Mr. Potter Has Won?

My perennial Christmas Missive, returns after a 4 year (can your believe it) hiatus. And who would have thought 5 years after the Great Meltdown produced the Great Recession, , 5 years into the age of Obama and a purported move away from supply-side economics pretty much nothing has changed to reign in the very things – excessive income inequality, unfettered financial speculation and moral hazard policies that reward the affluent investor over the struggling worker—that drove us to the brink Great Depression II, setting us up nicely for another round of financial mayhem within the decade.  Meanwhile 5 years into a recovery plan that has produced recovery for the richest  10% of the population who now take in more than half of all income (up by over 50%) and even more so the top 1% who raked in  over 90% of the gains from the recovery, middle class and working families are enduring stagnant or declining incomes that haven’t seen significant real increases since the dawn of 1980s supply side economics.    I was apparently naively optimistic when I wrote: Perhaps by Obama Christmas II the tides may turn. For now, let us at least raise a voice of prayer and a glass of cheer to the fact the Potters aren’t adding as much to their winning totals as they used to.Who knew Morning In America actually meant a sunset for  middle class expansion and an American Dream  deferred.. And yes, Virginia, income inequality DOES matter as any Feudal peasant or lord could have told you and as a brief glance at a map of global income inequality also tells you.  Excessive income inequality produces and exacerbates  poverty and  authoritarianism.  Period.  But at least there is hope in the coming year, what with that Marxist in The White House (as we always knew, thank you Fox News) and one now in the Vatican (thank you Rush Limbaugh for that bit of analysis), that national and global attention and conversation may actually turn to a meaningful discussion of inequality and—beyond the social justice issues and even bad for capitalism issues (true capitalism being antithetical to monopolies of power and wealth) the anti-democratic tendencies it fosters.  Until then,  let us hope that the Mister Potters haven’t won – for once they do it won’t be the same America we were born in.  Merry Christmas and best hopes for the future.  CL

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I watched the perennial holiday chestnut, “It’s a Wonderful Life,” the other day. There was George Bailey, as he is every year, struggling to keep the old Savings and Loan afloat. There was the malicious Mr. Potter, a truly covetous old sinner, trying to put Bailey out of business.  There was Clarence the angel showing, once again, that our world is a better place for the George Bailey’s amongst us.  It’s too bad that in today’s world the Potters are beating the Baileys, hands down.

Old man Potter dismissed the Bailey Savings and Loan as a kind of privatized social welfare program for dumb poor workers who couldn’t cut it on their own. “And what does that  get us,” he asked?  “A discontented, lazy rabble instead of a thrifty working class.  And all because a few starry eyed dreamers stir them up and fill their heads with a lot of impossible ideas? Don’t the  Rush Limbaughs or Tom Delays say the same thing today?

Labor laws, social welfare, retirement benefits, guaranteed healthcare, workplace safety laws, consumer protection–all are dismissed by our modern Potters as so much misplaced sympathy offered to the undeserving by the foolishly starry eyed, thinking that is at best naïve and at worst dangerous.  Any mention of social welfare on AM radio is now associated with Bolshevik Socialism – want to give workers a guaranteed living wage or put any limits at all on the worst excesses of the market and you’re labeled as an advocate of Gulags and death camps.

George, of course, argued back.  “Just remember this, Mr. Potter,” he retorted, “that this rabble you’re talking about, they do most of the working and paying and living and dying in this community.  Well is it too much to have them work and pay and live and die in a couple of decent rooms and a bath?”  Today he could add: is it too much to have them work and pay and live and die with decent healthcare, affordable housing, quality education for their kids and the sure knowledge that when old age comes, there will be some comforts to look forward to?

We don’t have that many George Bailey’s today. Few stand up to our Potters when they tell us workers can’t expect job security, no one is entitled to healthcare and decent pay is whatever the most desperate amongst us is willing to work for.  Even the Democrats, the party of dreams for the working stiff, have fallen in line with the rhetoric of balanced budgets and smaller government (except, of course, if deficits are required to provide tax cuts to the richest Americans) even if the cost are reduced programs to help the disadvantaged.

Can’t anyone makes the simple point George made that helping the least amongst us is not simple altruism, it is Capitalist self interest at it’s best? “Your all business men here,” he reminded the S&L board members thinking of supporting Potter, “don’t it make them better citizens? Doesn’t it make them better customers?”  Heck, wasn’t it that old socialist Henry Ford’s idea to raise worker pay, not because it was the moral thing to do but because it made them better participants in the Capitalist market place?   Like Old Man Potter, much of American corporate business has become warped and frustrated by ruthless competition and now sees its workers only as cattle to be milked for as long as possible before being sent to the layoff slaughterhouse.

Frank Capra understood that the Potters amongst us seldom lose, though the more public-minded like old George could, on occasion, battle them to a draw. Notice that, while George Bailey ultimately survived his battle with Potter, the old man survived unscathed too, his own crime of theft of the Bailey’s deposits unpunished. There have always been the Potters amongst us, those who pursue personal gain at any cost, be they a grasping banker like fictitious  Potter or the greedy executives of a massive corporations like Enron or WorldCom. What’s regrettable is that there are fewer and fewer George Bailey’s speaking up for the little guy.

In the real world the Bailey S&L would have been bought out by the 1980s by PotterCorp, a huge transnational Financial Services leviathan. A PotterCorp holding company would have bought out Bedford Fall’s chief industry, the plastic’s factory old Hee-Haw Sam Wainwright had built at George’s urging and shipped the jobs to Third World sweatshops. Downtown Bedford Falls would now be a ghost town with shops shuttered by a massive PotterMart selling cheap slave-labor produced products to the town’s poorly paid service employees.   Yes, least be there any doubt, in the world of today Mister Potter would have won.  And, least there be any doubt, Mr. Potter voted Republican.

 

Posted in Barack Obama, Supply-Side Economics. Tags: Healthcare Reform, It’s a Wonderful Life, Mr. Potter. Leave a Comment »

Vatican III

The surprise announcement last week by the Vatican of plans to woo disaffected conservative Anglicans back to the Papal folds has the potential to grow into the biggest religious turf war since the Jets and the Sharks tangoed down the hoods of New York.    With a swoosh of the Ecclesiastical pen the Church of Rome (that would be my homies, me being a Catholic and all) is attempting to undo at least part of what Henry VIII wrought almost five hundred years ago.

The reaction by Anglican leaders has been swift and condemning.    Former Archbishop of Canterbury Lord Carey of Clifton called Rome’s intentions “inexcusable” and appalling, a form of proselytizing Pearl Harbor carried out without forewarning or consultation.  The Telegraph promises “The Queen will stand up to Pope Benedict” when he comes a calling next year.   And The Guardian dismisses those who’s limited loyalty might lead them too bolt the faith as “a small rump” whose presence in the Anglican congregation will be scarcely missed.

Yet many Anglicans, including hundreds of its most conservative priests, are seriously considering the option despite huge potential social and, particularly, legal ramifications decamping en masse to Catholic camps would produce. Most of the discussion on the impact of the Anglican Gambit on the Catholic Church, meanwhile, has focused on the tangential impact of welcoming hundreds of married Anglican priests into the community of celibate Catholic clergy.  

Both these plot lines—the poaching of Anglican pews and the introduction of desperate Catholic housewives into rectories—may be missing the real dramatic underpinnings of the moment.   First, the move by the Catholic Church to poach renegade Anglicans may have the unintentional result of stimulating a pro-Anglican fervor amongst members whose devotion to faith has waned in recent years (decades.)  I would not be at all surprised to find out that Anglican Church attendance soared this weekend and continues to grow.  Nothing solidifies the ranks like feelings of assault.  The overture by the Vatican may end up being one of the biggest calls back to faith for Anglicans in modern times.

Second, by putting conservative Anglicans into play the Catholic Church might be risking putting liberal Catholics into play as well.  For many people religion is in many ways as much a cultural, personal identity as a theological one.  Many American Catholics whose attitudes on a whole range of issues differ substantially from official Church positions continue to consider themselves Catholics if for no other reason that they were born Catholic and being Catholic is who they are.  These Catholics are often referred to by their more conservative brethren as “cafeteria Catholics” in the same way conservative Republicans call moderate Republicans—like their former standard bearer, John McCain RINOs, as in Republican In Name Only.  Despite these differences with their faith, moderate and liberal Catholics remain Catholic because the thought of leaving, en masse, has never been really formulate or put on the table. 

That may change now.  If conservative Anglicans can leave their faith and join the more conservative Catholic Church, liberal Catholics may figure out they can leave their faith and join a more progressive Anglican (or American Episcopal) Church.  From a purely Machiavellian perspective, one would think the first official response from the Church of England would be precisely that: a formal invitation to liberal Catholics who want to see women ordained priests, who disagree with Church policy on abortion, contraception, gay rights and other issues, to come join their Episcopal flock.  What could now be looming on the holy horizon may well become a wholesale American religious realignment, akin to the great political realignment of the last generation where the Democratic stronghold of the South turned Republican and Republican strongholds in the Northeast turned Democrat.  Once Wallace showed Southern Democrats they could break with their party and start anew, the idea moved from heresy to orthodoxy.  The same could well happen for American Anglicans and Catholics alike.

The Telegraph argues that Pope Benedict launched his Anglican gambit to secure his legacy in the Church.  One must wonder if, a generation down the line, the gamble will have been seen as a winning play.  Turf wars are messy affairs laden with drama, unintended consequences—and even the occasional grand song.