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Beyond Hope: Where We Go After the Budget Deal Disaster?
I’ve been walking around in state of disbelief since hearing about the 11th hour budget deal reached between the White House and Congressional Republicans. It feels like a transformative moment in our history, the economic equivalent of December 6, 1941 or August 6, 1945.
(Photo by All About George under a Creative Commons License.)
Being on the road, in meetings and interviews from breakfast to bedtime, I am out of touch with all the commentary in the media and the Internet. The deal comes up in conversation, but addressed more with a grimace and a shake of the head than with a detailed discussion.
That’s a good thing, right? It shows that we’re not dwelling on our losses. That life goes one, even after the seeming disembowelment of social programs that the middle class and poor depend upon.
Or is it a good thing? Are the American people blithely making the best of this, causing no fuss, because we no longer can imagine anything other than giving corporations and the richer-than-rich one-percent everything they demand?
I still wonder, over and over, how this happened despite the fact that countless opinion polls—and even the bi-partisan Gang of Six—voiced support for a more equitable solution to the budget crisis. The Democrats still control the White House and the Senate, yet they surrendered without much of a fight to a small band of Tea Party zealots in the House of Representatives.
I can’t help but think the Democratic party resembles a scrappy high school football squad going up against the Pittsburgh Steelers. The Republicans, it appears, simply play the game better. Coach Obama’s team looks feeble on the playing fields of Washington.
But perhaps it’s an unfair fight in a different way. Right-wing Republicans—which today includes nearly all GOP officeholders, not just newly minted Tea Party advocates—hate the idea of government, although not the actual government of the Pentagon, the drug war, the security state and corporate subsidies. They also care little about the struggles of the poor and middle-class. So any government shutdown or slowdown suits their purposes. They lose little by pushing things over the brink.
Democrats, on the other hand, are hamstrung by their genuine interest in good governance and concern about what pain a shutdown would inflict on the less fortunate—which every year describes a bigger-and-bigger share of Americans.
A grim fairytale scenario could help explain what just happened. Imagine a violent fight over a small child—with the parents on one side and a cold-blooded babysnatcher on the other. The snatcher will take far greater risks to win the battle because he doesn’t care what happens to the innocent kid.
Where Is the Hope?
By nature and professional preference, I’m an optimist. It seems to me that sending out messages of gloom is not an effective way of inspiring people to believe they have the power to rise up and reform the system.
So I still hold hope that this political moment will spark a massive populist reaction over the next 16 months against the forces of greed that highjacked our nation. With a resounding victory in 2012, maybe Obama can finally fulfill his campaign promise of “Yes, we can.” So I will certainly work for the electoral repudiation of politicians who believe that slashing social programs is preferable to stopping corporate give-aways, raising taxes on million-dollar earners, and trimming the oceans of fat in the Pentagon budget.
But I’m not putting all my eggs in that basket. No way. Remember 2010, 2004, 2002 and 2000 (even though it was stolen), not to mention 1994, 1988, 1984 and 1980.
We can’t focus exclusively on the next election. This moment is also a time to look deeper, to acknowledge that the conventional liberal agenda does not go far enough to capture the hearts of everyday Americans. This is a time in history to explore bold ideas and craft new strategies. If the Tea Party taught us anything about the game of politics, it’s that vocal passion trumps reticent namby-pambyism.
What’s a new banner under which Americans of all backgrounds could work together to create a better future for their kids—and everyone else’s kids? How do we forge a political movement that stresses the importance of the we over the me?
As Paul Wellstone used to say, “We all do better when we all do better.” That’s the spirit of the commons, which I believe lies at the core of our best hope for the future.
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48 Comments so far
Show AllGood picture of the Three Stooges.
Whoa, don't debase the Stooges by comparing them with those evil bastards. The Stooges brought laughter and joy to millions around the world. The trio shown on screen bring only war and misery.
Obama--No He Can't
"Where's the beef?"
Mr. Walljasper:
I remember your days at the Utne Reader and just have one question for you: Do you learn nothing from watching what goes on in the United States? Your conception of good dems and bad repubs harkens back to high school athletics where your high school is conditioned to hate the kids at the high school three miles away because of some alleged difference. And your sports analogy is pathetic as well. Dude, you need to add a short but important phrase to your dictionary: class war. Think about it.
Hey, I was at that game!
It was weird. The red team and the blue team were both on the same side of the field. There was only one participant on the opposite bench, who vaguely resembled Bernie Sanders. But he was just a water boy.
The goalpost to the left was placed on the 50-yard line. The one on the right was out in the parking lot somewhere.
When the camera zoomed in for a close-up on the sidelines, the red and blue players appeared to be arguing vehemently with one another. But when they took the field for the final play with the clock ticking down, they raced en masse to the end zone, spiked the ball, then high-fived and turned to salute somebody up in the luxury boxes.
Class war. Exactly. Any of Jay's beloved democrats could win the people over big time very simply. Just call a press conference - and/or get on Olbermann - and speak the truth: that all of Congress and the President are whores for the corporate plutocracy; that the military-industrial complex and the bankster financial mafia have wrecked this country and dont give a damn as long as they keep accumulating more money and power; that US Imperial foreign policy over the entire post-WW2 era to the present has done incredible damage to the entire human race and that it is time to stop putting up with this bullsh@t and end the plutocratic rule of this country.
Any democrat who announced such a platform would immediately become the frontrunner for the presidency.
Pretty simple, huh Jay?
No, they'd be shot.
Research the election of 1968 - the first time I could vote.
Personally, I voted for the pig. The real one.
It's a shell game.
The U.S. Congress sets a federal budget every year in the trillions of dollars. Few people know how much money that is so we created a breakdown of federal spending in simple terms. Let's put the 2011 federal budget into perspective:
U.S. income: $2,170,000,000,000
Federal budget: $3,820,000,000,000
New debt: $ 1,650,000,000,000
National debt: $14,271,000,000,000
Recent budget cut: $ 38,500,000,000 (about 1 percent of the budget)
It helps to think about these numbers in terms that we can relate to. Therefore, let's remove eight zeros from these numbers and pretend this is the household budget for the fictitious Jones family.
Total annual income for the Jones family: $21,700
Amount of money the Jones family spent: $38,200
Amount of new debt added to the credit card: $16,500
Outstanding balance on the credit card: $142,710
Amount cut from the budget: $385
...a lot of numbers that, in fact, tell us zilch. Following your seeming lead, our government should slash spending? Why not just stick a knife in the back of every unemployed person?
Simple ideas, simple numbers, simple minds.
Let's complicate this with (the minimum estimate) 400 trillion of derivatives floating around out there. This will be a non-linear disaster. Simple enough?
The Jones family can't print "legal tender." The US government can, and does. That's part of its job.
Garbage in, garbage out.
aesop's dog, you're missing the 10 trillion ton gorilla in the room. (You're not alone, by the way. You're in the midst of a huge throng of people from both the right and left who share your blind spot.) For the US Government, for We the People as a sovereign nation, there's only one number we should be concerned about on your list. It is: "amount of money spent." This number should be large enough so that no person goes hungry, no person avoids seeing the doctor because she can't afford it, and no 20-something graduates from college with a millstone of debt around his neck that will take a decade or more to pay off, if he can find a job to begin with. This number should be small enough so that the supply of money doesn't race ahead of the level of activity in the real (a.k.a. "Main Street" not "Wall Street Casino") economy. The US Government doesn't need a credit card and shouldn't have one. The US Government doesn't need "income", and should never cut anything from the budget if doing so would harm a single living breathing human being. "WTF? Are you on acid, Shoe Thrower? What have you been smoking? Surely you're a naive visitor from another planet, in some bizzaro galaxy." Nope. I just believe, along with Abraham Lincoln (and Thomas Edison, and many others) that the government has the constitutional authority, the historical precedent, the sole ability, and the moral duty to deem money into existence with a wave of the hand, to pay for worthy things to advance the common good. And also that we SURE AS HELL don't need sociopathic, blood sucking reptiles like David Rockefeller, et al, to midwife this process. Therefore, aesop's dog, stop comparing the Jones family's budget to the We the People's budget. It is a bogus analogy.
If these numbers included here are correct, with or without the division by 100,000,000 they tell:
1) Given income vs. expense - including debt servicing, the system uses up almost twice as much as it takes in and presents a system dynamic that is hugely out of balance.
2) An adjustment of 1% to the ratio in the direction of expense that possibly contributes 0.2% to debt pay down is an effectively meaningless quantity. The debt will continue to grow exponentially.
Numbers are worth something, if they are correct. The 2011 figures are not yet all in. If the above numbers are for 2010 and correctly stated and the 2011 measures tend follow the ratio, they can be used to make the point, but the above values also include SS and Medicare. The federally deducted payments into SS and Medicare should not be included in the calculations in that they actually are premium payments into senior retirement and medical insurance plans. Those plans are not entitlements, they are assurance trusts.
The 2010 payments into SS and Medicare combined amounted to $1.76T and their combined payout and admin expenses were $1.37T. Points 1 and 2 still apply even if the percentages change slightly by removing these factors from the calculation.
Defending the commons and not allowing the privatization of so much more of all we call public is crucial. But aren't we reallly looking at old strategies that have already worked which is simply "getting the facts out" as Wayne Morse would say or as Thomas Jefferson would putting some "light" on the subject so "liberty" for us all can flourish as it's not really liberty when some make the rest of their servants or slaves and some don't try to get "more than" their "share" as Jefferson would say. He probably was a commonist too like we are, but "that's alright with me" as the Who would say. We should all be commonist by defending the commons. Take that J Edgar Hoover.
We need to have more of this spirit of "one for all and all for one" and stop being "divided into owners and servants' as David Erdal, much awarded British businessman and evolutionary psychologist would say. We have to defend the commons, and I'm sure Erdal would back that all the way as he has personally told me. He strongly opposes the current privatization madness.
"Commonist"...I like that word. It is both a clever pun and a succinct way of saying what I believe also.. Good one, AD.
Nice one Aesop! Not only is this a bullseye, it's a clever way to make the point! (Ignore the trash comments, they're just jealous they didn't think of it!) :)
Mr. Walljasper, it boggles my mind that anyone who's been paying attention still thinks Obama meant one single progressive thing he said while campaigning.
Seems to be he belongs in the category of "politicians who believe that slashing social programs is preferable to stopping corporate give-aways, raising taxes on million-dollar earners, and trimming the oceans of fat in the Pentagon budget."
This "article" is just plain sad. The same tired BS to prop up the machinery that's stolen what it hasn't gunned down, or "by law," yet eviscerated. Is Jay on strong meds or what?
"With a resounding victory in 2012, maybe Obama can finally fulfill his campaign promise of “Yes, we can.”
Having written this points out your lack of understanding of our world. Instantly you become not relevant to the issues at hand. In fact you become part of the problem.
Republicans are anti government. Our government is ruled by law. Republicans want less law and regulation so they can have power over others ( women, blacks, brown or children) and personally profit from their ego trips.
Obama wants government to work, but to work only for the benefit of his rich friends and followers and corporations. As long as the rich profit he is fine with turning over the reigns of government to corporations.
"Where We Go After the Budget Deal Disaster?" there is no "we" in this article.
Oh man, does this sum up how I felt last Sunday night. If you want to read where I found a bit of hope, check out my blog at www.wisdomvoices.com.
I'm looking to Wisconsin. Their state motto: Forward. It's the only option progressives have. We must continue on. Paul Wellstone, Eugene V. Debs, Dorothy Day...they never gave up.
Where do "we" start? How about working to amend the Constitution to eliminate the current impact of Citizens United. Hard work? You bet...but in the light of what's out there, it's about all I have. Organized people is the only hope to organized money,
Walljasper's optimism, both natural and a professional preference, is shockingly shallow. Typically, Jay refuses to think through his thin argument, since it might arrive at a less sanguine conclusion. If he really believes that an Obama "resounding victory" in 2012 should usher in a new chapter in "Yes, we can," he obviously wasn't paying any real attention in Chapter One.
Maybe it's all those interviews and meetings he's been attending. I have a hunch he's surrounded by too many cheerful optimists of the professional type who can't afford to look very closely at actual reality since it might threaten their hard-won status. Start acknowledging the non-existent differences between government-wrecking Republicans and spineless, do-nothing-but-capitulate Democrats, and your colleagues might begin to think you're some wild-eyed radical out to tear down the system that's made you so comfortable. Better to work hard for the reelection of the Yes, We Can Flim-Flam Man than wander into the scary political territory of the disenfranchised, chronically unemployed and destitute, those made that way by BOTH wings of the professionally optimistic Business Party.
Your comment reminded me of the 60's movie "The Flim Flam Man" with George C. Scott in the title role. At one point he tells his young apprentice that he has a MBSCSDD degree - "Master of Back-Stabbing, Cork-Screwing and Dirty-Dealing". That epitomizes this corporate whore in the White House. I also gave up on this article when the author talks about how Obama will take a "resounding success" in 2012 and finally give us the hope and change we voted for. That is sheer idiocy. I have come to hate this shameless phony. He betrayed everyone who voted for him with a wish that we could turn our country away from the disaster of George W. Bush. Now Bush can look on and smirk while "the Black guy" finishes what he started.
maritimus49,
I believe you post the same piece a few days back. I did not comment. Good one! :-)
“What’s a new banner under which Americans of all backgrounds could work together to create a better future for their kids—and everyone else’s kids? How do we forge a political movement that stresses the importance of the we over the me?”
Society must move forward under socialism. Capitalism is always about the ‘me’ and not the ‘we’. So the banner should read something like; “Socialism for all - Capitalism for the few.”
'With a resounding victory in 2012, maybe Obama can finally fulfill his campaign promise of “Yes, we can.”'
Mr. Walljasper, I know you are engaged in a number of very positive projects in the public sphere but you really have to step away from this gibberish & just shake yourself awake.
Obama is not your pal. He is not the quarterback of your high school team competing bravely against the pumped-up-on-roids-Republican juggernauts. He is the most important player in the CLASS WAR against the public sphere.
The game is fixed. He plays for the other team. Admittedly, he has to pretend to be playing for you otherwise there is no illusion of a great contest being waged on your behalf.
Think World Wrestling Entertainment, Inc.
http://www.wwe.com/
He may beat whatever clown emerges from the Republican scrum in 2012 but that will be because of an immense infusion of Wall Street cash into his campaign coffers.
Heads Wall Street wins.
Tails Wall Street wins.
This is not a pretty picture but denial and wishful thinking about Obama and the Democratic Party is not going to help.
Socialism is the only answer. We already know that Capitalism doesn't work. Time for a real change. Change everything. Get rid of political parties. Vote NADER. Draft NADER. Shut down ALL US bases on foreign soil. Eliminate the Black Budget. Pay reparations to all who have been victimized by USA foreign policy. Give Native Americans their rights. Cut the Offense Budget by 99%. Fire Congress. Give States the right to secede. Give Texas back to Mexico. Prosecute war criminals. End child labor. Shut down Monsanto. End the planned obsolescence of the tech industry which is contaminating the environment with toxic materials. Invent a computer that will last 20 years...
I like your thinking a lot more than I like a lot of what else I've read. I'm adamantly saying that.
I like the gist of what you say. The fatuous belief that "markets" are the "one true way" is wearing a little thin even among former free-market libertarians, such as myself. I think a two-tiered system is called for. Let the capitalists make the hamburgers, shoes, toys and the other trivial "stuff" that make life convenient and/or fun. For the important things, like funding for health care, education, scientific research, and public transportation, ignore the half-assed free market religion and let those kinds of decisions be made democratically/socialistically. Capitalism is not inherently evil if it knows its place. Let democracy/socialism be the great white shark that tolerates the little capitalist remorrah fish that keep its skin clear of parasites.
Try this...........
http://www.pressaction.com/news/weblog/full_article/jackowski07102011/
"Imagine a violent fight over a small child—with the parents on one side and a cold-blooded babysnatcher on the other. The snatcher will take far greater risks to win the battle because he doesn’t care what happens to the innocent kid."
This is a retelling of the story of the Judgement of Solomon, related in 1 Kings 3:16-28:
"And the king said, Divide the living child in two, and give half to the one, and half to the other.
"Then spake the woman whose the living child was unto the king, for her bowels yearned upon her son, and she said, O my lord, give her the living child, and in no wise slay it. But the other said, Let it be neither mine nor thine, but divide it."
http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1+kings%203:16-3:28&version=KJV
I could swear I responded to this article, now I do not see it........I'm going to have to make a list of th earticles I write on...
If you're logged into Common Dreams, you can see your comment immediately after posting it, but otherwise it takes a while to appear.
"I can’t help but think the Democratic party resembles a scrappy high school football squad going up against the Pittsburgh Steelers."
______________
Dear Editor: Please correct the typo in the above sentence; the word before "high school football squad" is supposed to be "crappy".
Otherwise, I join with those who find this etude in hysterical optimism, or "mocktimism", fatuous at best.
Walljasper faithfully echoes the hackneyed contemporary moderate liberal (or progressive) script, or hologram, embraced by many of the progressive writers favored by CD editors-- see the Michael Moore article published here yesterday, the columns by "poor Roberts" Reich, Kuttner, and Scheer, and a slew of others.
As Walljasper's football metaphor aptly expresses, It's a deep-politics free, two-dimensional vision of the prolapsed Amerikan political process as a Manichean power struggle between the Republicans and Democrats, with civilization hanging in the balance.
It implicitly buys into the premise that the Democratic Party, a perpetually beleaguered but valiant underdog, is the virtuous Party of the Ordinary Unprivileged Citizen, fka "Working Man", as opposed-- literally "opposed"-- to the decadent, sinister, wicked Republican Party of the Wealthy Authoritarian Fat-Cats.
At the end of the article, Walljasper attempts to amend this pedestrian hallucination from his seat at the fifty-yard line; he pays homage to the necessity of taking a longer view, and urges Amerikans to "explore bold ideas and craft new strategies" beyond electoral politics.
But that's just window dressing compared to the vacuous and pathetic "hope" that the the most desirable outcome of "a massive populist reaction over the next 16 months against the forces of greed that highjacked our nation" is a "resounding victory in 2012" for Obama.
It's nice to stay "half-full", but not if one is half-full of something that one ought to be flushing away instead.
Soon after Obama became President, he started showing his Republican colors: He refused to investigate the many crimes of Rumsfeld, Cheney and Bush. Would any real Democrat refuse to investigate crimes of Republicans? Obama has enlarged the Bush shredding of our Constitution: habeus corpus has been destroyed by Obama. This is the basis of all of our other civil rights. Obama has turned his back on labor unions Would any real Democrat turn his back on labor unions? Obama had doctor-advocates of single-payer arrested and removed from a public hearing. Would any real Democrat do that. Obama has been acting as a Republican for two and a half years. Obama is not a weak Democrat, he is a strong Republican fascist. Unless some gutty progressive anti-war Democrat steps forward and primaries Obama, we will be stuck with the "choice" of two Republican fascist candidates in Nov. 2012...
"With a resounding victory in 2012, maybe Obama can finally fulfill his campaign promise of “Yes, we can.”
He will need a new slogan, though. How about: "Yes, we really really can this time!"
Ah, another mild mannered, unconscious tool of the emergent oligarchs, mucking up our Common Dreams.
"I still wonder, over and over, how this happened"
Recall that 98% of Merkans voted for one of the two kapitalist parties for high office in 2008.
We can all change our points of view. But maybe that will require an interruption of the petro-opiate stream, the mechanism of modern serfdom.
Our first step towards fixing this mess is to understand what a media approved
President is. He is nothing but a brand. He is not a leader or any sort of decision maker. He is just a telegenic pitch man for decisions that are all made for him with out our imput. Figure that out and we'll stop electing some fool community
organizer from Chicago because CNN tells us to.
Nonsense Jay. The Democrats are not going to save us from the Republicans. You're dreaming and I hope it's not common here.
Never felt truer--hope is what you have when you don't have what you want.
As Thomas Jefferson "ridicule" such as that directed against thiis writer like this has no
place where a decent discussion and some "llight" might actually add to understanding and lead a better life for all. "Sincerity is to be valued above all" else he once said. Also "humiility' now and then never hurts. "Good humor" Jefferson said was also to be "valued," and this writer has "good humor, integrity, and sincerity" all crucial Jeffersonian values. When has the person making these making these remarks last pubiished anything in Common Dreams or else where might someone ask?