The Militant Moderate

No, we are not making up a new word, but we are using one that we believe is of quite recent origin. As best we know, this new word was coined and appropriately employed only a week or so ago by Paul Kruger, Nobel economist and columnist for the New York Times.

Neither our version of Webster nor our on-line dictionary has a definition for ignoramitocracy, of course, but a writer in the Daily KOS offers the following: “Rule by the Republican Party, or what a President Sarah Palin administration might bring to Washington, D.C.” The further comment is made: “It explains the current state of republican politics.”

Of course, we are familiar with the term aristocracy, which we know refers to those of high rank and privilege, often the hereditary nobility. A government of aristocracy would mean one ruled by the upper class elite, superior to others by birth and/or wealth.

In America we have resisted the aristocracy of “titles,” but espoused those of “power and pelf.” (Sir Walter Scott’s “Lay of the Last Minstrel”) Our founding fathers eschewed any use or recognition of hereditary nobility or title, preferring the common forms of address and courtesy versus obeisance to aristocracy of that sort. We have tended to overlook the fact that our forbears themselves were something of a “landed aristocracy” or from the “rich merchant” and artisan class. In fact, their rules allowed only male property owners to vote in those early days.

Those who believed in an aristocracy of the traditional sort believed also the doctrine of “divine right” of kings to rule. They accepted as God’s will the rule of the nobility and laws of primogeniture, and they believed that in bloodlines ran the right to rule, if not always the ability to do so. Religion of that historical era was criticized for being the “opiate” that kept peasant working classes in obeisance.

We have also heard and perhaps used the term “meritocracy.” In such a system, persons advance to leadership on the basis of ability and talent rather than privilege, birth, or wealth. It refers to leadership or “rule” by the most able and talented persons regardless of extraneous factors – including gender, nationality, or race. Many people fear any actual, true application of meritocratic rule. They distrust anyone who is much more intelligent or knowledgeable than themselves.

In a “democracy” we like to think that advancement is indeed based upon merit and little else. Such is not the case in reality, however attractive the theory. All kinds of extraneous factors prevent the working of that idealistic notion of a democracy, not the least of which being the accidents of time, place, and plain luck. But there are other factors, which are really sophisticated versions of aristocracy that intervene and sometimes dominate.

Wealth and power form a base from which political careers may be launched, either one’s own or the “sponsorship” of another who is more acceptable to voters. Name recognition is important. Appearance and personality have always been factors, and these have become highly significant since the advent of electronic media. Of course, such do not necessarily denote ability and talent.

An expressed ideology with connections to big money has become much more significant than merit in the ascendance of political personages in the new Republican Party. In fact, ignorance appears to be an asset to many of those now in favor with the money and power brokers of the conservative right wing. In the absence of ignorance, hypocrisy may help such ascendancy.

Writing in the Times, Krugman says:

“The underlying problem is that anyone with expertise and any kind of public profile – in short, anyone who is qualified to hold a position – is bound to have said something, somewhere that can be taken out of context to make him or her look like another Pol Pot. So what lies down this road? ….. A world in which key positions can only be filled by hacks, preferably interns from the Heritage Foundation with no relevant experience, but unquestioned (political) loyalty.”

And, according to Dr. Krugman, there you have an “ignoramitocracy.

An ignoramitocracy is put there by ignorant and gullible voters who have been brainwashed through massive media buys by the wealthy elite and their corporations. Gullible voters have been led to think that these corporate “minion” officials will rule in the interest of the common man.

Unfortunately, an ignoramitocracy is not even competent enough to rule the country well in the interest of its own sponsors from the economic aristocracy, much less all the rest of us.

Dr. Edwin E. Vineyard, AKA The Militant Moderate

Too bad that we have this mixed up nomenclature for our party symbols. We really should name our parties after their style of conduct. In that case, demos could be deserving of their donkey symbol. Indeed they are a bit rambunctious and difficult to handle and organize at times. But, on the other hand, they are very sure-footed, and they are often employed in carrying people along the most hazardous and treacherous paths. They are most reliable in traversing the high mountain trails, and along the edges of deep gorges such as the Grand Canyon.

We trust the donkeys with our lives.

Elephants aside, it seems to us that republicans should be symbolized by the mule. Mules may be excellent beasts of burden, but they do not ride easily. Mules are considered both dumb and stubborn. It takes a lot of training to get a mule into the harness with others, but then they work well in gangs – witness the 20-mule team Borax, appropriately advertised by no less a personage than Ronald Reagan. They pull their load well, but it is difficult to keep them headed in the right direction.

And then, republicans are hybrids. They are a party with a misguided populist tea-party and religious base, mixed with cohesive conservative leadership, and carried by financing from corporations and billionaires. That is something of a mule.

Bing Crosby helped popularize a song back in the forties, when this writer was a young navy radioman in training during WWII. It was called “Swing on a Star.” Quite applicable to the behavior of our republican group, it went like this:

“Would you like to swing on a star,
Carry moonbeams home in a jar,
And be better off than you are,
Or would you rather be a mule?

“A mule is an animal with long funny ears.
He kicks up at anything he hears.
His back is brawny and his mind is weak.
He’s just plain stupid with a stubborn streak.
And by the way, if you hate to go to school,
You may grow up to be a mule.”

How could any casual observer of our state and national political scene fail to see the resemblance between the mulish behavior of today’s republicans and that lyrical description?

Who, other than the republican base, would constantly kick up a fuss over anything and everything they hear? That rumor mill runs rampant daily on the internet through mails and websites. Their deliberate perpetuation of such known lies as the birthers pass along is illustrative of stupidity – either plain or corrupted by evil intent. Their media spokespersons constantly vilify their competing political personalities with falsehoods, lending credence to an underlying mean spirit.

When in office and dominant in houses of Congress or the legislature, these mulish republicans eschew any decent, positive leadership toward goals helpful or productive for the people. Instead, they follow the whims of their most radical elements, promoting government interference with women’s personal matters, turning the country into a gun-toting wild west, persecution of any who are different from the rest or follow a different religion, and attacking education, culture, science, and the arts.

These hard-headed radicals want to use government as their tool to force their beliefs upon others to follow, often ignoring the Constitution to do so.

The other thrust of these mulish republicans is to push the agenda of their corporate and billionaire masters for cutting taxes. Of course, that tax cutting agenda concentrates of cutting corporate taxes, cutting taxes of the wealthy, and giving out tax breaks for the business constituency. These poor dumb mules probably don’t even know they are being used for nefarious purposes against the working class to which they probably belong.

They have been led to believe that it is good for America to cut services to the people, persecute public service occupations, and trade tax breaks for servile jobs.

Now set free by the republicans on the Supreme Court, these corporate and rich mule-trainers and drivers are afraid of nobody. They believe that they can go out and buy enough television advertising to convince a gullible public that black is white, evil is good, and that they are patriotically serving the nation and the people’s interest. Can they really do that?

Dr. Edwin E. Vineyard, AKA The Militant Moderate

Who is to blame for high gasoline prices? We have a lot of ideas circulating around, most of which are not correct. While fault (or cause) may be spread around to involve several entities, persons, or events, it is unlikely that most of us are actually blaming the right people.

For one, the precipitating event or underlying cause may be easily identified, and about this there may not be a lot of disagreement. The calamitous change in the Middle East has caused anxieties about petroleum supply. These anxieties have, in turn, caused others to respond in ways that have caused a tremendous volatility in oil prices, which have translated into higher gasoline prices.

It should be understood that there is no actual shortage of global oil supply or oil supply in the United States. The shortfall in Libyan fields has been made up by expansion of production in Saudi Arabia and other places. Again, there is NO global shortage of oil, and none in this nation.

Further, there is no international shortage of gasoline being produced. This country is NOT short of gasoline supply. Nor has our American demand for oil and gasoline expanded. Rather it has tended to diminish somewhat due to conservation measures and smaller, more fuel efficient cars.

It should be clear then that our current high gasoline prices are NOT the result of either supply or demand factors. Yet we know from our study of economics that supply and demand vectors set the prices of goods and commodities. Have we been led astray by our economist friends? No, not at all.

It means that there are extraneous factors intruding into the oil and gasoline market, other than basic supply and demand.

We should hasten to absolve President Obama of direct blame for gasoline prices, and we should do the same for the former President Bush for those in his term. Releasing our oil reserves is not the answer, because there is no supply shortage. But there may be other actions within the purview of a president which could be helpful in avoiding or alleviating such crises. That will be discussed later.

One of these is anxiety, alluded to above. Anxiety tends to create ripe opportunities for Wall Street speculators in futures for commodities, in this case oil and gasoline. And, therein, lies the real explanation for high gasoline prices.

Of course, domestic oil companies tend to delight in high oil prices, because as suppliers they make a windfall profit from their local product. But they do not necessarily profit from the shooting global markets beyond the extent of their international operations. Oil royalty owners and producing oil companies in this country find themselves on a gravy train when global prices skyrocket while their local production costs go relatively unchanged.

So, yes indeed, oil companies are reaping rich benefits from spiking oil market prices. Their profits go up. Those of us who own a little oil company stock think we are getting ahead with our tiny share of that prosperity. But, we repeat, the oil companies are NOT necessarily causing the spikes in prices at all, although they may indeed benefit from them. Neither is OPEC, although they profit also.

We have commodities speculators nowadays who, through market machinations, drive up the price of almost all the consumer goods we purchase. These people are not only heavily responsible for the high oil and gasoline prices, but they are also responsible for the higher food prices we are paying at the grocery store.

Both suppliers and buyers in the commodities market employ futures contracts to hedge against sharp changes in price and assure themselves that they may sell or buy their product at a known future price. Sometimes called “hedging,” this is a common business practice. Your natural gas utility tries this, with varying luck.

The problem arises from others -- speculators, who enter the market as gamblers, making their bets and running up prices. As a part of the New Deal financial cures, the law gave commodities regulators powers to control speculation, so that market was dominated by suppliers and buyers. Until the first Bush’s term, speculators were highly controlled, but commissioners have since allowed growth speculator share to the point of dominating the markets.

Politics is involved to the extent that one holdover republican commissioner, having a deciding vote, will not vote to curtail speculation. His term expires this year. At that time, there is some hope to regain market stability, if our president chooses and can get a different appointment through. It will not be easy.

If the names Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs mean anything from the late Wall Street meltdown, throwing our economy into recession, then label these two Wall Street giants as culprits again. Together they control most of the commodities futures markets. Those very same markets are running up your grocery bill, and they are running up your gasoline prices – more than could ever be justified by the anxieties over the Middle East.

But these two Wall Street firms are major political donors as well. If there were only a way for all of us to follow the money and really know what these people are scheming. Would that we could wrest control of our own political affairs back from the business interests which are dominating our country.

Where is the Tea Party when you really need them? Well, they are frolicking on the other side against the interest of the people, blissfully ignorant.

But you wanted to know why you are paying high gasoline prices, and this has been a very long answer. As one of my university professors used to say, “Well, I understand this now, so its time to move on.”

Edwin E. Vineyard

No matter what one may hear through the dominant news media of the state, Oklahoma is NOT a high tax state. It is likely that it was never a high tax state, not in recent decades anyway, and that it has always been a state that relied on its natural resources to fill in a gap between what people are willing to pay in taxes and what they are willing to see spent by the state.

We might add that Oklahoma is not a high spending state either. While Oklahoma is just low-average in its per capita income, it is further below average in its taxes and expenditures.

The Tax Foundation has produced an authoritative report on comparative taxes and expenditures among the states of the union. The figures accessible to this observer are factual only, and without analysis or interpretation. The information about Oklahoma is intertwined with that of other states, and it must first be extracted, and then analyzed as to meaning. (The Tax Foundation report may be found at http://taxfoundation.org/publications/show/2181html for those interested.)

The following information spread shows Oklahoma’s ranking in key areas. A brief analysis of this data follows. Readers may make further interpretations of their own, by examining some of the seeming ambiguities in the original data itself. Careful attention must be paid to differentiating state from state plus local.







TAX FOUNDATION: OKLAHOMA COMPARISONS

2009 State per capita income $37,464 Rank 33

2009 Oklahoma State and local tax burden per capita $3259 Rank 37
Per capita tax burden as a percentage of income 8.7% Rank 37
(Roughly one-fourth below national average on each.)

2009 State Tax collections per capita $2,226 Rank 31
2009 State Revenue per capita $5,092 Rank 22
2008 Oklahoma Revenue by source
Property 17% Sales 29.3% Indiv. Income 22.6% Corporate 2.9% Other 28%

Personal Income tax rates Oklahoma 5.5% (all levels above $8700)
Rankings ----- High for lower income levels (Most states have
Low for higher income levels brackets)

2008 Oklahoma corporate income tax per capita $99 Rank 40

2011 Oklahoma state sales tax rate 4.5% Rank 36
Local sales tax rates 3.83% Rank 7

2009 State sales tax collections per capita $590 Rank 36
State plus local sales taxes per capita $996 Rank 22

2011 Oklahoma Gasoline tax rates per gallon $0.17 Rank 46
2010 Oklahoma Alcohol tax per gallon $5.56 Rank 21
2011 Beer tax per gallon 0.40 Rank 12
2010 Cell phone tax 10.74% Rank 17

2009 Owner Occupied property Eff. Rate 0.74% Rank 32
2008 Property tax collections per capita $582 Rank 47

2009 State debt per capita $2689 Rank 32
2008 State and local debt per capita $4670 Rank 46
2009 State per capita income $37,464 Rank 33

Source: The Tax Foundation: How Does Your State Compare?
Presented under the auspices of the Oklahoma Retired College Presidents’ Council
Dr. Edwin E. Vineyard, Exec. Secy.

HOW OKLHOMA TAXES COMPARE WITH OTHER STATES
(A SUMMARIZATION OF FIGURES FROM THE TAX FOUNDATION REPORT)

Oklahoma per capita income is low average (33). This is not a poor state.

Oklahoma’s state and local per capital tax burden is low (37). Oklahoma’s per capital burden as a percentage of income is low (37). The people of this state are under-taxed in comparison with others.

State tax collections per capita are low average (31). State revenue per capita is high (22). This means that there is other revenue entering the stream.

Oklahoma income tax rates are high for lower income people and low for higher income people, making the income tax burden below average. This is due to lack of a graduated bracket system. Correction is needed.

Oklahoma’s corporate income tax per capita is very low (40), due to fewer or smaller corporations, lower corporate taxes, or exemptions – perhaps all these.

Oklahoma’s state sales tax rate is low (36), but its combination of state and local sales taxes rank high (7). Locally voted sales tax rates are very high, but the state rate is actually low. Per capita income from the sales tax is low for the state, and average for the local governments. Rate vs. income disparity, lower income from higher rates, suggest poor sales or too many exemptions.

The Oklahoma gasoline tax rate is close to the bottom (46). This means highway users are not paying a fair share, and revenues that should be servicing other needs are being put into the hopper for highways and bridges. Correction is needed.

Oklahoma’s alcohol tax per gallon is average, and its tax rates on beer are high. The cell phone tax rate is high.

The effective rate for owner occupied property is low average (32). Property tax collections per capita are close to the bottom (47). The rates vs. collections disparity suggests tax breaks for commercial and industrial property, or perhaps an unusually poor quality level of property occupied. Study is needed.

State debt per capita is low average (32). State and local debt per capita is very high (46). This suggests a study of local debt is needed.

We are just coming out of a recession precipitated by outrageously risky behavior by virtually unregulated Wall Street financial institutions and their executives. After their bailout, those institutions responsible are doing well enough that they have repaid most of their loans. In fact, they are doing so well that they are already passing out huge bonuses to their executives – many of whom are the same people most responsible for the country’s financial meltdown.

But what about the 9% of our workforce that is unemployed? What about those whose unemployment compensation has run out? What about those who are downgraded in their positions and their pay? Something is not quite right about all of this. The penalties appear to be falling mostly on the backs of working people.

Salaried people with 401K plans are still hurting a bit. Some are almost back, perhaps original values or more, but they have not been earning at the planned rate for retirement. These workers are getting no bonuses from anybody, with a few exceptions like GM workers who took a big hit to keep the company afloat.

Interestingly enough, American corporations have been going gangbusters in the latter part of this recession. They have two years of record profits, and they are carrying record cash on their books. S & P 500 corporations are holding $1 trillion in cash, while lesser corporations are thought to be holding perhaps another trillion. Little is being paid out in dividends, and practically nothing is being reinvested in jobs in this country to help put Americans back to work. Only the selfish insiders are really getting ahead.

American workers are going nowhere. They have lost share of the national income. Their real wages have been stagnant for two or three decades. On the contrary, the incomes of the upper 5% have been climbing away from the other 95% of people. Yet with all this, the republicans have fought tooth and nail to save the multi-millionaires from a measly 4.6% increase in their base tax rate.

How is it that we keep electing people who do not represent the interests of the majority of Americans? One relatively unknown business and economics pundit made a short statement on a news channel’s weekly review. After observing a graphic illustration of the increasing separation of the income levels of the upper 5% from the stable income levels of the other 95%, he made a simplistic explanation. “I’ll tell you why this is happening,” he said, “it is because this upper 5% is convincing the other 95% to vote for politicians who favor the policies that help those at the top to prosper more.”

In other words, the majority of voters have been gullible to the propaganda sponsored by the rich. This includes rank and file republicans, and it includes some sincere tea party types who don’t even know their own organizations, as well as their dirty political ads, are bankrolled by billionaires.

During the last thirty years since 1980, when Reagan was elected, the top 1% (multi-millionaires and up) have gained in their percentage of the nation’s owned wealth from 7% up to 23%. Corporate CEO’s made 24 times the salary of the average worker in 1965, but today the CEO’s make 275 times the income of their average company worker.

This nation is becoming a feudalistic aristocracy of the wealthy. Not acceptable.

As Warren Buffet, an unusually social-minded billionaire, has said, “There is class warfare all right, but it is my class that has been making war, and we’re winning.” Well said, Mr. Buffet. We also liked your comment that you should not be paying a lower tax rate on millions than your secretary makes on a reasonable salary.

Then came the great budget cutting process all across the country.

About the loss of 100,000 jobs as a result of a republican cutting proposal, Speaker Boehner has already declared, “So be it!” Not at all what his party had led voters to believe about them. Republican governors in New Jersey and Wisconsin have demonstrated the same crass attitude toward public workers and teachers in their states. Oklahoma republicans have the same philosophy as they go about cutting budgets of state agencies, messing with pensions, attacking public schools, and changing the work environments throughout.

The attitude of governing republicans seems to be, “Let the teachers and the public employees pay the price.” Their big talk about “sharing the load” never gets around to raising taxes on those who can afford to pay. In Oklahoma, they have actually cut income tax rates in the midst of third year round of cuts in agency budgets. Just before the angst in Wisconsin, republicans there actually passed a tax cut bill of the same value they are pulling out of teacher and public employee salaries and benefits.

Again, republicans have put the burden of the recession’s hardships in government squarely on the backs of public employees. Medicaid for children and similar benefits for the poor are also taking a hit under republican management. All beneficiaries of state services are suffering cutbacks, while those who enrich the campaign coffers of republican candidates ride free.

This is not “shared pain,” and it is not fair to Americans.


Dr. Edwin E. Vineyard, AKA The Militant Moderate