Mary:
I want to strip away all the hype and spin. Our country, yes OUR country, has lost it's way. We, you and I, conservatives and liberals, Americans...must fully understand that we want the same thing...what's best for our nation. We want good schools, and safe homes, and good jobs and opportunity for all of our citizens. We both want a nation that we are proud of and that others will look to for the standards that should guide all nations. We want our elected officials to not only represent our interests but to provide leadership. They need to be honorable and humble at the same time standing strong for ALL Americans. We need businesses that not only make a profit but do so with the understanding that they exist because of this nation, not the other way around. Business can be successful and still care about their employees and customers and the environment. Over our 230+ history, we have amended our constitution many times...this is necessary because the one thing that remains constant is change. Our future depends on our constant ability to adapt, change, innovate, and move forward....to be "progressive". At the same time, we can and must "conserve" those traditions that matter...liberty, community, self sacrifice, loyality, these are the rocks that the founders used to build this country. Mary....we both want the same thing. We may choose to support different paths to that goal, but that is why we must come together and debate those paths so that we are finally united as a country on how to solve our problems. As Americans, we must reject the hype and spin...we must call out those who choose to divide us...we must embrace each other as Americans as we have done in the past....then we can overcome anything. If we continue to fight each other...if we continue to ignore our real problems as we discuss trivial issues and trivial people, then we will miss our opportunity...we will allow those who have power to keep it and the rest of us will go on thinking "If only...."
I embrace my conservative American brothers and sisters. I long for another voice like William Buckley....or Teddy Roosevelt, or Eisenhower, or Lincoln. Where are the conservatice leaders who boldly stood above the fray and shouted against concentrated wealth and power? Where are the liberal leaders who marched for the common American? Where are the real union leaders that died making sure working Americans were given a fair wage for a days work? Where are the GOP leaders of yesterday who stood up and supported the voting rights act and the marches in Selma? Where are the Republicans who walked up to Nixon and said "you have to go" for crimes against the Constitution? Where are the Democrats who stood firm for Social Security and Medicare in the face of accustions of being communists?
Mary...we both want the same thing...our country to be strong again for ALL Americans. We can do it together...you and I. At least that's what I want to believe.
Sunday, September 27, 2009
Thursday, September 10, 2009
Monday, June 1, 2009
Thursday, April 9, 2009
Slamming back at Joe the Republican
Many folks have read the story of "Joe the Republican". The 'self made' man who goes through the day enjoying benefits that his government (mainly through progressive policies) have provided. Below is a retort from a conservative to the points in the tale. I've decided to offer my own response to the retorts....(The original text is in italics, the conservative retort is after, and my comment is in bold)
“Joe gets up at 6 a.m. and fills his coffeepot with water to prepare his morning coffee. The water is clean and good because some tree-hugging liberal fought for minimum water-quality standards. With his first swallow of water, he takes his daily medication. His medications are safe to take because some stupid commie liberal fought to ensure their safety and that they work as advertised.”
Unfortunately, if Joe is in his forties or older, he is extremely likely to have one or more medical conditions for which no effective medication yet exists thanks to those same stupid commie liberals that introduced huge delays in every step of the process of technological advancement in the drug industry, and prevented a large number of development projects that would have been judged as a good risk had the costs of the whole enterprise not been jacked up so outrageously.
Now let's set the record straight...our government (we the people) not only try to keep us safe from risky drugs that can hurt or kill us, but the fact is that almost 30% of the funding for all drug R&D comes from...you guessed it..the government through the National Institutes for Health (NIH)! In 2000, a report from from a Joint Economic Committee of Congress outlined the benefits of NIH research. It noted that some econometric studies had given its research, which was funded at $16 billion a year in 2000, a rate of return of 25 to 40 percent per year. It also found that of the 21 drugs with the highest therapeutic impact on society introduced between 1965 and 1992, public funding was "instrumental" for 15. So let's move on to our next screed.
“All but $10 of his medications are paid for by his employer’s medical plan because some liberal union workers fought their employers for paid medical insurance — now Joe gets it too.”
Yeah, he gets it all right. Of course, he gets paid medical insurance in lieu of cash mainly because they’re taxed differently, which in turn evolved out of attempts by productive enterprises to evade price controls imposed by one of the heroes of the left, and the results are less than inspiring. This is generally referred to as a failure of the “free market” by people dedicated to keeping the Big Lie going for yet another century.
Tsk, tsk....again, our conservative get's it all wrong. Everyone with a brain knows that insurance works cause it spreads the risk out over the greatest number of people therefore keeping costs down. That's why we need to get ALL americans covered by insurance so the costs for everyone stays DOWN! Of course, our retorter above would like to have you believe that for-profit insurance (aka the free market) is the best way to go since it's so much less expens.....wait a minute...LESS EXPENSIVE??? Now let me see...Medicare adminsitrative overhead costs aroudn 3-5%. No profits, no dividends, solid basic coverage. For profit insurance adminsitrative overhead costs 18-22%, dividends paid to shareholders, and CEO's like "Diamond" Bill McQuire get compensated to the tune of $1.1 BILLION DOLLARS!!!
Moving on....
“He prepares his morning breakfast, bacon and eggs. Joe’s bacon is safe to eat because some girly-man liberal fought for laws to regulate the meat packing industry.”
You mean like the ones that prevent those evil meat-packers from more rigorously testing their cows for Mad Cow disease? Gee thanks.
Now this one's a no-brainer. Since Reagan and especially lovable Dan Quayle, we stopped fully funding our USDA inspectors and...get this...let the industry regulate it self!!! Hmmm...sounds like a winner...FOR THE INDUSTRY!
More, please...
“Joe dresses, walks outside and takes a deep breath. The air he breathes is clean because some environmentalist wacko liberal fought for the laws to stop industries from polluting our air.”
Of course it would be even cleaner if those same environmentalist wacko liberals hadn’t also fought to stop new nuclear plants from producing electricity without polluting the air.
He tee's it up and it's hit over the wall. Now about that pesky nuclear (or nucular) waste problem.
Next...
“Joe begins his workday. He has a good job with excellent pay, medical benefits, retirement, paid holidays and vacation because some lazy liberal union members fought and died for these working standards.”
No, the unions did not produce Joe’s high pay or any of his benefits. The technological advancements over the intervening decades allow huge amounts of wealth to be created with comparatively little effort - this means that Joe’s efforts, modest as they are compared to the strenuous efforts of his ancestors, create huge amounts of value, for which he is paid commensurately. Some of that pay is in the form of benefits - they are instead of, not in addition to, a portion of the cash that he would otherwise receive in payment, and to the extent that our friends on the left caused a substitution of benefits for cash that Joe would not have chosen on his own, they have made him worse off.
All the unions did was form cartels and use the threat of violence to keep competitors at bay and extort some wealth from the capitalists. The amount of wealth that could possibly have been obtained from capitalists in this manner is a tiny, insignificant fraction of the huge gains in wealth and income that people in every walk of life have enjoyed since the unions began doing this, so it is mathematically impossible for those unions to be responsible for the current affluence of the non-wealthy.
Ahh, yes...the conservatives wishful desire to go back to the days when sweatshops abounded, children toiled in factories, and 'capitalists' reaped the dividends. Look, organized labor gave and gives a voice to millions of wage earners who never had one before. And remember what Abe Lincoln said: "Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if Labor had not first existed. Labor is superior to capital, and deserves much the higher consideration." So capitalism doesn't even exist without labor. And here’s another Republican’s opinion on organized labor…
If I were an employee, a working man ... or a wage-earner of any sort, I undoubtedly would join a union of my trade... I believe in the union and I believe that all men are morally bound to help to the extent of their powers in the common interests advanced by the union.
– Theodore Roosevelt
Onward...
“Joe has to pay his Fannie Mae-underwritten mortgage and his below-market federal student loan because some elitist liberal decided that Joe and the government would be better off if he was educated and earned more money over his lifetime. Joe also forgets that in addition to his federally subsidized student loans, he attended a state-funded university.”
And thanks to the subsidies that encouraged millions of his competitors to pursue courses of education that would otherwise be a losing investment (actually, such courses were still losing investments - the taxpayers covered the losses), Joe had to go to college himself just to keep up with the competition, even if the courses he took contributed little to his ability to actually do the work and added little value to himself or his employer. The fact that his employer could be taken to court if someone with a college degree was passed over in favor of someone of a different race with only a high school diploma makes employers more likely to require this paper regardless of its relation to the actual work. Finally, the real value of the high school diploma, and the level of useful knowledge and ability it represents, has been declining for quite a while, meaning that Joe had to waste part of his adult life learning things that he should have learned during his childhood. And, the more that “worker protections” make it difficult and expensive to fire people, the less willing any employer is going to be to give someone with little experience a shot without impressive credentials; if it’s difficult and expensive to fire someone, you’d better not hire someone unless you’re sure he’s going to work out.
Which means that not only is Joe out four years of his own life and thousands of dollars, he’s also likely stuck supporting his own kids well into their early adult years, and he spends his nights worrying that one of his kids will not manage to get through nearly a decade of her prime reproductive years without derailing the required long course of education with a pregnancy.
Man...this guy is hard core! Actually, I agree with one thing...Joe is out thousands of dollars for his education. Wasn't it Thomas Jefferson that built the University of Virginia as a school of higher education that was FREE???? Jefferson was a staunch advocate of free public education. Jefferson promoted studies of natural history, botany, archeology, and architecture. Aside from that, I guess "impressive credentials" are something to be laughed at.
“It is noontime and Joe needs to make a bank deposit so he can pay some bills. Joe’s deposit is federally insured by the FSLIC because some godless liberal wanted to protect Joe’s money from unscrupulous bankers who ruined the banking system before the Great Depression.”
Of course those unscrupulous bankers worked for the Federal Reserve.
And last time I looked, the Federal Reserve was NOT a formal part of the federal government! Maybe the writer believes as I do that the managing/printing of our currency should be returned to our government and we should abolish the Fed Reserve!
“Joe is home from work. He plans to visit his father this evening at his farm home in the country. He gets in his car for the drive. His car is among the safest in the world because some America-hating liberal fought for car safety standards to go along with the taxpayer funded roads.”
And if he brings his small child with him, that child has to sit in the back seat because some America-hating liberal fought for a car “safety” device that endangers small passengers sitting near it, and refuse to this day to rescind this decree, insisting instead that it is Joe’s place to adjust to the whims of bureaucrats by moving his child out of the path of the explosive device rather than the bureaucrats’ place to adjust to their own mistake by allowing Joe to switch the damned thing off when appropriate.
That's it? That's all you got about auto safety?? A car seat? And I guess you don't like those taxpayer funded highways that a Republican president rammed through!
“He is happy to see his father, who is now retired. His father lives on Social Security and a union pension because some wine-drinking, cheese-eating liberal made sure he could take care of himself so Joe wouldn’t have to. ”
Joe isn’t helping to take care of his father? I’d say he’s chipping in to the tune of 15% of his paycheck. And his father depends for part of his livelihood on the financial health of a company that he no longer works for, because wine-drinking, cheese-eating liberals encouraged them to withhold part of his pay and only give it to him after he retired, assuming it still existed. Gee, thanks. And if it wasn’t for the damned FDA (see above), I’d bet serious money that Joe’s father would be healthy enough to keep working, and he’d be facing a long enough life expectancy that permanent retirement would be ludicrously expensive and completely out of the question at his youthful age unless he was unusually wealthy.
(sigh)…
Joe gets back in his car for the ride home, and turns on a radio talk show. The radio host keeps saying that liberals are bad and conservatives are good. He doesn't mention that the beloved Republicans have fought against every protection and benefit Joe enjoys throughout his day. Joe agrees: "We don't need those big-government liberals ruining our lives! After all, I'm a self-made man who believes everyone should take care of themselves, just like I have.
I’ll finish with more from Teddy
No man can be a good citizen unless he has a wage more than sufficient to cover the bare cost of living, and hours of labor short enough so that after his day's work is done he will have time and energy to bear his share in the management of the community, to help in carrying the general load. We keep countless men from being good citizens by the conditions of life with which we surround them. We need comprehensive workmen's compensation acts, both State and national laws to regulate child labor and work for women, and, especially, we need in our common schools not merely education in booklearning, but also practical training for daily life and work. We need to enforce better sanitary conditions for our workers and to extend the use of safety appliances for our workers in industry and commerce, both within and between the States.
– Theodore Roosevelt, speech at Osawatomie, Kansas, "The New Nationalism" (August 31, 1910)
The government is us; we are the government, you and I.
– Theodore Roosevelt, speech at Asheville, North Carolina (September 9, 1902)
“Joe gets up at 6 a.m. and fills his coffeepot with water to prepare his morning coffee. The water is clean and good because some tree-hugging liberal fought for minimum water-quality standards. With his first swallow of water, he takes his daily medication. His medications are safe to take because some stupid commie liberal fought to ensure their safety and that they work as advertised.”
Unfortunately, if Joe is in his forties or older, he is extremely likely to have one or more medical conditions for which no effective medication yet exists thanks to those same stupid commie liberals that introduced huge delays in every step of the process of technological advancement in the drug industry, and prevented a large number of development projects that would have been judged as a good risk had the costs of the whole enterprise not been jacked up so outrageously.
Now let's set the record straight...our government (we the people) not only try to keep us safe from risky drugs that can hurt or kill us, but the fact is that almost 30% of the funding for all drug R&D comes from...you guessed it..the government through the National Institutes for Health (NIH)! In 2000, a report from from a Joint Economic Committee of Congress outlined the benefits of NIH research. It noted that some econometric studies had given its research, which was funded at $16 billion a year in 2000, a rate of return of 25 to 40 percent per year. It also found that of the 21 drugs with the highest therapeutic impact on society introduced between 1965 and 1992, public funding was "instrumental" for 15. So let's move on to our next screed.
“All but $10 of his medications are paid for by his employer’s medical plan because some liberal union workers fought their employers for paid medical insurance — now Joe gets it too.”
Yeah, he gets it all right. Of course, he gets paid medical insurance in lieu of cash mainly because they’re taxed differently, which in turn evolved out of attempts by productive enterprises to evade price controls imposed by one of the heroes of the left, and the results are less than inspiring. This is generally referred to as a failure of the “free market” by people dedicated to keeping the Big Lie going for yet another century.
Tsk, tsk....again, our conservative get's it all wrong. Everyone with a brain knows that insurance works cause it spreads the risk out over the greatest number of people therefore keeping costs down. That's why we need to get ALL americans covered by insurance so the costs for everyone stays DOWN! Of course, our retorter above would like to have you believe that for-profit insurance (aka the free market) is the best way to go since it's so much less expens.....wait a minute...LESS EXPENSIVE??? Now let me see...Medicare adminsitrative overhead costs aroudn 3-5%. No profits, no dividends, solid basic coverage. For profit insurance adminsitrative overhead costs 18-22%, dividends paid to shareholders, and CEO's like "Diamond" Bill McQuire get compensated to the tune of $1.1 BILLION DOLLARS!!!
Moving on....
“He prepares his morning breakfast, bacon and eggs. Joe’s bacon is safe to eat because some girly-man liberal fought for laws to regulate the meat packing industry.”
You mean like the ones that prevent those evil meat-packers from more rigorously testing their cows for Mad Cow disease? Gee thanks.
Now this one's a no-brainer. Since Reagan and especially lovable Dan Quayle, we stopped fully funding our USDA inspectors and...get this...let the industry regulate it self!!! Hmmm...sounds like a winner...FOR THE INDUSTRY!
More, please...
“Joe dresses, walks outside and takes a deep breath. The air he breathes is clean because some environmentalist wacko liberal fought for the laws to stop industries from polluting our air.”
Of course it would be even cleaner if those same environmentalist wacko liberals hadn’t also fought to stop new nuclear plants from producing electricity without polluting the air.
He tee's it up and it's hit over the wall. Now about that pesky nuclear (or nucular) waste problem.
Next...
“Joe begins his workday. He has a good job with excellent pay, medical benefits, retirement, paid holidays and vacation because some lazy liberal union members fought and died for these working standards.”
No, the unions did not produce Joe’s high pay or any of his benefits. The technological advancements over the intervening decades allow huge amounts of wealth to be created with comparatively little effort - this means that Joe’s efforts, modest as they are compared to the strenuous efforts of his ancestors, create huge amounts of value, for which he is paid commensurately. Some of that pay is in the form of benefits - they are instead of, not in addition to, a portion of the cash that he would otherwise receive in payment, and to the extent that our friends on the left caused a substitution of benefits for cash that Joe would not have chosen on his own, they have made him worse off.
All the unions did was form cartels and use the threat of violence to keep competitors at bay and extort some wealth from the capitalists. The amount of wealth that could possibly have been obtained from capitalists in this manner is a tiny, insignificant fraction of the huge gains in wealth and income that people in every walk of life have enjoyed since the unions began doing this, so it is mathematically impossible for those unions to be responsible for the current affluence of the non-wealthy.
Ahh, yes...the conservatives wishful desire to go back to the days when sweatshops abounded, children toiled in factories, and 'capitalists' reaped the dividends. Look, organized labor gave and gives a voice to millions of wage earners who never had one before. And remember what Abe Lincoln said: "Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if Labor had not first existed. Labor is superior to capital, and deserves much the higher consideration." So capitalism doesn't even exist without labor. And here’s another Republican’s opinion on organized labor…
If I were an employee, a working man ... or a wage-earner of any sort, I undoubtedly would join a union of my trade... I believe in the union and I believe that all men are morally bound to help to the extent of their powers in the common interests advanced by the union.
– Theodore Roosevelt
Onward...
“Joe has to pay his Fannie Mae-underwritten mortgage and his below-market federal student loan because some elitist liberal decided that Joe and the government would be better off if he was educated and earned more money over his lifetime. Joe also forgets that in addition to his federally subsidized student loans, he attended a state-funded university.”
And thanks to the subsidies that encouraged millions of his competitors to pursue courses of education that would otherwise be a losing investment (actually, such courses were still losing investments - the taxpayers covered the losses), Joe had to go to college himself just to keep up with the competition, even if the courses he took contributed little to his ability to actually do the work and added little value to himself or his employer. The fact that his employer could be taken to court if someone with a college degree was passed over in favor of someone of a different race with only a high school diploma makes employers more likely to require this paper regardless of its relation to the actual work. Finally, the real value of the high school diploma, and the level of useful knowledge and ability it represents, has been declining for quite a while, meaning that Joe had to waste part of his adult life learning things that he should have learned during his childhood. And, the more that “worker protections” make it difficult and expensive to fire people, the less willing any employer is going to be to give someone with little experience a shot without impressive credentials; if it’s difficult and expensive to fire someone, you’d better not hire someone unless you’re sure he’s going to work out.
Which means that not only is Joe out four years of his own life and thousands of dollars, he’s also likely stuck supporting his own kids well into their early adult years, and he spends his nights worrying that one of his kids will not manage to get through nearly a decade of her prime reproductive years without derailing the required long course of education with a pregnancy.
Man...this guy is hard core! Actually, I agree with one thing...Joe is out thousands of dollars for his education. Wasn't it Thomas Jefferson that built the University of Virginia as a school of higher education that was FREE???? Jefferson was a staunch advocate of free public education. Jefferson promoted studies of natural history, botany, archeology, and architecture. Aside from that, I guess "impressive credentials" are something to be laughed at.
“It is noontime and Joe needs to make a bank deposit so he can pay some bills. Joe’s deposit is federally insured by the FSLIC because some godless liberal wanted to protect Joe’s money from unscrupulous bankers who ruined the banking system before the Great Depression.”
Of course those unscrupulous bankers worked for the Federal Reserve.
And last time I looked, the Federal Reserve was NOT a formal part of the federal government! Maybe the writer believes as I do that the managing/printing of our currency should be returned to our government and we should abolish the Fed Reserve!
“Joe is home from work. He plans to visit his father this evening at his farm home in the country. He gets in his car for the drive. His car is among the safest in the world because some America-hating liberal fought for car safety standards to go along with the taxpayer funded roads.”
And if he brings his small child with him, that child has to sit in the back seat because some America-hating liberal fought for a car “safety” device that endangers small passengers sitting near it, and refuse to this day to rescind this decree, insisting instead that it is Joe’s place to adjust to the whims of bureaucrats by moving his child out of the path of the explosive device rather than the bureaucrats’ place to adjust to their own mistake by allowing Joe to switch the damned thing off when appropriate.
That's it? That's all you got about auto safety?? A car seat? And I guess you don't like those taxpayer funded highways that a Republican president rammed through!
“He is happy to see his father, who is now retired. His father lives on Social Security and a union pension because some wine-drinking, cheese-eating liberal made sure he could take care of himself so Joe wouldn’t have to. ”
Joe isn’t helping to take care of his father? I’d say he’s chipping in to the tune of 15% of his paycheck. And his father depends for part of his livelihood on the financial health of a company that he no longer works for, because wine-drinking, cheese-eating liberals encouraged them to withhold part of his pay and only give it to him after he retired, assuming it still existed. Gee, thanks. And if it wasn’t for the damned FDA (see above), I’d bet serious money that Joe’s father would be healthy enough to keep working, and he’d be facing a long enough life expectancy that permanent retirement would be ludicrously expensive and completely out of the question at his youthful age unless he was unusually wealthy.
(sigh)…
Joe gets back in his car for the ride home, and turns on a radio talk show. The radio host keeps saying that liberals are bad and conservatives are good. He doesn't mention that the beloved Republicans have fought against every protection and benefit Joe enjoys throughout his day. Joe agrees: "We don't need those big-government liberals ruining our lives! After all, I'm a self-made man who believes everyone should take care of themselves, just like I have.
I’ll finish with more from Teddy
No man can be a good citizen unless he has a wage more than sufficient to cover the bare cost of living, and hours of labor short enough so that after his day's work is done he will have time and energy to bear his share in the management of the community, to help in carrying the general load. We keep countless men from being good citizens by the conditions of life with which we surround them. We need comprehensive workmen's compensation acts, both State and national laws to regulate child labor and work for women, and, especially, we need in our common schools not merely education in booklearning, but also practical training for daily life and work. We need to enforce better sanitary conditions for our workers and to extend the use of safety appliances for our workers in industry and commerce, both within and between the States.
– Theodore Roosevelt, speech at Osawatomie, Kansas, "The New Nationalism" (August 31, 1910)
The government is us; we are the government, you and I.
– Theodore Roosevelt, speech at Asheville, North Carolina (September 9, 1902)
Sunday, March 8, 2009
We need more muckrakers
Capitalism demands that profit rules over the public interest. The Government (We the People) are charged with protecting the public interest. Consider history...Upton Sinclair opened our eyes to the horrors of the meat processing industry and that led to Teddy Roosevelt signing the Food and Drug Act. It wasn't the industry that suddenly realized it was processing rats, mice, and other foul stuff into our meats...it took a muckraker (aka liberal) Like Sinclair to bring it out in the open.
Bring history to the present...Reagan convinced us that Government IS the problem. All we have to do is take any and all yokes off of the free market and we will all be so much better off because the market knows best...the market will always correct itself and make things right.
Bull.
The market cares ONLY about profit and greed. Ok, I support business doing what it's supposed to do...increase profits and take care of the private sector. However, I believe what the founders believed...We the People, in the form of government, must protect the public interest. The devil is in the details of course, but we've tried Reaganomics and it failed. Now get out of the way and go lick your wounds. If our government is up to the task, it's time to change things...for the betterment of the public's interest, not Wall Street.
Just my 2 cents.
WAKE UP AMERICA!
Bring history to the present...Reagan convinced us that Government IS the problem. All we have to do is take any and all yokes off of the free market and we will all be so much better off because the market knows best...the market will always correct itself and make things right.
Bull.
The market cares ONLY about profit and greed. Ok, I support business doing what it's supposed to do...increase profits and take care of the private sector. However, I believe what the founders believed...We the People, in the form of government, must protect the public interest. The devil is in the details of course, but we've tried Reaganomics and it failed. Now get out of the way and go lick your wounds. If our government is up to the task, it's time to change things...for the betterment of the public's interest, not Wall Street.
Just my 2 cents.
WAKE UP AMERICA!
Wednesday, March 4, 2009
The truth about corporate income taxes
Don't believe the hype about corporate income tax rates.
http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSN1249465620080812?sp=true
http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSN1249465620080812?sp=true
Tuesday, March 3, 2009
The economic collapse: from a religious man
Even an atheist can appreciate this......
(From Bishop John Shelby Spong)
The Rhetoric of the Stimulus Package
It has been fascinating watching our legislators in Washington debating the stimulus bill and seeking to reform the way stimulus monies have been spent thus far. My conclusion is that either memory is short or politics are blind. The Republicans, who controlled the White House for the last eight years and both Houses of Congress for six of the past eight years, and who managed to turn a billion-dollar surplus into a trillion-dollar deficit, suddenly became frightened of "saddling our children with massive debt." Where has all this fiscal responsibility been residing? We listened to the same people who voted for the war in Iraq with its unlimited financial appropriations and with almost no accountability, including many "no bid" contracts let to American oil interests, who now seem to have decided that the stimulus package is a gigantic "giveaway of wasteful spending." People who supported President Bush's irresponsible and failed tax policies, which shifted massive wealth from the middle class to the wealthiest ten percent of the population and thus helped to lead this nation into the deepest economic recession since the Great Depression, now appeared to be advocates of more of the same as their way to get this nation out of the current downturn. Insanity has been correctly defined as continuing to do the same thing while expecting a different result! Yet the failed policies of yesterday were offered with straight faces as the solution to the crisis those same policies created.
We listened to the howls of protest from business leaders who have long lived high on the economic hog, accumulating vast wealth and awarding themselves gigantic bonuses through risky and inappropriate lending practices, but who now seemed outraged that their salaries and bonuses should be curtailed or limited. Coming hat in hand to the American taxpayers requesting a bailout with public funds, they apparently expected no change in their executive compensation. They seemed not to recognize that their greed had killed the goose that laid their golden eggs. A man like Ken Lewis, who as CEO of Bank of America has watched his business drop shareholder value by 96%, still argued against placing any limits on executive compensation. "We will lose our best talent," he told us with a straight face. Lewis failed to explain why such outstanding talent had led to such disastrous results. The same could be said for the leaders of Freddie Mac, Fannie Mae, Countrywide Finance, Washington Mutual, Merrill Lynch, Wachovia Bank, AIG, Lehman Brothers, Bear Stearns, WorldCom and countless other icons of American business. Was it outstanding executive talent that led these corporations either to bankruptcy or to being taken over at fire sale prices? Does that performance result from "irreplaceable" employees? Can the executives who have led Citigroup, J. P. Morgan Chase, Morgan Stanley, MBIA, Ambac, XL Capital, Ford, General Motors, Nissan, Sonic and others to similar cataclysmic drops in shareholder value be so good that their retention requires exorbitant salaries and bonuses? Would it be so great a loss to their companies if the stated threat that they would be gobbled up by foreign banks or hedge funds actually occurred? The cemeteries of the world are filled with "indispensible people."
When the taxpayers of America are bailing out failed businesses run by failed executives, the people of America become the stockholders and members of the various boards of trustees, which gives them the right and the responsibility to set compensation. When these rescued companies recover and repay the taxpayers, then they can set their own compensation, subject only to their new stockholders' best judgment. Bonuses, which were designed to reward extraordinary performances, are hardly appropriate when those performances have led to today's economic crisis.
Those bank executives who were complaining that they could not live on the proposed $500,000 a year limit for publicly assisted businesses might look at the 7.6% of the population who have now lost their jobs and whose lives and security have been seriously disrupted. Perhaps they might also glance at those in the retired or near retired population who during their working lives invested in what they were told were safe, conservative, dividend-paying businesses that would enable them to live into old age with dignity, but who now discover that executive greed and sheer incompetence have robbed them of their once secure future.
Whatever else this economic downturn has done it will inevitably begin to restore a semblance of that basic sense of balance that once governed American business practices. As recently as the 1970s, the ratio between the compensation paid to top executives and workers in America was about 35 to 1. That is, if the workers averaged $50,000 a year, the CEOs averaged $1,750,000 a year. Today, less than forty years later, that ratio has risen to 275 to 1, which means that if the average worker today makes $50,000 per year, the CEOs' average compensation has become $13,750,000 per year. Our society has lost all sense of proportionality, to say nothing of both our social and economic interdependence and mutual responsibility. When one adds these facts to the massive outsourcing of middle class jobs that has taken place during the last 40 years in the United States, which has forced many workers into less skilled and less lucrative jobs, one realizes how much the purchasing power of the middle class, the working class and the working poor has actually declined, while executive salaries have blown the lids off the charts. The gap between the rich and the poor in the United States has reached unhealthy dimensions. Business leaders appear to have forgotten that there must be a general population with sufficient money to buy their products or recession, or even depression, is all but inevitable.
Yet in the political arena the idea that a basic fairness needs to be part of the business plan of this nation is looked upon askance. It was inserted into the last presidential campaign by the infamous "Joe the Plumber" rhetoric as a scare tactic. Republicans dubbed it "socialism." In Senator Joseph McCarthy's era it would have been called "communism"! To some people fairness seems not to be compatible with capitalism and a free market society. The great battle cry from the ranks of the well-to-do when economic fairness is discussed is that the architects of fairness are engaging in "class warfare." We need to recognize that America has been fighting class warfare for decades, but it has not been attacks launched by the poor against the rich, as those who use this cry seek to suggest. It has been an attack, sometimes quite brutal, of the rich against the middle class and the poor. Our present economic crisis reveals the fact that the middle class and the poor have lost that war and because the rich have won, the rich are suffering. The time has come to redress these grievances and to reestablish fairness by adjusting the tax codes so that those who profit the most from the economic engine that is America will bear a proportionate part of the responsibility of financing the government of this great nation and securing its peace and wellbeing.
There are many things that Ronald Reagan did as President of the United States that were exciting and noteworthy. No one will ever forget his words, "Mr. Gorbachov, tear down this wall," uttered in a divided Berlin. Mr. Reagan, however, was guilty of the tactic of constantly painting the government as the enemy of the people. He suggested again and again that taxes were somehow inherently evil, that the government was always the problem and never the solution. He kept telling people that their compensation was their money and that they should be allowed to keep most of it. Taxes, he said, were basically confiscatory. This Reagan idea, recycled now through two Bush presidencies, poisons our national life to this day and its echoes are heard in the rhetoric that marks the current debate over the stimulus package.
I need to say to those who still salute this idea that most of the money they have made in the last forty years in this country could not have been made in any other country in the world. Those who have become successful financially owe most of their success to the privilege of living in the United States. They not only have a vested interest in but a responsibility for keeping this nation strong economically, militarily and socially. It takes tax dollars to do that and they need to recognize that their "confiscatory" taxes represent the biggest single bargain in the budget of every economically successful citizen. When American corporations who make their fortunes in the freedom of this country then decide to establish offshore headquarters to avoid paying a fair share of taxes, they are acting in an unethical, selfish and irresponsible way. Freedom is expensive, as is the task of building the atmosphere in which civic life for all can bloom, but those things are well worth the cost. All Americans want to have safe roads, bridges, harbors and tunnels. All Americans want to have good schools for our children, good hospitals and good medical care for all. We all want our food, including our peanut butter, to be safe. We want our investments to be protected from both the Bernie Madoffs and the John Thains of this world. We want our medicines tested and to have their purity guaranteed. We want our people to be safe from attacks from foreign sources or domestic sociopaths. These precious and commonly expected realities of our corporate life cost money. It is, therefore, not just fitting but proper that those who profit most from the life of our society accept the responsibility for and be motivated to keep that system not just functioning, but healthy. Those whose greed and selfishness have led this nation to a place where the whole economy goes into decline, recession and perhaps even depression should bear a proportionate share of the hard times that they have caused for others. I think they will be able to survive for a year or two on a capped salary and restricted bonuses. Class warfare? Socialism? Communism? No, fairness, honesty and mutual respect require these steps. It is even biblical, since the Bible says: "Freely you have received so freely give!"
– John Shelby Spong
(From Bishop John Shelby Spong)
The Rhetoric of the Stimulus Package
It has been fascinating watching our legislators in Washington debating the stimulus bill and seeking to reform the way stimulus monies have been spent thus far. My conclusion is that either memory is short or politics are blind. The Republicans, who controlled the White House for the last eight years and both Houses of Congress for six of the past eight years, and who managed to turn a billion-dollar surplus into a trillion-dollar deficit, suddenly became frightened of "saddling our children with massive debt." Where has all this fiscal responsibility been residing? We listened to the same people who voted for the war in Iraq with its unlimited financial appropriations and with almost no accountability, including many "no bid" contracts let to American oil interests, who now seem to have decided that the stimulus package is a gigantic "giveaway of wasteful spending." People who supported President Bush's irresponsible and failed tax policies, which shifted massive wealth from the middle class to the wealthiest ten percent of the population and thus helped to lead this nation into the deepest economic recession since the Great Depression, now appeared to be advocates of more of the same as their way to get this nation out of the current downturn. Insanity has been correctly defined as continuing to do the same thing while expecting a different result! Yet the failed policies of yesterday were offered with straight faces as the solution to the crisis those same policies created.
We listened to the howls of protest from business leaders who have long lived high on the economic hog, accumulating vast wealth and awarding themselves gigantic bonuses through risky and inappropriate lending practices, but who now seemed outraged that their salaries and bonuses should be curtailed or limited. Coming hat in hand to the American taxpayers requesting a bailout with public funds, they apparently expected no change in their executive compensation. They seemed not to recognize that their greed had killed the goose that laid their golden eggs. A man like Ken Lewis, who as CEO of Bank of America has watched his business drop shareholder value by 96%, still argued against placing any limits on executive compensation. "We will lose our best talent," he told us with a straight face. Lewis failed to explain why such outstanding talent had led to such disastrous results. The same could be said for the leaders of Freddie Mac, Fannie Mae, Countrywide Finance, Washington Mutual, Merrill Lynch, Wachovia Bank, AIG, Lehman Brothers, Bear Stearns, WorldCom and countless other icons of American business. Was it outstanding executive talent that led these corporations either to bankruptcy or to being taken over at fire sale prices? Does that performance result from "irreplaceable" employees? Can the executives who have led Citigroup, J. P. Morgan Chase, Morgan Stanley, MBIA, Ambac, XL Capital, Ford, General Motors, Nissan, Sonic and others to similar cataclysmic drops in shareholder value be so good that their retention requires exorbitant salaries and bonuses? Would it be so great a loss to their companies if the stated threat that they would be gobbled up by foreign banks or hedge funds actually occurred? The cemeteries of the world are filled with "indispensible people."
When the taxpayers of America are bailing out failed businesses run by failed executives, the people of America become the stockholders and members of the various boards of trustees, which gives them the right and the responsibility to set compensation. When these rescued companies recover and repay the taxpayers, then they can set their own compensation, subject only to their new stockholders' best judgment. Bonuses, which were designed to reward extraordinary performances, are hardly appropriate when those performances have led to today's economic crisis.
Those bank executives who were complaining that they could not live on the proposed $500,000 a year limit for publicly assisted businesses might look at the 7.6% of the population who have now lost their jobs and whose lives and security have been seriously disrupted. Perhaps they might also glance at those in the retired or near retired population who during their working lives invested in what they were told were safe, conservative, dividend-paying businesses that would enable them to live into old age with dignity, but who now discover that executive greed and sheer incompetence have robbed them of their once secure future.
Whatever else this economic downturn has done it will inevitably begin to restore a semblance of that basic sense of balance that once governed American business practices. As recently as the 1970s, the ratio between the compensation paid to top executives and workers in America was about 35 to 1. That is, if the workers averaged $50,000 a year, the CEOs averaged $1,750,000 a year. Today, less than forty years later, that ratio has risen to 275 to 1, which means that if the average worker today makes $50,000 per year, the CEOs' average compensation has become $13,750,000 per year. Our society has lost all sense of proportionality, to say nothing of both our social and economic interdependence and mutual responsibility. When one adds these facts to the massive outsourcing of middle class jobs that has taken place during the last 40 years in the United States, which has forced many workers into less skilled and less lucrative jobs, one realizes how much the purchasing power of the middle class, the working class and the working poor has actually declined, while executive salaries have blown the lids off the charts. The gap between the rich and the poor in the United States has reached unhealthy dimensions. Business leaders appear to have forgotten that there must be a general population with sufficient money to buy their products or recession, or even depression, is all but inevitable.
Yet in the political arena the idea that a basic fairness needs to be part of the business plan of this nation is looked upon askance. It was inserted into the last presidential campaign by the infamous "Joe the Plumber" rhetoric as a scare tactic. Republicans dubbed it "socialism." In Senator Joseph McCarthy's era it would have been called "communism"! To some people fairness seems not to be compatible with capitalism and a free market society. The great battle cry from the ranks of the well-to-do when economic fairness is discussed is that the architects of fairness are engaging in "class warfare." We need to recognize that America has been fighting class warfare for decades, but it has not been attacks launched by the poor against the rich, as those who use this cry seek to suggest. It has been an attack, sometimes quite brutal, of the rich against the middle class and the poor. Our present economic crisis reveals the fact that the middle class and the poor have lost that war and because the rich have won, the rich are suffering. The time has come to redress these grievances and to reestablish fairness by adjusting the tax codes so that those who profit the most from the economic engine that is America will bear a proportionate part of the responsibility of financing the government of this great nation and securing its peace and wellbeing.
There are many things that Ronald Reagan did as President of the United States that were exciting and noteworthy. No one will ever forget his words, "Mr. Gorbachov, tear down this wall," uttered in a divided Berlin. Mr. Reagan, however, was guilty of the tactic of constantly painting the government as the enemy of the people. He suggested again and again that taxes were somehow inherently evil, that the government was always the problem and never the solution. He kept telling people that their compensation was their money and that they should be allowed to keep most of it. Taxes, he said, were basically confiscatory. This Reagan idea, recycled now through two Bush presidencies, poisons our national life to this day and its echoes are heard in the rhetoric that marks the current debate over the stimulus package.
I need to say to those who still salute this idea that most of the money they have made in the last forty years in this country could not have been made in any other country in the world. Those who have become successful financially owe most of their success to the privilege of living in the United States. They not only have a vested interest in but a responsibility for keeping this nation strong economically, militarily and socially. It takes tax dollars to do that and they need to recognize that their "confiscatory" taxes represent the biggest single bargain in the budget of every economically successful citizen. When American corporations who make their fortunes in the freedom of this country then decide to establish offshore headquarters to avoid paying a fair share of taxes, they are acting in an unethical, selfish and irresponsible way. Freedom is expensive, as is the task of building the atmosphere in which civic life for all can bloom, but those things are well worth the cost. All Americans want to have safe roads, bridges, harbors and tunnels. All Americans want to have good schools for our children, good hospitals and good medical care for all. We all want our food, including our peanut butter, to be safe. We want our investments to be protected from both the Bernie Madoffs and the John Thains of this world. We want our medicines tested and to have their purity guaranteed. We want our people to be safe from attacks from foreign sources or domestic sociopaths. These precious and commonly expected realities of our corporate life cost money. It is, therefore, not just fitting but proper that those who profit most from the life of our society accept the responsibility for and be motivated to keep that system not just functioning, but healthy. Those whose greed and selfishness have led this nation to a place where the whole economy goes into decline, recession and perhaps even depression should bear a proportionate share of the hard times that they have caused for others. I think they will be able to survive for a year or two on a capped salary and restricted bonuses. Class warfare? Socialism? Communism? No, fairness, honesty and mutual respect require these steps. It is even biblical, since the Bible says: "Freely you have received so freely give!"
– John Shelby Spong
Friday, January 16, 2009
Supply/Demand???....Don't you believe it!
Did you believe that the $147 a barrel price of oil last July was because of Supply and Demand?
Don't believe it.
Watch
Don't believe it.
Watch
Friday, January 9, 2009
"Laffer-ing" all the way to ruin..or...how voodoo economics has lead this country to disaster
In 1980 George H. W. Bush, while running against Ronald Reagan in the presidential primaries, referred to supply side economics as "voodoo economics". (he changed his mind, of course once accepting the VP nod from Reagan)
He was right....and over 28 years, this kind of economics has led us to ruin as a nation.
But what most people fail to see is that the folks that thought this up, (Arthur Laffer, Jude Wanniski, Grover Norquist, David Stockman, ) didn't just want to cut taxes, they also wanted to gain votes for more political power and that meant that they also had to increase government spending.
Wait a minute....Republicans increasing spending???? I can hear Sarah Palin now, "Say it ain't so, Joe!" But it's true.
That's where we come to the 2 Santa Claus Theory. Traditional conservatives believed in less taxes and LESS spending, and balanced budgets. However, in the 70's, this was seen by some cons as the path to being in the minority party forever. These folks believed that it was government spending that rallied voter support for the dems, so, let's see....why not cut taxes AND increase spending!! Yeah, that will cause voters to like us AND we can still move towards Norquists goal of -
"I don't want to abolish government. I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub."
But, under Reagan, weren't we were told that by cutting taxes, tax revenues would GO UP??? Yeah, we were told a lie....click HERE to see that tax revenues did NOT go up, they went DOWN under Reagan. That's why he left office with a HUGE national debt. (Remember, Reagan said deficits don't matter) So, cut taxes and raise spending...that will cause massive deficits and therefore it will "starve the beast" (destroy the federal government). Which is exactly what folks like Norquist want to happen.
Well, here we are 28 years later, 12 trillion dollars in debt, negative personal savings, double digit unemployment/under employment, no manufacturing base, almost no unions, 47 million without health care, trillions spent in Iraq and Afghanistan.....WAKE UP AMERICANS!!!
Norquist is drooling.....
It's time to bring back what worked from 1935 to 1980....
He was right....and over 28 years, this kind of economics has led us to ruin as a nation.
But what most people fail to see is that the folks that thought this up, (Arthur Laffer, Jude Wanniski, Grover Norquist, David Stockman, ) didn't just want to cut taxes, they also wanted to gain votes for more political power and that meant that they also had to increase government spending.
Wait a minute....Republicans increasing spending???? I can hear Sarah Palin now, "Say it ain't so, Joe!" But it's true.
That's where we come to the 2 Santa Claus Theory. Traditional conservatives believed in less taxes and LESS spending, and balanced budgets. However, in the 70's, this was seen by some cons as the path to being in the minority party forever. These folks believed that it was government spending that rallied voter support for the dems, so, let's see....why not cut taxes AND increase spending!! Yeah, that will cause voters to like us AND we can still move towards Norquists goal of -
"I don't want to abolish government. I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub."
But, under Reagan, weren't we were told that by cutting taxes, tax revenues would GO UP??? Yeah, we were told a lie....click HERE to see that tax revenues did NOT go up, they went DOWN under Reagan. That's why he left office with a HUGE national debt. (Remember, Reagan said deficits don't matter) So, cut taxes and raise spending...that will cause massive deficits and therefore it will "starve the beast" (destroy the federal government). Which is exactly what folks like Norquist want to happen.
Well, here we are 28 years later, 12 trillion dollars in debt, negative personal savings, double digit unemployment/under employment, no manufacturing base, almost no unions, 47 million without health care, trillions spent in Iraq and Afghanistan.....WAKE UP AMERICANS!!!
Norquist is drooling.....
It's time to bring back what worked from 1935 to 1980....
- strong unions (pass the Employee Free Choice Act)
- a trade policy that protects (yes, i said protects) our manufacturing jobs...let's start making stuff again
- do away with the Bush tax cuts on the wealthy, or better yet, roll back the Reagan tax cuts on the wealthy
- update regulation to 21st century technology standards
- have a single payer health insurance policy (how about everyone can buy into MEDICARE)
- increase the minimum wage to a LIVING wage
- FREE higher education for anyone that qualifies
It's time! Here's a nice article on why supply side economics didn't work!
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