Got Anger?

Remember the Howard Beale character in 1976 movie, Network.  He said, “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore.”  We’re mad too; but what are we mad about and what is it that we’re not going to take anymore?  Be careful because any discussion on these questions just makes everyone madder.

The grass roots movement, the Tea Party, is mad as hell but has no discernable plan to do anything but be mad.  And they’re taking back the country; from whom, I don’t know.  To do what with it, is uncertain.  Let’s review some facts.  Then ask yourself why we’re all so mad.   

Fact 1.  According to the Oct. 29 (Bloomberg Business News) – “The Obama administration cut taxes for middle-class Americans, expects to make a profit on the hundreds of billions of dollars spent to rescue Wall Street banks and has overseen an economy that has grown for the past five quarters.”  But we’re still mad anyway.

Could it be that we’re just mad and we don’t know why?  That’s worrisome.  We hear about how our taxes are too high, how government is too large, we can’t afford the healthcare law.  And we’re mad as hell about these things.  But reality doesn’t justify our anger.  Here come those Bloomberg pests again:

Fact 2. “The Obama administration has cut taxes -- largely for the middle class -- by $240 billion since taking office on Jan. 20, 2009. A program aimed at families earning less than $150,000 that was contained in the stimulus package lowered the burden for 95 percent of working Americans by $116 billion, or about $400 per year for individuals and $800 for married couples. Other measures include breaks for college education, moderate- income families and the unemployed and incentives to promote renewable energy.”  Those Bloomberg folks just won’t go away and I’m getting madder.

Fact 3. “Today, the Commerce Department reported the economy grew at a 2 percent annual rate in the third quarter as consumer spending climbed the most in almost four years, a sign the expansion is developing staying power. In the past year, the economy has grown 3.1 percent.  The third-quarter growth matched the median forecast of economists surveyed by Bloomberg News and followed a 1.7 percent gain the prior three months. Household purchases, about 70 percent of the economy, rose at a 2.6 percent pace, the best quarter of the recovery that began in June 2009.  .”  Facts, schmacts, now I’m mad because these facts don’t validate what I believe.  Please Bloomberg’s, I had just settled into a nice state of madness and you’re disturbing it with your good news. 

Fact 4.  A year and a half after U.S. stocks hit their post- financial-crisis low on March 9, 2009, the benchmark Standard & Poor’s 500 Index has risen 75 percent, and it’s up 15 percent for this year.” 

This is the last straw.  Now I’m mad about the fact that I have nothing to mad about.  Free-floating anger has no anchor.  It’s like the proverbial “loose cannon in a storm at sea” that rolls around the ship damaging everything it hits.  And that’s what we have.

I’m writing this column a week before the mid-term elections.  I wonder what kind of damage we will do to ourselves this time.  Peter Beinart has an interesting view:  “Disapproval of Congress, is an amazing 76 percent, the highest figure ever recorded, which helps explain why Republicans are about to win big. But just as amazingly, the Republican Party’s approval rating is five points lower than that of the Democrats. What that means is that putting the GOP in control is unlikely to improve Americans’ opinion of the legislative branch.”  It makes no sense but we don’t care because,  “we’re madder than hell and we aren’t going to take it anymore” and for goodness sake, don’t spread the good news from the Bloomberg people.  That just makes us all madder.

Robert DeFilippis