The Mad Hatter's Tea Party

By James Preston Allen, Publisher

There is a simple underlying fact that seems to be missing in all of this talk about deficit spending––something that you can check out for yourselves without having to take my word for it––the federal budget has only been in balance or had a surplus 24 of the last 110 years. The last time the budget had a surplus was when President Bill Clinton was forced to make certain uncomfortable compromises with the Republican majority in Congress––although he began cutting the deficit before then. Otherwise the "great anti-government" Presidents like Reagan, Bush the elder and then his son "Scrub" Bush, as he was called by the great Texan columnist, Molly Ivans, all ran huge deficits and nary a word was spoken by the Republicrats about spending too much money. After all, war is good business. It’s only peace that doesn't make a profit! This is the paradox of our times, the military-industrial complex versus public education, universal health care and providing for the "general welfare." Humph… which to choose?

This does seem to be a recurring theme when the Republican's are in charge of Congress and there's a Democratic President. They scream for “fiscal conservatism,” tax cuts, balancing the budget and otherwise "crying wolf.” During the years of Republican presidents, they're all on board for spending on wars, huge government contracts and cutting social welfare. Of course privatizing Social Security would be a huge bonus for the capital class on Wall Street that would love to get its hands on our $2.6 trillion Social Security trust that is held in U.S. Treasury bonds. Which contrary to the Republican's myth will not run out of money for the next 30, and some say 75 years, depending on whose projections you consider. State pension funds, which have been invested in the stock market all took a hit from the Wall Street crash some losing as much a 30 percent of their investment value and are only now recovering as the Dow Jones jumps past 12,400. The problem this has created in Los Angeles, California, as well as Wisconsin, is that governments now have to pay supplemental contributions to these pension funds because of these market losses. So much for believing that the "free market" is going to save us from insolvency.

What we will discover with all of the Tea Party hysteria over deficits and the "crying wolf" of fiscal insolvency is that our governments both large and small are far from being near bankruptcy. Let's face it, this is a manufactured crisis that strikes directly at the heart of the working class and the social reforms that have been fought for and won over the last century by organized labor and progressive reformers of both parties. What is happening in Wisconsin, Ohio and Indiana is a political counter-revolution by the Mad Hatters of the Tea Party, who are nothing more than a front organization for Koch Industries, Wall Street carpetbaggers and Bush's political hatchet man Karl Rove and his 501(c)(4) nonprofit corporation, Crossroads. Wisconsin is just the test market to see if anyone will really notice or object. It is the first salvo against President Barrack Obama's re-election.

But we should not be so smug as to think that this only applies to the Cheese-head state. The real goal is to force California with its Democratic leadership to adopt similar tactics to address our "budget crisis" with the same type of critical cuts to social spending, which includes public education, health, welfare, and pensions. This just at a time when our economy could use a boost in government spending to lower unemployment and to spark a reinvestment in public infrastructures. Clearly Wall Street and the "too-big-to-fail" banks aren't going to be investing in these things as they are making too much profit in China and Brazil, yet the Golden State is far from bankrupt.

The common discussion revolves around these three options: (A.) reducing spending and fixing such things as the state pension plan, (B.) by raising taxes, or (C.) combinations of the two. The fourth option would be to play hardball with the bond raters to get a better rating on refinancing the state's bond debt and to borrow against, rather than sell, assets. It’s sort of like refinancing your home to get a lower rate and to pay off your credit cards.

Refinancing debt is a tactic that any business would consider under these circumstances, yet it is precisely those who call for us to run the government "like a business," who are clamoring for cuts to the programs they detest, rather than resolving the revenue problem. The Los Angeles Unified School District, and the City as well, find themselves in the very same predicament and coming to the very same conclusions of balancing their budgets on the backs of workers and common taxpayers. Everybody is pointing the finger of blame at schoolteachers and organized city workers and their pension plans. Few are looking at how the money was mismanaged, invested and/or lost in the economic crash on Wall Street– the cause of all this consternation and confusion. Has anyone notice how few of these corporate criminals have been prosecuted out side of the ponzi poster boy Bernie Madoff?

Let's face it, schoolteachers in Los Angeles or Madison, Wis. didn't suddenly start making more money last year and tipping the deficit scale off balance. Most of them haven't had a real raise in salary in years. We are here because our largest capital financial institutions have failed us, and failed in their fiduciary responsibilities to protect their investors–– many of which were government pension plans. Yet the American government bailed, not the school districts or the cities, but the banks and hedge funds. And now as the financial crisis trickles down to the state and local levels, it's the fault of the workers and the common citizen. This is, if you'll excuse my uncensored use of the Anglo-Saxon exclamation… bullshit! A term even the most deranged Mad Hatter Tea Party member could understand. Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, and all the other fakers who got elected on the Tea Party ticket, should be driven from office by popular defiance, protest and, if necessary, civil disobedience. The tea party is over–clear the china, save your forks and remove the linens.