Who's Minding the Mines

The tragic West Virginia mining accident (It's hard to call a thing an accident that could have easily been prevented.) that took the lives of 25 coal miners, landing two in the hospital, and stranding four* deep within the earth (those four with a slim chance of survival, even if a rescue team can reach them once the methane gas has been pumped out) is emblematic of our economy as a whole--a microcosm of what's wrong with our country, when the virtues of capitalism are taken to an absurd extreme.

Here are the findings on the mine disaster that were submitted to congress:

"Parts or all of the mine where at least 25 workers died were ordered closed 61 times in the past 15 months, according to information from the Mine Safety and Health Administration.

"The information was provided in a summary to several congressional lawmakers after the accident at the Upper Big Branch Mine in West Virginia. The summary has not been made public but was provided to NBC News.

"Despite what experts said is an alarming number of so-called withdrawal orders, a total of more than 100 since 2000, federal regulators never took stepped-up action to cite the mine for a "pattern of violations" even though the mine met the criteria."

As with the financial sector, oversight of the delinquent mine, the Upper Big Branch Mine in West Virginia--owned by Massey Energy Company--suffered as a result of regulators too cozy relationship with mine owners, and a governmental structure that favored the interest of mine owners over that of mine workers who risked their lives daily for a paycheck that put millions of dollars in the pockets of owners; and not to forget bankers, who turned to the government and taxpayers to bail them out when their financial woes threatened to bring down their greed-built empires; and, again, thanks to taxpayers who shouldered the risk, these bankers were able, over time, to hand out to themselves billions of dollars in bonuses.

Because taxpayers assumed some of the toxic assets of banks, but not all (a huge shift of risk), certain banks were allowed to remain solvent. Here, too, regulators failed, more eager to protect the interest of bankers, than the public, while the likes of Alan Greenspan (Chairman of the U.S. Federal Reserve Board of Governors, 1987-2006) enabled bankers to borrow federal reserve dollars at such low rates, that they tripped over themselves to loan and invest it--most of the time not too wisely.

But who cares, if the money is so cheap and you're "too big to fail."

With the nation's economy on life support, and many Americans having suffered an economic mortal wound--foreclosures on their homes, bankruptcy, maxed out on their credit cards, and credit scores lower than perhaps at anytime in their lives--it seems that it will take a miracle to resurrect the corpus delicti, if it comes to that.

In the same way as owners of this non-union mine, bankers used every trick at their disposal, especially large donations to politicians, for one, to dissuade legislation and ensuing regulations that would have compelled greater responsibility on behalf of bankers and miners, and would have provided targeted oversight from regulators with power to actually do something about abuse--something other than warnings and fines.

In the same way, bankers put profits above people, almost always a sure recipe for disaster: For those who work in mines, injury, and a possible loss of life, and for John and Jane Citizen, an economy on crutches, and a loss of wages as a limping economy sheds jobs faster than it creates them.

In the same way as the owners of this mine, bankers are unrepentant. Even now, both bankers and this reckless mining company are resisting reforms that would have assured the lives of these luckless mine workers, and the continued health of our economy.

These persistent economic conditions--regulators too chummy with those they should be regulating, a governmental structure that favors corporations over the working stiff, incessant bowing, and toadying, to those who create capital, and employ people, and a government that facilitates, and enables abuses, further strengthening the hand of corporations so that they may unconscionably elevate profits above the welfare of people, and do it with impunity--are the Holy Grail of capitalism.

I'm not opposed to capitalism, but I rather doubt if we have truly seen it in actual practice in this country. What we have is some chimerical version of it, a voracious beast made of many parts, not all of which may be easily identified, or easily niched.

Consider for example, derivatives: "Securities that derive their value from other financial instruments that are used by the insurance company to hedge its bets on which direction the market is moving."

What in the hell does that have to do with the creation of capital? Wealth? Tangible assets? Goods and resources?

Capitalism is to "free market" what greed is to unrestricted.


*I have learned, since writing this piece, that the four missing miners were found, but found dead. This brings the total of mine workers dead to 29. We'd have to go back to the year, 1970, to find a disaster of similar magnitude. I have also learned that has offered to pay for the burial of the mine workers. This should bring comfort to the families--and I'm certain that Massey will receive all the attention that's coming to it, for this most beneficent of acts.

Strange Days

A movie came out a few years back, starring Angela Bassett, as a member of this partly all-star cast, called Strange Days. No it's not the movie I wish to review here, nor to critique Angela Bassett's performance in this Science Fiction look into a future where technology is used to capture experiences for later viewing and reliving as though they were just happening.

It's the title that intrigues me.

We seem to be living in Strange Days, a departure from those saner days when we could pretty much predict with some certainty how people might behave.

During the last few days, I caught a little of CPAC, not because I'm a Republican, or even a conservative, but because it's good to know what the political parties of our nation are contemplating.

Now a days, politics is shaping not only our economy, but some of our social interactions.

Strange days, indeed.

Rush Limbaugh's speech before CPAC resembled a pep talk of a sort, receiving so many standing O's that the people were standing more than sitting, with the ovations more than rivaling Obama's first address before a Joint Session of congress.

Rush restated his unequivocal position, "I hope Obama fails," as a way to further defy opposition from the left, and from some members of his own party.

In an equally defiant tone, he gushed, "I hope liberalism fails. Liberalism is destroying the country."

That's going to be hard sell. But then gullibility thrives because too many of us prefer the laziness of ignorance over the industry of knowledge.

You don't need that much of a fact check to learn that Republicans not only controlled both Houses of Congress for six years, but own the presidency for eight.

It wasn't liberalism that was in charge during that time, but conservatism, and it was this conservatism, this laissez-faire approach to the economy (few or no regulations in the financial sector of the economy), that led to our economic meltdown.

We're told: "Greed is good for the country. Capitalism flourishes under Greed."

Perhaps, but unregulated greed has only led to disaster for most, and has plunged the world's economy into a "black hole," one that is sucking up the light of opportunity, and the world's financial stability.

Strange days, I tell you!

Limbaugh called for a taking back of the country, "We can take back our country," he insisted, with a hubris that suggested that it belonged exclusively to Republicans, and we must do it because of our love of country.

(Of course, only Republicans love their country.)

Liberalism was equated with "socialism," that insufferable evil and anathema to capitalism, despite the recent foray into it with the TARP funds, and years and years of flirtation with it in our economy through subsidies of one sort or another.

Most Republicans believe that the party failed, not because it failed to articulate its advantage over its opponent's, not because it has become irrelevant to a growing number of Americans, not because it has been unwilling to distance itself from the failed policies of the Bush years (we're seeing some of that now), but because Republicans strayed from their center, their core values.

And if the party succeeds it will be because of its willingness to reconnect with those values. They believe that in a showdown, liberalism fails. When conservatism is compared with liberalism, the differences of the two will be blatantly obvious, and the superiority of conservatism over liberalism will be self-evident.

In that case, why all the urgency to supplant conservatism with liberalism. If liberalism is the self-evident evil that conservatives insist that it is, then, why do anything?

Liberalism will die of its own accord. And Republicans can be the vultures to pick away at the little flesh that's left on our economic bones.

Yet, this is not what Rush and company want: They want to destroy liberalism, to take back the country, to save the country from this liberal evil.

Republicans tell us that they can't allow liberalism under Obama to succeed. If it is allowed to succeed, the country, as we know it, is doomed. The statement, in and of itself, is contradictory. Liberalism, according to Republicans, can't succeed, since it carries within it the seed of its own destruction.

So what is it that Republicans and conservatives are afraid of? They're afraid of this: They're afraid that if Obama is allowed to succeed, then that success will spell the end of the Republican party as it is now constituted, and will signal their eventual demise, as it will be all but assured.

If Obama succeeds, they fail. It's as simple as that.

So the party has to root for the home team, rather than for the league, the league being the country.

Better the country goes down along with liberalism than allow it to stand strong under it.

Strange days, to be sure!

And what is the Republicans' prescription for fixing the economy? It is their "core values," of course, those values that we hear so much about these day, those principles that should govern the actions of every Republican, those "core conservative values" that will clearly, once and for all, show the country, and indeed the world, just how evil, and destructive (of human happiness, success, and enterprise) that liberalism is to the economic, social, and political landscape.

Some conservatives identify so much with what they call their "core values," that I don't think that they can survive without them. Those values are linked indelibly to their self-image, and their self-worth, and is the cornerstone of all things holy and righteous for them.

This self-identification is intractable, it can't be compromised, can't be modified without damaging a holy allegiance, or a Mount Sinai handing down of godly commandments filled with Thy Shalt Nots.

Here are the conclusions I've reached: Republicans and conservatives cannot allow, will not allow, Obama and liberalism to succeed, because it will steer the country further and further away from those core, conservative values that are quickly becoming the party's new/old identity, and prescription for saving the country from itself.

They see their mission as a holy, and just one, because we Americans just don't know what we're doing by our flirtation with "socialism," and the supposed direction that the liberals are taken us--perhaps Marxism, or outright communism.

And they point to the class warfare that Obama is fomenting between the haves and the have-nots, the rich, the middle class, and the poor, by taxing those who earn more than $250,000 more severely than those making less than that amount (not taking into account that it's merely reversing "top-down economics" with "bottom-up economics" that has favored the rich at the expense of the "working poor," and not taking into account that the gap between the two are still growing exponentially), as proof of their claim.

Robert Reich's Blog discusses these two models on his blog, not to say that those making $250,000 are being punished for their success, and are in the same boat as corporations, but that the models underscore a difference in the tax direction that's been prevalent for many years in our flagging economy, along with all its assumptions that rich corporations and individuals will take care of those who work for them, as long as corporations and individuals are doing well financially.

I said earlier: These are strange days. And I can only imagine just how strange they must seem to some Republicans and conservatives who are now seeing their "core conservative values" under attack by the liberal party in power who're pushing a so-called liberal agenda.

And if Republicans have any hope of seeing more days to their liking, and of their making, they have to hope that the country fails under both liberalism and the Obama administration--fails economically, politically, and perhaps socially (there's a great deal of talk about overthrowing the government these days). And Republicans have already signalled, with their unwillingness to sign on to the Economic Recovery Bill, that their party will do whatever it has to, to assure that.

I don't think it gets any stranger than that!

Stimulate This!

Years ago I worked for a company that had us pad our equipment and supply budget requests, because it was general knowledge that company heads would trim some items in the final request.

We would identify requested items numerically: those that were essential got a one, and those that were less essential, a three, four or five.

And it worked: we got most of the ones and many of the twos and threes, but rarely the fours and fives.

I can't say that this is what is happening on Capitol Hill with the Stimulus Bill, since I'm not that familiar with the Hill's culture, and only a little with the inner workings of how a bill becomes a law.

But, a little of that could be taking place: Put some extraneous crap in the bill to give the opposition something to cut, and to wrangle over, so that you get your ones, twos, and threes through without excessive wrangling from the opposition.

And although the bill was apparently cobbled together on the left, without input from the right, it wasn't long before the right began to whine about being left out of the process, accusing President Obama of neglecting his campaign pledge to bring a bipartisan tone to the Hill.

A cocktail, and a Super Bowl party later, and several Republican-demanded cuts, the Stimulus Bill received one Republican vote, no, strike that, no Republican votes. Notwithstanding the cuts, Republicans were still unhappy with the bill.

And in the Senate, Republicans revolted, insisting that the bill should be revamped to include nothing but tax cuts, and no Federal spending. I think that about 36 Senate Republicans said that they could vote for such a bill, despite information that warned that Americans hoarded some of the previous tax rebates designed to stimulate the economy.

This is how I see it: Republicans will not support this bill unless it's their bill, one geared more to tax cuts than Federal spending. And they're willing to take a partisan stand--rather than negotiate a compromise--to make that happen.

Democrats in both houses are struggling, it seems, to keep alive their vision of what the bill should be. Rather than work in a bi-partisan way, Republicans are attempting to wrest this bill from the Democrats, while insisting that President Obama and his party are the ones who're not behaving in a bi-partisan fashion.

A common Republican tactic: To deflect blame, blame the other side of doing what you're doing:

Spread the wealth among the wealthy, and call Democrats socialists. Take entrenched partisan positions, and insist that Democrats are partisan. Help create a recession, and call it Obama's Recession. Fail to uphold the Constitution, and call President Obama soft on terrorists and terrorism, for upholding the Constitution.

Everyone knows that the economy is in an abysmal mess, and falling fast. Consider the following:

1. 1.8 million jobs lost in the last three months.
2. Unemployment rate at its highest in 16 years.
3. Worst loses in 36 years.
4. Unemployment rate at 7.6 %
5. January--the largest one-month job loss since 1974.

We can do what I heard radio personality say: "We should let the banks, and the financial system fail and let economic forces dig us out our recessionary hole." But he forgot one glaring reality--it wasn't the economy that failed, it was the failure of some in the financial sector to control their greed that failed us.

Sure, we could do nothing. Just wait out the storm. And it's possible that no matter what we do, the economy may take most of this century to recover, especially if the economy collapses into a depression.

What's needed is someone who really knows the economy, and what is going on with it now, to give us solutions for a firm recovery. I'm just not sure if that person is out there, or even if he or she is being listened to.

What I do know: I don't trust those who have only recently decided to return to their fiscal conservatism after a 9-trillion-dollar hiatus. Our economic problems didn't just happen. They've been in the making for a long time, overlapping several party-controlled two-house majorities.

Where were these conservatives when President Bush proposed the first bail-out, strike that, financial rescue bill, that was weighed down with about 100 billion dollars of pork to fry up bacon to give certain congresspersons a whiff of what they could have if they supported the bill.

Now that President Obama is in the White House, the same Republicans have found their fiscal conservative conscience, and have changed their name from the Grand Old Party to the Grand Obstructionist Party.

Mind you, I don't oppose so-called Conservative Principles, just hypocrisy, no matter who's cooking it up.

We still don't have a stimulus bill, but the latest: a compromise has been struck with a few moderates on both sides of the aisle to filibuster-proof a passage of the bill.

And if you think that lobbyists are not "crawling all over this bill," think again. It's the ideal bill to get pet projects through . The bill is so big that it makes it easier for some pork to slip pass the watchful, fiscal eyes of the truest fiscal conservative.

It may take awhile to learn whether the bill is big enough to jump-start the economy. During that time, we need to get our own fiscal house in order, and, for some, that might mean renegotiating some of their bills, and sitting down with the family to decide where cuts and sacrifices can be made, and monies saved.