The Occupy Wall Street Movement

"I hope we shall ... crush in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed corporations which dare already to challenge our government in a trial of strength, and bid defiance to the laws of our country". If you think the quote is from a liberal politician, you will be wrong. It was in a letter written by Thomas Jefferson in 1816 to George Logan, a Pennsylvania politician. 

“We now conclude that independent expenditures, including those made by corporations, do not give rise to corruption or the appearance of corruption”. That quotation did not come from any statement by any Republican Presidential candidate.  That was the decision handed down in 2010 by Supreme Court in the case of Citizen United v. Federal Election Commission. 


According to Richard Beeman in his book titled 'Plain, Honest Men - The Making of American Constitution', moneyed influence on the election process was very much on the minds of the framers of the Constitution. There are other historical documents that allude to this concern. Yet our Supreme Court, by their ruling, has corrupted the election process in favor of the oligarchs. In 2010 elections the corporations and other wealthy interest groups, through the now legal Super PACS, legitimized Tea Party's single focus on tax cuts for the rich. Under the guise of deficit reduction, they are pursuing their goal of undermining the regulations that are meant to protect the citizens from the corporate greed. 


The Republican Congress is so concerned about the deficit that they would like to cut most of the governmental services except the defense. Yet the 81% of the deficits since the end of the WWII had occurred during the Republican Administrations. Reagan and Bush racked up $3.4 trillion by cutting taxes on the rich. When he took office, President Reagan informed us how to measure deficit to the end of the budget of the departing President. He said that if we stacked thousand dollar bills, a trillion would be 67 miles high. When he left office the stack had grown to 191 miles. See details here. Two tax cuts, prescription drug plan and two unfunded wars during the G W Bush administration added $6.06 trillion. Although Clinton left a $235 billion surplus after a paying $360 billion debt, he had accumulated $2.23 trillion interest on Reagan - Bush deficit. By the end of G W Bush budget on October 1, 2009, the total deficit stood at $11.63 trillion. Tea Party/GOP conveniently assign the Bush's last budget deficit and the interest to Obama thereby bloating his numbers to over $4.2 trillion, although his $1.4 trillion is part of the Bush tax cuts, Obama stimulus and the wars. The Grand Oligarchs Party, the GOP demonstrates total dishonesty when it comes to deficits. 


Although the federal corporate tax rate is 15% to 35%, during 2008 to 2010 the 12 fortune 500 corporations received $62.4 billion in Tax Subsidies while earning $171 billion in profits. Their Effective Tax rate was - 1.5%. See details here. According to the Congressional Budget Office, during the last three decades, for the 1% of the population, average inflation-adjusted household income grew by 275%. The rest of wealthiest fifth of the population, not including the top 1%, saw household income grow by 65% during that time, faster than the rest of the population. During the same period, the income of the poorest fifth grew a meager 18%.    


Reagan's record tax cuts, motivated by supply side economics, failed and the unemployment reached 10.8%, he began spending on the infrastructure. That triggered the recovery. Although he had to increase taxes four times to take back half of the original cuts, the government spending had already begun to increase payrolls. Compare Clinton, who raised the taxes in 1993 and industry responded by providing 23 million jobs. The Tea Party/GOP plan continues to fall back on the failed supply side economics by cutting more taxes on the back of the 99% Americans. They believe that millions of Americans are unemployed by choice just as the foreclosures are the result of bad choices by the mortgagees. 


They would gut the EPA, created under Nixon Administration as the chemically contaminated sites were found and people were getting sick. The Love Canal, NY is now forgotten when resident of the whole city had to be relocated. Also retired to the history is the Valley of the Drums where thousands of chemical waste filled drums were scattered on a 23 acre site near Louisville, Kentucky. It took us decades to clean many of our polluted lakes and rivers and many more need attention. There may be ways to make the agency more efficient, but to make it ineffective, as the sponsors of the Tea Party/GOP would like to do, would be a crime.


The subprime mortgage was nothing more than a fraudulent scheme in a freewheeling capital market. It bloated the housing market as it sucked in the unsuspecting mortgagees into low cost loans that were then used to create securities giving false value to the holder. The trading of such stocks enriched the financial managers and brokers alike who received billions in bonuses while the working Americans, once faced with the real cost of the loans, began defaulting. I am sure that some of the GOP presidential contenders would dismiss the plight of the underwater mortgage holders because of their bad choice. GOP, the Grand Oligarchs Party, by opposing the Consumer Financial Regulations, demonstrates that they feel no pain for the millions of Americans who have lost everything in the subprime scheme. 


Our election process has become so corrupt that majority of the time the bills are crafted by lobbyists' staff. Immediately after a Presidential election, the opposition begins to dismantle the elected officials and fund raising for the coming elections gets under way in earnest and no time is left for the affairs of the nation. The Occupy Wall Street movement is crying out against the injustices meted out by our representatives on behalf of their financial supporters. I hope that by the next elections, the protests have raised the ire of the voters so that we do not elect a candidate who pledges allegiance to an individual's whimsical idea. There can only be one pledge - to uphold the Constitution and work only for the welfare of all the citizens. 

The Jobs Plan

The White House jobs package was positively received by majority of economists. the reason for their optimism is the reduction of the payroll taxes that will encourage the indigenous industries to generate employment. It will not benefit global corporations, so the new jobs cannot be exported. Many economists are optimistic that this can create from 600,000 to 1.6 million jobs by the end of 2012. 

Nothing will happen until the Congress passes the bill. The House Republican leaders John Boehner and Eric Cantor have signaled they are open to some infrastructure spending and to a program that Obama will pitch to help train unemployed workers. Based upon their declared goals, one has to question their sincerity. Immediately after winning majority in the House in 2010 elections, The Tea Party Republicans declared their primary goal to do whatever it took to defeat President Obama. Rush Limbaugh declared that, "We will get rid of this president even if we have to bring the unemployment to over 10%." No matter how much we ignore his statement, the actions of the new GOP (Grand Obstructive Party) during the debt ceiling negotiations demonstrated their determination.  

Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader in the Senate, immediately branded President Obama's proposals as 'overly partisan and a political smokescreen.' He further emphasized that the president's policies simply do not work and that, "This isn't a jobs plan, it's a re-election plan." One wonders what the Tea Party Republicans have been doing since 2008. During the healthcare debate they rumored about the death panels and when that did not work they made deficit as their rallying cry. No doubt deficit is a long range problem and must be addressed but our immediate problem is the stagnant unemployment. Improved employment will not fare well for the GObP. 

Harry Reid, the Democrats' leader in the Senate, meanwhile, said that Republicans also had their eyes squarely on the 2012 vote.

"The other side seems convinced that a failing economy is good Republican politics. They think if they kill every jobs bill and stall every effort to revive the economy, President Obama will lose," Reid said.

The GOP's actions during the debt ceiling negotiations demonstrated their willingness to go as far as possible in pursuit of their goals when they were willing to allow a US default that would have shaken the already wobbly financial system of the world. We need to impress on our representatives that they need to attend to the affairs of the state. So far Harry Reid's statement rings true when he said, 

"Republicans aiming at the President have caught innocent Americans in the crossfire."

The Republicans are balking on doing away with the loopholes for the corporations and the wealthy in order to finance the Jobs Plan. More on that in my next post. 

Elections in the USA

The elections are still over a year away but the mudslinging is already in full swing. Since the Supreme Court bestowed life on the corporations and made them persons, there is no shortage of funds to disseminate misinformation and charge the emotions of the unsuspected.

Unlike other industrial nations where an election period lasts three to four months, electioneering in the United States never takes a break. Immediately after an Election Day, the opposition begins its campaign to dismantle the winning President and his party. National interests take a back seat to the schemes hatched by the minority to obstruct everything from simple confirmation of officials to the legislative agenda that brought the majority in power. Arguments on matters, sometimes of no national importance, are given prominence by the media and winners and losers are announced as in a sporting event.

Fundraising for the next elections begins immediately after the elected officials have taken their oaths. According to Center for Responsive Politics $ 5.2 billion was spent during the 2008 elections and $3.6 billion for the 2010 midterm. It is estimated that the 2012 elections will cost nearly $8 billion. At this rate the outside influence that the founding fathers feared is already showing its muscles. In order to keep the donors in line our representatives take positions that prevent any compromise. Compromising had been the bedrock of our system, but over time it has become a sign of weakness. The performance during the Health Reform Act and recent arguments in raising the debt ceiling are good examples.  

This behavior of our elected officials is forced upon them by the framers of the Constitution, albeit unknowingly. They had no example to follow and their foresights concerning our freedoms and rule of law have been nothing less than a miracle, but the bicameral system with a two year term for the members of the House is no longer working and is subject to outside influences. The honorable men, who spent five months of their time writing the Constitution without any compensation, expected gentlemen farmers or business owners to take two years out of their avocations to serve the nation. Instead our representatives have evolved into professional politicians who serve two masters with diverging agendas.  

The European nations that followed our experiment in democracy chose the Parliamentary system of government. Parliament is the final authority and a law once passed cannot be challenged in the courts. Here, on the other hand, the enforcement of a law can be delayed for years by court challenges or denied funding while the citizens are kept in a limbo. If there is a deadlock or the public becomes critical of the leaders, a no-confidence vote can topple the government and elections are called to elect a new Parliament.  The process takes no more than a few months. The absence of scheduled elections motivates a representative to diligently attend to the affairs of his nation thereby securing his position. Our system, on the other hand, provides job security to those whose campaign coffers are full.

It will be a miracle to see a Parliament in the USA, but we can implement some significant changes to make our system more responsive to a changing world. There was a discussion during the writing of the Constitution for the President to have one term of seven years. A change to an eight year term would free him or her from moneyed influence, political affiliations and stress of campaigning while addressing myriad of national and international problems. To allow the members of the House enough time to attend to the affairs of the nation, their term of office should be extended to four years with a maximum of three terms. In order to encourage the participation of multiple parties, we need to institute open primaries and limit the amount of money that can be donated by anyone including the corporations. Nowhere in the industrialized world have the lobbyists carried so much influence as they do in the USA where their staff is allowed to actively participate in the framing of legislation. No wonder that we have over 50,000 tax codes to facilitate special interests.  

Those who believe in the sacredness of the Constitution should pause to read the following inscription from the southeast wall of the Jefferson Memorial. It was excerpted from a letter dated July 12, 1816 from Thomas Jefferson to Samuel Kercheval. It reads:

I am not an advocate for frequent changes in laws and constitutions. But laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind. As that becomes more developed, more enlightened, as new discoveries are made, new truths discovered and manners and opinions change, with the change of circumstances, institutions must advance also to keep pace with the times. We might as well require a man to wear still the coat which fitted him when a boy as civilized society to remain ever under the regimen of their barbarous ancestors.

Birthers, Deathers and..........

Yesterday I found myself at an acquaintance’s house for coffee and cake. The conversation around the table was light and the attendees were retelling the  jokes they had recently heard. Somehow the name of Osama bin Laden came up and one of the guest looked at me and informed me as if in confidence that President Obama did not make the decision to take out OBL. Astonished that the informer, being a retired military officer, ought to understand that such a decision could only be made by the Commander-in Chief, I wanted to know the source of his information. His authority for the statement came from an e-mail containing this very confidential information.

There we go again. Since the day President Obama declared his candidacy for the office, the radical wing of the GOP, my former party, began to undermine the candidate by spreading the rumors that Obama was not a natural born United States citizen. The media, the Fox News in particular, gave this group legitimacy by calling them ‘Birthers’. Even the seasoned politicians the like of Boehner have succumbed to the villainous rhetoric of what I call the Crazy Right. None of the sane leaders of the Grand Old Party came forth to discredit these rumors. During the Health Care Reform debate the seniors were being scared by the idea of ‘Death Panels’. It is saddening to watch people who appear to be intelligent falling for such tactics. 20 to 27 percent of our population has been convinced by Fox News gang that our President was born in Kenya.

It seems that in order to acquire legitimacy with the GOP, one had to parrot the ‘Birthers’ mantra. Donald Trump was the latest of those pursuing that course. President was right to release the long form of his birth certificate calling the ‘Birthers’ what they really are – circus barkers. The nation is faced with multitude of serious problems and this manufactured controversy had been distracting from a real debate.  

Although the release of the long form birth certificate by the President burst the balloon of the ‘Birthers’, they changed their cloak to the ‘Deathers’. Immediately after the very successful operation in the elimination of Osama bin Laden, the number one enemy of the United States, the ‘Deathers’ began their campaign to discredit the President. First they floated the idea that it was a staged event as no one knew where Osama was. When the al Qaida confirmed the news that their leader was indeed dead, they began to deliver the e-mails informing their ignorant followers that this President was inept in making such a decision. The apologists of the torture practices of the Bush era have begun to justify that policy and the want-to-be intellectual, Sara Palin declared the end of Osama bin Laden was brought about the former President Bush.

This noisy minority of Crazy Right had been attempting to disparage the President from the very day he announced his candidacy. Why so much hate is being directed to a person who was elected with a great majority of voted? After the elections, all he had been attempting to do is to implement what he promised during the campaign. Could it be that the Crazy Right is really the closet racists who cannot contain their rage to see an African-American occupying the White House? They are living in a time and place that saw its sunset over many decades ago and the world is no longer painted with the color of communism and democracy. Thanks to the United States, rest of the world has acquired its own aspirations and sometime their hopes and ambitions do not coincide with ours. Our foreign policies need to accept these sea changes and military power must only be used in concert with others after all dialogues had been exhausted.  

The world respected us for our ideals and principles. After 9/11 our anger undermined our long standing beliefs and the policy of ‘you are with us or against us’ was followed with the zeal of an ideology. As a result our reputation as a nation of high principles became thing of the past.  President Obama, having lived abroad as a child, brings a unique pragmatic prospective to the foreign policy and should be given full support in undoing the damage done by our ‘you are with us or against us’ policies of the past. 

I urge all the intelligent and informed people to challenge what I call the Crazy Right, which is determined to demolish a legitimately elected Presidency without regard to the harm their misinformation does to the nation. 

National Deficit

We in America tend to forget history. So here is a quick recollection of the past decade so we can understand why we have this enormous deficit. United States had a surplus of 230 billion for the fiscal year 2000 and with the surplus from the previous year had accumulated enough to pay off 360 billion of its debt. Yet by the end of the 2008 we managed to pile up a debt of 5 trillion although the unemployment rate during most of those years remained at around 5.5%. We can blame it all on 9/11 but Bush Tax reductions of 2001 and 2003 had lot to do with the increase in deficit. Those tax was supposed wipe out all debt by 2010. Instead we had a financial crash in 2008. 

      
The wars were one distraction. The events that unfolded after the invasions lend credence to the fact that the plans to invade Iraq were already progressing before the twin towers fell. Otherwise how can one explain the half-hearted pursuit of Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan while deploying a greater force to attack Iraq in search of nonexistent terrorists and WMD? While the Administration was busy coping with the aftermath of the ill conceived wars, the deregulated financial markets schemed to peddle a new type of mortgage instrument that required the borrower to pay only the low interest for a fixed number of years and then convert to the standard home loan. This lured the unsuspecting consumers into buying properties based on initially low payments. By the middle of the 2008 when the period of low interest rates expired, the home owners found it difficult to make the new monthly payments, the housing bubble burst leading to the collapse of our financial institutions and many major banks lost their viability. Without the intervention of the Federal Government we could have faced a replay of the great depression. 

 Last November, the Republican with the help of the Tea Party zealots won the House of Representatives. Their mantra was to cut the government in order to reduce the deficits. But what Paul Ryan, the Republican Chairman of the Congressional Budget Committee, is proposing has nothing to do with reducing the deficit but has a lot to do with imposing the Tea Party/Republican ideology. His plan for cuts in the Medicaid, Medicare and other safety net services for the poor will bring prosperity only to the top 2% of the Americans who will see their taxes lowered. The cuts in the funding of the regulatory agencies such as EPA and FDA, that protect the air we breathe and food we eat, will free the purveyors of these commodities from adhering to standards. The projected unemployment of 4% will be hard to accomplish as the cuts in the investment into education and research take effect. China has already dethroned us from being the largest exporter and soon will attack our high tech industries that manufacture the products for export.   

Congressman Ryan speculates that lowered corporate taxes will induce the businesses to invest in the United States. The corporate taxes at 28% are already lower than what the businesses pay in Germany, France and the United Kingdom. The top tax rate for the individuals in those countries is 50% and they have to pay another 20% VAT (value added tax) every time they buy a product. The Medicare and Medicaid privatizing through the vouchers only assures continued healthy profits for the insurance companies. If the past decade is any indications the health insurance premiums will continue to increase for the elderly and the poor, who could least afford them. His sponsors, the 2% of the population, do not need any assistance with their medical bills. Cutting the Pell Grants will stop the upward economic migration.  When compared to the other industrialized nations, the United States, the wealthiest country in the world, has a large number of its inhabitants live below the poverty level. 

Governments in democratic societies undertake programs in order to even the field for its citizens. The programs emerge because the people demand them and the regulations are implemented to protect the less sophisticated members of the society from the transgressions of the more powerful groups. Unfortunately in our system once an agency or a program is created it acquires a life of its own and its termination is prevented by either the legislators or the sponsoring lobbyists. As a result our Federal government has agencies on top of other agencies addressing identical problems. 

We have become so sophisticated that we can overcome any moral or ethical concern in order to pursue our goals. This thinking leads to corrupt machinations needing supervision. The ideologues would like to take away the government’s ability to do just that.  The gulf between the rich and the poor is further widening as the middle class vanishes. The problem of the rampant deficits is necessary and presents a monumental challenge that will require pragmatic leaders with moral strength to only serve the interest of the nation and not their ideologies.

My future blogs will discuss some of the ideas that are being considered to reduce the deficits. I hope that the above post will motivate the readers to seek the facts and not parrot the sound bites of others who have their own axes to grind. 

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