I have been writing this blog for almost three years now and as I prepared to write this post in recognition of Thanksgiving, I went back to 2009 when I wrote my last Thanksgiving post and good or bad, with just a few tweaks—it still works today. So, here it is…
Christmas notwithstanding, Thanksgiving is our loveliest holiday, a smorgasbord of pie, stuffing, football and of course, the iconic and delicious turkey. The enduring image of Thanksgiving is of the English Pilgrims, newly arrived in America, sitting down to a harvest driven feast in circa 1620 with native-Americans, as both native and America’s first immigrants enjoyed the first Thanksgiving meal together.
President George Washington issued a “National Thanksgiving Proclamation” on November 26, 1789 but Presidents who followed Washington ended the practice because, it was argued at that time, that “Thanksgiving is a holiday specific to New England only.” Sara Josepha Hale who penned the now unforgettable (and mind numbing to some) nursery rhyme, “Mary Had a Little Lamb” made the cause her very own, speaking out all over our young country for the need to have an “American Day of Gratitude,” but it took the bloody and fratricidal American Civil War to ultimately nationalize Thanksgiving. In 1863, President Abraham Lincoln made the last Thursday in November a “national day of Thanksgiving” and a legal holiday on which we were all asked to thank “Almighty God” for the “blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies.”
Lincoln also committed to God’s “tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners or sufferers” during wartime—a request that takes on special meaning this Thanksgiving for the thousands of American families who have members of their respective families serving in such frightening places as Afghanistan and Iraq.
At first, some states in the South resisted the notion of a holiday with a New England origin with one Texas governor at the time spitting, “It’s a damned Yankee institution” but eventually, the South, the most religious part of America, eventually gave in to what has become our country’s most delicious and sacred national holiday.
Today, the celebration of Thanksgiving mirrors two different Americas. Those that are mobile, prosperous participants in the economy that is not only American but indeed is global, who are scattered by the four winds of the planet as they search for prestige, money and power, reassembling themselves with their immediate families only at Thanksgiving or possibly at Christmas as well. These gatherings, however loving though they may seem to be are in truth, marred by the silent awareness of their transience. The physical activities of hugs and kisses are sadly brief, and everyone, including the children, and especially the grandparents, know in their heart of hearts that once the feast is over, everyone will return to whence they came.
Then there is the other America. This America is the community of people with little material belongings and possessions, and is for the most part, populated by people who work very hard for a living, usually compensated by the hour for their labors. They have little in the way of monetary resources, they are not even very visible, but they do have within their lives a core that is the family. And the stability and love that comes from this reality is worth more than any stock portfolio or retirement plan driven by how much one has been able to accumulate during one’s lifetime. In some cases, we see this America portrayed on TV and in film as fractious, silly and ignorant, an image that these Americans find both wrong and NOT funny.
This year however, these two Americas are joined in mourning as well as fear. Most Americans, regardless of position, are personally impacted by the presence of one of their own in harm’s way, fighting wars that the Afghanis and Iraqis don’t want and that more than 48% of Americans want to end and that 45% of Americans are weary of but don’t know how to end our involvement. Americans are also united by the fear that comes from an economy that is collapsing all around them and as thousands of American families of every economic and financial stripe lose first their jobs and then their homes, America for the first time in almost a century is scared stiff.
There was tremendous hope in January of 2009 as a new President was inaugurated, a man who seemingly understood this weariness and fear that we had begun to feel as a nation. And he has struggled mightily with many serious challenges, even as he has been criticized for trying to deal with too much too soon. There are some rays of hope shining through the nation’s despair, stabilization in the financial markets, housing purchases on a small increase, the impact of billions in stimulus monies finally being realized, and a sense that America is no longer hated around the world as we were in the very recent past.
These are dangerous and tumultuous times in America. Our fields are still fruitful and productive but our skies and the air we breathe as well as the water we drink are not as healthy. So tomorrow, we will thank God for our families, friends and colleagues and we will pray long and hard for those whose lives are in the balance as they struggle to survive in bloody combat zones, and we will pray for Americans who have lost the sense that the American presidency is something to respect, pray for and work with, even when there is dissent. It is almost ironic that America’s first group of immigrants saw this land as an ideal and almost magical place and where almost anything was possible. It is also my prayer that we today, can become re-ignited with the fire of possibility, the fuel of change and the promise of a bright future.
Wednesday, November 23, 2011
Friday, November 18, 2011
The Joke's on us...
Will Rogers one said that “The trouble with practical jokes is that very often they get elected.”
Under the din of Herman Cain protestations and Newt Gingrich bellowing, the GOP attempted to put one over on the American people by pushing for yet another balanced budget amendment that would only serve to force massive spending cuts on what little social safety net we have left. Fortunately, the effort sputtered and died in the House of Representatives today, ultimately brought to a timely death by members of the U.S. House of Representatives who argued that Congress can balance the budget without the pressure of a constitutional amendment.
Requiring a two-thirds majority, this latest Republican accident waiting to happen failed 261-165, helped in no small part by Republican legislators who voted with the majority of Democrats in a successful effort to kill the amendment.
Economists had warned that injecting a mandatory balanced budget requirement into the legislative process would likely create the kind of cuts that would equal 17 percent within seven years of the amendment’s passage and ratification. According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, cuts of this magnitude would only serve to cripple Social Security by $1.2 trillion and Medicare by $750 billion by 2022.
Today’s vote was held as part of the compromise to raise the nation’s debt limit this past summer—the same deal that produced the deficit-cutting super committee that except for agreeing to reduce Social Security benefits just when our seniors need that income the most, are hopelessly deadlocked.
Since America’s debt will surpass $15 trillion this week, conservatives in the House were certain that now was the time to strike and that a budget balancing amendment was sure to pass. The conservatives should have taken a moment however, and done an old-fashioned head count because even some Republicans opposed it. House Rules Committee Chair David Dreier (R-Calif.) stated that Congress had proved it did not need a change to the United States Constitution to balance the budget because it had already done so many times under President Bill Clinton.
House Republican Paul Ryan of Wisconsin voted against the amendment because he felt that the language of the legislation was not nearly stringent enough.
The Democrats, who have somewhere along the way gotten some political moxie, made the argument that all the amendment would do is damage the social fabric of the country and provide the courts and the lawyers that inhabit them, the final say over how our tax dollars are to be spent. Don’t want to believe this salient point because you hate Democrats? Here is what that great Republican standard bearer for American jurisprudence, failed Supreme Court nominee Robert Bork had to say about balanced budget amendments: “Also troubling is the problem of enforcing such a constitutional provision. In the early stages of discussion, a lot of people, including most economists, apparently thought this was no problem: if Congress exceeded the constitutional limits on spending, someone would sue. That much is true. The result, however, would likely be hundreds, if not thousands, of lawsuits around the country, many of them on inconsistent theories and providing inconsistent results. By the time the Supreme Court straightened the whole matter out, the budget in question would be at least four years out of date and lawsuits involving the next three fiscal years would be slowly climbing toward the Supreme Court.” Bork, of course, is right to be worried about the judiciary’s unfitness to balance the budget. If the Supreme Court strikes down the 2014 budget in 2016, what happens next? Does the government have to take back the money it already spent, and if so, how? And what does this do to America’s credit rating if every bill sent to the federal government is subject to reexamination by nine judges in black robes?
In a statement released right after the amendment failed, House Speaker John Boehner one again demonstrated that he just does not understand basic economics or the lessons learned from history. “It’s unfortunate that Democrats still don’t recognize the urgency of stopping Washington’s job-crushing spending binge.” Mr. Speaker, we did it your way for eight years and look where that got us.
Boehner also took the opportunity to criticize President Obama whose own job bill is floundering in Congress, probably as dead as the amendment to balance the budget. Boehner whined that “It’s disappointing that a President who says ‘we can’t wait’ to take action on jobs is doing that: waiting, riding things out until the election and skipping opportunities to work together with Republicans to create a better environment for job growth.” I can hardly believe the Speaker complaining about the President not being willing to negotiate. All he did these past three years is to attempt to meet the Republicans half-way across the political spectrum. How many times do you keep your hands over the stove before you begin to realize that you are only getting burned?
None of this however will bother the kind of conservatives who now dominate Congress. They were willing to push America to the brink of fiscal implosion during the debt ceiling fight earlier this year. U.S. Senator Mike Lee (R-UT), a leading supporter of the balanced budget amendment, even admitted he wants America’s “house to come down” unless we agreed to his extortionist demand to rewrite the Constitution.
So conservative lawmakers have demonstrated time and time again through their actions that they don’t care one bit if their reckless tactics destroy the American economy. They have made absolutely clear however, that they will never, ever vote to raise taxes on the rich, even though doing so is one of the least harmful ways to bring the budget closer to balance.
And that’s the real reason why conservatives in Congress would opposed the balanced budget amendment and it explains why the right-wing Heritage Foundation is already whining that this version of the amendment would not have done anything to save David Koch and Paris Hilton from paying more taxes.
Under the din of Herman Cain protestations and Newt Gingrich bellowing, the GOP attempted to put one over on the American people by pushing for yet another balanced budget amendment that would only serve to force massive spending cuts on what little social safety net we have left. Fortunately, the effort sputtered and died in the House of Representatives today, ultimately brought to a timely death by members of the U.S. House of Representatives who argued that Congress can balance the budget without the pressure of a constitutional amendment.
Requiring a two-thirds majority, this latest Republican accident waiting to happen failed 261-165, helped in no small part by Republican legislators who voted with the majority of Democrats in a successful effort to kill the amendment.
Economists had warned that injecting a mandatory balanced budget requirement into the legislative process would likely create the kind of cuts that would equal 17 percent within seven years of the amendment’s passage and ratification. According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, cuts of this magnitude would only serve to cripple Social Security by $1.2 trillion and Medicare by $750 billion by 2022.
Today’s vote was held as part of the compromise to raise the nation’s debt limit this past summer—the same deal that produced the deficit-cutting super committee that except for agreeing to reduce Social Security benefits just when our seniors need that income the most, are hopelessly deadlocked.
Since America’s debt will surpass $15 trillion this week, conservatives in the House were certain that now was the time to strike and that a budget balancing amendment was sure to pass. The conservatives should have taken a moment however, and done an old-fashioned head count because even some Republicans opposed it. House Rules Committee Chair David Dreier (R-Calif.) stated that Congress had proved it did not need a change to the United States Constitution to balance the budget because it had already done so many times under President Bill Clinton.
House Republican Paul Ryan of Wisconsin voted against the amendment because he felt that the language of the legislation was not nearly stringent enough.
The Democrats, who have somewhere along the way gotten some political moxie, made the argument that all the amendment would do is damage the social fabric of the country and provide the courts and the lawyers that inhabit them, the final say over how our tax dollars are to be spent. Don’t want to believe this salient point because you hate Democrats? Here is what that great Republican standard bearer for American jurisprudence, failed Supreme Court nominee Robert Bork had to say about balanced budget amendments: “Also troubling is the problem of enforcing such a constitutional provision. In the early stages of discussion, a lot of people, including most economists, apparently thought this was no problem: if Congress exceeded the constitutional limits on spending, someone would sue. That much is true. The result, however, would likely be hundreds, if not thousands, of lawsuits around the country, many of them on inconsistent theories and providing inconsistent results. By the time the Supreme Court straightened the whole matter out, the budget in question would be at least four years out of date and lawsuits involving the next three fiscal years would be slowly climbing toward the Supreme Court.” Bork, of course, is right to be worried about the judiciary’s unfitness to balance the budget. If the Supreme Court strikes down the 2014 budget in 2016, what happens next? Does the government have to take back the money it already spent, and if so, how? And what does this do to America’s credit rating if every bill sent to the federal government is subject to reexamination by nine judges in black robes?
In a statement released right after the amendment failed, House Speaker John Boehner one again demonstrated that he just does not understand basic economics or the lessons learned from history. “It’s unfortunate that Democrats still don’t recognize the urgency of stopping Washington’s job-crushing spending binge.” Mr. Speaker, we did it your way for eight years and look where that got us.
Boehner also took the opportunity to criticize President Obama whose own job bill is floundering in Congress, probably as dead as the amendment to balance the budget. Boehner whined that “It’s disappointing that a President who says ‘we can’t wait’ to take action on jobs is doing that: waiting, riding things out until the election and skipping opportunities to work together with Republicans to create a better environment for job growth.” I can hardly believe the Speaker complaining about the President not being willing to negotiate. All he did these past three years is to attempt to meet the Republicans half-way across the political spectrum. How many times do you keep your hands over the stove before you begin to realize that you are only getting burned?
None of this however will bother the kind of conservatives who now dominate Congress. They were willing to push America to the brink of fiscal implosion during the debt ceiling fight earlier this year. U.S. Senator Mike Lee (R-UT), a leading supporter of the balanced budget amendment, even admitted he wants America’s “house to come down” unless we agreed to his extortionist demand to rewrite the Constitution.
So conservative lawmakers have demonstrated time and time again through their actions that they don’t care one bit if their reckless tactics destroy the American economy. They have made absolutely clear however, that they will never, ever vote to raise taxes on the rich, even though doing so is one of the least harmful ways to bring the budget closer to balance.
And that’s the real reason why conservatives in Congress would opposed the balanced budget amendment and it explains why the right-wing Heritage Foundation is already whining that this version of the amendment would not have done anything to save David Koch and Paris Hilton from paying more taxes.
Wednesday, November 9, 2011
Cain is simply not 'Abel'
Earlier this week, GOP Presidential candidate Herman Cain could not be more emphatic when he responded to the question of whether he would drop out of the Republican primary over the ever-growing sexual harassment charges levied against him. “No way” he said. He could be correct in his assumption that these sexual harassment charges will not end his campaign but he is simply wrong about his candidacy being credible. The reality is that ultimately his quest for the White House will be relegated to the trash bin of failed presidential bids.
As any woman knows, being harassed sexually is dirty, disgusting and inexcusable. Unfortunately, it is also the workplace scenario that is more about what he said, she said because few sexual harassers commit their crime in front of witnesses. Consequently, there is usually little corroboration and while hundreds of prominent men throughout history as well as an even larger number of business leaders, entertainers, wanna-be politicians and sports figures have been accused of sexual harassment and even confronted with mind numbing monetary lawsuits and pay offs, very few of them have had their careers ruined, Clarence Thomas and Bill Clinton are prime examples of this phenomenon.
Now we have Cain as fresh proof of that horrible reality. During the first days of the scandal, his campaign actually collected more money than he had received up to that point and polls showed that despite the charges, his approval ratings had not slipped that much. Cain’s first reaction to the charge that he had committed acts of sexual harassment was the typical male response to such charges. He denied, ducked and dodged and more than likely lied while simultaneously slandering the growing number of accusers. That type of response on the part of the candidate generated lots of press coverage and emboldened his supporters. This is why unfortunately Cain stayed right up there in the polls, running neck to neck with Governor Romney.
Believe it or not, Herman Cain has managed to remain, at least for the time being, at the top of the heap of GOP candidates with the specter of the sex scandal haunting his every step. Cain however has been and continues to provide what southern conservatives and their Tea Party allies in particular refer to as balance within the GOP. In other words, they have been pounded from the left and sometimes even from the center as being racist and haters of anything of color especially their favorite President to hate, Barack Obama. The hysterical support Cain has gotten in straw poll after straw poll on the surface refutes those charges. That is until people like Ann Coulter remarks on national television that “our blacks are better than their blacks.” Is there any need to even respond to something as vile as that statement?
The message that Cain consistently delivers is that he is a businessman, not a professional politician. In this era of visceral public hatred and disgust for politicians, Cain is like the guy on the white horse who has come to save the day and that he alone will make everything right in the modern day Sodom and Gomorra known as Washington, D.C. He brings a crude charm, and to some a sense of humor to what thus far has been a dull, uninspiring, and at times just plain stupid GOP field of presidential candidates portraying themselves as the Great White Hope in defeating the man they have depicted as everyone from Hitler to the Devil, President Obama. None of these candidates, save Cain, has created so much as a thready pulse among the Republican voters across the United States.
Prior to the Cain sex scandals, the candidate seemed to be the one who fit the bill in the mind of the vast majority of Republican supporters and voters as the candidate who was “Anybody but Romney.” The recent Iowa poll conducted by the Des Moines Register in which Cain ran dead even with Romney among GOP voters confirms that Romney has what some Republican pundits charitably refer to as “serious vulnerabilities” which in real English means that ultra conservatives hate Romney almost as much as they hate President Obama. The Iowa straw poll demonstrated that Republican voters in that state are three times more likely to vote for Herman Cain than Mitt Romney.
Cain has one more asset that fascinates a celebrity and star struck media that has, up until now at least, guaranteed candidate Cain with a front and center spot on the national media despite his anti-media ranting and raving. He has become relatively famous for being stupid and somewhat of a goofball such as when he made fun of Uzbekistan by stuttering beki-beki-beki-stan-stan, calling for an electrified U.S. border fence with alligators and moats, accusing black Americans that support Democrats as being brainwashed, and his latest gaffe in which he stated that he was concerned about China because “they definitely look like they are trying to develop a nuclear weapon capability” when China has had nuclear weaponry since the 1960s. These numerous mistakes should make Michele Bachmann and Sara Palin look like intellectual demigods but in reality, they have only made him a more marketable curiosity subject for the American media and for way too many Americans.
Despite his popularity among tea partiers and hardnosed GOP political operatives, mainstream GOP political leaders as well as the extremely rich GOP financial donors have mostly treated Cain as the court jester, an amusing sideshow that is ultimately doomed to crash and burn long before it is time to get down to the serious work of securing the Republican nomination for President. They view these recent sex charges as just part of the Cain circus act. It was felt by one and all that while it was fun and entertaining to watch, this candidacy was ultimately doomed to collapse in due time. Despite Mr. Cain’s defiant pronouncement that sex will not derail his candidacy and that he is in the race for the long haul, his exit time is very close, sexual harassment charges or not.
As any woman knows, being harassed sexually is dirty, disgusting and inexcusable. Unfortunately, it is also the workplace scenario that is more about what he said, she said because few sexual harassers commit their crime in front of witnesses. Consequently, there is usually little corroboration and while hundreds of prominent men throughout history as well as an even larger number of business leaders, entertainers, wanna-be politicians and sports figures have been accused of sexual harassment and even confronted with mind numbing monetary lawsuits and pay offs, very few of them have had their careers ruined, Clarence Thomas and Bill Clinton are prime examples of this phenomenon.
Now we have Cain as fresh proof of that horrible reality. During the first days of the scandal, his campaign actually collected more money than he had received up to that point and polls showed that despite the charges, his approval ratings had not slipped that much. Cain’s first reaction to the charge that he had committed acts of sexual harassment was the typical male response to such charges. He denied, ducked and dodged and more than likely lied while simultaneously slandering the growing number of accusers. That type of response on the part of the candidate generated lots of press coverage and emboldened his supporters. This is why unfortunately Cain stayed right up there in the polls, running neck to neck with Governor Romney.
Believe it or not, Herman Cain has managed to remain, at least for the time being, at the top of the heap of GOP candidates with the specter of the sex scandal haunting his every step. Cain however has been and continues to provide what southern conservatives and their Tea Party allies in particular refer to as balance within the GOP. In other words, they have been pounded from the left and sometimes even from the center as being racist and haters of anything of color especially their favorite President to hate, Barack Obama. The hysterical support Cain has gotten in straw poll after straw poll on the surface refutes those charges. That is until people like Ann Coulter remarks on national television that “our blacks are better than their blacks.” Is there any need to even respond to something as vile as that statement?
The message that Cain consistently delivers is that he is a businessman, not a professional politician. In this era of visceral public hatred and disgust for politicians, Cain is like the guy on the white horse who has come to save the day and that he alone will make everything right in the modern day Sodom and Gomorra known as Washington, D.C. He brings a crude charm, and to some a sense of humor to what thus far has been a dull, uninspiring, and at times just plain stupid GOP field of presidential candidates portraying themselves as the Great White Hope in defeating the man they have depicted as everyone from Hitler to the Devil, President Obama. None of these candidates, save Cain, has created so much as a thready pulse among the Republican voters across the United States.
Prior to the Cain sex scandals, the candidate seemed to be the one who fit the bill in the mind of the vast majority of Republican supporters and voters as the candidate who was “Anybody but Romney.” The recent Iowa poll conducted by the Des Moines Register in which Cain ran dead even with Romney among GOP voters confirms that Romney has what some Republican pundits charitably refer to as “serious vulnerabilities” which in real English means that ultra conservatives hate Romney almost as much as they hate President Obama. The Iowa straw poll demonstrated that Republican voters in that state are three times more likely to vote for Herman Cain than Mitt Romney.
Cain has one more asset that fascinates a celebrity and star struck media that has, up until now at least, guaranteed candidate Cain with a front and center spot on the national media despite his anti-media ranting and raving. He has become relatively famous for being stupid and somewhat of a goofball such as when he made fun of Uzbekistan by stuttering beki-beki-beki-stan-stan, calling for an electrified U.S. border fence with alligators and moats, accusing black Americans that support Democrats as being brainwashed, and his latest gaffe in which he stated that he was concerned about China because “they definitely look like they are trying to develop a nuclear weapon capability” when China has had nuclear weaponry since the 1960s. These numerous mistakes should make Michele Bachmann and Sara Palin look like intellectual demigods but in reality, they have only made him a more marketable curiosity subject for the American media and for way too many Americans.
Despite his popularity among tea partiers and hardnosed GOP political operatives, mainstream GOP political leaders as well as the extremely rich GOP financial donors have mostly treated Cain as the court jester, an amusing sideshow that is ultimately doomed to crash and burn long before it is time to get down to the serious work of securing the Republican nomination for President. They view these recent sex charges as just part of the Cain circus act. It was felt by one and all that while it was fun and entertaining to watch, this candidacy was ultimately doomed to collapse in due time. Despite Mr. Cain’s defiant pronouncement that sex will not derail his candidacy and that he is in the race for the long haul, his exit time is very close, sexual harassment charges or not.
Thursday, November 3, 2011
Super Committee is Not a Super Performer
If there is any question in your mind as to who owns Washington, the Congressional so-called supercommittee charged with reducing looming deficits by $1.2 trillion seems determined to relieve you of your confusion. According to various media accounts, both the Republicans and the Democrats on this supercommittee support a plan designed to reduce average Social Security benefits by three percent.
While Congress whacks some of us, and certainly our parents and grandparents over the head with a large cut in Social Security benefits manages to draw this new form of bipartisan support, the supercommittee will not even consider a plan to tax Wall Street financial speculation. No committee member from either party has been willing to suggest that a speculation tax be one of the items put forth as part of an overall effort to reduce the deficit. To date, not committee member has had the hutzpah to submit a simple request to this Joint Tax Committee that would facilitate a speculation tax to be one of the strategies considered as a deficit reduction strategy.
That said, it is a little difficult for me to determine who to be angrier with. Reducing Social Security benefits at a time when our senior population is more dependent on their benefits is incredibly cruel and heartless. What’s more is the reality that today’s seniors who would be victimized by a reduction in their benefits paid for their benefits by contributing to Social Security over their entire working lives. Most retirees have only their Social Security benefits to support them in their twilight years and this is due primarily to the economic mismanagement of people who look a lot like those that sit on this supercommittee. If they and/or their partners in crime, like former Federal Reserve Board Chairman Alan Greenspan had been doing their jobs correctly, we would not have had the monstrous housing bubble that exploded, leaving in its wake a ruined American economy. The explosion of this bubble resulted in most of the wealth that today’s retirees (or those like me who now cannot afford to retire) had accumulated in their home, stock portfolio and their savings to disappear, leaving them with little else than their Social Security benefits to sustain them. Now, those same architects of our wrecked economy want to cut Social Security as well.
This particular cut is especially vicious since it will impact the oldest and poorest beneficiaries hardest. Someone in their 90s and has been getting benefits for 30 years would see a reduction in their benefits of close to nine percent (there is that dastardly nine again) under the new cost-of-living adjustment being pushed by members of the supercommittee.
The Social Security benefit cut is being justified by the claim that the current cost-of-living adjustment exceeds the true rate of inflation. Unfortunately, the truth is just the opposite. The Bureau of Labor Statistics index that measures the cost of living of the elderly clearly indicates that the current adjustment understates the rate of inflation experienced by retirees. There should be no doubt then, this is a proposal for cutting Social Security benefits—it has nothing to do with making the cost-of-living adjustments accurate.
It is criminal that the supercommittee has chosen to focus on ways to make seniors struggle in ways that should shame this country while it will not even consider the idea of taxing Wall Street speculators. In spite of everyone’s claim that ‘everything is on the table’ taxing Wall Street is clearly off the table.
In order for a tax bill to be considered by the House and the Senate, it must first be reviewed, debated and ultimately scored by the Joint Tax Committee (JTC). Interestingly, many members from both houses have requested a score from the JTC of a bill taxing financial speculation the supercommittee has the JTC completely tied up meeting its requests. By refusing include a financial speculation tax (FST) in its scoring request the supercommittee is preventing this idea from even being part of the discussion.
Given the role of Wall Street in first creating the conditions for the recession and then prospering at the expense at what the Occupy Wall Street movement is calling “the other 99 percent” it would seem at least reasonable to include a tax on speculation. This is not a proposal made in isolation. The European Commission is currently close to approving a FST. Its leading supporters are the conservative leaders of Germany and France.
No on could possibly deny, despite their political stripes. That taxing speculation would generate big revenue. The United Kingdom already has a FST and as such generates the equivalent of 0.2 to 0.3 percent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) which for us here in the United States would be between $30 and $40 billion a year—just by taxing speculation. Of options, futures, credit default swaps (remember those?) and other derivative instruments were also taxed, it is not out of the questions that we could generate three to four times what we would without taxing these speculative weapons of destruction (SWD).
But our duly elected members of Congress who sit on this so-called supercommittee does not want to burden Wall Street with a tax on speculation. They are more interested in taking away hard won Social Security and Medicare benefits from the old and disabled.
This contempt for the 99 percent combined with protection for the 1 percent is why Congress’ approval rating sits at an all-time low of 9%. When both parties in Congress work against the interest of the overwhelming majority of Americans in order to provide protection and shelter for a tiny elite, it should not surprise anyone that most of us want to return the contempt.
While Congress whacks some of us, and certainly our parents and grandparents over the head with a large cut in Social Security benefits manages to draw this new form of bipartisan support, the supercommittee will not even consider a plan to tax Wall Street financial speculation. No committee member from either party has been willing to suggest that a speculation tax be one of the items put forth as part of an overall effort to reduce the deficit. To date, not committee member has had the hutzpah to submit a simple request to this Joint Tax Committee that would facilitate a speculation tax to be one of the strategies considered as a deficit reduction strategy.
That said, it is a little difficult for me to determine who to be angrier with. Reducing Social Security benefits at a time when our senior population is more dependent on their benefits is incredibly cruel and heartless. What’s more is the reality that today’s seniors who would be victimized by a reduction in their benefits paid for their benefits by contributing to Social Security over their entire working lives. Most retirees have only their Social Security benefits to support them in their twilight years and this is due primarily to the economic mismanagement of people who look a lot like those that sit on this supercommittee. If they and/or their partners in crime, like former Federal Reserve Board Chairman Alan Greenspan had been doing their jobs correctly, we would not have had the monstrous housing bubble that exploded, leaving in its wake a ruined American economy. The explosion of this bubble resulted in most of the wealth that today’s retirees (or those like me who now cannot afford to retire) had accumulated in their home, stock portfolio and their savings to disappear, leaving them with little else than their Social Security benefits to sustain them. Now, those same architects of our wrecked economy want to cut Social Security as well.
This particular cut is especially vicious since it will impact the oldest and poorest beneficiaries hardest. Someone in their 90s and has been getting benefits for 30 years would see a reduction in their benefits of close to nine percent (there is that dastardly nine again) under the new cost-of-living adjustment being pushed by members of the supercommittee.
The Social Security benefit cut is being justified by the claim that the current cost-of-living adjustment exceeds the true rate of inflation. Unfortunately, the truth is just the opposite. The Bureau of Labor Statistics index that measures the cost of living of the elderly clearly indicates that the current adjustment understates the rate of inflation experienced by retirees. There should be no doubt then, this is a proposal for cutting Social Security benefits—it has nothing to do with making the cost-of-living adjustments accurate.
It is criminal that the supercommittee has chosen to focus on ways to make seniors struggle in ways that should shame this country while it will not even consider the idea of taxing Wall Street speculators. In spite of everyone’s claim that ‘everything is on the table’ taxing Wall Street is clearly off the table.
In order for a tax bill to be considered by the House and the Senate, it must first be reviewed, debated and ultimately scored by the Joint Tax Committee (JTC). Interestingly, many members from both houses have requested a score from the JTC of a bill taxing financial speculation the supercommittee has the JTC completely tied up meeting its requests. By refusing include a financial speculation tax (FST) in its scoring request the supercommittee is preventing this idea from even being part of the discussion.
Given the role of Wall Street in first creating the conditions for the recession and then prospering at the expense at what the Occupy Wall Street movement is calling “the other 99 percent” it would seem at least reasonable to include a tax on speculation. This is not a proposal made in isolation. The European Commission is currently close to approving a FST. Its leading supporters are the conservative leaders of Germany and France.
No on could possibly deny, despite their political stripes. That taxing speculation would generate big revenue. The United Kingdom already has a FST and as such generates the equivalent of 0.2 to 0.3 percent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) which for us here in the United States would be between $30 and $40 billion a year—just by taxing speculation. Of options, futures, credit default swaps (remember those?) and other derivative instruments were also taxed, it is not out of the questions that we could generate three to four times what we would without taxing these speculative weapons of destruction (SWD).
But our duly elected members of Congress who sit on this so-called supercommittee does not want to burden Wall Street with a tax on speculation. They are more interested in taking away hard won Social Security and Medicare benefits from the old and disabled.
This contempt for the 99 percent combined with protection for the 1 percent is why Congress’ approval rating sits at an all-time low of 9%. When both parties in Congress work against the interest of the overwhelming majority of Americans in order to provide protection and shelter for a tiny elite, it should not surprise anyone that most of us want to return the contempt.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
