Should we preserve Social Security, which benefits everyone, especially the least of these, or preserve the Bush tax cuts for the ultra-rich. The pot of money is the same. How should we spend it?
What would Jesus do?
You know the answer -- it's in your heart, not your pocketbook.
I worked on Capitol Hill for a long time, and I do not consider myself naive about the inner workings of Washington. But even I was surprised by two revelations this week exposing the amount of money the oil industry is spending to buy political influence.
The first eye-opener came from recently released lobbying numbers. The OpenSecrets blog reported that the oil and gas industry poured $174 million into the political system in 2009. That’s eight times more than the green groups.
What did the oil and gas industry get for its money? A handful of Senators who blocked all attempts by the Senate to pass a comprehensive clean energy and climate bill that would have made fossil fuel industries start cleaning up their global warming pollution.
This week’s second revelation made that difference abundantly clear. Jane Mayer wrote an investigative piece in the New Yorker about the brothers David and Charles Koch who run Koch Industries -- the biggest corporation you’ve never heard of -- and who have spent more than $100 million on anti-government causes.
Koch Industries owns oil refineries and 4,000 miles of pipeline, and was named one of the top 10 air polluters in the nation in a 2010 UMass-Amherst report. The Kochs’ political donations are often aimed at promoting their libertarian views, but they also directly benefit their own profit margins. They have donated millions of dollars to nonprofit groups that fight environmental regulation and seed doubt about climate science. In fact, a Greenpeace report called them a “kingpin of climate science denial.” And though green groups tend to paint ExxonMobil as the worst of the worst when it comes to lobbying against climate legislation, Koch outspent even ExxonMobil.
One of David Koch’s pet projects is the group Americans for Prosperity, a group he founded and funds but positions as a grassroots movement. An ad for one of its training sessions for Tea Party activists says, “The voices of average Americans are being drowned out by lobbyists and special interests. But you can do something about it.”
But when Americans for Prosperity hosts at least 80 events protesting climate legislation, is it really acting in the interest of average Americans or the interest of oil industry donors?
When it funds an attack ad against Representative Betsey Markey from Colorado because she supported climate legislation last summer that would have brought 30,000 jobs to her state, who is it benefiting?
And when the group pledges to spend an additional $45 million before the midterm elections, is that money really coming from grassroots activists, or from deep corporate pockets? These fat cats pretend to fraternize with the ordinary folks who dangle tea bags from their tri-cornered hats, but, in fact, they are just using activists to put a populist face on their industry agenda.
Manipulating other people’s fears about the economy when you are a billionaire -- I would call that the depth of cynicism. But considering those billionaires are getting in the way of climate solutions, clean energy and green jobs in America; I have to instead call it dangerous.
We need to pinch pennies these days. Don’t you know we have a budget deficit? For months that has been the word from Republicans and conservative Democrats, who have rejected every suggestion that we do more to avoid deep cuts in public services and help the ailing economy.
But these same politicians are eager to cut checks averaging $3 million each to the richest 120,000 people in the country.
Lend US automakers enough to keep them afloat through the worst recession since the 1930's? No way says the GOP! But hand 45 times that much money to the Richie Rich class with no strings attached? That's just fine according to Republicans.
They're masters of misdirection and hypocrisy. How long will people believe this crap?
That's the Washington Post this morning, on the Republican Party's defense of the indefensible -- extending the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest even though the country is still in the grip of the Great Recession and the GOP's tax relief for the fat cats has resulted in huge budget deficits.
This is not fiscal responsibility in the form of offsetting a known cost with an identifiable savings. It's fiscal irresponsibility of the worst kind: play-acting at prudence instead of making hard choices.
Ezra Klein has produced several very helpful charts on the Bush tax cuts vs. the Obama tax plan (still a cut, but targeted to the middle class instead of the upper crust) over the past couple of weeks. Take a look.
...even in percentile terms, the Bush tax cuts do much more for the incomes of the rich than the poor, and the Obama proposal would do a lot more for the poor than for the rich.
And one final illustration, this one via Jonathon Chait, for those who say none of this matters, just look at Obama's huge deficit -- it's all his fault/this proves those tax and spend Democrats just can't manage money/the economy/the country/whatever.
Obama didn't create those deficits, he inherited them from Bush (aided and abetted by a compliant Congress) and the biggest chunk of the future deficit is caused by the Bush tax cuts -- which Obama is trying to fix. That isn't an excuse, it's just a fact. Don't preach to me about the evils of the deficit if you're going to rail/preach/vote against undoing the largest single source of it, otherwise I'll have to call you out as a hypocrite and a WATB to boot.
Republicans are all "the sky is falling" because the tax cuts they and George W. Bush enacted -- and deliberately set to expire this year! -- are about to expire.
Horrors, we'll go back to tax rates of the 1990's, a decade that looks pretty good in hindsight. At Campaign for America's Future, Steve Johnson has written a wonderful piece about why letting the Bush tax cuts die a natural death is really quite a good thing for our society. I am quoting liberally, because this is an important argument to have, and to make when we talk to people about taxes, government, infrastructure and so forth.
The American Social Contract: We, the People built our democracy and the empowerment and protections it bestows. We built the infrastructure, schools and all of the public structures, laws, courts, monetary system, etc. that enable enterprise to prosper. That prosperity is the bounty of our democracy and by contract it is supposed to be shared and reinvested. That is the contract. Our system enables some people to become wealthy but all of us are supposed to benefit from this system. Why else would We, the People have set up this system, if not for the benefit of We, the People?
The American Social Contract is supposed to work like this:
A beneficial cycle: We invest in infrastructure and public structures that create the conditions for enterprise to form and prosper. We prepare the ground for business to thrive. When enterprise prospers we share the bounty, with good wages and benefits for the people who work in the businesses and taxes that provide for the general welfare and for reinvestment in the infrastructure and public structures that keep the system going.
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But the “Reagan Revolution” broke the contract. Since Reagan the system is working like this:
Johnson has been writing extensively about Reagan's legacy coming home to roost --there are links to his previous posts at my link above. Others are now picking up his work and elaborating on it, to good effect.
Dr. Keivan Deravi, an economist at Auburn University Montgomery, says state government would have been devastated without the federal assistance.
"Had we not had this in the budget, the outcome would have been absolutely dreadful," he said. "The impact on the education side would have been unimaginable, to be honest with you."
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"I don't know why anyone wants to be the next governor," he said. "Alabama is going to be in major trouble unless the economy takes a major leap up, and most people don't believe that's going to happen."
Deravi believes Congress should approve a second stimulus program to assist the states, but acknowledges that won't happen.
Barack Obama's Stimulus (which was too small, thanks to the Party of NO) is pumping over $3 billion into the state of Alabama. It saved over 3200 education jobs and saved or created perhaps 10,000 jobs in other fields. Stimulus money held our Medicaid program together as state revenues plunged. And the road construction going on all across the state? That's stimulus money we'll soon be driving on.
Alabama owes a big debt of thanks to Barack Obama and the Democrats in Congress. We won't pay it, of course, because Southerners hate to admit they needed or accepted help from anybody. All those new roads and bridges ought to carry this sign ...
No one should be surprised by this. Raby is a conservative Democrat. The Blue Dog Coalition exists to gather conservative Democrats to their bosom.
But this is a nonsensical attitude:
"As I have stated through out the campaign, my first priority as a Congressman will be to focus on jobs and growing the economy," said Raby. "We must balance the federal budget for our Nation to rebound economically."
You can focus on putting people back to work and growing the economy or you can balance the federal budget in the short term and kick the recovery in the balls while you're at it. Raby and the rest of the Blue Dogs need to talk to some economists before adopting Republican talking points.
Especially now that Huntsville is the New Federal City, highly dependent on government spending.
Hint: Republicans voted against it, because NO is all they KNOW.
Here's a great new study of the effect of the stimulus and economic policy responses to the economic crisis of recent years by Princeton professor and former vice chairman of the Fed, Alan Blinder, and Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics. This is required reading for all the stimulus doubters and those who say the Obama administration has hurt the economy. WRONG!
The U.S. government’s response to the financial crisis and ensuing Great Recession included some of the most aggressive fiscal and monetary policies in history. The response was multifaceted and bipartisan, involving the Federal Reserve, Congress, and two administrations. Yet almost every one of these policy initiatives remain controversial to this day ...
With respect to the government's total policy response:
We find that its effects on real GDP, jobs, and inflation are huge, and probably averted what could have been called Great Depression 2.0. For example, we estimate that, without the government’s response, GDP in 2010 would be about 11.5% lower, payroll employment would be less by some 81⁄2 million jobs, and the nation would now be experiencing deflation.
... the effects of the fiscal stimulus alone appear very substantial, raising 2010 real GDP by about 3.4%, holding the unemployment rate about 11⁄2 percentage points lower, and adding almost 2.7 million jobs to U.S. payrolls. ...
The Great Recession gave way to recovery as quickly as it did largely because of the unprecedented responses by monetary and fiscal policymakers.
And who opposed those unprecedented responses that saved America from a repeat of the Great Depression? Republicans, the Party of NO. From The Gavel:
Most Congressional Republicans fought this rescue and recovery—and criticizing it has become a Republican mantra. This report paints a grim picture of what America would look like now if Republicans had been in charge:
America would have lost “16.6 million jobs … about twice as many as actually were lost.”
The “unemployment rate would have peaked at 16.5%.”
“The peak-to-trough decline in GDP is … close to 12%, compared to an actual decline of about 4%.”
America’s top three automakers and their suppliers “might have had to liquidate many operations with devastating effects on the American economy, and especially on the Midwest.”
The federal budget deficit would have surged to over $2 trillion in fiscal year 2010, $2.6 trillion in fiscal year 2011, and $2.25 trillion in FY 2012.
The report concludes:
Remember, this is with no policy response … this dark scenario constitutes a 1930s-like depression.
… it is clear that laissez faire was not an option; policymakers had to act. Not responding would have left both the economy and the government’s fiscal situation in far graver condition.
Left to themselves, the Republicans would have let the economy slide over the cliff and into a 1930's style depression. As it is, they managed to reduce the size of the stimulus and are still opposing measures to ease the economic pain, such as the extension of unemployment benefits. Their entire message is one of opposition to Obama's policies, no matter what effect it will have on the nation. They have to convince Americans the stimulus and other extraordinary economic policies have failed -- because Republicans staked their political future on opposing Obama's efforts to clean up the economic mess Bush left behind. These are not the grown-ups we need in charge.
Does extending unemployment benefits keep the jobless from looking for work?
My counterpart on the right is Matthew Givens, who has crossposted this and every episode at his website, Politics Alabama. Matthew came up with the idea for Counterpunch several months ago and we had both hoped it would generate more discussion and interest. This format is a good deal more time consuming than a simple blog post and since our readers don't seem captivated by our efforts, this will be the final episode of Counterpunch. I won't say it's always been fun, but nineteen weeks of Counterpunch has been a valuable learning experience for me and I'm grateful to have had the opportunity to work with Matthew.
My response to this week's question is below the fold.
Did someone set out to destroy the middle class in America along about the time Ronald Reagan was first elected? Might as well have.
The end result of 30 years of those policies is that the rich get richer, as Meteor Blades discusses over at DKos. Just like in 1928, we're back to the point where the richest 1% of Americans receive over 23% of the nation's income -- only this time Congress lacks the political will to do anything about it.
In 2007, the average household in the top 1 percent had an income of $1.3 million, up $88,800 just from the prior year; this $88,800 gain is well above the total 2007 income of the average middle-income household ($55,300).
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But income is less than half the picture. What's more telling is wealth. Using the word that the right wing always speaks with horror when it applies to rank-and-file Americans, wealth has been heavily redistributed upward in the past 31 years.
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The destruction of the middle class has not been the product of one party's machinations. One connived, the other - or rather a portion of it - acquiesced as it leaned ever more rightward. The current economic situation ... didn't start yesterday. And neither of them can be instantly rolled back.
Moving down that path will require progressives within the Democratic Party (and those who work with it because no other reasonable choice capable of winning high public office exists) to learn how better to influence the party's economic direction with an effective use of honey and vinegar. Emphasis on the word effective. So far, despite a few victories in the past 19 months - some good, some modest, some arguable - progressives are lagging in that influence. We are good at passing out blame for the situation but carefully avoid mirrors in the process.
These figures are (or should be!) alarming. And as long as we are busy squabbling among ourselves over who is to blame for not fixing things, nothing will get fixed. The country is in a very bad place and I totally agree with MB that progressives need to place more emphasis on effectiveness as we try to push the nose of this supertanker around.
President Obama really lambasts the GOP obstructionists in the Senate this week (deservedly!) for blocking the extension of unemployment benefits and small business loan funds.
Consider what that obstruction means for our small businesses – the growth engines that create two of every three new jobs in this country. A lot of small businesses still have trouble getting the loans and capital they need to keep their doors open and hire new workers. So we proposed steps to get them that help: Eliminating capital gains taxes on investments. Establishing a fund for small lenders to help small businesses. Enhancing successful SBA programs that help them access the capital they need.
But again and again, a partisan minority in the Senate said “no,” and used procedural tactics to block a simple, up-or-down vote.
Think about what these stalling tactics mean for the millions of Americans who’ve lost their jobs since the recession began. Over the past several weeks, more than two million of them have seen their unemployment insurance expire. For many, it was the only way to make ends meet while searching for work – the only way to cover rent, utilities, even food.
Three times, the Senate has tried to temporarily extend that emergency assistance. And three times, a minority of Senators – basically the same crowd who said “no” to small businesses – said “no” to folks looking for work, and blocked a straight up-or-down vote.
Some Republican leaders actually treat this unemployment insurance as if it’s a form of welfare.
Of course, our own Senators Shelby and Sessions are right in the thick of it, obstructing the economic recovery just as hard as they can. Looking at their actions, you might think Alabama's economy is in good shape or something ...
Given that the Alabama House delegation voted 6-1(only Congressman Davis voted YES) against the extension of unemployment benefits, you have to wonder how they think it will benefit them in the November election.
Will unemployed Alabama residents say "Gosh darn it, I'm proud of Mike Rogers for standing firm - even though it cost me my house" or will they start sharpening the pitchforks and lighting the torches?
Some of the rhetoric is beyond belief. The new talking point is that extending unemployment benefits will only discourage people from looking for jobs. Oh, we lazy Americans. Fifteen million of us thrown out of work since the recession began, and we just don’t want to go back on the job because of those cushy benefits. Unemployment is our fault. And there are all those high-paying jobs out there just going begging because Obama is too generous with our tax money. Give me a break!
This week's Counterpunch topic: "Is Joe Biden right in saying that we simply cannot recover all the jobs we lost in the latest recession?"
My apologies for the late posting of this week's episode; Matthew Givens had hardware problems and LiA's road trip to Montgomery yesterday exacerbated the delay. As always, this is crossposted at Matthew's blog, Politics Alabama.
This is another right-wing generated tempest in a teapot (we alternate selecting the questions). Check out the coverage at Media Matters if you aren't familiar with the spin on this -- that VP Biden has "given up" on the stimulus or the economy or both. My comments are below the fold.
I'm sure they aren't, but they should be. The Times-Dailycalls Senators Shelby and Sessions out today for their vote against the unemployment extension:
We trust that U.S. senators had a pleasant Fourth of July, secure in the knowledge that their next taxpayer-funded paycheck will arrive on time.
Among them are Alabama Sens. Jeff Sessions, of Mobile, and Richard Shelby, of Tuscaloosa, who joined their Republican peers last week in defeating an extension of unemployment benefits.
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Republicans said they opposed the bill because the nation would have to borrow the money, which would add to an already burgeoning debt.
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Perhaps these senators should ask themselves whether they would be willing to add to the national debt to preserve their own salaries and perks in Congress.
I haven't seen either of them offer to give up any personal benefits or a pound of their personal pork to reduce the deficit, and don't expect to. Shelby and Sessions toed the GOP line and voted against extending unemployment benefits, even though the unemployment crisis is unabated.
The good news is that unemployment has fallen to "only" 9.5 percent. The bad news is that the jobless rate is down only because so many people have given up hope of finding work. Perversely, the jobless who aren't actively looking for jobs are not counted as "unemployed." Perhaps there should be a new category: "mired in existential despair." If anyone in Washington wants to know why people in the hinterlands are angry, one simple answer is that our political leaders seem to be so calculating and unmoved ...
Mr. Speaker, it is a shame and a disgrace that we did not extend unemployment insurance. Every single Member who voted no yesterday should be ashamed of themselves. People are suffering. They are hurting. They are in pain. They cannot make ends meet. And too many, just too many on the other side of the aisle turn a deaf ear. I ask my republican colleagues: Can't you hear? Can't you feel? Can't you see? Where is your heart? Where is your compassion? Where is your concern? Extend unemployment benefits, and extend it now.
Senate Democrats on Thursday failed for a third time to advance legislation to extend unemployment benefits through November.
The 57-41 vote rejected ending debate on the legislation, which would have sent the bill to a final vote
No Republicans voted yes, while Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.), who had also rejected earlier versions of the legislation, voted no. Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) voted yes after voting on previous procedural motions. Sens. Robert Byrd (D-W.Va.) and Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) were absent.
After the vote, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) repeated comments he made earlier Thursday that the Senate will now move to a small-business bill. Reid said the unemployment benefits would not be added to that bill, but others have speculated that the provisions could still be attached to the small-business measure.
The failure to move the tax extenders package, which also would have renewed scores of individual and business tax breaks, illustrates the extent to which fears about the deficit are dominating the legislative process five months before a midterm election in which Democratic control of Congress will be on the line.
The legislation cost about $100 billion and would have added roughly $33 billion to the deficit by extending unemployment benefits for six months. The cost of the added unemployment insurance was not offset with other tax hikes or spending cuts.
Republicans unanimously voted against the motion, arguing it would add to the country’s ballooning deficit.
“We just can’t keep kicking the can down the street and say, ‘Oh, we’ll take care of it later on. It’ll be offset later,’ ” Sen. George Voinovich, a centrist Republican from Ohio, told The Hill.
“That’s all we’ve been doing these last couple of years, and I’m fed up with it.”
Voinovich, who is retiring at the end of this Congress, had voted for similar extensions in the past and hails from a state with one of the nation’s highest unemployment rates. That he could not stomach the cost to the budget of extending unemployment benefits again shows how budget concerns have overtaken worries about the economy.
You know what I'm fed up with Sen. Voinovich? You and your party of liars and hypocrites. Though Democrats and Republican's are both guilty of playing loose and fast with the truth, conservatives, er, fascist robberbarrons, this more recent strain of conservatism just takes the cake.
The last few months have been pretty tough in my household. I now know what effects a year of unemployment and all the rejection have on a person's self-esteem and relationships with the people around them. I realize that I haven't come close to hitting that point of "rock bottom" yet, and yeah things are starting to look up a little bit, but if things don't change in the net 2-3 weeks, we could be hitting that threshold.
"What's with all the fatalism?" you ask...Well as it turns out the GOP and a handful of "Democrats" thought it necessary to mess with my (and a whole lot of other folks') unemployment benefits.
Randy Sparkman of Huntsville wrote a kick-ass, progressive op-ed for the Birmingham News on the topic of Confederate Memorial Day which has just passed. Highlights below, but please click that link and read it all.
... Six of my great-great-grandfathers served in the Confederate Army. I am one of those well-meaning white Southerners determined to reconcile pride of place with the stain of my region's racial injustices. I'm also an American, with kinsmen who fought both Cornwallis and Rommel. So, I am grieved to see the ghosts of my old Rebel cavalrymen summoned from their churchyard rest to serve the most extreme rhetoric of both the left and the right.
Anger at President Barack Obama's success in expanding the social contract has hardened into code-laden polemics about "states' rights." As the far right winks a willingness "to do anything to take our country back," the far left uses that implied threat to undermine any suggestion of limited government. All the while, my state continues to trail, almost dead last, in every national measure of education, health and employment, and pay the lowest taxes in the country. The State House fiddles while the schoolhouse burns.
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While the earth moved under the feet of white Alabamians, Wallace hammered them with fear and distrust of federally driven social change. The faces he barked at from flat-bed trailers on little-town main streets went home to poor diets, poor schools and poor prospects. He took his show on the road as a presidential candidate at the apex of 1960s' civil unrest and proved that coded, hate-filled demagoguery would play as well in Peoria as Prattville.
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Wallace became powerful because people were uncertain about their future. Inexorable social forces swept away the status quo for the weak and the powerful, and they were afraid. The current spate of hateful distraction also preys on uncertainty.
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Most of Alabama's economy consists of small, local enterprises. If lawmakers will hang their sabers back over the mantle and make health care reform real, they may find portable medical insurance has the potential to be a great job creator. If smart folks are no longer tethered to employer-based health benefits, they will be more willing to take the risk of entrepreneurship and create the gift that keeps on giving: a local job that sustains itself.
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Alabama receives $1.66 in federal benefits for every $1 paid in federal tax. If you don't like the hand that feeds you, then lessen your dependence on it.
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It's time to get to work on the economy and let my grandfathers lie in peace.
Mr. Sparkman "gets it" and has done a great job of explaining the situation to a wider audience. Bravo!
It's not hard to figure out why we have a huge deficit. It's so easy I don't have to use words. Here are some pictures:
Bill Clinton raised taxes on the rich. Bush cut them.
Now, about that huge national debt...
The second chart kind of explains itself.
There's more, but you get the gist -- we have this huge deficit conservatives claim to hate (when they're blaming Obama for it, lol) because of conservative policies. Misdirection and projection. The right will say anything for political gain -- and they usually do -- truth entirely optional.
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And one final illustration, this one via 
Hint: Republicans voted against it, because NO is all they KNOW.
