Why Americans Cannot Elect a Good President

Americans seem to want a Facebook friend, or a tweeting buddy rather than a competent economic analyst interested in building a secure an ecologically progressive America. It is understandable that most Americans really haven’t got a good idea of why the national economy is so bad today, or how the process of national economic decline has been building since near the end of the cold war.

Real wages for white American males have been in decline since 1971-and wages for the middle class adjusted for inflation have been in decline as well. The Reagan tax cuts were good for one time only at stimulating the economy with a recoverable debt level, yet politicians have been unable to satiate the greed of Wall Street, Bankers and the financial services sector with any level of tax cuts.

The American economy has only about 11.5% manufacturing. The financial and Wall Street sectors have made an easy money country of the U.S.A. Financial accountability has taken second place to just having money. In such an easy-money economy the entire economy sinks in quality. It functions requiring deficit spending (Wall Street and banks) while the financial service sectors dumps fees at every opportunity and accounted for 40% of Wall Street profits as recently as 2007.

Prosperous, northern white women-a real worldly minority, Bachman and Palin (where is the one named Schnee?) are loud Republican candidates with unrealistic economic ideas looking back toward the Reagan era for ideas. Americans ought to elect the economist Joe Stiglitz-except they would ask; 'who is he'?

The Reagan era was a nostalgic, pioneering expansion economy itself a little bit beyond its right historical date. Understandably Sarah Palin is from such an era, or area in Alaska’s Mat-Su Valley.

The valley was populated at U.S. Government stimulated as the 1930’s Matanuska Colony. Pioneering farms were established. Of course in world war two and during the pipeline era Palmer and Wasilla also gained more population and development.

It is a beautiful area surrounded more or less by mountains on all sides. It is the kind of place where hunters may kill a bull moose just to take the horns and leave the carcass even today. On a beautiful bike route along the Palmer-Wasilla Highway I was too close to being run over by a car and then a truck twice this morning. First, a car ran a red light to turn in front of me riding my bike before I stopped suddenly. The second time a truck waited until I started through the crosswalk from the bike path on a green light and then suddenly accelerated to make a turn in front of me, and I was again able to stop. I may make a note of these guys, like Alaska FND 159, that seem to have disregard for the safety of those on bikes in the Wasilla area, in case the same guy does that twice this year.

Wasilla seems like an area where sparse population and lots of federal money from Ted Stevens created cheap, ground-breaking easy expansion and lately bad, conservative attitudes about the environment, finance and politics. It is natural enough because of the lack of population, competition and intelligence that may be common to a frontier area. Violent competition is the swollen, simplest concept for such politics. In days of yore that might have been more of a necessity than today. Now, it is just a devolution made by the ignorant as the easiest way to attain prosperity. That is a dangerous, naïve direction to take politically in a very sophisticated, intelligent and competitive world with substantial environmental issues.

It wasn’t at all surprising to me that Wasilla generated the one war criminal convicted for crimes against Afghans. Wasilla is that kind of place-some good, and much swollen arrogant attitudes fine enough in primitive, savage conflicts such as in the Balkans in the 90’s, yet not so good for competent, contemporary social and ecological progress.

The United States unfortunately requires popular politicians instead of competent ones. It is very unlikely that any candidate will be serious about reforming Wall Street, the financial sector or breaking up too big to fail banks. The nation has been almost automatic reelectors of Presidents-the sole exception since Nixon being President Carter. Basically the electorate just votes for whomever the establishment has felt would put a new face on the ongoing trimming of the ordinary working American and the poor as wealth is concentrated with the help of the broadcast media.