We now have a Presidential Commission to make recommendations about the Reagan-Bush-Bush $13 trillion deficit that was created by cutting revenues in half with tax cuts for the rich, while continuing Republican spending and starting two wars.
Of course, it is an absurd idea that we must all gather in hushed tones around former Reagan-Republican Allan Simpson, a man of dubious judgement, and Pete Peterson, a lifelong Republican and a man of dubious motives as they begin to snip, snip, snip at the social structure of our country.
The Peterson-Pew Commission is structured with people like David Walker, who, though a Republican, may have somewhat purer motives than they, yet still sees the nail as the Social Security system and his hammer as this Commission.
People like Douglass Holtz-Eakin are Neocons. In other words, he works for big corporations. That’s his job. He is the former head of CBO under Bush II who promoted the tax cuts that we now know were at least $1.8 trillion of the $13 trillion problem we want to cut.
So here we have a Commission, with Simpson, a Conservative former Senator and Peterson, billionaire Wall Street conservative presiding over a group that has, among others, Walker, former U.S. Controller General, who was the fire bell in the night sitting side-by-side with Holtz-Eakin who was one of those chiefly responsible for setting the fires. It is a joke….simply a charade.
We have now entered into that era when Republicans have packed away their consciences. Actually, they liked to be called “Conservatives” and then “Neoconservatives. So why don’t we just call them what they are: The Neoconservative Republican Party. Actually, that’s too long. Let’s shorten it to “Neocon Party” They’ve shortened “Democratic” to “Democrat” so they seem to like shortening.
No one called the…oh, let’s say, National Socialists, by their full name. It was shortened to “Nazi.” So let’s do that with Neoconservative Republicans. Neocons. After all, there are no traditional Republicans any more, in the sense of Lincoln, TR, Taft, Dirksen, Eisenhower, or even a Nixon without the paranoia. The “Grand Old Party” is now the Grand Old Tea Party. The Neocon Party for short.
The glorious leaders are from the former segregationist states, the old Dixiecrat power bloc, people like Pete Sessions and Richard Shelby, lobbyist-representatives like Joe Barton and Rob Portman and John Boehner and their leaders Sarah (I can see scary Communism from my porch) Palin and Rush (I married a fourth time rather than chasing child prostitutes in the Caribbean)
Limbaugh. Palin and Limbaugh? Well, these are the people who dictate to the Neocon Party. Check the candidates who bow down to them. The Chairman of the “Republican Party” apologized to Limbaugh. He has supposedly 15 million dolts who listen to him. Palin has whole lobbyist groups buying her books to put them on the best seller lists. She makes $100,000 a speech to Neocon groups. Don’t kid yourself. They run things.
That’s the Neocon Party. It’s actually an assembly of ignoramuses, hugely well paid propagandists, felons, sexual deviants, and out-and-out, no-excuses lobbyists within the halls of Congress. Remember Rich Santorum? His job was to facilitate the movement back-and-forth between corporate-sponsored “think tanks” and Senate and House offices.
One day you are an aide to a Congressman. The next day, if the people get wise to you or your boss and throw you out, you are working for the Heritage Foundation or the Cato Institute or some lobbying firm on K Street, the infamous home of all the lobbyists in DC, ruining our country for money.
There are 535 individuals in Congress. Last year there were 13,700 registered lobbyists, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. (Opensecrets.org…a great web site) In 2010, there are only 11,100, a tribute perhaps to the fact that a Democratic Administration may be more difficult to lobby, but far more likely to be due to the Great Bush Recession.
This brings us back to the Great Recession and the fact that Senators of the Neocon Party have held up unemployment for 1.3 million Americans and, in addition, have already held up any kind of job-stimulation effort by the Obama Administration.
In addition to the 1.3 million who have lost job benefits, because their unemployment insurance only runs for six months, another 200,000 people each week fall into the same category. In other words, in another five weeks, which isn’t far off we will have another million people looking around for charity.
Even the former male model, former pickup truck driver, now the Senator from Massachusetts, has said this: “No one’s disputing the value of these very important programs. But we also have to have tough choices and we also need to live within our means.” It would not have been a tough choice for Ted Kennedy. You help the working people the Neocons screwed…now! Brown’s a Neocon. “Tough choices” means killing anything for the working class, or the out-of-working class.
If you are Scott Brown, you should fix the enormous debt that the Bush II Neocons…still in the Senate…left us…later. That is why Senators used to go to Congress from Massachusetts, now clearly one of the states with the greatest number of ignoramuses in the U.S.A. Well over 50,000 Massachusetts unemployed will lose their unemployment…regardless of party…Neocons, Democrats, Whigs, Communists, Socialists, Royalists…all of them.
Aren’t they glad they voted for Scott (Pickup Truck) Brown! He also voted down $19 billion dollars in fees the Wall Streeters who not only caused this mess but who got $700 billion in bailout money would have had to pay. They’re already selling the same kinds of fake securities, with no oversight by other banks. The money would have gone to an FDIC-like private fund to keep the financial institutions on their toes and keep us–U.S. citizens from having to bail them out again. It would have made the banks pay for any bailout.
So, anyway, here is what we do.
First, we somehow threaten the lives, families, homes, children, grandchildren (even better), dogs, cats, neighbors, postmen, drycleaners…anyone and everyone who has anything to do with the following: Senator Olympia Snowe of Maine. Senator Susan Collins of Maine. Senator Scott Brown of the formerly great state of Massachusetts.
We somehow bribe them the way the Republicans are bribing them now, to vote for a bill to release $200 billion dollars, probably a lot less than is still left in the stimulus bill, to create–and it would–5 million jobs at an average of $40,000 for the unemployed for one year. These three are all we need to pass a bill. We may also have to kidnap and re-educate Senator Ben Nelson, if there is really a brain somewhere under that Brillo pad he uses for hair.
It is completely different from and better than unemployment. We need so many services in this country and the skills of the unemployed are so varied that every single department of government could act as the payroll administrator for a segment. No new administrative departments necessary. That is step one. Five million jobs will create another 5 million jobs in the service industries, local businesses. That’s a no brainer. We have the small businesses now, but people don’t see a long-term plan. This would be step one of a long term plan.
Step 2: During the roughly 18 months it will take to get everyone in the system and working, we will do two other things. We will bribe these same senators into passing a new tax bill. The Neocons often complain that the top 50% pay 90% of the taxes. So, since taxes are based on income, that must be where the income lies. No point in raising taxes on those who have no income.
Since 1979, people in the top 1% have doubled their incomes while the incomes of the rest of the workers have basically gone up about 20%. So the top 50%, where the money apparently lies, would get a 10% tax increase and the top 10% of those would get a 20% tax increase.
That means that if you pay $20,000 in taxes you will get a monumental increase of $2,000, about ten fine dining experiences. If you pay $500,000 in taxes…well, if you pay that much…what do you care? To those people, we must say this: You keep much more than what you pay in taxes. For the good of the People and the Country, you can make a sacrifice. If you want to vote to cashier the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, we could have a discussion on tax rates.
Next, make all businesses, no matter how many deductions, pay a minimum ten percent tax on any net income over $1,000,000. Exxon alone would have had to pay $4 billion and BP would have had to pay something like $1.8 billion. They now pay nothing on tens of billions while you pay gasoline taxes, which are not a flat rate but go higher each time they raise gas prices for no good reason.
Let’s take a couple of things off the table for the next ten years. Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. It goes without saying, doesn’t it, that we will not only not touch the VA but will make it as good as it needs to be…if that means increases…to care for our veterans. If we can’t do that, we should probably drop all pretenses about being Christians or patriotic.
People on Social Security, about 80% of them are getting bye and the older they get the more difficult it gets. Prices go up but they have no way to increase their income other than Social Security. In fact, all Americans should be enrolled in a minimally priced new health care plan for those under a certain amount, which would be set so that all people with little more than Social Security would be covered without paying Medicare co-payments and fees.
A tax increase of this kind on national income the first year, accompanied by a moderately restored economy (remember we get taxes from the public workers AND the newly created service jobs) will get our net annual deficit down to a figure close to what the Neocon Party had spent it into… around $500 billion. Then we can start talking about cutting.
Why do we need to be the world’s policeman? What are we doing in Afghanistan? Why aren’t we out of Iraq? Here’s a good example. We will never have guarantees, in this generation that Iraq or Afghanistan will be stable. But if we bring our troops home…about 300,000, we can reorganize for truly meaningful defense. We could then cut about $300 billion from our defense budget.
At the same time, we would close the door on U.S. manufacturers who make products abroad. Tax those products at rates that would make them competitive with U.S. made products. Then watch the former defense contractors scramble to get into those industries. Why? Because they don’t have to bribe Senators and Congressmen any longer or rely on government contracts but the group they understand…the American Consumer. With domestic manufacturing restored, the domestic consumer products market would be restored because manufacturing creates good jobs.
The net is this…regardless of the immediate numbers, what we need to do is what we did for hundreds of years, take care of our own domestic needs…including military hardware…and our energy needs…right here at home. If we do that, it will be like the post-war 1950s, a scramble for good people, greater efficiencies, engineers, and technically trained manufacturing jobs.
Senator John McCain, an authentic hero, said that most people who have lost their jobs will never see those jobs reappear in their lifetimes. John McCain is many things. A bright guy, however, he is not. He was almost dead last in his class at Annapolis. It is probably safe to say that he would not even have graduated had it not been for his Admiral father and his even more prestigious grandfather Admiral. Don’t listen to John McCain. He picked Sarah Palin. End of report.
With the right incentives, restoring domestic manufacturing is simple. And with a stronger domestic market, more buying power what country will avoid the U.S. market? And why would we care? We need to stop criticizing Europe and pay attention. We could be the much more successful European model. Make our own products. Employ our own citizens. Export products that have competitive advantages. Stop creating products that only compete on price because of foreign workers making fifty cents an hour. We still have a domestic consumer market that is the envy of the world’s manufacturers.
China can’t complain. We’re not talking about discouraging foreign manufacturers from competing. We’re talking about American manufacturers competing with each other here in the U.S. with U.S. workers…all in an equal competitive situation. If we need to reassess the Free Trade agreements, we can ask our big corporations. Do we need tariffs? And see what they say.
They might change their attitudes about wide-open trade if they, like other countries, had to worry about employment for U.S. citizens first, as other nations do, instead of impoverishing half our citizens, hiring foreigners, and borrowing from the government to make up for the taxes our workers would have paid. And of course the wealthy who enrich themselves in this process to not want to make up the shortfall. Thus, trillion dollar deficits as far as the eye can see.
We can do this. We paid off a debt of over 120% of GDP in the early 1940s down to a very small amount by the 1970s. And it would have been less were it not for the Viet Nam war. Wars are expensive. But then we decided to go into the fantasy world of movie-star Presidents with voodoo economics. The evolution of that failed concept created a faux-conservative political theory that really simply panders to big corporations. It became the Neocon Party, an alliance of military contractors, big oil, Christian fundamentalists, the segregationist remnants of the old south, the military itself and some extremely wealthy private groups and families.
Forget Peterson-Pew. They are a weak President’s sop to the corporatist Right Wing Neocons in the Senate. the Neocon Party is relying on the loophole of the filibuster, used 290 times in this session alone…astonishing…to obstruct government for the People. They will–you can be assured–look at this Commission as a way to cut Social Security, weaken Medicare, cut Medicaid and try to short-circuit the new health insurance program. Remember, they literally work for the health insurance industry, not you. They think that they can destroy the health reform bill by choking off revenues before it gets started.
They know what we know. Once truly competitive health care insurance…private but then public…which is coming, gets into the system, those $14 million health insurance CEO salaries are going away. And your health insurance costs will go down by half. And about 20% of the government debt will evaporate. But they don’t work for you. They work for the health insurance companies.
There are a lot of people worried about this commission. You won’t hear about many of them unless you search them out on the Internet. And if you listen to AM talk radio, you will hear more and more in support of the Commission. The owners of the media, a handful of multi-billionaires want the commission to succeed. They want it to succeed in cutting entitlements. Your job is to sift through the misinformation and let others know that this is serious and the future is perilous. A society with only rich and poor is very dangerous for many reasons. Not the least of which is this: once they have taken away your income, they will have a much easier time of taking your rights. Once they take away your rights, they will have a much easier time of taking your life.
Don’t think you need to worry? Consider this final thought. The most Liberal state in the U.S. just elected a Senator to replace Senator Ted Kennedy, who could certainly have been considered the most Liberal Senator. The new Senator, Scott Brown, not only held up a process for preventing another recession to work for Wall Street profiteers, but he just held up unemployment benefits for 1.3 million people, who paid unemployment insurance but cannot get it, even though they have ostensibly no other source of income. That’s where we are right now.
It is time to find a Democratic group and join in. We didn’t get quite over the top in 2008. It is too bad, but we have a great House of Representatives with 290 good bills for the People sitting in the Senate. We need to get to work to get them passed.
