Bill Clinton

Resolutions, Political Resolutions and Damned Lies

Leo Gerard — Tue, 03 Jan 2012 10:35:07 -0500

‘Tis the season of resolutions. With the new year comes pledges to quit smoking, get out of debt and spend more time with family. Gym memberships jump. Weight Watchers’ profits fatten.

This also happens to be the season of political resolutions. It’s that every-fourth-year event featuring presidential candidates in a contest of campaign promise one-upmanship. Ron Paul pledges to legalize marijuana. Michele Bachmann swears she’ll cut gasoline prices to $2 a gallon. Newt Gingrich guarantees he’ll create millions of jobs “right now.” Mitt Romney assures every college graduate a job.

Unfortunately, this also has been, for some time, a season of damned lies. These are deliberate deceptions involving a higher level of scheming. The Contract with America and the more recent Pledge to America are examples. Republicans knew they couldn’t fulfill what they led the public to perceive as promises. But the GOP designed these “pledges” specifically so that Republicans couldn’t be labeled as failures when what they pseudo-promised never materialized. That’s the stuff of damned lies.

Unfulfilled New Year’s resolutions are legendary. Low calorie salad fixings fill fridges Jan. 2, and remain there, rotting, on Feb. 2. The victim of this broken promise is also the perpetrator and therefore unlikely to protest the infraction.

These days, political resolutions strewn along the presidential campaign trail are picked up and carefully cataloged on the Internet by reporters and bloggers who hold candidates accountable for every syllable. That’s a good exercise, but the public generally recognizes political promise hyperbole and realizes that unexpected events may prevent a president from keeping his word. Franklin Delano Roosevelt, for example, pledged not to involve the country in the European war, but then the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. Mostly, the public shrugs off presidential contenders’ inflated political resolutions.

Damned lies, however, are dangerous because they subvert trust in the political system, which needs the faith of the electorate to function. Damned lies may, in fact, be an integral part of Republican strategy since the GOP hates government of the people by the people and hopes to shrink it small enough to drown in a bathtub.

In their 1994 Contract with America, Republicans vowed:

“in this era of official evasion and posturing, we offer instead a detailed agenda for national renewal, a written commitment with no fine print.”

That, and calling it a contract, led Americans to believe it was a step above a pledge. It was inviolable, sacrosanct. It was a bond with no double-crossing footnotes.

Except it wasn’t.

With the help of the “contract,” Republicans took control of the U.S. House of Representatives. And they passed the easy, less controversial parts of the pledge. But they never enacted the most popular, more contentious promises, including a balanced budget amendment and term limits.

They had, however, set up the “contract” so they could never be blamed for those failures. The most insidious aspect of the Contract with America was the fine print escape hatch it provided the GOP.

Republicans never promised to enact their “contract” provisions into law. They only said they’d vote on them:

“within the first 100 days of the 104th Congress, we shall bring to the House Floor the following bills, each to be given full and open debate, each to be given a clear and fair vote and each to be immediately available this day for public inspection and scrutiny.”

No wonder former President Bill Clinton called it the Contract ON America.

In the fall of 2010, when Republicans were trying to regain control of the U.S. House, they came up with a “contract” clone that they called “A Pledge to America.”

It said:

“Our plan puts forth a new governing agenda that reflects the priorities of the American people . . .and can be implemented today.”

Republicans won the majority in the House a year ago and have had nearly 365 “todays” to implement their pledges. Just like with the 1994 “contract,” Republicans have failed to fulfill the big promises, the important resolutions that people remember.

For example, the pledge said:

“A plan to create jobs, end economic uncertainty, and make America more competitive must be the first and most urgent domestic priority of our government.”

Republicans then proceeded to make deficit reduction their priority. When President Obama proposed a jobs plan in September, Republicans blocked it.

Also in the “Pledge,” the GOP swore to permanently stop “job-killing tax hikes” so that families would be able “to keep more of their hard-earned money.” Then in September when President Obama proposed to extend and enlarge the payroll tax cut for 160 million middle class families, the GOP opposed it.

And there was this pledge:

“We offer a plan to repeal and replace the government takeover of health care.”

As in the “Contract on America,” this is a sleight of hand. It doesn’t say Republicans will repeal health care reform. And, in fact, they didn’t. But they can’t be called failures because they only pledged to “offer a plan to repeal.” They didn’t promise to actually accomplish it, even though that’s what they led voters to believe.

What they can be labeled as failures for, however, is neglecting to produce their promised plan to replace health care reform.

Democrats called the latest formal list of Republican promises the “Pledge to Destroy America.” The destruction was done by the damned lies that denigrated trust in political institutions. It was deliberately done to diminish America’s democratic government.

Bill Clinton's Book -- The Ideas On Trade Agreements

Dave Johnson — Fri, 02 Dec 2011 14:20:55 -0500

I've been taking a look at Former President Bill Clinton’s new book, Back to Work: Why We Need Smart Government for a Strong Economy. Part of the book discusses trade so it is interesting to see what he has to say now that we are living with the results of NAFTA, China's entry into the WTO and other trade agreements. Not nearly enough, unfortunately.

Clinton's book contains a number of ideas for creating jobs and improving the economy. Part I looks at where we are today as a country with our economic problems. He looks at the conservative anti-government movement, launches a defense of government and talks about the country’s debt and where it came from. Finally he compares this to how things are doing in other countries.

In Part II he details several policy ideas for reviving the economy, paying off the debt and creating jobs.

Trade

Idea number 27 is pass new trade agreements. Here is what he writes, in his own words:

27. Pass the pending trade agreements with South Korea, Colombia, and Panama. We don’t have a trade deficit in goods and services with the countries with which we have trade agreements. That’s because the negotiations are tough and thorough, designed to meet both sides’ needs, and supported by enforcement mechanisms. Our trade deficit is largely with the countries we buy oil from and the countries we borrow lots of money from, China and Japan.

He follows that up with idea 28, Enforce trade laws:

28. Enforce trade laws. We lost manufacturing jobs in every one of the eight years after I left office. One of the reasons is that enforcement of our trade laws dropped sharply. Contrary to popular belief, the World Trade Organization and our trade agreements do not require unilateral disarmament. They’re designed to increase the volume of two-way trade on terms that are mutually beneficial. My administration negotiated three hundred trade agreements, but we enforced them, too. Enforcement dropped so much in the last decade because we borrowed more and more money from the countries that had big trade surpluses with us, especially China and Japan, to pay for government spending. Since they are now our bankers, it’s hard to be tough on their unfair trading practices. This happened because we abandoned the path of balanced budgets ten years ago, choosing instead large tax cuts especially for higher-income people like me, along with two wars and the senior citizens’ drug benefit. In the history of our republic, it’s the first time we ever cut taxes while going to war.

Clinton says trade agreements are, "designed to increase the volume of two-way trade on terms that are mutually beneficial." But the book ignores that this is certainly not the way it is working out. It just advocates more trade agreements to boost exports. Boosting exports is good, but it doesn't address what happens when the balance shifts to imports.

Clinton is saying that Bush came in and refused to enforce the rules, letting other countries just grab the jobs. He has a point, Bush didn't enforce trade laws and we lost 40-50,000 factories and millions of manufacturing jobs while he was President. But I think Clinton still has way too much faith in the good intentions of America's corporate elite. He seems to believe that just opening up trade means that our corporate leaders will strive forth to compete fairly in a world that will compete fairly in return. He misses the way that the trade laws were used by our own corporations to sidestep democracy, moving our own jobs to places that do not have democracy, so people are unable to demand good wages and working conditions. Then they came back to our own workers and said, in essence, "shut up and take pay and benefit cuts or we'll just move your job, too, and you and your family will starve."

Free trade agreements were supposed to be about trade. As Clinton writes, trade is a two-way exchange that is mutually beneficial. Well instead we have the result of job loss, a downward wage and benefits spiral and a terrible, terrible trade deficit that has been and is draining our economy -- not so mutually beneficial.

Really, is closing a factory here, moving the machines and raw materials and supply chain to another country, and then bringing the same goods back and selling them in the same stores something that should be called "trade?" Of course not, and it should never have been allowed.

Giving Thanks - For the Occupation, For the Intensity, For the Innocence

Richard Eskow — Thu, 24 Nov 2011 10:59:52 -0500

It's like the old-timers always said: Don't quit before the miracle happens.

While the Arab Spring showed that people can still accomplish the impossible, Our political debate was frozen in corporate cynicism. Now everything has changed. For the United States, spring came in autumn. Who says miracles don't happen?

Like a Prayer

A few months ago I prayed for something. Granted, it wasn't the kind of prayer that's sanctioned by any ecclesiastical authority. And, okay, maybe it wasn't exactly a "prayer." I guess the technical term for it would be "blog post." But trust me, it was a prayer.

I'd been asked to write something for the Fourth of July, and I wrote we have to fight a new war, a "war of independence from corporate politics." To be honest, those words felt Utopian even as I wrote them. Still, I never doubted them. The words were born out of the desperate sense that so many of us shared, a sense that our society is collapsing. And that it will keep on collapsing unless we change the way we think.

I wasn't arguing for any particular policy or platform. "The problem isn't just with politicians, or even the system," I said then. "The problem is dependence itself."

Oh, come on. How starry-eyed can you get? Stop depending on politicians? Declare psychic and political independence from celebrity-driven politics and media-made leaders? I'd always considered myself a realist, but this was almost embarrassingly idealistic.

Except for the fact that it happened.

Passionate Intensity

Like so many others, I had grieved and raged over the lack of commitment displayed by good people. Cynics, robber barons, and American warlords are hard at work degrading - and downgrading - this country. In a strange set of parallels, we were reenacting the stories of the Third World countries we'd invaded. Like them, we were becoming a nation where servile or fearful politicians served a cynical oligarchy while the people's way of life died all around them.

Some might call it karma - or simply "payback."

But whatever you call it, the forces of hate and greed were running wild. The "two-party" system seemed to offer nothing in response except a) posturing, b) surrender, and c) a politics of compromise that seemed to amount to little more than ... well, see "a)" and "b)", above. Good people were fighting for better policies, and I tried to play my part. But too many of us focused on the prose of politics and not its poetry.

Meanwhile, too many politicians got lazy quoting Bill Clinton's hack line: Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good. It can be, of course. But before our eyes, the "good" became the enemy of the "perfect" and the mediocre became the enemy of the good. Then the cynical became the enemy of the mediocre, and democracy began to die.

Meanwhile the other side gained its momentum with every passing month, fueled by a pseudo-populist movement ginned up by corporate-funded political hacks. A nation that had rejected the politics of greed and oligarchy at the ballot box was even more suffocated by it than before. No wonder so many people were uninspired, discouraged, despondent. Some people quoted William Butler Yeats:

The best lack all conviction while the worst are full of passionate intensity.

The good people who did burn with passionate intensity were in danger of turning the torch on themselves. " The game is over," wrote Chris Hedges. "We lost. The corporate state will continue its inexorable advance until two-thirds of the nation is locked into a desperate, permanent underclass."

As boom times came back to Wall Street, depression - emotional as well as economic - entombed the majority. But the suffering of the majority turned invisible inside the Beltway, as politicians debated deficits in a broken economy. It was like debating water conservation while the house burned down.

The Condition of Everything

Miles of commentary have been written about the Occupy movement. As the occupations gained steam, people criticized them for their lack of specific policy demands. But they were right not to issue specific demands. They were declaring independence from a frame of mind, a set of assumptions that led to passive acceptance of an unacceptable system.

And they had passionate intensity.

I've told this story before, but I'll tell it again: When OccupyDC marched down K Street, in the early days of the movement, a young security guard asked an older one what they were protesting. "I'm not sure," said the older man. "But I think they're objecting to ..." He circled his hands to indicate the environment around him. ".... the condition of everything."

By objecting to the condition of everything, the Occupiers changed the political dialog in this country. By rejecting leaders and insisting on self-governance through General Assemblies, they taught us by example how to escape emotional dependence. Like William Butler Yeats, they understood that you can't distinguish the dancer from the dance.

One of the movement's most articulate and forceful advocates is Chris Hedges.

Recalling Democracy

The Wisconsin uprising had been going on for months, even in the dark days of July. The miracle of Wisconsin is that it's still going on. People there occupied their capitol to protest laws designed to break the middle class, laws written by corporate America's "ALEC" division. Then they mounted recall efforts against recently elected GOP State Senators, reducing their majority and draining resources from their coffers.

Now Gov. Walker is facing a recall. The struggle in Wisconsin isn't about "Democrats" against "Republicans." It's about resisting politicians that are wholly-owned subsidiaries of corporate America.

The people of Wisconsin showed the country how to resist. Now they're showing us how to persist.

And just this month, Ohio voters rejected an ALEC-inspired initiative to strip that state's workers of rights. Maine voters rejected a move to overturn election-day registration, another attempt to restrict the ability of lower-income citizens to vote. And Mississippi rejected a definition of prenatal rights so extreme that many anti-abortion advocates were disturbed by its implications for the rights, health, and safety of women.

Like I was saying: Miracles.

Radical Innocence

But elections aren't the point. They can be a reflection of the change we need, but they're not the change itself. The real changes are personal. "When I remake a song," said Yeats, "it is myself that I remake." The Rolling Stones said "It's the singer, not the song."

We misunderstood our own power. We were being distracted and manipulated by fear and anger. Our minds, our souls, were being manipulated by what the Native American poet and activist John Trudell calls "the mining of the essence." One of the reasons we were powerless is that we believed we were powerless. That's even true economically. "All money is a matter of belief," said Adam Smith.

We needed to push our fear and anger away to see the obvious truths all around us: The corporations rule our political process. That our democracy is dying. That Wall Street is filled with people who broke moral (and sometimes actual) laws and forced the rest of the country to pay the price. We had to see with fresh eyes.

"All hatred driven hence," wrote Yeats, "the soul recovers radical innocence."

Our political process has become too cynical. Even reasonable and very moderate ideas favored by a majority of Republican voters, as well as others - a breakup of five or six too-big-to-fail banks, a public option health plan that's only available to one American in twenty - were declared impossible.

We needed an infusion of radical innocence, the innocence of Thomas Paine and Thomas Jefferson, of Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King and Nelson Mandela. We sometimes think of innocence as something childlike and weak. But innocence has great power. Innocence changes the world.

We needed that radical innocence,and we got it. What we do with it now is up to us.

Can we commit ourselves to moving forward, to persevering against all odds? The future's unwritten. But we know what's happening right now. The political dialog has shifted in a way that seemed impossible a few months ago. I don't know how you feel about that, but I know how I feel.

I feel thankful.

Reject Bad Advice and Bad Policy. Defend Medicare, Social Security.

Roger Hickey — Mon, 30 May 2011 22:48:40 -0400

Last week’s special election in New York’s 26th Congressional district was a political earthquake, demonstrating that the American majority, even in the most Republican of districts, will reject a candidate who embraces cuts to Medicare benefits or major changes to that most popular program. And, since almost every Republican in the House – and now the Senate – has voted for such drastic changes, Democrats across the country are happily learning how they can campaign to win back the House and keep the Senate.

But we can’t let Democrats undercut themselves again. Even as most of them practice their talking points about the Republican plan to dismantle Medicare, prominent beltway Democrats and Washington pundits are advising candidates that pressing their advantage on Medicare would not be the right thing to do. And others are urging Democrats to embrace policies – like cutting Social Security benefits – which would just as unpopular as dismantling Medicare and would confuse voters and undermine a winning message.

On May 25th, the day after Cong. Paul Ryan’s budget was soundly trounced in NY-26, when all around the country progressives were celebrating, Ryan was warmly received at a Washington conference on the deficit, sponsored by Wall Street mogul, Peter Peterson. At that event, former President Bill Clinton declared from the stage that, while he opposed Ryan’s plan for dismantling Medicare, he hoped that the NY-26 election didn’t mean that Medicare would be untouchable this year – a message he then delivered offstage directly to Rep. Ryan, the leader of the GOP plot to kill Medicare. And at that same Peterson event, Obama economic adviser Gene Sperling publicly declared the Administration’s strong interest in cutting Social Security benefits – either by raising the retirement age or by messing with Social Security’s cost-of-living formula.

So here we go again. Democrats start to unite around a winning economic issue, but major leaders of their party, repeating the case made by Washington Post editorialists and many beltway think tankers, warn them not to go there – that serious “adjustments” to Medicare (and Social Security) are inevitably necessary – and that campaigning as the champions of these programs is irresponsible, because, while it might help Democrats win the next election, it would be bad for the country. Reducing America’s deficits must be our priority, they solemnly declare, and these entitlement program must be cut.

This is horrible political advice that would deprive Democrats of a winning message.

But it is also bad policy advice. If Democrats side with the huge American majority who want a party that will protect and strengthen Medicare and Social Security, they shouldn’t campaign with their fingers crossed behind their back. A new Democratic majority in the House can come back to Washington in 2013 and join a strengthened Senate majority in pursuing good public policy that can revive the economy and bring down the deficit – while keeping their promise to protect the social contract.

There are plenty of serious economic proposals that accomplish those goals, without cutting or undermining Medicare, Medicaid or Social Security, starting with CAF’s Citizen Commission on Jobs and the Deficit and Representative Jan Schakowsky’s Deficit Reduction Plan. And, while they didn’t get the prominent visibility in an event designed to drum up panic on the deficit, the Peterson Deficit Summit actually featured plans from the progressive Economic Policy Institute and the Roosevelt Campus Network, both of which achieve reasonable budget balance while investing in growth and without doing stupid damage to our increasingly popular social safety net. (The Progressive Caucus Budget Plan also accomplishes the same goals.)

Apparently Bill Clinton agrees with Republicans that Medicare benefits have to be cut. What the various progressive plans have in common is the recognition of a simple fact: the growing costs of entitlements are driven by spiraling health care inflation in the larger economy. Medicare and Medicaid actually have a better cost control track record than the health care system as a whole. And all these “progressive“ deficit reduction plans repeat the truth that seemingly eludes Gene Sperling: Social Security has its own source of revenue and does not contribute a dime to the deficit. Now the policy implications of these insights are not easy, but they can be politically popular. In addition to attacking the immediate causes of deficits by reversing the Bush tax cuts for the rich, ending at least two wars, cutting obsolete military spending , and regulating the banks – all popular with the American majority – we are going to have to go after the driving forces in the American health care system: the complex of insurance companies, drug cartels, hospital and doctor syndicates, and the food-chemical industrial complex, all of which make Americans unhealthier, while driving up the cost of health care far above the Medicare trend line.

So Democrats have a choice: they can follow the advice of Bill Clinton, Alice Rivlin, and the Washington Post editorial board and give up on making the 2012 election a referendum on the very popular idea that we should protect and strengthen Medicare, Social Security and Medicaid. Or we they can fight like hell for these programs the American majority strongly supports, win that election, and come back to Washington ready to create jobs, stimulate healthy economic growth, and bring down deficits through healthy growth, new revenues, and good public policy designed to control overall health care costs. There is no doubt which is the best political strategy. It also happens to be better policy.

NOTE: One of the things that encouraged Democrats like Kathy Hochul to fight and win on Medicare is the strong speech President Obama made on April 13 declaring he would fight to protect Medicare. Because of that speech, the protests at Republican town meetings during Congressional recesses allowed Dems to stand up and fight. But we didn’t know what Obama was going to say until he gave the speech. So BEFORE the speech, we mobilized: we and other groups like MoveOn generated thousands of emails and phone calls to the White House. As you can see from this pdf of press coverage, even Nancy Pelosi was moved to call Obama by our email alert. The President should give us advance warning, especially when he’s going to do something progressive. But we have to work together to push the President – and his party – in the right direction.

Issa the Inquisitor

Richard Eskow — Wed, 05 Jan 2011 00:12:19 -0500

What's the worst thing about Darrell Issa's debut as Chairman of the House Oversight Committee? It could be his relentless, Gloria Swansonish, "I'm ready for my close up, Mr. DeMille" self promotion. It might be his manic insistence that he'll conduct "hundreds" of investigations,or his letters to lobbyists offering to put his new powers at their disposal. Or maybe it's his "hang 'em first and try 'em later" attitude toward the Administration. It's certainly ironic that his first act as head of the committee that investigates misuse of government funds seems to have been ... to misuse government funds.

Sure, they're all bad. But the worst of all may be this: Issa's making it clear that he'll use his position to cover up Wall Street's role in destroying the economy, and that he'll resist any attempts to rein in the corporate misbehavior that puts us all at risk. That's a shame: Issa once seemed like a fair-minded, independent voice, and he could have made an important contribution in his new position. Instead he's bent on becoming a tinpot Torquemada bent on harrassing and punishing anyone who tries to thwart corporate America's will.

Issa's announced that he intends to investigate Wikileaks, Fannie Mae, Afghanistan, how regulation affects job creation, food and drug recalls, what the last episode of Lost really meant, and whether Yoko broke up the Beatles.

Okay, maybe he didn't mention the last two. But Issa's on record as saying that, while he listed six targets of investigation, he could have listed sixty - "or six hundred, perhaps." In fact, says Issa, "there is so much in government that in the next two years even if we did a hearing every single day on every single sub committee, we couldn't do all the areas of waste, fraud and abuse..."

Nobody can investigate hundreds of topics meaningfully or effectively. But that's not the point. The goal of these investigations will be to help his party and serve his corporate cronies - and, of course, to get his name in the headlines. In fact, Darrell's already gone Hollywood. Videos on his website already have a Committee logo, as if he were a movie star and the mogul who runs the studio:

Issa's also turned the Committee's website into an advertisement for his own party, with a banner across that top that reads "Committee on Oversight and Government Reform: Republicans" and a tab underneath it thar reads "GOP Watchdogs."

The word "Democrat" didn't appear anywhere on the website under the Democratic chairman, as a cached copy of the page shows. And it shouldn't. Issa's abuse of this site would be illegal if this were a mailing, rather than a website, since taxpayer-funding mailings "may not be used to solicit votes or contributions (or) to send mail regarding political campaigns or political parties ..."

Issa's already made it clear that he intends to play the role of Grand Inquisitor toward an Administration he's already described as "one of the most corrupt" in history. That's a stunning statement after the Nixon and Bush Administrations or the scandals of history. (Teapot Dome, anyone?) Issa's letting us know he's getting the frame-up machine ready for more phony Whitewaters and multimillion-dollar fishing expeditions.

"Coming soon to a hearing room near you! The latest Oversight Production ..."

In his new role, Issa's the only member of Congress who can issue subpoenas without asking for committee approval. If that doesn't scare you, it should. That power was originally conferred on the Committee's Chairman by Republicans eager to find abuses of power under Bill Clinton. Issa's Republican predecessor during the Clinton era issued more than 1,000 such imperial subpoenas. As Karen Tumulty reminds us, the Committee took more than 140 hours of sworn testimony while investigating whether the Clinton White House "misused the White House Christmas-card list for political purposes."

What's really troubling about Issa's list isn't the sheer number of targets, or even the publicity-crazed ambition that seems to guide his every move. What's really worriesome are the signs that he intends to be an ideological Grand Inquisitor. Case in point: Politico says that Issa plans to investigate "the failure of the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission to agree on the causes of the market meltdown."

But the FCIC did reach its conclusions, and the majority report is expected shortly. Issa just wants to provide a platform for four political appointees from the Republican Party who staged a phony walkout from the Commission. Their ginned-up, ideological "complaint" was built around the Commission's refusal to accept their demand that it strike words and phrases like "deregulation" and "Wall Street" from their report. Issa intends to use his Committee as a platform for spreading this sort of deceptive Orwellian doubletalk.

If you've got an ideological narrative that hides Wall Street's role in ruining the economy, then baby, Darrell Issa's gonna make you a star!

The FCIC's majority is likely to conclude that excessive bank deregulation led to greed-driven speculation and often to criminal behavior, that "shadow banking" by non-financial entities contributed greatly to the problem, that "too big to fail" banks knew they'd be rescued if their gambling bets went bad, and that more is needed to make sure the same thing doesn't happen again.

Virtually all responsible economists agree with those conclusions. Even the guru of banking deregulation, Alan Greenspan, acknowledges that deregulation didn't lead to the kind of rational behavior he had expected. But the banks are eager to continue their reckless and greedy ways, and the Republicans want to keep raking in their contributions.

Politico also reports that Issa will investigate "the roles of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in the foreclosure crisis." Fannie and Freddie make handy ideological targets because they're government initiatives (the fact that they help black, brown, and poor people may help subliminally, too.) But the real value of scapegoating Fannie and Freddie is that it distracts attention from the real culprits - the ones writing fat checks to GOP campaigns.

Paul Krugman has shown that the housing bubble which led to the economy's collapse reached its height after Congress had tied Fannie and Freddie's hands. And some of the biggest problems happened outside Fannie and Freddie's reach altogether, in properties such as commercial real estate and luxury housing (leading to headlines like Bloomberg's "Rich Default on Luxury Homes Like Subprime Victims." The delinquency rate for homes worth more than a million dollars has been higher than the overall rate for much of this year.)

The common thread behind all this worthless real estate isn't Fannie or Freddie or government initiatives: It's bankers. They're the problem, and regulation is the solution. End of story. Now we can save the taxpayers the millions Issa's planning to waste on this subject.

He'll do it anyway, of course. Issa's made it clear that he wants to be part of the greatest cover-up in history: the cover-up of Wall Street's role in destroying the economy. That will reduce public pressure to regulate them and prevent future recessions or depressions - which means they'll be more likely to happen.

Not that bankers are his only constituency. Like a waiter with his pad open, Issa's been asking lobbyists all over town for their orders. As Politico reported, Issa sent letters to more than 150 lobbyists asking them what they'd like him to investigate and which laws they'd like to see changed. ""Is there something that we can do to try to ease that [regulatory] burden and stimulate job creation?" he asked. "Is there a consistent practice or regulation that hurts jobs?"

Who got these letters? From Politico: "Duke Energy, the Association of American Railroads, FMC Corp., Toyota and Baye... the American Petroleum Institute, National Association of Manufacturers (NAM), the National Petrochemical & Refiners Association (NPRA) and entities representing health care and telecommunication providers."

These lobbyists are probably drafting subpoenas now for the Chairman's signature. Anybody who gets in their way is likely to spend endless hours and many thousands of dollars enduring meaningless and punitive inquiries. It will be a replay of Chairman Dan Burton's disgraceful tenure during the Clinton years, which brought to mind the words of a sixteenth-century English historian: "A defence in the Inquisition is of little use to the prisoner, for a suspicion only is deemed sufficient cause of condemnation."

We were open-minded about Issa originally, and even cautiously optimistic. For anyone who hasn't been thrilled with everything this Administration's done, an Issa chairmanship originally had promise. He's reached across the aisle for several legislative initiatives. His calls for more disclosure of TARP spending were welcome, as were his meetings with the Federal Reserve to push for greater transparency.

But Darrell Issa's made it clear that he plans to use his office for personal advancement, partisan advantage, and to serve America's corporations at the expense of its people. His "oversight productions" have already become a pathetic spectacle. We know how this movie ends.

Tell the President: Stand Up to the Hostage-Takers! Defend Social Security and Medicare.

Roger Hickey — Fri, 17 Dec 2010 08:00:11 -0500

Republican hostage-takers got President Obama to go along with their tax cuts for the wealthy by threatening to raise taxes on the middle class and blocking even modest stimulus funds for our struggling economy.

Now the Republicans have identified their next hostage: They're going to threaten to destroy the international financial stability of the United States by refusing to raise the debt ceiling. What are they demanding for ransom? They want President Obama to slash Social Security and Medicare before this next hostage crisis comes to a head in March or April.

Who can stop this next hostage crisis? We can. We is everyone who cares about our country. We have to start by sending a message to the President here: No more surrendering to hostage takers' demands. Pledge to defend Social Security and Medicare. Click here to take action.

Here are two scenarios. Which one will you work to make happen?

Scenario One: In his State of the Union speech (around January 27), Obama declares that he is willing to "meet the Republicans half way". In fact, he will preempt the hostage-taking crisis altogether, by accepting some of the harshest recommendations of his deficit commission. He announces his support for legislation to cut Social Security benefits for today's retirees, by changing the cost of living index. He pledges to cut Social Security benefits for future middle-class retirees even more and declares his intention to raise the retirement age. What's more, he says he will cap Medicare benefits for each retiree, and they will either have to pay for the rest of their medical care out of pocket or do without the care they need.

This is looking like an increasing likely scenario. What would happen then? Let's play it out a little further:

In response to the President's statements, several senior Democrats announce their plans to quit public service, Republicans, flush with their latest victory, start issuing their NEWEST set of demands. If these new demands aren't met, they say, they'll refuse to pass the debt ceiling - which would crash the US economy. Soon the Democrats and Obama are attacked by Newt Gingrich and other Republican presidential candidates as the party and the President who cut Social Security. Republican prospects for 2012 improve greatly as the public recoils at this attack on a popular program, Democratic activists erupt in fury, and the true Democratic base of working families and independents becomes even more disillusioned.

Scenario Two: The White House and the Democrats in Congress are flooded with emails, faxes and phone calls that say: "We elected you to protect Social Security and Medicare." "Stand up and Fight against hostage takers." Over 200 Members of Congress join together to declare: "Social Security and Medicare are our 'line in the sand." In his State of the Union, the President reminds the country that Social Security doesn't contribute a single dime to the deficit, and says unequivocally that he will defend it against any attempt to cut benefits or raid its trust fund to pay down the Federal Deficit. He might even announce a new commission charged with strengthening and improving Social Security, composed of well-informed people who care about the program. He vows additional reforms to cut health care costs and improve the quality of care, and pledges not to harm or cut Medicare. And, channeling Bill Clinton from 1994, he declares he will refuse to give in to extortionists who would harm the US economic system in an attempt to force him to dismantle America's social contract. In response, nervous Wall Street financiers denounce the extremist politicians who would crash the world financial system in order to win their political goals. Chastened, the Republicans back down and agree to support extension of the debt limit.

Working Americans rally to the President, filled with newfound respect for his willingness to stand up and fight for them. 2012 starts looking much better for Obama - and for Democrats in the Congress.

Which scenario will become reality? That's up to you. Progressive activists - the kind of people who are reading these words - need to become even more active if we want to make Scenario Two our future.

Many people are disappointed and disillusioned by the outcome of the first hostage confrontation with Republicans in the new post-majority era - a confrontation that ended before it began. As a result, too many are succumbing to cynicism, assuming that all is hopeless and that the first Scenario is inevitable. We all know that if Scenario One happens, it will trigger a firestorm of protest and we will be part of that firestorm. Why not channel that energy into changing history instead, by using it to get President Obama on the road toward revival and real economic change?

If we get off our asses before a tragic mistake is made, we'll discover the American people are with us in this next fight. Poll after poll shows that, despite the coordinated conservative deficit scare campaign, strong majorities reject cuts to Social Security benefits or messing with Medicare. And people hate the idea of raising the retirement age - that includes already-retired people and baby-boomers, and younger workers who would have to work two more years - no matter how bad the economy is or how badly their bodies have been battered. Americans are strongly supportive of our modest but fair social insurance system - and, especially in these bad economic times, they'll fight any politician who tries to damage it. Let's fight a fight that unites all Americans - even the majority of Tea Partiers.

In the few weeks before the President's late January State of the Union speech, we need to clearly and forcefully tell him and the Democratic party what we think: Capitulating to hostage takers on Social Security and Medicare would be a disaster and politically and the wrong thing to do morally.

You can take your first action right here.

And then, if we succeed at getting the President to hold off, we can mount a massive campaign that would bring unions, citizens' organizations, grass roots groups of all kinds together. It would speak directly to the voters - blue collar and white collar, independents and partisans, middle class and working class - attacking those Republicans who would threaten to crash the US economy in order to cut popular programs. We can flood conservatives in Congress with angry protests and end this next hostage crisis with the first defeat of the new right wing Congress - and the first victory of America's progressive majority.

We can suffer through the first scenario, or make a better reality. It's up to you.

Mourning in America: Death of the Middle Class

Leo Gerard — Tue, 16 Nov 2010 13:58:25 -0500

The deficit commission report issued last week is another Saturday night special pressed to the temple of the American middle class.

“Turn over your money and your benefits or your country will die,” the report screams at workers. “You want your country to go bankrupt? No? Then you gotta delay retirement, get less from Social Security, pay more for health insurance and lose your precious few income tax breaks like the one that helps pay your mortgage while the banker is breathing down your neck right now.”

For 30 years, rich conservatives have successfully threatened the American middle class this way, ever since that rich conservative Ronald Reagan converted the White House into a castle.

The result is a country with greater income inequality than during the age of corporate robber barons at the turn of the 20^th century. It is a country whose 21^st century robber barons, the richest 1 percent of Americans, take nearly a quarter of all income and demand that politicians relieve them of their obligations. The rich -- hedge fund owners who rake in billions, Wall Street banksters handed bonuses in the millions, CEOs paid eight-figure golden parachutes after they mess up -- insist that politicians place government debt burdens on the middle class, the unemployed, the elderly, the struggling young, people whose income has stagnated for three decades.

The co-chairmen of the deficit commission complied with that mandate from the flush when they recommended the middle class bear the brunt of the cost of reducing the deficit. Simultaneously, conservatives in Congress are acquiescing by insisting on extending tax breaks for the nation’s wealthiest. Those are the very tax breaks that contributed dramatically to creating the debt – the one that the deficit commission now wants heaped on workers’ backs.

This will be the death of the nation’s strength -- its successful working class. Without the slightest regret or hesitation, the rich are killing the great American middle, rendering it a casualty of their shirked social responsibilities. Their campaign has been abetted by Republicans since Ronald Reagan. The Gipper contended slashing taxes for the wealthy would increase revenues for the government. Republican George H. W. Bush rightly ridiculed Reaganomics as voodoo.

In the GOP years between the beginning of Reagan in 1981 and the end of Bush II in 2009, the federal deficit exploded as Republican presidents failed to control spending and repeatedly cut taxes for the rich.

Reagan reduced the rate on the richest first down to 50 percent, then to 28 percent. The resulting budget deficit converted the U.S. from the world’s largest international creditor to its largest debtor. And now, the deficit commission sends the bulk of the bill for voodoo economics to the middle class, not the rich.

While Reagan gave the rich those breaks, income inequality increased. The share of total income taken by the richest 5 percent grew from 16.5 percent the year before he took office to 18.3 percent the year before he left. In that same time, the share of total income that went to the poorest 20 percent of households fell from 4.2 to 3.8 percent.

Democrat Bill Clinton fulfilled a campaign promise by increasing taxes on the rich -- to a 39.6 percent marginal rate. He balanced the federal budget and left Bush II with a surplus.

Then Bush II squandered it. He gave the rich more tax breaks, accumulated debts larger than all those created by previous presidents combined and worsened income inequality. During his administration, from 2002 to 2007, the pretax income of the richest 1 percent increased 10 percent every year. Over that same period, the median income for working Americans declined and the poverty rate rose.

From Reagan through Bush II, more than four-fifths of the total increase in U.S. income went to the richest 1 percent. Hedge fund owners, whose income is literally in the billions, pay income taxes at 15 percent – lower than the rate paid by their secretaries, who earn far less in a year than any of the top 10 hedgers do in half an hour.

Wall Street recklessness crashed the U.S. economy, throwing millions of middle income earners out of their jobs and their homes. The banksters went to Washington and got politicians to hand them bailout billions, and now those Wall Streeters plan to increase their bonuses -- while unemployment remains stuck at 9.6 percent in the Main Street economy.

It is those guys, bankers grabbing year end bonuses totaling two and three times what middle class earners get for a year’s labor; it is the five-home wealthy demanding that the foreclosed-on middle class suffer for the deficit. The rich, who have received the greatest benefits from this society, have no intention of paying their share of this national responsibility.

The deficit, the Social Security shortfall, difficulties with Medicare – they could all be solved if the nation returned to taxing policies that existed under Republican President Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, when the rate on top earners was 91 percent. That was not even the high point. In the mid-1940s it was 94 percent. Generally it fluctuated between 81 percent in 1940 and 70 percent when Reagan began slashing it in 1981.

Those rates may sound confiscatory now, but it’s not like the rich actually paid them after they subtracted out all of their exemptions, deductions, loopholes, special deals, tricks and wiles.

The dozen years in the 1950s and 1960s when the rate on the richest officially was 91 percent is a time considered by many Americans to be among the nation’s greatest for the middle class, a period when American workers could afford to buy homes, send their kids to college and travel across American on vacation.

There’s no talk of that now. Raising taxes on the rich now is considered ludicrous. Ridiculous. The whole Social Security shortfall could be solved if the rich paid taxes on their entire incomes, not just the first $110,000, a break that means the wealthy pay a smaller percentage if their income toward Social Security than the impoverished. But the deficit commission didn’t propose that.

No, the rich have succeeded in eliminating as a possibility their paying an increased tax share. Now, the only consideration is cutting their taxes. They didn’t hold an actual Saturday night special to anyone’s head. The rich are snake oil salesmen slick, Bernie Madoff-style schemers. They sold voodoo economics to America, and now they’re intent on making the middle class pay for what that policy has wrought in deficits.

Reagan’s re-election ad was wrong. He didn’t institute “Morning in America.” It was mourning for the once great American middle class.

Greenspan's Testimony: Will the 'Maestro' Face the Music?

Richard Eskow — Tue, 06 Apr 2010 00:13:52 -0400

Alan Greenspan testifies before the Angelides Commission on Wednesday. Without wishing him any personal ill will, let's hope he gets a grilling. We come not to bury Greenspan, but to ... well, actually we do come to bury him. For the greater good of all, he and the radical philosophy he represents must be exposed for all to see.

Paul Krugman observed the other day that Greenspan is "still not a mensch," and that's putting it mildly. Greenspan's engaged in a full-scale media blitz to convince the public that he still deserves to be called the "Maestro," s he once was by an adoring press and DC establishment. But underlying Greenspan's words and deeds, almost invisibly, is a extremist philosophy that has captured financial policy.

Greenspan's a lifelong disciple of Ayn Rand, the anti-government radical who rejected altruism and believed that "Man's ... own happiness as the moral purpose of his life." Charity was contemptible to her. She once wrote, "What are your masses but mud to be ground underfoot, fuel to be burned for those who deserve it?" Rand believed in self-interest as the prime motivating force in the world, and her book Atlas Shrugged celebrates a world where the fortunate refuse to help others.

Greenspan once wrote a letter praising Atlas Shrugged. Echoing his guru, he said that "Justice is unrelenting ... Parasites who persistently avoid either purpose or reason perish as they should." Since that day, more than forty years ago, Greenspan has become the figurehead (not the "fountainhead" - figurehead) for a new form of "establishment radicalism," a white-collar extremism which that has hijacked American economic policy for the last thirty years.

On another occasion, Greenspan wrote: "Stripped of its academic jargon, the welfare state is nothing more than a mechanism by which governments confiscate the wealth of the productive members of a society to support a wide variety of welfare schemes."(1) Since most Americans support helping the needy and indigent, that's hardly a view which most of them would accept or find admirable.

Randians have a complete right to their views, of course, as do all of those who dwell far outside the political mainstream. But it's worth asking how, in a democratic country, the political institutions that govern our finances came to be so completely dominated by a philosophy that few Americans understand or support.

Someday someone will write that story. But the goals for Wednesday's testimony are much more immediate: The Commission must determine the extent of Greenspan's negligence, and then explore ways to design a regulatory structure that is resistant to unelected ideologues like him.

Greenspan's recent tract in his own defense (pdf) for the Brookings Institution is an instructive read for Commission members, if not for the reasons he might wish. The document's 18,456 words can be summed up in the words "hey, who knew?"

From its very first sentence, Greenspan's paper is startling in its unwillingness to see the truth. He begins, "The bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers in September 2008 precipitated what, in retrospect, is likely to be judged the most virulent global financial crisis ever." The date is convenient, since it's after Greenspan's tenure at the Fed. The prediction that this will be "the most virulent ... crisis ever" seems dangerously optimistic, to the point of naivete.

But what's most striking in that sentence is its confusion of cause and effect. When a former Fed Chairman blames the entire financial crisis on Lehman Brothers, it's like a drunk driver blaming his accident on the wall he struck.

Commission members should ask Greenspan to clarify these remarks. They should also ask him why he continues to place the lion's share of blame on Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and subprime mortgages. This conveniently dovetails with right-wing talking points, but fails to address the massive breakdown in prime mortgages or the developing crisis in commercial real estate. Does he see any causes of the crisis that are not either isolated or conservative shibboleths?

Greenspan asserts in the Brookings paper that asset bubbles are inevitable and can't be prevented. That's another fairly radical position for a central banker to hold. It's like having a Secretary of Defense who believes we're incapable of resisting military attack. How did that belief affect the performance of his duties while at the Fed?

The Commission might also ask Greenspan if he intended to justify or defend bankers' unwillingness to withdraw from a runaway market when he quoted Charles Prince of Citigroup (who will also testify this week). Said Prince, "When the music stops, in terms of liquidity, things will be complicated. But as long as the music is playing, you've got to get up and dance. We're still dancing." It was Greenspan's job to know the difference between a merry jig and St. Vitus' Dance. The jerking movements of the big banks spelled danger for the economy, yet Greenspan didn't try to stop the music (even though Prince's quote could be interpreted as a cry for just such an intervention).

Greenspan also described the crisis as a "hundred year flood," which prompted Nassim Taleb to say that financial experts who don't plan for rare events are like pilots who don't know about storms. What's more, floods are natural disasters. This crisis was manmade, a fact Greenspan seems unwilling to acknowledge.

In what should be a warning for Commission members on what they may face on Wednesday, Greenspan has a tendency to filibuster - even on the printed page. Take this paragraph: ... (B)y what standard should reform of official supervision and regulation be judged? I know of no form of economic organization based on a division of labor, from unfettered laissez-faire to oppressive central planning, that has succeeded in achieving both maximum sustainable economic growth and permanent stability. Central planning certainly failed and I strongly doubt that stability is achievable in capitalist economies, given the always turbulent competitive markets continuously being drawn towards, but never quite achieving, equilibrium (that is the process leading to economic growth)."

All of that is basically Adam Smith-ish bankerese for "Shit happens." The Commission should not consider that an acceptable answer. It should grill the former Chairman on "too big to fail," especially this comment:

Beyond significantly increased capital requirements is the necessity of addressing the problems of some financial firms being "too big to fail" (TBTF) or more appropriately "too interconnected to be liquidated quickly."

"Too interconnected to be liquidated quickly"? This is obfuscation and misdirection, smoke and mirrors, a defense of the indefensible.

As we said in the beginning, this is not about discrediting one person. It's about understanding the philosophy and mind-set that led to a disastrous collapse. Greenspan will attempt to obfuscate. He will condescend, lecture, and distract. For the sake of the country, the Commission must not allow that to happen. And it should treat Greenspan's answers with all appropriate skepticism. It should bear in mind that when he testifies, the old Objectivist is sure to be acting in his own "rational self-interest."

________________

(1) From "Gold and Economic Freedom," written for Ayn Rand's newsletter when Greenspan was a devotee of the gold standard. Essays from the newsletter were eventually anthologized in a book called Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal.

The Clintonites Were Wrong

Isaiah J. Poole — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 10:32:57 -0500

Rocky Mountain Realities On Feb. 5

David Sirota — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 08:58:47 -0500

When I took a leave of absence from my job in Washington in 2000 to work in the Montana Senate race, I didn't have much clue what I was in for. Growing up on the East Coast, I thought of the Intermountain West as a huge, far-off, mysterious place of square states and cattle herds — and like many people on the coasts, I didn't know much else.

In the years since that first campaign, I have been working in and reporting on the West, telling people what I say in my new nationally syndicated newspaper column today: That this region is the most politically misunderstood place in America.

Many people scoffed at my writing, saying the West was a backwater — one that would remain a Republican stronghold forever. That is, until the last few years when many Democratic strategists in Washington realized that the West has become a political swing region — one that could decide the direction of national politics for the next generation.

Sadly, when you read the typical national reporter's occasional article about the West or watch national politicians drop in for a visit, you sense either condescension, stereotyping — or both. The West is still portrayed as a weird hinterland whose politics supposedly adhere to Washington, D.C.'s inaccurate notions of lockstep "red state" behavior.

But as I say in the column, the West defies the professional pundits' portrayals. On issues from national security to energy to the role of government, the Rocky Mountain region's nuances are far more complex than "red state" stereotypes — just like most places in America. And as this region prepares to vote on February 5 and then take center stage in the general election, the candidates who ignore the fictions and appreciates these nuances are the candidates who will likely win here.

As the only nationally syndicated newspaper columnist living in and reporting regularly on this region, I felt it was particularly important to write this piece before Tuesday's voting because the West is only going to become more prominent in American politics as this election year progresses. That prominence, I believe, will either allow inaccurate stereotypes to flourish, or let the more complex realities shine through. I hope it is the latter.

Go read the whole column here. If you'd like to see my column regularly in your local paper, use this directory to find the contact info for your local editorial page editors. Get get in touch with them and point them to my Creators Syndicate site.

One additional note: You may have noticed that I am trying to use my column to promote solid progressive voices whenever I can. Today's, as you can see, includes the use of material from a diarist at OpenLeft.com - a terrific progressive site. I want to continue doing that kind of thing — the Right promotes its voices very effectively like this. And I want to do the same with my column.