Politics not as usual - the crazy preference for "divided government"

Median income in the U.S. rose at its fastest rate last year while inequality shrank. What’s more, the income gains were larger for the poor and middle-class than for the wealthy, thus cutting into inequality. In addition, the poverty rate fell by 1.2 percentage points, the steepest decline since 1968. There were 43.1 million Americans in poverty this year, 3.5 million fewer than in 2014. The share of Americans who lack health insurance continued a years-long decline, falling 1.3 percentage points, to 9.1 percent.

This anchors in what has been utterly universal. Every major metric of U.S. national health improves across the span of democratic administrations. and almost all decline across Republican ones. Across the board, including deficits! Anyone who cares about actual outcomes would never trust the GOP with a burnt match.

Especially since this rapid rise should have happened 4+ years ago, had the GOP-run Congress passed the Infrastructure Bill, repairing our corroding bridges and roads, injecting high velocity cash into our sluggish money supply. (Supply Side tax cuts for the rich have only inflated asset bubbles while widening disparity, actually slowing money velocity.)

In fact, it is less the federal-level democrats than state level ones who should brag. Stymied by Congressional GOP blockage, blue states have been doing Keynsian stimulus and infrastructure investing - and it's working, as they surge in every way ahead of red states like Kansas, which keep doubling-down on Supply Side voodoo. This answers the key question posed by the CSMonitor article, as to why rural folk are lagging.

Seriously, compare outcomes! That is what they never, ever want you to do - the incantation-pushers at Fox and Breitbart. It is why they wage war on every knowledge and fact based profession. (Name an exception.) Especially science. It's why fact-checking their candidates feels so futile. Nevertheless, see my analysis of: Fact-checking the First Presidential Debate.

== Let's Bribe Trump to release his taxes! ==

A 26 year old Marine Corps veteran started a campaign on CrowdPac to raise money - to be donated to ten veteran's groups - if Trump releases his tax returns by the final debate on Oct. 19. Entrepreneur Reid Hoffman (co-founder of LinkedIn) made a $5 million matching pledge, bringing the total over $6 million for this CrowdPac campaign. This is an excellent example of citizen involvement. Wage this phase of our Civil War with wagers!

Demand they back up the spectacularly, actinically insane things they assert and believe - from 'Obama's a Kenyan Muslim' to 'no climate change' to 'the GOP is fiscally responsible and governs well' - and put money on it! Find a trustworthy person to hold the stakes. Watch how they run, and change the subject.

== Worst Congress in US History: Hint - it's the party ==

Oh, but let's get back to Americans' least favorite institution. After years of scaffolding and refurbishment, the US Capitol has been returned to its former glory. If only they could do the same to Congress. The Congress that broke all records for laziness, shattering the previous records held by every GOP led session since 1998, just finished its longest recess in U.S. history, to return to pass a year-delayed Zika Bill and yet another emergency 3 month funding bill, because it has not been able to do a simple budget since 2010, when the Republicans took over.

“Americans are worried and angry about the big issues: stagnant wages, immigration, trade deals, health care, entitlement programs, the tax code, the Zika virus, tainted drinking water. Yet the best Congress can do for the moment is to keep the government running on autopilot for a few more months, and even this isn’t guaranteed,” writes Dana Milbank in The Washington Post.

As House Democrats point out, 195 of the 219 ‘bills’ that Paul Ryan’s House brags of having passed have been minor “suspension” bills, such as post-office namings. That's 195 out of 219.

Seriously, you think cynicism and pessimism and dismissing Congress as an “institution” and a “corrupt political caste” will get you off the hook? Bull. It is not the institution but the drooling insane party that has gerrymandered its way into control over what was once the greatest deliberative body on the planet. 

In California, the other party only loosely guides its majority, who argue openly like adults, listening to business and community leaders about what needs to be done. Individual legislators negotiate in almost perfect transparency… and laws adapting to the 21st Century get passed… and constituents discuss pending bills and grownup POLITICS happens!

Republicans used to do this, back in even Gingrich’s day. Before a merely conservative party went stark, jibbering insane. You conservatives, know that Trump is not a disease but a symptom. You will only regain a sane conservatism by understanding a word. "Cauterize." Better yet... immolate and hope for a phoenix.

== Libertarians rise? ==

Straight from the old heart of the Confederacy: The Richmond Virginia Times-Dispatch dumps Trump and endorses Gary Johnson for president. And yes, I forecast that there would be a rush by “quasi-sane” American conservatives to the Libertarian Party candidate, perhaps even enough to get him on the coming presidential debates. At which point the bleed could become a gusher.

Clinton is not eager for all this, because she knows Johnson would bleed her a bit, too… and open a possible door for lefty-green Jill Stein. (I think she’s being shortsighted; getting ten million saner republicans to shift to the Libertarian Party could help us all.) But let’s keep it all in context. With Virginia turning blue, Richmond is no longer Jefferson Davis’s town. The re-ignited confederacy treason, sparked deliberately by Rupert Murdoch and Roger Ailes and their pals, is aflame mostly elsewhere, in states that did not invest in education.

The Libertarians have some ideas and promise. Mostly pro-transparency and leaving peoples’ bodies to themselves. But their current cult of “government = always bad!” is lunacy contradicted by all of American history. Our parents in the Greatest Generation would have been appalled. Half of our current wealth we owe to sci & tech advances, many of which emerged from taxpayer funding of R&D. From the 1790’s National Road to rails to highways and airways, from space to the web, government infrastructure investments were crucial every decade... till the last two. When fanatical GOP Congresses ended a two hundred year partnership of public and private.

== The fallback of sane Republicans: divided government!”

What's John McCain's re-election slogan now? "Elect me in order to put a 'check' on President Hillary!" Wow what a mantra. Of course it is based on the Fox-ite litany that divided government is best. Which they never said back when the GOP controlled every branch and lever of government from 2001-2007, setting a record for laziness that only the recent Boehner-Ryan congresses have matched. No attention to the people's business, not even funding to fight Zika. No adjustments to fit an onrushing 21st Century. Just favors for the oligarchy.

Oh, it was not for lack of determination or focus. For 25 years the GOP was the most disciplined and tightly run partisan group in American history. Every Republican pol repeated any talking point issued by Roger Ailes, within 24 hours. But that focus, that discipline was aimed at doing nothing. Not even passing a budget on time. Even once. Ever.

The incantation that "gridlock is good" is stunning drivel. Despite recent excellent economic news, the overall pace of this recovery, from the pit we fell into during the last Bush years, has been way too slow. Why? According to a deep and extensive study that weighed many factors for cause and effect: "As the U.S. economy enters its eighth year of its recovery from the Great Recession, one major factor is slowing its growth: Government gridlock." 

What can we expect if the Democrats take Congress? Reiterating a point that deserves it: just look at California, where the prospect of a 2/3 Democratic Assembly and Senate triggered screaming forecasts of instant communist dystopic hell. Except those Democrats did as Dems always do in power – they separated into individual legislators, negotiating pragmatically. And, to everyone’s surprise, the GOP minority became both moderate and influential!  Tipping the balance between DP factions. And California state government has been – without question – the most effective in the United States at responding to citizen concerns while adapting to an ever-changing 21^st Century.

Yet even as the Republican intelligencia are fleeing their toxic candidate, with many of them stepping up to support H. Clinton, because “at least she’s knowledgeable, moderate and stable,” some are repeating the mantra... "elect her to avoid Trump, but keep Congress red, so we can make her life a living hell, and make sure nothing at all gets done."

No, the issue is not divided vs. undivided. It is whether to trust a party with zero positive accomplishments and mountains of negative ones, ever again.

Take this example: At the recent National Security Forum, Trump again expressed his admiration for Russian President Vladimir Putin. 

Are you offended? Well, stop blaming Donald Trump for embracing things like the cult of Putin-worship that have been spread by Sean Hannity, O'Reilly, Limbaugh and the confederate media for years! Again and again: Trump is not the disease. He is a symptom.

Addenda Miscellany: In his "charity" foundation, Donald Trump became expert at one thing. He found a way to give away somebody else's money and claim the credit for himself.

Meet Rebekah Mercer, the powerful hedge fund heiress who is now the money-mogul appointing almost every top official in the Donald Trump campaign, replacing the Koch Brothers and Sheldon Adelson as the top GOP feudal patron.

== Finally ... but most important... SCIENCE! ==

Lawrence Krauss and his colleagues at ScienceDebate, supported by nearly every major science organization in the country, have spent two decades heroically asking political candidates to answer a series of questions about science and technology policy, in recognition of the fact that these matters will ultimately present the most important challenges to the next President. 

After getting predictably detailed -- somewhat wonkish, but scientifically enthusiastic -- answers from the Clinton campaign, and predictably lefty answers from Jill Stein, Donald Trump’s campaign finally sent in his answers. They were released on the Science Debate Web site.

Krauss makes no bones about his own reactions, which he lays out in the New Yorker. But then, if there were no other loathsome traits to the re-ignited Confederacy, their incessant and volcanic War on Science, is enough of a lethal threat to our children that nothing else would be needed.  It is the marrow-deep cancer that decent American conservatives must burn out of their movement, if it is to survive. 

Last minute item.  You think those talking about a "war on science" are exaggerating? Have another look at the biliously anti-science House GOP.  Again and again and again.... this is not about Donald Trump. He is not a disease.  He's a symptom.