Bankruptcy Is Not An Option

"Should taxpayers in Indiana who have paid their bills on time, who have done their job fiscally be bailing out Californians who haven't?" House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, R-Wisc., asks. "No. That's a moral hazard that we are not interested in creating." - Fox News Blog

So the financial wiz-kid of the Republican Party believes that we are just a group of states that happen to share borders but have no inherent connection to one another? It is this type of rhetoric and mentality that fosters the divisions that keep us from moving forward as a nation. This simplistic view of the economy shared by the wing-nuts and tea-baggers makes it difficult to take any of their proposals seriously. We are not talking about some teenagers who have overspent their allowance and so the answer is to send them to their room with no dinner. We are talking about our fellow countrymen who just happen to live in another part of the country, our country. We are talking about our fellow countrymen who just happen to live in another part of the country, our country. We already know that being born in Hawaii makes you a foreigner, but this is ridiculous.

The fact that these clowns speak about morality just demonstrates their own immorality. Is it a moral hazard to watch our fellow countrymen suffering because the wealthy in this country decided they needed another transfer of wealth through market manipulation? What is a moral hazard is that we have seen the biggest financial theft of our economy in history and no one was prosecuted, no one was so much as even charged. Has our definition of morality been so corrupted that it is morally right to give billions to millionaires and billionaires, but immoral to give support to the elderly, the unemployed, and or the mentally ill?

As long as we continue to allow these snake oil salesman to advocate their bad medicine we will continue to focus on cutting out our safety nets so we can continue to provide tax breaks to the wealthy. I’m sorry I obviously missed the memo that stated paying taxes in a democracy is optional. It’s amazing how all of the tea-baggers want government services, but they don’t want to pay for them. The wing-nuts want wars, nuclear arsenals, and government bail-outs they just don’t want to pay for them. There is a reason why we pay taxes. There are certain things we have decided as a society that are important enough to share the costs. The problem arises when one segment of the population is paying more than their share.

One of the challenges we will face as a country is how do we make the tax code more progressive and more balanced in the face of this anti-tax and cut spending at all costs false meme being promoted by those who have demonized the very concepts that have made our country great. Shared sacrifice, social safety nets for the needy, and a common sense of fairness are concepts that make a nation strong. We can no longer continue to allow the corporate interests and the money changers to undermine and tear at the fabric that makes us a nation. This idea of undermining the middle-class and the poor is nothing new to America. From the Hooverites, to the greed of the 80’s, to the butter and war rhetoric of the last administration we have been under assault it seems with every generation. And every generation has had to reconfirm our commitment to what makes America great.

Unfortunately with the decline in liberalism and the ascension of conservatism with it’s everybody for themselves mentality the very underpinnings of our society are at risk. Programs such as Social Security, benefits for the unemployed, and funding for education are now bargaining chips, but what is not on the bargaining table are tax-cuts for the wealthy and military spending. What type of society is willing to defund the programs for the middle-class and poor to reduce the taxes of the wealthiest among them? I could understand if the tax burden for the wealthy and the corporations were oppressive but under our current tax system the secretary of a CEO will probably pay more in taxes than her boss. To argue that our current tax system is unfairly slanted towards the wealthy is an understatement. To present Mr. Ryan, as a voice of reason in the deficit conversation when he is saying that everyone is on their own is like saying that a secessionist was a voice of reason during the civil war.

We are a country; we are a diverse nation that still manages to share some common threads. We should not allow those common threads to be unraveled for the benefit of a small group who value profits over national interests or their own citizenry. It’s amazing to me how the media and the pundits criticized the Chinese when their president was visiting, but no one has found it necessary to criticize the very American business people who have handed the keys to the American economy over to the Chinese and the Indians. Mr. Ryan doesn’t want to bail-out the states but he doesn’t have any such misgivings about bailing out the folks who have put the states in dire straits.

“Corruption and hypocrisy ought not to be inevitable products of democracy, as they undoubtedly are today” - Mahatma Gandhi

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The Failure of Liberalism

I think experience will teach you a combination of liberalism and conservatism. We have to be progressive and at the same time we have to retain values. We have to hold onto the past as we explore the future. – Oliver Stone

One of the greatest tragedies of the 20th century has been the decline of liberalism and the ascendancy of conservatism. While there are many opinions for the cause of this phenomenon the one that is the most fraudulent is that America is a conservative nation. This false premise has been propagated by those who want to maintain some fictitious sense of America’s past and a desire to reverse the progress we have achieved. Over the course of the last 50 years they have steadily and persistently chipped away at those ideas which defined liberalism (shared sacrifice, equality, and shared responsibility) and replaced them with greed, selfishness, and special interests while simultaneously demonizing liberalism as socialism.

Unfortunately, those of us who call ourselves liberals and subscribe to those principles that not only provided freedom, equality, and dignity to blacks and women, but also created the largest middle-class the world has ever known have allowed what we have accomplished to be tarnished and vilified. Unions which offered working-class Americans with livable wages, benefits, and organization became excessive and corrupt allowing themselves to be marginalized and thus laying the foundation for the corporate takeover of our political process. Without ongoing political organizations like unions to balance the scale the American worker has seen their share of the American Dream shrink while at the same time the wealthy class has seen their share increase to historic levels. While this is not a new phenomenon without the counterbalance of unions and organized political dissent the wealthy have been able to transform the political landscape in such a way that while the American worker is one of, if not the most productive worker in the world and yet they have seen their industries shipped overseas and their wages reduced or become stagnant.

The failure of liberalism is that while we focused on the physical aspects of inequality and poverty we did little to focus on the psychological effects of these issues. To use the analogy of “cream” rising to the top as that happens what is left at the bottom is more concentrated and more difficult to rise. You get less cream rising to the top and more sediment at the bottom. That sediment becomes more intransigent and begins to develop a mindset of poverty. Unfortunately today America is suffering from a large segment of our population with both situational poverty and generational poverty. Many of the people who are now dealing with situational poverty (poverty caused by a situation such as unemployment, medical reasons, etc.) will find it more difficult to overcome these circumstances as we face large unemployment as the new normal. Those suffering from generational poverty (poverty that has lasted over multiple generations) will find it next to impossible to overcome their external as well internal obstacles.

A couple of generations ago we had a strong manufacturing base that could absorb many of these low-skilled workers and offer them a pathway out of poverty. Today there are fewer opportunities for these workers to make a livable wage and move out of poverty. Because there is no longer a connection between effort and benefits or success we now have an intransigent underclass which is mostly urban and mostly black that lacks the opportunities to become middle-class and also lacks the desire to put in the work. Overcoming poverty requires hard work on the part of the individual to overcome the many obstacles designed to prevent their success and there appears to be an attitude among many of our young people that success no longer requires hard work. They instead seem to believe that there are short-cuts and easy money. It is important to be prepared for the opportunities but opportunity must also exist.

What we failed to realize is that while the fight to reduce poverty and inequality to us are self-evident concepts worthy of support there are many people who view them as collateral damage of capitalism. We falsely assumed that most caring people agreed with our position and supported the fight that has been waged yet there has been a slow erosion through materialism and greed undermining our social safety net and demonizing those who rely on it. We have not done a good enough job of combating the immorality of their argument and have allowed them to couch it in economics. Instead of it being our moral obligation to help those less fortunate, the weak, and the aged it has now come down to we can’t afford them. We can afford to give tax-cuts to the wealthy and corporations but we can’t afford to help the poor and less fortunate.

If we are to overcome the propaganda of the wealthy to demean and undermine the needy then we have to once again regain our moral footing and call out these tactics and their proponents for who and what they are. We must also be willing to address the excesses of our programs and be willing to innovate to overcome the intransigence of poverty. It is difficult to make the case for “food instability” while at the same time we have high rates of juvenile and adult obesity in these same communities. There is and has been a concerted effort on the part of the wealthy to undermine our social safety net. It has become fashionable to label the poor as lazy and morally bankrupt, but it wasn’t the poor who extorted billions of dollars from our economy, it wasn’t the poor who nearly brought our economic system to the brink of collapse, and it certainly wasn’t the poor who requested and received billions of dollars in wealth transfer.

There is this talk about class-warfare and I find it amazing that the only time we have this conversation is when the wealthy are being asked to contribute. I didn’t hear the term class-warfare when the rich were asking for TARP, bail-outs, and tax cuts. Hmmm, I wonder why? I guess it isn’t a transfer of wealth if it is going up only when it is comes trickling down.

My generation of the Sixties, with all our great ideals, destroyed liberalism, because of our excesses. - Camille Paglia

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Armageddon Again

I think that this is a long and winding process. But I think at the end of the day, members are not going to want to be in their districts, senators are not going to want to be in their districts when their constituents find out on the 1st of January that their taxes have gone up by several thousand dollars. - Robert Gibbs/Press Secretary

Can someone help me out here; why is it that every time the wealthy in this country are facing any type of loss of income through taxes or corporate malfeasance the situation becomes the onset of Armageddon for the rest of us? Remember the beginning of this “recession” at the end of the Bush Administration that was brought on by the investment community and bankers gambling with our economy? We were on the brink of Armageddon and had to pony up 800 billion dollars to rescue our economy which was being held hostage by the same people who were handing out multi-million dollar bonuses right up until the day of the bail-out.

Now two years later we are faced with another Armageddon this time over tax-cuts for the wealthy. If we don’t extend all the tax-cuts we will have another “great recession”, the stock market will tank, and we will suffer double-digit unemployment. Really. That’s funny when Bill Clinton enacted them not only did our economy not go into free fall, but it actually laid the foundation for one our biggest economic expansions. I agree with Mr. Tom Buffenbarger, President of the Machinist Union when he said that when the Bush tax-cuts were enacted his members who make a decent living barely felt any change and so having them expire will have little effect. He went on to state that for his members it is about sacrifice for the good of the country and if paying a few hundred dollars a year to insure the long-term health of America they would consider it an honor. It would be an honor because they still have jobs.

The problem today is that no one wants to sacrifice especially the wealthiest and most fortunate amongst us. Some people say that letting all of the tax-cuts expire would be just a symbolic ploy to stick it to the wealthy and would hurt working folks more. I could not disagree more. This isn’t about sending a message to the wealthy; this is about the very nature and future of this country. At some point the middle-class and poor have to take a stand and say enough is enough before there won’t be any middle-class left. If I hear Lawrence O’Donnell scream at one more guest concerning the 50% increase in the tax rate for the lowest brackets I am going to scream. Yes on paper and how Mr. O’Donnell is framing the question does appear ominous but the truth is that those lower brackets would not see a substantial increase in taxes just as they did not see any substantial relief when they were enacted.

I understand that the President promoted himself during the campaign as a pragmatist and not an ideologue. I get that. What I don’t get because I pride myself on being a pragmatist is how the President and his advisers cannot see how once you open the door to negotiating with terrorists that they continue to take hostages. Does he or anyone in the White House believe in two years it will be any easier to decouple the tax-cuts? It kills me how even the President’s own advisers talk about the tax-cuts as if there is no evidence about their effectiveness. The President’s chief economic adviser speaks about the tax-cuts as if they haven’t been in effect for the past 10 years. He stated, “I don’t believe that tax-cuts will work.” Really. How about all the evidence compiled the last 10 years are we suppose to discount it?

I was watching the news today and saw how the student demonstrators in England were willing to take to the streets of London and lay siege to Parliament over an issue that impacted their future. I was thinking the only way we could get that many people out to protest an issue it would have to be a Viagra recall or an Xbox 360 recall. How have we become so indifferent and apathetic? Is it any surprise that the wing-nuts and the rich have been able to transfer so much wealth from the middle-class to themselves? Unfortunately, in America it appears that by the time the middle-class decides to take a stand America will have already become a two-class society. The wealthy and the poor. This is the real message that the politicians and the talking heads don’t seem to get. There has to be a line in the sand if we are to salvage the future of the middle-class in this country and what is left of the American Dream.

My question is how have we connected help for those people who through no fault of their own are unemployed with giving tax-cuts to people who for the last 10 years have done very well and don’t need them. How are we even having this conversation? How can the wing-nuts make this case and get away with holding 98% of the country hostage and not pay for it? What we are seeing is the disintegration of our historical safety net and an unprecedented indifference towards those who are less fortunate. We are seeing it in our insensitivity towards the homeless and our refusal to spend the money necessary to attack what has now become the permanent underclass in our urban areas. I’ve never understood how we see folks struggling as just the way of the world, but when it comes to the wealthy it is the end of the world.

The death of democracy is not likely to be an assassination from ambush. It will be a slow extinction from apathy, indifference, and undernourishment. - Robert M. Hutchins

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A Crisis is Only a Crisis?

“Character is not made in a crisis it is only exhibited.” - Robert Freeman

When is a crisis a crisis? Obviously in the Republican mindset it is whenever they decide it is. It is not based on evidence, facts, or the threat level as evidenced by the Iraq War. It is not based on the magnitude or the suffering involved as evidenced by Hurricane Katrina. It is not based on expert predictions or historical facts as evidenced by the current economic conditions. In what has to be the most bizarre strategy in the history of politics the Republicans have chosen to hope for economic disaster. That’s right, with the rest of the country and the world hoping that the Obama administration will succeed in turning the economic crisis around the Republicans have staked out the strategy and the position of gloom and doom. Not only have they expressed hope that this will occur which is bad enough, but they are also in the process of orchestrating our economy’s complete demise through their inaction or obstinacy.

Regardless of one’s political persuasion, we as a nation are in the midst of a national crisis the likes of which I don’t think any of us realize. When someone is in the throes of a calamity its magnitude I think can’t be measured until after the crisis has passed or dissipated somewhat because to acknowledge its size would be to face the hopelessness of the task. Many times individuals function on adrenaline during these times of crisis and do not fully appreciate the enormity of the moment. Whether we accept or understand the size of this thing most of us are willing to accept that this thing is big and we need to do something about it and do something now. This is a time when all Americans should be coming together to solve this crisis and get behind our President who was elected to lead us at this time. As I watch all of those Republicans on television posturing I can’t help but remember these same Republicans who stood in front of the American people prior to the Iraq War and spoke about how this national crisis dictated all Americans to come together and stop the “mushroom cloud”. We have since learned that those were theatrics and there was no imminent mushroom cloud. However, does anyone today believe that the President and the economists are posturing now? Does anyone believe that the unemployment, foreclosures, and business closings are theatrics just to pass some massive Democratic spending bill in an effort to change our way of life?

Based on the logic of the Republicans which demonstrates they have no logic is that the Democrats have created this crisis so they can create legislation to regulate our free markets, provide universal health-care, and supply everyone with a government job. I couldn’t imagine waking up every morning hoping for a return to the suffering of the Great Depression just so I could return to power. We have to remember that if the Obama administration is able to resolve this and the many other crises facing our nation the Republicans will be out of power for possibly decades. Their only hope is to prevent these efforts from succeeding through obstructionism and stagnation. They are essentially betting against the American people. The public should really take a moment and think about this; we have a major political party betting against the American people they were elected to serve. And not only are they betting against the American people they are actually doing things to undermine the efforts of those who are trying to do something about the crisis. This of course is all being done in the spirit of the loyal opposition.

If the Republicans succeed in bringing down the economy and the country what will there be left to govern? The good news is that you are back in power; the bad news is that our country lies in ruins. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out what the Republicans are doing and they must be held accountable for their actions. First of all they were on watch when this crisis occurred which they have not taken responsibility for. In my opinion if you cannot acknowledge your mistakes then you cannot lead in the future because you obviously have not learned anything from those mistakes which you haven’t acknowledged were mistakes. You then proceed to undermine those who are trying to correct your mistakes which you still have not acknowledged were mistakes. And to demonstrate that you have changed and learned from those mistakes which you have not acknowledged were mistakes your strategy for solving the crisis is more of the same things that created the crisis? Is there any credible person who still believes that tax-cuts are going to solve this crisis?

It is time for us who are suffering to punish those who are indifferent to our suffering. The Republicans are so desperate that any change in the polls no matter how insignificant to the overall situation considers it a victory. Remember how the McCain campaign reacted to the spikes in polling for Sarah Palin and Joe the plumber they tried to build their campaign around them. Theatrics is not a strategy. I have often envied the people of Europe and their willingness to take to the streets and protest in large numbers their dissatisfaction with their leadership. We in America have become so selfish that if it an issue doesn’t impact us directly we tend to ignore its effects on others, i.e. Iraq War, health-care, etc. We are in a crisis and we must let those in Washington know that whether they believe we are in a crisis or not, we believe we are in one and we want immediate action. The Republicans believe that now the election is over we will go back to sleep and they can rally their more vocal base and bushwhack the election; they must not be allowed to do so. A crisis is a crisis when we say it is.

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McCain: Throw Out Baby With The Bathwater

In an effort to prove his bonafides to the fiscal Conservatives John McCain is willing to tank the economy, allowing millions of American homes to be foreclosed on. In what will be a well orchestrated plan by the Bush/McCain camps, McCain will be campaigning as a free marketer while Bush’s administration will be spending billions bailing out the real culprits who created this mess (Wall Street) while the victims will be left up the creek without a paddle. According to McCain it is not the Government’s job to bailout speculators which includes all of the consumers who are facing foreclosure. Now while there may be some people facing foreclosure who were using the loose mortgage regulations to take out risky loans to speculate on the housing boom, the vast majority did not. The vast majority were sold the panacea of the balloon mortgage with eternal low interest rates by the greedy mortgage bankers. Should they have been more diligent in investigating the fine print of their loans? Of course they should have, but today you have to almost be a Nobel Prize winning economist to understand these contracts.

“Rampant speculation” on both sides is the root cause of the crisis, Mr. McCain said. He placed part of the responsibility for the mortgage mess on lenders, who he said had grown “complacent” in a rising market and as a result acquired a “false sense of security” that caused them to “lower their lending standards.”

But in a departure from Democrats, who have focused on the lending industry’s role in the crisis, Mr. McCain suggested that some homeowners had also engaged in dangerous practices, including borrowing too much in hopes that a rising market would cover their mortgages.[1]

Senator McCain is willing to let the same ones who created the crisis fix it with his hands off approach. He is willing to play craps with the nation’s economy similar to the approach taken by Herbert Hoover. Today however the difference is that he doesn’t seem to have a problem with bailing out the banks and brokers whose reckless practices caused this fiasco. Once again John McCain is showing his age and how out of step with the 21st century he is. According to McCain’s economic plan he believes that the greedy bankers and brokers if left alone will step in an rescue the homes of the millions of Americans facing foreclosure. And he talks about Obama being a merchant of dreams.

Lets face it folks John McCain has changed political positions so often, he makes Mitt Romney look like Teddy Roosevelt. Senator McCain was against the tax-cuts before he was for them, he was against bailing out the banks before he was for them, and he was against regulation before he was for it. The sad part about it is that because the Democrats are so busy cutting each other up McCain is having a free ride to make these ridiculous speeches unchallenged. We all know he will not be called on these statements from the MSM, who have all but coroneted and canonized McCain. Even the Bushies recognize that their “laissez faire” approach to the brokerage houses has had a negative effect and now McCain wants even less government involvement.

Mr. McCain said he favored government intervention only when standing by would produce “catastrophic effects” to the economy. Asked if the Federal Reserve had gone too far last week in moving to prevent the collapse of Bear Stearns, he replied that it was “a close call, but I don’t think so,” because of the impact that the investment bank’s disappearance would have had on Wall Street and throughout the economy.[2]

I’m sorry, did I say less government involvement. I mean less involvement for the average American who is losing their homes due to their reckless speculation, but not less involvement for the bankers and brokers. Mr. McCain doesn’t seem to have a problem with bailing out the bankers and brokers who he obviously believes are in their positions by relying on those less than forthright borrowers. At this rate I would not be surprised if McCain proposes more subsidies for the big oil companies to help them cope with the record oil prices being caused by those greedy consumers. With each passing day Senator McCain exposes his lack of understanding and concern for the poor and the middle-class.

At one point in his career Senator McCain opposed the Bush tax-cuts because he felt they were tilted towards the wealthy and that was unconscionable. It seems now that he is the Republican nominee not only has his views changed but also his conscious. Yes to torture. Yes to tax-cuts for the wealthy. The only thing left is yes to bombing Iran to complete the trifecta. According to McCain, the Bush policies aren’t the problem just how they are being implemented. There was a time when if anyone had run on Bush’s policies they would have been summarily dismissed as a lunatic, here today we not only have McCain running on them but also trying to make them seem mainstream. Is time for the Democrats to focus in on the real enemy and stop their petty sniping. If not we might as well kiss the baby good-bye, because McCain will surely throw it out with the bath water.

[1] http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/26/us/politics/26mortgage.html
[2] http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/26/us/politics/26mortgage.html

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