It’s all over in the election. But it’s not enough for the country.

First, let me say thank you, again, to all the donaters of time, money, interviews and the other boosts that provided all that was needed to get me safely to Massachusetts. I arrived yesterday morning, spent the day offloading my belongings and those of others, turned in the U-Haul trailer, got back to watch about half an hour of the Tennessee debate, before crapping out, thoroughly exhausted. I’ll take today to recover sufficiently to pick up and run again, online and off, as I adjust to my new habitat, visit family, and start the rest of the projects I planned to get on-blog before Election Day.

Second, I wish my younger brother, Mark, a very Happy Birthday today and a fine year to follow.

Third, and most important to the mostest, it is time to go on the offense - HARD - on the ugly, virulent strain of bias now being raised by the ongoing perpetrators of hatefulness in this country. It’s always been there, but now they’re raising it beyond the Shrill-o-Meter to a level more dangerous than I’ve seen in this country in my 55 years.

I refer to the hate group known as ‘the Republicans’ as they ratchet up their ongoing class war to a full-scale attack on the nation’s most vulnerable demographic: the poor.

Here’s the closest anyone has come to the reality of the mortgage/housing crisis. But it’s not close enough. In fact, despite the many homeowners in crisis - about 16%-20% by most estimates - who are likely to face mortgage default and foreclosure in the next 15-18 months, those homeowners are NOT the source of the major economic woes the globe will undergo. Taking on risk, after all, to reach the brass ring of the American Dream via home ownership is a human trait that runs across class lines.

The real source of the international monetary woes remains the free market mantra that touts the ultimate house of cards that can be built by extremist capitalism: if you sell it, they will buy.

The system is rigged so BOTH major political parties and the Robber Baron class within the Castles of Capital benefit from the economy on the rise and the economy on the fall. Either way, the Masters of this War remain largely unpunished and responsible to no-one for all the multiple reasons for the current sorry state of affairs. Deregulation of the financial industries is just one of several flaws in the system that guaranteed this outcome. Government spending on the fastest planned-obsolence industries like the manufacturers of bombs and bullets also was key. Nothing needs replacement faster, so military overspending has always been the way to generate a strong ongoing cash flow to overcome an otherwise soft or weak economy. Temporarily.

Towards that end, when the tech bubble popped in 2000, the Greenspan-led Fed dropped interest rates dramatically to provide a soft landing for that market. That was followed by the post-9/11 games foisted on the country by the incompetent Bush administration: a minor tax cut that ballooned dramatically for the nation’s wealthiest, while launching major wars. And simultaneously, Bush promoted the biggest free market fraud of all by echoing its ultimate false panacea: “go shopping.”

Ay, there’s the rub, and a pumice-laden bloody raw rub it is.

That’s right, the MAJOR foundation crumbling the global economy, that none are addressing, is the notion that consumerism can prop up a house of cards indefinitely. And that message has been sold to everyone, rich, middle-class and poor. Yet somehow, the poor should be expected to call “bullshit” on the sales pitch every class is inundated with and be the only class wise enough to demonstrate fiscal restraint.

That’s what the GOP is selling now. While travelling, my radio provided me Rush, Ann Coulter and other rightist hatemongers insisting the nation’s poor are the villains causing this fiscal Hindenburg. In fact, the poor will yet again become its biggest victims. Want some anecdotal evidence?

A Sun Prairie, Wisconsin mechanic told me how business has fallen off in the past two years. “How can that be?” I asked, “Isn’t vehicle maintenance a constant?”

“They’re deferring it,” he replied, “they even do oil changes half as much as before. And it’ll mean more repairs in the long run, but they simply can’t afford any other way in the short term.”

He also noted that his late-September bulk purchase of oil for oil changes cost him double what it cost in July. That’s right: oil prices have been falling dramatically, yet at the point of purchase, it is still going up!

Another example: my sister here in Massachusetts does a lot of social work through her church, particularly helping low-income families and seniors. And they (the charitable) are panicking because they don’t know how they’re going to help keep folks alive this winter with heating fuel costs projected to rise an extra $500 per household this winter.

So you can see what the goal is of the GOP. Deny that Bush had any role in the mess. Deny that McCain-style deregulation bears any responsibility, too. Pit the middle class against the poorest so when the appeals for aid come, they’ll fall on deaf ears. To hold onto what dwindling power they have, they’re willing to accept hungry, frozen and dead Americans. After all, the poor caused their own woes so they’ll have to bear that cost.

Another example of what the Pro-Life Party really stands for…

The Democratic Party is not without fault, too. In the same quest for electoral victory, they’re willing to promote the either-or meme that labels the GOP as the sole proprietor of this mess. In fact, though it’s true that the GOP bears the greater responsibility, the Dems have made a few major mistakes that added to the fiasco. Like Bill Clinton signing on to the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act and the many Dems who’ve bent over backwards to kiss the asses of Big Business to boost their election chances.

What underlies everything - the gorilla wreaking havoc with the global marketplace - is the record amount of debt we accrue, as individuals, as businesses and within our governments. The nations that will fare best for the next two years are those with policies and incentives to promote savings instead of taking on more debt. Japan does that. Our country doesn’t. Our government taxes our interest on simple savings accounts, a disincentive that encourages endless buying till there’s nothing left to buy with. And as the WSJ article points out, home valuations at the peak of the bubble won’t be making a return appearance for a decade (my research of past housing bubbles say 10 to 12 years is common, so though the market will turn uphill around 2011-2012, full restoration won’t occur till 2016-1018.)

In the long run, adding incentives to save is the biggest reform to hope for. Regulation is also necessary, along with greater disincentives to limit the advance of murky financial reports in business. Taxing the wealthy to re-establish a functionally progressive taxation system will be necessary and ending the barn-door sized they now utilize.

Electing Obama is a given, while adding more Dems to Congress. It’s also a given that both outcomes will occur 4 weeks from now. But the fundamental longterm changes necessary to both get us through the next two years and to protect us from repeats in the future are not even being mentioned by anyone that I can discern: provide major incentives to save at every level and lend a hand to the poor in the interim.

If we don’t do both, people will die. And the biggest culprits won’t be in the obits. They’ll be the people still finding a way to profit from the dead and suffering.

Deal with that reality as humanely as you can or the tears you shed and the cures you promote will be met with skepticism by those who can still smell the difference between an ass and an economist.

End the Surge in the War on the Poor. Or be a part of the problem. The choice is yours. Bank on it.