"Some people see things as they are and say why?
I dream things that never were and say, why not?"
Robert F. Kennedy, Recapturing America's Moral Vision, 18 March, 1968, University of Kansas.
A day doesn't pass when well meaning perfectly good kossacks get into brawls over what can be done versus what should be done. Anyone who knows me, knows which side of that argument I stand on. Which doesn't means that when it counts, people on the other side of this argument can't work together:
Tomtech, who initiated and puts in a ton of work to maintain the vigil over the dying Gulf (please rec, it costs you nothing and you would be supporting the most up to date news on the gulf disaster) is a self-confessed Obamabot, and well, I'm not.
And it doesn't make one whit of difference.
The problems we face are bigger than Tom and I. Many of them are, in fact, bigger than the capacity of the US to go it alone and deal with. Whether it's LGBT rights, DADT, DOMA, FinReg, the wars, healthcare, unemployment, the shift of wealth to the wealthy, the unfolding global environmental catastrophe that is our addiction to oil, or a host of other problems, the point is they are real.
And they're out there. They aren't in the beltway bubble.
Outside the bubble, the gulf slowly suffocates as we argue. Outside the bubble is the fact that as of 2007, an esitmated $12 TRILLION is parked in tax havens around the world (Palan, Murphy, Chavagneaux, "Tax Havens: How Globalization Really Works", pg. 5). You know what that number closely resembles? It's as if the entire US GDP was removed from the world's taxable income. Americans are dying while engaged in a mindless pursuit of an amorphous enemy we hunt using the wrong tools, and, after witholding judgement on Obama's efforts in this regard, it now seems to me that we're going to lose that fight as well. Oil companies sit by while environmental activists are murdered, and the people who brought us the disaster in the Gulf are celebrated. Banks are going under everyday, and will continue to go under because our government, the one we so enthusiastically cheered when it took over, cannot decide to do the right thing and separate regular, boring banking from riskier trading operations. So, expect to see more bank failures in the future like Northern Rock, who went under because the legal and tax-avoidance machinations it put in place to protect it from the collapse of the CDO market failed (I recently watched Paul Volker say that he agreed to a compromise which gutted his own rule - another failure).
We can deal with these problems. They are solvable. I believe in human agency and our ability to recognize and deal with the problems we face. I also know that in the end, the political compromises we agree to today will eventually be judged to be political failures to deal with those problems they were supposed to address. I've seen this many, many times before. We all have.
For many days now, I've been watching BP's continuing disaster, and I'm outraged. We all are. The solutions are so close, yet they are walled off from implementation and locked away behind a wall of corporate and Wall Street greed which focuses on returns on investment to the exclusion of every other cost their decisions entail. We should be outraged over the big lie that Social Security and Medicare need reform to be cut in order to deal with the federal deficit while these same, pro-business spokesmen, some of whom are republican-lite democrats, continue to ignore the fact that corporations and the wealthy shelter their income in off shore tax havens because they have avenues of tax avoidance that are denied to ordinary working men and women in the United States. Make no mistake. It's the individual tax payer who foots the bill. The wealthy are under no illusions about this, and neither should we be under any illusions about this either: we live in what Citigroup call a plutonomy (Part 1 and Part 2) where the wealthy order our society to suit themselves. The money quotes:
"Our thesis is that the rich are the dominant drivers of demand in many economies around the world (the US, UK, Canada and Australia). These economies have seen the rich take an increasing share of income and wealth over the last 20 years,"
"The rich in the U.S. went from coupon-clipping, dividend-receiving rentiers to a Managerial Aristocracy indulged by their shareholders."
Only this past year has the top 5% of income earners paid more in raw dollar amounts than the bottom 50%, but It took 10% unemployment and a hefty tax break for the poorest working Americans to bring this about. Read the story at that last link. In effect, it means that the top 5% finally managed to pay more taxes than the 3% at the top of the lower half. I'm underwhelmed. That top 5% have been using the roads, drinking the clean water, breathing the clean air, enjoying the privilege of the finest in medical care, etc - none of which have they paid their fair share to support. We should be outraged over the fact that we're being fed lies by global free market supporters as they sit there and tell us to our face that taxes should be lowered, and that the social safety net is a luxury we cannot afford, when more than 60% of world trade takes place between subsidiaries of the same parent company, and thus the costs and profits reported to governments worldwide aren't at all subject to the free market these people champion.
We should be outraged by all of this and more. Everyone here should be totally and irredeemably pissed off.
I went off on another kossack yesterday who dared sneer at me for being an "ideological purist" (his words) four year old who can do nothing but "throw mud" (his words, again). That's why I'm spending today's diary on this. Nothing could be further from the truth. It's just that I know my enemy. I've seen too many compromises over the years go down as policy failures due to the other considerations and settling for what is "politically possible". And I know that a half solution is more often than not, no solution at all. Many of them are mere political gestures designed to keep real policy advocates quiet.
We can sit here and be real democrats demanding that that which needs to be done is enacted, or we can inhabit the bubble and settle for what can easily get passed without endangering the electoral prospects of those too weak minded to make the case for real reform. With pictures. Ours a good case. Ours is the case that has a real, human face attached to it, while theirs is based on touchy-feely, pie-in-the-sky fantasy. It's a much stronger case than can be made by anyone opposing us - as we witness everyday with the mud throwing of the likes of Limbaugh and Beck. That's all they can do, because essentially, all they stand for are the rights of the wealthy and privileged over the very fabric of democracy itself. All the Bachmans, Becks, Romneys, Fiorinas, Boehners, Grassleys, Lincolns and all can do is throw factually incorrect intangible ideas out there about American exceptionalism and supposed freedoms whose costs must be borne by everyone else. All they can do is pander to those who consider themselves Christians first, and Americans second.
We can settle for the illusion of security that the Afghan war is supposed to enhance. We can settle for free markets which in reality thrive on ignorance and secrecy. We can settle for being bullied by Wall Street, even though we support it through a myriad of preferential tax and capital policies, including our direct subsidy of 401k and IRA tax-deferred contributions. We can continue to witness the death of the Gulf of Mexico, the loss of the icecaps, and the peril we put ourselves in if the toxins in that oil in the gulf reach the North Atlantic and the phytoplankton blooms that provide a substantial portion of the oxygen we all need to survive. We can settle for what's politically possible, but let me suggest to everyone reading this that by settling for what's easily possible, getting democrats elected could very well be the least of our problems.
I know my enemy. He and she are the ones who will "regretfully" propose cuts in Social Security and Medicare. My enemy is the politician who refuses to undertake the measures needed to solve any number of problems. I expect this to come from republicans.
I won't stand for it from democrats.
The realities outside the bubble demand that none of us should.