Author: chasdarwin

Active in Americans United, Center For Inquiry, and ACLU

Reviving the Middle Class

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The biggest victim of the wealth redistribution that has been occurring since 1980 is the middle class.

Robert Borosage in HuffPost: ”

We can’t go back to the old economy. That economy — marked by booms and busts, Gilded Age inequality, declining wages, growing household debts, and unsustainable trade deficits — didn’t work very well for most Americans. President Obama is faced with the difficult task of creating the structure for the new economy even as he works to lift us out of the collapse of the old.

That’s why his stunning budget calls for health care reform, ending our addiction to oil and investing in education as both a way out of the mess and a down payment on the future. His pace is as unrelenting as the crisis. Next up: reviving America’s middle class, insuring that once growth returns, its blessings are widely shared. And the centerpiece of that is the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA).

EFCA helps revive the right of workers to organize in this country. Over the last decades, that basic right has been shredded, as companies waged open warfare on union organizing, and administrations often failed to enforce the laws protecting that right. The tactics were bare knuckle: fire the organizers; hold closed door meetings to threaten the workers. And if workers did vote for a union, one-third of employers simply refused to negotiate a contract with them.

The campaigns have been brutally successful. Today, over a majority of workers say that they would join a union if given a choice, but only about 7.5% of the private workforce is organized.”

The median income of Americans homes – in current dollars – is less than it was 3o years ago.  In his widely read work: “The Affluent Society”, economist John Kenneth Galbraith gives credit to strong unions for negotiating wages which built the middle class.  (That was published in 1958 – in case one has a disconnect with the title and the current state of our bushconomy…)

see; http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-l-borosage/obamas-next-gauntlet-revi_b_171610.html

11% of GOP voters say Limbaugh is their leader!

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Rasmussen reports that only 11% of Republicans think he is their leader: ” …just 11% of GOP voters say the conservative radio commentator is the party’s leader.  Eighty-one percent (81%) of Republican voters disagree and 8% are undecided in a new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey.”

N.B.: Should ‘fuhrer’ be the operative word for leader in this case?

see:

http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/general_politics/just_11_of_republicans_say_limbaugh_is_their_party_s_leader

Earmark my pork!

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What are earmarks?  What is pork?

Earmarks, about 2% – that’s TWO percent – of the budget, are projects inserted into the budget by legislators to address needs back home, which is one reason why they were elected.

Pork is what conservatives label projects that spend  money to solve a social or community problem.

When I hear ‘pork’ , I think of the factually challenged fat boy!

Socialists?

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The first thought that I had when I first  heard the word ‘Socialist’ connect with Obama (a year ago, going door to door in the March primary in Ohio), was that I didn’t consider that word pejorative.  (The first attack on expanded health care is often, of course, that it is ‘Socialized ‘ medicine.)     To the author, ‘Socialism ‘means what it did to socialists and communists in the past: the common ownership of the means of production.  Mr. Harold Meyerson writes a piece in the Washington Post.  From Meyerson: “… socialists and communists both spoke of nationalizing all major industries and abolishing private markets and the wage system. Today, it’s impossible to find a left-leaning party anywhere that has such demands or entertains such fantasies. (Not even Hugo Chávez — more an authoritarian populist than any kind of socialist — says such things.)”

In the 1960’s, I worked for IBM, and our president – Tom Watson – was a liberal Democrat.  A decade ago, when I read his autobiography – “Father, Son, and Company”, I learned why.  His father – as president of the US Chamber of Commerce – had gone to Washington to meet with Roosevelt, who said to him: “Tom, you go back to Wall Street and tell your friends that we are going to save this country, and them with it”.  Tom wrote that his Dad became a liberal Democrat, and he followed in those footsteps.  From Meyerson”…in the United States, conservatives have never bashed socialism because its specter was actually stalking America. Rather, they’ve wielded the cudgel against such progressive reforms as free universal education, the minimum wage or tighter financial regulations. Their signal success is to have kept the United States free from the taint of universal health care. The result: We have the world’s highest health-care costs, borne by businesses and employees that cannot afford them; nearly 50 million Americans have no coverage; infant mortality rates are higher than those in 41 nations — but at least (phew!) we don’t have socialized medicine. Give conservatives credit for their consistency: They attacked Roosevelt as a socialist as they are now attacking Obama, when in fact Obama, like Roosevelt before him, is engaged not in creating socialism but in rebooting a crashed capitalist system.”

see:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/03/03/AR2009030303207.html?hpid=opinionsbox1

The intellectual of the Grand Old party

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While it is difficult to address the question of what an intellectual is and simultaneously appear modest, I have to verify that I am still living in the same galaxy whenever I hear That word associated with Rush Limbaugh.  Having conversed with Harvard, Yale, and Case PH D’s , and some  Oxford grads, I have an established idea of what’s ‘ín’ and what’s not, and he is certainly ‘not’!  Shrewd, perhaps, but not practicing the in depth analysis required to reach the depths of an issue.

Perhaps the answer is that in a collection of room-temperature IQ’s, a 3 digit score seems lofty, but rather than appear to be an effete snob on this matter, I won’t say that, but rather, as a loyal Democrat, hope that the GOP listens to him, and no one else.

Redistribution from those who have too much, to those who have too little

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E. J. Dionne, in TruthDig

”  Our political system adjusts badly when the familiar landmarks erected during controversies of the past are swept away and prepackaged arguments become obsolete.

    Starting with this week’s congressional budget hearings, it will be imperative to recognize the extent to which President Obama’s fiscal plan and the direction he set in his foreign policy speech on Friday have transformed the terms of the nation’s debate.

    The central issue in American politics now is whether the country should reverse a three-decade-long trend of rising inequality in incomes and wealth.

    Politicians will say lots of things in the coming weeks, but they should be pushed relentlessly to address the bottom-line question: Do they believe that a fairer distribution of capitalism’s bounty is essential to repairing a sick economy? Everything else is a subsidiary issue.”

Right on!

see:http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20090301_dionne_redistribution/

Here we go again – Ohio 2010 Senate Race already in national spotlight!

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“Call it our curse. Apparently, living in Ohio means never being far from the next big election.”…How big will the race in 2010 be? It could be the most expensive Senate race in state history, with spending as high as $30 million. Democrat Sherrod Brown and Republican Mike DeWine spent about $25 million in 2006.”

From the Dayton Daily news:

http://www.daytondailynews.com/n/content/oh/story/news/local/2009/03/01/ddn030109SENATE.html

Off Key!

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Is the GOP – perhaps inhaling their own smoke – on the right path by standing against progress?  Hint: Success in politics depends on winning the persuadables.  Greg Sargent reports: “You routinely hear it asserted that the public wants bipartisan comity in Washington, but somestriking numbers buried in the internals of the new New York Times poll find that in the current context, precisely the opposite is true:

Which do you think should be a higher priority for Barack Obama right now — working in a bipartisan way with Republicans in Congress or sticking to the policies he promised he would during the campaign:

Working bipartisan way: 39%

Sticking to policies: 56%

“So a sizable majority wants Obama to pursue his policies with our without Republican support. Meanwhile, a huge majority says that Republicans should emphasize working with Obama in a bipartisan way over pursuing their policy ideas:

Which do you think should be a higher priority for Republicans in Congress right now — working in a bipartisan way with Barack Obama and Democrats in Congress or sticking to Republican policies?

Working bipartisan way: 79%

Sticking to policies: 17%

I’m not sure I’ve ever seen poll numbers suggest this clearly that the public has no interest in bipartisanship for its own sake. The public doesn’t seem to care about the preoccupations of process-obsessed Beltway pundits, and seems to be looking at the “bipartisanship” question through the prism of what they want their leaders to accomplish in policy terms.

The only bipartisanship majorities want is for Republicans to help Obama realize his policies. ”

Lets hope the GOP sticks to their current plan!

see: http://theplumline.whorunsgov.com/president-obama/poll-majority-doesnt-want-obama-to-be-bipartisan/

More on the GOP threat to our Recovery

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“The Ecstasy and the Agony”

Frank was really Rich today, and, amongst his words of celebration, was a warning.  Samples:

“The good news for Obama is that he needn’t worry about the Republicans. They’re committing suicide.”

“…the party is trying to lock down its white country-club blowhards.”

“G.O.P. pseudopopulism ran riot last week as right-wing troops rallied around their latest Joe the Plumber: Rick Santelli, the ranting CNBC foe of Obama’s mortgage rescue program….The Santelli revolution’s flameout was just another confirmation that hard-core Republican radicals are now the G.O.P.’s problem, not the president’s. Rahm Emanuel has it right when he says the administration must try bipartisanship, but it doesn’t have to succeed. Voters give Obama credit for trying, and he can even claim success with many Republican governors, from Schwarzenegger to Crist. Now he can move on and let his childish adversaries fight among themselves, with Rush Limbaugh as the arbitrating babysitter. (Last week he gave Jindal a thumb’s up.)”

Mr Rich goes on to warn us on potential problems.

see: “http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/01/opinion/01rich.html?ref=opinion”

The author sees the current GOP media situation as being caused by, among other facts:

o  They are so used to being able to run all over Democrats, minorities, the under-privileged,  and ‘Liberals’,that they do not yet realize may people are living in hard times, and wish a different message.

o They don’t yet realize the impact of the opposition having control of the executive and legislative branches.

Does the GOP stumbling mean we can go on auto-pilot and win the next three elections?  No, we must work hard, but we will take all of the help we can get!

A True Paradigm Shift: Ultra Rich helping those in need

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NY Times Columist Nicholas Kristoff writes today that we have a President who is more strategic: “Most presidents are tacticians, but President Obama is a strategist. His budget suggests that he aspires to be an echo of Franklin Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan, harnessing his charisma, vision and political capital to transport America to a different place.

The absurd system of health coverage we now have is a historical accident from World War II. Because of wage controls, employers competed for workers by offering health insurance as a fringe benefit — and so we’re stuck today with a system in which the loss of a job is compounded by the loss of health insurance.

Titanic ambitions encounter titanic opposition, and opponents of health reform are already rehearsing the arguments that they successfully used in the past:

We have the best health care in the world, and you want to create a socialized bureaucracy? You want to wait months for a necessary operation, as in Canada? And you really want higher taxes to pay for this, stifling the economy and undermining our long-term competitiveness?

So let’s examine those arguments.:

It’s true that the existing system offers top-line medical care. Yet over all, it is preposterous to argue that we have the best medical care in the world….McKinsey Global Institute found that the United States spends about $650 billion more on health care each year than one would expect for a country at its income level. That’s $2,100 per American, and it’s one gauge of the waste of our existing system….Repairing the system is thus not only a moral imperative but also an economic one. So if our health system is broken, is it really so awful that we increase taxes for the wealthiest Americans to make repairs? In 1980, the top-earning 1 percent of Americans accounted for 8 percent of the total income pie; by 2006, they grabbed nearly 23 percent.?”

see: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/01/opinion/01Kristof.html?_r=1&ref=opinion

Right on Mr. K!