gracchusdixit

The Republican Party and its paid propagandists would have us believe that Democrats are wasteful spendthrifts who produce nothing but disaster for the financial markets, “job creation,”  and the broader economy.   Every Republican candidate for President recites this refrain as if it were the Pledge of Allegiance, and some, like Mitt Romney, have predicated their entire candidacies on it.  The trouble is, it’s a complete and utter myth.  Either that, or a bold-faced lie.

I recently examined the performance of the S&P 500 since 1926, the first year for which data are available.  I did some quick arithmetic to calculate the annual returns produced under Democratic and Republican presidents.   Guess what?   Over the last 84 years, the average return produced under Republican administrations was 8.1 percent.  Under Democrats, it was 15.5 percent.

But maybe that’s unfair.  Maybe Republican presidents were dealt a bad hand of cards by their spendthrift Democratic predecessors, and it took them a few years to clean things up.  So, I looked at the difference between first and second terms in office.  Under second-term Democrats, returns averaged 14.6 percent.  Under the first-term Republicans who succeeded them, they dropped to seven percent.  Oops.

But did things get better when Republicans got their own second four years in office?  They did.  Returns during Republican second terms rose to 11.5 percent.  That’s better—but still an embarrassing four points lower than under the Democrats they replaced.  Another oops.

And what about Ronald Reagan, whose presidency, we are constantly told, was a boom for the markets and led to a booming economy?  Under Reagan, the S&P produced a 14.7 annual return.  That’s certainly better than the overall Republican record.   But it’s still lower than the Democratic average.  Indeed, it’s little better than the record of Reagan’s much-maligned predecessor, Jimmy Carter, and it’s much worse than the returns produced during the first two years of the Obama administration.  Oops again.

Of course, the stock market and the overall economy aren’t the same thing.   Most Americans are far more worried about their paychecks than their portfolios.  So, I also took a look at GDP, the broadest measure of economic activity.   Since 1926,  our total economy grew, on average, 1.8 percent a year under Republicans and 4.8 percent under Democrats.  That may be the biggest oops of all.

I’m not at all sure that I will vote for Barack Obama next November, but if I do, it may be for an altogether counter-intuitive reason:  another four years of a Democrat in the White House will be better for business.  You’re not seeing double.  That’s what I said:  “Better for business.”

Michael Bloomberg has the reputation of being one of the most successful big-city mayors in the country, which is a tough trick to pull off when you run the biggest and least governable city in the land.  Much of this reputation rests on the notion that, because of his immense personal wealth, he is beholden to no one and free to serve all the citizens of New York City without regard for personal gain or special interests.

But Bloomberg just blew that reputation to smithereens, exposing it for what it actually is—a carefully and expensively manufactured sham.  By forcibly ejecting the Occupy Wall Street demonstrators from Zuccotti Park in the dead of night, he revealed his true colors.  He is nothing more than another rich guy (in his case, a very, very rich guy) whose sole interest is to preserve an economic status quo that benefits himself and his cronies on Wall Street.

In a press conference after this sneaky late-night raid, Bloomberg asserted that, in a choice between the First Amendment rights of the demonstrators and “public health and safety,” public health and safety had to come first.  That proposition is ridiculous on its face.

To begin with, no such choice existed, and it wasn’t a choice that had to be made.   Exactly what danger to public health was Bloomberg afraid of?   It was the demonstrators, not the general public, who were sleeping outside in the cold and the rain.  Perhaps there was some litter piling up in Zuccotti Park.  But there’s enough litter on the streets of New York to sink the Titanic.  As to public safety, the only violence sparked by this movement has come from over-zealous police departments, not from the demonstrators, who have been doing a remarkably effective job of policing their own behavior, thank you very much.

And even if Bloomberg’s phony conflict between public hygiene and free speech existed, it is not at all clear why the one should take precedence over the other.  Free speech is the essence of democracy.  Without it, none of the other freedoms we value so much are remotely possible.  It is guaranteed by our Constitution; it is the hallmark of our democracy; it should be protected against all who try to attack it.

It was Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes—a man whose mental and moral stature dwarfs the right-wing pygmies now sitting on the Supreme Court—who articulated the principle that only a “clear and present danger” to the very survival of the nation can justify the suppression of free speech.  Does Michael Bloomberg really believe that the demonstrators in Zuccotti Park constituted a “clear and present danger” to the survival of New York City?  Of course not.

It should now be obvious to everyone what Michael Bloomberg really believes—that the Occupy Wall Street movement is a “clear and present danger” only to Michael Bloomberg and his friends, to the financial and political elites who have for decades been rigging the system to advance and protect their own interests, to the mythology of the free market itself.  As a businessman, Bloomberg made a vast fortune doing the bidding of Wall Street.  As Mayor of New York City, he is still serving the same customer.  By trying to suppress the Occupy Wall Street demonstrators, Michael Bloomberg has played right into their hands.  He has demonstrated to the whole world that he is a Mayor for the One Percent, not a Mayor of the Ninety-Nine Percent.