Ignorance is Bliss
With economics and politics always closely intertwined one way of understanding how policy making for the economy will play out is to take the political temperature. At the moment that means taking a look at the state of the Republican Party as it tries to figure out how to move forward. Assuming, that is, that it wants to move forward.
Things don’t look too bright.
In one of the more absurd moves in recent times the Republicans managed to block the ratification by the US Senate of a United Nations convention.
The UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities is based on the Americans with Disabilities Act. That Act was co-sponsored by Bob Dole, whom you may remember as a Republican presidential candidate. So this wasn’t a piece of socialism being foisted on the unwitting citizenry of the US. It was meant to take US standards and spread them around the world. It is a convention that positions the US as a champion of rights. It would help make disabled Americans more comfortable when they travel. And it is about as uncontroversial as you can get in this day and age.
This convention had everything going for it and has been endorsed by over 100 nations. It is a Jolly Good Thing.
But not here. No way. Not in the good old US of A.
Why?
Because the Tea Party didn’t like it.
Apparently there is a clause buried in the fine print that protects the rights of disabled children. Horror!
And that clause might, just might, be interpreted by some aggressive US based judge to prevent home schooling of such a child. Assuming a case was ever brought to court. And assuming everyone ignored the rider included in the US version of the Convention designed expressly to prevent such a case being brought.
For those of you who think this is all ridiculous please note: home schooling is a very big deal on the extreme right. The good folks over there see public schooling as an intrusion into the rights of parents to educate their children. This is because it is well known that education has a liberal bias. Kids learn stuff at school. Some of which might not fit the anti-deluvian thinking of right wing parents. Thus it is an essential right for parents to protect their kids from such liberal teaching, and to keep them in the dark about subversive knowledge. Like how old the earth is, which became a cause celebre for Marco Rubio one of the early front runners for the Republican candidacy in 2016. If you remember he recently tried to avoid answering the question about how old the earth is during a magazine interview so as not to upset his evangelical base of support. Indeed his answer put home schooling in the spotlight: his point was that it was wrong to teach things in school that contradict what a child may learn at home.
Apparently public school is simply supposed to reinforce ignorance rather than to enlighten.
I mention all this simply to illustrate for you all just where American public discourse sits.
The defeat of the convention was greeted with great glee by far right commentators. It was as if the US had avoided a major catastrophe. While you and I can laugh or shrug, this action signals where we are likely to be as we deal with the important issues facing us. If the far right is this divorced from reality, or rather if it is so deeply mired in its own reality that it cannot see how stupid this vote was, what hope is there when controversial issues arise?
Ignorance, as they say, is bliss.
Meanwhile allow me to depress you further.
We now have polling evidence to show us just how confused and disoriented voters are about the current ‘fiscal cliff’ debate.
They have no clue.
Only 12% understand that going over the fiscal cliff reduces the deficit. So over-hyped is the entire deficit and debt discussion that the public has no idea that the problem we face is too dramatic a reduction in the deficit, not too dramatic an increase.
Worse there seems to be a general notion that the so-called Simpson-Bowles plan is a good one. This is despite most people having no clue what is in the plan.
This ignorance extends into the media and Congress.
One prominent Democratic commentator objected to Obama’s plan including a massive $1.6 trillion increase in Federal revenues from tax increases of various sorts. He said it was over reaching and would not pass Republican muster. He suggested, instead, that Obama stick with Simpson-Bowles – a plan that includes an even more massive $2.2 trillion revenue increase. Huh?
On the other side of the aisle, some Republicans have endorsed Simpson-Bowles even though it advocates the ending of the Bush tax cuts. In case you hadn’t noticed those same Republicans oppose the ending of the Bush tax cuts. Go reconcile those positions.
I am beginning the wonder whether anyone has actually read Simpson-Bowles. Or, if they have, whether they understand it.
It gets worse.
When a research firm asked voters recently about another deficit reduction plan, about 25% of respondents thought highly of it. This remarkable level of public engagement in the debate pales somewhat when we realize that the plan voters were commenting on does not exist. It was a name made up for polling purposes.
If it sounds like a plan, walks like a plan, and looks like a plan …
Ignorance is, indeed, bliss.
