The concentration of wealth, and the destruction of the middle class
By Mike Krauss
Bucks County Courier Times
27 September 2011
The changes have been taking place for 40 years, but so gradually that the American middle class was not alarmed. People are like that. We can adjust to enormous change if it occurs gradually.
So it crept up on the American middle class: 40 years of flat wages, expensive credit substituted for income, two wage earners and multiple jobs to keep heads above water, jobs off-shored and American manufacturing decimated, wages further depressed by an over-supply of labor created by unchecked and mostly illegal immigration, taxes that favored the wealthy, banking laws and deregulation that allowed the finance industry to get a stranglehold on the American economy and government.
It is as if the American house had been infested by termites, but nobody noticed until the roof began to fall in. Suddenly, we can see how the house has been ravaged.
Poverty is rampant, millions of the middle class pushed down the ladder which generations expected to climb. Fantastic wealth has been concentrated among the few as never before.
The massive damage done is expressed in a chart recently published with surprising candor by the Federal Reserve and labeled “Owners Equity in Household Real Estate.”
It shows that in 1951 Americans held about $250 billion in home equity; about the time the GI Bill began not only to put veterans through college, but also to support the home ownership which created the modern suburbs and middle class.
By the time of the 2008 Wall Street crash and bail out, that equity had grown to almost $14 trillion, its growth virtually immune to the periodic recessions in the U.S. economy.
Even adjusted for inflation, that is a lot of wealth and represents what post World War II Americans achieved: the creation of the greatest and most broadly shared prosperity the world had ever seen — the rise of the American middle class.
With the crash, home equity fell off a cliff and has now been cut more than in half. It is falling still. Those Americans who owned most of that real estate, the middle class, have lost about $7 trillion of their wealth.
That wealth will not disappear. It will be transferred to the already wealthy. The new American way.
An industry trade group, Realty Trac Inc. reports that the sale of foreclosed homes accounted for 31 percent of home sales in the last quarter. These homes were not purchased by the poor, the unemployed or the struggling middle class. They were purchased — at bargain basement prices — by the already wealthy. Why would they do such a thing in a depression?
Because the economy only moves one of two ways: up or down. And when this depression ends, home prices will once again go up, and these assets will make the wealthy even wealthier.
Meanwhile, these homes will be rented. And millions of once middle class Americans will go from homeowners to home renters, and their wages will not be invested in an asset, but instead will go as rents to the wealthy.
Further, the Obama administration has floated the idea of ending the home mortgage interest deduction in the tax code, and providing rental assistance.
So the middle class taxpayer who still owns a home and pays taxes will lose that deduction, and be taxed to provide the money to be paid as rents to the new suburban slumlords.
Middle class Americans are experiencing a disaster of historic proportions. It was entirely man made. But, what to do about it?
A place to start is to stop listening to the prevailing narrative that Washington is dysfunctional and can’t get anything done because of partisan wrangling. That is a false and intentionally misleading narrative from a captured national media, whose owners fear the day the American middle class wakes up.
Washington gets plenty done. Doing nothing is a policy, the policy of keeping things the way they are.
Americans must wake up to the fact that high unemployment, home foreclosures, and out-of-control militarism, the destruction of the middle class and the legislation of every device known to man to preserve, protect and defend the wealth of the wealthy are the intended policies of the federal government.
The American political establishment is not bumbling. It is bought.
Political power flows from wealth. When the wealth of a nation is shared among the many, when there is a middle class, democracy can flourish. When wealth is concentrated, democracy dies.
Saturday, October 15, 2011
Friday, September 16, 2011
The never ending campaign
Obama jobs plan falls seriously short
In his address to the Congress and the nation, President Obama seemed in a determined fighting mood. The president said many things that will give hope to his dispirited supporters, and perhaps to many Americans.
But we have been there before, in the campaign of 2008, and Mr. Obama did not deliver. The nation got more of the same -- Wall Street and war and the protection of corporate profit as the overarching purpose of the federal government.
Mr. Obama is the most able political campaigner of his age, and his address must be seen for what it was -- a campaign speech. And whatever good the enactment of his many proposals might do, the Republicans in Congress are also campaigning (they never actually stopped), and their devotion to doctrine is as mindless, fanatical and frightening as that of the Ayatollahs in Tehran.
There will be no cooperation.
And even if the heartless, pseudo-Christian social Darwinists in the GOP should hear the cries of millions of struggling Americans, their grudging aide will come at a price: more cuts in the spending that sustains -- barely -- the lives of our most vulnerable citizens and the battered hopes of the beleaguered middle class.
In fact, as he did in the debt ceiling farce, Mr. Obama put those cuts on the table.
But, Mr. Obama's true believers will argue, look at all the good things the president proposed. Well, let's. This was billed as a jobs speech. And the word jobs was said by Mr. Obama 45 times -- almost once a minute. So, where are the jobs?
If Congress agrees to extend unemployment benefits, there will be some immediate spending, but no jobs. Grocery stores, pharmacies, auto repair shops and Wal Mart will see some more business. But it will be short-lived and no cause to hire. Just some quick profit taking and feel good headlines.
Similarly, the proposed cuts in employee and employer payroll taxes, while no doubt welcomed by both and the stuff of future campaign ads, leaves only modest sums in employees' pockets each month. And many American consumers may opt to pay down debt rather than take on new spending, as in fact they have been doing.
And even if Wal Mart adds some non-union, low-wage, no-benefits, part- time jobs, whatever will be sold will likely create more jobs in China than the United States.
And the employer payroll tax reduction will only spur hiring if employers see a sustained increase in demand, and so will lead to no immediate new hires, if ever.
But these payroll tax cuts depress revenues for Social Security and Medicare and give the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, all the GOP and many Democrats ammunition in the fear mongering campaign to eliminate both of those programs.
The president also proposed $35 billion to prevent the layoffs of an estimated 280,000 teachers, "while hiring tens of thousands more, along with additional police officers and firefighters," according to the New York Times.
Maybe. Or maybe battered school districts and local governments will use the funds to cover budget shortfalls and avoid tax increases.
The one sure jobs creator was spending on infrastructure. But the amounts proposed, given the need for jobs and the disastrous state of American roads, bridges, schools, water and sewer systems, public transportation and ...
You get the point. And after the recent storms, much of the mid-Atlantic and Northeast is a disaster area. It will take billions just to repair that damage. Obama's proposal got construction workers cheering. That was the point, as with so much of what the president proposed.
But the amounts proposed -- tens of billions -- fall hopelessly short of the scope and scale of the effort needed. And there is no guarantee that the GOP in the Congress will enact any of what the president proposed.
So the never ending campaign never ends. Already, the president and members of Congress are shaking the trees and being shaken down by the established interests that own Washington.
The president and all the GOP hopefuls are raising enormous sums through "super PACS," by passing the already anemic laws to prevent the wholesale selling of the office. And the Washington Post reported last week that members of the "super Congress" -- the elite committee that is charged to slash spending -- have set off on a furious round of fund raising, using their newly powerful positions to their best advantage.
Of course, say Mr. Obama and his would-be opponents, they have no idea what the super PACS that support them are doing with the tens of millions each is raising from contributors with no limit to their giving. And members of the super Congress would never protect the spending their contributors enjoy in exchange for a campaign contribution. That would be -- criminal.
There is no hope or health in Washington. The ship of state has foundered. It is time for the American people to put all the little boats in the water, and look to the states, counties and municipalities to provide the ideas, leadership and jobs that can collectively recover America's stolen prosperity.
In his address to the Congress and the nation, President Obama seemed in a determined fighting mood. The president said many things that will give hope to his dispirited supporters, and perhaps to many Americans.
But we have been there before, in the campaign of 2008, and Mr. Obama did not deliver. The nation got more of the same -- Wall Street and war and the protection of corporate profit as the overarching purpose of the federal government.
Mr. Obama is the most able political campaigner of his age, and his address must be seen for what it was -- a campaign speech. And whatever good the enactment of his many proposals might do, the Republicans in Congress are also campaigning (they never actually stopped), and their devotion to doctrine is as mindless, fanatical and frightening as that of the Ayatollahs in Tehran.
There will be no cooperation.
And even if the heartless, pseudo-Christian social Darwinists in the GOP should hear the cries of millions of struggling Americans, their grudging aide will come at a price: more cuts in the spending that sustains -- barely -- the lives of our most vulnerable citizens and the battered hopes of the beleaguered middle class.
In fact, as he did in the debt ceiling farce, Mr. Obama put those cuts on the table.
But, Mr. Obama's true believers will argue, look at all the good things the president proposed. Well, let's. This was billed as a jobs speech. And the word jobs was said by Mr. Obama 45 times -- almost once a minute. So, where are the jobs?
If Congress agrees to extend unemployment benefits, there will be some immediate spending, but no jobs. Grocery stores, pharmacies, auto repair shops and Wal Mart will see some more business. But it will be short-lived and no cause to hire. Just some quick profit taking and feel good headlines.
Similarly, the proposed cuts in employee and employer payroll taxes, while no doubt welcomed by both and the stuff of future campaign ads, leaves only modest sums in employees' pockets each month. And many American consumers may opt to pay down debt rather than take on new spending, as in fact they have been doing.
And even if Wal Mart adds some non-union, low-wage, no-benefits, part- time jobs, whatever will be sold will likely create more jobs in China than the United States.
And the employer payroll tax reduction will only spur hiring if employers see a sustained increase in demand, and so will lead to no immediate new hires, if ever.
But these payroll tax cuts depress revenues for Social Security and Medicare and give the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, all the GOP and many Democrats ammunition in the fear mongering campaign to eliminate both of those programs.
The president also proposed $35 billion to prevent the layoffs of an estimated 280,000 teachers, "while hiring tens of thousands more, along with additional police officers and firefighters," according to the New York Times.
Maybe. Or maybe battered school districts and local governments will use the funds to cover budget shortfalls and avoid tax increases.
The one sure jobs creator was spending on infrastructure. But the amounts proposed, given the need for jobs and the disastrous state of American roads, bridges, schools, water and sewer systems, public transportation and ...
You get the point. And after the recent storms, much of the mid-Atlantic and Northeast is a disaster area. It will take billions just to repair that damage. Obama's proposal got construction workers cheering. That was the point, as with so much of what the president proposed.
But the amounts proposed -- tens of billions -- fall hopelessly short of the scope and scale of the effort needed. And there is no guarantee that the GOP in the Congress will enact any of what the president proposed.
So the never ending campaign never ends. Already, the president and members of Congress are shaking the trees and being shaken down by the established interests that own Washington.
The president and all the GOP hopefuls are raising enormous sums through "super PACS," by passing the already anemic laws to prevent the wholesale selling of the office. And the Washington Post reported last week that members of the "super Congress" -- the elite committee that is charged to slash spending -- have set off on a furious round of fund raising, using their newly powerful positions to their best advantage.
Of course, say Mr. Obama and his would-be opponents, they have no idea what the super PACS that support them are doing with the tens of millions each is raising from contributors with no limit to their giving. And members of the super Congress would never protect the spending their contributors enjoy in exchange for a campaign contribution. That would be -- criminal.
There is no hope or health in Washington. The ship of state has foundered. It is time for the American people to put all the little boats in the water, and look to the states, counties and municipalities to provide the ideas, leadership and jobs that can collectively recover America's stolen prosperity.
Sunday, August 7, 2011
American Democracy?
Democratic Party died a slow death
By Mike Krauss
Bucks County Courier Times
The Democratic Party is dead. It was a slow death, painful to watch, but it’s over now. The remains will be buried alongside those of the Republican Party, which died some time ago.
The GOP took ill with the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Legions of Democratic southern whites fled their party and eventually made their new home in the GOP, bringing with them their passion for the Bible, guns and cars (Not necessarily in that order), and an abiding hostility to the federal government that had twice upended their social order and threatened their economic and political power.
Richard Nixon saw them coming and invited them in with a pitch to “law and order,” which gathered up the southern (and some northern) racists, the socially conservative voters upset by the changes of the 1960s, and the white suburban and rural voters who, while not necessarily racists, resented the huge and mostly urban spending of LBJ’s “Great Society.”
But Nixon was a moderate, who like Eisenhower before him did not make war on working men and women, and who took America out of war. And when Nixon went down the team that heckled Dwight Eisenhower at the ‘64 convention took over and the GOP died, to be replaced by the POG (Party of God), eager to fight His battles at home and abroad.
They joined the class of established and mostly corporate wealth that did not like it one bit when FDR started sharing that wealth and Lyndon Johnson tried to do the same.
All things federal became the enemy of the POG, while the nation’s established corporate wealth used all things federal to enlarge their wealth.
“Welfare cheats” (I wonder what color they were?), the ever useful communists and a focus on sex ( a sure attention getter) kept America’s increasingly deficient attention while the Reagan tax code accelerated the most massive transfer of wealth in American history — perhaps world history — into the hands of an ever richer few.
The Democratic Party was already weakened by Reagan’s assault on unions and the exodus of whites, and took seriously ill when Bill Clinton, a fatherless boy who longed for a family, got adopted by Wall Street.
Clinton embraced “free” trade, which actually carries a terrible price in lost jobs and low wages for Americans, and has since decimated American manufacturing and destroyed the old union base of the Democratic Party.
But “free” trade does wonders for corporate profit and Wall Street.
Then Clinton joined ranks with the POG to repeal the laws that had kept the banks and financial casinos separated since the crash of 1929. The result was not only that Wall Street crashed again, taking a lot of the middle class with it, but also that the finance industry — which produces nothing of utility — overtook all others as the source of profit in American business, and has further accelerated the transfer of wealth to the richest Americans and directed investment away from productivity.
While Americans were sold on “trickle down” — better described as “Scraps Under the Table” — economics, the wealth of America gushed up to the top.
The incomes of the richest Americans doubled under Bill Clinton, and tripled under George Bush, while those of working men and women have remained flat for decades.
Barack Obama, who also was adopted by Wall Street and will like Bill Clinton become wealthy, kept the Democratic Party in Wall Street’s pocket. Cut off from its former life’s blood — working men and women — the party’s condition grew critical.
The exact moment of death came during the posturing over the debt ceiling when President Obama put Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid on the chopping block, and moved himself to the right of Ebenezer Scrooge.
So two political parties that worked at the center of American politics and between them represented most average Americans, have been replaced by two political parties that work at the same reactionary end of American politics and represent the wealthiest Americans and the corporate engines of their wealth — Wall Street and war and the established corporate parasites.
William Penn observed that governments, like clocks, “go from the motions men give them.” But clockmakers have tools. Political parties must be understood as the tools people use to get their hands on the machinery of government. The tools Americans use to make government do what they want have been taken out of their hands.
Americans must take them back, or fashion new tools, or sit by and watch the American democracy die
By Mike Krauss
Bucks County Courier Times
The Democratic Party is dead. It was a slow death, painful to watch, but it’s over now. The remains will be buried alongside those of the Republican Party, which died some time ago.
The GOP took ill with the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Legions of Democratic southern whites fled their party and eventually made their new home in the GOP, bringing with them their passion for the Bible, guns and cars (Not necessarily in that order), and an abiding hostility to the federal government that had twice upended their social order and threatened their economic and political power.
Richard Nixon saw them coming and invited them in with a pitch to “law and order,” which gathered up the southern (and some northern) racists, the socially conservative voters upset by the changes of the 1960s, and the white suburban and rural voters who, while not necessarily racists, resented the huge and mostly urban spending of LBJ’s “Great Society.”
But Nixon was a moderate, who like Eisenhower before him did not make war on working men and women, and who took America out of war. And when Nixon went down the team that heckled Dwight Eisenhower at the ‘64 convention took over and the GOP died, to be replaced by the POG (Party of God), eager to fight His battles at home and abroad.
They joined the class of established and mostly corporate wealth that did not like it one bit when FDR started sharing that wealth and Lyndon Johnson tried to do the same.
All things federal became the enemy of the POG, while the nation’s established corporate wealth used all things federal to enlarge their wealth.
“Welfare cheats” (I wonder what color they were?), the ever useful communists and a focus on sex ( a sure attention getter) kept America’s increasingly deficient attention while the Reagan tax code accelerated the most massive transfer of wealth in American history — perhaps world history — into the hands of an ever richer few.
The Democratic Party was already weakened by Reagan’s assault on unions and the exodus of whites, and took seriously ill when Bill Clinton, a fatherless boy who longed for a family, got adopted by Wall Street.
Clinton embraced “free” trade, which actually carries a terrible price in lost jobs and low wages for Americans, and has since decimated American manufacturing and destroyed the old union base of the Democratic Party.
But “free” trade does wonders for corporate profit and Wall Street.
Then Clinton joined ranks with the POG to repeal the laws that had kept the banks and financial casinos separated since the crash of 1929. The result was not only that Wall Street crashed again, taking a lot of the middle class with it, but also that the finance industry — which produces nothing of utility — overtook all others as the source of profit in American business, and has further accelerated the transfer of wealth to the richest Americans and directed investment away from productivity.
While Americans were sold on “trickle down” — better described as “Scraps Under the Table” — economics, the wealth of America gushed up to the top.
The incomes of the richest Americans doubled under Bill Clinton, and tripled under George Bush, while those of working men and women have remained flat for decades.
Barack Obama, who also was adopted by Wall Street and will like Bill Clinton become wealthy, kept the Democratic Party in Wall Street’s pocket. Cut off from its former life’s blood — working men and women — the party’s condition grew critical.
The exact moment of death came during the posturing over the debt ceiling when President Obama put Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid on the chopping block, and moved himself to the right of Ebenezer Scrooge.
So two political parties that worked at the center of American politics and between them represented most average Americans, have been replaced by two political parties that work at the same reactionary end of American politics and represent the wealthiest Americans and the corporate engines of their wealth — Wall Street and war and the established corporate parasites.
William Penn observed that governments, like clocks, “go from the motions men give them.” But clockmakers have tools. Political parties must be understood as the tools people use to get their hands on the machinery of government. The tools Americans use to make government do what they want have been taken out of their hands.
Americans must take them back, or fashion new tools, or sit by and watch the American democracy die
Thursday, August 4, 2011
Six thousand air strikes later
Freedom lovers' quarrel
By Mike Krauss
Bucks County Courier Times
Remember the freedom loving Libyans who rose up to overthrow Muhamar Gadhafi, the ones President Obama ordered the U.S. military to support, without a vote from Congress?
Remember how upset Congress was at this further encroachment of the president on its authority?
The whole business no longer is news. What a surprise.
But it did get a blurb the other day. One of the freedom-loving rebels shot and killed the freedom-loving “military chief” of their rebellion. Another of the freedom-loving Libyan rebels from their “special forces” held a press conference to blame the crime on someone in the “faction” known as the Feb. 17 Martyrs’ Brigade.
Still paying attention? Or does this sound a lot like every other place in the Muslim world into which the U.S. sticks its nose?
The wire service news report explained, “The Feb. 17 Martyrs Brigade is a group made up of hundreds of civilians who took up arms to join the rebellion. Their fighters participate in the front-line battles with Gadhafi’s forces, but also act as a semi-official internal security force for the opposition. Some of its leadership comes from the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, an Islamic militant group that waged a campaign of violence against Gadhafi’s regime in the 1990s.”
Clearer? Maybe not, because one spokesman of the rebels blamed “gunmen” for the murder, implying an unfortunate, but uncoordinated wartime casualty; while a spokesman for the rebel military said the murdered commander had been “summoned” to a meeting and was killed en route, suggesting a set up.
This is bad news for freedom- loving Libyans, but possibly good news for the non-freedom loving supporters for Mr. Gadhafi. Many who attended the funeral of the deceased rebel were reported to be shouting that they wanted Gadhafi back.
But a lot of Libyans may know less of these events than you. The day the story broke, NATO forces bombed the broadcast facilities of the government (non-freedom loving), so that other non-freedom loving Libyans would not get the good news, or freedom loving Libyans the bad news.
Sorting out the freedom lovers from the non-freedom lovers is more of a challenge in Libya than it was in Egypt and other parts of the “Arab Spring” uprising, which continues with considerable loss of life in Syria and other places.
That may be because in Egypt and elsewhere, unarmed citizens took to the streets in their capitol cities to oppose their governments, whereas in Libya, armed, uniformed and trained fighters no one had heard of came out of the dessert to attack, first oil facilities, and then set up a bank.
Why oil facilities? Why a bank? Who are these freedom- loving Libyans with interests in oil and banking?
One explanation is that Gadhafi has kept control of the country’s oil industry, and has even allowed the Chinese to get into it — but not the U.S.
Oh, dear.
Another explanation, widely circulated in Africa but not much heard in the U.S., is that Gadhafi was using the revenue to set up development and infrastructure banks in Africa, offering low-cost financing and cutting in on the action of U.S. and European banks.
Oh dear, oh dear.
And freedom fighters emerged.
But freedom is never cheap, as American presidents like to point out when they get bogged down in expensive wars, and the freedom-loving Libyans needed cash. Fortunately, it was available.
The bank accounts that held the billions Gadhafi planned to put into African banks and development were frozen by Mr. Obama. (With the help of course of the international banking cartel. It’s one thing to bypass Congress, and quite another to bypass the banks). And the freedom loving Libyans were recently given $30 billion of those now unfrozen funds to play with.
Which may explain why they are now killing each other.
And freedom-loving Libyans and their freedom-loving American and NATO sponsors are left to hope they sort out which freedom-loving Libyans control the money, so they can get on to the really important business of who controls the oil and the banking.
By Mike Krauss
Bucks County Courier Times
Remember the freedom loving Libyans who rose up to overthrow Muhamar Gadhafi, the ones President Obama ordered the U.S. military to support, without a vote from Congress?
Remember how upset Congress was at this further encroachment of the president on its authority?
The whole business no longer is news. What a surprise.
But it did get a blurb the other day. One of the freedom-loving rebels shot and killed the freedom-loving “military chief” of their rebellion. Another of the freedom-loving Libyan rebels from their “special forces” held a press conference to blame the crime on someone in the “faction” known as the Feb. 17 Martyrs’ Brigade.
Still paying attention? Or does this sound a lot like every other place in the Muslim world into which the U.S. sticks its nose?
The wire service news report explained, “The Feb. 17 Martyrs Brigade is a group made up of hundreds of civilians who took up arms to join the rebellion. Their fighters participate in the front-line battles with Gadhafi’s forces, but also act as a semi-official internal security force for the opposition. Some of its leadership comes from the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, an Islamic militant group that waged a campaign of violence against Gadhafi’s regime in the 1990s.”
Clearer? Maybe not, because one spokesman of the rebels blamed “gunmen” for the murder, implying an unfortunate, but uncoordinated wartime casualty; while a spokesman for the rebel military said the murdered commander had been “summoned” to a meeting and was killed en route, suggesting a set up.
This is bad news for freedom- loving Libyans, but possibly good news for the non-freedom loving supporters for Mr. Gadhafi. Many who attended the funeral of the deceased rebel were reported to be shouting that they wanted Gadhafi back.
But a lot of Libyans may know less of these events than you. The day the story broke, NATO forces bombed the broadcast facilities of the government (non-freedom loving), so that other non-freedom loving Libyans would not get the good news, or freedom loving Libyans the bad news.
Sorting out the freedom lovers from the non-freedom lovers is more of a challenge in Libya than it was in Egypt and other parts of the “Arab Spring” uprising, which continues with considerable loss of life in Syria and other places.
That may be because in Egypt and elsewhere, unarmed citizens took to the streets in their capitol cities to oppose their governments, whereas in Libya, armed, uniformed and trained fighters no one had heard of came out of the dessert to attack, first oil facilities, and then set up a bank.
Why oil facilities? Why a bank? Who are these freedom- loving Libyans with interests in oil and banking?
One explanation is that Gadhafi has kept control of the country’s oil industry, and has even allowed the Chinese to get into it — but not the U.S.
Oh, dear.
Another explanation, widely circulated in Africa but not much heard in the U.S., is that Gadhafi was using the revenue to set up development and infrastructure banks in Africa, offering low-cost financing and cutting in on the action of U.S. and European banks.
Oh dear, oh dear.
And freedom fighters emerged.
But freedom is never cheap, as American presidents like to point out when they get bogged down in expensive wars, and the freedom-loving Libyans needed cash. Fortunately, it was available.
The bank accounts that held the billions Gadhafi planned to put into African banks and development were frozen by Mr. Obama. (With the help of course of the international banking cartel. It’s one thing to bypass Congress, and quite another to bypass the banks). And the freedom loving Libyans were recently given $30 billion of those now unfrozen funds to play with.
Which may explain why they are now killing each other.
And freedom-loving Libyans and their freedom-loving American and NATO sponsors are left to hope they sort out which freedom-loving Libyans control the money, so they can get on to the really important business of who controls the oil and the banking.
Monday, July 25, 2011
HOODWINKED !!
Another campaign of misdirection
By Mike Krauss
Bucks County Courier Times
For the second time in three years, the American people are being hoodwinked by a non-stop campaign of misdirection.
The previous campaign took place when Wall Street melted down in 2008. The barons were desperate. President Bush rode to the rescue. And then something totally unforeseen happened. The American people got so angry at the fraud, the Congress actually said “No!” to Wall Street.
In a panic, Wall Street mobilized the corporate dominated media, the VERY SERIOUS PEOPLE, talking heads and an army of lobbyists to scare the daylights out of the American people. Day after day, night after night the almost hysterical message went out: failure to bail out Wall Street will destroy the American economy and the lives of tens of millions.
Specifically, credit will dry up, businesses will lay off workers or close, there will be no loans for anything – homes, business, farmers, a new car or a college education – unemployment will skyrocket.
“The sky is falling!!”
After pretending to think about it, the presidential candidates of both parties got on board and the Congress caved. Wall Street got the cash.
And the sky fell on the American economy.
Credit dried up, the economy crashed and a tidal wave of home foreclosures and unemployment swept away about $7 trillion of the wealth of ordinary Americans. But Wall Street was saved.
The administration, the Congress and Federal Reserve were working for Wall Street, and not your street.
And they still are.
The American people are again being told their house is on fire, told it can’t all be saved, told some rooms must be sacrificed to the awful flames of deficit and debt.
Failure to act “boldly” will mean “The end of American economic supremacy,” warned one widely read columnist. (About a decade too late). No time to think! Quick, decide!
And Americans have decided. In every poll I have seen, Americans overwhelmingly want taxes raised on the wealthiest, wars ended, corporate tax loopholes closed, corporate subsidies ended and spending on Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security maintained, if not increased.
But instead, the President and Congress are positioning themselves to do the opposite; abetted as always by the corporate media, the VERY SERIOUS PEOPLE, talking heads and the army of lobbyists they hope to join after their “public service.”
Never mind that the deficit was caused by the Bush tax cuts and the cost of two wars, and could be erased completely by 2016 simply by letting those tax cuts expire.
Never mind that the U.S. military budget is mindlessly out of control, larger than almost every other nation on earth combined, with a reported 1,000 U.S. military bases spread around the world to defend Americans against no known military threat.
Never mind that the debt has been far higher in the past, as a share of the Gross National Product, and the nation survived, and in fact prospered.
Never mind that small business people, still unable to get loans, are turning to their credit cards for the money to keep their doors open – and paying legally criminal interest rates to Wall Street for that credit, thanks to a Congress that over-rode state usury laws.
Americans are being sold another lie, told that what must be done to save the nation and build a prosperous future is to gut the spending that feeds, clothes, houses, educates, provides health care and sustains the lives of tens of millions, many of whom are already in very dire straits.
As one reader of this column observed, “It used to be only the mafia that shot at your knees. Now it’s our politicians.”
New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman and others argue that the American people are morally obligated to “do the right thing,” accept that they have it coming, and have no one to blame but themselves after decades of profligate, selfish spending.
But the truth is that corporate America collapsed manufacturing and off-shored millions of good paying jobs, and continues to, in a race to the bottom for the lowest wages and least regulation anywhere in the world, and has depressed wages in the U.S. for decades.
The truth is that millions of American parents keep their children’s heads above water only by working two or more jobs, if they can find a job.
The truth is that Wall Street introduced and aggressively marketed massive and expensive consumer credit to mask the reality and maintain an illusion of prosperity.
And make billions in profits.
The truth is that wealth in the United States has been concentrated in the hands of a few in ways not seen in almost one hundred years.
The truth is the nation is going backwards.
Friedman’s argument is a pseudo- economist’s equivalent of the rapist’s defense, and equally vile: the victim is the culprit
“She really wanted it, your honor. She made me do it.”
The governing, corporate elite of the United States are now almost completely without shame and the knowledge of justice. The broad majority of the American people are almost completely without representation in the federal government.
There must be an alternative to the Wall Street, Washington and Federal Reserve government of the United States. The states, local communities and new leaders must step forward.
Before the Statue of Liberty swims back to France – for shame.
By Mike Krauss
Bucks County Courier Times
For the second time in three years, the American people are being hoodwinked by a non-stop campaign of misdirection.
The previous campaign took place when Wall Street melted down in 2008. The barons were desperate. President Bush rode to the rescue. And then something totally unforeseen happened. The American people got so angry at the fraud, the Congress actually said “No!” to Wall Street.
In a panic, Wall Street mobilized the corporate dominated media, the VERY SERIOUS PEOPLE, talking heads and an army of lobbyists to scare the daylights out of the American people. Day after day, night after night the almost hysterical message went out: failure to bail out Wall Street will destroy the American economy and the lives of tens of millions.
Specifically, credit will dry up, businesses will lay off workers or close, there will be no loans for anything – homes, business, farmers, a new car or a college education – unemployment will skyrocket.
“The sky is falling!!”
After pretending to think about it, the presidential candidates of both parties got on board and the Congress caved. Wall Street got the cash.
And the sky fell on the American economy.
Credit dried up, the economy crashed and a tidal wave of home foreclosures and unemployment swept away about $7 trillion of the wealth of ordinary Americans. But Wall Street was saved.
The administration, the Congress and Federal Reserve were working for Wall Street, and not your street.
And they still are.
The American people are again being told their house is on fire, told it can’t all be saved, told some rooms must be sacrificed to the awful flames of deficit and debt.
Failure to act “boldly” will mean “The end of American economic supremacy,” warned one widely read columnist. (About a decade too late). No time to think! Quick, decide!
And Americans have decided. In every poll I have seen, Americans overwhelmingly want taxes raised on the wealthiest, wars ended, corporate tax loopholes closed, corporate subsidies ended and spending on Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security maintained, if not increased.
But instead, the President and Congress are positioning themselves to do the opposite; abetted as always by the corporate media, the VERY SERIOUS PEOPLE, talking heads and the army of lobbyists they hope to join after their “public service.”
Never mind that the deficit was caused by the Bush tax cuts and the cost of two wars, and could be erased completely by 2016 simply by letting those tax cuts expire.
Never mind that the U.S. military budget is mindlessly out of control, larger than almost every other nation on earth combined, with a reported 1,000 U.S. military bases spread around the world to defend Americans against no known military threat.
Never mind that the debt has been far higher in the past, as a share of the Gross National Product, and the nation survived, and in fact prospered.
Never mind that small business people, still unable to get loans, are turning to their credit cards for the money to keep their doors open – and paying legally criminal interest rates to Wall Street for that credit, thanks to a Congress that over-rode state usury laws.
Americans are being sold another lie, told that what must be done to save the nation and build a prosperous future is to gut the spending that feeds, clothes, houses, educates, provides health care and sustains the lives of tens of millions, many of whom are already in very dire straits.
As one reader of this column observed, “It used to be only the mafia that shot at your knees. Now it’s our politicians.”
New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman and others argue that the American people are morally obligated to “do the right thing,” accept that they have it coming, and have no one to blame but themselves after decades of profligate, selfish spending.
But the truth is that corporate America collapsed manufacturing and off-shored millions of good paying jobs, and continues to, in a race to the bottom for the lowest wages and least regulation anywhere in the world, and has depressed wages in the U.S. for decades.
The truth is that millions of American parents keep their children’s heads above water only by working two or more jobs, if they can find a job.
The truth is that Wall Street introduced and aggressively marketed massive and expensive consumer credit to mask the reality and maintain an illusion of prosperity.
And make billions in profits.
The truth is that wealth in the United States has been concentrated in the hands of a few in ways not seen in almost one hundred years.
The truth is the nation is going backwards.
Friedman’s argument is a pseudo- economist’s equivalent of the rapist’s defense, and equally vile: the victim is the culprit
“She really wanted it, your honor. She made me do it.”
The governing, corporate elite of the United States are now almost completely without shame and the knowledge of justice. The broad majority of the American people are almost completely without representation in the federal government.
There must be an alternative to the Wall Street, Washington and Federal Reserve government of the United States. The states, local communities and new leaders must step forward.
Before the Statue of Liberty swims back to France – for shame.
Wednesday, July 20, 2011
Liberals' Lament
President Obama's remaining liberal supporters are in agony.
By Mike Krauss
Bucks County Courier Times
One by one Mr. Obama has abandoned the hopeful promises of his 2008 campaign, and has emerged as the champion of established wealth, Wall Street and war, and the global club of parasites in pinstripes.
New York Times columnist Paul Krugman was compelled to note that with his proposals to go after what remains of middle class security, Mr. Obama sounds no different than the Darwinian predators in the GOP.
First, Vice President Biden, the administration’s “regular Joe,” was dispatched to give cover to “negotiations” that proposed budget cuts of between $1.5 trillion and $1.7 trillion over 10 years.
Hit hardest were Pell Grants for college students, (while tuition goes through the roof), food stamps (while one in four American children already depends on them), transportation funding (while roads and bridges crumble) and pensions for federal employees.
Not members of Congress, of course.
Then the president put Medicaid, Medicare and Social Security on the chopping block.
Medicaid helps mostly those with no resources, a number that is rising with a vengeance. The administration has proposed to cut as much as $100 billion over the next 10 years, mostly by reducing funding to the states, cutting the Children’s Health Insurance Program and imposing restrictions on the states’ ability to tax hospitals and other health-care providers.
Corporate profit will be protected.
This will further squeeze the states and cut off health care for hundreds of thousands, and over the next 10 years millions, many of them the same children who increasingly lack a decent or sufficient diet. Nice.
Medicare is targeted for the biggest cuts, reportedly $353 billion over 10 years: cuts in prevention, medical education and public health programs. The future. Reimbursements will be slashed for hospitals that run up losses by treating patients who cannot afford to pay.
Charity and compassion must be discouraged.
The cuts in Medicare, combined with another administration proposal to raise the eligibility from age 65 to 67 will take a toll: An already large and growing number of older Americans will find themselves choosing between eating, getting a prescription, paying rent and paying their doctor.
Finally, Mr. Obama proposes cuts in Social Security, now, even though the fund is sound for another 20 years.
Two-thirds of the nation’s elderly rely on Social Security for most of their income, and for one-third, Social Security accounts for 90 percent of their income.
Wall Street has wiped out the investments, savings and home equity of millions, and Social Security is a life line for millions who worked all their lives but now have little left to carry them through old age.
But after months of bogus fear mongering over the debt and deficit as cover, Mr. Obama apparently concluded it was safe to turn his back on those struggling millions.
The change the White has proposed is an accounting devise designed to understate inflation and justify declining monthly support as people age. As noted by the actuaries of Social Security, the longer you receive benefits, the smaller they will be. Retire at 65, and by 85 the benefit level would be cut $1,000 a year; by age 95, $1,400 a year.
In Mr. Obama’s America, the longer you live the worse it will get.
Not for everyone, of course.
While wages for most Americans have remained flat for decades, the wealthiest saw their income double under Mr. Clinton, and triple again under Mr. Bush.
Americans have begun to wake up to the staggering transfer of wealth into the hands of a few, and with elections approaching the president and many in his party now say they want to raise the taxes of the richest.
Don’t hold your breath. Mr. Obama and too many members of Congress now depend heavily on the people who can pony up $75,000 per election in campaign contributions. So they will talk about taxing those Americans, but never put it to a vote without an off-set to give it back somewhere else.
Krugman offered up some pop psychology to explain Mr. Obama’s failure to stand up to the shameless monopoly of prosperity in America and protect the many millions now struggling.
“Mr. Obama is clearly still clinging to his vision of himself as a figure who can transcend America’s partisan differences.”
Translated: He’s just too nice and a little too naive for the job.
Earth to Paul Krugman.
Mr. Obama and the GOP are equally in the pocket of the nation’s established wealth, the latter set up to make the former look good in an increasingly grotesque parody of representative government.
Mr. Obama will be re-elected in a set piece against a GOP candidate pushed to the right of Ebenezer Scrooge. And while it is possible that champions will emerge in the next Congress to join the few brave souls now there who want to mount a resistance to the destruction of the American middle class, it is unlikely.
Reapportionment will make the safe seats safer, and campaign contributions, an army of lobbyists and the prospect of lucrative post-office sinecures will keep many, if not most members in line.
If there is to be a restoration of the prosperity of the American middle class and some hope for those who aspire to a better future for every American, leaders must be found outside Washington.
By Mike Krauss
Bucks County Courier Times
One by one Mr. Obama has abandoned the hopeful promises of his 2008 campaign, and has emerged as the champion of established wealth, Wall Street and war, and the global club of parasites in pinstripes.
New York Times columnist Paul Krugman was compelled to note that with his proposals to go after what remains of middle class security, Mr. Obama sounds no different than the Darwinian predators in the GOP.
First, Vice President Biden, the administration’s “regular Joe,” was dispatched to give cover to “negotiations” that proposed budget cuts of between $1.5 trillion and $1.7 trillion over 10 years.
Hit hardest were Pell Grants for college students, (while tuition goes through the roof), food stamps (while one in four American children already depends on them), transportation funding (while roads and bridges crumble) and pensions for federal employees.
Not members of Congress, of course.
Then the president put Medicaid, Medicare and Social Security on the chopping block.
Medicaid helps mostly those with no resources, a number that is rising with a vengeance. The administration has proposed to cut as much as $100 billion over the next 10 years, mostly by reducing funding to the states, cutting the Children’s Health Insurance Program and imposing restrictions on the states’ ability to tax hospitals and other health-care providers.
Corporate profit will be protected.
This will further squeeze the states and cut off health care for hundreds of thousands, and over the next 10 years millions, many of them the same children who increasingly lack a decent or sufficient diet. Nice.
Medicare is targeted for the biggest cuts, reportedly $353 billion over 10 years: cuts in prevention, medical education and public health programs. The future. Reimbursements will be slashed for hospitals that run up losses by treating patients who cannot afford to pay.
Charity and compassion must be discouraged.
The cuts in Medicare, combined with another administration proposal to raise the eligibility from age 65 to 67 will take a toll: An already large and growing number of older Americans will find themselves choosing between eating, getting a prescription, paying rent and paying their doctor.
Finally, Mr. Obama proposes cuts in Social Security, now, even though the fund is sound for another 20 years.
Two-thirds of the nation’s elderly rely on Social Security for most of their income, and for one-third, Social Security accounts for 90 percent of their income.
Wall Street has wiped out the investments, savings and home equity of millions, and Social Security is a life line for millions who worked all their lives but now have little left to carry them through old age.
But after months of bogus fear mongering over the debt and deficit as cover, Mr. Obama apparently concluded it was safe to turn his back on those struggling millions.
The change the White has proposed is an accounting devise designed to understate inflation and justify declining monthly support as people age. As noted by the actuaries of Social Security, the longer you receive benefits, the smaller they will be. Retire at 65, and by 85 the benefit level would be cut $1,000 a year; by age 95, $1,400 a year.
In Mr. Obama’s America, the longer you live the worse it will get.
Not for everyone, of course.
While wages for most Americans have remained flat for decades, the wealthiest saw their income double under Mr. Clinton, and triple again under Mr. Bush.
Americans have begun to wake up to the staggering transfer of wealth into the hands of a few, and with elections approaching the president and many in his party now say they want to raise the taxes of the richest.
Don’t hold your breath. Mr. Obama and too many members of Congress now depend heavily on the people who can pony up $75,000 per election in campaign contributions. So they will talk about taxing those Americans, but never put it to a vote without an off-set to give it back somewhere else.
Krugman offered up some pop psychology to explain Mr. Obama’s failure to stand up to the shameless monopoly of prosperity in America and protect the many millions now struggling.
“Mr. Obama is clearly still clinging to his vision of himself as a figure who can transcend America’s partisan differences.”
Translated: He’s just too nice and a little too naive for the job.
Earth to Paul Krugman.
Mr. Obama and the GOP are equally in the pocket of the nation’s established wealth, the latter set up to make the former look good in an increasingly grotesque parody of representative government.
Mr. Obama will be re-elected in a set piece against a GOP candidate pushed to the right of Ebenezer Scrooge. And while it is possible that champions will emerge in the next Congress to join the few brave souls now there who want to mount a resistance to the destruction of the American middle class, it is unlikely.
Reapportionment will make the safe seats safer, and campaign contributions, an army of lobbyists and the prospect of lucrative post-office sinecures will keep many, if not most members in line.
If there is to be a restoration of the prosperity of the American middle class and some hope for those who aspire to a better future for every American, leaders must be found outside Washington.
Saturday, July 2, 2011
Rome of the Caesars or England of the Tudors
“Let Freedom Ring”
By Mike Krauss
Bucks County Courier Times
I have a Fourth of July tradition. On the day, I read the Declaration of Independence, Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, and thanks to the internet, I listen to Martin Luther King’s speech on the Mall in Washington.
The first two still give me goosebumps. The third stirs strong emotion.
The speech is named by its great refrain, “I have a dream.” But in that speech there is another refrain, and I have always thought that perhaps Dr. King thought that was the one that would be remembered. He gave the dream a name: freedom.
“Let freedom ring,” he said.
You have to hear it. Dr. King was a marvelous orator, and the changes in the cadence, timber and tone of his voice as he said those words over and over –“Let freedom ring!” – can make you hear the bell.
It rang clearly, defiantly for Jefferson and the Founding Fathers. “All men are created equal… they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”
That declaration is the bedrock of democracy, although some of these ideas were already current in Europe, a part of Enlightenment thought, though not declared so boldly. (But the “pursuit of happiness” was pure American, Ben Franklin's inspired edit.) But there was more.
“That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it.”
That was news. The purpose of government is to secure the rights of the people, and the only legitimate government was republican, empowered by the people.
Lincoln understood how world changing that idea was, if it survived, if a nation “conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal… can long endure.”
Well, by the grace of God and the sacrifice of generations it did endure, and prospered, and the bell rang loud and clear for more than another century.
But this July 4th the sound is muted and far off.
It must be hard to hear indeed for tens of millions of Americans who lost their jobs, homes and futures, and for whom the American dream has become the American ordeal.
And it must be almost impossible to hear for millions around the world, for whom the sight of an American soldier was once and not so long ago a cause for joy, but is now too often occasion for alarm, fear and even loathing.
And for Americans who cherish the Constitution, the sound can only be a sad echo of former things.
Constitutional protections like habeas corpus, which prohibit government from holding people indefinitely without presenting charges, and others which prohibit government from denying citizens the “due process and equal protection of the law” have been thrown out the window.
The Military Tribunals Commissions Act of 2006 allows anyone alleged to be an “unlawful enemy combatant” to be sentenced to death on the basis of secret and hearsay evidence.
American citizens may be similarly murdered based on a “finding” of some faceless “national security” bureaucrat: no judge, evidence or jury.
This is Rome of the Caesars or England of the Tudors.
The fourth amendment, which protected Americans from “unreasonable search and seizure” and guaranteed the privacy of their persons, homes and papers has been trashed.
Federal agents are now authorized to search anywhere, anytime for virtually any reason, as they do to track protesters (so much for free speech) or the cub scout who was groped or the aged and dying grandmother who was forced to strip and surrender her adult diaper in an airport.
“Warrant? Probable cause? What’s that?”
The driver in all this is the collapse of what was meant to be the “Peoples House” and the repository of representative and therefore republican government: the Congress of the United States. It was long ago hijacked along with the political parties.
Energy companies that make zillions are hauled before the Congress, asked why the people’s taxes ought to further subsidize their fantastic profits and then – nothing happens.
The robber barons who looted the wealth of a nation are similarly beaten up in public shows of righteous indignation, patently perjure themselves in attempts to avoid the truth of their fraud and then – nothing happens.
The Peoples House can no longer pass a budget, take responsibility for the spending it approved, assert its authority to make war or defend the rights of the people.
Small wonder that the presidency has taken on increasingly authoritarian powers. Nature abhors a vacuum. The Capitol being effectively vacant, the president has moved in.
The major change in American government over the course of the past forty years has been the elevation of profit to sacred status, and the subversion of the democratic and republican government of the Founders, Lincoln and King, as presidents and Congresses worship at profit’s altar.
If there is to be a “new birth of freedom” in America, if freedom is to ring again and Americans are once again to enjoy equally their God given rights, then corporate profit and power must be reined in.
Let freedom ring.
By Mike Krauss
Bucks County Courier Times
I have a Fourth of July tradition. On the day, I read the Declaration of Independence, Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, and thanks to the internet, I listen to Martin Luther King’s speech on the Mall in Washington.
The first two still give me goosebumps. The third stirs strong emotion.
The speech is named by its great refrain, “I have a dream.” But in that speech there is another refrain, and I have always thought that perhaps Dr. King thought that was the one that would be remembered. He gave the dream a name: freedom.
“Let freedom ring,” he said.
You have to hear it. Dr. King was a marvelous orator, and the changes in the cadence, timber and tone of his voice as he said those words over and over –“Let freedom ring!” – can make you hear the bell.
It rang clearly, defiantly for Jefferson and the Founding Fathers. “All men are created equal… they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”
That declaration is the bedrock of democracy, although some of these ideas were already current in Europe, a part of Enlightenment thought, though not declared so boldly. (But the “pursuit of happiness” was pure American, Ben Franklin's inspired edit.) But there was more.
“That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it.”
That was news. The purpose of government is to secure the rights of the people, and the only legitimate government was republican, empowered by the people.
Lincoln understood how world changing that idea was, if it survived, if a nation “conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal… can long endure.”
Well, by the grace of God and the sacrifice of generations it did endure, and prospered, and the bell rang loud and clear for more than another century.
But this July 4th the sound is muted and far off.
It must be hard to hear indeed for tens of millions of Americans who lost their jobs, homes and futures, and for whom the American dream has become the American ordeal.
And it must be almost impossible to hear for millions around the world, for whom the sight of an American soldier was once and not so long ago a cause for joy, but is now too often occasion for alarm, fear and even loathing.
And for Americans who cherish the Constitution, the sound can only be a sad echo of former things.
Constitutional protections like habeas corpus, which prohibit government from holding people indefinitely without presenting charges, and others which prohibit government from denying citizens the “due process and equal protection of the law” have been thrown out the window.
The Military Tribunals Commissions Act of 2006 allows anyone alleged to be an “unlawful enemy combatant” to be sentenced to death on the basis of secret and hearsay evidence.
American citizens may be similarly murdered based on a “finding” of some faceless “national security” bureaucrat: no judge, evidence or jury.
This is Rome of the Caesars or England of the Tudors.
The fourth amendment, which protected Americans from “unreasonable search and seizure” and guaranteed the privacy of their persons, homes and papers has been trashed.
Federal agents are now authorized to search anywhere, anytime for virtually any reason, as they do to track protesters (so much for free speech) or the cub scout who was groped or the aged and dying grandmother who was forced to strip and surrender her adult diaper in an airport.
“Warrant? Probable cause? What’s that?”
The driver in all this is the collapse of what was meant to be the “Peoples House” and the repository of representative and therefore republican government: the Congress of the United States. It was long ago hijacked along with the political parties.
Energy companies that make zillions are hauled before the Congress, asked why the people’s taxes ought to further subsidize their fantastic profits and then – nothing happens.
The robber barons who looted the wealth of a nation are similarly beaten up in public shows of righteous indignation, patently perjure themselves in attempts to avoid the truth of their fraud and then – nothing happens.
The Peoples House can no longer pass a budget, take responsibility for the spending it approved, assert its authority to make war or defend the rights of the people.
Small wonder that the presidency has taken on increasingly authoritarian powers. Nature abhors a vacuum. The Capitol being effectively vacant, the president has moved in.
The major change in American government over the course of the past forty years has been the elevation of profit to sacred status, and the subversion of the democratic and republican government of the Founders, Lincoln and King, as presidents and Congresses worship at profit’s altar.
If there is to be a “new birth of freedom” in America, if freedom is to ring again and Americans are once again to enjoy equally their God given rights, then corporate profit and power must be reined in.
Let freedom ring.
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