Taking a humorous but analytical look at just about anything in the spirit of Groucho Marx: I wouldn't want to belong to any club that would have me as a member!
The Los Angeles school district, one of the largest and (overall) most cash-strapped in the country, has approved a proposal to allow corporate names to be posted on school buildings, school district vehicles, and other places, possibly including sports fields. Nothing is to be allowed in classrooms, and companies are to be thoroughly vetted so that no age-inappropriate or other unseemly (e.g., alcohol and junk food manufacturers) companies will be approved for participation. The school district spokesperson said that this still would not end the district's financial woes, but it would make it possible to "avoid further cut-backs in services and programs." Nor is Los Angeles alone in this; Milwaukee's school district started a similar program in 2009.
I'm not the only one who sees what's wrong with this picture. At least one of the parents of a Los Angeles school district fourth-grader noted on NPR's "Morning Edition" today that "there's no such thing as free." There will be a quid pro quo.
What is wrong with Americans? We apparently have become so indoctrinated by corporate and right-wing double-talk that we think it's safer to have businesses, each of which has its own agenda, run our school systems than it is to make sure the government has the funds to do what it needs to fulfill one of its most basic missions, to provide high-quality, free, public education to our youth. The right-wing has succeeded in making "taxes" such a dirty word that we have forgotten Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes's profound observation that "[t]axes are the price we pay for civilization."
Yes, government can take our money and spend it in ways we do not like--but WE are the government in this country. We have the power to change what we do not like. Besides, government in this country has systems in place to appeal abuses of the system. If a corporation treats you unfairly and there is no law [read that "government"--Ed.] which provides you access to redress, you are SOL.
I absolutely do NOT understand how so many Americans can mistrust their own government so much that they prefer to turn control over much of their lives to businesses whose sole purpose for existing is to maximize their own bottom line--even if that be at the expense of the rest of us.
But at the rate we are abdicating our duty to each other to make sure we have the best government on Earth, it won't be long before our kids begin each school day pledging their allegiance to "The Corporate States of America."
Mr. Barack Obama The White House 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW Washington, D.C. 20500
Dear President Obama,
You are correct in asserting both that compromise is the heart of our system and that your job as president is to do what's best for all the American people. However, this deal you brokered with Republican leaders in Congress is neither a compromise nor in the best interests of the American people.
It may look like a compromise when people at both ends of the political spectrum in this country are angry about what's been done, but detailed analysis demonstrates that in this case, looks are deceiving. A compromise is typically defined as a "meeting in the middle," but this deal started out so far to the right of center that what in reality is the middle has been moved so far to the left as to seem dangerously radical. Look: the far right is going to be angry at you no matter how much you give, because they are not angry about the substance of the issues--they are angry that YOU, as a black man, are the president. Nothing you can do will change their anger, so you might as well stop trying to appease them. They deny that they are racists or bigots, but if what they say they want about fiscally responsible political leadership is true, they would have voted all the Republicans OUT off office this past November, not voted more of them in. The disconnect between their proclaimed beliefs and their behavior should be telling you something.
Many on the left, however, are angry at you because you are starting to the right of center, which makes an agreement truly embodying the center, by definition, impossible. We all know that progress is slow, that we can't always get what we want, and that real progress in this country typically happens incrementally. Your behavior since you took office has been to start at the true center and move to the right, however, unlike your soaring rhetoric of hope and change promised during your 2008 campaign. By starting where you've been starting in every discussion so far with the GOP, you aren't giving even incremental progress a chance. I know you're in a tough position, and I know you have an eye to history, but as a fellow academician, I also know that your instinct is to expect people to respond to reasonable behavior by behaving reasonably themselves. In politics, however, that doesn't happen.
Your assertion that you got the GOP to concede several benefits to ordinary Americans that the GOP wouldn't otherwise approve may be true, but is meaningless. A "compromise" that gives 13 months of bare-bones sustenance to the millions of Americans who are the long-term unemployed while bestowing additional billions on the already ultra-rich in this country for 24 months (if not longer--it seems clear that in 2012 we're going to have deja vu all over again about what's happened during the past few months)--billions that will be added to the entire nation's fiscal deficit--is emphatically NOT in the best interests of the American people as a whole. Several analyses of the other terms of this "compromise" say that it will actually increase the burdens on the already-strained middle class instead of helping them. And adding nearly a trillion dollars to the long-term deficit by extending the tax cuts to the ultra-rich does not help the 98% of the American people who have seen their true earning power and purchasing power stagnate (if not downright erode) over the past 40 years.
The ultra-rich seem to have forgotten (if they ever knew) that people without secure, well-paying jobs do not spend money, and since spending money is what drives our overall economic growth, you'd do better by giving no more than a pittance (at the most) to the ultra-rich and bestowing the bulk of your fiscal largesse on us "regular" people. When the economic crisis began, back in 2008, I said that a real economic stimulus plan would devote itself 100% to putting people to work on improving our infrastructure and putting money in our pockets, not to giving money to those who did not need it and who would not spend it. History has borne me out--the rich are even richer than they were when the crisis started, the big ("too big to fail") Wall Street firms are even bigger than they were before 2008, infrastructure improvements are not being done on a big enough or fast enough scale, and the rest of us have become in a real way invisible. Indeed, in 2008, if you simply would have handed a million dollars to every single American, you'd have done more to help the vast majority of us than the stimulus plan as passed ever could, while increasing the long-term deficit only about half as must as the actual stimulus plan did. But the GOP would never have stood for that. (Millionaires and billionaires must be kept a small, elite group. The vast majority of Americans need not apply.) And no, I am not saying by this that you should engage in a short-term, unwinnable political fight. I am calling on you to do in fact what you claim you were doing in the first place, to wit: looking out for the best interests of the American people as a whole.
Listen to and study everything Sen. Bernie Sanders said in his most powerful and fact-laden oratory of December 10th. He is exactly right about it all, but the oligarchic few with most of the money have the power to thwart the will of the real majority of Americans at every turn. You said yourself, correctly, that the vast majority of the American people were aligned with you about not extending tax breaks to the millionaires and billionaires. Yet you still gave in to GOP intransigence and signed off on this "compromise" that gives way more to the ultra-rich 2% than it does to the 98% rest of us. The ultra-rich and their allies were playing a cosmic game of "chicken" with you, Mr. President. You blinked first. There is still time, however, to undo the damage this "compromise" has done.
Before I make my "modest proposal," however, let me tell you a little bit about myself, so that you'll understand the strength of my conviction about my idea. I am a life-long non-smoker who got a lung disease; I now must have, around the clock, 6 liters per minute of supplemental oxygen just to function. At that rate, a portable oxygen tank lasts maybe 2-3 hours, so I am effectively prevented from working outside my home. My sole sources of income for the past several years have been approximately 1/3 of my ex-husband's military retirement pay and Social Security disability payments (note that my 3 highest years of earnings were when I lived outside the U.S. to be with my now ex-husband in connection with his military duties, and so my income from those years does not count toward my benefit, leaving me getting less than half the average disability payment). Because of the austerity measures you've already implemented, this will be the second year in a row that I have not had any COLA at all. However, my cost of living has increased measurably over that period, so in real terms, my income is declining, not staying steady.
Nevertheless, I think you should scuttle this "compromise" you made with the GOP and let ALL the Bush era tax cuts expire at the end of the year. Not only will that fulfill the promises that were made at the time those tax cuts were first enacted, it will restore some modicum of fiscal responsibility to the ultra-rich in this country. The Reagan/Clinton era tax rates (which are the ones that will return once the Bush era cuts expire) did not demand from them a true "fair share" of the burdens all Americans bear for their country. Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes himself noted that "taxes are the price we pay for civilization." Thus, letting the Bush era cuts expire would be better than extending them for another 2 years (or more). And if letting the tax cuts for the middle class expire at the same time is the price we must pay, so be it. The cuts never made a huge difference to most of us, anyway, so ending them isn't going to make a noticeable difference in the other direction, either. The only thing that this "compromise" has done is to let us stall getting our fiscal house in order--again. Letting all the cuts expire in 20 days will be the wake-up call we need to start dealing with our real problems now, instead of sniping at each other while the problem gets bigger and bigger and bigger.
Extending unemployment benefits can be brought up as a stand-alone bill. House Speaker-elect John Boehner is on the record as having said--tellingly, before the deal you brokered with the GOP--that not even the GOP would fail to extend unemployment benefits at Christmastime. What would really do this nation good is to scuttle the "compromise," force a vote before the end of the lame-duck session on extending unemployment benefits alone, and talking to the American people about what the true costs to all of us will be of continuing to give in to the GOP's notion of "fiscal responsibility." If you don't, Dean Swift's "modest proposal" about solving the Irish problem may become applicable here.
