Senior Romney Health Adviser Admits Obamacare Can Move Health Care System In The Right Direction

Senior Romney Health Adviser Admits Obamacare Can Move Health Care System In The Right Direction

Mike Leavitt, President George W. Bush’s former Secretary of Health and Human Services and a senior adviser to Mitt Romney, says the Affordable Care Act could help reduce health care costs and transform America’s existing fee-for-service health care model. In an apparent break from Romney’s pledge to “easily” repeal the law, Leavitt told ModernHealthcare that the measure could help move the nation in the right direction:

    Mike Leavitt, the former secretary of HHS under President George W. Bush and current Romney adviser, said the federal government’s historic $15 trillion debt will drive “hard” changes in healthcare system to reduce its costs. Those changes, including moving across healthcare from a fee-for-service model to outcomes based payment, may be facilitated by the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. Romney has repeatedly urged repeal and replacement of the law.

    The law “gives the secretary authority to do certain things that are clearly aimed at trying to move us in this direction,” he said in a brief interview after addressing a Washington gathering of the Cancer Action Network. “A lot of it will depend on how aggressively the secretary chooses to use the authorities in the law to move us in that direction.”

Leavitt’s consulting firm, Leavitt Partners, is also heavily invested in the health law’s exchanges and “has been advising companies and state legislatures” on how to build the new marketplaces. He has also said that companies and states will likely implement the measure despite the GOP’s efforts to unravel the law, arguing that “they recognize that individual insurance shoppers and small businesses have long been at a disadvantage, lacking the negotiating power of large companies that can demand better prices.”

So Romney's advisory says that Obamacare or the Affordable Care Act is a step in the right direction - even as the far right conservatives like Sarah Palin and anti-American Fox News still claim ObamaCare is composed of "death panels".

Conservative Economics is Trickle on The American People Economics

Conservative Economics is Trickle on The American People Economics - “Trickled On” Economics

One thing about an election year, particularly this one, is that it reveals the fallacy that humanity has somehow emerged from “mere animal conditions.”  We may have comfortable homes, climate-control, exo-skeletons (known as automobiles) to allow us to move about rapidly and move objects many times our own weight, etc.  But beavers, ants, and foxes have these things.  One thing that humans have the capacity for, if they strive to use it, is being able to see life from another’s viewpoint – we have the capacity for compassion.  If anything would allow us to rise from a “mere animal condition,” it is this compassion.  But under the capitalist model, currently the dominant paradigm in the world, the priority is put on expropriating land and labor in order for a small group to accumulate wealth they did not produce.  In our deluded national narrative, these people are said to be “job creators.”  In fact, their access to wealth and power has allowed them to create a sort of neo-feudal system that can be aptly called, “Trickled-On Economics.”

In this dominant paradigm headed by Big Capital, compassion is highly discouraged.  There is a tendency among the politicians, managers, and overseers of capitalist institutions to live like there is no tomorrow and pretend like there was no yesterday.  After all, the working class – those who actually produce wealth – can be depended upon for a source of insurance in the event the gaming schemes of Big Capital fail.  This attitude of borrow now (“leverage” if you are rich), worry later, unlike the wealth itself, has trickled down, or should I say “trickled on” the general public.

The so-called “debt crisis” currently providing rationale for cutting social programs was created by capitalists manipulating the housing and financial markets for short-term profit, a scheme that crashed the global economy.  While they were doing that, working class people struggled with a steady decline in income resulting from off-shoring American manufacturing, union sell-outs, and outright union-busting.  To make up for this decline, they were handed credit cards, deregulated during the Reagan years, and usurious lending became the order of the day.  In addition, instead of providing education for its citizens as some social welfare states of western and northern Europe have done, the student loan industry was created, with student loan giant Sallie Mae becoming a for-profit corporation by 1995.  As if this was not enough (it never is), for-profit health care, starring Big Pharma, has become ensconced in Congress, K-Street, and Wall Street.  Also, moving in from the desert is a dust devil known as the for-profit prison system.  Examples of profiteering from others’ misfortune, or indeed manufacturing misfortune for profit, (note: I do not even broach the war profiteering game in this essay), has no limit in the capitalist paradigm.

With the declining share of wealth enjoyed by the working class, it was logically reasoned that higher education was a way out of mind-numbing, dead-end jobs and into a better life.   Both federally-insured and private loans for education skyrocketed.  For some, this better life came to pass, for others it became a trap and in some cases a death-trap.  Student loans do not have bankruptcy protection, and the collection agency can seize your home, your social security, your disability income – pretty much anything they want to seize.  There are numerous horror stories out there, including many suicides.  Indeed, as Alan Collinge has written in his book The Student Loan Scam, defaulted loans are more lucrative than those not in default because assets can be seized.

Credit card debt, which now ranks behind student loans in consumer debt as of the summer of 2010, is the result of falling wages and job loss.  By 2012, there were well over a half billion credit cards in use in the U.S. alone.  That is double the total population of the country.  Bankruptcies were down in 2011; with a mere 1.37 million filings in the U.S. (it was 1.55 in 2010).  Many bankruptcies were brought about by medical bills contracted in a system that preys on the sick.

A compassionate set of policies that would address these issues would not include taking billions of dollars in tax revenue from the working class and handing it over to Wall Street bankers to cover their failed schemes and scams as has been done more than once since 2008.  In this paradigm of the Bean-counter, we can hand $700 billion at a pop over to criminals in suits, but we cannot help struggling college graduates or families stranded without gainful employment.

It is not hard to see that the issue is systemic.  Capitalism has no built-in moral code other than maximizing profits.  Whatever morality exists is brought to the table by individuals, but the system itself does not reward compassion; indeed, ruthlessness and cruelty are central features of the game.  Capital has been engaged in a long-term struggle to deprive people of access to the resources they need to build a good life for themselves.  It creates an environment that allows a small group or even one person to live extremely well on the backs of those whose access to resources they control.  Once people become separated from the resources that they need to live, they must re-acquire them on terms favorable to the capitalist.  In some cases, the result is modern-day slavery.  The separation of people from the resource base is a central theme in the human history of the world and at the heart of our systemic problem today.

This system has led to the abuse of the non-human resources, as well.  Humans and their resources are, ultimately, not separate at all.  Labor is the interaction of humans with the non-human world and the results are often very beautiful, profound, poignant, moving, powerful, and on and on – in a word: art.  Forcing human beings to interact with resources on terms favorable to the Capitalist is hardly emerging from “mere animal conditions.”  It results in environmental degradation of both human and non-human.  Degrading and dangerous sweatshops, mines, oil rigs, etc., have increased because of deregulation and defunding of safety oversight.  Environmental oversight has been rolled back, defunded, or ignored.  These underscore the systemic nature of the dual expropriation of labor and resources for the sake of the wealth accumulation of a very few.

From mountain-top mining to clear-cutting rainforests, the systemic unsustainable use of resources creates an oppositional relationship between humans and their environment.  “Man vs. Nature” is a conflict drilled into our heads from an early age, but it is this term “Versus” that needs to be questioned and studied.  A political economic system in which compassion features predominately would institutionalize such introspection.  We have examples from our past.  Agriculture, for instance, traditionally employed the concept of “husbandry.”  Farms were once places where abundance was possible for all species involved and sustaining this human and non-human natural order was the priority. Under capitalism, agriculture has industrialized and cold, hard numbers dominate decision-making processes.

Under a more humane system, labor would be an extension of the production of nature; indeed, human labor is an expression of nature.  But its usurpation by a few is like the felling of the forests, the leveling of mountains, the making of war, or the building of sweatshops: we trade our humanity – our compassion – for the sake of accumulation by an ambitious and even sociopathic few.  If we are serious about emerging from a “mere animal condition,” we need to “think outside the box,” and box is the capitalist paradigm.


Doug Harvey is a historian and musician teaching, writing, and performing in the Kansas City area.

Doug means well, but he underestimates  -so all, but so much of the American public's appetite for abuse. Changing from the crony vulture capitalism we have now to a humanistic capitalism is immediately demonized as creeping communism. Until more of the public gets tired of being trickled on we are doomed to repeat these economic collapses -large and small forever - like rats on a treadmill.

Anti-American Conservative Legislators Are Trying to Turn Back The Clock To 1850 for American Women

How Lawmakers Lost Their Sense Of Shame

Connie Johnson is not afraid to be outrageous. The Democratic state senator from Oklahoma has watched in frustration for several years now as colleagues have rammed through bills limiting women's reproductive rights.

She tried debating and making speeches. Finally, earlier this month, she thought of something that made her point more clearly, or at least more graphically.

She introduced an amendment that would define life as beginning not at conception, but at "ejaculation."

"It wasn't until I got graphic that people finally heard what I was saying," Johnson says. "It was wonderful. If this is what it took to draw attention — to draw the world's attention to Oklahoma — I'm willing to do it."

Other legislators have used similarly provocative means to underline their point that bills addressing reproduction seem to be targeting women unfairly.

The Virginia Senate, for instance, last month rejected by two votes a measure, offered by Democrat Janet Howell, that would have required men to undergo a rectal exam and a cardiac stress test before they could be prescribed drugs for erectile dysfunction. Howell's measure may have been a stunt, but it was also intended as a serious comment on the underlying measure being debated, which would have required women to undergo an intravaginal ultrasound exam prior to an abortion.

These bills themselves are part of a larger trend. Politicians have always thrived on attention. In the age of reality shows and instant hype through Twitter and cable coverage, however, it appears there are no longer any limits on what they are willing to say or do.

"There's always been an element of grandstanding in the legislative process," says Jack Pitney, a government professor at Claremont McKenna College. "If you're eager for attention, the new electronic environment makes it easier for such activities to get attention."

The New Media Environment

Politicians have always said things that are shocking. But now titillating words and deliberately agitating bills can resonate well beyond their states or the halls of Congress as they're picked up instantly by blogs and cable.

This week, Indiana state Rep. Bob Morris gained instant national notoriety with his argument that the Girl Scouts subvert "traditional American family values."

Morris has stuck to his guns, but other politicians caught up in a trap of their own words' making have ended up apologizing. Some may have originally meant what they said — but they perhaps never intended their words to travel so far, so fast.

That was obviously the case for Rep. John Sullivan, R-Okla., who complained at a Bixby town hall meeting on Wednesday that there was no way to get senators to pass the House version of the federal budget "other than me going over there with a gun and holding it to their head and maybe killing a couple of them."

Sullivan illustrated his remarks with a firearms gesture, but he quickly apologized when he was called on them by a national news organization, the liberal blog Talking Points Memo.

There used to be a saying - America Love It or Leave It- Maybe its time for conservatives to start loving American freedom and respecting the basic rights of citizens or go found their own backwards country.

Conservative Republicans have made it clear the goal of the new culture war is preventing women from controlling their own lives

Conservative Republicans have made it clear the goal of the new culture war is preventing women from controlling their own lives

Why did the audience groan when John King asked in last night’s CNN debate whether the Republican candidates believe in contraception? It probably wasn’t because it was an asinine formulation (“Since birth control is the latest hot topic, which candidate believes in birth control, and if not, why?” as if birth control were a unicorn). It’s likely because the audience seems to have realized that it’s not a good look for Republicans to be so obviously engaged in curtailing women’s rights — which is why the candidates, or at least Rick Santorum and Mitt Romney, started talking about “out of wedlock” births. And though linking births outside marriage to contraception may have seemed like a non-sequitur, it wasn’t.

Santorum said, “What we’re seeing is a problem in our culture with respect to children being raised by children, children being raised out of wedlock, and the impact on society economically, the impact on society with respect to drug use and all — a host of other things when children have children.” And Romney, having started with a by-now-half-hearted defense of “religion freedom,” jumped in eagerly to defend abstinence-only education and say, “We have to have a president who’s willing to say that the best opportunity an individual can give to their unborn child is an opportunity to be born in a home with a mother and a father.” Bonus points for raising the spectre of abortion when asked about contraception. (By comparison, Ron Paul sounded halfway sane when he said immorality, not birth control pills, kills families. Or something.)

You might wonder if contraception isn’t logically a way to reduce potential unwanted pregnancies. But this subject change is one that some social conservatives have been trying to push for awhile. It involves conflating teen pregnancy and adults choosing not to marry when they become parents, and low-income women’s access to contraception with their “failure” to marry. (And drug use, why not?) But most crucially, it involves a nostalgia for the days where women neither had a choice over when they got pregnant nor had much of a choice but to try and marry the father.

Santorum even doubled down on the suggestion that more access to contraception leads to an increased “breakdown of the family,” citing to Greta van Susteren, again, the New York Times story about the high rate of children born outside of marriage. Then teen pregnancy got thrown in, with Van Susteren asking, “Are you saying that with contraception there’s more sexual activity? That young people will be less sexually active without contraception?” Santorum replied, ”That certainly was the case in the past.”

Inconveniently, teen pregnancy is at a 40-year low, so you might wonder which past Santorum is longing for. It’s true that between 1971 and 1988, more teenagers were having sex than before, but according to public health researchers, “At the beginning of the 1990s this trend reversed.” The data also indicates that it’s not an accident, so to speak, that the U.S. still has the highest teen pregnancy rate in the world: ”A mid-1990s analysis of five developed countries showed that adolescents in the United States initiated sexual activity at an age similar to that of adolescents in Sweden, France, Canada and Great Britain but that they used contraceptives less frequently.” A 2007 study in the American Journal of Public Health concluded that between 1995 and 2002, “the decline in pregnancy risk among 18- and 19-year-olds was entirely attributable to increased contraceptive use. Decreased sexual activity was responsible for about one quarter (23 percent) of the decline among 15- to 17-year-olds, and increased contraceptive use was responsible for the remainder (77 percent).”

As for the number of adults engaging in sexual activity outside marriage, it’s also been pointed out that the trend of later marriage — which also happens to correlate to a more lasting one — is on a “collision course” with abstinence-until-marriage doctrine. (Rick Santorum may have eight children, but he married at 32, for what that data point is worth). That Times piece about how more than half of births to women under 30 are outside of marriage (though a majority of women across the age spectrum are married when they have children) summed up the debate as follows:

    “The forces rearranging the family are as diverse as globalization and the pill. Liberal analysts argue that shrinking paychecks have thinned the ranks of marriageable men, while conservatives often say that the sexual revolution reduced the incentive to wed and that safety net programs discourage marriage.”

Birth control, of course, is used as a stand-in for the sexual revolution, but the suggestion is that without the pill, women might have been better able to coerce men into marriage in exchange for sex, whether those men are equipped to be partners and parents or not. Now, of course, they no longer need to solely rely on a man to support themselves (although two-partner households can certainly enjoy major economic advantages). How many women who lived through that earlier, more limited set of options would wish it on their daughters and granddaughters, as Santorum and apparently Romney do?

Conservatives also have suggested that the lure of no-strings-attached sex may have tricked women, too, into giving the milk away for free and saddled them with a baby or an abortion instead. “It is possible that women who are more confident in the reliability of their contraceptives may engage in sexual activity more often,” speculated National Review contributor Michael J. New last year in seeking to explain why the abortion rate had risen for low-income women while it had dramatically dropped among more affluent women. The implication was that Planned Parenthood handing out pills to sluts had encouraged them to wildly have sex, get pregnant and hightail it to an abortion clinic. Wealthier women, who are more likely to be married, did… what, exactly? Abstained? In fact, married couples report having sex more often than either single or partnered people, and according to census data, 78 percent of them use contraception. (There are still a million unplanned pregnancies that occur within marriage, and almost four in 10 of them end in abortion.) Meanwhile, contraceptive use among unmarried women overall is up, from 80 percent in 1982 to 86 percent in 2002.

As I wrote earlier this week, the evidence suggests that the key to reducing unplanned pregnancies, within and outside of marriage, is not less contraception — it’s more and better contraception, made more accessible alongside better information, all of which happens to correlate to your class situation. The substantive part of this “do you believe in birth control” nonsense is that the Obama administration has taken solid steps to correct the financial disparities in birth control access, by mandating that insurers fully cover it. And the fact that reproductive rights, when fully exercised, ultimately help women make choices for their own lives — whether to have children, whom to have them with and when — rather than making biology their inexorable destiny is what really rankles these Republican men.

Anyone listening to Santorum in particular knows that he is very quick with the comparisons to Hilter of anything he simply disagrees with. In that vain, throughout history it has been the general goal of all the great despots to oppose full person-hood and rights for women. So if Ricky really wants to learn about what is authoritarian and what is not, he need only look in the mirror.

Conservative Libertarian plantation owners don't want labor to get too uppity - David Koch Admits Big Spending to Help Scott Walker Bust 'Union Power'

Conservative Libertarian plantation owners don't want labor to get too uppity -David Koch Admits Big Spending to Help Scott Walker Bust 'Union Power'

Billionaire campaign donor David Koch, heir to a fortune and a political legacy created by one of the driving forces behind the John Birch Society, makes no secret of his enthusiasm for Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker.

“What Scott Walker is doing with the public unions in Wisconsin is critically important. He’s an impressive guy and he’s very courageous,” Koch explained in a recent conversation reported by the Palm Beach Post. “If the unions win the recall, there will be no stopping union power.”

That’s no surprise. What is surprising is that Koch is now appears to be bragging about how he and his brother Charles are using their vast fortune to fund an independent campaign aimed at “helping” Walker. Even in an era when billionaires such as the Kochs are emerging as key financiers of Super PACS and other campaigning vehicles Koch’s admission will raise eyebrows—and questions about whether inappropriate coordination of by a candidate, his campaign and a supposedly independent group might be the stuff of “scandal.”

Like their father before them, David Koch and his brother Charles are longtime champions of extreme right-wing causes. And Walker’s militant anti-labor policies coupled with a willingness to cut funding for public education and public services have made him a hero of conservative hardliners like the Kochs. At the same time, Walker’s extremism has inspired a movement to recall him from office, which recently filed petitions with more than 1 million signatures calling for an election to remove the governor.

The governor has already spent a fortune trying to block the recall drive, with millions of dollars in television advertising, as well as expensive legal efforts to block a new vote. Both have been strikingly unsuccessful so far; at least in part because Wisconsin has steadily lost jobs since Walker’s budget was enacted—a dismal record that has caused a loss of confidence in the governor and his agenda.

Even as Walker struggles to explain why Wisconsin is shedding jobs while the rest of the country is gaining them, conservative groups funded by Charles and David Koch, such as Americans for Prosperity, are filling the state’s television airwaves with ads that claim Walker’s policies are “working.” According to Reuters, “a $700,000 advertising campaign sponsored by Americans for Prosperity (AFP), a foundation funded by conservative billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch of oil and gas conglomerate Koch Industries, hit the Wisconsin airwaves, the latest phase of its ‘Stand with Walker’ campaign.”

These ads are supposedly independent expenditures by a not-for-profit organization that operates under tax rules established to benefit the work of “Religious, Educational, Charitable, Scientific, Literary, Testing for Public Safety, to Foster National or International Amateur Sports Competition, or Prevention of Cruelty to Children or Animals Organizations.”

Coordination between candidates and their campaigns and “independent” groups operating under the Internal Revenue Service code as 501(c)3 operations.

The IRS is explicit in this regard: “Under the Internal Revenue Code, all section 501(c)(3) organizations are absolutely prohibited from directly or indirectly participating in, or intervening in, any political campaign on behalf of (or in opposition to) any candidate for elective public office. Contributions to political campaign funds or public statements of position (verbal or written) made on behalf of the organization in favor of or in opposition to any candidate for public office clearly violate the prohibition against political campaign activity. Violating this prohibition may result in denial or revocation of tax-exempt status and the imposition of certain excise taxes.”

Similar, though slightly less strict rules, apply to campaigning by other co-called “501” groups that the Koch’s have funded.

So, while David Koch’s stated enthusiasm for Scott Walker was not surprising, his explanation of how that enthusiasm is being expressed politically was.

According to the Post, Koch said of Walker: “We’re helping him, as we should. We’ve gotten pretty good at this over the years. We’ve spent a lot of money in Wisconsin. We’re going to spend more.”

The Post added: “By ‘we’ he says he means Americans for Prosperity, which is spending about $700,000 on an ‘It’s working’ television ad buy in the state.”

Governor Walker’s defenders, a group that now officially includes the Koch Brothers (thanks to David Koch’s pronouncement), will surely suggest that the billionaire is merely expressing his right to fund independent activities that just happen to be “helping” Walker.

But it is notable that, during last summer’s Wisconsin state Senate recall campaigns, the Republican Party of Wisconsin issued statements pointing out that “coordination between…political campaigns and independent groups is specifically outlawed.”

Such coordination might be denied by the parties involved. But, argued the Republicans, reasonable people should recognize coordination as a “scandal.”

In some ways America is still fighting the Civil War and this time, unless ordinary working Americans speak up, the plantation owners like the Koch brothers will win. They hate that ordinary people - firefighters, office workers, nurses or anyone should have any power or say over their working conditions or even their fate in life. One thing these conservative libertarians are not about is freedom - except for the freedom to tyrannize the working class.

Anti-American Frank VanderSloot The Loony Billionaire Bankrolling Mitt Romney

Anti-American Frank VanderSloot The Loony Billionaire Bankrolling Mitt Romney

Frank VanderSloot's business practices and anti-gay activism--as well as his history of bullying journalists and bloggers--have brought the Romney backer lots of attention.

In a column sure to rain lawsuit threats down upon him, Glenn Greenwald exposes many of the scandals surrounding Mitt Romney's national finance co-chair, Idahoan Frank VanderSloot. VanderSloot is a billionaire whose deep pockets have funded no small number of Idaho's political figures. As Greenwald details, his business practices have drawn plenty of unwanted attention, as has his involvement in numerous far-right causes, particularly his anti-gay activism, including running a billboard campaign against Idaho Public Television for running a documentary about teachers talking about lesbian and gay issues in age-appropriate ways. His wife, Belinda, donated $100,000 to California's Prop 8 campaign.

VanderSloot also has a storied history of bullying journalists and bloggers. He seems to have a staff person devoted entirely to googling him and forwarding uncomplimentary instances of him name to his lawyers, so they can send threatening letters and bully said journalists and bloggers to pull their stories. His rabid anti-gay politics combined with his propensity to bully in one particularly disturbing incident involving local media, the Boy Scouts, and the Mormon Church. The "small, independently-owned newspaper in Mormon-heavy Idaho Falls," The Post Register ran an investigative series uncovering the story of a local pedophile in the local Boy Scouts troop who had molested dozens of children. The paper sued to obtain sealed court records from a civil suit in the case, and "then detailed how a Mormon bishop knew of his pedophile history yet still recommended him as a Scout master, how he was protected by several Boy Scout lawyers who were aware of more abuse but did not tell the boys’ parents, and how top-level local and national leaders of the Mormon Church had also received warnings."

    The newspaper then began uncovering the presence of several other scout-master pedophiles. As the Post Register‘s courageous Managing Editor, Dean Miller, detailed here, the backlash against the paper, its editors and reporters was severe.



    In response to this six-part exposé—which won the Scripps Howard Award for Distinguished Service to the First Amendment—VanderSloot went on a virtual jihad against the newspaper and the principal reporter who exposed the scandal, Peter Zuckerman. VanderSloot bought numerous full-page newspaper ads in The Post Register that attacked the story and explicitly identified the reporter, Zuckerman, as “a homosexual” (Zuckerman had previously written for a small Florida paper about being gay when he lived in that state, but had kept his sexual orientation largely a secret since he moved to rural Idaho). Vandersloot’s full-page ad expressly described the “speculation” that Zuckerman’s homosexuality had made him hostile to the Scouts and LDS: “the Boy Scout’s position of not letting gay men be Scout Leaders, and the LDS Church’s position that marriage should be between a man and a woman may have caused Zuckerman to attack the scouts and the LDS Church through his journalism.” While the ad absurdly sought to repudiate the very “speculation” about Zuckerman which it had just amplified (“We think it would be very unfair for anyone to conclude that is what is behind Zuckerman’s motives”), the predictable damage was done. Zuckerman’s editor, Dean Miller, explained: “Our reporter, Peter Zuckerman, was not ‘out’ to anyone but family, a few colleagues at the paper (including me), and his close friends”; but after VanderSloot outed him to his community in that ad, “strangers started ringing Peter’s doorbell at midnight. His partner of five years was fired from his job.”

Mitt Romney's national campaign finance co-chair is a huge anti-gay bigot. Not just against gay marriage, but a hate-mongering bigot who attacked and outed a reporter because he uncovered a threat to the families in his community—the threat of sexually predatory Boy Scout leaders.

VanderSloot gets away with his bullying ways in this small state because he's got extremely deep pockets and he'll use them to crush anyone, and friends in very high places. Thus far, he's been untouchable. But, as a close adviser and funder of Romney, (his company has given $1 million to the pro-Romney SuperPAC, Restore Our Future) he should be getting at least as much scrutiny by the national media as Foster Friess.

Vandersloot probably imagines himself a patriot. One person using their money and power to silence and destroy people is in no way an American ideal. It is the same kind of behavior embraced by authoritarian lunatics throughout the ages.

How to Restore the Middle Class Let everyone earn dividends from our common wealth-- the commons

 

How to Restore the Middle ClassLet everyone earn dividends from our common wealth-- the commons

A cushion of reliable income is a wonderful thing. It can help pay for basic necessities. It can be saved for rainy days or used to pursue happiness on sunny days. It can encourage people to take entrepreneurial risks, care for friends, or volunteer for community service.

Conversely, the absence of reliable income is a terrible thing. It heightens anxiety and fear. It diminishes our ability to cope with crises and transitions. It traps many families on the knife’s edge of poverty, and makes it harder for poor people to rise.

There’s been much discussion of late about how to save America’s declining middle class. The answer politicians of both parties give is always the same: jobs, jobs, jobs. The parties differ on how the jobs will be created — Republicans say the market will do it if we cut taxes and regulation. Democrats say government can help by investing in infra¬structure and education. Either way, it still comes down to jobs with decent wages and benefits.

It’s understandable that politicians say this: it was America’s experience in the past. In the years following World War II, we built a solid middle class on the foundation of high-paying, mostly unionized jobs in the manufacturing sector. But those days are history. Today, automation and computers have eliminated millions of jobs, and private-sector unions have been crushed. On top of that, in a globalized economy where capital can hire the cheapest labor anywhere, it’s no longer credible to believe that America’s middle class can prosper from labor income alone.

So why don’t we pay everyone some non-labor income — you know, the kind of money that flows disproportionally to the rich? I’m not talking about redistribution here, I’m talking about paying dividends to equity owners in good old capitalist fashion. Except that the equity owners in question aren’t owners of private wealth, they’re owners of common wealth. Which is to say, all of us.

One state—Alaska—already does this. The Alaska Permanent Fund uses revenue from state oil leases to invest in stocks, bonds and similar assets, and from those investments pays equal dividends to every resident. Since 1980, these dividends have ranged from $1,000 to $2,000 per year per person, including children (meaning that they’ve reached up to $8,000 per year for households of four). It’s therefore no accident that, compared to other states, Alaska has the third highest median income and the second highest income equality.

Alaska’s model can be extended to any state or nation, whether or not they have oil. Imagine an American Permanent Fund that pays dividends to all Americans, one person, one share. A major source of revenue could be clean air, nature’s gift to us all. Polluters have been freely dumping ever-increasing amounts of gunk into our air, contributing to ill-health, acid rain and climate change. But what if we required polluters to bid for and pay for permits to pollute our air, and decreased the number of permits every year? Pollution would decrease, and as it did, pollution prices would rise. Less pollution would yield more revenue. Over time, trillions of dollars would be available for dividends.

There’s been much discussion of late about how to save America’s declining middle class. So why don’t we pay everyone some non-labor income? I’m talking about paying dividends to equity owners in good old capitalist fashion. Except that the equity owners in question aren’t owners of private wealth, they’re owners of common wealth. Which is to say, all of us.

And that’s not the only common resource an American Permanent Fund could tap. Consider the substantial contribution society makes to publicly traded stock values. When a company like Facebook or Google goes public, its value rises dramatically. The extra value derives from the vastly enlarged market of investors who can trust a public company’s financial statements (filed quarterly with the Securities and Exchange Commission) and buy or sell its shares with the click of a mouse. Experts call this a ‘liquidity premium,’ and it’s generated not by the company but by society.

This socially created wealth now flows mostly to a small number of Americans. But if we wanted to, we could spread it around. We could do that by charging corporations for the extra liquidity that society provides. Let’s say we required public companies to deposit 1 percent of their shares in the American Permanent Fund for ten years, up to a total of 10 percent. This would be a modest price not just for public liquidity but for other privileges (limited liability, perpetual life, constitutional protections) we currently grant to corporations for free. In due time, the American Permanent Fund would have a diversified portfolio worth trillions of dollars. As the stock market rose and fell, so would everyone’s dividends. A rising tide would truly lift all boats.

There are other potential revenue sources for common wealth dividends. For example, we give free airwaves to media companies and nearly perpetual (and nearly global) copyright protection to entertainment and software companies. These free gifts are worth big bucks. If their recipients were required to pay us for them, we’d all be a little richer.

Banks are another large recipient of our collective largesse. I’m not talking about bail-out funds; I’m talking about the hugely valuable right we give banks to create money out of nothing. Banks do this (with our generous permission) by lending roughly seven times the money customers deposit (this is called ‘fractional reserve banking’); they then charge interest on these magically minted dollars. This gift to banks is justified on the grounds that it injects needed cash into the economy, but a comparable boost could be achieved by giving people new government-issued dollars — for example, by wiring money to their bank accounts — and limiting bank lending to money actually on deposit. Fresh money would then trickle up through households rather than down through banks.

Regardless of its revenue sources, the mechanics of an American Permanent Fund would be simple. Every U.S. resident with a valid Social Security number would be eligible to open a Shared Wealth Account at a bank or brokerage firm; dividends would then be wired to their accounts monthly. There’d be no means test — and no shame — attached to these earnings, as there are to welfare. Nor would there be any hint of class warfare — Bill Gates would get his dividends along with everyone else. And since the revenue would come from common wealth, there’d be no need to raise taxes or cut government spending. All we’d have to do is charge for private use of common wealth and feed the resulting revenue into an electronic distribution system.

How large should dividends be? The amounts paid would vary from year to year just as corporate dividends do. But the system should be designed so that dividends supplement rather than replace labor income. One good guide is Warren Buffet’s rule for bequeathing money to children: give them “enough to do anything, but not enough to do nothing.” We could also bear in mind that the higher the dividends, the stronger the middle class and the smaller the gap between the richest 1 percent and everyone else.

The United States isn’t broke, as some Republican say; we’re a very wealthy and productive country. The problem is that our wealth and productivity gains flow disproportionately to the rich in the form of dividends, capital gains, rent and interest. If we want to remain a middle class nation, that needs to change. Jobs alone won’t suffice. We need to complement wages with non-labor income from the wealth we all own. That would truly make us an ownership society.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License

Peter Barnes—an entrepreneur who co- founded Working Assets and a solar energy company—is co-founder of On the Commons.

ABC News Spreads Iran War Propaganda

ABC News Spreads Iran War Propaganda

I realize I wrote extensively yesterday about the American media’s typically mindless, nationalistic, war-craving hyping of The Iranian Threat — completely redolent of what they did in 2002 and 2003 toward Iraq — but I just saw this two-minute ABC News report from Diane Sawyer and Brian Ross that sinks to even lower depths than what I highlighted yesterday. It has to be seen to be believed. It’s a perfect museum exhibit for how empty-headed American media stars uncritically recite whatever they are told by government officials, exaggerate or fabricate bad acts by the designated Enemy du Jour while ignoring and suppressing the precipitating acts of America and its client states, and just generally do whatever they can to keep fear levels and war thirst as high as possible. This is nothing short of irresponsible propagandistic trash:

Sawyer begins by warning of “a kind of shadow war being waged by Iran around the world” — based on her blind acceptance of totally unproven Israeli accusations that Iran was behind three bombings yesterday in India, Georgia and Thailand, and without any mention of the constant attacks on Iran over the course of several years by the U.S. and Israel. After seeing video of ABC‘s Martha Raddatz riding on U.S. naval warships into the Strait of Hormuz, we are told by Sawyer — echoing the warnings just yesterday from Alan Dershowitz, Ethan Bronner, and some NYPD official — that “Israeli and Jewish facilities, including those here in the U.S., are on heightened alert,” and then Brian Ross is brought in to warn that “the violence could spill over into the U.S.” as “Jewish places of worship in at least ten U.S. cities have been told that they could be targets.” This, you see, “follows what appears to be the increasingly violent series of attacks by Iran.”

The State Department spokesperson is then brought in “to tie the incidents to Iran”; we hear her warn that “we are concerned about use of international terrorism by Iran or anyone else against Israel or any innocents.” Richard Clarke is then hauled out to say that Iran is sending a signal to Israel that it can retaliate using “its terrorist network.” Needless to say, no contrary information or critical sources are included: no Iranians are heard from and there’s nobody to question any of these accusations. It’s just one-sided, unchallenged government claims masquerading as a news report.

Note that this entire story is based on pure fabrication — not just by accepting as Truth the Israeli and American accusation that Iran is behind these attacks, but far worse, continuously warning about Iranian attacks on synagogues and other targets inside the U.S. There is literally zero evidence that any of that is happening. The text on the website of ABC News displaying the Sawyer/Ross story expressly says: “Federal officials told ABC News that there is so far no specific intelligence of any threat to Israeli interests in the U.S.” (that didn’t make it into the TV broadcast). Yet here we have multiple media outlets — including ABC – issuing incredibly inflammatory “warnings” that Iran may launch Terrorist attacks on Jewish houses of worships and other targets on U.S. soil, all based on pure speculation and fabrication. To call that reckless is to understate the case: given Sawyer’s continuous 2002-like fear-mongering, it seems much more concerted than mere recklessness.

Does anyone remember any of that happening? But that, at least, was merely about all the “horrific” things Saddam would do inside the U.S. if attacked; these latest reports are assertions that Iran will attack inside the U.S. even without being attacked. Meanwhile, here’s a little trip down memory lane of the numerous American media outlets containing warnings that Saddam was behind attempted and actual Terrorist attacks on U.S. soil. And here’s a March 9, 2003 New York Times article — typical at the time — uncritically repeating Bush administration claims that Saddam was harboring and tolerating all sorts of Al Qaeda Terrorists inside Iraq.

But the most destructive part of this state-subservient journalism is how it completely suppresses the actions of the U.S. and Israel that have precipitated all of this. While we are warned of Iran’s “terrorist network” and the “shadow war being waged by Iran around the world,” there is (other than a fleeting reference by Ross to the killing of Iranian nuclear scientists) no mention, as usual, of the multiple acts of aggression by the U.S. and Israel aimed at Iran nor the endless stream of threats made to attack that country. The U.S. media eagerly depicts Iran as the latest Saddam — some sort of maniacal, aggressive regime that, for some strange and inscrutable reason, continuously engages in Terrorism and poses threats to the U.S. and Israel without any provocation or cause — all in service of depicting the U.S. and Israeli Governments as the peaceful victims defending the world from all that is Bad, and its designated Enemies as the root of all evil.

In other words, the American media is doing what it always does in these cases, which is precisely why Diane Sawyer and Brian Ross should have a museum exhibit devoted to their behavior here. The only surprising part of any of this is that they do not seem to believe that they even need to pretend to be doing anything different than what they did in 2002 and 2003. They seem perfectly comfortable making it as clear as can be that they are reading from the exact same script.

When hasn't the broadcast media in particular not helped spread the paranoia of radical far Right conservatives. Many of those same conservatives now realize and admit that Iraq was a mistake, yet are once again claiming that America must go to war with Iran. Iran is another fairly backwards little country that poses no real military threat to the U.S. The average U.S. carrier has enough bombs and fire power to level most Iran military installations within 48 hours. Why do conservatives, with the media's help, insist on acting like insecure children.

America for the Elite -Wall Street ‘Likely To Set Records’ For Political Spending

Wall Street ‘Likely To Set Records’ For Political Spending

With Wall Street profits and bonuses falling and big banks cutting jobs right and left, it seems that the financial services sector would be scaling back its free-spending ways.

But, according to a Center for Responsive Politics analysis, they likely to set records in 2012 on political spending — the bulk of which is aimed at defeating President Barack Obama and electing Republicans opposed to the Dodd-Frank financial regulations enacted to address the sector’s 2008 meltdown.

It seems Wall Street has had its feelings hurt by the Obama administration’s increasingly vocal support for policies that benefit the other 99 percent, and as a result, the financial industry is giving heavily to Republicans and, in particular, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney (R). Politico reports:

    Despite a large overall fundraising advantage, Obama has raised just $5.1 million from the finance, insurance and real estate sectors so far this cycle compared with $12.4 million for Mitt Romney’s campaign, according to Sheila Krumholz, executive director of [the Center for Responsive Politics]. [...]

    Securities and investment firms are the top industry donors to the Republican Party so far this cycle, having given $12.4 million. The industry has given $10.3 million to the Democratic Party, second to $12.7 million from lawyers and law firms.

    The gap for Romney, a former private-equity executive and founder of Bain Capital, is even larger when his super PAC — Restore our Future — is included. Restore our Future, which can raise unlimited sums from individuals and organizations, had hauled in $30.1 million by the end of last year.

Wall Street has made no secret of its desire for Republican candidate who will return to the unregulated anything-goes policies of the Bush years. The banks spent millions lobbying against passage and implementation of Dodd-Frank and helped Republicans oppose the nomination of a director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. It’s comes as little surprise then that Romney, who announced his opposition to Dodd-Frank early in his campaign, has emerged as Wall Street’s favorite candidate.

Wars based on lies and hogwash. A busted broken economy, the legacy of conservatism. Let's go back and do all that again and again.