Why are the Democrats so timid, especially in the face of unapologetic Republican extremism? And this goes for Obama, too. He keeps talking about the "grand bargain" that he wants to negotiate, by compromising with the same Republicans who want to eviscerate any program or service that aids the poor or "middle class," want to repeal Obamacare and are determined to make Obama's presidency a failure, even if he was reelected.
Nader pointed out the obvious, when he identified the "defeatist" Democrats, who took no advantage in 2012 of the incredibly unpopular policies and votes of the Republican Congress, like cutting programs for the poor, while cutting taxes on the rich.
As I pointed out last week, the deficit/debt/austerity politics that roils inside the Beltway is also highly unpopular, except with one demographic: the wealthy. But Democrats, who call themselves The People's Party, are too scared to take a popular stand because they are almost as dependent on wealthy donors as Republicans.
In other words, we live in an extremely corrupt political system: politicians may not get direct payoffs, but they do get wealthy from currying rich people's favor. They don’t organize politics like old Boss Tweed, or Mayor Daley Senior, but they are even more corrupt: their whole agenda, such as it is, justifies and rewards the extremely wealthy--and this is not just the extremist GOP, but the "mainstream" GOP, and some Democrats, as well. Democracy does not come trippingly off the tongue.
However, the Congressional Progressive Caucus offers a no-nonsense alternative to GOP Paul Ryan's vague, reactionary budget and cancels the sequester. Progressives claim their budget, entitled Going to Work, would reduce the deficit in three years by producing 7 million jobs and increasing GDP by 5.7%.
Supporters claim that investing in jobs, in infrastructure, which civil engineers recently pinpointed for much needed repair, in teachers and cops--in people--would reduce the deficit. The budget also raises revenue by closing tax loopholes on higher incomes and raising taxes on millionaires and billionaires, including taxing investment income the same as wages; it's now at preferential low rates. Proponents claim the expansionary budget would cut the deficit by $4.4 trillion. Some of the loopholes to be cut, aside from investment income: $112 billion fossil fuels industry subsidy; $70 billion: food and entertainment corporate deductions; $13 billion: yachts and vacation homes deductions and $25 billion: eliminating a stock options loophole.
The Democratic Senate's budget is timorous by comparison, although at least it protects Medicare and Social Security from cuts. But why can't mainstream Democrats advocate for an expansionary budget to grow revenue? The Fed's Bernanke says we shouldn't cut spending until growth stabilizes; even Republicans admit the "fiscal crisis" is only a future problem.
Because our Roman Senators, the extremely wealthy, control the political debate and promote their interests: lower taxes for them; no protection from their rapacity and reduced/no services for everyone else. They want a society like Fifth Century Rome.
Showing posts with label Paul Ryan. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Paul Ryan. Show all posts
Wednesday, March 20, 2013
Sunday, May 1, 2011
Jobs, Quantitative Easing and a Capital Strike
Americans elected a Republican House because Democrats let them down, especially on creating jobs. Yet, Republicans think you can make more jobs by radically cutting Government spending, especially for the poor. That hasn't worked for the Tories in Britain, and it makes no sense: there is too little demand for new jobs, already; cutting spending reduces the demand further.
The absence of a strong fiscal policy is at the heart of the problem.
Bernanke began the Fed's Quantitative Easing II (QE 2) as a monetary substitute for the stimulus and job creation the Government should have been doing; QE2 will be completed in June. The Fed will have injected $600 billion in new money into the economy, but unemployment is only slightly lower. The more direct effects are: the stock market has been toying with a 13,000 Dow, and corporations have been meeting and beating profit expectations. The flood of money helped drive gold and silver to historic highs, oil to over $113/barrel; food and other commodity prices are soaring.
QE2 may have driven some of these price hikes through speculation, but hiring was only weakly boosted, and with QE2 ending soon, official unemployment is only a shade under 9%.
The Fed could face a capital strike if it attempted more. It's maintaining interest rates at historic lows, and Bernanke claims inflation will remain low, or even go lower. With S&P threatening to downgrade US debt ratings, with the Street clamoring against monetizing the debt, and Paul Ryan chairing the House Budget Committee, the Fed is unlikely to do more.
QE2 could only accomplish so much, anyway. Bernanke implied at its inception that he preferred a rational Government fiscal policy. QE2 was adopted because it was unlikely Obama and House Republicans would be able to reach an agreement to stimulate the economy.
Instead, we face stalemate. Radical Republicans demand the cuts outlined by Congressman Ryan and more. Speaker Boehner already faced difficulty corralling votes for the 2011 budget compromise. Democrats know they'll lose their base if they cave further to Republican demands. What is needed is what Obama and the Democrats didn't have the courage, or votes in the Senate, to push through in 2009-10: a real jobs bill, and a real takeover of the housing mortgage mess.
Will we hang on until 2013? With no jobs program, only the payroll tax stimulus, and housing markets falling further? Would corporations hire more, with falling demand for goods? Would banks resolve their mortgage mess: admit their fraud and losses? Dream on!
A deadlock on the debt could slam us into a Depression, and a likely Republican takeover. They favor putting corporations in control, much like the monopoly of power held by the Senatorial class of the late Roman Empire. Americans would be reduced to surplus labor, competing with low-wage workers worldwide.
Maybe we'll get bread and circuses?
The absence of a strong fiscal policy is at the heart of the problem.
Bernanke began the Fed's Quantitative Easing II (QE 2) as a monetary substitute for the stimulus and job creation the Government should have been doing; QE2 will be completed in June. The Fed will have injected $600 billion in new money into the economy, but unemployment is only slightly lower. The more direct effects are: the stock market has been toying with a 13,000 Dow, and corporations have been meeting and beating profit expectations. The flood of money helped drive gold and silver to historic highs, oil to over $113/barrel; food and other commodity prices are soaring.
QE2 may have driven some of these price hikes through speculation, but hiring was only weakly boosted, and with QE2 ending soon, official unemployment is only a shade under 9%.
The Fed could face a capital strike if it attempted more. It's maintaining interest rates at historic lows, and Bernanke claims inflation will remain low, or even go lower. With S&P threatening to downgrade US debt ratings, with the Street clamoring against monetizing the debt, and Paul Ryan chairing the House Budget Committee, the Fed is unlikely to do more.
QE2 could only accomplish so much, anyway. Bernanke implied at its inception that he preferred a rational Government fiscal policy. QE2 was adopted because it was unlikely Obama and House Republicans would be able to reach an agreement to stimulate the economy.
Instead, we face stalemate. Radical Republicans demand the cuts outlined by Congressman Ryan and more. Speaker Boehner already faced difficulty corralling votes for the 2011 budget compromise. Democrats know they'll lose their base if they cave further to Republican demands. What is needed is what Obama and the Democrats didn't have the courage, or votes in the Senate, to push through in 2009-10: a real jobs bill, and a real takeover of the housing mortgage mess.
Will we hang on until 2013? With no jobs program, only the payroll tax stimulus, and housing markets falling further? Would corporations hire more, with falling demand for goods? Would banks resolve their mortgage mess: admit their fraud and losses? Dream on!
A deadlock on the debt could slam us into a Depression, and a likely Republican takeover. They favor putting corporations in control, much like the monopoly of power held by the Senatorial class of the late Roman Empire. Americans would be reduced to surplus labor, competing with low-wage workers worldwide.
Maybe we'll get bread and circuses?
Thursday, April 21, 2011
Trump and Emperor Maximus
Donald Trump is awful! But a lot of Republicans think he should run for President: 17%, as many as for Huckabee, only behind Mitt Romney, and 20% of tea party ID'd Republicans expressed support.
Trump has his special quirks, one being his birther schtick, which may or may not be a genuine concern. At least one commentator points out birtherism's racist undertones, or at least that it could encourage racism. Birtherism feeds the fears of whites who cannot believe we elected an African-American President; they want to believe he's an impostor, regardless of all the data proving his birth in Hawaii. Why? Because he's black?
Bitherism and racism are one thing: what's even scarier, however, is that Trump represents the new breed of brash, political billionaire: he dismisses his closest rival, Mitt Romney, as "a small businessman," and claims that he, Trump, is "much, much bigger than he is." And that, dear America, is why he feels he should be President: he has more money.
Romney's business past may come back to haunt him. He's no small businessman: Bain Capital, the private equity firm he helped found, buys and sells businesses, and not only employs several hundred, but as with most such firms, it has also been in the business of firing hundreds or more of the purchased companies in order to "streamline" them.
This may be a portent of the kind of politics we'll be offered, either in the next few cycles, or for the foreseeable future. Billionaires vs multi-millionaires, these self-funded candidates run in part to protect the interests of their super-rich brethren, who will probably support them with their own money, too.
I would pair Trump with Roman Emperor: Maximus (ruled 3 months in 455); he was known as the wealthiest of the Senatorial class; he conspired to assassinate Valentinian III, in part, because the Emperor had seduced his reputedly beautiful wife, but also to gain power for himself. His "rule" was a disaster; it gave the Vandal King, Gaiseric, the pretext to sack Rome. "Emperor" Maximus was torn apart by an enraged Roman mob as the Vandals approached.
The question is: will all the money spent by and for someone like Trump/Romney, seduce Americans?
Or, will people begin to get it: the filthy rich want to keep it all for themselves. Congressman Ryan's budget makes clear what the future could begin to look like with people like Trump or Romney in charge. They'd cut taxes on themselves, the wealthy (Ryan calls them "job creators" even when, like Romney they are job destroyers). Those tax cuts would be paid for by draconian cuts to services (including Medicare and Social Security) and cut tax loopholes that benefit the poor and what remains of the middle class.
In late Imperial Rome, the middle class had two options: seek protection from the wealthy, becoming serfs, or escaping to the hills as bandits. Is that what we want?
Trump has his special quirks, one being his birther schtick, which may or may not be a genuine concern. At least one commentator points out birtherism's racist undertones, or at least that it could encourage racism. Birtherism feeds the fears of whites who cannot believe we elected an African-American President; they want to believe he's an impostor, regardless of all the data proving his birth in Hawaii. Why? Because he's black?
Bitherism and racism are one thing: what's even scarier, however, is that Trump represents the new breed of brash, political billionaire: he dismisses his closest rival, Mitt Romney, as "a small businessman," and claims that he, Trump, is "much, much bigger than he is." And that, dear America, is why he feels he should be President: he has more money.
Romney's business past may come back to haunt him. He's no small businessman: Bain Capital, the private equity firm he helped found, buys and sells businesses, and not only employs several hundred, but as with most such firms, it has also been in the business of firing hundreds or more of the purchased companies in order to "streamline" them.
This may be a portent of the kind of politics we'll be offered, either in the next few cycles, or for the foreseeable future. Billionaires vs multi-millionaires, these self-funded candidates run in part to protect the interests of their super-rich brethren, who will probably support them with their own money, too.
I would pair Trump with Roman Emperor: Maximus (ruled 3 months in 455); he was known as the wealthiest of the Senatorial class; he conspired to assassinate Valentinian III, in part, because the Emperor had seduced his reputedly beautiful wife, but also to gain power for himself. His "rule" was a disaster; it gave the Vandal King, Gaiseric, the pretext to sack Rome. "Emperor" Maximus was torn apart by an enraged Roman mob as the Vandals approached.
The question is: will all the money spent by and for someone like Trump/Romney, seduce Americans?
Or, will people begin to get it: the filthy rich want to keep it all for themselves. Congressman Ryan's budget makes clear what the future could begin to look like with people like Trump or Romney in charge. They'd cut taxes on themselves, the wealthy (Ryan calls them "job creators" even when, like Romney they are job destroyers). Those tax cuts would be paid for by draconian cuts to services (including Medicare and Social Security) and cut tax loopholes that benefit the poor and what remains of the middle class.
In late Imperial Rome, the middle class had two options: seek protection from the wealthy, becoming serfs, or escaping to the hills as bandits. Is that what we want?
Monday, April 11, 2011
Taxes and Class War
When Republicans insist and some reluctant Democrats agree: we have to cut the deficit and slow the rise in the debt, they look in the wrong direction, on purpose. Certainly, the US is the largest debtor in (and to) the world, and our debt continues to rise, increasingly to Japan and China.
The Republicans' budget guru, Congressman Paul Ryan, wants to cut $6 trillion from government spending in the next ten years--and also cut $4 trillion in taxes to corporations and high-income earners! It becomes more clearly class war when you see his targets for cutting spending: programs that benefit the poor, like education, Medicare and Food Stamps, programs and tax loopholes that benefit the shrinking "middle class," including Medicare, Social Security and mortgage and state income tax deductions. He wants these cuts, and more, to pay for the tax cuts.
The US is a relatively lightly taxed nation, especially for high-income earners and corporations. While conservatives cite the 35% corporate tax rate as the highest in the developed world, two-thirds of corporations pay no taxes, and few pay the full 35%, because of all the loopholes for which they've lobbied strenuously. The total tax breaks for corporations has been estimated to cost $660 billion in the next five years. Further, most high-income earners don't pay much of their taxes at the highest rate (cut by W and continued with Obama's reluctant signature in the tax deal last December). CEO's and other wealthy people earn most of their income in capital gains or dividends, taxed at 15%, about half the rate of "earned income." There are hedge fund directors who earn billions a year, and pay only at the 15% rate; they are hardly over-taxed.
We need to solve our deficit and debt problem by raising taxes on the wealthy and corporations and by re-configuring our defense, bringing most of our troops home, shrinking our forces, and recognizing that we can't afford to police the world. Those two measures alone would more than solve our deficit and debt problem, if we also allowed Medicare to negotiate drug prices as well as streamline its operations, as planned in the Health Care reform act.
We need to change the conversation. Our income tax is hardly progressive, and overall, our tax system takes more from the poor and middle class than it does from the wealthy. Our tax system hasn't yet become as cruelly inequitable as the Roman system in which the wealthy paid almost nothing and everyone else paid oppressively high taxes, or sold themselves into serfdom. But that's the direction in which Republicans like Paul Ryan want to go. Some Democrats are bought off, because billionaires have a lot of money. Some Democrats don't have a clue. And liberals like Feingold have been driven out by just some of the big boys' money, leading all politicians to draw their own conclusions.
Do ordinary people stand a chance?
The Republicans' budget guru, Congressman Paul Ryan, wants to cut $6 trillion from government spending in the next ten years--and also cut $4 trillion in taxes to corporations and high-income earners! It becomes more clearly class war when you see his targets for cutting spending: programs that benefit the poor, like education, Medicare and Food Stamps, programs and tax loopholes that benefit the shrinking "middle class," including Medicare, Social Security and mortgage and state income tax deductions. He wants these cuts, and more, to pay for the tax cuts.
The US is a relatively lightly taxed nation, especially for high-income earners and corporations. While conservatives cite the 35% corporate tax rate as the highest in the developed world, two-thirds of corporations pay no taxes, and few pay the full 35%, because of all the loopholes for which they've lobbied strenuously. The total tax breaks for corporations has been estimated to cost $660 billion in the next five years. Further, most high-income earners don't pay much of their taxes at the highest rate (cut by W and continued with Obama's reluctant signature in the tax deal last December). CEO's and other wealthy people earn most of their income in capital gains or dividends, taxed at 15%, about half the rate of "earned income." There are hedge fund directors who earn billions a year, and pay only at the 15% rate; they are hardly over-taxed.
We need to solve our deficit and debt problem by raising taxes on the wealthy and corporations and by re-configuring our defense, bringing most of our troops home, shrinking our forces, and recognizing that we can't afford to police the world. Those two measures alone would more than solve our deficit and debt problem, if we also allowed Medicare to negotiate drug prices as well as streamline its operations, as planned in the Health Care reform act.
We need to change the conversation. Our income tax is hardly progressive, and overall, our tax system takes more from the poor and middle class than it does from the wealthy. Our tax system hasn't yet become as cruelly inequitable as the Roman system in which the wealthy paid almost nothing and everyone else paid oppressively high taxes, or sold themselves into serfdom. But that's the direction in which Republicans like Paul Ryan want to go. Some Democrats are bought off, because billionaires have a lot of money. Some Democrats don't have a clue. And liberals like Feingold have been driven out by just some of the big boys' money, leading all politicians to draw their own conclusions.
Do ordinary people stand a chance?
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