Zachary Roth has an article for The Lookout that gives us the other side of the story of poverty. As it turns out, poverty doesn’t actually mean one is poor because:

…that measure, developed over 40 years ago, is inexact at best. It doesn’t include non-cash benefits–things such as food and housing subsidies–that can play a key role in supporting families.

I’ll try not to be overly sarcastic here. Through our collective representation, we, as a society, decided that people who earn less than a certain amount of money are considered poor and live in poverty. We also found that, in a country with as rich of blessings as we have, that is unacceptable. So we created programs – like food stamps and rent subsidies – that help make up the gap between what a family actually earns and what is considered minimally acceptable. Find that the programs that are intended to “help make up the gap” actually do “help make up the gap” only means that our programs are successful – so remember THAT the next time someone tells you that government can’t accomplish anything.

There are two purposes to telling such a story. One is to say what I have just said – “Look! We are making progress in the War on Poverty (remember that?)! We are successful!” But that isn’t what’s going on here. What’s happening is an attempt to minimize the problem of poverty. Take, for example, this quote from the same article:

…many or most poor Americans have things such as internet service, cable TV and dishwashers–not luxuries, to be sure, but not the picture of destitution that the word poverty often brings to mind.

Yes, people are not truly poor if they have a dishwasher…which, in case it isn’t known, is generally standard issue for modern (built in the last twenty years) housing projects. Of course, it is possible to get by without one – I never had one until I was an adult. But if we are going to use this argument to debate if we give too much aid to the poor (and make no mistake, that IS what it is for); then we need to do a cost-benefit analysis that shows if using a dishwasher is cheaper over the life of the appliance than it would be not having it. To do that, figure in the fact that dishwashers use less water and less soap, and because they tend to use hotter water, they cut down on communicable diseases. These, incidentally, are arguments any appliance salesman can repeat.

And the internet? Anyone who doesn’t have access is in danger of being seriously disconnected from work and school. Would it be more adaptive to hinder the poor from developing job skills, or to give them a tool they can use to break into the digital age? If we truly want to compete with the world economy; then we are going to have to invest in doing so. And providing high-speed internet for those who can’t afford it is the modern equivalent of building thousands of public libraries.

Cable TV is a different matter – but only because of the way we choose to use our televisions. Television could easily be used to supplement education, and there is no shortage of educational television programs. As a father of pre-schoolers, I absolutely LOVE educational television. But I can only get it on cable. The major networks simply do not see any return on their money. Captain Kangeroo and Mister Rogers are gone and Sesame Street is struggling (my personal opinion). But my kids get lessons on colors and shapes and math and phonics…from cable TV.

This has its basis in the belief that people absolutely deserve anything and everything that comes down the pike. If a person is poor or fat or anything less than absolutely perfect; then it is their fault. All they have to do is change! There is no such thing as simply not having as many resources as someone else. There is no such thing as not having the opportunities as someone else. It is radical individuality.

It’s why people will now unabashedly clap when the topic of letting someone die because they can’t afford health care comes up. People don’t deserve to live! If they wanted to live; then they would get a better job that gave them insurance…which, incidentally, is an expense forced on employers by governmental over-regulation.

The truly sad thing is that what should be a “Let them eat cake!” moment failed to even make a dent on our national psyche. God save us from ourselves.

I think it probably says something about where I stand on 9/11 as a generational and national moment that I completely forgot that Sunday was the tenth anniversary. I got up, got dressed, got my boys up and dressed, we had breakfast, and we headed out to try on a new church.

We walked right into a candlelit memorial service. Several of the people there had been in Manhattan that day. A handful had lost someone dear to them. It was…painful to witness.

The experience helped me, however, to put things into perspective. 9/11 was not a personal experience to me. I didn’t know anyone in the buildings or on the planes. I didn’t know anyone who marched off to war in response. I didn’t live close enough to see the towers when they stood; I didn’t hear or smell them burning. Yes, it was a horrifying day and my psyche struggled to absorb the amount of hate it takes to perpetrate such an act.

But it wasn’t personal. And because it wasn’t personal, I can still acknowledge the bravery and sacrifice of the people who were killed without my emotional state disintegrating. Furthermore, because I don’t like to be moved to tears through sad and painful memories, it is easy to avoid them – and I think natural to want to do so. But that means it is also easy for me to believe that everyone should also be ready to move on.

So I came face-to-face with the human suffering that day caused. It was only a few people, but the depth of their continued suffering was evident. I wanted to turn away, but I could not. And then I decided that I would not, because if the people around me can bear their pain every day, I can share it for a few minutes. I don’t know if it helps them or not. But it reminds me that I am fortunate, in so very many ways.

What I still cannot find a way to bear, however, is the response of those who were not personally touched by that tragedy, but continue to bang the drums of war and hatred. I understand why someone who has lost someone might do that – anger is part of coming to terms with loss. But for those whose loss was minimal…why continue to nurse the hate?

I don’t understand it.

the real John McCain. I would have loved to vote for this guy!

I haven’t had much to say about the “debt ceiling crisis” (or much of anything else) because there really isn’t that much to say. Dan Balz says it about as good as anyone:

Boehner was just as clear in casting the president as the obstacle. Obama, he said, came to office and led the country on a spending binge that included “a new health care bill that most Americans never asked for; a stimulus bill that’s more effective in producing material for late-night comedians than it was in producing jobs; and a national debt that has gotten so out of hand, it’s sparked a crisis without precedent in my lifetime or yours.”

The problem is that “most Americans” – before the overblown hype and hysteria – actually DID want a healthcare overhaul. If you will recall the 2008 Presidential election, even GOP can’t-quite-call-him-hopefull John McCain had a “healthcare plan.” Also, Democrats held a very slight voter preference in the realm of health care (48-46). It was a bona fide election issue.

So maybe Americans weren’t crazy about the bill that passed Congress…but that’s because it was truly a compromise. Each side gave up a lot to get something done. It’s how things are generally done.

President Obama put everything on the table – including Social Security and Medicare. But he insisted that he not be forced to cave entirely. For the GOP, it was capitulation, or nothing.

The Republicans cannot seem to understand that they control only one House of Congress. There were very specific reasons why our Constitution separated powers between both Houses of Congress and between Congress and the President. The biggest reason was to keep one party from winning a slender and temporary majority and using it to bum-rush the government and the American people and enact their partisan agenda.

And the Republicans are perfectly willing to destroy the economy in order to bring down Obama. They very simply care more about making him look bad than they do in the millions of people who are unemployed, underemployed, or whose livelihoods would be destroyed by their irresponsible actions.

This was not an accident. It was a specific and goal-oriented action as the new Republican majority rewrote the House rules. This was what they did in 1995, by the way, when they wanted to hamstring President Clinton. Same game, only the names have changed.

I’m not saying that runaway isn’t a problem – it is. But only a fool looks at one half of the equation. Remember that all those tax cuts were supposed to increase government revenues! If cutting marginal taxes would have balanced the budget and revved up our economy; then we wouldn’t be experiencing the economic doldrums we are now.

So why are we here? Because enough people elected Republicans to stop Obama at all costs…and that is exactly what they are doing.

The Washington Post has an excellent article today concerning the evolution of the Republican Party into a no-tax party. As a political and rhetorical tool, the “no new taxes” pledge has been probably the single most effective meme in modern politics. It has also become one of the most immoral.

In states like New Jersey, where budgets must be balanced, no matter what, it means that wave after wave of cuts must be enacted. New Jersey is an expensive place to live, and such entrenchment against any form of taxation means that those at the top get to keep enough income to cushion them from rough economic times while those at the bottom are impaled at the castle gates when vital services get cut.

Incidentally, it is the folks in the middle who get to pay for the lack of taxes.

Yeah, that’s what I call immoral.

At the federal level, the difference is financed through debt creation. Don’t let that fool you. That just lets the wealthy hold onto cash now, so they can make more wealth that won’t be taxed in the future. Meanwhile, the poor are never really going to be taxed because they have nothing to tax. So it will be the people in the middle who get to pay that future bill, too.

Last year’s budget had revenues of $2.1 Trillion and expenditures of $3.4 Trillion. That’s a deficit of $1.29 Trillion. That would require cuts equal to sixty-one percent of the entire budget just to bring it into balance. Want to pay off the debt? Well, just cut a bit more.

It’s also roughly thirty-eight percent of current revenues. Boosting tax revenues by a third would do the same thing that nearly destroying the government would do. Would such a tax hike hurt? Of course it would. Would it be more disruptive than halving the government? Not even close.

Consider that cutting the government by that amount would mean eliminating 1.22 million federal civilian workers, not counting cuts to the military and post office that would have to come along, too. Anyone think our current labor market can handle the extra demand? That would boost the number of unemployed to somewhere just over fifteen million. Again, that doesn’t include the military or post office – so the number probably goes well over sixteen million people in America without jobs.

2008 Statistics of Income (the latest year available) shows that, of the $1.03 Trillion brought in through the personal income tax, $249 billion (24%) came from people with incomes over $1 million per year. Now, doubling the income tax on all people would come close to eliminating the budget deficit. Let me go on record as saying that I do not want my taxes doubled. But the income tax is not the only source of revenue for the federal government. If income taxes on those with more than $1 million adjusted gross income were raised by fifty percent, rather than doubled, then that move alone would generate an extra $124.5 billion. That’s roughly a tenth of the budget deficit.

And, incidentally, that would increase the highest tax rate from 35% to 52.5%. That’s steep, but not even close to the 70% that it was as recently as the 1970s.

If we want to “spread the pain” then lower tax brackets could be raised by 25%. That would generate roughly an extra $195.25 billion. The two measures together would eliminate a third of the deficit.

Of course, that isn’t going to happen. Americans can’t bear the thought of raising taxes on Lady Gaga and Oprah. They prefer the immorality of pushing our debt onto future generations, and the chief mechanism for doing so is the no-tax pledge.

The New York Times has an op-ed offering today from David Stockman, who brings up the inability of Washington to talk truthfully about the budget. As I’ve said before, the two parties tend to be flip-sides of the coin of fiscal irresponsibility. Neither side is actually serious about what they are saying. Stockman concludes:

So the Ryan plan worsens our trillion-dollar structural deficit and the Obama plan amounts to small potatoes, at best. Worse, we are about to descend into class war because the Obama plan picks on the rich when it should be pushing tax increases for all, while the Ryan plan attacks the poor when it should be addressing middle-class entitlements and defense.

The first thing to recognize in discussing the budget deficit is that we are not talking about Social Security. Or at least, it should not be. Social Security is entirely off-budget because it is paid for through payroll taxes that are dedicated to that purpose. The latest report on Social Security does say that Social Security expenditures will exceed revenues this year – but that is a lingering effect of the recession. Through 2014, surpluses should return. After that, large numbers of retiring baby boomers will push the Social Security Trust fund annual budget into deficit, but this is why we have been piling up special Treasury Bonds for years. Beyond that, we could simply eliminate the cap on Social Security taxes and cut it in half and come out making money.

Medicare needs reform. However, that’s an entire book to write (or read). Whatever reforms are pushed through should be tied to the slowly-becoming-effective health-care reforms. A simple increase of a point or two in the Medicare tax (offsetting some of the Social Security tax cut) would pay enough to keep it neutral.

The main target for cuts needs to be the bloated defense budget. Cut 5% from the defense budget every year for five years. At the same time, limit growth of overall spending to the real growth-rate of the GDP. The combination will provide some amount of flexibility to address domestic needs without hitting the panic button anywhere.

The real place where we need reform is in the tax code. Set the standard deduction at $20,000 ($40,000 for married couples) and a whole lot of people who currently itemize will simplify their taxes immensely. Then have a steeply progressive tax code for incomes over $500,000 per year. Marginal tax rates, perhaps for incomes over $10 million, should top out around 45%.

It’s simple. Raise revenues a bit, cut spending a bit, and restructure things so that the people who are trying to make a living actually can. Fill in the details as you like, but that’s the basic recipe.

But probably not the way he wants to.

After spending $787 billion to bail out the financial industry and stimulate the economy via infratstructure projects, the President is now talking about spending another $50 billion on…more infrastructure.

That would be wonderful if the problem with the economy was not being able to get goods from one side of the country to the other. Or if the infrastructure business had collapsed and led us into the Great Recession. But neither one of these things is true. And even if it was, $50 billion is a paltry number to build bridges and highways with.

The problem with the economy is two-fold. First, Americans have been spending more than they make for several years. The only way that is possible is to use credit – and a whole lot of it. Now credit is a wonderful thing, but every dollar spent on credit reflects a claim against future earnings. And, since credit generally costs us interest, it is a higher claim against future earnings than if the spending were done with actual in-the-hand dollars. Eventually, the piper comes calling with an open palm and asks for his due.

What that means is that we must begin paying in today’s dollars for economic growth that already happened. We see that through people paying down their outstanding credit – also known as “paying off their cards.” This is often cited as one reason why the Bush Administration’s stimulus checks to individuals didn’t stimulate the economy – people used them to pay bills rather than to go out and buy useless stuff they didn’t need or want.

The “debt bubble,” if you will, swallowed that round of stimulus spending. And because it did, it was looked upon as a failure. This, I’m sure, played heavily in the considerations for making future stimulus packages reliant on “shovel-ready” infrastructure improvements. Hey, if we can’t get the American people to buy crap, then let’s build ‘em a bridge!

So, if you happen to be in the bridge building business, baby, business is a-boomin’! If, like the vast majority of Americans, you have no connection to the building of bridges or the widening of highways, then it has done little or nothing to help you. That is the second part of the problem with the stimulus package.

Anyone with their head on the bright and shiny side of their anus could see this would be the case. Or, anyone who took a brief look at the history of the Great Depression. You see, good ol’ Herbert Hoover tried exactly that. Hoover, you might remember, is pilloried by history for doing nothing to stave off the Depression. Because, you see, you can’t build an economy on infrastructure projects.

FDR was slightly more successful with infrastructure projects because by the time he started throwing them out there, no one had a job or a house to live in. It was a good idea, at that time, to give up on being a mechanic or a Fuller Brush salesman and move halfway across the country to work for the Tennessee Valley Authority or the Rural Electrification Agency. Now?

First, we aren’t yet desperate enough to do it. We, as a society, would rather continue to pay and receive unemployment benefits than to see families uprooted and migrated halfway across the country. So Republicans are right that those unemployment benefits keep people from taking jobs. That’s why we aren’t having bridges built by out of work computer programmers.

The other issue is that employers are not yet ready to actually value labor enough to entice people into the labor market. A computer programmer with a $250,000 mortgage is simply not going to move to Nebraska to help build an overpass at minimum wage. But if you start offering more money, at some point that same programmer will suddenly decide that it is in his best interest, or the best interest of his family, to love corn and wide open spaces.

So we sit here, with double-digit unemployment and declining real-worth wages…and CEOs are still earning usurous reams of money.

Is it any wonder our economy remains in the doldrums when the working man and woman are scorned for taking their due and the wealthy are worshiped with ever greater offerings of unearned wealth? For those who believe we live in a “Christian nation” and long for a return to the “good old days” when people lived by the words of the Bible…this is the place to make that return. Because if we don’t, then nothing else will matter anyway.

It’s worth remembering that “Labor Day” – the holiday weekend we are in the midst of – is supposed to be a solemn commemoration of the death of working people by the combined hand of government and business:

The first Labor Day in the United States was celebrated on September 5, 1882 in New York City. It became a federal holiday in 1894, when, following the deaths of a number of workers at the hands of the U.S. military and U.S. Marshals during the Pullman Strike, President Grover Cleveland put reconciliation with the labor movement as a top political priority. Fearing further conflict, legislation making Labor Day a national holiday was rushed through Congress unanimously and signed into law a mere six days after the end of the strike. The September date was chosen as Cleveland was concerned that aligning an American labor holiday with existing international May Day celebrations would stir up negative emotions linked to the Haymarket Affair.

Follow the links and read up on our history if you aren’t familiar with Pullman and Haymarket. Then take a minute and read Peter Laarman’s insightful words:

I want to stay focused on the specific hurts experienced by people who have internalized the rules, which all come down to one rule: in America you are on your own — it’s you against the world — so if you fail it means you are defective in some way.

I’ve lost a lot of focus with this blog – mostly because I haven’t been writing. But this is a good place to refocus. The Bible teaches us that labor must be respected. That depriving workers of their earnings is theft. That failing to care for the widows, the orphans, the homeless, and the poverty-stricken is an affront to God Himself.

Yet we have a political movement that likes to style itself as protecting our nation’s religious heritage, while with every word they utter they distance themselves from the overarching lessons of both history and the Bible. Wrapped in the pages of the Bible, they preach against the Word of God. Wrapped in the flag, they teach against the creed of America. They advance fascism while mongering fear of socialism.

Peter’s purpose is to move religion beyond platitudes and feel-good-ism. To acknowledge the pain, and hopefully move towards correcting the cause. Since my specialty is politics rather than religion, I’m more interested in protecting our liberties and the hard-fought rights our predecessors bequeathed to us.

So take in Peter’s words. Understand that he is trying to embrace the pain that threatens to overwhelm our entire culture. Where we find, it seems, that the world is still too much with us. We have met the enemy, and it is us. And our only hope of salvation – in this world – lie with our collective strength and refusal to lay down and die.

Chris Bowers, at Open Left, offered a supposed “Serious Question” today:

Does anyone here think that working to stop GOP from destroying the filibuster in 2005 was still a good idea?

Wasn’t that a mistake? Shouldn’t we have helped them instead?

Discuss.

It was also sent out on Twitter, and I responded thusly:

Yes. If Democrats knew how to message, they could paint the GOP as obstructionist and win even more seats. But they are too dumb

Within minutes, I received a Twitter reply that shows there is no seriousness involved and no discussion was ever wanted:

Oh yeah, better messaging would have led to huge Dem landslide in 2010, and / or forced GOP to cave on big policies. #um,no

Wow. Way to engage in an actual conversation. Before I go into detail, I’ll provide my two responses, just so anyone who actually reads this will have complete disclosure:
#1:

@openleft make a real argument. With 65 dems the gop could not filibuster.

and #2:

@openleft it isn’t about forcing gop to cave. Its about having a governing majority.

First, let’s deal with the issue of the filibuster…

The filibuster serves a real purpose in legislative proceedings. It prevents a mere majority from trampling over the concerns of a minority. It forces even a majority to build consensus – to appeal to the public and across partisan lines to forge agreements on important issues.

The problem that Democrats face in the Senate is threefold: 1) Republicans have locked arms in simply opposing everything put forth; 2) Their inept messaging lets Republicans frame things like the denial of unemployment benefits as a positive thing (or allows it to be ignored entirely); and 3) Their own partisanship is too weak, and their majority too small, to overcome Republican efforts. But not the filibuster.

And, yes, better messaging would have led to a very different political landscape in 2010. Democrats allowed Republicans to bottle up unemployment benefits for millions of Americans while our economic recovery was held in stasis by its “jobless” nature. What was the overriding news story? Lindsey Lohan going to jail. Under-regulation and under-enforcement of the oil industry led directly to the debacle in the Gulf. What is the news meme? “Is this Obama’s Katrina?” Republicans kill the campaign disclosure bill and Democrats’ messaging is no where to be found – meaning that Republicans can openly say that they are willing to denying corporations the ability to buy elections hurts Republicans and Democrats are too feeble – while holding a majority – to even put out a competing message.

There has been a complete lack of messaging and outreach on everything Democrats have undertaken since George W. Bush left office. Can anyone actually believe that Americans were protesting having the ability to see a doctor if they actually wanted to see one? Death panels – that was where the meme went. The Obama Cadillac of Messaging that drove him to the White House stayed in the garage. No one in the House or Senate has done anything, either.

So Democrats will likely lose this November, and they might even lose their majority in both Houses. But it won’t be because of the filibuster. It will be because they let a crippled and crumpled GOP dictate the public tone of the debate…while they stamped their feet and said, “But we have a majority!” and mocked anyone that pointed out their own failures.

The White House at least has the decency to try to make amends to Shirley Sherrod. The problem is that they never should have put themselves in a position to do so. The “story” was “broken” (i.e., fabricated) by an activist who was upset that the Tea Party has been called to task for failure to condemn racist comments/persons/thoughts in their membership.

A fuller examination of Sherrod’s remarks display a much different story than what the Tea Party activist portrayed them as. Yes, Sherrod is admitting to having racist thoughts that impacted her job performance. However, her full story is that: 1) She had second thoughts and went back to give full aid to the person in question; and 2) She says that it taught her that racism is wrong, no matter which side of the color-line a person lives on.

It’s a story that is unusual in its candor and its topic. First, to have a public official of any level admit to ever having had a racist thought is practically unheard of – even when they are caught doing and saying things that are blatantly racist. Second, it’s a story about black against white racism, which is also a topic that is practically taboo. Third, it’s a story where a poor white person went to the government for held (more taboo). Fourth, it’s a story where the person involved comes to understand that racism is a double-edged sword that damages the person wielding it as well as the person on the receiving end.

In short, it’s the type of story we, as a nation, need to hear more of so we can understand ourselves better. It’s the type of candid conversation on race that can actually move us forward rather than having the same stupid arguments again. Unfortunately, it has turned out to be nothing of the sort because a nitwit with an agenda was looking for something he could manipulate, rather than a story to tell.

It’s one thing to fabricate things to use as a general illustration – as long as the audience is told that it is a fabrication. It’s quite another to purposefully ruin a person’s life because they happen to say or do something that fits into a political agenda. It wouldn’t even matter if the other side had done the same – it is wrong, bordering on evil to shatter someone’s life for a cheap moment in the sun.

Almost as disgusting as the origination of the non-story has been the right-wing’s reaction to the revelation of a hoax. It is filled with equivocations and hyphenations and parenthetical remarks that make it clear they are really hear to bury Ceasar, not praise him. No one needs to say that the activist’s future work might stand on its own merit – let us see it and judge it in the light of this atrocity.

It’s a statement on our total inability to see the other political side as people rather than as pawns. And it’s a statement on how some people on the left are still stuck in reacting to those on the right rather than in doing the hard work of public education and framing. In other words, it’s an example of everything that’s wrong with our political system, and our nation.