The Class War Begins

Whether We Want To Believe It Or Not, We Are No Longer 'Exceptional'

I was reading this weekend, as I’m wont to do, and I noticed that there have been of late some very lucid points made regarding the status of the American welfare state.

Most of these comments were, to a point, somewhat simplistic – we Americans still have the ‘good guy/bad guy’ approach to most things – but as I began looking at the pure math of the problem, the points remain:  We’re going to have to get used to paying a lot more in taxes and other forms of governmental revenue in order to sustain the actions of government which are good for the whole.

The other thing which leaped out at me is that while the Right is fond of their simplistic answers, the Left (or what passes for it) is also fond of their own.   


Regardless, no one has a plan for either what to do with the displaced millions if the Welfare State is dissolved (the Right’s preferred solution), or what to do about paying for it (the Left’s preference).

The elephant in the room is the Empire – but we’ll save that one for a moment.

The far Right has created a phrase; ‘American Exceptionalism’.  They tout this at every turn of phrase (they’ve even seen to it that this is part of the New Curriculum in Texas) – what it boils down to is this:  The good ol’ U-S-of-A was inspired by ‘god’.  This ‘god’ somehow ‘blessed’ the nation with abundant natural resources and a kick-ass location, away from most of its enemies.   It was further ‘blessed’ by a unique people, ‘called’ from among the world’s most-creative and most-productive, and it was this creativity and productivity – along with the worship of this ‘god’ – which made us great.

It was this Exceptionalism that helped us create the biggest economic engine in history – along with a lot of help from this ‘god’ that keeps blessing us from afar.

But there are cracks in the plaster.

Yes, sir and ma’am (because we Americans are nothing if not polite), we’ve ceased worshiping ‘god’ the way we oughtta; the people who’ve Fallen Away are the ones who have caused the decline in ‘blessing’ (read: Massive amounts of disposable income and the ability to consume like nobody’s business).

At last count, nearly 60% of Americans believe this, in one form or another.

On the other hand, we have the Left, which believes that the current malaise was created by the Right, which has concentrated wealth in the hands of a few who are busy serving their own interests, and who, if they’d just Become Enlightened, would see that the Left is correct in its assumption that more, not fewer, programs for the poor are going to equal nirvana.

They believe that the engine which got us here can continue, if we only tax the rich and the super-rich, and do away with our far-flung Empire.

As with most polarized concepts, there’s a little right – and a whole lot wrong – with both positions.

Empire – It’s What’s For Breakfast (and Lunch; and Dinner….)

The Empire, as some on the Left are calling it, is costing us a fortune.

The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have cost us well over a trillion dollars so far, and show little or now signs of slowing down.  We’ve propped up regimes all over the world, the collective behavior of which would make any thinking-person’s skin crawl; we have bases literally all around the world (placed there, so we’ve been told, so we can respond to any crisis at a moment’s notice).

No one has addressed the obvious question:  Do we really need all this?

The answer is no – and yes.

Everyone knows that we import a vast amount of our energy.  What’s not immediately apparent is that we import a lot of other things, as well – everything from tires to cars to medical equipment to funny-sounding rare-earths which go in wind turbines, and – well; you get the idea.   America imports far more than it produces.   Those ‘abundant resources’ are not so abundant any longer – especially when we have over 350 million people, and they all want a lifestyle that’s better than their parents.

All of this trade needs to be protected.   In a world where a handful of half-starving Somalis carrying well-used AK-47’s in a homemade speedboat can seize an entire freighter full of goodies bound for American Yuppiedom, it’s apparent that rather than spending too much on our military, we probably haven’t spent nearly enough – at least, on the sort of things which would adequately protect trade.

Politically, we’re no better off overseas.  Remember that ‘god’ I told you about?  Well, evidently, he’s told most Americans that we have to ‘support’ a nation called ‘Israel’, which was created after WWII in the Middle East, smack in the center of some land which was previously-occupied.   The math there, too, is pretty daunting – they have a population of around seven and a half million – meanwhile, their neighbors in the Middle East number around half a billion – and they’re all pissed  at Israel – and us – to one degree or another.

The only reason Israel has survived is because of us.

Now, if that’s a situation we want to see continue, we’re going to have to realize that it’s going to cost a hell of a lot more – perhaps even double – than what we’re spending right now on defense (around a trillion dollars a year).

Is the Empire a good deal?   Well, that depends.

America’s military expenditures ‘buy’ (if you want to look at it that way) some pretty solid power -  both ‘hard’ power (the kind you can throw across someone’s border), and ‘soft’ power (the kind you can use at the conference table).  Both are pretty useful, are hard to value, and we’d likely miss them to one degree or another if they were suddenly unavailable.

The Nanny State – It’s What We’ve Got, Like It Or Not….

Next, we have to consider the other elephant in the room – entitlements.

Nearly half of all Americans live in a household now with some form of entitlement-payments coming in – whether that’s Social Security, welfare, unemployment, military pension, government pension, etc.  45% of all American households pay no income tax whatsoever (Federal or state).  Such payments amounted to nearly two and a half trillion dollars – or three times the military budget – last year (2009).  

We are now to the point where we can’t afford to do away with them.   And yes; it’s that simple – if we do, the alternative is seeing massive numbers of elderly, infirm and unemployed simply starve.

As nearly half of the nation’s population is involved, we’re now to a point where participation equals complicity.  The people who are participating won’t vote against their self-interest.  Anyone who tells them, “We’re going to have to get used to fewer services” is going to find him or herself out of office in a hurry.

Who Pays?

The problem is that we’re borrowing 40% of our budget as a nation.   We can no longer do this, for a bunch of reasons, but mainly because the countries loaning us the money aren’t going to put up with it much longer.

If you add up the trillion spent on maintaining the Empire; the two and a half trillion spent on entitlements, and the two-hundred fifty billion (plus or minus) spent on interest, and there’s not much room left to move in a budget which equals three and a half trillion – one and a half which is borrowed from other countries.

While it would be easy for one side to say, “Throw the bums in the streets!”, and the other side to say, “Bring the troops home!” – it’s not that simple.

The U.S. tax code taxes earned income at a different rate than unearned – which means that the people who have vast wealth and who live off the interest pay far lower taxes than those of us who are trying to win the lottery by way of the American Dream.   

This, by the way, is not a coincidence.  Income inequality has risen sharply over the past twenty years, to the point where the top 1% gained over 2/3rds of the income-growth.   The Bush-era tax cuts saw nearly a third of those cuts go to the same 1%.  Add to this the fact that most of the increase in government spending in that era was ‘filtered’ through business-interest owned by that same 1%, and you can see why actual income also increased to the top 1% along much the same lines.

The top 10% take home almost half of the earned income – and nearly all of the unearned income – in America.   If you increase the first figure to comprise the top 20%, you have nearly all of the income and wealth in the country.

The top 20% pay nearly 83% of all Federal taxes.   Eliminating the Bush era tax-cuts would only raise another $13 billion – a lot of money, but not nearly enough to offset the budget deficit and begin paying down bailout and stimulus alike.

If we want to know who’s going to pay – we’re increasingly going to have to look in the mirror, and begin by realizing that if we want a society which takes care of its own, maintains a worldwide empire and engages in religion-for-politics, we’re going to have to consider a 60% tax rate until the baby-boom generation is dead and gone; perhaps longer.

The alternative is to keep borrowing the difference from the Federal Reserve in the form of inflation and from other countries which sooner or later are going to call in their chits and refuse to loan us more money.

Class War, Reality, and The Future….

One thing we’re going to have to realize, once we’ve done the math – the facts are the facts; they’re remorseless, and they’re not going to change.   The only thing which will change is the outcome.

We’ve set ourselves up for the Ultimate Conflict, the conclusion of which is not certain – a full-on class-war, between the ‘wants’ and the ‘haves’.   The ‘haves’ are interested in maintaining the status-quo, because they’re making money and hanging on to it under a comparatively low tax structure; the ‘wants’ are not in a position to pay taxes.  Neither are going to budge (in fact, if the support being given to the anti-tax crowd is any indication, the ‘haves’ are betting they can buy the election outright and keep right on.

The bottom-half of the upper 20% have one real option the Rest of Us don’t  – they can truly bail out of the system and stay relatively intact, transferring their wealth to another country, or simply disappearing ‘off the grid’, converting their assets to land, equipment, hard metals and cash.  The upper half are betting on their money keeping them in power.

They have the resources.   The rest of the population (that bottom 80%) have the numbers.

Again, math raises its ugly head – and this time, it’ll be for all the marbles.

Regardless, we’ve had to accept this next bit of news with the sinking feeling that accompanies all truly life-changing negatives:  We are no longer ‘exceptional.’

We’re just like the rest of the world.

Stay tuned.

The Revolution Will Be Televised - The Koch Brothers, The Tea Party, and A Future America

Sometimes, I wish I didn’t care so much.

I’ve wondered if I’d be content to be a drooling, Springer-watching moron with no more ambition than a single wide with tarps and old tires on the roof and a job at the 7/11. I could rant about wanting English to be our ‘ofecal’ language; I could thank Fox News for keeping us ‘infromed’. Life would be simple. Glenn Beck would be my hero; everything would be black and white, and I’d be happy that the Tea Party was there to stick up for my ‘rights’.

When asked about them, I could say with a straight face (as some have, at those rallies), that “there must be rights I don’t know about.”

Unfortunately, I was born with a brain, and my parents insisted I learn to use it – which brings me to yesterday’s election.

Y’see, while Thinking America is reeling from yesterday’s election results and the media are weighing-in on the statistics, trying to parse reality out of the chaos, one thing seems to be overlooked – all the money spent by the Koch Brothers and their ultraRight minions has had a telling effect. Mama Grizzly herself (y'know - the gal who shoots wolves from a helicopter) stumped for the winner of the Biggest Upset, in the state of Delaware, and the votes are in.

The Tea Party Revolution has arrived.

The dumbing-down of America has found its voice. Whether we like it or not, the Tea Party , misspelled placards and wingnut theories aside, is now a part of the Republican landscape, just as much as the Fundies who began the process of co-opting the whole thing back in ’01. It’s a perfect storm of Angry Mouth-Breathing White Folks Who Can’t Spell, and plenty of money. Plenty, plenty of money.

Voters who call themselves ‘conservatives’ are increasingly unwilling to settle – the O’Donnell/Castle fight should be ample proof of that. Across the country, we’re seeing America’s New Polarization line up not along party lines, but along ideological constructs.

Has the Tea Party weakened the Republicans? I wouldn’t bet on it. The iron pipe about which I’ve often written? It just came out of the collective back-pocket of the ultraRight, and they’re getting ready to use it. Count on all that Koch money being spent on massive campaigns, aimed squarely not at thinking Americans, but at Joe and Josephine Sixpack. Don’t make any mistake – the Tea Party is bought-and-paid-for; it’s the completely funded political arm of big business in America, and they’re mad as hell – as well as fearful - that continued Democratic/Progressive control of the House and Senate will mean more controls and no more free-ride at the taxpayer’s expense.

These are the people who will make decisions based not on reason, but on emotion. Fear and hate (along with an abysmal lack of education) drives these people – and you can also count on these advertising campaigns not to extol the virtues of their chosen candidates, but the perceived vices of their opponents.

I’ll say it again – we dismiss these people at our peril. 

I have to shake my head – because these are the people who have the most to lose. Most of them work for minimum-wage or nearabouts; they live paycheck-to-paycheck; their children have no chance at an education, unless one of them literally wins one of those education-lotteries which are becoming so popular, or manage to overcome an underfunded public-school education and get a scholarship to a state-run college or university. Like as not, they’ll be sucker-punched into signing up for one of those Federally-sponsored school-loans to attend the University of We’ll-Teach-You-How-To-Cook, Clean, and Fix Cars – and they’ll get out in six months to a year with no useable skills and a $50,000 bill which they can’t bankrupt when they can't find a job (it’s part of the deal; those Fed-backed school-loans don’t qualify for bankruptcy).

(Right now, these for-profit schools are raking in big bucks and delivering no education – and student-loan debt now exceeds credit-card debt in America, making it the next big bubble-in-the-making – but that’s another story, indeed.)

Never have a group of people voted so consistently against their own self-interests.

While Hannity and Beck are spouting the old chestnut, “No-poor-person-ever-gave-me-a-job”, the people they’re protecting by way of demanding Bush’s tax cuts be left in place are betting against us – taking that windfall and sending it to overseas banks or other static investments which have sweet-squat-all to do with creating jobs. A poor person may never have given either of those bloviating morons a job – but it’s a lead-pipe-cinch that the wealthiest people in America aren’t going to do so any time soon, either.

Meanwhile, back to the Koch Brothers.

They’ve shoveled money into everything from the fight against environmental legislation to outfits like the Cato Institute, which favors eliminating most governmental control over business and reducing taxes for everything – except the military, which is, of course, good for business. Peeling back the layers of that rotten onion reveals a couple of guys with no interests past their own. To them, the Tea Party is just a means to the ultimate end – more money, for them.

Connect the dots, and you have a couple of puppet masters, along with others like them who are pouring money into candidates which have been bought, paid-for, and packaged to sell to a semiliterate group of voters who can be easily swayed, plied, and purchased. 

What’s the solution?

Each one of us – and I’m assuming you’re one of ‘us’ and not ‘them’, if you’ve read this far – are going to have to go out there this fall and vote a straight Democratic ticket. I hate saying that, because I pride myself on a great deal of independence, especially when it comes to my political philosophy.

Sadly, though, we are past those luxuries.

We’re going to have to own up to the fact that there are greater things at stake here. The Tea Partiers have a platform which, when we boil it down, would remove the gains of the 20th century. Some of them (like Sharron Angle and Michelle Bachmann) would take us back to the 18th century by way of applying their narrow religious worldview to legislation.

(Bachmann has stated that her agenda would be to bring lawsuit after lawsuit, tying up and eventually shutting down the Federal government, along with calling for the impeachment of Obama, should the Republicans win the House and Senate – but that, too, is another story entirely).

Nope – we’re going to have to accept the fact that America is polarized along party lines, and that one of the major parties doesn’t bear any resemblance to the party of Lincoln, Eisenhower, or even Nixon. It’s mutated into a particularly vicious supporter of gangster-oligarchy, run by a group of big business puppet-masters who are pulling the strings on a gaggle of Christian extremists and anti-government, semiliterate Hooterville-dwelling morons.

This is it, folks. It’s do or die come November. Don’t say you weren’t warned.

The revolution will be televised.

September 11th, 2010....

I thought I'd remind everyone about the core-problem with the world, and one of the recent events of the past ten years which would be vastly different if religion weren't poisoning our thinking.


Without religion:

1.     Yes - the Twin Towers would still be standing.


2.     National Socialism would never have existed.


3.     There would have never been an Inquisition.


4.     Joan-of-Arc wouldn't have been turned into barbecue.


5.     Most of humanity's wars would have never happened.


6.     Africa would be free of the results of colonialism.


7.     North and South America's indigenous populations would have remained free of the White Man's Burden.


8.     The Middle East would be a geography question for 12 year olds - not a constant source of worry and pain.


9.     The Crusades would have never occurred.


10.    The Dark Ages would never have happened.

Think about it....

The First-Ever International Purchase-A-Koran-And-Read-It Month....

I've been reading about this moron in Florida, who's collected over 200 copies of the Koran, and has said that although he's 'asked god' twice about going ahead, his favorite hateful Imaginary Friend has given him the green-light to burn them all on September 11th.

That's two days from now.

Terry Jones, the 'pastor' of the 50-member 'Dove World Outreach Center' which is sponsoring the 'Burn a Koran Day' is a former hotel manager-turned-preacher, whose catchphrase "Islam Is Of The Devil" is on t-shirts and billboards around and about their Gainesville, Florida church. He also has a Facebook page dedicated to the event, with over 13,000 people having 'friended' or 'liked' it.

In spite of warnings from General Petreus, the overall commander of coalition forces in Afghanistan, President Obama and Secretary of State Clinton that such an act could lead to reprisals against American troops and American interests worldwide, Jones is hell-bent (so to speak) in his quest to burn the Koran.

Whether dancing will be permitted around the fire isn't certain. They're Baptists, after all.

So, what do we do?

Personally, I have several Muslim friends. They're all good people - and I know this is hurtful to all of them.  So, in my case, I'm going to actually do something - and I'm going to suggest that you pass this on:

I'm declaring September the first-ever "International Purchase-A-Koran-And-Read-It Month".

I read the Koran back in college. I've got a copy here at home. However, I'm going to an Islamic bookstore here in Portland which is associated with a mosque, and I'm going to buy another one.

I'm encouraging the rest of you to do the same.

That's right - go to a mosque and buy a Koran. Tell them that you're going to start reading it, and that you went to the mosque's bookstore, rather than Amazon.Com, to show your support.

Here are some other things you can do:

1.  If any of you have the talent and tools to do so, then create a 'badge' for people's blogs and Facebook pages.  I'll post one here, on my Facebook page, and as my Email signature.

2. Patronize a Lebanese or Middle Eastern restaurant this weekend. Make a point of telling the owner that you came there to introduce yourself to Middle Eastern cuisine and to show your support of the Muslim community. I know they'll appreciate it.

3. Go out of your way to buy a couple of items at a Muslim-owned grocery. Who knows - you might find you actually like couscous!

4. The Military Religious Freedom Foundation (an organization which is run with great passion by a friend of mine, attorney, activist and retired Air Force officer Mikey Weinstein, is going to send a copy of the Koran in Arabic to the Afghan Army for every copy burned by this idiot Jones and his 'church'. Click on the link and show your support by sending the MRFF a few dollars. They do great work, keeping the Fundies from taking over the American military and promoting religious freedom in America's armed forces.

5. Lastly, pass this on. Tweet it. Repost it. Let's counter Jones's hate-filled actions by some positive work of our own.

And my thanks to all of you!

(While I've just learned that Jones is on-again; off-again about his Koran-burning stunt, I still think it's a great idea to do the five things I've listed above.  If anything, this can prove to be impetus to learn more about one of the world's largest religions - and do something decent, besides.)