You know, it sometimes amazes me how completely out of touch everyone in Washington really is. I'm not just talking about the politicians either. I'm talking about everyone, including the media. You know who I'm talking about, those inside the beltway reporters who don't have a clue what the ordinary person in this country is going through right now. They are so tied to the even less in touch politicians in Washington, that they are completely missing out on the biggest news story in quite some time.
What is that story you ask? It's the gigantic trap that the Republicans have set for the President and the Democrats with this new "compromise" on taxes that the President negotiated with the Republicans. When did we elect Charlie Brown as our President? And when did the Republican party become Lucy?
Seriously, can't the President see what's coming? It's as clear as a bell to me. First the Republican, who are supposed to be SOOOOOOOO concerned about the deficit, hold everything hostage to getting $700 billion in tax cuts for the wealthy which are unfunded, and so would increase the deficit. With a deadline looming, the President foolishly agrees to a "compromise" where it's only for 2 years. Note that this puts the argument about what to do about this newest round of tax cuts right in the middle of the next Presidential elections.
What that means is that they are going to get extended again, because no one wants to be seen as raising taxes in an election year. So, anyone who thinks that these ridiculously expensive, economically foolish tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires aren't going to get made permanent is a fool. So, there's part one of the trap. These tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires are going to end up permanent.
Part two of the trap is even more ingenious. Now that the Republican have fooled us all into borrowing trillions of dollars from the Chinese over the next 15 or 20 years so that Millionaires and billionaires can have their tax cuts which will do NOTHING for the economy, the second part of the trap springs. The second part of the trap is that we will be running HUGE deficits. So they will start screaming how we are going to have to make "sacrifices" so we can get a balanced budget or economy will get wrecked. Of course what they won't tell you is that it's these tax cuts that will be the biggest part of that same deficits that they are now complaining about.
Guess where they are going to want those "sacrifices" to come from? Yup, you guessed it it's from us in the middle class and the poor. They are going to tell us all how we just can't afford those expensive Social Security and Medicare programs any more so "sacrifices" will have to be made.
What they mean by "sacrifices" is that they will bump up the retirement age, probably to 72 or higher. They will cut Medicare benefits, and force older workers to continue to be robbed blind by their friends in the private health insurance companies until at least age 72 if not older. Of course, what they would really prefer is to eliminate Social Security all together so that old people can go back to just eating cat food until they die like they did before Social Security was passed. Of course we will save a lot of money because they will die sooner, not only from the malnutrition, but because they won't be able to afford the same kind of quality health-care that the millionaires and billionaire that their tax dollers were given to can afford.
Just gutting Social Security and Medicare won't be enough for these folks, they will go after every solcial program we have because it will be the only way that, short of raising taxes, that we will be able to address the huge deficit we have due to the stupid tax cuts we gave to millionaires and billionaires.
So, what should we do, you ask? First of all, the people of this country need to wake up to the fact that class warfare is being waged against them. That the biggest transfer of wealth in history is happening right under our noses. That transfer of wealth is from the middle class and the poor who actually create all of the wealth in this country, to the rich, who do nothing to add to the wealth in this country.
Once the people wake up and realize what is being done to them, then we can get some real change going. Here's a few ideas about what we can do:
1. We need to increase taxes on the wealthy so that they pay their fair share and the middle class and the poor can get their fair share of the wealth that they create.
2. We need to get control over the Corporations in this country so that they stop robbing us all blind. This includes stopping them from shipping our jobs overseas with such great abandon.
3. We need to get an even playing field back when it comes to politics by stopping the rich and the Corporations from buying our elections.
4. We need to revamp our education system so that we can have a truly informed electorate. The absolute ignorance of the ordinary American voter is amazing.
5. We need to get rid of the propaganda machines in the right wing media like Fox News and people like Rush and Beck. This is easy to do if we simply pass FCC regulations against knowingly lying over the airwaves. The amount of misinformation spewed on a daily basis by these people is just unbelievable. Making people pay a price for spreading misinformation by fining the stations every time they say something that isn't true would put a stop to their hate filled propaganda in a big hurry.
6. Start building stuff again! We don't make anything in this country any more. We need to put in place trade agreements and policies that make it more attractive for companies to make stuff in this country again. This doesn't mean cheaper, since there's no way that American workers can compete on pure price (we make $15 per hour, Chinese make $.05). We need to make it more expense to bring foreign goods into the US while at the same time making our goods more competitive overseas. So, for example, we can make deals with the Chinese that say something like as long as our trade balance is neutral, everything is OK (i.e. as long as we are selling as much to them as they are selling to us). The second they get more of the pie, tariffs kick in to bring things back into balance. Finally, we make it financially unattractive for foreign companies to own factories, and companies in general here in the US. We can do this by taxing the heck out of any corporate profits that leave the US.
7. We return the Unions to power in this country so the workers have a balance against the corporate interest. We do this by forming unions in every workplace so that workers have a voice, and by giving a couple of seats on the board of every company to the unions that represent the workers at that company. BTW, I'm not just talking about manufacturing here. I'm talking about unions for every worker including white collar workers.
Now I know that my friends on the right are going to scream how all of my recommendations are "unconstitutional". But there's nothing in our Constitution that says that we have to be Fundamentalist Capitalists. I think a little protection for the ordinary working people of this country is very Constitutional.
But you know what I think is "unconstitutional"? Taking money from the middle class and giving it to the rich so they can buy another Mercedes. Taking jobs from American workers and shipping them over seas. Letting ordinary working people die so that the health-care corporations can make more profits. Forcing old people to eat cat food while the rich just get richer. Destroying the middle class in this country so that the corporations can make bigger and bigger profits. Turning this country into a third world country. THATS what *I* think is "unconstitutional". That's what *I* think is Un-American. That's what *I* think every poor and middle class person in this country should be fighting against. But those are all things that are going to happen to us all of we continue to be fooled by the right-wing propaganda machine into voting against our own best interests and we continue to elect people who aren't interested in helping the ordinary working person in this country. People who are only interested in protecting the rich and corporate profits and don't give a rats ass about the poor and the middle class.
Sunday, December 12, 2010
Sunday, December 5, 2010
The Greed Of The Rich Is Hurting The Middle Class
It's been a while since I've posted something on here. Works has been pretty crazy, and politics has had to take a back seat. But I'm just fed up with the Republican echo chamber repeating their BS over and over again.
So, lets start with some fact, not the BS made up by the idiots on Fox News.
1. The top 1% of American earners took 23.5% of the pre-tax money on 2007.
2. From 2002 to 2007 the pre-tax income of that 1% rose 10% each year.
3. At the same time pre-tax income for middle America went down and the poverty rate increased.
4. Extending the tax cuts for these rich would cost our economy $700 billion.
Do you see anything unfair about these numbers?
So, what's about to happen in Washington? Yup, you guessed it, the super rich are going to get a ton of money that we are going to borrow form the Chinese.
For the past thirty years the rich have been waging war on the middle class. It’s been astonishingly effective, partly because it has been undeclared. But even that pretense is now being abandoned. The President’s National Deficit Commission has effectively declared that the rich will now go after what is left of working and middle class wealth and will take whatever steps are necessary to seize it. If allowed to succeed, their plan will reduce Americans to a state of serfdom.
Ronald Reagan began the war on the middle class with his “supply-side” economics. Its very purpose, according to David Stockman, Reagan’s Budget Director, was to transfer wealth and income upwards. It cut the marginal tax rate on the highest income earners from 75% to 35% while dramatically expanding spending for war. The results were two-fold: massive federal debt and an astonishing rise in the share of income and wealth going to those who were already the wealthiest people in the world.
The national debt quadrupled between 1980 and 1992. George W. Bush would repeat Reagan’s policies and double it again between 2000 and 2008. Meanwhile, the share of national income going to the top 1% more than doubled, from 9% to 24%. The share going to the top one-tenth of 1% of income earners more than tripled. We now have the most unequal distribution of income in the developing world and the inequality is growing rapidly.
Shifts of this magnitude over such short periods of time have never been seen in American history. With the rich getting much, much richer, its means that everybody else is getting poorer. And in fact, real wages for median workers are lower today than they were in 1973. Indeed, while the inflation-adjusted income of the bottom fifth of workers fell by $6,900 between 1979 and 2007, the top 1% saw its annual income increase by $741,000!
To try to keep up with living standards Americans resorted to debt. They increased their personal debt-to-income ratio from 62% in 1980 to 130% in 2008. When housing prices fell 35% nationwide in the recent collapse it left Americans with a smaller share of equity in their homes, 48%, than at any time since the Great Depression. The share they have lost has been taken by the banks.
In other words, all of the income and wealth gains for middle Americans from the “golden years” between 1945 and 1975 have now been wiped out. Or more accurately, have now been transferred to the very rich. The top 1% holds 34% of the nation’s wealth while the bottom 50% holds just 2.5%. The bottom 40% owns absolutely nothing.
These effects and numbers can be numbing, even dizzying. But it’s important to understand that they have not been the result of random events or impersonal market forces. Rather, they have followed as the intended consequences of the relentless application of a wide array of government and industry policies.
The massive run-up in debt is one such policy. The wealthy are net lenders. This means that massive public and private debt transfers interest income to them from the rest of the economy. Another method for effecting massive wealth transfer: Beginning in 1981 the Reagan administration effectively stopped enforcing anti-trust laws, allowing monopolies to gouge everyone who had to buy their products.
The government actually provided tax subsidies so that corporations could eliminate jobs in the industrial heartland and ship them to Mexico and later, China, India, and other low-wage countries, reducing wages and pitting American workers against each other for those jobs remaining.
The bank deregulation that began in the early 1980s reached its apex with the repeal of the Depression-era Glass-Steagall Act in the late nineties. This set up the “casino capitalism” of the next decade that would spawn massive criminality and mortgage fraud by the nation’s leading banks—none of which has been prosecuted. The result was the greatest economic collapse since the Great Depression.
But even as more than five million homeowners have lost their homes, the wealthy had their losses covered by the Bush and later Obama administrations. Bloomberg news estimates that the transfer to the banks through the financial bailout comes to some $13 trillion dollars.
We could go on and on and on with the roster of ways the wealthy have used the government to transfer national wealth to themselves. Environmental and health laws that are not enforced. Deals with the pharmaceutical industry so they don’t have to compete with foreign manufacturers. Health care “reform” that forces tens of millions of Americans to buy questionable insurance products, even as insurers continue to kick legitimate claimants off their rolls. Give-aways of the telecommunication spectrum worth hundreds of billions of dollars to media monopolies that ladle out state propaganda as if were news and never, ever challenge official narratives.
In these and a thousand other ways, the rich have conspired with the government they largely control to shift more and still more of the nation’s wealth away from the working and middle classes, to themselves. It amounts to the most insidious class warfare and the most rapacious looting of public and private resources in the history of the world.
The result is vast impoverishment, demoralization, and the destruction of the American middle class. One out of eight Americans are on food stamps. One out of five people are in official poverty. One out of four children are raised in poverty. Twenty five million people cannot find enough work, while their skills atrophy and their families and communities are destroyed. These are not figures describing a banana republic, a disaster-stricken region, or a third world country. They describe the United States of America after three decades of plunder by the rich. And now they want to go in for the kill.
Not satisfied with the staggering wealth they have already siphoned away, the ultra-rich are now using Barack Obama’s National Deficit Commission to propose even more brazen plunder. And the looting is no longer taking place behind closed doors or under the cover of arcane public policies.
The commission proposes to cut the federal government’s budget deficit by $4 trillion over the next decade. But 75% of the “savings” will come from gutting programs that help stabilize the middle class and their communities. None of it comes from policies that would harm the rich.
For example, the commission proposes cutting the tax deduction for mortgage payments. Not only will this render housing much less affordable for millions of prospective home buyers, it will reduce housing prices, perhaps substantially, for without the tax writeoff, buyers will be able to afford much less house. This will decimate the sole source of wealth of tens of millions of Americans.
It is housing wealth that undergirds retirement security for the middle class. Or, at least it did until one out of four homeowners went underwater on their mortgage in the recent bank-triggered collapse. Then, even as the Commission plans to decimate home prices and owner equity, it proposes cutting back benefits to Social Security recipients.
It would lower Social Security cost-of living adjustments while raising the minimum retirement age. And this is being proposed at the very moment that the bank-owned Federal Reserve Board is beginning to print hundreds of billions of dollars to bail out the banks from what’s left of their toxic assets still held from the housing crash.
The ensuing inflation is going to destroy the value of retirement incomes at exactly the moment that 77 million baby boomers head off into retirement. It was exactly this process of money printing and bankrupting of retirees that destroyed the German middle class in the early 1920s, giving rise to Adolph Hitler.
The Commission’s proposals would increase co-pays and deductibles for Medicare, making it unaffordable to millions. It proposes taxing as income the health insurance benefits millions receive from their employers. The Child Tax Credit would be eliminated as would 10% of all federal government jobs. This, at a time when more than 20% of the workforce is already underemployed and there are five workers trying for every available job.
We should be crystal clear: these policies amount to a mortal assault on what remains of middle class solvency and the democracy that a vibrant middle class makes possible.
But even as it girds up for this assault, the Commission barely touches the ultra-rich on whose boards they serve and who have gained so much over the past 30 years. And it cannot go without being said that it was these same professional predators who actually wrecked the economy, pitching it into its greatest collapse since the Great Depression.
The Commission’s proposals would actually lower the maximum tax on the highest income earners, from 35% to 24%. The nominal tax rate on corporate income would fall as well, from 35% to 26%. There is nothing proposed to raise taxes after so many decades of steadily amassed wealth. No financial transactions tax (as the IMF recommends) to stanch the kind of tsunami of speculative buying and selling that brought down the economy. Such a tax would raise over $700 billion over the next decade.
Of course, there will be no claw-backs of the trillions of dollars transferred to the rich under the phony duress of “saving the system” during the height of the financial crisis. No proposal that the cap on earnings subject to Social Security withholding should be removed. That proviso alone would raise more than half a trillion dollars over the next decade.
In fact, it is in comparison with other give-aways to the rich that the take-aways from the middle class by the Commission can be seen as so one sided and venal. Remember, they propose to save $4 trillion over 10 years.
But the war in Iraq, which we now know was entirely premised on lies, will cost more than $5 trillion, according to Nobel economist Joseph Stiglitz. It has proven a huge boon to the rich weapons makers, bankers, logistics companies and oil companies that Bush used to coddle as his “base.”
As mentioned above, Bloomberg news estimates that the financial bailout cost some $13 trillion, all of it going to the very richest people on the planet. There is not a syllable in the Commission’s report proposing getting any of that back to help reduce the deficit.
Or consider the notorious Bush tax cuts of 2001 and 2003 where fully 40% went to the top 1% of income earners. Obama once promised to overturn them but, as is his typically cowardly pattern, is now folding. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities has estimated that they will cost the government more than $18 trillion over their lifetime—four times what the Deficit Commission claims it will achieve in savings. But God forbid we should ask for even a penny of that back to help battle the deficit.
In other words, there are many, many substantial and just ways that the savings the Commission proposes to create could be secured via small contributions from those who have gamed the system and gained the most over the past three decades. But that is not the Commission’s plan. And it is in that omission that its true intent is revealed.
There is no more time for stealth, no more need for subtlety. Western capitalist economies are declining at a pace that is frightening their elite stewards and compelling such desperate, slovenly measures as the wholesale printing of money to postpone the inevitable. While Obama sings lullabies of “hope” and “change” to tranquillize the suckers out front, the rich are backing the truck up to the vault in the back, no longer even deigning to disguise the heist. And of course, why should they? They have the additional diversion of the moronic Tea Party vigilantes (“Keep the government out of my Medicare”), ever ready to cut other people’s throats to cure their own nosebleeds.
The Commission’s proposal is the most naked, undisguised declaration of class warfare possible. Its agenda is not to reduce the deficit but rather to reduce what is left of the American middle class and American workers, to a condition of servitude, of feudal peonage. Their poverty will make them docile and subservient. This will make possible the final looting of America by those whose sociopathic greed has brought it so low already. The battle over this proposal is the last bulwark against the devastation and final destruction of America. It must be fought and won or our freedom and security ceded forever. There is no other choice.
So, lets start with some fact, not the BS made up by the idiots on Fox News.
1. The top 1% of American earners took 23.5% of the pre-tax money on 2007.
2. From 2002 to 2007 the pre-tax income of that 1% rose 10% each year.
3. At the same time pre-tax income for middle America went down and the poverty rate increased.
4. Extending the tax cuts for these rich would cost our economy $700 billion.
Do you see anything unfair about these numbers?
So, what's about to happen in Washington? Yup, you guessed it, the super rich are going to get a ton of money that we are going to borrow form the Chinese.
For the past thirty years the rich have been waging war on the middle class. It’s been astonishingly effective, partly because it has been undeclared. But even that pretense is now being abandoned. The President’s National Deficit Commission has effectively declared that the rich will now go after what is left of working and middle class wealth and will take whatever steps are necessary to seize it. If allowed to succeed, their plan will reduce Americans to a state of serfdom.
Ronald Reagan began the war on the middle class with his “supply-side” economics. Its very purpose, according to David Stockman, Reagan’s Budget Director, was to transfer wealth and income upwards. It cut the marginal tax rate on the highest income earners from 75% to 35% while dramatically expanding spending for war. The results were two-fold: massive federal debt and an astonishing rise in the share of income and wealth going to those who were already the wealthiest people in the world.
The national debt quadrupled between 1980 and 1992. George W. Bush would repeat Reagan’s policies and double it again between 2000 and 2008. Meanwhile, the share of national income going to the top 1% more than doubled, from 9% to 24%. The share going to the top one-tenth of 1% of income earners more than tripled. We now have the most unequal distribution of income in the developing world and the inequality is growing rapidly.
Shifts of this magnitude over such short periods of time have never been seen in American history. With the rich getting much, much richer, its means that everybody else is getting poorer. And in fact, real wages for median workers are lower today than they were in 1973. Indeed, while the inflation-adjusted income of the bottom fifth of workers fell by $6,900 between 1979 and 2007, the top 1% saw its annual income increase by $741,000!
To try to keep up with living standards Americans resorted to debt. They increased their personal debt-to-income ratio from 62% in 1980 to 130% in 2008. When housing prices fell 35% nationwide in the recent collapse it left Americans with a smaller share of equity in their homes, 48%, than at any time since the Great Depression. The share they have lost has been taken by the banks.
In other words, all of the income and wealth gains for middle Americans from the “golden years” between 1945 and 1975 have now been wiped out. Or more accurately, have now been transferred to the very rich. The top 1% holds 34% of the nation’s wealth while the bottom 50% holds just 2.5%. The bottom 40% owns absolutely nothing.
These effects and numbers can be numbing, even dizzying. But it’s important to understand that they have not been the result of random events or impersonal market forces. Rather, they have followed as the intended consequences of the relentless application of a wide array of government and industry policies.
The massive run-up in debt is one such policy. The wealthy are net lenders. This means that massive public and private debt transfers interest income to them from the rest of the economy. Another method for effecting massive wealth transfer: Beginning in 1981 the Reagan administration effectively stopped enforcing anti-trust laws, allowing monopolies to gouge everyone who had to buy their products.
The government actually provided tax subsidies so that corporations could eliminate jobs in the industrial heartland and ship them to Mexico and later, China, India, and other low-wage countries, reducing wages and pitting American workers against each other for those jobs remaining.
The bank deregulation that began in the early 1980s reached its apex with the repeal of the Depression-era Glass-Steagall Act in the late nineties. This set up the “casino capitalism” of the next decade that would spawn massive criminality and mortgage fraud by the nation’s leading banks—none of which has been prosecuted. The result was the greatest economic collapse since the Great Depression.
But even as more than five million homeowners have lost their homes, the wealthy had their losses covered by the Bush and later Obama administrations. Bloomberg news estimates that the transfer to the banks through the financial bailout comes to some $13 trillion dollars.
We could go on and on and on with the roster of ways the wealthy have used the government to transfer national wealth to themselves. Environmental and health laws that are not enforced. Deals with the pharmaceutical industry so they don’t have to compete with foreign manufacturers. Health care “reform” that forces tens of millions of Americans to buy questionable insurance products, even as insurers continue to kick legitimate claimants off their rolls. Give-aways of the telecommunication spectrum worth hundreds of billions of dollars to media monopolies that ladle out state propaganda as if were news and never, ever challenge official narratives.
In these and a thousand other ways, the rich have conspired with the government they largely control to shift more and still more of the nation’s wealth away from the working and middle classes, to themselves. It amounts to the most insidious class warfare and the most rapacious looting of public and private resources in the history of the world.
The result is vast impoverishment, demoralization, and the destruction of the American middle class. One out of eight Americans are on food stamps. One out of five people are in official poverty. One out of four children are raised in poverty. Twenty five million people cannot find enough work, while their skills atrophy and their families and communities are destroyed. These are not figures describing a banana republic, a disaster-stricken region, or a third world country. They describe the United States of America after three decades of plunder by the rich. And now they want to go in for the kill.
Not satisfied with the staggering wealth they have already siphoned away, the ultra-rich are now using Barack Obama’s National Deficit Commission to propose even more brazen plunder. And the looting is no longer taking place behind closed doors or under the cover of arcane public policies.
The commission proposes to cut the federal government’s budget deficit by $4 trillion over the next decade. But 75% of the “savings” will come from gutting programs that help stabilize the middle class and their communities. None of it comes from policies that would harm the rich.
For example, the commission proposes cutting the tax deduction for mortgage payments. Not only will this render housing much less affordable for millions of prospective home buyers, it will reduce housing prices, perhaps substantially, for without the tax writeoff, buyers will be able to afford much less house. This will decimate the sole source of wealth of tens of millions of Americans.
It is housing wealth that undergirds retirement security for the middle class. Or, at least it did until one out of four homeowners went underwater on their mortgage in the recent bank-triggered collapse. Then, even as the Commission plans to decimate home prices and owner equity, it proposes cutting back benefits to Social Security recipients.
It would lower Social Security cost-of living adjustments while raising the minimum retirement age. And this is being proposed at the very moment that the bank-owned Federal Reserve Board is beginning to print hundreds of billions of dollars to bail out the banks from what’s left of their toxic assets still held from the housing crash.
The ensuing inflation is going to destroy the value of retirement incomes at exactly the moment that 77 million baby boomers head off into retirement. It was exactly this process of money printing and bankrupting of retirees that destroyed the German middle class in the early 1920s, giving rise to Adolph Hitler.
The Commission’s proposals would increase co-pays and deductibles for Medicare, making it unaffordable to millions. It proposes taxing as income the health insurance benefits millions receive from their employers. The Child Tax Credit would be eliminated as would 10% of all federal government jobs. This, at a time when more than 20% of the workforce is already underemployed and there are five workers trying for every available job.
We should be crystal clear: these policies amount to a mortal assault on what remains of middle class solvency and the democracy that a vibrant middle class makes possible.
But even as it girds up for this assault, the Commission barely touches the ultra-rich on whose boards they serve and who have gained so much over the past 30 years. And it cannot go without being said that it was these same professional predators who actually wrecked the economy, pitching it into its greatest collapse since the Great Depression.
The Commission’s proposals would actually lower the maximum tax on the highest income earners, from 35% to 24%. The nominal tax rate on corporate income would fall as well, from 35% to 26%. There is nothing proposed to raise taxes after so many decades of steadily amassed wealth. No financial transactions tax (as the IMF recommends) to stanch the kind of tsunami of speculative buying and selling that brought down the economy. Such a tax would raise over $700 billion over the next decade.
Of course, there will be no claw-backs of the trillions of dollars transferred to the rich under the phony duress of “saving the system” during the height of the financial crisis. No proposal that the cap on earnings subject to Social Security withholding should be removed. That proviso alone would raise more than half a trillion dollars over the next decade.
In fact, it is in comparison with other give-aways to the rich that the take-aways from the middle class by the Commission can be seen as so one sided and venal. Remember, they propose to save $4 trillion over 10 years.
But the war in Iraq, which we now know was entirely premised on lies, will cost more than $5 trillion, according to Nobel economist Joseph Stiglitz. It has proven a huge boon to the rich weapons makers, bankers, logistics companies and oil companies that Bush used to coddle as his “base.”
As mentioned above, Bloomberg news estimates that the financial bailout cost some $13 trillion, all of it going to the very richest people on the planet. There is not a syllable in the Commission’s report proposing getting any of that back to help reduce the deficit.
Or consider the notorious Bush tax cuts of 2001 and 2003 where fully 40% went to the top 1% of income earners. Obama once promised to overturn them but, as is his typically cowardly pattern, is now folding. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities has estimated that they will cost the government more than $18 trillion over their lifetime—four times what the Deficit Commission claims it will achieve in savings. But God forbid we should ask for even a penny of that back to help battle the deficit.
In other words, there are many, many substantial and just ways that the savings the Commission proposes to create could be secured via small contributions from those who have gamed the system and gained the most over the past three decades. But that is not the Commission’s plan. And it is in that omission that its true intent is revealed.
There is no more time for stealth, no more need for subtlety. Western capitalist economies are declining at a pace that is frightening their elite stewards and compelling such desperate, slovenly measures as the wholesale printing of money to postpone the inevitable. While Obama sings lullabies of “hope” and “change” to tranquillize the suckers out front, the rich are backing the truck up to the vault in the back, no longer even deigning to disguise the heist. And of course, why should they? They have the additional diversion of the moronic Tea Party vigilantes (“Keep the government out of my Medicare”), ever ready to cut other people’s throats to cure their own nosebleeds.
The Commission’s proposal is the most naked, undisguised declaration of class warfare possible. Its agenda is not to reduce the deficit but rather to reduce what is left of the American middle class and American workers, to a condition of servitude, of feudal peonage. Their poverty will make them docile and subservient. This will make possible the final looting of America by those whose sociopathic greed has brought it so low already. The battle over this proposal is the last bulwark against the devastation and final destruction of America. It must be fought and won or our freedom and security ceded forever. There is no other choice.
Thursday, September 16, 2010
Everything that's old is new again!
Welcome to 1937. For those of you who weren’t there, or who practice revisionist history, let me explain what happened to our economy in 1937. But first, lets step back to 1932. After the Republicans managed to completely destroy our economy with “Laissez-faire Capitalism” and triggered The Great Depression (no, the first one, not the second one we are in now) unemployment hit 25% in this country. That’s right by 1932 the unemployment rate of American workers was 25%. This was before all of the “nasty socialist” programs brought in by FDR, so if you lost your job (which there was a 1 in 4 chance would happen to YOU), you were out of luck. You had to depend on the kindness of strangers. Hope that your church still had some food in the food bank, and say good-bye to your home, etc. People moved into “Hoovervilles” because they had nowhere else to go.
At this point, people had enough, and they elected FDR who implemented a lot of what the Republican called “socialist” policies and encouraged the Unions which frustrated Conservative even more. As a result of all this so-called “bad” policy the unemployment rate had dropped to 10% by 1937. In general, it took nearly a 5 years before the United States was pulling out of the Great Depression.
So, what happened next? For some reason, the deficit hawks convinced FDR that it was time to balance the budget. That the deficits he was running just had to be eliminated or our economy was doomed in the long run. So, FDR tried to balance the budget by cutting spending, and guess what happened? That’s right, the fragile recovery took a decided turn for the worse. Especially unemployment which climbed to 19% by 1938. Manufacturing output fell by 37% from the 1937 peak and was back to 1934 levels. Can you say “double dip”?
So, what lessons can we learn from this period in U.S. history?
1. You can’t cut back on government spending before the depression/recession is completely over with.
2. Don’t listen to the Conservatives in this country when they tell you that fixing the deficit is the most important thing!
3. If the people who caused the problem in the first place, want you to return to their policies before the problem is fixed, JUST SAY NO!!!!!
Now, all this seems like common sense to me. Yet here we are, refusing to learn the lessons of history, and trying very hard to repeat the mistakes we made in 1937!
What scares me a lot is the reaction of a good-sized segment of the American population to all of this economic upheaval. Again, take a lesson from history. When Germany underwent the same economic issues as the U.S. in the 1920’s and 1930’s what did they do? They listened to a small number of people who gave them someone to blame for the problem. They then swept that hate filled group into power, and allowed them to do horrible things in the name of protecting the Fatherland.
First they came for the Jews and I did not speak out because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for the Communists and I did not speak out because I was not a Communist.
Then they came for the trade unionists and I did not speak out because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for me and there was no one left to speak out for me.
So now it’s the “illegal aliens”, and the “Muslims”, when do you think it will be YOU?!
At this point, people had enough, and they elected FDR who implemented a lot of what the Republican called “socialist” policies and encouraged the Unions which frustrated Conservative even more. As a result of all this so-called “bad” policy the unemployment rate had dropped to 10% by 1937. In general, it took nearly a 5 years before the United States was pulling out of the Great Depression.
So, what happened next? For some reason, the deficit hawks convinced FDR that it was time to balance the budget. That the deficits he was running just had to be eliminated or our economy was doomed in the long run. So, FDR tried to balance the budget by cutting spending, and guess what happened? That’s right, the fragile recovery took a decided turn for the worse. Especially unemployment which climbed to 19% by 1938. Manufacturing output fell by 37% from the 1937 peak and was back to 1934 levels. Can you say “double dip”?
So, what lessons can we learn from this period in U.S. history?
1. You can’t cut back on government spending before the depression/recession is completely over with.
2. Don’t listen to the Conservatives in this country when they tell you that fixing the deficit is the most important thing!
3. If the people who caused the problem in the first place, want you to return to their policies before the problem is fixed, JUST SAY NO!!!!!
Now, all this seems like common sense to me. Yet here we are, refusing to learn the lessons of history, and trying very hard to repeat the mistakes we made in 1937!
What scares me a lot is the reaction of a good-sized segment of the American population to all of this economic upheaval. Again, take a lesson from history. When Germany underwent the same economic issues as the U.S. in the 1920’s and 1930’s what did they do? They listened to a small number of people who gave them someone to blame for the problem. They then swept that hate filled group into power, and allowed them to do horrible things in the name of protecting the Fatherland.
First they came for the Jews and I did not speak out because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for the Communists and I did not speak out because I was not a Communist.
Then they came for the trade unionists and I did not speak out because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for me and there was no one left to speak out for me.
So now it’s the “illegal aliens”, and the “Muslims”, when do you think it will be YOU?!
Thursday, August 12, 2010
Why the Republican Party Doesn't Want to Fix Illegal Imigration
In this election season, politicians are seemingly crazy about illegal immigration. But few are advocating the real solution — an end to illegal hiring. Despite the fantasies of America-firsters, people from south of us (and to a lesser degree from Africa and Asia) don’t come here for our way of life or to plop out babies. They come here for the cash. There is a job waiting for anyone who’ll work under the table and live under the radar.
The notion that we would “secure our border” from the influx of illegal workers has always been silly. We’ve never completely sealed our border and neither has anyone else, with the possible exception of North Korea. Countries have border control to prevent the smuggling of untaxed goods. Countries that are successful at controlling undocumented workers do it by making it legally unattractive to hire them.
Why would so many Republicans demand doing the impossible before they are willing to even discuss the sensible? It’s a “wedge issue.” Wedge issues are aimed to pry voters away from their larger set of values by making them angry about just one. The goal is to create single-issue voters. For years, abortion was the pivotal wedge issue. During the heyday of the Evangelical Right, it was described as a “litmus test.” No matter what else a candidate stood for (the wedge logic went) if he was pro choice he was unfit to serve. Millions of Christians — forsaking all that stuff about casting stones and forgiveness — were herded to the right.
Religious influence in politics is declining. This is partly because of a continuous string of pastor and priest scandals. It’s also because congregations are starting to reject politics in the pulpit. But it’s mostly because we’ve all become tired of the idea that God only speaks through Chicken Little. Even gay marriage no longer promotes foaming at the mouth the way it used to.
So a fresh wedge is needed. Hey, the economy is bad! Let’s blame the Mexicans!
Candidates like Jan Brewer have recycled the Mexican Repatriation of the 1930s, Operation Wetback of the 1950s; the Illegals Crisis of the 1980s. Interestingly, these campaigns also targeted people who simply looked or acted like Mexican citizens, just as the judge recently noted SB1070 could. During times of economic hardship, illegal hires are a convenient demon. We deported over one million Mexican-looking people during the 1930s, many of them Americans. Ten years later, we found we needed them back to help out with our war. The Bracero Program was not without its faults, but Mexicans did come back when we needed them. Their contribution to the war effort was meaningful.
Illegal workers simply wouldn’t be here without illegal employers. They’re not speculators coming over just to see what’s up. But wedge-issue architects (with names like Brewer, Pearce, Hayworth, Armey and Tancredo) don’t want you to know about the simple solution. They’d like you to vote on anger, not on logic. A vote based on logic, you see, favors solving this on the employer side.
Beyond that, a wedge issue must never, ever be solved. Once an issue achieves wedge status (when it makes voters so apoplectic they’d vote against their own best interests) the loudest complainers become the most dedicated to keeping it alive. They are literally getting rich off of it.
But even more importantly, if we solved the problem, a major pool of cheap labor would dry up. We certainly can’t have that; American business has grown addicted to cheap labor. With help from the Republican Party, business in this country has done everything it can to drive down the cost of labor so that they can add profits to their bottom line. So, while the Republican Party loves to scream about illegal immigration, they do nothing to actually fix the problem because that would make their corporate masters very angry.
This brings us back to the argument for the “danged fence.” The fence is already mostly built. People already climb over it. Almost half of illegal hires in this country entered legally and overstayed their visa. None of these would be affected by fence. There are twice as many bodies guarding the border as there were twenty years ago. We’ve flirted with all sorts of cameras, electronic sensors and balloons in the sky. There are over 21,000 border patrol officers for fewer than 7,000 miles of border. That’s three officers for each mile, or eleven for each mile of the border with Mexico. They are supported by over 30,000 other Border Patrol and Customs employees. There is no shortage of boots on the ground at the border.
As far as the border (and the danged fence) everything that can reasonably be done is being done — and then some. Everything, that is, except stopping illegal employment at the source. Most cheating employers are American citizens; we can’t deport them. But we should fine or jail them. At that point, our immigration policies become simple and logical — make illegal hiring costly and make guest working legitimate, regulated, and limited.
It would only take a few dozen criminal prosecutions of employers to put things back on track. Then the Border Patrol could go back to catching smugglers and criminals rather than rounding up wealth creators and busing them back south. Now wouldn’t that be progress?
The notion that we would “secure our border” from the influx of illegal workers has always been silly. We’ve never completely sealed our border and neither has anyone else, with the possible exception of North Korea. Countries have border control to prevent the smuggling of untaxed goods. Countries that are successful at controlling undocumented workers do it by making it legally unattractive to hire them.
Why would so many Republicans demand doing the impossible before they are willing to even discuss the sensible? It’s a “wedge issue.” Wedge issues are aimed to pry voters away from their larger set of values by making them angry about just one. The goal is to create single-issue voters. For years, abortion was the pivotal wedge issue. During the heyday of the Evangelical Right, it was described as a “litmus test.” No matter what else a candidate stood for (the wedge logic went) if he was pro choice he was unfit to serve. Millions of Christians — forsaking all that stuff about casting stones and forgiveness — were herded to the right.
Religious influence in politics is declining. This is partly because of a continuous string of pastor and priest scandals. It’s also because congregations are starting to reject politics in the pulpit. But it’s mostly because we’ve all become tired of the idea that God only speaks through Chicken Little. Even gay marriage no longer promotes foaming at the mouth the way it used to.
So a fresh wedge is needed. Hey, the economy is bad! Let’s blame the Mexicans!
Candidates like Jan Brewer have recycled the Mexican Repatriation of the 1930s, Operation Wetback of the 1950s; the Illegals Crisis of the 1980s. Interestingly, these campaigns also targeted people who simply looked or acted like Mexican citizens, just as the judge recently noted SB1070 could. During times of economic hardship, illegal hires are a convenient demon. We deported over one million Mexican-looking people during the 1930s, many of them Americans. Ten years later, we found we needed them back to help out with our war. The Bracero Program was not without its faults, but Mexicans did come back when we needed them. Their contribution to the war effort was meaningful.
Illegal workers simply wouldn’t be here without illegal employers. They’re not speculators coming over just to see what’s up. But wedge-issue architects (with names like Brewer, Pearce, Hayworth, Armey and Tancredo) don’t want you to know about the simple solution. They’d like you to vote on anger, not on logic. A vote based on logic, you see, favors solving this on the employer side.
Beyond that, a wedge issue must never, ever be solved. Once an issue achieves wedge status (when it makes voters so apoplectic they’d vote against their own best interests) the loudest complainers become the most dedicated to keeping it alive. They are literally getting rich off of it.
But even more importantly, if we solved the problem, a major pool of cheap labor would dry up. We certainly can’t have that; American business has grown addicted to cheap labor. With help from the Republican Party, business in this country has done everything it can to drive down the cost of labor so that they can add profits to their bottom line. So, while the Republican Party loves to scream about illegal immigration, they do nothing to actually fix the problem because that would make their corporate masters very angry.
This brings us back to the argument for the “danged fence.” The fence is already mostly built. People already climb over it. Almost half of illegal hires in this country entered legally and overstayed their visa. None of these would be affected by fence. There are twice as many bodies guarding the border as there were twenty years ago. We’ve flirted with all sorts of cameras, electronic sensors and balloons in the sky. There are over 21,000 border patrol officers for fewer than 7,000 miles of border. That’s three officers for each mile, or eleven for each mile of the border with Mexico. They are supported by over 30,000 other Border Patrol and Customs employees. There is no shortage of boots on the ground at the border.
As far as the border (and the danged fence) everything that can reasonably be done is being done — and then some. Everything, that is, except stopping illegal employment at the source. Most cheating employers are American citizens; we can’t deport them. But we should fine or jail them. At that point, our immigration policies become simple and logical — make illegal hiring costly and make guest working legitimate, regulated, and limited.
It would only take a few dozen criminal prosecutions of employers to put things back on track. Then the Border Patrol could go back to catching smugglers and criminals rather than rounding up wealth creators and busing them back south. Now wouldn’t that be progress?
Saturday, April 24, 2010
IT's a sad day in America, especially if you are Latino and live in Arizona
Today is a sad day for America. Especially for Latinos for whom this is a major setback in the fight for equality and civil rights. The immigration bill signed into law by Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer is not one designed to curb illegal immigration, but rather it legalizes racial persecution and institutionalizes discrimination.
It represents the first outcome -- of many to come -- pushed and supported by the hateful rhetoric peddled time and again by the Tea Party and many of its followers. Worst of all, there is no longer a disguise or an attempt to hide behind the cloak of an economic argument. It is the latent persecution of those who fail to fit the "American Citizen" model created by the imagination of Teabaggers, Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck and the full array of cronies demanding to take a country back that never belonged exclusively to them.
This is what the Tea Party wanted all along. This is what FOX network, its biggest megaphone, had hoped for: A country willing to sacrifice its civil rights for an invisible sense of relief based on a false pretension that the country is or will be white and monolithic.
Just picture what the new law entails? A law enforcement official hears you speaking Spanish or English with an accent; they stop you and ask to see a passport. You might or might not carry it at that moment. You are detained indefinitely, hours - even days. How about if you happen to be walking while brown? According to the law, this could possibly well be evidence of being "illegal."
Your appearance, your clothes, your language, your location, your activities or anything that may trigger suspicion - regardless of whether it is actually suspicious or not - is grounds for detention. The cry “papers please” with a strong German accent from men wearing brown shirts and jack boots is about to be heard throughout Arizona, and you better have your papers!
This is precisely the main reason why we need a humane and intelligent immigration reform. The longer it takes for Congress to take action, the more of these obscene local and state laws we'll see coming out of the woodwork. There's a leadership vacuum at the federal level on immigration and it needs to be filled by President Obama. In today's America this can no longer happen.
Without a doubt the law will eventually be stricken down as unconstitutional, but not before many families are broken and many lives are impacted. We must all step up and say “enough” to the jack-booted crowd in Arizona and elsewhere in this country who think that only old, rich, white people are “Americans” and run around wearing silly costumes demanding back “their” America. What they don’t realize is that “their” America never existed. The Confederacy LOST the Civil War, and we don’t live in a white theocracy and never have.
It represents the first outcome -- of many to come -- pushed and supported by the hateful rhetoric peddled time and again by the Tea Party and many of its followers. Worst of all, there is no longer a disguise or an attempt to hide behind the cloak of an economic argument. It is the latent persecution of those who fail to fit the "American Citizen" model created by the imagination of Teabaggers, Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck and the full array of cronies demanding to take a country back that never belonged exclusively to them.
This is what the Tea Party wanted all along. This is what FOX network, its biggest megaphone, had hoped for: A country willing to sacrifice its civil rights for an invisible sense of relief based on a false pretension that the country is or will be white and monolithic.
Just picture what the new law entails? A law enforcement official hears you speaking Spanish or English with an accent; they stop you and ask to see a passport. You might or might not carry it at that moment. You are detained indefinitely, hours - even days. How about if you happen to be walking while brown? According to the law, this could possibly well be evidence of being "illegal."
Your appearance, your clothes, your language, your location, your activities or anything that may trigger suspicion - regardless of whether it is actually suspicious or not - is grounds for detention. The cry “papers please” with a strong German accent from men wearing brown shirts and jack boots is about to be heard throughout Arizona, and you better have your papers!
This is precisely the main reason why we need a humane and intelligent immigration reform. The longer it takes for Congress to take action, the more of these obscene local and state laws we'll see coming out of the woodwork. There's a leadership vacuum at the federal level on immigration and it needs to be filled by President Obama. In today's America this can no longer happen.
Without a doubt the law will eventually be stricken down as unconstitutional, but not before many families are broken and many lives are impacted. We must all step up and say “enough” to the jack-booted crowd in Arizona and elsewhere in this country who think that only old, rich, white people are “Americans” and run around wearing silly costumes demanding back “their” America. What they don’t realize is that “their” America never existed. The Confederacy LOST the Civil War, and we don’t live in a white theocracy and never have.
Thursday, April 22, 2010
The case for public funding for political campaigns...
I love FDR ...
"We had to struggle with the old enemies of peace -- business and financial monopoly, speculation, reckless banking, class antagonism, sectionalism, war profiteering," Franklin Delano Roosevelt said in a 1936 speech. "They had begun to consider the Government of the United States as a mere appendage to their own affairs. We know now that Government by organized money is just as dangerous as Government by organized mob. Never before in all our history have these forces been so united against one candidate as they stand today.
"They are unanimous in their hate for me -- and I welcome their hatred."
Government by Organized Money ... that's what we have today, and with certain Supreme Court decisions allowing Corporations to run their own unlimited ads in political campaigns, the situation is only going to get worse.
Maybe the time has come to finally move to all publicly funded campaigns? If we did that it would eliminate the influence of the lobbyists, and put the people pack in control of the government!
--joerg
"We had to struggle with the old enemies of peace -- business and financial monopoly, speculation, reckless banking, class antagonism, sectionalism, war profiteering," Franklin Delano Roosevelt said in a 1936 speech. "They had begun to consider the Government of the United States as a mere appendage to their own affairs. We know now that Government by organized money is just as dangerous as Government by organized mob. Never before in all our history have these forces been so united against one candidate as they stand today.
"They are unanimous in their hate for me -- and I welcome their hatred."
Government by Organized Money ... that's what we have today, and with certain Supreme Court decisions allowing Corporations to run their own unlimited ads in political campaigns, the situation is only going to get worse.
Maybe the time has come to finally move to all publicly funded campaigns? If we did that it would eliminate the influence of the lobbyists, and put the people pack in control of the government!
--joerg
Thursday, March 25, 2010
Are the TeaPartyers just plain old Fascists?
Are the Tea Partyers just plain old Fascists? Well, here is the definition of Fascism, let's see where they differ.
"Fascism, pronounced /ˈfæʃɪzəm/, is a radical and authoritarian nationalist political ideology. Fascists seek to organize a nation on corporatist perspectives; values; and systems such as the political system and the economy. Scholars generally consider fascism to be on the far right of the conventional left-right political spectrum, although some scholars claim that fascism has been influenced by both the left and the right.
Fascists believe that a nation is an organic community that requires strong leadership, collective identity, and the will and ability to commit violence and wage war in order to keep the nation strong. They identify violence and war as actions that create national regeneration, spirit and vitality. They claim that culture is created by collective national society and its state, that cultural ideas are what give individuals identity, and thus rejects individualism. In viewing the nation as an integrated collective community, they claim that pluralism is a dysfunctional aspect of society, and justify a totalitarian state as a means to represent the nation in its entirety. They advocate the creation of a single-party state. Fascist governments forbid and suppress openness and opposition to the fascist state and the fascist movement. Fascists reject and resist autonomy of cultural or ethnic groups who are not considered part of the fascists' nation and who refuse to assimilate or are unable to be assimilated. They consider attempts to create such autonomy as an affront and threat to the nation."
When I first read this definition, I was a a bit confused, so let's break it down, and compare each point to the Tea Party movement of today, and even some of the positions of the more mainstream GOP in the past which most Tea Partyers are part of.
Where the test fails is in the part where the definition says "and justify a totalitarian state as a means to represent the nation in its entirety.". Although I do think that the "unitary executive" theory that Dick Cheney believes in comes close. But still, I think that these people do still think that democracy is a good thing, at least as long as they are winning the elections...
So, is the Tea Party a Fascist organization? I don't think so, but it sure seems to have a lot in common with one.
"Fascism, pronounced /ˈfæʃɪzəm/, is a radical and authoritarian nationalist political ideology. Fascists seek to organize a nation on corporatist perspectives; values; and systems such as the political system and the economy. Scholars generally consider fascism to be on the far right of the conventional left-right political spectrum, although some scholars claim that fascism has been influenced by both the left and the right.
Fascists believe that a nation is an organic community that requires strong leadership, collective identity, and the will and ability to commit violence and wage war in order to keep the nation strong. They identify violence and war as actions that create national regeneration, spirit and vitality. They claim that culture is created by collective national society and its state, that cultural ideas are what give individuals identity, and thus rejects individualism. In viewing the nation as an integrated collective community, they claim that pluralism is a dysfunctional aspect of society, and justify a totalitarian state as a means to represent the nation in its entirety. They advocate the creation of a single-party state. Fascist governments forbid and suppress openness and opposition to the fascist state and the fascist movement. Fascists reject and resist autonomy of cultural or ethnic groups who are not considered part of the fascists' nation and who refuse to assimilate or are unable to be assimilated. They consider attempts to create such autonomy as an affront and threat to the nation."
When I first read this definition, I was a a bit confused, so let's break it down, and compare each point to the Tea Party movement of today, and even some of the positions of the more mainstream GOP in the past which most Tea Partyers are part of.
- "Fascists seek to organize a nation on corporatist perspectives, values, and systems" - Certainly the GOP is clearly in the pocket of Corporate America. They show this by constantly taking the side of the corporations against the public interest. They say it all the time in their campaigns as well. Words to the effect of "I ran a company, therefore I know how to run the government better" are all over the place.
- "Scholars generally consider fascism to be on the far right" - Nuff said.
- "Fascists believe that a nation is an organic community that requires strong leadership, collective identity, and the will and ability to commit violence and wage war in order to keep the nation strong." - I only have two words for you "Dick Cheney". In general, this was the position of ex-President Bush and the GOP for 8 years. Any opposition to war was called "un-American", and GW Bush's idea that the US had the right to "strike preemptively" in order to protect it's interests sounds an awful lot like this part of the definition of fascism.
- "Fascist governments forbid and suppress openness and opposition to the fascist state and the fascist movement" - See #3, also see all of the hated and violence directed at people who don't agree with the Tea Party that's all over the news, and has been ever since the inception of the group.
- "Fascists reject and resist autonomy of cultural or ethnic groups who are not considered part of the fascists' nation" - Can you say "Lou Dobbs? Seriously, anyone who looks, sounds, or acts differently from these people is attacked, both figuratively, and literally. Reference the spitting on a U.S. Congressman last Sunday.
Where the test fails is in the part where the definition says "and justify a totalitarian state as a means to represent the nation in its entirety.". Although I do think that the "unitary executive" theory that Dick Cheney believes in comes close. But still, I think that these people do still think that democracy is a good thing, at least as long as they are winning the elections...
So, is the Tea Party a Fascist organization? I don't think so, but it sure seems to have a lot in common with one.
Thursday, March 18, 2010
Let’s pass health-care reform now!
Folks,
We are just way to close not to pass health-reform. As you probably all know, I'm a notorious Progressive, so believe me I hate some of the provisions in this bill. Among other things I think it's a huge giveaway to the health insurance industry. But what's the alternative? Should we just leave the status-quo in place? Does the idea of ever increasing premiums, more rescission when you need your health insurance, and yearly lifetime maximums that keep getting lower and lower sound appealing to anyone? Anyway, I've talked about the issues with the current system a lot already and I won't repeat all that here. Just remember this; Capitalism is Socialism for the rich and the corporations! It's time for the middle class in this country to rise up and take back all of the handouts to the rich that were put into place by the Republicans going all the way back to Regan! A great first start would be to pass this health-care reform bill and begin the process of curbing health insurance company abuses.
One of the things I hear from my conservative friends is that this bill doesn't even go into effect for 4 years. This is a place where I tend to agree with them. However, there are some things that do go into effect much sooner, and I think it's worth pointing those out here. Here's a list of things that will take effect in the first year:
- Eliminating caps: If you buy a policy, a health care company will not be able to place a lifetime -- or annual -- cap on how much they will cover. This is will be especially important for those diagnosed with serious illnesses, such as cancer, who face steep medical bills.
- Pre-existing conditions: The Senate bill includes $5 billion in immediate support to provide temporary coverage to uninsured Americans with pre-existing conditions. (risk pools) The money would help you until the new health care exchanges in the Senate bill are put into effect in 2014.
- Children and pre-existing conditions: Another thing that's going to be very important is that there will be no exclusion of children with pre-existing conditions. This takes effect as soon as the President signs the bill.
- Dependent children: Your children will be covered until the age of 26. Children who are over 21 and may not have a job that pays their health insurance can still be on your policy
- Small business tax credits: Those tax credits are aimed at helping small businesses buy health insurance for their employees. Tax credits of up to 50 percent of premiums will be available to firms that offer coverage, according to the Senate's plan.
- Preventive care: All new insurance plans, will be required to offer free preventive care in order to "catch preventable illnesses and diseases on the front end."
- Appeals process: A new independent appeals process will be set up for those who feel that they were unfairly denied a claim by their insurance company.
- Help for seniors: If you fall into the Medicare Part D Drug Benefit coverage gap, dubbed the "donut hole," you will receive $250 to help pay for prescriptions.
All of the above will go into effect within one year of the bill being passed. There are some really good things there, even if it doesn't go far enough. Here's a list some of the things that are in the current bill that take a bit longer to go into effect:
- New health insurance subsidies would be provided to families of four making up to $88,000 annually, or 400 percent of the federal poverty level.
- Health insurance exchanges would be created to make it easier for small businesses, the self-employed and the unemployed to pool resources and purchase less expensive coverage just like congress has today.
- Total out-of-pocket expenses would be limited, and insurance companies would be prevented from denying coverage for pre-existing conditions. Insurers would be barred from canceling coverage for sick people, as well as charging higher premiums based on a person's gender or medical history.
- Insurers would be required to provide coverage for non-dependent children up to age 26.
- The Medicare prescription drug "doughnut hole" would be closed by 2020. Under current law, Medicare stops covering drug costs after a plan and beneficiary have spent more than $2,830 on prescription drugs. It starts paying again after an individual's out-of-pocket expenses exceed $4,550.
- A 40 percent tax would be imposed on insurance companies providing "Cadillac" health plans valued at more than $10,200 for individuals and $27,500 for families. The tax would kick in in 2018.
- The Medicare tax would be imposed on investment income for individuals making over $200,000 and couples making over $250,000.
- The federal government would assist states by picking up 100 percent of the costs of expanded Medicaid coverage between 2014 and 2016, and 90 percent starting in 2020.
- Individuals would be required to purchase coverage or face a fine of up to $695 or 2.5 percent of income, whichever is greater, starting in 2016. The plan includes a hardship exemption for poorer Americans.
- Companies with more than 50 employees would be required to pay a fee of $2,000 per worker if the company does not provide coverage and any of that company's workers receives federal health care subsidies. The first 30 workers would be subtracted from the payment calculation.
- States could choose whether to ban abortion coverage in plans offered in the health insurance exchanges. Individuals purchasing plans through the exchanges would have to pay for abortion coverage from their own funds.
- Illegal immigrants would not be allowed to buy health insurance in the health insurance exchanges.
So, can someone explain to me how any of the above is a "government takeover of health-care" as the conservatives like to scream about? All we are going is putting some reasonable regulations on the health-insurance companies, and ensuring that everyone has reasonable access to health-care insurance. The CBO report issued today also shows that this bill pays for itself, and actually reduces the deficit by 130 billion in the first 10 years.
As I've said time and again, I don't think that all of the problems we have with our health-care system are going to get solved until we remove the profit motive from the system. That means going to a single payer system and eliminating the for profit private health-care insurance companies entirely. But this bill doesn't provide for that, so I have to settle for what I can get, which is a very modest reform to the system that's better than nothing.
Tuesday, March 2, 2010
Is there really any difference between Republicans and Democrats?
I have noticed lately that even some of my Progressive friends are beginning to say that there is not much difference between the Republicans and the Democrats these days. This got me to thinking, is that true? Have we reached the point that, in order to get elected to anything, politicians just move to the completely vanilla "center" where there isn't really any difference between the parties? Are we really a "center right" country, as many would have us believe?
First, I hope not. It seems to me that the "center" is a place where people don't really believe in anything substantial. It's that vanilla center that sounds good, but is not only boring, but really doesn't get anything done. So, I suppose that based on that definition, that really is where this country is right now. But wouldn't it be great of there really were two parties that embraced two different philosophies? That the Republicans would simply admit, and campaign on, what they really believe in the heart of hearts. And that the Democrats would do the same?
In order to accomplish that the Republicans would have to admit that they simply don't believe in any kind of social safety net funded by, or controlled by, the government (that's any form of government). that given the chance they would eliminate hateful programs such as Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, Unemployment Insurance, etc, etc, That they would also eliminate nearly all government regulations on business and institute a very perverted form of Capitalism in which all profits go to the Corporations and the rich, and all of the risk is held by the tax-payer (which neither the rich no the corporation would be). In their vision for this country, we would continue to have the boom and bust cycles in the economy that we have been experiencing ever since the Conservatives have had any kind of influence over out economy. However, in their world, help for those who lose their jobs, etc during the bust cycles would be completely up to private charities. Forgetting, of course, that the donations to those charities tend to dry up at the times of most need. If you want to see what the bust times without the social safety net looks like, just read up on the Great Depression. Remember, a lot of the social safety net was put into place after the Great Depression because it became clear during the Great Depression that private charities weren't up to taking care of people on that kind of massive scale. But the Republicans don't care about any of that. The think that the unemployed just need to "get up off the lazy asses and get a job".
The Democrats, on the other hand believe strongly in the social siafty net put into place by FDR and LBJ. They believe that the part of the preamble of the Constitution "We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America." means that we have a solemn duty to help those who need it. That the part that talks about the "promote the general Welfare" means exactly what it says (bet you didn't know I was a strict constructionist). To that end it means that the people of this country have a right to be free from hunger, to receive basic health-care, to have shelter and clothing. Because without those things, how can we possiblly "promote the general Welfare"?
As you can see, the two positions above have no intersection! There is no "middle ground" between these two diametrically opposing points of view. One philosophy believes that everyone is on his own, and the other believes that we are all responsible for each other. To "move to the middle" means giving up some of your core beliefs. How do yo do that?
I wish I had some answers, but I don't. All I can say is that I strong believe that one of the reasons that we are where we are today in politics is this problem, and until we figure out how to solve it, we will continue to have ineffectual government at every level.
Joerg
First, I hope not. It seems to me that the "center" is a place where people don't really believe in anything substantial. It's that vanilla center that sounds good, but is not only boring, but really doesn't get anything done. So, I suppose that based on that definition, that really is where this country is right now. But wouldn't it be great of there really were two parties that embraced two different philosophies? That the Republicans would simply admit, and campaign on, what they really believe in the heart of hearts. And that the Democrats would do the same?
In order to accomplish that the Republicans would have to admit that they simply don't believe in any kind of social safety net funded by, or controlled by, the government (that's any form of government). that given the chance they would eliminate hateful programs such as Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, Unemployment Insurance, etc, etc, That they would also eliminate nearly all government regulations on business and institute a very perverted form of Capitalism in which all profits go to the Corporations and the rich, and all of the risk is held by the tax-payer (which neither the rich no the corporation would be). In their vision for this country, we would continue to have the boom and bust cycles in the economy that we have been experiencing ever since the Conservatives have had any kind of influence over out economy. However, in their world, help for those who lose their jobs, etc during the bust cycles would be completely up to private charities. Forgetting, of course, that the donations to those charities tend to dry up at the times of most need. If you want to see what the bust times without the social safety net looks like, just read up on the Great Depression. Remember, a lot of the social safety net was put into place after the Great Depression because it became clear during the Great Depression that private charities weren't up to taking care of people on that kind of massive scale. But the Republicans don't care about any of that. The think that the unemployed just need to "get up off the lazy asses and get a job".
The Democrats, on the other hand believe strongly in the social siafty net put into place by FDR and LBJ. They believe that the part of the preamble of the Constitution "We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America." means that we have a solemn duty to help those who need it. That the part that talks about the "promote the general Welfare" means exactly what it says (bet you didn't know I was a strict constructionist). To that end it means that the people of this country have a right to be free from hunger, to receive basic health-care, to have shelter and clothing. Because without those things, how can we possiblly "promote the general Welfare"?
As you can see, the two positions above have no intersection! There is no "middle ground" between these two diametrically opposing points of view. One philosophy believes that everyone is on his own, and the other believes that we are all responsible for each other. To "move to the middle" means giving up some of your core beliefs. How do yo do that?
I wish I had some answers, but I don't. All I can say is that I strong believe that one of the reasons that we are where we are today in politics is this problem, and until we figure out how to solve it, we will continue to have ineffectual government at every level.
Joerg
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