Where’s My Rebate Check?

For the second time in his presidency George Bush has had to provide an “economic stimulus” to the failing economy. When will these clowns get it? These short-term band-aids will not fix a broken economy. These rebate checks are just a way for the politicians in Washington to be able to accept their checks from the lobbyists without guilt. The truth is just like the last rebates they will do little to rescue an economy that has inherent flaws. Rather than do the hard work needed to create a working economy, the Washingtonians have opted for a symbolic gesture designed to appease the masses in time for the fall elections. It is a win/win for both parties and a loss for the American public.

The economic research on effective stimulus is quite clear on this point: there is a greater bang-for-the-buck from rebates targeted at lower-income households than higher-income ones. As the Congressional Budget Office put it in a recent report:[PDF] "Lower-income households are more likely to be credit constrained and more likely to be among those with the highest propensity to spend. Therefore, policies aimed at lower-income households tend to have greater stimulative effects." Given the well-documented increase in income inequality in recent years, excluding low-income households from the rebate also fails on the criterion of fairness.[1]

Rather than deal with the rampant corporate greed that has fed this recession, it is easier to hand out a few hundred dollars in hush money to the electorate while the fleecing continues. Let’s compare the “stimulus package” being offered up by Washington with the profit package that the corporations have been enjoying the last 8 years.

Since 2001, he noted, overall corporate profits have doubled, to more than $1 trillion. Contributors to that gain include a cumulative $440 billion increase in investment, a $375 billion expansion of budget deficits and a $140 billion decline in household savings. The only negative during the period was a $405 billion widening of the trade deficit.[2]

The proposed stimulus package totals 150 billion dollars while the corporate profits are over a trillion dollars, is it just me or is there a small discrepancy here? Are we to believe that a $600 check is going to off-set the unprecedented growth of wealth and profiteering that is taking place in America today? The increase in the price of gasoline alone amounts to more than what is being offered the American public. Many economists believe that one of the main problems with our economy is the lack of savings, so what are we suppose to do with our rebate checks? Go out and spend them to generate more profits for the corporations. Why not just continue to give the money directly to the corporations and avoid the middle-man? So remember when those checks start to arrive in May or June you will be counted on to be a good little American and go out spend that money. Go buy yourself something nice, you really deserve it. Maybe it will help you to forget how truly bad the recession is and how worse it is going to get. Maybe it will help you to forget all your fellow Americans who are being evicted from their homes or who are still patrolling the streets of Iraq. Maybe it will help you forget all those millions of Americans who were forgotten in the negotiations; the unemployed, the food stamp recipients, and the seniors.

Yeah $600 is a pretty small price to pay for silence. I know it’s hard to say no to free money, but this money isn’t free. It will be directly added to the budget deficit which is currently hovering around 9 trillion dollars, so what’s another 100 billion? Our economy needs help, but not these onetime symbolic gestures. The time has come to make some much needed changes that will require making some difficult decisions. I just don’t see the political will or the populist surge to make it happen. So we will take our checks and continue to ignore the giant elephant in the room until there is a total collapse and then everyone will wonder what happened? What happened was that our infinitely expanding economy finally reached the limits of greed and corruption and rammed into the glass wall.

[1] http://www.epi.org/content.cfm/webfeatures_snapshots_20080123
[2] http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/01/business/yourmoney/01profit.html?_r=2&ref=business&oref=slogin&oref=slogin

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You Call This A Recovery?

You want to know why John Edwards and millions of other Americans are angry. It’s simple really, the country has been hijacked by greedy and ruthless men who don’t give a damn about the poor people left in their wake. The funny thing about America is that there is parity, it just takes longer for it to get around. In other words, the same thing that’s happening to blacks and other minorities will eventually make its way around to whites. Whether it is the epidemic of drugs or the loss of wealth, it is all just a matter of time. It is precisely this effect that causes me to not understand why there is not more coalition building going on. NEWSFLASH – It all rolls down hill people. If you are not in the top 10% of the wealthy, you are in trouble. It won’t matter what race, creed, or color you are. Greed knows no boundaries or has no racial preferences.

The following depicts the nature of the so-called Bush recovery for millions of Americans, not the ones who have received the big tax-cuts or the golden parachutes. No these are the collateral damage stories and there are millions of them every day. As more and more jobs that once promised a decent standard of living disappear and are being replaced by the minimum wage service sector jobs there will be a political firestorm. The backbone of any democracy is the middle-class. If the middle-class loses its vibrancy and is allowed to dwindle, then the stability of our government will also diminish.

Between her husband’s factory job and her intermittent work, they made $30,000 a year in the best of times, Mrs. Joos said. Since last fall, when her husband was laid off by the Merillat cabinet factory, which downsized to one shift a day from three, keeping anywhere near that income required Mrs. Joos to take a second job. She works at a school cafeteria each weekday from 9:30 a.m. to 1 p.m and then drives to Wal-Mart, where she relaxes in her car before starting her 2-to-10 p.m. shift at the deli counter.[1]

The average American worker is having to work so hard just to try and keep their heads above water that they don’t have time for the intricacies of democracy and this is exactly what the top 10% want. Keep the workers so insecure and busy that they don’t have time to concern themselves with the business of democracy. Every day there are more Americans placed in these tenuous positions of having to decide how they are going to make ends meet. It is no longer the illegals or the minorities, but mainstream Americans are having to move back home at middle-age or downgrading their life-styles.

It is not a lack of hard work that has placed them in these positions, but a pattern of corporate greed and a race to the bottom of the wage ladder. In an effort to maximize profits, jobs are being moved to the lowest wage earner countries that are stable enough to sustain their slave workforces. While all this is taking place the politicians and the “experts” are saying don’t worry, be happy. We don’t need those jobs anyway, we will replace them with new better jobs. Tell that to Jeffrey Evans, who now lives with his mother at 49 because his factory job laid him off and now he is working for half as much at one of these “better jobs”, or the wife that has to take on a second job.

Mr. Evans said that moving back into the home where he grew up, after decades of independence, was a stinging reminder that “I lost everything I worked for all my life.”

His mother, Shirley Sheline, 73, had worked 28 years at the same auto parts plant, and shares his dismay. “Can you believe it, a grown man forced to move back with his mother,” she said.[2]

There is growing disappointment for millions of Americans as they watch their standard of living drop precipitously, while at the same time the corporate class standard of living continues to rise. They are no longer buying into the rising tide or trickle down economic garbage they are being fed. There is a trickle coming down all right, but it isn’t economic prosperity, it’s someone pissing on them. The bottom is about to fall out of this economy. The banks and Wall Street have built a house of cards that is about to collapse and it will take with it the dreams and futures of a great many Americans. They have layered so much false paper in their business practices that they now have to go begging from foreign investors to put value back into the economy.

Now more than ever we need someone to step up and face down the greedy. It is time for America to be told some hard truths, the jobs that we are hemorrhaging are not coming back. We need to come up with jobs that provide living wages and a decent standard of living. These jobs can and should come from our efforts to detox ourselves from the current sources of energy. This task will not be easy because the current crop of CEO’s are too greedy and short-sighted to willingly give up their cash cow which is predicated on our current sources of energy. They no longer should be given a choice, it is time for the government to lead with either the carrot or the stick.

[1] http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/16/us/16ohio.html
[2] http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/16/us/16ohio.html

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John Edwards Big Gamble

In an interview on Sunday, John Edwards dropped a bombshell and took an enormous gamble. My first thought was why would he make such statements on the eve of the Iowa caucuses? My second thought was to consider the viability of his proposal. I wondered if this was some last second ploy to pander to the anti-war voters in Iowa based on some last-minute polling data. The thing about the Edwards campaign is that he has never shied away from providing details to accompany his policy statements and Sunday appears to be no different. While others have continued to throw out generalities and vague statements concerning Iraq and ending our involvement, Mr. Edwards has taken the bold step of actually outlining steps he would take to do so.

“To me, that is a continuation of the occupation of Iraq,” he said in a 40-minute interview on Sunday aboard his campaign bus as it rumbled through western Iowa.

In one of his most detailed discussions to date about how he would handle Iraq as president, Mr. Edwards staked out a position that would lead to a more rapid and complete troop withdrawal than his principal rivals, Senators Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama, who have indicated they are open to keeping American trainers and counterterrorism units in Iraq.[1]

According to the interview Mr. Edwards would call for the immediate withdrawal of 40,000 to 50,000 US troops, followed by the withdrawal of the remaining troops within 9 or 10 months. Mr. Edwards’ plan would leave a force of 4,000 to 5,000 troops for embassy duty and protection of aid workers. This plan of course is the most accelerated withdrawal of any of the other major candidates; it also flies in the face of the military, the State Department, and conventional wisdom. There are many who predict a complete collapse in Iraq if we withdraw.

While many will view this as a desperate effort to garner last minute votes in Iowa, I see it as a long-term strategic move to tap into the larger anti-war vote in America. In the last mid-term Congressional elections the voters of America elected the Democrats to end the war. In what has been the best example of spinelessness in the history of our country, they have failed to do so. In fact they have provided Mr. Bush with every piece of legislation and funding he has sent to them. Despite the “surge” is working rhetoric and the “good news” from Iraq, there is still a large number of voters, especially Democratic voters who are very disappointed with the efforts of the current Congress and their jellyfish imitation.

The anti-war movement in this country has been minimized and under-reported from the beginning by the MSM. Make no mistake about it, just as Mr. Edwards has declared war on the corporate elite and their disproportionate share of wealth in this country, part of his wide-ranging agenda is to also end the occupation of Iraq. Mr. Edwards recognizes that part of the historically high profits being made is a direct result of our involvement in Iraq. There is the war-profiteers being supplied at taxpayer expense, there is the high cost of gas being fueled by the instability in Iraq, and there is the corruption of Iraqi politicians that continue to allow them to drag their feet on reconciliation. We must begin to show some resolve not just against the terrorist, but also against those who are stealing us blind under the guise of terrorism. We need to think about all the costs we have paid since 9/11, I would venture that the cost of each one of those 2,900 plus lives has been to the tune of over 2 billion dollars each. Think about that for a moment. If we were to include all costs associated with homeland security, the two wars, and the war profiteering and corruption since 9/11, what has it been for each life lost.

I believe that what Mr. Edwards is saying is we must begin to put this all in perspective and the way to do this is by dialing down our involvement in Iraq and allowing the Iraqis and the rest of the world to take a part in this reconstruction. Since 9/11, we have not had a national conversation about what sensible and responsible responses we should be pursuing. We all just jumped on the Neo-con bandwagon and went off half-cocked around the world to extract our revenge. We must move away from the temple of 9/11 where too many have been worshipping and begin to look realistically at the world and our place in it.

“That is a very important question for the president of the United States because it is very much a judgment call,” Mr. Edwards said. “Do I believe that we have had a moral responsibility? I do. The question is, How long does that moral responsibility continue and at what juncture is it the right decision to end what we have been doing and shift that responsibility to them?”

“Let’s assume for a minute that come January 2009 we still have a significant troop presence in Iraq, which I think is likely,” Mr. Edwards added. “If that is the case, then I think another 9 to 10 months of American troop involvement and expenditure of taxpayer money with an intense effort to resolve the political conflict and intense diplomacy, then at that point America has done what it can do.”[2]

The time has come to end the crusade. We must begin to refocus on America and all that ails us. Many will say that this is the beginning of isolationism, they would be wrong. What it is, is the beginning of cleaning up our own house before we begin to clean up the world. We have a major struggle before us here at home, the struggle of corporatism and wealth strangulation from the top. The war on terror has been a distraction and it has allowed us to watch the biggest disparity of wealth accumulation in our nation’s history. It is time we focused on this struggle or it won’t matter what happens in Iraq or anywhere else in the world.

[1] http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/02/us/politics/02edwards.html?hp
[2] http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/02/us/politics/02edwards.html?hp=&adxnnl=1&pagewanted=2&adxnnlx=1199297375-nTvB2yKgo93g2bIG+4mpqg

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