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Bernie Sanders for President, Maybe

December 13, 2010 By 2 Comments

Tax cuts for the rich would be awesome, dude.

“What are these people smoking?”  asked Bernie Sanders, independent senator from Vermont, deriding those who want to extend the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy in his epic six-hour filibuster on the floor of the Senate.  He argued, rather effectively in this blogger’s opinion, that at a time when American working and middle class people are struggling and we have the highest rate of hunger amongst our young of any industrialized nation, giving the richest Americans what amounts to billions in tax cuts–trillions if they are extended again–is obscene.  This will force tax increases on future Americans to pay for the deficit engendered by these tax cuts and will do very little to stimulate the economy since it is impossible to imagine what more these people can spend the money on.  They will invest it and make more money.

As for the payroll tax holiday, Sanders pointed out that this is an attack on Social Security in disguise because it will reduce revenue to Social Security by several hundred billion dollars.  And as Sanders cogently argued, both the two-year extension of the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy and the payroll tax holiday for one year, will inevitably be extended; the Republicans will argue that not extending them further will amount to a gigantic tax increase, particularly for working people.  Sanders has no illusions.  He knows that the Republicans will use this argument to manipulate the simple-minded Americans into believing that they are right.

The original supporters of the payroll tax holiday are a group of right-wingers who have openly called it a tactic to “destroy” Social Security, turning it into a welfare program reliant on general revenues rather than direct contributions to the Social Security fund, which has a current surplus of over a trillion dollars.  As Sanders argued, simply by increasing the income level on which Social Security tax is paid and adjusting benefits for the wealthiest Americans, Social Security will be safe for seventy five years.

Because of these considerations, Sanders opposes the  “compromise” bill, which he claims is not a compromise but a surrender.

Even under Reagan, he related, the general policy when unemployment was over seven percent was to extend unemployment insurance, the same being true under Bush’s father when he was president.  So whether the president has been a Republican or a Democrat, the policy of extending unemployment insurance has remained the policy until now. Trading an extension of unemployment benefits for an extension of the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy, Sanders concluded, is a terrible deal.

One was struck by Sanders’ common sense as he read letters from constituents who can’t afford heating fuel and gas for their cars to

Thanks for the help, now piss off.

get to work, hard-working people who are desperate.  The Republicans say we can’t afford a program to provide health care to victims of 9/11 but we can afford billions in tax cuts for the wealthy.  Sanders holds out his hands and pleads, “If anyone can understand this, explain it to me because I cannot.” In his down-to-earth manner and feigned politeness to those he referred to in his monumental speech as “my Republican friends,” Sanders brilliantly illuminated all the terrible problems the country faces as well as some practical solutions. He has his finger on the pulse and was every bit as eloquent, with his Brooklyn accent, as Obama.

Sanders simply cannot abide what is going on. Neither can anyone with common sense and a sense of compassion, both totally lacking on the Republican side as well as among certain DINO Democrats, Democrats in name only.

To add insult to injury, Obama dragged out Bill Clinton at the White House to make the argument that this is the best deal possible.  Christopher Hitchens wrote a book about Clinton called “NO ONE ELSE TO LIE TO.” He got it right about the inventor of “triangulation,” which created the largest tax increase on middle-class Americans to balance the budget, but now says we can get along fine by letting his rich friends get a hefty tax cut.

What is going on is obscene.  Sanders rejects the idea that America should be a plutocracy while everyone else is on the brink of disaster.  The tax code should be revised not only to increase taxes on the wealthy, but also to impose a wealth and excess profits tax.  Sanders also rightly explains how reducing the inheritance tax, which is part of the deal, would increase the deficit by trillions over ten years.  The Republicans manage to instill fear in Americans with $50,000 in assets that the IRS will come and take it away after they die. This is a patent lie.  The only people truly affected by the inheritance tax are the super rich, like the Walton family.

Quick question: If anyone can understand this, explain it to me because I cannot.

Sanders does not come across as filled with hate or resentment against anyone.  If Obama can’t regroup and remember why all those people voted for him, maybe Bernie Sanders should offer an alternative.  He takes no prisoners and is free of the inhibitionsas that constrain the regular Democrats, ever afraid they will offend someone. It’s true that Bernie voted against the Brady Bill and with the NRA, so it’s not as though he’s entirely pure.  Almost everyone in Vermont has a gun and he needs those votes.  But at the moment, he is the best we’ve got.

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What’s To Be Done?

November 19, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Zizak, who is the author of the recently published book, LIVING IN THE END TIMES, recently asserted, “We don’t know what to do but we must do something fast.”  Sounding more like the great American comedian, Sid Caesar in his mode as the loony German philosopher than a respected intellectual, Zizak has nevertheless put his finger on the contemporary human condition that is in constant crisis.

Zizak sees Western politics much in the same way as American liberal thinkers such as Richard Hofstadter did in the 1950s, when they were confronted with radical right McCarthyism based on fear of communism. There are two main forces; the traditional liberals or social democrats who accept capitalism and liberal democracy but assert the need of a safety net that they tinker with and the radical right, which today is anti-immigrant, populist, racist and demagogic. In this context, it is the liberal Democrats who are now the conservatives, which in America means fighting to preserve the reforms of Roosevelt’s New Deal and Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society, and Obama’s universal health care, against the rising tide of the radical right, to which the traditional Republican Party has succumbed.

In the Fifties, America was fortunate enough to have the popular figure of Eisenhower to diffuse the radical right as a Republican.  There is

Ike reminds Nixon and the right: "You've got to chill".

no Republican figure now capable of playing that role.  Even Nixon was moderate on the issues and Ronald Reagan, who was able to defeat Jimmy Carter with the most conservative rhetoric ever delivered by an American politician, nevertheless, appointed Sandra Day O’Connor to the Supreme Court, and working with the Democrats, rescued Social Security, and reformed the tax code, while systematically growing both the size of the government and the deficit.  And while George W. Bush became unpopular because of his military policies, he appointed more blacks to high positions than any American president and expanded Medicare through his prescription drug benefit program that the Republicans in Congress endorsed.

It was the financial crisis that led to the near landslide victory of Barack Obama, American’s first black president and the Democrats in both houses of Congress.  But as soon as the Democrats took power, a right wing backlash of unprecedented proportions took hold, with demagogues like Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck leading the charge and Fox News playing a key role in whipping up resentment against Obama and the liberals.  The radical right in the form of the Tea Party, led by Sarah Palin, propelled the Republicans to victory in the House, and only the nomination of several week Republican candidates enabled the Democrats to hold the Senate.

The continued high rate of unemployment fueled the dissatisfaction that led to this revolt, but the cry of “ let’s take our country back” with its distinctly racist overtones had much to do with the route of the Democrats.  Smelling blood, the Republicans show every signs of continuing the onslaught by stonewalling Obama, even to the extent of postponing a scheduled dinner with him at the White House, a sign of disrespect for a president of unprecedented proportions.

America's 'Alternate Reality'? You betcha.

And while the continued crisis of the economy necessitated government action and dramatic steps by the Fed, the radical right backlash propelled the dynamics of an anti-government, pro-free market movement that contradicted the failures of the capitalist system itself.  It was as if the radical right and the Republican Party that embraced it were living, as  David Frum has put it, in an “alternative reality.”  They confused what was a crisis of capitalism itself with the illusion of the threat of socialism and the Americans bought it.  With the Democrats in retreat from their own policies and the Republicans determined to bring down Obama and take total power, America is caught in a situation in which there is virtually no possibility of constructive discourse or action.

With virtually everyone on the deficit reduction bandwagon, the right is prepared to throw people to the wolves, terminating unemployment insurance and depriving them of other needed services in the name of saving a capitalist system that can no longer afford the safety net that was put in place to thwart the very socialism so many Americans fear.  The question really is whether you can have economic competition without social barbarism. So, odd as it may seem, the eccentric, bearded philosopher, Zizak, is right. We don’t know what to do but we need to do something fast. Or else.

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