FDR's Second Bill Of Rights

On January 11, 1944, as the country prepared for D-Day and the invasion of Normandy, Franklin Delano Roosevelt was already laying out his vision of what a post-war America should be. In his State of the Union speech FDR discussed the recommendations that the President had made to the Congress to stabilize the economy, including a new tax bill, a food price control law, currency stabilization measures, and a national service law. He also included the following:


"It is our duty now to begin to lay the plans and determine the strategy for the winning of a lasting peace and the establishment of an American standard of living higher than ever before known. We cannot be content, no matter how high that general standard of living may be, if some fraction of our people—whether it be one-third or one-fifth or one-tenth—is ill-fed, ill-clothed, ill-housed, and insecure.

Why aren't we even talking about this?

It's been quite a while since I've posted anything. The situation seems so immune to change. But at least I can bellyache even if I can't change anything.

Why is it that in every discussion about budget cuts, including those coming from the President and other high-level Democrats, there is little to nothing said about the military? 

We have something on the order of over 900 Flag Officers (Generals & Admirals) each with million dollar retinues to cater to their every whim. They have six-figure salaries, government provided mansions, cars and private jets. And when they retire on their six-figure retirement plans, a lot of them join companies like Raytheon, GE, Lockheed or the like to peddle more waste back to Congress and their erstwhile colleagues in the military. The waste here is incredible! How many kids could we educate with the savings from just slashing these cadres in half?

Why do we need to have over 700 military bases scattered around the world, not even counting the ones we built in Iraq and Afghanistan? How long could we extend Medicare for just the savings of closing half of those bases?

Why on earth do we need eleven aircraft carriers, when the rest of the world combined has only ten? And most of those belong to our allies. How many billions are spent each year on these carrier groups? How many years could Social Security be extended if we just reduced the size of our Navy by half?

The Pentagon plans to buy a total of 2,443 F-35 fighters at a rough average cost of around two hundred million dollars apiece. For what? Blowing up more goat-herders in the Middle East? I won't even suggest depriving the Generals and Congress their shiny new jets, but if they just cut that number by half, they'd save $244 billion dollars! How many bridges and highways could be repaired with that money?

But what are we arguing about? How big of a tax break we will be giving millionaires and corporations. And how many benefits we will be slashing to the poor and the elderly.

What the fuck are we doing?

America as a third world country

You don't think we're there yet? Check out this Google search result.

Was I Googling for Haiti? Pakistan? Fucking Cuba?

 Nope, I searched for "tent city America". The so-called "Recession" has resulted in these popping up from Seattle to Portland, Maine. From Los Angeles to Miami and all stops in between. These people, for the most part, are folks just like you and me. Caught in the trap of having lost their jobs, used up their unemployment insurance, and kicked out of their homes, they are camping out in hopes of a better day.

While the 1% get richer and the Politicians argue whether to give them more tax breaks or the right to pollute our environment so they can steal more money from this land, local governments are trying to deal with the homeless problem.

How? By passing new and tougher laws criminalizing homelessness.

It's starting to look like a significant portion of the voting public won't be able to bestir themselves to get to the polls in Nov '12 unless something changes radically. The Republicans don't seem to have a candidate they can rally around, and the left is pretty much disgusted with Obama. Of course, the center never really cared much either way, so their vote is completely up for grabs.

So which way will it go? Who the hell am I to try to predict.

But thinking about this has brought me to a realization of sorts. In the long run, it might be a good thing for the country if the Republicans won overwhelmingly. They have dug themselves so deep into the Tea Party line, that four more years of Republican insanity just might wake the country up from its fat, happy slumber.

Can you imagine, not just repealing Obamacare, but eliminating Medicare? How about privatizing Social Security? Eliminating the FDA and EPA? The Department of Education? All gone.

How long do you suppose it will take before we have rivers catch fire again? Until the smog in major cities makes Beijing look like paradise? How many will die from salmonella or e-coli? When all our kids are going to for-profit schools? We can barely regulate the drug companies now, what about when all our pharmaceuticals are being imported from China?

Oh, and we'll be accelerating the race to the bottom in wages, until everybody is working for Wal-Mart salaries. But it's OK, you'll be able to supplement your income with the hours you work every week at your second job at McDonald's.

If the country can survive it, maybe we'll be able to get together and force a movement to get the profiteers out of government and put the country back on a sane track.

*sigh* Or not. Your mileage may vary.

Of Hell & Handbaskets

After all the smoke and fury of the debt ceiling "debates", what exactly have we accomplished?

Nothing positive that I can see. It's still likely that the rating agencies will lower our coveted AAA status. After all, this debacle was the equivalent of buying a car on credit, then a year or two into the process, having a very  loud debate in the lobby of the bank in front of the manager's office over whether or not you cared to continue payment on the loan. Sound silly? It is!

We were not debating whether to run up more debt, we were debating whether we were going to pay for all the stuff Congress already bought.

So is the resultant agreement going to solve anything? Nope. In fact, the austerity measures called for in the bill without any attempt to raise revenues will likely choke off any hope of recovery from the recession, and may arguably worsen it. The Republicans held hostage by the Tea Party will not even discuss anything having to do with raising taxes on their wealthy overlords, and without at least repealing the Bush tax cuts, there is a popsicle's chance in hell of bringing down the deficit. Not with billions going to wars in the Middle East and to supporting a military that spends more than all the other developed nations in the world combined.


The only thing that will solve our deficit, and the recession, is jobs. Not jobs at Wal-Mart or McDonalds, but real, full-time jobs that pay a living wage. Failing that, collect taxes from the wealthy and corporations that are  currently paying less than the janitors that clean their offices. Even better, do both and use the funds to rebuild America's crumbling infrastructure. There's a job creator!

Cutting all those government funds is going to mean more layoffs, not less. People that lose a good paying job and are forced into a low wage position won't be buying new cars, or homes, or anything more than basic food and rent. They likely won't have health insurance either, at a time when Medicare and Medicaid are under the axe.

When the Republicans took office last year, they promised a "relentless focus on creating jobs".

So far, all we've seen is a relentless focus on driving the country off a cliff, just so they can hopefully blame it all on Obama next year.

I'm not seeing anything to feel positive about.

Oh, noes. Not again!

Matt Taibbi, about whom I've written previously, has written a new piece about Corporate America's ongoing rape of the country. In 2004, the Bush government gave a tax holiday to major corporations to allow them to "repatriate" their offshore earnings as they are supposedly only subject to tax when they bring them back into the country. The deal that the lobbyists sold was that these huge sums of money, once put back into the American economy would be used to create jobs etc. etc.

Only, as we have seen, it didn't. The money was paid out in insane bonuses to top executives and shareholders, or invested in the Wall Street bubble in full steam at the time.

Now they are making noises about doing it again as part of the debt reduction package circulating the Hill as we speak. For the same reason as before, too. The businesses, suddenly flush with all that cash, will immediately begin building factories and office towers and solve the job crisis!

What could possibly go wrong?

Doing the same thing again and again expecting a different result is the definition of insanity.

Make some noise. Write or call your Congress-critter and tell them we need jobs, not more Corporate Wealthfare!

Read the whole article here:

Corporate Tax Holiday in Debt Ceiling Deal: Where's the Uproar?

Griftopia

I just finished reading the well-researched, often profane, and supremely eye-popping book from Rolling Stone's Matt Taibbi which he calls "Griftopia".

Wow. Just...wow.

A lot of this book is about stuff that we may have already heard rumors and half-baked reports about. What Taibbi has done is to pull together all those rumors and facts and weeded through them for their underlying morsels of truth. He has taken research and reporting and woven a fact driven account of the intentional and ruthless ripping off of this country over the last twenty to thirty years.

So why should you read this book? I dunno, if you wonder at all about how we got to the crash of '08, or why gas prices keep balooning, even though there is no shortage of supply. What is "speculation" and why is it suddenly responsible for gas price increases? How do "Hedge funds" work and why all of a sudden do they earn so much freaking money? What is this dismantling of the regulatory environment that we keep hearing about, and exactly who is behind it? Sounds mind-numbingly financial and, well, boring doesn't it?

It's not. In fact it's a riveting read. Taibbi manages to get the interviews, pull together the documentation, and interpret the results in a manner that's as easy to read as, well, Rolling Stone. And yet, damn, I can't help but wonder how it is that a reporter for a fan-mag ends up writing about some of the biggest financial and political frauds in the history of the country.

Simple. Taibbi was assigned to follow the '08 election campaigns for the paper. In doing so, he heard and saw things that surprised him and piqued his curiosity as a reporter. Stuff that other, more mainstream colleagues knew, and in some cases, joked about. He decided to investigate further, and Rolling Stone encouraged him in doing so. None of the big outlets that we depend on for our news would dare touch it. They depend on the perpetrators either directly or indirectly for their revenue. Rolling Stone suffers from no such constraints. Again, our much vaunted Fourth Estate has abandoned it's mission of reigning in the more egregious violators in our government and industry.

The truly gut wrenching part of the whole picture is that all Americans should be screaming bloody murder about the crimes that have been, and are still being committed. Our courts should be fully occupied with bringing the people that wrecked the world's economy to justice and returning the stolen trillions(yes, that's trillions!) to the victims. Instead, not only have the criminals been given a free pass and a bailout, but they are still doing the same legalized roulette at the expense of taxpayers. Then they are given tax breaks for doing so.

Pick up a copy of Griftopia. Or go down to your local Library(remember what those are?) and check it out. It's a great read. In fact, it should be required reading for high school kids.

Oh, and here's a link to Taibbi's blog

Uncertainty?

Every time a Republican opens their mouth to talk about the reason business is not hiring, it's the "uncertainty" surrounding federal regulations, taxes, or (dire organ music) Obamacare!


I listened to Michelle Bachmann avoid answering Bob Shieffer's questions on Meet the Press Sunday. One of her long winded expostulations had to do with the "thousands" of business owners she has talked to and their unanimous feeling that it was the uncertainty in the regulatory climate that was preventing them from expanding or hiring.


OK, I can't claim to have discussed the issue with thousands of business owners, but I've talked to a few and I work for one. They have a much simpler take on the situation:

Misplaced priorities

I find myself once again agreeing with P.Z. Myers. Over at his blog Pharyngula, he comments on Joe Biden listing examples of what he considers government waste. While there is unavoidable truth in what Joe says, it only serves to illustrate how messed up this whole debate is. Biden talks about a website the gov't, for whatever reason, has dedicated to the Desert Tortoise. A project which costs the taxpayers a whopping $125 per year. More on that if you're interested here.

With our defense budget larger than all the rest of the developed world combined, Joe is gonna cure the deficit by eliminating a $125 website. We now have two and a half wars going on, military bases 'round the world and the world's largest navy. But do we hear any serious discussion about reducing military spending? Oh sure, they say they are going to stop using so many paper clips at the Pentagon, and the on again off again new engines that nobody, including the Air Force wants for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter are currently off again. (I think.) But nobody is talking about closing down unneeded bases in Europe, or Japan, or the Phillipines, or Korea, or dog knows where else. No one's seriously talking yet about ending our involvement in Iraq, Afghanistan, or Pakistan. Hell, we just decided that Libya was a neat place to waste money, and now I hear we've got troops in Yemen. I just listened to McCain bloviating about the need to back up the poor Syrians as well.

In the words of John Boehner: "We're broke!" If so, where in the treasury is the secret compartment with the money to pay for these excursions?

Obviously, there isn't one. We'll just have to steal it from Social Security, Medicare, and those damned Desert Tortoises.