By John Lawrence
Oil is less than $30. a barrel. This is over three times less than what it costs just to buy the barrel itself! Iran has been accepted back into the world community and is revving up to sell its oil on the world market which will bring down the price of oil even more. Frackers and oil producers in the US have taken on a huge amount of debt under the assumption that it would pay off down the road. They hadn’t counted on the price of oil plummeting. What will they do when we convert 100% to renewables?
The debt overhang in the US economy is, as The Donald would say, UUUUGE! All the Wall Street banks and hedge funds, which have bet on the US becoming oil independent and have bought derivatives up the ying yang, are on the losing end of their bets. This presages a crash similar to the mortgage based crash of 2008. Then the Big Banks will ask for another bailout. Or maybe they won’t ask; they’ll just tell us that we’re bailing them out because, after all, they run the government.
Goldman Runs the Government While Committing Fraud
Goldman Sachs runs the government’s finance department. Treasury Secretaries Robert Rubin (1995-99) and Hank Paulson (2006-2009) were at Goldman from 1966 to 1992 and 1974 to 2006 respectively. At Treasury, Paulson was aided by Chief of Staff Mark Patterson (Goldman lobbyist 2003-2008), Neel Kashkari (Goldman Vice President 2002-2006) , Under-Secretary Robert K Steel (Vice Chairman at Goldman, where he worked from 1976 to 2004), and advisors Kendrick Wilson (at Goldman from 1998 to 2008) and Edward C Forst (former Global Head of Goldman’s Investment Management Division).
Paulson’s successor, Timothy Geithner, a protege of Robert Rubin, was kept close to the Goldman fold with the usual tactic of paying him lucrative speaking fees, the same tactic they use to keep Hillary’s ear. I could go on with Goldman’s connections to the US government, but I don’t want to bore you. For a fuller account I refer you to Michael Hudson’s book, Killing the Host, How Financial Parasites and Debt Destroy the Global Economy.
This January 2016 Goldman admitted to committing massive fraud and was fined $5 billion. The Wall Street firm had agreed with federal prosecutors and regulators to resolve claims stemming from the marketing and selling of faulty mortgage securities to investors. These are the people who are running your democratic (ha, ha) government. While the 99% got screwed, Wall Street got bailed out because they ARE the government.
But not to worry. This looming market crash is a problem for the big guys, the billionaires, the investor class, not the 99%. The mortgage defaults of 2008, on the other hand, brought real pain to the middle class. While the banks got bailed out, the average middle class homeowner did not. HAMP, the Home Affordable Mortgage Program which was supposed to help homeowners stay in their homes with loan modifications, was a colossal failure.
The program gave permanent mortgage modifications to 1.3 million people, but 350,000 of them defaulted again on their mortgages and were evicted from their homes. Fewer than one million homeowners remain in the HAMP program – just a quarter of its target – and $28 billion of the funding remains unspent. The HAMP program, supposed to help homeowners save their houses, may have led them deeper into a bureaucratic swamp.
401ks – the Worst Idea Perpetrated on the American People
Now that that crisis has settled down, the main worry of the middle class is that, when the stock market tanks, so will their 401k. 401ks were one of the worst travesties visited on the average American worker. Folks lucky enough to have traditional pensions don’t have to worry especially if it’s a government pension. On the other hand, those with traditional pensions from corporations have to worry about corporate raiders and hedge fund takeover artists raiding their pension funds. Those with 401ks are taking all the risk in their individual portfolios over which they have no control really. They are at the mercy of the market and Wall Street. God help them.
There is also widening inequality which means that American consumers have less money to spend to keep the economy going. US GDP depends on consumer purchases because they are 70% of the economy. If everyone goes to ground and starts growing their own vegetables and keeping their own chickens, all those nonpurchases at the supermarket will drive the economy down. 2015 was a big year for car sales; that means that 2016 will not be because consumers are carred up.
Robert Reich thinks the economy is on the edge of recession:
Consider: The median wage is 4 percent below what it was in 2000, adjusted for inflation. The median wage of young people, even those with college degrees, is also dropping, adjusted for inflation. That means a continued slowdown in the rate of family formation—more young people living at home and deferring marriage and children – and less demand for goods and services.
At the same time, the labor participation rate—the percentage of Americans of working age who have jobs—remains near a 40-year low.
The giant boomer generation won’t and can’t take up the slack. Boomers haven’t saved nearly enough for retirement, so they’re being forced to cut back expenditures.
Wall Street and hedge funds are running the economy. They are the central planners not the US government which is basically just a pawn in their hands. They borrow money from the Federal Reserve at extremely low rates and then buy Treasury bonds which amounts to making money off the spread or making money off their ability to finance the American government which boils down to us, the American taxpayers.
Fortunately, the US isn’t dependent on Japanese or Chinese or Saudi Arabian investors to buy its bonds. Wall Street has taken over that role in a symbiotic Ponzi scheme which requires the Fed, Wall Street and the US Treasury to all play their parts. That means that now the Big Banks are really, really Too Big To Fail. They are an essential part of funding and running the US government!
Better to Put Your Money Under the Mattress
While Wall Street banks are too big to fail, the next banking crisis could trigger not a bail out but a bail in. According toEllen Brown, the mechanics are already in place to loot depositors’ bank accounts:
While the mainstream media focus on ISIS extremists, a threat that has gone virtually unreported is that your life savings could be wiped out in a massive derivatives collapse. Bank bail-ins have begun in Europe, and the infrastructure is in place in the US. Poverty also kills.
At the end of November, an Italian pensioner hanged himself after his entire €100,000 savings were confiscated in a bank “rescue” scheme. He left a suicide note blaming the bank, where he had been a customer for 50 years and had invested in bank-issued bonds. But he might better have blamed the EU and the G20’s Financial Stability Board, which have imposed an “Orderly Resolution” regime that keeps insolvent banks afloat by confiscating the savings of investors and depositors. Some 130,000 shareholders and junior bond holders suffered losses in the “rescue.”
Something to think about. Maybe hiding your money under the mattress is the best solution since it’s not earning any interest in the bank anyway.
Thom Hartmann has written a book, The Crash of 2016: The Plot to Destroy America–and What We Can Do to Stop It. Marketwatch.com writes:
“The United States is more vulnerable today than ever before including during the Great Depression and the Civil War,” says Thom Hartmann, in “The Crash of 2016.” Why? “Because the pillars of democracy that once supported a booming middle class have been corrupted, and without them, America teeters on the verge of the next Great Crash.” Thanks to an obstructionist GOP, hell-bent on destroying Obama the past six years. [Thom’s] indictment hits hard, but matching something you might hear from Rush Limbaugh on the Right.
“The United States is in the midst of an economic implosion that could make the Great Depression look like child’s play,” warns Hartmann. His analysis is brutal, sees that “the facade of our once-great United States will soon disintegrate to reveal the rotting core where corporate and billionaire power and greed have replaced democratic infrastructure and governance. Our once-enlightened political and economic systems have been manipulated to ensure the success of only a fraction of the population at the expense of the rest of us.” And he wrote that before Picketty’s “Capital in the 21st Century.”
The US has a boom bust economy. Unfortunately, the busts are becoming more frequent and the booms more superficial. People get all euphoric when the stock market goes up. As someone once said, it leads to “irrational exuberance.” Then when it crashes, they sell leaving their 401ks and retirement incomes in shambles. That’s what happens when investing is left in the hands of amateurs. The big guys, the hedge funds will make money either way – when the stock market goes up they go long; when it goes down they’re short. They are high frequency traders and act on insider information. They commit fraud.
They have billions of dollars at their disposal from low interest loans from Wall Street. That’s why they can buy entire corporations, break them up, lay off the employees, raid their pension funds and sell the remaining eviscerated hulk off to the unsuspecting and naive. The hedge (vulture) funds and Wall Street make out like bandits which is what they essentially are. The banks, whose function used to be capital formation to fund industry which created jobs, now functions as a conduit to hedge funds to wreak havoc with the American economy in pursuit of short term profits.
The world is polarized between the uber wealthy and the rest of us. Just 62 people own as much wealth as the 3.6 billion poorest. That’s globalization for you. Nation states are no longer important or in control. The uber wealthy, the billionaires, who can buy and sell politicians and governments at their whim are the controllers. They – not the communists or socialists – are the central planners of the economy, and their plan for the economy is to benefit them and only them. The World Bank and the IMF are their henchmen.
The New Feudalism – Billionaires Replace the Nobility
This is from a recent report from Oxfam, AN ECONOMY FOR THE 1% How privilege and power in the economy drive extreme inequality and how this can be stopped:
The gap between rich and poor is reaching new extremes. The richest 1 percent have now accumulated more wealth than the rest of the world put together… Meanwhile, the wealth owned by the bottom half of humanity has fallen by a trillion dollars in the past five years.”
The wealth of the richest 62 people has risen by 44 percent in the five years since 2010—that’s an increase of more than half a trillion dollars ($542 billion), to $1.76 trillion,” Oxfam noted. “Meanwhile, the wealth of the bottom half fell by just over a trillion dollars in the same period—a drop of 41 percent. Since the turn of the century, the poorest half of the world’s population has received just 1 percent of the total increase in global wealth, while half of that increase has gone to the top 1 percent.
There is really only one candidate for President who is addressing these issues – Bernie Sanders. Republicans want us to take our eyes off the ball of growing inequality and impoverishment of the 99% while the billionaires take on the role of oligarchs. They want us to focus on international terrorism and the threat that that brings to our everyday lives.
While that is surely a threat, ISIS cannot do major damage to the US. A few people can be blown up here and there and that is a tragedy. It’s just not as great a tragedy as the gun violence done by Americans to other Americans on a daily basis which is orders of magnitude bigger.
If the economy takes a tumble, Hillary Clinton’s ties to Wall Street will take on an even more ominous cloud over her campaign while the fact that Bernie Sanders has raised millions in small donations without the help of Wall Street or Super PACs will cast him in an even more favorable light. That might be the deciding factor. The Republicans will surely be left behind if they place all their bets on getting the American people to vote for them out of fear of ISIS.
John Lawrence
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Over and over while reading it I thought that the world this column presents is a bit too much Satan’s. That is, Goldman Sachs figured out a system that would leave one (white) man standing atop the planet’s resources, and that the world economy is completely controlled by Goldman Sachs.
It might be controlled by money. For sure, Bernie Sanders and Move On are gathering money in order to run against money’s control. For sure the inevitable Democratic nominee has acquired a queenly wardrobe and brittle sensitivity to criticism after having been royally compensated for speaking to Capitalist Convos these past years. The Donald may be the richest man ever to run for our presidency…
BUT, let’s recognize that this shit is happening under our noses, up at Carlsbad, where a lagoon is going to be destroyed by a golden shopping mall its developer says will save the lagoon. The Goldman Sachs are many, and they’re hiding in plain sight. VOTE AGAINST THEM!
Depression? Who knows?
“Republicans want us to take our eyes off the ball of growing inequality and impoverishment of the 99% while the billionaires take on the role of oligarchs. They want us to focus on international terrorism and the threat that that brings to our everyday lives.”
Where do the people who think like this think terrorism comes from? THIS IS THE SOURCE OF IT!
The real threat, the real terrorism, is the absolute robbing of wealth from everyday Americans by the corporate moguls. The terrorist attacks are awful, but they don’t affect the hundreds of millions of Americans who see their paychecks dwindling every day. I sometimes imagine that the terrorist attacks (the ones with machine guns, not computers) are the machinations of the corporate cabal, which pretty much rules the United States and the rest of the world; the attacks are the sideshow to divert people from realizing what’s really happening.
Thank you Wayne. I really appreciate your taking the time to express yourself. I agree with you. The attacks may appear as you say, like a sideshow, but I believe them to be the acts of truly desperate people. People who have nothing at all to live for, so they are thus willing to sacrifice their lives to demand our attention. The issues that we all MUST address underlie these acts of terrorism. And the sooner we identify and address them, the sooner the terrorism will stop. In my mind you have identified the greatest of these in your post here. Thank you, once again.
Way back in the 1930s Woody Guthrie wrote:
Some folks rob you with a six-gun, some with a fountain pen.
Computers make it even easier, but it has always been so.
Some participants at the recent World Economic Forum (WEF) meeting in Davos optimistically see a ‘4th industrial revolution’ on the horizon. This is based on an extensive research report, “The Future of Jobs,” covering top management people in 350 large firms.
The new revolution relates to technological breakthroughs in digitalization, robots, nanotechnology, and artificial intelligence. However, many participants expressed deep concern about where the ‘4th industrial revolution’ is taking the world – particularly concerning broad job generation at decent wages.
We are trapped in a self-destructive capitalistic paradigm of lower job generation technologies supporting a culture of maximizing shareholder values by aggressive outsourcing of manufacturing labor and knowhow, company-downsizing, downgrading worker wage levels, using more ‘flex-time’ workers at low wage rates. To counter this Main Street income destructive culture, we need, among other things, to strengthen an already high dependence on job growth from small businesses, i.e., the ‘self-employed’ sole proprietor businesses and startups as well as existing corporate small businesses and co-operatives. Today, small businesses of 500 or less employees provide 65% of net-new private sector jobs.
The job destruction forces at work are simply accelerating the middle and lower class ‘race to the bottom’ – dangerously intensifying income inequality, social conflicts, and economic stagnation. Unless intelligent policy changes are implemented, consumer purchasing power will eventually decline well below historical U.S. Consumption level of 70% of GDP vs. 58% in Europe.
As I’ve remarked many times before, we are far too dependent on Consumption and too little dependent on Investment as drivers of GDP growth. This makes us continually vulnerable to speculative, exotic financing, wild use of credit card debt, wasteful trivial spending, and no or little savings – all laying the basis for the next disastrous financial breakdown that Joe Public ends up paying for.
The advanced EU countries may grow more slowly in good times and recover more slowly in economic bad times. BUT, they still have a healthier than U.S. balance in the drivers of GDP growth, i.e., Consumption, Public Investment, Private Investment and favorable Net Export Balance … not to ignore progressive taxation, high savings rates and social-nets that help stabilize market and share the pain fairly of market downturns.
If, as the “The Future Jobs’ report projects, the computer and robot eclipse human productivity on a grand scale, what then? The answer is we can expect huge changes in the labor market exasperated by a wave of technological advances. At least 7 million jobs will disappear and 2 million will be added for a net loss of 5 million jobs worldwide by 2020. This will occur notably in a broad range of administrative and office functions affecting both men and women.
The jobs added will mostly be beta jobs in areas in which women are relatively under-represented and untrained – engineering, mathematics, data research, data analysis, deep computer knowledge, electronic techniques, computer program coding, etc.
According to “The Future of Jobs” report, for every 4 jobs that disappear, men will find another one in a fast-growing technical field. But for women the result is worse. For every 20 jobs lost, one new technical or beta function job will be found. This data highlights necessity of greatly expanding the role of the beta sciences in public educational programs for male and female students at an early age.
Technology is indeed a motor for GDP growth. BUT, it is a relatively weak net job generating motor, especially in the nearby future. This means great stress must also be given to upgrading and developing the vocational-trade job sectors. Germany has perfected its vocational educational systems pragmatically and effectively, nurturing a broad range of societal job expertise at a decent wage. Today, 50% of German students attend various types and levels of trade schools rather than go to college. They also have the option to follow or switch to a higher beta course in engineering, project management, computers, etc., or to study a liberal arts course like a course in psychology, economics, or a language course, etc.
Another key strategy to counter the technological and business job destruction actions taking place is to start investing (through government-private partnerships) immediately and aggressively in infrastructure; urban transit and rail systems; renewable energy sources including related technologies and services; pre-college educational systems and teaching personnel; single-payer basic Medicare-for-ALL.
The only person running for president now who honestly recognizes the depth of the structural economic and democratic breakdowns/challenges facing us – that only revolutionary REAL change, not evolutionary BAND-AID changes, will cure … is Bernie Sanders.
Frank, thanks for your astute remarks as always. I think vocational training is the way to go. As far as advanced technical training, you must be in the upper 2% of your class or else the Googles, Microsofts and Apples of the world won’t want you no matter how many college degrees you have. They only want the cream of the crop.
You can get an apprenticeship or learn a trade without going into the huge student debt you’ll have after earning a college degree. Then you’ll have something that will enable you to relate to the real, local economy instead of something that will get you a job as a quant on Wall Street (they only want the cream too). You can actually earn a degree now at Stevens Institute of Technology (across the river from NYC) in “financial engineering.”
The other piece of the puzzle is that no matter what your practical skills are, you need to go into business for yourself. Else your employer will charge $125.an hour for your services and pay you $10.
Also with practical skills in the construction industry, for example, there will be opportunities for building wealth on the side in real estate.
Thom Hartmann (“The Crash of 2016”) hosts informative programs on Free Speech TV. His feature stories and interviews are never seen on MSM. Ditto with Amy Goodman’s “Democracy Now”.
I agree that 401Ks are “the Worst Idea Perpetrated on the American People”: the privatization of retirement savings.
Ellen Brown is an important advocate for public banks, an idea being considered in CA:
http://www.webofdebt.com/
http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2013/10/01/should-states-operate-public-banks/public-banks-are-essential-to-capitalism
http://www.occupy.com/article/why-public-banks-outperform-private-banks-%E2%80%93-north-dakota-switzerland
http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2011/09/california-may-launch-public-bank-which-could-help-take-the-power-to-manipulate-the-system-away-from-the-insolvent-giant-banks.html
Thank you again Frank. You said, “As I’ve remarked many times before, we are far too dependent on Consumption and too little dependent on Investment as drivers of GDP growth.” Wouldn’t replacing the federal income tax with a federal sales tax help with this problem? Even though by doing so there would inevitably be endless feuding over who gets sales tax exemptions and who doesn’t. But this sort of problem will persist until we replace our economic system with a more equitable one, not just our taxation system.
I hope I have not distorted your intended meaning by quoting you out-of-context.
Paul,
Sorry for delay in response. Your question is: Would replacing state sale taxes – which are different in almost every state and even within cities in a state – for the federal income tax help the U.S. economy?
I don’t believe this would be a wise nor feasible move. More fundamental changes in our economic model are critically a must as exploding economic inequality is making a joke of our democracy.We have descended into a corrupt plutocracy.
In recent years, John and I have written extensively about what’s broken in our social-economic model and some ideas how to correct the structural breakdowns. An update is probably necessary as things are only getting much worse … calling for ‘revolutionary’ change as Bernie so outlines.
In one of my earlier reports, I noted some shocking 1970-2008 ‘Big Picture’ numbers of what has been happening to our country’s income distribution and concentration – figures the media hasn’t the slightest understanding of the implications of for Main Street.
If these figures don’t confirm a hollowing out of 90% of working Americans where mobility upward has been at a standstill with stagnant nearly rock bottom wages and few benefits, WHAT DOES?
______________________________________________________________________
U.S. OVERALL AVERAGE INCOME GROWTH -INFLATION ADJUSTED: 1970-2008
…………….No. of People…..Average Income…..1970-2008
……………..(Millions)…………………….% CHANGE
Top 0.1%………..15,000……….$5.6 Million……..+385%
Top 0.1%-0.5%…..610,000……….$878,000…………+141%
Top 0.5%-1%…….762,000……….$443,100………….+90%
Top 1%-5%………6.0 Million……$211,500………….+59%
Top 5%-10%……..7.6 Million……$127,200………….+38%
Bottom 90%……137.2 Million…….$31,300…………..-1%
_____________________________________________________________________
Source: The World Top Incomes Data Base; The Washington Post; Sloan School of Management; U.S. Treasury Department; U.S. Census Bureau; Piketty and Saez, etc.
_____________________________________________________________________
The 1% wealthiest now hold about 265 times the wealth of the typical American. This is TWICE the ratio in 1962 and 1983 when the numbers were already sky-high at 125 to 1 and 132 to 1, respectively. The average real minimum wage of 10.69 has steadily declined from 54% of average real hourly earnings of $19.85 in 1968 to 36% of average real hourly earnings of $20.31 based on a real minimum wage of $7.25 in 2013.
U.S. corporate and individual tax systems need to be vastly simplified and made utterly transparent. This requires eliminating the multiple subsidies, credits and deductions that massively plague our tax system … yielding a complex, manipulative tax avoidance playing field for taxpayers employing shrewd ‘how to beat the system’ tax consultants. Dutch individual and corporate tax structures/forms are light years simpler than the those of the U.S. Take it from someone has been living in Europe for 35 years now.
European personal tax systems are progressive – ensuring equitable, decent living standards for all citizens and for funding investments in state-of-art infrastructure, schools, and basic health care for All. The European idea is, “We are in this life together” where the common good and individual freedom are seen as inextricably linked. This philosophy sits deep in the European values and culture where cautious consumption spending and saving of money are inherent qualities.
European supportive, effectively managed and abuse-controlled social nets are considered basic human rights. In addition, as noted, they also act as social-economic stabilizers in difficult times. For Europe, it comes down to the rights and power of money versus the rights of a broad spectrum of living persons.
As is typical of EU countries, the Netherlands has four primary governmental tax revenue sources: a 52% tax on individual incomes above $65,000, a 25% corporate tax, and an investment tax rate of 30% vs. a 0-20% U.S. capital gains tax rate, a 21% VAT tax on goods and services. These tax revenue sources are quintessentially transparent and absent of numerous deductions, credits and complexity. In general, Europe’s tax structures are far better balanced in terms of the functional, fair redistribution of income and wealth for a broad, fair sharing of society’s progression in good and bad times.
The U.S. maximum progressive tax rate is 39.6% on a head-of-household income of $439,000. Further, the U.S. top 1%, 5%, 10% income earners can divert much income into relatively low capital gains tax rates varying from 0% for those in the 10% to 20% brackets up to 20% for the 39.6% tax bracket.
1978-2014 CEO pay soared 997% – $1.5 million to $16.3 million – while typical worker pay increased a paltry 10.9% – $48,000 to $53,200 – adjusted for inflation. Is it any wonder U.S. income/wealth. The average top CEO now makes over 300 times what typical workers earn compared to 50 times for European CEOs. (Source: Economic Policy Institute – “CEO Pay Has grown 90 Times Faster Than Typical Worker Pay Since 1978,” by L. Mishel and A. Davis, July 2015). Little wonder U.S. income and wealth concentration and resultant huge inequality have accelerated to the highest levels in the world – with possible exception of Saudi Arabia and Dubai.
In contrast to Europe, we are suffering from a fourfold human crisis: marginalizing workers, wages, communities, and environmental concerns while concentrating economic power in a few hands. Mega global corporations and billionaires have become society’s most influential citizens as result of multiple tax breaks and a radical reduction in marginal income tax rates over the years.
Top marginal tax rates were in the high 80s 1951-64, at 70% 1965-1981, and then were halved by Reagan’s administration to 28%. The corporate statutory rate of 35% falls sharply to an effective rate of around 20% as result of significant tax subsidies given Fortune 500 companies. Two-thirds of multinationals enjoy effective U.S. tax rates that are in fact lower than tax rates paid on foreign profits.
The 1965-1981 period when marginal tax rates were high, jobs and economic growth were robust as were improvements in the living standards for All. Inequality declined. We had none of the extreme obscene gaps in incomes and wealth we have now reached today that are steadily undermining the quality of life of millions of Americans.
With a culture of sinking, stagnant lower and middle class wages, destruction of unions, we have become ever more dependent on cheap imports causing substantial trade deficits – despite reduction in trade deficit from reducing oil imports with new gas funds. Unlike the EU 17, U.S. net exports are significantly negative which reduces GDP making us ever more dependent for GDP growth on a 70% consumption level vs. 58% in Europe. This leads to overspending, maxing out credit card(s) use and debt. In Netherlands, credit card use, number of credit cards and credit card debt levels are strictly controlled. The Dutch are by nature a saving society.
Then we have huge +$800 billion Defense expenditure budget, exceeding 5% of GDP … compared to Europe and rest of world Defense expenditures at less than 2% of GDP. This plus net export deficits force us into a high debt borrowings from China which in turn reduce our flexibility to invest in our own society’s people, obsolete infrastructure, weak pre-college education systems, etc.
We have one of the most costly health care systems in the western world as returns to insurance firm shareholders, salaries/bonuses of CEOs and top management take priority over quality basic health care for all at a reasonable premium cost. The Dutch basic heath care premium for excellent basic coverage for two is $2,400 annually with a $375 deductible. Comparable private basic coverage plans in the states would cost at least TWICE that amount!
These are some of the serious structural problems Bernie Sanders has been focusing on honestly and persistently with concrete answers on how to accomplish REAL change. Is he a Socialist, the standard bullshit, demagogic one-liner of Republicans? NO, he is not.
He’s a genuine social Democrat and always has been, not a wild spender. Hillary, late in the game, is now copying Bernie’s ideas and dialogue, e.g., now professing her conversion to recognizing the danger of extreme inequality, her really being a practical Democrat progressive with a social conscience and a campaign financed largely by Wall Street. It all comes down to who can be trusted to set in motion the substantial changes required.
Bernie, for some time in clear language, has forthrightly been saying we’ve gone far too far to the RIGHT. People want REAL change. Our country’s democracy has transitioned into a PLUTOCRACY where political and economic power is in the hands of the rich and mega corporations. This is crushing two of the most fundamental of all human rights:
– the right to a decent means of living (literally the right to live) and the right to participate in making the decisions that affect our lives.
As far as “Socialism” is concerned, I greatly respect the ‘social democracy’ and economic model my family has enjoyed in the Netherlands for over 30 years now. As is true for most of the advanced EU 17 countries, the Netherlands has an excellent societal, political, economic balance between capitalistic free market economic forces and fundamental human, community social needs and protections.
Correction Typing Error – 12th paragraph from bottom, 2nd sentence: remove …Is it any wonder U.S. income/wealth.
I get it Frank, all of it. You have cited these nauseating statistics many times. Bernie can talk all he wants to about “change”, but the kind of change he is talking about and that I as do many, including yourself and John, believe is necessary and long overdue will be defeated in court. Bernie cannot accomplish the ‘revolutionary’ changes he espouses without a new amendment to the US Constitution, given that the SCOTUS has already gone in the opposite direction, allowing corps to give to political candidates anonymously and without limit.
The “real change” Bernie talks about requires more than a “movement”. It requires at least one amendment to the US Constitution.
Until the Constitution provides the grounds for overturning the SCOTUS decision in 2010 in the Citizen’s United vs FEC case, aren’t we stuck with the consequences of that decision, no matter how destructive they may be? I view overturning Citizens United as simply a starting point for the social change Bernie espouses.
Until the constitution speaks by means of a new amendment to the morally correct use of money in elections, any effort to change the status quo will be struck down as unconstitutional. And equally, any effort to create the kind of real change Bernie is talking about must begin with an amendment to the US Constitution or any such effort will be totally ineffective.
Paul,
Yes, I couldn’t agree more with what you are saying, Paul.
The Citizens United decision treating corporations as people has inevitably led to unlimited contributions to outside groups such as Super PACS and tax-exempt non-profits (the Koch brothers approach). It is disgustingly anti-democratic when such a decision allows concentrated big money parties to increase and shape our government and public policy – by purchasing political power and marginalizing citizens from influencing the political process.
Not surprisingly, Hillary is taking advantage of Super PACs to win the presidency. However, Bernie is not descending to this corrupting money influence. He is empowering the voices of ordinary Americans by relying on small donors entirely. The Clintons have long been happily married to the Wall Street and billionaire money trees. It runs in the family.
Unfortunately, a constitutional amendment will take years to be approved (or disapproved) by the Supreme Court. On the positive side, public support for a federal law imposing tough, new campaign finance laws and new structures to incentivize small donors is growing. (see: .
Meanwhile our declining democracy of the pro-rich, pro-corporate, pro-war, anti-government, anti-social nets, anti-infrastructure/education investments, anti-fair minimum wages, anti-science of human-induced climate change is gutting the middle class. It has eroded the post WWII values you and I grew up with of shared prosperity, robust communities, decent paying jobs, savings, capital investment, and production of goods.
The structural rot, money corruption, and hypocrisy of U.S. politics will not be transformed by incrementalist, token changes supported by right-of-center establishment people … who propagate the myth that ‘revolutionary’ or transformational change as proposed by Bernie cannot be pragmatically implemented. Centrist compromise is the only path to real progress. This myth in turn reinforces the dangerous myth our democracy is NOT broken in any way – it just needs some repairs. No big changes, incremental evolutionary changes will do just fine.
Hillary and the media beguilingly paint Sanders as a hopeless romantic with his genuine but naive idealism calling for fundamental political change. Again, the false assertion is that setting a process of substantive REAL change in motion is pragmatically impossible. This political hype is focused on undermining Bernie’s popular goals: providing basic public medical care at a reasonable premium cost for All, curbing Wall Street, cleaning up politics, establishing a $15 dollar minimum wage, rebuilding U.S. infrastructure, setting fair taxes for the rich, closing corporation tax loopholes and subsidies, breaking up the large global banks, funding tuition-free public colleges, conducting a less interventionist foreign policy.
Unlike Hillary, Bernie is simply saying we must start with BIG ideas and then work to something REAL in the end. “Pre-compromising’ by pre-adopting a major part of your opponent’s program is unrealistic and defeatist.
Ironically, as noted, Hillary is now co-opting Sanders message about the lives, needs, and rights of REAL people, the bottom 90%. She is also unconvincingly co-opting his original message that our country must NOT cede control of its destiny to Wall Street bankers, Super PACS, billionaires.
Hillary and the media conveniently ignore fact that for many years Bernie has been a pragmatic lawmaker. He has been given the label of “amendment king” in recognition of his constant efforts to correct failed legislation and to pass legislation serving the common good. So he’s a DOER as well as a transformational thinker, contrary to Hillary’s nonesense she is the one and only PRAGMATIST. In fact, Bernie’s legislative experience and legislative approval record exceed Hillary’s.
Bernie is making the public plainly aware and self-critical of how our institutions have lost site of their original purpose to serve the populace rather than becoming self-serving. This erosion of common purpose for the common good has been encouraging insiders/outsiders to game the system to maximize their own share and avoid accountability whenever things go wrong.
Societal decisions based mainly on the demands of vested interests, various elites, and cronies – marginalizing feedback of bottom 90% doing the real work and suffering the consequences – besides being profoundly undemocratic – ensure no common good is being served. The results turn out to be unsound, even catastrophic. One only has to point to our HUGE income/wealth inequality, middle class economic race to the bottom, and denial of scientific reality of human-induced climate change by many Republican leaders.
Vastly complicating government and societal decisions further is the NEW WORLD economic reality that economic growth, technology and consumption mean accelerating pollution and drastic climate destabilization. Growth as we have known it in the 4% GDP range is fast becoming uneconomic and environmentally unsustainable … just as are the 6-8% GDP growth rates for China and India’s 2.8 billion people.
In a recent study, scientists have shown that human activities have already brought the Earth beyond four of nine planetary boundaries. These four boundaries include: the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere; the extinction of species and biodiversity of same; deforestation; the entry of nitrogen and phosphorous (used in land fertilization) into the ocean.
All of above require new, imaginative long-term thinking … not status-quo thinking assuming ceaseless economic expansion and the consequent squandering of natural resources, primarily benefiting short-term interests and greed of Wall Street and not the near AND long term common interests of all Americans.
Hi Frank, and thank you for your reply.
You said, near the top, “Unfortunately, a constitutional amendment will take years to be approved (or disapproved) by the Supreme Court.” This is factually incorrect. The Supreme Court has no control over the creation of new amendments to the US Constitution. In fact, if one wishes to overturn a decision of the US Supreme Court, there must be grounds in the US Constitution to declare that decision unconstitutional. Until the Constitution addresses the morality of campaign finance, the Citizen’s United decision cannot be declared unconstitutional. Overturning the Citizens United decision is the first step in creating the sea-change you describe. Article V of the US constitution stipulates that there are only two ways that the Constitution may be amended: (1) Congress may propose and amendment, which then must be ratified by 3/4 of the state legislatures, or 2/3 of the state legislatures may pass resolutions demanding a convention for the purpose of creating a new amendment. Any amendment proposed by either method must be ratified by 3/4 of the states. I am involved with a group that is pursuing an amendments convention of the states whole purpose if to propose a new (28th) amendment to the US Constitution to get big money out of politics. That group is called The Wolf Pac. It may be found at .
Sorry. Typo correction: “I am involved with a group that is pursuing an amendments convention of the states whose purpose is to propose a new (28th) amendment to the US Constitution to get big money out of politics.
That’s really fantastic news, Paul! Keeping Going!
I will Frank, but I must admit that at times it’s very discouraging to have to realize that even here in Massachusetts, a state that one would think would be quite progressive, the leadership of the Massachusetts legislature, whom I have been working very hard to convince to pass our Article V resolution, is making moves to attempt to undermine the legislation. Some have said the MA legislature has already been bought. I’m beginning to wonder if they may not be right about that! It doesn’t surprise me that the US has been so slow at adopting measures to slow global warming.
For readers who may be interested, below are some excellent, not too technical, links to overviews of Nine Planetary Boundaries. This research by 18 scientists attempts to measure the breaking points (or ‘danger warnings’) in the natural world that are being accelerated and transgressed by the economic boom since 1950 and by the globalized economy – leading to destabilization of the Earth System in coming decades.
Planetary Boundaries (e.g., climate change, stratospheric ozone depletion, ocean acidification) provide a scientific-based framework of the risk that human disturbances will destabilize the Earth System. The planetary boundary framework defines a safe operating space concerning the degree of human disturbances that will maintain the Earth System in a stable, harmonious state with ongoing human activities.
1. http://ens-newswire.com/2015/01/16/earths-planetary-boundaries-disrupted-by-human-activities/
2. http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/01/15/can-humanitys-great-acceleration-be-managed-and-if-so-how/
3. http://climateandcapitalism.com/2015/04/22/what-strategy-for-an-ecological-great-transition/
4. http://richardheinberg.com/museletter-276-the-great-transition
5. “Bounding the Planetary Future: Why We Need a Great Transition,” by Johan Rockstrom, Published by Great Transition Initiative, April 2015