This is a book intended to help the average voter sort out the constant stream of misinformation and rhetoric emanating from political candidates, media, talking heads, and talk shows in order that they can formulate their own strategies about what's best for our country and intelligently exercise their most precious asset to support those who agree with their position, their vote. What is suggested here is nonpolitical in terms of party or ideology and does not argue whether any economic theory offers the correct solution. It is concerned with the economic condition of the country and what political policies best impact the economy, but does not support any party or radical group and the ideologies they promote to accomplish their solutions. Although a long-term member of the Republican Party, I claim no current party affiliation. This book offers methods of determining how political entities use tools designed to mask their true intent and gain the voters support. This is accomplished by identifying tactics used by parties, talking heads, and politicians to achieve their ends and by giving some basic economic training and review techniques to assist the voter in finding the factual information necessary to rebut the constant flow of rhetoric and fallacy with which they, the voter, are constantly bombarded. Conversations with friends, family, and business colleagues have convinced me that because we are continuously subjected to this rhetorical bombardment by all these groups, we are confused. This confusion was clearly demonstrated by the November 2010 elections where, as a nation, we voted for individuals running on policies that will most likely make our major problems of GDP growth, unemployment, and deficit spending much worse. The worst part is the Tea Party and others told us they were going to cut social benefit programs but wrapped it up in a rhetorical blanket of fear: "We're going bankrupt, but we'll s

POLITICAL ECONOMICS UNDERSTOOD

A Voter Understanding of Lies and Tricks of PoliticiansBy Thomas E. Bird

Trafford Publishing

Copyright © 2012 Thomas E. Bird. A.B.; MBA
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4669-2302-7

Contents

Preface.........................................................................viiChapter 1—Overview and Purpose............................................1Chapter 2—Obfuscation.....................................................6Chapter 3—The Political Economy...........................................20Chapter 4—Control.........................................................35Chapter 5—The Major Problem...............................................44Chapter 6—Budgets, Spending and the National Debt.........................52Chapter 7—Dealing With Ideology and Political Parties.....................68Chapter 8—Who Are We?.....................................................77Chapter 9—What are "They" really Saying?..................................86Chapter 10—The Purpose of Political Parties...............................94Chapter 11—Some Ideas on Candidates.......................................100Chapter 12—So Where Are We Now?...........................................108Chapter 13—What Do We Change?.............................................115Chapter 14—The Process of Change..........................................122Chapter 15—Into Action....................................................132

Chapter One

Overview and Purpose

My father and mother were typical hard working "blue collar" people marrying in 1926 and raising a family during the Great Depression. Although limited in schooling they had a deep appreciation for education and instilled it in their three children. My older sister, Betty, completed a college nursing program and became a Registered Nurse; I was the first university graduate in the family with both a BA and MBA followed by my younger brother, John, who completed the same basic education and earned similar degrees. All of us worked our way through college. As a result of my own experience I believe the tools to make sense out of our current problems are within the reach of all of us if we understand where these tools are located and how to use them.

My roots are working class and I know and understand the working family economics; the dedication to improving the lives of our children; and our tremendous patriotism and loyalty to our country. I have also worked as a senior manager in three Fortune 200 companies, as a CEO to two smaller firms and management consultant to over one thousand large and small businesses. I am fully conversant with business and economics and convinced the average working family is fully capable of making sound decisions given the truth. What we are experiencing today is deliberate obfuscation and distortion of that truth by individuals and parties with their own agendas and those agendas are not what is best for the United States.

What I am offering is a methodology to get past the misinformation to the truth supported by facts and history and will demonstrate some simple methods to show you how to separate the policies of left and right, find the solutions that will benefit our country and help us strengthen it. Only by doing this will we be able to pass this country of ours on to future generations as the land of opportunity and freedom for them as it has been for us.

I want to make clear at the outset I embrace no political party; I am concerned with the rhetorical "talking points" the leaders of all the parties consistently pound at us as the "right" course for our country even though these "talking points" are often nothing more than expressions of illogical thinking, prejudiced rhetoric, dishonest representation of the facts and attempts to re-write history to support their positions.

For more than forty years I was member of the Republican Party dutifully voting for most Republican candidates from Eisenhower in 1956 to Bush in 2000. I resigned from the party in 2001 when I saw what Bush was doing and the Party's absurd shift to the right that he was advocating. When I looked at the Democrats response to what was occurring I saw they were no different, except their shift was to the liberal left. Each group in its own way causes as many problems as it fixes and because each party has its own agenda that supersedes the peoples' business, we thus pay extra to conduct the people's business when it is conducted at all. The only reason congress was organized in the first place was to do the peoples' business and now, more often than not, what is done is either counter to the best interests of the people or nothing gets done at all. As a result we ordinary citizens pay a huge price because each Republican, Democratic or Libertarian political agenda has a large price tag for us as a nation. Alas, we must now, in 2012, buy into a long-term government created political-economic program to get out of this mess, or the hole if you prefer, in which we currently find ourselves. The congress and the last administration created most of it and now they offer the same old programs that got us in this mess as the vehicle to get us on the road to recovery and prosperity. If we choose programs and representatives incorrectly the hole will become so deep we will never be able to dig our way out. The price for that failure will be to lose the nation we love and end up with exactly what our founders tried to avoid.

The goal of these parties is political and economic control of our country in order to re-shape it into their respective versions of utopia, ignoring the fact that the world at large has already judged our country as the world's the most admired nation. If we listen carefully to the messages of the parties' leaders, interpreted by reference to unbiased facts, the liberal left version means more social programs like a National Healthcare plan; tough regulation of business; rebuilding America's infrastructure; green energy and tax reform aimed at redistributing wealth back to the middle class with elevation of the lower class poor through education and job training. The goal is more rapid growth and improved jobs for all economic groups; in other words to build a larger, stronger middle class and improve upward class mobility. The probable price is larger government, higher taxes on the rich and deficit spending for the next decade at least.

If we analyze the messages coming from the right wing conservatives they tell us they want much the opposite: low taxes for the wealthy to continue the shift of national wealth to the super rich, assuming it will "trickledown" and restart the economy and not simply increase business's and the super-rich's economic and political control. Additional goals are reduction of government through outsourcing and reduction of government services; outsourcing and reduction of Social Security and Medicare—so called "privatization"; and privatization of education and elimination of controls on business. The probable outcome of such policies will eventually result in a two class economy of rich and poor with few in the middle according to most economists. We may pay lower taxes but give up social programs and have slower growth as a result. Given the recent Supreme Court decisions the political/corporate complex will have all the money it needs to control federal elections not only of the President of the United States and Congress but of State Governors and State Legislatures as well. Elimination of class action lawsuits will reduce the power of the people to fight back and the super rich and corporations will control government programs and laws to support their agenda.

If your goal is the right wing, economic/political two tiered model above you can stop reading now. We are well on our way to achieving it. Given one more election like the 2010 debacle, we will be on a course that promises to be irreversible. I am not suggesting you vote by party nor am I suggesting spending cuts are bad, but I am suggesting we vote only for programs that support our goals and only for candidates that fully support those programs. Understanding what each party and each candidate offers as policy and where he/she stands on specific issues and their impact is the goal of this book. This understanding of intent and content of legislation and political leaders will allow us to make good choices and find the best course for our country. I further suggest that only by learning the simple methods of separating fact from prejudicial rhetoric and misinformation will you be able to fully evaluate the policies of candidates and exactly what they will do regarding the issues at hand; and most importantly, what those actions will do to our country and our economics depending on how they are decided. If informed decision making is your goal then read on!

Chapter Two

Obfuscation

to confuse, bewilder, or stupefy. to make obscure or unclear: to obfuscate a problem with extraneous information.

Webster's dictionary.

Ignoring the question

Whenever I watch the Sunday morning talk shows I am reminded of the Broadway Toni Award winning musical "Best Little Whorehouse in Texas". In it, one number portrays the governor of Texas being interviewed by the media cleverly not answering questions by dancing around and offering unintelligible responses that are totally off-topic It is appropriately titled "A Little Sidestep" and it was immensely entertaining in the show; however, it is immensely irritating when real politicians are asked important questions about our government, our economic and political problems and their various political positions and beliefs and they do a "little sidestep".

A case in point was the appearance of Congresswoman Michelle Bachmann on "Meet the Press" in early March of 2011. Ms. Bachman was asked several questions by the host, David Gregory, ranging from her intent to take a hard line on the budget before congress by voting against the Federal debt ceiling and possibly shut down the government to her aspirations to be president of the United States. On each occasion she responded with her OWN agenda statement, "Obama stole $105 billion from the people of the United States". Not only did she not address the questions of Mr. Gregory, she offered no factual support for her statement other than "he snuck it through on the `Obama Care' bill". Although she obviously felt her answers were proper for one in her position, those individuals who do not agree with her would say she was guilty of deliberate obfuscation of Mr. Gregory's attempts to get to the truth of the various matters he raised. Ms Bachmann "sidestepped" his questions by use of the red herring fallacy of casting unsubstantiated aspersions on Mr. Obama. Whether one supports Ms. Bachmann or not it is quite clear she used some well known fallacies and rhetoric to avoid the truth and, in doing so, deprived all Americans of information necessary or at least helpful to understand those areas of concern; and, she replaced valid arguments with invalid arguments based on misinformation.

So how do we deal with situations like this? How do we get to the truth and how do we determine the importance of any given situation? Let's look at how we might react if we did NOT listen carefully and then look again as if we did listen carefully and apply some basic analytical tools.

If we are Bachmann, or Republican, supporters or even committed independents opposing "Obamacare" our reaction might be to believe her; after all she is a Congresswoman. Maybe the president had done something bad, perhaps illegal, and maybe he is even impeachable. If we were Obama, or Democrat, supporters we might react by believing that her statements are slanderous and made only to wantonly discredit the President. In each case our initial reaction is pre-programmed by our rhetorical political beliefs. We reach our position by jumping directly to our conclusion without benefit of really hearing what has been said and understanding what has transpired. Even if we reached the correct conclusion we would not know why, and we need to know why.

So let's pretend we did watch and listen carefully and look at it critically.

First, we need to know exactly what took place. In this case when Ms. Bachmann agreed to appear on "Meet the Press" it was ostensibly to openly and honestly discuss important political issues of the day. However, her behavior on the show when she was questioned clearly demonstrated she obviously had no intention of answering Mr. Gregory's questions, she had her own agenda and it included accusing President Obama of something. We know all that just from observing her behavior. When questions are not answered directly and fallacious statements, so called "talking points", are offered in response we can assume the respondent, Ms. Bachmann in this case, has another purpose in mind. Second, her response would be classified as a "Red Herring" fallacy, or a statement that has no relation to the question but is made to take your attention elsewhere. In this case that the president has done something illegal. Third, the statement that "Obama stole $105 billion from the American people" is at best a weak argument with a premise based on opinion not fact. There is no supporting valid third party reference and as such it is classified as rhetoric, in this case as "prejudiced" rhetoric. In other words, Congressman Bachmann is saying she wants us to accept and agree with what she says, even though it is without factual support. She expects us to agree with her because SHE said it. In HER perfect world perhaps we would do that, but today's real world of politics is far from perfect and certainly statements such as Ms. Bachmann's are not to be accepted without careful consideration of the facts of the matter.

So where are we? We have reviewed Ms. Bachmann's responses, concluded she did not address the questions for reasons that we believe fit her personal agenda and then she attempted to focus our attention on an allegation she made against the president that was unsupported by facts. The next logical step is to investigate the reasons she may have had for her actions. What information is either generally available in the reliable media or verified by competent, unbiased sources that would help us understand her logic. When we check with the Congressional Budget Office we see the funds Ms. Bachmann says are stolen are in fact monies previously approved in the 2010 Health Care reform bill passed by congress after over one year of debate. The $105 billion in question is the amount to be appropriated in 2011 and does not reflect any other budget reductions made in areas covered by the new law. It is clear that there was no sneaking and no theft and this is factually true. In fact the CBO concluded the healthcare law will save $200 billion over the first 10 years after implementation.

Let's return to her statement regarding the $105 billion "theft" by Obama. What does she have to gain from such a statement? We know from major media coverage including video and direct quotes that she is a committed adversary of the Democratic Party in general and President Obama specifically. We know that congress had president Obama's 2011 proposed budget on the floor and was debating passage and we know that Ms. Bachmann is the self-appointed chairperson of the ultra-conservative Tea party caucus. We also know that she supports major cuts in President Obama's appropriations budget for 2011 and is dedicated to repealing "Obamacare". If we then review specific media, some biased for and some against the President we can consider their inputs using the same factual analysis and thus reach a conclusion regarding what Ms. Bachman said and did not say during her short interview. Using all these inputs we can establish several scenarios that explain her actions:

1. Her Tea party members expect her to vigorously attack President Obama's budget on the grounds it is out of control spending creating a government run Health Care system. This is also unsupported by facts. What is true is the law provides for mandatory coverage through insurance companies with some federal support for hardship. This is verified by reading the law.

2. She is exaggerating the situation in order to bias people and gain support for larger budget cuts and possibly for future career reasons. (i.e. she wants the presidency and announced her intentions a few weeks later.)

3. She truly believes her allegation is true

At this point all facts point to some combination of 1 and 2. Assuming she has a competent staff, and they and she are fully aware of the CBO report she should know her allegations are false.

So now we understand exactly what's going on behind the scenes and what the real issues are. We can now make a preliminary decision regarding Ms, Bachmann's agenda and whether we agree with it. But since the real issue is government spending and whether to reduce it we will need to know exactly what cuts are proposed and their impact before we agree to support her agenda. If any elected Congressman responds to specific questions with a "little sidestep" when questioned on these issues we will need to go through the same steps.

Acknowledging the Question

Obfuscation takes other forms as well. On Sunday March 20, 2011 Admiral Mike Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was interviewed by David "Gregory on Meet the Press" regarding the US role in the United Nations decision to establish a "No Fly" zone in Libya. As he responded to the primary question of exactly what was the mission he persistently downplayed the US leadership role, emphasizing over and over that it was a coalition whose sole purpose is to stop the killing of innocent non-combatants by Ghadafi' s Air Force. Each time Mr. Gregory attempted to gain a clearer perspective, Admiral Mullen answered directly but always included: it is a UN operation to save lives; it is a coalition including the Arab league; it is limited and not a war with Nation Building as an objective.

The positive thing is he answered questions directly. What makes us uncomfortable is his assignment or agenda, was obviously to convince the host and the American people of the administration's message the talking point: "No Fly" zone, is to save lives; it is a United Nations coalition including the Arab league; it is limited in its objectives and not a war with Nation building", pounds that message home.

(Continues...)

Excerpted from POLITICAL ECONOMICS UNDERSTOODby Thomas E. Bird Copyright © 2012 by Thomas E. Bird. A.B.; MBA. Excerpted by permission of Trafford Publishing. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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