By: Eugene Robinson, Opinion Writer, The Washington Post, September 19, 2011
“We Are The Whiners”: About Those ‘53 Percent’
Republicans have been preoccupied for much of the year with those Americans who don’t make enough money to qualify for a federal income tax burden. Some are working-class families who fall below the tax threshold; some are unemployed; some are students; and some are retired. These Americans still pay sales taxes, state taxes, local taxes, Social Security taxes, Medicare/Medicaid taxes, and in many instances, property taxes, but not federal income taxes.
This, apparently, annoys the right to no end. It’s why all kinds of Republican officials — including Mitt Romney and Rick Perry — want to “fix” what they see as a “problem,” even if it means raising taxes on those who can least afford it.
This argument is even manifesting itself in a new “movement” of sorts, intended to respond to progressive activists calling for economic justice.
Conservative activists have created a Tumblr called “We are the 53 percent” that’s meant to be a counterpunch to the viral “We are the 99 percent” site that’s become a prominent symbol for the Occupy Wall Street movement. The Tumblr is supposed to represent the 53 percent of Americans who pay federal income taxes, and its assumption is that the Wall Street protesters are part of the 46 percent of the country who don’t. “We are the 53 percent” was originally the brainchild of Erick Erickson, founder of RedState.org, who worked together with Josh Trevino, communications director for the right-leaning Texas Public Policy Foundation, and conservative filmmaker Mike Wilson to develop the concept, according to Trevino.
The overriding message is that the protesters have failed to take personal responsibility, blaming their economic troubles on others.
There are all kinds of problems with the right’s approach here, including the fact that they seem to want to increase working-class taxes and also seem entirely unaware of the fact that it was Republican tax cuts that pushed so many out of income-tax eligibility in the first place. There’s also the small matter of some of those claiming to be in “the 53 percent” aren’t actually shouldering a federal income tax burden at all, but are apparently unaware of that fact.
But putting that aside, take a look at Erick Erickson’s argument, presented in a hand-written message posted to the Tumblr blog: “I work three jobs. I have a house I can’t sell. My family insurance costs are outrageous. But I don’t blame Wall Street. Suck it up you whiners. I am the 53% subsidizing you so you can hang out on Wall Street and complain.”
Just for heck of it, let’s take this one at a time.
The very idea that Erickson works “three jobs” is rather foolish.
Blaming financial industry corruption and mismanagement for Erickson’s troubles selling his house is actually quite reasonable.
If Erickson’s reference to “family insurance costs” is in reference to health care premiums, he’ll be glad to know the Affordable Care Act passed, and includes all kinds of breaks for small businesses like his.
And the notion that victims of a global economic collapse, who are seeking some relief from a system stacked in favor of the wealthy, are “whiners” is so blisteringly stupid, it amazes me someone would present the argument in public.
If there are any actual “whiners” in this scenario, shouldn’t the label go to millionaires who shudder at the idea of paying Clinton-era tax rates?
By: Steve Benen, Contributing Writer, Washington Monthly-Political Animal, October 11, 2011
The Occupy Protests: A Timely Call For Justice
Occupy Wall Street and its kindred protests around the country are inept, incoherent and hopelessly quixotic. God, I love ’em.
I love every little thing about these gloriously amateurish sit-ins. I love that they are spontaneous, leaderless and open-ended. I love that the protesters refuse to issue specific demands beyond a forceful call for economic justice. I also love that in Chicago — uniquely, thus far — demonstrators have ignored the rule about vagueness and are being ultra-specific about their goals. I love that there are no rules, just tendencies.
I love that when Occupy Wall Street was denied permission to use bullhorns, demonstrators came up with an alternative straight out of Monty Python, or maybe “The Flintstones”: Have everyone within earshot repeat a speaker’s words, verbatim and in unison, so the whole crowd can hear. It works — and sounds tremendously silly. Protest movements that grow into something important tend to have a sense of humor.
I can’t help but love that House Majority Leader Eric Cantor called the protests “growing mobs” and complained about fellow travelers who “have actually condoned the pitting of Americans against Americans.” This would be the same Eric Cantor who praised the Tea Party movement in its raucous, confrontational, foaming-at-the-mouth infancy as “an organic movement” that was “about the people.” The man’s hypocrisy belongs in the Smithsonian.
Most of all, I love that the Occupy protests arise at just the right moment and are aimed at just the right target. This could be the start of something big and important.
“Economic justice” may mean different things to different people, but it’s not an empty phrase. It captures the sense that somehow, when we weren’t looking, the concept of fairness was deleted from our economic system — and our political lexicon. Economic injustice became the norm.
Revolutionary advances in technology and globalization are the forces most responsible for the hollowing-out of the American economy. But our policymakers responded in ways that tended to accentuate, rather than ameliorate, the most damaging effects of these worldwide trends.
The result is clear: a nation where the rich have become the mega-rich while the middle class has steadily lost ground, where unemployment is stuck at levels once considered unbearable, and where our political system is too dysfunctional to take the kind of bold action that would make a real difference. Eventually, the economy will limp out of this slump, and things will seem better. Fundamentally, however, nothing will have changed.
Does that sound broad and unfocused? Yes, but it’s true.
The Occupy Wall Street protesters saw this broad, unfocused truth — and also understood that the place to begin this movement was at the epicenter of the financial system.
For most of our history, it was understood that the financial sector was supposed to perform a vital service for the economy: channeling capital to the companies where it could be most effectively used. But the rapid technological, economic and political change the world has witnessed in recent decades created myriad opportunities for Wall Street to channel capital to itself, often by inventing exotic new securities whose underpinnings may not exist. The 2008 financial crisis demonstrated the urgent need for reform.
It’s not that investment bankers should be held responsible for all the ills of the world. It’s that Wall Street is emblematic of an entire economic and political system that no longer seems to have the best interests of most Americans at heart.
So a ragtag group — not huge, but idealistic and determined — camps out in Lower Manhattan. A similar thing happens in two dozen other cities. And maybe a movement is born.
Already, after less than a month, commentators are asking whether the Occupy protests can be transformed into a coherent political force. For now, at least, I hope not.
We have no shortage of politicians in this country. What we need is more passion and energy in the service of justice. We need to be forced to answer questions that sound simplistic or naive — questions about ethics and values. Detailed policy positions can wait.
At some point, these protest encampments will disappear — and, since the nation and the world will not have changed, they’ll be judged a failure. But I’ve got a hunch that this likely judgment will be wrong. I think the seed of progressive activism in the Occupy protests may grow into something very big indeed.
By: Eugene Robinson, Opinion Writer, The Washington Post, October 10, 2011
GOP Congressman Equates Purchasing Health Insurance With Buying An Expensive Vacation Home
Just when you thought it could not get more ridiculous, GOP Congressman and Chairman of the House Appropriations Labor-Health and Human Services subcommittee, Denny Rehberg, has come up with a novel idea. He wants the Congressional super committee to solve $1.2 trillion in deficit reduction by simply killing off the expansion of Medicaid and the subsidies that will open the door to health care for millions of Americans.
In making his argument, Rehberg noted that expanding the Medicaid safety net program, and providing subsidies to low and middle class workers, is akin to the “expensive vacation home” that the average American would choose not to buy if that American was facing a deficit as serious as the nation’s.
Before getting to the heart of Rehberg’s suggestion, one can’t help but wonder what makes the Congressman think that the “average” American can afford an expensive vacation home (or any vacation home for that matter) on what the average American earns, even if that American is not in debt?
But should we be surprised by the Congressman’s view of the world? This is the same Denny Rehberg who is not only listed as number 23 on the list of the wealthiest members of Congress, but is the same Congressman Rehberg who had no idea what the minimum wage was in his own state (check out this video as it is priceless.)
Of course, far more important is Rehberg’s inability to grasp that getting treatment for cancer or unblocking that clogged artery that is going to make someone a widow or widower is not quite the same as purchasing a vacation home—expensive or otherwise.
And while life might not be worth living for Rep. Rehberg and friends without that idyllic home on the lake, the average American would still prefer to remain alive, thank you very much, which is precisely why Medicaid coverage was extended to more people and subsidies are to be made available to the working poor and middle-class so that medical care will become an option in their lives.
When asked how low and middle class Americans will manage to purchase health care, should the mandate requiring them to do so be found to be Constitutional by SCOTUS, Rehberg answered that Health and Human Services would be able to grant waivers to those who cannot afford coverage without Medicaid or subsidies.
Thus, Rehberg’s solution is to simply leave millions of Americans without coverage by way of a waiver. Nice.
Health Care For America Now’s Executive Director, Ethan Rome, put it this way:
Rep. Rehberg’s proposal is yet another part of the Republican assault on the middle class. Denny Rehberg says that basic health care is a luxury item, as if a mother in Montana taking her children to the doctor or a cancer patient getting treatment is the same as buying ‘an expensive vacation home.’
Considering that estimates place the uninsured under age 65 in Montana at somewhere between 16 percent and 20 percent of the population, a number well in excess of the national average, I suspect that Rehberg’s fellow Montanan’s might disagree with his approach.
Let’s hope they voice that disagreement at the ballot box next November.
By: Rick Ungar, Mother Jones, October 6, 2011
Calling All Progressive Democrats: A Time To Fight
Should you find your enthusiasm for activist politics waning, Robert Reich has a Monday morning energizer in his latest blog entry “Don’t Be Silenced,” via RSN:
We’re on the cusp of the 2012 election. What will it be about? It seems reasonably certain President Obama will be confronted by a putative Republican candidate who:Believes corporations are people, wants to cut the top corporate rate to 25% (from the current 35%) and no longer require they pay tax on foreign income, who will eliminate capital gains and dividend taxes on anyone earning less than $250,000 a year, raise the retirement age for Social Security and turn Medicaid into block grants to states, seek a balanced-budged amendment to the Constitution, require any regulatory agency issuing a new regulation repeal another regulation of equal cost (regardless of the benefits), and seek repeal of Obama’s healthcare plan.
Or one who:
Believes the Federal Reserve is treasonous when it expands the money supply, doubts human beings evolved from more primitive forms of life, seeks to abolish the Internal Revenue Service and shift most public services to the states, thinks Social Security is a Ponzi scheme, while governor took a meat axe to public education and presided over an economy that generated large numbers of near-minimum-wage jobs, and who will shut down most federal regulatory agencies, cut corporate taxes, and seek repeal of Obama’s healthcare plan.
That’s the default scenario, the one which will become reality if Democratic apathy is allowed to fester. The rest of Reich’s column is more of a challenge to progressive/left Dems to fight for the causes that once made the Democratic Party a great champion of working people:
…Within these narrow confines progressive ideas won’t get an airing. Even though poverty and unemployment will almost surely stay sky-high, wages will stagnate or continue to fall, inequality will widen, and deficit hawks will create an indelible (and false) impression that the nation can’t afford to do much about any of it – proposals to reverse these trends are unlikely to be heard.Neither party’s presidential candidate will propose to tame CEO pay, create more tax brackets at the top and raise the highest marginal rates back to their levels in the 1950s and 1960s (that is, 70 to 90 percent), and match the capital-gains rate with ordinary income.
You won’t hear a call to strengthen labor unions and increase the bargaining power of ordinary workers.
Don’t expect an argument for resurrecting the Glass-Steagall Act, thereby separating commercial from investment banking and stopping Wall Street’s most lucrative and dangerous practices.
You won’t hear there’s no reason to cut Medicare and Medicaid – that a better means of taming health-care costs is to use these programs’ bargaining clout with drug companies and hospitals to obtain better deals and to shift from fee-for-services to fee for healthy outcomes…Nor will you hear why we must move toward Medicare for all.
Nor why the best approach to assuring Social Security’s long-term solvency is to lift the ceiling on income subject to Social Security payroll taxes.
Don’t expect any reference to the absurdity of spending more on the military than do all other countries put together, and the waste and futility of an unending and undeclared war against Islamic extremism – especially when we have so much to do at home…
Although proposals like these are more important and relevant than ever, they won’t be part of the upcoming presidential election.
The choice facing progressive Dems is between whining and hand-wringing about inadequate leadership of the Party on the one hand and doing something to change it on the other. Reich sounds the call to arms to put real progressive policies back on the agenda:
…I urge you to speak out about them – at town halls, candidate forums, and public events. Continue to mobilize and organize around them. Talk with your local media about them. Use social media to get the truth out.Don’t be silenced by Democrats who say by doing so we’ll jeopardize the President’s re-election. If anything we’ll be painting him as more of a centrist than Republicans want the public to believe. And we’ll be preserving the possibility (however faint) of a progressive agenda if he’s reelected.
Re-read that last graph. That alone is reason enough to push hard from the left inside the party — it actually strengthens Dem defenses against the GOP default scenario and it lays the foundation for a stronger progressive future for the Democratic Party, win or lose in 2012.
Still not juiced? Reich’s clincher:
Remember, too, the presidential race isn’t the only one occurring in 2012. More than a third of Senate seats and every House seat will be decided on, as well as numerous governorships and state races. Making a ruckus about these issues could push some candidates in this direction – particularly since, as polls show, much of the public agrees.Most importantly, by continuing to push and prod we give hope to countless Americans on the verge of giving up. We give back to them the courage of their own convictions, and thereby lay the groundwork for a future progressive agenda – to take back America from the privileged and powerful, and restore broad-based prosperity.
Grumble and gripe about inadequate leadership in your party, if you will. But do something this week to advance progressive policies and federal, state and local candidates who support them. Your actions add legitimacy to your critique.
By: J. P. Green, The Democratic Strategist, September 19, 2011
Obama’s Tax Plan Is Common Sense, Not Class warfare
“Class warfare!” scream the Republicans, in a voice usually reserved for phrases such as “Run for your lives!”
Spare us the histrionics. The GOP and its upper-crust patrons have been waging an undeclared but devastating war against middle-class, working-class and poor Americans for decades. Now they scream bloody murder at the notion that long-suffering victims might finally hit back.
President Obama’s proposal to boost taxes for the wealthy by $1.5 trillion over the next decade is a good first step toward reforming a system in which billionaire hedge-fund executives are taxed at a lower rate than are their chauffeurs and private chefs.
Republicans whine that, since they oppose raising taxes on the rich — and control the House of Representatives, which can block such legislation — Obama’s proposal should be seen as political, not substantive. This is just a campaign initiative, they say, not a “serious” plan to address the nation’s financial and economic woes.
But that’s pure solipsism: Whatever does not fit the GOP’s worldview is, by definition, illegitimate. By this standard, Obama could propose only measures that are in the Republican Party’s platform — which obviously would defeat the purpose of being elected president as a progressive Democrat in the first place.
Outside of the Republican echo chamber, polls consistently show the American people consider unemployment to be the nation’s most urgent problem, not deficits and debt. Obama was on target with the American Jobs Act he proposed this month; the only question was what took him so long.
Americans do have long-term concerns about debt, however, and by large margins they see an obvious solution: a balanced combination of spending cuts and tax increases. In other words, they want precisely the kind of approach that House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) rejected during the debt-ceiling fight — and that he vows to reject again.
Why did Republicans begin squawking about class warfare even before Obama had a chance to announce his proposals? Because by calling on the rich to pay “their fair share” of taxes, the president has hit upon a clear and simple way to illustrate how unequal and unfair our society has become.
Since the beginning of the Reagan years, the share of total income captured by the top 1 percent of earners has doubled while the share taken by the bottom 80 percent has fallen. The rich are getting richer at the expense not only of the poor but of the middle class as well.
Studies demonstrating this trend tend to be dry and, let’s face it, sleep-inducing. But the perverse disparity in tax rates between the super-rich and the rest of us is enough to grab anyone’s attention.
The very wealthy earn much of their income through dividends and capital gains, which are taxed at 15 percent. This low rate would apply specifically to a wildly successful hedge-fund manager who made, say, $50 million last year. By contrast, an insurance company executive who made $500,000 — just 1 percent of what the hedge-fund manager took home — would pay a top marginal income tax rate of 35 percent. Even a teacher who made just $50,000 — 0.1 percent of the hedge-fund haul — would pay a top marginal rate of 25 percent.
Obama proposes tax legislation that would erase this disparity. He also vows that, unless Congress enacts comprehensive — and fair — tax reform, he will allow the Bush tax cuts for households earning more than $250,000 a year to expire at the end of 2012.
The overall plan that Obama announced Monday would cut deficits by about $4 trillion over the next 10 years — without gutting programs that bolster the middle class and aid the poor. New tax revenue and money saved from ending the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan make up most of the total.
Obama’s proposed savings in Medicare and Medicaid are modest and tailored so that their impact is progressive. The president correctly decided that ensuring Social Security’s long-term solvency should proceed on a separate track. All this should be heartening to those who really want to preserve these vital programs.
The headline from Obama’s plan, though, is the call for wealthy Americans to pay taxes like everybody else. If Republicans believe the current system is fine, Obama said, “they should be called out. They should have to defend that unfairness. . . . They ought to have to answer for it.”
We’ve already heard their answer.
And we’ve heard Obama’s retort: “This is not class warfare. It’s math.”
Share This Blog
Unknown Feed- An error has occurred; the feed is probably down. Try again later.
mykeystrokes.com 