Tag Archives: taxes

Political Rants

What now.

Gingrich has thrown his hat into the presidential ring. That should go well. Not so long ago, he was the most hated man in America. I have to think he has moved up from there – perhaps that fact alone has encouraged him to try. Or maybe he’s pulling a Buchanan and using it as a fundraising, image-building exercise. (Great way to sell books.) Either way, I can hardly imagine a less likely or desirable prospect, and I don’t think I’m alone in this. It’s no accident – the policies he has been most closely associated with over the years are wildly unpopular. The current crop of GOP congresspeople represent an odious distillation of his most extremist positions. What’s not to hate?

Back when the Newt was Speaker, I wrote a song about his crusade against welfare – one cheerfully joined by Bill Clinton and various other Democrats, eager to throw the poor over the side for a few cheap political points. Written like a bloodthirsty hymn sung aboard a pirate ship, the lyric went, in part, like this:

Please, Newt Gingrich, save us from welfare dependent mothers
whose hungry infants threaten our fortunes with default
Please, o Speaker, drive them away from this captain’s table
Please drive them from below the salt!

Bring to us the biscuit, that humble little biscuit
Please add it to our bounty, we savor every crumb
Take it from the infant, that greedy mother’s infant
Please pluck it from his toothless gums!

Mr. Speaker – we beseech thee, for the gods of war and industry
Mr. Speaker – we beseech thee, please… Bless This Feast!

Imagine the singing pirates being all of those industrialists, corporate CEOs, and generals/admirals who benefit from budgetary largess, year after year, to the tune of billions of dollars (at the expense of all of the rest of us, including many in dire need) and you’ll get the idea.

I suppose it makes sense that Newt would think this is a good time for him, since the ethos of greed and further targeting of the poor/working class has descended upon us once again. Given today’s sensational announcement that the Social Security trust fund will be expended in 2036 (instead of 2037), after which the fund would only cover 75% of its costs (assuming we never come out of deep recession and never again experience economic growth above 1% a year), he may be right.

But I doubt it.

luv u,

jp

Political Rants

Walking like Egyptians.

As happens every few decades, the empire is shaking at its foundations, the rot of popular will spreading from Egypt to other corners of America’s realm. In fact, nowhere does the grip of tyranny seem firmer than right here at home, where low-income people in the colder latitudes may soon be denied home heating assistance to preserve privileges for the very well-off. (My, what a good idea! ) This offered up by a Democratic president, the ink barely dry on his deal for the extension of Bush’s budget busting tax cuts, themselves passed in the same breath as Bush’s declaration of the criminally fraudulent Iraq War. Now everyone…. and I mean everyone … is all about the deficit and how we can compel poor, working class, and retired people to fill the gap left by war and the ravages of wealth.

Fundamental economic disenfranchisement is a large part of what lit a fire under the people of Tunisia and Egypt. Remember that Egypt has, in the past few years, undergone a neoliberal economic restructuring that has exacerbated inequality beyond the miserable point at which it was before. I am not suggesting that Americans are facing this level of privation or repression. But the same process that concentrates wealth at the top in places like Egypt is at work right here at home. It’s not hard to see. Each recession takes a larger bite out of the working class and poor. This most recent one has been the worst in that respect, putting people out of work for months, years, and in some cases the rest of their lives, at least in terms of a solid, remunerative job that can support a family. Meanwhile, the wealthiest are top of the mast, as always, their income swelling to obscene levels, and the very investment bankers that crashed our economy two years ago are raking in the bonuses like never before.

Part of this process is the assault on organized labor, most particularly public sector unions, which are under sustained attack across the nation. This goes far beyond wringing concessions on contracts. This is about the vilification of government workers and, in the most extreme cases, attempts to curtail hard-won collective bargaining rights. That’s what’s happening in Wisconsin right now. That’s why all those folks are walking like Egyptians up the steps of the state capitol. That fight has nothing to do with budget deficits – it’s a precalculated political attack on public sector unions, which is the nation’s last labor stronghold.  Wisconsin’s governor is driving a truck through the hole opened by the likes of New Jersey’s execrable governor Christie and others.

We need to stand with these people. Like those folks in Cairo and Alexandria, their fight is very much ours as well.

luv u,

jp

Political Rants

Going Dutch.

Aside from being the day of the Super Bowl, last Sunday was the 100th birthday of Ronald Reagan, apparently the patron saint of NPR, which ran seemingly countless stories about the “Gipper” all that week. (I hope they don’t think that will help convince the G.O.P. House to keep their already meager CPB funds in the budget. That won’t save you!) Missing from the many remembrances of RR were those who might not remember him so fondly- the Guatemalans, the Salvadorans, the Angolans, the Timorese, the Argentineans… the list goes on. I’ve long felt that Reagan had a profound impact on the American presidency and, consequently, U.S. society, though not in a positive way. Thanks to his presidency, for instance, we can never consider raising federal taxes on anyone under any circumstances. He heralded the arrival of the new jingoism that ultimately put us into Grenada, then Panama, then Kuwait, then Somalia, then the former Yugoslavia… and of course Afghanistan and Iraq.

Granted, they were not all his ideas. He was, like many presidents, something of an empty vessel into which various policy mavens and ideologues were able to pour their nasty ideas. Reagan’s son Ron has written of how his father showed the beginning signs of Alzheimer’s while still in office. I have known two people who had occasion to observe him for fairly long periods of time during his term, both of whom told of a man so cloudy minded he needed to be briefed on the basics every fifteen minutes by an extremely protective Secret Service. In that respect, his administration was run by the people around him, just as George W. Bush’s foreign policy was shaped by Rumsfeld, Cheney, Wolfowitz, and others. (If we get a president Palin, that job will be taken up by the likes of Randy Scheunemann. War with Russia, here we come!)

These people represent, in large part, the lasting legacy of any administration. I just heard Elliot Abrams – one of Reagan’s creatures – on NPR the other day. There’s a guy who should be languishing in a Nicaraguan jail right rather than commenting on the uprising in Egypt. They never go away. And likewise, the policies seem etched in stone. Taxes can never be raised on upper income people, even though they’ve been making out like bandits since Reagan time, while the rest of us have flat-lined. We will cut essential benefits for the poor, the elderly, and the ill before asking them to part with some of their ill-gotten gains. Does that irritate you? Thank Reagan.

Money hole. Hey, Hosni Mubarak has amassed something like a $45 to 70 billion fortune since Reagan’s first year in office. That’s about equal to the amount we’ve sent Egypt in aid. Not hard to see what our money has been buying. But at least the old bastard has been persuaded to retire. Good for you, Egypt. Welcome news in these difficult days.

luv u,

jp