It’s present in the rhetoric of virtually all politicians. “We need to have a work ethic; it’s not American to be lazy.” Like so much that is said by politicians, the high esteem with which they regard work has an exclusion clause in it. The rules don’t apply to them.

Actually, many politicians do work hard, just not doing their day jobs – you know, the one that we elected them to do. Texas Governor Rick Perry makes $150,000 a year, not a king’s ransom for those who do the bidding for the wealthy, but still a healthy chunk of money. It’s certainly enough money that if your state is on fire you would want to at least pretend to be in charge. You might fly in, wearing your custom hard hat for a photo op while the fire fighters are cursing you under their breath as they wait for you to leave so they can do their day (and night) jobs.

But Rick Perry was enjoying his fifteen minutes of fame as the presumptive Republican nominee for president. He discovered that his gift for gab scorched him on the campaign trail, particularly in the heat of debates. He probably wished that he was paying a little attention to the fires in his home state. But like so many of our leaders, he was AWOL when it counted. And while he was AWOL, the state treasurer was signing his paycheck.

He’s not alone in this regard. Sarah Palin was away from Juneau so much when she was governor of Alaska that she decided that her services were no longer needed. She declared her job done, resigned, and hit the high-paying lecture circuit while writing (or having ghost-written), her book Going Rogue.

It’s not just Republicans. Bill Clinton was away from the office raising money dozens of times during his two terms as president. But Barack Obama seems to be trying to outdo Clinton. Clinton was the key-noter at five fund-raisers in his first year as president; Barack Obama was the headliner twenty-three times in his first nine months.

Barack Obama was a U.S. senator for four years. During that period of time (1,461 days), he was on the job only 143 days. Part of that is due to the fact that twenty-three of the forty-eight months that he was a senator he was busy either being a presidential candidate or a president-elect. As a senator, his average salary was $165,450 per year. His presidential campaign raised over $650 million. Perhaps he could have saved the tax payers a few dollars by not accepting his salary for the days he was absent. Instead he could have taken a stipend from his campaign. The same could be said about Rick Perry now as well as other candidates who hold public office.

In fairness to the president, many of the days when he was not working as a senator, his colleagues were also away from Capitol, often dialing for dollars. In fact Congress is in session only two out of three weeks and many of the weeks when it is in session, both the days and the hours are few.

There are clearly consequences of the work schedules, or lack of work, that many of our political leaders.

1. Basic functions of government are not being fulfilled. The presidency requires an individual at the helm who is “focused like a laser” on the job to be done. Yes, time off is necessary for sanity, but shilling for money is not the kind of relaxation that re-energizes someone.

Members of Congress can only do their job if they are gathering information, synthesizing it, and evaluating it. The committee system provides opportunities for small numbers of Congresspersons to engage specialists in Q & A. If witnesses were knowledgeable and had no connection with lobbying organizations that donate to campaigns, they could be of enormous benefit to members of Congress in doing their jobs. Additionally there could be on-site inspections of national and international problems as well as the programs that are trying to address them. The trips would be serious inquiries; not old-fashioned junkets.

2. Public officials need to bring more integrity to the jobs they hold. If Congress comes back from its August vacation and then goes on vacation after two weeks, it’s a public relations disaster. Here they are talking about the great American values of responsibility and hard work, and they’re some place other than on the job. When they reconvene, it’s often to try to deal with gridlock that developed in part because they weren’t on the job when they should have been.

3. There is a “trickle-down” impact of not working. FEMA is running out of money; it needs new appropriations from Congress. These are dollars that provide shelter, food, clothing, and additional support for real people, the victims of disasters. Even if Congress eventually meets its obligation, the uncertainty of if or when they will get around to it undermines local planning and adds to the trauma of the victims.

The Brits and others do it differently. They have six-week campaigns. Elections occur in a compact period of time when voters can be focused. By virtue of being only six weeks, excessive money is not needed.

When our public officials talk about the need for oversight of the spending of public monies, there is a single institution which is geo-centered and accessible to evaluators. If Congress and the president would simply look at themselves with one purpose in mind – ensuring that we get a good day’s work out of them every work day, we could solve many of our problems. The cost would be abandoning hypocrisy. That might be asking too much, but if the public doesn’t shed light on it, we’ll continue to get less than optimal government. A simple question to ask any public official who is scrounging for dollars would be, “What would you be doing now if you were at work?

The post We need politicians to do their day jobs appeared first on Occasional Planet.

The upcoming election may appear to be between a Republican and a Democrat but it could end up being a battle between two massive moneyed interests: Big Oil vs. Wall Street, i.e., the Koch Brothers and ExxonMobil vs. the savvy businessmen of Goldman Sachs and Citibank. The clash of the titans may play out in the coming year through their proxies, Wall Street backed Barack Obama and Texas oilman, Rick Perry. (Unless the GOP decides Perry is too radical and chooses Romney)

How does this moneyed influence play out in real life?

Here are a couple of examples. Unlike President Obama, the CEO of ExxonMobil has endorsed the carbon tax. Obama prefers a cap and trade market, a less effective tool on both economic and environmental grounds. But a carbon tax doesn’t provide Goldman Sachs a market to manipulate, so Obama doesn’t (and couldn’t) support it. If you want to read more about this issue, Matt Taibbi covers it well in his now classic Vampire Squid piece.

When the BP oil spill occurred in 2010, Republican governor Rick Perry, warned against a “a knee-jerk reaction” to the spill. He recommended against shutting down drilling in the Gulf because the cost to the country (oil industry) would be staggering. He suggested the spill could have been an act of God. You can read further about his oil industry friendly position on the spill at Politico.

What we can be sure of, the election will not be about us

The election will not be about the needs of working families, i.e., jobs, health care, housing, education, ending corporate driven wars, regulating banks and corporations, or getting money out of politics. We will be addressed at rallies and televised debates. We will attend campaign events where the candidates will flip hamburgers and serve us pancakes. They will drink our beer and eat our bar-be-que to assure us they are one of us, and on our side. We will listen to the stirring faux populist rhetoric of two charismatic leaders and compare their messages, hoping once again that they mean what they say.

Yet. who wins will depend on the state of the economy, the candidate who has the most money and the most effective TV ads, his or her performance in scripted, televised “debates,” and how well GOP voter suppression tactics work against Democratic GOTV efforts. That the economy is predicted to be similar to what it is today, if not worse, does not bode well for President Obama’s reelection. A tired, scared, discouraged population may, in desperation, give an evangelical Republican a chance to clean up Bush’s mess, or, if businessman Romney is the candidate promising jobs, they may give him a try.

Something similar happened in 2010, when the normally sensible, progressive people of Wisconsin, scared and discouraged about the economy, elected Koch Brothers backed Scott Walker for Governor. Why? Because he promised to create jobs, which is what Perry, pushing his Texas (un)miracle, will do if he is the Republican party’s nominee. The people of Wisconsin, who are suffering from voter’s remorse, are now trying to recall Governor Walker. Democrats have a good chance of doing so if they can overcome the rampant GOP vote tampering and suppression tactics that have been rampant in the recall elections of senators. Elections are never simple—or clean.

James C. Moore thinks oilman Rick Perry is headed to the White House

James Moore, Texas-based Emmy award-winning former national TV news correspondent, and co-author of the best-seller, Bush’s Brain, thinks the GOP candidate will be Rick Perry. Moore gives compelling reasons why Perry will be the GOP candidate and why Sarah Palin, who did badly in the Iowa straw poll, yet is still sticking around, will be his vice presidential choice. He also thinks Perry is going to win. Here’s a taste of what he has to say about Perry and the upcoming election:

Because presidential politics tend to be more visceral than intellectual, Perry’s coyote-killer good looks, $2,000 hand-tooled cowboy boots, supernova smile and Armani suits, combined with podium skills to embellish the mythology of Texas, all will create a product Americans will want to believe and buy.

After he wins the nomination, protocol will require Perry to have discussions with Bachmann about the vice presidential slot, but he will, eventually, turn to Sarah Palin. The general election will force the Texan back toward the middle and he will stop talking about faith and abortion and gay marriage; Perry will campaign on jobs and the economy. . . .

The general election will, quite literally, decide the fate of a nation. Every time Team Obama criticizes the Texas economy for its minimum wage job boom, the president will be accused of attacking the working men and women of America. (Texas has created a large share of the new jobs in the United States in the last decade but studies indicate many of them are at places like Wal-Mart and Carl’s Jr.)

President Obama will also get beaten up for presiding over the first bond rating downgrade in U.S. history as well as high unemployment. When the cold rains fall in early November next year, unemployed voters in places like Ohio will step into the booth and dream of a minimum wage job in the Texas sun selling fishing rods at big box sporting goods stores or working in call centers; they will vote against Barack Obama.

And in the process, they will write the epitaph to set upon the tombstone of history’s greatest democracy: Perry-Palin, 2012.

This, of course, depends on two big “ifs.” If the GOP candidate ends up being Rick Perry, and if you are banking on Wall Street losing the election. So far, in the biggest economic downturn since the Great Depression, Wall Street not only hasn’t lost anything, it’s doing very well. I think the savvy businessmen will do everything possible to reelect Barack Obama rather than let Koch Brother’s backed loose canons Rick Perry and Sarah Palin in the White House. On the other hand, if the GOP candidate is Mitt Romney, they could work with him. But why would they choose Romney over President Obama who has been very good to them?

The first billion dollar presidential election will be an historical event. It will be interesting to see which moneyed interests win out. Will it be the Koch Brothers, or will it be Goldman Sachs? Will it be Obama, or Perry or Romney? The real question, though, is, When it’s all over, can we still say we have  a functioning democracy?

The post Election 2012: Koch Brothers vs. Wall Street? appeared first on Occasional Planet.