The Bishop and the Butterfly: Murder, Politics, and the End of the Jazz Age
    cmaukonen's picture

    Mickey Mouse

    By cmaukonen on Sun, 02/27/2011 - 9:39pm |


    Mickey Mouse

    adj (sometimes not capitals) Slang
    1. ineffective; trivial; insignificant he settled for a Mickey Mouse job instead of something challenging
    2. (Music, other) Chiefly US and Canadian (of music, esp that of dance bands) mechanical or spiritless
    [from the name of a cartoon character known for his simple-minded attitudes, created by Walt Disney (1901-66), the US film producer]

    When I was living in Naples Florida, I first ran into the term Mickey Mouse. At that time it meant to slap something together - usually something you broke - so that it looked OK in hopes that nobody would notice and that when it did fall apart, you were not around to get the blame. IE to Micky Mouse something.  What we have is a Micky Mouse economy now and we have had this for quite some time.

    I am not sure when this all started, I think in the 1970s but maybe as late as the 1980s. For sure by the time Reagan got in. If one looks at the various boom-bust cycles over the last 4 or so decades a pattern emerges.


    The one thing that I started to notice is that which ever party happens to be in power - that which ever is currently in the White House - they will make damn sure that any economic down turn does not happen while they are there.  They will go to whatever lengths are necessary to make sure the other party gets the blame.  They will Micky Mouse the economy so that it does not fall apart until they are out of power, with out taking any real steps or passing an real legislation that would make things better in the long run.  And they will cook the books, so to speak, so everything looks AOK.  Making unemployment look good by not including vast parts of the unemployed.  Making the GDP look good by not including certain areas of the economy. And printing money to make people feel good.

    I noticed this first with Reagan and then Bush I with Clinton and then Bush II and now with Obama.  By the time Bush I got into office the economy was already sliding. With the price of oil continuing to rise, our trade deficit increasing and more and more jobs being ship over seas and once productive steal and auto plants being closed,  things were not looking good. Reaganomics being a disaster as well. Bush I did not fair well. For one thing he agreed with the democrats in congress on taxes and spending which pissed off all the other republicans so he lost to Clinton in the election. Clinton's answer was to cook the books and then try some techno-voodoo by making what was then ARAP-NET public. And the tech sector took off with people making WEB-Sites, selling advertising on them and then going public on Wall Street promising huge profits and returns. One of the best ponzi schemes yet.  Then the Dot-Com bubble burst just in time for Bush II to take office.  Bush's answer....give a tax break, lower interest rates so people would THINK they had money and hope that whole thing does not collapse until he is out of office. Well his timing was a wee bit off, but it worked since the implosion happened just before the election and Obama got saddled with it anyway. 

    So what does Obama do...well enact a stimulus package that does little,  pass some meaningless health care legislation and financial legislation and hope the next dive does not happen until he is out of office.  The whole point being not to rock the boat. Putting the health insurance industry or financial industry out of business as usual,  would likely have cause a complete melt down and he certainly did not want that on his watch. Nor did any of the democrats in congress.  Only the republicans would like that.

    To sum it all up, the economy is mostly a political game of dodge ball. Each party doing what ever they can not to be saddled with an economic collapse.


    Comments

    So what does Obama do...well enact a stimulus package that does little,  pass some meaningless health care legislation and financial legislation and hope the next dive does not happen until he is out of office

    Well, nothing quite like eradicating Obama's first 2 years in a single sentence.


    by William K. Wolfrum on Mon, 02/28/2011 - 7:17am

    It's called "kicking the problem down the road" and has been for a long, long time.  You're just figuring this out?

    And that meaningless health care legislation?  There are several people I know that have been helped tremendously by the law already. 


    by wabby on Mon, 02/28/2011 - 8:01am

    Tinker:.......a mender of pots, kettles, pans, etc. 

    After having been kicked down the road too many times; the can needed to be mended.  

    Obama the itinerant, tinkered while Rome burned.


    by Resistance on Mon, 02/28/2011 - 9:54am

    The dream of the repubs would be throw one million people out of work through 'cuts' and then point to the dems and challenge them to prove how their political philosophy screwed everybody.

    Geering up for war is always a good way to provide stimulus. w and dicky c knew that!


    by Richard Day on Mon, 02/28/2011 - 11:08am

    No so much any more War tends to be a major drag on the economy. WWII did two things. One it put everyone to work for the government and two was a major distraction. The reason for the "Good Times" afterwards was the nearly total adsense of any foreign competition do to them being bombed to rubble.

    Good times can be had again if you don't mind reducing the rest of the world to the stone age but I think there might be some resistance to this.


    by cmaukonen on Mon, 02/28/2011 - 11:28am

    The US was the only industrial country untouched by the war, so we had a manufacturing monopoly until the 70's. The Japanese first tested US auto and electronics market's in the mid-60's, and by the early 70's, they had a established foothold in the economy. The oil embargo of 73 was our manufacturing sector Pearl Harbor because everyone began to look at Japanese cars with serious interest and forgo US cars...something about the price of gas rising from 35 cents a gallon to over a dollar and at that time the average US car's MPG was around 12 to 15 whereas the Japanese cars were boasting 30 MPG or more.


    by Beetlejuice on Mon, 02/28/2011 - 2:57pm

    Back in the day when I was in the military, mickey mouse meant something plain and simple...something a child could understand. And if a child could understand it then it didn't take much effort to do and the chance of screwing it up were nil.

    I've been doing some off-line reading and have found some interesting stuff that I think may be revelant in a roundabout way....then again, maybe not.

    What's been happening since Ronnie RayGun is a systematic destablization of the public. The GOPer's have been very successful at turning their base aganist liberals destroying everything we stand for. They do this by claiming excesses by liberals are at the expense of the conservative base which infuriating many in their ranks. So political vengence is a handly tool when used to restore the order that some believe they have lost. What the GOPer base doesn't realize, those whom they give their trust to are manipulating them. As Carl Sagen once said..." an organism fighting with itself is doomed"...so too might our democracy. What I think is more profound is from Goethe..."None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free". With the internal political fighting going on between both conservatives and liberals, neither side can claim to be free if the work accomplished by one is razed by the other once political power is transferred.

    So kicking the can down the lane for the next person to keep kicking is just marking time while the internal strife in the meantime tears at the fabric of freedom that keeps everything together in one piece. The fabric of freedom is woven with vertical rows and horizontal rows. It takes two opposing rows to make the fabric...one row alone can't do it. Yet the GOPer's and their base firmly believe it can. Unfortunately, the last world governemnt that thought a single political structure was all that was necessary was called the Soviet Union...and we all know how that ended.

    One last thing. Network is a 1976 satirical film about a fictional television network. In it there are some very intersting trirades that are real today.

     


    by Beetlejuice on Mon, 02/28/2011 - 2:44pm

    And all the while our Oil Puppets are driven out by the people one by one. There is no reason that any of these countries should see as as friends and allies after they over throw them since we were the ones supporting the tyrants in the first place.


    by cmaukonen on Mon, 02/28/2011 - 3:06pm

    But they're having their...Mad As Hell...moment right now. They're literally shouting out they're mad as hell and their not going to take it anymore, and doing something about it. In the US, we're still trying to stab each other in the back and blaming each other, but not realizing we're both victims of manipulators.


    by Beetlejuice on Mon, 02/28/2011 - 3:20pm