Don't Let Wisconsin Divide Us ... Conservatives and Liberals AGREE About the Important Things

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Don't let Wisconsin divide us.

Conservatives and liberals actually agree about the most important things.

In fact, most Americans - conservatives and liberals - are fed up with both of the mainstream republican and democratic parties, because it has become obvious that both parties serve Wall Street and the military-industrial complex at the expense of most Americans.

In reality, all Americans - conservatives and liberals:

• Want to break up the unholy alliance between big government and big banks

• Want to break up the giant banks (and see this)

• Agree that the Wall Street criminals who committed fraud should be thrown in jail

• Agree that the Federal Reserve should be audited

• Are against corporate socialism

• Are against rampant inequality

• Want to stand up to the ruling class

• And are against unnecessary imperial wars

The powers-that-be try to divide us and demonize the "other side" so that we won't realize how much we all agree on. See this, this, this, this, this, this, this and this.

Don't let them.

Debunking Myths

Before we can honestly look at what's going on in Wisconsin, we need to dispel some commonly-accepted myths.

People who think that debts and deficits don't matter are wrong. As two top American economists - Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff - demonstrated in December 2009 :

The relationship between government debt and real GDP growth is weak for debt/GDP ratios below a threshold of 90 percent of GDP. Above 90 percent, median growth rates fall by one percent, and average growth falls considerably more. We find that the threshold for public debt is similar in advanced and emerging economies...

As I wrote in January 2010:

Al Martin - former contributor to the Presidential Council of Economic Advisors and retired naval intelligence officer - observed in an April 2005 newsletter that the ratio of total U.S. debt to gross domestic product (GDP) rose from 78 percent in 2000 to 308 percent in April 2005. The International Monetary Fund considers a nation-state with a total debt-to-GDP ratio of 200 percent or more to be a "de-constructed Third World nation-state."

Martin explained:

What "de-constructed" actually means is that a political regime in that country, or series of political regimes, have, through a long period of fraud, abuse, graft, corruption and mismanagement, effectively collapsed the economy of that country.

Forbes noted in December:

Add the unfunded portion of entitlement programs and we're at 840% of GDP.

Boston University economics professor and former Senior Economist for the President’s Council of Economic Advisers Laurence Kotlikoff says that the real federal debt is $202 trillion dollars, and that the U.S. is bankrupt.

And see this, this, this, this and this.

So we have to reduce our debt.

And yet the government has been spending like a drunken sailor ... while slashing taxes.

Not Liberal or Conservative ... But Redistribution of Wealth Up to the Ultra-Rich

As I noted last December:

Ronald Reagan gave big tax cuts to the wealthy.

So it is dramatic that Reagan's director of Office of Management and Budget - David

Stockman - calls the Bush tax cuts "the biggest fiscal mistake in history".

Specifically, Stockman told Dylan Ratigan that Bush's advisers forecast a $5 trillion surplus over 10 years. But "two unfunded wars and a Fed engineered housing bubble later", we're in a $ 5 trillion cumulative deficit. So Bush made a $10 trillion mistake.

Stockman said extending the Bush tax cuts won't stimulate the economy, the fact that the tax cut extensions will expire on the eve of the 2012 elections will panic politicians and force them to renew them yet again, and that "we're destroying the economy on Uncle Sam's credit card.

Indeed, Moody's and other rating services are threatening to downgrade America's credit rating due to the extension of the tax cuts for the wealthy:

The rating agency said in a report Monday that last week's agreement between the White House and congressional Republicans should bolster economic growth in the next two years – but at the expense of the nation's already perilous budget position down the road.

The agreement to extend the Bush tax cuts for two years and trim workers' payroll tax contributions for one could raise the U.S. debt-to-GDP ratio at 2012 to 72-73% from around 62% now, Moody's said. It said that without the tax package, that number might have been around 68% in 2012. [These numbers are low, as discussed above.]

***

"Unless there are offsetting measures, the package will be credit negative for the US and increase the likelihood of a negative outlook on the US government's Aaa rating during the next two years," Moody's said.

The comment comes as the bond market seems to have reached very much the same conclusion. The yield on the 10-year Treasury has soared to 3.32% from around 2.4% two months ago, as investors bet on a stronger recovery and rising inflation.

At the same time, our leaders are spending like they just won the lottery.

As I wrote last March:

Why aren't our government "leaders" talking about slashing the military-industrial complex, which is ruining our economy with unnecessary imperial adventures?

And why aren't any of our leaders talking about stopping the permanent bailouts for the financial giants who got us into this mess? And see this.

And why aren't they taking away the power to create credit from the private banking giants - which is costing our economy trillions of dollars (and is leading to a decrease in loans to the little guy) - and give it back to the states?

If we did these things, we wouldn't have to raise taxes or cut core services.

And see this short video from England.

The same thing is playing out on the state level.

For example, if the Wisconsin governor was proposing cutting pensions because everyone needed to share in the sacrifice, that would be understandable. But as the Washington Post's Ezra Klein points out:

The Badger State was actually in pretty good shape. It was supposed to end this budget cycle with about $120 million in the bank. Instead, it's facing a deficit. Why? I'll let the state's official fiscal scorekeeper explain (pdf):

More than half of the lower estimate ($117.2 million) is due to the impact of Special Session Senate Bill 2 (health savings accounts), Assembly Bill 3 (tax deductions/credits for relocated businesses), and Assembly Bill 7 (tax exclusion for new employees).

In English: The governor called a special session of the legislature and signed two business tax breaks and a conservative health-care policy experiment that lowers overall tax revenues (among other things). The new legislation was not offset, and it helped turn a surplus into a deficit [see update at end of post]. As Brian Beutler writes, "public workers are being asked to pick up the tab for this agenda."

***

Update ... The $130 million deficit now projected for 2011 isn't the fault of the tax breaks passed during Walker's special session, though his special session created about $120 million in deficit spending between 2011 and 2013 -- and perhaps more than that, if his policies are extended. That is to say, the deficit spending he created in his special session is about equal to the deficit Wisconsin faces this year, but it's not technically correct to say that Walker created 2011's deficit. Rather, he added $120 million to the 2011-2013 deficits, and perhaps more in the years after that.

And according to Madison's Capitol Times:

To the extent that there is an imbalance -- Walker claims there is a $137 million deficit -- it is not because of a drop in revenues or increases in the cost of state employee contracts, benefits or pensions. It is because Walker and his allies pushed through $140 million in new spending for special-interest groups in January. If the Legislature were simply to rescind Walker’s new spending schemes -- or delay their implementation until they are offset by fresh revenues -- the “crisis” would not exist.

The Fiscal Bureau memo -- which readers can access at http://legis.wisconsin.gov/lfb/Misc/2011_01_31Vos&Darling.pdf -- makes it clear that Walker did not inherit a budget that required a repair bill.

The facts are not debatable.

Because of the painful choices made by the previous Legislature, Wisconsin is in better shape fiscally than most states.

***

[Walker] has proposed a $137 million budget “repair” bill that he intends to use as a vehicle to ...

Pay for schemes that redirect state tax dollars to wealthy individuals and corporate interests that have been sources of campaign funding for Walker’s fellow Republicans and special-interest campaigns on their behalf. As Madison’s Democratic state Rep. Brett Hulsey notes, the governor and legislators aligned with him have over the past month given away special-interest favors to every lobby group that came asking, creating zero jobs in the process “but increasing the deficit by more than $100 million.”

Actually, Hulsey’s being conservative in his estimate of how much money Walker and his allies have misappropriated for political purposes.

***

“Since his inauguration in early January, Walker has approved $140 million in new special-interest spending that includes:

“• $25 million for an economic development fund for job creation that still has $73 million due to a lack of job creation. Walker is creating a $25 million hole which will not create or retain jobs.

“• $48 million for private health savings accounts, which primarily benefit the wealthy. A study from the federal Governmental Accountability Office showed the average adjusted gross income of HSA participants was $139,000 and nearly half of HSA participants reported withdrawing nothing from their HSA, evidence that it is serving as a tax shelter for wealthy participants.

“• $67 million for a tax shift plan, so ill-conceived that at best the benefit provided to ‘job creators’ would be less than a dollar a day per new job, and may be as little as 30 cents a day.”

State Rep. Mark Pocan, D-Madison, sums up this scheming accurately when he says: “In one fell swoop, Gov. Walker is trying to institute a sweeping radical and dangerous notion that will return Wisconsin to the days when land barons and railroad tycoons controlled the political elites in Madison.”

State Senator Jon Erpenbach says that the unions have already agreed to cuts:

"The
state employees have talked about the money and giving up the money,
and that's fine. But what they have a problem with - and what a lot of
us have a problem with - is the fact that Governor Walker is taking
decades of union law and throwing it out the window and trying to bust
the unions altogether, and that's just not the right way to go."

***

"The public employees have said you can take the money - the money isn't the issue. The issue is their right to collectively bargain their contracts. And that's where we all have to draw the line."

Economist Menzie Chen argues
that Wisconsin public workers make less than their private
counterparts, even when pensions are included. Pulitzer prize winning
journalist David Cay Johnston says that Wisconsin's governor is really trying to bust unions as a first step in driving down everyone's wages ... both in the public and the private sector.  Mother Jones alleges that the billionaire Koch brothers - the ones who Supreme
Court justices Scalia and Thomas hung out with before deciding to
allow unlimited foreign money to pour into American political races - funded the election of Wisconsin's governor. And Forbes' columnist Rick Ungar claims
that the Kochs are behind the crackdown on Wisconsin unions, as they
have business interests in Wisconsin. Whether or not these claims are
true is beyond the scope of this discussion, and I haven't researched
them enough to weigh in one way or the other.

On the other hand, as James Sherk of the Heritage Foundation argues in the New York Times:

“It is impossible to bargain collectively with the government.”

That
wasn’t Newt Gingrich, or Ron Paul, or Ronald Reagan talking. That was
George Meany -- the former president of the A.F.L.-C.I.O -- in 1955.
Government unions are unremarkable today, but the labor movement once
thought the idea absurd.

***

When government unions strike, they strike against taxpayers. F.D.R. considered this “unthinkable and intolerable.”

***

Government
collective bargaining means voters do not have the final say on public
policy. Instead their elected representatives must negotiate spending
and policy decisions with unions. That is not exactly democratic – a
fact that unions once recognized.

But whether or not you think public union workers are whiners and public
labor unions harmful or beneficial, the fact is that the governor of
Wisconsin is trying to do exactly what the federal government is trying
to do: throw money at their ultra-rich friends, and pay for it by
shafting the little guy. It almost appears as if the federal and state
governments are using "shock doctrine" tactics as an excuse for imposing
"austerity measures" which benefit the wealthy at the expense of the
little guy just like failed third world countries.  (Remember, Reuters claims that republicans are trying to bankrupt states in order to weaken unions.)

Indeed, Governor Walker is a true conservative to the same extent that President Obama is a true liberal ... not very much.

Again, if everyone - giant banks and corporations as well as workers -
were being asked to share in the sacrifice, that would be completely
different. I'm all for shared sacrifice (I work for the private sector,
but I'll sacrifice a little if we can also claw back the ill-gotten
gains from Wall Street CEO's. See this, this and this.)

But that's not what's happening. Instead, federal and state policies are making the rich richer and everyone else poorer.

And if you still think that this is a conservative versus liberal issue, listen to what tried-and-proven conservatives (re-read Stockman's statements above) are saying.

For example, Paul Craig Roberts, whose conservative credentials are impeccable - former Assistant Secretary of the Treasury under President Reagan, one of the people who most widely promoted "trickle down" economics, former editor of the Wall Street Journal, listed by Who's Who in America as one of the 1,000 most influential political thinkers in the world, and PhD economist - writes:

Obama’s new budget is a continuation of Wall Street’s class war against the poor and middle class.

Wall Street wasn’t through with us when the banksters sold their fraudulent derivatives into our pension funds, wrecked Americans’ job prospects and retirement plans, secured a $700 billion bailout at taxpayers’ expense while foreclosing on the homes of millions of Americans, and loaded up the Federal Reserve’s balance sheet with several trillion dollars of junk financial paper in exchange for newly created money to shore up the banks’ balance sheets.

The effect of the Federal Reserve’s “quantitative easing” on inflation, interest rates, and the dollar’s foreign exchange value are yet to hit. When they do, Americans will get a lesson in poverty.

Now the ruling oligarchies have struck again, this time through the federal budget. The U.S. government has a huge military/security budget. It is as large as the budgets of the rest of the world combined. The Pentagon, CIA, and Homeland Security budgets account for the $1.1 trillion federal deficit that the Obama administration forecasts for fiscal year 2012. This massive deficit spending serves only one purpose--the enrichment of the private companies that serve the military/security complex. These companies, along with those on Wall Street, are who elect the U.S. government.

***

The U.S. is determined to create as many enemies as possible in order to continue its bleeding of the American population to feed the ravenous military/security complex.

***

With a perpetual budget deficit driven by the military/security complex’s desire for profits, the real cause of America’s enormous budget deficit is off-limits for discussion.

***

The U.S. military/security complex is capable of creating any number of... events in order to make these threats seem real to a public whose intelligence is limited to TV, shopping mall experiences, and football games.

So Americans are stuck with enormous budget deficits that the Federal Reserve must finance by printing new money, money that sooner or later will destroy the purchasing power of the dollar and its role as world reserve currency. When the dollar goes, American power goes.

For the ruling oligarchies, the question is: how to save their power.

Their answer is: make the people pay.

And that is what their latest puppet, President Obama, is doing.

***

These goals [of propping up foreign dictators who serve U.S. interests] are far more important to the American elite than Pell Grants that enable poor Americans to obtain an education, or clean water, or community block grants, or the low income energy assistance program (cut by the amount that U.S. taxpayers are forced to give to Israel).

There are also $7,700 million of cuts in Medicaid and other health programs over the next five years.

Given the magnitude of the U.S. budget deficit, these sums are a pittance. The cuts will have no effect on U.S. Treasury financing needs. They will put no breaks on the Federal Reserve’s need to print money in order to keep the U.S. government in operation.

These cuts serve one purpose: to further the Republican Party’s myth that America is in economic trouble because of the poor: The poor are shiftless. They won’t work. The only reason unemployment is high is that the poor had rather be on welfare.

A new addition to the welfare myth is that recent middle class college graduates won’t take the jobs offered them, because their parents have too much money, and the kids like living at home without having to do anything. A spoiled generation, they come out of university refusing any job that doesn’t start out as CEO of a Fortune 500 company. The reason that engineering graduates do not get job interviews is that they do not want them.

What all this leads to is an assault on “entitlements”, which means Social Security and Medicare. The elites have programmed, through their control of the media, a large part of the population, especially those who think of themselves as conservatives, to conflate “entitlements” with welfare. America is going to hell not because of foreign wars that serve no American purpose, but because people, who have paid 15% of their payroll all their lives for old age pensions and medical care, want “handouts” in their retirement years. Why do these selfish people think that working Americans should be forced through payroll taxes to pay for the pensions and medical care of the retirees? Why didn’t the retirees consume less and prepare for their own retirement?

The elite’s line, and that of their hired spokespersons in “think tanks” and universities, is that America is in trouble because of its retirees.

Too many Americans have been brainwashed to believe that America is in trouble because of its poor and its retirees. America is not in trouble because it coerces a dwindling number of taxpayers to support the military/security complex’s enormous profits, American puppet governments abroad, and Israel.

The American elite’s solution for America’s problems is not merely to foreclose on the homes of Americans whose jobs were sent offshore, but to add to the numbers of distressed Americans with nothing to lose the sick and the dispossessed retirees, and the university graduates who cannot find jobs that have been sent to China and India.

And Ron Paul - who has very strong conservative credentials, and who won the Presidential straw poll at the Conservative Political Action Conference two years in a row - recently said in his CPAC speech:

We’re going to continue to bail out, we’re going to continue to spend the money, nobody wants to cut. I am sure that half the people in this room won’t cut one penny on the military, and the military is not equated to defense. Defense spending is one thing, military spending is what Eisenhower called the “military-industrial complex” and we have to go after that.

***

But let’s say government, as you all, I am sure would agree, is out of control, and it’s very hard for us to get a handle on it. So let’s say we even theoretically, and a miracle happens and we balance the budget where we are today, it would be still a disaster because we’re spending too much money. But it wouldn’t change a whole lot. When a crisis comes, guess what happens? Guess who does the bailing out? The Federal Reserve used $4 trillion to pass out without congressional approval and most people say “Oh, well that’s the Federal Reserve’s job to do that.” No, it is our job to check up and find what the Federal Reserve has done, audit them, and find out who their buddies are that they’re taking care of.

***

The Federal Reserve creates money out of thin air, they can loan to banks, central banks of the world, to other governments and international financial institutions and we’re not even allowed to know. They resent the fact that when I ask these questions, that they don’t have to give us information. That’s why the bill to audit the Fed is the first step to ending the Federal Reserve.

***

I think and I believe that we have had way too much bipartisanship for about 60 years. .... It’s the bipartisanship of the welfare system, the warfare system, the monetary system, the challenge to our civil liberties, it all goes through with support from both parties. So there’s way too much bipartisanship. This should be a challenge of the issue of philosophy – good philosophy versus bad philosophy.

***

But where I think we go astray on this exceptionalism is there are some people and sometimes they’re referred as neoconservatives and they’re sort of neo-Jacobins where they believe that we have this moral responsibility to use force to go around the world and say, “You will do it our way or else.” Well force doesn’t work, it never works.

Paul is also against welfare. Given his views on ending the warfare
state, bailouts, and reining in the Fed. I think, on balance, he would
make a much better president than Obama.

Comments

[JustACitizen]

Now - if he could have trimmed his brilliance down to a 30 second soundbite...or a bumper sticker - maybe - just maybe - some of the people here would know who he was. /sarc off

[RagnarDanneskjold]

They should never have been given the right to collectively bargain. Even FDR was against it. The right for public workers to collectively bargain has only been in place since the 1960s. I dislike unions, but private unions have to bear the brunt of their mistakes. If they push too hard on the employer, the company may underperform or relocate. Public unions haven't had this problem. They literally are the government, when they don't get what they want they shut down government.

The government is the problem, we need to break up the relationship between government and corporations, we need to break up the big banks. Where do you think the costs for that hit? On public employees, they have benefited from the 30-year growth in credit markets and government. The two go hand in hand because the revenue pays for the workers. Going forward, there are two paths. One is to cut the pay and benefits of workers back to sustainable levels, the other is to fire a lot of them. The unions almost always choose to fire people as part of their "collective bargaining." But why do public employees have a right to tell taxpayers how the government is organzied?

Also, this BS about Walker causing a deficit. He caused the deficit to be a bit larger with the tax cut, but the state is still in a long-term fiscal hole. Government is too big and our economy cannot support it. Tax hikes will accelerate the collapse of the whole economy and the government. Tax cuts accelerate the collapse in government, and might save the economy. Go for it.

Also, there's a big difference between a private worker losing his benefits, and saying the another private worker should lose them too, versus HAVING TO PAY HIGHER TAXES TO FUND A PUBLIC WORKER'S BENEFITS! Taxes are the lid on the bucket of crabs, keeping the crabs from climbing out, and the public employees are standing on top. Pop that lid.

[MisterBig]

Union Workers are our Friends and Neighbors

On television this week it looked like Cairo had come to Madison, as up to 40,000 people demonstrating for their rights marched on the Statehouse in Wisconsin.

A state Capitol thrown into political chaos swelled for a fifth day with nearly 70,000 protesters, as supporters of Republican efforts to scrap the union rights of state workers challenged pro-labor protesters face-to-face for the first time and GOP leaders insisted again Saturday there was no room for compromise.

Protesters carried signs likening Republican Gov. Scott Walker to Hosni Mubarak, the deposed autocratic leader in Egypt, setting the stage for a broader battle between newly empowered Republican ... governors across the country and a weakened labor movement hampered by the perception that public employees are unfairly insulated from the worst of the recession.

President Obama weighed in, saying that some of what Walker is doing "seems like an assault on unions."

[DOT]

" On television this week it looked like..."

Get a life my freind. The camera shows what the news director wants.

No doubt this is bigger than any demonstration since the late sixties or early seventies, however, do not trust what comes up on TV.

[StychoKiller]

To those in Wisconsin:  Join the strike, DO NOT PAY YOUR STATE TAXES!

[Jim in MN]

You could pay your state taxes into a strike fund....

[DOT]

The myth of being TBTF applies to governments

as well as banks. The population of what would become the United States of America

was about 2.6 million back in 1776. Maybe it is past the time to re-organize.  TBTF=TBTE

There are regional interests and perogatives that are crushed in order to maintain

this more perfect union. Our children should be encouraged to create their own

more perfected union. The orthodoxy of left vs. right forces them into the existing paradigm

and punishes inovation.

[redpixel]

Most of the comments on George's recent posts, including those made by George,  should be categorized as "flights into fantasy.  Ron Paul and Ralph Nader would be a winning ticket!  HaHaHa!  This is so bizarre and is showing that people are so confused about which way to go that they are like rats in a Skinner Box pounding the lever as hard as they can in the futile hope that the magic food pellet will drop.  

The truth is that nothing is going to drop until people settle down and take control back from the takers and non-producers in this once great country.   

[Jim in MN]

Takers and non-producers = financial sector globalist traitors, right?  I thought that's where GW's post started....

[Implicit simplicit]

True that. The trading of derivatives and the HFT trading of stocks that are held on average less than 11 seconds offers no positive production for the economy, just the churning of capital for the rich. 

[JustACitizen]

I have to admit - I enjoy threads like this. It brings out the corporate boot lickers, miracle of the market kool-aid drinkers and the progressive-liberals. Some of the folks on the right would make fine fascists and some of the folks on the left would love the nanny-state - beyond France even.

I have a special place in my heart for the folks that believe that the possession of  material wealth equals God's favor though.

I wonder how many of our founding fathers really wished to deified?  I think that they might be a little flattered - but ultimately disappointed in their descendants. They were men - with all of the flaws and foibles of other men. The process (trade-offs, arguments, grand bargains, high minded speeches, etc) of creating a nation - in the time period of the Enlightenment had a much larger role than most folks understand nowadays.

So junk away fellas...

[GoldmanSux]

Enjoy your work George, and there is much overlap, but you seem to think no cutting in spending aside from military, banks, bailouts, industrial complex is neccessary, when you've quoted unfunded liabilities of 840% of GDP.

The math is impossible without cuts everywhere. Some stats you didn't include. Wisc. state workers are being asked to pay 12.6% of their health coverage(avg. private sector is 20%). They are being asked to pay 5.8% of their pensions(avg. private sector is 7.5%). So they will still be subsidized. Where's the conspiracy? In fact, it pisses me off they're subsidized at all.

You say Wisc. public workers make less than private sector. This is not the case Federally. Federal workers wages have increased fantastically in the last decade so they now make significantly more than private sector workers. This gap needs to change by spending cuts.

You are against the extension of Bush's tax cuts. Why on earth would you favor tax increases when the US is insolvent. If default is inevitable, which I believe it is, the sooner it happens the better. I will never be in favor of paying more tax until I see the solvency issue resolved. Anything else is illogical.

[George Washington]

State Senator Jon Erpenbach says that the unions have already agreed to cuts:

"The state employees have talked about the money and giving up the money, and that's fine. But what they have a problem with - and what a lot of us have a problem with - is the fact that Governor Walker is taking decades of union law and throwing it out the window and trying to bust the unions altogether, and that's just not the right way to go."

***

"The public employees have said you can take the money - the money isn't the issue. The issue is their right to collectively bargain their contracts. And that's where we all have to draw the line."

[GoldmanSux]

Today that is their policy. Last week it wasn't. It's easy to say you can take the money when the state isn't asking for a cancellation of collective bargaining on wages. It's about the benefits. And, as I pointed out above, the proposal is they will still be significantly subsidized.

The progressive Obama threw out decades of bankruptcy law in his automotive industry restructuring. Things need to be done in dire circumstances. You quoted the stat of 840% of GDP in unfunded liabilities. Is it your position no cuts will are necessary? Is that mathmatically possible? I think not.

[Diamond Jim]

Wisconsin is like any other State...besides being bankrupt, the People are sick and tired of throwing $$$ down the crapper for education. If the kids were getting the first class education the Unions and politicians always tell us about, I do not think their budget would be cut. Americans understand the value of a good education. But we have been hearing this..."all we need is more money..." crap for 40 years and Little Johnny and Sally are dumber than ever...ask a 13 yearold what 7 X 6 is...or ask them to write a complete grammatically correct sentence....if you can get them away from their "physical education" of twitching their thumbs on some stupid phone.

Nah, screw the unions ...it is all about pay for performance now..........

[minus dog]

"So we have to reduce our debt."

No, we need to default.  Pissing away money trying to fill the un-fillable hole is a waste of time, money, and lives.

And good luck drumming up support for the teachers.  Our schools simply suck, and it's largely the fault of their unions.

[DOT]

Lazy ass citizens also share some of that blame. They thought they were rich.

So what if prop. tax went up, just look at that 401 !

[ebworthen]

Good list George.

[razorthin]

"Federal Reserve should be audited"

Sure, just throw a glass of water at Satan.  Costs even less than that lipstick for the pig.

[Zina]

What the Right-wing Assault on Women, Unions, the Environment, Health Care and PBS Is All About

Budget deficits are a ruse to conservatives. What they really want to do is change the basis of American life.

The central issue in our political life is not being discussed. At stake is the moral basis of American democracy.

The individual issues are all too real: assaults on unions, public employees, women's rights, immigrants, the environment, health care, voting rights, food safety, pensions, prenatal care, science, public broadcasting, and on and on.

Budget deficits are a ruse, as we've seen in Wisconsin, where the Governor turned a surplus into a deficit by providing corporate tax breaks, and then used the deficit as a ploy to break the unions, not just in Wisconsin, but seeking to be the first domino in a nationwide conservative movement. Deficits can be addressed by raising revenue, plugging tax loopholes, putting people to work, and developing the economy long-term in all the ways the President has discussed. But deficits are not what really matters to conservatives.

Conservatives really want to change the basis of American life, to make America run according to the conservative moral worldview in all areas of life.

In the 2008 campaign, candidate Obama accurately described the basis of American democracy: Empathy - citizens caring for each other, both social and personal responsibility-acting on that care, and an ethic of excellence. From these, our freedoms and our way of life follow, as does the role of government: to protect and empower everyone equally. Protection includes safety, health, the environment, pensions and empowerment starts with education and infrastructure. No one can be free without these, and without a commitment to care and act on that care by one's fellow citizens.

The conservative worldview rejects all of that.

Conservatives believe in individual responsibility alone, not social responsibility. They don't think government should help its citizens. That is, they don't think citizens should help each other. The part of government they want to cut is not the military (we have 174 bases around the world), not government subsidies to corporations, not the aspect of government that fits their worldview. They want to cut the part that helps people. Why? Because that violates individual responsibility.

But where does that view of individual responsibility alone come from?

The way to understand the conservative moral system is to consider a strict father family. The father is The Decider, the ultimate moral authority in the family. His authority must not be challenged. His job is to protect the family, to support the family (by winning competitions in the marketplace), and to teach his kids right from wrong by disciplining them physically when they do wrong. The use of force is necessary and required. Only then will children develop the internal discipline to become moral beings. And only with such discipline will they be able to prosper. And what of people who are not prosperous? They don't have discipline, and without discipline they cannot be moral, so they deserve their poverty. The good people are hence the prosperous people. Helping others takes away their discipline, and hence makes them both unable to prosper on their own and function morally.

The market itself is seen in this way. The slogan, "Let the market decide" assumes the market itself is The Decider. The market is seen as both natural (since it si assumed that people naturally seek their self-interest) and moral (if everyone seeks their own profit, the profit of all will be maximized by the invisible hand). As the ultimate moral authority, there should be no power higher than the market that might go against market values. Thus the government can spend money to protect the market and promote market values, but should not rule over it either through (1) regulation, (2) taxation, (3) unions and worker rights, (4) environmental protection or food safety laws, and (5) tort cases. Moreover, government should not do public service. The market has service industries for that. Thus, it would be wrong for the government to provide health care, education, public broadcasting, public parks, and so on. The very idea of these things is at odds with the conservative moral system. No one should be paying for anyone else. It is individual responsibility in all arenas. Taxation is thus seen as taking money away from those who have earned it and giving it to people who don't deserve it. Taxation cannot be seen as providing the necessities of life, a civilized society, and as necessary for business to prosper.

Above all, the authority of conservatism itself must be maintained. The country should be ruled by conservative values, and progressive values are seen as evil. Science should have authority over the market, and so the science of global warming and evolution must be denied. Facts that are inconsistent with the authority of conservatism must be ignored or denied or explained away. To protect and extend conservative values themselves, the devil's own means can be used again conservatism's immoral enemies, whether lies, intimidation, torture, or even death, say, for women's doctors. Freedom is defined as being your own strict father - with individual not social responsibility, and without any government authority telling you what you can and cannot do. To defend that freedom as an individual, you will of course need a gun.

This is the America that conservatives really want. Budget deficits are convenient ruses for destroying American democracy and replacing it with conservative rule in all areas of life.

What is saddest of all is to see Democrats helping them.

Democrats help radical conservatives by accepting the deficit frame and arguing about what to cut. Even arguing against specific "cuts" is working within the conservative frame. What is the alternative? Pointing out what conservatives really want. Point out that there is plenty of money in America, and in Wisconsin. It is at the top. The disparity in financial assets is un-American - the top one percent has more financial assets than the bottom 95 percent. Middle class wages have been flat for 30 years, while the wealth has floated to the top. This fits the conservative way of life, but not the American way of life.

Democrats help conservatives by not shouting out loud over and over that it was conservative values that caused the global economic collapse: lack of regulation and a greed-is-good ethic.

Democrats help conservatives when they use conservative words like "entitlements" instead of "earnings" and speak of government as providing "services" instead of "necessities."

Is there hope?

I see it in Wisconsin, where tens of thousands citizens see through the conservative frames and are willing to flood the streets of their capital to stand up for their rights. They understand that democracy is about citizens uniting to take care of each other, about social responsibility as well as individual responsibility, and about work - not just for your own profit, but to help create a civilized society. They appreciate their teachers, nurses, firemen, police, and other public servants. They are flooding the streets to demand real democracy - the democracy of caring, of social responsibility, and of excellence, where prosperity is to be shared by those who work and those who serve.

http://www.alternet.org/economy/149980/what_the_right-wing_assault_on_wo...

[MisterBig]

Do not begrudge a fellow workingman for making more than another ...

Wisconsin's war on human liberty

"It is but an episode in the great battle for human liberty, a battle which was commenced when the tyranny and oppression of man first caused him to impose upon his fellows and which will not end so long as the children of one father shall be compelled to toil to support the children of another in luxury and ease."

-- From the Final Argument of Clarence S. Darrow, in the case of the Woodworkers' Conspiracy

"In a free country ... every person has the right to lay down the tools of his trade if he shall choose. Not only that, but in a free country where liberty of speech is ... guaranteed, every man has the right to go to his fellow man and say, 'We are out on strike. We are in a great battle for liberty. We are waging war for our fellow man. For God's sake, come with us and help.' "

[GoldmanSux]

OMG. 18 paragraphs of progressive utopian platitudes. You didn't read Georges's stats. Unfunded liabilities to the tune of 840% of GDP. Meaning the pain is only starting. You need to read the federal budget and do the math. Your view of the world has been discredited and is not coming back.

Your statement, Deficits can be addressed by raising revenue, plugging tax loopholes, putting people to work, and developing the economy long-term in all the ways the President has discussed is mathematically impossible. In fact, it is a lie.

[StychoKiller]

On "Progressive" planet, money just falls out of the sky, it seems!

[Lord Koos]

On "conservative planet", all the money falls onto 5% of the people & corporations have the same rights as people.

[nmewn]

Glad to see Ariana Huffington exercised her corporate & individual rights and collected her check?

[DOT]

If what you say is true about the people backing up the public servants of Wisconsin, then the Unions would immediately accept Walker's proposal because it would allow a direct vote on compensation. AKA democracy. I personally believe this would be a cumbersome method of public administration. What do you think about voters choosing the compensation levels of public employs ?

p.s. "those who serve..." and  "public servants"  provide "services" so that means you are helping conservatives,by your own words!

[Cheyenne]

GW--You are on the money here. I read lots of your stuff--you Gulf coverage was fantastic--but in this piece you reach out to everyone. Most pieces on sites like this aren't like that. Well done.

[catskinner]

Agree hell,the the public employees are just that, payed by the tax payers!~

[StychoKiller]

I would propose to the ordinary Wisconsin tax-payer that they join the strike and NOT PAY STATE TAXES -- seems only "fair!"

[RocketmanBob]

And, "Divide and conquer"?  How about the class warfare arguments that the progressives and socialists have been foisting on Americans for the last 50 years?

How come every time I've heard a question asked to a union leader, some of the folks chanting about "Democracy!", or member of the US congress, their opinion about the missing state senators in WI, the subject mysteriously turns to the eeeeevollll corporations and Wall streeters?

And how would you suggest we address "rampant inequality"?  Because, GW, in all fairness, the only rampant inequality I see regularly, especially around April 15th, is that 47% of the public pay no income tax, and in fact get some of mine redistributed to them.  That seems pretty un-equal to me...

Can you point out where the founders of our country codified equality of outcome in the US Constitution?  Because I don't remember that part.

As I recall, they wanted to sure equality of opportunity instead, and under the law, instead.

[Terminus C]

Because, GW, in all fairness, the only rampant inequality I see regularly, especially around April 15th, is that 47% of the public pay no income tax, and in fact get some of mine redistributed to them.

Do you have a link or citation for this statistic?  While I do not dispute this number, I find it astounding and would like a reference.

[RocketmanBob]

My pleasure, here are a few:

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/04/07/national/main6372418.shtml

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/04/07/income-tax-47-of-american_n_529059.html

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Nearly-half-of-US-households-apf-1105567323.html?x=0&.v=1

http://money.cnn.com/2009/09/30/pf/taxes/who_pays_taxes/index.htm

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/2488542/posts

I cited a variety of sources in case you believe any particular one of these is biased to a particular POV.  There are more easily found if you search using the terms 47% of the public pay no federal income tax.

Take it easy.

[KickIce]

People like you just don't get America.  It's not equal opportunity but equal benefits that we should be pushing for.  The people sitting at home and and those gaming the system is what gives us all incentives and is what made this country the hotbed of invention.

sarcasm off/

It's funny, people keep wanting government to step in even though they are the ones that set up the rules in the first place.

[nmewn]

"Because, GW, in all fairness, the only rampant inequality I see regularly, especially around April 15th, is that 47% of the public pay no income tax, and in fact get some of mine redistributed to them.  That seems pretty un-equal to me..."

Hot damn...preach it brother!

+ a million tax credits!

[Seer]

Careful, there are Commies in your closet!

Love watching your tilting at windmills- keep up the great work!

[RocketmanBob]

Which windmill would that be Seer?

[nmewn]

;-)

[StychoKiller]

Respect for religion must be reestablished. Public debt should be reduced.  The arrogance of public officials must be curtailed. Assistance to foreign lands must be stopped or we shall bankrupt ourselves. The people should be forced to work and not depend on government for subsistence. - Cicero, 60 B.C.

We've been here before!

[pvmuse]

Respect for Religion must be reestablished ???

Where in your constitutional gobbledegook did you dig that out from? 

Is this a teabagger convention here or what?

[nmewn]

"Respect for Religion must be reestablished ???

Where in your constitutional gobbledegook did you dig that out from?"

Freedom of religion implies respect for even those who do not practice any religion at all...and it can be found in the very first Amendment.

And it is completely different than imposing the jizya, through law, (the Constitution & Bill of Rights is the basis of our law in America) on any religion other than the preferred religion of the government.

And the fleebagger convention is at the Best Western Clock Tower Resort in Rockford Illinois ;-)

[DOT]

Nice pool there.

[RocketmanBob]

GW,

I don't know where to start.  You are right to say that liberals and conservatives can agree on some things; but perhaps not all of the bullet points you listed.

I'll start by noting that you never mentioned the unholy alliance between government employees and politicians via Big Labor.  There is something fundamentally wrong with AFSCME, the teacher's unions, and other labor groups giving vast sums of money and support to politicians, only to be sitting across from those same people at the bargaining table where, naturally, they feed the union's ever increasing demands via the public trough; our tax dollars GW.  Part of which cycle back to the unions via the public employees dues, in a perverse positive feedback loop.

From http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/philg/2009/09/07/history-of-public-employee-unions/

According to the author of While America Aged, public employee unions should be able to win much higher wages and benefits than private company unions. The UAW could shut down GM or Ford with a strike, but they couldn’t vote the GM and Ford CEOs out of office. Once a sufficiently high percentage of voters are unionized public employees, there is essentially no limit to the obligations imposed on the state.

And I'll present the words of FDR, who, you know, is not renown for being a union buster nor antagonistic to organized labor in the least

From http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2011/02/19/the_ghost_of_fdr_is_smiling_on_wisconsins_governor_108962.html

“The process of collective bargaining, as usually understood, cannot be transplanted into the public service,” Roosevelt wrote in 1937 to the National Federation of Federal Employees. Yes, public workers may demand fair treatment, wrote Roosevelt. But, he wrote, “I want to emphasize my conviction that militant tactics have no place” in the public sector. “A strike of public employees manifests nothing less than an intent on their part to prevent or obstruct the operations of Government.”

Which, in fact, is what's happening right now in Wisconsin...

There's been a lot of talk about Madison being like Cairo, in a propagandistic effort to Paint Walker as Mubarak, and the protesters as being somehow virtuous or possessing absolute moral authority; and the word "Democracy" is being cavalierly bandied about, heard constantly in the bussed-in professional protester's chant, "This is what Democracy looks like!"

Nothing could be further from the truth.  These people have no respect for Democracy, neither protester nor the pusillanimous Democrat's in the state Senate.  Walker and the other members of both houses in the assembly prevailed in legitimate free elections, running on a platform he's now trying to deliver on-the situation could not be any different than in Egypt.  And furthermore, none of those now cheerleading the Democrats who are exploiting a parlaimentary loophole and left the state in order to avoid having to vote on a measure that reflects the will of the people of Wisconsin are no believers in democracy either.

But I'll tell you, I'm pretty sure that many of them have applauded for the last 2 years while the Democrats in the national legislature have "jammed through" legislation time and time again.  And I'll hazard a guess that those same people have met criticisms of those cramdowns with trite replies such as, "Elections have consequences!", and more simply, "We Won!".

As the cliche says, those that live by the sword and such...

And I'm surprised you're falling for, and helping promote the meme that WI public employees are underpaid.  The Soros-funded Economic Policy Institute "study" that concludes they are underpaid is deeply flawed, and I could write a post on those flaws alone, but I'll just name two:

1) The study contends that it is wrong to compare the "compensations" directly because the public employees recieve a higher percentage of their compensation in the form of benefits; but they never compare the level of services that those benefits provide versus their private sector counterparts. Indeed, the public employees have the "Cadillac" plans, while private industry-not so much.  And they astoundingly try and assert that public employees recieve less vacation/sick leave/paid holidays-this is patently absurd on it's face...

2) The study doesn't compare apples-to-apples, because it dishonestly uses education levels as the basis of comparison.  This is wrong, a priori, because teachers typically are required to have advanced degrees to recieve their certificate; degrees that often compare only to private sector managerial or specialty levels.

Indeed, in most levels of public service people recieve raises and promotion in grade simply for acquiring a degree, or achieving a benchmark in college credits; without necessarily enhancing or even using the coursework they're being rewarded for taking-courses that they were often reimbursed for, depending on the state, as well!

In short, the EPI study is propagana in my humble opinion.

Looking at this spreadsheet, http://dpi.wi.gov/lbstat/xls/tasr10.xls , one can see that the average teacher's compensation in WI is around 75k/yr.  The administrators, http://dpi.wi.gov/lbstat/xls/adm_sal_2010_final.xls , averaged 107k/yr.  But the average household income in WI is 52k/yr ( http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/55000.html ); so the teachers that are currently protesting and engaging in an illegal wildcat strike are compensated 1.5 times the HOUSEHOLD average in their state, and in fact in salary alone equal that number!  So for all of the smoke and light in WI, their arguments are pretty hollow, at least from the POV of average privately employed folks.

Governor Walker is following through on campaign promises he made to rein in the state's budget, in order to be able to keep the tax rates low, as well as deal with the public employee unions that, in part, have been adding to the budget problems.  He ran on a "right-to-work" platform in order to entice businesses to reloctate to WI instead of leaving it as the trend has been.  All he's doing is delivering on the promises he made to the electorate who chose him in a free and fair election.  What is un-American, or un-democratic about that?

What is undemocratic, and simply thuggish bullying as well as deriliction of duty, is the teachers who are ignoring their responsibities, as well as the children they often claim to be motivating their actions, in order to buy time until the DNC and Trumka et al, and his bussed in, astro-turfing, professional protesters and union members come in from other states, and who, like Mr. Obama, are out-of-staters sticking their noses in Wisconsinite's business.  And most alarming is the Demcrats in the legislature who feel it's their right to shut down the system rather than accept the results of the election, and their opposition exercising the will of the people.

My Regards.

[George Washington]

RocketBob,

  You make a lot of good points.  I didn't know that FDR opposed public unions.  There is much I still have to learn about this issue.  I am NOT wed to a liberal or a conservative philosophy.  I am constantly searching for what is best for the most people ...

[RocketmanBob]

This is a tough issue GW, to be sure.  And none of us want to see hardship visited upon our fellow Americans.  I know you try to be non-partisan, as your namesake thought we should all be.  It is unfortunate that many can't see past the limitations of partisan talking points, and feel the liberating effect of professing principle instead of propaganda.

For what it's worth, I don't think you a propagandist or memetic repeater.  A thousand pardons if I gave you that impression.  I only wanted to address that EPI study that I've seen circulating for a few days, and was quoted in some of the links you provided.

This is a tough issue, and I say that we all need to let the Wisconsinites straighten it out.  I am incensed at the out-of-state forces pouring in and meddling in their business, because of the fear that others will get the idea of reforming public employee union policy.  Because that's all we're talking about here, public employees.  Walker is in no way trying to "bust up" the trade unions and organizations of private industry workers.

As always, your fellow American.

[nmewn]

Excellent rebuttal RB.

[RocketmanBob]

Many thanks.

[SRV - ES339]

In the 2010 mid terms, nine of the top ten political action groups were corporate, in support of GOP candidates... why is it wrong that one of the ten was a public sector union?

Are you saying it's acceptable for corporations to organize in support of candidates they prefer but unions cannot?

If so, please provide your argument.

[RocketmanBob]

To begin with, I'd appreciate it if you could cite the source for what you assert as fact, friend.

Political action groups or committees are necessarily incorporated, to form the framework for their activities as a unique entity; it's not like they're Exxon or some other transnational corporation simply operating under a different name.

So I think you're misunderstanding the nature of PACs altogether.

As far as the unholy relationship between public sector employee unions and politicians I would think that the danger of each to feed off the other, in a unstable positive feedback loop fed by public funds, would be self-evident.

Thanks for your comment.

[Argonaught]

No. And stick to the facts, Walker is not trying to do anything to private sector unions.  He is just, rightly, saying that the Public sector can not negotiate on behalf of the taxpayer while getting contributions from those they are negotiating against.  It really is that simple.

[SRV - ES339]

Perhaps you may want to introduce yourself to the facts (where do I start)... for one, unions do not negotiate directly with elected officials.

This is union busting and nothing more... please show me one Walker quote saying he was going to bust public sector unions... he did not, and he has no mandate (other than from his corporate masters... guess that makes you a fan) to do so.

I'll just leave it there because... nothing is that simple.