The money that will come in to government coffers when you force those people to be accountable who were supposed to stimulate the economy, invest in new businesses, and hire people with all of the money they didn’t have to pay the government in taxes but simply didn’t will actually go to balance the federal budget and books that the conservative right has been whining about so much.

And that’s the clincher, and that’s why the Tea Party thug gallery simply has no idea what they’re on about – they complain that the government needs to find ways to pay for things, and they they can’t spend like this with no money coming in…but as soon as there’s a way to hold government accountable for the money that it’s not bringing home and ending a program of tax cuts that never yielded the benefits they were supposed to, they start screaming and crying. It seems the conservative right and the Tea Party thugs are only interested in balancing the budget and bringing in more money to government coffers if that really means the money will wind up in their pockets and if they’re able to cut the throats of the neediest Americans in the process.

Here’s the scoop, thanks to Anthony DiMaggio at TruthOut:

Allowing the Bush-era tax cuts to expire will remove a massive boon for America’s rich, which benefitted the most from Republican policies over the last decade. Reinstatement of the Estate Tax, the Alternative Minimum Tax and the return of pre-Bush income tax levels for the richest Americans (among other tax changes) will result in an increase of more than $217 billion in tax revenues for 2010 and 2011. The expirations will then contribute another $1.25 trillion from 2012 through 2015, and an additional $2.2 trillion from 2016 to 2020.(13) The Center for Economic and Policy Research projects that it could take a decade for the US to return to pre-2008 unemployment levels.(14) The unemployment problem, however, could be greatly reduced if even a portion of the more than $3.6 trillion in public revenues that would be restored within this same period were used to bolster private economic development and preserve state public sector jobs.

The 2009 economic stimulus was credited with preventing the recession from growing worse. Recent data suggests that national unemployment would have reached 16 percent without it.(15) The effects of the stimulus were blunted, however, due to the relatively small amount allocated in 2009 – totaling $787 billion – in addition to the refusal of states to raise taxes to make up for declining tax revenues.(16) Total state budget gaps for the fiscal year are projected for 2011 at $84 billion.(17) This means that, if the Bush tax cuts were allowed to expire, the revenues gained from them (from 2010 and 2011) are far more than enough to fill all currently existing state budget deficits for the next ten years (assuming the deficits remained at current levels, which they most likely would not once a full recovery took place), while still leaving an additional $2.76 trillion dollars left over to promote further economic recovery.

Business apologists will no doubt complain that the restoration of pre-Bush tax levels will stifle business initiative, investment in the economy and future growth. They argue that only by pushing tax cuts for business and the rich can economic recovery occur. These claims are difficult to take seriously considering that American corporations have returned to pre-2008 profit levels, while systematically refusing to invest in the economic growth needed to decrease unemployment from near historic highs. The top banks in the country were rescued under the TARP taxpayer funds under the assumption that they would begin to loan money to jump start the economy. They refused, preferring to take the money to pay CEO bonuses and buy up their competitors. The Bush tax cuts were intentionally frontloaded with benefits for the masses of Americans, with the vast majority of cuts for the wealthy (which constituted the bulk of the tax cuts under Bush) appeared only in the later years of the tax cut timeline laid out in 2001.(18) The Bush tax cuts, like the TARP funds, have not been used in the last few years to help bring about an economic recovery. These cuts are set to expire this year and renewing them will likely do little to nothing to promote recovery if they have had no effect up until this point.

Bingo. If the Bush-era tax cuts haven’t done anything up to this point – and even unlike President Obama’s stimulus, which while controversial there’s at least evidence that it made an impact and kept the situation from getting as bad as it could have – there’s no reason to believe that the Bush tax cuts will do anything favorable for the economy now….aside from what would happen if you let them whither and die, like they should have in the first place.

Who knows – maybe the whole mess wouldn’t have been so difficult to deal with if the vastly Republican Congress at the time never passed the tax cuts in the first place.

[ The Coming Tax War: How Letting the Bush Tax Cuts Expire Could End the Economic Crisis ]
Source: TruthOut

Admittedly, the Right’s attention span has always been short, and their capacity to revise history to make themselves look glowing (see Ronald Reagan) has always been remarkable, but President Obama has been in office for 18 months and not only are conservatives trying to pretend that he’s not still busy cleaning up the messes of the past 8 years (“hurr when will you stop blaming the last guy for what’s happening now, hrurr”) but also conveniently shaping today’s issues in short-term language (instead of properly pointing at the near 30-year history of American conservatism as responsible for the deregulation of our financial industries, energy industries, and transportation industries to the point where they’re only accountable to their shareholders and the desires of their executives to line their pockets – at the expense of the American people.)

Bumper stickers like “How’s that change working out for you” and “Miss him yet?” have been appearing on the cars of the angry, who want you and I to believe that the world may as well have ended 18 months ago and now we’re all picking through the smoldering ashes of our civilization. To those questions, I have two very simple answers:

* That change is working out great for me, thanks for asking!
* No, I don’t miss him at all – in fact, I’m happily on my way to forgetting he ever existed.

Starting at the very bottom, I’m particularly glad that I have a President who, while he isn’t perfect, is leaps and bounds more perfect than the last guy, and a President who I don’t have to worry will lock me up and waterboard me if I disagree with him and don’t march in lock step behind. Now I have a President who, as a matter of policy, doesn’t strip American citizens of their rights and due process just so they can be thrown in a dark cell until the powers that be can think of what do to with them. Again – our current Administration isn’t perfect on this point, but at least they’re willing to listen to suggestions and open to changing course – the last Administration would have simply called you “un-American,” “un-patriotic,” and thrown you in a cell just for speaking your mind.

The last Administration listened in on the phone calls of American citizens without a warrant, and the last Administration locked up American citizens for no reason. The last Administration was responsible for the Patriot Act, which while it hasn’t been repealed, has been used with significantly more caution and judgment than it had been in the past. The last Administration was obsessed with the State Secrets Act and shutting down human rights lawsuits just by invoking it.

So no, I don’t “miss him yet” at all, and that “change” has been a huge breath of fresh air.

Let’s move on to some more tangible examples though:

Would Mad King George have appointed two women to the Supreme Court? Likely not.

Would McCain have signed the Lucy Ledbetter Act, mandating equal pay for equal work? Never.

Would Bush Jr. have committed to drawing down troops in Afghanistan and Iraq, even if those plans are slow to take shape? Never – they would have said even talking about leaving would have emboldened our “enemy.”

Would the Little Bush or McCain ever strive to provide health insurance to millions of uninsured Americans, pass a Patient’s Bill of Rights, put Medicare on sound financial footing, and cut near a trillion dollars from the budget defecit over the next 10 years by reforming the way Americans get and spend on health care? It would have been a laughable proposition.

Would McCain or Palin have signed an executive order mandating that “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” be repealed? Wouldn’t have even crossed their minds.

Would Bush Jr. ever thought to close Guantanamo, much less actually try? Never.

Would a Republican president ever have sought to re-vitalize the Civil Rights wing of the Department of Justice, ousting political appointments that sought only to minimize the amount of work the agency did by throwing out legitimate cases and complaints and marginalizing career lawyers who have fought for equal rights their entire lives? Nope.

Would McCain or Palin have fought to restore science and scientific analysis to its rightful place in American discourse, especially on such important topics as climate change, space science, and medicine? Never.

Would McCain or Bush Jr. be on nearly as solid terms with our allies as Obama is, and managed to completely turn around our antagonistic relationship with Russia the way he has? Never – we would have seen more bluster and saber rattling, and likely be in the middle of another war with another faceless enemy designed to make us afraid by now had we voted differently.

Would McCain ever have gleefully signed ethics reform into law that would ensure there were strong rules to make sure the the field day that Republicans had during their majority time in office prior to 2008 (remember the cascade of ethics and sex scandals coming out of Congress back then? Oh how soon the right wing forgets…) never happen again? Not a chance.

Would Bush Jr. ever have given woefully needed money to the American auto industry – even if it was unpopular – and then been able to stand behind them as, as happened last week, they all post revenue gains and profits as opposed to the record losses and debts they had over a year ago?

The economic downturn was in full swing when President Obama was elected, as were both wars and all of their issues – so blaming President Obama is only ad accurate as you can blame someone for not cleaning up someone else’s mess fast enough. Someone recently pointed to a story about the vast majority (something like 96%) of money slated for reconstruction in Iraq being unaccounted for, and snarkily commented about whether or not this was something that people would just blame President Bush for – to which I responded that yes, it is – it’s only the right that seeks to unload accountability for their own actions and leadership decisions onto the people that follow them. President Obama has accountability to cleaning up that mess, but he has no accountability for having made the mess in the first place.

To that end though, would Bush Jr. or McCain ever have pushed through legislation designed to stimulate the economy, fund thousands of new infrastructure projects, put hundreds of thousands of Americans back to work, and, with time, eventually turn the job decline into a slow but steady job incline? Not at all – there would have been some tax breaks for the wealthiest Americans (like the Bush tax cuts being debated now in Congress – you remember, the ones that did nothing to stimulate the economy or create new jobs?) and the Republicans would have resorted to their old stand-by, that people who are unemployed somehow “want to be jobless” or “deserve it.”

Would Bush ever have had the gravitas or political will to push through a massive financial system reform bill into law that not only forces more accountability in the financial sector but also establishes a new government agency that the public can turn to for their own protection against those massive Wall Street entities? Never. Would McCain? Hardly – he may have handed over some more money to them, but never have fought on our behalf.

So when you ask me if that “change” is working out for me, I’m more than happy to say yes.

When you ask me if I “miss him yet,” I can answer with a smile and say “miss who?”

Because overall, there’s plenty of work left to be done, and we’re not out of the woods, and everything isn’t perfect, but I’m more hopeful now than I ever have been, and I’m confident that America is moving in the right direction under a leader who at least considers the best interests of the people and the nation over their own personal whim or delusional personal “calling.”

Yup, that change is working out for me just fine, thanks. I wouldn’t trade it for anything.

Myth #1: Social Security is going broke.

Reality: There is no Social Security crisis. By 2023, Social Security will have a $4.6 trillion surplus (yes, trillion with a ‘T’). It can pay out all scheduled benefits for the next quarter-century with no changes whatsoever.1 After 2037, it’ll still be able to pay out 75% of scheduled benefits—and again, that’s without any changes. The program started preparing for the Baby Boomers’ retirement decades ago.2 Anyone who insists Social Security is broke probably wants to break it themselves.

Myth #2: We have to raise the retirement age because people are living longer.

Reality: This is a red-herring to trick you into agreeing to benefit cuts. Retirees are living about the same amount of time as they were in the 1930s. The reason average life expectancy is higher is mostly because many fewer people die as children than they did 70 years ago.3 What’s more, what gains there have been are distributed very unevenly—since 1972, life expectancy increased by 6.5 years for workers in the top half of the income brackets, but by less than 2 years for those in the bottom half.4 But those intent on cutting Social Security love this argument because raising the retirement age is the same as an across-the-board benefit cut.

Myth #3: Benefit cuts are the only way to fix Social Security.

Reality: Social Security doesn’t need to be fixed. But if we want to strengthen it, here’s a better way: Make the rich pay their fair share. If the very rich paid taxes on all of their income, Social Security would be sustainable for decades to come.5 Right now, high earners only pay Social Security taxes on the first $106,000 of their income.6 But conservatives insist benefit cuts are the only way because they want to protect the super-rich from paying their fair share.

Myth #4: The Social Security Trust Fund has been raided and is full of IOUs

Reality: Not even close to true. The Social Security Trust Fund isn’t full of IOUs, it’s full of U.S. Treasury Bonds. And those bonds are backed by the full faith and credit of the United States.7 The reason Social Security holds only treasury bonds is the same reason many Americans do: The federal government has never missed a single interest payment on its debts. President Bush wanted to put Social Security funds in the stock market—which would have been disastrous—but luckily, he failed. So the trillions of dollars in the Social Security Trust Fund, which are separate from the regular budget, are as safe as can be.

Myth #5: Social Security adds to the deficit

Reality: It’s not just wrong—it’s impossible! By law, Social Security’s funds are separate from the budget, and it must pay its own way. That means that Social Security can’t add one penny to the deficit.8

You can read the full list, complete with citations and facts that back up these statements, at the link below:

[ Top 5 Social Security Myths ]
Source: MoveOn.org

Instead of regulating the industries that are falling apart around us today by leaking oil into our waterways or foreclosing on our homes, the Bush Administration claimed that the best way to keep the economy going was to let the party keep rolling, no matter what the damage in the long run – and we’re seeing that damage now (and may not see the end of it for generations.)

And yet, Republicans in Congress want to continue the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy – you remember the ones, the ones that were supposed to stimulate so much job growth and investment in small businesses but did neither of those things (but did wind up as a massive payout to the wealthiest few percent of the American populace?) Of course you do, as does David Stockman:

IF there were such a thing as Chapter 11 for politicians, the Republican push to extend the unaffordable Bush tax cuts would amount to a bankruptcy filing. The nation’s public debt — if honestly reckoned to include municipal bonds and the $7 trillion of new deficits baked into the cake through 2015 — will soon reach $18 trillion. That’s a Greece-scale 120 percent of gross domestic product, and fairly screams out for austerity and sacrifice. It is therefore unseemly for the Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell, to insist that the nation’s wealthiest taxpayers be spared even a three-percentage-point rate increase.

More fundamentally, Mr. McConnell’s stand puts the lie to the Republican pretense that its new monetarist and supply-side doctrines are rooted in its traditional financial philosophy. Republicans used to believe that prosperity depended upon the regular balancing of accounts — in government, in international trade, on the ledgers of central banks and in the financial affairs of private households and businesses, too. But the new catechism, as practiced by Republican policymakers for decades now, has amounted to little more than money printing and deficit finance — vulgar Keynesianism robed in the ideological vestments of the prosperous classes.

This approach has not simply made a mockery of traditional party ideals. It has also led to the serial financial bubbles and Wall Street depredations that have crippled our economy.

Stockman then goes on to explain the four significant ways that these policies have caused serious harm to the US economy, and what their true impact may be. He even twists the screws a bit on the topic of our out-of-control military spending, which seems to be skyrocketing regardless of the party you support (although Democrats have lately expressed interest in bringing in the military budget and Defense Secretary Gates asked his generals to find areas where they could trim the fat.)

The entire piece is worth a read, especially if you find you have a short memory for fiscal policy, or if you know a right-winger who thinks the economy only tanked when President Obama took office and seek to blame him. There’s plenty of blame to go around – the real problem is that the political right doesn’t have the will to actually fix the problem.

[ Four Deformations of the Apocalypse ]
Source: The New York Times

There were a couple of trends that jumped out at me, though, beyond the obvious numbers. The first is that the public, while discouraged and pessimistic about the status quo, still doesn’t much care for Republicans.

Respondents were asked, for example, how much confidence they have in various leaders to “make the right decisions for the country’s future.” For Obama, the number is 43%. For congressional Democrats, it’s 32%. Congressional Republicans, meanwhile, is a distant third at 26%. Indeed, while support for Obama’s handling on the economy has fallen quite a bit, the poll asked which political party voters “trust to do a better job handling the economy.” Democrats still lead Republicans by eight points.

Dems aren’t faring well in this political landscape, but it’s not because voters are moving in large numbers to the GOP.

Now that’s a level of analysis you probably won’t find in many media outlets – they’ll stick to the top-level talking points, which are all worth discussing, but they’ll completely avoid digging into the details – it’s not that the voting public prefers Republicans or Tea Partiers, it’s that they’re just unhappy with the pace of the economic recovery and the political process entirely, so much so they’re disenchanted with everyone, not just Democrats in Congress or with President Obama.

This is where campaigning really needs to play a role, and incumbent Democrats and the President need to get out in front of this disillusionment and show the country what they’ve done for them, the good it’s doing, and the fact that voting for Republicans and Tea Partiers will not only take the country back in the wrong direction but will likely have abyssal results for the American people – since neither of those two groups care about the average American nearly as much as they both claim to.

One more tidbit that has to do very much with my last piece on the matter:

There was also this:

“Because of the economic downturn, Congress has extended the period in which people can receive unemployment benefits, and is considering doing so again. Supporters say this will help those who can’t find work. Opponents say this adds too much to the federal budget deficit. Do you think Congress should or should not approve another extension of unemployment benefits?”

It wasn’t even close — 62% want to extend unemployment benefits, 36% are more concerned with the deficit. For those who blocked the Senate from voting on this — three times in three weeks — the argument was that Americans, overcome with deficit-reduction mania, want Congress to stop spending. The evidence to the contrary is pretty clear.

Democrats everywhere – the American people just handed you an ace in the hole. Play it.

[ Keep in Mind, Republicans Fare Worse Than Obama in Discouraging New Poll ]
Source: Washington Monthly

Now while normally I applaud that kind of fiscal prudence, I, like most Americans, have my priorities in order, and those priorities involve not punishing main street while rewarding the right side of the aisle in the Senate. Republicans think that this is a good move for them, and shows that they’re standing up against reckless spending in Congress, and the media has been reporting it as something like that – giving Republicans some leeway because they’re trying to avoid a bloating federal deficit, but the media is summarily (as are the Republicans) ignoring the fact that the money for the unemployment extension would increase the federal deficit by something like less than one percent.

That’s right – so what this boils down to is that the Republican party doesn’t think that a lifeline to the millions of unemployed Americans is worth that less the one percent of the federal debt. They don’t think your mortgage payments are worth it, they don’t think your groceries or your rent are worth it, they don’t think your childrens’ tuition is worth it, and they don’t think your car payments or medical bills are worth it. They don’t think we’re worth it – and that’s what we need to remember when we head to the polls in November. Not the Tea Party pomp and fluff, the fact that when push came to shove and America looked to Congress to make sure our priorities were in order: people before wars, people before wall street, people before corporate tax breaks, the Republicans stood in the way and just decided that not only were the American people not that important, they simply weren’t worth it.

So over at Alternet, there’s an excellent dissertation of why the GOP isn’t universally despised for its effort, and part of it has to do with the media and part of it has to do with the semi-noble desire to keep the federal debt down (although if there’s anything you would want our government to spend money on, it’s the well being of the American people) but that’s worth a read as well. In the interim though, remember that these are the priorities for the Republicans and the Tea Party fanatics, and the well being of the American people, the well being of you and I, simply aren’t on that priority list.

[ Republicans Just Screwed Over Millions of Jobless Americans — Why Aren’t They Universally Despised? ]
Source: AlterNet

Even Republicans who aren’t necessarily on the far right will tell you that making BP pay for the spill in the gulf is exactly what America should be doing – because the alternative, making the taxpayer pay for the damage, is unacceptable on any front. However, even with Republicans like Joe Barton groveling to BP and unintentionally exposing the Republican pro-business and anti-American platform, none of them want to be on the record stating that they’d rather oil spill into the gulf for decades, putting Americans out of work, food supplies and health at risk, and let the oil industry off with a slap on the wrist and force the American taxpayer to foot the bill (or more likely just go into debt via deficit spending.)

What President Obama is doing here – by forcing BP to get in there and clean up their own mess, even if it’s messy and takes a long time and costs BP a lot of money – is the right thing to do. We can debate whether everyone jumped on the problem fast enough (and I think that’s a good debate to have, not necessarily in a finger-pointing way, but definitely in a “do we really want this risk in our energy profile, what can we do to make sure it doesn’t happen again” kind of way) till we’re blue in the face, but it doesn’t stop the oil from gushing and it won’t pay back the people whose lives and livelihoods have been lost because of the spill.

And the fact that President Obama is doing what’s right for the situation is what terrifies Republicans so much – he’s managing this crisis the best way any American President possibly could – and while that doesn’t mean that he or anyone else can just slip underwater and plug up the leak, he is taking BP to task for their mistakes, dedicating resources to the cleanup effort (no matter how much Bobby Jindall whines) and he’s riding BP every day until they get this taken care of and start paying claims to the people who need the money.

Last week, the nation witnessed an act of good governance when the Obama administration put the full-court press on oil giant BP to set aside $20 billion in assets to compensate the thousands of Americans whose livelihoods — and in some cases, lives — are being devastated by the Deepwater Horizon catastrophe. It was an example of exactly what government is supposed to do; whatever it can, within the limits of the law, to protect its citizens’ interests.

Team Obama was shrewd to get a fund set up now, with the nation’s outrage focused on the calamity, rather than allow the company’s army of lawyers to drag a settlement through the courts for years. The agreement, entered into voluntarily by BP, ensures that the firm can’t escape legal judgments by paying out all of its current profits as shareholder dividends and then claiming insolvency.

The fund is about the equivalent of a year of BP’s profits — the Associated Press called the sum “a drop in a very large bucket” for the company, and reported that BP could raise the cash “without batting an eye.” It will be administered by an independent third party — the same administrator who handled billions of dollars worth of claims stemming from the attacks of 9/11. And President Obama secured it using little more than his bully pulpit and the pressure it allowed him to put on BP execs.

But here’s the clincher that I think is an essential piece:

The fact that applying pressure to a corporation whose risky cost-cutting resulted in what may prove to be the worst man-made disaster in history is seen as an act of government overreach says a lot about how deep down the rabbit hole of corporate propaganda we’ve gone since the Reagan/Thatcher “revolution.” Whereas at one time analysts warned of governments nationalizing firms or distorting the market with rigid price controls, we’ve now come to a point where a strongly worded letter or a few harsh words are enough to elicit mainstream hand-wringing on behalf of delicate multinational corporations like BP.

Exactly. Joshua Holland takes more than just the Republicans to task over this, he also rides the media that’s in their pockets for coming to the defense of the company and opposing any strong language or talk by the Obama Administration. While it’s likely that those elements of the media are simply in the pockets of the oil industry, it’s also likely that their fear that the President is doing the right thing and looking good in the process that makes them whine so much.

Frankly, if any President had done anything differently, there would be the same questions about the beginning, but if President Obama had laid off of BP and allowed them to voluntarily pay claims that they felt were appropriate (like the insurance industry post-Katrina; thanks to George W. Bush) there would be outcry about the people of the Gulf region being not just out of work but with no way to recover their lost income and livelihoods, which would quickly dovetail into the Republican’s head-in-the-sand complaints about job growth (as in, they admit it’s a problem, but have no ideas to do anything about it and nothing to say aside from “The President should do more about jobs.”)

Holland then goes into why putting the squeeze on BP was the right thing to do, especially by looking back at the way Exxon managed to slither its way out of paying the appropriate damages for the spill they caused with the Exxon Valdez. It’s a good historical story for an America with very short memories. He concludes:

As it stands, getting BP to set aside a year’s profits to pay for some of the damage the firm has done in the Gulf of Mexico, using nothing more expansive than the power of persuasion, is simply good governance in action. People died, many others’ livelihoods have been ruined, and a foreign corporation that has no legal obligation to pay more than $75 million in damages will do so nonetheless.

Only someone deeply steeped in an almost religious reverence for some mythically pure “free market” could see it any other way.

[ Obama Making BP Pay Is Good Government, and That's Why Republicans and The Corporate Media Are Freaking Out ]
Source: AlterNet

When I see the pseudo-libertarian drivel “End the Fed,” where libertarians cry about how the Fed operates in secret from behind closed doors and are accountable to no one, I can’t help but wonder why those same laissez-faire free marketeers are completely fine with a corporate board deciding every aspect of their lives and being held accountable to no one (in fact, these same people weaken the government’s efforts to impose some oversight over the way these businesses operate when it influences the greater public) but refuse to allow a public body to operate without them being present. I understand that the big difference is that the Fed is a public body and should be accountable to the public, and I agree on that point, but it’s remarkable how much faith the free marketeers have in closed door capitalists in corporate boardrooms but nowhere else.

And all of that faith? Poorly placed. People in the 70s and 80s used to complain about how inefficient government was and how much bureaucracy there was – and while I think government today is more streamlined than it was (and yet still has leaps and bounds to go) it’s still pretty bogged down with red tape – but now you have the contrast of a corporate system where the high-power players and decision makers are accountable to no one, play fast and loose with the rules (and at times outright violate them), and the resulting victims are the general public, either with higher prices and costs that taxpayers have to pay out of their own pockets (which libertarians are okay with, as long as they’re not taxes – banks can bend them over with fees and then collude with one another so the so-called open market isn’t so open and that’s okay, but heaven forbid the government collect taxes for a road or school), with their jobs, homes, and livelihoods, or with the well being of their communities.

No finer examples are available of what happens when you let the foxes guard the henhouses – I mean, let businesses regulate themselves – as what’s happened in the Gulf of Mexico and in West Virginia in recent months. Mines collapsing and oil rigs burning, both costing the lives of the men and women who worked there and trusted their employers to look out for their safety.

Dave Johnson, writing for the Campaign for America’s Future, has this to say:

The terrible Gulf oil, West Virginia mining, Wall Street finance and government debt disasters all demonstrate the ongoing catastrophic and continuing results of conservative policies. Each of these is a direct consequence of letting corporate conservatives take over government and dismantle the regulatory and democratic protections that We, the People fought so hard for following the Great Depression — itself a previous demonstration of the failure of conservative policies.

How often have you had to hear that “the market” is the best way to run things? That is is “self-correcting?” That regulations are government “interference” or “meddling” in the market? That business/free markets/private sector always does things better or is more efficient than government? When you hear these you are experiencing the clash between a “one-dollar-one-vote” free market system — as we had before the Teddy Roosevelt progressive era and the Franklin Roosevelt New Deal — and “one-person-one-vote” democratic, We, the People system that brings the benefits of our economy and our country to the most people. But because of the power of money and marketing most people are hearing only one side of an ongoing argument between the wealthy few and the broad masses of working people.

For decades we have heard these pro-market, anti-government arguments repeated over and over and over and over and over and over. Big corporations have a lot of money to buy a big megaphone, so you hear that government is bad, business is good and the people ought to just keep their noses out of the marketplace and stop telling businesses how to do things. You hear that taxes are bad, “hurt the economy,” “cost jobs,” “take money out of the economy,” “just get passed through to customers anyway” and a million similar great-sounding slogans that fall down under minimal evaluation. They have been repeated over and over, until we forgot why we had fought so hard for strong government regulations and high taxes at the top.

After the disaster of Nixon the country learned about cracks in our democracy that let big money get their nose under the tent. But after Watergate we didn’t plug all of the leaks, and big money got into the tent anyway. They used their position to give themselves more power, and used that power to give themselves even more, etc. and now we have a system that is corrupted absolutely.

So with the conservative government of Reagan and then later under the all-out anti-government conservative administration of George W. Bush we have had the opportunity of seeing just what happens when these “free market” ideas are given free reign to replace democracy. Anti-government zealots were put into positions inside the government and used that power to take apart the protections that We, the People had painstakingly built.

He’s absolutely right. And this goes beyond the horrific, live-taking disasters we’ve seen recently – this comes down to your cable and telephone bill and the fact that you can’t just “take your business elsewhere” to another provider with superior service, your lack of small shops on main street but your abundance of Walmarts (which is a more complex issue, I know), and so on. When you let business regulate themselves and pretend to have the interests of anyone but their shareholders in mind, of course they’ll steamroll the public. They only thing they need the public for is money and manpower, and as long as they can get those two things, they’ll continue to abuse us mercilessly and break out the big checkbook and megaphone when the advocates of the public — government, namely progressive government — step up to try and defend us.

Johnson ends his piece on a somber note, that this “experiment in conservative ideology” has finally come home to roost, and they we’ll likely see the effects of it for a long time. I can only hope that progressive politicians and the public will work together to stem some of these systemic problems in our corporate system before they cost more lives, but when the Supreme Court goes and rules that corporations are people and give them carte blanche to write big checks to get the people who support them into office, I have a hard time believing that we’ll get too far.

[ Finance, Mine, Oil & Debt Disasters: THIS Is Deregulation ]
Source: Campaign for America’s Future

But as the debate over financial reform on Wall Street rages not too far from me here, it’s important to remember to point the finger not just at the institutions that got us to where we are today, but also the mindsets and corporate processes that got us to where we are today:

RJ Eskow, writing for the Campaign for America’s Future, has this to say:

What we’ve been witnessing in Washington isn’t just political positioning by one party looking to deny the other a victory, although it’s certainly that. We’re also seeing the death struggle of a dying ideology. This ideology provided intellectual cover to business and political elites for decades, but events have proved conclusively that it doesn’t work. What’s more, people are beginning to see that it’s inconsistent with the country’s traditional values of competition and free enterprise.

The ideology was cooked up in think tanks and boardrooms, then packaged and sold under a variety of conservative and libertarian guises. While the theories and rationalizations varied wildly, the conclusions were always the same: Deregulation was always the right approach, even (especially) for the most concentrated and rapacious businesses. Consumer regulations should be avoided because they hurt everybody, especially (somehow) consumers. And cutting taxes for the rich magically made things better for everybody else.

The arguments changed but the results were consistent: greater upward distribution of wealth, and more concentration of power, delivered by those the special interests funded and placed into positions of influence.

While the ideology was traditionally a Republican one, it had willing enablers in the Democratic Party who pushed for the same goals: Less regulation. More “unfettered” innovation in financial products, with “unfettered” a code word for “untested.” Less transparency. More centralization of financial products through growth and acquisition, as if the world had never seen oligopolies before.

Now the ideology lies in ruins. The world has seen its fruits in a worldwide economic collapse, massive structural unemployment, and revelations of dirty dealings by our largest and most respected financial institutions. The two most prominent architects of the New Economic Order, Alan Greenspan and Robert Rubin, are publicly discredited by the collapse of the edifice they built. And, as we’ve discussed before, Greenspan’s philosophy was particularly colored by his extreme ideological leanings and Ayn Rand worship (the money quote for Greenspan: “Parasites who persistently avoid either purpose or reason perish as they should.”)

That’s a pretty damning proclamation by Eskow there, and one I completely agree with. While I’m certain that financial reform in Congress will fall far short of where it needs to be, I would be more than happy to see these folks taken to task for what they’ve done. I understand the needs of risk-taking and I understand (more than a lot of people) the need for a thriving, innovating, competitive economy, but I don’t understand the need to not just be risky but unethical and flat-out foolish with the money of millions in the hopes that it’ll pay off and make everyone rich — and at the same time with the assumption that if it goes bust and everyone loses, someone else will take the fall.

It’s time the right people took the fall.

[ Unfree Markets: The Last Gasp Of A (Literally) Bankrupt Ideology ]
Source: Campaign for America’s Future

But here’s the clincher: President Obama actually lowered these same people’s taxes across the board, but because they have to pay taxes at all, they’re complaining about it. That’s right – the same people with some of the lowest taxes in America are the ones raising the loudest stink about taxation – and don’t you think for a second that it has something to do with the rest of us – it’s pure and outright greed, draped in an American flag and a gross misinterpretation of American history.

That’s what prompted President Obama to say “You’d Think They Would Be Saying ‘Thank You,’” when asked about the Tea Party crazies and their anti-everything (specifically taxes in this case) mentality.

The graphs are over at AlterNet, but they tell a startling tale of how these same people have some of the lowest taxes in history:

Taxes have been cut–for almost everyone. They are at historic lows. This is probably a contributing factor to why only 20% of the country think the share of taxes they have to pay is “unfair.”

Head over to see the graphs and click through to the studies where the data is sourced. It’s very telling.

[ Hey Teabaggers, Your Taxes Are Actually Really, Really Low ]
Source: AlterNet (courtesy of Open Left)