Irons Presents Common Sense Ideas for Tax Reform

Irons Presents Common Sense Ideas for Tax Reform

John Irons of the Center for American Progress has laid out ideas for a comprehensive tax code overhaul which he says is overdue. [Washington Post]

Schlesinger Appeals to Bush for Change in Foreign Policy

Schlesinger Appeals to Bush for Change in Foreign Policy
Says Lincoln would rejoice

"There is no more dangerous thing for a democracy than a foreign policy based on presidential preventive war.

Maybe President Bush, who seems a humane man, might be moved by daily sorrows of death and destruction to forgo solo preventive war and return to cooperation with other countries in the interest of collective security. Abraham Lincoln would rejoice."

- Arthur Schlesinger Jr., Bush's Thousand Days, seen in today's Washington Post

Fuzzy Stats Lie About US Foreign Debt

Fuzzy Stats Lie About U.S. Foreign Debt

Writing about the U.S. trade deficit, Paul Krugman says that, depending on what's wrong with the (slightly positive) investment income statistics we're being handed by our government, either the U.S. economy has hidden strengths or it's in even worse shape than it seems. By some measures, he warns that America's foreign debt, including the value of foreign-owned businesses, could be at least $1 trillion bigger than the official numbers say. (Yes, he said $1 trillion.)

Bush/Cheney Knew Damn Well There Were No WMD

Bush/Cheney Knew Damn Well There Were No WMD

RAW STORY headline and Think Progress Story-

60 Minutes: CIA Official Reveals Bush, Cheney, Rice Were Personally Told Iraq Had No WMD in Fall 2002

From Think Progress-

Tonight on 60 Minutes, Tyler Drumheller, the former chief of the CIA’s Europe division, revealed that in the fall of 2002, President Bush, Vice President Cheney, then-National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice and others were told by CIA Director George Tenet that Iraq’s foreign minister — who agreed to act as a spy for the United States — had reported that Iraq had no active weapons of mass destruction program. Watch it here

Still, they lied to all of us, including the members of our House and Senate.

Bridging the Asset Gap - Investing in Americans

Bridging the Asset Gap - Investing in Americans

In my last featured blogpost, at the One America Committee, I talked about poverty and how it could "happen" to any one of us at any unexpected time in our lives. Have you ever seen the despair of a friend or neighbor who's suddenly lost his job or who has become ill and cannot support his (or her) family? We are all in this American experiment together. Our neighbor's poverty affects us all. In a healthy democracy, our government should be accountable for the conditions that affect us all, for we are only as strong as our weakest link. In his book titled "One Nation, Underprivileged - Why Poverty Affects Us All", Professor Mark R. Rank reminds us that, if we are serious about alleviating poverty, we must seek to change the conditions that produce poverty instead of blaming the poor for their plight. In the book he uses a "musical chairs" analogy. He shows that we need to focus on creating more "chairs" for those who are participating in the game so that we produce fewer "losers" in the first place.

In this post, I'd like to briefly discuss some ideas and policies that might bring about a change by providing a more efficient social safety net for low-income Americans. In subsequent posts, I will delve more deeply into each of them.

In the song "Down N Outer" songwriter, Nanci Griffith sings about a poor American on a street corner who only "wants to earn his piece of America," but he`s "just a bank account away" from it. The accumulation of assets in America is dependent upon having a job, first and foremost. It is also largely dependent upon an income surplus combined with the faith that one's income will be there and will remain stable from week to week; month to month. In today's economy, with manufacturing jobs being sent to other shores, automobile companies downsizing, pensions disappearing, and low-wage jobs with no benefits coming in to replace once decent-paying jobs that  provided a full benefits-package, faith in the system is broken. Policies currently exist for the accumulation of assets for many middle and upper class workers, delivered mainly through the tax code. Examples would be deductions on home mortgages and lower tax rates on capital gains.

A significant percentage of the American population, however, lacks financial assets such as savings and/or stocks. According to a 1990 study [Oliver and Shapiro], one-third of American households had no financial assets at all. A study [by Wolff] in 1998 has shown that middle-income families could maintain their standard of living without income for 1.2 month while those at the bottom-income level would not be able to replace their income for any period of time.

What can be done to build up financial assets for those who are "just a bank account away from America?"

We can discuss big ideas, keeping an honest eye on the fact that we are facing an incredible mountain of national debt, thanks to five years of the Bush administration's policy of giving billions of dollars in tax breaks for the wealthiest 1% of Americans and the delivery of subsidies for just about any corporate interest you can imagine. Let's not forget that when the Republican-led majority in Congress decided to trim the debt with sweeping budget cuts last fall, hardly a dime of the tax cuts for millionaires and breaks for Big Energy and Oil was touched. President Bush and his rubber-stamping Congress have rewarded wealth and turned their backs to the rewarding of hard work done by the willing hearts and calloused hands of the poorest Americans.  Alleviating poverty and lifting all boats on a rising moral tide will take belief, commitment, cooperation, and caring from us all.

I have heard Senator Edwards offering solutions in the form of policies that will reward work by creating and increasing assets of the poorest working Americans. He has said that there is an asset gap in America that is every bit as important as the income gap.

A direct way to build assets for low-income workers is by expanding the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC). Since 1975, the expansion of this federal tax credit has provided an income supplement to low-wage workers. In the 1990s, the EITC helped move 7 million Americans out of poverty and into the middle class. As one of the biggest cash-transfer programs for low-income families, the EITC reflects congressional and public preferences to support increased work efforts and self-sufficiency and less dependency on welfare programs for low-income population. One of the chief aims of the EITC is the "rewarding of work." The EITC promotes and rewards low-wage work by reducing the taxes that low-wage workers pay on their earnings and by supplementing their wages. Senator Edwards wishes to make this tax credit more available to single workers and to get rid of the marriage penalty that presently exists. Female heads-of household can especially benefit from an expansion of the EITC. In a Grogger study (2003), it was found that the EITC may be the `single most important' policy parameter for explaining recent declines in welfare and increases in work and earnings among female-headed families. [source: tc.umn.edu]

Work bonds would help by setting up accounts for low income families to the extent that workers would be saving money while the government would match any savings they could manage to accrue. This would help them save to buy homes and send their children to college. Low-income working families would receive an extra credit of up to $500 per year that would be directly deposited into a new account held by a bank or a safe stock fund with low fees. If families put away more, the amount in the account would grow, and it would be available not just for retirement, but also for a small business or a personal emergency. [source: Senator Edwards' speech at CAP, September 19, 2005]

Senator Edwards suggests an enhancement of housing vouchers for the poorest workers and setting aside up to $1,000 in an account to help low-income workers entering the workforce to make home payments for the first five years they are working. After five years, they will have up to $5,000 for a down payment on a home of their own. Senator Edwards has also stated his aim to crack down on predatory lenders and their shameful practices because they prevent low-income workers from building assets.

In Britain, there is a program that issues Baby Bonds for low-income families. They set up an account for a child when they are born and then by the time the child reaches 18 years of age, they make that money available to them. Whether they want to go to college, buy a house, or start their own small business, they can use that money to do so. Senator Edwards has proposed similar ideas to help all Americans build their savings for the future. [source: One America Committee blog/Serb Hall celebrator]

All of these strategies are about investing in people and rewarding their hard work. The creation and building of assets for low-income families would be a direct investment in the American people. By bridging the asset gap, it would not be only their lives that would be beneficially affected. The communities where they live and work would also be enhanced by the increased opportunity. When Senator Edwards says he's fighting to alleviate poverty, I also hear him asking us to develop the political will to invest in American workers and allow them to live up to their full potential. This is so directly tied to the benefit of the entire American population that we can no longer sit back in silence as we see our elected representatives turn their backs on those who want to learn and to work hard to earn their piece of America.

*This entry was cross posted from the One America Committee blog.

Dump Dick?

Dump Dick?

Would dumping Dick Cheney salvage the Bush administration at this late date? The LA Times and the Times Online (UK) are suggesting the idea. Cheney has said as recently as last March 19th that he has no intention of resigning.

Last fall, Financial Times writer Edward Alden quoted Lawrence Wilkerson, retired Army Colonel and top aide to former Secretary of State Colin Powell, who claimed that Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, "and a handful of others had hijacked the government's foreign policy apparatus, deciding in secret to carry out policies that had left the US weaker and more isolated in the world." Speaking of Mr. Wilkerson, there was an opinion of his printed in the Baltimore Sun just yesterday. In the column, the phrase "swaggering ineptitude" speaks volumes about the wrong direction in which our nation is headed. Wilkerson recommends returning to our founding roots and away from the radicalism of the "neoconservative" movement. Dumping Cheney would be a great start, provided he would be replaced with a sworn non-neocon (and that Rumsfeld would go, too.)

Joe Gandelman has a roundup on the 'Dump Dick' rumblings at the Moderate Voice.

Bill Moyers' Wake Forest Speech

Bill Moyers' Wake Forest Speech

"It was in the name of Jesus that Dorothy Day marched alongside auto workers in Michigan, brewery workers in New York, and marble cutters in Vermont. It was in the name of Jesus that E.B. McKinney and Owen Whitfield stood against a Mississippi oligarchy that held sharecroppers in servitude. It was in the name of Jesus that the young priest John Ryan - ten years before the New Deal - crusaded for child labor laws, unemployment insurance, a minimum wage, and decent housing for the poor. And it was in the name of Jesus that Martin Luther King Jr. went to Memphis to march with sanitation workers who were asking only for a living wage.

This is the heresy of our time - to wrestle with the gods who guard the boundaries of this great nation's promise, and to confront the medicine men in the woods, twirling their bullroarers to keep us in fear and trembling. For the greatest heretic of all is Jesus of Nazareth, who drove the money changers from the temple in Jerusalem as we must now drive the money changers from the temples of democracy."

- Bill Moyers, from A Time for Heresy , remarks delivered on March 14 upon the establishment by Marilyn and James Dunn, of the Wake Forest Divinity School, of a scholarship in religious freedom in the name of Judith and Bill Moyers. [Truthout.org]

Video: John Edwards Speech in Portsmouth, N.H.

Video: John Edwards Speech in Portsmouth, N.H.

Michelle Bair taped Senator John Edwards when he spoke to 200 people at a recent Democracy for New Hampshire fund-raiser at the Portsmouth Gas Light Co restaurant in the lovely city of Portsmouth, New Hampshire. Don't miss her entire series of videos of the Edwards speech at You Tube. Here's a clip:



*Thanks to Michelle for allowing me to use this.

Howard Dean Swipes at Bush on Katrina and Iraq

Howard Dean Swipes at Bush on Katrina and Iraq

At the DNC spring meeting in New Orleans, party chair Howard Dean said that President Bush did a cut and run on Katrina, creating a political legacy of deficits, divisiveness and deceit.

Criticizing Bush for leaving his mess in Iraq behind for some other President to deal with, Dean said..

"He got us into it. He owes it to the American people to get us out."

My American Street colleague Jenny Greenleaf of Oregon was in New Orleans for the DNC spring gathering. She compares the work that she and fellow DNC volunteers were doing in New Orleans to "moving a sand dune with a teaspoon" (Hey - that rhymes):

The DNC, meeting here in New Orleans, wanted to make this about more than political machinations. DNC members are fanning out around the city to clean up devastated homes, pack food at the food bank, and sort and distribute clothes, food and hygiene products in Plaquemines Parish. I helped salvage in a commercial kitchen/pantry for Food For Friends, which prepares and delivers meals to AIDS/HIV patients. When I signed up, I imagined scrubbing shelves and polishing the stove. This place was way beyond that: our task was to save what files we could, throw away trash, and remove the refrigerators still full of food from the building, which will not be repaired anytime soon. Fortunately Food for Friends has been able to resume operations elsewhere.[..]..It’s wonderful to do something to help, but it feels like trying to move a sand dune with a teaspoon. The need here is so immense.

"Inequality" and Corporations

"Inequality" and Corporations

In the latest installment of the Washington Post's editorial series about "inequality", they warn that

protectionism would have disastrous consequences for growth and would help limited numbers of exposed workers rather than the majority of poor and middle-income families. But the pressure to close borders, bash corporations and experiment with ineffective social programs will continue until government addresses inequality in a serious way.

I think both ideas, "protectionism" and "social programs", have to take on a new meaning here in 2006. The American people still expect decent and fair treatment from the companies that do business here in America, even while hundreds of thousands of jobs are outsourced to foreign shores. The American people still expect a poor child to grow up to be be able to have as much opportunity to succeed as a kid from the upper middle class right here in this country.

Multinational corporations need to be held to social responsibility standards that will disable them, through voluntary competitive standards, from taking advantage of workers in third world countries and wantonly sending American jobs to cheaper zones in which to do business. A new ISO standard (ISO-26000) on Corporate Social Responsibility is being drafted as I write this. The third meeting of the ISO/TMB/WG SR will take place next month. Some corporations are voluntarily paying attention to social responsibility, with a healthy push from their own employees. We need a new moral direction and our political leaders, through their perverted economic policies and unethical lobbyist-hugging governing practices, have not been setting good examples.

Business should be encouraged to be a strong partner in raising the poor up into the middle class. (See, for example, this case study titled Bridging the Cultures of Business and Poverty: Welfare to Career at Cascade Engineering, Inc. by James R. Bradley, Stanford Social Innovation Review.)

The federal minimum wage should be raised.

The richest in America should be paying their fair share of the American people's heavy tax burden. The last five years of the Bush administration's misguided economic policy have raped the middle class and have enriched the richest, while the current budget slashes threaten to make every one of our communities poorer in every way imaginable.

Bush: Some Things Never Change

Bush: Some Things Never Change

Some things in life are really great when they are steady and predictable, such as a secure job and a sturdy ladder. I've watched and analyzed President Bush's moves since he came into office. He's a stubborn and rigid man; fiercely so. He's stubborn to the extent that it can be categorized as a character flaw that has blinded him to acting for the good of the American people he is supposed to be representing. As David Gergen has written in his New York Times guest column, the recent shake-up in the White House seems to be all about "better management and marketing" rather than necessary change. Mr. Gergen suggests:

..[Better management and marketing] will help, but they almost certainly will not be enough to rescue [Bush's] presidency from its low approval ratings and loss of public confidence.

Judging from all I've seen so far from this President, we will likely get more marketing and management...long after the product has lost its sales appeal with the American public. What happens when everyone decides to mute the Oval Office commercials? You don't watch ads for cover-up when what you know you really need is an able physician. Most Americans understand we don't need cheap cosmetics. We need major surgery.

photos

Washington Memorial Chapel, Valley Forge, Pa

Philadelphia

The First Senate Chamber, Philadelphia

Old Philadelphia at dusk

Washington Memorial Chapel, Valley Forge


Valley Forge

George Washington's Headquarters at Valley Forge
(The first Pentagon)

John Edwards Demands Bush Accountability

Raw Story Headline 4-23-06

John Edwards Demands Bush Accountability

In an email that former Senator John Edwards sent out today, he asks each of us to sign his letter to Alberto Gonzalez demanding that Special Prosecutor Fitzgerald be empowered to investigate the President's role in manipulating intelligence on Iraq.

Let's do it.

Cat photo

Kitty Before

What would I do without my cat and my coffee cup?


Kitty After
A creation of my nieces Olivia and Blaire

Harpers: Anti-Bush Sentiment Swing at CIA

Harpers: Anti-Bush Sentiment Swing at CIA

From Harpers.org blogpost "The CIA Wehrmacht" regarding renditions of individuals to countries that torture their detainees:

An ex-senior agency officer who keeps in contact with his former peers told me that there is a “a big swing” in anti-Bush sentiment at Langley. “I've been stunned by what I'm hearing,” he said. “There are people who fear that indictments and subpoenas could be coming down, and they don't want to get caught up in it.”.[...].Scott Horton, a human rights activist who has become a principal spokesman for the New York City Bar Association in evaluating the Bush Administration's tactics, said that he's also hearing stories of growing dissent at the CIA. “When the shit hits the fan,” he explained, “the administration scapegoats lower-level people. It doesn't do a lot in terms of inspiring confidence.”

While right-wing Newsmax, in ho-hum 90s-style, is still headlining blame toward former President Clinton for anything they can (in this case for being responsible for CIA's low morale), Bush has nearly destroyed the integrity of the institution with his policy (or looking the other way for too long) on torture and teh scapegoating of CIA on the Iraq WMD dupe.

The Harpers blog also comments that the revolt within the military against Secretary of State Donald Rumsfeld is really nothing new.

"...cracks definitely have developed in the Administration's relationship with the Armed Forces. Most recently, several active duty senior commanders who spoke on the record at the “Current Strategy Forum” that ended here last week were critical to a point that walked a fine constitutional line of disloyalty to the political leadership.....[What I think is going on here is serious concern among officers to protect the integrity of the institution."

- part of a 2004 quote from an unnamed source at the Naval War College

Rumsfeld and the Bush administration have done "a number" on our military with the entire Iraq debacle. The way I'm seeing it, either Rumsfeld will step down or, if you go along with former President Gerald Ford's opinion, the entire Bush administration will sink down the sewer of history together in one loyal turd-like lump. One columnist has said that

Bush cannot afford to fire Rumsfeld, certainly not at this moment, since such an action would then turn the generals' guns (and those of their supporters elsewhere) against the president himself.

Former US ambassador to the United Nations Richard Holbrooke has categorized what has been dubbed as The Revolt of the generals, as “the most serious public confrontation between the military and an administration since President Harry S. Truman fired Gen. Douglas MacArthur in 1951”.

Norquist Sticks to His Scuzzy Guns

Norquist Sticks to His Scuzzy Guns
Defends 'K-Street'

Grover Norquist is holding tight to the "K Street" brand - which is now a stigma representing the undemocratic, the immoral, and the unethical. Good for him. Maybe he'll slide down the drainpipe along with all others who proudly wallow in unethical D.C. practices. Norquist was no more than a high-powered D.C. thug in a "Big Man in D.C." costume. Now that so many Americans have caught on to the tactics of Norquist's kind and the moral bankruptcy of Norquistian ideas and procedures, he's more of an embarrassment to those Republicans who have gravitated freely toward that type of behavior. They're fleeing like bugs from Raid because of the public shame.

Maybe Karl Rove will soon race him for bottom of the black hole, a position they both deserve.

General Batiste Calls for New Leadership on Iraq

General Batiste Calls for New Leadership on Iraq

Retired Army major general John Batiste, a fellow Central New Yorker, has an opinion printed in the Washington Post today. He says that the army's transformation started years before the Bush administration, even though Donald Rumsfeld seems to want to take so much credit for the idea. Bottom line, he believes that Rumsfeld chose to go war with what we know was the wrong war plan, all the while discounting professional military advice and ignoring more than a decade of competent military planning. He calls into serious question Rumsfeld's character and skills - both necessary attributes to lead our nation to a successful outcome in Iraq.

photos

Me and Alexander Hamilton at Signers' Hall, The National Constiutution Center, Philadelphia, Pa.



"What's up, fellers? Let a gal in on a secret?"

Hunger in America

Hunger in America

The Food Stamp program barely scratches the surface of the overall unmet hunger need in America today. See my post at the One America Committee about this subject. An excerpt:

The food stamp rolls had decreased from 1994 (27.5 million participants) to 1999 (18.2 million participants) because of a robust economy and changes in eligibility for the program at the state and federal levels. We are currently living in an economy that appears to be expanding only for only the richest. Need is increasing in our communities. According to Results.com, a website dedicated to Hunger issues, the Food Stamp program served 25.4 million people in March 2005. That amounts to 7.2 million more people than in 1999. Even with this increased need in our communities, the House Agriculture Committee passed a bill on October 28, 2005 to cut about 300,000 people off the Food Stamp program. Food Stamp cuts would account for $844 million over five years, impacting 300,000 low-income families, of the $3.7 billion of cuts in the Agriculture Committee package. See this analysis by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP).

Hunger is up, and the House leaders have cut the budget, taking assistance away from the hungry. Maybe the House leadership just doesn't get it, or perhaps they care more about the lobbyists and special interests that pamper them and contribute to their campaigns. Take a look at the leadership in the state of Mississippi, the poorest state in the Union. Governor Haley Barbour wants to keep the cigarette taxes low and the tax on groceries high, claiming that food stamps are already "taking care" of the poor and the working poor in his state. Jackson Clarion Ledger editor Sid Salter reveals the irresponsible nature of the political myth being perpetuated by Mississippi's misleading governor with a list of statistics that cry out for moral action.

Why the Washington Post is Wrong on the Generals

Why the Washington Post is Wrong on the Generals

"In our view Mr. Rumsfeld's failures should have led to his departure long ago. But he should not be driven out by a revolt of generals, retired or not." [WaPo editorial 4-18-06]

While I understand the concerns laid out in today's Washington Post editorial about the Generals' public revolt in pressuring Donald Rumsfeld to step down, I strongly disagree with them. It seems that anyone who has any prescience, especially after all the arrogance and dangerous ignorance we have seen from the Bush administration that has placed our nation and our military in an embarrassingly weakened position, would understand that the Generals' speaking out is the only way to move Mr. Rumsfeld closer to the "out" door. Bush will never do it unless his hand is forced. Public polls mean nothing to him. The media have been very weak in making effective arguments and Bush does not pay a lick of attention or respect to them, either. To my way of thinking, Bush's blind stubbornness and fear of political damage for making necessary changes of course in Iraq makes him the worst leader - the most dangerous leader - that this nation has ever seen. The Washington Post has said it themselves. There are myriad glaring reasons why Rumsfeld should have stepped down long ago. The startling fact that he has not done so causes their concluding argument to hold no water for me or for most Americans, I would suspect. In this case, we see the Generals as our champions - their first concern and priority being the Constitution and our country. This is an unusual circumstance and I wholly support and respect the Generals for speaking out courageously. May their one concerted voice make the difference. I'm with David Broder. Listen to the brass.

Rumsfeld thinks he'll go on and on. At least that's what he told Rush Limbaugh.

E.J. Dionne knows that Rumsfeld's departure wouldn't touch the ones who were most accountable for the unconscionable errors made in Iraq. But do we expect that Bush or Cheney would offer to step down? Of course not. Mr. Dionne is simply pointing out that these Generals are not people that Bush can easily dismiss as crybaby liberals. They don't fit the mold...and either someone is going to have to fall on their sword for the mistakes in Iraq or we will go on making the mistakes. Mr. Dionne has written:

For all his mistakes, Rumsfeld is not some alien creature operating as a loner sabotaging the otherwise reasonable policies of his bosses. President Bush is the commander in chief. Vice President Cheney is on record as having made outlandishly optimistic predictions before the war started about how swimmingly everything would go. Rumsfeld is Bush's guy, which is why the president resists firing him. Letting Rumsfeld go would amount to acknowledging how badly the administration has botched Iraq.

see Buzztracker at Real Clear Politics for more comments.