Any long-time reader of this blog will know how bitterly disappointed I was with the health care law insurance giveaway that the Obama administration bungled last year. Part of that law was dropped by the White House because of an insane requirement: a 75-year solvency clause for the Community Living Assistance Services and Supports program. Much like what will happen with the Postal Service, which was recently saddled with the same requirement, this negotiated capitulated requirement ensured the program’s demise.
How pathetic is this? Where was the 75-year solvency clause for the mega-banks which have received $14 Trillion in taxpayer dollars? Where was the 75-year solvency clause for war and occupation activities? Oh, that’s right, our republic has been all too happy to transform itself into an imperialist oligarchy.
Quality health care for everybody? We’re too busy destroying countries and cultures while ensuring the largest upward transfer of wealth in history continues unchecked.
Forget the crazies on the right and ask yourself this: is this the change you voted for? How many more decades have to pass before this ludicrous incrementalist approach is ditched? The Republican Teabaggers are playing to win while Democrats want to play nice. Brilliant!
Yet somehow those rich fat cats on Wall St have convinced policymakers to look at cutting Social Security benefits while giving them even more tax breaks. That makes more elderly people slide into poverty while the country’s deficits race out of control. All of the above, by the way, has been brought to you by Republican/Conservative economics. Their policies have worked exactly as they’ve wanted them to for the past 40 years. The sad part is too few Democrats are visibly standing up for the elderly and impoverished. Given all that, I’m still confused why the elderly continue to vote for Republicans who in turn work to screw them over time and time and time again.
The 2nd article goes so far as to mention the “financial industry reform” legislation that passed this year. Like a small number of other progressives, I’ll say this again: the reform was an absolute joke. It won’t reform the financial industry. It won’t prevent a repeat of the 2007-2009 economic crash that nearly destroyed the U.S. economy. It was enough to allow the justified anger over that crash to wane to a point where politicians and Wall Streeters could point to the signed legislation and say, “See, something was done. Nothing bad will happen ever again. Now go away and trust us to manage our businesses.”
The combination of these news stories might even have something to do with the “enthusiasm gap” that most of the corporate media and silly pundits can’t fathom. Nah – it’s definitely the fault of the DFHs who didn’t get everything they wanted in 18 months.
Democrats are on pace to waste on of the largest one-party majorities in history. Given the size of the caucus in each chamber of Congress, most Americans assumed that something would be done to address the multiple crises this country faces. You do know what happens when people assume things, don’t you? It turns out that old adage was true. Great and needed reforms have not been the products of this Congress. Edge-nibbling and incrementalism have been the products instead.
Financial industry reform was supposed to be the next great thing that Congress took up. It’s desperately needed: thanks to a bunch of billionaires, Wall St. has turned into America’s largest set of casinos. Unlike the ones found in Las Vegas, these casinos are unregulated and have a more direct impact on Americans’ lives. Witness the 2008-2010 Great Depression redux if you want an idea of how out of control these banksters have gotten.
I recommend reading a short piece by Les Leopold. He starts out with (emphasis mine):
Wake up Congress! The financial reform bill you just passed won’t protect us from economic chaos. Why? Because it fails to burst the mother of all bubbles — Wall Street itself.
Despite that simple fact, Americans will start being subjected to pandering politicians selling their “look what we accomplished” bs. How many will be reelected? Or, how many will fall to the wave that I see building during this year’s election cycle: Americans want tangible solutions passed. Politicians might get away for a short while telling us how awesome they are. What happens when the economy crashes again? What happens when people realize how little health care insurance legislation accomplishes for them and how much it accomplishes for the failed system?
After a short discussion, Les offers up 5 necessary reforms:
1. Break up the top twenty banks that are too big too fail.
2. Institute a financial transaction tax.
3. Pass a windfall profit tax of 75 percent on Wall Street bonuses and hedge fund income.
4. Raise the marginal tax rate on those earning $3 million or more per year to 70 percent.
5. Ban the sale of complex derivatives to all public entities and pension funds and ban public and pension investments in hedge funds.
To do any of these, however, would require elected officials that have not been thoroughly bought off by the financial industry. That’s one reason we’re in the mess we’re in.
Those large majorities I started out with won’t last forever. Congress members are going to want to travel back to their districts and states in a couple of months – which means the time for actual work to get done is quickly dwindling. What will happen next year when there are even fewer Democrats? How long will it take to get a meaningful number of solid progressives in place to exert influence?
Ninety-one days ago I gave you thirty days to fix the U.S. economy that you broke:
I’m just a simple, average citizen who has listened to you jawbone for decades—amplified non-stop by Fox News, CNBC, the Wall Street Journal and right-wing radio—about how perfect your system of “unfettered everything” is. How greed is good and regulation is the devil’s work. And yet, you seem to be strangely ineffective at fixing it when it breaks. Could it be you’ve been bullshitting us all along? …
Fix the damn economy on Main Street already, you Ayn Rand-worshipping free-market capitalist wizards. Show us how it’s done. Be the heroes we’ve been holding out for.
Bummer. You couldn’t do it, even with a two-month extension. Not even close. Instead of rolling up your sleeves and getting to work, all you’ve done is continue pointing your fingers at the Big Bad Government—the one that statistics confirm single-handedly saved your asses from Great Depression II—and whine. Hell, even your Savior of All Things Economic, Grover “Ayn Rand With a Beard” Norquist, couldn’t convince voters in Washington and Maine that your ideas were worth a bucket of warm spit.
Oh, sure, Wall Street is thriving, in large measure because they’re up to their old backroom book-cooking tricks again. (I did challenge you to work your magic “honestly, ethically and legally,” remember?) But Main Street is still tanking. So I guess it’s true—you’ve been bullshitting us all along.
That doesn’t sit well with me. Because, see, I’ve been programmed by Frank Luntz and the GOP spin machine to think of two things when I hear the word conservative: fiscal competence and defense. You fucked up the defense part real good. And now you’ve failed to prove your worth on the economy. I mean, good gracious Gerty, I gave you 90 days and look at what you did: in what should’ve been your moment of triumph, you dithered.
