March 21, 2010

WTF Does That Even Mean?

OK I turned on the TV and saw about a minute of the health insurance debate. A Republican was saying "A government big enough to give you what you want is a government big enough to take it away."

WTF? WTF does that even MEAN?

It sounds scary and sinister, but I WANT the government big enough to give people what they want and need. I mean WTF?

And government is rule by the people. So I WANT it BIG. I WANT the people having lots of control over our affairs. I mean, what is the alternative if not big corporations making the decisions for us?

Posted by Dave Johnson at 6:30 PM | Comments (0) | Link Cosmos

February 23, 2010

Were Founding Fathers REALLY For Limited Government?

Go read Did the Founders Want Government Small?

America’s revolutionaries had read their history. Every previous attempt to establish republican rule, they knew from that history, had failed. Athens. Rome. Venice. Florence. The cause of that failure, as the Founders came to see it: a deep and divisive maldistribution of wealth. The Founders came to believe, notes Huston, that a republic could only endure with “an equal or nearly equal distribution of landed wealth among its citizens.”

The founders of this country wanted democracy. Democracy requires equity. Concentration of wealth destroys democracy - and we are seeing this in action today.

Posted by Dave Johnson at 8:32 AM | Comments (0) | Link Cosmos

February 6, 2010

Did Bush Leave Us Bankrupt, Corrupt, Ungovernable?

From Open Left

When you sell the farm, the farm's gone.

Is it already too late for America? I’m starting to think that the anti-tax, anti-government conservative movement that started in the mid-70s, elected Reagan and led to the terrible Bush Presidency may have effectively destroyed the country, leaving it bankrupt, corrupt,ungovernable, ruled by a wealthy elite -- and we're only now just starting to realize it. To cover tax cuts we stopped maintaining the infrastructure and started borrowing. To satisfy their hatred of government we increasingly stripped away rule of law, regulation, and belief in one-person-one-vote. We are seeing the consequences of all of that coming back to roost now.

Reagan left us with massive debt and ever-increasing interest payments. Bush left us with $1.3 trillion deficits and a destroyed economy that would force further increases in the borrowing for years - to be blamed on Obama. The "free marketers" gave away our manufacturing base that will take decades and massive capital investment to recover. Obama can try, but it may just be too late to do anything about the borrowing. We need massive investment in jobs and infrastructure, and a national economic/industrial plan. But, with their own Reagan/Bush debt as ammunition, conservative ideologues continue to block every effort at investment to get out of the mess we are in.

The conservatives destroyed the regulatory structure of the government. They removed the inspectors, administrators, regulators and replaced them with corrupt cronies.

The conservatives killed off, contracted out or sold off - "privatized" - so much of our in-common resources and heritage of public structures. Water systems, oil and mineral leases, government functions, elements of the military, etc.

The conservatives destroyed the rule of law, leaving behind public perception of rule by cronyism, favoritism and mob.

The conservatives destroyed public understanding of democracy, leaving behind a one-dollar-one-vote system that their Supreme Court just formalized, along with a corporate media that works to keep people uninformed. And to make matters worse, now the telecoms can argue before Federalist Society judges that their "speech rights" are violated by rules making them carry labor and progressive websites over the internet lines they control. And forget about the idea of them ever letting anti-corporate-rule candidates raise money on "their" internet.

I hate to reference Friedman but this from last week has been sticking in my mind. He says the world is looking at the mess in the US and is turning away from democracy as a result.

[Foreigners] look at America and see a president elected by a solid majority, coming into office riding a wave of optimism, controlling both the House and the Senate. Yet, a year later, he can’t win passage of his top legislative priority: health care.

“Our two-party political system is broken just when everything needs major repair, not minor repair,” said ... who is attending the forum. “I am talking about health care, infrastructure, education, energy. We are the ones who need a Marshall Plan now.”

Indeed, speaking of phrases I’ve never heard here before, another goes like this: “Is the ‘Beijing Consensus’ replacing the ‘Washington Consensus?’ ” Washington Consensus is a term coined after the cold war for the free-market, pro-trade and globalization policies promoted by America. ... developing countries everywhere are looking “for a recipe for faster growth and greater stability than that offered by the now tattered ‘Washington Consensus’ of open markets, floating currencies and free elections.” And as they do, “there is growing talk about a ‘Beijing Consensus.’ ”

The Beijing Consensus, ... is a “Confucian-Communist-Capitalist” hybrid under the umbrella of a one-party state, with a lot of government guidance, strictly controlled capital markets and an authoritarian decision-making process that is capable of making tough choices and long-term investments, without having to heed daily public polls.

It is too late to recover?

Accountability is a first step. If the current administration would hold the corrupt actors accountable, maybe we could begin to restore governance. And the public would know who to blame for what has happened to us, enabling them to support policies that will get us out of this. But so far they won't. If they won't even investigate torture and illegally invading a country why should we expect any accountability for the financial collapse, corrupt government contracts, bribery, embezzlement, corruption and other crimes of the Bush era?

More equitable distribution of the fruits of our economy is another step. Our system worked so much better back when the top tax rate was 90%. The returns from our investment in infrastructure were more widely shared. And back when it took many years to build a fortune businesses had an interdependence with their communities. Executives needed the schools and roads and other public structures functioning well. They needed long-range business and community planning. But just imagine trying to do something about the concentration of wealth today.

So where do we go from here. Is democracy over? Is rule of law a thing of the past? Is predatory monopoly control by the largest corporations the way things are and will be? Does the world now move to governance by a wealthy elite?

Or is the winter and the rain and the snow just getting to me?

What are your thoughts?

Posted by Dave Johnson at 8:00 PM | Comments (0) | Link Cosmos

February 3, 2010

Who Owns The People's Resources?

Who owns the resources -- oil, gas, minerals, water, etc.?

Over at Open Left David Sirota writes about The Politics of Oil/Gas Taxes Moves to New Geographic Battlegrounds

Twenty-eight states have severance taxes on such commodities - that is, taxes assessed when the commodity (in this case, natural gas) is severed from the earth. The idea behind these taxes is that these natural resources are inherently both a public resource and a finite resource, and therefore the private corporations severing them should give back to the public coffers a small fraction of the value of that resource. In many states, these tax revenues are devoted to trust funds for public goods like education.

If people had a strong understanding of democracy, they would look at the issue this way: We, the People want to develop a resource that we own in common. We want minerals extracted and processed for us to use. To do so we "hire" a company to do this for us. As payment, as the company sells the resources they get to keep some -- only some -- of the proceeds for themselves.

Posted by Dave Johnson at 5:56 PM | Comments (0) | Link Cosmos

January 29, 2010

Obama At Republican Meeting - Who Won?

No one won, and this isn't about "winning." It was good for the country. I congratulate the Republicans for inviting President Obama and President Obama for showing up and having this discussion. Good for them and good for us. Maybe something good will come from this. Fat chance.

Posted by Dave Johnson at 3:50 PM | Comments (0) | Link Cosmos

January 22, 2010

How To End Corporate Domination Of Government - And Our Lives

The Supreme Court yesterday allowed corporate executives to tap into their company's resources and use that money to directly influence elections instead of for the profitable operation of the company. This use of company funds isn't considered bribery because the company executives can claim they are only engaged is "speech" to promote good government, not influence public officials to bring a return to the company.

To fix this we should pass a law that tightens up corporate governance and explicitly spells out - as law - that for-profit companies can only use company resources for the profitable operation of the company. This would make it illegal to use company money to "promote good government" or any other excuse currently used to get around the bribery laws. If by law executives can't use the company's money except for activities that return a profit, then use of this money in politics can't be just "speech" -- it is to return a profit. Therefore the federal bribery of public officials statute would apply to any use of corporate resources to elect candidates:

18 U.S.C. § 201 : US Code - Section 201: Bribery of public officials and witnesses (b) Whoever - (1) directly or indirectly, corruptly gives, offers or promises anything of value to any public official or person who has been selected to be a public official, or offers or promises any public official or any person who has been selected to be a public official to give anything of value to any other person or entity, with intent - (A) to influence any official act; ...

shall be fined under this title or imprisoned for not more than two years, or both.

Currently it is the fiduciary responsibility of the managers of a company to use corporate resources only for the profitable operation of the company, but not law, and executives largely ignore this responsibility and get away with it. Give this responsibility the force of law. Spell it out. And by doing so, protect the corporation's shareholders from this misuse of their money by executives.

Would this end "corporate philanthropy? Yes it would! This is a good thing!

I completely agree with Milton Friedman that corporate philanthropy is nothing more than a scam - theft from the company by the few who make these decisions. If there is extra cash laying around and the money isn't used to bring back profit to the company it should be distributed to the shareholders or taxed. That is what a company is FOR. We need to restore this understanding of what these companies are for.

We shouldn't have our parks, symphonies, etc. decided by some executive's vanity. In a democracy we should have these things because We, the People want them. Tax big companies and let US decide how to use the money, instead of begging some executive to let us have these things. This is why we set up the legal construct that allows these companies to exist.

There is a common misunderstanding of what a corporation is that led to the Supreme Court getting away with this. A corporation is not a sentient entity, but we tend to think of it that way and this leads us to bad decisions about where they fit in society. It is simply a legal construct that allows the pooling of resources to reduce individual risk, so that large-scale projects can be accomplished. One person can't fund the building of a 747 airplane and even if one person had the resources it would be "putting all of the eggs in one basket." By bringing in thousands that risk is reduced and the necessary capital is gathered. To further reduce risk we excuse the shareholders from personal liability for the debts of the company - they don't have to pay the debts if the company goes bankrupt or is sued and they don't go to jail if the company does something bad.

We through our laws set this construct up for our benefit - to accomplish large-scale projects, create goods and jobs, and to pay back a portion to us as taxes. In return for giving the investors these advantages we expected a return. The advantages would lead to profits that would be shared so we could build the roads, schools, courts and other public structures that enable these companies and us to thrive. But over time that understanding has also eroded and the tax burden has shifted ever downward - or just borrowed.

Companies don't make decisions, think, act or speak and more than a book or a chair does. A few executives at the top make these decisions and then use corporate resources to implement them. Bob in Sales and Alisha in Accounts Receivable have nothing to do with these decisions. If the executives screw up or engage in schemes that enrich themselves Bob and Alisha get laid off, the executives have already pocketed their bonuses so they don't really care and "the company" doesn't "learn a lesson" because it can't lean any more than a book or a chair can.

We must restore this understanding of the role of corporations in our society. They exist to accomplish certain things. We, the People set this up to benefit US. We enabled the aggregation of vast resources and assumed that the fiduciary responsibility to only use those resources for operating the company would be upheld. This turns out to have been a mistake. The executives who control those resources are using them to tilt the playing field and bring advantage to themselves, in ways that have nothing to do with delivering better products or services. They instead use these resources to influence government to just hand them competitive advantage - or just cash.

So if we want to end corporate domination of our politics and our lives we need to tighten up corporate governance and spell out in law that the resources of a corporation must not leak out of that corporation, and should ONLY be used for the profitable operation of the company and nothing else.

This post originally appeared at Campaign for America's Future (CAF) at their Blog for OurFuture. I am a Fellow with CAF.

Posted by Dave Johnson at 8:29 AM | Comments (0) | Link Cosmos

January 9, 2010

Will Supreme Court Rule For One-Dollar-One-Vote?

This post originally appeared at Campaign for America's Future (CAF) at their Blog for OurFuture. I am a Fellow with CAF.

The Supreme Court could say as soon as Monday that corporate executives are free to use huge amounts of corporate resources to directly influence elections. The vote will probably be 5-4 and we know which 5 and which 4 and why.

If this happens it will fundamentally change the way our elections are decided, our leaders are chosen, and our laws are made. The ruling will complete the transition, already underway, from a one-person-one-vote ideal to a corrupt one-dollar-one-vote system run for the benefit of those with the most dollars to throw into elections. And of course those with access to the most corporate dollars will use their new influence to increase their own dollars - and influence - at the expense of those with fewer dollars. Monopoly capitalism will be the New World Order.

It is simple to imagine how unlimited direct use of corporate resources will change our lives. Just for example, suppose executives at a chemical company want to save money by dumping toxins into a nearby river. Suppose a county or state government is trying to block this. Imagine the effect unlimited direct corporate money can have in a county or even a state election. Of course those executives will be able put in place a local or state government that lets them dump into the river. They probably will be able to get laws passed preventing their company from being sued for the resulting cancers. I know that this sounds pretty darn close to the political system that we have today but with direct use of corporate resources to influence elections the corrupting influence will be much more direct and corrosive.

This is not what some call corporatism and is not about companies making decisions, because companies don't think or make decisions. This is about executives -- people -- at the helm of huge, powerful companies using the company's vast resources to benefit themselves. This is at the expense of people in other, smaller companies. It is so important to understand that it is done by people - executives using corporate resources because companies are not sentient entities, no matter what anyone says. They don't think and they certainly don't speak. And it isn't everyone in these companies. The people in Sales or Accounts Receivable don't make the decisions, a few people at the very top do. In order to address this problem we need to understand that the actions of corporations are really the actions of a few people. Corporations don't act or "do" anything, people do.

This is about monopoly capitalism. Of course executives in control of the biggest companies will use their financial power to consolidate their control over our system, for their personal benefit. Smaller companies in the same industries and startups that threaten to compete won't stand a chance because the rules will be bent against them. If you think the oil and coal companies are hampering efforts control CO2 emissions and foster new alternative energy sources now, then just wait until the resources of giant companies are allowed to directly control our elections and therefore our government. If you think giant pharmaceutical companies are getting favors like unlimited patent life now, just wait until the Supreme Court opens up direct use of corporate resources.

So how did we get here?

It is difficult if not impossible for individuals to raise sufficient capital to enable large-scale projects that can cost millions, even billions to get started. So we developed corporations which areprivate legal entities designed to pool individual resources and accumulate vast sums, far beyond the ability of individuals to gather. The corporate legal structure enables large numbers of people to contribute to an effort. This also spreads the risk. Even if someone could raise the kind of money it takes to design and build a 747, why put all the eggs into one basket?

This legal structure was developed and is supported by our laws to benefit all of us. In fact, we even grant "limited liability" to the investors in corporations to encourage their development so investors are not responsible for the debts of a corporation. This is just one of many benefits granted to corporations by we, the People. We set up this structure to benefit us - why else would we have done it?

These pooled resources are supposed to be used only for business purposes, and the businesses are supposed to operate on a regulatory playing field that is set up by us. Corporate executives are only supposed to use corporate resources to run the business for the benefit of the shareholders. Some argue that use of their company's money to influence the political system brings benefits back to the companies thereby benefiting the shareholders. But in this example influence comes with an expectation of gain which is just bribery and is therefore illegal. On the other hand, some claim that these companies only have our best interest at heart, and expect nothing but good government in return for their largess. Of course without direct corporate gain this use of corporate funds by executives is a waste of shareholder's resources, and is therefore theft. Bribery or theft, which is it? Either way it is wrong.

Democracy developed in reaction to corrupt rule by wealthy and powerful interests for their own benefit at the expense of the rest of us. So it was recognized from the beginning that such pooled resources are a danger to the democracy we fought so hard to develop, and rules were put in place to prevent this from happening. But like the smallest leak in a dam, any use of corporate money to gain influence of course turns into greater and greater influence. The first bribe led to greater resources to use for a larger second bribe, and so on. As each bribe increased the influence of a wealthy corporate few eventually we ended up with a political party entirely dedicated to furthering the control of that wealthy few, to the point of appointing Supreme Court justices dedicated to that end. And here we are.

What can we do about this?

First of all, if by some miracle the Supreme Court doesn't open up direct use of corporate resources in elections we must recognize how close we have come to losing democracy, and stop all use of corporate resources to influence not just elections but public attitudes as well. Even without the Supreme Court opening things up, we have been heading down this path for some time. We have to stop corporate resources from leaking out of the companies and affecting corporate rulemaking. This includes lobbying, which is really just bribery. Company resources will always be used to bring advantages to that company -- over other companies and the rest of us.

If the governmental systems come entirely under the control of a wealthy few with access to the resources of giant corporations we are in a heap of trouble. But we have been here before, a century or so ago. A strong progressive movement can turn things around. We will need to develop strong public outreach from progressive organizations to help the public understand what is happening,. We will need to support labor unions as they fight to restore the ability of people to make a living and have some power and control over the workplace. And we will need to help people learn to fight the propaganda that is and will be thrown at us 24 hours a day.

Posted by Dave Johnson at 1:35 PM | Comments (1) | Link Cosmos

January 7, 2010

Why Is Moving A Factory Called "Trade"?

This post originally appeared at Campaign for America's Future (CAF) at their Blog for OurFuture as part of the Making It In America project. I am a Fellow with CAF.

I have a simple question: Why is moving a factory across a border called "trade"?

The process of building up a country is long and difficult. People over time unite and engage in a long, hard struggle to form a democratic government for themselves and build strong public structures -- a system of laws, environmental protections, wage and hour rules, worker protections, product safety standards, etc. -- all of which work to raise the standard of living for everyone. These strong public structures enable economic growth and empower the people and companies to prosper while protecting the investment that built it all. So people return a portion of the resulting prosperity as taxes to invest in building and maintaining this infrastructure.

That is how good, solid self-government should work. The people build the public structures that enable each other to prosper and that protect the investment. And it worked for us.

But then, along come the quick-buck artists, looking to grab what they can for themselves, as fast as they can, without doing their part or sharing their gains or leaving anything but a mess behind. And they found a way to accomplish this. They found places outside of our borders where the people had not yet built up the solid, democratic governmental institutions that protect people and the environment as ours do. They fired the workers who had built up the companies and communities, packed up the machines that made the products, closed the factories, and opened factories on the other side of those borders.

Moving factories across borders is just a way of evading our laws and our protections, that we have fought so hard to get in place. So why do we let them bring the same products that we used to make here, back across those borders to sell in the prosperous market that our hard-won public structures enabled?

People fought and died so we could maintain our own strong government that protected us and enabled our prosperity. We built up our prosperity over time and with many hard fights, and that is what has made our county the market that everyone wants access to. We should use that market power to set the terms of what can be brought in to this country. We should help the people in countries that have not yet build up the kind of strong, democratic governments that can protect them from the quick-buck artists and exploiters instead of letting those manipulative consters wipe out our jobs and tear down our own government and rules. We should say that before products get access into our market the workers that make them should be paid well, and the environment they are made in is protected. Maybe we shouldn't allow goods from undemocratic countries in at all. What do you think?

We worked hard to build what we have, and we are letting that be taken away from us. It is time to stop allowing our factories to be closed and moved across borders as a way to get around the rules and standards we fought so hard to put in place.

Posted by Dave Johnson at 4:11 PM | Comments (1) | Link Cosmos

December 22, 2009

Save Social Security - 10 Questions for the Deficit Commission

This post originally appeared at Campaign for America's Future (CAF) at their Blog for OurFuture. I am a Fellow with CAF.

It is possible that there is going to be a “deficit commission” to look for ways to reduce our country’s budget deficits. I have some questions for them to ask to help get things started in the right direction:

1) President Reagan increased Social Security taxes, but used that money to cut the very top tax rates that only the wealthiest pay. Now that the money borrowed from Social Security is coming due, which income group is better positioned to pay it back, wealthy people or the elderly to whom this money is owed?

2) President Clinton left office with a huge budget surplus. Then, President Bush gave tax cuts to the wealthy, and his last budget had a $1.4 trillion deficit. How much of this change was because of those tax cuts for the rich?

3) How large was the country’s yearly budget deficit and total debt in the “Eisenhower/Truman” decades when the top tax rate was 90%?

4) Today we have an “infrastructure deficit” – the amount needed to repair our country’s roads, bridges, sewers, etc. – of somewhere upwards of $1.6 trillion. Was our infrastructure kept in good repair before the top tax rates were cut?

5) Concentration of wealth is long recognized as a threat to democracy, and now we are seeing a low-wage, everything-to-the-top economy with the greatest ever concentration of wealth going to a few at the top. Was the problem of wealth concentration increasing or decreasing before the top tax rates were cut?

6) When top rates were high people couldn’t take home vast fortunes in a single year. When it took several years to make a fortune did corporations depend on long-term or short-term thinking? Did the executives of corporations care if the infrastructure and communities their companies depended on were in good shape? Did large corporations fleece customers and exploit employees for quarterly returns as they do now?

7) The military budget is the largest item in our country’s budget. Was the military budget larger or smaller when we faced the cold war threat from the Soviet Empire?

8) Just how big is our military budget, if you add in veterans programs, nukes, intelligence and the military budget’s share of accumulated debt interest? How large is it in relation to all of the rest of the countries in the world, combined?

9) Speaking of debt interest, how much debt interest do we pay on the debt that has added up since we cut tax rates at the top? Who gets all that interest?

10) Some will say that proposals to bring back the tax rates of the Eisenhower administration are “socialist.” What was the name of the organization that accused President Eisenhower of being a Communist?

11) Does the following chart stimulate any ideas about how we might solve the debt problem?

Posted by Dave Johnson at 11:36 AM | Comments (1) | Link Cosmos

November 3, 2009

Working At The Polls

I am working at the polls today. Not a single voter yet...

Update - 8:45am - still no voters. Not one.

Update - We had a flurry of two voters at around 9:15am.

Update - 3:30pm - nine voters so far today. A few people dropped off their absentee ballots.

Final Update - Total of 12 voters on the machines, six absentee drop-offs and one vote on paper but somehow she took the ballot home with her.

Posted by Dave Johnson at 3:36 PM | Comments (0) | Link Cosmos

September 30, 2009

A New Economy from Old Roots?

This post originally appeared at Campaign for America's Future (CAF) at their Blog for OurFuture as part of the Making It In America project. I am a Fellow with CAF.

How do we build a new economy out of the collapse of the old economy? How do we start fresh to begin creating jobs again, while building in economic and environmental sustainability, as well as workplaces that respect human needs and rights? How do we change things so that we all get to share the benefits of the economy rather than just contributing to the increasing wealth of a few vastly wealthy people?

While we look for a vision for a new economy, we should examine what has worked in the past. America had periods in which regular people enjoyed sustained increases in their standard of living. For a long time it was a conventional wisdom that each American generation would do better than the previous generation, more people would receive good educations, medical care would get better, the middle class would grow, leisure time would increase, poverty rates would decrease, retirement would be easier, etc.

But this pattern stopped. Beginning in the late 1970s and especially in the 1980s incomes began to stagnate, wealth increasingly concentrated at the top, working hours and workplace pressures steadily increased, availability of good health care started to decrease, etc. The standard of living of most Americans began to and continues to decline. At the same time corporations became more predatory as consumer protections vanished. Meanwhile outsourcing, deunionization and other anti-worker policies led to increasingly unpleasant, stressful and unrewarding worklives for more and more people.

Many of today's problems are traceable directly to the policy results of anti-government propaganda that was blasted out from well-funded conservative think tanks starting in the 1970s. The anti-government campaign led to defunding of many national, state and local government programs that improved education, helped the poor or enriched people's lives. We suffered deregulation in many areas where the government had protected consumers, workers, investors and the environment. Huge reductions in taxes for the wealthy were either offset by tax increases for the rest of us or government borrowing. And that borrowing has led to increasing problems of paying the interest and threats to funding even basic programs like Social Security and education.

So what worked, before the conservatives trashed the place?

Regulation

One thing we know for sure now, learned the hardest way thanks to the financial crisis: regulation worked. Regulation was necessary, it worked, it kept firms from taking risks that could bring down the economy. And we can also see now how regulations protected consumers from predatory corporate activities, workers from wage theft or unsafe working conditions, and the environment from exploitation and destruction.

Taxes

Before Reagan the tax rates at the top were very high. After you reached - and took home - a certain very high income you paid a high percentage of the rest in taxes. This had many beneficial results – even for the people who paid higher taxes. Government could afford to keep the physical, education and legal infrastructure in good condition without borrowing. Government could afford to invest in programs that improved our standard of living, health, knowledge and technology, which helped businesses grow. Businesses thrived in such well-watered soil.

The high tax rates also kept the bad side of human nature in check. When it took years to build up a fortune businesspeople had to rely on the health of the greater community to nurture their own wealth-building enterprises and keep them thriving over a long period. They had to think and act long-term. The roads needed to be kept in repair, the schools needed to provide excellent education to potential employees, the courts needed to be functional to enforce contracts, and they wanted the communities they were going to have to stay in to be pleasant places to live.

But once taxes were lowered vast windfalls could be realized from a single event and it made more sense to try to fleece the community with quick-buck schemes than to rely on it. We began to see corporate raiders break up solid, ongoing companies, steal pension funds, etc., while encouraging communities to cut spending on schools, roads, etc. It became more profitable sell off or outsource our manufacturing capacity. And then, as things fell apart, the few who benefited could just fly away in their private jets or sail away in their huge yachts. The greater community was no longer any use to them except as crops to be harvested. Vulnerable consumers are the only crop that is coming up in this economy.

Big Government

Government is We, the People making the decisions. "Big government" is simply another way of saying that more of the important decisions are made by the people. Shrinking government means handing the decisions over to big corporations. In the real world this is the choice. And in the real world big corporations make decisions that benefit them, and only them. Before you badmouth government think carefully about what the alternative is.

Old-Fashioned Government Planning

As I said in a post a few months ago,

The phrase “industrial policy” sounds so Walter Mondale, 1970s, smokestacks and brick factory old-fashioned. I suspect the subject turns people off, eyes glaze over, hands reach under the table for iPhones and Blackberries…

But here we are without an industrial policy. How’s that working out for us? Every other country has one. China seriously has one. We instead have huge trade deficits. We don't make things here so we have to borrow money to buy things made elsewhere.

To add insult to injury, recently Deutsche Bank released a research note advising investors that the U.S. was not a good investment because of our lack of a government industrial policy. See Deutsche Bank: Absence of US Clean Energy Policy Will Send Global Capital Elsewhere.

While we envision a new direction for our economy, maybe we should also be looking at returning to a few old-fashioned ways of doing things, too.

Posted by Dave Johnson at 4:09 PM | Comments (0) | Link Cosmos

September 29, 2009

Pittsburgh Police Presence - Intimidation of Democracy

I was in Pittsburgh and I have never seen anything like the police atmosphere there. I go back to the 60s protests, including Mayday when they set up machine guns on the White House grounds so I have seen it. But that was more military, not police. There were almost zero "civilians" in the city and a massive militarized police presence beyond anything I have ever experienced.

Here are a few impressions. Everyone had been whipped up with fear leading up to the Summit - both police and townspeople. It seemed as though the police had been through some sort of military training in advance of the Summit. The militarized attitude was not what I have seen from police before. It appeared they had been led to expect massive trouble on the order of tens of thousands. What I suspect happened was that the local media scared the wits out of the population by playing clips of huge WTO protests over and over until people were convinced that they were going to be besieged by a violent Woodstock of some sort. (Like how they have scared people to the point where they won't let their kids walk to school anymore.) I don't know that but what I saw there makes me thing it was something like that.

Everyone had brand new equipment. The uniforms were new, freshly pressed. Riot helmets without a single scuffmark. New trucks, rifles, communications equipment, body armor, all new. Millions upon millions of anti-terrorist gear was finally going to be tried out.

The weirdest thing was that buildings clear across town from where the would be any expectation of trouble had anti-tank barricades set up around them. I mean the concrete divider segments that are put between oncoming lanes on highways had been moved into place around builds, entrances, etc all over town! Of course the security around the perimeter for the Summit was crucial, the barricade with the trucks filled with heavy materials at every intersection stops potential attacks from a hijacked bus or truck. The fencing and checkpoints ... these are 20 of the world's leaders in one place. Fine. But why anti-tank barriers on buildings on the other side of town?

There were thousands of police. There was police from all over the East and Midwest. There were police on horseback, bicycle, motorcycle, van, car, truck, dump truck, military-style vehicle, helicopter, speedboat, and on foot. There were police dogs. There were Coast Guard, Secret Service, National Guard, State Police, Park Police and every other agency you can imagine.

The actual People's March was orderly, almost fun, except for the masses of police. It went on for quite a while, followed by hundreds of Falun Gong, then followed by hundreds of police on foot, followed by mounted police, followed by dozens of police vehicles with doors open, fully-armored police with machine guns ready to jump out.

The really, really needed a police marching band as part of the display. Seriously. This was a missed opportunity.

The effect was intimidation. No way around it, no one could have been anywhere near Pittsburgh for this Summit without receiving a loud and clear message, "We are in charge, we don't want to hear what you have to say, shut up and behave." And for the public, the expectation that an unspeakable force of evil was coming - and then when the DFHs show up, this has to translate to the message the people who protest against elites are somehow in the wrong. Massive intimidation. The security was necessary for the Summit, but the rest of it was intimidation of democracy. Police are trained to respect the citizens, but this militarization changed that, turned "the other side" into enemies.

Another problem was the effect of anticipation. The police were intimidated, too, led to expect a massive wave of weirdos attacking them. And so of course after months of preparation and anticipation were naturally ready to go after them and win.

Pictures later.

Posted by Dave Johnson at 8:06 AM | Comments (0) | Link Cosmos

September 19, 2009

A Govt Pursuit Of Happiness Agency?

Excellent idea: Why We Need a Government Agency to Defend the Pursuit of Happiness,

Our happiness is kept from us by prisonlike schools and meaningless jobs, un(der)employment and untreated physical and psychological ailments, by political leaders who scare the votes out of us and corporate "persons" that buy up all the resources that have been created and defined by our labor.

More thinking like this, please!

Posted by Dave Johnson at 12:21 PM | Comments (0) | Link Cosmos

September 18, 2009

Big Government

Government is us, democracy, We the People in control of the decision making. Conservatives rail against "big government," which literally means they are against We the People making decisions. And that necessarily means they want big corporations and a wealthy few making the decisions instead because that is the only alternative.

THAT is the choice - either the people through our government, or control by and service to a few big corporations and wealthy people.

Posted by Dave Johnson at 1:41 PM | Comments (0) | Link Cosmos

September 8, 2009

The REALLY Important Political Event

The REALLY important political event this week is not President Obama's health care speech. This week the Supreme Court begins the procedure that will lead to a 5-4 vote (same as when they put Bush in office) to remove restrictions on the use of corporate money in politics.

The only reason the Supreme Court is considering this case is in order to overturn these restrictions. It will be a 5-4 vote. They would not be considering it at all if this were not what the 5-vote majority intends.

The removal of restrictions on corporate money in our politics will effectively mean the end of what is left of American democracy. It will finalize that America is a one-dollar-one-vote wealthocracy instead of a one-person-one-vote democracy.

Posted by Dave Johnson at 8:58 AM | Comments (1) | Link Cosmos

August 10, 2009

Why Health Care Reform Is Losing

I haven't heard very many voices, prominently featured, explaining to the general public what the bill really does. President Obama is out there laying out general principles, and then there are a million conservative voices saying all kinds of stuff. Maybe because there isn't a bill yet.

So you can't really blame some people for coming to some of these conclusions. You and I say it sounds ridiculous to say these things but to a lot of people who don't really understand a lot about how things really work, when all they hear is one side of the story they're going to go with the only thing they hear.

The only thing that really matters - gets through to millions and millions - is what is on TV and radio. Sure, in a democracy it is the job if the news media to inform the voters. But in the 1980s our broadcast news media was released from the obligation to serve the public interest and they immediately stopped serving the public interest. Pro-government legislators seem to have just given up on fixing that. Go figure.

When the opposition is able to define you before you do, then you have lost the battle. The pubic is going to figure that the truth lies somewhere between the extremes they hear. And those are that on the one side the government is going to set up death panels to decide who gets to live, and on the other side the government is going to take over the entire system and ration care. So it must be somewhere between those.

Posted by Dave Johnson at 7:52 AM | Comments (2) | Link Cosmos

August 3, 2009

Conservative Hating On Cash For Clunkers

This post originally appeared at Campaign for America's Future (CAF) at their Blog for OurFuture. I am a Fellow with CAF.

Government can work, and the “Cash for Clunkers” program proved it. So, naturally, conservatives have to hate on it.

The “Cash for Clunkers” turned out to be one of the most successful government programs in some time. It was so successful that a program that was meant to take until November achieved its goals in something like a week or two! Thousands of cars were sold, helping dealerships and car companies to move toward recovery. Thousands of gas guzzlers were scrapped, helping the country move toward improved energy efficiency.

Dealers reported that their showrooms were full and their sales way up. Ford reports that the program is helping them have a strong July.

Ford Motor Co has seen a sharp increase in sales over the past week since its dealers began accepting trade-ins under the U.S. government's "cash for clunkers" incentive program, the automaker's U.S. sales chief said on Thursday.

The only problem with the program was that so many people are taking advantage of it that the computer system got slowed down!

Yes, the program achieved its goals in record time. So the House has approved an additional $2 billion and the Senate should take it up this week. This means even more help to dealerships and manufacturers and even more fuel economy for the country!

What could be wrong with that?

Well if you are a conservative, plenty is wrong with that. First of all it makes government look good -- and conservatives just hate government. Government is those people who get in the way and tell companies they can't pour toxins into our rivers. Government is those people who show up and ask big companies to share what they make -- after building the roads and courts and schools that enabled them to do so well. That goes against everything conservatives stand for: dirty rivers, big corporations doing and taking anything they want for free, etc.

Mostly, though, a big success like this comes at exactly the wrong time for conservatives. Right now conservatives are fighting tooth and nail to keep We, the People from passing health care reform in a way that chooses better care and lower costs for the people over higher profits and CEO pay for insurance companies. So right now it is vitally important to discredit the idea that government can do things right.

So just as it starts to become clear that the government has a winner on its hands, we start to see reports in the conservative media -- Drudge Report, right-wing blogs, talk radio, FOX News, etc. -- that call the program a failure. In fact, many of these stories coincidentally seem to use almost the same wording! The lesson they all teach is this failure shows what will happen if we pass health care reform.

So draw your own lessons. Was a program that wildly overachieved its goals, stimulated the economy, improved the country's fuel efficiency and brought a great price for a new car to tens of thousands of Americas a success or not? I say it was, and I say it shows why we want a public option choice in the health care reform!

Posted by Dave Johnson at 1:25 PM | Comments (6) | Link Cosmos

July 22, 2009

When They Say Government They Mean You

This post originally appeared at Open Left.

I'd like to talk about government. The conservative/corporate propaganda machine has turned "government" into a bad word. Conservatives portray our government as some kind of enemy of the public. We have all heard the scare stories about the harm done by meddlesome regulations from intrusive big government programs run by government bureaucrats.

Let's step back from reacting to the word as we hear it today and think about what the word really means.

In America government is us. It is, by definition, "We, The People." Our Constitution is the defining document of our government and it couldn't be clearer, declaring that We, the People formed this country "to promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves"... In other words, watch out for and take care of each other; "We, the People" have banded together to watch out for each other, take care of each other and build institutions to protect and empower each other.

With this in mind let’s try an experiment. Try substituting some variation of the words, "We, the People," "us" or “the people making decisions for ourselves” every time you read or use the word "government." Or use the word "our" instead of "the" when you say "the government." Our government, us, we, the people, working together to take care of and empower each other.

My favorite use of this experiment is to apply it to Reagan’s keynote statement, “Government is the problem, not the solution.” Reagan is making a profoundly anti-democratic statement here. He is saying that “The people making our decisions for ourselves and watching out for each other is the problem.”

With statements like these, Reagan and the conservatives are advocating a different system of government than democracy. They are saying that we should hand those decisions and responsibilities over to the "private sector" - the corporations - and let others decide how things are going to be done and how our money and common resources will be used.

Another example is when conservatives repeat, “Don’t let the government tell us what to do.” That becomes, “Don’t let us tell us what to do,” or a little more broadly, “Don’t let us decide the rules that we will live by.” If WE aren’t the deciders, then who is? What about the conservative pejorative, “big government?” They are complaining about “big We, the People.” They want “limited government.” So they have a beef with US having more power over ourselves! Of course, if WE don’t have this power, who do you think will?

Conservatives complain about government as a meddlesome, intrusive problem. But just who is government a problem for? If you are a top executive in a large chemical corporation and your bonus depends on lowering the cost of discarding toxic wastes, government stands between you and the river into which you want to dump the wastes. It costs the company less to dump the waste into the river, you will get your bonus, but We, the People don't want that stuff in our water. So for you, government is the problem. And that is a good thing. But our government is us. Our government protects us.

How about the refrain that people shouldn’t rely on government, but instead should rely on themselves? That sounds good, somehow. But try it with “each other” and a small adjustment to “themselves,” and what they are saying becomes, “People shouldn’t rely on each other they should be on their own.” This is a variation on their “personal responsibility” mantra. They want us alone and defenseless. (This is also why they hate unions.) Is alone and defenseless really such a good way to live, especially in a world dominated by big corporations always trying to trick us and get our money? Wouldn’t it be better if we were working to protect each other from the big corporations?

Spending: When conservatives complain about government spending they mean empowering and taking care of each other. They don’t like us doing that. We as a species learned from the beginning to band together, take care of each other. And now they want us separated and on our own.

Government taxing and spending is what empowers us. In the 1950s President Eisenhower proposed building the interstate highway system. That was an example of government spending, and as I wrote the other day, the top tax rate was over 90% on income above a certain amount. So after executives and owners of big companies made several hundred thousand dollars additional income was taxed at a very high rate. They could still become very, very wealthy, but more slowly. This taxation meant that the major beneficiaries of our government helped us pay for our government.

It paid off. The interstate highway system triggered a surge of economic growth, new industries, new products -- and even greater income for the very people who were taxed to help pay for it.

We also spend money protecting each other. Let’s talk about the distortions in military spending another time. What about our spending to regulate corporations and enforce those regulations? Or spending on education or health care or parks? Conservatives just hate that. They have convinced much of the public that government spending - the people taking care of each other - is bad. And the way to disempower us is to cut taxes, the ability to gather the resources we need to fight the battles we fight with the rich and powerful.

Try these experiments, substitute "us" and "We, The People" when you hear conservatives complain about government. Substitute "the resources we need to empower each other and fight the powerful" when you see the word "taxing" and substitute "taking care of each other" when you see the word "spending." This can be very powerful and empowering. It helps us see what kind of world the conservatives are really advocating.

Posted by Dave Johnson at 9:34 AM | Comments (0) | Link Cosmos

July 21, 2009

Should We Bring Back The 90% Top Tax Rate?

This post originally appeared at Open Left

How many stories have we heard in recent years of CEO’s and other executives looting, stealing, polluting and wreaking general havoc? The incentive to loot a company’s pension funds is money. The incentive to outsource our jobs is money. The incentive to deny needed treatments to an insured patient is money. The incentive to pollute our rivers and air is money.

Generally the incentive to lie, cheat and steal is money. This is especially true in the corporate world where the reason for … well, everything … is money. This is normal, and can be kept in check. But the temptation that pushes many over the line is not just money, it is the possibility of the big, humungous jackpot. And that is what we have today.

It used to be that you could make, why, millions of dollars if you worked hard, built a company, invented something important, or had amazing talent. But today mere millions is for chumps. Today you can loot a fund, rig an energy market, forward-run stocks or threaten to bring down an economy and end up with a quick payoff of billions.

When excessive, massive paydays are possible, it opens the door to overwhelming greed and a resulting compromising of principles.

There is a way to prevent the destructive behavior we have been seeing from the top. People won’t have an incentive to cheat and steal if they can’t get the huge jackpot from the proceeds. Let's limit the possibility of collecting a vast and fast return. The vast and fast return is the motivator, so take it out of the equation.

The way to do this is with a very steep progressive income tax with a very high tax rate on income above a certain level. So suppose we set the top tax rate back to 90% for people making over, say $3 million. $3 million a year is nothing to sneeze at, so there is still plenty of reason to do what you do to make a lot of money. And if you pass $3 million you still take home $100K for every million more you make, which is also nothing to sneeze at. But there is no longer a reason to engage in quick-buck schemes. Instead there is plenty of reason to build a solid business over time, and hopefully eventually build a fortune of hundreds of millions. As I said, nothing to sneeze at.

People could still become vastly wealthy, except it would take ten or twenty years to become vastly wealthy. You would have to actually do a good job, consistently, instead of looking for fast-buck schemes to cash out in a year. And for those who still need to make a billion or two a year, We, the People are the beneficiaries while they still take home hundreds of millions. It's a win-win.

Again, if we limit the income that can be realized from such behavior we reduce the incentive to engage in it. We as a society used to understand this. We used to tax high incomes at very high rates. We used to see that this provided all of us with a benefit.

An additional bonus from this idea: by limiting the amount that can be made in a single year we provide an incentive to stay involved and work hard and over a longer period of time build up a respectable fortune. Just not a vast and fast fortune.

Another benefit from increasing the top tax rates is that we need the money. Because of the huge tax cuts that were given to the wealthiest we neglected maintaining our infrastructure, we have run massive deficits, we cut services to citizens and now we are reaching a limit of our ability to borrow. So it is time to ask the beneficiaries of the policies that got us into this jam to pitch in again and help us get back out of it again.

Until the late 1970s the United States had a very, very high top income tax rate. From the time of FDR until the 1960s the top rate was 90% plus on very high incomes. From the 60s until the Reagan years it was in the 70%s. Under Reagan it ramped down to 28%. (See the numbers here.)

The periods of highest taxation of the highest incomes coincides with periods of the most investment in the country’s infrastructure, the period of building the middle class and American leadership in areas of education, science, technology and manufacturing. Perhaps this is because we, as a country, had the financial resources available to invest for the public good rather than tied up by a few at the top as we see today. Perhaps this is because in a consumer economy more regular people with more money keeps things going, and moving the taxes up to the prime beneficiaries increases the amount of money that regular people have to spend.

There were multiple historical justifications for these tax rates. Among these, we understood that the purpose of our economic system was for OUR benefit. So while we encourage people to produce we also understand that once the production is stimulated we all want to benefit from it. So after a certain point a tax kicks in and increases and we all share in the returns from the enterprise.

Another justification was that we needed the money to pay for WWII, and to invest in the things that pulled us out of the depression. Yes, we got out of the depression by raising taxes at the top.

But beginning in the 70s the malefactors of great wealth started a well-funded drumbeat of marketing messages to convince people that government and regulation are bad, the richest should not be taxed, the rich “create jobs,” cutting taxes increases government revenue, etc.

This huge propaganda campaign succeeded and turned the public against taxes and government. They convinced the people that the people should have no power. (Marketing can convince people to smoke -- it can convince people of anything.)

Look at the changes in the nature of our economy since tax rates were lowered. We have financialized the economy. We have been shipping manufacturing and jobs out of the country. We have been eliminating pensions. Wages have stagnated. We have massively increased debt. And a very few at the top have been able to use financial power to consolidate to themselves much of the income and benefits of the economy that We, the People built.

Reasonable returns that build up over time are boring. They require work. So when you can make out like a bandit you act like a bandit. Since the tax rates were lowered the nature of our economy has changed from building solid companies that treated their customers well and provided well-built products, to quick-buck schemes designed for fast cash out.

Corporate conservatives will argue that we just want to “punish success” by asking the wealthiest to pitch in. Actually we want people to make lots of money. In fact, we want more people to make more money. That’s the point of our economy – so that we all are prosperous. And with ever higher tax rates, when those at the top make more money we all make more money. So in fact with high top tax rates there is an additional societal incentive for the rest of us to encourage those at the top to make even more.

What we don’t want is people gaming the system so they can reap vast personal returns for themselves at the expense of the rest of us. We want the system functioning smoothly. A very high top tax rate helps fight this problem. In the recent financial collapse it was vast and fast returns that provided the incentive for the gaming, for taking huge risks and not worrying enough about the downside.

Some other points, off the top of my head: (This is a blog post not a Ph.D. thesis.)

- High tax rates at the top encourage work.

- High top tax rates limit the concentration of wealth.

- High top tax rates distribute the benefits of our economy to all of us, paying a dividend for participating in a democracy.

We can also use high top tax rates to increase investment incentives. A top rate of 90% provides a lot of room to set a favorable capital gains rate. If you only tax, say, 60% of the income from capital gains this would provide a huge incentive for the very rich to invest. This way a person in the 90% tax rate would only pay $54 in taxes and a person in a 20% tax rate would only pay $12 on capital gains.

We used to believe as a society in democracy and sharing the wealth. We used to believe in not letting a few get wealthy enough that they can use the resulting power to skew the country's policies in their favor. We used to believe that windfalls should be shared. This idea helps return us to a functioning democracy with the resources to act for our mutual benefit.

This idea retains the profit incentive while reducing the greed/bad-behavior incentive by capping the potential gains. These potential gains can be great enough that anyone can strive for them, without being high enough to drive massive greed.

So, what do you think? Should we set the top tax rate back to 90% or higher?

Posted by Dave Johnson at 10:50 AM | Comments (0) | Link Cosmos

July 20, 2009

It's The Economic Paradigm, Stupid!

I am happy to announce that beginning today I will be working as a Fellow and blogger with Campaign for America's Future. This post introduces the areas I will be pursuing.

The economy is terrible. There aren't enough jobs. Most of the jobs that are still there are not paying enough for people to keep up, and people are afraid they could lose them tomorrow. So we all have too much debt. We have too little health care. We have too much stress. And in the bigger picture we have too little power to do anything about it.

They say we're reaching a "bottom" and that there are "green shoots." But I am afraid that this isn’t your father’s recession. I'm afraid this economy isn’t a pendulum that has swing too far in one direction, ready to be pulled by natural forces back to the other side. I am afraid that this isn't a "business cycle" pattern with a fall, then a bottom, then a recovery where all the shoppers return to the stores, all the jobs come back and growth picks up where it left off. Even "green shoot" optimists admit there will be few new jobs if there is any recovery.

It may be that we are not in a period of waiting for things to "get back to normal." Many people think that this economic collapse IS the return to normal.

For decades concerned observers have warned about problems with the "sustainability" of our economic paradigm. If you look at charts describing changes in the economy, environment, population - all kinds of things - you see that in recent decades they all change and start to move, often exponentially, in directions that obviously cannot be sustained. They look like this:

A wise man once said that when something is unsustainable it can’t be sustained. And here we are. A very good explanation of the problem of unsustainability of our economic paradigm is The Story Of Stuff. "It's a linear system and we live on a finite planet."

It is not just the economy out of whack. The business practices that brought us here -- overextraction, overextension, overleveraging, overconsumption -- have also whacked the planet’s resources. The fisheries are increasingly depleted. The aquifers are increasingly drained. The forests are increasingly logged. The landfills are increasingly full. And, of course, the planet is increasingly hotter.

Our economic system has also taken a toll on the people. Too many hours at a stressful workplace with too little sleep have burned many of us out. Our thinking and identity are about our jobs, not our spirit and character. Our values are devoted to markets with many of us placing making money over loving and caring for families and others. And there's no time for that stuff anyway. We have become consumers instead of citizens and humans. Decades of falling wages, decreasing savings and increasing debt have tapped us out. Consumption has used us up. And we’re fed up.

So things reached a breaking point and broke down. This has been coming at us for decades. And here we are.

If this economic collapse was the consequence of decades of an unsustainable economic model, then what do we do?

The government, of course, has been working to fix this problem within the context of the current failed economic system. And in that context they have been doing a good job. They lowered interest rates to encourage even more borrowing. The stimulus pumped borrowed money into the economy to cover the loss of demand from people and business. They raised the FDIC protection levels so we're not all wiped out if banks fail. They bailed out overleveraged financial institutions so they could again provide credit.

Of course the stimulus is better than none. We need unemployment benefits and infrastructure investment. And investment has a longer-term payoff.

But what happens after the stimulus? What do they think will drive our economy back to what they think of as normal? Will it be renewed manufacturing of cars? If we don't bring back the good-paying jobs, who will buy them? Same for houses. Same for TVs and appliances and furniture and jewelery and expensive shoes and all the rest.

In a June interview on the Lehrer News Hour, Treasury Secretary Geithner said that they are doing what they need to do to "get growth back on track."

Back on track? Does he mean we will fish out the remaining fish? Cut the rest of the trees? Drain the rest of the aquifers? Take the tops off the rest of the mountains? Does he mean that we will run up the rest of the credit cards? Will we cover the rest of the land with even bigger houses and subdivisions and strip malls? Will we export all the rest of the jobs? Will we hand the rest of the nation's income and wealth over to an elite few?

I don't think they are going to get things back "on track" by applying more of the same "solutions" that got us to where we are today. Will they bail out more companies, making them even too bigger to fail? None of the fixes will work if the problem is that we have reached the limits of sustainability of the economic model we have been following for decades.

So what can we do to change the system itself? How do we restructure the model - the economic paradigm - in ways that let We, The People enjoy and share the benefits of our economy? There are a number of clues that I will be writing about in my work with Campaign for America's Future. Maybe we can follow the clues and find answers.

One obvious part of problem is that we have an economic system in which we tolerate a few people controlling –- and thereby getting most of the benefits from –- things that should belong to and be controlled by all of us. Aren't We, The People supposed to be making the decisions here? And shouldn't we make decisions that benefit all of us instead of just a wealthy few?

At the center of this problem is the role of the corporation in our society. Corporations have amassed immense power and that power is used to control the country's decision-making processes, always to the benefit of the wealthy few. Getting a grip on this problem requires us to regain understanding of why we have corporations in the first place. We, The People enacted the laws that allow corporations to exist because we felt that it would be to our benefit to do so. And to the extent that they are now benefiting a few at the expense of the rest of us, we can change the laws. Let that sink in.

Another thing we have to get control over is the concept of externalization. Why do we allow companies to externalize their costs while internalizing the profits? In other words, companies are allowed to push costs onto the rest of us, but are not asked to share the resulting profits with the rest of us. We even let them see and treat people (us) as "costs" -- a layoff pushes the responsibility to support a worker onto the community while the company keeps the wages they were paid.

When a company replaces a worker with a machine, the company pockets the wages that would have gone to the worker and the worker is discarded. But now we are learning that eventually enough workers are discarded that there is no one to purchase what those workers replaced by machines were making. So the company and the economy lose, too. This just doesn't work.

Here is a big one: We need to understand that actually making things is what drives an economy. America became an economic powerhouse because we made things here. China is an economic powerhouse because they make things there. I'll be writing about that a lot.

These are just a few of the things that I will be exploring in the coming months. Let's see where it goes.

*About the title.

Posted by Dave Johnson at 8:49 AM | Comments (3) | Link Cosmos

July 8, 2009

CA Voters Kept In Dark About Budget

This post originally appeared at Speak Out California

Today's San Jose Mercury News has a front-page story, California leaders in no hurry to break budget impasse. From the story,

Despite plunging tax revenues, Wall Street's unwillingness to loan the state money and billions of dollars worth of IOUs hitting mailboxes, California's leaders are displaying a seeming lack of urgency to close the state's $26.3 billion deficit.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and legislative leaders blew past a supposedly ironclad June 30 deadline to pass a new budget...

Blew past? The legislature did pass a budget fix last week, but the Governor vetoed it! This choice by the Governor led to the state needing to issue IOUs.

To their credit (I guess) the San Jose paper hinted at the veto in an editorial a week ago, Governor didn't need to push state over the edge, writing,

In rejecting a stopgap fix for the budget on Tuesday, the governor and GOP leaders have accelerated a budget meltdown that pushes the state deeper into debt."

Talking to people involved, I pick up a sense that passing a budget fix after the Governor said he would veto it was pointless, so not worth mentioning. But isn't that for the voters to decide?  Many would say that passing the fix, especially at the last minute after all negotiations had failed and the state was going over the cliff was the responsible thing to do, also known as governing. This put a budget fix on the table and available for use to avoid the calamity and cost of IOUs, rating downgrades, etc. The Governor had a clear choice at that point, and chose to take the state over the cliff.  The voters should have been told, not kept in the dark that the Governor made that choice.

Meanwhile, the other side still refuses to offer up any plan of their own, still insisting that the Democrats fix the budget entirely with cuts to services that the public needs and take the blame for that.  They refuse to allow any plan that asks oil or tobacco companies to pitch in. They claim the wealthy will "leave the state" if asked to pitch in an additional $40 a week. They make up stories about companies leaving the state (but can't name any). But it is not reported that the Republicans refuse to offer a plan or engage in serious negotiations. It is as if the Republicans are expected to not be serious, so it's not worth reporting that they aren't serious. The voters should have been told.

The system of democracy depends on the voters being informed so they can apply pressure as needed and remove officeholders who are not doing what the voters want them to do.  But none of this works if the citizens have no way of learning simple facts, like that the legislature did govern responsibly and pass a budget fix, which the Governor vetoed. The voters should have been told.

Click through to Speak Out California.

Posted by Dave Johnson at 3:34 PM | Comments (0) | Link Cosmos

June 30, 2009

Who Is Our Economy FOR, Anyway?

The Seeing the Forest question: Who is our economy FOR, anyway?

If the government provides good, low-cost health care to citizens it reduces the profits of the big insurance and drug companies. This health care battle lays down a clear choice of who benefits: citizens or a wealthy few?

Republican Senator Snowe of Maine announces her choice. See Open Left:: The Problem With The Public Option Is That It Lowers The Cost Of Health Insurance,

In an Associated Press interview in Portland, Snowe said it would be unfair to include a government-run health insurance option that would take effect immediately.

"If you establish a public option at the forefront that goes head-to-head and competes with the private health insurance market ... the public option will have significant price advantages," she said.

Well, duh. That is the whole point. You can't lower the price of health insurance unless you start offering lower-priced health insurance. It's a tautology.

So, naturally, during the fight to lower the price of health insurance, so-called moderate Senators think that the problem with the public option is that it would... lower the price of health insurance. While it may be news to so-called moderate Senators, protecting the crappy products of large corporations is not their job description.

Yes, this health care battle is stripping some of the camouflage from the real fight: do the people benefit from our government, or do a wealthy few benefit?

Who is our economy for, anyway? I first asked that question here just about seven years ago, and it became the blog's tag line. I think the financial crisis and now this health care battle allow people to clearly see and understand which choice their Washington representatives make. And I think the way these twin crises are unfolding helps people to understanding the choice their own elected representatives make. I think will make a big difference come election time.

Posted by Dave Johnson at 11:10 AM | Comments (0) | Link Cosmos

June 24, 2009

George Will Gets It Right About Government

This post originally appeared at Speak Out California.

Sunday's San Jose Mercury News contains an anti-government op-ed by George Will, "Democrats want nation dependent on government". (The online headline is different.)

This sounds scary, sinister, even somehow slightly evil. But if you look into the meaning of the words, the effect changes.

Here is what I mean. In America government is us. Our Constitution is the defining document of our government and it couldn't be clearer, declaring that We, the People formed this country "to promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves"... In other words, watch out for and take care of each other; "We, the People" have banded together to watch out for each other, take care of each other and build institutions to protect and empower each other.

So with them real meaning of the words in mind Will's headline becomes "Democrats want nation to take care of each other." Will is exactly right, and good for them.

Will's column is about the national healthcare reform battle and proposals for a "public option," which offers a Medicare-like health insurance plan to all of our citizens. Will opposes this, because,

"Competition from the public option must be unfair because government does not need to make a profit and has enormous pricing and negotiating powers."

In other words, he is complaining that a public option health insurance plan will provide more benefits to more citizens at a lower cost. Will casts this as a bad thing, because it threatens the ability of a few wealthy business owners to profit from people's need for health care.

Profits for a few instead of benefits to the public appears to be his idea of the purpose of government. But to the rest of us the point of health care reform is to take better care of each other while lowering the costs. This is why the "public option" is necessary -- private, profit-driven companies are not designed to accomplish delivery of essential services to everyone. Profit-driven companies are designed to deliver only to those who are willing to pay the most, which when applied to essential human needs violates fundamental tenets of democracy. We are supposed to be a one-person-one-vote country, not a one-dollar-one-vote country.

Again, Will and other conservatives use lots of scary words. But if you look at the meanings of the words, their complaint is with Americans who want to enjoy the fruits of democracy and equality, and take care of each other.

And this is supposed to be a bad thing?

Click through to Speak Out California.

Posted by Dave Johnson at 7:48 AM | Comments (3) | Link Cosmos

May 29, 2009

Today's Housing Bubble Post - Recovery Myth

Go read James Boyce: The Recovery Myth: Caveat America and take a look at the chart.

While you're at it, look at this chart as well.

I think we need to go through a period of disappointment for the "always goes up" crowd before they realize that this isn't a pendulum swinging, a natural part of the cycle, a temporary setback, etc. We went through fundamental changes in the economy in the early 1980s, and since then household debt has been increasing, wages have been stagnant, and predatory capitalism has sucked the consumer dry. The consumer is tapped out and until the nature of our economic system changes, and the people start to benefit from their own work again, things can only get worse. Top-down economics doesn't work. Democracy is the only economics that works.

Posted by Dave Johnson at 8:58 AM | Comments (0) | Link Cosmos

May 28, 2009

California Election Results -- What The Public Wants

This post originally appeared at Speak Out California.

Did the results of the special election on the budget propositions really show that the public is against taxes and government, as the Republicans claim?  Recent polling looked at the reasons the propositions failed.  Polls are a useful way to understand what people really thing because they take a scientific sample, actually asking the voters what they think, instead of just repeating something that Republicans just say.  Let's see what the voters give as their reasons for opposing the propositions.  From the polling:

• 74% of voters polled thought the election was just a gimmick, not an actual fix for California's budget problems.
• 70% of the voters polled said the legislature is a captive of special interests (possibly because people are learning that the "budget deal" that they came up with in the middle of this emergency included a huge tax cut for large, multi-state corporations.)
• In a budget battle dominated by Republican demands for spending cuts instead of asking the rich and corporations to pay their fair share only 19% of voters polled said that Californians are being asked to share the pain equally. 
• And to drive that point home, only 29% of voters polled said that the budget should be balanced only with spending cuts.  According to the polling "even among 'No' voters, less than half (46%) say the government should rely entirely on spending cuts with no tax increases."

In summary, voters resented that the legislature is held captive by the 2/3 rule, and want them to address that instead of coming up with short-term gimmicks to get through another year while making things even worse later.

Additionally, and completely contrary to anti-tax and anti-government claims, the polling showed "broad support for new revenue streams."  According to the polling report, the public supports:

• Increasing taxes on alcoholic beverages (75% support)
• Increasing taxes on tobacco (74% support)
• Imposing an oil extraction tax on oil companies just like every other oil producing state (73% support)
• Closing the loophole that allows corporations to avoid reassessment of the value of new property they purchase (63% support)
• Increasing the top bracket of the state income tax from nine point three percent to 10 percent for families with taxable income over $272,000 a year and to eleven percent for families with taxable incomes over $544,000 a year (63% support)
• Prohibiting corporations from using tax credits to offset more than fifty percent of the taxes they owe (59% support)

The corporate right has to spin last week's special election as an anti-tax vote.  What else can they do?  But, as usual, their spin goes completely the other way from the facts.

Let's put them to the test.  The corporate right claims that this election showed that the public is solidly against government and taxes.  If they really believe that, how about reinstating majority rule in California, instead of requiring a 2/3 vote to pass budgets and taxes? 

Since they claim that the public is solidly against taxes, will they also support a straight up-or-down vote on taxes?  Of course not.  The public is not with them and they know it. This is just a ruse to continue destroying our great state and our democratic process.

Click through to Speak Out California.

Posted by Dave Johnson at 2:34 PM | Comments (0) | Link Cosmos

May 26, 2009

Are California Voters 'Anti-Government?'

This post originally appeared at Speak Out California. In the op-ed piece titled, "A rising anti-government tide," Republican leader Newt Gingrich wrote last week about California's special election,

"This vote is the second great signal that the American people are getting fed up with corrupt politicians, arrogant bureaucrats, greedy interests and incompetent, destructive government."

For those unfamiliar with the history of Newt Gingrich here is a quick lesson in what you are hearing.  Newt Gingrich is a father of Republican nasty-talk.  In 1990 Gingrich introduced a memo titled, "Language: A Key Mechanism of Control," advising Republicans to use certain words over and over, always describing opponents as "destructive," "incompetent," "greedy," etc., and always describe Republicans as "humane," "fair," "principled," etc.  Please go read the memo and see for yourself.  Gingrich's advice was to just insult and insult and be nasty dirty up the discourse, and you will win elections.  And, of course, that is what they did and they did win elections - for a while.  They are still nasty and just insult and insult, but they haven't been winning elections. 

So, knowing that, take anything Gingrich says with a grain of salt.  (Never mind that Gingrich is also known for committing adultery in a car in the parking garage of the U.S. Capital, with a much-younger Congressional aide while he was Speaker of the House, during the Republican effort to impeach President Clinton for adultery!)  And ask yourself why any supposedly respectable news outlet would give him a platform to do the damage that he does.  
 
But back to the subject-at-hand, whether voters really, as Gingrich claims, expressed an "anti-government" message last week?  Does Gingrich have his facts right?  Let's check a fact. Gingrich wrote, "This model of high-tax, big-spending inefficiency has already driven thousands of successful Californians out of the state..." But everyone who actually knows anything about California knows that the reason people leave the state is because of high real-estate prices.  And the reason they are high is because so many people want to live here.  Of course, the implication (because it coincides with another Republican talking point) is that businesses leave the state because of taxes.  Studies that look at actual facts show this isn't true, either.  Brian Leubitz on Friday wrote about this at Calitics,

"He [Gingrich] highlights the Yacht Party theme that all these businesses are leaving California...except that they aren't. As noted by the CA Budget Project blog, the PPIC has shown that this really isn't true. PPIC event went so far as to say, in a report, that "it is important to be wary of anecdotal evidence of businesses fleeing the state to support arguments that California has an economic climate hostile to business.""

Can any readers name even a single business that has left California because of taxes?  If so, leave a comment.

Next: A look at the polls.  Click through to Speak Out California.

Posted by Dave Johnson at 10:46 AM | Comments (1) | Link Cosmos

May 15, 2009

The Bailouts and Democracy

(This post appeared as part of the Issues Now! series leading up to the America's Future Now conference from the Campaign for America's Future.)

I have questions about the bailouts and I can’t seem to get answers. This by itself means there are big problems with the bailouts and the rest of this effort to restore the economy. I am a citizen in a (supposed) democracy and I am not getting enough information to allow me to do my job. As a citizen I’m in charge of all of this, yet I don’t know where my money is going, how it is being used, what alternatives were considered, who is profiting, who is gaming the system, and I can’t find out.

Like the old Soviet Union, when the institutions that are supposed to provide information are not trusted – or are not there – rumors and alternate explanations (read: “conspiracy theories”) abound. And so it is with the national discussion of the bailouts. Ask anyone on the street about the bailouts, read almost any blog, op-ed page, letter to the editor: people do not understand why these particular corporations are so special that they should get this special access to our money after they got themselves into trouble, and no one is doing a good job of explaining to the public-at-large just what is going on. “Trust us” is not democracy.

Take a look at this short video clip of Representative Alan Grayson (D-Fla) asking the Federal Reserve Inspector General what she knows about the trillions that the Fed has put up and the IG saying she doesn’t know:

Q: “You’re the Inspector General … do you know who received that one trillion dollars plus…?”

A: “I do not know.”

And there are reports that the Congressional Oversight Panel headed by Elizabeth Warren is having trouble getting sufficient information from the Treasury Department. So as far as I can tell, no one is getting sufficient information and reporting back to us citizens what is being done in our name and with our money. And it is a lot of money. Right-wing radio and blogs are certainly taking full advantage of this information gap to stir up anger and trouble. As David Sirota wrote the other day,

According to Bloomberg News, the White House, the Congress and the Federal Reserve have committed almost $13 trillion to the financial industry in one bailout form or another. If even more resources continue to be devoted to bailing out the same financial con artists who got us into this economic mess, that means far less resources will be available to tackle all of the nation's other challenges (health care, infrastructure, education, etc.). And when those challenges aren't met, conservatives will have a set of failures to cite as a powerful rationale for their own political revival.

So let me ask a few of my questions:

Are the stress tests being gamed as rumored? If so, why? They used 8.9 percent unemployment as their “worst case” and, as Dean Baker wrote, “The unemployment rate hit 8.9 percent last week and it is undoubtedly going higher.”

Is the Public/Private Investment Partnership (PPIP) plan being gamed as rumored with big banks using bailout funds to trade toxic assets at inflated prices and again fraudulently boost their balance sheets (BBuBfBBs)? (The dual-alliteration test might be just as valid as a stress test that used a sure-to-be-topped unemployment number as its worst case.) But seriously, is someone looking into this and stopping it if true?

Is it true that, as rumored, individuals at AIG are offering sweet deals (backed by taxpayer dollars) in exchange for very-high-paying jobs down the line with the recipients of those deals? Again, is someone looking into this and stopping it if true?

Why was it essential that those particular corporations be bailed out to get credit flowing? Couldn’t other banks take over their lending subsidiaries or departments with government help? Instead we’re giving billions to already-too-big corporations followed by rumors that they are using the money to acquire other companies and get even bigger. Are we making too-big-to-fail corporations into too-bigger-to-fail corporations?

Why do Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and others in the Obama administration appear (at least from the information I get) to think their employer is the financial sector instead of the People of the United States? For example, in the restructuring of GM they are allowing jobs to be outsourced. How does this match up with the idea that in our democracy those workers are their employer?

Along the same lines, why didn’t the legislation authorizing the bailouts prohibit the companies receiving taxpayer money from lobbying? Why didn’t it limit pay and bonuses at all levels to the amount earned by the President of the United States? Why did it have so many loopholes that allow these companies to game the system with our money? In other words, why does it seem like the people writing the legislation felt they worked for the banking industry instead of the people?

And here is a big question: Didn’t we go through something just like this with the S&L crisis not that long ago? What lessons did we learn from that? The causes of the S&L crisis were deregulation, “unsound real estate lending,” and connected insiders (with names like Neil Bush) gaming the system. I wrote about the connection between the S&L crisis and this one the other day,

People got really, really rich looting financial institutions, and then when the taxpayers came in to fix it connected insiders got really rich from that, too. … Valuable properties were sold to connected insiders for pennies on the dollar. Pretty much everyone was allowed to keep what they made from what we think of as bad practices.

So look at the results of the current crisis. A few got really rich by looting financial institutions, taxpayers on the hook to bail everyone out, and the cleanup looks like it involves connected insiders getting really rich. ...

So maybe the lesson WAS learned. For example, we think Lehman was a failure? But a few people made millions, even hundreds of millions from those decisions. ... And they were all allowed to keep the money.

So the lesson for US to learn is that this stuff works out really well for the people making the decisions. If we want these things to stop we need to get the money back … and put enough of them in jail. Otherwise the incentive structure guarantees this will happen over and over. It is set up that way.

Yes, these are a lot of questions.

And one last one: Do we want to “restore” our financial system, or change it? What we had didn’t work. In fact what we had demonstrated the most extreme example of “didn’t work” that any of us have experienced in our lifetimes. So why do we want to “restore” it? The words imply a wish to return to the way things were. Ryan Avent writes,

Many progressives want to use the actual process of crisis resolution to reshape the financial system, but this is like trying to install a sprinkler system while one’s home is on fire.

Ryan, this fire burned down the whole town. What I want is a complete investigation of how the fire started, who started it, why there wasn’t a sprinkler system, why the fire department wasn’t making them install a sprinkler system (and was someone paid off), and how much the fire department is spending on fighting the fire. And then I want complete accountability: who will go to jail for starting this fire and who will be fired because there was no sprinkler system. And when all that is out of the way I want new management at the fire department and a completely overhauled fire code that protects the public and never lets this happen again.

Shouldn’t we instead learn from what happened and make some fundamental changes to bring it more in line with our ideas about democracy and who is supposed to be in charge here? As I have been asking for years, who is our economy for anyway? Shouldn’t we see that too-big-to-fail is too big and limit by law the size of corporations – as well as limit the allowed percentage of ownership any person or entity can as they grow larger? Shouldn’t we realize that corporate money should stay in the corporation and not be allowed to influence our decision-making? Shouldn’t we all be asking more questions and getting answers?

If anything needs to be “restored” it is the understanding that We, the People are in charge here and have a right to all the information we want and need from our government and our elected officials. They work for us. Under our system We, the People are supposed to be telling the corporations what to do, not the other way around.

Posted by Dave Johnson at 12:02 PM | Comments (0) | Link Cosmos

May 8, 2009

Who Is The Boss Of Who?

The first three words of the Constitution - the document that states the rules of our country - are "We, the People."

We are supposed to be in charge here. We are supposed to be the ones who make the decisions and the rules.

We built this country and the institutionsthat created its wealth. But now an elite few have seized control, live off of that mutual effort and "own" 90% of everything. When the people try to make decisions that alter that, they block it. With this in mind, see Kyl Warns Obama Administration Not to Fire Bank CEOs - Bloomberg.com

A leading Senate Republican warned the Obama administration against removing chief executive officers at banks that received U.S. assistance, saying “the great fear” would be government management of companies.

God forbid that We, the People might want to have a say in all of this!

Posted by Dave Johnson at 12:15 PM | Comments (1) | Link Cosmos

May 6, 2009

Humanity's Greatest Challenge

Go read Kim Cranston: Humanity's Greatest Challenge and Its Solution. This is an excellent and important post pointing out that the failure is not as much solving the scientific problems, but that our institutions aren't even able to agree to start trying to.

Our greatest challenge is that our institutions can't resolve any of these challenges, let alone prioritize climate change as the challenge that poses the greatest threat if we don't act immediately. Until we address the crisis of the failure of our institutions to resolve the significant challenges we face, don't expect progress on any of them.

[. . .]

Can democracy survive complexity? That is what this [energy-environment] problem represents. It is so difficult. It is multi-scale, multidisciplinary, with large certainty in some areas and small certainty in others. It is irreversible and reversible and we won't know how we did until it is over. We will only know forty years later. That is why climate complexity is a challenge to democracy. Democracy is short term."

Exactly. Go read.

Posted by Dave Johnson at 4:04 PM | Comments (0) | Link Cosmos

April 29, 2009

Not My Priorities

Please take a look at Not My Priorities. This is a great idea, clear, simple, understandable.

From the site,

NotMyPriorities.org is an effort to enable every person in America to see a pie chart that our representatives in congress approved. I have shown the Not My Priorities pie chart to thousands of people and can count on one hand how many have disagreed. Even Republicans say that the pie chart does not represent their priorities!

Posted by Dave Johnson at 11:11 AM | Comments (2) | Link Cosmos

April 27, 2009

Do We Still Have A Two-Tiered Justice System?

Earlier I commented on the case of Rep. Harman. Anyone else caught with this appearance of a crime would be investigated by the Justice Department, and maybe prosecuted if the investigation showed reason to do so. I can understand that the Bush admin, the way they operated, may have discovered an opportunity to exchange letting her off the hook for getting her help (also known as blackmail) but is the Obama Justice Dept. investigating these allegations against Harman? (As well as the allegation that the Bush Justice Dept didn't?) If not, why not?

The other day the story in the press was that President decided not to let the Justice Dept. investigate and maybe prosecute people in the CIA. I hope this is not the case, because this would be inappropriate political interference with the Justice Dept. If a crime is committed it must be investigated and, if warranted, prosecuted - no matter who is involved and no matter whether the President likes it or not. That is how rule of law works.

It is my hope that we are returning to rule of law, and the Justice Dept is back to properly doing its job without political interference, and is investigating the allegations that the Bush admin tortured people, and is investigating whether to prosecute Rep. Harman.

If not, we have just swapped one politicized Justice Dept. for another. And we continue to have a country where some people are above the law and the rest of us are beneath it.

Posted by Dave Johnson at 11:26 PM | Comments (0) | Link Cosmos

April 26, 2009

On Jerry Brown’s Campaign For California Governor

He was called “Moonbeam” and mocked, but he was right, and we were right, and the country needs to come to terms with this this so we can move on and finally DO right.

Jerry Brown was Governor of California from 1975 to 1983. He was a symbol of “the 60’s” even though it was the 70's, because he came from the times, cared about the issues of the times, spoke the language of the times and governed for the people, from the times. He opposed the Vietnam war. He talked about protecting the environment and conserving energy and providing education and "Buddhist economics." He fought corporate power and sued large corporations, particularly in the area of campaign finance. He was right.

For taking these positions Jerry was called "Moonbeam" and mocked for advocating things that we now all understand were correct and necessary. It is 30 years later and the country needs to get past that mocking of the people who were right. But the mocking and obstruction by entrenched interests are still in the way of letting us move on and do the things we need to do for the economy, the country, and the planet.

Now Jerry is again running for Governor of California and I think this is important to our current national conversation at a time when we must come to terms with the reasons that we have waited 30 years to start doing something about major problems. Jerry’s campaign will force a conversation that will clarify for the country that the "dirty hippies" were right, that we need to learn to ignore the mocking that is a primary weapon of the corporate right, that we need to take care of the planet, that we need to take care of each other, that we need to be in charge of the corporations, not the other way around.

In his speech to the California Democratic Convention he talked about how 30 years ago he changed California's energy policies, and how the result has been that California has barely increased its energy use since while the rest of the country has. He talk about a number of things like this, but what most resonated with me was when he talked about how we educate kids. The current emphasis on testing is stifling the creativity of kids. He says we need to bring back education that stimulates creativity. Wow -- how long since I have heard "60's" talk that's so right?! Talk that recognizes our humanity and says that we are not just cogs in a corporate machine. Who talks about these things today?

A few years ago, when Jerry was running for Attorney General, I wrote,

I've loved Jerry Brown since his 1992 campaign for President. During that campaign he proposed boosting the economy and helping the energy/pollution/Middle East problem with a national program to hire unemployed people to retrofit buildings to be energy efficient. Imagine if we had done that! So now 13 years later we have the Apollo Alliance but Jerry doesn't seem to get much credit for being so far ahead on this.

A few years before that I wrote,

In the 1992 campaign Jerry Brown made a suggestion that I haven't forgotten. He suggested putting the unemployed to work retrofitting buildings and homes to be energy efficient. It requires an up-front investment but it returns a more efficient economy (everyone paying less for energy) and national energy independence as a foreign policy bonus. Meanwhile all those unemployed people are getting and spending paychecks, boosting the economy. It helps everyone but the oil companies. Oh. I guess not, then.

I don’t know right now if Brown can or should win and this is not an endorsement. But I think this is a conversation that we all need to have and learn from.

Posted by Dave Johnson at 8:03 AM | Comments (0) | Link Cosmos

April 25, 2009

MUST Prosecute

There is a great diary over at Daily Kos: They Are Telling Us They Will Torture Again. Go read.

This is the deal: We HAVE TO investigate and prosecute, or they will just keep doing it. Senators can write strongly-worded statements and lock them in a safe, as Sen. Rockefeller did to protest illegal wiretapping, and it won't stop anything. Investigate and prosecute. Lay down the law. Make the statement that we do not tolerate this, and will punish those who do it.

Posted by Dave Johnson at 10:48 AM | Comments (0) | Link Cosmos

April 24, 2009

The Rules Of DC Journalists

Go read: Three key rules of media behavior shape their discussions of "the 'torture' debate" - Glenn Greenwald,

[. . .]
(1) Any policy that Beltway elites dislike is demonized as coming from "the Left" or -- in this case (following Karl Rove) -- the "hard Left."
[. . .]
(2) Nobody is more opposed to transparency and disclosure of government secrets than establishment "journalists."
[. . .]
(3) The single most sacred Beltway belief is that elites are exempt from the rule of law.

Posted by Dave Johnson at 10:54 AM | Comments (0) | Link Cosmos

April 23, 2009

Public Still Trusts Corporations More Than Self-Government

This post originally appeared at Speak Out California.

But is it really better to be government by corporations?  In February I wrote,

After decades of anti-government speeches claiming that government holds back business, government takes money out of the economy and government is less efficient than corporations, people came to believe that, as Ronald Reagan famously said, "Government is the problem, not the solution."  This led to deregulation and budget cutbacks in all areas including education and infrastructure. 

If you think about it, government really is what We, the People want it to be.  In a democracy we jointly make decisions about the best way to manage our affairs.  So saying that corporations do things better is really an anti-democracy message.  What they are saying is that organizations run by a few wealthy elites telling everyone else what to do, with the benefits of everyone's work mostly going to those few at the top, is a better way to manage society than to have everyone making the decisions and sharing in the results.

Just for fun, here is the video from that post again:


Here is more proof that marketing works:  A recent Gallup Poll of public trust of government vs corporations found that the public still would rather be governed by big corporations than by themselves.

Gallup's results, graphically:

Marketing works.  Especially when it is repeated over and over for decades, unopposed.  This blog reaches a moderate audience, but the message that government by the people is a good thing needs to reach people who don't hear it very often, and only hear the marketed anti-government, anti-democracy message that is spread by the corporations.  Did you know that Speak Out California also provides speakers to talk to local groups across California and do radio and TV interviews discussing the benefits of government and democracy? Please contact us at info@speakoutca.org to schedule a speaker for your event.
Click through to Speak Out California and leave a comment.

Posted by Dave Johnson at 12:11 PM | Comments (0) | Link Cosmos

April 22, 2009

Chris Bowers Says Make Them Actually Filibuster

Chris outlines how to actually make the Repubicans stand and tal for days when they filibuster things. This way the public will clearly see who is and who is not bloakcing important bills.

Open Left:: Make The Filibuster An Actual Filibuster

Posted by Dave Johnson at 10:48 AM | Comments (0) | Link Cosmos

Why We Have Low-Information Voters

We have low-information voters because they receive low information.

I was reading this story, Credit card bill tests Democrats' political will, and came across this:

Her [Rep. Carolyn Maloney, D-NY] proposed legislation would halt credit cards from imposing arbitrary rate increases and penalties and certain billing practices on balances with different rates. It is expected to win approval by the committee, and later by the full House.

But it remains unclear whether Democrats in the Senate can muster the 60 votes needed in that chamber to advance controversial legislation amid stiff opposition from the banking industry. The Senate's version of a credit card reform bill includes tougher language. [emphasis added]

The REASON that 60 votes are needed in the Senate is because the Republican party is obstructive every single bill. It isn't that "the Democrats" don't need to muster a few votes, it is that the Republicans are acting in ways never before seen in history. The name for it is "filibuster" and it was used on a few occasions in the past, when the concerns of the minority were sufficient to have them stay up all night talking.

Now we have a corporate-purchased party that blocks consumer legislation so they can get more lobbying money from the banking industry.

My complaint: No one reading a story like this would know any of this. So they would not have the information needed to make an informed decision in the voting booth, and certainly not know who to call to ask them to vote the right way.

The corporate news media is not serving our democracy. They serve a different master.

Posted by Dave Johnson at 8:27 AM | Comments (0) | Link Cosmos

April 21, 2009

It Is Improper For The President To Interfere With The Justice Department

Atrios makes a very important point: The President is not supposed to say that someone should or should not be prosecuted.

We have a system of justice that is supposed to be independent of politics and individuals. It is improper for a President to say that someone will or will not be prosecuted. No one is supposed to be above the law.

I hope Atrios doesn't mind if I pay him the complement of repeating his post in full:

I'm so old I can remember those ancient days when it was accepted that the Justice Department was independent from the president, that the Attorney General and others should make decisions absent political considerations, and that when it seemed as if independence might not be possible, the AG should recuse him/herself and appoint a special prosecutor.

I'm not the first person to bring this up recently, but the point is that it shouldn't be Obama's and Rahm Emmanuel's decision whether to prosecute anybody. If there's suspicion and clear evidence that people broke laws, an inquiry should begin. If the AG feels undue pressure from President Change and his gang then he should appoint a special prosecutor to try to wall off the investigation from political pressure.

This is an example of just how badly Bush and the Republicans distorted our system, when everyone later takes it for granted that this is how things are done. It is also an example of why we need to investigate and prosecute lawbreaking. If you don't lay down the law the things that are allowed to slide become the norm.

Update - I see that Glenn Greenwald wrote about this at Salon,

Whether to commence criminal investigations and prosecutions of specific acts of alleged criminality is not Obama's decision to make. It is the duty of the Justice Department, and ultimately the Attorney General, to make those decisions based strictly on legal considerations, and independent of the political interests of the White House. Whether or not Obama favors prosecutions is really irrelevant, and one could almost reasonably argue that the increasingly aggressive pressure he and his aides, such as Rahm Emanuel, have been exerting to impede prosecutions was becoming improper.

BUT adds that, to Obama's credit,

Clearly, Obama today -- in the face of rising rapidly pressure to investigate -- seems to have re-considered that approach. Obama just plainly contradicted what Rahm Emanuel said over the weekend and what Robert Gibbs said yesterday when he announced this afternoon -- appropriately so -- that the decision of whether to prosecute Bush lawyers who authorized torture ("those who formulated those legal decisions") was one for the Attorney General, and not Obama, to make, and that Obama did not want to "prejudge" that question.

Posted by Dave Johnson at 11:45 AM | Comments (0) | Link Cosmos

April 19, 2009

America Was Created To Fight Corporate Power

Americans should all understand the reasons behind the formation of this country. We formed this country because a wealthy elite, called royalty, controlled the economy and set up legal monopoly operations for the benefit of their cronies, called corporations, and then set up the laws and tax structure to benefit those corporations and their owners at the expense of the rest of us.

We fought a revolution to change this. We set up a governement and economy that is supposed to be controlled by We, the People. Think about the meaning of that the next time you hear corporate-funded voices complain about "big government." They are complaining that the people make the decisions instead of the corporate elite -- once known as royalty.

PLEASE read The Real Boston Tea Party was Against the Wal-Mart of the 1770s

The real Boston Tea Party was a protest against huge corporate tax cuts for the British East India Company, the largest trans-national corporation then in existence. This corporate tax cut threatened to decimate small Colonial businesses by helping the BEIC pull a Wal-Mart against small entrepreneurial tea shops, and individuals began a revolt that kicked-off a series of events that ended in the creation of The United States of America.

They covered their faces, massed in the streets, and destroyed the property of a giant global corporation. Declaring an end to global trade run by the East India Company that was destroying local economies, this small, masked minority started a revolution with an act of rebellion later called the Boston Tea Party.

Later in the piece,

The citizens of the colonies were preparing to throw off one of the corporations that for almost 200 years had determined nearly every aspect of their lives through its economic and political power. They were planning to destroy the goods of the world’s largest multinational corporation, intimidate its employees, and face down the guns of the government that supported it.

A link to this was posted at Atrios' blog, by Avedon of The sideshow.

Posted by Dave Johnson at 7:51 AM | Comments (1) | Link Cosmos

April 16, 2009

Tea Party Contradictions

This post originally appeared at Speak Out California

Let's take a look at yesterday's tea parties.   I am hearing from people who attended tea parties around the country that the people who showed up were by and large good, honest Americans who are upset about the bailouts, deficits and general direction that things have been going for some time.  I say good for them for getting involved, speaking up and showing up.  We need more of that in this country, after so many decades of apathy.

There is a problem with the tea party events as presented, however, in that the sentiments and concerns of these regular people were largely hijacked by professional manipulators, who wanted to make it appear that the the people at the rallies support an anti-democracy, anti-government, pro-corporate and right wing agenda.  These were the FOX News and Rush Limbaugh audience, and the people from militias with racist signs, and paranoid people convinced that President Obama is a "fascist," etc. and who claim that the economic distress we are experiencing is somehow the fault of Obama's and the Democrats' policies even though he only took office less than three months ago

There are distressing photos of these event-hijackers, and there was troubling and violent rhetoric at many of the rallies. The Governor of Texas actually talked about his state seceding from the union -- the very definition of hating America and the kind of talk once that led to a savage civil war. (FOX News called such talk "patriotic." One has to ask, "patriotic to what country?")

An obviously focus-group-tested phrase was repeated at the rallies: "Obama is going to raise taxes on our kids by borrowing for unnecessary government spending now." But what did the people at these rallies think us "liberals" have been saying all this time about the effect of all the Republican borrowing to pay for these huge tax cuts they gave to the rich and corporations, and to pay for the Iraq war and other military spending increases? This is the reason we have these huge deficits!

And, of course, no one ever says which spending is "unnecessary."  Do they mean unemployment checks? Bush made those necessary.  How about money to rebuild roads and bridges and schools? Bush made that necessary.  How about money to reduce our oil use? Bush and Cheney, both former oil company executives, made that necessary. How about money to continue funding the Iraq war? Bush made that necessary. The bailout money? To the extent that it was necessary (I don't agree that it was) it certainly was not Obama who wrecked the economy.

Which spending in the stimulus plan, specifically, is "unnecessary," and which was made necessary by the Republicans who messed things up so badly?

Some contradictions from the rallies: 

• The people at the rallies were presented as protesting tax increases, yet in the current Obama budget only tax cuts have been proposed. (There are hints that there will be a request for a small tax increase on the very wealthy after a few years.)
  
• Many at the rallies were protesting against "government spending," but did not seem to understand where the government actually spends a huge portion of our budget, such as on military and huge subsidies for big oil, agriculture and other corporations (like Wall Street bailouts) -- but instead were protesting against imagined spending like "welfare" and foreign aid, which add up to only a tiny fraction of the budget. 
• Reagan's and Bush's tax cuts for the rich have created so much debt that we currently pay out over $500 billion to interest each year -- paid to people who can afford to loan us trillions.  Now that is some serious government spending. 
  
• Many rallies were rebranded by their corporate-funded organizers as "Fair Tax" rallies. But the so-called "Fair Tax" is really about cutting taxes on the rich and making up for it by raising taxes on everyone else. This is an example of corporate astroturf convincing people to support raising their own taxes or cutting their own benefits so that taxes on the wealthy and big corporations can be further reduced.  (You can't cut taxes for that group without making up for it somewhere.)

This all brings to mind something that I have said about marketing: with good enough marketing you can convince people to kill themselves.  Think about cigarettes and the comet-suicide cult and you'll understand what I mean.

Click through to Speak Out California and leave a comment.

Posted by Dave Johnson at 3:44 PM | Comments (2) | Link Cosmos

April 13, 2009

Stop The Corrupting Corporate Money At The Source

The way to stop corporate corruption of our political system is to stop the corporate money from leaking out of the corporation.

We can pass laws to prevent corporations from using money for anything other than the operation of the company. We can impose a regulatory structure that works, and stops them from using funds for lobbying, funding front-group "think tanks" and anything else that WE decide is corrupting our system. We can track the money, and punish executives who allow it to leak out of the corporation.

We can stop it at the source. Much easier than trying to patch hundreds of little loopholes that pop up to capture the flow of money after it has left the corporation. It is so much easier to spot money as it leaves the company, and plug that leak, than it is to try to control it after it is out. One law, one set of accounting rules, and it all stops.

We, the People grant corporations a charter to operate, within certain rules. We allow them to amass significant resources because it enables large-scale projects. But these resources are supposed to be used to run the company, not to corrupt our political system. This money is supposed to be the property of the shareholders and is supposed to be used ONLY to run the company. It is theft for executives to use it to fund anything that influences public opinion or policy to enrich themselves...

Posted by Dave Johnson at 10:32 AM | Comments (1) | Link Cosmos

April 10, 2009

Democracy - Where The People Are In Control

Not.

Calculated Risk: Fed Orders Banks Not to Release Stress Test Results

Posted by Dave Johnson at 8:45 AM | Comments (0) | Link Cosmos

April 6, 2009

Corporate Corruption: So Obvious - How To End It

A company (or industry) makes a tremendous amount of money by scamming us, screwing us, stealing from us, killing us, poisoning us, destroying our environment or some other thing that one way or another a working democracy would stop immediately. But the company uses a portion of the money they are accumulating to pay off legislators, regulators, inspectors -- someone in the government -- to keep them from stopping the company from what they are doing. And they pay off others in the government to stop the rest of the government from doing anything about that. Meanwhile they spend a bit more of that money on marketing/propaganda/PR/trickery to make us look the other way.

So it continues. And we all get poorer while they get richer. And each year this continues they have even more money and power to use to keep us from stopping them.

We see it over and over again. It is becoming the primary path to wealth here. Companies and industries getting rich from corruption, bribery, buying elections, buying legislators, purchasing government subsidies or tax breaks or handouts or bailouts... It is so much more cost-effective than actually making something worthwhile and slowly building an industry based on quality and good service to customers that it is replacing the old, more honest business model.

How many examples can you think of just off the top of your head?

Of course we start with the tobacco industry, killing what, 400,000 Americans each year? But if I start writing about all the ways the tobacco industry has paid off legislators and others to ward off accountability I won't get anything else written for weeks...

And then there are the health insurance companies, reaping their fortunes off of keeping us from health care and from having a health care system like the rest of the modern countries of the world.

The pharmaceutical industry actually got the Republican Party to pass a law prohibiting the government from negotiating better prices for the drugs Medicare buys!

The military armament industry, grabbing one of the largest chunks of the US budget, continues the taxpayer gravy train by marketing fear and marginalization... Look what happens to anyone who suggests we shouldn't continue handing them more money than every other country in the world combined spends on their own military. Suggesting we cut this brings down the hammer.

The oil industry, what can I say? An industry that exists to take a resource out of the ground and sell it back to us -- as if the resources of the planet are not the property of the people of the planet -- paying off legislators to keep us from taxing them, all the while poisoning the planet, preventing alternatives...

Wall Street, hedge funds and the banking industry -- what do I need to say? They paid to get a law passed prohibiting the government from regulating credit default swaps. And now they pay to get the government to bail them out from the inevitable consequences!

How about the food industry -- paying to get the government to stop food inspections? Paying to be allowed to continue to sell food proven to makes people obese and give us diabetes - even children?

How about industries that market anorexia and self-hatred to women in order to sell clothes and makeup?

How long could I go on with this list? Leave a comment with an example of your own.

What do we do about it? It really is a simple answer. All we really have to do is remember that the first three words of our Constitution are "We, the People." WE are in charge here, not them. We are the boss of them. We own the country (and its resources), not them. We make the laws, not them. We are a one-person-one-vote not a one-dollar-one-vote country.

So it's very simple, really: We change the laws. We stop them from corrupting us with the money that our laws allow corporations to accumulate. We prevent companies from spending even one cent on anything other than what that company does. It is not their business to tell us what to do, it is our obligation as citizens in a democracy to tell them what to do. We need to say: not one cent can leak out of a company to influence the rules we set for how companies operate. No lobbying whatsoever. No propaganda. No funding "think tanks" that are just front groups for corporate PR. No astroturf, no PR, no influencing public opinion in any way whatsoever. Not one cent used for anything that even hints at telling us how to run our country. Not one cent for anything other than the operation of the company, and while we're at it that includes predatory marketing of their own products, marketing that influences our culture, marketing that makes us feel bad about ourselves, marketing that makes us feel bad about others, marketing that insults us and marketing that makes us think we should want things that we shouldn't!

And jail for anyone who breaks these rules. Because we are the boss in this country and they have abused that idea and in so doing have ruined our economy and harmed our planet.

We are the people, we are in charge. All we have to do to get this done is do it. Once you believe that you have the power, you do.

Posted by Dave Johnson at 8:18 PM | Comments (0) | Link Cosmos

April 4, 2009

Who Do You Think Paid For This? - Episode XXII

Down With Tyranny has the story: The End Of Tax Havens? Not Until The Far Right Is Wiped Off The Face Of The Earth

OK, this video is from the Center for Freedom and Prosperity Foundation featuring Dan Mitchell from Cato Institute who it also turns out is Chariman of the CFPF, and Down With Tyranny swears it isn't a spoof:

Billionaires and the shills who make a living by scraping and bowing before them and faithfully serving their interests-- like the Republican Party and GOP front groups like the American Heritage Institute, Fox News and the Cato Institute-- are hardly giving up and will fight a battle to persuade gullible Americans that tax cheats are true patriots. This video by Republican Party astroturf group, the Center for Freedom and Prosperity Foundation explains, with a straight face, how absolutely fabulous tax havens are. This isn't a spoof; it's real (I swear):

The guy actually keeps a straight face while he says this stuff about why rich people and companies should be able to avoid taxes using tax-scam secret offshore accounts. (I'll bet they also complain that Obama's budget increases the deficit.)

So where do you think this "institute" gets the money to put out stuff about how really, really rich people (who got rich off of the infrastructure that We, the People built) shouldn't pay taxes?

Posted by Dave Johnson at 2:00 PM | Comments (1) | Link Cosmos

March 31, 2009

The Government's Financial Transparency Website

Take a look at FinancialStability.gov | U.S. Department of the Treasury

Posted by Dave Johnson at 8:04 PM | Comments (0) | Link Cosmos

March 19, 2009

Stop Corporate Lobbying With Taxpayer Money

This post originally appeared at the Commonweal Institute's Uncommon Denominator blog

Why are recipients of the Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP) – better known as the Banking Bailout – allowed to continue to lobby? Taxpayer dollars should not be used to influence our government. We, the People should be telling them what to do, not the other way around.

TARP recipients spent $114 million on lobbying last year as the financial crisis emerged. In just the last quarter of the year eighteen bailout recipients spent $14.8 million to influence the government, as the TARP funds were distributed.

The lobbying has paid off. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, “The companies' political activities have, in part, yielded them $295.2 billion from TARP, an extraordinary return of 258,449 percent.”

TARP recipients are currently lobbying against compensation caps at companies receiving TARP, against increasing bank regulation – and even against increased oversight of the use of TARP funds in the TARP Reform and Accountability Act! They are also lobbying against the Arbitration Fairness Act, the Fairness in Nursing Home Arbitration Act, the Mortgage Reform and Anti-Predatory Lending Act and the Helping Families Save Their Homes in Bankruptcy Act, Credit Card Holders Bill of Rights and the Stop Unfair Practices in Credit Cards Act!

But these companies are not just lobbying in favor of their own(ers) interests; they are lobbying against those of the rest of us. Recently it has come to light that Bank of America, Citigroup and other TARP recipients are organizing efforts to oppose the Employee Free Choice Act – federal legislation that would enable workers to organize unions, which results in increased income and benefits for working people, thereby enabling them to make their credit card and mortgage payments.

Use of corporate funds to influence our government is a larger problem than just this current misuse of TARP. In fact, this BofA and other companies’ use of TARP funds to oppose the Employee Free Choice Act supports an argument that the current economic crisis is a result of corporate lobbying. A corporate-funded assault on government has resulted in de-legislation and deregulation, enriching a few at the expense of the rest of us, while eroding the foundations of our economy and our democracy. Now the public has been harvested in one scheme after another, plundered for every dollar as incomes stagnated, debt skyrocketed and savings fell. Consumption fell off the cliff as the work- and debt-load tapped out people’s ability to participate in the economy. The resulting crisis has led to taxpayer dollars propping them all up.

And now millions of those taxpayer dollars are being used for … even more lobbying.

Whether or not this collapse occurred as a direct result of lobbying and other influence buying, it was not a grassroots movement that led to repealing the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933, allowing financial giants to trade mortgage-backed securities and collateralized debt obligations. It was not citizens holding politicians’ feet to the fire that killed the Financial Services Antifraud Network Act. At the same time the lobbying-bought deregulation and suspension of oversight allowed these companies to sell trillions in credit default swaps without the necessary reserves to cover the potential downside. And here we are.

Companies understand lobbying as a way to profit, not to advance policies that serve all of us. A 2006 New York Times article discusses how Google felt it had “no choice but to get into the arena” to start “spreading its lobbying dollars” around to politicians and quotes a Google lobbyist saying the “policy process is an extension of the market battlefield.” According to the Washington Post, a lobbyist explosion occurred in the last decade, doubling to 34,750 between 2000 and 2005, the result of “wide acceptance among corporations that they need to hire professional lobbyists to secure their share of federal benefits.”

This lobbying does not bring We, the People any benefit, it only boosts the financial interests of certain individuals. This is not competition to improve a product or service or the efficiency of the company. It is paying off politicians to gain unfair competitive advantage or to receive subsidies or tax breaks.

Clearly it is time to demand that TARP recipients stop using corporate funds for anything other than operating their companies, and get their noses out of our business.

Lobbyists say they serve a necessary function, providing information to legislators. But corporations can’t have it both ways. If lobbying is purely informational and not intended to sway favor for particular corporations, then the funds are not being used to generate profit for the shareholders and the use of funds and resources is theft from the company. But if the lobbying is intended to tilt the playing field and gain benefits for a company over others it is really just bribery, an affront to our democracy and laws, corrupting our system. If the use of corporate funds to lobby is for the financial gain of a few executives, this is also theft from the company by those few for their personal gain.

We should immediately prohibit companies from engaging in lobbying while accepting taxpayer dollars. Restricting lobbying by TARP recipients would be a bipartisan solution, as Republican lawmakers have called for exactly this approach in the past. The 1981 Heritage Foundation Mandate for Leadership called for a ban on lobbying by recipients of federal funds, as did the 1995 Republican “Istook Amendment.”

And it is time to open a discussion about whether any corporate funds – whether the company is a recipient of TARP funding or not – should be used to influence our government. We should be telling them what to do, not the other way around.

Click through to the Commonweal Institute's Uncommon Denominator blog

Posted by Dave Johnson at 2:29 PM | Comments (2) | Link Cosmos

Who IS In Charge Here?

"Like we're along for the ride, still taking dictates from the people who got us into the mess we're in."

Posted by Dave Johnson at 12:14 PM | Comments (0) | Link Cosmos

March 18, 2009

Source Of The AIG Outrage

The AIG outrage is not just over these particular bonuses, or that the AIG taxpayer bailout billions went to Goldman Sachs and European banks.

What is wrong here is that people committed fraud, bribed legislators, destroyed our economy and our democracy -- and no one is being held accountable. In fact, they're still running the show. The system isn't being changed. The system is still set up to give and get multimillion-dollar bonuses while so many lose jobs, houses, wages, etc. Wealth continues to concentrate at the very top. Power continues to concentrate. Politicians continue to give benefits to those at the top of the economic food chain, and we are the food. There is a wealthy elite in charge and the public sees it and is sick of it.

That is the source of the outrage, and until that is addressed the outrage will increase.

Posted by Dave Johnson at 8:15 AM | Comments (1) | Link Cosmos

March 17, 2009

No Schools For You

This post originally appeared at Speak Out California

Here is an idea for solving California's budget crisis.

What if the California legislature temporarily budgeted for districts according to the wishes of the district's legislators. If an Assembly or Senate representative demanded cuts to schools, fire, etc. then the schools, fire, etc. in that representative's district receive the entire cut! This would be an honest application of representative democracy, allowing the citizens of an area to be governed according to their wishes without it affecting all of the citizens in the state.

Wait, you say, why should only certain districts be punished with cuts? Why should only a few citizens shoulder the burden of balancing the budget through cuts? The answer is because those are the people who elected the extremist minority who are forcing the cuts, while refusing to ask the rich to pay their fair share and actually cutting taxes for huge corporations. (Yes, the budget "solution" included a huge tax cut for the Wal-Marts and Exxons.)

With this plan the residents of Santa Clarita (the right-wing bastion of northwest LA County) could get their wish to have no schools, police, road maintenance, firefighters, etc. while the residents of San Francisco could keep their government services. And the residents of both areas would have what they want.

Or, at least, they would have the opportunity to understand just who they elected.

Click through to Speak Out California

Posted by Dave Johnson at 9:37 AM | Comments (3) | Link Cosmos

March 16, 2009

Autoworkers Forced To Take Cuts - Wall Street Bankers Get Bonuses

Actually the headline sort of says it all. When GM needed a loan the autoworkers in the factories were forced to take pay cuts. But when the "too big to fail" Wall Street firms got bailouts many times the size of what GM needed, they continue to pay dividends, they continue to pay huge bonuses, and they send out taxpayer dollars to pay off banks in other countries. And they continue to spend millions on lobbying.

Our democracy truly is broken. We, the People have no say and receive few benefits from our economy.

Posted by Dave Johnson at 10:08 AM | Comments (1) | Link Cosmos

AIG Accountable To No One

Robert Reich says that the bailouts demonstrate that our democracy is broken.

Robert Reich's Blog: The Real Scandal of AIG,

The scandal is that even at this late date, even in a new administration dedicated to doing it all differently, Americans still have so little say over what is happening with our money.

[. . .] This sordid story of government helplessness in the face of massive taxpayer commitments illustrates better than anything to date why the government should take over any institution that's "too big to fail" and which has cost taxpayers dearly. Such institutions are no longer within the capitalist system because they are no longer accountable to the market. To whom should they be accountable? As long as taxpayers effectively own a large portion of them, they should be accountable to the government.

But if our very own Secretary of the Treasury doesn't even learn of the bonuses until months after AIG has decided to pay them, and cannot make stick his decision that they should not be paid, AIG is not even accountable to the government. That means AIG's executives -- using $170 billion of our money, so far -- are accountable to no one.

Reich also posted at Huffington Post, where he added a final line:

Our democracy is seriously broken.

Jane Hamsher goes on at Firedoglake, (click through for links and the rest)

As Glenn Greenwald notes, this argument is patently absurd. We forced auto workers to break their contracts with the US automakers and accept wage cuts as a condition of receiving TARP funds. Yet when it came time to limit executive bonuses at bailed out banks, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act only stipulated that bonuses would be prohibited for TARP recipients in employment contracts written after February 11, 2009. AIG was quick to note this in their white paper offering the legal justification for paying out these bonuses, which FDL obtained yesterday.

Unlike the auto workers, nobody insisted that the AIG bankers who wrote half a trillion in credit default swaps take a pay cut as a condition of receiving TARP funds. But this was the deal with the auto makers. And as economist Peter Morrici notes, "The Obama Treasury, headed by Tim Geithner, is forcing the terms of that deal on the United Autoworkers."

Posted by Dave Johnson at 8:50 AM | Comments (0) | Link Cosmos

March 14, 2009

Is President Obama A Socialist?

Is President Obama a "socialist?"

During the campaign this accusation was everywhere. According to Google there are currently 4,700,000 sites on the web with the words "Obama" and "Socialist." A couple of pre-election examples: Obama’s International Socialist Connections "Blogger Steve Bartin, who has been following Obama's career and involvement with the Chicago socialists, has uncovered a fascinating video showing Obama campaigning for openly socialist Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont.", Is Obama a socialist? "Obama has declared that he believes every person has a "right" to health care. The Socialist Party USA believes every person has a "right" to health care."

As silly as those pre-election accusations were, now it is Republican leaders making the claim that President Obama is a socialist,

Obama's plans are "one big down payment on a new American socialist experiment," asserts House minority leader John Boehner. He's "the world's best salesman of socialism," says Republican Senator Jim DeMint.

Never mind that Republicans don't even know that "socialism" means public ownership of the means of production, operated for the benefit of society and the people-at-large instead of for the profit of a select few. Of course, no one is talking about that, not even the Republicans making the direct "socialist" accusations. They mean something they call "European-style socialism,"

The five-term Republican said that he has gotten praise from his constituents for opposing the stimulus and warned that the country may succumb to "European-style socialism."

As we all know, when Republicans get on a talking point, they all get on it, almost as if someone were telling them to. Other examples of recent Republican accusations that Obama is taking us to "European-style socialism," here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and I'm only stopping because my fingers are getting tired.

So, let's take a look at whether Obama meets the Republican definition of a "European-style socialist" by comparing what we have in the U.S. to some of the things that "socialist" Europe offers to its citizens: (Note - Europe is not socialist...)

National health care system assuring every citizen has equal access to quality care? NO.

Five-six weeks mandatory vacation for everyone? NO.

Extended maternal leave for new parents? NO.

Day care provided for children? NO.

Fair(er) wages for all workers? NO.

Shorter, less stressful working hours? NO.

More even distribution of the benefits of the economy? NO.

Government services for citizens instead of a select few. NO.

Retirement at a relatively young age? NO.

Retirement with a good pension? NO.

Citizens having a say in how the economy is managed? NO.

Citizens protected from predatory corporations? NO.

So, even though the accusation was absurd on the face of it, even comparing Obama's policies to some of the "socialist" things offered to the people in Europe, Obama is not a socialist.

Posted by Dave Johnson at 9:54 AM | Comments (0) | Link Cosmos

March 12, 2009

Recovery.gov

Have you visited Recovery.gov lately? Go read the FAQs (Frequently Asked Questions). Look at the timeline for distribution of the recovery money. Etc...

They will be showing where the money goes in the spring, as the agencies start reporting in.

Has your local newspaper, TV or radio news told the public about Recovery.gov, or are they instead telling people what Britney is wearing?

Posted by Dave Johnson at 10:30 AM | Comments (1) | Link Cosmos

March 3, 2009

Recovery.gov

Remember to track what is happening with the recovery/stimulus money over at Recovery.gov

Posted by Dave Johnson at 1:18 PM | Comments (1) | Link Cosmos

March 2, 2009

Earmarks

I had a conversation over the weekend with someone who wanted to talk about the budget. He complained that there were a lot of "earmarks." I told him that there were a lot of earmarks for Republicans as well as for Democrats.

I told him that an earmark is a special request for funds for a project in a local district, like building a bridge or a clinic -- something that is needed in a local district that is requested by that district's member of Congress, to serve the constituents of that district.

He didn't know that. In fact, he had never really thought about it at all. He just knew that earmarks were bad for some reason. he had been hearing over and over that they were bad.

And when I told him what earmarks meant, he liked the idea. He said that's what a member of Congress should be doing. Government serving its constituents in a democracy - imagine that.

Another day, another Republican anti-democracy propaganda message put down.

Posted by Dave Johnson at 9:46 PM | Comments (0) | Link Cosmos

February 26, 2009

How They Win

The Fairness Doctrine was a policy on use of the broadcast airwaves that said that since the public owns the airwaves we have a right to demand that companies we license to profit from them support democracy by presenting news and information that is in the public interest and present a diversity of opinion. The idea was that big corporations cannot buy up and use the public airwaves to spew right-wing corporate propaganda.

In 1969 the Supreme Court unanimously upheld the Fairness Doctrine.

Ronald Reagan got rid of the Fairness Doctrine, saying that "markets" should decide what information, news and opinions people are presented with. The Congress immediately voted to bring back the fairness rules, but Reagan vetoed this.

Under George Bush the Congress again voted to restore these rules, but Bush vetoed it.

Under Clinton a majority of the Congress again voted to restore these rules, but the Republicans in the Senate filibustered.

So today they had a chance to bring back rules of fairness and democracy. What happened? DEMOCRATS cut their own throats and overwhelmingly voted to back corporate control of what we are allowed to know. "Democrats cave again." Does this sound familiar?

Do they think the corporate media is now going to say good things about Democrats and unions and democracy? Do they think Rush Limbaugh is going to praise them for backing him?

Senate Backs Amendment to Prevent 'Fairness Doctrine' Revival,

The Senate approved an amendment Thursday that would outlaw the so-called "Fairness Doctrine," an off-the-books policy that once required broadcasters to air opposing viewpoints on controversial issues.

Republican Sen. Jim DeMint's amendment passed by a wide margin of 87-to-11.

THIS is how Republicans win. They don't give up. They deny the popular will. And eventually they wear down the Democrats until they just cave.

Posted by Dave Johnson at 12:22 PM | Comments (6) | Link Cosmos

February 24, 2009

Who Is Our Government For?

This post originally appeared at Speak Out California

dday, writing in Giving Away The Tax Argument at Digby's Hullabaloo blog, asks why so many California newspapers have "tax increase calculators" but no calculators that show people how much the budget cuts affect them.

In my life, I have never seen a "spending cut calculator," where someone could plug in, say, how many school-age children they have, or how many roads they take to work, or how many police officers and firefighters serve their community, or what social services they or their families rely on, and discover how much they stand to lose in THAT equation. Tax calculators show bias toward the gated community screamers on the right who see their money being "taken away" for nothing. A spending cut calculator would actually show the impact to a much larger cross-section of society, putting far more people at risk than a below 1% hit to their bottom line.

[. . . The media already highlights the tax side of the equation over spending, dramatically portraying tax increases while relegating spending cuts to paragraph 27. It feeds the tax revolt and distorts the debate. And it's completely irresponsible.

In Why Are Public Assets Being Cut Right When We Need Them Most? Jay Walljasper, of OnTheCommons.org wonders why public transit, libraries and other things the government does for us are all being cut at exactly the time people need them? As the economy turns downward more people need to take the train or bus, or use the library. Jay makes the connection,

Minnesota governor Tim Pawlenty, one of the leading contenders for the Republican presidential nomination in 2012, proposes closing the state's budget gap by reducing corporate taxes and slashing state aid to local governments. This will mean painful cuts in public assets, such as transit and libraries.

. . . This loss of our public assets is an alarming threat to our society. The things we all own in common and depend upon--libraries, transit, parks, water systems, schools, public safety, infrastructure, cultural programs, social services--are being gradually but steadily undermined.

For many years I have been blogging at Seeing the Forest, often coming back to a question, "Who is our economy for?" For some time now regular incomes have stagnated, while incomes at the very top just go up and up. The GDP keeps rising, productivity keeps going up, but regular people see less and less of the benefit of this increase. In fact, if you look at charts and data, the stagnation of incomes started almost exactly at the same time as President Reagan took office and started implementing the corporate agenda of anti-tax and anti-government policies. So is this a coincidence?

Throughout human history we have seen one scheme after another wherein a few people seize power and devise a system to hold it and use it to enrich themselves at the expense of everyone else. This is human nature and through history we have seen it happen over and over.

America formed in reaction to the British monarchy's exploitation of its people. We, the People formed our government to band together and protect each other from attempts by the powerful few to exploit us. Our Constitution was supposed to be include a system of checks and balances to account for the nature of power.

It is time for the people to take back that power and use it to again benefit each other. And it is time for California's newspapers to do something for We, the People and include a "budget cuts calculator" as well as tax increase calculator. It is just as important, maybe more so, that we all understand how we're injuring and jeopardizing our future with the budget cuts the Republicans required in this year's budget negotiations.

Click through to Speak Out California

Posted by Dave Johnson at 10:31 AM | Comments (2) | Link Cosmos

Social Security and Taxes

Someone wrote to me the following. You have heard a thousand variations of the same thing:

"Starting in 2012, Social Security won’t take in enough to cover the benefits it is paying. So either we cut other federal programs to pay for Social Security, or we cut Social Security benefits."

Actually, the shortfall in 2012 has nothing to do with paying back Social Security in particular. Reagan and then Bush used the Social Security surplus to give huge tax cuts to the rich (further concentrating wealth at the top.) The government owes Social Security a lot of money, but -- and this is the thing -- it also owes all the other bond holders.

Social Security might need to start cashing in some of its bonds in 2012 or so.

Other bond holders need to cash in their bonds at other times. We never ask other bondholders to accept less when they ask for their money for their bonds. That would be called "defaulting."

So why does this bondholder, Social Security, get special treatment in our thinking? Why do we think that people who get Social Security should get less?

The answer to this and a lot of other problems is to raise taxes on the wealthiest. History shows that our economy does better when there is a VERY high tax rate on the very top incomes. It used to be 93% on money made after you hit a few hundred thousand. And that money was used to build infrastructure, educate kids, and all the things that made this a country that could compete. That is part of what got us out of the depression.

Let me add that a very high tax rate at the top removes the incentive to go for quick-buck schemes, and makes business owners plan for the long term.

Think of it this way -- if we had a 90% top tax rate hedge fund managers would only bring home a hundred million or so a year, but the rest of us would have health insurance and good roads and better schools.

Posted by Dave Johnson at 8:10 AM | Comments (1) | Link Cosmos

February 20, 2009

Obama To Use Honest Deficit Accounting

You're going to hear a lot of complaining that Obama is growing the federal budget deficit. One reason is that the deficit is about to rise is that the Bush administration used gimmicks to make it look smaller, and Obama is changing over to honest accounting.

Obama Bans Gimmicks, and Deficit Will Risem,

The new accounting involves spending on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Medicare reimbursements to physicians and the cost of disaster responses.

But the biggest adjustment will deal with revenues from the alternative minimum tax, a parallel tax system enacted in 1969 to prevent the wealthy from using tax shelters to avoid paying any income tax.

. . . “The president prefers to tell the truth,” he said, “rather than make the numbers look better by pretending.”

Posted by Dave Johnson at 12:30 PM | Comments (0) | Link Cosmos

February 19, 2009

The California Budget Agreement

Dave Johnson, Speak Out California

California finally passed a budget. It is a bad budget, cutting essential services, borrowing a tremendous amount, selling our lottery revenues and giving a huge tax break to big out-of-state companies. Each of these came from demands by the very, very few Republicans who agreed to vote for the budget at all will, of course, just get us through another year while making it ever more difficult to pass future budgets.

California's 2/3 requirement means that a few corporate-funded extremists can hold the rest of us hostage. So they had to make a terrible deal to get the three Republican votes required by the 2/3 rule, or else lay of tens of thousands and stop paying California's bills. We the People of California were all held hostage to that threat.

The resulting deal was that if We, the People want schools, police, firefighters, roads & bridges, courts, all the things our government does for us, we had to agree to tax breaks for the big multinational corporations that kick in so much money to help elect the anti-government extremists. So the big companies - the kind that come in and crush local California businesses - get a big tax break while the rest of us have our taxes raised. Oh, and the oil companies can continue to take our oil out of the ground for free and then sell it back to us.

Here are some reactions around the California netroots:

David Dayen at Calitics,

"The cuts are going to be really, really bad: 10% across the board for education, huge cuts for public transit operations, health care, etc. The new revenues basically fill in the loss of revenue from massive unemployment.

[. . .] The "single sales factor apportionment," which is the massive business tax cut, doesn't kick in until FY2011, predictably and conveniently after Gov. Schwarzenegger is out of office and it will be someone else's problem to make up the revenue! It's almost like somebody planned it that way!"

Richard Holober at Consumer Federation of California,

"The deal reported today does not call on all California taxpayers to share in the sacrifice. Working Californians will face billions in higher sales tax and income tax rates. But businesses win about one billion dollars in new tax breaks. $700 million in corporate tax cuts result from a recalculation of how California taxes the profits of big multinational corporations. According to the Senate Analysis, the windfall to multinational corporations, and the revenue loss to California will eventually grow to $1.5 billion."

Robert Cruickshank at the Courage Campaign blog,

"The only way out, and the first reform that we must undertake - the tree blocking the tracks, the door that opens the path to all other reforms - is eliminating the 2/3 rule that gives conservatives veto power over the state and turns the majority Democrats into a minority party on fiscal matters. It's been talked about frequently on Calitics and in what remains of the media's coverage of state politics. So it seemed time for an in-depth discussion of the issue and the prospects for restoring majority rule to California."

David M. Greenwald at California Progress Report,

"Many Democrats and political observers fear that Maldonado strong-arming the legislature may set a bad precedent for future attempts at getting a budget on time."

So here we are. Our structural problems have enabled extremists to increase ... our structural problems. We are one more step down the road to intentional ungovernability.

Over the next several months, we who love this state must act to fix this. We must get rid of this 2/3 budget-vote requirement that allows extremists to hold us hostage. An initiative changing the 2/3 vote requirement is long-overdue but we'll need the support of every forward-thinking voter to make it happen. Let's work together to ensure that it does.

Click through to Speak Out California

Posted by Dave Johnson at 3:48 PM | Comments (0) | Link Cosmos

February 17, 2009

Recovery.gov

The Obama administration has put up a new website, Recovery.gov, to help people track how the recovery/stimulus money is spent.

From the site:

Recovery.gov is a website that lets you, the taxpayer, figure out where the money from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act is going. There are going to be a few different ways to search for information. The money is being distributed by Federal agencies, and soon you'll be able to see where it's going -- to which states, to which congressional districts, even to which Federal contractors. As soon as we are able to, we'll display that information visually in maps, charts, and graphics.

Posted by Dave Johnson at 3:04 PM | Comments (0) | Link Cosmos

February 12, 2009

Government

This post originally appeared at Speak Out California

After decades of anti-government speeches claiming that government holds back business, government takes money out of the economy and government is less efficient than corporations, people came to believe that, as Ronald Reagan famously said, "Government is the problem, not the solution." This led to deregulation and budget cutbacks in all areas including education and infrastructure.

If you think about it, government really is what We, the People want it to be. In a democracy we jointly make decisions about the best way to manage our affairs. So saying that corporations do things better is really an anti-democracy message. What they are saying is that organizations run by a few wealthy elites telling everyone else what to do, with the benefits of everyone's work mostly going to those few at the top, is a better way to manage society than to have everyone making the decisions and sharing in the results.

As the financial crisis hits, and the fabric of that pro-big business philosophy is shredding the fabric of our society, we can see clearly just how foolish and destructive the right-wing machine has been to our economic, social and political values. (Not to mention cutting off peanut processing plant regulation and inspection, leading to the current situation of 9 dead and hundreds seriously ill across the country. This is just ONE more example of the consequences of right-wing policies.)

Alone those lines, here is an interesting video, making fun of some of the anti-government propaganda we have heard over the last few decades:

Click through to Speak Out California

Posted by Dave Johnson at 1:45 PM | Comments (1) | Link Cosmos

February 8, 2009

Let's Challenge Radio Station Licenses

Should we be organizing challenges to the licenses of radio stations that do not serve their communities in a balanced way?

Earlier I pointed to Bill Press' op-ed on how corporate radio shuts our progressive voices, Seeing the Forest: Corporate Radio Not Balanced. Press reminds us that companies are given radio licenses by We, the People and,

... according to the terms of their FCC license, "to operate in the public interest and to afford reasonable opportunity for the discussion of conflicting views of issues of public importance."

Obviously many radio stations are violating the terms of their licenses, using OUR airwaves to spew anti-democracy corporatist right-wing crap all day every day.

Shouldn't we be organizing challenges to the licenses of these stations?

Posted by Dave Johnson at 10:40 AM | Comments (0) | Link Cosmos

Corporate Radio Not Balanced

Corporate radio is using OUR airwaves to present only right-wing propaganda. The airwaves are used to tell us we should support right-wing Republican policies, and to mock the majority of us for wanting democracy.

See Another Right-Wing Conspiracy in Washington?

Companies are given a license to operate public airwaves -- free! -- in order to make a profit, yes, but also, according to the terms of their FCC license, "to operate in the public interest and to afford reasonable opportunity for the discussion of conflicting views of issues of public importance." Stations are not operating in the public interest when they offer only conservative talk.

For years, the Fairness Doctrine prevented such abuse by requiring licensed stations to carry a mix of opinion. However, under pressure from conservatives, President Ronald Reagan's Federal Communications Commission canceled the Fairness Doctrine in 1987, insisting that in a free market, stations would automatically offer a balance in programming.

That experiment has failed. There is no free market in talk radio today, only an exclusive, tightly held, conservative media conspiracy. The few holders of broadcast licenses have made it clear they will not, on their own, serve the general public. Maybe it's time to bring back the Fairness Doctrine -- and bring competition back to talk radio in Washington and elsewhere.

Posted by Dave Johnson at 8:54 AM | Comments (0) | Link Cosmos

January 31, 2009

Key To Happiness

Worth a read: The Key to Happiness That No One -- Not Even the Happiness Gurus -- Are Discussing,

There's just one pathway to happiness in which this deep, human need for power is given pride of place: democracy. By this I mean democracy as a living practice that enables us to have a real say in every dimension of our public lives, from school to workplace and beyond.

[. . .] Including power in our definition of happiness changes everything.

Posted by Dave Johnson at 8:18 AM | Comments (1) | Link Cosmos

January 29, 2009

Our Businesses Thrive On The Infrastructure We Built

This post originally appeared at Speak Out California

The key to California's successful business environment are education and infrastructure. It is not an accident that our semiconductor and computer and Internet industries, and biotechnology and pharmaceutical and genetic engineering and our other world-class competitive industries developed in California instead of in "low tax" states like Mississippi and Alabama. These industries thrived here because of our well-educated people and our modern, well-maintained infrastructure.

There has been a dramatic wealth-building return on our investment in education and infrastructure. Investors could count on California as a good place to start and grow a business, and it has paid off.

But how much would it cost if businesses had to pay fair market value for use of the infrastructure that We, the People built? What would it cost if companies had to pay the full education cost every time they hire someone who was educated at a California public school or state college or university?

What would it cost if companies had to pay to be provided with police and fire protection? Should companies pay a fee to have the police investigate, catch the perpetrators, and then put them through the criminal justice system?

What would it cost if companies had to pay fair value to use our roads and air- and seaports.

What would it cost if companies had to pay for access to the legal system that We, the People set up. We passed the laws and paid for the courts. We set up the entire legal structure.

We, the People pay to regulate (and apparently bail out) the banking and financial system. What would it cost if businesses had to pay us for setting up this system that (used to) keeps our money sound?

This is what government and taxes are for. We, the People built up California's comprehensive physical, legal, cultural, education and societal infrastructure. Businesses rely on that infrastructure, and we want them to thrive. This benefits us all. Many, many people became wealthy by betting on California as a great place to do business, and we are proud of that. Now it is tome to give something back.

Building and maintaining that infrastructure does cost money, and that is where taxes come in. For several years California has been cutting taxes and cutting back on our investment in education and infrastructure. Businesses cannot continue to thrive as they have if we continue along this path. We have reached a point where the tax-cutting has brought our state's education spending to the second-lowest per-pupil of all the states! We have been and are deferring maintenance on roads and other infrastructure. We are cutting back on all essential services and we still have a $40 billion budget shortfall!

Our companies are getting a good deal. If we charged fees that were based on the actual value of the service that the infrastructure provides businesses would have to pay much, much more than any level of increased taxes companies and wealthy individuals might be asked to pay to help California meet the budget shortfall. The businesses and individuals who thrived because of the infrastructure we built need to contribute to the future by agreeing to pay taxes to help invest in rebuilding that infrastructure.

The payoff is clear. As I wrote above, there is a reason that Silicon Valley and genetic engineering and other wealth-creating industries developed in states like California and Massachusetts instead of "low tax" states like Mississippi and Alabama.

Click through to Speak Out California.

Posted by Dave Johnson at 9:04 AM | Comments (0) | Link Cosmos

January 20, 2009

Born Again American

This is interesting:

Posted by Dave Johnson at 11:29 AM | Comments (1) | Link Cosmos

Barack Obama Is President

We have shown the world that this can happen. But we also need to understand how the last eight years happened, and assure the world that our system is strong enough to keep it from happening again. We must strengthen democracy and law.

Posted by Dave Johnson at 9:05 AM | Comments (1) | Link Cosmos

January 13, 2009

The "Tax Freedom Day" Trick

This post originally appeared at Speak Out California

It takes a 2/3 vote to pass a budget in California. As we have seen this means any budget that does not completely meet the hard-core anti-tax, must-cut-government position of the Republicans in the legislature is voted down. Even though there is enormous public support for government - schools, roads, firefighters, etc. - they will not compromise at all. They demand that we gut the government, lay off tens of thousands of workers, or nothing. So California races toward economic ruin.

What do your taxes buy you? The average person benefits greatly from strong government. By gathering together into a community that is jointly managed (i.e. government) people can pool their resources and accomplish great things that cannot be accomplished by people who are on their own. Roads and bridges are examples of things that people cannot accomplish individually. Police, firefighters, public schools are other examples. Law and courts and a monetary system are still more. And then there are benefits like Social Security and the "safety net" of programs for people who lose jobs to food programs for those of us without enough to eat.

The reason we have almost everything that we value as a society, our education and (until recently anyway) jobs, the internet, buildings that don't easily burn down or blow away, drinkable water coming to our houses and sewage systems leaving them and (until fairly recently, anyway) a health care system that stops epidemics is our government. All of the businesses we see around us exist because of our government -- a corporation cannot even exist without the government that establishes it and the legal system that maintains it.

But there are some who would personally benefit more in the absence of government than in its presence. History has taught that there are some who would organize themselves to take what others have worked to build rather than do that work themselves. One need only look at the walls built around cities in the past to understand this. There have also been organized gangs and other criminal enterprises that take rather than build, and more recently we have seen that organized predatory enterprises also find ways to victimize and prey on people. Fraud, confidence and ponzi schemes, consumer scams and all manner of trickery prey on people who are left unprotected by their community. Government is what has always protected regular people from such predators.

Government -- the people banding together to guard and accomplish their interests -- serves to protect people from those who would just take rather than work with the rest of us to build.

So why did Ronald Reagan famously say "government is the problem" in his first inaugural address and he loudly and repeatedly attack the idea of taxes? The foundation and strength of government is the taxes it collect. Taxes are what provide government with its strength to do all of the good things described above. This is why anti-government ideologues reason that the way to cut government (and thereby bring in its alternative) is to cut taxes. They say that if they can just cut out the foundation of government, it will fall. Or, more famously, that they can "drown it in a bathtub."

One way that anti-government ideologues have worked to accomplish this is to turn people against their own government, tricking people into misunderstanding how taxes work and what government does for them. last week, in What Are Tax Brackets, I explained how one of these tricks works -- that you only pay bracket rates taxes on income that falls in that bracket, not on all income earned up to that bracket.

Another way they turn people against taxation and government is to misrepresent how much is collected and how it is used. Exaggerated statements like, "We pay half our income in taxes" are commonly heard, along with under-representation and misrepresentation of the benefits we receive from government.

"Tax Freedom Day" is one example of this technique. Tax Freedom Day is a product of The Tax Foundation, which is funded by the very same collection of right-wing donors that fund the Heritage Foundation, Cato Institute and so many other components of the anti-government "conservative movement."

Tax Freedom Day is widely publicized by corporate media, and usually described as being when "the average American" has earned enough income to pay their taxes. Tax Freedom Day for 2008 is April 23. To calculate Tax Freedom Day the The Tax Foundation adds up all the taxes paid to the government from all sources, but it only includes certain forms of income. It doesn't include capital gains income, for example, yet includes capital gains taxes on the tax side of the calculation. These misleading calculations of course result in a much higher tax amount than "the average America" really pays. So while they say that 30.8% of "our" income went to pay taxes in 2008, anyone reading this who looks at their own tax bill can see that their taxes are substantially lower than this figure.

So the next time you hear about Tax Freedom Day, keep in mind who is making this claim, and why.

Click through and join the discussion at Speak Out California

Posted by Dave Johnson at 4:26 PM | Comments (3) | Link Cosmos

January 9, 2009

Max's New Song

New song from Max. He doesn't like people being appointed to the Senate because they come from certain families.

Max and the Marginalized: Date With Dynasty and scroll down to click the player button.

Lyrics:

Date With Dynasty

So the chattering classes said it's said and done, and this time they're probably right
Opportunity knocks and then it's ring and run, and disappear into the night
And I don't have a finger to point right out but I think it would be a mistake
To march in the order of the monarchy to the top of the Empire State

Honoring a legacy, long before I came to be
When birthright meets opportunity
You've got a date with dynasty
You've got a date with dynasty

And they said consecration was dead and gone, it's safe to say they were wrong
And they sang out a sun-soaked symphony but someone stopped singing along
So don't get me wrong, I think it all goes down with the best of intentions at hand
Oh what a concept, the purpose of process has turned up in desperate demand

Tell me just what happened to, hearing out two points of view
I know that isn't the life for you, but who's got the time with so much else to do
And that's why saints and royalty are better left to history
Be them, kings and queens or Kennedys
You've got a date with dynasty
You've got a date with dynasty

What good is entitlement, absent some accomplishment
Or maybe some shred of evidence, of some kind of semblance of interest
I guess we'll never take a leave of silly old ideas like these
In this land of opportunity
You've got a date with dynasty
You've got a date with dynasty
There's nothing quite like a legacy
You've got a date with dynasty

Posted by Sudeep at 9:13 PM | Comments (0) | Link Cosmos

Local Food

We grow some of our own food in a small garden. Our garbage largely goes into a compost pile. This is in a regular neighborhood. So I thought I would pass this along: How You Can Start a Farm in Heart of the City,

Once you taste lettuce that actually has a distinct flavor, or eat a sweet tomato still warm from the sun, or an orange-yolked egg from your own hen, you will never be satisfied with the pre-packaged and the factory-farmed again.

. . . When you grow some of your own food, you start to care more about all of your food. "Just where did this come from?" we'd find ourselves asking when we went shopping. What's in it?

It's not just about flavor and health and quality. It's also about local control and about putting carbon into the air. Food that is shipped means carbon going into the air. Food from a giant supermarket is more money going to the corporate system and away from local farmers.

I stopped buying imported olive oil when I realized that this is something that is very heavy that is being shipped across the planet. What's the point of that?

Posted by Dave Johnson at 11:02 AM | Comments (0) | Link Cosmos

January 4, 2009

Big Companies Are Public Resources

Deep Thought: When companies reach a certain size, they are public resources. They are large because they do something that is important to many of us. They have a great impact on all of our lives. We all depend on their success and are hurt by their failure.

They are public resources. Do we usually leave public resources in the hands of a few people?

Think of startup companies as auditioning for a job. The ones who reach a certain size are then rewarded by getting the "contract" to, say, develop oil resources or make cars...

Update - You say this sounds radical? I never proposed that the government borrow $700 billion dollars and hand it over to giant companies. It was the "private property free market conservatives" who did that.

Posted by Dave Johnson at 10:00 AM | Comments (1) | Link Cosmos

January 1, 2009

This Is Not The 'Business Cycle'

A quick comment: The financial crisis we are experiencing is not business as usual, it is not the business cycle. This is not like anything that has happened before. We are not going to solve this by acting as if it was just a typical downturn in the business cycle and tweaking the way things are done. A bit of stimulus and a few regulatory changes are not going to solve this.

This is a fundamental paradigm shift -- what we had before did not work, period. It was hurting all of us by forcing us into jobs we all hate and doing meaningless things, taking on debt, unhealthy habits, and is chewing up the very planet we live on! A new model for understanding how economies work is needed.

We have to rethink the relationship between people and work and who gets to share in the proceeds. Until now most people work to make someone else rich, because it has been the only way we can "make a living" -- be allowed money to eat, etc. But as machines and computers and other technologies do more and more of the work for us the result is that more and more people are laid off or paid less or otherwise discarded and fewer and fewer of us are able to get by. This is because our current economic system forces us all to pretend that a few people "own" the right to benefit from our economy, and the rest of us do not.

But doesn't this idea that a few people can "own" the right to the benefits of our economy fundamentally conflict with the idea of democracy, where we all have an equal share of America, an equal voice and equal rights?

In Alaska, for example, the people of the state benefit from their common ownership of the oil there. Companies bid for the job of extracting the oil and pay the state a lot of money to do that. Everyone in Alaska benefits, AND a trust fund is set up to guarantee that they continue to benefit forever after the oil is all gone.

Our entire economy should work that way. We should recognize that we own in common all of the resources, and these companies should have to apply for the job -- bid for the right to do things we want done -- with the understanding that they are common resources from which we all benefit.

We also have to reengineer the economy to be sustainable. We have to stop this game of "demand creation" -- making people think they need things that they do not need, in order to "keep the economy going." The economy only needs to go far enough to feed and house and clothe us and take care of our health, and then we should be deciding in common what else we want to do, up to the point where it interferes with our real lives. There is a limit to what we need, and can then get on with the other things that life is about, like thinking, art, music, reading, studying... When there is less to be done, we should work fewer hours, leaving us free for the other pursuits. More on this later.

Posted by Dave Johnson at 10:08 PM | Comments (2) | Link Cosmos

December 24, 2008

Taxes

Tom Friedman wants to know why America has fallen so far behind the rest of the world in keeping up our infrastructure.

Landing at Kennedy Airport from Hong Kong was, as I’ve argued before, like going from the Jetsons to the Flintstones.

. . . The next day I went to Penn Station, where the escalators down to the tracks are so narrow that they seem to have been designed before suitcases were invented. The disgusting track-side platforms apparently have not been cleaned since World War II. I took the Acela, America’s sorry excuse for a bullet train, from New York to Washington. Along the way, I tried to use my cellphone to conduct an interview and my conversation was interrupted by three dropped calls within one 15-minute span.

In 1981 we stopped asking the richest to pay taxes. To pay for that the country started borrowing, deferring maintenance and cutting what the citizens get from the government.

So yes, we stopped fixing things, and now everything is breaking. You didn't notice this before now?

There was another effect of this huge tax cut for the rich. By changing tax policies to let people keep fortunes made in a single year everyone started trying to make a fortune in a single year. Business became entirely about making as much as you can as fast as you can instead of building up solidly over time. Theft at the top became rampant. Everything became schemes. Manufacturing went away because it was easier to make a quick buck from schemes...

Friedman's solution? Use the Obama stimulus,

It has to go into training teachers, educating scientists and engineers, paying for research and building the most productivity-enhancing infrastructure — without building white elephants. Generally, I’d like to see fewer government dollars shoveled out and more creative tax incentives to stimulate the private sector to catalyze new industries and new markets.

In other words, back to where things were before Reagan.

Posted by Dave Johnson at 9:48 AM | Comments (0) | Link Cosmos

December 23, 2008

Deep Thought On Rule Of law

Ford pardoned Nixon, which led to the crimes/bribery/theft/fraud/lies/wars of the Reagan/Bush I administration. It also led to a common understanding that in America the big fish operate under different rules and are held to a different standard.

Reagan was let off the hook for Iran/Contra and Bush I pardoned everyone who otherwise might have testified against him. Then under Clinton they let bygones be bygones, bribery remain unpunished and stolen money stay stolen which led to the crimes of Bush II. (It also paved the way for Clinton's impeachment because they knew the Dems would let them get away with anything and the public was ready for a story about people at the top not being let off the hook.)

If you don't prosecute lawbreaking and hold accountable the lawbreakers, it will just happen over and over, worse each time. Throughout the Bush II administration the Dems refused to hold anyone accountable and look what's happening today.

Posted by Dave Johnson at 10:50 AM | Comments (0) | Link Cosmos

December 19, 2008

The Root Cause Of The Economic Catastrophe

Everyone understands that the root cause of this economic catastrophe was corporate money's influence on our politics. Corporations are able to concentrate money. We, the People let them do that because it enables them to undertake large-scale projects. But currently executives can access that money and use it to influence politics through bribery and/or manipulating public opinion. Deregulation, unfair tax codes, loss of consumer and worker protections and decades of falling wages and benefits have been the result -- hardly in the interest of the public.

Until we stop allowing use of corporate money to influence politcians and the public these problems will only increase.

When are we going to come to grips with that?

Posted by Dave Johnson at 8:57 AM | Comments (2) | Link Cosmos

December 14, 2008

Republican Opposition To Unions

A quick thought about Republican opposition to unions. I keep reading that Republicans are "ideologically" opposed to unions.

Republicans are opposed to unions because they are paid to oppose unions. Is this really "ideology?"

If they oppose unions because they believe America should be ruled by a few wealthy people, and that democracy is a bad thing, that is an ideology. In my opinion, if they oppose unions because those wealthy people pay them to work to destroy people's ability to fight corporate power, that isn't ideology, that's opportunism.

Posted by Dave Johnson at 9:42 AM | Comments (1) | Link Cosmos

The TARP Oversight Panel Speaks

This is interesting, and demonstrates that we are heading into a new era of transparency in government. Watch this short video, about the Congressional Oversight Panel that is looking at how that $700 billion is being used.

Excellent.

Posted by Dave Johnson at 8:59 AM | Comments (0) | Link Cosmos

December 10, 2008

Obama Transition Taking Public's Questions

Go to this site, sign in, leave a question, and most important, vote Yes or No on the existing questions before right wingers show up and skew things: Change.gov: The Obama-Biden Transition Team | Open for Questions

Posted by Dave Johnson at 11:02 AM | Comments (4) | Link Cosmos

December 7, 2008

Democracy Is The Only Economics That Works

I am reading about how we got out of the Great Depression, and I think there was a clear sense of adversarial relationship between wealth, corporate power and democracy that we don't see today, but which I believe defines what is happening to us. For example I am currently
reading FDR's 2nd inaugural address. I know this address comes four years into The New Deal, but I think it reflects what I have read from when the New Deal began as well.

"In fact, in these last four years, we have made the exercise of all power more democratic; for we have begun to bring private autocratic powers into their proper subordination to the public's government. The legend that they were invincible above and beyond the processes of a democracy has been shattered. They have been challenged and beaten.

Our progress out of the depression is obvious. But that is not all that you and I mean by the new order of things. Our pledge was not merely to do a patchwork job with second-hand materials. By using the new materials of social justice we have undertaken to erect on the old foundations a more enduring structure for the better use of future generations.

In that purpose we have been helped by achievements of mind and spirit. Old truths have been relearned; untruths have been unlearned. We have always known that heedless self-interest was bad morals; we know now that it is bad economics. Out of the collapse of a prosperity whose builders boasted their practicality has come the conviction that in the long run economic morality pays. We are beginning to wipe out the line that divides the practical from the ideal; and in so doing we are fashioning an instrument of unimagined power for the establishment of a morally better world.

This new understanding undermines the old admiration of worldly success as such. We are beginning to abandon our tolerance of the abuse of power by those who betray for profit the elementary decencies of life."

I think this strongly shows that FDR's believed that the depression was caused by wealth flowing to the top (as today) and would be corrected by asserting that We, the People must take back control of our common resources.

In other words, real democracy -- We, the People controlling and making decisions about our common resources, instead of corporations and the wealthy -- is the only form of government and economics that can work for all of us.

Posted by Dave Johnson at 4:31 PM | Comments (1) | Link Cosmos

December 3, 2008

A Quick Thought

A top tax rate of 90% removes the incentive to cheat and steal and exploit others and corrupt our democracy in hope of a rapid path to immense wealth.

But someone "earning" $30 million would STILL take home $3 million. (Plus the amount below that top tax rate.)

Posted by Dave Johnson at 10:50 PM | Comments (1) | Link Cosmos

December 1, 2008

Too Big To Fail?

I said it before but I want to repeat it: "Too big to fail" necessarily means a company that should be under the control of the public. Our economy should not just be at the mercy of a select few. We, the People should be involved in making decisions that affect us. This is the very definition of self-governance.

Posted by Dave Johnson at 7:37 AM | Comments (0) | Link Cosmos

November 25, 2008

Interactive Government

Go visit YOUR incoming interactive government at Change.gov: The Obama-Biden Transition Team | Join the Discussion: Healthcare

Posted by Dave Johnson at 6:11 PM | Comments (0) | Link Cosmos

How Much Do Auto Workers Make?

Go read The media myth: Detroit's $70-an-hour autoworker.

Auto workers make $28 an hour on average. No auto assembly-line worker makes $70 an hour, even if the media repeats that figure over and over. The $70 figure includes the "labor costs" of health care and pensions for retired and injured workers and the cost of management for that worker/hour, as if it was added to the number of labor hours that goes into a car today.

Yes, GM and the others have a high cost to cover the benefits to their workers. That was the point of our laws that set up corporations -- to benefit US. Japanese and German and other car companies have many of these costs paid by the government. They did it with taxes and had the government provide the benefits, we tried to do it throught the corporations themselves, and our model hasn't worked.

The point is that we need health care reform and decent pensions for all Americans, through We, the People -- the government. It certainly doesn't mean that we should just get rid of the last major manufacturers we have. Sheesh.

Posted by Dave Johnson at 2:40 PM | Comments (0) | Link Cosmos

November 24, 2008

Are Bailouts Funding Lobbying?

In the discussions of the bailouts progressives have talked about protecting the taxpayers through compensation limits, equity positions instead of just handing over funds, etc. But I don't think we have asked for what I think could be one of the most effective ideas for restoring and protecting democracy -- and thereby preventing disasters like the one we are experiencing.

Let's start demanding that companies receiving bailout funds stop lobbying and stop the other things they do to influence public opinion and policy decisions! This includes funding right-wing "think tanks," PR firms, etc.

My own preference would be to ban *all* use of corporate funds for any purposes of influencing public opinion or government policy. I am of the opinion that corporate money should be used to run the corporation, period. Lobbying, etc. does not benefit the interests of the corporations -- because corporations do not have interests. They are supposed to just operate within the rules WE set. What we are seeing is corporate resources wrongly being used for the personal interests of executives and a few wealthy shareholders, not to promote the broader interests of all the shareholders, the long-term well-being of the company, and our society. I believe that We, the People should be making the laws, telling corporations how they can operate, not the other way around. We are the boss of them.

So demanding that companies receiving bailout funds must cease all lobbying is a way to introduce this idea that the people should be in control of decision-making in general. It is an Overton Window tactic to start getting the public talking about the idea that corporations should be out of our politics, leaving the decision-making to We, the People.

Posted by Dave Johnson at 5:22 PM | Comments (0) | Link Cosmos

Democracy or Corporate Rule. Choose One.

Why are We, the People allowing big corporations to use OUR broadcast frequencies to spread anti-democracy propaganda with no ability to respond with different viewpoints?

When is the last time you saw a representative of labor on TV talking about why people should join unions?

WE own the radio and television frequencies. WE license the use of these to private companies, and then they use them to push policies that harm us, without allowing anyone to come on and tell the other side.

It used to be different. Before Ronald Reagan came in and changed these (and so many other) rules to favor big corporations over the public's interests broadcasters were not allowed to use our airwaves for propaganda, and were not allowed to overcommercialize their programming. Reagan overturned decades of precedent, and when Congress responded by overwhelmingly passing a law to restore control by democracy Reagan vetoed it. Since then Republicans have vetoed or filibustered every attempt to restore democracy's control over our own resources.

Why do we allow big corporations to use OUR resources against us, for the benefit of a wealthy few? It is either democracy or corporate rule. Choose one.

Posted by Dave Johnson at 10:53 AM | Comments (0) | Link Cosmos

November 22, 2008

Sustainabilty Is The Key To The Next Economy

There is an old saying: If something is unsustainable it can't be sustained. Our economy is starting, just starting to show us what happens when you continue unsustainable practices to their conclusion.

The day will come when instead of habitually saying, "How can I make money off of this" as things happen, they will say, "Is this really sustainable?" Unfortunately we are only at the very beginning of the kind of pain that is going to teach us as a society that this is the correct way to evaluate what appear to be opportunities.

Let me explain:

We have learned that it is a good idea to store explosives in special bunkers with thick, concrete walls. Think about how we learned that it is important to require this.

We have learned about clean, safe drinking water. Think about how we learned that this is a good practice. We have learned to build sewer systems instead of dumping bedpans into the street. Yes, we used to do that and now we don't. Think about how we learned not to. Along the same lines we have largely learned to wash our hands after we go to the bathroom and before we eat. Think about how we learned that this is a good practice.

We have set up building codes that prevent fires and collapses from earthquakes. At least in California we have. In other parts of the country they don't require buildings to be earthquake-safe. We do, they will. Think about why we do and they don't but will. Think about why we have fire codes for buildings across the country.

Are you getting my drift? These are things that people didn't know to do, but now they do know. But people seem to have to go through terrible, devastating, tragic shocks before they learn. And finally we learn, and routinize safe practices. We had been through severe economic shocks and then the Great Depression and there were some things we as a people thought we had learned. Think about how bad the depression was and the things that we set up to try to prevent it from happening again: regulations, oversight, a strengthened democracy with citizen control of public resources, strong unions to serve as a counterbalance to corporate power, high taxes on the rich and corporations so income would be more fairly redistributed and the benefits of our system shared widely -- only to gradually let most of that slip away. So the control of our country's decision-making had reverted back to the wealthy and predatory capitalism was reinstated. We, the People were harvested for every last dollar and hour of labor and when we were finally tapped out the economy had to collapse.

There is every sign that this economic collapse could be worse that any before it.

So, like I said, the day will come when people look at events and instead of saying, "How can I make money off of this" they will say, "Is this really sustainable?" But I fear that we are going to have to reach the bottom before we learn this.

Posted by Dave Johnson at 11:43 AM | Comments (0) | Link Cosmos

November 18, 2008

Too Important To The System To Allow To Fail

Over and over we are hearing about companies that are "too big to fail." The meaning is that if they fail they take everything else with it, so we must bail them out.

Suppose that something happened to the atmosphere and air had to be manufactured. Suppose that all of our lives depended on the ongoing manufacturing of air. Would any of us, even the hardest-core Republicans, even consider allowing this function to be in the hands of a private company? Of course we would not allow this.

Isn't "too big to fail" the very definition of an important PUBLIC resource? If something is "too big to fail" because failure risks bringing down the entire economy, how did we ever allow such functions to fall into the hands of private companies in the first place?

Posted by Dave Johnson at 4:50 PM | Comments (0) | Link Cosmos

November 14, 2008

More On Auto Bailout

The auto companies -- are they just getting what they deserve?

Where we use "they" in discussions like this I actually see something else happening, and I think it is something worth pointing out in our thinking about companies. We should be clearer in our wording and thinking about which "they" we mean. It makes a difference in the conclusions we reach. The individual executives who make these decisions can have different interests from the companies they work for. They are often overly rewarded for quarterly and yearly results regardless of long term results and make decisions accordingly.

So when we talk about what companies should do, and we say or think things like "if they had done so and so this wouldn't have happened" we're missing that the executives making the decisions might have done just fine for themselves while damaging the longer-term interests of the company. We often express that "they" got what they deserved when the company later faces the consequences of such decisions. In fact the particular executives may have made millions and all be working (looting) at some other company at that point while Bob in Accounting or Mary in Sales takes the hit.

The auto companies didn't lobby against CAFE, executives at those companies took advantage of their access to corporate resources to lobby. Who knows where they are now -- we shouldn't punish the companies and communities in which they exist because of a misinterpretation of which "they" is responsible for the bad decisions.

Posted by Dave Johnson at 9:39 AM | Comments (1) | Link Cosmos

What To Ask For In A Bailout

Someone asked me, "If we bail out the auto companies how do we make sure they don't just go off and build gas hogs, and give all the profits to their executives again?"

The answer to this is the answer that should have been part of the Wall Street bailout: You benefit from the Public, so the Public had better start benefiting from you. You get the money and you start building cars that are lined up with the public interest. You serve the public, not harvest the public. You limit executive compensation and spread the wealth around. You pay taxes when you do well. You don't try to influence the political process in any way because We, the People tell you what to do, not the other way around. Etc.

(Question: why aren't these the explicit rules for doing business in the U.S. anyway - bailout or not?)

Posted by Dave Johnson at 7:41 AM | Comments (0) | Link Cosmos

November 13, 2008

Thought Experiment On Government

This post originally appeared at Speak Out California.

Try this: Every time you read the word "government" substitute the appropriate variation of the term "We, the People" or "democracy" and then see how you feel about what is being written. Use the same substitution for the term "the state."

This is especially fun when reading anything written by a conservative or a right winger.

Ronald Reagan's famous phrase, "Government is not a solution to our problem, government is the problem" takes on a whole new meaning, doesn't it? He was saying that "democracy is the problem" -- and here we are 25 years later seemingly living under corporate rule instead of democracy. How has that turned out?

When conservatives complain about government or "the state" they are complaining about control of decision-making by the people rather than by a few. Never forget that.

Posted by Dave Johnson at 10:23 AM | Comments (1) | Link Cosmos

November 12, 2008

Millions More Votes For Democracy Next Time

Millions of people who wanted to vote either couldn’t vote, were kept from voting, were tricked out of voting, were tricked into voting the wrong way or voted but their votes were just not counted. There was voter suppression, voter roll purging, voter caging, intimidation, deception, misinformation and other efforts to keep citizens from voting for who they wanted to represent them in our government. On top of these efforts to there were also systemic problems that kept people from voting or kept their votes from counting.

I learned about these horrors while working on the Election Protection Wiki project, a non-partisan collaboration of citizens, journalists and researchers on the larger SourceWatch wiki. The EP WIki is a one-stop-shop for exposing voter suppression, voting machine problems, common election-worker screwups and other threats to election integrity.

Now that the voting is (mostly) done, we're working to document the problems with the election in order to stop this from happening next time. Here's what we've documented thus far, but if you see anything we've missed, please come over and add it in. I'm happy to help:

Suppression -- In several states there was systematic purging of voters from the registration rolls. Any excuse was used to remove voters, including something as simple as a misspelled street name or even the use of 'Bob' for 'Robert'. A Brennan Center for Justice study of voter purging estimated the number of voters purged before the 2008 election to be in the "millions."

Lines and delays -- One way to keep people from voting is to create conditions that cause long lines to form. Extremely long lines with waiting times of several hours for early voting and on election day were reported in different areas. Eventually people give up and go to work or home. Placing too few voting machines in precincts that tend to vote a certain way is one example of this tactic. In some areas lines were so long that people waited four, five, six and in some cases as many as eight hours to vote. We have no way of knowing how many people were kept from voting by these lines.

Some of the lines were a byproduct of the voter-roll purges. People arrive at polling places where they have voted in election after election, only to be told they are not registered. So they complain and demand provisional ballots, which can take a long time to complete. Lines grow ever longer as each of these voters is accommodated.

Intimidation -- Flyers warning that people with parking tickets will be arrested appeared in different areas. Students were warned that they could be arrested for voting where they go to school. Police were stationed at precincts with lots of Latino voters. Partisans were challenging voters in some areas.

Systemic problems – voting machines malfunction, scanners get clogged with ink, absentee ballots are not mailed, and other systemic problems kept an unknown number of people from voting or their votes from counting.

Just not counting votes -- collecting provisional ballots and then not counting them.

Tricks -- One big emerging story involved text messages sent to Democrats in several states, advising them they should avoid the lines and vote Wednesday. This happened in Missouri, Florida, Minnesota, Montana, Idaho, Pennsylvania, New Mexico, Virginia and several other states. Similarly voters in several states reported receiving robo-calls with a similar message. This was clearly an organized effort to keep people from voting.

In Florida Democratic voters were called and told they could avoid lines by voting by phone, given a number to call, and after "voting" were told they didn't have to go to the polls. This was also clearly an organized operation.

And these were only the scams that we heard about.

Beyond deliberate suppression and deception there were many other problems. How many people were denied or tricked out of their right to vote? How many never received absentee ballots? How many showed up only to be told they are not registered? How many voted using provisional ballots, without knowing if they will ever be counted? How many believed that they could avoid lines by waiting a day? There is really no way to know. But we can work to make sure these things pen again.

At least there is a place where the media, policymakers and citizens can find a collection of election problem reports and policy suggestions to help guide the reform process: the Election Protection Wiki.

Help us document the problems that occurred on Election Day. Help us collect proposals for election reform. You can get directly involved; we need your help!

If we fix these problems and stop these suppression efforts we will bring millions of new voters into our democracy. If we do not we will see all the long lines, registration problems, machine malfunctions and untrustworthiness, voter suppression schemes and tricks that we see during every election all over again, losing millions of votes.

Democracy is about all of the people having an equal voice in deciding how our country will be managed. So all of us owe it to the rest of us to help perfect this. After each election we should look at the problems that occurred and take steps to prevent them from happening again.

Posted by Dave Johnson at 9:35 AM | Comments (0) | Link Cosmos

November 9, 2008

Problem One is Corporate Money Influencing The System

The most important problem to address, in my opinion, is the way a few people have been able to use corporate resources to influence people and policies. These people don't use these resources to promote the betterment of society, or even of the companies whose resources they control. They use these resources to promote policies and ideas that are for their personal benefit.

Corporate resources should be used to run the company. And companies should operate under the rules WE set for them, for our benefit. It is time to make this the law. It is time "to bring private autocratic powers into their proper subordination to the public's government."

Fixing this problem will allow the system to operate the way it is intended again, which will allow us, We, the people, to start addressing the rest of the problems.

Posted by Dave Johnson at 9:22 AM | Comments (1) | Link Cosmos

November 8, 2008

Oil vs Air

No one "owns" the air. No one gets to "profit" from air -- we don't have to "pay" anyone to be able to breath air.

Why is oil different?

Thinking through this question open up some very interesting ideas about our economy and who benefits and why.

In Alaska the oil companies pay the people of the state for the oil. No one pays state taxes AND everyone in the state gets a big check every year. AND the oil companies put aside money into a fund that guarantees the people of Alaska will continue to get those checks forever, even after the oil runs out. This is because the people of Alaska understood that the oil belonged to them.

So what about the rest of the oil in the country, and the world? Why don't the people of the US and the world benefit from their ownership of that oil? Why do a few people who own and manage oil companies get the profits for themselves and grow ever richer, while the rest of us lose our jobs and pensions and health care and houses?

Why do we get taxed to provide these companies that benefit a few people with military protection? Why do we get taxed to build the roads that enable them to move their products to make this money, and then have to pay them for our oil so we can drive cars on those roads? Why do we pay taxes to provide the legal infrastructure of courts and laws that enables them to grow richer, while we all grow poorer from it? Why do we get taxed to provide an education system that invents machines that take our jobs, and that only trains us to be employees that can just be tossed aside?

I'm using oil here as just one example of underlying economic assumptions. Inheritance is another underlying economic assumption. Why does someone "inherit" the right to be rich?

Who is our economy FOR, anyway?

There are a lot of questions here that will need to be re-thought if we are going to get out of the economic mess that the few who benefit from the current corporate and economic structure have gotten us into.

Posted by Dave Johnson at 11:52 AM | Comments (2) | Link Cosmos

November 6, 2008

President-Elect Obama's Transition Website

Go explore and click around at Change.gov.

It even has a blog.

You can even go see what nominees, appointees and members of the transition team are given as resources to study.

Awesome.

Posted by Dave Johnson at 8:03 PM | Comments (0) | Link Cosmos

November 5, 2008

Tell The New Administration What To Do

Imagine the first 100 days. Go tell the new administration what YOU want them to focus on: White House 2 - Where YOU set the nation's priorities

Posted by Dave Johnson at 3:07 PM | Comments (0) | Link Cosmos

NOW We Start The Fight For A PEOPLE'S Economy!

OK, the Republicans are out of the picture. It will take parts of the country a while to come to terms with that. Especially the media, always behind the curve. Our TV screens and newspaper columns might still feature older, well-to-do, white conservatives but We, the People have taken back control.

One gift the conservatives gave us with their election tactics was a clear mandate for socialism. They spent weeks telling the country that an Obama victory was a victory for socialism. And We, the People came out and voted and provided a clear landslide mandate to "spread the wealth around."

NOW we start the fight to create a country and an an economy that works for US, for We, the People.

Things that are for the people: Health care. Vacations. Child care. Mass transit. Unions. Pensions. Environmental protections and clean energy. Education. Nutrition. Housing. Income security.

What needs to change? Wow, where to start.

Our fight starts with getting corporate power under control and working for us again. That is job one. Corporations exist because We, the People make the laws and the roads and everything else that allows corporations to exist and make money. And we do the work. Why do we do this? For OUR benefit -- Why ELSE would we? Did we set up this system so that a very few can use its resources to get all of the benefits of everything we all do? As this blog's motto has been for several years: Who is our economy FOR, anyway?

We need to get the influence of corporate money our of our politics and out of our lives. Corporate resources should not be used by executives to have influence on our politics. That is not what corporate resources are supposed to be for. We, the People are supposed to tell corporations how to behave, not the other way around.

We need to keep corporate influence away from how we think about politics as well! In a democracy it is up to We, the People to tell companies what they do, not the other way around. Beyond that, we also need controls on advertising to keep them from influencing our humanity -- what we think we need and want and how we think we should live our lives, just to sell products that harm us and the planet.

So job one is prohibiting the use of corporate resources to influence our politics, our thinking and our humanity

Posted by Dave Johnson at 6:56 AM | Comments (2) | Link Cosmos

November 2, 2008

Making it Count: How to Protect Your Vote & Spot Dirty Tricks

Posted by Dave Johnson at 1:00 PM | Comments (1) | Link Cosmos

October 29, 2008

Socialism

In Europe they get 5 weeks vacation, fully-paid health care for everyone, generous pensions at an earlier age, full maternity benefits AND child care.

They get PROTECTION from poison in their food, workers getting injured by their jobs, companies dumping crap in their air and water, corporate scams and other general exploitation of the public.

They get some say in how big corporations are run, and the corporations BENEFIT THE PEOPLE.

When McCain complains that Obama is going to "spread the wealth around" ... COMPLAINS about that!! I think maybe everyone in the entire country might just turn out to vote for Obama. Except a few, very few, fatcat corporate executives who are stealing everything they can get their hands on, at our expense. HELL yes, spread the wealth around! HELL yes!

Socialism -- another name for things that work. Compare that to what we've had here for twenty or thirty years. Is there even a question? Sign me up!

Who is our economy FOR, anyway?

Posted by Dave Johnson at 6:41 PM | Comments (2) | Link Cosmos

One Of The Worst?

This is one -- just one -- of the sleaziest Republican smear/deceit ads this year. Sen. Dole in North Carolina hires a voice impersonator to sound like her opponent, to say "There is no God" in an ad, saying her opponent "took godless money."

Wow. That's really creepy. And Sen. Dole apparently thinks North Carolina voters are really, really stupid. Is she right?

One thing that comes out of this election: I think it has become pretty obvious what the Republican Party is about. They say nasty and things to trick people who don't follow the news into voting for them, and then they hand over public money to a few wealthy corporation owners who fund all of this.

I think people are starting to become well-enough aware of this game to start doing something about it. ONE thing would be to stop allowing a few people to use corporate resources to influence our politics. It isn't corporations that are the problem, it is this abiloity of a few people to access corporate resources and use them to subvert democracy.

Posted by Dave Johnson at 10:43 AM | Comments (0) | Link Cosmos

October 23, 2008

Ron Howard's Call To Action

Posted by Dave Johnson at 5:16 PM | Comments (0) | Link Cosmos

Don't Let Anyone Say You Can't Vote

If they say you can't vote:

1) Don't take no for an answer.
2) Demand a provisional ballot.
3) Follow up to be sure it is counted.
4) Call the Election Protection Hotline at 1-866-OUR-VOTE (they are on the web at http://www.866ourvote.org/ same as the phone number.)
5) Be ready, go to the No More Stolen Elections website now.

Posted by Dave Johnson at 5:06 PM | Comments (0) | Link Cosmos

October 21, 2008

Election Protection Wiki News Roundup

Volunteers at the Center for Media and Democracy’s Election Protection Wiki continue to collect reports of ongoing voter suppression.

Among the reports on the Election Protection Wiki from the last few days:

Michigan: GOP admits foreclosure voter suppression scheme.

California voters say they were duped into registering as Republicans

West Virginia: voters say electronic voting machines changed their votes from Democrats to Republicans.

US Supreme Court sides with Ohio election officials against striking 200,000 from the voting roles.

And the Obama campaign has asked the Justice Department to expand the special prosecutor’s DOJ politicization probe to see if the ACORN accusations are related

The volunteers are collecting information on polling place shortages, voting machine malfunctions, ballot misprints, voter roll purges, voter intimidation and other election threats. At the same time they are contributing to issue articles on exit polls, student disenfranchisement, the ACORN controversy and other important topics. All of this is being collected into a central location for use by media, activists, advocates and policy-makers on and after election day.

We need every hand we can get to help us get this information ready in time. Come to the Election Protection Wiki and help keep this election honest.

Posted by Dave Johnson at 10:28 AM | Comments (0) | Link Cosmos

October 20, 2008

The Day After The Election

Go see what AfterDowningStreet.org is up to: A McCain "Win" Will Be Theft, Resistance Is Planned

Posted by Dave Johnson at 7:29 PM | Comments (0) | Link Cosmos

October 18, 2008

Election - Final Stretch

We're about to see the full force power and fury of the right-wing machine unleashed. I'm not so sure Obama will keep his lead through the next phase, or if there will be a country when they're done.

The RNC and the McCain campaign has been accusing Obama and Democrats of being "un-American" or "anti-American" and "dangerous" and "terrorists" and anything they can think of. Today McCain said Obama's tax policies are "Socialist." Across the country the first phase of robo-calls has started, with nasty smears, lies, fear-mongering and you-name-it being pumped into people's homes at all hours.

It is only going to get worse. And then it will get worse. And then it will get really nasty. The next two weeks will go down in history. The corporate right faces the prospect of the people bringing them back under control, and a look at where all the money went. The authoritarian right faces investigations for torture and war crimes. The party operatives face jail time for illegal politicization of the entire government. They will not go without a huge fight.

I really don't know where things will go in the next two weeks, but keep up your spirits, and fight back.

And, of course, watch your backs.

Posted by Dave Johnson at 1:31 PM | Comments (1) | Link Cosmos

October 17, 2008

A Call To Community

Christy at Firedoglake blogged about Obama's closing remarks to the Al Smith Dinner last night. Obama: Each Of Us Has The Responsibility Of Service In Our Communities, Especially Now. Please click through.
This video is the entire event, both McCain and Obama. Lots of great jokes. Obama's closing remarks are at 22:14:

Here is Christy's transcript of the closing remarks:

The fact that each October, in the closing weeks of a hard-fought campaign, people of all political persuasions can come to this dinner, and share a meal and honor the work of this foundation, underscores the reality that no matter what differences or divisions or arguments we are having right now -- we ultimately belong to something bigger and more lasting than a political party.

We belong to a community. We share a country. We are all children of God.

And in this country, there are millions of fellow citizens, our brothers and sisters, who need us very much. Especially now. We are being battered by a very serious economic storm, and for many Americans it's only deepened the quiet storms they've been struggling through for years.

Beyond the walls of this hotel, on the streets of one the greatest cities in the wealthiest nation on earth, there are men and women and children who've fallen on hard times and hard luck. Who can't find work or even a job that pays enough to keep a roof over their heads. Some are hanging on just by a thread.

Scripture says God creates us for works of service. We are blessed to have so many organizations like this one, in the Catholic diocese that perform these acts of God every day. But each of us also have that responsibility. Each of us has that obligation. Especially now.

So, no matter who we are or what we do -- and what I believe is each of us in this room asks for, and hopes for and prays for enough strength and wisdom to do good and to seek justice, and play our small part in building a more hopeful and compassionate world for the generations that will follow.

Before Al Smith was a candidate who made history, he was a man who made a difference. A man who fought for many years to give Americans nothing more than a fair shake and a chance to succeed. And he touched the lives of hundreds of thousands, of millions as a result. Simply put, he helped people. And that's a distinction we can all aspire to. And we can all achieve.

Young or old, rich or poor, Democrat or Republican or Independent. And I have no doubt if we come together at this moment of crisis with this goal in mind, America will meet this challenge and weather this storm. And, in the words of Al Smith, "walk once more in eternal sunshine."

Posted by Dave Johnson at 7:37 AM | Comments (0) | Link Cosmos

October 16, 2008

Doesn't Anyone Remember The Justice Department Politicization Scam????

This in the news today: Officials: FBI investigates ACORN for voter fraud,

The FBI is investigating whether the community activist group ACORN helped foster voter registration fraud around the nation before the presidential election. A senior law enforcement official confirmed the investigation to The Associated Press on Thursday.

A second senior law enforcement official says the FBI was looking at results of recent raids on ACORN offices in several states for any evidence of a coordinated national scam.

First, it is ILLEGAL for anyone in the government to leak news of an FBI investigation. That by itself should be a tipoff to what is going on here.

Second, this is what the Justice Department politicization scandal was about: prosecutors fired for refusing to involve themselves in phony pre-election investigations of vote fraud, and others who were not fired because they played along. Those prosecutors are still on the job. Get it yet?

I am seeing 24.7 hysteria in the media that ACORN is engaged in a conspiracy to steal the election. But once you look into it there is not a single fact behind the charges. In fact, there were a total of 26 cases of voter fraud in the United States in a 5-year period studied.

Meanwhile the Republicans are fighting to purge millions of citizens from the voting rolls before the election. Do you not get it yet?

Posted by Dave Johnson at 3:24 PM | Comments (0) | Link Cosmos

October 10, 2008

Voting Really Matters

Are you too busy to vote? Watch this.

Posted by Dave Johnson at 1:59 PM | Comments (0) | Link Cosmos

October 8, 2008

Deregulation

A serious question: Has deregulation ever led to anything except corruption, environmental destruction, harm to citizens and consumers and financial disaster?

Think about what deregulation is. We, the People pass laws to govern and benefit ourselves. Deregulation really means reducing the amount of control that We, the People have over the decisions that are made -- and handing that control to a few wealthy people who control businesses. It is also a redistribution of the benefits from those businesses away from We, the People and to a wealthy few.

WHY would we ever want do do that?

Posted by Dave Johnson at 3:54 PM | Comments (0) | Link Cosmos

October 7, 2008

Republicans and Democracy

Headlined at Drudge, this Republican newspaper complains that homeless people are allowed to vote: PRO-OBAMA GROUP "VOTE TODAY OHIO" PICKS UP HOMELESS AND REGISTERS THEM TO VOTE

Of course, one-dollar-one-vote Republicans would object to a one-person-one-vote system. God forbid citizens should be allowed to register and vote!

Posted by Dave Johnson at 10:23 AM | Comments (0) | Link Cosmos

October 3, 2008

Palin, On Democracy

Here is something Sarah Palin said during last night's debate. As you read this, substitute the words, "decision-making by We, the People" or "democracy" for the word "government."

Patriotic is saying, government, you know, you're not always the solution. In fact, too often you're the problem so, government, lessen the tax burden and on our families and get out of the way and let the private sector and our families grow and thrive and prosper.

Palin says that decision-making by We, the People is not always the solution. Palin wants We, the People and democracy to "get out of the way." So, OK, see if you can guess what replaces decision-making by We, the People if we get out of the way.

Oh, and for a big clue, think about the bailout bill that just passed. How much decision-making by We, the People was involved in that?

Posted by Dave Johnson at 1:49 PM | Comments (2) | Link Cosmos

September 23, 2008

This Is Important Because

Since I am in New York I thought I would take a subway down to Wall Street this morning. Here it is, from behind the statue of George Washington, taken about 15 minutes ago. Now I am online from a Starbucks down the street.

Thinking about this financial crisis, I have an observation. Just a week ago there really wasn't that big of a problem as far as the Financial Elite were concerned. I mean, us out there in the hinterlands were feeling pain and trying to tell the Elite to pay attention. So we were "whiners." But the "fundamentals of the economy were found."

Now it is just ONE WEEK later and the entire world has collapsed and the Congress is working on a package to send ALL THE REST OF THE MONEY that the country can possibly borrow to Wall Street.

What happened? I think what happened is that something affected THEM, so it became IMPORTANT. This financial crisis is important because it affects the financial elite. And so we are presented with a "shut up and pay up" oackage to bail them out. Because THEY are important and we are NOT important, so the things that make them uncomfortable MUST be solved immediately.

But who is being asked to pay? We are. Not them, us. Have you once heard from Washington a suggestion that the rich and corporations start paying taxes again, to cover the costs of this massive bailout? Of course not.

They say that credit is drying up. My question is, according to the law of supply and demand is credit really drying up, or is the PRICE of credit rising to meet the cost of covering the risks of loaning to these clucks who screwed up the economy.

Posted by Dave Johnson at 8:02 AM | Comments (0) | Link Cosmos

September 22, 2008

The Reason They MUST Pass It NOW

The reason Congress MUST pass this bailout bill NOW is because in a short time an Obama administration might be taking over. THAT is the reason it has to be done NOW and uses up all the rest of the money the United States might be able to borrow, ever, instead of passing something that covers the problem for a few months. Otherwise there would be a chance for a sensible approach that follows the principles of one-person-one-vote democracy instead of one-dollar-one-vote Republicanism.

Chris at Open Left writes,

Cut Bush out of the equation. Start negotiating with the candidates instead, thus forcing them to make this their first action as President. This will also have the positive result of making the election about the bailout and corporate malfeasance in general. Hell, it would also make every single congressional campaign about the same thing, since every candidate would be forced to work out the deal for two weeks before the next President is in office.

Posted by Dave Johnson at 6:19 AM | Comments (0) | Link Cosmos

A Better Plan

By shocking us with their Plan the Bush administration have once against defined the terms of the debate, and set all of the conditions. It all has to be immediate with no time to think it over and has to be done exactly the way we say or YOU will be responsible for killing the economy (and this kitten).

Krugman says,

I’d urge Congress to pause for a minute, take a deep breath, and try to seriously rework the structure of the plan, making it a plan that addresses the real problem. Don’t let yourself be railroaded — if this plan goes through in anything like its current form, we’ll all be very sorry in the not-too-distant future.

Calculated Risk adds,

A better plan would be transparent (all deals would be publicized), involve a share in ownership for the taxpayers, and have substantial oversight. We can do better.

Democracy can work. Give it a (last) chance.

Posted by Dave Johnson at 5:59 AM | Comments (0) | Link Cosmos

September 19, 2008

Shock Doctrine Bailout: Taxpayers To Cover Debts Of Wall Street Zillionaires

Treasury Secretary Paulson just used the words, "A significant investment of taxpayer dollars." That's OUR dollars. And where is the money going? The plan is for U.S. taxpayers to bail out Wall Street. Not just a few firms this time, but all of it. The financial markets are, of course, soaring on the new bailout plan.

Where did all this bad debt come from? In the last few years millions were talked into borrowing money from Wall Street using houses as collateral. Sometimes to buy those houses, other times to buy cars and ... stuff. This paid for Wall Street's multi-million-dollar salaries and bonuses for the past several years. The easy borrowing ran up the price of houses, but now the party is over and the bill comes due.

What does this bailout plan mean to regular Americans? First: It means no money for a health care plan.

Second: it means no money for retirement. It means no money to cover what the government borrowed from Social Security to give those tax cuts to the rich. (The corporations long ago quit providing pensions to the people who did the work. THAT scam -- 401Ks instead of pensions; money transferred from workers to shareholders -- is what started the big Wall Street runup.)

In summary, this plan means our standard of living will drop in order to cover the mess Wall Street made while handing out those multi-million dollar bonuses.

The plan will be presented to Congress in these last days of the Bush administration, and a climate of disaster emergency urgency will be used to get it passed before anyone has time to consider the ramifications of what is happening.

Alternative: instead use the money to retrofit the entire country to a green economy. Make every building energy efficient. Replace the oil and coal-based electricity generation with alternatives. Build efficient power lines to the new wind generation system we will build in the Plains states. This would give every unemployed person a job, create an efficient economy, and pay dividends forever. This would probably cost much less than the bailout.

Posted by Dave Johnson at 6:53 AM | Comments (2) | Link Cosmos

September 17, 2008

Baroness Calls Obama Elitist

Baroness Lady Lynn Forester de Rothschild, wife of British banking scion Sir Evelyn de Rothschild, endorsed John McCain -- the guy with a private jet and seven houses -- for President today, calling Obama "an elitist."

As the saying goes, I am not making that up.

Aristocrat Who Favored Clinton Endorses McCain,

When not engaged in politics, de Rothschild -- whom the Wall Street Journal dubbed a "New York socialite" and Portfolio has described as "the flashiest hostess in London" -- has the run of a sprawling estate in Buckinghamshire, north of London, known as Ascott House. In the U.S., she summers on Martha's Vineyard. And she has not been shy with her feelings about Obama prior to today, telling CNN weeks ago -- and without any hint of irony -- that, "frankly, I don't like him. I feel like he is an elitist."

Is there anything else to say about McCain and his claims that he is one of us regular people?

Posted by Dave Johnson at 2:26 PM | Comments (0) | Link Cosmos

September 15, 2008

New Progressive Voices

What do we do if we win?

I'll be writing soon about New Progressive Voices - Values and Policies for the 21st Century,

The members of the Progressive Ideas Network have come together at this auspicious moment to lay out a course for genuine progress in the government and governance of this country and all its people.

This is a book of nine essays by progressive leaders, laying out a progressive vision for governance. You can download their document (56 pages PDF).

Go to the site to see the list of Progressive Ideas Network organizations that are participating.

Posted by Dave Johnson at 1:06 PM | Comments (0) | Link Cosmos

September 14, 2008

McCain Campaign Lie Strategy - Will It Work?

The McCain campaign is being called out on some of the lies they have been telling. The campaign spokesman says that they are in this to win and don't care what the "media filter" says.

I think we will get a test of their theory that the "media filter" doesn't matter anymore. This is to a large degree about who controls the information channels now. The conservative movement has been building to this with their well-funded "liberal media" campaign. They have they're mouthpieces like Rush constantly telling his audience not to ever believe the media. The right has a very large following. The result is that most of the public believes that the major news media is a propaganda machine for liberals and should not be trusted.

And they have the advantage that repetition of messages does work. They are running ads that say Obama will raise your taxes, force sex talk on your kindergartners and all that stuff -- even one that says Obama is the anti-Christ. They have the money to run those ads over and over on shows that lots of people watch. And they have the wealthy and corporate-backed front groups running ads and robo-calls and smear campaigns, etc. against Obama. People don't necessarily watch or believe mainstream news, but they will see these ads again and again.

So do the authoritarian conservatives have the power to override facts and "create their own reality" as they did in the lead-up to the Iraq war? I really don't know the answer and wouldn't bet my house on it either way.

Remember, tobacco company marketing is able to get people to kill themselves, but to hand over much of their money in the process. Modern marketing methods can convince almost anyone to do or believe almost anything.

Posted by Dave Johnson at 11:00 AM | Comments (0) | Link Cosmos

August 26, 2008

Denver Convention, Transportation and Democracy - The Sheer Distance

One problem that many people attending this convention are forced to deal with is the sheer distance between events. First, getting from the airport into town is a very expensive cab ride with few other choices.

I was immediately struck that there is no light rail system out to the airport! I don't understand how a major airport near a major city could have been planned and built without incorporating light rail from the start. Of course, this was all done in the unfortunate oil/car-dominated era that we are all working to end...

In town convention events are vast distances apart. Even inside the security perimeter itself things are far apart. It is a long walk in the sun to get from the Pepsi Center to the Tivoli, where the Starz Green Room is. It is a very long walk from the Big Tent to the Starz Green Room. Etc.

Getting my official convention credentials this morning meant taking a cab for miles, to a hotel in another part of town. (Long lines, waiting, waiting...) And then there were no cabs available to take me back. Miles and miles... There was a free city "16th street mall" shuttle that helped part of the way.

So this is a problem with this convention. Having things far apart might be OK if there was some way to get from one place to another. You can't have a car here but everything seems to require that you do.

And of course in the larger picture this is the problem with the way America has built up its housing/mall/freeway infrastructure. You have to have a car, period, or you cannot participate in the modern America except in a few larger cities that have well-thought-out transportation. This requirement that you have a car imposes a certain cost on people. But there are plenty of people who can't meet those costs and are forced to drop out of participation. So look what happened in New Orleans when Katrina hit. Many people simply could not evacuate because they did not have their own cars, and there was no real transportation available otherwise.

America has created distances between people, classes, and even physical distance requirements that work against us in the long run. This kind of approach, where you can't participate if you can't afford your own car is anti-democracy. In the case of this convention, it was just dumb.

Posted by Dave Johnson at 10:14 AM | Comments (1) | Link Cosmos

August 23, 2008

What I Think About Biden As VP

I think we have to beat McCain. His performance last week concerning Russia and Georgia shows that he is dangerous, trigger happy and is willing to encourage fear and hostility and risk nuclear war for little reason.

I think any continuation of Bush policies would be ruinous for an already-ruined country.

I think ANY choices of our leaders by anyone other than the people is an insult to democracy so I am not big on the way America chooses vice-presidents. In my lifetime we have had LBJ and Ford as Presidents who were in no way chosen by the people. (And then Bush was imposed on us by the Republican majority of the Supreme court.)

I think all the hoo-ha over who will be "picked" for us just shows what we're willing to tolerate and how far we have to go before we really understand what democracy means.

Posted by Dave Johnson at 1:32 PM | Comments (0) | Link Cosmos

August 21, 2008

Governor Schwarzenegger v.s. "Republican Right-Wing Talk"

This post originally appeared at Speak Out California

Not content with blocking the budget, the right is going after the Republican Governor for trying to govern. See Schwarzenegger engages in talk-show tussle,

Schwarzenegger tried to defend new taxes as necessary because the state was still paying off debts incurred by predecessor Gov. Gray Davis. But the hosts pressed further and suggested that Schwarzenegger abandoned his original mission of fixing the state's fiscal situation in order to pursue environmental goals.

That seemed to upset the governor, who maintained that his environmental policies had nothing to do with the state budget.

"This is absolutely absurd what you're saying right now," Schwarzenegger said. "....You're living in the Stone Age if you think that the environmental issue has anything to do with the budget or the declining economy worldwide."

"Don't lie to the people," Schwarzenegger added. "That's all I can tell you, don't lie to the people. Don't pull wool over their eyes. It's nonsense Republican right-wing talk."

That prompted the "anesthesia" joke. Schwarzenegger underwent anesthesia Saturday when he had arthroscopic surgery to repair cartilage in his right knee.

In fact the state is paying off debts incurred by Governor Schwarzenegger, but at least he is trying to move the far-right Republicans off of their "no taxes under any circumstances" ideology. The Governor is trying to govern and should get credit for that, even if it is governing from the right. The far-right that is the rest of the state's Republican Party apparently doesn't want government at all, especially not government-by-the-people. There are lots of people. They want a one-dollar-one-vote approach favored by corporations and the rich who have lots of dollars.

Please click through to Speak Out California

Posted by Dave Johnson at 8:04 AM | Comments (1) | Link Cosmos

August 13, 2008

That Stimulus Package

Earlier this year we borrowed $152 billion and sent checks to everyone, calling it a "stimulus package." The interest on that borrowing alone will add another $6.8 billion per year to our budget -- forever -- assuming rates don't rise. Great idea.

Borrowing another $152 billion bought us a little bit of time. But last month retail sales dropped, and the economic downturn is back on track just as bad as before. And because of that borrowing the interest that we all have to pay will make it just that much harder to get out of this.

That "stimulus package" didn't create a single job. It didn't fix a single bridge. It didn't increase the country's productivity. It didn't build light rail anywhere. It didn't make us more energy efficient. It wasn't investment. It was more consumption. Borrowing to consume.

What if we put $152 billion into hiring people to retrofit buildings to be more energy efficient? What if we put $152 billion into hiring people to install solar onto the roofs of government buildings? What if we put $152 billion into hiring people to hold summer classes so people would qualify for better jobs? That would be investment. It would lower our future costs or increase our future ability to earn. What has happened to us that this wasn't even considered -- by the Democratic majority in the House and Senate?

Update - Thinking some more about this. In 2001 Bush said that news of the dramatic change from budget surplus to budget deficit after his tax cuts started taking effect was "incredibly positive news."

President Bush said today that there was a benefit to the government's fast-dwindling surplus, declaring that it will create "a fiscal straitjacket for Congress." He said that was "incredibly positive news" because it would halt the growth of the federal government.

(He said this in August, 2001. Later, when people were upset about it the weasel tried to blame 9/11 for the deficits.)

Now we pay almost $500 billion at year for interest on the debt and this amount is rising rapidly. That $152 billion "stimulus package" was supposed to fix the economy. Think about the terrible effect on the economy of paying $500 billion each year just on debt interest.

Posted by Dave Johnson at 3:45 PM | Comments (0) | Link Cosmos

August 12, 2008

So-Called Choice In Medical Insurance

TPMCafe | Talking Points Memo | The Fictions of a Free Market

Too often, "choice" means that we are "free to choose"--in fact forced to choose--what we can afford. When it comes to health-care "menu" is code for a tiered system If you are middle-class, even if you are upper-middle-class, you may find that reformers who promise "universal coverage" are, in fact, offering an array of "choices to fit every pocketbook." And unless you happen to be perched on the top step of a five-step economic ladder, you may well discover that the only insurance policy that fits your purse really shouldn't be called "insurance." Either the co-pays and deductibles are so high that you can't afford to use it--or when you do use it, you'll be told that the treatment you most need isn't "covered." So-called "Swiss cheese" policies are filled wiht holes that open, like trap doors, when you most need protection.

Go read.

One of the comments following the post:

We "free Americans", as market participants, do in fact have a choice, as is constantly noted by Conservatives: we can choose to sell our souls and buy everything we're sold, buy into all the BS we're told, and live like we're "supposed to", like everybody else who believes that the keys to a good life are a fancy car, an obedient spouse, a few kids, credit card debt for useless items, and a wide-screen tv with 80+ sports channels, hoping all the while no one in the family ever gets sick.
Or we can choose to fight this massive lie of the "American Dream", and grow steadily alone, bankrupt and insane - but they're correct, it IS OUR CHOICE.

Posted by Dave Johnson at 8:11 PM | Comments (0) | Link Cosmos

One Effect Of Money's Influence On Policies

This post originally appeared at Speak Out California

A new briefing paper from the Economic Policy Institute titled The China Trade Toll [PDF document] says that since China entered the World Trade Organization in 2001 our China trade policy "has had a devastating effect on U.S. workers and the domestic economy."

The report shows that since 2001 California has lost 325,800 jobs (55,400 of these just in the last year) to China due to these policies. And since 2001 2.3 million jobs were lost nationally. According to the report even those workers able to find new jobs saw their wages drop an average of $8,146 per year. (These figures are only for jobs and income lost to China and do not include jobs and income lost to other countries.)

And, of course, this effect is not limited to the workers who lost their job. This also has an effect on works' ability to ask for raises and imporvements in working conditions. From the report,

It is also critical to recognize that the indirect impact of trade on other workers is significant as well. Trade with less-developed countries has reduced the bargaining power of all workers in the U.S. economy who resemble the import-displaced in terms of education, credentials, and skills. Annual earnings for all workers without a four year college degree are roughly $1,400 lower today because of this competition…

Specific industries were affected more than others by our massive trade deficit with China. Computer and electronic product manufacturers were hit hardest, losing an eliminated 561,000 jobs in this period. Jobs lost to the deficit tended to be better-paying ones,

More than two-thirds of the jobs displaced by China trade deficits were in manufacturing, which tends to employ a higher-than-average share of workers with a high school degree or less (43.7% of workers displaced) and to provide those workers with good wages and benefits. More than half (55.6%) of the jobs displaced came from the top half of the U.S. wage distribution, and among this group a disproportionate share came from the top 10th of all U.S. wage earners. African Americans (230,000 jobs lost), Hispanics (339,000), and other ethnic groups (219,000) all suffered from the loss of jobs such as these that pay substantially more and offer better benefits than jobs in other industries.

Here is what is going on. First, China "pegs" its currency to the dollar instead of letting it follow market rates as the dollar does. So the dollar's decline does not make it cost less to manufacture here, which would bring manufacturing jobs to the U.S. Next, China doesn't allow workers to organize labor unions. So their workers are not really benefiting from all of this. Wages there are kept low, and prices grow ever higher due to the currency manipulation of "pegging" to the dollar. And finally, China imposes barriers on imported goods. So while they manufacture and sell to the rest of the world, they keep their own people from buying things made elsewhere.

As a result China exported $323 billion in goods to the U.S. in 2007, and purchased only $61 billion in goods from the U.S.

The report concludes,

The growing U.S. trade deficit with China has displaced huge numbers of jobs in the United States and has been a prime contributor to the crisis in manufacturing employment over the past six years. Moreover, the United States is piling up foreign debt, losing export capacity, and facing a more fragile macroeconomic environment.

And, the report points out that this isn't particularly in the long-term interests of the Chinese people, either,

Is America’s loss China’s gain? The answer is most certainly no. China has become dependent on the U.S. consumer market for employment generation, has suppressed the purchasing power of its own middle class with a weak currency, and, most importantly, has held hundreds of billions of hard currency reserves in low-yielding, risky assets instead of investing them in public goods that could benefit Chinese households. Its vast purchases of foreign exchange reserves have stimulated the overheating of its domestic economy, and inflation in China has accelerated rapidly in the past year. Its repression of labor rights has suppressed wages, thereby artificially subsidizing exports.

Of course trade is good, when it is a two way street. If trade is fair, it benefits everyone involved. But this report shows that what the people who run American corporations call "free" trade is hurting our economy more than it is helping. Now that several years of these policies have passed we can measure the results, and the results have not been good for the American people.

Because of our country's trade policies with China 325,800 jobs have been lost in California. Meanwhile China is allowed to manipulate their currency, prevent unions, and set up barriers that keep their people from buying goods we make here.

What this has meant is big corporations can get out of paying American workers a fair wage because they can get away with paying Chinese workers hardly anything, while a very few people at the top of the American and Chinese food chains pocket the difference entirely for themselves. If you consider the huge amounts that some of these individuals are pocking from this scheme -- some receiving hundreds of millions of dollars each year -- aren't we at least benefiting from the taxes they pay? Unfortunately no, because of the tax policies of California and national Republican: low taxes for the rich, higher taxes for the rest of us, and borrowing to cover the resulting deficits. Here in California the Republicans are even blocking an effort to ask the super-rich to pay the same sales taxes that the rest of us pay on everything we buy when they buy yachts and private planes. But no, they don't even have to pay that tax.

The result of these tax policies is that while we lose jobs,and the remaining workers get pay cuts, we also lose out on government services like schools, fire protection, police, roads, mass transit and everything else our government does for us. And that's not all. Because of these tax policies the state and national governments are borrowing huge amounts, and we have to pay that back with interest.

All of this -- the China trade policies, the tax policies, the massive borrowing -- come from the influence that money buys in our political system. The minute someone is able to use some money to gain an advantage, of course they use that to get even more money, which lets them buy an even bigger advantage, and the cycle continues.

You can easily see the effects of the money with the massive ad campaigns around California's elections and ballot initiatives -- and the resulting budget gridlock as a few corporate-connected Republicans block every effort to ask the rich and connected to pay their share.

We are in a stranglehold situation. A very few wealthy people are exporting our jobs and pocketing the money they would have paid as wages and benefits. They are not even paying taxes on the ill-gotten gains, which forces our state and national governments to borrow. And they are getting away with it because they are able to use some of that money to further influence our political system.

Here's the thing. They're not even using their own money to purchase this influence. Since they have control of the resources of large corporations, they are using the money from those corporations to fund the system of influence, which directs much larger amounts of cash back to themselves.

I think the way to stop this is to prevent any use of corporate money for anything other than operating the corporation. I'll share some ideas on that in later posts.

Click through to Speak Out California -- Please leave a comment with your thoughts.

Posted by Dave Johnson at 9:50 AM | Comments (0) | Link Cosmos

August 9, 2008

If You Can't Do The Time, Don't Do The Crime

A new group called Accountable America is warning conservative donors about staying within election laws. The New York Times wrote about this the other day with the misleading headline, Group Plans Campaign Against G.O.P. Donors.

Of course it isn't a "campaign against GOP donors" it is a campaign warning against unlawful and unethical activity. But stopping unlawful activity just might dry up a lot of the Republican Party's -- and the right's supporting infrastructure's -- cash flow. This includes 501c3 tax-free "charity" think tanks and 501c4 "issue" organizations that are really illegally engaged in candidate activity, or otherwise acting as conduits for corporate money or for those who have "maxed out" (reached the legal limit) for political donations.

The other day I wrote about,

... companies intimidating workers to vote a certain way, churches, think tanks, front groups incorporated as c4s but doing candidate work, campaigns violating election laws, etc.

... Suppose [we could create] some concern among the Wal-Marts and the Sheldon Adelsons that they had better think about following the law?

What would this do to the funding sources of the right's machine?

So I guess great minds think alike. Heh.

There is plenty of need for an effort to get conservative and corporate donors to follow the law. Just for example -- last week's news about "curious" bundled political contributions made by employees of oil companies receiving billion-dollar contracts from the government to McCain and Republicans. Some of these donations came from people clearly unable to make such a donation on their own. This makes it appear that the companies may have illegally given these people money to give to McCain and the Republican Party and groups are demanding an investigation (that will never happen).

[Public interest groups] want the Justice Department to investigate whether bundlers for John McCain's presidential campaign are using "straw" donations -- those made in the name of someone else to evade contribution limits.

A story at TPM elaborates,

"An executive from a company that has a billion dollar contract to deliver oil to U.S. bases in Iraq possibly violated election law to funnel contributions to McCain. We think that warrants an investigation."

And on the Hess matter ... : "An office manager for an oil company that stands to gain millions in profits from offshore drilling makes donations for the first time this cycle to McCain, and did it at the same time nine other Hess donors do. That's worth an investigation."

Now that Accountable America is on the scene maybe corporations and big donors who are thinking about engaging in illegal activities will think twice.

If you want to help this effort you can donate by clicking here.

Update Kathy G writes about Accountable America in her post Liberal fascism strikes again!

* The new group will offer a $100,000 reward to those providing information that leads to the conviction or judgment against a conservative or business-related organization that violates the law.

* Accountable America will provide information to the public through television ads, mailings, phone calls and its Web site.

* Next week the organization plans to send a mailing warning nearly 10,000 Republican donors of the consequences of funding organizations that break or skirt the law.

Posted by Dave Johnson at 12:43 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack | Link Cosmos

August 3, 2008

Question For Today

Question: Is there such a thing as a good or bad company? CAN a company be good or bad? (Is a company sentient?)

Is there any definition of a good or bad company beyond following the law and distributing profits to shareholders?

If a company is acting in ways that we do not like whose jobs is it to change the way the company is acting?

Posted by Dave Johnson at 12:03 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack | Link Cosmos

July 20, 2008

Pete McCloskey at Netroots Nation

Never mind Bob Barr, I ran into "national treasure" Pete McCloskey at Netroots Nation.

Posted by Dave Johnson at 10:28 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack | Link Cosmos

July 15, 2008

How You Can Help Atria Residents and Workers

Last week in Gouging Vulnerable Seniors -- What Can Be Done? I wrote about two big pension funds that have invested in the "Lazard affiliate" that owns Atria Senior Living, and suggested they ask Lazard to clear up their act. (If you are not familiar with what is happening with Atria, please click this.) One of these funds is in Quebec, the other in the Netherlands. These funds have signed on to the United Nation's Principles for Responsible Investment (UN-PRI) and these principles call for investors to take action when their investments are causing harm.

PGGM is a large pension fund in the Netherlands that serves that country's public social workers and health care workers.

La Caisse de Depot et Placements du Quebec ("CDP") -- a large public pension fund in Quebec.

These are prominent, large funds with good reputations on a global stage. They are responsible investors and take it seriously enough to be signatories to the UN-PRI. The Principles' FAQs say "The Principles suggest a policy of engagement with companies rather than screening or avoiding stocks based on ESG criteria (although this may be an appropriate approach for some investors)." I am writing here to encourage PGGM and CDP to ask Lazard to clean up their act, and have Atria treat their elderly residents and their workers better. Ask them to support the International Labor Organization's core conventions, especially Freedom of Association: "The right of workers and employers to form and join organizations of their choice is an integral part of a free and open society. It is a basic civil liberty that serves as a building block for social and economic progress. Linked to this is the effective recognition of the right to collective bargaining. Voice and representation are an important part of decent work."

So OK, that's what THEY can do. What about you?

Do you have a pension fund? Maybe you have friends or relatives with pension funds? There are steps you can take.

YOU will retire some day. You will get old. So you should take this personally. Do you want to have a national corporate environment that means you will retire into a place like this? Or do you want to fight the system that accepts this kind of thing? Because it can happen to YOU.

Here is a partial list of the investors in the Lazard-Atria fund:

Public employee pension funds in the U.S.:
Virginia state pension fund
Wisconsin state pension fund
Colorado state pension fund
Utah state pension fund
New York state pension fund
IIlinois state pension fund
Illinois Municipal Retirement Fund

European / Canadian public funds:
La Caisse de Depot (Quebec fund)
PGGM (Netherlands public / healthcare workers fund)

Corporate funds:
General Motors Asset Management
Lucent Asset Management
AT&T Investment Management
IBM

Other investors:
Lazard Group
Government of Singapore Investment Corp (GIC)
Institutional Property Consultants
Southern Company

If you have money in one of these, this is not just some union dispute -- it is your money.

Are these funds doing their job on holding Lazard responsible? Are they responsible with their other investments? What about other places where you have money?

There is a way for them to start being responsible, and that is to join the UN-PRI commitment to responsible investing, and start fighting to create an economy that cares about people.

This isn't just about Atria and Lazard. This is about a national climate where people are human beings who are respected, not just economic units to be squeezed. You have the power to make noise and demand that people be treated with respect.

This post was sponsored in part by The Campaign To Improve Assisted Living.

Posted by Dave Johnson at 9:44 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack | Link Cosmos

July 10, 2008

Balancing the Budget and Paying Off the Debt

Oh, so NOW they want budget deficit reductions!

Here's what I think: The money for those tax cuts was borrowed from the Social Security trust fund, and America's rich people have had quite a party with that money. That means that America's rich people owe the money to the elderly. It was borrowed from the elderly and it has to be paid back to the elderly. It is wrong to ask elderly retirees to accept less because we gave the money away to rich people to have a big party with.

And the money we owe the Chinese was borrowed and used to give tax cuts to the rich, and subsidies to oil companies, and no-bid contracts to defense contractors with Cayman Islands addresses.

Since the borrowing began in the early 80s there has been a massive shift in wealth from regular people to a very few wealthy people. Now that the borrowing has to start being paid back they are asking regular people to be the ones who have to work harder, accept less, drive on unrepaired roads and send their kids to bad schools.

We used to have a 90% top tax rate because we felt this kind of concentration of wealth was bad for democracy. Corporations used to foot a much greater portion of the country's tax bill, but this has also shifted onto the backs of regular people. And you know what? When we had those tax policies the economy worked better. In a consumer economy, regular people with more dollars in their pockets mean the economy does better.

I'm an independent contractor so I have to pay 15% to social security on my first dollar to my last dollar - before income and other taxes. That is a direct subsidy to those tax cuts. It pisses me off.

Posted by Dave Johnson at 12:05 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack | Link Cosmos

July 8, 2008

Anti-Democracy Conservatives

This post originally appeared at Speak Out California

This column by Newt Gingrich is really bothering me: Bobby Jindal, America's Most Transformational Governor - HUMAN EVENTS. Near the beginning of the column,

The principles that motivate his Louisiana Revolution are the same pro-innovation, pro-competition, anti-bureaucracy and anti- big government principles that I urge each week in this newsletter - the same principles that are so desperately needed in Washington, D.C.

Let's take a look at what these words mean.

Pro-innovation. Fine. Pro-competition. Fine. But let's look at what "anti-bureaucracy" and "anti-big government" actually mean.

In a democracy we have openness and transparency. The use of our money and resources is accountable to the people. And how do we make sure that government is open and accountable? We have careful procedures and oversight in place to ensure that the money and resources are used as they should be used. This means you have to make sure that every i is dotted and every t is crossed before you approve something. Otherwise you get politicians giving contracts to their brothers-in-law, department heads taking trips to luxury resorts, and other corruption that history has taught will always occur.

Conservatives like to complain about "bureaucracy" and claim that corporations are more 'efficient" than government, but what they are really complaining about is openness and democracy. Yes, it is more efficient to have one executive making decisions and telling us how it is going to be. And yes, it is less bureaucratic to just ram projects through and award them to your friends. But let's take a look at the results of the conservative revolution in government of the last few years. We have seen so many "no-bid contracts" awarded to well-connected companies, with no oversight and no accountability at all. Reporters who can get past the secrecy have discovered that literally billions upon billions of our tax dolalrs have been stolen, can't be accounted for at all! This is what the conservatives meant when they said they wanted to get rid of bureaucracy -- they meant they wanted to take off with the money!

And what about "anti-big-government?" Just what do they think government IS? The first three words of our Constitution are "We, the People." THAT is what government is. We, the People make decisions about how we will invest our resources and how we will distribute the return on that investment. Those resources include our minerals, oil, coal, water, as well as our people, companies, laws and intellectual property. We, the People making the decisions.

So when they complain about government they are really complaining that We, the People are in charge. And "big government" means We, the People in charge of more of our own destiny. If they don't want We, the People in charge -- what DO they want? Think about that. The alternative to big government is big corporations making the decisions about our resources, people, oil, coal, laws, etc. That is what this really means. And this has proven itself out, hasn't it? As we have lived through the conservative revolution, we have seen more and more of the control of our resources and our desitiny shifted away from QWe, the People and into the hands of the few who control the big corporations.

So don't be fooled by shiny words. When you realize what these conservatives really want you see that it is about taking control away from you and me and giving it to a wealthy few.

Click through to Speak Out California.

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June 14, 2008

Another Corporate Gimmick - Arbitration

This post originally appeared at Speak Out California.

Does your credit card or bank loan agreement have an "arbitration clause?" More and more consumer-oriented contracts and "agreements" have clauses specifying that disputes must go to arbitration rather than our civil justice system. The justification for this is that arbitration saves the time and expense of working within our legal system. But here's the thing: the corporations choose the arbitrators and every arbitrator knows they will never, ever, ever, ever (ever) get another job if they rule against the corporations. Never.

And guess what: 98.8% of arbitrations end up in favor of the corporations. This is not a surprise.

The Progressive States Network's newsletter has a story about this today, Arbitration: "Set up to squeeze small sums of money out of desperately poor people",

The headline above is a quote from former West Virginia Supreme Court Justice Richard Neely, describing what his role was as an arbitrator at the National Arbitration Forum (NAF), a for-profit company hired to enforce mandatory arbitration clauses for credit card consumer loans. "NAF is nothing more than an arm of the collection industry hiding behind a veneer of impartiality," says Richard Neely.

In a devastating expose by BusinessWeek, Neely and other former arbitrators describe an arbitration system stacked completely against consumers-- a system where creditors win 99.8% of all disputes involving companies ranging from Bank of America to Sears to Citgroup. Arbitration clauses buried in the fine print of credit card offers means consumers lose the right to have disputes decided in an independent court and instead are forced into corporation-selected arbitration firms.

The BusinessWeek story mentioned in the Progressive States Network story is titled, Banks vs. Consumers (Guess Who Wins)

This story about credit card companies taking unfair advantage of consumers is one more attack on citizen rights to access our own legal system (one more of so many attacks). Think about what is happening here. First the big corporations fought against "regulations" which are the rules that We, the People set up requiring safe workplaces or environmental standards, or products that do not injure people, etc. Then when fewer regulations of course resulted in worker or consumer injuries or toxic spills or other harms the inured parties filed more lawsuits asking the companies to make good. So in response to these lawsuits the corporate-financed "tort reform" movement came along, working to limit the ability of citizens to be compensated for the results of corporate bad behavior. The result has been fewer regulations preventing harms and more restrictions on citizen access to courts where we can seek damages after we are harmed.

I didn't even bring up the corporate-conservative movement to install their own business-friendly judges in the courts.

But even those erosions of our access to justice has not been enough for the greedy corporations. Now there is arbitration: clauses that show up in contracts and agreements that remove your ability to take a dispute to the courts at all! And the judges in these courts are dependent on the corporations for their livelihood!

Deregulation, tort reform and now arbitration that is rigged against the consumer. Drip, drip, drip. One after another the big corporations are eroding the rights of citizens.

Click through to Speak Out California.

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June 6, 2008

Dems - No Lobbyist Or PAC Money

The Democratic Party has announced that they will no longer accept contributions from lobbyists or PACs.

The Democratic Party | Democratic Party Will No Longer Accept Washington Lobbyist Donations:

Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean and the Obama for America Campaign today announced that the DNC will no longer accept Washington lobbyist donations, making the same commitment as Barack Obama, the presumptive Democratic nominee for president.

"The DNC and the Obama Campaign are unified and working together to elect Barack Obama as the next president of the United States. Our presumptive nominee has pledged not to take donations from Washington lobbyists and from today going forward the DNC makes that pledge as well," said Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean. "Senator Obama has promised to change the way things are done in Washington and this step is a sure sign of his commitment. The American people's priorities will set the agenda in an Obama Administration, not the special interests."

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June 3, 2008

Donna Edwards Says You Should Run For Office

I had the opportunity to talk with Donna Edwards for a while today, at the SEIU 2008 convention. She says that you should run for office, and a lot more than that.

This year Donna Edwards challenged incumbent "corporate Democrat" Al Wynn for Maryland's 4th Congressional District in the primary election and won, with help from the Netroots, multiple progressive organizations and labor, including a great deal of help from the SEIU. Her win is "reverberating - wide and deep" among members of Congress. It shows that accountability has arrived. It also shows that "Democrats can do this without begging and relying on corporate interests." She goes on to say,

"There is a huge lesson in this. A lot of elected officials start out in the grassroots community - and then the money happens. One step after another they are following the corporate agenda."

She says that help from the netroots will "enable candidates like us to be as independent inside as we were on the pathway getting there."

In 2006 Donna ran against Wynn and lost by 2731 votes. Many progressive organizations and labor groups were reluctant to challenge any Democratic incumbent. After that defeat she went from labor organization to labor organization saying that she was just one union hall away from winning. So in 2008 a coalition of labor and progressives joined up, and she ended up winning the primary by 20 points. Incumbent Wynn resigned from office and immediately joined a lobbying firm for big bucks.

She says the wind of change is out there, a demand for change is building. She says regular people have to run for office to start building a farm team for change. Regular people have a story to tell, and the more we run regular folks, the more opportunity there is to tell the public where we have to go. The power of the moneyed interests that want to keep us where we are is incredible so we have to empower regular people to tell their stories.

She said she talked to a number of people, telling them they should run, and finally decided to run herself. "But why didn't I say that first?" She wants all of us to say that first. (Not that Donna should run, but that YOU should run.) Progressives need to create a farm team to run for office.

From Left: Todd Beeton (MyDD), Donna Edwards, Watertiger (Firedoglake) and me.

Disclaimer: Blogger hotel and airfare paid for by the SEIU

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June 2, 2008

SEIU Convention -- These Are PROGRESSIVE People

I am at the SEIU convention in Puerto Rico. There are 3500 representatives here, each representing a number of workers. SEIU now has 2 million members and growth is accelerating.

I'm in a darkened convention hall, listening and absorbing, with things coming at me from all directions. I'm talking to members and leaders. So I am not yet writing a lot. I'm just posting short posts until the larger stories appear and then I'll be writing a lot about this event and ongoing.

This is a great thing happening here. THESE people are going to really make changes happen -- with health care the first priority. This is janitors, health care workers, and others, a real bottom-up movement of people who work hard. This is one of the most diverse crowds I have been in and these are dedicated people. And these are PROGRESSIVE people!

The focus here is beyond the SEIU in particular and labor movement in general. The focus here is on the inequities in our current imbalanced economic system. We all know that it is working for a very few people at the top and not for the rest of us. And SEIU recognizes that they can't make the lives of just their workers better -- even if they could it wouldn't stick if other workers are still at starving wages with no benefits because employers can just use them as a wedge to pressure SEIU workers away from asking for a fair share. So they recognize that they have to work to make the economy start working for everyone.

More to come.

[Disclaimer: Blogger hotel and airfare paid for by the SEIU]

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May 28, 2008

Republicans Pretending To Govern

This post originally appeared at Speak Out California

A good op-ed appeared Saturday in the Boston Globe, America's faux government. The writer discusses how many parts of our federal government seem to no longer be functioning.

They sent everybody home a long time ago, set timers to make the lights go on, and locked the doors. Government is so much more cost efficient if nobody actually does anything.

We read about drugs harming people while drug companies make huge profits -- where was the Food and Drug Administration? We read about the Federal Aviation Administration asking the airlines to inspect themselves, and the airlines having to cancel so many flights because they didn't,

Whoever is still pretending to work there must have made Employee of the Month.

Why is this happening?

So we're now living in a Libertarian country, where the government doesn't actually provide any services except defense. The problem? We're paying taxes as if we live in a social democracy where the government provides all services except defense. They don't need defense because they have found that if you stop teaching history in schools, people forget that you actually need it sometimes.

How can you tell that we are Libertarians now? Because business is not complaining all the time. When the government is actually showing up for work, business groups say that they are being Crushed By Overregulation. Choked by Bureaucracy. I haven't heard a word of that in a long time, but it used to be the anthem of American business. OSHA, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, was on the news every night - truly, every night. When was the last time you heard of OSHA showing up for a surprise inspection?

Please go read the rest.

The column is written partially as humor, but the reality is there. We elected people who hate government to run our government, and look what has happened. They said regulations are bad, inspectors are intrusive and oversight should be "voluntary." The have stopped the regulators and inspectors and overseers from regulating and inspecting and overseeing.

The last several years saw the libertarian dream realized. Government was largely shut down. And what happened? Did this experiment bring "liberty?" Did the working person prosper in an "ownership society?"

No, what happened was what all the reality-based, experienced, practical people said would happen if we implement a libertarian system: the corporations immediately filled the vacuum and began to enrich themselves at the public's expense. And when Katrina came around, people were left on their own.

So what do we learn from this? I think it is important to remember that "the government" is not some "they" that just showed up from nowhere and "tells us what to do." The government is US, you and me and the rest of us, organized together to help each other. And it is up to US to keep an eye on things, for each other. When we listen to smiling hucksters who offer easy answers using nice-sounding words we ought to be extra careful. Tax cuts have brought us mountains of debt. Government cutbacks have brought us bad roads, bad schools and really, really bad disaster relief. And deregulation has brought us a corporate state.

Taxes, services, regulation and oversight have all become bad words. But now that we have performed the libertarian experiment we can see the consequences of this kind of thinking. It turns out that taxes are an investment in our future. It turns out that government services are us taking care of each other. It turns out that regulations keep the marketplace playing field level, which allows to enjoy the benefits of innovating businesses. It turns out that oversight keeps our government honest. And it turns out that conservative disdain for all of these didn't make government better, it made government worse.

Click through to Speak Out California

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May 22, 2008

Private Greed vs. Public Good

This post originally appeared at Speak Out California

As I wrote the other day, the California Chamber of Commerce has come out with their annual list of "job-killer" bills. The list only targets bills by Democrats, and the bills are all acts that would help the people of California by improving the environment, worker wage and safety, public health, etc.

The California Chamber of commerce is a lobbying association. They represent their members: businesses, many of which are large corporations. This is about private greed vs. the public good. The Chamber's job is to convince the legislature to pass laws that enrich the owners of the corporations that fund them. Nothing more, nothing less.

If that involves convincing the public of something, then they do that. Hence the label "job killer."

But the companies represented by the Chamber are the real job killers. They outsource jobs to other countries. They lay people off when they calculate it will maximize their profits. They employ as many people as needed to maximize the income to and wealth of their owners. Nothing more, nothing less.

The very idea that the Chamber of Commerce would care if something is a "job killer" is ludicrous when you understand their function. They are a lobbying association that represents the interests of companies that eliminate as many jobs as they want to, at their discretion, and then use some of the money that would have been paid in salaries to pay the Chamber to convince us to support their interests -- and the rest of it to enrich themselves, which is their primary interest.

That is how corporations work in the modern, "free-market" world that we find ourselves in since the Reagan era. Not for the public benefit, not necessarily even for the company's benefit, but for the financial benefit of the executives and (some of) the owners of the company.

Private greed vs. public good. Nothing more, nothing less.

So there isn't really an argument about whether the "job-killer" bills on this year’s list really do or do not "kill jobs." That is not the point of the label. Instead it is up to us to understand who we are hearing from. If we get caught up in arguing about whether these bills create more jobs than they might cost, we’re missing the point. Their arguments are propaganda with no basis in reality, designed to do nothing more than sway opinion. The point of the "job-killer" label is to make people afraid for their jobs, not to actually argue that these bills will or will not actually "kill" any jobs.

For example, a bill to require energy efficiency in new housing construction obviously creates many new jobs in the new, innovative "green" industries. But such a bill might lower the profits that go into the pockets of the executives and owners of some of the companies that the California Chamber of Commerce represents. (The LA Times on Wednesday said the Chamber’s agenda "seems dominated by development and energy interests".) And, again, it is irrelevant whether the bill might or might not really cost jobs in some of those companies. The Chamber doesn't care. That is not their function.

The use of the label "job killers" is about scaring the public. Nothing more, nothing less. It is about fear. It is about creating a climate in which people who are afraid for their jobs will go along with measures designed to enrich the owners of the companies that the Chamber -- a lobbying association -- represents.

So please don't be fooled. Don't be swayed by propaganda designed to make you afraid. As I wrote above, it is up to us to understand who we are hearing from.

Click through to Speak Out California

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May 14, 2008

Do Republicans Believe In Free Markets?

This post originally appeared at Speak Out California

A news story on Monday, McCain urges free-market principles to reduce global warming. Which"free-market principles" does McCain mean?

McCain's major solution is to implement a cap-and-trade program on carbon-fuel emissions, like a similar program in the Clean Air Act that was used to reduce sulfur dioxide emissions that triggered acid rain.

Summary: the government sets a limit on how much CO2 companies will be allowed to emit. The government sets a fee for any emissions above that level. The government allows companies with emissions below that limit to sell "credits" to companies above the limit.

McCain describes this as a "free market" approach.

Conservatives always come up with nice-sounding ways to describe their ideas. They talk about "free markets." "Free" sounds so good. Has a nice ring to it. But is there really such a thing?

In McCain's example every single component of this market is defined, set up and regulated by government. But conservatives always say that government is the enemy of freedom and of markets. Do they not see the contradiction?

In fact, is there a market that is not defined, set up and regulated by government? Would markets even exist if there were no government? First, there is the money that is exchanged in a market. Unless we revert to a pure barter system where goods are exchanged money is entirely a creation of government. And it is entirely regulated by government. Next are the laws that, excuse the word, "govern" the market system. These laws are entirely a creation of government and it is government that enforces them and government that runs the courts that resolve disputes. And yes, these laws are "regulations."

So when conservatives complain about "government" and "regulation" and advocate "free markets" what is it they are really saying? The best way to understand what they want is to look at what they do, not what they say. If we look closely at the results of those times when conservatives gain power we can see that they really seem to mean they will use the power of government to protect the wealthiest people and biggest corporations.

For example, conservatives in government have always defended the big energy companies against threats to use of their products. They oppose mass transit, alternative energy research, even requiring cars to get better gas mileage.

A closer look reveals that what they really stand for is a protection of the status quo, defending the rich and powerful against the rest of us.

Click through to Speak Out California

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April 29, 2008

Pentagon Pundit Scandal Broke the Law

Please read Pentagon Pundit Scandal Broke the Law | Center for Media and Democracy.

Note that "Pentagon" means the Republican Party appointees in the administration who run the Department of Defense, which resides in the Pentagon.

The Pentagon was conducting "information operations" targeting the American public. This program was blatantly illegal.

Note that almost NO news outlets involved are reporting on this story at all. What does that tell you?

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April 28, 2008

Bring Back The 90% Top Tax Rate!

When Eisenhower was President the top income tax rate was 91%. But you had to have already made a LOT of money before you hit that rate. (Eisenhower, by the way, supported that 91% top tax rate.)

That 91% tax rate is what got us out of the depression, and helped create a middle class (with the help of strong labor unions). It payed for fighting World War II and the GI Bill, and helped build our highway system, education system and other infrastructure that is in place today (albeit crumbling now from maintenance deferral resulting from tax cuts.) We did all that without borrowing, and the rich still got richer.

Think about this: If tax rates at the top were 91% today, hedge fund managers would STILL be bringing in over $300 million EACH YEAR – but the rest of us would be able to get health care, fix the roads, good schools, and the other benefits that were the reason we - yes, we - enabled this economic system in the first place.

And think about this. If that top rate is 91% it reduces the incentive for corporate CEOs to bribe politicians to put policies in place that funnel all the wealth up to the top.

Who is our economy FOR, anyway?

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April 25, 2008

The Middle Class Squeeze Is A Result Of LOW Taxes

This post originally appeared at Speak Out California

It is a popular misconception that taxes add to the squeeze on the middle class. But it isn't tax increases that have squeezed the middle class, it's tax cuts. It may be hard to believe (after so many years of constant anti-tax rhetoric) but here is why.

The middle class IS squeezed these days. There are pressures and long hours at work, long commutes, health insurance costs, housing costs, food and gas prices rising, and wages are not keeping up -- they haven't been for a long time. But it is not a coincidence that the middle-class squeeze began at the same time as the corporate-funded anti-government, tax-cutting fervor. In fact a good case can be made that many of the reasons the middle class feels squeezed are the result of pressures brought about almost entirely FROM the effects of tax CUTS and cutbacks in government services, regulations and enforcement that went along with the tax cuts.

There are direct and indirect relationships. One example of a direct relationship is the dramatic rise in the cost of a college education. Sending kids to college has become extremely expensive. And this places a very hard squeeze on parents who want their children to get a degree. But here in California tuition was very, very low before Proposition 13. Tax cuts directly led to this squeeze on the middle class. (And remember, most of the property taxes that were cut were on business property.)

Indirect results include rising energy prices from cutbacks in government R&D and subsidies for oil alternatives as well as longer commutes as the government cuts back on transit solutions like buses, trains and roadbuilding or improvements. Health care costs continue to rise because of government inaction and deregulation -- the result of the anti-government sentiment encouraged as part of the the anti-tax campaign. And insurance costs rise while coverage is reduced or even denied as the government cuts back on regulation and enforcement. (My wife is the one who brings in the health insurance for our family. Every year she gets a raise, but every year the amount taken out of her check to cover her portion of the health insurance payment goes up by more than her raise, and her take-home pay is lower. So more squeeze.)

Other areas where the anti-government, anti-tax campaign has increased pressure on the average person is at work. Anyone that works for a corporation is feeling the extra pressures there. As government of, by and for the people declines corporate power fills the vacuum.

And there are so many more areas where we are squeezed by this increasing dominance of corporations in our lives. As government -- the power of We, the People -- diminishes, the corporations swoop in to pick us clean. How many examples of corporate power coming to dominate over people power can you think of?

Click through to Speak Out California

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April 20, 2008

Are Clinton and Obama Communists?

The right has been cranking up the communist charge in this election. I guess it worked for the 50 years ago, so why not trot it out again?

I came across this today at the Republican TownHall site: Townhall.com::Obama, Clinton And Capitalism: It's Okay For Them, But Nobody Else,

The big irony here is that while Obama has done extremely well for himself in our very unique free-market economy, he has the “audacity” to demonize others who have done well for themselves, and to propose economic policies that, if implemented, would radically change our nation into something more akin to a Western European socialist state.

OK, let's examine that for a minute. Aside from the implications that they are communists, what does "Western European Socialist State" really mean? European citizens get 5 weeks paid vacation per year for everyone, free full-coverage health care for everyone, generous pays and pensions for everyone (with retirement earlier than here), corporations required to benefit the public, modern public transit systems, child care, clean public-oriented cities, governments responsive to the people instead of the wealthy, the corporations and the big military contractors, ... oh I could go on and on about the terrible state of things for Western European citizens...

And what are some of the examples of Clinton and Obama's supposedly communistic policies?

Obama has proposed a federal crack down on what he deems “excessive pay” for corporate executives. He has proposed that the federal government begin taxing people’s capital (not just earnings or interest payments, but, yes, capital itself). He has proposed that the capital gains tax rate be raised to 28%, nearly doubling its current rate of 15%. And he has made it a constant theme of his campaign to lament “Bush’s tax cuts for the rich,”

. . .[Clinton] has berated the reality of America being an “ownership society” (despite the recent increase in mortgage foreclosures, home ownership in America is still at an all-time high), saying that in reality we are an “on your own” society. Her remedy for the “problem” is for us to become a “we’re in this together society,” a nation of “shared responsibility” AND “shared prosperity.”

Conservatives lament that people should have to actually give back a bit to the public by paying taxes, after the public's investment in roads and bridges and law enforcement and military and schools and the legal and financial infrastructure made them rich. The writer thinks that the roads and bridges and schools and everything else that enabled that ecosystem which enables people to get rich just magically appeared. The writer doesn't seem to know that it was taxes that built that system -- OUR taxes -- and thinks the beneficiaries of this public investment should just freeload off the rest of us.

Taxes are the reason we have a thriving economic ecosystem. Tax cuts make us poor. And people getting rich off of our public investment and giving nothing back is the reason we don't get 5 weeks vacation, health care, and all the rest here.

If the conservatives are trying to scare me away from voting for Clinton or Obama by claiming that if elected they will bring us 5 weeks paid vacation a year, free health coverage and the rest, and that the cost will be taxing rich CEOs and corporations -- well I gotta tell you I want to get me some of that!

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April 19, 2008

Post A Sign

"If you just had one person in every city doing what I do you wouldn't be able to drive anywhere without seeing a protest against the war."

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April 8, 2008

Justice For ... All?

This post originally appeared at Speak Out California

You hear a lot in the news about big corporate lawsuits. If you closely followed this week's business news, for example, you may have read about a jury ruling that Microsoft has to pay Alcatel-Lucent $367.4 million for violating patents. Imagine the money that must have gone into lawyers, research and experts -- even the copying bill must have been enormous. And these cases take months to hear.

There were also court rulings about the drug Prevacid, another covering dialysis machines, and many, many others.

All of them big-money corporate cases with millions, even billions of dollars at stake. These big companies have the money to take these cases to court.

But what if you or I need to go to court? Are we on an equal footing?

A recent issue of The Progressive States Network’s newsletter, Stateside Dispatch, says,

According to Access to Justice: Opening the Courtroom Door [PDF file] by the Brennan Center, federal funding for legal services in real dollars has declined dramatically over the last twenty-five years. In 2004, federally-funded programs turned away at least one person seeking help for each person served, leading to approximately one million cases per year being turned away due to lack of funding.

In fact, the Brennan Center report states that “most low-income individuals cannot obtain counsel to represent them in civil matters.” On top of that, government-funded legal aid services are now by-and-large prohibited from helping people when they are harmed by corporations.

What do you do if you are a regular person injured by a product, or denied a job because of your age, or defrauded out of money, or any of things that can happen to people? It used to be that a law firm might take the case based on a contingency fee, where they receive a percentage of any award resulting from your case. But more and more these fees are restricted or awards are "capped." So attorneys cannot afford to take your case. Even if you can find an attorney willing to take your case "pro bono" there is still the cost of research, depositions, expert witnesses, etc. to consider.

Is this fair? Is there anything more fundamental to our American concept of democracy than equal justice? Access to the courthouse is an example of democracy leveling the playing field and providing fairness. But we no longer have equal access. And this means we no longer have fairness.

So what can we do about this? First, we need to restore our own understanding of democracy and our individual stake in its preservation. We must all recognize that equal justice is a fundamental requirement of a democratic society. One reason this country was founded was to level the playing field between the rich and the poor. So we all need to demand equal treatment under the law.

In California we must demand a rollback of the "tort reform" measures that have taken away equal access to the courts and removed a regular person's ability to fight back when harmed by a big company. We must either remove the award "caps" and limits on attorney fees or implement a system of government funding for attorneys who represent regular people.

Click to continue.

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March 25, 2008

Conservatives Opposed To Rule Of Law, Our Constitution And Good Education

This post originally appeared at Speak Out California

Conservative leader and former Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives Newt Gingrich writes about the California court ruling that children - even home-schooled children - must be educated by credentialed teachers, saying it is an example of "Judicial Supremacy." In his article he quotes a Wall Street Journal editorial calling the ruling a "strange new chapter" in the "annals of judicial imperialism." Later in the piece he writes,

The decision represents yet another case of a special interest -- in this case, the education unions and bureaucracy -- using the courts to get what they can't get through the popular vote.

This is yet another example of judicial supremacy: Rule by an out-of-control judiciary rather than the will of the people. It joins court rulings such as the removal of "under God" from the Pledge of Allegiance on a long list of usurpations of the freedom and self-determination of the American people.

Lets take a moment to examine what Gingrich is really complaining about here.

Here's how the American system of law and justice is supposed to work: We have a Constitution and we have laws that we are all supposed to follow by mutual agreement. And we have in place a judicial system for interpreting our Constitution and laws, again by mutual agreement. So when there is a dispute we take that dispute to the courts, and the judges rule according to the Constitution and laws. And then we agree to follow their rulings.

Newt Gingrich and the conservatives complain that this is "Judicial Supremacy" and "judicial imperialism." Wow, this sounds pretty bad! But look at the meaning of these negative-sounding words. Isn't "Judicial Supremacy" really just another way of saying that we agree to follow "rule of law?" When Gingrich uses language that casts a negative frame on the concept, isn't he undermining public respect for the rule of law? Gingrich and other conservatives are happy enough with our American system when it works in their favor but when it rules against their agenda they launch another anti-government screed.

This post is not written in opposition to home or private schooling, but to point out the importance to all of us that we all operate under the same set of agreed-upon rules. At least in California, another agreed-upon rule is that our children should receive the best possible education. Article 9 of our California Constitution states that a good education is "essential to the preservation of the rights and liberties of the people." The wording at the beginning of Article 9 is as follows:

A general diffusion of knowledge and intelligence being essential to the preservation of the rights and liberties of the people, the Legislature shall encourage by all suitable means the promotion of intellectual, scientific, moral, and agricultural improvement.

To this end Article 9 describes how California will manage a system of free, public schools. And Article 9 makes it clear that to this end our children deserve qualified, "credentialed" teachers.

Once again, We, the People of California have decided that a good education is "essential to the preservation of the rights and liberties of the people." This is what we want. Just what is it that Gingrich and other conservatives want instead if it doesn't involve qualified teachers providing education to our state's children?

Click to continue.

Posted by Dave Johnson at 2:45 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack | Link Cosmos

March 23, 2008

Defending the Constitution

A very good op-ed in the Washington Post, Mickey Edwards - Dick Cheney's Error, defending the Constitution and democracy. But reading it, I have to wonder where this guy has been for seven years?

It is Cheney's all-too-revealing conversation this week with ABC News correspondent Martha Raddatz. On Wednesday, reminded of the public's disapproval of the war in Iraq, now five years old, the vice president shrugged off that fact (and thus, the people themselves) with a one-word answer: "So?"

"So," Mr. Vice President?

[. . .] When the vice president dismisses public opposition to war with a simple "So?" he violates the single most important element in the American system of government: Here, the people rule.

Posted by Dave Johnson at 8:33 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack | Link Cosmos

March 20, 2008

Stuck in Atlanta 24 Hours - Airline Says Too Bad For You

My flight from Washington DC to Atlanta landed late. The connection to San Francisco still wasn't due to take off for a few minutes but the airline (AirTran Airways) didn't hold it.

So I go to the counter and ask what I can do? They only have one flight to San Francisco a day, and the next one is in 24 hours.

Can I get on another airline? Try Orbitz, she says.

Can you get me a room? She gives me an 800 number of a discount service.

Can I get some food? There are concession stands in the airport.

Too bad for you. We've already got your money and you're on your own.

There is nothing I can do, they already have my money.

Welcome to the New America. Welcome to the You're On Your Own (YOYO) society. Welcome to corporate domination. Did you know that it used to be illegal for airlines to treat their customers like this? But now it is expected.

We, the People used to be in charge. We set up the legal, financial and physical infrastructure that enables corporations to serve our interests. You know, that pesky "We, the People" thing. Why else would we have set up corporations except to serve us?

But now it is the other way around. Now the corporations are in charge of us. A select few grew fabulously wealthy from the system we set up to serve all the people, and have used that wealth to manipulate the system to bring all the benefits to themselves at the expense of the people.

When are we going to do something about it?

(Note - the airline employees were not nasty, considering who they have to work for and the policies they have to work under. They seemed resigned to having to tell people this stuff. That's another part of this system -- if you want to have enough money to feed your kids and pay the rent (but not get health care) you're forced to serve the corporation, and be their agents in telling people "too bad." There is a harm that comes to people from being compelled to treat others this way. And if you think you have too much integrity to do that, well we can find someone in India who is hungry enough.)

Posted by Dave Johnson at 8:09 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack | Link Cosmos

March 18, 2008

Take Back America - Tuesday

This was originally posted at Speak Out California

I am at the Take Back America conference in Washington DC. This is an annual gathering of a couple of thousand progressives. You see lots of familiar names and faces here, people you see on TV and in magazines. Just five minutes ago I was saying "Hi" to Arianna Huffington. Earlier today I said Hi to Jesse Jackson...

I was thinking about why people do this. I don't mean the overnight flight with a three-hour layover in Atlanta. (But really, why did I do that?)

I mean, being a progressive is not a big-money gig. So I am attending these great panel sessions and the speakers are very sharp, productive people, who speak very well, and who have dedicated their lives to helping other people. Yes, some make pretty good money, but nothing at all like they could make out there in the corporate world.

Trust me, nobody does this for the money.

I was watching one particularly good speaker yesterday. She was very good, very persuasive, interesting to listen to... and I thought, "I used to do this for products." Now I can't do this for products. Something inside of me will not let me.

It is about being a citizen. In a morning session today Taylor Branch was talking about lessons from the civil rights movement. One thing he said resonated with me. He said, "Citizens in a democracy are all supposed to have an equal share in that democracy, so we ought to act like it." We all have a duty, a responsibility to be involved in bettering our country, and to work to stop the wrongs we see.

That's why.

Posted by Dave Johnson at 3:22 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack | Link Cosmos

March 13, 2008

Oil Tax Defeated, School Budget To Be Cut -- What You Can Do

This post originally appeared at Speak Out California

Tuesday's post began,

In Dubai, people get free housing, free medical care, AND $5,000 per month. The people of Dubai share in the country's oil wealth.

In Alaska, people not only do not pay state taxes, the state government writes every state resident a check every year. The people of the state of Alaska share in the state's oil wealth.

But in California the big oil companies get to pump our oil from the ground for free, and then sell it back to us. Right now these oil companies are reaping the highest profits of any industry ever in history, making a few people immensely wealthy, and are not giving back any of this wealth to We, the People of California!

Our state's budget reflects our priorities and our values. So I wrote that We, the People of California should ask big oil companies to give back some of the immense wealth they are generating for themselves with our oil, so we can fully fund our California schools. I honestly did not know that Assembly Speaker Fabian Núñez was about to introduce a bill to do just that. Well, he did, along with a windfall oil profits tax, and this is what happened:

The bill, which required a two-thirds vote to pass, was defeated on the Assembly floor after Republicans refused to vote for the new taxes.

These are choices, and the people of California need to understand that a choice was made yesterday to continue to be the only state that allows oil companies to pump our oil and not pay anything for it. And instead of asking the rich oil companies to give back a bit they want to cut the school budget by another 10%.

Republicans said the bill was a publicity stunt, saying Democrats know that no taxes can pass as long as there is a rule allowing just a few Republicans to block the will of the vast majority. They mocked the effort as an "oil drill."

"I think this truly is a political drill on the eve of the layoff notices that will go out all across the state and on the eve of (the legislative) spring break when we will be at home in our districts talking to our constituents," Assemblyman Chuck DeVore, R-Irvine, said during the Assembly floor debate that lasted about three hours.

But do the people of California understand this? Do they realize that just a few votes can allow oil companies to get their oil free, while their children face ever-worsening schools? We need more "publicity stunts" to help them understand the different values and priorities that are being reflected. Politics and life are all about our priorities, not just our choices. What is more important to our people: rich oil companies or well-educated kids?

A choice is being made here, priorities and values are being expressed: cut our schools by 10% rather than ask rich oil companies to give back just a bit. Say it over and over, and then do something about it. Write to your legislators and demand they ask the wealthiest to start giving back a bit.

And remember, this is an election year. This is the time when citizens can do something about it when their legislators are not responding. This is the time that you can remove legislators who give wealthy oil companies tax breaks while cutting school budgets. You can volunteer to work in election campaigns, and go from door to door in their districts, letting voters know that their legislator made a choice and voted to cut school budgets while giving tax breaks to oil companies.

Help spread the word!

Posted by Dave Johnson at 10:51 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack | Link Cosmos

March 11, 2008

Choices on Taking and Giving Back

This post originally appeared at Speak Out California

In Dubai, people get free housing, free medical care, AND $5,000 per month. The people of Dubai share in the country’s oil wealth.

In Alaska, people not only do not pay state taxes, the state government writes every state resident a check every year. The people of the state of Alaska share in the state’s oil wealth.

Approx. 12 percent of America's oil production comes from California. As I write this oil sells for $108.14 per barrel. In 2005 the oil companies were pumping oil out of our state at a rate of approx 230 million barrels each year. Oil company revenues and profits are the highest ever from any companies in the history of the world, ever. Did I mention "highest" and "ever"?

But the people of our state, in our wisdom, have decided that instead of asking the oil companies to give back a bit, we will instead give them our oil. Give them. And then we buy it back to put in our cars, etc. Yes, we, the people of the state of California have made the choice to give away our oil to greatly enrich a select few. (And this post is not even a discussion of the dozens of other ways that we have made the choice to allow the few wealthiest among us to avoid giving back by paying taxes.)

Today in California we are facing a budget shortfall. And instead of asking oil companies and others to give back a bit we are on the verge of deciding instead to cut our school budget. Again. This time by 10%. We are on the verge of deciding to cut health care. Again. And courts, police, and every other state service by 10%, again, rather than ask oil companies and others to give back from what they take from the state.

The way we solve this budget shortfall is a choice we make. Our choice. Our choices reflect our values and priorities. And we all make these choices whether we think we do or not. If you don't vote, you are choosing. If you vote for someone because you would like to have a beer with him or her, you are choosing. If you choose to vote for candidates who tell you there is "waste, fraud and abuse" and then after they have been in office for decades, continue to claim there is "waste, fraud and abuse," you are choosing. If you choose to let your government borrow and borrow, you are choosing. You will have to pay that back with interest later, of course, but you are choosing.

And if you choose to let your state give our oil away to wealthy corporations so they can sell it to you and get even wealthier you are choosing to make up that potential tax revenue yourself, through cuts in your children's education and health care and law enforcement, or maybe through increased taxes in the future, but one way or another you are choosing.

What are our priorities? Further tax relief to the wealthiest corporations, or educate our children? Here you are on the verge of choosing to cut your schools by another 10%. Is that the choice you want to make?

There is something else you can choose to do today. You can choose to write to your legislators and let them know what your choice really is. You can choose to talk to your family and friends and explain these choices and ask them to write to their legislators as well.

Click here to find out how to contact your California legislators. If you so choose.

Posted by Dave Johnson at 4:28 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack | Link Cosmos

March 5, 2008

A Line In The Sand -- Stop Cutting School Budgets

This post originally appeared at Speak Out California

Governor Schwarzenegger has declared a “fiscal emergency” and is asking the legislature to solve the problem entirely with budget cuts. He has asked for 10% “across-the-board” cuts which at first glance seems to sound fair, but really means avoiding decisions about what budget items are the most important. It means cutting schools 10%. And law enforcement. And medical care. (Of course, they can't cut the interest owed on Governor Schwarzenegger's past borrowing.)

And more than that -- much, much more than that -- it is a trick that leaves out the fact that the state is not collecting needed tax revenue because of loopholes that let big corporations and the wealthy off the hook while the rest of us make up the difference.

It’s time to draw a line in the sand and demand that our state government not cut the budget for our children's education any more.

Isn't there a lot of "fat" in the budget, just waiting to be cut? Most people think so. But think about this -- every time the state has a shortfall they cut spending, saying they are cutting out the "fat." As a result, in the decades since Proposition 13 passed they have trimmed and trimmed and trimmed, and we now are long past the point where there is anything left to cut. In fact, today California schools have the lowest number of administrators per student of any state. Our schools have squeezed and squeezed and dropped programs and forgone pay raises and they can’t operate any more efficiently.

I was listening to a radio show the other night, someone from the San Francisco schools said this budget cut could mean they have to have 61 students per classroom.

But the Republicans in the legislature won't let us talk about taxes -- not even the yacht tax loophole. You and I have to pay sales taxes but people who buy yachts and private jets do not. They keep California as the only state that won't tax the oil companies for the oil they pump out from our state. They won't find a way to make commercial property owners pay market-rate property taxes.

The Governor and a Republican minority in the Assembly and Senate are still willing to block all alternatives to cutting teachers and health care and roads and parks and those things that We, the People call our government.

So it is time to draw a line in the sand. No more cuts. It is time to ask the corporations and wealthy to start giving back some of the incredible wealth they have made off of the physical, legal and financial infrastructure that We, the People of California put in place that enabled their gains in the first place.

Here are steps you can take to help fight back:

First, join us. Click this link and join Speak Out California. This way we can keep you up to date on our activities, including our activities to help keep our schools funded.

Next, start Speaking Out yourself, writing letters to the editor and contacting your legislators, demanding that the state enact alternatives to budget cuts, like closing tax loopholes and making wealthy people pay the same sales taxes that the rest of us pay.

The California Teachers Association provides a web page that helps you find the correct contact information for your state legislators. Please write to your legislators.

The Education Coalition has a website with facts to help you make your points. Give them a visit, too.

And finally, this is Speak Out California's fundraising month. Help us out so we can continue the work we are doing. Help us keep the progressive voice alive.

Posted by Dave Johnson at 5:11 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack | Link Cosmos

February 28, 2008

Reflections On Corporations II - Corporate Philanthropy

This post originally appeared at Speak Out California

Who should decide whether our communities have museums, concert and dance facilities, parks and other cultural programs? Who should decide on priorities for funding for disaster assistance or research into cures for diseases?

Should the public make the bulk of these decisions, through the transparent and accountable systems of our democracy? Or should a few individuals who control vast wealth and resources make these decisions for the people?

Because of dwindling tax revenues many communities have come to rely on "corporate philanthropy" for assistance with cultural programs, or to supplement their schools, or for other community benefits.

The people who run corporations are in a position to decide to donate the corporation’s money to various causes. Many of these are things that the people, through our government, no longer have the resources to support. For example, the executives and Board of a corporation might decide to donate to build a museum. They might decide to fund a school.

And they might decide not to do these things.

So look at what is happening -- as discussed in the Feb. 26 post, Reflecting on Corporations, we have corporations using their resources to influence the public and government to change the rules of the playing field on which corporations operate - deregulating, lowering taxes, etc. As this corporate influence brings cuts in corporate taxes (as well as cuts in taxes paid by the owners of the corporations), our society is left with fewer public resources for building museums, conducting research, etc.

And then we have corporations stepping in, using some of their earnings to provide those benefits, with their executives deciding where to direct the resources. For which the public is supposed to be grateful, and feel more favorable to the corporations, and perhaps grant them further benefits.

These are functions that the public once prioritized and controlled. But today the balance of control of the country's resources continues to shift more and more to fewer private individuals. This massing of assets and resources into corporate hands takes away the people's ability to decide to build museums and fund schools. It puts more and more power to make decisions that affect the public into the hands of corporate executives. Is this compatible with our understanding of democracy?

And a related question: Should corporate earnings be diverted from the shareholders? Is it the proper function of corporations to make decisions about funding museums, etc?

Perhaps there should be controls that guarantee that corporate funds and resources are used solely for the benefit of the shareholders and broader pubic interest. Perhaps corporations should be prohibited from engaging in any activities that influence our government or lawmaking or public opinion. Perhaps they should operate on the playing field that We, the People lay out for them -- and not be able to influence that playing field for the benefit of a few individuals who control the corporation. Perhaps.

Posted by Dave Johnson at 12:58 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack | Link Cosmos

February 27, 2008

Reflections On Corporations

This post first appeared at Speak Out California

How is it that corporations have the rights that individuals do, but not the responsibilities?

Let's reflect on what a corporation is. A business is formed by a few people. The business asks the government for a corporate charter, pays a fee, and is then this special entity called a corporation with special rights granted by the government.

Under our laws, corporations are fictional persons with certain rights. They can own assets, employ agents and engage in contracts just like people. But unlike you or me they have special benefits including limited liability and unlimited life.

Corporations enjoy limited liability -- if you or I commit a crime, injure someone, go bankrupt or get sued we're in big trouble and have to suffer the consequences. But this is not what happens to the owners of corporations. Their liability is limited and if their corporation is involved in any of these things they can just fly away in their private jets. In some jurisdictions corporate officers and directors are even shielded from liability for criminal acts the corporation commits.

Corporations have unlimited life -- which means the entity continues beyond any individual. The assets owned by a corporation can stay and grow in that corporation, and be controlled by its owners perpetually. So the corporation is able to amass significant assets and resources.

A corporation is not taxed the same as individuals. In most case they pay much lower taxes, the dividends they pay their owners are taxed at lower rates, as are the capital gains. In fact there are many circumstances where corporations do not have to pay taxes at all! So the burden of paying for the roads and schools (and wars) falls on the rest of us.

Corporations are able to compel large numbers of people -- employees, contractors, other corporations and other paid entities -- to do certain things. They can even tell people what to wear, how to wear their hair, even to wear makeup or not.

These special rights help corporations build up tremendous resources and power far beyond the ability of any individual in our society. So individuals finding themselves up against corporations face tremendous disadvantages. Many of the mechanisms for mitigating this disparity, including unions, the right to sue, taxes, even government regulation, have been reduced as a result of corporate-funded lobbying, ballot initiatives or other efforts. The ability to amass tremendous assets and power enables the people at the top of corporations to have great influence over our government and the laws it makes -- even to the point of granting them ever greater rights and benefits and tax cuts -- helping them to amass even greater assets, resources and power.

Corporations make decisions in ways that are very different from how We, the People of America and California make our community decisions through our governments. In our government all decisions and spending are participatory and transparent, meaning all of us can vote for representatives and can watch or otherwise look at how decisions are made and understand where all money is spent. In California it is even illegal for a city council committee to meet in secret. This is certainly not how things are done with corporations. (By the way, this is why some people say corporations are "more efficient"-- they do not have the procedures for the degree of transparency and accountability that governments and other public entities require.)

Question -- are these differences between public and corporate accountability and transparency compatible with our understanding of democracy? What about the ability of corporations to influence how our government regulates corporations? Keep in mind that corporations are nothing more than the creation of our laws. So discussing questions like these is essential to the maintenance of that democracy.

Click to continue

Posted by Dave Johnson at 8:23 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack | Link Cosmos

February 12, 2008

Something Very Big To Pay Attention To

Open Left:: Consolidated Potomac Primary Returns Thread is tracking today's primaries.

But one of the primaries is very, very important. In Maryland's 4th district there is a Congressional primary between progressive Donna Edwards and incumbent Al Wynn. Wynn is a "corporate Democrat" and beating him tells the entire establishment that they are no longer safe, that they have to listen to progressives or lose their jobs.

Chris Bowers writes,

With every precinct coming in with at least a 10% improvement for Edwards over 2006, let me reiterate this point: the new primary voters who are coming out for Barack Obama are also going to result in the first progressive displacement of a centrist, corporate, congressional Democrat via a primary in years. This it it. This is what we have been working for and building for. This is our emerging majority. We finally have the organization, and the voters, and the whole ball of wax. The movement has thoroughly come of age.

You can track results of that race here.

Update - Donna Edwards won the primary!

Posted by Dave Johnson at 8:45 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack | Link Cosmos

Watching Freedom's Watch: The Donors

Since 2004, we have been very involved in investigating, exposing, and uncovering the roots and exposing the tactics and lies of the right-wing smear machine. James was involved not only in John Kerry's campaign, but also in the Truth and Trust Team, a group of Kerry friends and family who attempted to fight back against the Swift Boat Veterans.

Dave, of course, followed the campaign and those attacks closely, and then worked with James and others, including our friend, Taylor Marsh, on The Patriot Project in 2006. Created by John Kerry, David Thorne and others, The Patriot Project helped veterans such as Joe Sestak, Patrick Murphy and John Murtha defend themselves -- even looking into previous attacks on John McCain. We also were part of the team that exposed the Economic Freedom Fund, a group created with a $5,000,000 donation from Bob Perry that attacked moderate Democrats, primarily in red states.

Why do folks like Bob Perry give money like that? It's strictly business.

Take, for example, the global warming arena where we have shown folks how the same tactics, the same strategies, the same people sometimes who created this whole smear empire with the tobacco companies, are now doing the same with global warming.

ExxonMobil has given these groups $25 million over the years - often, incredibly, as charitable donations. This past quarter, they had $11.7 billion in record profits. That's a return on investment we all would envy.

Now, we are looking forward not back.

And what we see is a front group on steroids, a massive death star of right wing machinery, floating, ready and waiting.

Freedom's Watch, operating like the opposite of a grassroots-funded progressive group like MoveOn.org, was founded by major donors like

... Sheldon G. Adelson, the chairman and chief executive of the Las Vegas Sands Corporation, who ranks sixth on the Forbes Magazine list of the world's billionaires; Mel Sembler, a shopping center magnate based in St. Petersburg, Fla., who served as the ambassador to Italy and Australia; John M. Templeton Jr., the conservative philanthropist from Bryn Mawr, Pa.; and Anthony H. Gioia, a former ambassador to Malta who heads an investment group based in Buffalo, N.Y. All four men are long-time prolific donors who have raised money on behalf of Republican and conservative causes.

as well as

Richard Fox, one of the major building, development and real estate management companies in eastern Pennsylvania and southern New Jersey and a longtime GOP activist. He co-founded the Republican Jewish Coalition.

Gary Erlbaum, owner of Greentree Properties in Ardmore, Pa., who tried to rally Orthodox Jewish support for last year's failed reelection bid of conservative Christian Sen. Rick Santorum.

Freedom's Watch has direct connections with the Republican Party and is staffed by Republican Party operatives like Ari Fleischer, former White House Spokesperson; Bradley A. Blakeman, a former deputy assistant to George W. Bush; Kevin E. Moley, a senior adviser to Dick Cheney during the 2000 campaign.

Check out their site and their rhetoric. It is a major right wing group and here's the scary part:

Freedom's Watch says it plans to raise over $250,000,000 to play in this election. But Freedom's Watch is a 501(c)(4) organization, which means they can engage in political activity but not as their primary mission. They are allowed to lobby on issues but not support candidates. Yet the group appears to be primarily designed to influence elections in favor of Republican candidates

But who is going enforce the laws? The FEC? The Justice Department? Perhaps Senate Democrats can issue one of their strongly-worded statements of disapproval.

So what do we do?

We watch them -- and we start exposing them now, every day, all day.

We are going to post these articles frequently and often.

We are going to launch a Newsladder where we would appreciate everyone joining and linking up anything they see about this group.

We are going to launch in the coming days a new site, www.watchingfreedomswatch.com where, again, will write and expose this group.

The issue isn't you - and what you know. If you are reading this you are a blog-reader and already know more than most people about how these things work. The issue is whether we can drive narratives and how much knowledge we can give the average American about who these folks really are and what they are up to.

Posted by Dave and James at 12:53 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack | Link Cosmos

February 5, 2008

Primary Election Day Thoughts

This post appeared today at Speak Out California

It’s primary election day in California. Don't let yourself forget to vote, and check our voter guide to help you figure out what those initiatives are about.

Here is a scary thought: People who are just old enough to vote for the first time in this election were ten years old when the 2000 election brought George Bush to the White House, and likely don’t remember much from before that.

They certainly don't remember California before Proposition 13 cut taxes, back when we had great roads and schools and colleges. They don't remember that there was a debate over whether the people should be allowed to decide how much to tax ourselves. Instead we now have a requirement that 2/3 of voters approve taxes - a level that can almost never be met.

They don't remember California before term limits. Proposition 93 is just a tweaking of the term limits rules, and there is no discussion over the merits of term limits generally. Young people don't know that there was a debate over the idea that people should be allowed to decide for themselves if they want to return their own representatives to office.

Last week I was caught in traffic so I couldn’t get home in time to watch the Clinton-Obama debate. I scanned the radio and not one single AM or FM station was carrying it. (Oddly one station was carrying an older Republican Presidential candidate debate.) FM was a sea of really bad commercial music, ads, and a few good Spanish music stations. AM was a sea of right-wing opinion, and ads. And then more ads.

I remember when it was considered a duty of a broadcaster to inform and serve the public. It was unimaginable that a candidate debate was not available. In exchange for licenses to use OUR radio spectrum for commercial purposes the broadcast companies agreed to serve the public interest. They would limit the number of ads and devote a large percentage of programming to documentaries, news and other information that served democracy. It was understood that WE owned the resource, and WE set the terms for commercialization of that resource. Imagine!

Yes, We, the People used to set the terms for licenses to commercialize the public resources. Now it's the other way around - the corporations give us credit ratings.

It seems like such an old debate over ideas like these. But younger people they have never heard these debates and likely don't even know there even was debate over these ideas. They don't know about a time when the people were considered to be the owners of the state's and country's resources.

If they ever did get an opportunity to hear about these debates they might even think it is a good idea for the public to make decisions. (Hint.)

Click to continue.

Posted by Dave Johnson at 9:42 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack | Link Cosmos

January 30, 2008

The Public Interest

This post originally appeared at Speak Out California.

Whatever happened to the concept of "the public interest?" What about "the common good?"

In 1961 John F. Kennedy said in his inaugural speech, "Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country." This statement inspired an entire generation to dedicate themselves to public service or other pursuits that helped the public-at-large ahead of narrower, selfish interests. And they thought that was a good thing to do with their lives, not a foolish waste of their time.

Many today would scoff at that notion. In the decades since JFK's call to public service the idea of government as a force for good has been severely denigrated. For so many years conservatives and business interests have been getting their message out, trying to convince us that people should be selfish -- that they shouldn't care about others because it is up to each person to take care of themselves. They say that we are not our brother or sister's keeper, that each person should be responsible only for themselves.

But there are some basic facts and realities that get in the way of conservative philosophy.

For example, if a person has a contagious disease and is not given treatment, each of us is at risk. This is because we really do share a common humanity. This is not only a philosophical or spiritual concept - as human beings viruses and bacteria can pass from one person to the next. If we do not provide treatment to the sick we can catch the sickness ourselves. (Many would argue that this applies psychologically and spiritually as well.) So the roots of community and mutual interest are not, as conservatives say, just an ideological concept that liberals try to force on others.

Another example of our shared interest is that it is near-impossible for a person or even a family to be self-sufficient. We just can't by ourselves grow or raise or build everything we need to live. The traditions of neighbors raising a barn for others, of community meals, even back to tribes in which some hunt and some gather demonstrate that people just are not physically prepared to be on our own. We are meant to share and take care of each other. The conservatives are just wrong.

The American institutions that are so much under attack by conservatives today - public schools, progressive taxation, public transportation, public health, almost everything with "public" or "community" in its name, and even government itself - evolved over time as the best solutions to common problems. They didn't just spring up out of the mind of some dictator, they were worked out by trial and error. America was founded as a country ruled by its people and We, the People built those schools and public roads and libraries and the rest of the infrastructure that conservatives deride as "tax and spending programs." We built all of this to serve us, not to tear down or sell off (privatize) so that a wealthy few can increase their profits.

This idea of "the public interest" has merit. It is time to understand that our progressive values have proven themselves superior, time and time again. Progressive ideas are the best way to approach our problems. They are better for people and communities.

It's just the way it is: each of us has a vital interest in the welfare of all of the rest of us.

Posted by Dave Johnson at 10:25 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack | Link Cosmos

January 27, 2008

Stealing Our Future

Please read Stealing Our Future: Conservatives, Foresight, and Why Nothing Works Anymore | OurFuture.org. This is a must-read post for anyone who cares about government and about America.

Posted by Dave Johnson at 11:27 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack | Link Cosmos

January 25, 2008

Another Anti-Government Propaganda E-Mail

I received one of those anti-government propaganda e-mails today. Look how they do it. It's a really funny story, until they inject the propaganda point as the last line:

The Firewood Story

It was already late fall & the Indians on a remote reservation in South Dakota asked their new chief if the coming winter was going to be cold or mild. Since he was a chief in a modern society, he had never been taught the old secrets. When he looked at the sky, he couldn't tell what the winter was going to be like. Nevertheless, to be on the safe side, he told his tribe that the winter was indeed going to be cold & that the members of the village should collect firewood to be prepared. But, being a practical leader, after several days, he got an idea.

He went to the phone booth, called the National Weather Service & asked, 'Is the coming winter going to be cold?' 'It looks like this winter is going to be quite cold,' the meteorologist at the weather service responded. So the chief went back to his people & told them to collect even more firewood in order to be prepared. A week later, he called the National Weather Service again. 'Does it still look like it is going to be a very cold winter?' 'Yes,' the man at National Weather Service again replied, 'it's going to be a very cold winter.'

The chief again went back to his people & ordered them to collect every scrap of firewood they could find. Two weeks later, the chief called the National Weather Service again. 'Are you absolutely sure that the winter is going to be very cold' 'Absolutely,' the man replied. 'It's looking more & more like it is going to be one of the coldest winters we've ever seen.'

'How can you be so sure?' the chief asked. The weatherman replied, 'The Indians are collecting firewood like crazy.' Always remember this story whenever you get advice from a government official!

As if a corporate weather source would somehow be different. The government is US, and stories like this carry a profoundly anti-democracy message, intended to make people think that somehow privatizing government functions to corporations would be better for us.

But a corporate information source would be about screwing the customers and the employees and the public so the CEO could get a bigger jet. No one except a very few already-wealthy power brokers benefit when we hand over our common interests - even weather reporting - to corporations as they are presently constituted.

Posted by Dave Johnson at 12:14 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack | Link Cosmos

January 14, 2008

The Political Compass - where I stand vs. the candidates

The graph on the Political Compass web site, which analyzes the positions on the political compass of the various candidates for President in the primary elections, demonstrates why many many Americans like myself feel so disenfranchised by the current political process and the "choice" it has given them. Every single candidate of significance in both parties falls into the upper right hand quadrant: Authoritarian/Right - the Democrats just fall closer to the lower left-hand corner of that quadrant, the Republicans, the upper right hand corner.

Me? I fall into the extreme lower left-hand corner of the lower left quadrant: Left/Libertarian... my views on social and economic issues are almost diametrically opposite that of every single candidate. And exactly in the same quadrant as my political party: the Green Party (globally and in the U.S.)... although that party is much closer to the center than I am, amusingly enough.

Kucinich and Gravel, both in the upper right hand corner of the lower left quadrant, Left/Libertarian, are the closest candidates to my preferences. You can look at the 2004 Election diagram, which shows that the two closest candidates to my position (in the same region as Kucinich) were David Cobb and Ralph Nader (no surprise). John Kerry and GWB both, of course, fall into the lower left hand and upper right hand corner of the Authoritarian/Right quadrant (also no surprise).

... and guess where Gandhi, Nelson Mandela, and the Dali Lama all fall? Desmond Tutu. Michael Moore. Eric Schlosser ("Fast Food Nation")? Just to name a few folks. You guessed it: the lower left hand quadrant. The first three are sourced from the Analysis page (the site strongly recommends that you take their test before reading that page), the last three are sourced from the site's Libertarian Left thinkers page. You might also want to take a look at who the guiding intellectual lights of the Authoritarian Right (and thus the American political mainstream) are. Take a look at those two pages, and tell me which one has more books on your reading list. :)

Where do you fall on the Political Compass? Which individuals would you rather be associated with? Do you feel "represented"? Do you feel that the Democratic Party, in the form of Clinton, Obama, and Edwards, folks that in other areas of the world would be described as "moderate conservatives", truly represents YOUR political beliefs?

Look at where the Labour Party in Britain has gone over the past three decades (middle of lower left hand quadrant to middle of upper right hand quadrant)... is there any doubt that a graph of the Democratic Party in this country would show the same pattern?

Dave wants to drag the Democratic Party back to Left/Libertarian quadrant it occupied thirty years ago. Me, I think: "Why spend the effort to do that, when there's already a party that truly represents my views?" We have a difference of opinion on tactics. I'm curious as to which side of the discussion the readers of this blog fall on.

Of course, as the site mentions, if we had a rational political system, with proportional representation, then this entire discussion would be unnecessary. Dave and I would happily both be members of the Green Party of the United States (and so would vast numbers of other people), and we'd be working in coalition with the Democrats occupying the "moderate conservative" lower left hand corner of the Authoritarian/Right to frustrate the efforts of the Republican party to destroy everything we hold dear.

P.S. I'm going to write them and ask that they include Cynthia McKinney, one of the leading candidates for the Green Party nomination, on the primary page. I don't think there's enough information available for him to easily make an analysis of the other candidates' positions, although I'm sure they'll all fall into the same general region (based on what I heard today when I attended the Green Party Presidential Candidates debate - soon to be available on the KPFA web site).

Posted by Thomas Leavitt at 12:33 AM | Comments (4) | TrackBack | Link Cosmos

January 9, 2008

Do Taxes Drive The Economy?

This post originally appeared at Speak Out California.

Do taxes drive California's economy?

The governor says California is in a budget crisis. He says we need to cut the state's spending "across-the-board," and the Republicans insist that tax increases and other alternatives are off the table. The media largely seem to be going along with taking discussion of alternatives off the table, and consequently Democrats are too intimidated to bring them up.

But what they are missing is that taxes drive the economy.

Tax-cut proponents say that increasing taxes on the wealthy "takes money out of the economy." I wonder where they think the money goes? Do they think it just goes up into the air and disappears?

They don't seem to -- or pretend not to -- understand that taxes come right back into the economy. It is taxes that pay the salaries of teachers and police officers and that build and maintain our roads. Then that money circulates from those teachers and construction workers to support our stores and movie theaters and restaurants and to buy homes and cars.

What would the effect be of a cut? In California there are approx. 308,000 teachers. The Governor is proposing a 10% "across-the-board" tax cut. Imagine the economic consequences if this cut means laying off 10% of those teachers -- 30,000 people? This is not the precise plan but it illustrates that spending cuts do not help the economy of California. In fact it is spending cuts, not tax cuts that "take money out of the economy."

And anyway we want what our taxes buy us! We want our teachers and firefighters and roads and courts and water & sewer systems. Cuts are not what we want.

Borrowing more money is not the solution, either. One result of the conservative tax-cutting fever of recent years has been massive borrowing at the state and especially the federal level. But people have not been told that borrowing is in reality a spending increase because we have to pay interest on that debt. California is spending $4 billion this year to pay interest on bonds and that is spending that cannot be cut. That is a lot of spending, and we would not have such a serious deficit if we did not have to pay out that $4 billion.

So the solution to the budget shortfall has to include all the tools in our toolbox. First, we have to close tax loopholes. We need to restore the vehicle license fee (which the Governor calls a tax). Then we need an oil-severance tax - we are the only state in the country that drills oil that doesn't have one! And we have to stop being a "donor state" to the federal government. We send over $50 billion to the feds that we do not get back for programs or services.

Finally, we need tax increases on corporate profits and the wealthy. Here is why: tax money is used to build the very things that ensure our prosperity. It is used to build the economy that enables some of us to become very wealthy and stay that way. Our tax-supported legal system enables and protects businesses and investors. Our tax-supported economic infrastructure defines and regulates the financial system under which investment occurs to build these businesses. Taxes built the physical infrastructure (like schools and roads) that helps us all in ways that everyone understands. But taxes also built and support the legal and economic infrastructure that is crucial for economic growth as well. The Anderson Forecast states that the two keys to a successful economy are infrastructure and education, and that is tax dollars. Entrepreneurs and businesses look for those qualities when determining where to set up shop.

In other words, the wealthy and businesses have benefitted the most from government investment and they have the most money as a result, so they should be contributing the most. And middle-class taxpayers are currently being hammered by a different kind of oil tax -- huge increases in gas prices at the pump while the oil companies are recording the most profits by any companies ever. And because of previous spending cuts, the middle class, and particularly our students, are experiencing increases in fees such as college tuition while the benefits of the taxes they pay are going disproportionately to the wealthy.

Of course taxing the very wealthy and corporations might very well take some money out of the Cayman Islands' or other tax-haven economies, bringing it back to California. (One building in the Cayman Islands is the business address of more than a thousand American corporations.) And increasing taxes on the wealthiest might even cause someone to have to buy a slightly smaller yacht or private jet in order to be used to pay a few hundred teachers or firefighters.

Click to continue

Posted by Dave Johnson at 9:12 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack | Link Cosmos

January 6, 2008

Impeach!

Every American should read Why I Believe Bush Must Go byGeorge McGovern in today's Washington Post.

Posted by Dave Johnson at 1:23 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack | Link Cosmos

January 2, 2008

The Appeal of Ron Paul

Insiders talk about Huckabee as the Frankenstein's monster the Republicans created with their strategy of stirring up religious strife. They worked so hard to divide us along religious lines to get votes - but then a candidate shows up who is an actual right-wing Christian, not just a vote-pandering corporatist, and they don’t know what to do about it. It’s fun, in a way, to watch the right's machine -- Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, the right-wing blogs. etc. -- in total panic, trying to get their audience to pull back from voting the way they’ve been telling them to vote for so many years.

I think the DC Democratic leadership has made the same mistake with their cautious, pander-to-the-so-called-center strategy (as conservatives move that "center" ever rightward). Like the Republicans, they thought they owned their base. They paid lip service to get progressive votes but then engaged in the kind of strategerizing and "afraid Rush Limbaugh will say something bad about them" approach we have had to endure rather than just doing what is right. (The point being that Rush will say something bad about you anyway, no matter what you do.) They let the war go on, took impeachment "off the table," wouldn't force Republicans to actually filibuster (thereby requiring 60 Senate votes for Democratic interests but only 50 for Republican), let Bush continue to violate the law and Constitution with impunity - even refusing to enforce their own Congressional subpoenas! They think their “base” has to stick with them no matter what.

So then along comes Ron Paul. HE says the war is wrong and illegal and must be stopped. HE says we have to enforce the Constitution above all. And surprise of surprises, he is drawing support. A