not find this so wrong were it not for the fact that the side of ignorance fights aggressively to promote its vision of the world. In this country such ignorance is propounded by religious Christians who deny the truth of evolution and promote nonsense like Creationism and its bastard brother, Intelligent Design. In foreign countries one finds militant Islam which refuses to allow women even to attend school and which attacks and tortures women who seek merely to learn.

I have fought against the myths of religion. I believe that the chief problem with religion is that it is totally wrong. There is no such thing as God, yet billions of people all over the world go on worshipping him and praying to him, oblivious to his nonexistence. To me it is offensive that human beings, born with brains and the capacity to think, need to surrender the powers of reason in order to give meaning to their lives.

Ignorance is not a benign negativity. It is a powerful moving force that hates reason and the scepticism of rationalists. You will find that ignorant people are very angry when you show disbelief in one of their favorite irrationalities such as UFOs, the Yeti, the Loch Ness Monster, the Bermuda Triangle, Crop Circles, fortune tellers, extra sensory perception, ghosts, witches, signs of the Zodiac, mediums who speak to the dead, goblins, fairies, elves, and the thousands of religious myths like faith healing, stigmata, exorcism, holy water, and many others.

I have tried to fight against the plethora of conspiracy theories that abound in the world because I believe that the basis of most conspiracy theories is a religious need to find meaning in the many bad things that happen to us. For this reason I wrote the following which will appear in one of my columns in the future:

CONSPIRACY THEORIES AND OCCAM’S RAZOR

Some people are going to be bothered by the following statement, but it is correct. There was no conspiracy to kill John F. Kennedy. The assassination on November 22, 1963, was the work of only one man, Lee Harvey Oswald. If that statement makes some uncomfortable, it is a sign that they are persons who prefer conspiracy theories to rational, sharp, scientific evidence.

Unfortunately for fuzzy conspiracy theories, there has long been plenty of evidence demonstrating the fact that Oswald acted alone. I recently saw two television documentaries that chronicle the facts about Kennedy’s death. The first was entitled “The Kennedy Assassination - Beyond Conspiracy,” a 2003 made-for-television documentary narrated by the late Peter Jennings. The documentary recreates the assassination using modern computer technology to rotate the scene of the assassination so that it can be viewed from any angle .The resulting digital animation recreated the exact view point from any perspective within the plaza at the moment, and provided concrete evidence that the shot that killed Kennedy came from the gun fired by Lee Harvey Oswald as the lone assassin.

The documentary also looked deeply into the sad life of Oswald. He fancied himself a dedicated communist and traveled to the Soviet Union and Cuba in order to achieve some recognition. Nobody paid any attention to him. He decided to do something that would make his life meaningful and make him famous. He bought the rifle with which he shot Kennedy and which was found in the Texas School Book Depositary with Oswald’s finger prints on it.

Another documentary entitled: “Autopsy: Postmortem with Dr. Michael Baden,” told the story of the renowned forensic physician who has worked on numerous high-profile cases, including the Kennedy assassination. Baden was asked by the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) to study the autopsy and other documents dealing with the death of Kennedy. Dr. Baden found that the autopsy in Dallas was badly botched and that the conspiracy theories arose out of this careless postmortem. If the autopsy had been properly done, it would have depicted the way in which the bullet entered Kennedy’s back and exited his throat. Baden concluded that there was no conspiracy and only one shooter, Oswald.

There are many conspiracy theories surrounding the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Some are simply unproven and others are patently idiotic. When the Warren Commission Report first came out, I read it over several times and became thoroughly convinced of the one-shooter conclusion. I have therefore always been perplexed by the stupidity of the books and theories claiming a conspiracy. I found the Oliver Stone movie “JFK” absurd.

The murder of Kennedy profoundly influenced my philosophy of life. I was deeply shocked to realize that our bright future could be obliterated in one devastating moment of insanity. I also came to realize that much in life is the result of arbitrary forces for which there is no reason, no explanation. Things just happen. I developed a lawyer’s method of reasoning based on “Occam’s Razor.”

Occam's Razor is a principle attributed to the 14th-century English logician and Franciscan friar, William of Ockham. The principle states that the explanation of any phenomenon should make as few assumptions as possible. In other words, the simplest explanation is almost always the best. The simplest explanation for Kennedy’s assassination is that Oswald acted alone.

Why do people continue to have faith in conspiracy theories? I believe that the motivation is akin to religion. People do not want to believe that the bad things that happen to us are arbitrary and have no real meaning. They want to believe that there is an explanation for everything, and that even if it requires a cockamamie conspiracy theory, that is better than saying something bad just happened without any explanation.

The fact is that most bad things, such as tsunamis, earthquakes, volcanoes, hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, diseases, and thousands of unwanted occurrences, are not the fault of any person. They just happen.

Republican Partisanship and the Serengeti Plains

In order to perform the complicated steps of the Tango, as Al Pacino and the magnificent Gabrielle Anwar could attest, it takes two people working in close collaboration. President Obama has asked the Republicans to dance, but, unfortunately, most of them are too hobbled by bitterness at the outcome of the election to join with him. It takes two to Tango.

The Republican Party reminds me of the watering places in the Serengeti Plains. During the wet season, the watering holes provide water for a broad assemblage of animals, while in the dry season, the holes contract into muddy puddles filled with rapacious crocodiles. Now that they have been rudely tossed out of office, the Republican Party has contracted into a puddle and is being led by crocodiles like Mitch McConnell, Jim DeMint, and David Vitter.

President Obama has reached-out to Republicans in many ways. During the campaign and afterward he continuously called for an end to partisan bickering in Washington. He appointed three Republicans to his cabinet. He entertained Republicans at the White House and went to meet with them at the Capitol in a serious effort to get bipartisan support for his stimulus package. Despite this, Republicans in Congress and in the media have almost totally rebuffed his efforts.

In the Senate, the only Republicans to support the stimulus package as of the writing of this commentary were three northern “moderates,” Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, Susan Collins of Maine, and Olympia Snowe of Maine. Those three managed to use their crucial leverage as swing votes to weaken the bill and deduct tens of billions of badly needed dollars for state and local governments, education, health, and renewable energy programs. All other Republicans have refused to compromise.

The brilliant syndicated columnist and Nobel Prize winner, Paul Krugman, has summarized the situation as follows: “Over the last two weeks, what should have been a deadly serious debate about how to save an economy in desperate straits turned, instead, into hackneyed political theater, with Republicans spouting all the old clichés about wasteful government spending and the wonders of tax cuts. It’s as if the dismal economic failure of the last eight years never happened.”

On February 5, 2009, President Obama noted that 3.6 million workers have lost their jobs since the recession began, and said: "What do you think a stimulus is?....It’s spending — that's the whole point!” He went on to say: “I welcome this debate, but we are not going to get relief by turning back to the same policies that for the last eight years doubled the national debt and threw our economy into a tailspin…. The American people have rendered their judgment. And now is the time to move forward, not back. Now is the time for action.”

My feeling is that the President and the Democrats should abandon any further efforts at bipartisanship. The Republicans lost the presidential, congressional, and many state elections. It appears that they will lose even more in 2010. The Democrats will soon have a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate. At that point all governmental and legislative decisions should be made from a left-liberal political point of view. There should be massive additional stimulus spending if necessary to the economy. Only the most liberal Democratic judges and government officials should be appointed. Taxes should be raised to 50% on wealthy Americans and big corporations. The government should outlaw discrimination against gay people and should endorse the right of such people to marry. Interference with abortion clinics should be outlawed, and, instead, the government should subsidize them. The government should adopt a single-payer health insurance system.

The Republicans have constricted into a mean-spirited coterie of sour sore losers led by political party hacks and toxic cheerleaders like Rush Limbaugh. Meanwhile, the Democrats are led by a brilliant, charismatic, widely popular president surrounded by exceptional and talented advisors who are fighting to undo the damage that has been done to this nation by Bush and his band of hooligans.

Republican Partisanship and the Stimulus Package

Every Republican in the U.S. House of Representatives, including representatives that I admire and respect, such as Steve Austria of Beavercreek, Ohio, and Mike Turner of Dayton, Ohio, voted against the President’s $819 billion economic stimulus package. I’m sure they knew that the package would have sufficient Democratic votes to pass and considered their votes to be symbolic opposition to aspects of the bill that they did not like. The problem with symbolic votes is that they can be read two ways. When you vote against a stimulus package you vote against everything in the bill, and this is something that should and will be considered by voters in the next congressional elections.

By voting against the entire bill, the Republicans voted against the nearly $245 billion that is to be devoted to unemployment benefits and fiscal aid to states so that they don’t have to cut services, raise taxes, and lay-off employees. Mike Turner, whose district includes both Dayton and Wilmington, may have wanted more direct aid for the newly unemployed workers in those places, but his vote was not a vote for more direct aid. It was a vote against a package that would greatly help the thousands workers who have lost their jobs in those ravaged areas.

According to the Center for American Progress, Ohio would get approximately $19 billion of the stimulus funds, including $2.3 billion to help with the state’s fiscal crisis. The package would also provide $155 million for job training and employment services in Ohio. Those services are needed by the unemployed workers of Dayton and Wilmington.

The bill provides $62 billion in infrastructure spending for highways, mass transit, and other projects. Millions of dollars of this money would go to repair and rebuild infrastructure and to create thousands of new jobs in the Miami Valley and throughout Ohio. A vote against the bill did nothing to help the thousands of out-of-work people who could fill those jobs and the millions of people who will benefit by the repairs and new infrastructure.

One of the greatest problems for the newly unemployed people of Dayton and Wilmington will be health coverage. The stimulus package provides $40 billion to subsidize the cost of health coverage for unemployed people. Republicans do not like subsidizing health insurance because they consider it a step toward universal coverage. A vote against the bill was a vote directly against the desperate health needs of those thousands of out-of-work people.

The bill devotes $145 billion to President Obama’s “Making Work Pay” tax credit for two years. The credit is $500 per worker, $1000 per family. Republicans claim that the bill does not provide sufficient tax cuts, but they voted against this tax credit for middle class taxpayers. It is as if they are saying: “If you don’t do it our way we are going to take our ball and go home.”

The stimulus package provides over $1.4 billion for Ohio public schools over the next two years, with $106 million going to the Miami Valley. Approximately $3.2 million of this would go to the Xenia City schools. The bill would create jobs, aid in new school construction, and prevent cuts in curriculum and extra curricular activities. A vote against the bill did nothing to help education or unemployment in this area.

Some Republicans list as one ground for objection that the package did not contain money for defense spending. In September 2008, Congress passed the Department of Defense Appropriations Act of 2009. The base budget was $515.4 billion, with a total of $651.2 billion when emergency discretionary spending and supplemental spending are included. There is no indication that that amount was insufficient or that the Defense Department is laying people off. Defense spending is always included in separate appropriation bills covering the needs of the military.

Republicans probably hope that their objections will inspire changes in the bill by the Senate. The bill needs to be improved and one hopes that some of the Republicans’ ideas will be adopted in the Senate. Perhaps the House Republicans will then vote for the final package. I doubt that they want to go down as having voted against their own people in a time of desperate need.