Get News & Views Updates
Most Popular This Week
- Canada's 'Idle No More' Movement Spreads Like Wildfire
- What If All the World’s Debt Just Went Away
- Bolivia's Morales Calls for New Era of 'Peace and Unity' to Break Greed of Capitalism
- Sen. Bernie Sanders: 'Mr. President, I am Disappointed'
- Six Weeks After Reelection, Obama Sells Out Liberal Democrats
Popular content
Today's Top News
The Big Shakedown: Wisconsin and the GOP’s Vision for America’s Future
"This [Wisconsin struggle] is, I think, a real test case of, Can America make the adjustments it needs to face a future that is going to a lot less comfortable ….than the recent past has been?" declared influential right-wing commentator David Frum, appearing Sunday on Fareed Zakaria's GPS Show on CNN.
Frum thus hinted at the enormous stakes for working people and the poor across the United States in the current Wisconsin battle: de-unionization as a step toward further disinvestment in the public sector, trimming away all government functions that serve ordinary families and the goal of greater equality.
The future that's "a lot of less comfortable" is fated not for those who have steered the Wall Street banks and Corporate America from disinvesting in America's productive base, shipping millions of jobs overseas. This medicine is, of course, reserved for the victims of disinvestment, not its architects and beneficiaries in the richest 1 percent enjoying record profits, bonuses, and a stunning 24% share of America's income.
THE GREAT SHAKEDOWN & 'CONCENTRATED INTERESTS'
Because of federal and state budget deficits, Wisconsin is the first battleground on whether American citizens will face up to the reality that they must make more sacrifices, Frum argued:
American society is going to go through a great shakedown, and there are going to be squeezes on all kinds of concentrated interests.
Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker has been very explicit about the identity of those evil "concentrated interests":
We can no longer live in a society where the public employees are the haves and taxpayers who foot the bills are the have-nots.
Frum left no doubt that he would exempt Wall Street billionaires or corporations exporting jobs from "the squeeze."
"I don't see a lot of squeezes on Wall Street yet, David," countered co-panelist Chrystia Freeland, author a recent superb Atlantic article on the rise of a new, stratospherically wealthy global elite cushioned from economic shocks. But Frum made clear that those at the top were to be spared from the shakedown:
FRUM: Well, that's maybe not the place to -- but look at the healthcare sector where you --
FREELAND: That's [not the place you should squeeze? I mean, aren't they the guys who are responsible for the financial crisis?"
But unperturbed, Frum went on to explicitly defend Gov. Scott Walker's vision of America (although acknowledging Walker's problems with "style," not substance). And what is that vision?
It's a country too bankrupt to provide for the basic needs of the vast majority: good public schools, public investments in roads, bridges, and Internet availability, quality healthcare for all, public job-creation programs, and protections against rapacious employers driving down wages with the threat of off-shoring more jobs.
GOVERNMENT OF, BY, AND FOR JOB CREATORS
Instead, Wisconsin and America must don what NY Times corporate globalization enthusiast Thomas Friedman calls the "golden straitjacket." This means offering yet more subsidies and incentives to the "job creators" in the richest 1 percent—despite the fact they have mainly demonstrated their job creation prowess in Mexico, China, and India.
With "pampered" public employees as a convenient diversion for those who have been stripped of healthcare and retirement benefits by corporations using their leverage over employees to the max, right-wing voices continue trying to keep the spotlight away from the role of Wall Street bankers and corporate CEOs in dis-investing in the productive base. (For example, Milwaukee lost 80 percent of its manufacturing jobs between 1977 and 2002, with more losses since then.)
Fortunately, people in Wisconsin and across the nation are gravitating toward the perspective articulated by Chrystia Freeland on GPS: "What we have seen in America in the past 35 years is the people at the very top taking a huge share of the increase in productivity of the nation and the middle class getting squeezed."
This is being reflected in poll after poll showing the Walker-Frum perspective being rejected. “Poll: Scott Walker losing P.R. battle” was the encouraging headline of Greg Sargent's recent blog.
Sargent noted Public Policy Polling’s latest survey showing the Wisconsin public supporting public employees’ collective bargaining rights over Walker’s union-eradication position by a 57%-37% margin. The PPP poll also showed Wisconsinites split 48%-48% on whether Gov. Walker should be recalled—after just months in office.
More surprising, a poll by the ultra-conservative Wisconsin Policy Research Institute, essentially a local spinoff of the Milwaukee-based Bradley Foundation, found that Walker's job performance got a 54% disapproval rating among Wisconsin adults, with 43% approving. Among independents, Walker fared even worse, earning a 57% disapproval grade.
Further, his attacks on Wisconsin's teachers and his proposed dis-investment in public education--he proposes reducing per-pupil spending in the four-county Milwaukee metro area by a whopping average of $598.64—is widely perceived as destructive to the state's economic future and parents' aspirations for their children.
LESSON FOR OBAMA, TOO
How can kids advance in a world where the shrinking supply of good jobs requires high-level skills when schools are losing equipment, facilities and many of the best teachers?
How can the state hope to prosper when the state's educational system--traditionally one of the nation's best, outside its pockets of concentrated poverty--is being hacked to pieces? It's no wonder, then, that Scott Walker has an incredible disapproval rating of 67% among parents with children in school.
Let's hope that Wisconsin's 14 fugitive Democratic senators—who are denying Walker a quorum necessary to ram through his union-destroying bill—will recognize that they and the public are winning and hold out for victory against Walker.
Let's also pray that President Obama and his advisors will recognize that the Republican plan for continued dis-investment in both our public institutions and our productive base is generating mass resistance.
President Obama has the chance to build upon this resistance--emanating from Wisconsin and building across the nation--to fight against federal cutbacks aimed at vital environmental and social protections, such as Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.
Comments
Note: Disqus 2012 is best viewed on an up to date browser. Click here for information. Instructions for how to sign up to comment can be viewed here. Our Comment Policy can be viewed here. Please follow the guidelines. Note to Readers: Spam Filter May Capture Legitimate Comments...
82 Comments so far
Show AllIn today's Star Tribune there's a story of a corporation moving a lot of jobs from Minnesota to Wisconsin. Perhaps this is because the Wisconsin republicans have just reduced taxes on corporations. We have state-wide and world-wide battles ongoing to attract corporations and the rich. The poor and the middle class must pay for this. This is one hell of a difficult fight that will likely never end, but giving up is not an option. Also, from the article's last sentence mentioning Medicare, we must fight to set up "death panels." Well, perhaps that is an unfortunate choice of phrase, but Medicare must increasingly be designed to pay for procedures that clearly have positive results, and not pay for those that do not.
And Freeland needs to stop beating around the bush with euphemisms like "the wealthy taking an increasing share", and "workers getting squeezed", and call it what it is:
THE GREATEST WEALTH TRANSFER SCHEME THE WORLD HAS EVER SEEN.
The Repubican Party plan, articulated by their C st. Family is that AMerica become like Indonesia, complete with a military dictator, like Suharto. The Family admires, hitler, stalin, mao, pinochet, just a few of the prominent hero's. They are exempt from all morality, amoral, but the Peasantry is subject to American Taliban sharia laws. This is the unofficial policy which is the real policy. Official policies are for PR propaganda.
Re: Greg R comment:
"Wisconsin Republicans have just reduced taxes on corporations."
From what I have been reading Gov. Walker has been promoting a deal whereby a company that moves to Wisconsin will not have to pay taxes for two years (please correct me if my source was incorrect). Isn't this a great idea? One state stealing jobs from another state without regard to whether they devastate communities in the victim state. Is this what we are being reduced to for jobs? Of course we don't want to talk about what to do about reversing the tide of jobs continuing to flow out of the country do we? That might upset the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the BIG corporations.
Get ready folks, we are in for a rough ride.
Investment capital and jobs will tend to flow to the uses and venues that offer the best risk/reward ratio. The more we haircut investment returns by taxes, union-friendly legislation, and other costs, the more we can expect jobs to flee.
That is not to say we shouldn't prevent abuses of workers or the environment, or impose taxes needed to support important governmental operations and services, just that we should be aware in doing so that there is a cost in jobs and economic growth.
If we have the will, there are quite an array of things we can do to limit that risk/reward ratio on capital and job flight out of the country and indeed the idiocy of states fighting each other for higher corporate profits.
Jobs will flee anyway. To a corporation, nothing matters but profits. There must be a brake on companies that are located in the United States to prevent them from outsourcing jobs.
Have you ever tried to catch water in a sieve? Short of a millitary rule government expropriating all the wealth in the United States and turning the country into a lurid reprise of the worst of the People's Republic of China (Great Leap Forward, Cultural Revolution, etc.), there is no constitutional way to put such a brake on. Punitive taxes will result in capital and jobs fleeing more strictly.
Here in WI, when marginal tax rates on the highest income brackets were raised, unemployment went down, when these rates were lowered, unemployment went up. Your logic seems to be contradicted by facts - pesky, isn't it?
The truth is that marginal income for the wealthy is not productive, while marginal income for everyone else is productive (it gets spent leading to further economic activity). We will reach a point where everything starts to fall apart - the question is - will our corporate masters let it get to that point? Are they that stupid?
Horace. do you have anything to back up your opinions?
Counterintuitive as it may seem, analysis of the 1930s suggests you are wrong. See:
Larry Beinhart "The Astonishing Stupidity of Not Raising Taxes On The Rich When Budgets Are Tight"
http://www.alternet.org/story/150099/the_astonishing_stupidity_of_not_raising_taxes_on_the_rich_when_budgets_are_tight?akid=6611.75346.08I_qR&rd=1&t=12
"When taxes were raised the economy improved. Every time. Deficits had no negative effect on the economy. Indeed, when deficits were at their highest, the economy boomed.
After spending was cut -- to balance the budget -- a recession immediately followed. When taxes were raised and government spending resumed -- with deficits -- that recession ended."
Remember, common sense tells us the earth is flat and the sun revolves around the earth.
See, e.g., Joint Economic Committee, Congress of the United States, "Report: The Reagan Tax Cuts: Lessons for Tax Reform" (July 1996), available at: http://www.house.gov/jec/fiscal/tx-grwth/reagtxct/reagtxct.htm
"High marginal tax rates discourage work effort, saving, and investment, and promote tax avoidance and tax evasion. A reduction in high marginal tax rates would boost long term economic growth, and reduce the attractiveness of tax shelters and other forms of tax avoidance. The economic benefits of ERTA were summarized by President Clinton's Council of Economic Advisers in 1994: 'It is undeniable that the sharp reduction in taxes in the early 1980s was a strong impetus to economic growth.' Unfortunately, the Council could not bring itself to acknowledge the counterproductive effects high marginal tax rates can have upon taxpayer behavior and tax avoidance activities.
"Since 1984 the JEC has provided factual information about the impact of the tax cuts of the 1980s. For example, for many years the JEC has published IRS data on federal tax payments of the top 1 percent, top 5 percent, top 10 percent, and other taxpayers. These data show that after the high marginal tax rates of 1981 were cut, tax payments and the share of the tax burden borne by the top 1 percent climbed sharply. For example, in 1981 the top 1 percent paid 17.6 percent of all personal income taxes, but by 1988 their share had jumped to 27.5 percent, a 10 percentage point increase. The graph below illustrates changes in the tax burden during this period."
. . .
"Several conclusions follow from these data. First of all, reduction in high marginal tax rates can induce taxpayers to lessen their reliance on tax shelters and tax avoidance, and expose more of their income to taxation. The result in this case was a 51 percent increase in real tax payments by the top one percent. Meanwhile, the tax rate reduction reduced the tax payments of middle class and poor taxpayers. The net effect was a marked shift in the tax burden toward the top 1 percent amounting to about 10 percentage points. Lower top marginal tax rates had encouraged these taxpayers to generate more taxable income."
At the same time that Reagan decreased marginal tax rates he increased SS income tax rates. In 1983 the Greenspan "goons" were tasked by Ronnie Raygun to "fix" (i.e. squeeze) Social Security beneficiaries.
"If the taxpayer's combined income (total of adjusted gross income, interest on tax-exempt bonds, and 50% of Social Security benefits and Tier I Railroad Retirement Benefits) exceeds a threshold amount ($25,000 for an individual, $32,000 for a married couple filing a joint return, and zero for a married person filing separately), the amount of benefits subject to income tax is the lesser of 50% of benefits or 50% of the excess of the taxpayer's combined income over the threshold amount. The additional income tax revenues resulting from this provision are transferred to the trust funds from which the corresponding benefits were paid. Effective for taxable years beginning after 1983."*
So everybody, even those with with big bucks (because we all get SS not just the poor), now pays some tax on a portion of their SS income. It wasn't the change in the marginal tax rate that caused this increase in percentage of tax revenue increase you suggest, Horace. The increase in tax revenue was exactly the amount of increase in the taxation of SS income. The real rich don't care that their SS income is taxed, that is piddly poo compared to their real income.
"Since the thresholds in the 1983 law were intentionally not indexed, over time, they would lose some of their threshold effect as increases in real income or in inflation would tend to pull more and more people into tax liability. Indeed, by the time the law was first amended in 1993, about 18% of Social Security beneficiaries had some tax liability (compared to about 10% when the law was originally enacted)."*
Source: *http://www.ssa.gov/history/taxationofbenefits.html
So what?
So SS taxation is where your increase in tax revenue percentage comes from not marginal tax rate decreases. The JEC report is disingenuous.
And who was the Joint Economic Committee, Congress of the United States, "Report: The Reagan Tax Cuts: Lessons for Tax Reform" (July 1996)?
104th congress:
January 3, 1995: Republicans gained control of both houses for the first time since the 1950s.
Duration: January 3, 1995 – January 3, 1997
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
President of the Senate: Al Gore (D)
President pro tempore of the Senate: Strom Thurmond (R)
Speaker of the House: Newt Gingrich (R)
Members: 100 Senators
435 Representatives
5 Non-voting members
Senate Majority: Republican Party
House Majority: Republican Party
Who was on the committee?
JOINT ECONOMIC COMMITTEE 104th congress:
CONNIE MACK, Florida, Chairman
WILLIAM V. ROTH, JR., Delaware
LARRY E. CRAIG, Idaho
ROBERT F. BENNETT, Utah
RICK SANTORUM, Pennsylvania
ROD GRAMS, Minnesota
JEFF BINGAMAN, New Mexico
PAUL S. SARBANES, Maryland
EDWARD M. KENNEDY, Massachusetts
CHARLES S. ROBB, Virginia JIM SAXTON, New Jersey, Vice Chairman
THOMAS W. EWING, Illinois
JACK QUINN, New York
DONALD A. MANZULLO, Illinois
MARK SANFORD, South Carolina
MAC THORNBERRY, Texas
FORTNEY PETE STARK, California
DAVID R. OBEY, Wisconsin
LEE H. HAMILTON, Indiana
KWEISI MFUME, Maryland
ROBERT N. MOTTICE, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR
BRIAN S. WESBURY, CHIEF ECONOMIST
LEE PRICE, MINORITY STAFF DIRECTOR
So when SS is 100% of your income, it matters how much of it is taxed. When SS is only .0001% of total income it doesn't even register a blimp on the radar.
http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/debt_deficit_history
Here's a good source for graphic data on historic US Debt/Deficit. Can't say I agree with the politics of the site but the data seem valid.
It was Clinton that levied taxes on 50% of social security benefits, not Reagoon.
That was in the 90's. Raygun did it first in the 80's. Horace is referring to a JEC report in the 90's about the effects of policies enacted in the Reagan years. It gave the 1990's Repuplican congress leverage for the additional tax levied during the Clinton years.
From the source mentioned earilier: (go to the site to read the whole article)
"(Modified for a taxpayer with combined income exceeding a secondary threshold amount ($34,000 for an individual, $44,000 for a married couple filing a joint return, and zero for a married person filing separately), so that the amount of benefits subject to income tax is increased to the sum of (1) the smaller of (a) $4,500 for an individual, $6,000 for a married couple filing a joint return, or zero for a married person filing separately, or (b) 50% of the benefit, plus (2) 85% of the excess of the taxpayer's combined income over the secondary threshold. However, no more than 85% of the benefit amount is subject to income tax. The additional income tax revenues resulting from the increase in the taxable percentage from 50% to 85% are transferred to the HI Trust Fund. Effective for taxable years beginning after 1993.)"
And
"Note that these were secondary thresholds and taxable percentages. Thus they did not increase the number of beneficiaries subject to taxation. Rather, they raised the potential tax liability for a subset of those already subject to the tax (those with higher earnings). Prior to this change, 81.8% of Social Security beneficiaries had no potential tax liability for their Social Security benefits. This was not changed, in any way, by the 1993 law. However, of the 18.2% already subject to potential taxation, 10.6% saw their potential tax liability increase, while the remaing 7.6% suffered no change.
The changes introduced by the 1993 amendments were designed to make the treatment of Social Security benefits more closely approximate private pensions--albeit, only for higher-income beneficiaries. To this end, the taxable percentage was set at 85% for these higher-income beneficiaries. New thresholds were added, but only to differentiate those subject to the higher percentage from those still subject to the 50% figure."
Horace, some points are missing from this analysis. First, since Reagan, that top 1% have been sucking nearly all the increased wealth into their pockets. If their share of taxes had not increased, that would have been a travesty. Secondly, "welfare" payments have increasingly gone to the rich and not to the poor, since Reagan. I think Will Rogers had something interesting to say about statistics.
Amusing and entertaining fiction. Obviously you do enjoy. In all good fairy tales it is the prince and princess who marry and live happily ever after while the poor turn out in droves to idolize and celebrate their ruler's inherited and unearned wealth while without question they joyfully live without voice under their benevolent control.
The fact that the top 1% now hold as much wealth as the bottom 90% combined belies the validity of your fairy tale to do anything but move wealth upward. The cold facts are, the experiment failed the people but has rewarded enormously the few while undermining the many. It is time to put the fairy tale to bed and awaken to the realities of life controlled by corporateers (the authors of your fairy tale).
So all would be well and the country would be fairer if the top 1%, 2%, 5%, or 10% made less money even if the bottom 90% stayed the same. How is that any different from the politics of resentment? Or are you just another simpleton Marxist tool?
Horace please tell me when it became a legal duty of corporations to maximize profits and shareholders equity? Of course, I understand the profit motive and to survive you need new investments and profits. However, what I learned in the 60's/70's about business and analysis of where to locate your business the first considerations were RAIL and AIR LOCATION to enable you to get in your inventory of material necessary to produce and then to ship the finished product around the country and world. Second, was the availability of an EDUCATED WORKFORCE. Third, were there GOOD SCHOOLS in the area to educate their workers children.
Economic Growth? Yes, CEO's and management pocketbooks and portfolios and corporate cash reserves, and banksters pocketbooks and portfolios have grown. Is that what you are meaning in economic growth? It used to be 50/1 now it is 1000/5000 to 1. That is not econimic growth Mr. Horace. China is having economic growth and is growing their middle class like we did in 40/50/60/70's. We did it in 90's also. China demands intellectual property rights when mfg. in China.
Corporations in my heyday valued the American worker an proclaimed that every worker was vital to the corporate goal no matter how low on the totem pole. They valued community. What happened?
The so called people of wisdom in business and movers and shakers of this country created globalization and it our brightness they did not protect the American worker nor the workers of the world. Do you think that was done by design by the powers of b's. We are moving fast to a fascist state.
I cannot answer the question exactly, but it has long been a tenet of corporate law (and law applying to other business entities) that the directors are trustees and owe a fiduciary duty of undivided loyalty to the owners, to prefer their interests over all others, and that translates into a duty of absolute loyalty to the shareholders and a duty of due care in exercising their corporate powers.
Corporate decisions such as where to locate plants and other facilities may in fact contribute to shareholder value. Notwithstanding happy talk to jolly up the workers, community leaders and others, there are no legal duties at all to communities, employees, unions or others except as imposed by statutory responsibilities or other law (e.g., the duty under the National Environmental Policy Act not to despoil the environment).
The duty of undivided loyalty to the shareholders means, among other things, maximizing shareholder value (which is not always identical to immediate profits but does mean value of the shares over some measuring period). In the famous case of Meinhard v. Salmon, Justice Benjamin Cardozo, then Chief Judge of the New York State Court of Appeals (and later appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court by President Roosevelt), explained this fiduciary duty as follows:
"Many forms of conduct permissible in a workaday world for those acting at arm's length, are forbidden to those bound by fiduciary ties. A trustee is held to something stricter than the morals of the market place. Not honesty alone, but the punctilio of an honor the most sensitive, is then the standard of behavior. As to this there has developed a tradition that is unbending and inveterate. Uncompromising rigidity has been the attitude of courts of equity when petitioned to undermine the rule of undivided loyalty by the 'disintegrating erosion' of particular exceptions (Wendt v. Fischer, 243 N. Y. 439, 444). Only thus has the level of conduct for fiduciaries been kept at a level higher than that trodden by the crowd. It will not consciously be lowered by any judgment of this court."
Meinhard v. Salmon, 249 NY 458, 464 (1928).
Greg seems to live in the magical realism of Econ 101.
Just as likely a reason could be, a years previous decision to automate the Wisconsin plant for production of an improvement of their product. Many factors were likely considered, long before Republican shock troops embarked on a "night of the long knives" on orders of the Koch class. With out interviewing the people involved, how is it possible to know that the schools and other public resources that contribute to the quality of life in Wisconsin were not also key among the factors that swayed the decision.
Governor Koch Walker is undermining those very things under the pretense of a budget crisis. I do agree that "We the People" can no longer afford certain things
and will have to sacrifice. We no longer can afford a "life blind economy" and we will need to sacrifice the "rich" by reducing their wealth to less dangerous levels.
I recommend the latter part of today's Democracy Now, where Naomi Klein reveals
http://www.democracynow.org/2011/3/9/my_fear_is_that_climate_change
that legislation in Ohio, to address the 'budget crisis', empowers the Governor the to APPOINT someone who will have the authority to dissolve local governments and turn over their operation to corporations. It's not exactly Huey Long's version of what the American version of fascism would look like but close; instead of a flag it comes wrapped in an economic crisis.
Yes, the thanks we get for unprecedented gains in productivity is the middle finger and further outsourcing of jobs.
How many decades of more of the same will it take for Americans to understand that to believe corporations will take their tax breaks and their bonuses and reinvest in America is to believe in a fairytale? They take everything we give and then take more. They give nothing back, and no matter how much we give them, it will never be enough.
If these corporations are citizens, they are guilty of treason. But if course, they get only the benefits of personhood and none of the responsibility. They have never understood reposibility anyway.
Frum and the rest if the chumps carrying water for these thieves can go to Hell. I'm not going to take a slap in the face and then willingly allow them to spit on me. I suspect a very large and growing number of people in this country feel exactly the same way. Walker's vision of America is not America at all, it's a dystopian nightmare for all but those to whom he grovels.
And incidentally, Obama hasn't shown the desire to fight anyone--except the base that put him in the Oval Office. I wouldn't expect him to side with us in this fight.
LIke Michael Moore was saying on Saturday that many of these "Wealthy Elites" have their private jets idling on the tarmac in case of an urgent need to escape. Do you remember a few years back reading about then President Bush buying a large track of land in Paraguay very close to an Airbase which also keeps US Military Planes. I have read about more recent land purchases down their. Makes you think that maybe some are getting ready to escape a very large revolt in the U.S.
'President Obama has the chance to build upon this resistance--emanating from Wisconsin and building across the nation--to fight against federal cutbacks aimed at vital environmental and social protections, such as Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.'
What complete naive drivel this is! Roger, you haven't a clue who Obama is serving! Obama isn't doing what his conscience is telling him, he is doing what the very top secret-elite mutlinational corporate fascist capitalists are telling him to do! That's why he has not kept his key pre-election promises and has done an about face and evolved the criminal Bush administrations policies!
Yes, Obama has been in office 777 days and not only has he not on any one of those days fought for any social or environmental issue, he has serially blamed the victims and rewarded the perpetrators of the greatest wealth transfer scheme the world has ever seen.
Looking at Obama's track record and ignoring his rhetoric during his decade in public office there is no evidence that he has a conscience. Obama is a successful corproate money magnet and will do whatever it takes to maintain that magnetism.
"there is no evidence that he has a conscience"
This is the key to understanding. Most normal working people assume that better human nature, our capacity for empathy and sympathy, and our conscious is relatively equal amongst our fellow beings. That simply is not and never has been true. Perhaps especially so in the U.S..
Every citizen of this country needs to understand that it was unconscionable authority the colonists revolted against. Every working person needs to cement in their brain how capitalism incentivizes sociopathic behavior. They need to learn to discern the difference between what is said and what is, to not disregard the lies and propaganda as simply politics but rather as a social disease. They need to come to grips with the FACT that the Commons and the General Welfare are the only true measure and source of prosperity for a people. That FACT is not about socialism, it is about humanity.
Suggested reading: The Sociopath Next Door by Martha Stout
eg: "It's nothing personal, it's just business."
"Can America make the adjustments it needs to face a future that is going to a lot less comfortable ….than the recent past has been?" declared influential right-wing commentator David Frum."
So what uncomfortable adjustments is Mr Frum and his rich buddies making to face the new American future? Just askin. Same thing I would think a REAL reporter would do too, if we had any, any more.
Frum and his cronies are elevating their comfort levels exponentially at the expense of those of us who they demand become less comfortable.
With each passing day I trip over more homeless people lying on the sidewalk on my way to work. We are not talking comfort, Frum, we are talking survival.
'...let's also pray that Obama.....' The author is reduced to this: prayer! The only way we are going to get Obama to do anything for the enemies of his base (his base being Wall Street) is to stop praying, ditch the Democrat Party, and head for our own Tahrir Squares. Falling for the 'lesser of the two evils' will get us more evil. Obama has the same thing in store for the Working Class (known in the USA as the 'Middle' Class) as he has for the torture victims in Guantanamo, more trials and tribulations.
Yeah, I noticed that 'pray' thing.
... Does this mean we've agreed to finally bury the desiccated corpse of 'hope' that O'bummer still drags around like a kid with a broken toy?
I can't believe that Frum actually used the word, "shakedown." Was that a Freudian slip, or what? Or not, perhaps... The richest one or two percent are flat-ass robbing the rest of us blind, and bragging about the theft. On Wisconsin, viva la revolucion!
I don't think it was a slip. These bastards are getting more and more brazen when speaking about their anti-democratic agenda. And why not? They have been getting away with EVERYTHING for decades. They hate democracy and believe that the masses are stupid, and only they should have the 'right' to rule the world. But, I tend to agree with what Michael Moore recently said... they have over played their hand.
The chances that President Obama will solidly come out in favor of the working class in this country are slim to none considering the fact that the alleged agent of hope and change is an agent of hope for the plutocrats of this country. Unfortunately the author of this article does not seem to understand that Obama is a Republican disguised as a Democrat and/or a politician who cares not a whit for the concerns of the American people.
Indeed.
It's up to us. Dreaming and praying are much more effective when paired with wise strategy and action.
Michael Moore said this over the weekend in Madison: "The country is not broke - the only thing that's broke is the moral compass of the rulers - and we aim to fix that compass and steer this ship ourselves from this point on."
No more hoping and praying to leaders who have morally rotten agendas.... We can do this ourselves.... On Wisconsin!
quote: We can no longer live in a society where the [ .................. ] are the haves and taxpayers who foot the bills are the have-nots.
Fill in the blank... who would've thunk public employees?
I cannot imagine very many folks (excepting maybe those on welfare) referring to public employees as the "haves," especially in the richest most prosperous nation ever. How many luxury cars, homes, yachts, jets do those "employees" own anyhow? They must have fantastic investment portfolios! Yet, can you appreciate just how humane and altruistic those wonderful people are, with all they have, their financial independence, they choose to get up every day and serve those less fortunate. Wow! Now that's trickle down - that's giving back for sure.
Realistically though, with the systematic diminishment of wages and benefits for the working class (i.e. actual taxpayers), and the elite paying less and less in both wages and taxes, our communities certainly can't afford much.
No, we certainly cannot afford much...
"Corporate Profits Were the Highest on Record Last Quarter"
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/24/business/economy/24econ.html
Hope and prayers !!! For fuck sake !!!
Mr. Bybee, I want some of what you're smoking - it seems to have the ability to completely alter reality. Dream on; pray till your knuckles bleed.
I'm not so sure this republic will survive until the 2012 election, but if it does the best thing that could happen is the largest electoral defeat of an incumbent U.S. president in history. But of course it will be too late by then. It was already too late in 2000.
We will learn what sort of hell our governor has in store for Pennsylvania in exactly 29 minutes...
Fire the teachers...
Let the poor freeze, starve, and die of the to inability to get medical care.
End socialist public transit - end this wasteful bloated scam that only retards, cripples and black people use...
let the cities decay - they are full of nothing but liberals, faggots, black poeple and other assorted derelicts...
and most of all...
DRILL BABY DRILL!
"Let's also pray that President Obama and his advisers will recognize that the Republican plan for continued dis-investment in both our public institutions and our productive base is generating mass resistance."
It is not just a Republican plan.
President Obama along with his advisers are complicit in the problem that those who believe in social equity and human rights face. President Obama has used his political capital to advance the agenda of the global oligarchy of whom Bill Gates, the Koch suckers and those manicured schmucks on Wall Street are a part of. As one Madison demonstrator reminded me, President Obama works for them. They sign his pay check. Brand Obama was designed to last just long enough for the robbed class to let down their guard while robber class cleaned out the national treasury and locked us into the vault to assure that resistance to their "new world order" would be contained.
But thanks to Al Jazeera and other independent media like Democracy Now people were able to witness and be inspired by the heroic struggle of the Tunisian and Egyptian peoples in their non-violent rejection of their U.S. supported dictators. It was just the kind of positive role model that the ruling class normalizing media distorts if it cant be suppressed because it is contagious.
Obama is more likely to use his recognition of the long over due "mass resistance" that has broken out in the Madison to declare a state of emergency if it spreads to a General Strike and put into use the dictatorial powers, he has refused to eliminate via Executive Order, that are his by mere pronouncement under the Patriot Act.
The polls are clear as to what the public wants from government; national health care, an end to the "wars with out end" economic policy of the ruling class,
an end to corporate and financial class impunity for their crimes and real action to limit the climate catastrophe in progress. A number of people in Madison also expressed outrage at the corporate news distortion of the events that they were seeing first hand. Broadcasting lies is a "free speech" right in the United States according to the Supreme Court but access to the , at least for the moment, still Public's airwaves is not. If Obama was about recognition of "reality" he would start by making the FCC respond to the needs of "citizens" instead of allowing it to continue to be an agent of Corporate control of public consciousness.
"Let's also pray that President Obama and his advisors"...unbelievably pathetic... norman finkelstein pegs oourprez as a "pathological narcissist"
Norman is great. With Howard Zinn gone, and Noam Chomsky getting old, perhaps Norman can pick up their mantles.
Welcome to the Corporate Police State of America.
These "poor" rich people fail to recognize that THEY also need paved roads, street lights, traffic signals/signs too. Where do they think those things come from? It isn't magic. I'm sick of hearing them talk about what they "can't afford."
I disagree with all of the anti-Obama comments. I think President Obama has put forth his wishes, the formerly-Democratic Congress did not pass the bills he wanted, but watered them down ~ who knew there were so many CONSERVATIVE DEMOCRATS!???? And those Dems were replaced with VERY CONSERVATIVE Republicans. I also feel that possibly Mr. Obama is feeling the pressure of being the most-threatened President we have ever had in the White House. Threatened not just for himself, but for his family. Are we so naive that we really believe he'll be allowed to live if he bucks the extremely wealthy folks "behind the scenes" who REALLY run the country and call all the shots? (No pun intended by the word "shots," but look at what happened to President Kennedy; and the assassination, at least of his character, to President Clinton!) Anyone who tries to make REAL REFORM has a steep price to pay. And though he might not fear for himself, I'm sure he worries about his family. Personally, I don't want to even think about his girls growing up without their very intelligent, idealistic father who HAS TRIED TO bring about the CHANGE we have so long begged for. But we gotta just "Keep on keepin' on," as my bro says, "otherwise the bad guys win." God bless our President. I pray God keeps him safe everyday. And damn those who wish him ill!
Your bro is WRONG. If we keep on keepin' on, "THEY" win. oblahblah and his family are no more important than anybody else and he chose to put himself (and his family) in this position.