Occupy the Debate

View 696 Tuesday, October 11, 2011

The Travelling Republican Debate show continues tonight with Charlie Rose, who generally considers himself the smartest person in the room and often is. It will be interesting to see him in action with the Republican candidates, at least two of whom are smarter than he is.

It is said that the debate is intended to emphasize economics and that Rose will also try to embarrass the Republican candidates with questions and jibes about the Occupy Wall Street movements.

It may be interesting to see what the candidates have to say about the Occupy Wall Street movements, although probably not, because they aren’t likely to take them seriously. After all, this was called into existence by Adbusters, a rather strange organization, supported by ACORN and community organizers, and suddenly supported by the regular political operatives of organized labor. There seems to be little common ground among the demonstrators other than a general discontent with the way things are going, and a disdain for the Tea Party. I would presume that most of the demonstrators are Obama supporters — or more likely, disappointed Obama supporters. The disappointment has gone to disdain with some. He was supposed to have brought us hope and change, and an end to this corporate state and domination of the nation by the 1% and some kind of transfer of power to the 99%, and a general return to prosperity and something like participatory democracy, and that didn’t happen. He promised the most open administration in history, and the most ethical, and that hasn’t happened either. There don’t seem to be any more people actually listening as there were before Obama’s inauguration. The hope and change didn’t happen but since the Republicans are the party of big corporations and big banks, where do you go from here?

If a lot of this sounds like the Tea Party, it’s hardly a coincidence. The Tea Party people decided to try reforming the Republican Party and weaning it away from corporate welfare and “Big Government Conservatism" (whatever that it; it sure isn’t conservative). They seem to be doing some of that. It needs to continue. Establishment Republicans won’t save this country.

A good part of the country is unhappy with the concentration of wealth and power that has taken place over the past decades. That includes me. Marx predicted that capitalism contained the seeds of its own destruction, and the concentration of power under capitalism is inevitable. The economist David McCord Wright believed that one principle reason why Marxism didn’t get so far in the United States is that we had the anti-trust acts and prevented the overwhelming concentrations of power that would otherwise have resulted. I would certainly support a return to breaking up power concentrations, not by confiscation but by anti-trust actions. Instead of the Big Five banks I’d be much happier with the Not-So-Big Fifty, or Forty. I’d do the same with many of the other industries. But that’s another essay. My point is that capitalists always cooperate each other to influence government – see Adam Smith as a beginning – to restrict entry into their particular part of the market. That’s not necessarily a Republican trick. Look at Obama and the auto industry, the stimulus actions, or almost anywhere else you look as first Republicans and then Democrats thrashed about trying to recover from the collapse of the housing market bubble – a bubble created by government in efforts begun by Democrats but continued by post-Gingrich Republicans, which enriched Wall Street. No wonder so many Occupy Wall Street people are unhappy. They have every right to be, and it takes a great deal more education than they are likely to have got in their terribly expensive years in our new modern colleges to figure out what went wrong or how to get out of it.

For a start they want the bailout money back. It didn’t go to them. To whom did it go? There was a lot of money floating out there –

Anyway, look for that. Look for Charlie Rose to be easy on Romney and hard on Perry. See how he treats Cain. And now that Palin has pretty well removed herself as a possible knight riding to the rescue, things will get more serious as the Republicans begin to realize that their candidate probably is on that stage; it’s a bit late for anyone else to come to their rescue.

It should all start in an hour or so. I’ll have some comments after it’s over.

There were no surprises in the Republican debate at Dartmouth this evening. The candidates have finally learned not to treat each other as enemies, and to stop bashing each other; the lesson hasn’t been perfectly learned, but they’re doing better. Bachman managed to control her near-surface hysteria, sufficiently so that I’d advise her to run for Speaker of the House. She’d be a good one. Cain looked Presidential, as did Romney and Perry. Newt Gingrich as always was the smartest man in the room, and managed to get the point across: there wasn’t anyone on the platform who wouldn’t do a better job than Mr. Obama. In the old days when Postmaster General was a high precedence Cabinet position that served as the post for Presidential Advisor – think Benjamin Franklin as Washington’s Postmaster General, or Farley as Roosevelt’s – I’d think the country well served if Newt had that post. We don’t have anything quite like it now, a cabinet level position without direct management responsibility, not confined to “national security” but expected to be involved in that. We need Newt Gingrich in a position close to the President, someone to be listened to and free to range through all the actions of government without the responsibility of actual management.

I’m not familiar with the Bloomberg Channel, which is apparently popular with financial institutions and offices; indeed I don’t think I have ever watched it before, and I had trouble finding it among the many channels we get. I found it an hour before the debates began and watched for a while. Their political analysts were almost all both arrogant and incompetent. If Charlie Rose spends much time hanging around with them it’s no wonder that he’s sure he’s always the smartest man in the room. Of the three interrogators, one was the Washington Post harridan who considered it her job to argue with the candidates and become part of the debate, one was Charlie Rose who wasn’t much different from any of the other moderators in such debates, and one was a Bloomberg analyst who appeared more competent than anyone else I saw at Bloomberg. The fact the she was a personable young lady with a reasonable media voice and demeanor didn’t hurt. Some of the Bloomberg pundits had voices and demeanor totally unsuitable for public appearances coupled with an apparent inability to understand what they were talking about.  Those were my impressions; I could be wrong because my exposure to them was limited; I can say I won’t be going back to Bloomberg for much else.

The debate won’t have changed many opinions. Rick Perry came off better this time, but so did all the others: less strident, less ready to tear each other apart, more inclined to talk about what they intend to do rather than recite resumes.

The big three remain: Romney, Perry, and Cain. The others didn’t come off badly at all. I could live with any of them as President.

Yesterday was 10/10/2011 as well as Columbus Day. Ten-ten is the anniversary of the 1912 founding of the Republic of China as well as anniversary of the uprising in 1911 that led to the fall of the centuries old dynasty and millennia old empire.

During the Cold War ten-ten, or double-ten, was an important day. The Republic of China was recognized by the United States, and the Republic threw large receptions/parties attended by much of the diplomatic corps – those who sympathized with Nationalist China as opposed to Red China. Senator Tom Dodd’s Committee of One Million Against the Recognition of Red China generally threw another reception. The US recognized diplomatic corps of the Baltic Republics (which were physically occupied by the USSR and claimed to be part of Russia until the breakup of the USSR) would attend. As Southern California Chairman of Captive Nations I was always very busy on Ten-Ten. Even after the US recognition of the People’s Republic (and the diplomatic exile of the Republic) there were ceremonies on Ten-Ten for years, but the music stopped as time went on. I think my last Ten-Ten party was in about 1996 at Universal City. It was organized by Chinese Americans and I was invited because I had been considered a good friend of China in the old days. My friend Supervisor Mike Antonovitch was there. I hear from him once in a while, but I think I haven’t had a Ten-Ten invitation since.

With the end of the Cold War the US commitments to the Far East have been reexamined and new priorities and policies instituted. Over time the Republic of China, now known as Chinese Taiwan and not recognized as a sovereign entity, has become a stable parliamentary democracy. The People’s Republic of China remains what it is.

At one time the policy of the US was that we agree that China is one country, and that it includes Formosa (Taiwan).

For my last essay on the subject (1999) see http://www.jerrypournelle.com/reports/jerryp/taiwan.html, which also includes an FPRI report on the subject. Things have changed a lot since 1999 but the essays are informative about history.