Our Banana Republic

There are times when I think our republic has always been this dysfunctional, but I'm just more aware of it today thanks to technological innovation. When I was growing up we had 3 nightly news stations and 2 local newspapers. Cable News, USA Today, and the internet did not yet exist. Of course, I was also a kid and then a teenager. Didn't have time for politics all that much, though I thought Ronald Reagan was the greatest president ever. What did I know?

Then cable news took off. I watched the first Gulf War on CNN. I studied government and history in college. Economics was my favorite subject though I ended up focusing my career in a much different area. The internet slowly grew into my preferred news source. I didn't have to rely on a single source or a few sources. I could search around for "the truth".

Today the internet and cable news provides alternative news positions everywhere you look. This has been a blessing and a curse. Information is at our fingertips like never before. And disinformation is also available in quantities previously unimaginable. News seekers no longer need to see news from a perspective that does not agree with their preconceived biases. Conservatives can run to the Drudge Report, or Breitbart's cadre of websites, or Glenn Beck's page, or Fox News. Liberals can turn to the Daily Kos, ThinkProgress, Crooks & Liars, MSNBC. There is no need for truly fair and balanced reporting anymore. Fair and balance doesn't sell advertising. Fair and balanced doesn't meet the warped demand for profitability from the free press.

But that's not the point of today's post. The point of today's post is that we've entered an era of idiocy. I suspect, though I lack evidence, that the cause of this idiocy is this fractured news environment. We no longer sit down as a country and listen to Edward Morrow explain things we need to know as citizens. There is little demand for unbiased reporting and as such our citizens have their biases confirmed and a wedge is driven further between those who lean left and those who lean right.

Gone are the days when we stood as a nation and understood that we should be rightly judged for how we treated the least among us. Now we have politicians clamoring over each other to eviscerate the safety programs that protect our poor and vulnerable.

Gone are the days when we understood that the strength of our economy was based on our working citizens making a livable wage that allowed them to purchase more goods and services and continue to grow the economy. Now globalization has made U.S. wages much less important to multinational corporations.

Gone are the days when unions were accepted as a necessary protection against the over-reach of the moneyed elite. The unions, grown fat with power, alienated all but union members and have become popular targets for opportunistic corporatist politicians.

Gone are the days when education of our children was the single most important thing we could do to assure our future competitiveness as a country. Now we slash education budgets by billions of dollars while giving billions of dollars in tax cuts to the wealthy.

The absurdity is overwhelming, yet a substantial proportion of our population is never exposed to these ideas, because they seek their news from places that defend these policies as rational or even just.

We're witnessing the Fall of Rome. The conversion of the great United States of America into a Banana Republic in which power and influence are bought and sold and the working people are an afterthought in the greed driven policies of the elite.

Thank your Congressperson.

Shame!

There is a grassroots effort brewing. Workers are taking to the streets like they haven't done in decades. The "busy middle" has awoken as austerity measures have targeted worker's compensation and collective bargaining.

Unions are easy punching bags these days, because they're often bloated, inefficient machines of a bygone era. However, they still serve an invaluable function - providing collective bargaining power to individual workers who would be powerless against their employer otherwise, especially in times of economic distress.

However, a curious thing has happened. On Tuesday, February 15th, 2011, the sleeping lion awoke. Public union workers in Wisconsin were organized by their union officials to protest in the state capitol. They've been there ever since. Three weeks of continuous protests! The protests have continued to grow in size rather than diminish. Union members not affected by the pending legislation in WI have joined to rally with the at-risk workers.

The organized GOP effort to pit private sector workers against public sector workers has backfired. While some still buy the idea that public sector workers are fat cats sucking off the government teet, many more are now realizing that this represents a threat to all working class people. The gutting of collective bargaining power will likely affect how effectively private sector unions can negotiate as well.

Mirror protests have sprung up all around the country in support of Wisconsin. "Workers of the World, Unite!" echoes in these efforts.

But the most interesting rallying cry might be the simplest. After Wisconsin house members passed the bill stripping public employees of collective bargaining rights in a late night session cries of "Shame!" erupted from the public gallery. As the lawmakers broke for the evening the gallery overran the legislative floor as the cries of "Shame!" followed the lawmakers out into the corridors.

Here is that video:

And then it happened again. Over the weekend Michael Moore, rabble-rouser and documentarian extraordinaire, flew to Madison, WI to speak to the protesters directly. His rousing and entertaining speech, America is NOT Broke, was at times inflammatory, at times hilarious, and always impassioned. Shouts of "Shame!" popped up as he spoke about the transgressions of the moneyed elite in their attempts to buy our democracy.

His full speech here:

I don't always agree with his documentary methods and I think he's sometimes over the top in his rhetoric, but he's definitely a lover of the working man and sincere in all he does. He's someone I'd be proud to have a beer with.

And most recently, the "Shame!" chant popped up in a Wisconsin Town Hall Meeting. Remember a couple summers ago when Democratic representatives were ambushed by angry citizens in their town halls over health care reform? Well, payback appears to have come to Republicans. Only the Republicans aren't taking it. They adjourned the meeting without responding to the protester's concerns.

Video here: 

And "Shame!" is what it is. Blaming the working class for the economic problems our country faces is not only incorrect, it is dishonest and at its root demonstrates a disdain for the citizens of our country. School teachers don't become school teachers to get rich. Most don't even become school teachers because they have outstanding benefits. Most become school teachers to teach our children. A similar truth exists about public employees. Many public workers choose those careers in order to serve their communities. In other to improve the lives of their fellow citizens.

It is time that the austerity hawks be shown what shame they bring on themselves and our country for the way they've attacked the working class while protecting the plutocracy.


Shame on every last one of them.

At least one politician gets it ...

With all the hue and cry about austerity and budget cuts, there is at least one lone politician on Capitol Hill who is consistently and loudly advocating for the less fortunate in the wake of the rape of our economy by Wall Street and the unfunded $3 trillion spending spree also known as the Iraq War. Want to look for a single cause of our burgeoning national debt? Look at the accounting practices regarding Afghanistan and Iraq War funding from 2001-2008. 

Nevertheless, while our politicians target safety net programs and public employee pensions as potential cost savings measures, let's remember that these same politicians have given enormous handouts to Wall Street and extended an enormous tax cut for the wealthy. 

Without further delay I give you Senator Bernie Sanders (VT-I) first expounding on how he sees things and then asking pointed questions to Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner. 

The trouble with Bernie, of course, is that he's a self avowed Democratic Socialist. That means he is a socialist who embraces democratic principles. Remember, socialism is an economic system, not a political system. While democracy is a political system, not an economic system. When I say "the trouble with", what I really mean is that many find it easy to dismiss Bernie Sanders, because of his aversion to unfettered capitalism. Of course, when you stop and think about his position in this video clip, it is very difficult to contradict him without being a complete tool (of the plutocracy). 

It pays to be poor?

In a discussion of the Obama tax deal and extension of unemployment insurance someone said to me, "It sure pays to be poor." At first I thought they said "pays to be pure" and while I agree that purity is worth the extra expense, I didn't see how it was relevant to the discussion at hand. Then I realized they said "pays to be poor". 


This, of course, is a conservative mantra here in the United States that government social programs are so generous there is no incentive to work, the poor pay no taxes, and this financial windfall for not doing anything has created a lazy welfare class. 


On the face of it, this is an absurdity. When you dig deeper it's even more ridiculous. 


Let's take a look at it. 


No incentive to work. 


Welfare pays on average $500 in cash and food stamps for a single person household per month. That's $6,000 per year, of which only $3,600 is cash. Per year. For a family of 4 these numbers would increase to approximately $1,400 per month, or $16,800 per year, of which $11,800 would be cash. 


Unemployment insurance is a bit more generous. On average payments are $300 per week,  or $15,600 per year. This can vary quite a bit based on where you live and what you were earning before you lost your job. You see, we pay unemployment insurance .... it's insurance for times like this when you lose your job. If you were making a high salary before you got laid off, you will receive a higher weekly payout to try to keep you solvent while you look for a new job.


So no, benefits are not so generous that they create a disincentive to work.


The poor pay no taxes. 


Social Security, Medicare, unemployment insurance, and other state/local program taxes ... these are all taxes paid on income for which there is no refund. You get to deduct these taxes from your federal (and state) income tax bill so you're not paying taxes on taxes, but you don't get them back if you don't make enough. Because you're paying into the funds for each of these programs in case you need to use them. So unless unemployed or getting paid off the books, we all pay all of these taxes whether we're rich or we're poor. In fact, the only break anyone gets on these taxes are among those who make more than a certain amount, because social security tax is only applicable to the first ~$106,000 of income. After that you no longer pay that tax. So it pays to be rich, apparently. 


And there are other taxes. The biggest and most obvious is sales tax. This is a percentage of everything you purchase if you use legitimate sources for goods and services. The poor spend a higher percentage of their income rather than saving/investing, so they pay a higher proportion of their income in sales taxes. 


Finally, well not finally, but the last tax point I'll make is this. Renters may not pay property taxes directly, but you better believe those taxes are rolled into the price of the rent by the landlord. So no, renters don't get free school for their kids without paying taxes for that education. 


So, nope, the poor pay taxes. Perhaps not quite the same percentage as the wealthy, but they do pay them and it's a substantial portion of their income. 


Poor people are lazy.


I'm not even going to acknowledge this nonsense with a response. 


But I will leave you with this. We've reached the point in the United States where our leaders will gladly give 25% of a nearly $900B tax break to the richest 1% of Americans, but there are counties in United States that need foreign aid to take care of their poor children. 


That's pathetic. We should be ashamed. 

All Out War

It's impolite to admit it, but we're at war. I'm not talking about Iraq, Afghanistan, or even Pakistan or Yemen. I'm talking about at war with ourselves. We have a domestic battle going on. And again, I'm not talking about red states versus blue states or the intellectual elites versus the mama grizzlies. I'm talking about class warfare. 

Conservatives call it "redistribution of wealth", and they're right. There's an effort by liberals in this country to redistribute the wealth. There's a reason for this. A sound reason. For the past 30 years the wealth has been redistributed in the opposite direction. 

Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) in this youtube video from the Senate floor, lays out the facts of this case in much more clear terms than I can hope to recreate here so I'll let the gentleman from Vermont stand on his own. 

Highlights (I'd argue they are lowlights):

- In 2007, the top 1% of Americans earned 23.5% of all income in the United States, up from just 8% in mid-1970s. 

- This top 1% earned more than the bottom 50% of all Americans combined. 

- The top o.1% (1/1oth of 1%) earns 12¢ of every dollar made in the United States.

- Between 1980 and 2005, 80% of all new income went to the top 1%. That leaves 20% for the remaining 99%.

- Wall Street executives largely responsible for the financial crisis are now earning more than they made before the bailout.

- We have the most unequal distribution of income and wealth of any developed country on earth. 

- Some in Congress have come out in support of $700B in income tax breaks over the next 10 years to the top 2% of earners. This would result in an average $100,000 tax break to each person in the top 2%. 

- Eliminating the estate tax would cost $1T over the next 10 years and that break would go virtually entirely to the top 3/10th of 1%.

- Our trade policy has resulted in the loss of millions of jobs earning livable wages in exchange for cheap goods overseas and higher corporate profits. 

- In 2009 ExxonMobil made $19B in profits, paid $0 in taxes, and received a  $156M refund from the IRS. 

All of these are verifiable facts. Not opinions. 

So at a time when our economy is in distress, we have sustained high unemployment, our federal budget deficit is growing daily through a combination of increased outlays to help the poor and unemployed and decreased tax revenue,  a substantial number of our leaders think it is sound policy to extend tax breaks to the top 2% of earners and eliminate the estate tax altogether, providing a $1.7T windfall to these highest earners over the next 10 years.

So we're clear, the extension of tax breaks to the wealthy represents just a 2.8% increase in their top marginal tax rate. This means they pay the same as everyone else on all taxes in all lower brackets. Only once they exceed $200,000 in taxable income as an individual or $250,000 as a couple do they pay an additional 2.8% of their income over those thresholds in taxes. The GOP is claiming this is necessary to create economic growth. These tax breaks have been in place for nearly 10 years. Where's the growth? It's a myth. It's a fiction. It doesn't work. We need the tax revenue to cover expenditures for the poor, the elderly, and the infirm. 

This is part and parcel to an assault on the working and middle classes by the moneyed elite in this country. It began under Ronald Reagan and it has continued under every president since, Republican and Democrat alike. Only now, under President Obama, has there been any pushback whatsoever against this systematic financial rape of the American people, and the resulting hue and cry from the wealthy and their shills has been shouts of "Socialism!", "Communism!", "It's a war. Like when Hitler invaded Poland in 1939!" All this when President Obama's policies and the Democrat-controlled Congress have been largely business friendly. His Justice Department has not pressed charges against a single Wall Street executive for defrauding investors. The financial reform law falls far short of what is likely necessary to avoid future bubble/burst cycles. The health care reform law does not actually capitate expenditures for healthcare. 

It's clear why this state of affairs exists. These moneyed interests own Congress. Their campaign contributions and political action committees trade treasure for power. Politicians who dare to stand up to these forces do so at their own peril. Wall Street, which had backed President Obama overwhelmingly in the 2008 election, poured their millions into Republican coffers in 2010. Apparently the president was too critical of their excesses and their payback was to support his opponents. No matter who wins the elections, the American public, at least the 98% or 99% of us who don't hold the purse strings, lose. 

You'll find this is a common topic for me to discuss. I've hesitated to call it war for a long time, but that's where we are. We have a choice. We can either continue to accept the status quo or we can stand up for egalitarian principles in which our interests are given equal weight to those with loads of cash.