Nostalgic for Reagan Republicans? And do facts matter?

First an announcement that is that's pertinent to today's topic. A bold new site "Evonomics.com" makes economics much livelier. Among other intriguing and enlightening pieces, they recently featured my 'classic' about the root method of our Enlightenment renaissance -- flat-open-fair competition. While citing Adam Smith, F. Hayek, Ben Franklin and Pericles, I show how far today's libertarians and conservatives have drifted away from their own core underpinnings. How they have been suckered into betraying the very thing they claim to support. 

Drop by Evonomics to try out this and other challenging articles, daring us to think -- and rethink -- as if we were proper heirs to those revolutionaries... as well as avid 21st Century minds.

== My, my how you have changed ==

Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush actively promoted measures to combat climate change, with Reagan in 1987 overruling objections within his own Cabinet to a major proposed treaty to protect the ozone layer, according to recently declassified records. Both presidents’ secretaries of state, George P. Shultz and James A. Baker III, played key roles in blocking efforts by other Cabinet secretaries to frustrate implementation of more environmentally friendly policies. 

For example, memos for senior State Department officials noted that “Global climate change is the most far reaching environmental issue of our time” and that notwithstanding the need for continued research, “We simply cannot wait – the costs of inaction will be too high.”

These discussions led to success in the 1989 Montreal Protocol, which phased out production of industrial chemicals linked to the destruction of the Earth’s ozone layer. An example of where we saw a problem, acted (like adults) and (largely) solved it.

Back when it was not a core GOP principle to hate science.

== Then boomers took over ==

Who would have expected the U.S. “boomer" generation to be so sanctimoniously stupid? Politically, I mean? Take this recent example.

The new transportation infrastructure bill “is a landmark moment for a Congress that is reviled by many Americans as a do-nothing body, most notable for the bitter fighting between its most extreme elements.” For the first time in 10 years it does more than a continuing resolution but actually addresses national needs.  It also quietly reauthorizes the U.S. Export-Import Bank. (So much for that “enemy number one” on the conservative action list.)

Why the decade of obstruction? Because republicans know that spending on infrastructure is the very best form of economic stimulation, directly helping the country while most of the cash immediately becomes high-velocity dollars - spent and re-spent with the biggest economic “multiplier” possible.  More than enough reason to block it, so the resulting economic improvements would not happen on a democrat’s watch.

Too late. All economic indicators are up, and now GOP leaders fear bridges are about to start collapsing, and they’ll be blamed.  Still, they managed to avoid any sort of funding that might be reliable or long term, paying for this increase by a one-time raid on the Federal Reserve. The very opposite of fiscal conservatism.

== Facts matter ==

The Republican debates are great theater.  But all the fact-checking services are in despair because it is like trying to drink from a firehose. At any given moment, the odds of a candidate’s utterances being even half true are around 50%.

Are facts even slightly pertinent, anymore?  When every attempt at creating a fact-checker service is immediately rendered impotent, because scores always look bad for the GOP?  Take, for example, the stark difference in actual, measurable outcomes across the spans of Republican administrations versus democratic ones. By any actual metric – by dozens – the outcomes are diametrically opposite.  Should that change a person’s mind? If true, would it change yours? 

In wake of the recent Paris Climate Summit, the biggest were-elephant in the room is climate change. The inconvenient fact? That 2015 will have been the hottest on record and 2016 could be even hotter. 

This will make it hard for Ted Cruz, Sean Hannity and other outright-deliberate liars to use their favorite gambit of pegging their “before” comparisons always on the specific year 1998. In other words, in 2013 they said "there hasn't been any warming in the last 16 years!"  In 2014 they said "there hasn't been any warming in the last 17 years!"  In 2015 they said "there hasn't been any warming in the last 18 years!"

Why so specific? Why did they always peg 1998 as the ‘before” year?  Because that was the previous record holder for hottest year in all of recorded human history…. Allowing them to then proclaim that the years since then show “no warming.” Like a woman choosing as her “before” peg the last year she was pregnant, then declaring “I haven’t gained a pound since 2005!

If you ditto-nodded to that nonsense-lie by Cruz and Hannity etc., or repeated it, then welcome to a foretaste of your ultimate destination.

Oh, but there is a long series of actual truths that are so inconvenient to the fox-narrative of gloom. Take the favorite rant-topic of Donald Trump, Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio – that the US is being swamped by waves of illegal immigration.  Except that… we’re not. 

In fact, the flow has gone from an inward flood, under George W. Bush, to negative under Obama.

"There are many reasons for the historic reversal of migration between the U.S. and Mexico, according the Pew Research Center, which announced Thursday that more than 1 million Mexicans headed south to re-establish their lives in the last five years, while only 870,000 migrated north to the U.S."

But it gets richer when one contemplates that confederates, like angels, have no memory.  Remember the screeches and flapping chicken-little panic when a few thousand unaccompanied minors from south of the border appeared, briefly surprising our government agencies, who had not encountered the phenomenon before?  Oh the sky was falling!  Except that…

…except that crisis ended within weeks, as measures taken by the administration worked.  Simply and quietly worked. But sensationalist media ignored that fact. And the United States of America – once again -- did not come to an end.

Does that disappoint candidates who actively pray for the United States to come to a rapid and violent end?  Let’s be clear; that does describe the average Republican candidate today. Many openly avow to praying for exactly that.

No wonder Mexicans are leaving.  So much for the core Trump talking-point. (See here for more on why almost everything you believe to be true about immigration is diametrically opposite-to-true.) 

== More inconvenient facts? ==

Crime rates have been at historic lows during the Obama administration, and police deaths have also dropped to their lowest level in a lifetime.  So how does NJ governor Chris Christie get away with saying the exact opposite, in railing against Obama during a recent debate? Simple. Any attempt to set up or refer to a Fact Check site soon devolves, because no matter how sincerely non-partisan the group's original intentions, they will soon be dismissed as "partisan," for one simple reason. Because there is no longer even a figleaf correlation between dogma and actual fact on the American right. It is the basic reason for the War on Science…

…and against every other American clade of skill and knowledge, from medical doctors to teachers, civil servants, law professionals, economists, journalists. (Name an exception.) 

Getting back to the GOP debates… we will talk more about front-runners Donald Trump, Ben Carson and Ted Cruz.  But lest we forget that “establishment” republicans are no more honest or competent. Take Jeb Bush’s howler that his brother “kept us safe from terrorism.”

This admittedly biased article on Salon puts the lie to such nonsense.  “The more we learn about the last Republican administration, the more obvious the truth becomes. We now have enough evidence to say not only did George W. Bush fail to keep us safe; he was criminally negligent in his refusal to heed the warnings his administration was given in the months before 9/11.” Indeed, the author asserts that “more Americans were killed (by enemy action) on U.S. soil during George W. Bush’s administration than under any other.”  

The latter part I’d like to see documented.  But certainly there were more successful terror attacks under G. W. Bush – and more victims – than across the Clinton and Obama administrations combined.  Facts that confederate voters blithely ignore because to of the narrative-fable that Republicans are stronger on defense. 

Indeed, one measure of the delusion dominating America's gone-around-the-bend right wing is the matter of military readiness. At the end of the Clinton Administration, 100% of major U.S. military units were rated fully combat ready. By the time G.W. Bush left office, not a single major army or marine unit was so rated. Most have now regained that status. So much for muslim-traitor Obama.

I have left out so many other inconvenient facts.  Like the blatant way that almost every conceivable metric of U.S.economic health has done better (by far) across the span of the Clinton and Obama administrations than across those of either Bush.  Indeed, most plummeted across spans of republican rule and most went up across democratic administrations. And this includes the trend lines of budget deficits!  When outcome variance is that huge, only a fool would let dogma trump our own self-interest.  See the comparison made extremely clear, including the staggering fact that any prudent fiscal conservative must choose to be a democrat. The facts regarding deficit spending are overwhelming.  

Fairness on the Public Airwaves

In a previous political posting, we ran through a long list of political addictions – nostrums and catechisms that believers return to decade after decade, despite their having been relentlessly and decisively disproved. Like the notion that a seventy year Drug War can cure chemical dependency, or that a fifty year trade embargo on Cuba ever did a scintilla of good. Or an utter insanity called Supply Side (Voodoo) Economics, or SSVE, that never made a single successful prediction, not even one, ever...

...or – indeed – some of the almost-as-absurd incantations nursed by the much-smaller but still dangerous very-far-left. Like anti-vaxxing and other hostilities to science, that approach 5% as silly as climate denialism; (yes, that silly.)

Normally, even the most obstinate human would start to shift away from such disproved nonsense. That is, if they were exposed to the disproof!  Alas, so many of us scrupulously avoid looking in directions that might offer up such evidence we’re wrong!  And there are evil men who cater to this weakness in human nature.

Which brings us to today’s topic.

== Should we hear any disagreement… at all? ==

Probably the most destructive administrative act in the last 50 years, and the root cause of almost all of America’s current problems, was based in a Reagan era action: 

“It was called the "Fairness Doctrine" created to prevent the American people from receiving misinformation in the guise of fact. Over 60 years later, the Fairness Doctrine is a thing of the past and the American people are worse off because of it.” 

Take a look at: The Repeal of Fairness: How Ronald Reagan gave us FOX News and other Bias Sources from the Examiner.

This history of the doctrine shows that its elimination led to today’s utterly polarized media, in which our fellow citizens stare at hate-drenched lie-festivals … rallying the faithful… without ever catching even a glimpse of another side.

While the Left has its own echo chambers that strive to copy the lucrative Fox – captive audience – business model, there are no masters of propaganda better than the crew led by Roger Ailes.  Indeed, MSNBC teeters on bankruptcy, because dedicated leftists are only a small minority of the Blue Constituency. 

The larger portion — moderate liberals — get bored by constant uniformity and wander off to find a variety of news sources. Indeed, their guru - Jon Stewart - swivels and skewers assumptions in all directions, while welcoming smart opponents on his show.

They are the ones who do not need a Fairness Doctrine.  They feel an itch on their own, to sample from a range of perspectives. 

But the far-left and entire-right are dogma junkies. Those portions of the populace need to be exposed to occasional rebuttals, lest they become shambling zombie-marrionettes to the hypno-lobotomizing propaganda puppet shows they stare at, endlessly nodding as stoked-up hate and fear levels just keep on rising.

There is a reason that the merchants of fear-and-loathing despise any talk of a restored fairness doctrine. Indeed, they would fight against it more furiously than anything else, even fair tax rates for oligarchs...

...because even just one minute of rebuttal per hour… would destroy their scam.  

Oh, we would still disagree, debate and fuss… there would still be liberals and conservatives and libertarians and such… but the purity of utter spite might give way to argument, comparison of evidence, some concessions in both directions, and even the horrible thing that the puppet-masters fear most. 

Negotiation. 

== How bad is the lie tsunami? ==

A new survey by the Tampa Bay Times’ PunditFact, looking at the veracity of cable networks, found that Fox News won (or lost) first prize for having the most falsehoods studied.  According to PunditFact, Fox News’s on-air talent were mostly-false, false, or “pants on fire” 60% of the time.  

MSNBC ranked second in falsehoods, at 46% of the time.  

And CNN ranked a lowly (or uply) 18% level of falsehoods – meaning, CNN did a pretty good job getting it right.  

As validation, the Economist, also a generally conservative journal, did its own survey of truthfulness, coming to very similar ratings. 

And hence this open challenge. Do you doubt I could do that one-minute rebuttal, myself?

I’m quite serious. Give me one minute per hour on Fox… or one per three hours… hell even one minute per week… and I would leave the Fox lie machine a smoldering ruin. You know I could do it. So could many of you. 

Want an equal chance at liberal media? Well, rebuttals already happen over there. Even on MSNBC. But sure… have at!

Alas, the masters of propaganda will fight to the death against any “fairness” on publicly owned airwaves, even though the principle was deemed totally righteous by our parents, in the Greatest Generation. The puppeteers know that the Ailes-heimers sickness they impose on millions would dissipate like a bad dream, and so would this phase of our re-ignited Civil War...

...setting us back on the path of non-demonizing, practical negotiation and vigorous, but reasonable argument. 

On that day when the fever breaks, we will regain a conservatism of intellect (I want it back!) and on that day, Barry Goldwater and William F. Buckley can stop spinning in their graves.

== Don't even pretend that truth evasion is equal ==

Oh, for those of you preaching the cynical line that “the parties are just the same, equally captured by Wall Street and equally corrupt,” dig this well.  

Democrats have long supported the Fairness Rule… meaning that they do not fear rebuttal...

...while Republicans sought to destroy it, and would go into actinic fury if they saw any hint of its return.

 Let's reiterate: one side does not mind its partisans hearing contradicting views and evidence.  The other side desperately dreads it.

Think about that. WHY is the right terrified of letting their troops hear any rebuttal at all?

Nothing better shows that the matter now is not “left-vs-right”... but honest/sane versus dishonest/insane.

Go on, spin out the rationalizations! It’s “freedom of speech” to keep half of a country hypnotized and hate-stoked with relentless, easily disproved lies. Just like the way southern whites, before the Civil War, had only newspapers to read that were owned and run by the plantation caste, having burned-out every other voice, loyal to Union and reason.

Go ahead and cry out “it’s simple competition and supply and demand!”  As you defend the same monopoly-oligarchy that was the top enemy of flat-open-fair enterprise for 6000 years. The exact and diametric opposite of "competition."

Sorry, these flailings may reassure you. But deep inside you know. 

This deliberate lobotomization of American political discourse is nothing less than treason.