The Wrongologist – Page 195 – Geopolitics, Power and Political Economy

Preparing for a New Land War in Europe

From 1970-1973, Wrongo ran a US Army nuclear missile unit in Germany. It was during the Cold War, and also during America’s involvement in Vietnam. Wrongo got lucky, spending his entire service in a cold war zone, not in a hot war zone.

The stated purpose of his unit was to provide air defense of the skies over Western Europe (WE). The enemy was the Soviet Union. In the 1950s, NATO’s strategy to defend W. Europe changed from reliance on conventional weapons to what was called “flexible response,” which included the first use of tactical nuclear weapons, like the type Wrongo’s unit had.

The doctrine of first use of nuclear weapons came about because NATO was vastly outnumbered in weapons and soldiers in WE. For example, the Warsaw Pact had more than 5 million soldiers and 72,000 tanks on the ground in Eastern Europe arrayed against NATO’s 32,000 tanks. And at its peak, the Soviet Union could deploy 10,000 aircraft against NATO’s 2,000.

Wrongo’s unit was part of a trip wire: If the Soviet Union launched an attack on WE, Wrongo’s job was to turn his air defense unit into a very accurate surface-to-surface nuclear weapon, taking out as much of the Soviet Union’s advancing tank forces as possible.

Fast forward to the collapse of the Soviet Union. Its tanks, soldiers and planes were moved back to Russia from the satellite states. Much of that equipment was decommissioned, and most of the tank outfits were disbanded in 1998.

Now, 45 years after Wrongo served as part of the NATO tripwire, Moscow has reactivated the First Guards Tank Army. During the Cold War, the First Guards Tank Army was stationed in East Germany as part of the vanguard of a possible Warsaw Pact drive into Western Europe. According to Patrick Armstrong at Sic Semper Tyrannis: (parenthesis by the Wrongologist)

The 1st Guards Tank Army will be stationed in the Western Military District to defend Russia against NATO. It is very likely that it will be the first to receive the new Armata family of AFVs (newest generation of Russian tank) and be staffed with professional soldiers and all the very latest and best of Russia’s formidable defence industry. It will not be a paper headquarters; it will be the real thing: commanded, manned, staffed, integrated, exercised and ready to go.

Russia’s Defense Minister Sergey Shoygu has named the activation of the new tank army one of Russia’s top priorities for 2016.

Why is Russia doing this? Well, under Clinton, we added Poland and three Baltic republics to NATO. Under GW Bush, we said we would deploy medium-range nuclear missiles to Poland, supposedly as a defense against Iran. That decision was later reversed by Obama. Under Obama, we threatened to add Ukraine to NATO.

Armstrong says the decision to re-create the tank army is an indication that Russia really does fear attack from the West and is preparing to defend itself against it. And why do they fear the West? Armstrong says it is about NATO’s continued expansion eastward. He points out that the Russians: (brackets by the Wrongologist)

[Russia had]…planned for small wars, but NATO kept expanding; they argued, but NATO kept expanding; they [Russia] protested, but NATO kept expanding. They [Russia] took no action for years.

Until now. The defense site Southfront.org writes about the Russian military. They suggest that these moves reflect a change in Russian military doctrine:

The fighting in Ukraine demonstrated the advantage of having large and permanently established maneuver formations…Independently operating battalions, regiments, and brigades lacked the ability to deliver a knock-out punch, and coordinating a large number of such units was difficult for higher headquarters.

Could this be Putin’s “Star Wars” moment? Ronald Reagan got the Soviets to spend heavily to counter the apparent threat of Star Wars, America’s not-quite-real anti-ballistic missile technology.

Putin is now laying out a Russian military strategy for Europe that no NATO country wants to match, financially or militarily. He sees that NATO and the US are now committed to smaller, special operations forces, drones and cruise missiles when conducting military operations.

Maybe Putin recognizes and understands that the one thing NATO won’t do is field a real army.

And our wars of choice in the Middle East have gutted the US economy, and our warrior spirit. We have fought wars we couldn’t win, and we plunged entire regions of the world into chaos and terrorism.

Now, Putin confronts us with the need to make a strategic choice in Europe.

Any bets this will be discussed by our presidential candidates?

The Revolution WILL Be Televised

There is a lot of talk that the 2016 election is the start of a political rebellion in the US. We see the large, enthusiastic Sanders/Trump crowds, and the candidates’ relative success with winning primary elections, and have to ask:

Will it remain a political rebellion, one that expresses itself through the electoral process?
Will it continue beyond the 2016 election, assuming an Establishment candidate wins?

It began with the failure of the US economy to add permanent jobs for the middle class, and the lower classes after the Great Recession. Our column outlining that all jobs created since 2005 were temporary or contractor jobs showed that people are living paycheck to paycheck, but fewer have benefits, and all are afraid that they could be out of work with any personal or economic hiccup.

And wages are not rising the way corporate profits are, as this chart shows:

Corp Profits to HH income

So, fewer jobs as an employee, and no change in household income. More risk, no more money. Life for the average person in the US is harder and more frightening for a large group of people. Maybe they are not yet a critical mass of voters, but there are enough angry people that the Establishment political machines may be disrupted.

Since many see the worsening of the life of the middle class to be permanent, there is little reason for hope if you are on the fringe of our society. So, we’re watching that play out in the 2016 electoral race. People are finally getting tired of one or the other of these two campaign pitches:

We are the greatest nation on earth, but only if we elect candidate X, because candidate Y will ruin us
Or, you can’t have a good job with dignity, or good schools, or ask us to address any other of our serious problems, because we can’t afford it and people won’t pay more taxes

And as Gaius Publius says, there’s no other way to see the Sanders and Trump insurgencies except as a popular rebellion, a rebellion of the people against their “leaders.” On the Sanders side, the rebellion is clearer. Sanders has energized voters across the Democratic-Independent spectrum with his call for a “political revolution,” and that message is especially resonant with the young. From The Guardian:

Analyzing social survey data spanning 34 years reveals that only about a third of adults aged 18-35 think they are part of the US middle class. Meanwhile 56.5% of this age group describe themselves as working class.

Fewer Millennials (who number about 80 million in the US) are describing themselves as middle class. The number has fallen from 45.6% in 2002 to a record low of 34.8% in 2014. Ms. Clinton will need to rely on Sanders supporters falling in behind her – and faced with the prospect of a Trump presidency, many may do so. She also intends to try to win over “moderate” Republicans, assuming that the Bernie voters have nowhere to go.

That might work, since as Benjamin Studebaker says, Clinton is arguably closer to the Republican establishment than are Trump or Cruz. In fact, the Democratic and Republican establishments are both closer to each other than either is to its own anti-establishment wing. Consider that Clinton and the Republican Establishment both:

Support the Trans-Pacific Trade Partnership (TPP)
Support immigration reform
Support foreign aid
Oppose Medicare for all
Oppose tuition free college
Oppose a $15 minimum wage

It would not be unreasonable for moderate Republicans to conclude that Clinton is closer to their ideological needs than are Trump or Cruz. Clinton may play for the other team, but at least she’s in their league.

The Establishments of both parties have no vision when it comes to solving income stagnation for the 99%, or solving our crippling health care cost increases, the trade treaty fiasco, and the military establishment’s continued sucking of more and more money from our budget.

These cumulative burdens will break people’s belief in a better, more secure future. Either policy changes are enacted by the next Establishment president and Congress, or things could start to come unglued.

Which means that for almost every one of us, this could be the most consequential electoral year of our lives.

So, the Establishment wings of both parties need a Monday wake-up call. Here to rouse them from slumber is Iris DeMent with “Livin’ in the Waste Land of the Free”:

Those who read the Wrongologist in email can view the video here.

Sunday Cartoon Blogging – April 3, 2016

Something you may have missed this week was that an increasing number of hospitals were held hostage by attacks on their IT departments. The attackers were looking for ransom. It started last month with Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center.

Last week there were three more, and this week, a whole hospital chain was attacked by ransomware, this time affecting the servers of 10 related MedStar facilities in Maryland and Washington DC.

Apparently most hospitals have paid the ransom.

Is this extortion or terrorism? Patients probably don’t care which. Let’s hope no patients were harmed by the IT outages. The biggest question these attacks on hospitals raises is: Why aren’t hospitals better prepared against ransomware? Hospitals are considered critical infrastructure, but unless patient data is impacted, there is no requirement to even disclose that a hacking occurred, even if operations are disrupted.

Computer security in the hospital industry is generally regarded as poor, and the federal Department of Health and Human Services regularly publishes a list of health care providers that have been hacked with patient information stolen.

Onward to the rest of our silly season. Donald Trump had a bad week on the abortion issue:

COW Trumps an Asshole

On the other hand, Trump said out loud what the GOP really thinks:

COW What We Think Ted and Don enter the Rut:

COW Seduction The GOPs self-fulfilling prophecy:

COW Prophecy

The Democrats have their own dilemma:

COW Dems Dilemma

100% of Jobs Created Since 2005 Were For Contractors or Temps

And that’s why so many Americans are scared. Neil Irwin in the NYT’s Upshot brought us the bad news that 9.4 million new jobs created during the period from 2005-2015 were temp jobs or contracting jobs.

What’s worse is that those jobs add up to more than 100% of the jobs created by the US economy during that period. That means there was an overall decline of about 400,000 in people working as employees for an American corporation during those 10 years.

The news is based on a study by labor economists Lawrence F. Katz of Harvard and Alan B. Krueger of Princeton that found that the percentage of workers in “alternative work arrangements” — including working for temporary help agencies, as independent contractors, for contract firms, or on-call — was 15.8% of total employment in 2015, up from 10.1% a decade earlier. More from Irwin:

By contrast, from 1995 to 2005, the proportion had edged up only slightly, to 10.1% from 9.3%. (The data are based on a person’s main job, so someone with a full-time position who does freelance work on the side would count as a conventional employee.)

This raises bigger questions about how employers managed to shift much the burden of providing our social safety net to workers, and about the economic and technological forces driving the shift.

The change has profound implications for social insurance. More so than in many advanced countries, corporations in the US carry a large share of the burden of providing their workers with health insurance and paid medical leave when employees are sick. US corporate employers pay for workers’ compensation insurance, and for unemployment insurance benefits for those who are laid off.

These are part of the government-sponsored safety net in other countries.

In addition, US employers help fund their workers’ retirement, formerly, through pensions, but now more commonly, through 401(k) plans. These are also part of the government safety net elsewhere.

While the Affordable Care Act has made it easier for independent contractors to get insurance, there’s little doubt that these workers are now carrying more of the financial burden of protecting themselves from misfortune than they would have shouldered with a more traditional company-employee relationship.

Perhaps most significant, the implicit contract between an employer and an employee is that there is a relatively high bar for firing employees. If the economy turns down or business slows, a contract worker is far more likely to be out of a job or out of the job faster, than a conventional employee.

This is a large factor in the growing job insecurity we see since the Great Recession.

Moreover, the study shows it was likely that companies caused this shift in terms of employment, not employees who were looking for more freedom and flexibility. If 2005 to 2015 had been a period when workers had a lot of power in the job market that might have been plausible, but it wasn’t. More from Irwin:

The unemployment rate was above 7% for nearly half of the period, from the end of 2008 to late 2013. Employers had the upper hand. That suggests it’s more likely that employers were driving the shift to these alternate arrangements.

So, companies took advantage of the weak job market since the Great Recession. In addition, improvements in technology have enabled the shift. New technology allows remote measurement of how successful each worker is, regardless of their location, and it allows the employer to monitor contractor progress, giving the company the power it needs to move to contracting, or to a temp workforce.

Making employees into contractors benefits only the employers, not the workers, and it may help explain the disconnect between the anger and insecurity we see on the 2016 presidential campaign trail, and the clearly positive employment and economic news we’ve seen each month for the past few years.

Both are true, and that has profound implications, both politically and economically, for the next 10 years. A big question for the next decade is whether the rise in temp employment was a one-time shift, or whether it will continue in the years ahead, even in a tightening labor market.

At risk is whether employer-provided social insurance that has been a backbone of the 20th-century American middle class economy will still be with us in the 21^st century.

And if the shift to contracting continues,and we become more of a 1099 nation, it is a certainty that we will see a growing populist, anti-corporate electorate.

Review of the Play, “The Humans”

Wrongo and Ms. Oh So Right saw “The Humans” on Broadway last night.

We tell an old joke at the Mansion of Wrong whenever two family members (mostly in families we haven’t met) are reported to have had a terrible fight, we say “that’s gonna make Thanksgiving dinner awkward.”

And “The Humans” has a few of those awkward moments to go along with lots of laughs. On the surface, the setting for The Humans is the NYC of today: A young woman and her boyfriend have moved into a basement apartment in New York’s Chinatown and have invited her family in from Scranton, PA for Thanksgiving dinner.

And in the play, as in life, Thanksgiving dinner shows us how things have changed since we were last all together. The elderly are forgetful. The millennials have a shaky foot on the ladder of success. Jobs may have been lost. Health issues have intervened. Marriages may have lost their footing. The things that keep us up awake at night are more intense.

These all could be people we know, a family with strong bonds, sub-rosa resentments, and the kind of troubles we see in today’s American middle class: Fear caused by failure to launch a career, loss of jobs, loss of relationships or health, and the ever-popular money troubles.

“The Humans” is a one-act 90-minute play, wherein a young(ish) woman, a struggling artist trying to get her act together, has invited her working-class family from Scranton, PA, to the worn and tired new apartment she shares with the trust-fund guy she dates. Her mom, dad, sister and grandma all show up in a snowstorm. None of them are comfortable in the city apartment, a basement duplex of strange thumps on the ceiling, unreliable light bulbs, and little natural light.

But, they are mostly uncomfortable with changes in their lives that they have tried to keep from the others in the family.

If you’ve ever hosted Thanksgiving for parents (or in-laws) in your first apartment with your paper plates and Costco appetizers, or if you have turned up at your 20-something’s abode as a reluctant guest, suddenly feeling like your parental responsibilities are in the rear-view mirror for good, you’ll immediately bond with “The Humans.”

It’s a snapshot of the way many of us live today: Paycheck to paycheck, student debt, fear of aging, uncertainty about tomorrow, and the realization that all we really have is each other.

See it if you can. It closes on July 24, 2016.

Foxtards: Learn A Little Before Bloviating

When Obama and family got off AF One in Cuba, he was met by the Cuban Foreign Minister (FM):

Obama in Cuba

That led to comments like this:

Obama doesn’t really take his responsibility as POTUS seriously. He obviously doesn’t respect the office and thus is indifferent to insults to the office.

And Trump tweeted:

Trump lambasts Castro

Calm down Foxtards! Here’s what you need to know:

In the US, a foreign head of state or head of government is formally welcomed by the president on the South Lawn of the White House. You can check out our State Department’s process here.

In Cuba it is similar:

President Putin was greeted at the airport, by the Cuban FM.
President Chavez of Venezuela was greeted at the airport, by the Cuban FM.
President Ortega of Nicaragua was greeted at the airport, by the Cuban FM.
President Xi of China was greeted at the airport, by the Cuban FM.
Back in the day, President Khrushchev of Russia was greeted at the airport by, you guessed it, the Cuban FM.

So, how is Obama being greeted at the airport by the Cuban FM, an “insult”?

BTW, both Obama in DC and Castro in Cuba greeted Pope Francis at the airport when he visited, so Trump was half-right. Castro did go to the airport once.

Is Trump Our Next Andrew Jackson?

(This is our second column about how the history of a progressive Democratic President has meaning today. You can read the first here)

From Politico:

America has never seen a presidential candidate like this before. Detractors point to his lack of political experience, his poor grasp of policy, his alleged autocratic leanings and his shady past. They believe this man without much of a political platform (but with interesting hair) has neither the qualifications nor the temperament to be president. Yet in defiance of conventional wisdom, he is leading his three main rivals in the race for the White House, and party bigwigs are at a loss how to respond.

No, it’s not Donald Trump. It’s Andrew Jackson, and the year is 1824.

We think of Jackson as the quintessential American populist, a president who took on the banks (well, one bank, the Second National Bank, yesteryear’s Fed). Jackson was a general in the Army, the guy who won the Battle of New Orleans against the British. He was a lawyer, elected into the House of Representatives, and a Senator from Tennessee, all before he was a two-term President.

So, not quite the same resume as the Short-Fingered Vulgarian.

Jackson was born in the backwoods of the South, his father died before he was born, and his mother raised him with the collective support of her family. He was the first member of his family to be born in the New World. He lost one brother in combat during the Revolution; another died as a POW. His mother died while nursing American prisoners. Jackson was, by today’s standards, a child soldier.

He was also the greatest war hero of his generation. And he once took a musket ball in the chest before killing a rival in a duel.

Can you picture Mr. Foul-Mouthed Comb-Over participating in a duel?

Jackson ran for president three times, winning a least a plurality of the popular vote each time. But in his first try in 1824, the election was decided in the House of Representatives, and the presidency went to John Quincy Adams.

Jackson was a fabulous campaigner. Tens of thousands flocked to see this charismatic outsider who positioned himself as a steadfast defender of the Republic. Jackson’s rallies dwarfed those of his rivals, yet he had plenty of baggage.

Jackson was, his rivals believed, more of a celebrity than a serious candidate. They learned a tough lesson, as are Trump’s Republican rivals today.

The dominant political party in 1824 were the Democratic-Republicans. It was the party of Thomas Jefferson. Founded in the 1790s, it believed in an agrarian-based, decentralized, democratic government. The party opposed the Federalists who had authored and ratified the US Constitution. By 1830, the Democratic-Republican Party had been split in two. Adams, in league with Henry Clay, favored modernization, banks, and federal spending for roads, which the Andrew Jackson faction (the Democrats) opposed.

We see a similar party split looming on both sides today. And there are other parallels. The 1820’s were a time of discontent, financial panics, threats of rebellion, and outbursts of violence. Both the agrarian and new industrial classes felt that the central government was either hostile, or indifferent to their needs. They felt that equal rights for all had been replaced by a plutocratic class who kept most of the benefits to itself.

Today, Jackson is less likely to be portrayed as the champion of the working class than as a big-time slaveholder and Indian fighter. His infamous policy of Indian Removal supported the confiscation of Native American lands and their eviction west of the Mississippi. This led to the “Trail of Tears” the forced removal of nearly 125,000 Native Americans from Georgia, Tennessee, Alabama, North Carolina and Florida.

There is a similarity between Jackson’s Indian Relocation act and Trump’s proposed “deport all illegal Hispanics” policy. A big difference between Trump and Jackson is that Jackson was pro-immigrant; he enjoyed political support in the cities of the North, particularly among the Irish immigrants who had recently arrived in the US.

Jackson started out with very limited resources, whereas Trump has inherited wealth. Jackson took on the greatest army in the world at the time, and won. Trump led pranks at his military high school.

Jackson worked his way up the political ladder and had considerable experience in government at local, state and national levels, while Trump ran one losing campaign, and is now embarked on a second.

Jackson was opposed to big banks, whereas Trump owes his success to the big banks.

2016 shapes up as a change election, like 1932, 1860 or Jackson’s in 1828. As in 1828, the Establishment Republicans may finally see what 40 years of promising their base one thing, and then doing exactly the opposite reaps.

That same threat is facing the Democrats.

We’ve Had Threats To Our Constitutional Rights Before

“The Past Is Never Dead, It Is Not Even Past” – Faulkner

Does this sound familiar?

They called for imprisonment of Americans who came from a foreign country. They called for shutting down immigration from certain countries and deporting the immigrants already here. They were for stifling dissent against a looming foreign war by calling the anti-war protestors traitors. They passed laws that curtailed several rights granted in the Bill of Rights.

An administration worked hard to “sell” a war to the American people.

This is not America in the post-9/11 period, it was during World War I, not during Iraq, or our current battle against ISIS.

And it occurred while a progressive Democrat was in the White House.

On April 6, 1917, Woodrow Wilson delivered his war message to Congress. The US, Wilson said, was to embark upon a crusade to “make the world safe for democracy“. Unfortunately, Wilson’s administration gave rise to the greatest attack upon civil liberties (up to that time) since the passage of the Sedition Act in 1798.

Wilson had two problems. First, the citizenry had to be mobilized behind a war effort that did not involve a direct attack on the US. Second, he felt a need to guarantee our internal security against both real and imagined enemies. To solve the first problem, in April, 1917, Wilson established the Committee on Public Information (CPI), under the leadership of George Creel, a respected progressive. The Committee’s job was to convince citizens that the war was righteous, and to educate all Americans about American war goals.

Writers turned out “true” stories concerning what the Germans planned to do to America; speakers toured the nation delivering anti-German talks. Movie audiences thrilled to “Pershing’s Crusaders” and came by the thousands to hate the enemy by watching dramas such as “The Kaiser, the Beast of Berlin.”

Congress also enacted laws that curtailed our constitutionally guaranteed freedoms of speech and press. Shortly after Wilson’s war message, in June, 1917, the Espionage Act was passed. This made it a crime to make false reports which would aid the enemy, incite rebellion among the armed forces, or obstruct recruiting or the draft. In practice, it was used to stifle dissent and radical criticism.

In October, 1917, another law required foreign language newspapers to submit translations of all war-related stories or editorials before distribution to local readers.

In May, 1918, the Sedition Act bolstered the Espionage Act. It provided penalties of up to 20 years imprisonment for the willful writing, uttering, or publication of material abusing the government, showing contempt for the Constitution, or inciting others to resist the government. Under this Act, it was unnecessary to prove that the language in question had affected anyone or had produced injurious consequences. In addition, the Postmaster General was empowered to deny use of the mails to anyone who, in his opinion, used them to violate the Act.

In October 1918, Congress passed the Alien Act, by which any alien who, at any time after entering the US was found to have been a member of any anarchist organization, could be deported.

Volunteer organizations sprung up, dedicated to discovering alleged traitors, saboteurs, and slackers. The volunteer groups were hyper-patriotic, and were often responsible for violations of civil liberties, although the government made no real attempt to discourage or limit their activities.

With the quiet consent of the Department of Justice, the American Protective League’s 250,000 civilian members—many of whom wore official-looking badges reading “Secret Service”—undertook vigilante actions against supposedly disloyal socialists, pacifists, and immigrants; they engaged in domestic surveillance operations; and raided businesses, meeting halls, and private homes in an effort to uncover pro-German sympathizers. As a result, force became the order of the day.

Somewhere during the fight to make the world safe for democracy, Americans lost their tolerance, compassion and mercy, and much of their democratic ideals.

Does this sound familiar?

The various Acts of 1917 and 1918 helped destroy what remained of the left wing in America. Victor Berger, the first socialist elected to Congress, was sentenced to 20 years in prison for hindering the war effort. Eugene V. Debs was sentenced to 10 years in prison for making an anti-war speech.

On November 11, 1918, the Allies and Germany signed an armistice: the war was over.

The American public had shown a willingness to tolerate and even to participate in censorship, mugging, imprisoning, harassment, and forced deportation of Americans who didn’t agree with them.

Given where we are today, it could easily happen again.

Don’t bet against it.

“The Oven is Preheating, But Your Goose is Not Yet Cooked.”

The quote above is from “City on Fire” (Knopf, 2015) a novel by Garth Risk Hallberg that describes NYC in the 1970s when it was both dangerous and in decay. And it aptly describes the current phase of American politics. What we are seeing with Trump, and to a lesser extent with Sanders, is that angry white working class people have decided to overturn our election process.

Maybe not in 2016, but certainly by 2020.

It shouldn’t be difficult to understand, since wages for working class white males peaked in 1968, 48 years ago. For their entire working lives, conditions for working class males have been getting worse. Here is a chart from the WSJ:

White Men in Labor Force

For white working-class men in their 30s and 40s, in what should be the prime decades for working and raising a family, participation in the labor force dropped from 96% in 1968 to 79% in 2015. Over that same period, the portion of these men who were married dropped from 86% to 52%. (The numbers for nonwhite working-class males show declines as well, though not as steep, and not as continuous.)

There Is No Hope For The GOP

While we are busy obsessing about the Donald and Hillary, the Congress is supposed to be governing in the background. They aren’t.

After Paul Ryan (R-WI) replaced John Boehner as House Speaker, the idea was that Republicans would have more of a united front. And specifically, when it came to Ryan’s specialty, the federal budget, the idea was that Republicans would have an “ah-ha” moment, craft a budget, and then put pressure on Obama to go along.

But the change in leadership changed nothing for those divided House Republicans. Despite months of budget negotiations, the House Freedom Caucus, the 40 Republicans that ousted Boehner as Speaker, have now rejected Paul Ryan’s budget, probably leaving the Republicans with no budget to pass this year. More from HuffPo: (emphasis by the Wrongologist)

The budget, a non-binding resolution laying out spending priorities for the next 10 years, is little more than a press release, except in one key area: It sets the spending limits for the next fiscal year. And without those individual allocations, there’s little point in Republicans trying to go through appropriations process.

If there is no budget, there won’t be appropriations bills. A return to the regular legislative process for appropriations was a key tenet of Ryan’s program for the Speakership. Republicans overwhelmingly support the process of sending up individual spending bills so that they can add policy riders to legislation, putting the squeeze on Mr. Obama to choose between funding parts of the government, or keeping the Democrat’s social policies intact.

Dave Dayden said in the Fiscal Times:

The Freedom Caucus essentially wants to control government from a base of 40 members of the House, with only a few allies in the Senate and no president willing to agree to their demands. They want to…balance the budget through massive spending cuts, dismantle government healthcare programs, and overturn every executive order of the past eight years…

For months, Ryan has attempted to broker a deal on a budget resolution, which sets topline numbers for the appropriations committees to use to fund government operations. A bipartisan deal with the White House had set those numbers in stone, at $1.07 trillion for the next fiscal year. But the Freedom Caucus wants to cut that by $30 billion, back to the level mandated by Sequestration, the automatic spending cuts implemented in 2011.

Nevertheless, the Freedom Caucus formally opposed the deal, unable to stomach the nominal $30 billion spending increase (all of which was offset by cuts elsewhere). While Ryan had offered them votes on individual elements on the budget, members dismissed the additional votes as meaningless, because the Senate was unlikely to take them up.

Because Democrats don’t usually agree to budget resolutions from the other side, losing a 40-member bloc is enough to ensure that Ryan’s budget won’t have enough votes. That means it’s likely the government will be funded with a Continuing Resolution (CR) at current levels for the near future. And Democrats will have to supply most of the votes for the CR to pass.

And the lack of a budget is just a sidelight to the continuing irreconcilable differences between GOP factions. The GOP cannot fix this. Only a purge of one side of the Party, or the other, will do it.

If Paul Ryan cannot mediate this intra-party dispute, who can? Is Trump believable as a mediator?

If they can’t agree on something as simple as a topline budget number, what can they agree on?

The Trump phenomenon may succeed, or it may not. But the Freedom Caucus phenomenon seems far more consequential to the GOP and the country than Trump. And it’s hard to figure out how Republicans will get to where they are trying to go with the Tea Party or with Trump.

So, here’s a Wake Up Call for the GOP: Your “Big Tent” strategy with the Tea Party has failed. You gotta split up with the Teahadists and return to your roots, the roots that allowed you to govern back in the day. Then you can begin working to take back the seats you have lost to the Freedom Caucus.

To help the GOP wake up, here is a song by Girlyman, a group that broke up in 2013 at the height of their powers. Girlyman called their musical style “harmony-driven gender pop.” They had a strong following in the gay community. Here is “Joyful Sign” recorded in NYC at City Winery on April 16, 2011. And, its a break up song:

Those who read the Wrongologist in email can view the video here.