Disaffection with Power

If there is a rising tide of political dissent, and even a spirit of insurrection, as the media and supporters of the Tea Party claim, it did not show up in this election. So what is going on? The answer: not much that is new but something different than they would have you believe.

The political disaffection seems to be a conservative thing. In fact, it seems to be centered among the hard-core conservatives and their disappointment with the Republican Party. After eight years of George Bush, and the Republican Party that supported him through it all, what honest conservative would not be disaffected?

The Democrats are showing no signs of such disaffection. They, in fact, seem undisturbed enough to stay home this election. And why should they be upset, they are the governing party and things are getting straightened out. When motivated, they were willing to turn to a solid liberal to defeat Sen. Arlen Specter, trying to run as a Democrat.

Among the signs of disaffection is the outpouring of Internet anger, frustration and pain from conservatives directed against our president. Millions of them refuse to accept Obama as our legitimate president. The “birthers” deny the plain evidence of his birth in Hawaii. The “oath takers” are ready to take up arms. Others are certain, against all evidence, that he is a Muslim.

This supposed level of disaffection is contradicted by his approval ratings. President Obama presently has approval ratings greater than 50 percent for the country as a whole. True, in some southern states it is around 40 percent but in places like California, Massachusetts and New York his approval rating is still 60 percent or higher.

Conservatives are fearful and angry and, for the first time in 150 years, they are taking to the streets to protest their grievances. Aside from the wacko groups that are crowding under the Tea Party umbrella, otherwise reasonable people are complaining about: the sharp rise in the national debt, the intrusion of the federal government into the economy and the burdensome level of taxation.


Those fears are not rational. The facts belie them. Independent economists agree that the national debt, even with the stimulus package, is not a serious threat to our economy. Medicare and Social Security can, with minor tweaking, be made whole. The debt to GDP ratio remains around 80 percent and well below the 125 percent it was in 1946 when no one worried about it. The truly staggering sums that were added to the debt in 2008 and 2009 were invested in catastrophe avoidance. We got a bargain.

In fact, the stimulus package and the bank bailouts prevented an economic collapse that would have cost us on average over $1.5 trillion in lost output in each of the next five years. Because the US Treasury and the Federal Reserve acted, recessionary losses were held to less than $500 billion. The bailout of our economy was and remains the right thing to do.

It is the same with government intrusion. Our economy was zealously deregulated starting in 1980 and continuing through 2008. That is the reason that BP didn't have to put a backup preventer in the Gulf oil well. It is why Massey Energy could get away with multiple violations of safety standards in its coal mines. And certainly it is why the financial sector was able to abuse our whole economy and bring it to crisis. It is the nature of public goods that they must be publicly protected.

Tea Partiers say that the TEA stands for “Taxed Enough Already.” It is hard to take these complaints seriously when taxes are at the lowest level in decades. The average federal income tax rate for all US taxpayers is 12.7 percent, lower than it have been in 50 years. The burden of all US taxes, 28 percent of income, is the lowest among industrial countries, with the single exception of Japan.

Times are tough and when people are losing their jobs, their homes and any hope for financial security they have a right to express their grievances. But the agenda that the conservatives are pushing will not help. This anti-government, anti-tax madness would reduce education, benefits and entitlement spending to pay for corporate and bank bailouts. It would deregulate so that corporations will not have to pay for “accidents.” And it would cut taxes so that we will have to install a regressive sales tax to pay our bills.

It took a great deal of time and Orwellian manipulation to get the average working citizen to accept that canceling the debts of the rich, endangering public safety and increasing their taxes was something they should agitate for.

Private power is the problem. It is not the solution.