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Think US Is Moving Far Left? That Terrain's Not Even Close
The infernal machinery of reactionary America -- the editorial page of The Wall Street Journal and its animatronics version on Fox News, The Weekly Standard, the nasal intellects of talk radio like Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity -- would have you believe that Barack Obama's presidency will be a radical break from right-leaning America. If only. Here's what radical would look like.
Health care. Enough tinkering in fear of universal health care. The single-greatest obstacle to universal and affordable care is the insurance industry. Eliminate its role in health. It's a disease whose only effective cure is a single-payer system such as Medicare. Its overhead is cheaper than private-sector insurance. Its coverage is universal. The care it enables is private and up to individual choice. I'd much rather pay my $5,000-a-year premiums in the form of a national health tax supporting a system like that than the capricious system in place now. With a national system, I'd have the satisfaction of knowing that 71 million uninsured and underinsured fellow-Americans are covered. Bonus radicalism: End for-profit hospitals.
Taxes. You know you're in a Salvador Dali world when the Democratic presidential candidates pretend $200,000 earners are middle class and their Republican mirrors evoke the Boston Tea Party when you propose raising taxes a miserable 3 percentage points on people making more than $250,000. "Taxes are what we pay for a civilized society," in Oliver Wendell Holmes' words. We just haven't been paying them much for the past 28 years, which explains why we've become so uncivilized (shoddy health care, shoddy schools, shoddy roads). So: Return marginal tax rates -- all rates -- to their Clinton-era levels. Forget about a middle--class tax cut. I don't make that much money, but I'm embarrassed, for my children's future especially, at how little federal taxes I pay, though the results are all around me. Capital gains and dividend income? Tax it at the same rate as all other income. Bonus radicalism: End the handout known as the mortgage-interest deduction except for low-income first-time homebuyers.
Energy. Thomas Friedman's serial analogies are murder on the English language, but he still has brilliant ideas. The $1-a-gallon federal surtax on gas was one of them -- a great idea in the 1990s, still a great idea today no matter what the price of gas is. If we want the double-bang of an incentive to drive less, energize the alternative-energy sector and finance it, there's no fairer, quicker way than a gas surtax. Bonus radicalism: An extra 25-cents-per-gallon tax dedicated exclusively to new mass-transit projects such as light rail and bullet trains. (Gas prices are ready to fall below $2 per gallon, so if we could put up with $4.50 per gallon a month ago, we can put $3.25 per gallon to good use before the next shock).
Star wars. After 25 years, $160 billion and barely a couple of pretend-success tests, the Reagan-inspired missile-defense system is still doddering on at $10 billion a year. Time to junk it, along with the $380-million-a-plane F-22 Raptor fighter program, developed more than two decades ago to fight ghosts once known as Soviets. Bonus radicalism: Welcome gays in the military.
Immigration: U.S. Rep. Christopher Shays, the Connecticut Republican, was unfortunately defeated two weeks ago. His "blue card" idea shouldn't be: A "blue card" to every illegal immigrant willing to work and pay taxes, as a first step to a Green Card -- and citizenship. It's not amnesty. It's Americanism at its best. Bonus radicalism: Mr. Obama, tear down that wall going up along the U.S.-Mexico border.
Domestic security. Close the Department of Homeland Security, the Bush administration's single-biggest, most useless and abusive (of dollars and liberties) expansion of government since Harry Truman signed the equally toxic National Security Act of 1947. Bonus radicalism: Abolish the CIA -- or at least half of those 18 spy agencies in the country's $40-billion-a-year "intelligence community."
Iraq and Afghanistan. Quit fantasizing that the "surge" did more than sedate loathing -- among Iraqis or toward Americans -- or that it could be applied to Afghanistan. It's not that Iraqis and Afghans can't make peace, but they won't as long as foreign powers muck it up for them. Withdraw troops from both, replace them with plenty of economic aid and a few special forces focused exclusively on al-Qaida. The next war, anyway, is in Pakistan. Bonus radicalism: Withdraw all remaining 35,000 to 45,000 U.S. troops from Europe. Time to let those Europeans carry their own weight.
That would be radical, at least relative to the fearful, self-serving conservatism of the past three decades. In reality, it's only mildly liberal -- and unlike anything Obama is proposing. As I said: If only.
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51 Comments so far
Show AllThat was very interesting. Did you take it? Did it give you two figures +or-?
Left (-3.0) Libertarian (-7.8).
Forgot to put the figures in. Left (-4.00)
Libertarian (-3.28)
Left (-8.38) Libertarian (-7.23), but my excuse is that I'm Canadian.
i got -9.00 and -5.59.
Yep.
-10.0, -9.13
The national obsession with test-taking to determine what personality one has, what one's political label is or ought to be, etc., etc., is one of the symptoms of the decay of thinking.
Did you ever think it might be just fun?
Thing always says I'm Libertarian even though I completely reject half of their core philosophy and most of their economic ideology.
It needs much more granularity to be accurate.
Jeez, I'm right up there with Margaret Thatcher? Oops, nope, I was looking at it upside-down.
Mahatma, my man...
"All Nature's difference keeps all Nature's peace." Alexander Pope
REDBAITING REVIVED
"The...machinery of reactionary America...would have you believe that Barack Obama's presidency will be a radical break from right-leaning America."
Yup, that's the right wing strategy: after decades of naked right wing rule and relentless right wing legislation - led by Republicans, but aided and abbetted by liberals - the right is juicing up the hysterical denunciation machine: shrieking 'a liberal is a closet commie' at the possibility of a minute reversal of right wing direction.
Unfortunately, that rhetoric works on uneducated or illiterate or politically optimized childlike minds of the American public.
Americans are not trained to think for themselves. The real message most people get and understand is: "shut up and row."
Sioux Rose
ABRAMAWICZ: Sort of rhetorical question: Given the "brand indoctrination" (a/k/a programming so long at work in the U.S.) I wonder if the same policies were actually implemented by either one, with JUST the NAME Republican/conservative or Democrat/Liberal applied, if people would vote according NOT to what's at stake, but just the label? This would be a fascinating (political Pavlov) experiment to enact. (Some could argue its evidence is already in full sight given the polls on the public's lack of support for the Iraqi war, and wish for a single payer health plan, etc.)
bro, got the gift of gab, godbless
On Taxes: "Capital gains and dividend income? Tax it at the same rate as all other income."
I would support a lowered capital gains tax for assets held MORE than 5 years, with another break at 10 years. Short-term thinking is the bane of our economic existence. Some exemption for assets like family farms is also important, to help maintain social stability.
He should also have mentioned a Tobin tax, a tiny percentage on all security transactions. It would raise a tremendous amount of money while discouraging speculation and day trading. This is the way to make Wall St. pay for the bailout that shouldn't have happened.
Oregoncharles
Yeah, the Tobin tax would work if everyone agreed to implement it. How about something that could work with trading in the Markets?
Every stock transaction would pay .25% on each stock traded. I hear that this would bring in billions of dollars a year, and only tax the thiefs aka the Market.
If we are going to socialize the losses on Wall Street, they should pay up front.
TAXING STOCK TRANSACTIONS TO PAY FOR CRISIS - LINK
hoytdouglas November 16th, 2008 3:08 pm
"Every stock transaction would pay .25% on each stock traded. I hear that this would bring in billions of dollars a year, and only tax the thiefs aka the Market."
Yup - should be and can be on the table still, via pressure on president elect. (Whether it makes it to table depends on whether Obama support is the one-shot act of an anti-bush reaction, or can build into a movement that goes beyond him.) See Chuck Collins' list of ways Wall Street can pay to clean up its mess:
"Institute a Financial Transactions Tax. Congress should levy a tax on financial transactions such as sale and purchase of stock and more exotic transactions such as credit default swaps, options, and futures. The UK has a modest financial transaction tax of 0.25 percent, a penny on every $4 invested. This is negligible for a long-term investor, but imposes a cost on the fast-buck flippers. Estimated annual revenue: $100 billion."
MORE:
Tax the Speculators
A Fair Plan to Pay for Economic Recovery
by Chuck Collins
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2008/09/19-3
Sioux Rose
OREGON CHARLES: These are excellent selections. Use the website posted on one of CD threads today to send this to OBAMA!
Energy:
Why restrict yourself to taxing gas? Just to finance mass transit, yes, but the the tax should be on fossil carbon as such, by the pound. The worst offender in global heating is coal, not oil. And you don't want to tax current-account fuels like wood or even ethanol, assuming that can be gotten from better sources than corn. Then dedicate the revenue to sustainability and reversing our global fever. To be progressive, part of it would have to be returned to low-income people, who would be the hardest hit by such a tax.
Oregoncharles
Bonus Radicalism:
End the Empire, close our foreign bases and bring all occupying forces home. The savings would be enormous: there are something well over 700 foreign military bases. (Nobody seems to know the real number, probably including the Pentagon.)
Has anyone noticed that I'm channelling Green Party principles, except for the first bit about long-term capital gains - I think that's just me.
Oregoncharles
Of course progressives should not buy into the right's ridiculous mantra that "the US is a center-right nation." But it should be recognized as equally preposterous the statement that "the US is a center-left nation." The US is a center-stupid nation, with voters becoming more clueless all the time (at least for the past few decades). The Republicans will continue losing elections only until they figure out a new strategy to get most of the voters to choose candidates that advocate policies that are the most damaging to the interests of the great majority, i.e. typical Republican candidates. And they will figure it out, and fairly soon, unless we have some completely unexpected dramatic cultural shift, which progressives should work for, but not with any illusions.
Sioux Rose
KIVALS: With right wing radio stations attracting an unfortunate number of listeners, and sporting events filling stadiums, and right wing megachurches still full... the ways and means to induce stupidity, conformity, and the types of rules so relished by authoritarian personality types, if these 3 diverse venues repeatedly tell their viewers/guests/listeners/supporters ANYTHING it will be believed by the vast majority in their ranks. The ways and means to manufacture consent are well in place, my friend... and when the "true believers" actually define "the reality-based community" as outside their ilk, then the once therapeutic adage "that the truth shall set them free" no longer applies.
Hi Sioux Rose,
And don't forget the right-wing Internet sites popping up as well as right-wing television networks. When I am honest with myself, I am very pessimistic about the future of the US, though not necessarily about the future of humanity. I really believe that as long as the US does not start a nuclear war, the human race may have a decent chance of coming through the other end of these trying times. But for the US, I see very dark times ahead, with further economic and social deterioration and even collapse. I see the US as having made choices that lead to inevitable disaster, and the best one can hope for is that people in other nations do not follow the US over the cliff.
"And don't forget the right-wing Internet sites popping up as well as right-wing television networks."
They've always popped up before in the past. Of course the rightwing will now find ways to make use of the Internet just like they did with television in the 1970s after JFK succeeded in using the telly to his advantage in 1960.
The only thing that hasn't changed is the fact that the left and even the moderates have yet to make use of local elections to turn out better pols so that maybe Washington wouldn't be controlled by rightwing cronies in both parties. If you want to end the dark times and put some light into your life, try duking it out on the local and state level elections like I do. If you don't vote there, you have no business telling Washington what to do because voter apathy on local and state levels has always made a hugs difference, and always will.
I vote in all the elections, but "duking" it out where I live would be pointless and could end up being a bit too literal for comfort. I live in a small community outside of Austin which is about 20 percent progressive (virtually zero mainstream Democrats), 20 percent libertarian, and 60 percent rock solid conservative. There is not much hope for electoral progress there.
The only reason the place where you live in is nowhere close to progressive is because the progressive/liberal movement doesn't focus on those areas. You have to duke it out issue after issue. Aunt Sally may not like abortion but she sure as hell doesn't appreciate getting paid less for the same job her male co-worker is doing. Where do you think politicians in Washington come from? They come from their local districts. If you insist that people will stay "conservative" and let it happen, then don't expect improvements but more failures. Go meet people in your area which share at least something progressive with you and learn to socialize. Until more people who claim to be liberal and progressive do that, nothing's going to change and all you'll end up with is more of the same. Texas may have been historically "conservative" but that doesn't always have to be that way. Why not reach out to the libertarians on civil liberties issues and reframe the issues with so-called "conservatives" ? If you people aren't going to duke it out on the local and state levels, then all you can expect is more bullshit in Washington and then you have no right to complain about it. I'm sorry if I sound a bit too rough but face it honey. It all starts local and builds up from there. That's how Corporate America won.
Sioux Rose
Good morning, Kivals. Yes, tumultuous times are indicated in the same way that the car traveling at 60 MPH suddenly applies the brakes, but continues according to the momentum already put into motion. Since the US was given so much in the way of natural resources, acreage, beauty, and diversity... its USE of these items to build up militarism as a club with which to bludgeon other lands has not merited much in the way of positive karmic brownie points. ALL nations will be involved with the growing pains, the Age phase transition already in progress; but the US, as proclaimed leader of the western world had/has an obligation to act accordingly. By alloting homage to Mars rules and promoting militarism as its chief ideal (seen all too ostensibly in WHERE the treasury allocates funding) its hubris will be curbed by those higher forces designed for the task. Besides Mars/war, mammon (materialism/capitalism without conscience) holds high esteem and it will be there through the fallen economy that the lessons become clear. Those who know how to live on little and find pleasure in small things are rich whether they recognize it or not. Those who have much are often unsated due to a sickness of soul. Perhaps therapy awaits them... therapy of the cosmic sort.
More radicalness: close the 700+ military bases and golf resorts worldwide, sell/lease the assets, then cancel as many "private" military contracts as possible and have the men and women from those closed bases and resorts do the work Halliburton and the rest aren't actually doing, or doing poorly.
Cancel all mercenary contracts, write laws prohibiting the use of tax dollars to hire private armies.
No more off-shore tax shelters. Period.
Collect all outstanding oil lease royalties, severe penalties for all who refuse to cough up what's owed.
Super-radical: salary caps for ALL Americans. $50 million/year. If ya can't live on that, you receive free therapy. All earnings above that must be re-invested one way or the other.
Really super radical: end the "war on drugs," free all non-violent drug offenders, unleash law enforcement upon white-collar criminals and politicians.
Hey - fun to dream radical dreams, right?
Sioux Rose
FRANK: Thanks for mentioning those bases. I would have brought up this fiscal hole in the U.S. fabric had you not done so.
I wonder CD friends, could a modest marijuana surtax cover our national debt?
A big fat NO. On the other hand, cutting back on wasteful military spending, tax breaks for the wealthy elite and multinationals along with cutting down on tax loopholes for both groups, not bailing out Wall $treet, and cutting down those "free" trade scams will cover our national debts just fine, thank you.
Woman, I'm leaving to go trim for a few days tomorrow, for great NorCal growers; you propose bringing the fed into our worlds?
NO. WE TAX ASTROLOGIST PALM READING CRYSTAL BALL GAZERS.
Stay out of our world.
Sorry to see that you killed off your alter ego trans. I had some of the best belly laughs in a long time.
You go, girl!
Nice thought. Obama is the type who could put something like that forward, coupled with the obvious need to decriminalize that which is not criminal.
Not because it is the "correct" or "just" thing to do.
Because it is just so much more "bread to masses" to keep all of you fat, dumb, wasted, and happy. Not to mention apathetically lethargic in the face of the actions that need to be taken....many yesterdays ago.
You made me laugh, for once, though. Thanks.
Don't close the golf courses; let Homeless People camp and live on them.
Weather Report.
People don't move politically because they themselves will it, but because historical developments force a choice between the available routes in the social & political structure of the time. Voluntarists believe that hanging up a series of positions and then voting on those is the essence of democracy; but it is NOT. Changes, even revolutionary ones, are taken not by announced goals but by seizing the moment to alter procedures & political dynamics. Unfortunately, anglo culture is notoriously literal & singularly bad at assessing symptoms & the moves necessary to begin a general cure. Bringing down the fever is the first step, before any sort of operation, much less radical surgery, can be undertaken.
I would prefer that tax rates go back to those of the Eisenhower years rather than the Clinton years.
Amen, in the Eisenhower years our taxes paid for the Second World War AND rebuilt Europe.
How will our generations yet umborn pay for this catastrophy? Slavery?
You are already slaves.
Slaves to a criminal system operated by and for the interests of corporate criminals around the planet.
You have been for sometime now. Witness all the hurrahs for a black man who is, as is amply proven by his own voting record on the issues, nothing more than a black prostitute for hire to the interests of his and McCains masters, the criminal cabal of mass murdering thieves for profit that must be eliminated before anything remotedly resembling peace is going to appear on this planet.
All of you remind me so much of those who called themselves Jews in the 30´s and early 40´s. Just keep talking, keep talking, keep talking, all the way to the ... showers.
Any fool knows one cannot have an honest dialogue with mass murdering criminals and their lackies.
"Domestic security. Close the Department of Homeland Security,"
INS goes to State, CoastGuard to DoT, Border Patrol to DoJ, FEMA should become a cabinet-level agency of it's own. TSA is so worthless, it's tempting to say Hellwithit, let the Airlines and Airports take care of security and fire all these clowns they've got now. Maybe the Air Travel industry will rebound.
"Bonus radicalism: Abolish the CIA -- or at least half of those 18 spy agencies in the country's $40-billion-a-year "intelligence community."
At least remove the operations side. Intelligence gathering and analysis is fine, in fact without it, we're blind. As soon as there are operations imperatives attached, the information gets distorted. And so does our Foreign Policy.
John F. Butterfield:
As a European, I have no idea what Eisenhower taxes were like. But that that crumbling country of yours somehow thinks that personal greed is a virtue and taxes - i.e. your membership dues for being part of a community - are evil because they might prevent you and your wife from amassing even more useless and tasteless junk (don't protest, I've amply seen how Americans spend their money), that's one lesson I learned particularly in the America that is between the coasts. Which is the same America that's so much against taxes.
So can I take it that Eisenhower's taxes were even lower than the Clinton administration's or am I being unfair to you and were they actually higher?
Considering the Third World state of American roads, planes, (mostly non-existent) passenger trains, schools, the state of health insurance: Your taxes must be far too low. It's embarrassing.
Or some rich Americans are not paying their dues.
Araquin said:
"Your taxes must be far too low...Or some rich Americans are not paying their dues."
You are right that many Americans think that personal greed is a virtue; however, it is not just Americans thinking that way. Please be reminded that some European countries are helping rich Americans hide their dues with the "privacy" banking laws they've established. To my knowledge, we also have them here in America for foreigners who deposit money in American banks.
Pretty nice deal all around for the wealthy to avoid paying their fair share!
What is this?
McCain attacks Obama for being too radical.
The author attacks Obama for not being radical enough.
You just can't please everyone can you?
No, Obama isn't perfect, but he is the best President we've ever had.
Josephine Ortez
Dear JoePlumber - Let me bring you to present reality. Obama is NOT President yet.
He is the President-Elect. He will take the oath of office on Jan 20 2009.
I think you need to wait and see what Obama does before you call him our best President. He certainly has not been our best presidential candidate ever. All he did was win an election that was the Democrats to lose - which they almost did.
Progressives and "single issue" activists spend a life-time promoting one or two "band aids" to somehow fix a key "problem". Lists of issues, such as done here, can be created that might "fix" a few problems. Progressive reformers, forever defenders of capitalism, refuse to consider that U.S. capitalism, like the Democratic party, is incapable of reform. Entire lists of "reforms", even if by some miracle were carried out, would not "fix" unending problems caused by gangster capitalism.
The problems listed above are intrinsic to capitalism. Corporate capitalism has made the Democratic Party and Obama the new care-takers of corporate capitalist interests and agendas, foreign and domestic. The federal government is "of, by and for" capitalist profits. The capitalist system of economics must be ended to even address, let alone solve these social and economic problems intrinsic with capitalism.
The capitalist economy is based on the maximization of profit for 1 to 5% of millionaires and billionaires individuals and corporations. The living standards of the rest of society, in decline for the last 30 years, is now increasingly impoverished and bankrupt. The economy needs to be transitioned to a socialist economy to serve the economic needs of all the people.
The transition to socialism is essential to end global warming, end wars for resources and profit, end the privatization and destruction of the social infrastructure (public schools, public health, potable water, affordable housing, affordable and healthy food, etc.). The destruction of the "commonwealth" is now being carried out to the profit of a few at the expense of the majority of people, the working people of this country.
Socialism is essential for human survival. A mere comment here cannot convey this understanding. You will never hear about this fact of life in progressive media (Democracy Now!, Pacifica radio,) and certainly not from corporate controlled mass-media or NPR (National Privatized Radio).
Please check out the World Socialist Web Site: http://www.wsws.org. WSWS, on-line for over ten years and six days a week, provides readers an internationalist and socialist perspective on current affairs.
The capitalist system HAS ALREADY ENDED. It ended before our eyes.
You don't even really have to read between the lines in the Economist and the Financial Times to grasp the state of pure disbelief of the writers. Even though they aren't writing "Oh well, now we all have to be socialists," the retreat has been sounded: 'What we thought would work failed on a grand scale.'
The American working people won't be won with sloganeering or analysis, but they are already being won as they express disgust with the perks being handed out as part of the bailout. They are becoming socialists WITHOUT KNOWING IT, and without even wanting it.
In "Doctor Zhivago," Lara tells her fiancé Pavel, "They don't WANT a revolution." Pavel answers, "Yes they do. They don't know it yet, but that's what they want."
It will not be a textbook step-by-step easily labeled Revolution; but it has already started, and will continue to gain speed with every round of layoffs. Every rightwing vote against bailing out an industry will be seen as further demonstrating that the right hates the working people; and every little goody that the investors & managers seize for themselves will speak much more immediately to all the victims of capitalism than any amount of pamphleteering or speechifying.
ABSOLUTELY!
(I would add: apologize, first to Fidel and the Cuban people for the assassination attempts, terrorism, attempted invasions, subversion of their sovereignty, criminal embargoes of humanitarian supplies, etc., etc.; then to the rest of the Americas for several hundred years of treating it as our doormat; then to the Middle East and esp. the Palestinians (just before telling Israel all aid is withheld until every last settlement is abandoned and every last inch of "the wall" is destroyed); and then to the rest of the world for our hubris, imperialist ambitions, and plain ol' bad manners.)
"no gods, no masters" --m. sanger
If that's radical left then I'm Ghengis Khan.
Well, I took a shot at it and came out:
Economic Left/Right -6.38
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian -4.97
On the graph, that puts me about between Mandela and the Dali Lama.
I'm not sure of the significance of this, but I really wish that all world "leaders" would govern based upon empathy, common sense, and the rediscovery of the "Golden Rule" instead of acting like kindergartners fighting over who gets the kitty poop they found in the sandbox.
You know the SDS'rs have taken over when:
The United States is allowed to have no more than 50 nuclear weapons
We cut our aircraft carrier groups to five instead of 22
Fighter pilots are obsolete. From now on, nothing but drones
The vast majority of the defense budget goes to developing peacekeeping operations and disaster assistance worldwide, to be used only under the auspices of the United Nations
The International Criminal Court is the law of the land, and the President of the United States is subject to prosecution if he screws up that way.
These will do for a start.
Any other ideas?