It’s always nice to have some forms of confirmation that I’m not out picking daisies in left field when I put forth these kinds of positions. So it was a pleasant surprise to read to articles this weekend that offered opinions similar to my own with regards to American socialism and wealth redistribution. Without reprinting the entire articles (which you should go and read anyhow), here are some salient points to consider…

The first I’ll share is from the San Diego Union-Tribune:

Is it really socialism to talk of “spreading the wealth”?

Actually, it has been part of the American economic system since its founding.

In a letter to James Madison in 1785, for instance, Thomas Jefferson suggested that taxes could be used to reduce “the enormous inequality” between rich and poor. He wrote that one way of “silently lessening the inequality of property is to exempt all from taxation below a certain point, and to tax the higher portions of property in geometrical progression as they rise.”

During the early days of the republic, the government relied mostly on tariffs to collect revenue, under the theory that since the rich bought most of the imports, they would pay most of the taxes.

“The rich alone use imported articles, and on these alone the whole taxes of the general government are levied,” Jefferson wrote in 1811. “The poor man, who uses nothing but what is made in his own farm or family, will pay nothing. (With) our revenues applied to canals, roads, schools, etc., the farmer will see his government supported, his children educated and the face of his country made a paradise by the contributions of the rich alone, without his being called on to spend a cent from his earnings.”

Although the income tax was abolished in 1872, the idea of using taxes to share the wealth remained an important part of the public discourse. Teddy Roosevelt was a vocal proponent of this idea in the early 1900s.

“I believe in a graduated income tax on big fortunes, and in another tax which is far more easily collected and far more effective: a graduated inheritance tax increasing rapidly with the size of the estate,” he said in 1910.

In times of economic peril, the tax rates were raised – rather than lowered – to ensure that money was more evenly distributed. During the Great Depression, Franklin Roosevelt’s administration boosted the highest tax rate from 63 percent to 79 percent in order to fund his New Deal programs. He pushed it to 94 percent during World War II.

Roosevelt was matched by Dwight Eisenhower in the 1950s, who, with the aid of a Republican Congress, maintained an income tax rate of more than 90 percent for top earners. It took Lyndon Johnson to lower the upper tax rate to 77 percent. It remained near that level until the second year of Ronald Reagan’s presidency.

But doesn’t a high tax rate strangle economic growth? It’s hard to make that case. During the 1950s, when the upper-income bracket was taxed at its highest peacetime rate in history, the economy grew at a robust 4 percent per year, using inflation-adjusted figures. The 1950s growth rate certainly did not occur because of the high taxes, but the tax rate apparently didn’t impede it.

“Every dollar spent by the government must be paid for either by taxes or by more borrowing with greater debt,” Eisenhower warned in the 1950s. “The only way to make more tax cuts now is to have bigger and bigger deficits and to borrow more and more money. Either we or our children will have to bear the burden of this debt. This is one kind of chicken that always comes home to roost. An unwise tax cutter, my fellow citizens, is no real friend of the taxpayer.”

Clearly, over this nation’s history until very recently, both major parties had candidates and presidents who understood that America’s real promise of a better life for all relied on both socialism and wealth redistribution. But the Republicans and theif frenzied fans can’t seem to concede the point, even when the evidence comes directly from their own mouths and actions.

From the New Yorker Magazine:

On October 12th, Obama gave one of his fullest summaries of his tax plan. After explaining how his tax plan would work, Obama added casually, “I think that when you spread the wealth around, it’s good for everybody.” McCain and Palin have been quoting this remark ever since, offering it as prima-facie evidence of Obama’s unsuitability for office. Of course, all taxes are redistributive, in that they redistribute private resources for public purposes. But the federal income tax is (downwardly) redistributive as a matter of principle: however slightly, it softens the inequalities that are inevitable in a market economy, and it reflects the belief that the wealthy have a proportionately greater stake in the material aspects of the social order and, therefore, should give that order proportionately more material support. McCain himself probably shares this belief, and there was a time when he was willing to say so. During the 2000 campaign, on MSNBC’s “Hardball,” a young woman asked him why her father, a doctor, should be “penalized” by being “in a huge tax bracket.” McCain replied that “wealthy people can afford more” and that “the very wealthy, because they can afford tax lawyers and all kinds of loopholes, really don’t pay nearly as much as you think they do.”
For her part, Sarah Palin, who has lately taken to calling Obama “Barack the Wealth Spreader,” seems to be something of a suspect character herself. She is, at the very least, a fellow-traveller of what might be called socialism with an Alaskan face. The state that she governs has no income or sales tax. Instead, it imposes huge levies on the oil companies that lease its oil fields. The proceeds finance the government’s activities and enable it to issue a four-figure annual check to every man, woman, and child in the state.

A few weeks before she was nominated for Vice-President, she told a visiting journalist—Philip Gourevitch, of this magazine—that “we’re set up, unlike other states in the union, where it’s collectively Alaskans own the resources. So we share in the wealth when the development of these resources occurs.”

Hmmmm…..McCain says higher incomes should mean higher taxes…at least he did back in 2000. And Palin governs a state where socialism (taking money from the big wealthy oil companies and giving it back to every person in her state) is the main rule.

Even the deniers of socialism and wealth redistribution, as we know and practice it here in America, are tied to our history, and not so subtly practicing the very things they now say will make Obama “unfit” to lead.

Pot. Kettle. Black.

(cross posted on Bring It On!)

(original video by Ken Grandlund- cross posted at Bring It On!)

Here it is for your enjoyment.

John McCain, that POW guy who can’t tell the truth from a lie, and the guy who wants you to give him the key to the most powerful office in the world, has intimate experience with financial meltdowns and big government transfers of wealth from taxpayers to crooked financial bastards.

John McCain a liar and a crooked politician. Not only can John not solve the current problems of America, but as a politician and a liar, he has helped create financial disasters again and again through deregulation and trading votes for favors and profit.

John McCain isn’t fit to be a Senator, much less the President of the United States.

Why, it was just a few months ago, in March 2008, that McSame said this in an interview with the Wall Street Journal:

Q: In 1995, when the Republicans won control of both houses of Congress, you proposed a regulatory moratorium, but couldn’t get it passed. Would you declare such a moratorium if you were president?

A: I’m always for less regulation. But I am aware of the view that there is a need for government oversight. I think we found this in the subprime lending crisis — that there are people that game the system and if not outright broke the law, they certainly engaged in unethical conduct which made this problem worse. So I do believe that there is role for oversight.

As far as a need for additional regulations are concerned, I think that depends on the legislative agenda and what the Congress does to some degree, but I am a fundamentally a deregulator. I’d like to see a lot of the unnecessary government regulations eliminated, not just a moratorium.

Again in March 2008, speaking to the Orange County Hispanic Small Business Roundtable:

“I have always been committed to the principle that it is not the duty of government to bail out and reward those who act irresponsibly, whether they are big banks or small borrowers.”

and this:

“Our financial market approach should include encouraging increased capital in financial institutions by removing regulatory, accounting and tax impediments to raising capital.”

So when you read today that John McSame is embracing regulation, you can be sure that it is a lie, a ploy, an empty campaign retort to try to look like he has a clue.

And when he says that the government had no choice but to bail out AIG and other financially irresponsible private corporations, remember that for years his position has been the exact opposite.

The truth of the matter is this: the only regulation McSame and his eminently (un)qualified co-candidate consider worthy is the regulation that prevents women from having sole authority over their own bodies.

When your economy is in meltdown due to unbridled greed set off by a decade or more of concerted corporate deregulation spearheaded by the GOP and folks like John McSame, you don’t hand the keys to the vault to the very man who helped create the fiasco. And if you do hand him the keys (i.e. vote for McSame for president), you are a big, fat idiot.

(cross posted at Bring It On!)

Everything has an opposite. Day and night. Happy and sad. Good and bad. Progression and regression. The list is endless. How does this apply to the current presidential election? It’s easy to say that Democrats and Republicans are opposites, but in truth, both parties share similar philosophies about governing. Ideologically they have some stark differences, primarily in the arena of social policy, but when it comes right down to the nuts and bolts of running the country, both parties, and their respective elected officials, share a certain disdain for true public stewardship and instead seek to dominate the opinions and news cycles in order to gain and retain power. Once they have that power, they tend to slip into the status quo of political gamesmanship, and instead of trying to effect real, dynamic change for America they revert to the patterns we are familiar with: massive fundraising, ties to lobbyists, misrepresenting reality to push an agenda that benefits few citizens, and an endless series of calculated slams against each other for perceived public support. The last eight years have helped to highlight these similarities between the parties while at the same time seeking to erupt culture wars on the ideological front. For the most part, these efforts are ploys that are understood by the public but often ignored. As voters, we tend to concentrate on the ideological social differences and lose track of the fundamental problems with our government. The politicians love this because it allows them to distract the American public with topics like gay marriage or abortion or flag burning-things that won’t disrupt their cozy little behind the scenes plans. The politicians of both parties know that if they can distract us with things like those then we won’t keep an eye on the real issues that are destroying our democracy- issues like economic malfeasance or corporate welfare or environmental destruction.

This presidential campaign started off in the same vein. And then along came Barack Obama. His began as a message of change-not just a change from a republican to a democrat in the White House, but a fundamental change in the way government does business. He spoke of returning American politics and government to the American people and taking it away from the monied interests that now own the political landscape. He talked about an era where the government and the people worked in concert to solve the real problems of the day instead of a continuation of the same. His message was so resounding to so many people that he turned the Democratic race upside down, in the process wreaking havoc on the GOP candidates who could find no new path or who would walk no new trail. He exposed both the GOP and his Democratic colleagues as frauds who only pretended to want a new way but in reality would stick to business as usual. Obama was a new light in the political arena, and his message resonated with voters of all stripes. His campaign spotlighted the emptiness of the GOP platform and sent the GOP nominee, John McCain, into a tailspin. The GOP base was less than enamored with their candidate and their ideas for a new administration looked just like the one we’ve labored under for the last 8 years.

Then McCain found Sarah Palin. And her nomination as his VP changed the game. Where republicans were dismal about their chances to retain the Oval Office they now have hope. Why? Not because they have a new candidate, but because they have a champion who embraces their darker side. When the GOP failures were exposed under the light of the Obama campaign, the conservatives of America were forced to accept that their party was bankrupting not just the country, but their own ideological identity. But the GOP is nothing if not tenacious and accepting that their ideas were not only NOT helping America but were hurting them as individuals too, they have decided that it is better to fight for what is wrong than to accept that is IS wrong and seek better ideas to follow.

Sarah Palin is the anti-Obama in the political arena. She endorses that which has been shown to be wrong for America. And the GOP is eating it up. To understand why they would do this, one must look farther than the sound bites in the news and investigate human nature.

Deepak Chopra perhaps understands the human psyche better than I do, and is, by any measure, more lucid on this topic than I am. I was recently pointed in the direction of an article he posted on his website that I want to share here.

Obama and the Palin Effect

Deepak Chopra – September 04, 2008

Sometimes politics has the uncanny effect of mirroring the national psyche even when nobody intended to do that. This is perfectly illustrated by the rousing effect that Gov. Sarah Palin had on the Republican convention in Minneapolis this week. On the surface, she outdoes former Vice President Dan Quayle as an unlikely choice, given her negligent parochial expertise in the complex affairs of governing. Her state of Alaska has less than 700,000 residents, which reduces the job of governor to the scale of running one-tenth of New York City. By comparison, Rudy Giuliani is a towering international figure. Palin’s pluck has been admired, and her forthrightness, but her real appeal goes deeper.

She is the reverse of Barack Obama, in essence his shadow, deriding his idealism and exhorting people to obey their worst impulses . In psychological terms the shadow is that part of the psyche that hides out of sight, countering our aspirations, virtue, and vision with qualities we are ashamed to face: anger, fear, revenge, violence, selfishness, and suspicion of “the other.” For millions of Americans, Obama triggers those feelings, but they don’t want to express them. He is calling for us to reach for our higher selves, and frankly, that stirs up hidden reactions of an unsavory kind. (Just to be perfectly clear, I am not making a verbal play out of the fact that Sen. Obama is black. The shadow is a metaphor widely in use before his arrival on the scene.) I recognize that psychological analysis of politics is usually not welcome by the public, but I believe such a perspective can be helpful here to understand Palin’s message. In her acceptance speech Gov. Palin sent a rousing call to those who want to celebrate their resistance to change and a higher vision.

Look at what she stands for:
–Small town values — a denial of America’s global role, a return to petty, small-minded parochialism.
–Ignorance of world affairs — a repudiation of the need to repair America’s image abroad.
–Family values — a code for walling out anybody who makes a claim for social justice. Such strangers, being outside the family, don’t need to be heeded.
–Rigid stands on guns and abortion — a scornful repudiation that these issues can be negotiated with those who disagree.
–Patriotism — the usual fallback in a failed war.
–“Reform” — an italicized term, since in addition to cleaning out corruption and excessive spending, one also throws out anyone who doesn’t fit your ideology.

Palin reinforces the overall message of the reactionary right, which has been in play since 1980, that social justice is liberal-radical, that minorities and immigrants, being different from “us” pure American types, can be ignored, that progressivism takes too much effort and globalism is a foreign threat. The radical right marches under the banners of “I’m all right, Jack,” and “Why change? Everything’s OK as it is.” The irony, of course, is that Gov. Palin is a woman and a reactionary at the same time. She can add mom to apple pie on her resume, while blithely reversing forty years of feminist progress. The irony is superficial; there are millions of women who stand on the side of conservatism, however obviously they are voting against their own good. The Republicans have won multiple national elections by raising shadow issues based on fear, rejection, hostility to change, and narrow-mindedness.

Obama’s call for higher ideals in politics can’t be seen in a vacuum. The shadow is real; it was bound to respond. Not just conservatives possess a shadow — we all do. So what comes next is a contest between the two forces of progress and inertia. Will the shadow win again, or has its furtive appeal become exhausted? No one can predict. The best thing about Gov. Palin is that she brought this conflict to light, which makes the upcoming debate honest. It would be a shame to elect another Reagan, whose smiling persona was a stalking horse for the reactionary forces that have brought us to the demoralized state we are in. We deserve to see what we are getting, without disguise.

I reprinted this here to help elucidate the conservative infatuation with Sarah Palin, a candidate who is (IMO) poorly suited for the second highest office in the land. Palin isn’t where she is today because she has the desire to serve so much as because John McCain needed an anti-Obama to invigorate his voters. Her selection was calculated and cynical and makes this contest a much clearer choice for me at least.

There is the light and there is the dark. We’ve been heading towards the darkest part of the cave for almost a decade now. It’s time to return towards the light again. It’s time to reclaim out better selves.

(cross posted at Bring It On!)

Taking a cue from the King of Made-Up Reality, George W. Bush, the GOP and their candidates have unleashed an alternate reality that they want all Americans to believe.

King George has spent the last 8 years not listening to reality. According to Bush, the economy is fine, Iraq was the best place to target terrorism, nepotism makes for the best government, drilling for off shore oil will bring gas prices down immediately, and massive debt is what future generations of Americans really want and need.

GOP heir-apparent John McCain has so much trouble with the truth that he hasn’t spoken realistically for months. According to McCain, the middle class consists of people who make about $250,000 a year, being a maverick means bucking the party line as much as 10% of the time, POW and POTUS are really interchangable, and his VP choice is someone who hates earmarks as much as he claims to.

The newest member of the GOP glamour gang is Sarah Palin who wouldn’t know reality if it bit her in the knee. According to Palin, abstinance education really works and is the only method worth teaching, God rejoices over pipelines, and that shooting animals from an airplane is the only sporting way to hunt for your trophies.

SEE NO REALITY.  HEAR NO REALITY.  SPEAK NO REALITY.

Better yet…just make up your own reality and repeat it over and over and over again.

You want reality? Here is the reality that the 21st century GOP has brought to America.

Iraq War…torture…gross mismanagement of funds…record deficits…corporate malfeasance…Dick Cheney…Katrina…cronyism…Donald Rumsfeld…economic meltdown…anti-science…politicization of government agencies…Terry Schiavo fiasco…Alberto Gonzales…high unemployment…outsourcing to mercenaries…swiftboating of politics…Iranian nukes…tension with Russia…John Ashcroft…Walter Reed Medical Center…domestic spying…massive future debt…Condi Rice…bankrupted state treasuries…national security theater…Samuel Alito…billions of dollars sent to Pakistan and nothing to show for it…bin Laden still at large…skyrocketing energy costs…widening income gap between rich and poor…Harriet Myers…suspended endangered species act…denial of environmental crisis…The Bridge To Nowhere…foreign distrust…falling dollar value…Karl Rove…tax cuts to the wealthiest Americans…nuclear proliferation…biggest expansion of government in generations and nothing to show for it…Tom DeLay…attorneygate…power to the lobbyists…religious disharmony…

And that’s just the “easy to identify” list. Some say reality is what you make it. This is the reality that the GOP has made in America. Is this the reality you want for another four years or more?

McCain/Palin are now promising change. They lie. The only change they seek is more regressive social and economic policies for Americans. The only change they desire is more debt and war and religiously based laws. The only change we can count on from them is even more government bullying and lies. That is the reality they can promise and that you can expect from the GOP.

If reality really is what we make it, it’s time for a new reality.

(cross posted at Bring It On!)

And so while flexing the muscle of a bully administration, the GOP faithful gather together in Minneapolis this week to honor hypocrisy and failure and administer a promise to give America more of the same thing for as far as the eye can see.

WHAT IS THIS PLACE? TIANANMEN SQUARE?

The GOP convention got off to a great start, as federal troops and local cops were deployed to recreate a domestic version of Iraq’s Green Zone- you know, the place that proved to John McCain that Iraq was a pretty safe place to hang out. Good thing too, because over 280 people have been arrested for protesting the war. Now I’ll grant that some of those folks taken into custody went far over the line of respectable protest and should have been arrested. But many dozens of those hauled away were reporters and peaceful protestors who were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. And what’s the best way to deal with a flower-wielding protestor? That’s right, drench her with pepper spray. Well, maybe now the GOP can put those not-so-secret domestic detention camps that Haliburton helped build.

But hey…we already know that the US under George W. Bush and the 21st century GOP is a place of brutality first, ask questions after the waterboarding party is over. Almost a decade of illegal spying, foreign agression, and domestic security theater has all but numbed us to the jack-booted thugishness of the Compassionate Conservatives. So these convention tactics should come as no big surprise, right?

And neither, I suppose, should the resounding hypocrisy coming from the mouths of the GOP faithful as they cozy up to their terribly two-faced general election candidates. Remember, not only is the GOP the self-described party of fiscal strength, compassion, and tough on terror, they also hold the halo of moral righteousness, reminding America that sex is awfully shameful, theft is a sin, and lying-well, let’s just say that lying isn’t condoned in polite circles. Oh, and of course, none of those caveats actually apply to members of the GOP- it’s what they SAY, not what they DO that really matters…

ABSTINANCE, SCHMABSTINANCE 

VP nominee Sarah Palin supports abstinence only education. Now she admits that her unmarried 17 year old daughter is knocked up. But that’s okay…presidential nominee John McCain opposed proposals to spend federal money on teen-pregnancy prevention programs and voted to require poor teen mothers to stay in school or lose their benefits. While the right heartily condems both unwed sex and teen pregnancy, and just as heartily opposes any kind of sex education to prevent at least one of the two above topics, they are managing to pretend that in the case of THIS particular unwed teen mother to be, all is right in the world, because THIS girl plans to wed the redneck who knocked her up. Now some are saying that candidates’ kids should be off limits and I tend to agree. Except when that candidate is vying for the second highest office in the land, and she wants to federally force the rest of us to raise our kids under the rules she so successfully used in her own home. Sorry, Sarah…but we don’t think your way worked too good here, and we sure don’t want our hands tied to your own narrow set of rules when it comes to our own kids’ futures.

SHOW ME THE MONEY! 

And then there’s the “maverick” mentality that beats down the over-spending pork barrel projects with a sledge hammer that is John McCain. McSame says he’ll put an end to the wasteful earmark policies that dominate federal politcs. No matter that Bush said the same thing and has done nothing. We all know that John is just following the playbook. Too bad his choice of running mate didn’t leap on that train a bit sooner. Yes, Palin killed the Bridge to Nowhere that indicted Senator Ted Stevens worked so hard to bring to the Alaskan wilderness, but only because costs for the project were too high, not because she was ideologically opposed to wasting taxpayer money. While mayor of the blink-and-you’ll-miss-it town of Wasilla, Palin hired a lobbying firm to secure over $27 million for hew town of 6,700 people. Sure, they had bad plumbing and needed a new youth shelter. Don’t we all???

WE’RE THE DECIDERS NOW, BITCH

And who can forget the example of political stewardship Sarah Palin has displayed when it comes to being tough on ethics. She’s quite a trooper in this category, as in she pressured the state public safety commissioner to fire her former brother-in-law ( an Alaska state trooper) and when he didn’t cave in, she fired his ass. Who’s your daddy now?!? Add this lady’s cajones to the toughness McSame garnered as a POW and this is one kick-ass super team. Hell, if we elect these two tigers, Al-Qaeda will probably just give up then and there.

EXPERIENCE THAT REALLY COUNTS

And finally, we all know that the only real measure of a commander in chief (and we must view the VP choice as a potential CIC) is the amount of foreign policy experience they have. When it comes to Palin, the Democratic ticket seems to be sadly lacking in this field. After all, Palin lives in Alaska, which is closer to Russia than any other state. And Alaska has a lot of oil, so she’e up on all those oil places around the world simply because has to deal with oil companies. In the 21st century, what other experience do you need, especially when McSame intends to follow the Bush doctrine of attack those with the most oil and the worst armies. Plus, she’s a trophy hunter, so she has all the VP experience needed to shoot a “friend” in the face on a hunting trip. Clearly an important VP consideration if one wants to fill the shoes of Dick Cheney.

Take a close look, voters, at the face of the new GOP. Here’s a hint- the hypocrisy, the thugishness, the lack of respect for individual choice, environmental stability or energy sensibility is all still right there. And so is the preference to give tax money to the richest Americans and the CEO’s of bastard corporations, reward friends and bully enemies with political power plays, and an unnereving desire to adhere to outdated and inadequate mythology to guide us towards the future. The only difference is that they are finally trying to put a pretty face in front of it, even if the do put that pretty face next to McSame’s ghastly grimace.

The 21st Century GOP- a prettier, friendlier “fuck off” to America.

(cross posted at Bring It On!)

Really? Were none of those other six candidates crooked enough for the Alaskan GOP? Not enough bribes under theie belts? Not enough willingness to fleece American taxpayers out of tax revenue so another stupid bridge over an ice field could be built? Is this the best the Alaska GOP has to offer to the U.S. Senate?

Or maybe this is just indicitive of why the GOP in general is so rotten to the core. See, instead of opting for a clean start and gaining back some credibility as a party that wants to work FOR America, the GOP in Alaska prefers to try to hold on to their senatorial seniority so someone can keep bringing the pork back home.

The GOP is ripe with rotten fruit, and Stevens is just the lowest pit on the branch today. It would have been pretty easy to tell the old codger to take a hike and turn the page towards a better, more honorable representative, but the GOP will do anything to keep the Democrats from gaining a solid majority, even if that means holding on to a federally indicted bribe taker through the election.

Odds are that Stevens will be brought to justice sooner than later. But for the GOP, holding on to a loser is a way of life. One need look no farther than the White House to see how resistant the GOP is to saying, “We were wrong.”

What’s next? McCain-DeLay ’08 Bumper Stickers?

(cross posted at Bring It On!)