Blog

GOP candidate Newt Gingrich frequently condemns President Obama as a follower of Saul Alinski. Chris Matthews explains how this leftist thinker influenced Republicans and conservatives such as Ronald Reagan and William F. Buckley.

Who will rebuild America? Despite the indisputable decay of our roads, bridges, ports, airports and schools, no one has come forward to patch them up, much less build their more efficient and attractive successors.

“Prior to 1975,” says Bernard Schwartz, the former CEO of defense and aerospace manufacturer Loral Corp., who has taken the rebuilding of our infrastructure as a personal crusade, “we spent 3 percent of our GDP on infrastructure. Since then, we’ve spent 2 percent. If you add up that difference over the years, it comes to about $2 trillion, which is the amount that the American Society of Civil Engineers says would be required to bring our infrastructure up to par.”

What happened in 1975? It’s roughly the midpoint between the federal government’s enactment of Medicare and the indexing of Social Security, which greatly diminished poverty among U.S. seniors, and the Howard Jarvis/Ronald Reagan tax revolt, which greatly diminished government revenues. That left fewer funds for public construction projects, but at the time, our infrastructure was still pretty spiffy — the interstate highway system had only recently been completed, and the jet-age airports in major U.S. cities were still relatively new.

Today they’re sagging, and dragging the country down with them. But government, hamstrung by austerity-obsessed centrists and the anti-government radical right, is not stepping up to rebuild them. A bill to establish a federal infrastructure bank has been introduced in the Senate by Massachusetts Democrat John Kerry and Texas Republican Kay Bailey Hutchison, but it’s hard to imagine the do-nothing House Republicans supporting such a measure.

Which leaves — whom? U.S. banks and corporations are sitting on trillions of dollars, but there’s scant indication they want to invest it in America. A recent column in the Wall Street Journal called on U.S. billionaires to put their money into public projects in return for tax benefits and naming rights. (The Rupert Murdoch Sewage Treatment Plant? Has a ring to it.) I’m not aware of any takers who’ve come forth, however, to answer this plea.

But there are other pots of money in the United States — most prominently, our pension funds. And one group of pension funds has already begun to pony up the bucks to rebuild the nation: those controlled (at least in part) by America’s unions.

The retirement set-asides for unionized public employees and construction workers go into funds that their unions and their employers jointly control. In June, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka announced that his organization’s unions’ funds would invest $10 billion over the next five years in infrastructure projects. Since then, the federation’s construction-worker division has put $200 million of pension money into to retrofitting buildings, while the retirement funds of California teachers and other public employees have committed between $1.1 billion and $1.4 billion to infrastructure projects in the state. (Bound by their fiduciary responsibility to the retirees, the funds’ trustees must be confident that the projects will generate revenues, through tolls, fees, and the economic growth that such projects engender.) (more…)

I never cease to be amazed by the dogged persistence of some people in regarding Ronald Reagan and what we have come to call “Reaganomics” as commendable.

When you hear these people ranting, never forget this:  Reagan and his policies turned the U.S. from the world’s largest creditor nation into the world’s largest debtor nation.  Here’s a link to an article with more information on that.

Note that as a creditor nation, money goes out to one or more other nations, but comes back with interest (i.e., a net gain), except in the case of defaults which tend to be rare.  But as a debtor nation, the flow of capital gain is reversed, from the debtor to the creditor;  no bank or financial institution in the private sector could long endure
under such conditions.

You will also note in the article that the Carter administration phased out price controls on petroleum, allowing gasoline prices to rise.  But while the article fails to mention it, those price controls were partly based on subsidies to the petroleum
industry which, even though the price controls no longer exist, are still being granted today.

***

To submit a blog to Free Speech Zone, e-mail it to bstack@usw.org. Keep it to 250 words or fewer. You MUST include your full name, hometown, and state. You may attach a photograph of yourself. Please include a phone number. This WILL NOT be published. Posting any given blog is within the discretion of the USW.  No blog using foul language (this is a family site), false information (we don’t want to get sued), or unnecessary personal attacks (again, we don’t want to get sued) will be used. Wait a reasonable period of time, then blog again! This is a Free Speech Zone. 

When President Obama released his plan for “the Buffett rule,” which involves closing tax loopholes and ensuring that millionaires pay their fair share in taxes, he explained that “middle-class families shouldn’t be paying higher taxes than millionaires and billionaires.” “Warren Buffett’s secretary shouldn’t pay a higher tax rate than Warren Buffett,” he said.

Ever since, Republicans have been attacking Obama for inciting “class warfare.” “It looks like the President wants to move down the class warfare path,” said House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI). “I don’t think I would describe class warfare as leadership,” agreed Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-OH).

However, if calling for an end to millionaires having lower tax rates than their secretaries is class warfare, Obama is only the latest class warrior to occupy the Oval Office. In a June 6, 1985 speech at Northside High School in Atlanta, Georgia, then President Ronald Reagan explained that tax loopholes allowing a millionaire to pay lower taxes that a bus driver were “crazy,” because they allowed the “truly wealthy to avoid paying their fair share”:

We’re going to close the unproductive tax loopholes that allow some of the truly wealthy to avoid paying their fair share. In theory, some of those loopholes were understandable, but in practice they sometimes made it possible for millionaires to pay nothing, while a bus driver was paying ten percent of his salary, and that’s crazy. Do you think the millionaire ought to pay more in taxes than the bus driver or less?

(more…)

The Republicans have been so desperate to find new and clever ways to attack the president that they’ve managed to paint themselves into rhetorical corners with wafer thin sloganeering and laughable attempts at snark. It’s no wonder, then, why they’re dogged by an ongoing series of contradictions. These incongruities whiz past our faces so quickly these days, they’re almost imperceptible.

For example, during the Florida CPAC event last weekend, Governor Rick Scott cracked a joke about the president’s use of a Teleprompter. Not particularly shocking since it’s a desperately ridiculous attack that’s been popular since 2009 when the Republicans conveniently forgot that all modern presidents, including Saint Reagan, have used Teleprompters. Adding to the meta-irony, however, was the fact that Rick Scott read his Teleprompter joke… off of a Teleprompter.

Elsewhere, New Jersey governor Chris Christie announced that he doesn’t plan to run for president. Within his prepared remarks, Christie noted that President Obama “has not found the courage to lead.” (more…)

This is not your father’s (or mother’s) GOP. During a time of national crisis, the President has submitted an urgently-needed jobs bill that is well within the mainstream for Republicans as well as Democrats. But today’s Republicans are a new breed, dedicated not to their country or even an ideology.

Who could best express the absurd lengths these politicians will go to destroy anything that’s stands in their way? Nobody I can think of – except Groucho Marx. But before Groucho has his say, let’s have ours.

Their refusal to pass the strongest provisions in this reasonable bill, if that’s what they choose to do, will be conclusive proof that their only allegiances are to their own re-elections and the massive corporations that they serve. This bill is far from perfect, but it’s a start.

Rejecting this bill wouldn’t just be a vote against jobs, although it would certainly be that. It wouldn’t just be a vote against children, although it would condemn them to oversized classrooms in crumbling buildings. It wouldn’t just be a vote against bridges and highways and a safer, more prosperous country. (more…)

By Robert L. Borosage
Co-Director Campaign for America’s Future

Less than a week after launching his presidential campaign, Newt Gingrich’s candidacy has already been declared “done” and “over” by conservative pundit Charles Krauthammer. Gringich’s mouth – always faster than his brain – has been gorging on foot. He’s provided Democrats with great ad copy, denouncing the Republican plan to end Medicare as “radical” and “right wing social engineering.” He managed an astounding 360 overnight, from having “consistently favored” an individual mandate on health care to calling it unconstitutional the next day. He’s received well deserved scorn for dog whistle race bait politics in http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/gingrich-promises-to-slash-taxes-calls-obama-food-stamp-president/2011/05/13/AF9Q602G_story.htmldeclaring Obama the “food stamp president.”

And of course, in the run-up to his announcement, he retired the trophy for the most creative excuse for cheating on your wife, declaring that it was his passion for his country that led him astray.

Despite Gingrich’s gift for self-immolation, even with his own candidacy already sapped by the licentiousness of his mouth and his libido, he shouldn’t be dismissed. He has provided the clearest statement of how Republicans will run against Obama and Democrats in the next election – in the Reagan tradition, combining city on the hill economic homilies with back alley racial allusions. Consider Gingrich’s calling card: (more…)

By Jim Hightower
Author, radio commentator, America’s number one populist

A recent email to me pretty well sums up the big budget hullaballoo being pushed by tea party Republicans. As the writer put it: “Remember when teachers, public employees, Planned Parenthood, NPR and PBS crashed the stock market, wiped out half of our 401ks, took trillions in bailout money, spilled oil in the Gulf of Mexico, gave themselves billions in bonuses, and paid no taxes?” Then he added, “Yeah, me neither.”

Yet, it’s teachers, the middle class, the poor, the elderly, the environment, and the idea of public service that GOP Congress critters and governors want to punish for the destructive deeds of Wall Street banksters and corporate elites. For example, the GOP’s widely ballyhooed budget plan doesn’t just “end Medicare as we know it” – it ends it, period. Instead of extending this efficient and effective health care program, they would toss the elderly under the bus of insurance profiteers. Goodbye and good luck.

How’s this for bitter irony? Last year, tea party Republicans got elected to Congress by falsely claiming that Obama’s universal health care program would require “massive Medicare cuts.” And now, those same tea partiers are not merely voting to cut Medicare, they’re killing it. (more…)

By Robert Kuttner
Co-Founder and Co-Editor of The American Prospect

Economists are painting a pretty bleak picture of the economic outlook between now and the November 2012 election. Will this hurt President Obama’s re-election chances? Or will voters blame the Party of No?

That, of course, partly depends on what kind of campaign Obama runs and partly on the Republicans. But first, let’s take stock (actually, maybe let’s sell stock).

The Federal Reserve has been buying up lots of bonds to keep interest rates very low. The Fed disguises what it’s doing with the antiseptic and mystifying term, “quantitative easing,” or QE for short. This is the second time the central bank has tried this trick, hence the coy nickname, QE 2. The problem is that very low interest rates only take you so far in a depressed economy.

For the most part the Fed’s policy has been good for large banks and good for the stock market. Ordinary borrowers, businesses and homebuyers have trouble getting credit. (more…)

By Leo W. Gerard
USW International President

The nation’s greedy corporations and insatiable wealthy are fattening themselves on workers. There’s no trickle down. It’s the opposite; the rich have been sucking the economic lifeblood from the middle class for decades.

When reckless Wall Street banksters get taxpayer-funded bailouts, billionaires get tax breaks and gigantic corporations like GE and Bank of America pay absolutely no federal income taxes, they’re getting for free the very public services that enable them to make massive profits in this country – the courts, the roads, the trade regulators, the patent enforcement.

The middle class doesn’t get those big time special deals and loopholes. Workers pay their taxes. As a result, it’s workers footing the bill for the government services that enrich the rich. Greedy corporations, their CEOs and the right-wing politicians they buy with tens of millions in campaign cash are freeloaders.

It’s time workers stood up to the freeloaders. Join Monday’s We Are One rallies. These demonstrations across the country by religious groups, social justice organizations and labor unions will illustrate that the middle class is mad as hell and not going to take trickster economics anymore.

It’s time for greedy corporations and the insatiable rich to pay their fair share. It’s time to stop cuts to the government programs most treasured by and vital to the middle class and the vulnerable in this country – education, public transportation, Social Security. It’s time to stop right-wing attempts to terminate democratic rights like collective bargaining and voting without harassment. It’s time for the middle class to stop paying for everything and for the insatiable rich and greedy corporations to start sharing the sacrifice required to recover from the economic crisis caused by reckless gambling by Wall Street bankster corporations.

March for your rights Monday. March for the middle class facing record rates of foreclosure, unemployment, child poverty, and loss of opportunity as country club conservatives cut off college loans and Head Start.  March for the right of college students to register and vote in the towns where they study. March for the right of workers to band together, elect representatives and bargain with employers for better pay and working conditions. March for the right of the people to insist that corporations pay at least the same rate of taxes as workers do. March to end tax breaks for the wealthiest one percent who have now acquired more wealth than all the workers in the bottom 90 percent.

Greedy corporations, the insatiable wealthy and their purchased politicians have for three decades skewed public policy to enrich themselves while pushing down wages and benefits for the middle class.

From 1947 to 1975, a time of strong unionization in the workforce, real wages of average workers increased with productivity. The 75 percent rise in productivity and the nearly matching rise in wages gave the United States the largest, most vibrant middle class in the history of the world.

Since 1978, productivity grew 86 percent, but compensation for workers grew only 37 percent, and if the cost of benefits, mostly uncontrolled health insurance increases, is removed, the real average  hourly wage did not rise for 35 years, according to Alan S. Blinder, professor of economics and public affairs at Princeton University and a former vice chairman of the Federal Reserve.

Here’s how it works: The nation’s largest corporation, General Electric, earns tens of billions in profits from the labor of its workers but refuses to share the benefits with them. GE is expected to demand that its 15,000 unionized U.S. workers accept benefit cuts. So they’ll pay more for their retirement and health care and have less money to live and to pay taxes.

Meanwhile, the share of national income captured by the richest one percent rose from 8 percent in 1975 to 23.5 percent in 2005.

Under Dwight D. Eisenhower, the president in the 1950s, the nation’s richest paid an effective tax rate of 70 percent after loopholes. Today, it’s 16 percent – significantly lower than the 25 percent forked over through payroll deductions by individual workers earning between $34,500 and $83,600 a year.

That resulted from deliberate policy changes. Beginning with Ronald Reagan, country club conservatives cut taxes for the wealthy, while at the same time ending routine minimum wage increases and undermining the bargaining rights of labor.

The changes were made by increasingly wealthy politicians increasingly influenced by lobbyists. For example, 60 percent of the freshmen in the U.S. Senate and 40 percent in the U.S. House are millionaires. By contrast, only 1 percent of Americans are worth more than $1 million.

Compounding that is corporate influence, which worsened last year when the U.S. Supreme Court enabled corporations to donate unlimited money in secret. The upshot is corporations like General Electric, spending millions to lobby and paying zero in federal income taxes. GE spent $200 million to lobby for loopholes in the federal income tax code over the past decade, made $26 billion in American profits over the past five years, and not only paid absolutely no federal income taxes, but got itself a $4.1 billion rebate from the IRS.

That is far from an anomaly. Two out of every three U.S. corporations paid no federal income taxes from 1998 through 2005, according to a report by the Government Accountability Office. And the situation hasn’t improved since then. U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders has written repeatedly about tax avoidance by the likes of Bank of America and Goldman Sachs, Wall Street banks that former President George W. Bush handed hundreds of billions in bail out dollars.

Bank of America got a $1.9 billion tax refund from the IRS last year, even though it made $4.4 billion. Goldman paid only 1.1 percent in federal income taxes on its $2.3 billion in profits. New York Times reporter David Kocieniewski wrote in his story about GE that such tax dodging by corporations has resulted in a significant decline in federal revenue from corporations –  from 30 percent in the 1950s to 6.6 percent in 2009.

Tax avoidance is a virtuous cycle for greedy corporations and the wealthy. They pay less in taxes, then have more money to lobby politicians to lower their taxes. In fact, it’s gotten so bad that lawmakers are hiring lobbyists right from their K Street firms to write legislation. And Congress’ new right wingers are increasing this trend. Since they took office in January, nearly half of the 150 former lobbyists working in top policy jobs in Congress were hired.

For workers, however, it’s a vicious cycle. They’re forced to pay the taxes shirked by greedy corporations and the insatiable wealthy. And they’re forced to suffer service cut backs.

Right now, right wingers are trying to cut $51.5 billion from the federal budget – demanding elimination of programs essential to the middle class and poor such as subsidies for home heating for the impoverished. But if the wealthy paid their share, say hedge fund manager John Paulson who earned $2.4 million an hour in 2010 – then those cuts would be unnecessary because the federal government would have an extra $69.5 billion in revenue.

Forty-three years ago on April 4 Martin Luther King was assassinated after standing up for the right of public sector workers in Memphis, Tenn. to negotiate for better lives.

In his last speech, Rev. King said God had allowed him to go to the mountaintop where he’d looked over and seen the Promised Land. “I may not get there with you,” he cautioned, “But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people will get to the Promised Land.”

Greedy corporations and the wealthy have made it to the mountain top. And they’re shoving American workers down the hillside to ensure the Promised Land is reserved only for the richest.

The promise of America democracy is equality. Equal rights, equal treatment under the law, equal opportunity. Freeloading by greedy corporations and the insatiable wealthy is denying those promises to the vast majority of citizens. Americans must unify and march to wrest back those rights and secure the American Dream for all.

Take a first step. Join one of the 600 We Are One demonstrations on April 4.

***

Leo W. Gerard also is a member of the AFL-CIO Executive Committee and chairs the labor federation’s Public Policy Committee. President Barack Obama recently appointed him to the President’s Advisory Committee on Trade Policy and Negotiations. He serves as co-chairman of the BlueGreen Alliance and on the boards of the Apollo Alliance, Campaign for America’s Future and the Economic Policy Institute.  He is a member of the IMF and ICEM global labor federations and was instrumental in creating Workers Uniting, the first global union.