Beat it, Buddy - Democratic Underground

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Thu Jan-14-10 10:16 AM
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Beat it, Buddy

Beat it, Buddy
By David Glenn Cox

These are the short days of long shadows, long cold nights of frozen dreams and frozen time. Underneath the heaps of blankets our children lie prostrate, shivering and naked facing the prospect of a dawn as dark as dusk in a land as cold as stone.

The governor of this country's most populous, and formally most prosperous, state recently asked the federal government for $6.9 billion to help close the state's $20 billion budget deficit. The federal government is on the horns of a dilemma; Big Daddy has fifty children and if he helps one then he must then help them all. So the White House vacillates between building redoubts and palisades and “Let them eat cake.”

The White House responds, "We gave you eight billion in stimulus funds last year. What did you do with it?”

“Are there no prisons... and the Union workhouses, are they still in operation?"

California represents 13% of the gross domestic product of the United States; it is far from wise to just say, “Beat it, Buddy.” The appropriation sponsored by Senator John Kerry for $6 billion in the form of aid to Pakistan to rebuild schools and homes moves through the Senate. The State Department recently doubled humanitarian aid to Yemen. Yemen is a country that shares a common border with Saudi Arabia, the wealthiest oil state on planet Earth, but somehow the Yemenis are our problem.

California is suffering through government-admitted unemployment levels of 12.3%, while the actual number might reach 20%, approaching depression era levels, and the Obama administration says, “Beat it, Buddy.” California is third in the nation for home foreclosures, behind Nevada and Florida, and threatens to lead the nation in commercial property foreclosures.

California is rapidly approaching the intersection of hard times and hard realities and the crash will affect us all. So it borders on the height of arrogance or the summit of incompetence for White House advisor David Axelrod to say, “We recognize they have enormous problems, but we can’t solve all of those problems from Washington.”

Harry Truman once said, “The White House was the finest prison in the world.” The current administration had better send out scouts from behind its walls and gates or it will find that its sentence has been significantly shortened. The President has a wonderful job. He can go on TV and propose lofty goals while he has the ability to send servants to the door to tell the beggars to “Beat it, Buddy!”

Meanwhile, back at the skull ranch, Congress continues hearings on the AIG bailout, which has reached $182 billion. They are questioning whether the Federal Reserve Bank of New York paid 100 cents on the dollar for securities that were trading for significantly less on the street.

“The New York Fed said it had to make the payments after banks refused to accept so-called haircuts, according to a November audit from Neil Barofsky, the special inspector of the U.S. Troubled Asset Relief Program.”

Strange days, indeed, when the slide looks up through the microscope and into the eyeball of the scientist. Oh, no! We won’t accept that, you must rescue us on our own terms! The banks seeking rescue tell the Federal Reserve on what terms they will accept a bailout, but a sovereign state of the union is told to hit the bricks.

“The bank is something more than men, I tell you. It's the monster. Men made it, but they can't control it.” (John Steinbeck)

Thirty seven million citizens of California don’t hold the sway with Washington of a half a dozen banks in New York. This is the crux of the matter and defines our times. We cannot save ourselves by rescuing investment banks. We must save our people and thereby save the banks, or in the long run the banks will all go to hell anyway.

It's a grand Katrinaesque scenario where an entire state is told to bugger off by the federal government. California has already made cuts in education and social programs; there is no fat left to trim. State workers have already been asked to work fewer hours for less pay with a heavier workload. Without federal assistance the next round of cuts will mean more people will become homeless and others will die. It is an economic hurricane and a national disgrace.

Imagine yourself the Governor of California, having to make such terrible decisions on what necessary programs for the weakest, the sickest and the elderly will need to be cut. Then look over the horizon at Senator Ben Nelson’s sweetheart Medicaid deal with the federal government picking up the tab for 100% of Nebraska’s Medicaid bill. Of the deal Schwarzenegger said, "Nebraska got the corn and we got the husk.”

California’s bond rating has been cut and now cut again until the credit rating for the state of California is now two steps lower than Greece, the poorest member of the European Union. It means the state must pay a higher interest rates to the banks that were bailed out by the federal government, which told California to take a hike when it asked for federal assistance. If that’s not privatization I don’t know what is.

Does the White House suppose that this can go on and continue to be ignored? Can they spin the financial collapse of the most populous state in the union with an economy larger than Russia’s? It boggles the mind because California is but the tip of the iceberg. Right behind it lies New York and New Jersey, Florida, Pennsylvania and Illinois. Can they continue to close their eyes and wish them all away?

We are a union, or we are not.

“It ain't that big. The whole United States ain't that big. It ain't that big. It ain't big enough. There ain't room enough for you an' me, for your kind an' my kind, for rich and poor together all in one country, for thieves and honest men. For hunger and fat.” (John Steinbeck)