Popeye Politics

---

"That's all I can stands, cuz I can't stands n'more!"

Popeye the Sailor Man

---

Nearly a year ago, on the day that Barack Obama was sworn in as president, I got phone calls from some friends, e–mails from some others, who expected me to gloat with them over the fact that a Democrat was about to take the oath of office.

These friends, you see, knew that I have been a Democrat all my life. My mother was a Democrat. My father is a Democrat. It's how I was brought up.

I guess I disappointed my friends, though. I insisted that the new president and the Democrats' super majorities in the House and Senate needed to devote all their time and energy to addressing unemployment.

Initially, I guess, that was motivated by selfish reasons. I was out of work then, as I still am today, and I wanted my life back. But as the months have gone by and the jobless numbers have continued to increase, my concerns have expanded beyond my immediate needs, and I have been increasingly alarmed at the plight of millions of my countrymen.

Through it all, I have continued to tell people that unemployment needed to be brought under control. And my friends — those who still have their jobs, that is — have pooh–poohed me. Unemployment always lags in a recovery, they told me. The voters understand this, they said, and they won't turn their backs on the Democrats.

But, just to make sure, they never missed an opportunity to remind people who was president when the economic meltdown occurred. And, whenever anyone criticized Obama for not doing enough, they played the race card. I guess they figured that, between blaming/bashing George W. Bush (and, trust me, I'm not letting him off the hook, but he hasn't been in office for nearly a year now) and racial guilt trips, they insulated themselves from criticism.

Well, here we are, a year later. The economy isn't bleeding jobs at the rate of six figures a month anymore — but it's still losing jobs, with the exception of a measly 4,000 that were added in November. Twice as many people are out of work as was the case last January. The unemployment rate has been stuck at 10% for three straight months.

And my Democrat friends aren't telling me about the "inevitability" of Democratic control of the government anymore. I suppose that, secretly, they're just hoping the party can avoid a repeat of 1994.

Good luck.

This weekend, I read an article in The Nation that called unemployment a "political time bomb." In it, author John Nichols neatly summarizes the disconnect between elected leaders and the people.

---

"The 2010 cycle promises to be one of the most volatile political moments since the economically–driven realigning elections of 1958 (which confirmed long–term Democratic control of the Congress) and 1980 (which saw the Republicans reassert themselves under the leadership of Ronald Reagan).

"As in those previous years, political leaders are worried about serious domestic– and foreign–policy concerns.

"But the voters are worried about jobs and the economy."

---

I don't want to give away all of the details of Nichols' article. I encourage you to read it for yourself. Then pass it along to your congressman and your senators, especially if they are Democrats.

If you — or they — pay attention to nothing else, pay attention to Nichols' last paragraph.

---

"If the president or congressional allies think health care reforms that for the most part won't kick in for half a decade or mimicking George Bush's tough–on–terror blathering is going to make voters forget the fact that one in ten of them are jobless or that one in seven of them are in dire employment straits, then the Democrats are in for the rudest of all political awakenings."

---

Just a couple of additional points here.

First, if you are inclined to label The Nation racist, you are mistaken. Possibly delusional. It was founded at the dawn of Reconstruction by abolitionists who supported the North in the Civil War. Nearly 145 years later, it is still affiliated with liberalism and progressive causes. Among its many notable contributors over the years have been Martin Luther King Jr., Franklin D. Roosevelt, Tom Hayden, Hunter Thompson, H.L. Mencken, Ralph Nader, Langston Hughes, James Baldwin, George Orwell, Robert Frost and John Steinbeck.

Second, like Popeye, I have had all I can stand and I can't stand no more. After a lifetime of supporting Democrats and considering myself a Democrat, I have concluded that the politicians of neither party really care about the citizens of this country until they need our votes.

I'd like to think that what is sure to happen to the Democrats in November will be the wakeup call they need. But I know it won't be.

Some people will tell me I haven't given Obama and the Democrat Congress enough time. I disagree. I feel I have been generous and patient. Please, don't talk to me about "blame" anymore, OK? We can settle that later. It doesn't really matter to me who started this. I'm tired of asking the people who were elected to do something about it to tell me what is being done — and then being lectured about racism and blame.

So I now consider myself to be an independent. I'm really going to need to believe a politician is committed to my best interests — or that politician will not get my vote.

Sorry, Mom.

The View From the Summit

---

This is the video that opened the jobs summit.

---

They held the White House' jobs summit today. Unless some sort of specific policy initiative comes from it, it was one big photo opp.

Nevertheless, it's odd how joblessness is suddenly getting all this attention. And everybody has an idea what should be done — or what shouldn't be done.

In TIME, Michael Scherer calls the jobs summit a "show" that Barack Obama has presented before. "They are all," he writes, "to put it bluntly, somewhat painful exercises — long, monotone and repetitive."

Before the summit began, David Malpass wrote, in Forbes, that "[t]he answer [to creating jobs] lies in small businesses that take advantage of freedom, a sound currency and low tax rates. Anytime those three things are available, they hire like crazy."

Malpass added that job creation is thwarted by "a weakening dollar and the threat of high tax rates."

Tami Luhby of CNNMoney.com writes that the summit brought together "130 executives, economists, small business owners and nonprofit officials," who discussed a number of important issues. But Luhby touches on a point that has bothered me — Washington's limitations.

"The administration and Congress are tied up with health care reform and foreign policy issues," Luhby writes. "And their ability to institute new programs will be hampered by the nation's record budget deficit."

Federal spending will get even tighter when additional troops are deployed to Afghanistan on their high–risk, low–reward mission.

If the Democrats are going to enact anything, it is my guess they will have to do it on their own. Republicans, as Luhby points out, have used the unemployment rate as evidence that the president's economic policies have failed. Democrats can expect few, if any, Republicans to side with them.

Katrina vanden Heuvel urges, in The Nation, the enactment of "a bold jobs bill." Good idea. Wish someone had thought of it about 10 or 11 months ago.

Let's see what the jobs report says tomorrow.

Penny Wise and Pound Foolish

As John Nichols observes in The Nation, Republicans resisted including $900 million for pandemic preparedness in the economic stimulus package earlier this year.

As the outbreak of swine flu shows, that resistance was foolish.

Maine Sen. Susan Collins spearheaded the opposition in Congress, following the lead of former White House political czar Karl Rove — ostensibly to save money but chiefly for partisan political reasons.

There was no connection, they argued, between economic recovery and pandemic preparedness. Rove even argued that the health sector added jobs in 2008, which (he claimed) made stimulus funding even less necessary.

Oh, really?

Collins was one of three Senate Republicans who voted for the watered–down version of the stimulus package in spite of threats from members of her party to oppose any Republican who supported it. It bewildered me then — and it bewilders me now — why Collins should be sensitive to such threats. She was just re–elected last November and won't have to face the voters again until 2014.

Besides, Maine is no longer the Republican stronghold it once was. Working with Democrats makes sense for a moderate Republican like Collins.

In the wake of reports of an outbreak of deadly swine flu south of the border — and further reports of cases in the United States — efforts to cut the stimulus package by eliminating pandemic preparedness funds seem to be a clear case of being penny wise and pound foolish.

The swine flu outbreak may be something that can be contained, but Nichols quotes one person who is skeptical about that:

---

Dr. Anne Schuchat, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's interim deputy director for Science and Public Health Program, explained to reporters on Saturday that, because the cases that have been discovered so far are so widely spread (in California, Kansas, New York, Ohio and Texas), the outbreak is already "beyond containment."

---

Nichols rightly points out that "a pandemic hitting in the midst of an economic downturn could turn a recession into something far worse — with workers ordered to remain in their homes, workplaces shuttered to avoid the spread of disease, transportation systems grinding to a halt and demand for emergency services and public health interventions skyrocketing."

To me, this is a reminder of how intertwined everything is — and how tenuous and fragile those connections are.

I know I'm using the word "foolish" a lot in this post, but, frankly, I can think of no better word to describe Republican efforts to save dollars by eliminating funds intended to save lives by preventing the spread of an epidemic — especially when we are not that far removed from the public hysteria brought on by outbreaks of SARS and avian flu in other parts of the world, not to mention concerns about viruses growing resistant to existing antibiotics.