We Can Fix America If We Focus on What ALL Americans - Liberals AND Conservatives - Want

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While there are some things that
liberals and conservatives will never agree about, there are many things
that we already all agree on.

Knowing the many things we agree to
empowers us, because it helps get us away from the distractions so that
we can realize that there is much common ground among all Americans, and
that if we work together, we hold a very strong position. If we shelve
our irreconcilable differences for a little while and join our voices
together on the issues we agree on, the sound will be so loud that it
will shake down the walls which are holding us back.

While the mainstream political parties try to sell us on their brand, the truth is that "poll
after poll shows that both national parties are deeply unpopular with
an electorate looking for something new and different". This essay focuses on what people want.

Break Up the Unholy Alliance Between Big Government and Big Banks

Conservatives tend to view big government with suspicion, and think that government should be held accountable and reined in.

Liberals tend to view big corporations with suspicion, and think that they should be held accountable and reined in.

Irreconcilable difference?

Not really.

Specifically, a Rassmussen poll conducted in February found:

70%
[of all voters] believe that the government and big business typically
work together in ways that hurt consumers and investors.

(and see this).

Remember that the government helped and encouraged the giant banks to get even bigger, and then has hidden their insolvency and shielded them from the free market, and helped them grow even during the severe downturn.

In return, the big banks and giant corporations have literally bought and paid for the politicians.

Conservatives might call it "socialism" and liberals might call it "fascism" - they are the same thing economically.

But all Americans - conservatives and liberals alike - can agree that it is not capitalism, and it is not American.

As
just one example, the list of prominent economists and financial
experts calling for the too big to fails to be broken up is wholly
bipartisan:

• Nobel prize-winning economist, Joseph Stiglitz

• Nobel prize-winning economist, Ed Prescott

• Nobel prize-winning economist, Paul Krugman

• Former chairman of the Federal Reserve, Alan Greenspan

• Former chairman of the Federal Reserve, Paul Volcker

• Former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich

• Dean
  and professor of finance and economics at Columbia Business School,
  and chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers under President George
  W. Bush, R. Glenn Hubbard

• Simon Johnson (and see this)

• President of the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, Thomas Hoenig (and see this)

• President of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, Richard Fisher (and see this)

• President of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, Thomas Bullard

• Deputy Treasury Secretary, Neal S. Wolin

• The President of the Independent Community Bankers of America, a Washington-based trade group with about 5,000 members, Camden R. Fine

• The Congressional panel overseeing the bailout (and see this)

• The head of the FDIC, Sheila Bair

• The head of the Bank of England, Mervyn King

• The leading monetary economist and co-author with Milton Friedman of the leading treatise on the Great Depression, Anna Schwartz

• Economics professor and senior regulator during the S & L crisis, William K. Black

• Economics professor, Nouriel Roubini

• Economist, Marc Faber

• Professor of entrepreneurship and finance at the Chicago Booth School of Business, Luigi Zingales

• Economics professor, Thomas F. Cooley

• Economist Dean Baker

• Economist Arnold Kling

• Former investment banker, Philip Augar

• Chairman of the Commons Treasury, John McFall

Throw the Criminals In Jail

Liberals
tend to believe that the public should be protected against harm,
while conservatives tend to believe that people should be left free to
buy what they want.

Too far apart to ever agree?

No.
Conservatives believe that people must be held responsible for their
actions and punished for their transgressions. Indeed, some 82% of the American public wants tougher regulation of Wall Street.

Moreover, even for those who don't like the government sticking its nose in our business, liberals and conservatives agree that if a
company chooses to make a representation about something, it can be
sued if it is a lie. In other words, all Americans agree that fraud
laws should be enforced against everyone from
the homeowner who fills out a mortgage application on a small house to
the head of a giant bank who makes false statements about the bank's
balance sheets and the quality of it's investments.

Everyone agrees that financial scammers must be tried and put in prison.

(And
whether people believe in liberal Keynesianism or conservative Austrian
economics, we should all be able to agree that a free market without
bubbles is not possible without strong laws allowing prosecution of criminal fraud).

Audit the Fed

Both liberals and conservatives agree that the Federal Reserve should be audited. The bill to audit the Fed passed in a bipartisan landslide, and the overwhelming majority of Americans
favor a full and complete audit. Given that the Fed has such a
powerful influence on the economy, credit, unemployment, and which
sectors and even which individual companies win or lose, the audit - and
indeed whether or not the Fed should continue to exist - is a very
important issue.

Safe and Healthy Food and Water

Americans want to be free
to live our lives without being poisoned.  We agree on safe food, clean
water and a healthy environment.

For example, polls show:

• A large majority of Americans want strong food safety rules, and want genetically modified foods to be labeled

• Most Americans are worried about water pollution

• Americans don't want to be exposed to toxic pollutants

Freedom and Fair Elections

All Americans agree that personal liberty and freedoms are vital.

We all agree that our own government should not murder us and then falsely blame others for it.

And we all agree that there should be free and fair elections. That is why - according to ABC News and the Washington Post - 80 percent
of all Americans oppose the Supreme Court's recent decision allowing
unlimited campaign contributions. Americans understand that - unless we
take the flood of money out of elections - Washington will represent
special interests, and not us.

And we all agree on publicly
verifiable, automatically audited paper ballot elections with reasonable
ID requirements, so that we assured that no party can manipulate
electronic voting results.

Whether the above list of common
positions seems modest or ambitious, the fact that we can all - liberals
and conservatives - agree on them is very powerful.

Because once we realize that we agree on them, and decide to rally behind them to restore prosperity to America, we will have a much better chance of turning our country around.

You
still might think that the people across the aisle are fanatics,
nutjobs, flakes, sinners or scoundrels on some issues. But remember
that - to the extent that they are working for the same goals you are on
the issues mentioned above - they are your valuable allies.

Big hat tip to Moneymutt for his help on thinking through areas of common ground.

Comments

[InconvenientCou...]

"And we all agree on publicly verifiable, automatically audited paper ballot elections with reasonable ID requirements, so that we assured that no party can manipulate electronic voting results."

I'd advocate conflict of interest rules designed to prevent political parties, from striaght up buying votes and/or violating the law to create vote from non-US citizens.

Talk about moral hazard...

[Gully Foyle]

https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Whipping_Star

Whipping Star (1970) is a science fiction novel by Frank Herbert. It is the first full-length novel set in the ConSentiency universe established by Herbert in his novelette "The Tactful Saboteur"

In the far future, humankind has made contact with numerous other species: Gowachin, Laclac, Wreaves, Pan Spechi, Taprisiots, and Caleban (among others) and has helped to form the ConSentiency to govern among the species. After suffering under a tyrannous pure democracy which had the power to create laws so fast that no thought could be given to the effects, the sentients of the galaxy found the need for a Bureau of Sabotage (BuSab) to slow the wheels of government, thereby preventing it from legislating recklessly.

[techperson]

1. Start the Independent Party, since a lot of people already are registered as Independent.

2. Stake out the middle of the road, where most people are.  

3. Adopt the personal freedom issues of the Democrats, but reject their centralized economic prescriptions.

4. Adopt the economic freedom issues of the Republicans, but reject their right-wing policies against personal freedoms.

5. Every candidate must pledge to self-term limit - 2 terms as governor, 4 terms in the House, 2 terms in the Senate, then you're done.

6. Replace the income and SS taxes (which discourage producing income) with the FairTax (which discourages consumption)

Bernanke’s biggest flaw is that he thinks this is only a credit contraction recession, so he can fix it with credit expansion tools. He doesn’t realize that he is up against (1) a generational shift to the Gen Xers who got buried in student loans, and view credit very differently from the Baby Boomers, (2) the retirement of said Boomers, the pig in the python with the largest cohort turning 48 ( the year of peak consumption per Harry Dent) in 2005 – did something change after that? And (3) technology, which slashes prices every year (OMG – deflation!).  So he will bring the U.S. economy into chaos, without ever knowing why it didn't work.

SurviveTheGreatInflation.com the book launched this week – Bernanke isn’t going to change – given his history, he can’t – and Obama doesn’t have any idea how awful his appointments were. It's inflation coming, not deflation. Don't ever bet against the Fed.

Obama Fires Bernanke on YouTube

Part 1 - http://bit.ly/aMKfZ8  Part 2 – http://bit.ly/bJ8VVx