The bankruptcy bill that passed yesterday is just a symptom of what is wrong with both the Democratic party and politics in general. I linked to an L.A. Times article and a Jonathan Chait editorial in
this diary. There are some folks who, understandably, are troubled by my use of an intemperate adjective to describe Senator Biden. Trust me. Joe Biden has a hide as thick as a rhinoceros. That may be part of the problem. The damage and harm that this bill will do to working families across America is not in dispute. We need to start flooding these middle class turncoats with the same volume of email they are getting on Social Security.
Social Security is not just about Social Security. It's about giving working families just little bit of economic security. It's about giving people who work their whole lives just a little bit bigger piece of the economic pie.
More in Extended Entry
We need to flood all of the following Senators and then some with emails:
I can hear the sound of exploding heads, wondering why Boxer and Clinton are at the top of the list. It's because this bill was greased, and every single Senator knew it. There were 60 votes locked in on this bill and everyone knew that a filibuster would fail. So they went along. This is a prime example of why Ralph Nader says there isn't any difference between the Democrats and the Republicans. When the corporate bosses say jump, both parties ask how high. I think Boxer and Hillary owe us an explanation for why they didn't even try to slow this economic abomination down.
Does anyone care to make the case that the DLC Democrats who are serving as rotating Faux Republican Corporate Scumbags Du Jour are voting in the interests of their constituents on bills like the Class Action Lawsuit Bill and the latest Bankruptcy Bill that passed the Senate yesterday? There is not even a thin veneer of ethical cover for these corporate political hacks. They are voting for corporate interests, who are big campaign donors, over the interests of their constituents. There isn't even an argument to the contrary.
All of the economic bullshit in the world will not change the fundamental facts. There is a growing inequality of wages.
There is a Widening Income Gap.
Pay special attention to Chart 3 from Inequality.org. The top 5% now controls 59% of the wealth in this country. That's $6.5 trillion for the top 5% and $4.5 trillion for the bottom 95%. And they still want more.
Let's look at raw numbers. In 1970 the Gross Domestic Product of the United States was a little over $1 trillion. In 1981 it was a little over $3 trillion. Today the GDP is $11 trillion. Those numbers are in constant dollars. The American economy is ten times as large as it was in 1970, and virtually all of the increase in real wealth has gone to the top 5%; most of it to the top 1%. And they still want more. Wages have been stagnant for 30 years. Companies are cutting health care insurance and pension benefits. Companies have shifted more and more of the economic pain from recession to contract workers and temps. And they still want more.
Does anybody think this is the end of the corporate railroad that has been crushing the American middle class under its wheels for the last thirty years? Is there the slightest doubt in anyone's mind that all of these Senators will be appearing on Tweety or Russert's show in the next couple of weeks making a vacuous defense of their vote and getting a complete pass from the media on these votes? The same exact thing will happen with Medical Malpractice Caps if we don't get the DLC's attention right now. They don't give a tinker's damn about the voters and middle class Americans they are pretending to represent.
The bankruptcy bill represents a vital core of the same problem that affected the DLC Consultancy. It represents a vital core of the same problem Thomas Frank addressed in What's The Matter With Kansas? There were a lot of arguments made that putting Howard Dean in as DLC Chair was not about left vs. right; it was about reform. At the very core of the argument for reforming the DLC is the conflict between corporate America and middle class America. It's about the economic populism that drove the New Deal and the Democratic party for the last fifty years. George Bush is determined to dismantle the New Deal. Unfortunately, a few DLC Democrats are willing to help him. The corporate railroad is not going to stop until it hits a brick wall of opposition. If that opposition doesn't come from the DLC, it sure as hell isn't going to come from the Republican party.
We need to activate the same grass/net roots coalition working on Social Security on the economic dismemberment of the middle class. Considering how quickly the bankruptcy bill went through the Senate, it may already be too late. Was there any debate at all? There is absolutely no way the bankruptcy bill sailed through the Senate as quick as it did without the implicit cooperation of the entire Senate Democratic Caucus.
Email these turkeys now!