huffpost – charles' log

“Last Thursday’s Washington Post headline blared: “Debt panel’s lack of progress raises alarm on Hill.”

In fact it is far better for everyday Americans if the so-called Super Committee fails entirely to get a deal.

The overarching reason is simple: any deal they are likely to strike will make life worse for everyday Americans — and worsen our prospects for long-term economic growth.

Of course that’s not the view of many denizens of the Capitol who are still obsessed by the notion that it is critical for the Congress to produce a “compromise” that raises revenue and cuts “entitlements.” There are three reasons why these people are wrong:

1). Any deal would likely slash the income of many everyday Americans. You could design a plan to substantially reduce the deficit without big cuts in Social Security, Medicare or Medicaid. My wife, Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky, who served on President Obama’s Fiscal Commission, designed just such a proposal last year. And, of course, Social Security has nothing to do with the deficit in the first place.

Unfortunately, however, in order to get Republican support any large-scale deal in the Super Committee would almost certainly require big cuts in either Social Security, Medicare or Medicaid — or all of them. Substantial cuts in any of these programs will make life harder for everyday Americans and reduce the likelihood of long-term economic growth.

Without a “deal” in the Super Committee, the current budget plan does not cut Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid — and that’s a good thing.

According to the Social Security Administration, the average monthly Social Security check now averages the princely sum of $1,082 — or about $13,000 per year. Next year, for the first time since 2009, payments will increase by $39 per month to offset inflation, but $18 a month of that increase will go right back out the door in the form of Medicare premium increases.

Already under current law, Medicare Part B premiums, that cover services like doctors, outpatient care and home health services, must be set annually to cover 25% of program costs. And remember that Medicare recipients aren’t getting an “entitlement” — they are getting an earned benefit that they paid for throughout their working lives. The same, of course, is true of Social Security.

Mean while, Medicaid is the principle means of assuring that America actually begins to provide health care for all — including nursing home and home care.

The problem with medical care costs isn’t that “greedy” seniors and others are gobbling up too much care. The problem is that the costs of providing care are going up too fast. In fact, the per capita costs of providing health care in America is 50% higher than anywhere else on earth, and the World Health Organization only ranks health care outcomes as 37th, in the world.

Medicare is actually the most efficient means in the American economy for providing health care. Any action by the “Super Committee” that reduces the percentage of Americans on Medicare — say, by raising the eligibility age from 65 to 67 — would cost the American economy.

According to a study by the Kaiser Family Foundation, if such a proposal were operational in 2014 it would raise total health care spending in America by $5.7 billion per year.
This is so because, while it would save the Federal government a net of about $5.7 billion ($24 billion savings in Medicare payments largely offset by $18 billion of increased Medicaid payments and subsidies to low-income participants in exchanges), it would also generate an additional $11.4 billion in higher health care costs for individuals, employers and states — resulting in a net cost to the economy of $5.7 billion.

The one thing you could do to cut Medicare costs without hurting ordinary families or the economy as a whole is to require Medicare to negotiate with the drug companies for lower prices the same way the Veterans Administration does today. That would cut hundreds of billions in costs to the government over the next ten years, but don’t expect the Republicans to include that as an acceptable cut in “entitlements” as part of a Super Committee deal.

Of course, America has no business cutting the income of seniors who get $13,000 a year in Social Security payments regardless of anything else that is in a deal. The deficit problem should be fixed by asking millionaires and billionaires to pay their fair share and by jobs plans that put America back on a path of sustained economic growth. And we have no business reducing access to health care for everyday people so that CEO‘s can fly around in their corporate jets, oil companies can keep their tax breaks, or Wall Street hot shots — who we all bailed out just three years ago — can pack in their huge bonuses.

Even if a Super Committee proposal includes increases in revenue to the government from millionaires and billionaires, that is not reason that normal people — whose real incomes have dropped over the last decade — should also be called upon to “share in the sacrifice.”

The problem isn’t that everyday Americans are gorging themselves on excesses that “America can’t afford.” The problem is that Wall Street, the financial sector and the 1% have gobbled up all of the increases in economic growth that the country has produced over the last two decades.

That has meant that the standard of living for normal people has been stagnant. But just as problematic, it has lead to a stagnant economic growth. Since the incomes of everyday people haven’t increased at the same rate as increased worker productivity, there simply haven’t been enough new customers to buy the new products and services that American businesses produce. That is the formula for recession and depression. And that’s just what happened.

American corporations are sitting on two trillion dollars of cash. The reason they aren’t hiring has nothing to do with the need for more tax breaks. What stops them isn’t lack of “confidence,” it’s a lack of customers.

For decades the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has preached the need for fiscal constraint and austerity. According to the Washington Post, now even the IMF is warning that, “austerity may trigger a new recession, and is urging countries to look for ways to boost growth.”

If you want to lay a foundation for long-term economic growth in America, the last thing you would do is reduce the income going to ordinary Americans — even over the long run. That’s not the problem — just the opposite. We do not need ordinary people to “share in the sacrifice.” We need policies that will increase the share of income going to ordinary people and reduce the exploding inequality between the 99% and the 1%.

Any deal in the Super Committee will almost certainly do just the opposite.

2.). The worst effects of sequestration could be solved without a “grand bargain”. The one big downside of a failure of the Super-Committee to act would be the level of discretionary spending cuts that would be required through the resulting sequestration. This is particularly true of cuts in education funding.

The budget deal that was struck in order to prevent Republicans from plunging America into default last summer requires an additional $1.2 trillion reduction in the deficit over the next ten years. If the Super Committee fails to agree on the distribution of these cuts, they will automatically be spread over defense and non-defense segments of the budget beginning in 2013. But there would be no cuts in Social Security, Medicare or Medicaid.

Congress would have the ability to adjust these sequestration requirements between now and 2013, regardless. But the “fast track” authority that would require up or down votes on a proposal from the “Super Committee” would expire if the Committee cannot reach agreement by November 23rd.

The best solution to the problem of big cuts in discretionary spending would be to put together a smaller deal to raise some revenue and reduce cuts in discretionary and – if necessary — military spending — after the mandate of the Super Committee has expired.

The Congress will have a year to help solve this problem, and the pressure to ameliorate some of the cuts in military spending that have so far proved ineffective at forcing Republicans to consider big revenue increase, may be more persuasive when it comes to smaller increases as the actual date of sequestration (2013) draws near.

Of course it’s possible that the Super Committee itself could come with a small-bore deal of this sort, simply to avoid the full force of sequestration. But that would be very different than a $1.2 trillion dollar package that includes cuts in Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. Progressives should avoid cuts to these programs at all costs, because any cuts that sliced Social Security, Medicare or Medicaid benefits would require changes in the structure of the programs themselves that would last forever. Cuts in discretionary spending — as bad as they might be — are one-time events and do not fundamentally change the structure of the American social contract.

3). There is no reason for Congress to fear that its failure to act on a “Super Committee” agreement will have massive adverse consequences on “market confidence,” since the level of the deficit will not be affected. That has already been set — with a mandate for a $1.2 trillion cut. The Wall Street gang and the ratings agencies might sputter something about government dysfunction for a day or two. But the fundamentals will not be affected, since the level of government borrowing won’t be affected by whether or not there is a deal.

It’s also worth noting that even after Standard and Poor’s downgraded the U.S. debt because of the process leading up to the debt ceiling deal, it had no effect on the interest rates the government is paying for bonds. In fact those interest rates dropped to record lows. U.S. government debt remains the safest investment in the world, no matter what S&P did, and the market reflected that indisputable fact.

In other words then, Congress does not have its back against the wall like it did during the debt ceiling “hostage” crisis. When it came to the debt-ceiling deadline, failure was not an option. In the case of the “Super Committee” failure to come to an agreement is a very real option — in fact, it’s the best option.

There are some in Congress — most notably in the Senate — who truly believe that what the country needs is a “grand bargain” that cuts the deficit by making ordinary people “share in the sacrifice” even if millionaires and billionaires are asked to share some as well.

Hopefully those who are working for such bargain will be thwarted by two important political realities.

First, that cuts in Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid are politically toxic. People get really angry when you take away something they have earned.

Second, the Republican’s stubborn unwillingness to give an ounce of new revenue from the pockets of millionaires and billionaires – who, after all, are the true core constituency of the Republican Party.

This time a little “gridlock” may be a good thing.”

Robert Creamer is a long-time political organizer and strategist, and author of the book: Stand Up Straight: How Progressives Can Win, available on Amazon.com. He is a partner in Democracy Partners and Senior Strategist for Americans United for Change. Follow him on Twitter @rbcreamer.

Emphasis Mine

see: /robert-creamer/three-reasons-why-its-bet_b_1030166.html

Increasing Union Membership Would Boost Middle-Class Incomes: Study

2011-09-28 chasdarwinLeave a comment

From HuffPost, by Jillian Berman

“If the incomes of the union rank-and-file rose by just a tenth, middle-class incomes would go up $1,479 per year — even for those who aren’t members, according to an analysis of Census data from the Center for American Progress.

The boost in income, while slightly lower than if college-attainment rates went up by 10 percent, is higher than if the unemployment rate dropped by four percentage points — a scenario that would increase middle class incomes by $772 per household, according to the study.

The share of income going to the middle class is below average, in the states with the lowest unionization rates, The Center for American Progress also found.

Union rights have come increasingly under fire as unemployment remains high and companies and municipal governments look to curb spending. In August, a Gallup poll found that approval of unions was just above its lowest-recorded level, dating back to the Great Depression, while union membership dropped to a 70-year low in 2010, according to The New York Times.

In a February poll by the Pew Research Center, though, the number of respondents saying unions have a negative impact on the availability of jobs was the same as those saying they have a positive effect. Opinions like these may be why union influence is dwindling in states including Wisconsin, where last week major state employee unions lost their official status, according to Reuters.

The waning influence of private-sector unions, such as the United Auto Workers, could have something to do with their dwindling numbers, according a Harvard University and University of Washington study. The researchers found that private-sector union membership dropped to 8 percent from 34 percent among men between 1973 and 2007 and to 6 percent from 16 percent for women during the same period.

The effect? A more than 40 percent increase in wage stratification, according to the study.

Here’s where a boost in unionization would most help middle-class incomes, according to the Center for American Progress:

Middle-class household incomes would rise $1,675 per year in New Hampshire, on average, if the unionizaton rate saw a 10 percent boost, according to the Center for American Progress.

Emphasis Mine

see:http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/09/27/union-membership-middle-class-income_n_983702.html?ref=fb&src=sp&comm_ref=false#sb=1061349,b=facebook

Did ‘we’ Lost the War(s)?

It became politically critical the way Nixon grasped at “Peace with Honor” as fig leaf modesty to cover our withdrawal from Vietnam. To be absolutely plain: Our military has been ineffective, in shocking contrast to initial war expectations. After 9/11 we worshiped our forces as Gods of War, and yet after ten years of heroic effort they could not meet even the most limited of US war goals

2011-09-07 chasdarwinLeave a comment

From HuffPost, By Michael Vlahos

“Official Disclaimer: This is my take, and mine alone.

I thought at least someone would ask the question. This is after all a solemn commemorative occasion. It is perhaps our only real moment for constructive reflection, because this anniversary also effectively marks the end of the war itself.

It is almost as though we collectively decided not to say it, and focus instead on a fitting and proper emotional memorial — never the word, defeat.

But we will learn nothing and gain nothing from ten years of tragedy, waste, and ruin unless we face up to it. And facing up does not mean asking, “Did we win?” Not winning, as the coachman says in The Wizard of Oz, is a horse of a different color. It is for example the correct question to have asked at the end of the Korean War (Answer: No we did not win. But we did not lose either).

So how do we know we lost? The history of war shows us two stainless measures: One is emotional and one is objective. You have lost when you feel you have lost, no matter what you say in public. You have lost when your instruments of war fail to achieve your goals, and instead lead you to a place of strategic vulnerability and disadvantage — when you are in a worse situation coming out of war than going in.

The 9/11 War is a straight-up defeat on both counts. Our nation today is depressed and disheartened and feels itself in steep decline. The US military — the instrument we chose to achieve our goals — not only failed to achieve them: Its very enterprise has led to a world situation of severe vulnerability and disadvantage to the United States.

Emotional defeat is a quick review because it is so visible and clear:

We feel weak. We were in budget surplus going into war, and now we are going to top 100 percent GDP debt very soon — and a third of that will be paid to the war. Hence actual unemployment is at 1934 levels, and will hover there very much longer than it ever did after 1934.
We feel in decline. We feel China stole a march on us and we will never catch up. How we were startled by a report that China would surpass us by 2016, even though the message was couched in the deceptive measure of purchasing power parity. Yet we still feel like our time has passed.
We feel we have nothing to show for 200,000 casualties — which must include the yet uncounted wounded by TBI, PTSD, and toxic dust. They will witness and testify for this war for decades to come.
We feel divided as a nation. Republicans believe Democrats are socialist “defeatocrats” and thus traitors to the American idea. Democrats believe Republicans are sweatshop-loving Scrooges whose worldview is closer to medieval Taliban than modern American ideals. The only belief both share is a judgment that national political leadership has failed. Utterly.

Naturally all this is voiced, cacophonously. It is just that the wild surround sound is not connected to the very thing that caused it: The war.

Objective defeat seems like the more difficult argument because it is so hotly denied. But the very denial of objective defeat actually makes it a stronger argument, because denial is in itself powerful evidence for the prosecution.

Evidence falls into three baskets: Did the use of military force achieve our goals? How well has the military adapted to difficulties and shortcomings? What is the military’s concluding assessment?

Goals: The US Government has put forward many different war goals at different times and from different sources within Government. Yet the overarching goal announced in strategic initiation and six-year follow-through was twofold: The “transformation of the Middle East” into democratic polities according to US standards, and the extirpation of terrorism and its source, “violent extremism.” Specific benchmark-goals within this strategic framework were the establishment of democratic polities in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the maintenance of “stability and security in the Greater Middle East” (US official policy since 1991).None of these goals has been achieved, and as a consequence of the Arab Spring, stability and security in the Greater Middle East has also been lost. Iraq and Afghanistan are not stable, let alone democratic polities. Violent extremism, as defined by US leadership (i.e., al-Ikhwan), is an increasingly powerful and legitimate force in Muslim politics. Indeed it can be argued that military force in the short term highly encouraged and hardened Islamist “extremism.” In the longer term, because of the ways force was used to seduce occupied societies to adopt US political forms, our “kinetic” military administration encouraged wider popular revolution, even against “stable” tyrants that were America’s most valued “friends and allies in the region.”

Adaptation: The US military responded so slowly that its adaptation to military failure came too late to contain the dynamic surge of a changing Arab consciousness inspired by US military action. Moreover US military adaptation was operational rather than strategic — meaning the military chose to try only a different palette of techniques to bring resistance to heel. This approach is called counterinsurgency (COIN). But COIN has been an utter failure in Afghanistan (COIN in Iraq was of the storybook variety). Why? Because COIN believes that a larger community’s actively resistant consciousness can be broken by limited (even soft) techniques. Truth is that committed insurgent communities can be broken only through the slaughter or removal of military-age males and by placing the rest of the community in concentration camps. So far Americans have shown themselves incapable of wholeheartedly embracing such a strategy.Hence the US military adapted too little and too late. They also adopted the wrong approach. Honing our skills in 9-11-style COIN as advertised — the occupation and administration of entire countries — is waste. The American people will be unwilling to risk repeat defeat and debacle for the foreseeable future. But as to practical future courses of action, we can already see chaotic irregular environments awaiting us — whose scale and horror in coming decades will not permit even the thought of another Iraq or Afghanistan.

Assessment: I know of no military person, fraternity, or institution willing to utter the forbidden word: Defeat. Instead we are all just moving ahead and leaving a bitter past behind. This is both a terrible strategic mistake and a potential national tragedy in the making. To be absolutely plain: Our military has been ineffective, in shocking contrast to initial war expectations. After 9/11 we worshiped our forces as Gods of War, and yet after ten years of heroic effort they could not meet even the most limited of US war goals. This is not to say that our soldiers did not do their utmost. Furthermore their sacrifice in itself represents a stern civic message to the 99 percent of Americans who stayed home and “went shopping.”But their efforts achieved only marginal results. Even the shining narrative of “The Surge” was in the end just brilliant propaganda. The so-called “Sons of Iraq” came to us and wiped out AQI on their own, while it was the enemy “Mahdi Army” whose winning power-drills ethnically cleansed Baghdad — and now Iraq is his and we are out. Was our military poorly charged and led by Supreme Command (our leaders)? Yes. Were they given a task that we can admit now was unattainable? Yes. Can we see also that war has changed, and that there are conflict environments whose very nature makes submission to us unlikely? Yes. But even a shield-wall of denial cannot avoid what our senses tell us: That in not attaining, they — we — were defeated.

Yet harshest light shows nothing to so many who blithely insist that there were big “wins” coming out of 9/11, and that this is enough. They sanctimoniously aver that we defeated Al Qaeda, like a commonplace truth brooking no argument. Case closed.

This argument about Al Qaeda is reminiscent of Harry Summers telling an NVA colonel: “You know you never defeated us on the battlefield.” To which Col. Tu famously replied, “That may be so. But it is also irrelevant.” Defeating Al Qaeda was simply not the US main war goal after Tora Bora — instead it became critical only recently. It became politically critical the way Nixon grasped at “Peace with Honor” as fig leaf modesty to cover our withdrawal from Vietnam.

Defeating “Al Qaeda and Associated Movements” (AQAI) thus becomes like a Vietnam-era changeling — a strategic switcheroo. Yet pretending the dime-store trophy we now hold up is what we were all about these past ten years is also like asking us to throw away the whole decade — and in turn this becomes yet another badge of defeat.

But why bring up Vietnam again? Because right now our defeat in Vietnam should be a lodestar to the American military. Because our military transcended defeat in Vietnam. Because they faced up to an honest defeat, the US military made defeat a utility of virtue. Because of Vietnam our military transformed itself, and emerged as a force so potent it practically brought down the great Soviet Empire on its own.

America’s military services must find their utility of virtue in the 9/11 War. Our officers, our enlisted men and women need to answer questions like:

What are the limits of military effectiveness in the world today? How can the military be effective in the chaotic irregular environments of the human future? How can the military help national leaders understand changing limits and possibilities to military use? How can our military reinforce, rather than weaken, America’s world relationships and the nation itself?

Embracing defeat is an unsung virtue — but right now such virtue is necessity.”

Emphasis Mine.

see:http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-vlahos/post_2358_b_952745.html

Al Gore On Climate Change Deniers: It’s Crucial To ‘Win The Conversation’

2011-08-31 chasdarwinLeave a comment

from HuffPost, see link below

“former Vice President Al Gore suggests that people today need to “win the conversation” against skeptics of climate change in the same way people stood up to racist comments during the civil rights movement.

Speaking with Climate Reality Project’s Alex Bogusky, Gore argues that in some places, even the words “climate change” have become politically incorrect.

Bogusky explains that it is often difficult to stand up to climate change deniers, but Gore says, “it is no more difficult than it was for Southerners to talk about the evils of racism.”

Gore agrees that explaining the science beyond climate change may be more difficult than confronting racism, but says the moral component is the same.

In the same interview, Gore takes on comments by Texas Governor and presidential hopeful Rick Perry, who has been an outspoken critic of climate change scientists. Perry recently said he believes there are “a substantial number of scientists who have manipulated data so that they will have dollars rolling in to their projects.”

Gore explains that scientists have previously overturned accepted views, so there’s a “natural respect” for a contrarian impulse in the scientific community. But he argues that comments by Perry and others are totally different. He says, “This is an organized effort to attack the reputation of the scientific community as a whole. To attack their integrity, and to slander them with the lie that they are making up the science in order to make money.”

Gore says members of the scientific community did not enter their profession to make money. Nor did they expect to be regularly defending themselves from political attack.

Out of fear of the public supporting “the scientific reality,” Gore contends that:

Powerful polluters … see it as a useful strategy to try to convince the public that the scientists are liars and that they’re greedy and they’re making stuff up. All in the service of their overarching strategy of creating enough doubt to persuade people that there shouldn’t be any sense of urgency about addressing this crisis.

Not all of the candidates for the Republican presidential nomination are as unconvinced of climate change as Perry, however. Former Utah Governor Jon Huntsman tweeted several weeks ago that he “trust[s] scientists on global warming.”

The Huffington Post’s Lynne Peeples reported that, according to some scientists, Hurricane Irenemight be part of a growing trend of extreme weather events that are linked to climate change.

Over the past two weeks, hundreds of people have been arrested in front of the White House for protesting the proposed Keystone XL pipeline. According to Tar Sands Action leader Bill McKibben,it is expected to be “the largest collective act of civil disobedience in the history of the climate movement.”

Emphasis Mine

see:http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/08/30/gore-climate-change-deniers_n_940802.html

Tea Party Time

government – financed by common taxes — is the most efficient provider of so many goods and services.

2010-10-072010-10-07 chasdarwin1 Comment

see: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-creamer/obion-county-fire-tragedy_b_753893.html

Robert Creamer creams the tea party/ GOP ‘less government’ ideology.’

“This week, MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann reported the story of the Cranick family’s house fire. When the family’s Obion County, Tennessee house caught fire on the night of October 5th, the fire department from the nearby town failed to respond since the Cranick’s had forgotten to pay a $75 fee. Firefighters finally responded to a call by Cranick’s neighbor, who had paid his fee. They sprayed the property line to protect the home of the neighbor and watched at the Cranick’s home burned to the ground.

The firefighters had been ordered not to intervene to save the Cranick’s house — even though they were already at the scene — because, apparently, it would have encouraged others not to pay the $75.

The Obion County fire incident is symbolic of the moral and economic bankruptcy of the Tea-Party-Republican vision of government and the economy. And it poses the stark choice facing American voters in the Mid-Term elections.

The Tea-Party-Republicans — including the Republican Congressional leadership – talk incessantly about how government services should be slashed. They believe that society should maximize the extent to which each individual is responsible to fend for themselves. They claim that is more “efficient”. The Obion County fire illustrates clearly why that assertion is simply wrong.

Competitive markets are extremely efficient at encouraging innovation, increasing productivity and distributing goods and services in many arenas. But there are other arenas where history and experience have demonstrated that it is both more efficient and more humane to provide goods and services through government — which, as Congressman Barney Frank likes to say, is the name we give to the things we have chosen to do together.

The core difference in values between the right wing and progressives is whether we create a society where we’re all in this together, or all in this alone.

Mainstream Americans understand that there are a number of areas where it makes much more economic and moral sense to guarantee goods and services to everyone in the society and ask our citizens to finance them by paying their fair share of taxes rather than paying for them “ala carte”.

We came to the conclusion decades ago that government should provide every child with an education, and our public schools have provided the foundation of American economic prosperity.

We use government to provide infrastructure necessary to support our economy — roads, bridges, harbors, airports, sewer and water systems, and street lights.”

N.B.: and the Internet.

“We provide common parks and recreation facilities that are open to public use.

Government provides for our common defense and our domestic security. We don’t require each person to hire a private army or security firm to defend his or her home. That would be stupid, wasteful and lead to anarchy.

Government is particularly efficient when it comes to providing social insurance –– like Social Security and Medicare. The overhead for these programs is tiny compared with other insurance programs (including private health insurance plans) run by the private sector. They have covered everyone reliably and effectively for generations. That’s why they have virtually unanimous public support.

At long last, with the health care reform bill, America joined the company of every other industrial nation, in understanding that it is more efficient and more humane for government to assure that everyone in society has access to health care. Of course one of the signals that prompted this change was the sheer fact that private market health insurance caused our health care cost to skyrocket to 50% more per person than any other nation — with worse outcomes. Almost certainly, the Affordable Care Act is just the first step in reform, since a public option will certainly be needed to ultimately bring our spending in line with other nations. But it was a critical first step.

Of course, most everywhere in America, we provide fire protection through the government. We all pay — through our taxes — to assure that if the time ever comes when we need to call 911 because of a fire, no one will have to check to see if we have paid a fee, a clerical error on payment records will not cost us our homes, and firefighters will not stand by and watch our homes and lives go up in smoke. And of course we also support common protection because fire doesn’t necessarily stop at the property line — just ask Ms O’Leary of the legendary Chicago Fire.

The Obion county story demonstrates what happens when we forget that government – financed by common taxes — is the most efficient provider of so many goods and services.

It makes no economic sense to allow what is likely a multi-hundred thousand dollar home to be consumed by flames because a failure to pay a $75 fee. Now, either the insurance company or the Cranick’s will have to build a brand new home in its place. Their former home was wasted because of the absurdity of the system that had been set up to protect it.

That same absurdity is implicit in so many of the other Republican economic positions. Its ultimate expression is the Republican desire to repeal health care reform and return us to an out of control system run by private health insurance companies that has cost us 50% more than any other country. That system is wasting trillions of dollars that come out of the pockets of middle class Americans — just to allow private insurance companies and their top executives to make obscene amounts of money.

And with fire protection and health care, the moral consequences are also clear. Bad enough that someone’s home was allowed to be destroyed because of the failure to pay a $75 fee. Would the firefighters have been allowed to intervene if the family pets were inside the house — what about a child?

The Republicans want to return us to a health care system that allowed for-profit health insurance companies to brazenly make those same choices everyday. They made life and death decisions that determined whether people were treated or not — and often whether they lived or not — using their own bottom line as their only real guide. They wouldn’t cover you because you have a “pre-existing condition“. They would cut you off when you got sick. They hired armies of bureaucrats who do nothing but deny claims. Some of the worst of these abuses are now history because of health insurance reform. If the Republicans have their way, those new protections will be repealed.

But let’s be clear. The people behind the “drown government in the bath tub” politics are not the kind of folks who run around in three corner hats and George Washington wigs. The Tea Party rank and file is not the principal engine of anti-government fervor. The money for the ads and the buses and the radio shows are provided by big corporations — by people like Rupert Murdoch of Fox and David and Charles Koch.

The Koch brothers own virtually all of Koch Industries, a conglomerate whose annual revenues exceed a hundred billion dollars and is the second largest privately owed company in the country.

The Koch’s combined fortune of thirty five billion dollars is exceeded only by those of Bill Gates and Warren Buffett.

They may be libertarian true believers. But the Kochs would also benefit mightily by making government small and toothless. They would benefit more than most anyone from lowering tax rates for the wealthy. They have a massive stake in lowering the standards for environmental regulation since their oil companies and other holdings have made them one of the top ten air polluters in the United States.

The same goes for the many funders of these ultra-right causes. The money comes from very wealthy families and massive corporations. For them the right wing ideology is nothing more than a vindication for their own wealth — and a justification for their own economic self interest. And the fact is that their economic self interests conflict with those of the vast majority of their fellow citizens.

Progressives cannot be cowed by the anti-government propaganda that spews forth from these giant economic interests even when it’s dressed up in the clothing of the small number of ordinary Americans who have become Tea Party activists.

In fact the Cranicks of Obion County Tennessee are truly emblematic of the victims of the Koch brother’s vision of America. The Cranicks are victims, as are the eight million Americans who lost their jobs because of the greed and recklessness of the big Wall Street banks — because of the traders and CEO’s that ride around in corporate jets and demand that smaller and smaller quantities of their billions be taxed to pay for our common welfare.

The choice we face on November 2nd is between the interests of the Cranicks and the interests of the Kochs.

Hopefully the fire in Obion County, Tennessee will provide the light necessary to illuminate the true consequences of the Tea Party Republican agenda. And it may help provide the spark that is needed to help mobilize millions of Americans to vote November 2nd and reject that agenda at the polls.”

Robert Creamer is a long-time political organizer and strategist, and author of the recent book: Stand Up Straight: How Progressives Can Win, available on Amazon.com.

(Emphasis mine)