Calling anyone who wants to help families right before Christmas stay in their homes, pay their utilities, or get a present or two for their kids a Maoist is just plain silly (and once again insensitive to the victims of those mass movements that killed so many).
Jobless benefits are not "largesse"; they are returned premiums paid by employers and employees into a compulsory federal unemployment insurance system. Workers received less money for years in exchange for the benefits they are receiving now. They have already paid for them. If the system runs a deficit, it will be replenished once the economy recovers. This is how it has always worked (unlike communism, which generally hasn't).
Tax cuts to the wealthiest 1%, on the other hand, are completely un-financed and un-budgeted. Most of those dollars will not be spent, so are taken out of the economy. They represent a redistribution of wealth by fiat from a central government to a well-connected and well-represented elite. Although such historical allusions are hyperbolic, there is far more evidence to support the idea that this transfer is far more reminiscent of Soviet-era handouts of cash, cars, privileges, and dachas to a well-connected few. Communism didn't fail because it professed concern for the worker but because it, like Republicans today, instituted policies that were ultimately harmful to them. No, I'm not calling Republicans communists, but simply because Boehner says he loves free markets does not mean he is to be trusted anymore than Stalin when he said he believed in the universal rights of man.
If you think jobless benefits are trivial, you clearly have not talked to a family who depends on them. Or to local businesses who are disproportionate recipients of the benefits. Or to their employees whose jobs will be lost if those benefits are cut off prematurely.
No recession lasts forever. I have faith in the long-term strength of the United States economy and believe most of those out of work today won't be in 12 to 18 months.
But in a sustained downturn we have a moral obligation to help those who are less fortunate than ourselves. I am willing to help. Are you?
Friday, December 10, 2010
Thursday, December 9, 2010
Obama Should Have Fought Tax Cuts for the Rich by Jim Wallis
[Since I could not figure out a way to get a link to this article, I am pasting the entire Jim Wallis post below:]
Obama Should Have Fought Tax Cuts for the Rich
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Time and again, we heard Barack Obama on the campaign trail say that Washington was broken, and he was running for President of the United States to change it. He was right about our political system, and his presidency has offered further proof. Washington is a broken system and needs to be changed. But early on in the Obama presidency, the White House decided that the system was even more broken than they had imagined, special interests were even more powerful, and the influence of money over everything in Washington was almost complete. So instead of changing the "broken system," and "the ways of Washington," they decided to work within it, and still tried to get some things done for the people. That was a mistake. That was the moment the new president should have called in leaders of social movements, including those from the faith community, to strategize how to create enough pressure from the outside to make real reform on the inside possible. But that never happened.
At a Democratic National Committee fundraising dinner in February 2010, Obama said, "Change is easy if you're just talking about tinkering around the edges. Change is harder when you actually dig in and try to deal with the structural problems that have impeded our progress for too long." What Obama has found is that as long as the system is broken, change is hard, even when you tinker around the edges. We have seen tinkering around the edges when it comes to the poor, our economic system, the war in Afghanistan, and immigration reform. But these systems don't just need tinkering, they need deep change.
Obama should have fought on taxes. The richest 2 percent of the country just got an extension of tax cuts they didn't need at great cost to us all. There was GOP opposition, and Democrats battling with one another, but President Obama should have been fighting against the self-interests of the wealthiest Americans long before this. He allowed those who benefit from these tax cuts and the political allies they have bought in Congress to frame the debate and set the terms of engagement. So Obama is now backed into a corner, and just made a compromise that he thinks is the best deal possible when up against the clock. He got some good things for working families in the payroll tax cut, the extension of unemployment benefits, various refundable tax credits, and the important middle class tax cut. But the president is now presiding over the great redistribution of wealth that has been going on for a very long time -- the redistribution of wealth from the middle and the bottom, to the top of American society -- and leaving us with the most economic inequality in American history. This will only grow larger with the Obama "compromise."
If Obama had he fought earlier, he could have ensured the protection of small business owners, who are the primary job creators. Obama could have focused the higher tax rates on the very rich and protected those who are more in the middle and really creating jobs. But now, most of the people who will be keeping their tax cuts are not job creators. After all, how many jobs will be created by the Goldman Sachs traders, or the hedge fund gamblers, or the celebrities who dominate our lives? Almost none. On the contrary, they have been the "job destroyers," and have wrecked this economy and the lives of so many people.
Let's be clear here: At the root of the crisis was just a handful of banks -- not the banking industry, not business in general, but a handful of very rich people who took big and selfish risks. They are already getting richer because of our taxpayer bailout, and now we're giving them more tax breaks and estate tax bonanzas. There is socialism in America, but it's only for the rich. Risk has been socialized for some of the very richest people in the country, and then, the "free market" pain is distributed to all the rest.
The rich are too big to fail in America, while many in the rest of the country really are failing. The president did want to keep some things for average Americans in this compromise, but he lost the big battle a long time ago when he did not fight the people whose greed, recklessness, and utter lack of concern for the common good led us into this terrible crisis. He waited too long to fight, to force a national debate on economic fairness, and to counter the distortions of the Republicans who clearly don't mind adding huge sums to the deficit (almost a trillion dollars with the tax cuts) as long as it benefits their wealthy patrons. The Republicans will now seek to reduce the deficit by adding more pain to the rest of us -- especially those on the bottom and increasingly shaky middle rungs of the economy. And now, Obama and the rest of us are all backed into corners without a way out.
Our national economic philosophy is now to reward the casino gamblers on Wall Street and to leave the majority of the country standing outside the casino with a tin cup, hoping that the gamblers are at least big tippers. More tax breaks and benefits for the very wealthiest people in America is not only bad economics and bad policy; it is fundamentally immoral. In aletter to the president signed by more than 100 religious leaders, we said just that.
So far, they haven't listened.
At a Democratic National Committee fundraising dinner in February 2010, Obama said, "Change is easy if you're just talking about tinkering around the edges. Change is harder when you actually dig in and try to deal with the structural problems that have impeded our progress for too long." What Obama has found is that as long as the system is broken, change is hard, even when you tinker around the edges. We have seen tinkering around the edges when it comes to the poor, our economic system, the war in Afghanistan, and immigration reform. But these systems don't just need tinkering, they need deep change.
Obama should have fought on taxes. The richest 2 percent of the country just got an extension of tax cuts they didn't need at great cost to us all. There was GOP opposition, and Democrats battling with one another, but President Obama should have been fighting against the self-interests of the wealthiest Americans long before this. He allowed those who benefit from these tax cuts and the political allies they have bought in Congress to frame the debate and set the terms of engagement. So Obama is now backed into a corner, and just made a compromise that he thinks is the best deal possible when up against the clock. He got some good things for working families in the payroll tax cut, the extension of unemployment benefits, various refundable tax credits, and the important middle class tax cut. But the president is now presiding over the great redistribution of wealth that has been going on for a very long time -- the redistribution of wealth from the middle and the bottom, to the top of American society -- and leaving us with the most economic inequality in American history. This will only grow larger with the Obama "compromise."
If Obama had he fought earlier, he could have ensured the protection of small business owners, who are the primary job creators. Obama could have focused the higher tax rates on the very rich and protected those who are more in the middle and really creating jobs. But now, most of the people who will be keeping their tax cuts are not job creators. After all, how many jobs will be created by the Goldman Sachs traders, or the hedge fund gamblers, or the celebrities who dominate our lives? Almost none. On the contrary, they have been the "job destroyers," and have wrecked this economy and the lives of so many people.
Let's be clear here: At the root of the crisis was just a handful of banks -- not the banking industry, not business in general, but a handful of very rich people who took big and selfish risks. They are already getting richer because of our taxpayer bailout, and now we're giving them more tax breaks and estate tax bonanzas. There is socialism in America, but it's only for the rich. Risk has been socialized for some of the very richest people in the country, and then, the "free market" pain is distributed to all the rest.
The rich are too big to fail in America, while many in the rest of the country really are failing. The president did want to keep some things for average Americans in this compromise, but he lost the big battle a long time ago when he did not fight the people whose greed, recklessness, and utter lack of concern for the common good led us into this terrible crisis. He waited too long to fight, to force a national debate on economic fairness, and to counter the distortions of the Republicans who clearly don't mind adding huge sums to the deficit (almost a trillion dollars with the tax cuts) as long as it benefits their wealthy patrons. The Republicans will now seek to reduce the deficit by adding more pain to the rest of us -- especially those on the bottom and increasingly shaky middle rungs of the economy. And now, Obama and the rest of us are all backed into corners without a way out.
Our national economic philosophy is now to reward the casino gamblers on Wall Street and to leave the majority of the country standing outside the casino with a tin cup, hoping that the gamblers are at least big tippers. More tax breaks and benefits for the very wealthiest people in America is not only bad economics and bad policy; it is fundamentally immoral. In aletter to the president signed by more than 100 religious leaders, we said just that.
So far, they haven't listened.
Wednesday, December 8, 2010
Silencing an unpopular or even offensive point of view as the National Portrait Gallery is currently being pressured to do does not justify or excuse censorship. In fact, I think you'd be hard-pressed to find many censorship campaigns that did not claim to be acting on behalf of the People, usually a majority suppressing the dissenting voice of a minority. Inserting a sensitivity clause into the First Amendment was something the founders could have done but wisely chose not to. And by the way, if we don't defend speech we disagree with, then freedom of speech doesn't really mean much does it? Popular speech needs no protection - it's popular!
And let's not forget that history is full of voices that spoke words that offended the majority of their time but were in fact correct.
Galileo seemed to be contradicting Scripture and the majority of his time who "knew" that the earth was stationary and the sun revolved around it. He was censored.
Mark Twain questioned the morality of slavery and the arbitrary taboo of interracial friendship, offending the majority of his time in his book Huckleberry Finn (a work some school systems in the United States, conservative Christian ones still want to ban).
When Margaret Sanger opened a clinic to help poor women take control of their reproductive lives, she was almost arrested for violating the Comstock Law of 1873 that prohibited discussion or dissemination of information about contraceptives as "obscene." It would not be until 1966 that the Supreme Court recognized the right of (married) couples to use contraception! Yet these ideas were considered as offensive to the majorities in their time.
When Martin Luther King spoke out against racism, poverty, and the Vietnam War (which he saw as interwoven), he was condemned as a communist (Glenn Beck would have been proud). Even LBJ, who parted ways with MLK over Vietnam, referred to him at one point using the n-word.
And of course we can go back much farther to a long line of moral leaders who were condemned in their time for saying unpopular, even offensive things, such as that the rich would have a harder time getting into heaven than a camel getting through the eye of a needle, or that we will be judged by how we treat the least among us. That sort of thing.
And while we are speaking of offensive free speech, let's consider that book found free in most hotel rooms. In this story, you'll find several cases of infanticide, incest, drunkenness, debauchery, mass murder, slaughter of innocents (and their animals), and a fairly detailed account of one (censored) man's torture and execution... which brings us of course to the ants.
I personally fail to see how ants on a corpse are as offensive as, say, graphic pictures of Sebastian riddled with arrows (I counted at least 12 in the Louvre alone), beheaded John the Baptists, and more punctured, bleeding, broken, suffering Jesus's than I think is healthy for any small child (or adult) to see. I remember walking into a room in a museum in Florence to see a giant picture depicting in gleeful detail the torment of several people being burned alive in an auto de fe. Now the spiritual descendants of those engaging in this cruelty - and depicting it in such apologetically graphic terms - want to remove a work of art because it has some insects? Give me a break!
I do not advocate censorship of the more violent and divisive imagery thrust upon us by a religious "majority" (although most accept without thinking too much about it, such as why the nails went through the palms rather than the wrists or why blood would have spurted several feet (as one particularly gory painting in Rome illustrated) when a soldier pierced Jesus's side even though it had been established that he was "already dead"). I would prefer not to have my view of a beautiful mountain-top marred by a wood carving of a corpse nailed to a piece of wood, as recently happened near Zermatt, but understand the religious organization that put up the memorial has a right to free speech, even if it may offend me and disturb small children (or adults who think about it much).
And let's not forget that history is full of voices that spoke words that offended the majority of their time but were in fact correct.
Galileo seemed to be contradicting Scripture and the majority of his time who "knew" that the earth was stationary and the sun revolved around it. He was censored.
Mark Twain questioned the morality of slavery and the arbitrary taboo of interracial friendship, offending the majority of his time in his book Huckleberry Finn (a work some school systems in the United States, conservative Christian ones still want to ban).
When Margaret Sanger opened a clinic to help poor women take control of their reproductive lives, she was almost arrested for violating the Comstock Law of 1873 that prohibited discussion or dissemination of information about contraceptives as "obscene." It would not be until 1966 that the Supreme Court recognized the right of (married) couples to use contraception! Yet these ideas were considered as offensive to the majorities in their time.
When Martin Luther King spoke out against racism, poverty, and the Vietnam War (which he saw as interwoven), he was condemned as a communist (Glenn Beck would have been proud). Even LBJ, who parted ways with MLK over Vietnam, referred to him at one point using the n-word.
And of course we can go back much farther to a long line of moral leaders who were condemned in their time for saying unpopular, even offensive things, such as that the rich would have a harder time getting into heaven than a camel getting through the eye of a needle, or that we will be judged by how we treat the least among us. That sort of thing.
And while we are speaking of offensive free speech, let's consider that book found free in most hotel rooms. In this story, you'll find several cases of infanticide, incest, drunkenness, debauchery, mass murder, slaughter of innocents (and their animals), and a fairly detailed account of one (censored) man's torture and execution... which brings us of course to the ants.
I personally fail to see how ants on a corpse are as offensive as, say, graphic pictures of Sebastian riddled with arrows (I counted at least 12 in the Louvre alone), beheaded John the Baptists, and more punctured, bleeding, broken, suffering Jesus's than I think is healthy for any small child (or adult) to see. I remember walking into a room in a museum in Florence to see a giant picture depicting in gleeful detail the torment of several people being burned alive in an auto de fe. Now the spiritual descendants of those engaging in this cruelty - and depicting it in such apologetically graphic terms - want to remove a work of art because it has some insects? Give me a break!
I do not advocate censorship of the more violent and divisive imagery thrust upon us by a religious "majority" (although most accept without thinking too much about it, such as why the nails went through the palms rather than the wrists or why blood would have spurted several feet (as one particularly gory painting in Rome illustrated) when a soldier pierced Jesus's side even though it had been established that he was "already dead"). I would prefer not to have my view of a beautiful mountain-top marred by a wood carving of a corpse nailed to a piece of wood, as recently happened near Zermatt, but understand the religious organization that put up the memorial has a right to free speech, even if it may offend me and disturb small children (or adults who think about it much).
Wednesday, December 1, 2010
Sarah Palin has 2.5 Million "Likes" on Facebook; Should We Admire Her for This?
If only popularity were correlated with intelligence, character, or ability to lead...
The most popular type of website remains pornography; does this mean we should admire pornographers for their genius or shake our heads at their shameless pandering to the lowest element of our humanity?
Sarah Palin would not be a household name if the Republicans had not tapped her to be McCain's running mate. For all we know, she would have completed her term as governor rather than be lured by a multi-million dollar contract with Fox News and a lucrative book deal.
I have a beef with any public servant, including candidates for national public office, leveraging their name recognition which they gained through no personal merit per se (there were strategic reasons for selecting Palin that had nothing to do with any accomplishments) into lucrative private contracts. That includes ex-presidents receiving $100,000 a pop to speak when the only reason they are paid so much is because they once held a public office. All the goodwill that comes with that office (here I am using goodwill in the business sense) is a function of the trademark and brand recognition that is really the property of the taxpayer.
(My "if I were king of the world" solution? Apply a very high return-to-the-people tax on the proportion of speaker's fees or book royalties that could reasonably be assumed to be a function of the fact the person held public office, in the same way that we must pay capital gains on the proportion of proceeds from the sale of stock that represent a profit. In other words, if someone was paid $10,000 for speaking prior to being elected president, then is offered $100,000, it is safe to assume that $90,000 of those fees are generated as a function of publicity gained while serving the people; why not tax that $90,000 at 50% and use it to reduce the deficit or publicly finance the next election, rolling the money back into the public coffers?)
Yes, Palin has some organizational skills and a knack at manipulating public opinion (her "death panels" post on Facebook perhaps more than any other single factor brought the popularity of healthcare reform from over 70% to about 50:50 for and against).
But were it not for the clout of the Republican Party and the national publicity a run for president gave her, she would be using those skills at the level of her local PTA, town council, or Alaska statewide politics (a state, let's not forget, with a population less than Columbus, Ohio). Instead of 2.5 million likes, she would have 2,500. As Barbara Bush pointed out, Sarah Palin seems happy in Alaska - perhaps she should stay there.
In our winner-takes-all media circus, we will have exaggerated measures like this that seem to make people appear much more important, popular, or significant than they really are. Let's also remember that 2.5 million is less than 1% of the population of the country, and that no doubt a number of those "likes" are more than one person (since people often have multiple profiles).
I would not be surprised in a country in which 4 million Americans believe they have been abducted by aliens that 2.5 million like Sarah Palin.
The most popular type of website remains pornography; does this mean we should admire pornographers for their genius or shake our heads at their shameless pandering to the lowest element of our humanity?
Sarah Palin would not be a household name if the Republicans had not tapped her to be McCain's running mate. For all we know, she would have completed her term as governor rather than be lured by a multi-million dollar contract with Fox News and a lucrative book deal.
I have a beef with any public servant, including candidates for national public office, leveraging their name recognition which they gained through no personal merit per se (there were strategic reasons for selecting Palin that had nothing to do with any accomplishments) into lucrative private contracts. That includes ex-presidents receiving $100,000 a pop to speak when the only reason they are paid so much is because they once held a public office. All the goodwill that comes with that office (here I am using goodwill in the business sense) is a function of the trademark and brand recognition that is really the property of the taxpayer.
(My "if I were king of the world" solution? Apply a very high return-to-the-people tax on the proportion of speaker's fees or book royalties that could reasonably be assumed to be a function of the fact the person held public office, in the same way that we must pay capital gains on the proportion of proceeds from the sale of stock that represent a profit. In other words, if someone was paid $10,000 for speaking prior to being elected president, then is offered $100,000, it is safe to assume that $90,000 of those fees are generated as a function of publicity gained while serving the people; why not tax that $90,000 at 50% and use it to reduce the deficit or publicly finance the next election, rolling the money back into the public coffers?)
Yes, Palin has some organizational skills and a knack at manipulating public opinion (her "death panels" post on Facebook perhaps more than any other single factor brought the popularity of healthcare reform from over 70% to about 50:50 for and against).
But were it not for the clout of the Republican Party and the national publicity a run for president gave her, she would be using those skills at the level of her local PTA, town council, or Alaska statewide politics (a state, let's not forget, with a population less than Columbus, Ohio). Instead of 2.5 million likes, she would have 2,500. As Barbara Bush pointed out, Sarah Palin seems happy in Alaska - perhaps she should stay there.
In our winner-takes-all media circus, we will have exaggerated measures like this that seem to make people appear much more important, popular, or significant than they really are. Let's also remember that 2.5 million is less than 1% of the population of the country, and that no doubt a number of those "likes" are more than one person (since people often have multiple profiles).
I would not be surprised in a country in which 4 million Americans believe they have been abducted by aliens that 2.5 million like Sarah Palin.
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