Cooperation vs the tea party

Written By: - Date published: 3:42 pm, July 30th, 2011 - 23 comments
Categories: Economy, International, us politics - Tags: ,

Cooperation is the word that the tea party has forgotten. But increasingly it looks like the evolutionary feature that defines humanity. I find it rather amusing that the tea party is un-cooperating itself towards extinction. It is a pity that they damage the rest of us on their way out.

In the current Economist we have “The evolution of generosity – Welcome, stranger”

THE extraordinary success of Homo sapiens is a result of four things: intelligence, language, an ability to manipulate objects dexterously in order to make tools, and co-operation. Over the decades the anthropological spotlight has shifted from one to another of these as the prime mover of the package, and thus the fundament of the human condition. At the moment co-operation is the most fashionable subject of investigation. In particular, why are humans so willing to collaborate with unrelated strangers, even to the point of risking being cheated by people whose characters they cannot possibly know?

The upshot was that, as the researchers predicted, generosity pays—or, rather, the cost of early selfishness is greater than the cost of trust. This is because the likelihood that an encounter will be one-off, and thus worth cheating on, is just that: a likelihood, rather than a certainty.

Then we look at the 80 or so recently elected members of the house from the tea party wing of the republicans who delayed a republican bill from the congress because it wasn’t strong enough. But it was immediately and unceremoniously dumped in the senate.

“To the American people, I would say we tried our level best,” Mr. Boehner said as he concluded a debate that had been abruptly halted Thursday evening when he fell short of the votes for victory. “We tried to do our best for our country, but some people still say no.”

That is complete bullshit. Quite simply it was a bill that had little support in the senate (even 22 republican senators voted against it), but was destined to be vetoed by the president if it did pass. It was a complete exercise in futility and did absolutely nothing to solve the threatening issue of the arbitrary debt ceiling.

As the Lexington blogger at the Economist acerbically points out about the Republician bill.

Er, hang on. The “something” the Republican House has come up with is a non-solution (since the Senate cannot buy it) to a problem entirely of the Republicans’ own making. The reason for this crisis is that instead of just raising the debt ceiling in the customary way so that the government can pay the bills Congress has already run up, the Republicans decided to point a pistol at the American economy and threaten to pull the trigger if they did not get the spending cuts they wanted.

Sure, America needs to tackle its burgeoning entitlement programmes. But not now, when cutting spending will make an insipid recovery worse, and more especially not like this, hijacking a routine procedure and using it to bring the country to the edge of downgrading or default. At least the Republicans have done something? Gimme a break.

I’d agree. Somehow I don’t see that forcing an issue in such a way that it looks more like an attempt at kidnap is something that will engender the type of cooperation that will ensure this problem gets solved.

It looks like the republican bill was only put forward in a ball-grasping exercise like a haka to help drag the tea party idealists into the cooperation that is required for politics to work. It is good that the republican leadership is giving their tea party members the training wheels that they require to learn with. It would be better if they did it outside of the institution that affects so many world wide.

The way this is proceeding at present, I suspect that the republicans are sowing the seeds for their defeat next year. And that will mainly be because the antics of the tea party will not be seen as being in any way cooperative – which in turn will make sure that many voters will have already given them their last chance.

23 comments on “Cooperation vs the tea party ”

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  1. lprent 1
    30 July 2011 at 3:45 pm

    BTW: Does anyone know why they are throwing peas overboard in the cartoon?

  2. randal 2
    30 July 2011 at 4:01 pm

    the tea party have concocted a mish mash of historical fact with infantile omnipotence and desire to create soemthing that has no rational basis except their own fantastical imaginations.

  3. Colonial Viper 3
    30 July 2011 at 4:14 pm

    Boehner pulling the GOP out of the debt talks last minute sent Washington a very clear signal – he is not in charge of his own caucus. The Koch brothers backed Tea Party freshmen congressmen are the tail wagging the entire Republican dog.

    Obama has it when he said that the US might have an AAA credit rating (just) but that their political system would be judged less than AAA

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K0UXnARjd3g

    btw, the US remains an enormously wealthy country. Apple has US$70B in cash reserves, more than the entire Federal Government today.

    And the richest 400 people in the country (according to Forbes) hold wealth of about US$1.4T.

    • Afewknowthetruth 3.1
      30 July 2011 at 8:44 pm

      Money is created out of thin air when a loan is made.

      http://videolectures.net/google_grignon_debt/

      None of the money people think they have actually exists. Most of it is in the form of computer entries. And some of it is in the form of pieces of worthless paper. If ALL loans were repaid overnight most of the money people think exists would vanish overnight.

      For the moment people believe the computer entries and pieces of paper have value, so they able to trade them. However, it’s when a lot of people try to trade them in for something tangible that the real value, i.e. zero, becomes apaparent. Hence gold has risen from under $1200 to $1600+ over the past year, as people offload their ‘toilet paper’.

      China is currently offloading as much of the worthless stuff (T bonds etc.) as possible and is converting the computer digits and pieces of paper into gold, oil, ownership of land and companies etc.

      Whether the pieces of paper that claim ownnership of land and companies will be of much use in the severely energy- depleted world we are headed into is yet to be determined. And whther the gold will be much use when there is little food a few years hence is also food for thought.

      The financial system contains the makings of its own downfall.

      It has only been the increasing availability of cheap energy that has allowed the Ponzi scheme to inflate to the degree it has. The days of cheap energy and abundant are rapidly drawing to a close. The Ponzi scheme based on consumption of oil and creating money out of thin air must collapse soon.

  4. Colonial Viper 4
    30 July 2011 at 6:25 pm

    Illegal Mexican immigrants leave US for better economic conditions at home

    Seriously, you read that right.

    “It’s now easier to buy homes on credit, find a job and access higher education in Mexico,” Sacramento’s Mexican consul general, Carlos González Gutiérrez, said Wednesday. “We have become a middle-class country.”

    Mexico’s unemployment rate is now 4.9 percent, compared with 9.4 percent joblessness in the United States.

    An estimated 300,000 undocumented immigrants have left California since 2008.

    http://www.sacbee.com/2011/07/28/3799513/improving-mexican-economy-draws.html

  5. Bill 5
    30 July 2011 at 9:44 pm

    Co-operation isn’t the problem. Capitulation is the problem. The ‘left’ are forever going down the road of compromise and winding up in capitulation city.

    • Colonial Viper 5.1
      30 July 2011 at 9:58 pm

      yeah you can see how Obama has completely failed so far in his presidency, even with things that the majority of Americans support eg. higher taxes for the rich and a public healthcare option.

      In the US big money rules the game of politics. A list of big donors to Obama reveals all the same suspects, banks, big oil, etc.

  6. Afewknowthetruth 6
    30 July 2011 at 10:06 pm

    The US is going to have to increase the budget for cleaning up the mess after weather-related disasters -another consequence of the short term, pro-corporate profit policies that have been in place for decades.

    http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/capital-weather-gang/post/2011-ties-record-for-most-billion-dollar-weather-disasters/2011/07/26/gIQAvMd7aI_blog.html

    2011 already ties for the most, and the hurricane season has hardly started.

    And until hurricanes deliver water, the southwest bakes and burns -yet more environmental and economic toll. No wonder Mexicans are leavi for home.

  8. Oligarkey 8
    31 July 2011 at 10:11 am

    Up until the last few years, i saw the level of greed in the US oligarchy as akin to a ravenous serpent eating its own tail in pursuit of more flesh to feast on. I saw the American empire as reminiscent of the classical Roman one – the oligarchy having become so arrogant and greedy that the consensus that its rule was built on would have to collapse. Now i realise – they have simply been in a process of moving their capital all over the world creating capitalist “democracies” that have a veneer of independence, but in financial and macroeconomic terms are owned and controlled by the centers of global capital, that are given form in the World Bank, IMF and other US-based, but ostensibly global financial institutions. The plan has been to weaken national institutions, such as labour unions, by playing divide and rule with the supply of capital (unemployment and offshoring kills union/labour bargaining power), delivering control of the political process to the capital-supplying institutions. So it’s faulty to look at the US’s crisis as national and recent. It’s part of a global, long-term plan to create one world market, where the share of economic surplus going to labour decreases, and the share going to capital increases. So it actually suits the capital elite quite nicely to have the US markets in turmoil, because it further weakens national institutions of civil society that provide a counter-balance to their control of the political process, both nationally and globally. It increases their bargaining power in the labour market.

    This plan has been in action, since Lyndon Johnson entered the Whitehouse in 1963, and the Kennedy brothers’ plans to reach a compromise with the Soviets were scrapped. Incidentally it’s my belief that the Kennedy brothers were both killed due to this ambition, as was Italian President Aldor Moro (was in the process of seeking an “historic compromise” between his “christian democrats” and the Italian Communist Party when, in 1978, he was assassinated). Moro’s wife testified at the trial for her husband’s assassination, that according to her husband, none other than Henry Kissinger had told him that he would be “badly punished” if he kept up with this plan. A BBC doco series called “Gladio” points toward the P2 masonic lodge as organising the execution of Kissinger’s threat. That lodge controlled all the Italian security and intel institutions at the time.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j1fH3YpQciQ

    It’s an absolutely ruthless conspiracy, that was alluded to in 1961 by John Kennedy.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xhZk8ronces&feature=related

    Where is this plan supposed to end up? Probably total corporate control of every society on the planet.

    We need to get rid of the quasi-fascist macroeconomic settings of the Washington consensus that underpin the power of global capital in NZ, and were first introduced in the fascist dictatorship of Pinochet’s Chile. These are, the floating dollar (leaves us open to attack by large global financial interests), employment law that kills the bargaining power of the unions (the Labour Party’s Employment Relations Act retained this aspect of National’s 1991 Employment Contracts Act), and finally, laws governing foreign investment, which allow billions of dollars of capital to be leeched oversees every year – mostly by the foreign banks. David Lange claimed that ex-U.S. Vice President Dan Quayle threatened to have him “liquidated” over the anti-nuclear policy in the 1980s – and the introduction of “Washing Consensus” policy may be what saved him. Funnily enough, Winston is the only politician that has the guts to take on these issues. The Labour Party members who are in the know are either owned by said interests or are too scared to oppose them.

    But what’s the point of surviving to live in such a bleak future? The time has come to say in a loud voice, what is true.

    • Afewknowthetruth 8.1
      31 July 2011 at 12:53 pm

      I agree with most of what you say. However, the problem goes back a lot further than you have indicated. Indeed, it goes right back to the early 1600s, when corporations were provided with Royal Charters that gave the the ‘right’ to loot the planet, subjugate or annihilate people etc.

      In conjunction with money-lenders such as the Rothchilds, global corporate-financial empires were created more than a century ago. The Americans were able to get in on the act when they started to make millions, and then billions, of dollars out of extracting and refining oil. Rockefeller was particularly noted for his manipulative and unethical practices. Famous quote of David Rockefeller:”Why would you care about people?”

      Global corporations and money-lenders will continue to degrade the planet and subjugate populations until they can’t, I’m afraid.

      ‘Where is this plan supposed to end up? Probably total corporate control of every society on the planet.’

      That has already been achieved (other than the few remaining hunter-gatherers and perhaps the remaining comunist states).

      ‘The Labour Party members who are in the know are either owned by said interests or are too scared to oppose them.’

      Very likely. We certainly do not get an ounce of truth from them on such matters -just a deathly silence.

      ‘But what’s the point of surviving to live in such a bleak future? ‘

      We have entered an energetic-environmental bottleneck and few humans are likely to survive what is on the horizon. The Powers That Be probably know that and have made their plans. The covert fascism that characterises most western ‘democracies’ will probably morph into overt fascism, and then feudalism as we slide down the slope of energy descent and environmental degradation .

    • mikesh 8.2
      1 August 2011 at 11:52 pm

      Opponents of the plan, such as Gadaffi, certainly seem to be having a pretty rough time.

  9. Oligarkey 9
    31 July 2011 at 1:29 pm

    Afewknowthetruth

    Yeah – you’re probably right. I meant the plan, as it has appeared in its particular form since the 1960s – i.e. the process of financial and corporate globalisation. I think there is still the possibility for genuine popular re-taking of power, when the energy crisis reaches its zenith, and unemployment reaches 20%-30%. That will happen in the next 10 years. The left has until then to get the word out, so that people aren’t drawn down the road of supporting a new fascist consensus.

    Of course, events as they unfold in the US will be crucial. I’m looking forward to knowing the content of Obama’s last speech as president.

  10. Afewknowthetruth 10
    31 July 2011 at 2:31 pm

    Oligarkey.

    The founding father of the Rothschild empire suposedly used the term ‘one world government’ in the late 1700s. Who knows if that is true?

    ‘That will happen in the next 10 years. The left has until then to get the word out’

    You may be right but I personally believe there will be a major breakdown of the system within 2-3 years, for which most people will be totally unprepared.

    As for the left getting the word out, I don’t think that will happen. A combination of ignorance and denial characterises the left (just as much as it characterises the right). There is no sign of any chink in the armour yet. Labour is still campaigning on growth, consumerism and globalisation.