Weekend Economists Ring in the Old, Wring Out the New: Dec. 30, 2011 to Jan. 2, 2012

[Demeter]

76. Electing People Who Will Govern on Foolish Assumptions Won't Work

http://blog.buzzflash.com/node/13232

Fool me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on me or as George Bush famously butchered the quote, “you can’t get fooled again.” But it seems the American people have a great capacity for allowing themselves to be fooled over and over again. Why we’re even ready to accept the myth that Newt Gingrich is brilliant and Mitt Romney could cure the stuttering economy by making ruthless corporate skills the law of the land.


How extraordinary it would be if business acumen translated into leadership talent and enabled a corporate giant to run a country and deal with the vagaries of a complex world. Those who seek easy answers for our dilemmas are satisfied it seems that candidates simply announce their intentions to shrink government, balance the budget and keep Iran from acquiring a nuclear device, in a breathtaking overhaul of our political system - - except of course for solving the problem of a bloated financial industry and removing the perks from corporate America’s balance sheet.


Conservatives spend most of their time conforming to arcane notions of what a conservative is and how best they can demonstrate their adherence to the principles of a narrow generic agenda. Being conservative may include broad-based goals such as lower taxes, smaller government and moral imperatives but programs to enhance the lives of most Americans often get lost in waves of rhetoric. How strange it seems to run a campaign on the basis of one’s conservative bona fides instead of tackling the major issues of the day; they are not the same thing and conservative values are not a palliative formula that will cure the country’s ills.


But we find ourselves in the midst of a dizzying Republican primary roundabout in which choices include religious beliefs, traditional have-gun-will-travel foreign policy and isolationist doctrine couched in promises of what each candidate will accomplish as soon as they reach the oval office. The subject of jobs is rarely touched upon except to criticize the president for not creating them. And efforts to reign in the excesses of an out-of control corporatist segment of our society are met with derision by conservatives who insist “free markets,” that is unregulated business interests as they see it, are the best medicine for an ailing economy. That mindset has brought us to a state of “unbridled crony capitalism, a confluence of corporate corruption and political corruption” so described by Ed Fallon, an Occupy Des Moines organizer. But he added in a recent interview, “the system is a mess”, but that doesn’t mean it is unworkable. With respect to goals, Fallon said one of the organization’s goals is to lobby for reinstating Glass Steagell, the law that formerly forbade mixing investment entities with banks and which, when overturned, wreaked such havoc in the financial markets. Special-interest legislators worked their will in Congress and helped to create the travesty we now struggle to unravel. Once achieved such legislative victories are hard to defeat no matter how devastating the consequences of partisan maneuvering prove to be - - fooled again, this time into near financial ruin...

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