Presidential elections in America are strange: the one element that the president has the least control over, and yet looms largest in the minds of the electorate, is the economy. A staggering economy in 2008 helped then-candidate Obama win the White House; President Bush was blamed for the financial crisis, and McCain’s clear lack of economic know-how undercut his campaign. Obama likely would’ve won anyway, but these factors certainly made his task easier and increased his margin of victory.

But today, after three years in office, continued high unemployment and the still-sputtering economy are the biggest threats to Obama’s re-election. The European debt crisis—which could be the biggest single influence on the U.S. economic recovery—is completely out of Obama’s hands. A collapse of the Eurozone, coupled with defaults in one or more EU countries, could spiral out of control, create another global crisis, and throw the U.S. into yet another recession. The chances of this happening have diminished in the last couple of months (largely due to aggressive monetary policy by the European Central Bank), but they are still significant.

This is why every week that goes by with the Eurozone intact is a big victory for the President. The closer we get to November, the less likely that events in Europe could negatively impact the U.S. economy enough to influence the election this fall. Nine months is still lots of time, and European leaders have demonstrated a high capacity for poor policymaking, but at least the situation seems stable for now.

Another event that could derail both the U.S. and the global economic recovery would be a major increase in the price of oil. With global demand easing the price actually fell over the past week, but Iran has become the “elephant in the room”. The Iranians have threatened to close the Strait of Hormuz if the U.S. takes additional steps to restrict Iranian oil exports (steps America began to take in response to Iran’s efforts to develop a nuclear bomb). Closing the Strait would approach an act of war and would certainly draw a massive U.S. response. The price of oil could skyrocket to $200 a barrel, a shock that could rattle investors around the world and set off a global economic contraction.

Given that closing the Strait would be a form of economic suicide for the Iranians—they export most of their products through Hormuz—the chances of their following through are low. Even so, the threat itself could be enough to send prices higher. Along with the EU’s woes, this is one more issue that could significantly impact the U.S. economy and imperil a second term for Obama. Every week that goes by with calm in the oil markets is a boost to the President and his team.

As the clock runs down towards November, the election should be about the issues and the candidates’ positions. Obama has a record to run on and his Republican challengers have policies that can be evaluated. As Andrew Sullivan pointed out this week in Newsweek, Obama’s record looks remarkably impressive, especially when matched against his campaign promises. In addition, as Ezra Klein pointed out, politicians hold to their campaign promises to a surprising degree (despite the conventional wisdom that says they don’t).

If voters were more rational and reasonable, candidates would be judged more on the things they can control—their policy agendas—and less on things beyond their control, like the economy. Sadly this isn’t the case.

Given this reality, every week that goes by without an economic calamity outside the U.S. gives America’s economy another week to chug along and gain momentum. Nothing could be better for Obama’s re-election prospects.

Jason Scorse

Since the economy in 2012 will likely continue to be weak, and the presidential contest will revolve almost exclusively around it, Mitt Romney’s record as a successful businessman should be his greatest asset (although, as Paul Krugman has noted, there is little similarity between running a business and running the federal government). After three+ years of a crushing recession and its aftermath, a man who built a fortune restructuring failing companies is supposedly well-equipped to come to America’s rescue.

Sadly for Mitt and the Republican Party, it hasn’t turned out that way. Romney’s record at Bain Capital, which he helped found, has become his Achilles heel because of the massive lay-offs that came along with Bain’s “accomplishments”. And layoffs weren’t the only pain. While Romney and Bain were making millions, many employees at the restructured companies lost their pensions along with their jobs. The fact that Romney helped Bain receive millions of dollars in bailouts is also problematic at a time when people are (rightfully) disgusted with the Wall Street bailouts.

If you listened to Romney’s GOP opponents this week, you might have imagined you were in the middle of an Occupy Wall Street protest. I have never heard such populist rhetoric from Republicans; it reached the point where many on the Right had to come to Romney’s defense—characterizing the attacks on Romney as attacks on free enterprise that would ultimately damage the party. But the genie is out of the bottle: if Romney becomes the nominee, look for Democratic ads in which Republicans take turns lambasting Romney for “vulture capitalism”; it’s a Democratic operative’s dream come true.

What might prove even more troubling is the issue of Romney’s tax returns; he is in a no-win situation. He has refused to release his returns out of fear that they will show exactly what everyone suspects: he pays an extremely low effective tax rate since most of his income comes in the form of tax-advantaged capital gains. Romney almost certainly pays taxes at a lower effective than many middle class workers, and his tax proposals would keep it that way. If Romney doesn’t release his tax forms, it will reinforce the belief that he has something to hide and make a mockery of his commitment to transparency (which has already been mocked by the revelation that, as governor of Massachusetts, he spent tens of thousands in taxpayer money to destroy government records). If he does release his returns, the truth will be there for everyone to see. I see no way for Romney to escape.

Some commentators have suggested that the negative scrutiny Romney is now receiving will allow him to get the issues out of the way before the election season heats up. I don’t buy it. It would be one thing if Romney had good answers to the criticisms; so far, he and has advisors have only made matters worse—for one thing, by lying about how many jobs he supposedly created while at Bain. In addition, the fact that his economic policies would further favor the wealthy and hurt the middle class will become even clearer as time goes on.

This is all to the good. Mitt Romney is a small man in almost every sense of the word. He enjoyed tremendous success as a cutthroat capitalist, but he has no moral compass and no vision, and would be a terrible person to replace President Obama.

Here’s hoping the attacks on him intensify. He deserves it.

Jason Scorse

Over the past decade executive power has (rightly) gotten a lot of negative scrutiny, due mostly to the Bush Administration pushing the boundaries to prosecute the “war on terror”. Although Obama banned the use of torture immediately upon entering office, he too has been accused of using his presidential powers in extra-constitutional ways—much to the chagrin of the Left. (I tend not to agree on this point; although the President has pursued an aggressive campaign against terrorists, including against some American citizens, his actions seem to me both measured and Constitutional.)

But executive authority extends beyond national security interests, and the Obama Administration has adeptly used this power to promote civil rights and Obama’s larger domestic agenda. Given a Republican Congress unwilling to compromise on almost anything, exercising this power has been critical.

Some of the best examples: extending federal benefits to same-sex domestic partners, enacting new fuel efficiency standards for cars and trucks, enacting new mercury standards that promise to save thousands of lives and improve infant health, tying foreign aid to respect for gay rights, and using its judicial powers to invalidate Republican efforts to limit voting rights.

And just this week the Administration announced a new immigration policy meant to improve the lives of potentially hundreds of thousands of immigrant families. Before the change, legal immigrants married to illegal immigrants or with children that were illegal faced an immigration process that often involved years of forced separation. Under the changed rules, illegal family members will still have return to their home countries and reapply for U.S. entry—but they’ll get waivers that will greatly reduce their time away. The new rules are also an incentive for more people to come out of the shadows and apply for U.S. citizenship.

This change comes while Republicans adamantly oppose any easing of the rules for illegal immigrants currently in the country. They even filibustered the DREAM Act at the end of 2010, which would’ve done nothing more than allow the children of illegal immigrants who have spent their lives in the U.S. to attend U.S. public universities (and not even be eligible for financial aid).

Also just a few days ago, President Obama used his executive authority to recess-appoint Richard Cordray as the director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Republicans were refusing to confirm Cordray, or any nominee, in a blatant attempt to nullify a key part of the Dodd-Frank financial regulatory reform (which passed by a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate). Obama timed Cordray’s appointment to allow him to remain in his post until the end of 2013. While the timing raises legal issues that will likely be challenged in court, Obama deserves credit for pushing the boundaries. Using procedural tactics never meant for that purpose, the GOP was trying to block a Congressionally-passed law from ever going into effect.

It would be much better if we lived at a time when Congress was committed to promoting the public interest and doing its job, but we are not; the House and Senate are filled with extremist Republicans who put politics before country.

But controlling the presidency does matter, and President Obama should be applauded for using his executive authority in several ways to improve the lives of millions of Americans.

Jason Scorse

Every four years we elect a president and every four years we hear that “this is the most consequential election of a generation” (or some variant thereof). Since it’s impossible to know counterfactuals, we can never really know which elections turned out to be most significant. Would Al Gore have bankrupted the country and mired America in a war in Iraq? Would John McCain have rallied the GOP around some form of climate change policy? We’ll never know.

The 2012 election will be different than recent others in a substantive way: a series of major policies are set to go into effect in 2013 and 2014 that will define the nation for decades to come, and President Obama’s positions are diametrically opposed to those of the Republicans.

All the Bush tax cuts are set to expire on December 31, 2012. If Congress takes no action to extend any of the cuts, taxes will increase on everyone (including the middle class) and the deficit be reduced by more than $3 trillion per decade.

Obama wants to continue the cuts for those making less than $250,000 a year but allow marginal rates on the rich to rise, saving approximately $700 billion per decade. The Republicans want all the cuts extended; if a Republican wins in November, this is likely to happen.

So the progressivity of the tax code is at stake in the upcoming election, and that means major fiscal choices. Extending tax cuts for the rich would likely mean cuts in other parts of the Federal budget—cuts to the social services that lower and middle income Americans rely on.

Also set to take effect beginning in 2013 are the cuts in defense and discretionary spending that were set in motion by the failure of the “Super Committee”. The defense cuts total approximately $500 billion over the next decade, and would be the first major reductions in defense spending since the beginning of the “war on terror” in 2001. Obama has pledged to veto any changes to this deal, saying that the defense cuts must occur. It is extremely unlikely that a Republican president would do the same; Romney or Gingrich would almost certainly use the failure of the Super Committee to push for even deeper cuts in social programs.

The fate of healthcare in America could well be decided by the Supreme Court early this summer, in advance of the election. The Court’s decision aside, healthcare faces sharply different futures depending on who wins the White House (and the Congress) in November.

All the GOP presidential hopefuls have pledged to repeal “Obamacare”. If this occurs, benefits that millions are now enjoying could be ended (e.g., older children on their parents’ plans, seniors no longer subject to the “donut hole”, patients with pre-existing conditions who were finally able to secure coverage). The Affordable Care Act also includes dozens of innovative measures aimed at improving the overall quality of care and lowering Medicare’s long-term cost trajectory; these too would be lost.

The nation will also be choosing between hugely different positions on immigration policy and gay rights. Obama signifies inclusion and tolerance, while most Republicans come down hard in favor of fences, marriage amendments, and thinly-veiled bigotry.

And don’t forget: it’s likely that two of the most progressive Supreme Court justices—Ginsburg and Breyer—will retire during the next presidential term. A Republican president would try to turn a 5-4 right-wing majority into a 7-2 majority, pushing back progressive causes for generations. With the Roberts Court clearly favoring business interests over the public good, any upcoming Supreme Court nominations could well turn out to be the most consequential outcome of the 2012 election.

All things considered, I hope that everyone dedicated to reason, justice, and equality will realize what’s at stake in 2012 and rally around President Obama. I have been a harsh critic at times, but given the crises he inherited, the obstacles constantly in his way, and the immense difficulty of actually governing, he has done a very good job and deserves re-election. His vision for the country is the right one, and the alternative is simply horrible.

Happy New Year!

Jason Scorse

A strong case can be made that apart from President Obama’s election and long list of accomplishments (to which the end of the Iraq War can now be added), the biggest political story of the past few years is how the Republican Party has essentially gone mad. I use that language not as hyperbole but as an accurate description; while Republicans call Obama a radical and an extremist, they’re actually doing a better job of describing themselves than the centrist in the White House.

I remember periods when the GOP became unhinged—during Clinton’s impeachment for example—but I’ve never before seen rightwing lunacy infect every aspect of the Republican Party. Once considered “the party of ideas,” current GOP positions now read like a list of what not to do if you want a sound economy, equal opportunity, and believe in equal treatment for men and women, and for all races and creeds.

Even though many Republicans are more reasonable than party leaders—for example, a majority favor tax increases on the wealthy—people who self-identify as Republicans hold increasingly extremist and often reactionary views on everything from immigration to climate change to healthcare. Many even refuse to believe that Obama is a U.S. citizen and a practicing Christian.

The fact is that classic conservatism and the Republican Party are increasingly at odds. The word “conservative” is now lazily used to describe almost anything right-leaning; historically, however, liberalism and conservatism were two sides of the same coin: each promoted a view of limited but effective government that relied on well-functioning markets to determine societal outcomes.

True conservatives are not averse to government. They believe in a set of principles, many of which come from microeconomic analysis, to determine when markets work well and when they do not. This methodology is used to identify the spheres where government can help improve outcomes (e.g., environmental policy) and where it will likely lead to worse outcomes (e.g., the housing market). Ironically, the Obama White House is known for using conservative economic logic to determine its policy responses; Lawrence Summers was famous in the Administration for asking the question “where is the market failure?” whenever anyone suggested government intervention to solve a problem.

People are sometimes surprised to learn that conservatives have also traditionally paid attention to issues of equality and income distribution. Milton Freidman famously suggested a minimum income for all U.S. citizens, an idea which made its way into then-candidate Richard Nixon’s economic platform. Today’s Republican Party would deride as socialism an idea that came from one of conservatism’s greatest heroes.

While conservatives have traditionally underestimated the benefits of many environmental policies, they were early champions of market solutions to many environmental problems. They helped establish a cap and trade system for sulfur dioxide, which has since been used by the EU to reduce greenhouse gases. Using environmental taxes to shift government revenue from labor income to consumption is largely a conservative idea, and it’s been adopted by the same European governments that most Republicans consider socialist.

Time was when people who considered themselves conservative would find the Republican Party more hospitable than the Democratic Party; that time is long past. If Friedman were alive today, he would be aghast at what passes for conservatism in the GOP. He wouldn’t be thrilled by the Democratic Party, but he would have the intellectual honesty to recognize that current Democratic ideas are actually closer to conservatism’s roots. And as Paul Krugman consistently points out, what passes for economic analysis in right-leaning circles these days is little more than ideological extremism masquerading as social science, with no regard to evidence or facts.

It’s time for people to stop referring to anything rightwing as conservative. It’s not only wildly inaccurate but disrespectful to a serious intellectual tradition that still has much to offer for American public policy.

P.S. Coincidentally, on Monday E.J. Dionne made the case that Obama is the conservative in the race by any reasonable use of the term.

Jason Scorse

As the holiday season approaches and people of various religions gather to celebrate, I am reminded of one of the principles shared by all monotheistic faiths—the belief that humans are separate from nature. Even religions that accept evolution believe that humans are uniquely imbued by the Creator, and exist in a separate moral universe.

This great divide between humans and all things non-human has led to incalculable destruction and pain inflicted on untold billions of animals over thousands of years. I do not claim that the religious separation between humans and other living beings is solely responsible, but it has contributed significantly. Virtually all research into violence shows that the propensity for cruelty increases in proportion to the dehumanization of “enemies”; animals perpetually live in that dehumanized space.

We torture and kill billions of animals in our industrial farming system every year; animals are out of sight and out of mind. Animals today have forceful advocates who are questioning and fighting back against the factory farming complex; religion, though, still holds that animals exist solely for human purposes, and we can do with them what we wish. Animals are also abused for sport and in the name of science, for purposes as trivial as testing hair dyes and lotions. Again, there is the belief, promulgated by religion that animals are here to serve us and little more.

Fortunately, we are slowly beginning to realize that the line between us and the animal kingdom is essentially artificial—little more than a product of our arrogance and lack of imagination. We are learning that animals not only have an immense capacity for pleasure and pain, they have complex emotional lives: they pine for other animals, mourn, and develop deep and affectionate ties—with members of their own species, and others as well.

Videos proliferate on the internet of orangutans befriending dogs, dogs befriending elephants, deer befriending rabbits, and even lizards cuddling with cats. Many humans have forged bonds with animals as diverse as lions, tigers, whales, and dolphins. We are also discovering mental capacities in animals far more sophisticated than we once imagined, including the ability to build and use tools, solve complex puzzles, and communicate in complex languages.

These discoveries have begun to impact public policy. The National Institutes of Health just put a freeze on medical trials for chimps, with new criteria that will make it much harder to employ chimps in future medical experiments. The Constitution of the European Union contains language banning animal cruelty, and the Ecuadoran Constitution is the first to include explicit “rights of nature”.

We are nearing a moment in history when societies across the global will recognize that life exists on a continuum; while humans are unique in many aspects, we are only one manifestation of the evolutionary process. This does not mean that all life is equally valuable—an ant is not equivalent to a person—but morality must be broadly defined. It is not enough to simply claim that humans are inherently superior to all other beings.

When we reach this point, we will be able to appreciate our place on the continuum without looking down on other creatures or creating the kinds of divisions that have led us to inflict harm on other creatures and on our consciences as well. The truly moral person is the one who has the power to dominate and control others, but chooses not to (and even a few religious people understand this).

Jason Scorse

If we had a serious media establishment in America, it would be full of stories about how the Republican Party has lost touch with reality. Analysts would ponder how a party whose policies are opposed by the overwhelming majority of Americans continues to exercise outsized influence; detailed examinations of the dysfunctional Senate would be standard front-page news; and GOP politicians who have been wrong on virtually every major issue of the past decade would be lambasted and their ideas discredited.

Instead, we have a media in which theater has replaced substance, fact-checking is rare, and reporters spend their time parroting talking points rather than doing analysis. Nevertheless, when the people get a chance to vote on specific rightwing ideas, they fail miserably. It turns out that the ideas might make good sound bites, but even in deep red states they cannot stand up to reason.

Case in point is the recent defeat of the Personhood Amendment in Mississippi, one of the reddest states in America and one of the most opposed to abortion rights. Faced with taking the anti-abortion rationale to its logical extreme—that from the moment of conception a fertilized egg is morally equivalent to a human being—the voters of Mississippi balked. The amendment lost by almost 20 points, a stunning defeat for the anti-choice movement.

The strength of the anti-abortion position has always been its moral absolutism. Pro-choicers are derided as moral relativists whose logic heads down a slippery slope on which human life is devalued. Some anti-abortionists do allow for exceptions when it comes to the health of the mother, and some are willing to do likewise in cases of rape and incest; but purists have never countenanced abortion under any circumstances.

The problem with moral certainty is that it leads to unreasonable and intolerable conclusions, even by the standards of one of America’s most conservative states. If a fertilized egg is a human being, what about fertility clinics which typically destroy hundreds or thousands of fertilized eggs? What about a woman who isn’t aware she’s pregnant, but has a miscarriage? Will exceptions for the mother’s health, rape, and incest no longer be allowed? Perhaps even more damming, millions of fertilized eggs are miscarried every year due to natural causes. Does this make God the world’s biggest abortionist?

As Gary Gutting opined in a recent New York Times piece, the practical implications of saying that human life begins at conception make people realize that there are grey areas, and what seems like a black and white issue really isn’t. Once this is acknowledged, the logic of the extreme rightwing position on abortion disintegrates and a window for morally acceptable abortions is opened.

Another rightwing extremity—the effort to strip public employees of their bargaining rights—was similarly defeated in Ohio, another traditional GOP stronghold. With states paying generous benefit packages to public employees, while private employees are seeing their benefits shrink, the GOP thought that attacking union rights would be a winning strategy.

But again, provocative sound bites don’t necessarily translate into sound policy. Ohio voters realized that workers without collective bargaining rights are at a disadvantage, and that unions have played a critical role in the creation of America’s middle class.

The 2012 presidential race is heating up, and the GOP primary is generating any number of extreme positions on taxes, Medicare, environmental protection, and other issues. The facts will ultimately undermine these positions, just as they undermined the Personhood Amendment and Ohio’s anti-union legislation. The truth is that just about every major Republican idea these days can’t stand up to reason, and would be rejected if it were put to an individual vote.

Whether voters will realize that Obama is not to blame for the economy, and that he presents a sensible alternative to rightwing extremism, is yet to be seen. I think they will. But if they don’t, any Republican president will soon find out that nearly all the positions they ran on are unpopular and ineffective, and pursuing them will only weaken the party in the long-run. Only by returning to more centrist, rational policies can the GOP reclaim its position as a serious political party.

Jason Scorse

To really appreciate how inefficient, ineffective, and ultimately cruel the U.S. healthcare system is, you have to experience its deficiencies firsthand. Unfortunately, someone close to me has been suffering mysterious and debilitating ailments for the past couple of months. The person is in the prime of life, but has been forced to quit working and life has lost much of its normal enjoyment.

I had my first hint of how bad the system is when we went to a gastroenterologist who joked during the visit how hard some ailments are to diagnose, and suggested seeing a psychiatrist since Western medicine had little to offer. This came in response to complaints of severe nausea and stomach pains, and the doctor was the head of this particular clinic.

As I accompanied my friend from doctor to doctor, I noticed the lack of coordination and the requirement for the same paper forms with each visit. The doctors all had their pet theories and ordered redundant tests, including the head of the GI clinic at one of the most prestigious hospitals in the country. They recommended all sorts of expensive tests, including an endoscopy and abdominal and head CAT scans, before anything else. All came back negative.

It wasn’t until visiting a naturopathic doctor that my friend finally starting getting information that seemed more reasonable and hopeful. The doctor ordered detailed allergen tests and blood and stool work to try to get to the root cause of the problem. These showed an intolerance to gluten, dairy, and pecans (of all things), as well as some adrenal issues and imbalances in intestinal flora. The naturopath recommended a regimen of supplements, avoiding all intolerant foods, and meditation to decrease stress. It’s only been two weeks since these changes have been made, but the signs are promising and my friend is starting to feel better. We can only hope that a full recovery is underway.

The lessons from this experience have big implications for healthcare policy (and more importantly, people’s health). For starters, our system is entirely backwards. People are given the most invasive and expensive tests first. And sadly, even doctors from the top medical schools lack any training in diet and nutrition, which are the root cause of so many ailments.

I can’t tell you how many stories I have heard from friends in the “alternative” medical community (including dieticians, naturopaths, acupuncturists, and physical therapists) whose patients had been suffering for years (or even decades) with easily treatable conditions that dozens of Western-trained doctors were unable to identify. The resulting human misery, as well as the costs, are staggering; no wonder Americans spend nearly twice as much per capita on healthcare as other developed nations, and obtain worse outcomes. I can only imagine how many millions of Americans are out there, unaware of the alternatives, continuing to suffer and wasting untold thousands of dollars.

My friend was lucky enough to have excellent health insurance. Ten of millions of Americans have none, and find themselves adrift in a world of even more suffering, anxiety, and financial hardship. It is simply unacceptable, especially for a country as great as the United States.

Fortunately, things are changing for the better. Once it’s fully implemented in 2014 Obama’s healthcare law covers more than 30 millions of those currently uninsured (even though tying health insurance to employment, as the system currently is constructed, makes little sense in the 21st Century workforce). In addition, major headway is being made on creating electronic medical records and expanding the role of technology to both decrease inefficiencies and empower individuals to take control of their own health. And as more and more people seek and find relief with alternative medical techniques (most of which are cheaper, safer, and have myriad co-benefits), mainstream Western medicine will be forced to change. Assisted by the internet and social media, Americans will no longer be forced into a system that focuses on disease management instead of on health and wellness promotion. There are many brilliant, caring, and dedicated students, enrolled in the top schools, who deserve an education (and ultimately a healthcare system) that allows them to devote their talents to far better things than simply prescribing expensive tests and working for a system that ultimately puts profit over people.

Those who claim that the American healthcare system is the best in the world are either blindingly ignorant or shills for the insurance and drug industries and medical providers. Our system is broken, and fixing it is the greatest challenge we face. Failure will lead to deficits that dwarf any we have ever experienced, and the moral consequences are even worse; needless suffering that simply unconscionable.

Jason Scorse

Terrorism is a charged word with no “official” definition. The most straight-forward and simplest is at Dictionary.com: terrorism is the use of violence and threats to intimidate or coerce, especially for political purposes.

Congressional Republicans are at it once again. In the midst of the debt-ceiling debacle they used the threat of defaulting on U.S. bonds in order to enact sharp cuts in domestic programs that don’t fit their ideological agenda. Now that the so-called “Super Committee” has failed to come up with a bipartisan plan to reduce the deficit by $1.2 trillion over the next 10 years, they’re back to the same old tricks.

President Obama wants to extend the payroll tax cut and unemployment benefits, which are due to expire at the end of 2011. Republicans are already indicating that they will oppose these measures, just as they have opposed everything in Obama’s jobs bill (excluding two relatively minor provisions on hiring veterans, which passed recently).

Let me be clear. If Republican opposition were based on principle, consistently applied over the years, one could conclude that Republicans simply disagree with Democrats on the issues. But (like the individual mandate in the healthcare bill) the policies Obama and the Democrats are proposing right now are things Republicans have recently championed. Unemployment benefits have always enjoyed bipartisan support. Infrastructure spending has never been a partisan issue. And the payroll tax cut is something Republicans have long proposed. So why is the GOP saying no?

The only possible explanation is their willingness to do anything, including sabotaging the economy, in order to decrease Obama’s chances of reelection. There is no other plausible rationale.

The American economy right now continues to be weak, the EU seems on the verge of a meltdown, and growth is slowing in Asia. Every independent analysis indicates that Obama’s proposals would help ordinary Americans make ends meet and provide a modest hedge against the downside risks faced by the U.S. With interest rates near zero, there has literally never been a more opportune time for America to issue more short-term debt.

Some argue that concern over the deficit has led Republicans to change their minds over economic policies they supported only a few years (or months) ago. But simple arithmetic demonstrates that this claim is false. The GOP is calling for an extension of all the Bush tax cuts, and is resisting even modest cuts to the defense budget; these positions alone would add much more to the deficit than Obama’s proposals. Even Paul Ryan’s budget, hailed by many for its “fiscal seriousness,” would add more than $6 trillion to the deficit just in the next decade (yes, you read that right).

And don’t forget, Republicans want to repeal Obamacare even though it shaves hundreds of billions from the deficit in the first decade, and more than a trillion in each subsequent decade. There is simply no credible evidence that Republicans really care about the deficit—except as an excuse to dismantle social safety nets, and to keep redistributing wealth to the already wealthy

In the meantime, tens of millions of Americans continue to be burdened by crushing debt, unemployment and under-employment, and the prospect of more on the way. No doubt some of these individuals made bad decisions, and a case could be made that they deserve their fate; but most are simply victims of the most vicious economic downturn in three-quarters of a century.

None of this seems to matter in the slightest to the Republicans. They intend to bring Obama down and to continue catering to the rich, no matter how much ordinary Americans suffer.

If this isn’t economic terrorism, I don’t know what is.

Jason Scorse

Like many, I recently watched with amazement as dictators were challenged and overthrown in the Middle East. As one who came of age during the reigns of Gaddafi and Mubarak, and remembers the Iranian hostage crisis of 1979, I never thought I would see the day when unarmed civilians would take on such brutal regimes. Their courage is inspiring (I strongly recommend the Frontline documentary “Syria Undercover”).

Here in America, I have often wondered when (if ever) people would get fed up with a status quo in which the rich get richer while the poor and the middle class stagnate, and social and environmental needs are ignored. I have heard stories about the 1960s when mass actions by concerned citizens produced the civil rights movement, the women’s rights movement, and opposition to the Vietnam War. I’m told there was a sense that something big was happening, and the feeling was almost palpable. I never thought I’d see a repeat; people have become jaded, and with 24-7 media the distractions are endless.

I was wrong. It is happening again in 2011 with the Occupy movements.

Despite all the shortcomings of this populist uprising, especially its lack of specific demands and leaders, the movement has become a force to be reckoned with and it’s not going away. I predict it will have a significant impact on American society over the next decade, starting with the 2012 election.

Saturday I watched the live telecast of the General Assembly of Occupy Oakland. While there were some crazy ideas and strange personalities, I was struck by how incredibly sane it seemed overall. The participants have created an extremely democratic and open society. People take turns discussing issues which are then brought to a vote. I know from my job how hard it is for as few as four people to agree on anything; it’s extremely impressive that the Occupy protestors in Oakland have created a forum where hundreds of disparate people, almost all strangers, map out a strategy and take action.

I also watched video of the police at UC-Davis pepper spraying a group of peaceful students, and it was a sight to behold—police brutality plain and simple (which supposedly got even worse off camera). What is most striking is that the crowd didn’t back down, but instead shamed the police into retreating. You can tell that the students recognize they have the moral upper hand, and that their cause is just. This dichotomy between people with truth on their side and police officers lashing out indiscriminately is more evidence that the balance of power in America needs to shift. There are now calls for the president of UC-Davis to resign (I recommend reading this letter and signing the petition).

Elites across America have been getting away with corruption and abuse for decades. We may have reached a tipping point where people are simply not going to take it anymore. When times are good and everyone benefits from a strong economy, it is easy to gloss over the inequalities; when times are bad, ugly truths can come to light. This is the time we are living in now.

And while I understand why the Occupiers resist aligning themselves with any political party, they will eventually have to enter the political realm in order to make any substantive changes. Doing so could force the Democratic Party to weed out its so-called “centrists,” who actually undermine core Democratic values. Whether through primary challenges or other means, anything that forces the party back to its populist roots would be a blessing. A significant number of Democrats are as beholden to financial interests as their GOP counterparts, and helped usher in the era of deregulation that is responsible for much of our current economic malaise.

Republicans don’t know what to do about the Occupy movements, which challenge just about everything they stand for. In the short term the party will likely continue to hold significant power—because of the undemocratic nature of the Senate and the Electoral College, because of redistricting by GOP-controlled state legislatures, and because so many rightwing extremists allow religious zealotry to trump their economic self-interest. But the party’s long term prospects are worsening by the day, and the Occupy movements are sure to hasten their ultimate defeat.

The Occupiers have put us on the road to a paradigm shift in America, one that will ultimately produce changes as significant as those from the 1960s.

P.S. The powers-that-be are getting scared and trying to undermine the movement as this memo shows. Also, for great updates on the UC-Davis incident check out this piece by James Fallows at the Atlantic (and check out the video at the bottom).

Jason Scorse