Paranoid Republiphrenia

"The religious factions that are growing throughout our land are not using their religious clout with wisdom. They are trying to force government leaders into following their position 100 percent. If you disagree with these religious groups on a particular moral issue, they complain, they threaten you with a loss of money or votes or both." -- Barry Goldwater, 1981

Barry Goldwater, figurehead of the American New Conservative movement of the 80's and 90's warned us of the perils inherent in capitulating to the fervent faithful of the religious right. Today, the GOP is rent by deep internal divisions fueled by extremism. From the chaos of the 2010 mid-term surge of tea party candidates, many of them very very green at politics, to the ridiculously reactionary anti-gay legislation recently shot down in Kansas and Arizona, to an outright government shutdown last year, the Republican Party seems unnervingly disjointed and at odds within its ranks.

And the consequences have been dear.

Even Gov. Jan Brewer, widely regarded as aggressively conservative, not only vetoed her state's reactionary anti-gay legislation, but felt compelled to castigate her fellow Republicans in the Arizona legislature for putting such a poorly conceived bill on her desk. And not just poorly conceived, but outright unnecessary, even if one moves past the obvious discriminatory spirit. The wholly imaginary "war on religion" that the evangelical wing of the GOP insists exists reveals such legislators as not just hateful, but downright paranoid.

The U.S. Congress, largely as a result of Republican (read: tea party) stonewalling on budgetary negotiations, is seeing across-the-board approval rates under 20%. With a Democratic President whose own approval rating stands at 45%, and who has presided over the sourest US economy since the Great Depression, the GOP should be preparing for a mid-term election season ripe for widespread victory. Instead, going into the these elections, the GOP is saddled with explaining why their leadership has no control over the least experienced and most reactionary crop of Congressional freshmen the party has seen in decades. They are saddled with an image of Jim Crow-style pedantry at state level. They are burdened with the very public and near-constant gaffes from deeply ignorant evangelical candidates. This is entirely because of timid handling of religious extremists in their own ranks.

It will be interesting, as the primaries and fall elections play out, to see America's reaction to the GOP's schizophrenia over the last two election cycles. If the GOP has any hope of returning to efficacy, the pandering to the evangelical base must be balanced, or the Democrats will very much take advantage of the vacuum created by the estrangement of moderate conservatives and centrists who do not believe everything in the world must be responded to from a perspective of fear and imagined persecution.

Political Histrionic Disorder: Godwin's Law in Beltway Psychology

In a recent blog, the Daily Kos' staff writer Hunter highlights a disturbing trend in partisan politics, the argumentum ad hitlerum, or rush to compare all things that a given talking head or politico disagrees with to Hitler, Nazi policy, or any of an assortment of colourful World War II throwback phrases. In this particular case, Dan Webster (R-FL) compares the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau with the Gestapo for having the audacity to attempt to carry out its mandate to amass cohesive data sets about mortgage loans. Hunter has a point that in an economy that warrants a Wikipaedia page about a crisis, it may be a good idea to compile accurate data about who has loaned money to whom, for what, when, and how that loan payment is going. Unfortunately, current political shorthand for "that makes too damn much sense" seems to be "this is some nazi-ass sh*t!"

Let's be clear. Regulation of sub-prime lending by banks who recently got away with a slap on the wrist for very nearly collapsing the entire economy is not in the least akin to rounding up people and putting them in death camps. Not only is the insinuation belittling of actual human suffering at the hands of pure ideological evil, it is the most trivial and predictable logical fallacy of modern American political discourse. This knee-jerk political response even has an internet "law": Godwin's Law. Hunter is right to respond to this sort of thinking with a resounding "what?"

American politics these days are murky. We have no clear evil, anymore. In the past, American office seekers could draw a clear, concise picture of the decidedly evil other to whom to contrast themselves. Stalin. Marx. King George III, and the grandaddy of all that is wrong with government run amok: Adolf Hitler. In answer to Hunter's question of how politicians in modern US discourse get to the point of shouting "Hitler" and "Nazi" at everything they don't like, I say: laziness. Argumentum ad hitlerum, sadly, WORKS. Nothing sticks in the mind; nothing seems quite so comforting to the American political psyche as to draw allusion between the other guy and Hitler, history's consummate OTHER GUY. So, firing up the base by conjuring images of shiny black boots and ghetto raids is often far more useful in politics that one might hope. It certainly works better that trying to actually break down complex issues like sub-prime lending and assess--never mind accept--actual political responsibility.

Where I disagree with Hunter is in that he asks how politicians get to the point of aggrandizing simple, logical regulation to pogroms. What he should be wondering is how we continue to allow ourselves to elect those sorts of people. How are we, the voting public, allowing ourselves to get caught up in the laziest, most illogical forms of political propaganda? THEY WANT TO REGULATE HOW WE TRACK MONEY IN A SYSTEM THAT NEARLY DESTROYED THE VERY FABRIC OF THE NATIONAL AND GLOBAL ECONOMY?!?!!!!  THOSE NAZI BASTARDS!!!!  Hunter doesn't really take the chickens of outrage quite all the way back to roost. If we stopped giving the Chicken Littles of US politics a forum to holler about falling skies, we might be able to do something about things that actually matter, like unemployment and effective regulation of banks.

Have Degree, Will Work for Peanuts

In an editorial in USA Today, Theda Skocpol and Katherine Swartz analyze the potential effects of the Affordable Care Act upon the phenomenon of employees remaining with companies that provide healthcare coverage--simply for continuation of coverage--which they call "job lock." Projections by the Congressional Budget Office indicate a loss of two and a half million full time equivalent jobs as people move into retirement, out of the work force, or into reduced work hours as the ACA becomes fully implemented and frees people from work-tied insurers. The authors cite existing medical conditions, personally or of a family member, as a major reason people maintain employment in such jobs. This of course leads to people working in fields that are not ideal, working rather than taking time to care for children and loved ones, or avoiding retirement simply to maintain insurance coverage. Under the ACA, Americans now have the option of pursuing reduced time at work without fear of being unable to maintain their healthcare. As a person who has personally sought out jobs based at least in part on healthcare packages, it is easy to see the benefit in freeing up people to seek fulfilling employment or a more amicable balance between family and work obligations, but still being able to see a doctor.

However, there are of course downsides to the relationship between the ACA and corporate America. Skocpol and Swartz make a good point about the restraints upon established workers, particularly those in the demographics most likely to have both aging parents and young children, as well as older workers who are approaching retirement. They ignore, however, the workers freshly entering the workforce, who are facing the other edge of the sword that is the ACA. Young people coming into the workforce are seeing fewer and fewer full-time opportunities as profit-driven corporate America seeks to reduce insurance overhead at the lowest ranks of employment. In 2012 John Schnatter, CEO of Papa John's Pizza caught a lot of heat for his vow to reduce hours for his workers as a way of absorbing the cost of the ACA's mandate to insure those working over 33 hours a week. Fox News criticizes the ACA for pushing people into part-time work as companies work to keep costs down. While the freedom to work fewer hours may indeed be a major benefit to a stable, salaried family with children or elderly relatives to care for, the push to keep hourly employees below the threshold of full-time to mitigate insurance hassles at the corporate level leaves the young struggling to make ends meet at jobs where there is incredible pressure to avoid not just overtime but even achievement of regular hours in the 30+/week range. People working in the service industry are particularly vulnerable, being forced to work two or three part time jobs in order to maintain the same standard of living that they could previously have had with one 40hr/week job, even if it did not provide full coverage for healthcare. This is particularly galling when you consider the statistics of how much use younger people even get out of insurance. The fact is healthy, younger workers are far more often in need of income to pay rent than they are of insurance to cover treatment of illness. But with more and more jobs being made part-time or on-call, simply living month-to-month becomes more pressing than the idea that one might miss a physical.

While Skopcol and Swartz and USA Today paint a rosy picture of the suburban mom able to make more PTA meetings and soccer games, and the 60 year old with chronic illness no longer shackled to a desk for five more years to maintain healthcare, it ignores the shaft being given to new workers trying to establish themselves. In an economy where underemployed college graduates are moving back in with mom and dad  as it is, can we afford to give corporate America carte blanche to force a generation of workers to depend on income from the new proliferation of part-time, on-call jobs? What stability is to be built in a job market that has people not only juggling job and family, and possibly school, but job, and job, and job, and family and school? And that 63-year-old entrepreneur no longer forced to forgo his small business dream so he can have insurance coverage? He's gonna have a lot less capital to invest in his new small business, with two part-time employed, degree holding, 30-somethings to feed, at home.