blog

THE COMMYWAY BLOG: An almost daily rant by Party Organizer R. Rex Drexler.

PAGE CONTENTS

03-18-05--Let's Soak the Rich a little                                                 04-07-05--John Paul II and Harold Stassen

03-19-05--Ownership Society                                                04-10-05--Presidents SS Plan Will End Benefits

03-21-05--Darwin and Intelligent Design                            04-15-05--America's Failure to Lead

03-23-05--Inalienable Rights are Inalienable                     04-17-05--A Liberal Education Is So Gay

03-25-05--Sick and Poor in Mississippi                              04-22-05--Pro Business tax reform

03-29-05--A central Organizing Principle                         05-07-05--No Representation Without Taxation

03-31-05--Earth's Resources Deleted                                                     Or, How To Stop Corporate Lobbying

April 1st--Now It Can Be Told

04-01-05--Give Wolfowitz His Due

04-05-05--Wrong way to Redistribute Wealth

No Representation Without Taxation

(Or, How To End Corporate Lobbying)

Posted 05-07-05: Mussolini is reported to have defined fascism as the merger of corporate and government power. Our old communist rivals, the Chinese and Russians are closer to the fascist model than they are to socialism or democracy. And our own country has taken some small but scary steps that have brought corporate and government power closer together:

1. The Vice-President's task force to develop a comprehensive energy strategy had hundreds of meetings

    with corporate representatives, but only a few (some say two) meetings with non-corporate advocacy

    groups.

2. The Administration has repeatedly filled positions at the EPA and Interior with former lobbyists for the

    mining industry.

3. The Republican congressional leadership has told its members to not meet with lobbyists who also donate

    money to Democrats, and has also pressured lobbying firms to only hire Republicans if they expect to be

    heard.

What has become of government of the People, by the People, and for the People? Why is it becoming a government of the corporation, by the corporation, and for the corporation? If a radical change is not made in the way corporate lobbyists are allowed to influence our government, we may join our Chinese friends on the road to fascism. One idea that has a chance of working is to make it illegal for corporations to use company money for lobbying members of Congress or any government agency. Of course, individuals would still be able to pay lobbyists but only with their own money.

On the face of it, this proposal has no chance of passing in Congress even under a Democratic administration with out support from the business community. What could entice big business to give up lobbying the government? How about this? The end of all corporate income taxation in return for the end of all corporate lobbying of government. After all, corporate taxes only make up 7 to 12% of federal revenues. As a median income wage earner I personally would be glad to pay an extra 2% in taxes to lessen big business's influence on our government. It might be a good trade.

A Pro Business Tax Reform

Posted 04-22-05: Tax reform is a popular topic these days. One of the most unpopular taxes is the tax on capital gains. Critics say it is unfair because money is taxed twice: first, when the corporation earns a profit, these earnings are taxed; later, when these profits are distributed to stockholders as dividends, these monies are taxed again as capital gains. A few years ago the tax investors pay on capital gains was reduced from 30 to 15%, but the system continues to tax the same money twice. Rather than eliminating the inequity of double taxation, this new tax policy has actually created a new inequity by lowering taxation on investment income.

Shifting the tax burden from investment income to wages seems to be a consistent theme of the current administration. FMCP feels very strongly that this is wrong. All income, except for tax protected retirement accounts, should be taxed on the same basis regardless of whether it comes from investments or wages.

Instead, we should eliminate the double taxation on capital gains by allowing corporations to deduct the money they pay out to stockholders as a business expense, just as they are allowed to deduct wages paid to workers. Corporations would then have up to 30% more money available to pay out to investors because it would no longer be spent as taxes. This would stimulate investment in companies that pay dividends. The stock market may become less volitile because more people might invest in anticipation of higher yielding dividends, rather than speculate in anticipation of higher stock prices.

A Liberal Education Is So Gay

Posted 04-17-05: One of the most intractable problems we have in our consumerized society is our failing education system. Call me old fashioned, but I have always believed that, like virtue, knowledge is its own reward. The unexamined life is not worth living...ect. Today, education seems to be valued mainly for its vocational benefits. Why pay attention in history class? It won't help you get a job. It's liberal arts and a liberal education is just so gay. And don't forget that liberal means un-American.

There is even a movement in education circles that schools should adopt a business model. Consumer driven education. Sounds good. Just teach children what their parents want them to learn. Parents are liable to tell the schools to not teach the scientific method in biology class. Don't teach children that John Brown was a blood thirsty terrorist who was lionized by many protestant preachers, because they might realize that Islamic fundamentalism is not without parallels to our own history. And, for goodness sake, don't teach children that Davey Crockett, in the eyes of the country of Mexico, was an illegal immigrant, because they might realize that some Mexicans are acting heroically in illegally immigrating to the U.S. in search of a better life for their families.

America's Failure to Lead

Posted 04-15-05: If the U.S. wants to maintain its leadership position in the world, then it must lead in an area that most countries consider as a greater long term problem than international terrorism--global warming and permanent environmental degradation. Many American environmentalists blame President Bush for pulling out of the Kyoto Protocol on Global Warming, but most of the blame should be placed on the shoulders of the U.S. Senate and the American people who they represent. In 1997 the Senate voted 95 to 0 against Kyoto. Not one Democratic Senator voted in favor. Not Paul Wellstone. Not Joe Biden. Not Ed Kennedy. Not John Kerry.

Most of the Senators have said that they could not vote for Kyoto because it is unfair to America. It is unfair because it would require the U.S. to decrease total CO2 emissions while allowing developing countries to increase their emissions. At least this is how most Americans seem to look at it. People in the rest of world, however, see our point of view as an example of how selfish we are. For a developing country to increase its standard of living, requires an increase in the production of energy and that means burning fossil fuels and more CO2. When the U.S. says that poor countries shouldn't be allowed to produce more green house gases if we can't, we are, in effect, saying that we don't want poor countries to be able to increase their standard of living. That is no way to lead but it is the way to piss off the rest of the world.

The President's Social Security Plan Will End Guaranteed Benefits.

Posted 04-10-05: Why hasn't this gotten more coverage? On March 31 the United States Congress's public policy research arm, The Congressional Research Service, sent a memo to the House Ways and Means Committee that says, "the President's plan effectively ends Social Security's guaranteed Benefit." In other words retirement benefits will eventually come solely from private accounts. If the stock market crashes a year before a person retires, the retiree's incomes may be devastated. Read the memo summary.

Pope John Paul II and Harold Stassen

Posted 04-07-05: One of the core beliefs of FMCP is that unregulated capitalism can be as great an evil as classical communism. Now that the conservatives are doing everything they can to make Bush look good by linking their "culture of life" to Pope John Paul II, I would like to point out that Pope John Paul II and the great republican Harold Stassen made speeches in which they said that laissez-faire capitalism can be as evil as communism. Politics sure does make strange bed fellows.

Another core belief of FMCP is that no single economic system can produce solutions to every economic problem. This belief is based on simple arithmetic ...basic set theory. Kurt Goedel won a Nobel Prize for proving that no theory of mathematics can generate solutions to every problem in mathematics. (This is a gross oversimplification, but close enough for this discussion) When taken to their extreme positions, both of our grand economic theories, capitalism and communism, are essentially sentimental romances. Both promise the ideal if only their principles were ever fully implemented.

The truth is that Marx was right when he wrote that under pure unregulated capitalism, the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. It is equally true that F.A. Hayek was right when he wrote that communism destroys individual initiative and robs a society of its will to improve itself. But this is not to say that both philosophies cannot be useful if thought of as parts of an economic toolbox, instead of political dogma.

Redistributing Wealth, the Wrong Way

Posted 04-05-05: The Bush administration is set on a course to redistribute wealth in America. This is being done by changing the way the federal government is funded. The trend is to decrease the amount of taxes raised from investment income and to let taxes on wages take on an increased proportion of total federal revenue. (talk about class warfare) For example, the Bush administration has cut taxes on capital gains in half. The result is a boon for the upper 20% who have significant investment income, but does little for the bottom 80% of workers who have only a small amount of income from investments. The government helps the rich get richer and leaves everyone else on their own.

At a time when the top 1% owns 30% of the nation's wealth and the bottom 60%( that's most of us ) owns only 5% , the Bush administration and the so called conservative movement have declared radical tax reform to be a major goal. Don't get me wrong, FMCP is in favor of radical reform as part of its philosophy of radical centrism, but not the type of reform being proposed by the conservatives. The tax reform ideas getting the most press coverage involve replacing the income tax with a national sales tax or consumption tax which is the most regressive type of tax system imaginable. A sales tax is the most regressive tax because people in the bottom 60% spend almost all of their income, while the upper 40% are able to save a substantial portion to their income. Money that is not spent is not taxed under a sales tax system. It is absurd to tax 100% of the wages a worker needs to sustain his family, and not tax the excess money not needed to sustain a person's standard of living.

How do the conservatives think they can get away with this? Well, it may be easy when everyone hates the IRS. It's also easy when the public is poorly informed. 19% of people think that they are in the top 1% income bracket...duh. That is why proposals to increase taxes on only the top 1% get so little support 19% of the people think that their taxes will be raised.

Give Wolfowitz His Due

Posted 04-01-05: The good thing about Paul Wolfowitz and most of the neo-cons is that they believe in the transformative power of democracy. They should be lauded for this. Too bad that they also assume that the U.S. is morally superior to other nations. Their hubris is the stuff from which empires collapse. Their problem is a common one. They cannot see that what they believe is in the best interest of the U.S.may not be in the best interest of the world.

Yesterday, Wolfowitz was confirmed as head of the World Bank despite the fears of many Europeans that this may result in the World Bank morphing into a mere tool of American foreign policy. Let us all hope that this fear is not realized. Let us hope that Wolfowitz finds a higher allegiance and becomes a citizen of the world. In his new job, let us all hope that he will be able to act on policies that are in the long term best interest of the world rather than the short term interests of the United States.

Now It Can Be Told

Posted April 1st: Sources close to party leadership have revealed that FMCP is in reality a front organization for the Republican party. An unidentified staff member pointed out that it is really pretty obvious what with all the talk about an "ownership society". The staffer added that the Party Organizer had been named man of the year recently by the Republican Business Advisory Council.

60% Of Earth's Resources Depleted

Posted 03-31-05: For those of you who thought the previous blog of 3-29 overstates the case, please read this story from The Guardian about the dire warnings issued by a panel of over 1,300 scientists. Thanks to Robyn for this link.

A Central Organizing Principle

Posted 03-29-05: Hush! Be quiet. There is an elephant in the room and most of us don't want to hear about it. It gives us a headache just to think about it.

What will happen when the earth reaches the point where further economic growth is unsustainable? How many people, and at what standard of living, can the world support? Will we know before we get there...before it's too late? Some scientists believe we are already there. Others believe that the world's economy can expand 50 times with no problem. But all people who study such things believe that someday we will reach that point. The limit of growth.

If earth reaches that point sometime in the near future, say in the next 50 years, then the U.S. will probably still be the dominant economic power in the world. Today, the U.S. has 1/20th of the worlds population, but has such a high standard of living that it consumes 1/4th of the world's material resources. For example, every person in China uses the equivalent of 900kg. of oil every year, while every person in America consumes 8,000kg. of oil per year. As the earth approaches the point, people in the U.S. and the rest of the world will gradually become aware of a startling fact. In order for a poor country to have an increase in its material standard of living, a richer country must experience a decrease in the amount of material resources it has available.

Faced with this, will poorer nations feel that they have the right to improve their standard of living? Will America be willing to transfer some of its material wealth to poorer nations, or will it use its military power to maintain control of its inequitable share of the earth's material resources? How can we work this out?

FMCP believes that neither of our two major political parties currently have the ideological tools needed to deal with the problems raised by the approaching end of sustainable material economic growth. Both parties consider continued economic growth and an increase in the material standard of living to be their major goals. They are unable to think about how to run a society in which the growth of material consumption must be limited. In fact, many Americans have a strong belief that it is not the job of government to force businesses to build more efficient cars and air conditioners or to phase out the use of fossil fuels. Others have strong beliefs that international treaties, which will be needed to maximize the world's and America's standard of living, are an unacceptable infringement on the sovereignty of the United States. And some believe that the use of nuclear power should be banned.

A major goal of FMCP is to promote a new political synthesis that realizes that neither the left nor the right can, on their own, solve our problems. We must realize that each political philosophy is capable of coming up with a good idea. We must acknowledge that some of the bad things that the left says about laissez-faire capitalism are true, and also that some of the bad things that the right says about over reaching government regulations are true as well. We must learn that what has worked well in the past under old circumstances may stop working under new circumstances.

How to deal with the elephant in the room should become the central organizing principle of our political system. FMCP does not pretend to have all the answers as to what kind of political system we should develop, but it does predict that once our country reaches a workable political consensus it will include the following beliefs:

1. Some redistribution of wealth will be necessary.

2. An unprecedented level of international cooperation will be needed.

3. A person's individual initiative must continue to be rewarded.

4. A nation's quality of life can be improved without increasing its consumption of natural

      resources.

Sick and Poor in Mississippi

Posted 03-25-05: Here in America we are blessed with the best doctors, hospitals, and medical colleges in the world. We spend 15% of our GDP on health care, a higher percentage than any other country in the world. We should have the best health care in the world, but we don't. Of the 30 most developed nations, the United States ranks last. Some second world countries have better health care than we do. When confronted with this fact, many well-off Americans scoff and deny, but they have never been sick and poor in Mississippi.

Here in America we have the most inefficient health system in the developed world, because we have let medical care become big-business. There would be nothing wrong with this except the fact that the practice of medicine does not fit a business model. Health care delivery does not respond normally to the forces of supply and demand.

The Republican Party knows this. In 2002, I infiltrated the Republican Party and attended a President's Round Table meeting where Frank Luntz, a top party strategist, told the audience that health care is a big problem because it doesn't follow market forces the way other parts of the economy do. People always want more health care, never less. Because of their fierce belief that market forces apply to all economic activity, the Republican Party is unable to make the logical connection that we should move away from market based health care. Many on the right sincerely believe that non-market based systems are un american and even immoral.

In the March 7 issue of The New Republic, Arnold S. Relman, former editor of The New England Journal of Medicine, provides a detailed analysis of why laissez-faire economic theories are not relevant to health care. Most consumers are not in a position to evaluate need for care, price, and quality of medical services, "an essential characteristic of most free markets." Dr. Relman warns that current Bush Administration proposals for a "consumer based" health system will probably only make things worse.

Inalienable Rights are Inalienable

Posted 03-23-05: By the time I was half way through the article it finally made sense to me. Why Clinton and Bush are against joining the International Criminal Court? If only one account from Jane Mayer's feature in the Feb. 14, NEW YORKER is true, then agents of the United States Government have acted outside the law, both domestic and international. Back in Texas they used to call that being an outlaw. Now they call it "extraordinary rendition."

If we joined the ICC, we could have members of our military and intelligence services brought before the court. I now understand that Clinton and Bush are against joining the ICC because they could be found guilty of war crimes. According to Mayer, a state department legal adviser warned that President Bush would be seen as a war criminal by the rest of the world.

The rest of the world often sees our government as hypocritical, while a majority of Americans are dumbfounded by this. We project a foreign policy that assumes an implicit American moral superiority, and yet reject the idea that no one can be denied due process of law, that no one can be subjected to cruel and unusual punishment, or that inalienable right are inalienable. And we wonder why the world questions our moral superiority.

Darwin and Intelligent Design

Posted 03-21-05: In 1872 Charles Darwin wrote, "Great is the power of steady misrepresentation." He wrote this out of frustration that so many, from theologians to biologists, falsely held that his theory stated that natural selection is the only method of species modification. Darwin believed that natural selection is the main, but not the only method.

Over a century later we continue to misunderstand the meaning of Darwin's theory. It is true that evolutionary theory does not require God or an Intelligent Designer, but it is not true that the theory rules out the existence of God. After all, the theory of gravity does not require the existence of God, but it does not rule out his existence. That theologians and biologists continue to make this false conclusion illustrates the sad state of today's intellectual discourse.

If Darwin's theory required the existence of God, then it would not be a scientific theory. The existence of God is beyond the scope of scientific thinking. A belief in God is properly the subject of religion and metaphysics. That is why Intelligent Design is not an appropriate subject for discussion in biology textbooks. However, it would be appropriate for textbooks to mention that evolution does not rule out Intelligent Design, and that Intelligent Design should be studied by the philosophy department. Unfortunately, philosophy is a subject rarely taught in K-12 schools.

Ownership Society

Posted 03-19-05: It was really nice of the Vice-President to endorse "universal capitalism" a few weeks ago. But not so nice that the Republican Party has also appropriated the equivalent term "ownership society" and associated it with personalized social security and health savings accounts. Kind of gives it a bad name and that pisses us off here at FMCP. We prefer to associate "ownership society" with programs that actually help people who are in need.

Personalized SSI and HSA accounts do little for those who need it most. Under the best scenario the personalized SSI option will increase retiree's benefits by about $100 a month, and that will be in year 2040 dollars. Not all that much help. And as for the HSA, it helps most who need it least. Under HSA a person can put $3,000 a year into a special health savings account and deduct that amount from their taxable income. A person in the 30% tax bracket would save $900, but people earning enough money to be in that bracket don't need help paying for health care. Those in the low 15% tax bracket would only save $450, but many lower wage earners don't have $3,000 to put away in the first place. It would make some sense if the poorer man saved $900 and the richer man saved $450, or better yet ...nothing. But Nooo!! We can't have that. That would be class warfare.

Let's Soak the Rich a Little

Posted 03-18-05: This is a little out of date but I have to say it. The recession of 2001 was not caused by a lack of money available for investment. It was caused to a large extent by irrational over investment in the stock market. This means that the tax rates of the Clinton Administration were not too high to promote investment. In fact there was so much extra money in the system that we saw levels of over capitalization not seen since the Hoover Administration. Of course, once we were in recession and millions of people had seen as much as half of their life savings vanish, it was prudent to lower taxes.

The recession is over and it is now the time to increase revenue to help decrease the deficit. A good place to start would be to end the $90,000 cap on Social Security taxes. If all income over $90,000 were taxed at 2% (employers would not be taxed) it would go a long way toward making Social Security solvent. A person who made one billion dollars would pay an additional 20 million dollars into the Social Security system and still have a total tax rate lower than during the Clinton years. Last year the American economy generated 69 brand new billionaires. It adds up.