The blunt truth is, that plan isn't going to work, at least not in a place of the scale and complexity of the United States. The Swiss are few enough that they can be the world's bankers; The Arabs can be the world's oil company; but the United States, if it is going to be a prosperous place, needs to be a place where the main engine of prosperity is taking raw materials, making something valuable out of them, and then selling those valuable things at a profit.
We can't have a first-tier economy by selling each other life insurance and software; we need to make things. Physical, need-machine-tools-to-make-them things - cars, boats, clothing, machine tools, electronics. The Democrats used to know this, and acted accordingly; now they represent the members of the management class who want to send line workers to college so they can become computer programmers. It's ridiculous.
There are millions of manufacturing workers who used to earn good livings making things here in the USA. The "New Economy" has no real place for them: the Old Economy is the only place that offered them a way to use their skills and gifts in a way that afforded them the basics of life plus a little fun.
Again: the economy offers people with less than a college degree precious few (and vanishing) ways to support a family in anything approaching comfort.
Here's the thing: there are millions of folks who are, to be blunt, not smart enough, or are temperamentally unsuited, or are (heartbreakingly) too fucking poor to go to college. Are they to be consigned to working at 7/11 and making 9 bucks an hour until they "retire"? Don't we as citizens have an obligation to see that they have work available to them that will allow them to support their families in a dignified manner, and maybe even allow them to put something away for college for the kids and even something for their golden years?
An aside: Those questions have not been asked of Americans in any public and
consistent way for years - decades even. The very clause, "we, as
citizens, are obligated to..." is, in the libertarian, Hobbesian world
of economic mercilessness we've allowed to flourish, a nonsensical
phrase full of meaningless words. We are no longer "citizens" --
active participants in the building of our civilization -- but
"consumers", defined by our economic worth; mere cogs in the
soul-impoverishing machinery of ponzi-scheme "wealth creation" and economic
oligarchy; passively doing our part to keep the whole corrupt machine
humming, nothing demanded of us but to Consume, while the economic masters milk America until it is a dry, hollow husk and they can move on to greener pastures.
The thing that most creeped me out about the movie The Matrix was the sense I had that it was not really about some future dystopia, but rather a piercing parable for the present world we live in; there is this sort of Machine that we all participate in, an experience so immersive that we can't escape its grinding works, can't but serve its needs rather than the needs of our brothers and sisters, of our families.
To break out of this losing game, we must realize - we must RESOLVE - that, to coin a phrase, the Economy is made by and for us, and not us for the economy.
You can't ride a man's back unless it is already bent; it took decades for the ceaseless propaganda of the Machine to bend our backs; it only takes a moment, an instant, to decide to straighten your back and thus undo all its work. ]]>It's extremely disheartening to see the administration and so many Democrats in congress completely ignore the political and policy ramifications of failing to engage in fundamental financial reform and fiery populist rhetoric at a time like this. This [tea party] movement is happening in a vacuum created by a lack of interest in this topic by liberals who are so enamored of being members of the new "creative class" and the like that they aren't paying attention to the cynicism and anger that's reaching critical mass among average working stiffs out there. It's easy to dismiss it, but very, very foolish. The issues Moore raises in this film will be answered on the right with authoritarianism, militarism, immigrant bashing and violence. It's a recipe for disaster unless the left takes this on in direct, political terms.
This time there is a rather large group who, in the absence of an affordable public plan, are likely to be angry about health care reform and they will be aided by the large block of teabagging phonies and their industry allies in raising holy hell about it. These are people who are going to be forced to buy pretty expensive insurance policies from private insurers, and for whom the subsidies are just not adequate. They are average middle class people who are going to be told they need to find a way to now set aside nearly 50% of their discretionary income for Blue Cross insurance executives to make multi-million dollar bonuses. And that is from a very small amount of discretionary income.I would put it in far harsher terms: without a public option to control costs, this is going to be a disaster of epic proportions, something that will send more working people into the hands of the teabaggers, because we offer them nothing of substance.
[...]
I don't suppose that most of the people writing these plans have recently had to live with only a couple hundred dollars a week to spend among three people, but if they did, they would know that cutting that in half is impossible. I don't know how many people this affects, but it's obviously in the millions.
There's a reason why so many people are uninsured and it isn't only because they have pre-existing conditions. It's also because insurance is unaffordable. Unless this reform fixes that problem they haven't fixed it at all. They need to create a public plan that these subsidies can actually make affordable or these folks are all going to have to become criminals and defy the mandate. And if that happens reform fails.
I think you will see a terrible backlash if they don't get a grip on the political realities here. I hope that Hickey is correct and that they are, or this could be a monumental debacle.
Me: But Soc, ol' buddy, you're talking about The Repub's deluded base, here. You know, the people agitating for tax cuts for their boss's boss's boss? What possible use could they be to the Democrats?]]>
Socrates: I can see I'm outmatched here, and must bow to your superior wisdom in this matter. I just have one or two questions, and I was hoping you could enlighten my ignorance.
Me: Sure, Soc. Shoot.
Socrates: Who are these people you call the 'base' of the Republican Party?
Me: Oh, you know...working stiffs...people in our society who are more or less powerless. People with stagnant wages, maybe just a high school education, who have little or no power in the workplace or the rest of society, and feel some vicarious empowerment when they hear Rush Limbaugh or Sean Hannity "speaking up for them".
Socrates: He speaks for them, does he?
Me: Well, of course. You know, against the dirty, heathen Liberals who want to turn all their wives into hairy-legged, baby-killing lesbians, or something?
Socrates (aghast): The Liberals want to do that?
Me: Are you serious?? No, of course not!
Socrates: Well, that's a relief. I just wonder then: why are they not voting for Democrats? They used to, in huge numbers, as I recall...
Me: I already told you - The Republicans have the wool pulled over their eyes.
Socrates: But I still don't understand: why did they stop voting for Democrats? I remember quite a long period when people like that voted overwhelmingly for Democrats, every single election, starting in 1932.
Me: Well, you know, that was a different time, then...
Socrates: Really? And how was it different?
Me: Well, to begin with, there was the Great Depression, which threw everyone out of work. The Republican response was: let charity take care of the indigent, and let The Market right itself. The Democrats had specific, concrete plans to help the people who were hurting...and so the Republicans just got killed in the '32 elections...
Socrates: Ah, so the Republicans learned their lesson, and sing a different tune, now? Me: Well, of course they...you know, come to think of it, no. They are pretty much saying and doing the same things now as they did then.
Socrates: Then I'm still confused - why are all those poor farmers and minimum-wage earners and economically hurting people now voting for Republicans?
Me: I already told you - the Republicans are appealing to their fears and prejudices! Socrates: Hmmm...if those folks voted Democratic, do you think the Democrats might do better in elections?
Me: I'm sure we would, but we don't want those people.
Socrates: Because...?
Me: Do I have to tell you again?? The Republicans have them all tied up in fear and prejudice.
Socrates: I see. Let me ask you: Have you ever experienced feelings of fear, and even prejudice, within yourself?
Me (thinking): Oh, sure. It's probably a universal human experience to some extent. Socrates: Did you enjoy it?
Me: What, feeling those things? No, I guess not - not deeply, anyway. Who wants to be afraid? Anyway, what's your point?
Socrates: Do you think the people who now are caught up in the Republicans' fear mongering and pandering to prejudices are enjoying the experience - I mean, really, deeply enjoying it??
Me: Um, probably not...
Socrates: Then why do they allow the Republicans to keep doing it?
Me: You lost me.
Socrates: As we've established already, not only are they powerless, but their prejudices and fears are only adding to their misery. Isn't that true?
Me: I've never thought of it that way, but yes, I guess you're right. What the heck is wrong with them?
Socrates: Do you remember the impassioned speech given at the 2008 Democratic National Convention - the one everyone remembers - where the speaker eloquently called for huge amounts of assistance for struggling family farmers, a living wage for all American workers, card-check legislation to help workers get some power in the workplace, and shooting barbs at the Republican rich, "lolling obscenely in their Opera Boxes"?
Me: Um...(thinking)...No, actually I don't.
Socrates: Neither do I. Do you want to help people who are trapped in economic stagnation, and are being exploited with fear and prejudice?
Me: Well, yeah, that's a large part of the reason I'm a Democrat.
Socrates: Well, how can you help them?
Me: Like I said, they are pretty much beyond help...
Socrates (now genuinely shocked): You don't really believe that, do you?
Me: Well, what can we do for those people?
Socrates: "Those people"? Didn't you describe them yourself as, "Working stiffs...people in our society who are more or less powerless. People with stagnant wages, maybe just a high school education, who have little or no power in the workplace or the rest of society?" Me: Yes, that's right: the Republican Base.
Socrates: We also went over how the Democrats gained a large and enduring majority in the past by coming up with specific, concrete plans to help people who were hurting, did we not?
Me (dawning realization): Uh, yes, I guess so. But what about the social issues - abortion, gay rights and so on?
Socrates: Think about this for a moment. How much does the status of gay marriage or the legal status of abortion increase their misery on a daily basis, in the course of living out their day-to-day existence?
Me: Actually, on a day-to-day basis...? Probably not much. Not much at all, really. Socrates: And how much does the fact that they are, in your words, "people in our society who are more or less powerless...with stagnant wages, maybe just a high school education, who have little or no power in the workplace or the rest of society" make their lives harder, on a daily basis?
Me: I imagine it's a constant, grinding bummer...
Socrates: So, if you offered a whole list of ways to help them with those concrete, constantly-lived, ever-present miseries - in fact, if you organized your agenda around those issues, and hit the talking points constantly - do you imagine they might just consider giving your party a strong and enduring governing majority?
Here's the thing; If Bush had not destroyed the structural surpluses that were originally projected for the last 8 years, the government would not be paying almost a half trillion dollars a year in interest on the (vastly expanded) national debt. I'm enough of a cynic to believe that was actually deliberate: utterly destroy the country's fiscal standing, so that the next time a Democrat is elected, there is a smooth transition to theatrical hand-wringing and bleats that "Gee, we're too broke to be able to afford to help all those people..."
But the thing is, as a matter of math it is actually fairly simple to pay for everything Obama wants and more, AND pay down the debt, if you make the income tax resemble what if was in the Eisenhower administration: the top marginal rate hovered between 91 and 94 percent, and there were more brackets.
Another thing I've heard proposed is a 13% asset tax on all assets over 10 million dollars. This would apparently (I haven't studied the proposal in detail) pay off the entire national debt, more or less instantly. That would then free up tons of money to make our fellow citizens', and our own, lives better through investments in things like job training, better schools, social workers and so on, to finally tackle in a comprehensive way the economic and social decay in our inner cities; upgrading and modernizing our inter-city train system to standards that obtain in the rest of the developed world (a project whose need will become more apparent in the coming world of ever-costlier oil); government-subsidized day care to ease the path of single mothers out of poverty; new incentives and even direct investment in green energy sources and a smart grid.
I think if you ask most Americans if they want those things, they'll say "yes." If you propose a much more progressive tax system to pay for it, they'll be fine with that, too.
The problem isn't "too much spending." That's the Republican argument; the problem is not enough revenue, because the relatively well off are not paying their fair share.
[Update] To be clear, my argument here is that there used to be an idea in this country that one of the legitimate purposes of our government is to help balance society through income redistribution, by means of the tax system and domestic spending. It's time liberals made explicit arguments for that basic premise. Not establishing that premise makes everything else we want to do harder.
Although I am a white Irish Catholic, I grew up in a black neighborhood, and this has given me what I think is a pretty unusual point of view (for a white person) on race relations in America.
I've noticed again and again that what's missing from lots of discussions between whites about "the Ghetto" is any sense of understanding of the the concrete, complex humanity of the people being discussed. The often glib caricatures used by whites (even relatively well-meaning ones) do not bear virtually any relationship to the actual people who were my neighbors in Richmond, California. For those who know the area, I grew up almost exactly between the Kennedy Manor and Easter Hill housing projects, in a solidly working-class black neighborhood - in the 1960s and into the 1970s (we moved to suburbia in 1976). We were the only white family in the neighborhood.
Do this for me: Think about how long ago, say, 1983 is from the moment in time that you are reading this diary. That was the amount of time separating the folks in the neighborhood in 1970 from a time when they lived in the Jim Crow, pre-civil-rights South, and could be lynched - taken out on some back road, emasculated and hung - for calling a white woman by her first name.
I saw first-hand the psychological devastation that was wrought in people who had experienced that culture: because of an accident of melanin, they could be murdered for performing the intrinsically human act of speaking with kindly familiarity to a woman they might actually be acquainted with.
There was a family down the street I'll call the Millers. Dad worked in the Chevron chemical plant, mom was a part-time secretary at the school district office. 5 kids, the youngest of whom was in my class at Pullman Elementary.
The oldest boy, who I'll call Duane, had had polio, and walked with a pronounced limp. Duane had one of the kindest, most tender hearts I've ever been privileged to know. He used to look out for me sometimes when things in the neighborhood got rough.
One day when I was...oh, probably 6 years old, I was over at the Millers' house visiting my friend from school, and Duane got the new Chihuahua dog they had just gotten, and handed the dog to me to see - and the little mutt bit me on the stomach and held on with its teeth. I screamed with pain and fear, and Duane hurriedly got the dog off me.
His mom came running, and when I told her what had happened, Duane, right there on the spot, was beaten by his mom. She shoved him, his bad leg just collapsed, and his mother just...attacked. He got the beating of his life right there in front of me.
When she was done, she turned to me and apologized in anxious tones: "Duane didn't mean it - he was just playing - just tell your mama it was an accident..."
At the time, it struck me as strange - here was this big, powerful woman, and she was begging for my forgiveness?
She had met my parents, had sat and talked with my mom many times over coffee - she knew my parents were about the furthest thing possible from the racists she had left behind in Alabama.
But here's the thing I've realized since. In a time in her life no more remote from that moment than 1983 is from us today, Duane's carelessness with a white boy might have put their well-being, even their lives, in danger. She struck Duane not out of anger, but deep, unreasoning terror.
***
The neighborhood could be, at times, almost saturated with an atmosphere of latent violence - but there was also deep, overflowing, selfless love, a love so profound and simple and deep that it gave me a taste of what heaven might be like.
There was elderly Mrs. Pender next door, who had had a stroke and walked with a walker. Her husband, Mr Pender, had the most awe-inspiring lawn on the block - he probably weeded the thing with tweezers - but his wife was the real gift to the neighborhood. She would take me in sometimes when the 'hood got extra crazy, and tell me that she knew, just knew, that one day I would grow up to be someone really special. (Mrs. Pender is now long dead, and heaven is a richer place for her being there. RIP, Mrs. Pender.)
There's the elderly black lady I met one day when I was selling door-to-door. The whole enterprise, while technically not fraudulent, was making me pretty uncomfortable. Lots of the salesmen loved selling to ghetto addresses - they would just wave a couple free months of service in the naive residents' faces, kinda forget to mention the charges that would hit after that two month grace period, and rack up sales. I worked the ghetto when I had to, but hated it - I felt like Judas.
One day, I knocked on some humble little basement-apartment door, and the door opened to reveal a frail, elderly woman...who had the kindest eyes I had ever seen - it was as if she were staring right through the glib salesman veneer, past all the BS, and directly into my soul, and genuinely appreciating, unconditionally loving, the qualities she saw there. It was as if I were staring dumbstruck into the very Face of Christ. I could sell no more.
***
There are spiritual treasures heaped in our ghettos among the poverty and violence, and one of the more tragic facts of our culture is that the vast majority of whites have absolutely no clue about the riches to be found there.
There is a woman I know who lost both of her grandchildren to murder - both in their mid-teens. To see this woman is to see a person who has been almost physically crushed by grief - she walks with stooped shoulders, and to look into her face is to see care-lines that have little to do with age, and lots to do with having gazed heartbroken into the coffins of two grandchildren she had loved with primal, protective, simple, profound, unconditional love.
And yet, she has refused to believe that murder, that hatred, that retaliation is all there is in this world. She spends practically every waking moment working in outreach programs for at-risk youth. She sees some straighten out their lives and make it out. Some she loses to murder or prison. The ones in prison, she writes to; the ones who were murdered, she prays for and with their families. Her actual first name is "Hope" and she is a saint.
I also have some very painful memories of my childhood, some of which are the reasons I suffer from PTSD, but I must say I've never found elsewhere the kind of simple, stripped-down, elemental love I witnessed and experienced in the old neighborhood. If only more Americans could see that Hope and they are in the very same world. They and Hope could help each other heal.
[Beginning of make believe]
My dream candidate is a state governor who grew up working class and made himself prosperous by his own efforts. He knows his way around a union hall; while he's been both a union member and management, one of the things that made him want to start a business is he didn't have the stomach for the kind of screwing over of workers that is part and parcel of being a middle manager in many large companies.
There's a story circulated about him that he once missed an important vote in the state assembly because it was opening day of deer season, and he was nowhere to be found.
He is passionate about doing what he can to make sure that workers get a fair deal in America. Reliable rumor has it he once threw a Democratic Party official out of his office, with instructions never to return, because that Democrat had dared to make a crack about "damned union chiselers."
He's known for intervening personally to try to save jobs (especially union jobs) when some mill owner makes noise about "off-shoring" production. He once loudly and publicly questioned a plant-owners patriotism for sending jobs overseas. He drives a pickup truck; not because he's making some kind of "positioning" statement, but because he actually needs one for driving around his working farm. He overturned his state's "right-to-work" laws, and passed card-check legislation, as one of his first acts as governor.
He got elected governor by putting together a coalition of blue-collar workers (who, in reciprocation for his manifest passion for their welfare, would gladly walk through the fires of hell for him); hunters and environmentalists (the hunters love telling the story of that missed vote, the environmentalists respect him for the genuine passion with which he talks about conservation) and family farmers (who trust him implicitly to look out for their interests.)
He insisted that his son and daughter attend a state college, even though their grades could easily have gotten them into a top-tier private college. Anything that smacks of elitism is something he has little patience for.
There are a few things that really piss him off...
Anyone, especially a self-described "progressive," who has the temerity to say a word against unions and people whose collars are likely to be blue is going to be the object of a withering dressing down, and be called a "damned Judas."
Hypocrites: A pastor who has a mega-church in his state once got a meeting with the governor. No one is quite sure what transpired in that meeting, but his secretary remembers hearing the governor bellow, "No God-Damned Pharisee swindler in a thousand-dollar suit is going to tell ME what to do!!" followed by the Pastor retreating from the governor's office with an ashen face.
Polluters: He'd rather personally swim in nuclear waste than have some company dump a teaspoon of pollution on his state. He appointed a pitbull to go after polluters in his state.
He's more of an egalitarian than a libertarian; he knows instinctively that one of the primary functions of Government is to help balance society by keeping things (relatively, anyway) equal, thus providing stability.
[End of Make Believe]
A guy like this would make deep, deep inroads into the Republican working-class base. He would also be familiar to (and typical of) generations of Democrats from the late 1920s to 1970s.
Sherrod Brown was once asked why so many blue collar people in southeastern Ohio voted for Republicans. His perfect response: "Because Democrats stopped talking to them."
Worth pondering...
]]>I think those of us who want it to stop should just continue to say so and to reason with and/or critique the people who want to keep it alive. Some of them, honestly, are most likely McCain voters trying to stir up shit. Some are thoughtless, regardless it's important, I think, to support Hillary on this site and work for Democrats here, not some Democrats at the expense of others. I was really annoyed with the tone around here as people waited for Hillary to speak. It seemed like everything the Clinton camp has claimed about Obama supporters and it really disappointed me. I'm not, nor have I been, a Clinton supporter during this campaign, but I am a Democrat. I thought she did a fantastic job today. I'm a woman and she brought tears to my eyes. I am grateful to her for withstanding the heat and yes, sexism, that she has faced. It's time to move on, to forgive her the things we didn't like, and welcome her support.
Obviously, I am thrilled and honored to have Senator Clinton's support. But more than that, I honor her today for the valiant and historic campaign she has run. She shattered barriers on behalf of my daughters and women everywhere, who now know that there are no limits to their dreams. And she inspired millions with her strength, courage and unyielding commitment to the cause of working Americans. Our party and our country are stronger because of the work she has done throughout her life, and I'm a better candidate for having had the privilege of competing with her in this campaign. No one knows better than Senator Clinton how desperately America and the American people need change, and I know she will continue to be in the forefront of that battle this fall and for years to come.]]>
What do I mean when I say "I'm a liberal?"
What makes you a liberal?
]]>