D.C. Comics

So what's doin' on the Hill today. The House will be debating the critical issue of the qualifying standards for the America's Cup. This was after the grueling debate they held on honoring baseball last week. Speaker Boehner told a press conference yesterday that he was focused on Jobs. The reporters laughed. No one in town believes any of the Republican congresscritters want to create a single job or maybe they wouold like to preserve their own.

Today Bishop Willard Romney will be speaking to the Koch-funded Americans for Prosperity about his economic policy programs. Earlier this week, he said he was only interested in tax cuts for the middle class. But for Willard that definition is fungible. It refers to the middle rich. And, oh well, the mega rich. Willard wants to eliminate the estate tax, which will provide his hosts--the Koch brothers--with a nice $8.5 billion bonus for their efforts.

We are less than a year away from the 2012 presidential elections. Nate "the Great" Silver calls it 50/50 for Obama's chances. Gallup has Romney 1 point ahead. And other polls show Obama losing a number of states he turned in 2008 but eecking out an electoral victory.

But the carnival show is on the Republican side. Six women now have come forth to accuse Herman Cain of sexual harassment. The betting line projects 9 in total. Outsiders say the man is cooked but his approval rating just soars as every new charge comes forth. It is a fascinating study in masochism to see the Republican base become more attached to a former lobbyist and pizza parlor owner as flaw after flaw gets exposed. Incredibly, the majority of Republicans in Iowa actually believe that his 9-9-9 plan would benefit them. This is especially true of those earning less than $50,000. All economists say that they will pay several thousand more dollars in taxes. But the will to believe is strong.

Herman Cain, who really is the first virtual candidate in American polictical history, has the lead in Iowa and South Carolina. All this, despite the revelations about his days as chief lobbyists for the Restaurant Association, and the glaring fact he doesn't have an organization or a bank rivalling Perry and Romney.

Perry meanwhile denies he was drunk or high in New Hampshire. The audience has been enlisted to testify to the Boston Globe that Perry was just exuberant. There are really political commentators saying that Perry is being brilliant by pretending he's dumb.

Flashback to 2008, even the sorry field of GOP candidates then debated real issues. Do you remember how they thought health insurance reform was important? Or how about the debate on cap and trade and global warming? Today, it is a fallow field with no ideas about anything. Notice how they don't even mention the debt? It's Obama's debt but once we get in--well, the hell with it.

Some observers believe if the GOP takes the White House then they will endorse infrastructure investment and other job creating programs. It's just they want to force Obama out the door. If they voted for Obama's jobs creation program now, then the unemployment rate would be 7% at election time, lower than when he came in. So that's what they are banking on. But I happen to believe they will not embark on any job-creation programs if they take control. I think they will embark on the final looting of America by transferring again huge amounts of wealth to the top 1%. And they will systematically destroy by attrition and cuts all that remains of the social safety net. All of this solely in the name of ideology.

What is so fascinating to watch here in D.C. is how oblivious the town is to the 99er Movement and its growing strength around the country. Conservatives have tried to put down the movement as another hippie protest and Fox News is claiming it has been organized by ACORN. But the reality is that it is growing because the corporations, the banks and their enablers have push the envelope to the point of breaking. When millions of people in a society feel that the game is stacked against them there is pushback. How effective will it be? I don't know. But there is a real threat that our operating economy will actually become totally divorced from our population at large. This could generate a whole new energy in the country, which would have unexpected consequences.

I've lamented the efforts since the 2010 elections to suppress voter turnouts by focusing on minorities and the young. The progress that has been made by making voting easier by 2008 has been dramatically reversed on purpose. If the electorate can be contained, it is believed you can manipulate the results better. This year the Republicans are banking on this. A close election with voter suppression would favor them.

But I've always told foreign democracy movements that rigged elections also provide opportunities. If the winner of a rigged election believes they have a mandate to push an ideological agenda without consultation of the opposition or the people, there will be a backlash that will unravel their control over the system. We actually saw this with the 2008 election. The Bush-Cheney Administration had come to power under dubious circumstances in 2000 and their re-election was clouded by voter manipulation in Ohio. There was actually perceived on a bipartisan basis the need to actually have a clean election in 2008 because of the noxious fumes left by the last two national elections.

Since then the Republican Party has become radicalized in a way unique in my lifetime so much so that elections are merely a formality but nothing of substantive meaning. As evidenced by their behavior since 2008, the Party has narrowed its interest to serve the top .3% of the population. And this is becoming abundantly clear to independents and Democrats.

This overt and very public embrace of economic inequality has triggered the current reaction of the 99er Movement or Occupy Wall Street Movement. What is now being placed at the center of the political debate is the issue of economic democracy. People are asking the uncomfortable questions about our economic system. So far the ideas from this movement are rather modest--a small fee on stock trades, the end of the Bush era tax cuts, and the slight tax hike on those making $1 million or more a year.

In some ways Mitt Romney is right if unemployment were at 6%, these protests may not have happened. What the Mormon Bishop doesn't say is that American corporations are holding over $2 trillion in cash reservers and are not creating jobs and that the top corporations for the last five years have paid no federal income taxes. In fact, they got massive tax refunds. All the while profits have gone through the roof. The Dow still is nearly 4,500 pts higher under Obama than during Bush's last days. This discrepancy between the health of our financial and corporate world and the population at large sparked the 99er Movement.

There will absolutely be nothing accomplished in the American Congress this year. They might as well go home. There is virtually no interest in ameliorating the problem of the American people. So we will watch to see how the movements continue to grow.