So, I wrote the Washington
Post, again. Something like Letter to the Editor number lebenty-leben, I’m
guessing. They didn’t get around to publishing it (quelle surprise!), but here
it is:
Editor,
“Obama did not lead a U.S. retreat from the world,” Jackson Diehl
writes in “Foreign policy red flags “(Post,
Nov. 12). “Instead he sought to pursue the same interests without the same
means.”
Obama has withdrawn ground troops from war zones, cut the
defense budget, and backed away from nation-building projects and from U.S.-led
interventions, Diehl tells us. That sounds to me like a decision to pursue distinctly
different interests around the world and, more specifically, to make it clear
that the U.S. will no longer police the world to secure all the advantages that
once accrued under Pax America.
If my understanding is correct it might mean that U.S.
corporations can no longer invest and operate globally backed by the threat of
force. If my understanding is correct it might also mean that groups with
historic grievances against the U.S. (real or imagined) will unfortunately have
more space and freedom to plot anti-American violence. Indeed, that might make
Americans a bit more vulnerable, a risk that we will have to figure out how to
manage and reduce by other means. But if we can do this through a “lighter
footprint” globally, we might become one of the principal architects of a more
peaceful world.
Or is Diehl suggesting that a heavier footprint might get
better results? Are we talking, say, the Bush footprint, which resulted in
upwards of one million Iraqis and Afghanis dead or displaced, thousands of
American fatalities, and a military budget that roughly doubled from the first
Bush-year to the last? Is that the footprint Diehl is recommending?
Jeff Epton
That’s the letter, but there’s more to say, of course.
Obama’s “lighter footprint” still includes drone attacks, Guantanamo and
anything but a get-tough-with-Israel element, but at this time in history, and
after almost 50 years of disappointment with American foreign policy, I’m more
than willing to settle for half a loaf.
And, speaking of compromise, disgruntled leftist though I
may be, I’m ready for more of it. If Barack Obama wants to trim a little around
the edges of programs I support, including Medicare, in exchange for Republican
votes for higher taxes on the wealthy, other revenue increases of various
kinds, closing tax code loopholes or ending subsidies that supplement the
profits of oil companies and hedge funds and other corporate actors, and
continuing reductions in the military budget, I’m ready to sign on.
Some of those cuts likely will harm individuals and
communities that need more, not less, government assistance or protection. But
without Republican support for revenue increases the country will continue to
be pummeled by the effects of political gridlock.
Of course, there are lots of possible compromises that will
provide no long-term benefit. Any worthwhile deal with Republicans in Congress
must be part of a strategic assessment that suggests that the Republicans who
do compromise will be willing to do so more than once.
I don’t know what criteria to apply in reaching such a
conclusion, but I’m fairly certain that there are Republican senators and
representatives who believe that a deal of some sort would be better for the
country than falling off the fiscal cliff and also believe that Republicans who
continue on their present reactionary path might well be overwhelmed by an
approaching demographic tsunami.
There will be plenty of folks who wish to argue with this
approach. People who believe that compromise can easily convert to
betrayal. Robert Borosage lays out that perspective in persuasive detail in “A ‘grand bargain’ on the fiscal cliff could be a grand betrayal.”
Borosage’s main argument is that going over the fiscal cliff
will not immediately do the kind of damage that so many observers are
predicting. Further, he says, the nation does not have a debt or deficit
problem, but a jobs problem that needs to be addressed first. And, finally,
that there is plenty of time next year, after going over the cliff that is not
a cliff, to address the problems created by lapsed tax cuts and automatic
budget cuts.
But I’m not persuaded. I agree with the proposition that
getting more people back to work is more important than addressing the deficit.
But what Borosage and I believe is not going to compel action. The end of
the payroll tax cut is going to reduce household income for even the poorest
working families by a meaningful amount. That’s not going to get anybody back
to work. There are more layoffs coming, as well, as the fiscal cliff
approaches.
Sorry I am that compromise is necessary, but January will
not create a more flexible Congress or present new opportunities to pass
another sorely needed stimulus bill. Stimulus items like spending for
infrastructure, extending unemployment benefits, and preserving the payroll tax
cut are going to take compromise, now or later. Election victories
notwithstanding, coaxing the right number of Republicans to vote with Democrats
is going to take giving up something.
Though Jackson Diehl’s Nov. 12 piece left something to be
desired, two Post columnists wrote
rather more interesting columns that ran on Nov. 14. Dana Milbank’s “The Confederacyof Takers” points out in substantial detail how well most red states do feeding
at the public trough. “Red states receive, on average, far more from the
federal government in expenditures than they pay in taxes. It is the opposite
in blue states,” Milbank wrote.
Also, check out Harold Meyerson’s “The GOP’s gerrymandered advantages,” which points out that in Florida, Virginia, Ohio, Wisconsin and
Pennsylvania congressional races, Republicans won 30 more seats in the House of
Representatives than Democrats, despite the fact that Obama won the popular
vote in those states by margins that should have led to a 30-seat Democratic
advantage. That did not happen, Meyerson wrote, because Republican
gubernatorial and legislative control of those states after the 2010 census
permitted significant gerrymandering of House districts. “…by suppressing
competition, and crafting uncompetitive districts, [Republicans] maintained
their hold on the House last week.”
Obviously, it will
take a while before the full effects of the coming demographic change will
swamp intransigent Republicans. In some cases, it will take Democratic
victories in tight elections in state legislative districts over the next six
years before redistricting will permit Democrats to once more exercise all the
prerogatives of the majority party in Congress. But legislative victories for
working people and minorities should come a little easier in the future than
they have over the last four years.
In the meantime, we should all keep in mind that working
people in the red states are suffering, too. After all, capital and organized commercial
interests in the south, like weapons manufacturers, oil companies and
agribusiness, are siphoning off a huge share of the federal largess that heads
that way.
Ordinary folks in the red states are pretty much getting the
same shaft as working people elsewhere. They may even have been getting it
longer. The fact that they don’t seem to vote their own interests is a measure
of how long they’ve been exploited and of the absence of unions to organize and
message an alternative. While we are compromising, and strategizing our way to
future victories, we ought to figure out a way to talk plainly and supportively
to folks in the red states. They are Americans and they are our sisters and
brothers.
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