Ted McLaughlin : Wendy Davis, Energized Dems Deal Blow to Texas GOP and War on Women

Pro-choice demonstrators at the Texas State Capitol in Austin, Sunday, June 23, 2013. More than 1,000 packed the place on Sunday and the numbers kept growing during the week. Photo by Alan Pogue / The Rag Blog.

A new day for Democrats in Texas:
New political stars and a raucous crowd
deal blow to GOP's insidious attack on choice

By Ted McLaughlin / The Rag Blog / June 27, 2013

[The Week that Was! As the Supreme Court made landmark decisions about voting rights (two thumbs down) and gay marriage (it's about time!), thousands of cheering pro-choice Texans -- wearing orange shirts that read "Stand With Texas Women" and rooted on by Planned Parenthood president Cecile Richards, daughter of the late and great Texas Gov. Ann Richards -- filled the rotunda and packed the galleries of the State Capitol of Texas in Austin for their own marathon filibuster. The enthusiasm was intoxicating.

It was a massive three-day show of opposition to Texas Republicans' attack on women's health in the form of a draconian new abortion law -- and of support for Texas Sen. Wendy Davis and her dramatic filibuster in the Senate chambers. Davis has emerged as a superstar and a legitimate candidate for higher office in Texas. The events captured the imagination of the nation. As MSNBC's Rachel Maddow said Tuesday night: "Texas: Who knew!" Oh, and coming next week: "Kill the Bill, Volume 2." See you there. -- Thorne Dreyer / The Rag Blog]


AUSTIN, Texas -- The teabagger governor of Texas announced Wednesday, June 26, 2013, that he is calling a second special session of the Texas legislature. Three issues are on the agenda -- transportation funding and juvenile justice (both of which died in the last session because Republicans wasted the whole 30-day session trying to shut down the state's abortion clinics), and, of course, the same old anti-choice legislation that was filibustered to death in that first special session.

Perry seems determined to keep the issue alive, and give Democrats something to make sure their supporters remain energized and engaged.

Texas Democrats have been a dispirited bunch for a long time now. It has been more than 20 years since a Democrat held statewide office, and prospects for the future seemed dim because there were really no politicians in the party with true statewide appeal.

That changed dramatically on Tuesday night, when a couple of female State Senators put themselves in the limelight to stop (at least temporarily) an odious anti-choice bill that would almost certainly close 37 out of 42 clinics in the state that do abortion procedures -- and in the process they inspired and renewed thousands of Democrats across the state.

Texas Senators Wendy Davis, left, and Leticia Van de Putte in the Texas Senate Chamber, Tuesday, June 26, 2013. Photo from Jobsanger.

The new Texas political stars are Sen. Wendy Davis and Sen. Leticia Van de Putte. Davis got the ball rolling by declaring she would filibuster the bill (which had to be approved by midnight, when the session ended, or it would die).

She got the floor about 11:15 a.m. and began her filibuster -- and then she held the floor for over 10 hours. She was helped by the other 11 Democratic senators who lobbed her "softball" questions to keep her filibuster growing, but the real work of the filibuster was on her capable shoulders -- and she performed admirably.

With only a couple of hours to go before midnight, the Republican majority was able to stop her by claiming for the third time that she was not being germane to the bill with her discourse. It was arguably not true, but truth or rules have never been very important to Texas Republicans. The other 11 Democratic senators stepped forward with a barrage of parliamentary maneuvers (points of order, parliamentary questions, etc.).

One of the most prominent of these senators who sprang to the defense of Sen. Davis was Sen. Van de Putte. And with only about 15 minutes until midnight, she challenged the Senate president by demanding to know, "At what point must a female senator raise her hand or her voice to be recognized over her male colleagues?" The crowd in the gallery began to applaud her, and that applause turned into more than 20 minutes of shouting and applauding that delayed a vote on the GOP bill.

With time running out, the GOP tried to hold their vote -- but as Democratic senators pointed out, the vote was not finished before midnight, and by Texas law, the session was over at midnight. This caused a big mess -- as Republicans claimed the bill was passed, since the vote started before midnight, and the Democrats claimed the bill was dead since the vote was not finished before midnight.

The official senate record backed Democrats, showing the bill was passed on 6/26 and not on 6/25 as required. The Republicans then tried to fix that by illegally altering the senate record (see below).

The top picture shows the original Senate log, and the bottom one shows the log after being altered by Republicans. The senators then argued among themselves for a while -- and at about 3 a.m. the Republicans backed down and admitted the bill had been passed after midnight, which means the bill was DEAD.

The governor will call another special session and most likely get the bill passed (even if they have to lock the public out and do it in secret). But for right now, the bill is dead. And the Republicans did nothing good for their image, since their shenanigans were observed by hundreds of thousands of Texans and other Americans.

I watched the proceedings on the Texas Tribune's live YouTube feed. More than 182,000 people watched on that stream, but that was just a portion of those watching the proceedings, since there were approximately 199 other live feeds -- not to mention all the traffic on social media like Twitter and Facebook.

And while the Republicans were humiliated, thousands of Texas Democrats (and others) were energized -- and Sen. Wendy Davis and Sen. Leticia Van de Putte were able to increase their political capital immensely. They are now both credible candidates for statewide office. And combined with the new statewide Democratic effort to register new voters, and the added impact of changing demographics, this means Democratic prospects in Texas are brighter than they have been in many years.

To put it bluntly, it was a great night for Texas Democrats and a terrible night for Texas Republicans.

[Amarillo resident Ted McLaughlin, a regular contributor to The Rag Blog, also posts at jobsanger. Read more articles by Ted McLaughlin on The Rag Blog.] 

Photos by Alan Pogue / The Rag Blog:

The Rag Blog

[+/-] Read More...

[+/-] Summary only...

Ted McLaughlin : The Never-Ending Fight Against the Plutocrats

Sample plutocrat: William Henry Vanderbilt (1821 - 1885). Famous quote: "The public be damned." From Famous Person Caricatures / TradeCard.com. Inset image below: Modern day robber baron David Koch. Caricature by DonkeyHotey.
The never-ending fight against the plutocrats

"The issue today is the same as it has been throughout all history, whether man shall be allowed to govern himself or be ruled by a small elite." -- Thomas Jefferson

By Ted McLaughlin / The Rag Blog / September 4, 2012

The quote by Thomas Jefferson above is just as valid today as it was a couple of hundred years ago. When he said it, the choice was between being ruled by royalty and their appointees or a rule by the people. The Revolutionary War ended the rule by royalty, but it did not end all of America's problems or firmly establish a lasting democracy in this country.

Jefferson knew that democracy was a never-ending fight, and that there would always be those wanting to seize power away from the people.

In the United States, those who have wanted to seize that power for their own benefit have mainly been the robber barons -- and their preferred method of doing that has simply been to buy that power (although they have never shirked from using violence, mainly through their surrogates in the political establishment and the police).

By the early twentieth century, these robber barons had nearly succeeded in destroying democracy and establishing rule by themselves -- a plutocracy.

The United States was saved from that effort at establishing a plutocracy (rule by the wealthy class) -- but it took the greatest economic disaster of the twentieth century to wake up voters and spur them to seize their country back from the robber barons -- the Great Depression.

The greed of the robber barons caused them to overreach, and that overreaching  caused the most serious depression the country had ever seen. Voters replaced all (or most) of the politicians that had been bought by the robber barons with politicians that had the benefit of ordinary Americans as their primary interest.

These politicians (Roosevelt Democrats) began to reestablish economic justice through a variety of measures like government job creation, higher taxes on the rich, Social Security, and sensible regulations on banking and investment. The robber barons (and their Republican lackeys) whined that the measures would destroy America, but they only destroyed the plutocracy and reestablished democracy -- and the country began to emerge from the plutocratic depression.

After World War II, the economy had fully recovered, and through new measures like the GI Bill and increased union power, the country prospered like never before. And this prosperity was further enhanced by the War on Poverty, Medicare and Medicaid, and the Civil Rights Acts. The country was well on its way to establishing a strong democracy with equal rights and economic justice for all citizens.

But the robber barons had not gone away -- their names had simply changed. And they wanted back the power they had lost. But they were smarter this time. They knew they had to create a message that large numbers of voters could be fooled into accepting, so they couched their nefarious agenda into innocent sounding messages like patriotism (accusing those who opposed them as unpatriotic), spreading democracy (using American military power to steal the resources of other countries), law and order (misusing the law to attack those who disagreed with them), pro-life (an excuse to attack the rights of women), returning to traditional values (the new code for racism), and defending Christianity (using religion to achieve their political and economic goals).

But perhaps the most nefarious of these new political messages was trickle-down economics. Through a concerted propaganda campaign, they convinced many people that the way to economic prosperity was to deregulate corporations and the financial industry, and cut taxes on the rich.

The idea was that by feeding ever larger amounts of money to the rich and the corporations, much of that money would trickle back down to ordinary American in the form of rising wages and new job creation. The truth is that it was simply a return to the economics of pre-Depression era America -- and it didn't work back then and doesn't work today.

The rising wealth of the corporations and the rich didn't raise wages for anyone but the rich -- who have seen their income rise by over 270% since the trickle-down economic theory was put into effect under Reagan, while the wages of ordinary workers have remained stagnant (and in fact, have actually lost much of their buying power).

Instead of raising wages or creating jobs, the rich just fattened their own bank accounts. And this had the same effect it did in the early twentieth century -- it threw the country into a serious recession (depression?) and threw millions of Americans out of work (which was exacerbated by corporate outsourcing, which continues unabated).

Now we stand at the same place our forebears did in the Great Depression -- on the edge of greater economic disaster and plutocratic rule. Will we reestablish economic justice and democratic rule, or will we give in to the robber barons this time? The answer is anything but certain.

Many Americans still buy the lie of trickle-down economic theory, or have fallen for the diversions created to fool them into voting against their own economic (and democratic) interests -- like defending religion (against a non-existent war), pro-life (for the fetus only), patriotism (putting a pink sticker on a vehicle and continuing wars that can't be won), low taxes (but only for the rich), and traditional values (opposition to rights for anyone but white men).

Will Americans vote for democracy and economic justice, or will they cement the power of the robber barons? We'll find out in November.

[Ted McLaughlin, a regular contributor to The Rag Blog, also posts at jobsanger. Read more articles by Ted McLaughlin on The Rag Blog.]

The Rag Blog

[+/-] Read More...

[+/-] Summary only...

Ted McLaughlin : Are We Moving Towards Single-Payer?

Photo by Glyn Lowe Photoworks / Flickr. Image from OtherWords.
The pressures moving the U.S. closer
to a single-payer health care system

There will be a huge pressure to reform Medicaid -- and the only way to reform it adequately is to make it a federally-administered program.

By Ted McLaughlin / The Rag Blog / July 3, 2012

It looks like the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) is here to stay. After last week's Supreme Court decision, the only way it can be overturned now is for the Republicans to win the White House and both houses of Congress in the coming election (which is very unlikely) -- and even then, they might find public pressure would prevent its repeal.

Right now, a slight majority of people don't like Obamacare. Some have projected this to mean that a majority of Americans would like to see it repealed. That is just not true. One recent poll showed that 79% of Americans like most of the reforms and don't want it all repealed.

The only part they're not crazy about is the individual mandate. But as the program kicks in fully in the next couple of years, people will begin to realize that the individual mandate only applies to between 2% and 5% of the population -- and the program will become more and more popular.

Another fact commonly overlooked is that among those who are against Obamacare, about 22% don't want it repealed but made stronger. These people would like to see a public option at a minimum (and really want a single-payer system like those in other developed countries). When the program was first passed, I was among those opposing it because it didn't go far enough. I was afraid that all it really did was to delay the United States from going to a single-payer health insurance system.

But after a lot of thinking about it, and a few facts coming to light, I'm starting to change my opinion. I now believe that Obamacare might actually hasten America's progress toward a single-payer system, instead of delaying it. That's because the program is responsible for creating (or increasing) three pressures on the health care system as a whole to move toward a single-payer system. These three pressures are:

1. Forcing private insurance companies to pay a bigger percentage of their premiums for real medical care.
2. The continuing decline in employer-based insurance coverage.
3. The refusal of many states to increase Medicaid coverage for the poor.

Let me take these in order. First, in the past the insurance companies have not been required to spend the money they get for real medical care. While government-run Medicare has an overhead expense of 3% to 4%, many of the private insurance companies were putting 30% to 40% of their premiums toward "overhead."

And the more they put into this area (and the less into medical costs for consumers), the more profit they had. This was a primary reason for the record-breaking profits those companies were showing.

Obamacare ended that. A private insurance company must now put at least 80% of its premium income toward actual medical costs of its consumers (and the giant companies must spend at least 85% on medical costs).

The companies tried to get around this by declaring some administrative costs as medical costs (like the money spent paying their salesmen to sell the policies), but the government didn't go for it. They demanded medical costs be actual medical costs (rather than hidden administrative costs). And if an insurance company fails to spend the proper percentage on medical costs, then they must refund a big enough part of premiums received to get them down to the proper percentage (and the first refunds are currently being issued).

While this still allows the insurance companies to make a decent profit, it has put a serious crimp in the outrageous profits they were making (by denying claims and raising premiums). Now if they raise premiums, they must also increase the amount they spend for medical costs (or wind up refunding the raise).

In other words, the large insurance companies no longer have a license to steal -- and they don't like that. Forbes Magazine reports that some insurance companies are already getting out and searching for other, more lucrative, ways to do business -- and this movement out of insurance to other things will probably just continue to grow.

Second, is the move away from employer-based insurance for workers. This started before Obamacare was created (or the recession hit). As the chart above shows, the percentage of Americans covered by employer-based insurance fell from 69.2% in 2000 to about 58.6% in 2010 -- and the trend continues to move downward. If 2010 had the same percentage of coverage as 2000, then 28 million more people would have employer-based insurance than currently have it.

The hope of the writers of Obama's reform program was that the law would stop this decline in employer-based insurance coverage (through tax breaks for businesses, creation of health insurance exchanges, and a penalty charged for companies that don't provide insurance). I think that's mostly wishful thinking. Any business with less than 50 workers will be exempt, which means there is no incentive for small businesses to provide insurance. And as medical costs (and therefore insurance premiums) rise, many other businesses may decide it is cheaper to pay the penalty than to provide insurance coverage.

And those companies choosing the penalty over insurance coverage will just be a short step away from approving of single-payer insurance (which would most likely be funded by employee/employer contributions just like Social Security), as they realize it would be cheaper for them than providing their employees with ever-rising private insurance.

Third, and perhaps the biggest pressure for single-payer insurance, is the Republican state governments refusing to institute the Medicaid reforms called for in the program. The red states in the map above (from ThinkProgress ) are those with Republican leadership. The 10 states in dark red have already said they will not adopt the Medicaid reforms to cover most of the poor (even though the federal government would pay all of the cost for three years and then pay 90% of the cost). And it is extremely likely that the lighter red states will soon follow suit.

That means many millions of Americans who thought they would be getting insurance coverage because of the reforms, will be denied it because the Republicans will just continue the current inadequate Medicaid programs. They will do this because they don't consider medical care to be a right, but only a privilege available to people who can afford it.

For them, their ideology is more important than the lives and health of many millions of their fellow citizens. And they can get away with this because the Supreme Court killed the provision that would have forced the states to reform Medicaid.

Now one of the primary reasons Obamacare was passed was that there are 50 million people in this country without any kind of medical insurance. Some of these will now be able to get private insurance because of the health insurance exchanges and government subsidies. But a large part of this 50 million (the poor and the working-poor) were meant to be covered through Medicaid.

If this doesn't happen, there will be a huge pressure to reform Medicaid -- and the only way to reform it adequately is to make it a federally-administered program (like Medicare). And the easiest way to do that is to let those making less than a certain salary qualify for Medicare (and do away with Medicaid).

This huge swell in Medicare, combined with decreasing employer-based insurance and insurance companies leaving the business, will bring great pressure to go to a government-run single-payer insurance system.

The experience of other countries has shown us that the money spent on medical care overall will then decrease (since we spend much more per capita than any single-payer country). It will also decrease premium costs for both individuals and businesses (since high overhead and huge profits will be eliminated).

The way I see it, Obamacare did not delay going to a single-payer system. In fact, it has probably created (or increased) the pressures propelling us to adopt a single-payer system much sooner. It has to happen. There is no other real solution to our current broken health care system. Obamacare made some improvements, but it didn't fix the broken system. But maybe it is pushing us much closer to the real solution.

[Ted McLaughlin, a regular contributor to The Rag Blog, also posts at jobsanger. Read more articles by Ted McLaughlin on The Rag Blog.]

The Rag Blog

[+/-] Read More...

[+/-] Summary only...

Ted McLaughlin : The GOP's Biggest Mistake

Mike Luckovich political cartoon from The Friends of Jake.
GOP's biggest mistake:
The anti-woman agenda

By Ted McLaughlin / The Rag Blog / April 3, 2012

I can understand some of the actions of Republicans, even though I vociferously disagree with them. I understand the racist policies of the party. They probably weren't going to get very many African-American or Hispanic votes anyway, and those policies play well to their base of white male voters (many of whom still harbor racist fantasies).

In fact, to my great shame as a white male, the Republicans can probably count on a significant majority of the white male vote.

And that is probably where things will still stand when the general election comes around in November. The Republicans will get a majority of the white male vote, and the Democrats will get an even larger share of the minority vote -- and the two groups will virtually cancel each other out. But there is another voting group that is even larger than white males or minorities -- the women of America.

And if the Republicans want to have a chance of winning in November, they must split the women's vote with the Democrats. If they can get around 50% of the women's vote, they stand a very good chance of winning (both the White House and Congress). This is no secret. Anyone with even a rudimentary knowledge of American politics can easily figure this out. That's why it's so difficult to understand the recent actions of elected Republican officials (both on the state and federal level).

In recent years, the Republicans have pushed an anti-woman agenda. They have opposed equal pay for women in the workplace. They have pushed a religious agenda that says women should be subordinate to men. And they have opposed the right of women to have control over their own bodies. This has resulted in a small majority of women supporting the Democratic Party, but it has not been a big enough majority to deny Republicans a chance of winning.

But recently the Republicans have doubled-down on their anti-woman actions. They have opposed the extension of the Violence Against Women Act, which protects women against domestic violence. They claim their opposition is due to the law being widened to include domestic violence among same-sex couples and among undocumented immigrants. Even if that is true (and their position ideologically pure), the opposition will do nothing except increase the incidence of domestic violence against women.

They have also made it their party's position to oppose the free and easy access to contraception for all American women. They have tried to cloak this opposition to contraceptive access as a religious argument. It is not. It is just one more attempt to keep women in a second-class status in this country -- barefoot and pregnant and in the kitchen.

There is no doubt that easy access to contraception has been one of the most important developments in women's fight for equality in the United States -- second only to women securing the right to vote. It has given women the ability to have control over their entire lives, and the ability to plan how those lives will unfold. And women know this. Between 95% and 99% of all American women are either using, or have used, contraception (regardless of their religious affiliation).

All the Republicans have done with these new attacks on women is to emphasize their opposition to the equality of women in this society. It is, in effect, a "war on women." And more women than ever are beginning to realize this.

A new Pew Research Center survey shows that women are abandoning the Republican Party in droves. In the 2008 election, Barack Obama got 56% of the women's vote (about a 12% gap between Obama and McCain). That was significant, and helped the president to roll to an easy victory. But he could easily do much better among women this year. Look at the current numbers for women voters:

Obama...............58%
Romney...............38%

That's a 20% gap for the president.


Obama...............61%
Santorum...............35%

That's a 26% gap for the president.

And it's not just the president who is benefiting from the anti-woman attitude of the GOP. The Democratic Party is doing well also. About 52% of women now identify themselves as Democrats (or leaning Democratic), while only 43% say they are Republicans (or lean toward Republicans). That's a 9% gap and growing. The gap is larger among single women than married women, but Democrats lead among both groups. Here are those numbers:


Married Women

Democrat...............48%
Republican...............45%


Single Women

Democrat...............62%
Republican...............31%

The Republicans didn't just shoot themselves in the foot with their recent anti-woman actions. They've filled both feet with bullet holes. Can they turn this around before election day? It's very doubtful. It would require they abandon the positions they have taken, and that is something the right-wing ideologues running the party are loath to do. Even if they did, I doubt they could convince the women they've angered that their change was real (and not just to win an election).

The Republicans have made a serious mistake in waging their war on women. Maybe their biggest mistake ever.

[Ted McLaughlin also posts at jobsanger. Read more articles by Ted McLaughlin on The Rag Blog.]

The Rag Blog

[+/-] Read More...

[+/-] Summary only...

Ted McLaughlin : Recovery is a Myth For Most Americans

Chart from Reuters / ThinkProgress.
For most Americans:
The recovery is a myth

By Ted McLaughlin / The Rag Blog / March 20, 2012

The Great Depression of the 1930's has a lot in common with the current Great Recession, which poses the question of why the economy is not recovering today the same way it did from the Great Depression.

As the chart above shows, the period from 1933 through 1934 showed an 8.8% income growth that was enjoyed by the bottom 90% of Americans. But in the "recovery" of 2009 through 2010, the bottom 90% of Americans actually dropped another 0.4% in income while the top 0.01% (the richest Americans) gained 21.5%. Why is the current recovery benefiting only the super-rich?

It all boils down to how the government has acted in response to it. In 1932, the country elected a huge majority of Democrats to Congress and put Democrat Franklin Roosevelt in the White House. The Democrats then went to work creating jobs. They created many jobs through government programs like the Works Project Administration (WPA) and the Civilian Conservation Corp (CCC), and taxed the rich to pay for it. These organizations went to work building America up, and we still enjoy many of the projects they completed.

But this also did something else besides putting some people in government jobs. It also increased the money flowing through the economy (because the people with those jobs now had money to spend). And all that new spending boosted the small businesses around the country, and as their business improved they also began to hire workers. The actions by those Democrats resulted in a rising economic tide that helped most Americans.

But Americans are not good at learning from history, so when the Great Recession struck in 2008 the country's leaders did exactly the opposite of what the government had done to cure the Great Depression. They did this because the Democrats did not have a big enough majority to override Republican obstructionism. In 2009 and 2010, the Republicans in the Senate misused the filibuster rule to block any efforts the Democrats made to create large numbers of jobs.

The Republicans then shrunk the economy by laying off massive amounts of government workers (on both the state and federal level), cutting social programs severely, encouraging the export of American jobs, and extending the Bush tax cuts for the rich. And to their great shame, too many Democrats went along with this. This shrinking of the amount of money flowing through the economy also had the effect of hurting small businesses, so they also laid off workers.

After the 2010 elections, the Republicans had control of the House of Representatives so the obstructionism shifted from the Senate to the House. But the Republican policies (to block help for ordinary Americans while giving more to the rich) are still having the same effect they did in 2009 and 2010 -- to keep the recession going for most Americans while only the richest Americans enjoy a "recovery."

There is a solution -- vote as many Republicans out of office as possible, and replace them with progressives. The Republicans know they have no solutions for the economic recovery of most Americans -- they just don't care as long as they can keep the money flowing to their rich Wall Street and corporate buddies.

That's why they are trying to change the political focus from the economy to social issues (like abortion, contraception, immigration, race, same-sex marriage, etc.). If the Republicans are successful in changing the political agenda, then we can expect the economic pain to last many years longer for most Americans.

[Ted McLaughlin also posts at jobsanger. Read more articles by Ted McLaughlin on The Rag Blog.]

The Rag Blog

[+/-] Read More...

[+/-] Summary only...

Ted McLaughlin : Dems are Better for the Stock Market

Chart from Bloomberg Businessweek.
Against conventional wisdom:
Stock market does
better under Democrats

By Ted McLaughlin / The Rag Blog / February 27, 2012

The Republicans claim to be the party that best benefits Big Business and Wall Street. And Wall Street (along with the corporate moguls of Big Business) seems to have bought into that idea -- so much so that they are donating millions of dollars to super PACs supporting Republican candidates.

In January, the Republican super PACs revealed they had received about $47 million -- much of it from the finance and investment industry (Wall Street). From these numbers, it is quite obvious that Wall Street believes it would be best served by returning a Republican to the White House.

But this conventional wisdom that says the stock market is best served by having a Republican in the White House is simply not true. And it's not just a little bit untrue, it's a whole lot untrue. Bloomberg News took a look at how the stock market has performed under both Republican and Democratic presidents. What they found was that the stock market performed much better under Democratic presidents. They looked at the last 50 years, since the presidency of John Kennedy -- and this is what they found:

• The sum of $1,000 "invested in a hypothetical fund that tracks the Standard & Poor's 500 index only when Democrats are in the White House would have been worth $10,920" just a few days ago. That's a gain of about 992% in 23 years.
• That same $1,000 "invested in a fund that followed the S&P 500 under Republican presidents... would have grown to $2,087 on the day George W. Bush left office." That's a gain of about 109% in 28 years.
• Even adding in the presidency of Dwight Eisenhower doesn't bring the Republicans near the gain experienced under Democrats. That would increase the return under Republicans to $4,796. That's a gain of about 380% in 36 years -- far less than half of the gain under Democrats in only 23 years
• The annualized return for the 23 years under Democratic presidents is about 11%.
• If that $1,000 were invested in a fund following the Dow Jones Industrial Average (instead of the S&P 500), the return under Democratic presidents would be $7,550. That's a gain of about 655% over the 23 years.
• If that $1,000 were invested in a fund following the Dow Jones Industrial Average under Republican presidents, the return would be $2,716. That's a gain of about 172% over the 28 years.

This blows conventional thinking out of the water. We have always been told that the Democrats were better for the poor and working classes, while the Republicans were better for the investor class. But these figures show that Democratic administrations are better for everyone -- including the rich.

So why do the Wall Street bankers favor the Republicans? Because they aren't as bright as many think they are. They are only thinking about tax policy -- not in what is better for them in the long run. They think the lower taxes for the rich touted by Republicans would result in them having more money than under Democratic presidents with the current tax rate. But is that true?

Let's examine the figures using the current 35% top tax rate for Democratic administrations and a 28% tax rate (proposed by Romney) for Republican administrations, and see which would be best:

• The S&P 500 figure under Democrats had a gain of $9,920. Taxed at a maximum rate of 35%, this would leave the investor with $6448 after taxes.
• The S&P 500 figure under Republicans had a gain of $1,087. Taxed at the smaller rate of 28% this would leave the investor with $783 after taxes.
• The DJIA figure under Democrats had a gain of $6,550. Taxed at a rate of 35% this would leave the investor with $4,257.50 after taxes.
• The DJIA figure under Republicans had a gain of $1,716. Taxed at the smaller rate of 28% this would leave the investor with $1,235.52 after taxes.

As is easily apparent, Wall Street investors would be much better off with a Democrat in the White House -- even if they had to pay a higher tax rate. They would still have more money in their bank accounts. And this would be true even if the Democrats eliminated the 15% capital gains tax rate (the rate that current stock gains would be taxed at).

The fact is that all classes in our society would be better off financially with Democrats in the White House -- whether poor, rich, or somewhere in between. That leads me to wonder -- why would anyone vote Republican?

[Ted McLaughlin also posts at jobsanger. Read more articles by Ted McLaughlin on The Rag Blog.]

The Rag Blog

[+/-] Read More...

[+/-] Summary only...

Ted McLaughlin : Can the Republicans Kiss and Make Up?

And the losers are (clockwise, from upper left): Rick Santorum, Newt Gingrich, Mitt Romney, Ron Paul, and Jon Huntsman (who dropped out of the race on Jan. 16). Caricature by DonkeyHotey / Wikimedia Commons.
A tough primary season:
Republican Party suicide?

By Ted McLaughlin / The Rag Blog / February 1, 2012

"I spent much of my academic career telling reporters, 'Relax, this is not the most negative campaign ever.' Well, this IS the most negative campaign ever." -- Ken Goldstein, Campaign Media Analysis Group

Politics has always been a rather brutal undertaking, and never more than in a general election or a party primary. The stakes are high and the loser goes home while the winner assumes a lot of power -- or in the case of a primary, the right to run for that power position.

Even the tamest of primary campaigns can rightfully be compared to a bare-knuckles brawl, where even the winner comes out bloodied (and must heal his campaign before taking on his opponent in the general election).

But this year the Republicans have turned that bare-knuckles fight into a gutter fight with knives and other weapons, and some are now wondering whether the eventual winner (and possibly even the party itself) might be mortally wounded when it is all over. Americans are used to negative campaigning, but the Republicans seem to have kicked that negativity up a few notches this year.

Just listen to the words of Ken Goldstein, president of Campaign Media Analysis Group (CMAG), who says, "I spent much of my academic career telling reporters, 'Relax, this is not the most negative campaign ever.' Well, this IS the most negative campaign ever." And he has the facts to back up that statement. Consider the following facts gathered from just the Florida campaign:

• $19.9 million dollars were spent on ads in Florida -- $15.9 million for Romney and $4 million for Gingrich. In 2008, John McCain spent only $11 million in his entire 50-state primary campaign.
• A total of 11,586 TV spots were aired in Florida between January 23rd and 29th, with 10,633 (91.8%) of those being negative and 953 (8.2%) being positive.
• The Romney campaign ran 3,276 ads and 99% of them were negative. The Gingrich campaign ran 1,012 ads and 95% of them were negative.
• The Romney super PAC ran 4,969 ads and 100% of them were negative. The Gingrich super-PAC ran 1,893 ads and 53% of them were negative.
• The Florida ads broke down this way -- 68% were anti-Gingrich, 23% were anti-Romney, 9% were pro-Gingrich, and less than 0.1% were pro-Romney.

To me, that sounds like the very definition of a negative campaign. And it's already having an effect beyond the borders of Florida. While the negative ads were run within the state, they were reported by the media all across the country. And it all seems to be having a negative effect on the Republican Party -- even among the GOP faithful.

A new survey by the prestigious Pew Research Center shows that now a majority of Republicans believe their field of presidential hopefuls is only fair/poor. This is the first time in that survey that more than 50% have believed that.

As late as December of 2011, only 44% of Republicans thought their presidential field was only fair/poor, while 51% believed the field was good/excellent. Those numbers have now flipped. Now 52% of Republicans believe their field of candidates are fair/poor, while only 46% believe that field in good/excellent.

Republicans seem to be losing faith in their presidential candidates, and that is not good for their hopes of winning in November. At this point in 2008, about 68% of Republicans rated their field of candidates as good/excellent.

The fact is that there is now a significant split in the Republican Party -- a split between the teabagger/evangelical/ultra-right-wingers and the establishment/moderate-conservatives. And the two groups don't like each other at all.

The race between Romney and Gingrich is more than just a contest between those two men. It is a proxy fight for control of the party going into the future -- and it is a dirty no-holds-barred proxy fight.

Can these two disparate elements in the Republican Party kiss and make up after the primaries are over? They will try, but whether that effort will be successful is getting more doubtful every day -- especially with Romney's big victory in Florida. It wouldn't take too many Republicans to go over to a third party or just stay at home on election day, to have a disastrous effect for the Republicans' down-ballot on election day.

And worse yet for Republicans is that there is no reason to believe these party divisions won't be just as bad two or four years from now. What we are now witnessing may be more than just a very negative campaign. We could be watching the slow suicide of a once-respected (remember Abe Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt) political party.

[Ted McLaughlin also posts at jobsanger. Read more articles by Ted McLaughlin on The Rag Blog.]

The Rag Blog

[+/-] Read More...

[+/-] Summary only...

Ted McLaughlin : Class Conflict and the Disappearance of the Middle Class

Class conflict rises
as middle class disappears

The growing inequality of wealth and income in this country has reached a point where it is now causing a conflict between the rich (the 1%) and the vast majority of Americans.

By Ted McLaughlin / The Rag Blog / January 16, 2012

The graphic above (from Think Progress) shows what has been happening to the American middle class in the last 40 years. To put it bluntly, it is disappearing. While the rich continue to get much richer (with their income growing by over 240% since 1980), the loss of millions of jobs and the stagnant non-growth of wages for most Americans has shrunk the middle class and thrown many more Americans into working class status (if they're lucky) or even worse, into abject poverty.

The Republican "trickle-down" economic policies, instituted by Ronald Reagan and accelerated by George W. Bush, deregulated financial institutions and encouraged Wall Street to play dangerous games with investor funds -- culminating in the loss of trillions of dollars, many millions of jobs, and the start of the most serious recession since the Great Depression. In addition, these same politicians encouraged corporations to outsource millions more American jobs by rewarding them with tax breaks.

The idea was that when the rich and corporations had a lot of money they would use that money to create jobs and the growing wealth would be shared by everyone. It didn't work, because the wealthy aren't the real job creators -- no matter how much money they have. This is clearly illustrated by our current situation -- where the rich have a larger share of the country's wealth and income since before the Great Depression and American corporations are sitting on trillions of dollars in cash. And yet only a pitiful handful of jobs are being created.

There is only one thing that creates jobs -- demand for goods and services. When the working and middle classes have money to spend demand is created, and jobs are created to meet that demand -- and all classes in society benefit (including the rich). But Republican policies have taken money from the working and middle classes and given it to the rich. Since the mass of our society no longer has much money to spend, demand is depressed and the recession continues with little or no job creation.

The chairman of the President's Council of Economic Advisors, Alan Krueger, says the shift in income over the last three decades is the equivalent of moving $1.1 trillion from the 99% to the 1% every single year of those three decades. Is it any wonder that the middle class is disappearing, and we look more like a banana republic every day?

Class distinctions were not important when our economy was working for everyone. But in this current economy, where the rich get richer and everyone else becomes poorer, class is again becoming an issue. It's become an issue because the gap between the "haves" and "have-nots" is huge, and growing larger all the time.

The Republicans and the 1% call this "class warfare," but the truth is that the class war has been going on for the last 30 years -- and it has been waged by the rich against the rest of America. But Americans are finally waking to realize what has been done to them over the last three decades by the rich (and their Republican lackeys).

A recent survey by the Pew Research Center shows that a full two thirds of the population (66%) now believe there are "strong" or "very strong" class conflicts between the rich and the poor. That's a jump of 19% over just two years ago, in 2009, when only 47% believed that. And this increased belief in this strong class conflict cuts across all ethnic, political, income, age, and education demographics. In the following list, I give the current percentage who believe this (followed by the 2009 percentage in parentheses):

Total population...............66% (47%)

Whites...............65% (43%)
African-Americans...............74% (66%)
Hispanics...............61% (55%)

Republicans...............55% (38%)
Democrats...............73% (55%)
Independents...............68% (45%)

Less than $20k...............64% (47%)
$20k to $40k...............66% (46%)
$40k to $75k...............71% (47%)
Over $75k...............67% (49%)

Age 18 to 34...............71% (54%)
Age 35 to 49...............64% (48%)
Age 50 to 64...............67% (45%)
Over age 65...............55% (36%)

College grad...............66% (48%)
Some college...............70% (50%)
High school or less...............64% (44%)

The growing inequality of wealth and income in this country has reached a point where it is now causing a conflict between the rich (the 1%) and the vast majority of Americans. And it has also caused an erosion of the American dream.

Many no longer believe the old canard that anyone can get rich in America because America has a vibrant class mobility. About 72% of those who say there is a strong class conflict, also say the rich got that way either because they were born into it or because they knew the right people -- not because they earned it by working for it.

The rich, through their Republican cohorts, may have started the class war back in 1980, but the rest of America is waking up and starting to fight back. It will be a long and tough fight though, because the rich and the corporations own far too many members of Congress. But that fight can be won -- it must be won if democracy is to survive in America.

[Ted McLaughlin also posts at jobsanger. Read more articles by Ted McLaughlin on The Rag Blog.]

The Rag Blog

[+/-] Read More...

[+/-] Summary only...

Ted McLaughlin : Are We Marching to War With Iran?

Dogs of war. Graphic from Press TV.
Dogs are barking:
Are we marching to war with Iran?

By Ted McLaughlin / The Rag Blog / January 9, 2012

The animosity between the United States and Iran has a longer history than most Americans realize. Before 1950, most of the oil assets of that country were owned by Western powers (mainly the United Kingdom and the United States).

The countries paid the Shah (King) of Iran for the right to take Iran's oil, but most of those funds went into the Shah's many bank accounts and very little was ever actually used for the benefit of the people of Iran. That changed for a short while in 1951.

It was in that year that the Iranian Majlis (parliament) put a socialist prime minister in power, Mohammad Mossadegh. Mossadegh nationalized the country's oil and proposed using oil revenues to help the people of Iran. This created a power struggle between the Shah and Mossadegh, and the Shah fled the country. This angered the United States (and United Kingdom). How dare these people try to own and control their own resources, and interfere with the profits of Western oil companies!

In 1953, the American CIA overthrew Prime Minister Mossadegh, and reinstalled the Shah as the absolute ruler of Iran. The Shah (Mohammed Reza Pahlavi) then ruled as an even more brutal dictator, using his SAVAK (secret police) to take care of any political opponents. He was able to retain his power for over 20 years, but was hated by the people and viewed as a puppet of the United States.

In the late seventies, the people rose up against the Shah. They were led by Muslim clerics, especially Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, and in early 1979 they seized power and the Shah fled the country. An elected government was set up, but most real power lay with the religious leaders (and still does).

This new government was understandably anti-American, since it was the United States that had overthrown their elected government and put the Shah back on the throne (and then supported him until his overthrow).

This anger at America resulted in the destruction of the American embassy and the taking of embassy employees as hostages. This was a ridiculous and unnecessary action, and is still used by the U.S. to convince others the government in Iran cannot be trusted. The employees were eventually released in January of 1981, but the stage had been set for the current bad relations between the two countries.

And since 1981 the tension between Iran and the United States has only grown worse -- and neither seems ready to institute talks to restore diplomatic relations and lessen that tension. The latest charge from the United States is that Iran is building a nuclear weapon. There is no evidence of this, but it has not stopped politicians from making the accusations and the American media from reporting the same.

While it is true that Iran is developing nuclear power plants to supply energy to its people, and is purifying its own uranium (since sanctions have cut off their ability to buy it from other countries), there is no evidence at all that they have started to develop a military application for this nuclear power or have attempted to build a bomb.

Even the International Atomic Energy Agency admits this is true. All they have said is that the Iranians might soon have the capability to do that -- not that they are doing it or will do it in the future. The idea that Iran is building a nuclear weapon resides only in the fevered imaginations of fear-mongering politicians.

But the United States and other countries have used this fear to attack Iran with sanctions, the most recent of which were just imposed. The latest sanctions say any country or company that does business with Iran cannot have access to the financial services of the United States.

The Iranians see this as an attempt to choke off the sale of their oil, upon which they depend. And they are right -- that is exactly what the U.S. is trying to do. They want to force regime change in Iran by bankrupting the country.

And the Iranians have overreacted to this move. They have now threatened to block the Strait of Hormuz, through which about 16% of the world's oil supply flows. And they recently held naval maneuvers in that area to emphasize that point.

These actions have brought both countries to the brink of war -- and neither seems willing to back down, or even discuss reducing tensions. It seems like the leaders of both countries want war, because both are escalating the rhetoric and trying to justify their own positions.

The crazy thing about this is that neither country can afford a war. It would take the United States only a couple of weeks to use their air power to destroy Iran's infrastructure. But although the U.S. could seriously damage Iran, it could not win by air attacks alone. And the U.S. simply doesn't have the ground strength for another prolonged ground war (and a ground war in Iran would be even worse than what we experienced in Iraq, and are still experiencing in Afghanistan).

There are some who believe the war with Iran has already started, and there is some evidence for that view. The Iranians recently shot down a U.S. drone that had invaded Iranian airspace, and several U.S. rockets have landed in an Iranian border area, killing several people.

The United States says the rocket attacks were accidental, but how are we to know? Have the first shots in the coming war with Iran already been fired?

There is still time to back away from the brink, but it would take the people of both countries demanding a stop to the hostilities and warlike rhetoric. And so far, that is not happening. The people of Iran are convinced the U.S. wants to destroy them, and the people of the U.S. are convinced Iran is building a bomb to attack them. Truth has become a victim of fear in both countries.

I wish it wasn't true, but I think there will be a war with Iran. And we may already be a lot closer to that war than anyone realizes.

[Ted McLaughlin also posts at jobsanger. Read more articles by Ted McLaughlin on The Rag Blog.]

The Rag Blog

[+/-] Read More...

[+/-] Summary only...

Ted McLaughlin : It's Everyone's Fight

Typical 99% parasite. Image from Jobsanger.

CLICK ON IMAGE TO ENLARGE

It's everyone's fight

'The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and for government to gain ground.' -- Thomas Jefferson

By Ted McLaughlin / The Rag Blog/ December 6, 2011

The quote at the bottom of the picture above shows what the right wing would like for Americans to believe -- that the Occupy Wall Street movement is nothing more than a few bored young people, parasites with meaningless lives who have contributed nothing to America. But this picture shows that argument is a pathetic lie (designed to protect the 1% and the failed Republican economic policy).

This gentleman has contributed much to his country. As a World War II veteran, he put his life on the line for his fellow citizens -- to defend freedom for not only his generation, but also for all the generations that followed.

And I suspect that he has worked hard all his life to support his family and contribute to our economy. He certainly doesn't look like a "trust fund baby." And he's not the only older American who has joined in the protests. There are many -- they may not be camping out with the younger folks, but they are there for the marches and demonstrations.

For many of these older demonstrators -- even if they and their younger cohorts are able to finally affect the change that is needed in this country -- that change will probably not benefit them much. That is not why they are there. They are there because they love their country and they want to protect the constitutional rights for those who come after them. And they want some economic justice for their children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

These people know something that far too many Americans seem to have forgotten -- that rights, even constitutional rights, must be fought for continuously, or they will disappear. It is simply the nature of ALL governments to assume as much power as they can -- and this is true even of rather benign democratic forms of government. Every form of government will slowly eat away at the rights of its citizens if allowed to do so. As Thomas Jefferson so wisely told us, "The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and for government to gain ground."

These governments always have a seemingly justifiable reason for eroding the rights of citizens -- the most popular being that it is necessary to defend the country, or to maintain law and order, or to please some god.

A perfect example of this was the Bush administration's imposition of the Patriot Act. They said it was needed to prevent another 9/11 disaster. But 9/11 did not happen because of a lack of intelligence gathered -- the plans were known before the incident happened.

9/11 happened because of incompetent leadership that did not take the proper precautions after learning of the plan to attack America. And preventing another 9/11 was just an excuse government used to seize a few more of the people's rights.

And now we have the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations. These protests were started to point out the economic injustices of our present society. The deck has been stacked in favor of the richest Americans (because they own far too many members of Congress) and this has resulted in a serious recession and the loss of millions of jobs -- not to mention a vast gulf in wealth and income between the richest Americans and the rest of America. And much of America has responded favorably to these demonstrations, because they recognize that change must come.

In fact, the demonstrations have been so popular and widespread (blanketing the nation) that the 1% and their government lackeys are beginning to get scared. They want to stop the movement before it grows large enough to actually affect the needed change.

This is normal, as no group in power has willingly given up any of their power or economic advantage. The sad part is that, like past governments here and around the world, they are willing to deny the rights of the people in an attempt to hold on to their power and advantages.

It is written in the United States Constitution that the people of this country have certain rights, and among these are the right to free speech, the right to peaceably assemble, and the right to redress the government for their grievances. The Occupy Wall Street movement is simply trying to exercise those rights in its quest for economic justice. And the authorities are trying to deny them those rights -- often through the use of violence.

The stakes were already high, as they will be in any quest for economic justice. But now those stakes have been heightened even more. It has now become a fight to either keep or cede to the government the basic rights given citizens by the Constitution. Whatever anyone might think of Occupy Wall Street's goals, it is now imperative for all Americans to step up and demand that our constitutional rights be respected and obeyed by the government.

These rights have always been guaranteed to the rich and powerful but are often denied to those without political power. Now it is time for the Americans of this generation to fight for those rights to be extended to every citizen, and that fight can only be won if everyone becomes involved -- regardless of age, sex, race, color, or national origin. It is everybody's fight, and it is too important a fight to lose.

It is not good enough for those rights to be written in the Constitution. Government must be forced to honor those rights, or they mean nothing.

[Ted McLaughlin also posts at jobsanger. Read more articles by Ted McLaughlin on The Rag Blog.]

Source /

The Rag Blog

[+/-] Read More...

[+/-] Summary only...

Ted McLaughlin : Congressional Insider Trading is a Crime! Or Should Be...

Image from Dallas News.
There oughta be a law:
Stop Congressional 'insider trading'

By Ted McLaughlin / The Rag Blog/ November 26, 2001

Last week it was revealed that members of Congress regularly do something that, if done by other Americans, would be considered a criminal act. It is "insider trading." This is when someone uses information not available to the general public to make trades in the stock market, thereby gaining an unfair advantage in the market.

An example of this would be when a corporate insider knows something will soon happen that will affect the market price of that company's stock. It would be illegal for him/her to use that knowledge to buy or sell that company's stock until that information is released publicly.

But the members of Congress and their aides routinely have that kind of information available to them (such as the knowledge that a new law or regulation will soon be imposed that will significantly affect a certain industry, or the knowledge that a lucrative government contract will soon be given to a certain corporation).

While it would be illegal for an American citizen to use this secret information to enrich themselves by buying or selling stock, that illegality does not extend to members of Congress or their aides. And many members of Congress and their employees (of both political parties) have used "insider trading" to fill their own personal bank accounts with cold hard cash (and lots of it).

Of course this isn't the only example of Congress giving themselves perks that ordinary Americans don't enjoy. How many ordinary workers do you know that can vote themselves a raise without permission of their bosses, even in the midst of a recession? Congress can, and they don't seem to care what their bosses (the people of this country) think about it. But in spite of their usual arrogance, this insider trading story seems to have embarrassed at least some members of Congress.

Rep. Tim Walz (D-Minnesota) and Rep. Louise Slaughter (D-New York) have introduced a new bill in the House of Representatives. It is called the "Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge Act (STOCK Act), and it would ban members of Congress or their aides from buying or selling stocks or commodities if they have "material nonpublic information" that relates to a company or commodity. The bill would eliminate the insider trading advantage that Congress currently enjoys over all other Americans.

But while the bill makes a lot of sense and would be supported by a large majority of Americans, don't start celebrating its passage yet. For a lot of the members of Congress this is akin to killing the goose that lays the golden eggs, and you can bet that many of them will fight tooth-and-nail to kill this bill. In fact, they are already coming up with reasons why the bill "wouldn't work," and might even be a bad idea.

These naysayers tell us that it would be very hard to prove that a member of Congress or their aides had used insider information in making trades. And they say that Congress might just make many more things secret from the public to cover their tracks after making insider trades.

These are actually fairly good arguments. We already know that many Wall Street executives engage in insider trading but are rarely caught, and authorities would be even more reluctant to make an accusation against a member of Congress. And the government already keeps too many things secret that should be public knowledge.

But even if both of those things are true, they are nothing more than excuses for failing to address the problem. Insider trading is wrong and should be outlawed no matter how hard it is to prove. And it is just as wrong for Congress as it is for everyone else.

While not all insider trades are caught, some are and that acts as a deterrent to others who would consider it. As for Congress trying to cover their illegal acts with government secrecy, there are ways to expose that (remember WikiLeaks?).

The truth is that there is an easy way to overcome both of those arguments. Just amend the STOCK Act to outlaw all trading of stocks and commodities by members of Congress and their aides and immediate family members (whether insider trading is used or not).

I know there will be some that will say this would be unfair, and that members of Congress should have the right to make money by honest trading just like other Americans. I disagree.

These men and women were not sent to Congress to make themselves rich. They were sent there because they told the voters they wanted to serve their country, and they are well-paid for that service. A member of Congress is paid nearly $170,000 a year (plus expenses, perks, and benefits). The salary alone is three times the average wage of the bottom 99% of Americans.

If this is not sufficient remuneration for their service to their country, then I question if their running for office was really a desire to serve -- and they should resign (and then they could trade to their hearts desire).

Government service should not be the path to riches, and for millions of government workers at all levels it isn't. They work for salaries lower than they could get in private industry because they have a desire to serve their country and their fellow citizens -- and they retire on a modest income after that life of service. Why should it be different for members of Congress (or their aides)?

[Ted McLaughlin also posts at jobsanger. Read more articles by Ted McLaughlin on The Rag Blog.]

The Rag Blog

[+/-] Read More...

[+/-] Summary only...

Ted McLaughlin : Playing the Debt Blame Game

Chart from brillig.com.
With forgetful elephants...
Playing the debt blame game

By Ted McLaughlin / The Rag Blog / November 20, 2011

The Treasury Department admitted this week that the national debt of this country has, for the first time, topped $15 trillion. That's an incredibly large figure, and just about equals the entire Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of the country for one year. And the Republicans are trying to blame one person for the entire debt -- President Obama. They act like they had nothing to do with creating any of that debt.

Obviously the old canard about elephants never forgetting is not true -- at least for political elephants. The GOP elephants have had to forget the economic history of the last 30 years to arrive at their ludicrous conclusion.

Let's take a look at the history of the national debt. First of all, the fact that some national debt exists is not necessarily a bad thing. In fact, there has never been a time in this country's history when there was not some level of national debt -- from the presidency of George Washington to the present -- and yet the nation and it's citizens have prospered.

As the chart above shows, the national debt reached about $2.5 trillion during World War II, which was understandable since large sums of money had to be spent to arm ourselves and our allies and fight the war. And the national debt stayed around or just below $2 trillion through the next seven presidencies (Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, and Carter). And generally, the economy was very good during this stretch -- both for workers and entrepreneurs.

Then Ronald Reagan was elected president and things changed. He tossed out the Keynesian economics followed by previous presidents and instituted a supply-side "trickle-down" theory of economics. This trickle-down economics favored the rich, and the gap in wealth and income between the rich and the rest of America began to widen -- and the national debt began to grow much larger.

By the time Reagan left office, he had increased the national debt from the $2 trillion he had inherited to nearly $4 trillion. George Bush I continued the trickle-down policies and grew the national debt to $5 trillion.

After assuming office, it took Bill Clinton a few years to bring the deficit under control. But by the time he left office, the nation was actually enjoying a surplus each year (of a little more than $200 million) and the national debt was starting to be paid down. He left the next president with a national debt of about $5.6 trillion and a small yearly surplus.

Then George Bush II was elected president, and he quickly kicked Reagan's trickle-down economics into high gear. This created a deficit and started to balloon the national debt. He instituted huge tax cuts for the rich (which added about $400 billion a year to the deficit and national debt), increased military spending (adding about $180 billion a year to the deficit and national debt), and started two unnecessary wars (adding more than $100 billion a year to the deficit and national debt) among other things.

By the time Bush left office at the end of 2008, the gap in wealth and income between the rich and the rest of America was the biggest it had been since the 1920's -- and the national debt stood at about $10 trillion. And the nation was thrown into a serious recession that cost many millions of jobs. The economy was a mess and Bush had laid the groundwork for the deficit and national debt to continue climbing.

But even though President Obama inherited an economy that was a horrible mess, he cannot be completely absolved from any part in further increasing both the deficit and the national debt. That's because he continued many of Bush's worst mistakes. He didn't end the wars, he increased the military budgets more, and he extended the Bush tax cuts for the rich. If he had stopped all of those things, the national debt would not stand at over $15 trillion today -- but he didn't.

So now the Republicans want to blame President Obama for the deficit. But that is hogwash. The dirtiest hands are those of Republicans. Obama's sins are not of commission, but omission (for not stopping the trickle-down madness initiated by the Republicans). But regardless of who is to blame, the fact is that we have a national debt of $15 trillion.

What can we do about it? Republicans tell us that it can be controlled by doing nothing but making cuts to education and social programs and Medicare. That's ridiculous. Even completely eliminating all of those would not pay off the national debt.

They also want to cut Social Security benefits (or abolish or privatize it). That's also ridiculous. Social Security did not cause even one penny of the deficit or the national debt. They just want to get rid of it because they've never liked it.

So, what can be done to control the deficit and pay down the national debt to a reasonable level? There are some sensible solutions. Here's what I would suggest:

• Stop both foreign wars. They are accomplishing nothing except to bleed our national treasury.
• Make serious cuts to the military budget. The military budget accounts for more than 54% of all government discretionary spending, and there are many cuts that could be made (waste, unworkable and expensive programs, closing of foreign bases, etc.). In fact, we could cut the military budget in half and still be spending several times as much as any other country in the world is spending.
• Let the Bush tax cuts expire. This is a $400 billion a year drain on the budget that we can no longer afford.
• Abolish the special 15% tax on capital gains. Then tax capital gains at the same rate that all other income is taxed at. Income is income, and the income of the rich should not be taxed at a lower rate than the income of everyone else.
• Establish a small tax on Wall Street trading of stocks and other financial instruments.
• Continue the estate tax, and consider lowering it to include estates of only one or two million dollars.

That's where I would start. Maybe you have some other suggestions. But one thing I don't believe should be done in the middle of this recession is to cut social programs or education. The social programs are the only thing keeping millions of Americans' heads above water, and education is the only way for millions more to better themselves.

The Republicans like to say we are passing our debt on to our children and grandchildren. That will only be true if we fail to act right now.

[Ted McLaughlin also posts at jobsanger. Read more articles by Ted McLaughlin on The Rag Blog.]

The Rag Blog

[+/-] Read More...

[+/-] Summary only...

Ted McLaughlin : The Occupy Movement is Changing the Conversation

It's changing the conversation:
The wealth gap and the Occupy Movement

By Ted McLaughlin / The Rag Blog / October 31, 2011

The image above brings home a very disturbing fact about the United States -- the vast inequality of wealth and income in the country. This inequality, which grows worse with each passing week -- since Congress has done nothing about it -- was the primary cause of this Great Recession (just like a previous and very similar gap caused the Great Depression).

But there is a big difference between the previous gap causing the Great Depression, and the current gap causing the Great Recession. The previous gap was caused by the Republican Party favoring the rich and the corporations. But when the Democrats got into power they changed the economic policies, put people back to work (using WPA and CCC), created the Social Security system, and gave the country new hope.

But things were different this time. After the Republicans went back to their old ways of favoring the rich and the corporations, causing the current economic mess and the loss of millions of jobs, the people again put the Democrats back in power in 2008. But this time nothing happened.

It turns out that the rich and corporations had gotten smarter -- instead of just buying the Republican politicians, they also bought a passel of Democratic politicians (the blue dogs). And the Republicans combined with the blue dogs were powerful enough to prevent any economic changes or job creation.

After watching the Congress muddle around for nearly three years without changing the failed "trickle-down" Republican policy or doing anything to create a substantial amount of jobs, it became obvious that too many members of Congress (of both parties) were controlled by the corporations and the rich and nothing was going to be done to help ordinary and hurting Americans.

In fact, the situation was being made worse by cuts to education and social programs while the rich continued to get unnecessary tax cuts and the corporations received unnecessary subsidies.

If any needed change was going to occur, it would have to start with the American people -- not the corporate-owned politicians in Congress. When this became obvious, it resulted in the birth of the Occupy Wall Street movement.

It may have started small with only a few hundred protesters in New York City, but it struck a chord with the American people and spread quickly to many other American cities -- first the large cities, and then in the smaller cities, and finally to cities around the world. It has now grown so large that it can no longer be ignored.

But can the movement cause real economic change in the United States? Probably not until and unless it grows even larger, but it has caused a couple of minor changes already -- and one of those could lead to much bigger changes down the road.

The first change is that it is starting to scare the big banks on Wall Street. At about the same time that the Occupy Wall Street movement started, one of the biggest banks (Bank of America) announced they would start charging their depositors a $5 a month fee for using their debit cards (accessing their own money). Several other of the giant Wall Street banks indicated they would do the same.

But the American public, led by the Occupy Wall Street protesters, gave voice to their anger over this latest insult from the greed-mongers of Wall Street (whose illegal actions triggered the recession).

Many people threatened to pull their money out of the giant banks and put it into local banks and credit unions. There was even a day set aside, November 5, to do this en masse. Now the big banks are backing down. J.P. MorganChase, U.S. Bancorp, Citigroup, PNC Financial, KeyCorp, and other banks are now saying they will NOT follow Bank of America's lead in charging for use of a debit card. And frankly, it would not surprise me if Bank of America didn't reverse their decision soon.

But the Occupy Wall Street movement has caused an even more important change -- one that could lead to needed economic changes down the road. They have altered the national dialogue, especially on the nation's news media outlets. Last summer all the media wanted to talk about was the national debt, an issue that is far less important than job creation and income inequality. A review of the 24-hour news sources (MSNBC, CNN, Fox) in the last week of July showed the following mentions:

Debt...............7,583
Unemployment...............427
Unemployed...............75

But after a month of the Occupy Wall Street movement that has changed. A review of the same news sources during the week of October 10-16 showed the most popular word references had changed to:

Jobs...............2,738
Wall Street...............2,387
Occupy...............1,278
Unemployment...............506
Debt...............398
Unemployed...............194

This is good change. A problem cannot be solved until the public is discussing it as an important issue, and that is unlikely to happen until the issue is being covered by the media. The movement still needs to grow to be the catalyst for a real change in economic policy, and that can happen now because the nation is now paying attention and starting to discuss the real issues.

[Ted McLaughlin also posts at jobsanger. Read more articles by Ted McLaughlin on The Rag Blog.]

The Rag Blog

[+/-] Read More...

[+/-] Summary only...