Destroying America's Social Contract-- Will Paul Ryan's Dream Come True?

Ryan learned everything he knows about economics from an adolescent Ayn Rand book

It looks likely that Paul Ryan will announce his retirement from Congress close to Wisconsin’s June 1 filing deadline. There are rumors circulating that he’s selected Tom Hillman, his former aide and now an investment banker in Madison, as the sacrificial lamb. A last minute announcement will make sure that no other mainstream conservative candidates will have time to get into the primary between Hillman and neo-Nazi Paul Nehlen. Ryan is worried that if a bunch of mainstreamish candidates jump into the race, Nehlen could win. Ryan himself could be headed for Trump’s cabinet, possibly to HUD or the EPA. Or maybe he really does just want to stay home with his sons and teach them to master the bow and arrow before they leave for school.

Besides, Ryan is on the verge of accomplishing his longtime goal of rolling back the New Deal. Wrecking social insurance programs like Social Security, Medicare and the V.A. has always been his top priority. Now that he’s passed the first step-- tax cuts that will “bankrupt” the country, the second part of the plot is to pass a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution, something the House will deal with starting this week. Ryan and his cronies want to pass something that treats the U.S. government like a family budget-- mandating that Congress not spend more than it brings in.

Reactionary Virginia Judiciary Chair, who is also retiring, has written an amendment that would require three-fifths majorities in both the House and Senate to pass tax increases or increase the debt limit. The amendment can’t pass but the far right wants it as a purity test for Republican members. (It is also a purity test for Democrats. Any Republican who votes against it will be vulnerable to a primary from the right and any Democrat who votes for it will be vulnerable, at least in theory, to a primary from a progressive.

Goodlatte’s statement: "A constitutional amendment requiring a balanced budget would finally bring discipline to federal spending and would benefit generations to come. I have demonstrated my commitment to fiscal responsibility by introducing constitutional amendments to mandate a balanced budget every Congress since 2007… I commend the decision made by House leadership to bring H.J.Res. 2 to the floor for a vote. I challenge my colleagues in the House and Senate to do what is morally right and responsible by passing this amendment and sending it on to the states for ratification.”

Ro Khanna is the congressman from Silicon Valley. More than a view observers of Congress say he's the most progressive member of that body. Here's what he told us about Ryan yesterday: "Paul Ryan sought to operationalize the Ayn Rand and Hayek world view. Basically, his goal is the reconstruction of the administrative state. Democrats need a counter vision that affirms the role of the state in giving people a fair chance at the American Dream. We need to be for a jobs guarantee, a $15 minimum wage, debt free college, a massive expansion of the EITC, investments in tech jobs and apprenticeships. We won’t beat a conservative ideology with platitudes. Rather we need to build our platform based on the framework on Stiglitz and Kelton and Reich and stand for something bold!"

Randy Bryce, AKA, @IronStache, is the progressive Democrat who has turned Ryan's world upside down. He speaks plainly and gets to the point quickly, as he did yesterday: "Paul Ryan got to where he is today using the same programs he is going to take away from the rest of us. A perfect illustration of someone kicking the ladder once he gets to the top so no one else can raise themselves up."

Progressives understand the danger and are ready to stand firm against it. Sam Jammal is the progressive candidate running in CA-39, mostly located in northeast Orange County. "There are a lot of reasons why this is an important election," he told us. "One of the defining issues-- thanks to Paul Ryan and Trump's reckless tax reform-- is preserving Social Security and Medicare. Trump severely undermined our budget by creating a $1.5 trillion hole in our budget. Now, Ryan is going to use that to advocate for deep cuts. Democrats are going to need to stand firm and hold the line against cuts. Our seniors earned this, but Ryan just looks at things from an ideological perspective. What is even more dangerous is that Republicans are going to use the deficit to undermine every investment we have traditionally made to build our country. Democrats must be prepared to replace Trump's tax reform and fight for critical investments in education, infrastructure and health care. This is Ryan's last stand to dismantle our government."

UPDATE From Pavlina Tcherneva

"The political establishment has convinced the American public that a balanced budget is the fiscally responsible thing to do. Nothing can be further from the truth. Every dollar that the government taxes (i.e., takes away from US families and firms) and that is not returned back to the economy via government spending is a lost dollar to the economy. In other words, surpluses drain money from the private sector while deficits add dollars to it. Now Republicans understand this very well. The large tax cuts will produce deficits which will in turn fill someone's coffers, but they prefer to fill the coffers of the wealthiest families. Once they've done that, they demand that the budget be balanced on the backs of middle income families, by cutting programs and entitlements, that benefit the majority of households. It is perfectly sensible to demand greater government deficit spending. But the responsible thing to do is to demand that this kind of government spending is done for the public purpose and in a way that supports the incomes of the vast majority of families, not the select few."

The Collapsing Social Contract

by Gaius Publius

"[T]he super-rich are absconding with our wealth, and the plague of inequality continues to grow. An analysis of 2016 data found that the poorest five deciles of the world population own about $410 billion in total wealth. As of June 8, 2017, the world's richest five men owned over $400 billion in wealth. Thus, on average, each man owns nearly as much as 750 million people."
     —Paul Buchheit, Alternet

"Congressman Steve Scalise, Three Others Shot at Alexandria, Virginia, Baseball Field"
     —NBC News, June 14, 2017

"4 killed, including gunman, in shooting at UPS facility in San Francisco"
     —ABC7News, June 14, 2017

"Seriously? Another multiple shooting? So many guns. So many nut-bars. So many angry nut-bars with guns."
     —MarianneW via Twitter

"We live in a world where "multiple dead" in San Francisco shooting can't cut through the news of another shooting in the same day."
     —SamT via Twitter

"If the rich are determined to extract the last drop of blood, expect the victims to put up a fuss. And don't expect that fuss to be pretty. I'm not arguing for social war; I'm arguing for justice and peace."
     —Yours truly


When the social contract breaks from above, it breaks from below as well.

Until elites stand down and stop the brutal squeeze, expect more after painful more of this. It's what happens when societies come apart. Unless elites (of both parties) stop the push for "profit before people," policies that dominate the whole of the Neoliberal Era, there are only two outcomes for a nation on this track, each worse than the other. There are only two directions for an increasingly chaotic state to go, chaotic collapse or sufficiently militarized "order" to entirely suppress it.

As with the climate, I'm concerned about the short term for sure — the storm that kills this year, the hurricane that kills the next — but I'm also concerned about the longer term as well. If the beatings from "our betters" won't stop until our acceptance of their "serve the rich" policies improves, the beatings will never stop, and both sides will take up the cudgel.

Then where will we be?

America's Most Abundant Manufactured Product May Be Pain

I look out the window and see more and more homeless people, noticeably more than last year and the year before. And they're noticeably scruffier, less "kempt,"​ if that makes sense to you (it does if you live, as I do, in a community that includes a number of them as neighbors).

The squeeze hasn't let up, and those getting squeezed out of society have nowhere to drain to but down — physically, economically, emotionally. The Case-Deaton study speaks volumes to this point. The less fortunate economically are already dying of drugs and despair. If people are killing themselves in increasing numbers, isn't it just remotely maybe possible they'll also aim their anger out as well?

The pot isn't boiling yet — these shootings are random, individualized — but they seem to be piling on top of each other. A hard-boiling, over-flowing pot may not be far behind. That's concerning as well, much moreso than even the random horrid events we recoil at today.

Many More Ways Than One to Be a Denier

My comparison above to the climate problem was deliberate. It's not just the occasional storms we see that matter. It's also that, seen over time, those storms are increasing, marking a trend that matters even more. As with climate, the whole can indeed be greater than its parts. There's more than one way to be a denier of change.

These are not just metaphors. The cocuntry is already in a pre-revolutionary state; that's one huge reason people chose Trump over Clinton, and would have chosen Sanders over Trump. The Big Squeeze has to stop, or this will be just the beginning of a long and painful path. We're on a track that nations we have watched — tightly "ordered" states, highly chaotic ones — have trod already. While we look at them in pity, their example stares back at us.

Mes petits sous, mon petit cri de coeur.

GP
 

The Last Word on Baltimore: It's Up to the State to Stand Down

The world, as the very very rich are making it

by Gaius Publius

I've been listening for days and days about how bad are those bad people in Baltimore, breaking windows and such. And listening to the media give honoring hours and hours to the calls for peaceful protest.

And through my head runs the one message this intends — Violence belongs only to the State.

Here's the terrific writer Ta-Nehisi Coates with the last word on Baltimore:

Nonviolence as Compliance

Officials calling for calm can offer no rational justification for Gray's death, and so they appeal for order.

Rioting broke out on Monday in Baltimore—an angry response to the death of Freddie Gray, a death my native city seems powerless to explain. Gray did not die mysteriously in some back alley but in the custody of the city's publicly appointed guardians of order. And yet the mayor of that city and the commissioner of that city's police still have no idea what happened. ...

And then he writes this indictment:

When nonviolence is preached as an attempt to evade the repercussions of political brutality, it betrays itself. When nonviolence begins halfway through the war with the aggressor calling time out, it exposes itself as a ruse. When nonviolence is preached by the representatives of the state, while the state doles out heaps of violence to its citizens, it reveals itself to be a con. And none of this can mean that rioting or violence is "correct" or "wise," any more than a forest fire can be "correct" or "wise." Wisdom isn't the point tonight. Disrespect is. In this case, disrespect for the hollow law and failed order that so regularly disrespects the community. 

Consider just two of the first three sentences above:

When nonviolence begins halfway through the war with the aggressor calling time out, it exposes itself as a ruse.

When nonviolence is preached by the representatives of the state, while the state doles out heaps of violence to its citizens, it reveals itself to be a con.

Isn't it obvious that this is what's going on? That the violent State is calling "time out" when it starts getting its own back? And isn't it obvious that the media, almost all of it, is complicit in the "con" that Coates eloquently calls out?

When the Social Contract Breaks from Above, It Breaks from Below As Well

I've said this too many times, and I think I will be saying it until the whole thing comes apart. It's up to the rich to stand down. It's up to police to stand down. It's up to the predators to stop feeding on us, eating our money, our labor — and in the case of the torturers in our "security" community — our pain, which they give us to please themselves.

If the rich are determined to extract the last drop of blood (I'm looking at you, TPP, and your presidential enabler), expect the victims to put up a fuss. And don't expect that fuss to be pretty.

Response to the broken Social Contract isn't pretty, and it isn't race-specific

I'm not arguing for social war; I'm arguing for justice and peace.

But if our owners, the very very rich, and their enforcers the police, don't stand down, we may have neither. This outcome, if it comes, is one we will all regret. It took France 100 years to recover from this:



Do we have that long? Do they?

GP