If you were surprised by the Election 2012 results you really, really need to hear this, even if Rachel Maddow makes you skin crawl. America needs at least two political parties. The Republican Party cannot provide loyal opposition if, from top to bottom, they live in a bubble.

If you were surprised by President Obama’s comfortable win in Election 2012, you were caught in the right wing media bubble. The corporate owned “lame stream media”, it turns out, leans right. Also, they make money on eyeballs, so they wanted the race to sound a lot closer than it was.

Unbiased poll aggregators like Nate Silver at fivethrirtyeight.com had been predicting an Obama win for months, based on the polling numbers. Considering that FiveThirtyEight.com called 49 of 50 states correctly in 2008 and hit the mark again in 2010, Republicans should have taken Silver’s numbers more seriously. But Silver’s numbers didn’t fit with the fantasy that Republicans had constructed for themselves, so Silver’s math never penetrated the bubble.

Heck, even a math-challenged guy like me could comfortably predicted an Obama win as early as the middle of the Republican primaries, when it was clear that the Dittohead wing of the party would weed out all the sanity, leaving the GOP to run an empty shell of caricature of a candidate, the very personification of the coddled 1%er vulture capitalist.

So for the sake of the nation Republicans, please crawl out of the bubble, broaden your news sources. I read RedState and Drudge, David Frumm, David Brooks, Krauthammer – when I can stomach him – and other conservative media. If you need some recommendations on left-leaning news and opinion, I recommend Rachel Maddow (maddeningly correct more often than not), RawStory.com, Dean Baker’s BeatThePress blog, Paul Krugman, Ezra Klein, Bill Moyers, and Matt Taibi as some of the best.

Stewart, a man of magnanimous soul has pity on the poor disgraced Fox pundits, and graces them with a new and more appropriate slogan going forward:

FOX NEWS : Math You Do As A Republican To Make Yourself Feel Better

If you vote Republican in Election 2012, here’s the fundamental economic policy you can expect, and those trend lines you see below – the result of 30 years of “trickle-down” economics – are the results you should expect.

Many Republicans look at this graph and think, “Awesome!”
Even the few remaining “compassionate conservatives” not clinging to their dog-eared copies of Atlas Shrugged throw up their hands and say, “What can we do, it’s globalization? That’s just the way it is. Nothing we can do. We’ve gotta protect our job creators.”

[Folks, consumers with money in their pockets are the job creators. Entrepreneurs don't employ people for the fun of it, they hire in response to demand for their products and services. When too much of an economy's wealth and income is concentrated in the hands of a tiny elite, demand stagnates and the economy stagnates.]

Progressive Democrats look at this graph and think, “What can government do to make sure all income categories from poorest to richest are rising as we grow the economy?”

That’s the key difference between Democrats and Republicans: Democrats believe the government has a role in shaping an economy and a society that works for 100% of Americans at all income levels, and Republicans believe government’s only roles are national defense and promoting an economic environment that is friendly to business owners.

There are a thousand ways that American oligarchs have bought policy that funnels more and more of the country’s income and wealth into their bulging offshore bank accounts. We can debate about how to break the oligarchs’ grip on government and re-balance the distribution of income. We can debate about the most effective and efficient ways that government can help give every American a fair shot, real equal opportunity. Conservatives want to shut down that debate. The best thing – the only thing – government can do to help, Republicans say, is cut taxes on the owner class and get out of the way.

We’ve been trying that since the Reagan years, and you can see the results above.

Image Iranian spies had instigated and funded a successful coup against the President Eisenhower in 1953 and replaced him with a brutal dictator. Imagine more recently they invaded and occupied Canada and Mexico, and now have tens of thousands of troops, tanks, missiles and bombers near our south and north borders, and 2-3 carrier battle groups parked in striking distance and able to cut off our main trade routes in days.

I’m thinking we’d be concerned for our survival and would be working feverishly 24/7 to develop a weapon to defend ourselves (not necessarily attack) this military 10x our size that has shown a willingness to invade countries (Iraq) on thin pretense.

What a stupid, childish little tantrum. These young men at Occupy Oakland played right into the hands of Fox News and the rest of the establishment media, who are desperate to paint the Occupy movement as a bunch of commie anarchist hippies who hate American. You’ve handed them the perfect hideous image on a platter. Well done.

I respect the efforts of Occupy Oakland and others in the movement to get up in the grill of the corrupt self-serving establishment. I’m committed to non-violent resistance to our broken and rotting status quo. Many Occupiers have show great courage and restraint while confronting the foot soldiers of the plutocracy. This flag-burning, on the other hand, shows a stunning failure to grasp the optics and consequences of the act.

You’ve probably already seen a picture of a few guys gleefully lighting an American flag taken from Oakland City Hall during a January 30 action. So I’m not going to use that image here.

OWS born of love of America

I prefer the image I captured at Occupy Wall Street in October 2011, in which the abundance of American flags shows how the genesis of the Occupy movement grew from a love of America, driving an urgent need to fix it.

I’m no flag-waving chest-thumping my-country-right-or-wrong type of patriot. I think we’ve done a lot of things right in this country, but we also must address a host of problems, and we can learn from other countries that are doing some things better, like health care, education and more equitable distribution of the gains of the society.

I believe flag-burning, like book-burning, is a moronic, childish gesture that, nonetheless, should be protected as free speech. To me, burning an American flag represents a total rejection of the founding principles of the country. You don’t burn a flag show you’re pissed off that Wall Street swindlers are buying Congressmen by the dumpster load. You don’t burn a flag to protest the shameful profiteering in our college loan system. You don’t burn a flag to object that war profiteers dictate our diplomatic and military policy. You only burn a flag when you believe the core principals of the country are fatally flawed, and you reject the whole lot.

Unless you completely reject America at its best, burning our flag, my flag, is symbolically throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

I’m nowhere near there yet. I love this country, and I’m stepping up and stepping out to put power in the hands of the people. I believe our founding principles are wise and strong. We can break the corporate stranglehold on the political system. We can restore representative democracy. We can restructure our economic policies toward growth for 100%, not just 1-2%. Occupy Wall Street has built momentum in the right direction.

Let’s not break that momentum with childish, over-the-top tantrums that deeply offend many Americans with the wrong message. I believe this isolated incident was the work of some dimwitted and uninformed outliers. If I ever get the impression that the core of the Occupy movement has turned anti-American, you can count me out.

The King of America addresses his subjects at Occupy Congress #J17

Don’t panic, folks, the Occupy movement is fighting against crony capitalism, not main street capitalism.

[The Greenville Journal published my Op/Ed piece "Corruption Opposed, Not Success" (pdf here) in their January 20, 2012 edition. The Journal doesn't currently publish and online edition that I can link to, so I am posting the original text that I submitted here, along with a PDF of the printed version (which was edited slightly to fit the space).]

Occupiers Oppose Corruption, Not Success

 Don’t panic, folks, the Occupy movement is fighting against crony capitalism, not main street capitalism.

Through my work, I’ve had the opportunity to interact with several CEOs who fall into the top 1% income category. One such CEO read my recent account, published in the Journal (11/18/2012), of driving up to Occupy Wall Street and was eager to engage me in a discussion. My friend said he respected the initiative of the occupiers to take to the streets, and he agrees there is plenty of reason for outrage and protest in the wake of the financial crisis and recession.

What turns my CEO friend off to the occupiers is their message of 1% vs. 99%. He feels vilified simply because he falls into that income category, though he and many 1percenters like him are not guilty of any of the injustices or excesses that the occupiers are protesting. He feels criticized for his success. And maybe he’s seen one of those unfortunate “Eat The Rich” signs that pop up at some Occupy actions like tricorn hats at Tea Party rallies.

I have great respect for the successful business people I’ve had the pleasure of knowing. Without exception they are extremely hard working and dedicated. Many have taken great risks and sacrificed much to achieve their success. Many are positively engaged in the community. I’m a capitalist because I believe that the capitalist economic model (reasonably regulated) does the best job of encouraging and leveraging these good traits, not just in CEOs, but in everyone who wants a better life for themselves and their families.

So I didn’t join the Occupy movement to oppose free enterprise or people getting rich through smart, honest business, hard work or even risk taking – with their own money.

Nor am I looking for a handout – a charge I often hear tossed at occupiers. I do believe that we would be smart to invest in all Americans’ health and education, because heath and education are essential for productive people and lead to a number of long-run benefits, like lower crime rates and decreased future dependency on the state.

 I occupy the public square because Wall Street banks engineered a multi-trillion dollar swindle of American homeowners and taxpayers, yet not a single perpetrator of this massive fraud has gone to jail, and little has been done to prevent another fraud/bubble/bailout repeat.

I occupy because a moneyed elite have used their accumulated wealth (whether honestly or dishonestly gained) to buy political influence and rig the tax code, regulatory structure and trade policy in their favor. The result of this crony capitalist structure is that 1% have enjoyed mind-boggling after-tax gains, while 99% have struggled with stagnant or declining wealth and shrinking opportunity for our children. If we were to start a country from scratch, would we all agree to create a society where only 1-2% collect most of the gains of the whole country?

I occupy because America has devolved not only to two-tiered economy but also to a two-tiered justice system. Under the new American justice regime, a woman who lied about her criminal record to qualify for food assistance for her children (who committed no crime) got three years in federal prison (prison and foster care at taxpayer expense), while a CEO, whose bank committed $52 billion in mortgage and securities fraud, got a $28 billion bailout for his bank and $18 million bonus and $161 million retirement package for himself. Occupiers demand one justice for all.

We emerged from the horrors of the Great Depression and World War II as a live-and-help-thrive society. Since the enshrining of Reaganomics and “trickle down” theory, we have morphed both in rhetoric and policy into a live-and-let-die society. That’s not the kind of bleak Darwinian society I want for my children or myself.

I’m headed to Occupy Congress to add my small voice to a large and growing movement (not just Occupy, but groups from left, right and center) to drive money out of our political system. The profiteers of the status quo are blocking progress and solutions with a deluge of Super PAC money. Voting is important, but now that the Supreme Court has equated money with speech and corporations with people, voting is not enough – you’ve got to show up.

Jim Magruder

January 2012

Looking on the bright side, these historic low numbers are better than “our” representatives in Washington aught to expect, considering that 90+% of Americans have experienced a drop in income, net worth and future prospects on their watch.

I’m guessing that 4% that gave Congress a “good” performance rating believe the D.C. gridlock embraced by this Do-Nothing-Congress will provide the opening they need to steal, cheat, or bribe their way into the top 1%. That’s the New American Dream.

RBS Pirates photo by Bob Shields

Sorry, no. A little honesty is too much to ask of the banking industry these days. In fact, Occupy Edinburgh enforced truth in advertising over RBS in the wee hours of Christmas morning. Brilliant.

Dear President Obama,
Please veto NDAA and force Congress to send you a defense authorization bill that does NOT codify indefinite detention, kidnapping, and assassination of citizens or non-citizens.

This the the wrong way to go. America is better than this.

I would rather live with a little less (illusory) security than compromise the principles that America was founded on and the rule of law that is the fabric of our society.

We cannot defeat terrorism with assissinations (just an imperial form of terrorism). We must take the moral high ground.

NDAA makes a mockery of our Constitution and makes hypocrites of us all.

Please, VETO NDAA.

Thank you for your service, and Merry Christmas to you and your family. Sincerely,

Jim Magruder

You still have time to contact the White House (comment link) (phone:202-456-1111) and urge the President to veto the bill. President Obama has until December 26 to sign, not sign, or veto.

Merry Christmas!  -  Happy Hanukkah!  -  Joyous Kwanzaa!  -  Waggish Festivus!