This is the first promotion video for the September 27th MoveOn-sponsored American Awakening Community Call to Action event that will be held in the Sequim High School auditorium from 6:00 PM to 8:30 PM. This will be a huge free event with guest speakers and community input. Please see the hi-res poster with details here:
http://www.desautel.net/pickup/Poster_copy.jpg
This and other fliers also appear in the video. If you live on or near the Olympic Peninsula, this is a must-attend event! Please link, tweet, post on FaceBook, and otherwise spread the word in any way you can!! There will be additional promotion videos in the future posted here, so watch for them? Here is the promotion video:
Please spread the word!!
Saturday, August 13, 2011
Monday, July 25, 2011
Social Security and Government Spending
As I point out in Framed: Social Security (on the Daily Kos website), “Social Security is one of the keystones of the New Deal and a pillar of progressive legislation. This makes tearing it down one of the prime targets of conservative politics.”
And, sure enough, Social Security is under its most serious attack since it was signed into law in the 1930. Republicans have actually written its demise into legislation they passed in the House. They are using every bit of leverage they can to have President Obama chip away even a little bit. They know that even the slightest change to Social Security is an enormous strategic victory. It allows them to say to the American people, “See. Even Democrats admit that Social Security is a bad idea. That’s why we have to get rid of it.”
How can they get away with this when a large majority of the voters don’t want Social Security touched, and would prefer to see the rich give up a little more money to save it? They can get away with it primarily because the public has forgotten what Social Security really is. This allows people committed to killing it the latitude to label it “government spending” and “an entitlement”.
Do you know what Social Security is? It isn’t government spending at all. It is a requirement that employers pay for the actual cost of the labor they use to make their products. It is part of the private sector. It prevents employers from exploiting workers by paying them only enough to survive while they are actually working.
Social Security cures a huge problem with the free market. This is how the free market operates: It sets a price for a commodity, in this case labor, based on the equilibrium point between supply and demand. There is no guarantee in the free market that that price point is going to be enough for the worker to survive in the long run. It only has to be enough for them to survive while they are working and until someone more able to do the job shows up. At that point, they are surplus. Their means of survival no longer depends on the job—only on the kindness of their family or the charity of strangers.
And, as we saw all too well before the 1930s, that meant that many seniors lived in poverty, barely able to survive and unable to pay when they faced heavy medical bills—until our society provided a universal retirement plan. It is only Social Security and Medicare that keeps many seniors alive. Without it, normal market forces would prevent them from ever saving for retirement, and they would simply die when they were too old to work.
This is why these programs are taken out of payroll taxes. They are really taxes on employers. They require employers to pay enough in the aggregate that workers can survive when they are unable to work because they are disabled or too old. If, for any reason, the amount that goes into these funds is insufficient, then the right thing to do is to raise the employment taxes until employers are paying enough to support the programs.
In fact, there is a shortfall. That shortfall is not in Social Security (which is running a surplus), but in Medicare. It is a shortfall primarily because we have allowed wages to fall and the number of workers employed to decline to the point where the payroll taxes are not sufficient to fund the program. The right thing to do in this case is to raise the employer contribution to those programs.
That’s right. It’s time to raise taxes. This is only right because worker wages have fallen while worker productivity has been soaring. In fact, since the 1970s, wages have fallen about 8%, but worker productivity has gone up about 80%.
Until the 1970s, wages increased along with productivity. But starting in that decade, wages went down while productivity went up. This is largely due to unrestricted globalization, which has put pressure on wages. It is also due to a shift away from wealth-producing industrial jobs to wealth-distributing service jobs. The lack of wealth production means that there is less money to distribute, and causes shortfalls that have resulted in lower wages. This drop in wealth producing industrial jobs (over 25% since the 1970s) is also the result of unrestricted globalization. And this same dynamic has also reduced employment rates. Employment is down 0.9% in the three decades since the 1970s over the three decades previous. This means that 1.4 million Americans are out of work right now due to bad trade policy.
The combination of lower wages and less employment has created a staggering blow to Social Security and Medicare, which get their money from payroll taxes. The right solution to this problem is to raise the employer contribution (since employers have benefited from the increase in productivity, but workers haven’t) and to regulate trade, both by instituting a uniform tariff and by requiring adherence to an international minimum wage as the price of access to American markets.
In the face of good trade policy, corporations would begin to relocate production facilities in the U.S. to serve our market, bringing about sustained job growth in high-paying jobs.
Increased wages and higher employment would not only balance the budget for Social Security and Medicare, but it would also eliminate pressure on the federal budget and allow us to pay down our debt.
The important thing to remember is that Social Security is not government spending. Dollars that go into Social Security are still spent on the same things. Seniors still buy food, clothing, transportation and all the other things consumers buy. When dollars are taken for the government the nature of the spending changes. If you tax a dollar and spend it on the military, money that would have gone to food now goes to weapons. This changes the guns-to-butter ratio of the money in the economy. But money that goes to Social Security still goes to consumer items.
And the other important thing to remember is that Social Security prevents workers from being exploited by the market. The market doesn’t care whether you survive your retirement. If you let the market set wages, then it will gladly kill you off the moment you are no longer working, because you don’t have any use to the market unless you are producing. A strictly market-driven economy will give you the Republican plan for retirement: (1) Don’t retire. (2) But if you do retire, die quickly. (With apologies to Rep. Grayson.)
You can learn more about Social Security and the statistics behind it by going to Framed: Social Security.
Rich Wingerter
And, sure enough, Social Security is under its most serious attack since it was signed into law in the 1930. Republicans have actually written its demise into legislation they passed in the House. They are using every bit of leverage they can to have President Obama chip away even a little bit. They know that even the slightest change to Social Security is an enormous strategic victory. It allows them to say to the American people, “See. Even Democrats admit that Social Security is a bad idea. That’s why we have to get rid of it.”
How can they get away with this when a large majority of the voters don’t want Social Security touched, and would prefer to see the rich give up a little more money to save it? They can get away with it primarily because the public has forgotten what Social Security really is. This allows people committed to killing it the latitude to label it “government spending” and “an entitlement”.
Do you know what Social Security is? It isn’t government spending at all. It is a requirement that employers pay for the actual cost of the labor they use to make their products. It is part of the private sector. It prevents employers from exploiting workers by paying them only enough to survive while they are actually working.
Social Security cures a huge problem with the free market. This is how the free market operates: It sets a price for a commodity, in this case labor, based on the equilibrium point between supply and demand. There is no guarantee in the free market that that price point is going to be enough for the worker to survive in the long run. It only has to be enough for them to survive while they are working and until someone more able to do the job shows up. At that point, they are surplus. Their means of survival no longer depends on the job—only on the kindness of their family or the charity of strangers.
And, as we saw all too well before the 1930s, that meant that many seniors lived in poverty, barely able to survive and unable to pay when they faced heavy medical bills—until our society provided a universal retirement plan. It is only Social Security and Medicare that keeps many seniors alive. Without it, normal market forces would prevent them from ever saving for retirement, and they would simply die when they were too old to work.
This is why these programs are taken out of payroll taxes. They are really taxes on employers. They require employers to pay enough in the aggregate that workers can survive when they are unable to work because they are disabled or too old. If, for any reason, the amount that goes into these funds is insufficient, then the right thing to do is to raise the employment taxes until employers are paying enough to support the programs.
In fact, there is a shortfall. That shortfall is not in Social Security (which is running a surplus), but in Medicare. It is a shortfall primarily because we have allowed wages to fall and the number of workers employed to decline to the point where the payroll taxes are not sufficient to fund the program. The right thing to do in this case is to raise the employer contribution to those programs.
That’s right. It’s time to raise taxes. This is only right because worker wages have fallen while worker productivity has been soaring. In fact, since the 1970s, wages have fallen about 8%, but worker productivity has gone up about 80%.
Until the 1970s, wages increased along with productivity. But starting in that decade, wages went down while productivity went up. This is largely due to unrestricted globalization, which has put pressure on wages. It is also due to a shift away from wealth-producing industrial jobs to wealth-distributing service jobs. The lack of wealth production means that there is less money to distribute, and causes shortfalls that have resulted in lower wages. This drop in wealth producing industrial jobs (over 25% since the 1970s) is also the result of unrestricted globalization. And this same dynamic has also reduced employment rates. Employment is down 0.9% in the three decades since the 1970s over the three decades previous. This means that 1.4 million Americans are out of work right now due to bad trade policy.
The combination of lower wages and less employment has created a staggering blow to Social Security and Medicare, which get their money from payroll taxes. The right solution to this problem is to raise the employer contribution (since employers have benefited from the increase in productivity, but workers haven’t) and to regulate trade, both by instituting a uniform tariff and by requiring adherence to an international minimum wage as the price of access to American markets.
In the face of good trade policy, corporations would begin to relocate production facilities in the U.S. to serve our market, bringing about sustained job growth in high-paying jobs.
Increased wages and higher employment would not only balance the budget for Social Security and Medicare, but it would also eliminate pressure on the federal budget and allow us to pay down our debt.
The important thing to remember is that Social Security is not government spending. Dollars that go into Social Security are still spent on the same things. Seniors still buy food, clothing, transportation and all the other things consumers buy. When dollars are taken for the government the nature of the spending changes. If you tax a dollar and spend it on the military, money that would have gone to food now goes to weapons. This changes the guns-to-butter ratio of the money in the economy. But money that goes to Social Security still goes to consumer items.
And the other important thing to remember is that Social Security prevents workers from being exploited by the market. The market doesn’t care whether you survive your retirement. If you let the market set wages, then it will gladly kill you off the moment you are no longer working, because you don’t have any use to the market unless you are producing. A strictly market-driven economy will give you the Republican plan for retirement: (1) Don’t retire. (2) But if you do retire, die quickly. (With apologies to Rep. Grayson.)
You can learn more about Social Security and the statistics behind it by going to Framed: Social Security.
Rich Wingerter
Thursday, March 3, 2011
Revising Education
Public education is under a brutal attack in the United States. The right-wing campaign to undermine the school system started many years ago with the effort to place zealots on school boards. But right now in Wisconsin, Ohio, and many other states we see a full-scale attack on public service unions. This offensive targets teachers, who arguably have some of the most powerful unions in the country.
In February this year MoveOn delegates from the Clallam council met with Rep. Norm Dicks’s staff as part of the national MoveOn organization’s efforts to send a strong message to Congress about how progressives feel. One major area we left out of those discussions was the issue of education reform. It didn’t fit neatly into the theme of jobs and the economy, which is the topmost issue. But education is critical to both jobs and a robust economy.
Education is the final link in the standard of living chain. Our modern standard of living is based on the use of technology. That technology starts with research, but it can’t be effectively applied unless people understand it and can properly use it. In other words, education turns technical ideas into practical applications. It’s difficult to apply technology properly without good education.
Why is our public education system under attack? This is politically motivated. Reality has a “well-known liberal bias”. Any educational system dedicated to truth and developing well-rounded, independent individuals is a threat to the established order, which depends in part on ignorance to maintain political power. The last thing The Bandits want is a bunch of smart, creative, thinking individuals taking a close look at the existing system.
Also, as a practical matter, taking over and controlling school boards provides a lot of leverage to alter the political landscape. It develops budding (right-wing) politicians by training them how to get elected where the stakes are relatively low. And, to the degree that this influences what’s taught in the schools, it can have long-term impact on voters’ choices.
The school takeover strategy has already resulted in demands that schools teach lessons on right-wing heroes in American history classes. One cannot teach about Phyllis Schlafly without teaching about her reasons for opposing the ERA, so this promotes conservative political philosophy.
But, probably the more important reason for this attack on public education is to move kids out of the public schools to private ones, where it is easier to propagandize them. To this end, vilifying the public schools serves the political purpose of the right. I think this is why we are seeing such vitriolic attacks on teachers’ unions and teachers themselves. It certainly has nothing to do with improving the quality of the schools.
How do we know? We know because teaching is a “service business”. Based on research into quality improvement we know that the root cause of quality problems in a service business has only a one-in-ten chance of being caused by the people involved. Nine out of ten times the problem stems from the environment or the methods used.
While it’s easy, when problems occur, to jump to the conclusion that some person is to blame, quality improvement methodology suggests we should look at other factors first. If someone is ignoring the probabilities to go after one aspect of the problem, chances are there’s a hidden motivation. Yet the probabilities suggest that the root cause of quality problems in most schools is not the teachers.
And, it isn’t hard to see how these other factors would impact schools. Public schools operate in the “environment” of their local communities. If the community is supportive of good education and has the resources to back up that commitment, chances are very good that this will result in good schools there. But the last part of that assumption is telling. Not every community in our country is “above average” in the resources it can bring to bear.
Educational quality as an issue resurfaced for me as I tried to catch up on my back reading of The Nation magazine. In “Beyond Silver Bullets” (10 January 2011, pages 18-23), authors Pedro Noguera and Randi Weingarten take on some of the bad reform efforts that come out of the ongoing attack on teachers’ unions. Are teachers’ unions to blame for poor quality in the schools?
…there is no evidence that the presence of unions impedes academic success in American schools. Consider this: in states like Massachusetts and Minnesota, where public schools are heavily unionized, students earn the highest scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, the standardized exam known as the nation’s report card.... What’s more, in almost all the nations that outperform the United States in education, teachers are unionized and teaching is a respected profession.
What is to blame, at least in part, is the environment:
In many of the most disadvantaged schools, the non-academic needs of poor students—for health, housing and a variety of social supports—are often unmet. Invariably, when the basic needs of children are ignored, the task of educating them is much more challenging.
This is not the answer that the right wing wants to hear. What it suggests is that we should be working to address the disadvantages of the community, first. In fact, this is one of the things that national funding for schools is meant to address. It ensures that schools in the poorest neighborhoods can get access to at least some money from the federal government. This helps to level the playing field.
Not that economics is the only reason we spend money on education at the national level. Education is also important for national defense. The country cannot afford troops that can’t read, write or figure. Yet, we’ve actually seen calls to end the Department of Education. It’s not clear whether these people are uneducated or just unpatriotic!
I’d like to suggest that the way to improve the quality of education is to concentrate on what we know works.
- Emphasize the New Three Rs: Research, Reason and Results.
- Develop community-based evaluation of schools.
- Bring all elementary education back into the public school systems.
- Make adequate funding of schools the responsibility of the federal government.
- Treat teachers as professionals, deserving of the respect afforded other professionals.
We need to stop looking at education as the process of instilling facts into brains, and start looking at it as the process of helping the individual develop their ability to use their brains to understand and improve the world. To do that, I suggest a new “Three Rs”. The New Three Rs moves the emphasis away from fact memorization to the active process of productively engaging in the world. To get proper results humans research the facts, then use reasoning, conscience and perspective on those facts. The New Three Rs create “alive” education, not fact memorization and regurgitation, as we often see in dead education.
Evaluation of schools should be community-based, not nationally driven. You cannot properly judge a school system in isolation from its community. If a school is radically underperforming, the first intervention should be to learn how the community holds its schools and address that environmental issue. Teacher performance cannot be accurately assessed unless the community’s relationship with its schools is healthy. After that, we should look into teaching methodology and make sure that the school is using the appropriate methodology backed up by adequate funding. Only after these measures have been taken is it productive to look at teacher performance—where the other 10% of problems might occur.
And here I should mention that in terms of raising the quality of schools we have much better places to spend our money than on trying to optimize the kinds of teachers we have. Firing bad teachers or trying to manipulate them through performance pay would be a very unproductive way to improve quality, even if teacher quality were the main issue. We draw our teachers from a large pool of trainees and we have hundreds of thousands of teachers working in the school system. To raise quality even 1% requires a vast expenditure. That expenditure would be properly addressed to teacher training (in the colleges), not to merit pay, if we wanted to be effective. But even there, we would need to work diligently to raise the quality of the people in that population in order to have any noticeable change.
The sad truth is that we could fire the lousiest 10,000 teachers in the country with little effect on overall quality of education because the absolute number of teachers is so large. And, we would then draw their replacements from the same pool of trainees, so that over time this would have no effect at all. Any improvement we made would rapidly evaporate the moment we stopped expending the effort. To sustain any improvement by improving the “teacher stock” in our schools we would need to keep the effort up indefinitely.
Contrast that with changing a community’s attitude about its schools, which might be done with essentially no money at all. Or, contrast it with changing teaching methods (and the facilities/equipment we provide), which would likely create a permanent improvement with a one-time expenditure. Obviously, just in terms of effectiveness, concentrating on the quality of teachers is our least effective means of achieving quality in education. We only hear so much about it because it serves the political agenda of certain well-funded interest groups.
This is where we need to dig in politically, as well. Concepts such as charter schools and school vouchers were created, I think, as an adjunct to attacking the public schools. The implicit message behind setting up a charter school or giving school vouchers is that public school teachers aren’t good enough. We should remember that part of the right-wing motivation for attacking teachers is to attack unions. The right wing attacks public unions because it helps undermine unionism in general and also because teachers’ unions are some of the strongest unions in the country.
On top of which, spending money on vouchers and schools outside the regular public system serves to defund public schools, making it harder for them to perform well, and leading to a downward cycle. So, we need to end vouchers and other expenditures that are outside the public school system.
Uniformity and consistency in funding is also important to the system as a whole. We should think about this in terms of ensuring that whatever is considered a minimum standard for a rich community should also be the minimum standard for the poorest community. We should use this standard to set a minimum funding level for the Department of Education as a broad matter of public policy.
And, finally, we need to restore respect for educators, especially classroom teachers. We can do that by reminding people that we require above-average education to be an educator. And we should remind people of the benefits these professionals bring to the community.
I went to public schools for my entire elementary and high school experience, first through twelfth grade. In that time I encountered many excellent professionals and got a first-rate education, which served me well in college and throughout my life. I would like to think that this is the birthright of every American citizen.
—Rich Wingerter
Friday, January 21, 2011
A Truth Warrior Goes Down
Keith Olbermann and MSNBC have reached an agreement for him to leave and for Countdown to no longer exist. Sounds like a firing to me. This sucks. Let's hope he is picked up with a new show somewhere very soon. In America, the informed voter is a vanishing species, and Countdown was one of the few shining sources of truth and facts. With unlimited spending on unchecked deceit by unrevealed donors running rampart, it is not surprising that a large chunk of American voters are unknowingly voting against their own best interests.
A voter deceived is a right to vote denied!
A voter deceived is a right to vote denied!
Wednesday, January 19, 2011
The Great Divide – Liberals & Conservatives
Unfortunately, I spent much of my adult life not paying much attention to politics or the battle between Liberals and Conservatives. I’ve voted for Republicans and Democrats in the past. Being painfully shy and introverted most of my life, being conservative to me meant not being a risk-taker. My first exposure to what was going on was during the Clinton impeachment. It seemed wrong to me that they were investigating Clinton’s personal and private life when it was not illegal and had no impact on the performance of his duties as President. I did not condone Clinton's actions, but the fervor and tenaciousness of the investigation and the media coverage seemed to me a colossal and spiteful waste of time. Being on the Internet a lot at the time, I discovered that the polls were showing that a large majority of Americans felt the same way as I did. My first rude awakening – Republicans did not seem to care what their constituents thought or wanted. I found and joined MoveOn.org.
That was a rude awakening, but I lost my political virginity during the 2000 election. I have written before about how my logic and analysis, and hundreds of hours researching online, revealed to me that on every issue in Florida during that election, the Democrats were correct and the Republicans were full of BS. I have also posted about my shocked surprise to find out that the mainstream media no longer valued providing the actual truth to their listeners, but instead allowed any claim or statement without truth-checking. But for this post, the relevant rude awakening for me was discovering just how deep, wide, and ugly the gulf between Liberals and Conservatives is. The anger and hatred is astounding.
I am, by nature, extremely logical, organized, analytical, and detail-oriented. That is how my mind works, and those are the tools I use to discover the truth and make decisions. That is how I came to the Liberal side of the Political fence. In the long-term, the policies and programs championed by Liberals will build a stronger economy, increase posterity for everyone, and bring the American dream to the most Americans. However, this begs the question – why are Conservatives so against these policies? How do Conservatives come to different conclusions?
In my mind, there are three ingredients to logical analysis, without which logic is meaningless. The process has to begin with an understanding of current reality. What are the facts, how do things interact and impact each other, and what are the interrelationships. The endpoint of the process is some desired change in reality. Some goal or state of being that we are trying to reach or achieve. So, we need to know where we are and where we want to go. Logical analysis then, involves designing the steps, behaviors, policies, and actions that will work best in bringing us from current reality to desired reality.
So, given this perspective, the first question that came to my mind relative to the polarizing differences between Liberals and Conservatives was – are they both trying to reach the same endpoint, or are the desired realities that much different between Liberals and Conservatives? Aren’t we all Americans? Don’t we all treasure the founding philosophies of life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness, freedom of religion, and so-on? Don’t we all want to prosper and have a high standard of living? Don’t we all want America to have a strong economy and be the shining light of freedom in the world? I believe that the answers to these questions are all yes, and that these general overall goals are the same for Conservatives and Liberals.
Well, if we all want the same things, then the differences must lie elsewhere. What’s left in the logical analysis process is the understanding of current reality, and the behaviors, policies, and actions that will lead to the agreed-upon endpoints. This is where I believe Conservatives, or the conservative philosophies (I do not like to stereotype), go astray. I do not claim that Conservatives are evil or purposefully advancing policies that are bad for America, I believe that they are mostly well-meaning and honest Americans. But there is a basic difference between Liberals and Conservatives. At the core, Conservatives tend to be a little more restrictive, a little less tolerant of the behaviors of others, and a little less open-minded than Liberals. This is not to say there is a major gap between these core values. I believe the differences are quite small, and Liberals and Conservatives are not that far apart at the core (we are all Americans after all!). But the small difference is important because it tends to lead us in different directions when considering issues and policies for America. The end result of traveling different paths of analysis and logic is the huge gulf we see in discussions and politics.
Of course, it is not as simple as all that. There is another huge and malevolent force in America dedicated to interceding into the logical analysis process used by American voters in order to pervert and twist both their understanding of the current reality, and the logical actions and steps that should be taken to reach the common goals. This force is what I call the Republican/Conservative Power Structure (RCPS). The RCPS is a relatively small group of Americans (and international partners) who are wealthy and/or owners or executives of huge business enterprises. The RCPS funds and controls Republican leaders and the GOP, and their main tactic is taking over the government and destroying Democracy. Their goal is the destruction of the middle class, with the few wealthy having and controlling all wealth and power.
The average Conservative in America is not part of the RCPS, but because of the small core differences between Liberals and Conservatives, the latter are an easier target for the RCPS. Decades of deceit has indoctrinated many Conservatives with an unreasonable and illogical hatred and fear of anything that is remotely “liberal.” The fantasy of liberalism coming into their homes and taking their stuff and money to give to others, the threat of socialism, is total and complete BS, but widely believed by the core of conservatism. And for most of them, this divisive and polarizing alternate reality sabotages the logical analysis process before it can even start. That, of course, is exactly the outcome desired by those doing the brain-washing and indoctrination.
So, the great divide in this country is not really between Liberals and Conservatives. These two philosophies are a lot closer than people think. The end goals are almost identical. In effect, the divide is a false divide, constructed over decades by the Republican/Conservative Power Structure using deceit, manipulation, fear, hatred, and any other tool they could find in order to convince those Americans who tend to be more constrained and traditional in their views (Conservatives) that Liberals are the enemy. The basic problem is that the world changes very rapidly and uncontrollably, and Conservatives tend to resist change more than Liberals. Many of the “back to America’s roots” and literal and strict interpretation of the Constitution ideas are simply not practical in a vastly changed world. This is not to say we should throw out or drastically change the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. But, like any document, creed, policy, or philosophy that needs to stand the test of time, it is not the literal words put down by the originators to which we must be true, but the intent and goals of those words. Life, liberty, freedom, the pursuit of happiness, freedom of and from religion, checks & balances, and the rest of the fantastic ideas and achievements of The Founding Fathers, represent their intent. The Constitution and the Bill of Rights are the paths to the achievement of that intent, and the Amendment process, along with the interpretation and application of intent by the judiciary, are the flexibility given to us by The Founding Fathers that is necessary for keeping the intent alive through the years as the world continues to change.
Tuesday, January 11, 2011
Stand Off: How to Neutralize a Tragedy
Now that all the Glock smoke has dissipated from the Safeway parking lot in Tucson, we can go back to where we were before Congresswoman Giffords was shot this past weekend. The pundits on each side of the popular issues of the day have lined up behind their familiar barricades, loading their lexicons with righteous rhetoric to fire at each other; while we, the public, are left to sort through the empty shells. Depending on who you like to believe, whether it's Brooks or Shields on PBS, O'Reilly on FOX or Olberman on MSNBC, you will again find yourself following the same pattern we always follow and coming up with the same "progress" toward "change." None. Meanwhile, the "People's House" worries about ways to better fortify itself against the onslaughts of enraged citizenry, each additional "check point" enhancing an environment of terror and securing lobbyist access.
Thursday, January 6, 2011
‘The Left Has Nowhere to Go’ or How I learned to Stop Worrying While Waiting for the Black Swan
TruthDig Blogger and Progressive Piece de Resistance Chris Hedges recently discussed the state of our political parties with consumer advocate and presidential candidate Ralph Nader.
The following is a sampling of Nader’s assessment:
“The more outrageous the Republicans become, the weaker the left becomes. The more outrageous they become, the more the left has to accept the slightly less outrageous corporate Democrats. The left has nowhere to go. Obama knows it. The corporate Democrats know it. There will be criticism by the left of Obama this year and then next year they will all close ranks and say ‘Do you want Mitt Romney? Do you want Sarah Palin? Do you want Newt Gingrich?’ It’s very predictable. There will be a year of criticism and then it will all be muted. They don’t understand that even if they do not have any place to go, they ought to fake it. They should fake going somewhere else or staying home to increase the receptivity to their demands. But because they do not make any demands, they are complicit with corporate power. Corporate power makes demands all the time. It pulls on the Democrats and the Republicans in one direction. By having this nowhere-to-go mentality and without insisting on demands as the price of your vote, or energy to get out the vote, they have reduced themselves to a cipher. They vote. The vote totals up. But it means nothing."
“Obama has the formula now. You give the Republicans a lot of what they want. Many of them vote for you. You get your Democrat percentage. You weave a hybrid victory. That is what he learned in the lame-duck session. He gets praised as being a statesman and a leader and getting things done. Think of all the rewards he can contemplate while he is in Hawaii compared to what they were saying about him on Nov. 5. All the columnists and pundits say that now he can work with John Boehner. But once you take a broader view, it is the difference in the mph of corporatism. McCain is 50 miles per hour and Obama is 40 miles per hour.”
“The black swan question is whether something will erupt that is rare, extreme and unpredictable,” Nader said. “It is amazing that it hasn’t happened in any pockets of the country. How much more can the oppressed take before they revolt? And can they revolt without organizers? These are the two important questions. You have got to have organizers, and as of now we don’t.”
Read the entire article at http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/the_left_has_nowhere_to_go_20110102
The following is a sampling of Nader’s assessment:
“The more outrageous the Republicans become, the weaker the left becomes. The more outrageous they become, the more the left has to accept the slightly less outrageous corporate Democrats. The left has nowhere to go. Obama knows it. The corporate Democrats know it. There will be criticism by the left of Obama this year and then next year they will all close ranks and say ‘Do you want Mitt Romney? Do you want Sarah Palin? Do you want Newt Gingrich?’ It’s very predictable. There will be a year of criticism and then it will all be muted. They don’t understand that even if they do not have any place to go, they ought to fake it. They should fake going somewhere else or staying home to increase the receptivity to their demands. But because they do not make any demands, they are complicit with corporate power. Corporate power makes demands all the time. It pulls on the Democrats and the Republicans in one direction. By having this nowhere-to-go mentality and without insisting on demands as the price of your vote, or energy to get out the vote, they have reduced themselves to a cipher. They vote. The vote totals up. But it means nothing."
“Obama has the formula now. You give the Republicans a lot of what they want. Many of them vote for you. You get your Democrat percentage. You weave a hybrid victory. That is what he learned in the lame-duck session. He gets praised as being a statesman and a leader and getting things done. Think of all the rewards he can contemplate while he is in Hawaii compared to what they were saying about him on Nov. 5. All the columnists and pundits say that now he can work with John Boehner. But once you take a broader view, it is the difference in the mph of corporatism. McCain is 50 miles per hour and Obama is 40 miles per hour.”
“The black swan question is whether something will erupt that is rare, extreme and unpredictable,” Nader said. “It is amazing that it hasn’t happened in any pockets of the country. How much more can the oppressed take before they revolt? And can they revolt without organizers? These are the two important questions. You have got to have organizers, and as of now we don’t.”
Read the entire article at http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/the_left_has_nowhere_to_go_20110102
Wednesday, November 24, 2010
No Bailouts for Billionaires
Local members of MoveOn.org want our elected representatives to know that we stand firmly against extending the Bush tax cuts on the top income tax brackets. Instead, Congress can extend the tax cuts to lower brackets, allowing everyone in the country to see lower taxes. This includes those earning the most money, since this would lower taxes on their first $250,000 of income. But to further cut the top brackets would add a windfall to the very rich, especially those earning a billion dollars a year or more, while doing nothing to help the economy and shifting the tax burden to those that earn less and have already sacrificed over the past few decades.
The wealthiest households in the U.S. are the ones that own the majority of assets in the country. The top 1%, in fact, own about 35% of all our wealth. But the effective tax rates for the highest earners have actually fallen substantially over the last 15 years. According to a study at U.C. Santa Cruz, “the effective tax rate on high incomes fell by 7% during the Clinton presidency and 6% in the Bush era”. While many bemoan even a low top rate of 35%, in fact, the effective tax rate on high incomes is only about 20%. So, the tax rates for the top tiers should, in fact, be increased to a higher rate than they were before the Bush cuts.
Additionally, those that owned large property holdings have been historically called on to do the most to defend the country in times of war. This is as it should be. Wars defend both people and property. So, those with enormous holdings should pay the most to fund the federal government. Households in the top tax brackets own most of the assets and control an even larger share of the financial assets. As of 2003 just the top 1% of households with the highest incomes received more than half of all capital income.
About three-quarters of the real federal budget is used for our protection. This includes defense-related expenditures ($844 billion) and national protection ($458 billion) out of a total of $1.7 trillion. Many people count Social Security and Medicare as part of the federal budget, but this is not really government spending. These programs simply require employers to pay enough for their workers to live through retirement to a natural age. Spending on Social Security and Medicare is part of the private sector and should not be counted as part of the federal budget. When we exclude these programs and look at actual spending, the large majority of this spending is for the country’s defense.
Yet, there is no national property tax that would require those with large property holdings to pay their fair share. We make up the difference with a progressive income tax, so that the wealthiest, which have the greatest share of the wealth, are required to pay at a higher rate. Yet, many in Congress would like to reduce the top tax rates, shifting the burden to lower income levels.
Workers have already sacrificed enough. Since the early 1970s, real wages in the U.S. have declined about 8%, while worker productivity has risen about 90%. This additional labor productivity has not resulted in wage increases. That additional wealth has gone to employers and increased profits. Until workers start to see the fruits of this productivity increase they should not be required to sacrifice further with increased tax burdens.
The irony is that these exact cuts were supposed to stimulate the economy and create jobs during the Bush Administration. But there is no evidence that the current low tax rates for the very rich have contributed to any job creation. Nor is it logical to assume they would. The economy is suffering from a lack of demand. At the same time, businesses have shown no inclination to expand jobs in the United States because they’ve learned they can make a cheap buck off us.
Congress needs to address this structural imbalance before cutting any more taxes. The route to job growth (which is the basis of any solid economic growth) is to ensure that all products sold in the U.S. are made to our workplace and environmental standards. Further bailouts for billionaires will not produce economic growth. That can only come from an effective national industrial policy and an effective international trade policy, the bare minimum necessary to addresses these structural problems.
Sources:
- Wealth, Income, and Power by G. William Domhoff
- The Library of Congress, House bill “H.CON.RES.85” from the 111th Congress
- Bureau of Labor Statistics
- U.S. Census Bureau
Sunday, October 17, 2010
Progressive Support for Patty Murray
MoveOn recently announced that it was supporting Senator Patty Murry (D-WA) for re-election, in part because she signed the MoveOn pledge to fight corporate corruption. Sen. Murray said, "I am proud to support MoveOn's five million members in your fight to stop the corporate corruption of Washington.... I believe the Supreme Court decision [Citizens United] was wrong, and as a member of the Senate Rules Committee, I am an original cosponsor of the DISCLOSE Act, which would overturn egregious issues created by the Citizens United ruling."
Sen. Murray is a strong progressive on a number of issues:
Go to the MoveOn website and look for the "MOVEON COUNCILS" link (on the right side of the page). In the "Join a MoveOn Council Near You" area you can search for a council in your area by providing your zip code.
Once you have joined the council, you can become a more active member by joining the "core group" for that area. The core group is the team that coordinates activities at the local level. Joining the core group increases your reach in progressive politics.
Sen. Murray is a strong progressive on a number of issues:
- Civil Rights: "We can never give up on full equality for all Americans, no matter how hard the fight or how difficult the path.
- Education: She helped raise funding for education, allowing the U.S. to compete more easily with Europe and China, where education is heavily subsidized.
- Energy Independence and Climate Change: She cares about our future. "We owe it to our children and future generations to get this issue under control".
- Healthcare: She supported the public option, and she has introduced legislation to increase Washington's Medicare reimbursement rate up to the national average, as well as a trauma care bill to help hospitals cope.
- Veterans & Military Families: She is committed to providing the benefits and care troops and their families deserve.
Go to the MoveOn website and look for the "MOVEON COUNCILS" link (on the right side of the page). In the "Join a MoveOn Council Near You" area you can search for a council in your area by providing your zip code.
Once you have joined the council, you can become a more active member by joining the "core group" for that area. The core group is the team that coordinates activities at the local level. Joining the core group increases your reach in progressive politics.
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