Home from an excellent evening (an old friend regaling me over the sherry with the tale of his long-ago encounter with Gaddafi, a sumptuous dinner, a talk by John Polkinghorne - ah, the lot of a President of a Senior Common Room), I caught parts of Mrs Brown’s Boys, which was not terribly good, but which, being set in Dublin, did contain several telling references to having to pay for medical treatment.
The absence of any significant Marxist influence in this country has been due to the universal and comprehensive Welfare State, and the strong statutory protection of workers and consumers, the former paid for by progressive taxation, and all underwritten by full employment. These are very largely the fruits of Catholic Social Teaching. Such fruits have been of disproportionate benefit to ethnically Gaelic-Irish Catholics throughout the United Kingdom.
Even in the 1940s, Sinn Féin worried that they were eroding its support. She who led the assault on these things remains a Unionist hate figure. The Civil Rights Movement was explicitly for equal British citizenship. Even the old Nationalist Party, never mind Sinn Féin, was permitted no part in it. And it was classically British Labour in identifying education, healthcare, decent homes and proper wages as the rights of citizens, who are demeaned precisely as citizens when they are denied those rights. The fruits of Catholic Social Teaching, indeed.
Yet imagine how much more Catholic and more concerned with rural issues British social democracy would have been if, as it continued to develop after the First World War, it had continued to include the whole of Ireland. If most of Ireland had not left the United Kingdom in 1922, then all of Ireland would have received the National Health Service a generation later, and Irish votes at Westminster would have been crucial to sparing these Islands, as a whole, the abortion and divorce free-for-alls a generation after that.
The Attlee Government’s firmly Unionist reaction to the proclamation of the Irish Republic was opposed only by a handful of Labour MPs, mostly Soviet agents or sympathisers, and it resulted in no negative reaction from unions and local parties, numerous of which were dominated by Irish Catholics at that time. Those Irish Catholics had moved from one part of the United Kingdom to another, or at the very latest from one part of the Commonwealth as it then existed to another, and no one had asked them if they wanted to be turned into foreigners. They did not.
Does anyone seriously imagine that the inhabitants of the Falls Road or the Bogside would ever vote themselves into a situation in which they had to pay to visit the doctor, as is the arrangement in the Republic? They were never really voting for that when they voted for the SDLP, which was why they voted for the SDLP. And now that they are no longer voting for it by voting for Sinn Féin, they vote for Sinn Féin. Almost no one votes for the “dissident Republicans” who, in effect, really would wish for such a thing. Indeed, they hardly ever present themselves for humiliation at the ballot box.
Tuesday, 22 February 2011
A Fine Idea
The way for everyone else to compete is apparently to pay less, and David Cameron has accordingly just announced the mass reduction in the wages and working conditions of the only people trained to deliver public services, through their transfer to the employ of the unaccountable, largely foreign companies that bankroll his party.
But the way for the City to compete is apparently to pay more, and more, and more. Underwritten, if not directly provided, by the workers in and the users of the public services. Or, rather, by those who used to work in and use those services, in the days when they still existed.
Well, no more. Not bonuses merely for doing your job properly. Fines if you don't.
But the way for the City to compete is apparently to pay more, and more, and more. Underwritten, if not directly provided, by the workers in and the users of the public services. Or, rather, by those who used to work in and use those services, in the days when they still existed.
Well, no more. Not bonuses merely for doing your job properly. Fines if you don't.
An Alternative View
Peter Hitchens writes:
"I’m amazed at the apparent enthusiasm for AV among contributors here. The FPTP system, which I much prefer, produces strong governments which can be turned out in a night if they prove unsatisfactory, and compels parties to make coalitions before the vote, rather than afterwards. The reason it currently works so badly is not because there is anything intrinsically wrong with it, but because it is dominated by dead political parties, kept alive by state subsidy, guaranteed BBC access and dodgy billionaires. AV will do nothing to fix any of this. Our constitution was fine before Labour started mucking it up in 1997, and it is being changed to suit the governors, not the governed."
But, real though all of those problems are, the biggest thing of all keeping those parties going is the First Past The Post Electoral system. Without it, at least one of two patriotic, morally and socially conservative parties, one with Labour roots and the other with Tory roots, would always be in government at any given time. Quite possibly, they both would be.
The one with Labour roots would give a voice to those whose priorities included the Welfare State, workers' rights, trade unionism, the co-operative movement and wider mutualism, consumer protection, strong communities, conservation rather than environmentalism, fair taxation, full employment, public ownership, proper local government, a powerful Parliament, the monarchy, the organic Constitution, national sovereignty, civil liberties, the Union, the Commonwealth, the countryside, traditional structures and methods of education, traditional moral and social values, economic patriotism, balanced migration, a realist foreign policy, an unhysterical approach to climate change, and a base of real property for every household to resist both over-mighty commercial interests and an over-mighty State.
It would give a voice to those who were aware of, who understood, who valued and who drew on the Radical Liberal, Tory populist, trade union, co-operative, Christian Socialist, Social Catholic and Distributist, and other roots of the Labour Movement, rejecting cultural Marxism no less comprehensively than they rejected economic Marxism, and vice versa. A voice to those who, with Herbert Morrison, had never seen any conflict "between Labour and what are known as the middle classes", and who, with Aneurin Bevan, denounced class war, calling instead for "a platform broad enough for all to stand upon" and for the making of "war upon a system, not upon a class".
It would recognise that we could not deliver the welfare provisions and the other public services that our people have rightly come to expect unless we knew how many people there are in this country, unless we controlled immigration properly, and unless we insisted that everyone use spoken and written English to the necessary level. It would refuse to allow climate change to be used as an excuse to destroy or prevent secure employment, to drive down wages or working conditions, to arrest economic development around the world, to forbid the working classes and non-white people from having children, to inflate the fuel prices that always hit the poor hardest, or to restrict either travel opportunities or a full diet to the rich. It would give a national platform and profile to the alliance of the traditional Right and the traditional Left against the neoconservative war agenda and its assaults on liberty at home, including against any new Cold War with either or both of Russia and China.
And it would therefore co-operate as closely as possible with the forces of provincial, rural, protectionist, church-based, conservative, mind-our-own-business Toryism, forces set free by electoral reform from tendencies variously metropolitan, urban, capitalist, secular, libertarian and make-the-world-anew.
"I’m amazed at the apparent enthusiasm for AV among contributors here. The FPTP system, which I much prefer, produces strong governments which can be turned out in a night if they prove unsatisfactory, and compels parties to make coalitions before the vote, rather than afterwards. The reason it currently works so badly is not because there is anything intrinsically wrong with it, but because it is dominated by dead political parties, kept alive by state subsidy, guaranteed BBC access and dodgy billionaires. AV will do nothing to fix any of this. Our constitution was fine before Labour started mucking it up in 1997, and it is being changed to suit the governors, not the governed."
But, real though all of those problems are, the biggest thing of all keeping those parties going is the First Past The Post Electoral system. Without it, at least one of two patriotic, morally and socially conservative parties, one with Labour roots and the other with Tory roots, would always be in government at any given time. Quite possibly, they both would be.
The one with Labour roots would give a voice to those whose priorities included the Welfare State, workers' rights, trade unionism, the co-operative movement and wider mutualism, consumer protection, strong communities, conservation rather than environmentalism, fair taxation, full employment, public ownership, proper local government, a powerful Parliament, the monarchy, the organic Constitution, national sovereignty, civil liberties, the Union, the Commonwealth, the countryside, traditional structures and methods of education, traditional moral and social values, economic patriotism, balanced migration, a realist foreign policy, an unhysterical approach to climate change, and a base of real property for every household to resist both over-mighty commercial interests and an over-mighty State.
It would give a voice to those who were aware of, who understood, who valued and who drew on the Radical Liberal, Tory populist, trade union, co-operative, Christian Socialist, Social Catholic and Distributist, and other roots of the Labour Movement, rejecting cultural Marxism no less comprehensively than they rejected economic Marxism, and vice versa. A voice to those who, with Herbert Morrison, had never seen any conflict "between Labour and what are known as the middle classes", and who, with Aneurin Bevan, denounced class war, calling instead for "a platform broad enough for all to stand upon" and for the making of "war upon a system, not upon a class".
It would recognise that we could not deliver the welfare provisions and the other public services that our people have rightly come to expect unless we knew how many people there are in this country, unless we controlled immigration properly, and unless we insisted that everyone use spoken and written English to the necessary level. It would refuse to allow climate change to be used as an excuse to destroy or prevent secure employment, to drive down wages or working conditions, to arrest economic development around the world, to forbid the working classes and non-white people from having children, to inflate the fuel prices that always hit the poor hardest, or to restrict either travel opportunities or a full diet to the rich. It would give a national platform and profile to the alliance of the traditional Right and the traditional Left against the neoconservative war agenda and its assaults on liberty at home, including against any new Cold War with either or both of Russia and China.
And it would therefore co-operate as closely as possible with the forces of provincial, rural, protectionist, church-based, conservative, mind-our-own-business Toryism, forces set free by electoral reform from tendencies variously metropolitan, urban, capitalist, secular, libertarian and make-the-world-anew.
A Sign of the Times
Although he was a Minister in the Government that, while it did not cause the problem, certainly did not make it any better, David Lammy writes:
It is a sign of the times that recently published researched showing that almost half a million Britons have a gambling problem went largely unnoticed.
The damage done to those people, and the friends and relatives who are also affected, is readily dismissed by some with an appeal to notions of free will and individual choice. It was their choice to gamble; their problem is their choosing. The same logic gets the gambling industry off the hook: the casinos, betting shops and gambling sites are simply responding to consumer demand.
Where has that left us? We have grown accustomed to the idea that schoolchildren should walk past five or six betting shops between their school and the bus stop. Or that sporting coverage should be punctuated by adverts with "live" odds, inviting viewers to gamble on the outcome. Our distance from the problem can give comfort. Many of us gamble, but mainly online, over the telephone, or we fill in a lottery slip at the corner shop without being confronted by problem gambling. The insides of every new betting shop are a mystery.
The garish colours splashed across the front of bookmakers' shops block the depression that lies behind the plastic advertising boards. The penniless young men glued to virtual roulette wheels while others queue are invisible to the passing public. You're prevented from seeing the desperation of men surrounded by scrunched up, worthless betting slips that represent their afternoon's endeavours.
The romantic vision of bookmakers filled with scores of working-class men betting on horses is out of date. Now a large proportion of bookmakers' takings come from touch-screen betting terminals. They offer you the chance to bet up to £100 a time on casino games that take place at up to three times the speed. These are no longer just bookmakers' shops, they are casinos, operating openly and freely in a growing number of locations on our high streets.
The government's survey data tells us that the average problem gambler is male, young, unemployed and from a deprived neighbourhood. The bookmakers know where to find them. That's why Newham has three times as many bookmakers as Richmond-upon-Thames. It is a predatory industry that profits from poverty.
Gambling laws that were weakened under the last Labour government have given gambling firms free rein over our high streets. Loopholes in the legislation are being exploited so that banks can be converted into bookmakers' shops with no need for planning permission. In the depths of the recession, when people in our inner cities were most in need of financial advice, they found a virtual roulette wheel instead. A social crisis caused by gambling on financial markets is being exacerbated by invitations to gamble on high streets.
People "demand" the opportunity to gamble away money they do not have, just like people "demand" money from loan sharks at extortionate interest rates. This is a warped, empty type of freedom, in which the powerful are free to exploit the vulnerable. Unless we establish some speed limits on the road, we are only going to need more and more ambulances.
All TV advertising of gambling before the 9pm watershed must stop. If people really want to have a bet then they will do. Rather than abolishing the Gambling Commission, the government should be looking at stopping old-fashioned bookies' shops becoming soulless mini-casinos. Most of all, residents need their voice heard. We deserve a say if a company wants to build the ninth betting shop on a 300m stretch of high street. This is not just a question of consumer demand – we walk, cycle, drive and shop on these streets every day.
In Britain all parties talk about devolving power – away from ministers and mandarins to councillors and communities. But it's a patronising, half-hearted offer that treats people only as consumers, not as parents, residents and citizens who have wider concerns. Ministers drone on about localism but people are still denied a say over so many of the things that matter to them. Many will decry this as "paternalism" but this is not about prohibiting gambling. People simply want to have a say over more than which horse to back at the 4:20 at Epsom.
It is a sign of the times that recently published researched showing that almost half a million Britons have a gambling problem went largely unnoticed.
The damage done to those people, and the friends and relatives who are also affected, is readily dismissed by some with an appeal to notions of free will and individual choice. It was their choice to gamble; their problem is their choosing. The same logic gets the gambling industry off the hook: the casinos, betting shops and gambling sites are simply responding to consumer demand.
Where has that left us? We have grown accustomed to the idea that schoolchildren should walk past five or six betting shops between their school and the bus stop. Or that sporting coverage should be punctuated by adverts with "live" odds, inviting viewers to gamble on the outcome. Our distance from the problem can give comfort. Many of us gamble, but mainly online, over the telephone, or we fill in a lottery slip at the corner shop without being confronted by problem gambling. The insides of every new betting shop are a mystery.
The garish colours splashed across the front of bookmakers' shops block the depression that lies behind the plastic advertising boards. The penniless young men glued to virtual roulette wheels while others queue are invisible to the passing public. You're prevented from seeing the desperation of men surrounded by scrunched up, worthless betting slips that represent their afternoon's endeavours.
The romantic vision of bookmakers filled with scores of working-class men betting on horses is out of date. Now a large proportion of bookmakers' takings come from touch-screen betting terminals. They offer you the chance to bet up to £100 a time on casino games that take place at up to three times the speed. These are no longer just bookmakers' shops, they are casinos, operating openly and freely in a growing number of locations on our high streets.
The government's survey data tells us that the average problem gambler is male, young, unemployed and from a deprived neighbourhood. The bookmakers know where to find them. That's why Newham has three times as many bookmakers as Richmond-upon-Thames. It is a predatory industry that profits from poverty.
Gambling laws that were weakened under the last Labour government have given gambling firms free rein over our high streets. Loopholes in the legislation are being exploited so that banks can be converted into bookmakers' shops with no need for planning permission. In the depths of the recession, when people in our inner cities were most in need of financial advice, they found a virtual roulette wheel instead. A social crisis caused by gambling on financial markets is being exacerbated by invitations to gamble on high streets.
People "demand" the opportunity to gamble away money they do not have, just like people "demand" money from loan sharks at extortionate interest rates. This is a warped, empty type of freedom, in which the powerful are free to exploit the vulnerable. Unless we establish some speed limits on the road, we are only going to need more and more ambulances.
All TV advertising of gambling before the 9pm watershed must stop. If people really want to have a bet then they will do. Rather than abolishing the Gambling Commission, the government should be looking at stopping old-fashioned bookies' shops becoming soulless mini-casinos. Most of all, residents need their voice heard. We deserve a say if a company wants to build the ninth betting shop on a 300m stretch of high street. This is not just a question of consumer demand – we walk, cycle, drive and shop on these streets every day.
In Britain all parties talk about devolving power – away from ministers and mandarins to councillors and communities. But it's a patronising, half-hearted offer that treats people only as consumers, not as parents, residents and citizens who have wider concerns. Ministers drone on about localism but people are still denied a say over so many of the things that matter to them. Many will decry this as "paternalism" but this is not about prohibiting gambling. People simply want to have a say over more than which horse to back at the 4:20 at Epsom.
Parallel
"Diplomats resigning en masse, fighter pilots defecting." I switched on the radio, and those were the words of Jim Naughtie. I was quite taken aback when he turned out to be talking about Libya. I had honestly assumed that he was talking about Britain. But no such luck.
Good luck to the brave crews of the two Iranian ships that will today sail through the Suez Canal and then parallel with the coast of Israel. That country subjects their country to the world's only stated nuclear threat by a nuclear state against a non-nuclear state. And who gets to use the Suez Canal is Israel's business how, exactly? Is this, as the Iraq War was, a restatement of the claim to all territory between the Nile and the Euphrates?
After all, Yisrael Beiteinu and Shas are both in the ruling coalition, recalling the old joke about why there could not be an alliance between the Herstigte Nasionale Party and the Conservative Party of South Africa: "The HNP wants to drive the Bantu into the sea, but the CP will not allow Bantu on the beaches." Any other state purportedly embodying Western liberal democracy would be made a pariah if it welcomed into government any party remotely resembling either of those. Notably in Austria, that has in fact happened in the fairly recent past.
Good luck to the brave crews of the two Iranian ships that will today sail through the Suez Canal and then parallel with the coast of Israel. That country subjects their country to the world's only stated nuclear threat by a nuclear state against a non-nuclear state. And who gets to use the Suez Canal is Israel's business how, exactly? Is this, as the Iraq War was, a restatement of the claim to all territory between the Nile and the Euphrates?
After all, Yisrael Beiteinu and Shas are both in the ruling coalition, recalling the old joke about why there could not be an alliance between the Herstigte Nasionale Party and the Conservative Party of South Africa: "The HNP wants to drive the Bantu into the sea, but the CP will not allow Bantu on the beaches." Any other state purportedly embodying Western liberal democracy would be made a pariah if it welcomed into government any party remotely resembling either of those. Notably in Austria, that has in fact happened in the fairly recent past.
Divide and Conquer
Robert Reich writes:
The Republican strategy is to split the vast middle and working class – pitting unionized workers against non-unionized, public-sector workers against non-public, older workers within sight of Medicare and Social Security against younger workers who don’t believe these programs will be there for them, and the poor against the working middle class.
By splitting working America along these lines, Republicans want Americans to believe that we can no longer afford to do what we need to do as a nation. They hope to deflect attention from the increasing share of total income and wealth going to the richest 1 percent while the jobs and wages of everyone else languish.
Republicans would rather no one notice their campaign to shrink the pie even further with additional tax cuts for the rich – making the Bush tax cuts permanent, further reducing the estate tax, and allowing the wealthy to shift ever more of their income into capital gains taxed at 15 percent.
The strategy has three parts.
The battle over the federal budget
The first is being played out in the budget battle in Washington. As they raise the alarm over deficit spending and simultaneously squeeze popular middle-class programs, Republicans want the majority of the American public to view it all as a giant zero-sum game among average Americans that some will have to lose.
The President has already fallen into the trap by calling for budget cuts in programs the poor and working class depend on – assistance with home heating, community services, college loans, and the like.
In the coming showdown over Medicare and Social Security, House budget chair Paul Ryan will push a voucher system for Medicare and a partly-privatized plan for Social Security – both designed to attract younger middle-class voters.
The assault on public employees
The second part of the Republican strategy is being played out on the state level where public employees are being blamed for state budget crises. Unions didn’t cause these budget crises — state revenues dropped because of the Great Recession — but Republicans view them as opportunities to gut public employee unions, starting with teachers.
Wisconsin’s Republican governor Scott Walker and his GOP legislature are seeking to end almost all union rights for teachers. Ohio’s Republican governor John Kasich is pushing a similar plan in Ohio through a Republican-dominated legislature. New Jersey’s Republican governor Chris Christie is attempting the same, telling a conservative conference Wednesday, “I’m attacking the leadership of the union because they’re greedy, and they’re selfish and they’re self-interested.”
The demonizing of public employees is not only based on the lie that they’ve caused these budget crises, but it’s also premised on a second lie: that public employees earn more than private-sector workers. They don’t, when you take account of their education. In fact over the last fifteen years the pay of public-sector workers, including teachers, has dropped relative to private-sector employees with the same level of education – even including health and retirement benefits. Moreover, most public employees don’t have generous pensions. After a career with annual pay averaging less than $45,000, the typical newly-retired public employee receives a pension of $19,000 a year.
Bargaining rights for public employees haven’t caused state deficits to explode. Some states that deny their employees bargaining rights, such as Nevada, North Carolina, and Arizona, are running big deficits of over 30 percent of spending. Many states that give employees bargaining rights — Massachusetts, New Mexico, and Montana — have small deficits of less than 10 percent.
Republicans would rather go after teachers and other public employees than have us look at the pay of Wall Street traders, private-equity managers, and heads of hedge funds – many of whom wouldn’t have their jobs today were it not for the giant taxpayer-supported bailout, and most of whose lending and investing practices were the proximate cause of the Great Depression to begin with.
Last year, America’s top thirteen hedge-fund managers earned an average of $1 billion each. One of them took home $5 billion. Much of their income is taxed as capital gains – at 15 percent – due to a tax loophole that Republican members of Congress have steadfastly guarded.
If the earnings of those thirteen hedge-fund managers were taxed as ordinary income, the revenues generated would pay the salaries and benefits of 300,000 teachers. Who is more valuable to our society – thirteen hedge-fund managers or 300,000 teachers? Let’s make the question even simpler. Who is more valuable: One hedge fund manager or one teacher?
The Distortion of the Constitution
The third part of the Republican strategy is being played out in the Supreme Court. It has politicized the Court more than at any time in recent memory.
Last year a majority of the justices determined that corporations have a right under the First Amendment to provide unlimited amounts of money to political candidates. Citizens United vs. the Federal Election Commission is among the most patently political and legally grotesque decisions of our highest court – ranking right up there with Bush vs. Gore and Dred Scott.
Among those who voted in the affirmative were Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia. Both have become active strategists in the Republican party.
A month ago, for example, Antonin Scalia met in a closed-door session with Michele Bachman’s Tea Party caucus – something no justice concerned about maintaining the appearance of impartiality would ever have done.
Both Thomas and Scalia have participated in political retreats organized and hosted by multi-billionaire financier Charles Koch, a major contributor to the Tea Party and other conservative organizations, and a crusader for ending all limits on money in politics. (Not incidentally, Thomas’s wife is the founder of Liberty Central, a Tea Party organization that has been receiving unlimited corporate contributions due to the Citizens United decision. On his obligatory financial disclosure filings, Thomas has repeatedly failed to list her sources of income over the last twenty years, nor even to include his own four-day retreats courtesy of Charles Koch.)
Some time this year or next, the Supreme Court will be asked to consider whether the nation’s new healthcare law is constitutional. Watch your wallets.
The strategy as a whole
These three aspects of the Republican strategy – a federal budget battle to shrink government, focused on programs the vast middle class depends on; state efforts to undermine public employees, whom the middle class depends on; and a Supreme Court dedicated to bending the Constitution to enlarge and entrench the political power of the wealthy – fit perfectly together.
They pit average working Americans against one another, distract attention from the almost unprecedented concentration of wealth and power at the top, and conceal Republican plans to further enlarge and entrench that wealth and power.
What is the Democratic strategy to counter this and reclaim America for the rest of us?
The Republican strategy is to split the vast middle and working class – pitting unionized workers against non-unionized, public-sector workers against non-public, older workers within sight of Medicare and Social Security against younger workers who don’t believe these programs will be there for them, and the poor against the working middle class.
By splitting working America along these lines, Republicans want Americans to believe that we can no longer afford to do what we need to do as a nation. They hope to deflect attention from the increasing share of total income and wealth going to the richest 1 percent while the jobs and wages of everyone else languish.
Republicans would rather no one notice their campaign to shrink the pie even further with additional tax cuts for the rich – making the Bush tax cuts permanent, further reducing the estate tax, and allowing the wealthy to shift ever more of their income into capital gains taxed at 15 percent.
The strategy has three parts.
The battle over the federal budget
The first is being played out in the budget battle in Washington. As they raise the alarm over deficit spending and simultaneously squeeze popular middle-class programs, Republicans want the majority of the American public to view it all as a giant zero-sum game among average Americans that some will have to lose.
The President has already fallen into the trap by calling for budget cuts in programs the poor and working class depend on – assistance with home heating, community services, college loans, and the like.
In the coming showdown over Medicare and Social Security, House budget chair Paul Ryan will push a voucher system for Medicare and a partly-privatized plan for Social Security – both designed to attract younger middle-class voters.
The assault on public employees
The second part of the Republican strategy is being played out on the state level where public employees are being blamed for state budget crises. Unions didn’t cause these budget crises — state revenues dropped because of the Great Recession — but Republicans view them as opportunities to gut public employee unions, starting with teachers.
Wisconsin’s Republican governor Scott Walker and his GOP legislature are seeking to end almost all union rights for teachers. Ohio’s Republican governor John Kasich is pushing a similar plan in Ohio through a Republican-dominated legislature. New Jersey’s Republican governor Chris Christie is attempting the same, telling a conservative conference Wednesday, “I’m attacking the leadership of the union because they’re greedy, and they’re selfish and they’re self-interested.”
The demonizing of public employees is not only based on the lie that they’ve caused these budget crises, but it’s also premised on a second lie: that public employees earn more than private-sector workers. They don’t, when you take account of their education. In fact over the last fifteen years the pay of public-sector workers, including teachers, has dropped relative to private-sector employees with the same level of education – even including health and retirement benefits. Moreover, most public employees don’t have generous pensions. After a career with annual pay averaging less than $45,000, the typical newly-retired public employee receives a pension of $19,000 a year.
Bargaining rights for public employees haven’t caused state deficits to explode. Some states that deny their employees bargaining rights, such as Nevada, North Carolina, and Arizona, are running big deficits of over 30 percent of spending. Many states that give employees bargaining rights — Massachusetts, New Mexico, and Montana — have small deficits of less than 10 percent.
Republicans would rather go after teachers and other public employees than have us look at the pay of Wall Street traders, private-equity managers, and heads of hedge funds – many of whom wouldn’t have their jobs today were it not for the giant taxpayer-supported bailout, and most of whose lending and investing practices were the proximate cause of the Great Depression to begin with.
Last year, America’s top thirteen hedge-fund managers earned an average of $1 billion each. One of them took home $5 billion. Much of their income is taxed as capital gains – at 15 percent – due to a tax loophole that Republican members of Congress have steadfastly guarded.
If the earnings of those thirteen hedge-fund managers were taxed as ordinary income, the revenues generated would pay the salaries and benefits of 300,000 teachers. Who is more valuable to our society – thirteen hedge-fund managers or 300,000 teachers? Let’s make the question even simpler. Who is more valuable: One hedge fund manager or one teacher?
The Distortion of the Constitution
The third part of the Republican strategy is being played out in the Supreme Court. It has politicized the Court more than at any time in recent memory.
Last year a majority of the justices determined that corporations have a right under the First Amendment to provide unlimited amounts of money to political candidates. Citizens United vs. the Federal Election Commission is among the most patently political and legally grotesque decisions of our highest court – ranking right up there with Bush vs. Gore and Dred Scott.
Among those who voted in the affirmative were Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia. Both have become active strategists in the Republican party.
A month ago, for example, Antonin Scalia met in a closed-door session with Michele Bachman’s Tea Party caucus – something no justice concerned about maintaining the appearance of impartiality would ever have done.
Both Thomas and Scalia have participated in political retreats organized and hosted by multi-billionaire financier Charles Koch, a major contributor to the Tea Party and other conservative organizations, and a crusader for ending all limits on money in politics. (Not incidentally, Thomas’s wife is the founder of Liberty Central, a Tea Party organization that has been receiving unlimited corporate contributions due to the Citizens United decision. On his obligatory financial disclosure filings, Thomas has repeatedly failed to list her sources of income over the last twenty years, nor even to include his own four-day retreats courtesy of Charles Koch.)
Some time this year or next, the Supreme Court will be asked to consider whether the nation’s new healthcare law is constitutional. Watch your wallets.
The strategy as a whole
These three aspects of the Republican strategy – a federal budget battle to shrink government, focused on programs the vast middle class depends on; state efforts to undermine public employees, whom the middle class depends on; and a Supreme Court dedicated to bending the Constitution to enlarge and entrench the political power of the wealthy – fit perfectly together.
They pit average working Americans against one another, distract attention from the almost unprecedented concentration of wealth and power at the top, and conceal Republican plans to further enlarge and entrench that wealth and power.
What is the Democratic strategy to counter this and reclaim America for the rest of us?
Monday, 21 February 2011
The Heir Presumptive
So, in public service provision, David Cameron is to enact a "presumption in favour of" Conservative Party donors rather than public service providers. In his Howard Hughes-like fear of the latter's "dirt", Cameron is truly the Heir to Blair. Those of you who wanted the wrong Miliband as Labour Leader, this is what he would have been like, too. Indeed, as with the schools policy, the forests sell-off, and so many other features of this Government, this latest wheeze was in fact devised by David Miliband when he was working for Tony Blair.
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