Democracy and other Fantasies

Attacking the US middle class?

2011-03-21T08:23:00.000-07:00

Ralph Nader gets it right again. There has been a 60 year long war against organized labor in this country and the corporate forces can taste final victory against public worker unions. Meanwhile, Obama and the Democratic Party are doing absolutely nothing to fend off this attack on those who put them in office time and time again.

The Best Defense Is a Good Offense

2011-03-09T05:53:00.000-08:00

I don't know about you, but I'm tired of playing defense. The left in this country (and I don't mean the Democratic Party which is barely centrist) has been so demoralized by the incessant well-funded attacks from the right, that we have forgotten what it would be like to be on the offensive. Part of this is due to the incessant attacks by the right. Examples: attacks designed to destroy Planned Parenthood must be opposed, the new National Right-to-Work law must be opposed, the attacks on PBS must be opposed, etc., etc. Pretty soon we're up to our eyeballs in things to oppose and our efforts are splintered across dozens of single-issue groups and for every one of these little skirmishes we manage to win, a dozen more are started by the right-wing. Of course, they have the advantage of being on Koch and never seem to sleep.

Well I'm sick of it. We are playing the right-wing's game. They make the rules and we haven't got a chance. It's time to go on the offensive. Now I know that if we go out there and demand something we really want, that America really needs, the Demo-rats will oppose it and we will be called immature left-wing nut jobs by the President and the "leadership" of the party and socialist terrorists by the right. Well I say, Big Fucking Deal. It's not as though the left would be losing any clout, we don't have any.

So what will be our line of offense? First of all, no more mealy-mouth half-assed "pretty-please" requests for tweaks to Demo-rat legislation (I'm thinking of the public option here). We aren't Barack Obama, and we shouldn't begin negotiating by giving up 95% of what we want. Let's seriously drive for what's right, what's just, and what MUST be done to get this nation back on track. Here are some examples:

1. We want to repeal the Bush tax cuts AND the Reagan tax cuts on the wealthiest Americans.
2. We want to repeal NAFTA, and exit the WTO and make American businesses invest in America and American jobs or they dont' get access to our markets. No more tax loopholes for post-office boxes in Aruba, no more special exemptions hidden in legislation - time for American corporations to pay their taxes and invest in America.
3. We want a 50% reduction in the Pentagon budget within 3 years by ending the illegal wars, closing all of our overseas military bases, and ending any pretension of empire.
4. We want an immediate repeal of the Patriot Act and the Military Commissions Act and we want Guantanamo closed for real this time, and we want those responsible for the unconstitutional and illegal imprisonment and torture brought to justice, even if they're Democrats.
5. We want the Employee Free Choice Act, but damn it, let's repeal the Taft-Hartley Act that started the demise of unions in the first place. While we're at it let's quadruple the budget of the NLRB and OSHA and the other agencies that protect workers so they can enforce the law quickly and effectively.
6. We want to declare health care a human right and require the government to make sure that every American can receive all the care they need regardless of their ability to pay.

I could go on, but you get the idea. Be radical! If we stake out a position at the left end of the politically possible in this country, we are still right of center. Ask for, no DEMAND what we really want, what will really be the BEST outcome for all Americans and don't compromise. Every time the right-wing nutjobs spew out another corporate-funded attack, go them one better.

They want to destroy PBS - then shit, we want a tax on every piece of video equipment sold in this country to fund not one but two independent public TV and radio networks that don't need or want any freaking "donations" from corporations!
They want an internet "kill switch"? We want the government to nationalize the internet infrastructure and provide free high-speed internet service to every home in America!

We aren't going to win by playing defense. We aren't going to attract new people to the left by simply being against things all the time. We also need to realize that the tactics of the 1960's aren't going to work again and we need new blood, new ideas and new vigor. The only way to get those new people and their new ideas is to get the hell out in front and lead!

An Example for us all

2011-02-14T06:09:00.000-08:00

76 year old author and poet Wendell Berry has been fighting against mountaintop removal coal mining in his beloved Eastern Kentucky for over 40 years. He has lobbied, campaigned, protested, written and testified but the destruction of the land continues unabated. Now he is fed up. Today Wendell Berry and a few other Kentucky citizens are camped in the outer office of Governor Steve Beshear where they intend to remain until the government acts on behalf of the people of Kentucky. Listen as Berry says

"If current governmental practice affords no apparent recourse but to become as corrupt as your opponents, you've got to become more radical. If your government will not rise to the level of common decency, if it will not deal fairly, if it will not protect the land and the people, if it will not fully and openly debate the issues, then you've got to get in the government's way. You have to forbid it to ignore you. You have to provide it will 2 new choices:
Either it must grant you the consideration it rightly owes you, or
It must expose itself openly as a government not representative of the people, but owned by the privileged few."

Thanks to Chris Hedges for bringing this effort to our attention.

Again with the cuts

2011-02-01T08:19:00.000-08:00

Today's news was again filled with Gov. Cuomo's plans to cut spending and impose a tax cap on counties and localities - a plan that will destroy what's left of the NY state economy and plunge us into long-term depression. Thankfully there are other voices in Albany with a grip on reality and I'm proud to say one of them is my own Assembly representative, Barbara Lifton.

As Barbara points out on her Assembly web site,

"Most people’s taxes are too high, but it’s not their income taxes that are killing them; it’s the property tax that’s killing people! Our income taxes rank 25th out of the 50 states, largely because the wealthiest New Yorkers went from a 15% tax bracket to under 7% during the late ‘80’s and early 90’s. The top 4% of New Yorkers, those making $250,000 per year and up, had their tax rates cut by more than 50%. Most other New Yorkers had perhaps a one percent drop, from say, 5% to 4%, but have more than paid for those cuts by property tax hikes that resulted from the shift from state support to local support for schools and other critical services."

New York is facing a $10 Billion budget shortfall, but as Lifton points out, we are currently losing $22 Billion in revenue due to tax cuts enacted in the last 25 years. Spending in New York state has "flatlined" between 6.5% and 7.5% of State GDP over the last 25 years, it's tax cuts that are causing our budget woes, not spending. She provides a set of charts (pdf) on her web site that prove her point.

With the corporate Democrats and Republicans in Washington ready to put the screws to school children, seniors, the disabled and the poor so that the Wall Street fat cats will continue to fill their wallets, and the corporate Democrats and Republicans in Albany set to do the same, the people need to fight. We need to put a stop to this assault on our future and the first step is to support the few politicians who are still putting people first. Ultimately lawmakers who actually represent the interests of the ordinary people in their district are in the minority, so don't expect miracles. We need to make the people of New York understand that the deficit in Albany is not about state pensioners who are also employed by the state, or excessive health care costs for workers, on greedy unions. The deficit is caused by tax benefits for the wealthy.

A quick search of the Assembly docket shows that members are once again flooding the legislature with little tweaks of the tax code for this or that interest group and failing to address the bigger issue. Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver is talking about extending the so-called "Millionaire's Tax" (a temporary increase in income taxes for New Yorkers earning over $200,000/year), but Cuomo opposes it and it remains to be seen whether that step (an important though inadequate one) is for real or just another circus for the media.

Renewing New York's Economy

2011-01-06T08:23:00.000-08:00

The Ithaca Journal carried a Guest Viewpoint column this morning written by local State Senator Mike Nozzolio that outlined his legislative priorities for New York in 2011. They are standard order conservative nonsense: Cut Spending, Tax Cuts, Deregulation, etc. I was moved to write a letter in response which hopefully will see publication in the Journal also.

Dear Editor,

State Senator Mike Nozzolio's recent Guest Viewpoint in the Journal lists his legislative priorities for New York in 2011 and seems unconcerned that the end result of those priorities will be to make the current hard economic times worse for most New Yorkers. All of Sen. Nozzolio’s prescriptions seem to boil down to one concept: let’s make state and local government less effective by lowering its revenue and cutting its spending. This is the flip side of the idea that the “free market” will take care of everything if we just get “big government” out of the way. Anyone who has been awake over the last 3 years should know better.

Sen. Nozziolo claims he is committed to “renew hope and prosperity for all New Yorkers”, but his prescription is to let our infrastructure crumble further, make our educational system worse, make our health care system worse, and put more of our fellow citizens on the streets - that will surely make New York a mecca for business -- NOT! Mike Nozziolo, like all Republicans and most Democrats, is still drinking the free-market Kool-Aid while the economy is dropping dead around them.

If we are to improve the lives of New Yorkers, we need strong and well-funded state and local governments because it is only government that has the ability, the desire, and the moral imperative to empower citizens. If we want New York to grow and “renew hope and prosperity”, we need government to provide high-quality education, environmental protection, roads and infrastructure, and care for the disabled. No private industry is going to undertake those tasks because they simply aren’t profitable.

As citizens, we must evaluate a politician’s objectives based on the logical and actual outcomes of his policies, and by that standard Sen. Nozzolio’s real objective is not to create jobs, it is to decrease the size and effectiveness of government so that corporate interests can be free to exploit workers and the environment. His real objective is not to create good paying jobs that will stimulate the upstate economy, but to force workers to accept lower wages, poorer working conditions, and longer hours. His real objective is not to renew prosperity for all New Yorkers but to continue to enrich the few at the expense of the many.

Unfortunately for Nozzolio and his fellow conservatives in both parties, the only viable solutions to the problems of the nation and New York state run contrary to their belief system and therefore are not considered:

1) Enact progressive tax reform, starting with ending the rebate of billions of dollars annually from the Stock Transfer Tax and restoring the tax rate on the wealthiest New Yorkers to mid-1970’s levels.

2) Shift Medicaid and education funding to the state so we can lower property taxes.

3) Enact a state single-payer health care system that will put hundreds of dollars a month into the pockets of New Yorkers, and

4) Use state funds and tax breaks to promote key industries with strict requirements that the recipients actually create good paying long-term jobs in New York State. It is ideas like these that will renew New York's hope and prosperity, not a recapitulation of the ideas that got us into this bind in the first place.

Update: The Ithaca Journal printed this letter January 11 as their Guest Viewpoint. You can see the predictable reactions in the comments below on the paper's web site.

Weeping for our Dying Country

2011-01-04T16:51:00.001-08:00

Is a New Party Possible?

2010-12-10T06:57:00.000-08:00

Now that most (but not all) progressives/liberals have finally discovered that the Democratic Party is not their friend, the next question is what to do about it? We have two political parties controlled by the same interests marching in lockstep on economic and military/foreign affairs questions who only appear to differ on matters the government has no business meddling in: reproductive health decisions, homosexual rights, etc.

Some people are calling for a primary challenge to Obama from the Left and I have heard all sorts of names mentioned as possible candidates ranging from Howard Dean and Russ Feingold to Al Franken and Susan Sarandon. There are two problems with this approach, at least.

1. We cannot continue to look for a progressive knight on a white horse, a liberal Saviour who will fix everything for us if we only elect him or her. It won't be that easy. One person, even if elected President cannot single-handedly turn around 3 decades of right-wing drift and 60 years of increasing corporate control of our political system.

2. The Democratic Party is never going to permit a real progressive to capture the nomination, and when the primary challenger goes down to defeat as he will, the party bigwigs will move even further to the right to disassociate themselves from that person and that defeat.

One of the best comments on our current political climate was given by University of Texas economist James Galbraith in a recent speech to the ADA.

"The Democratic Party has become too associated with Wall Street. This is a fact. It is a structural problem. It seems to me that we as progressives need — this is my personal position — we need to draw a line and decide that we would be better off with an under-funded, fighting progressive minority party than a party marked by obvious duplicity and constant losses on every policy front as a result of the reversals in our own leadership."

I agree wholeheartedly with Professor Galbraith. A "fighting progressive minority party" is the only way we can retain any integrity in fighting for left of center policy changes. Associating ourselves with the party of Obama, Reid and the Blue Dogs is itself a compromise of our principles and we simply must stop.

The question is how to get from where we are to that progressive party structure. The remnants of previous 3rd parties are still out there but offer nothing of practical value. Starting a party from scratch would be a herculean effort and herding the issue-oriented liberal cats is an impossibility. So here's my suggestion and my call to bravery to those who are willing to sacrifice for their principles.

The members of the Progressive Caucus in the House along with the 2 or 3 remaining progressives in the Senate should withdraw from the Democratic Party and form a new party. Even if only 30 or so had the courage to do this, it would provide a nucleus of seasoned politicians with a public platform and access to the media. The media love to reduce every question to bickering between two parties, and they might just love the idea of an expansion team joining in the fray. With any luck, this could encourage the libertarian wing of the Republican Party to do the same.

By doing this now, the new party will be immediately viable and will be able to attract a Presidential candidate from their own ranks or from outside the Beltway and make sure that their party is on the ballot in every state. I believe a lot of progressives out there would jump in a work hard and donate to a new party that was sitting in Congress and acting on their behalf every day.

While the House members who join this new party will be cut off from the Democratic fundraising machine, most get little support there anyway. They won't need to even show up for the primaries, they can just swoop in at the general election and run against the corporate funded, Wall Street loving, duplicitous nincompoops from both parties as the true candidate of the people.

It's an idea. I'm going to tell my Congressman about it. If you are lucky enough to have a progressive representing you in Congress, write to them and push the idea.

Powerful Wimp

2010-12-07T15:32:00.000-08:00

Some days, particularly days when you have enough time on your hands to keep up with what's going on in the country, you are amazed at what you read.

We have a President who apparently could not successfully negotiate the trade of a chocolate bar for a carrot stick from a fat 3rd grader. Of course, we know Obama has a wonderful ability to convince people of shit that's not true - his entire campaign for President is a perfect example. But today we got a two-fer.

First up, remember the "principle" that Obama campaigned on to make Americans who make over a quarter-million a year pay higher taxes? Kiss that one goodbye! He has now "compromised" with the Republicans to extend the "temporary" Bush tax cuts so that he can convince them to extend unemployment and restore a minimal estate tax. Wanna bet that they have their fingers crossed and will vote against both when the time comes? We can still hope that Pelosi and Reid will let the whole Bush tax cut package expire instead of capitulating, but their track record doesn't suggest much reason for hope.

Next, remember how Obama and Hillary were negotiating a big deal with Israel where they were going to sell (give really) them billions in advanced weaponry in order to get a 90-day (!) settlement freeze so there could be another round of worthless "peace talks" with the Palestinians? Well, Netanyahu knew his adversary was a pussy so he refused and sure enough, Obama backed down. Maybe he realized that a 90-day extension of a settlement freeze that was never really enforced was worthless but if that's the case, why try it in the first place?

But never fear that the U.S. President is a powerless wimp. Someone still believes he is powerful - the federal judiciary. US District Judge John Bates says that the federal judiciary doesn't have the authority to even hear a lawsuit challenging the President's right to order the assassination of an American citizen. So this guy who obviously has no principles he's willing to defend and who continually engages in pointless exercises that display his stupidity, can order the military-intelligence complex to kill you whenever he feels like it and there's not a goddamn thing you can do about it.

I can only repeat from that sage of the people, Joe Bageant,

Let us now pause to clutch our hair in our fists and scream AAAAAAGGGGGHHHHH!)

Inside Job?

2010-12-05T09:56:00.000-08:00

I recently attended the movie "Inside Job", an excellent documentary about the current economic crisis and its causes. A few days later, I ran into an acquaintance whose political views were unknown to me at the time and when the topic of our economic depression (aka the jobless recovery) came up, I recommended he see Inside Job, which he did.

This person is a very thoughtful and caring man who has been listening to and reading a lot of right-wing material lately and he brought me an article from Investors Business Daily with the title "10 Reasons You Should Not Waste Your Money On Film 'Inside Job'" by Paul Sperry.

Since the current economic crisis was clearly avoidable and in the opinion of many (including Inside Job filmmaker Charles H. Ferguson) the result of intentional fraudulent activities by several major banks and investment firms, it seemed worthwhile to examine Sperry's complaints. so here we go.

Reason #1: "Ferguson...has a political agenda." And Sperry doesn't? Is it even possible to comment on the state of our nation's economy without implying a political agenda? I think not.

#2: "...Barney Frank...is lionized in the film as the conscience of regulators." I think Sperry is exaggerating a bit here but certainly Ferguson was too kind to Frank. Barney Frank is in the pocket of the Wall Street bankers just like virtually every other important member of Congress on both sides of the aisle. Here as in reason #1, Sperry falls into the phony left/right, Democrat/Republican paradigm, which presupposes the reader must support one of the two parties and demonize all members of the other. When it comes to the economy and the banking and investment business, the two parties tend to vote in lockstep so this appeal is superfluous.

With his 3rd, 4th and 5th reasons, Sperry launches into one of the standard right-wing narratives about the economic crisis which of course, tries to lay the blame on "liberals". In this case it is the "...affordable-housing mandates HUD foisted on Fannie and Freddie." This refers to the Community Reinvestment Act of 1977 which was amended several times during the Clinton years to expand its reach. During the Bush Administration the Act was amended a few more times primarily to remove regulatory language that might have prevented the banks from using CRA as a way to make risky loans. All that is rather beside the point since as Paul Krugman wrote,

"The proposition that the Community Reinvestment Act caused all the bad stuff, because government forced helpless bankers into lending to Those People, has been refuted up, down, and sideways. The vast bulk of subprime lending came from institutions not subject to the CRA. Commercial real estate lending, which was mainly lending to rich white developers, not you-know-who, is in much worse shape than subprime home lending."

Let me make this a bit more clear. If you own a local bank, CRA says you need to offer some mortgages in poorer neighborhoods. It doesn't force you to make loans to people with no jobs, or without checking their credit. It doesn't force you to make so many risky loans that your bank is in jeopardy of failing. No, those decisions were made by greedy bankers under pressure from Wall Street firms. The Community Reinvestment Act had nothing to do with it.

With reason #6, Sperry returns to blaming the Democrats by saying that "...Clinton regulations had created the subprime market." True, primarily because Clinton like Obama was in lockstep with Republicans who supported deregulation at any cost. He tries to refute this in reason #7 by alleging that "Overregulation of lending created the mortgage bubble." Since he provides no rationale or quotes to support that unusual and outrageous view, it's safe to assume that he has none.

Reason #8 is right out of the 1950's. The movie's thesis must be bogus because it quotes a Chinese banking official who is (OMG) a Communist! He actually allowed a card-carrying Red to speak in the movie. Of course, since Chinese banks own a huge chunk of US debt, the views of Andrew Sheng might be important regardless of his politics.

Sperry's last 2 points center on demonizing the Greenling Institute, whose founder Bob Gnaizda appears several times in the movie describing how he attempted to warn the Federal Reserve and others about the rampant fraud in the mortgage industry. Regardless of the obvious fact that Gnaizda was prescient and correct, we must discount him and his group because they are located in Berkeley California and advocate for minorities and the poor.

All in all, Paul Sperry wrote a baseless, partisan hit piece accusing Inside Job of being a partisan hit piece. Inside Job, however can document its accusations and prove its allegations, something Sperry is unable to do.

Some Recent Favorites

2010-12-04T13:39:00.000-08:00

One thing I'd like to do here from time to time is share some of the blog posts by others that have caught my attention in the last week or so. As a first installment, here are some gems on domestic issues from the first last few days.

Ian Welsh, who gets so many things right, says
"People, Obama is not and never has been a left winger...Until folks get it through their skulls that Obama is not and never was a liberal, a progressive or left wing in any way, shape or form they are going to continue misdiagnosing the problem."
Progressives and liberals seem to bend over backwards to excuse the Obama Administration for not having done anything remotely liberal, or they seize on worthless gestures at reform as big achievements - anything to avoid saying they were bamboozled in 2008.
One of my podcast heroes, Doug Henwood of Left Business Observer takes Bill Gates down a peg or two and links to an excellent post by education guru Diane Ravitch on the sorry state of our public schools and the disastrous "solutions" being proposed by Gates, the Walton family and others in the billionaire class. Really worth reading if you care at all about our children and their education.
Matt Yglesias is not on my "must read" list, but his recent post on job creation is a short and very apt analysis of why we aren't creating jobs and aren't going to by following the various job creation scenarios on offer. Check out this analogy he offers:
"If everyone in Yuma, Arizona is unemployed then even a very competent proprietor of a dry cleaning establishment is going to have a hard time expanding his business. He won’t take out a loan to expand, he won’t get an equity investment to expand, and he won’t invest his own money in an expansion. You can give the guy all the money you want, and he won’t invest in expanding his business. That’s because unemployed people don’t need much dry cleaning and also don’t have much money to spend on dry cleaning. A guy with $0 and a good idea and a lot of potential customers will find a way to start his business. A guy with $1 billion and a good idea and no potential customers is just a guy sitting on a huge stockpile of cash. Things like the availability of credit matter, but credit is currently available. What’s not available is customers with money and an inclination to spend it. More government spending and more money-creation will lead to more purchases, more customers, more business expansion, and more hiring."
Jerome Doolittle in Bad Attitudes points out that inequality and poverty have real consequences for real people. He quotes a post by Ed Yong in Discover:
"The World Health Organization Report on Violence and Health reported a strong association between global inequality and child abuse, with the largest incidence in communities with “high levels of unemployment and concentrated poverty.” Another international study published by the American Journal of Psychiatry analyzed infanticide data from 17 countries and found an unmistakable “pattern of powerlessness, poverty, and alienation in the lives of the women studied.

he United States currently leads the developed world with the highest maternal infanticide rate (an average of 8 deaths for every 100,000 live births, more than twice the rate of Canada). In a systematic analysis of maternal infanticide in the U.S., DeAnn Gauthier and colleagues at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette concluded that this dubious honor falls on us because “extreme poverty amid extreme wealth is conducive to stress-related violence.” Consequently, the highest levels of maternal infanticide were found, not in the poorest states, but in those with the greatest disparity between wealth and poverty (such as Colorado, Oklahoma, and New York with rates 3 to 5 times the national average). According to these researchers, inequality is literally killing our kids."

Finally from blogger Kris Atomic, some wonderful pictures of Iceland to provide some calm and peace from our crazy world. One example here to whet your appetite.

Why I'm Here

2010-12-04T06:42:00.000-08:00

For some years now, I've been something of a lurker on various political blogs. I follow several lefty bloggers and drop in now and then on some conservatives as well. It seems to me that it's time to start initiating conversations instead of merely chipping in my two cents on someone else's topic.

First of all, for the tech-savvy who may notice that there is another blog connected to my profile, that blog was created specifically for the Ithaca local of Democratic Socialists of America. What you may read there is more or less officially sanctioned by that group, but what you read here is not. This blog reflects my personal opinions which may or may not correspond to those of DSA or any other organized group.

Second, I am looking for dialogue here, not passive readers. I hope that some of my readers will disagree, even strongly disagree with my statements. However, disagreement needs to have some basis. Those who simply want to call me names and recite the latest sound bites from their favorite radio or TV personalities may find their comments removed. I don't want to moderate comments, and I hope I never need to.

I've chosen the title, Democracy and other Fantasies, not out of a dislike for democracy, but because I am passionate about it and it is almost completely absent from the political system of the United States and many other Western nations. I hope we can restore democracy from the realm of fantasy and make it the central feature of our politics. So welcome to any and all and let the musings begin!