So, anyone had enough of the corporate welfare that is going on lately? I have. I mean, yes, banks are important, as is the automobile industry, but at some point, in a capitalist system, industries have to fail, otherwise, we have indeed slipped into socialism.
Unfortunately, it is the worst kind. The kind of socialism that makes products and insures that the rich stay rich; the kind of socialism that prefers to make weapons and prisons rather than schools and hospitals; the kind of socialism, that soon, will either require or invite wars due to its burgeoning budgetary needs.
The very idea that we can spend our way out of a recession is the same one that got us into this mess…anyone recall Bush telling Americans to shop more following 9-11? Even more egregious is that it is now acceptable for companies to be arrogant enough to ask for our money, using of all strategies, an appeal to patriotism as the raison d’etre.
Quite frankly, as long as Bush has his billions with the Saudi’s and the banks and the auto industries have enough money to pay themselves multi-million dollar salaries and fly to congress in private jets to ask for bailout money, they can kiss the American people’s collective ass. And congress can kiss it too, since they don’t have a clue as to how to get us out of this mess other than throwing money at the problem and bending over to big businesses every perverted suggestion. Make no mistake, what we are seeing with this bailout money is trickle down economics—Republican style—only now we see that our Democratic congress is willing to play that game too.
And let this be a lesson to you idiot-asshole Republicans out there that are still butt-hurt John McCain didn’t win: notice that I’m not lying down like a lapdog to slurp up everything the Dem’s are doing now that we’ve won the election. I am going to be as critical as I ever was, because I care about results, about using government effectively and efficiently, not crooning over some suit because they have a particular consonant behind their name.
To tell you the truth, I’m not a huge fan of Obama’s plan to spend another $700 billion and to keep the Bush tax cuts in place either. I’m all for building infrastructure, but only if it is going to move us forward into a new economy, buoyed by green technology and grants to research alternative energy sources. Let me be clear: I am optimistic that he will do a good job as president, but only if he has the courage of his convictions to institute fundamental, drastic, and lasting change to the way this country functions.
For my part, I am going to try to be solutions oriented, and there are two huge, primary actions that can be taken to get this economy back on track—actions that I don’t hear anyone talk about, and actions I don’t believe Barack Obama or this Democratic congress will take unless prodded by massive popular lobbying:
1) Immigration Reform
2) Forgiveness of debts (primarily student loans)
The first should be no surprise, really. Illegal immigration is a huge burden on our society. To begin with, the influx of cheap, unskilled labor devalues our labor market in general, even our skilled labor market. The result is less jobs and lower wages for U.S. citizens. This then is exacerbated by the fact that many immigrants send their money back to Mexico or Central/South America, where it goes to work in their markets—not ours. Moreover, our social services, schools, police, justice, prison, fire, and medical establishments are burdened with providing service to people that have not paid into the tax system very long, if at all. Finally and most simply, illegal immigration means more people. More people to share less resources, which means ultimately, less for all of us. This may sound selfish, but unless we are going to make the jump to world government, it is necessary to do what is best for one’s country first and foremost. The excellent thing about this problem is that it would be simple to fix. All that would need to be done is enact a 10 year mandatory prison sentence for those who employ illegal immigrants, and then periodically sting businesses that are suspected of not complying with the regulation.
The second action that could be taken, the forgiveness of debts, would have a similarly simple solution: forgive debts that qualify under certain parameters. I know that this doesn’t seem “fair,” but then again, neither is bailing out CEO’s and billionaires. The benefits of such a program, however, would be much more far reaching in turning around our economy than the corporate welfare our government is such a fan of. You see, rather than giving money to people that already have houses, cars, businesses, etc., we’d be giving money to the young and the poor (in my case both). Forgiving debt gained through attending college, would allow the young, educated class to begin buying those things that keep our economy humming, like cars, houses, opening investment and bank accounts, enabling them to start new businesses.
Yes, I am aware of the fact that I am advocating for a program that would benefit me greatly, so of course I have a selfish interest in such an initiative. But the effects of such a program would be dramatic, and I’ll use an old axiom to illustrate my point: give a man a fish, and he’ll eat for a day, but teach him how to fish, and he’ll eat for the rest of his life. Right now, our government is giving the rich more fish, and they’ll eat for a day, but they won’t have learned their lesson, and so, they’ll have their lavish vacations and their leer jets and their golden parachutes, and five years down the line, we’ll have to bail them out again. On the other hand, by forgiving debt, the government is not making someone rich, but instead, giving them the opportunity to get rich. You see, if the young and the poor have their debts forgiven, we’ll still have to earn a living, we’ll still have to make smart investments, we’ll still have to fish to have our dinner every night, so to speak. And with that, we’ll create jobs, stimulate the economy, and provide a stable base for consistent, sustainable growth.
So, its up to the Democrats: keep throwing money at the fat cats, and the young and poor will slog along, unable to actively participate in the economy because we are saddled with debts, or, help free us from those debts and make us an active and powerful force that can drive the U.S. economy out of this recession, and into the future.
Tuesday, November 25, 2008
Wednesday, November 12, 2008
For the pros
The progressives that is...yes, yes, a little more than a week removed from Obama and the Democratic (not the Democrat, you idiot conservatives) party's dramatic, sweeping victory, we get to pat ourselves on the collective back and allow ourselves to feel pretty damn good going into the holiday season. Here's a little more on why/how we won, what remains to be done in the present, and what goals I believe we should have for the future:
1. Why/how we won: Lets begin with the how. Obama's fifty state strategy paid huge dividends and may well have permanently reshaped the electoral map. He also brought a huge number of new voters, especially young voters, to the polls. According to exit polls, Obama won virtually every demographic, except among whites in general, though he did win among younger whites (18-29; the full results are at http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2008/results/polls/#USP00p1).
However, why he won may have less to do with campaign strategy and more to do with state of the economy. Recall that before the market essentially went on its journey through the center of the earth, McCain was ahead in national polls. His campaign seemed to follow the markets as well, going to more and more obscure negative attacks, and of course, there was and still is "aahlsoo" the Palin factor...as it turned out the nastiness the barracuda had in spades, she lacked in tact, poise, and intelligence--only the GOP would glorify such a substanceless trainwreck of a human being.
In other words, Obama may have won as much because of the self destruction of McCain's candidacy and the economic results of 8 years of the Bush administration as anything.
Still, the results are staggering. Obama won 364 electoral votes, turning Virginia, North Carolina, Ohio, Indiana, Iowa, Colorado, Florida, New Mexico, Nevada, and possibly Missouri blue, all of which were won by Bush in '04. He also won the popular vote 66,361,433 (53%) to McCain's 58,024,608 (46%). In the end, we crushed them, and that feels really, really good. Suck it cons!
2. In the present: sit back and watch the destruction. The day after the election, Fox News was discussing whether the voting age should be moved to 35, and you'll still hear a lot of dumb comments about socialism and terrorism from the dumber cons--wait, is that an oxymoron? My favorite are the snide little comments about how people voted for Obama but they don't know why--that we are sheep for change. In rebuttal, I'd like to point out that conservatives knew more about why they weren't voting for Obama than why they were voting for McCain, and moreover, for the right wing to say that Obama's voters were, or are not, critical thinkers is the single most absurdly self-unaware things I have ever heard--even if I count the ramblings of Rush and O'Reilly. Yes, because somehow electing Bush president twice was at the apex of critical thinking...what a bunch of fucking bullshit.
But to be a bit more positive, we as progressives need to: a) encourage those fiscal, states-rights conservatives to retake their party, and b) alienate and belittle the religious and philosophical zealotry that took over the Republican party starting with Reagan. Unfortunately, conservative talk show hosts are too rabid and crazed a group to tell their base the truth, which is that they lost because they didn't have a real platform and their economic philosophy simply doesn't work, so it is up to us to say exactly that, and encourage the reasonable Republicans to either join and influence our party, or to take back their own.
With the crazed and rabid religious nutjobs that make up the base of the party, we need to do what a good football team does when its up by 10 points in the middle of the third quarter: go on a long, clock draining, touchdown scoring drive in which you just physically dominate the other team and totally demoralize them. We need to have that killer instinct, step on their throats, and show absolutely zero tolerance or forgiveness for their insertion of hate and immaturity into the political landscape. STAMP THEM OUT!
I really hope that our Democratic leaders understand this as well. We still need to have hearings on torture, the manipulation of intelligence in the leadup to war in Iraq, spying on American citizens without warrants, and the politicization of our Justice Department. These issues lie at the core of our constitution, and if this is to be a country of laws and not men, we simply cannot allow lawlessness and despotism to go unpunished. Those who are responsible should be made an example of by being forced to undergo significant jail time.
3. Goals for the future: Obviously, Obama and the Democratic party have their work cut out for them and I would expect that they will address the economy, the war in Iraq, and the energy crisis, first and formost. A few issues that still lie at the core of our domestic problems that we cannot forget about however, are: the healthcare crisis, improving public education, and the war on drugs/the prison industrial complex.
The healthcare crisis is going to kill our economy, if not many of our citizens, if it is not dealt with quickly and efficiently. Socialism is the way to go here--the military is socialized, as are our police and fire departments, and public education. While all have their problems, the fact is that there are certain segments of needs a society has that cannot be solved effectively by the free market. It is much more efficient to socialize these segments, and then to run them as cost effectively possible.
We also need to totally rethink our educational system. As a recent addition to public schools, there are a myriad of problems that need to be wholly overhauled. For my part, I will be writing a thesis position paper on what those problems and their causes are, and how we can solve them by redesigning everything from the structure to how we evaluate student performance to how we evaluate and pay teachers.
Last, but not least, is the war on drugs and the prison industrial complex. We currently imprison more people than any other country in the world per capita, and if the fact that we are doing an injustice to many imprisoned doesn't move you, perhaps the cost will. It costs about $32,000 a year for every prisoner in our system. We have over 2 million. That's a lot.
The cause of this is that: a) we continue to increase prison sentences in the hope of cutting the crime rate, and b) we still criminalize the use of most drugs. The result is a lot of people that were either trying to get high or trying to get rich (the American dream, right?), end up rotting in jail for much longer than is realistically necessary. To solve this problem we need to decriminalize most drugs and treat their users as addicts rather than criminals. This would eliminate the black market that breeds the vast sums of money that allow for the rise of organized crime and gangs.
Back to the present--celebrate pros--we are potent, but now that we are in power, it is time for the real work to begin.
1. Why/how we won: Lets begin with the how. Obama's fifty state strategy paid huge dividends and may well have permanently reshaped the electoral map. He also brought a huge number of new voters, especially young voters, to the polls. According to exit polls, Obama won virtually every demographic, except among whites in general, though he did win among younger whites (18-29; the full results are at http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2008/results/polls/#USP00p1).
However, why he won may have less to do with campaign strategy and more to do with state of the economy. Recall that before the market essentially went on its journey through the center of the earth, McCain was ahead in national polls. His campaign seemed to follow the markets as well, going to more and more obscure negative attacks, and of course, there was and still is "aahlsoo" the Palin factor...as it turned out the nastiness the barracuda had in spades, she lacked in tact, poise, and intelligence--only the GOP would glorify such a substanceless trainwreck of a human being.
In other words, Obama may have won as much because of the self destruction of McCain's candidacy and the economic results of 8 years of the Bush administration as anything.
Still, the results are staggering. Obama won 364 electoral votes, turning Virginia, North Carolina, Ohio, Indiana, Iowa, Colorado, Florida, New Mexico, Nevada, and possibly Missouri blue, all of which were won by Bush in '04. He also won the popular vote 66,361,433 (53%) to McCain's 58,024,608 (46%). In the end, we crushed them, and that feels really, really good. Suck it cons!
2. In the present: sit back and watch the destruction. The day after the election, Fox News was discussing whether the voting age should be moved to 35, and you'll still hear a lot of dumb comments about socialism and terrorism from the dumber cons--wait, is that an oxymoron? My favorite are the snide little comments about how people voted for Obama but they don't know why--that we are sheep for change. In rebuttal, I'd like to point out that conservatives knew more about why they weren't voting for Obama than why they were voting for McCain, and moreover, for the right wing to say that Obama's voters were, or are not, critical thinkers is the single most absurdly self-unaware things I have ever heard--even if I count the ramblings of Rush and O'Reilly. Yes, because somehow electing Bush president twice was at the apex of critical thinking...what a bunch of fucking bullshit.
But to be a bit more positive, we as progressives need to: a) encourage those fiscal, states-rights conservatives to retake their party, and b) alienate and belittle the religious and philosophical zealotry that took over the Republican party starting with Reagan. Unfortunately, conservative talk show hosts are too rabid and crazed a group to tell their base the truth, which is that they lost because they didn't have a real platform and their economic philosophy simply doesn't work, so it is up to us to say exactly that, and encourage the reasonable Republicans to either join and influence our party, or to take back their own.
With the crazed and rabid religious nutjobs that make up the base of the party, we need to do what a good football team does when its up by 10 points in the middle of the third quarter: go on a long, clock draining, touchdown scoring drive in which you just physically dominate the other team and totally demoralize them. We need to have that killer instinct, step on their throats, and show absolutely zero tolerance or forgiveness for their insertion of hate and immaturity into the political landscape. STAMP THEM OUT!
I really hope that our Democratic leaders understand this as well. We still need to have hearings on torture, the manipulation of intelligence in the leadup to war in Iraq, spying on American citizens without warrants, and the politicization of our Justice Department. These issues lie at the core of our constitution, and if this is to be a country of laws and not men, we simply cannot allow lawlessness and despotism to go unpunished. Those who are responsible should be made an example of by being forced to undergo significant jail time.
3. Goals for the future: Obviously, Obama and the Democratic party have their work cut out for them and I would expect that they will address the economy, the war in Iraq, and the energy crisis, first and formost. A few issues that still lie at the core of our domestic problems that we cannot forget about however, are: the healthcare crisis, improving public education, and the war on drugs/the prison industrial complex.
The healthcare crisis is going to kill our economy, if not many of our citizens, if it is not dealt with quickly and efficiently. Socialism is the way to go here--the military is socialized, as are our police and fire departments, and public education. While all have their problems, the fact is that there are certain segments of needs a society has that cannot be solved effectively by the free market. It is much more efficient to socialize these segments, and then to run them as cost effectively possible.
We also need to totally rethink our educational system. As a recent addition to public schools, there are a myriad of problems that need to be wholly overhauled. For my part, I will be writing a thesis position paper on what those problems and their causes are, and how we can solve them by redesigning everything from the structure to how we evaluate student performance to how we evaluate and pay teachers.
Last, but not least, is the war on drugs and the prison industrial complex. We currently imprison more people than any other country in the world per capita, and if the fact that we are doing an injustice to many imprisoned doesn't move you, perhaps the cost will. It costs about $32,000 a year for every prisoner in our system. We have over 2 million. That's a lot.
The cause of this is that: a) we continue to increase prison sentences in the hope of cutting the crime rate, and b) we still criminalize the use of most drugs. The result is a lot of people that were either trying to get high or trying to get rich (the American dream, right?), end up rotting in jail for much longer than is realistically necessary. To solve this problem we need to decriminalize most drugs and treat their users as addicts rather than criminals. This would eliminate the black market that breeds the vast sums of money that allow for the rise of organized crime and gangs.
Back to the present--celebrate pros--we are potent, but now that we are in power, it is time for the real work to begin.
Friday, November 7, 2008
For the cons
So, I've noticed this truck at work that has a homade sign reading "Liberty vs. Socialism," clearly referring to the accusation made by the right that Barack Obama is a socialist. This is ironic for two reasons: 1) we both work at a school, which is essentially a socialist entity. It is funded by public money, run for the public good, and ruled by anal government regulations. To be clear, it is run poorly, and Bush's No Child Left Behind is the worst kind of socialist reform there is, because it reduces human beings to numbers and spreadsheets, provides insufficient funding to its purposes, and sets unnattainable standards that exacerbates the rift that exists between the haves and the have nots. 2) We both work at a school, and one would hope that teachers and people working at schools are rational, reasonable people, because in the end, we all strive to teach our students to think critically.
Therefore, though he is accutely aware of the pitfalls of a socialist run entity, especially one as badly run as public schools, he should also surely be aware that many of the problems particular to schools have their root in NCLB. Moreover, for him to buy into the absurdly simple-minded allegation that Obama is a socialist can only be interpreted to mean that he is neither rational nor reasonable, and that he lacks, or refuses to use, critical thinking skills.
Let me just lay it on the line for the grumbling conservatives out there:
1) Obama is no more a socialist than McCain, who I'd like to point out, has helped oversee an unprecedented expansion of the federal government and allowed the GOP, a party that formerly believed in states rights, to completely reverse their position in order to dictate federalist mandates from Washington.
2) On election night, a lady in the 7-11 I was at, upon seeing me high five an African American woman wearing an Obama T-shirt, complained that, "this country is going to hell." OK, first of all, discontent was one of the primary reasons for Obama's historic election to president. But second, and more importantly, the feeling that America is not headed in the right direction has nothing to do with Obama, who, in point of fact, is not yet president. Look, even if you want to blame everything on Clinton, conservative, remember that that was 8 years ago--6 years for which your party had complete control of the government, and 8 with the executive branch. In those 8 years, Bush and his buddies did NOTHING to make you feel good about our country. Why then you would be foolish enough to believe that 4 more years of your party's rule was going to make things better is beyond me...I'll refer back to Einstein: the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.
3) You lost because your party is ideologically bankrupt. You ran a person for VP, a person that would have been a heartbeat away from the presidency, who thought Africa was a country, not a continent, and could not name the countries involved in NAFTA (So Sara, NAFTA stands for the North American free trade agreement--North America consists of the U.S., Canada, and Mexico). More importantly, your platform had nothing to do with the problems we face as a nation in the 21st century; instead, your guy continued to trot out tax cuts and more of the same bankrupt economic policies that have not worked since Reagan first tried them in the 1980's. Finally, your campaign strategy relied on name calling, fear mongering, and bullying, with the hope that lingering racism among southern and rural voters would buoy your cause. Put all of these things together and you have a dumb, immature, foolish, and bigoted campaign; that you thought you would somehow win was a joke.
Therefore, though he is accutely aware of the pitfalls of a socialist run entity, especially one as badly run as public schools, he should also surely be aware that many of the problems particular to schools have their root in NCLB. Moreover, for him to buy into the absurdly simple-minded allegation that Obama is a socialist can only be interpreted to mean that he is neither rational nor reasonable, and that he lacks, or refuses to use, critical thinking skills.
Let me just lay it on the line for the grumbling conservatives out there:
1) Obama is no more a socialist than McCain, who I'd like to point out, has helped oversee an unprecedented expansion of the federal government and allowed the GOP, a party that formerly believed in states rights, to completely reverse their position in order to dictate federalist mandates from Washington.
2) On election night, a lady in the 7-11 I was at, upon seeing me high five an African American woman wearing an Obama T-shirt, complained that, "this country is going to hell." OK, first of all, discontent was one of the primary reasons for Obama's historic election to president. But second, and more importantly, the feeling that America is not headed in the right direction has nothing to do with Obama, who, in point of fact, is not yet president. Look, even if you want to blame everything on Clinton, conservative, remember that that was 8 years ago--6 years for which your party had complete control of the government, and 8 with the executive branch. In those 8 years, Bush and his buddies did NOTHING to make you feel good about our country. Why then you would be foolish enough to believe that 4 more years of your party's rule was going to make things better is beyond me...I'll refer back to Einstein: the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.
3) You lost because your party is ideologically bankrupt. You ran a person for VP, a person that would have been a heartbeat away from the presidency, who thought Africa was a country, not a continent, and could not name the countries involved in NAFTA (So Sara, NAFTA stands for the North American free trade agreement--North America consists of the U.S., Canada, and Mexico). More importantly, your platform had nothing to do with the problems we face as a nation in the 21st century; instead, your guy continued to trot out tax cuts and more of the same bankrupt economic policies that have not worked since Reagan first tried them in the 1980's. Finally, your campaign strategy relied on name calling, fear mongering, and bullying, with the hope that lingering racism among southern and rural voters would buoy your cause. Put all of these things together and you have a dumb, immature, foolish, and bigoted campaign; that you thought you would somehow win was a joke.
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