The inequality just keeps growing. It seems the Republicans have decided that everything is only for the rich and the corporations and the rest of us don’t count. Too many democrats seem all too ready to go along with that. Obviously, with the Citizens’ United decision our Supreme Court is on board with the oligarchy. Now the right wing wants to get rid of what is left of our unions, our public schools, medicare, and social security. When one of our two parties has gotten to the point that they flat out state they want our government to fail for their own political gain that seems like treason to the whole idea of America to me. We are all Americans whether they want to believe it or not. I think the vast majority of Americans all want the same things. Those things are not what the right wing in this country want. Even when you poll self-professed conservatives in this country you find most of the people believe in a liberal view of America. The word liberal has just come into a very bad light due to incessant disparagement of the term by the right wing for so many years. Regardless, poll after poll has shown that most Americans actually are liberal. The silent majority is actually a liberal one. People want medicare and social security to work. They want our government to work. They want the rapacious bankers, mortgage brokers and Wall Street wheeler dealers to pay for screwing up our economy and all of us in their uncaring practice of unfettered greed. We need to put a stop to the destruction of our country that the right wing is working so hard at. If they have their way there will only be the rich and the corporations running this country any way they see fit while the rest of us are reduced to doing whatever they want of us for whatever scraps they feel like handing out. They have gutted our middle class and are working hard at completely destroying it. They want to destroy our schools so the people will not be smart enough to see what they are doing. Already, the last couple of generations are not as well educated as the boomers were. We are the only major country in the world where our level of education is going down steadily for the last few years. It has to change. Obviously, our leaders in Washington are not going to do it on their own so it is up to all of us to make sure that they get started on fixing things instead of making them worse. Things are terrible enough already. We desperately need to stop them from continuing to make things worse for us and start getting on track to improve things. With that being said I am still looking around for suggestions on what to do that will help in that struggle. I found the following article at this link on the dailyKos. I think it is a very good article. It definitely points out some things we should be working on. I reprint it below in full with the author’s permission
Now is the Time for Boldness.
by fromer
America is rotting.
Not through neglect, but through design and timidity. The 1Percenters designed the rot, and the Party that historically represented us 99Percenters encourage it through timidity. This rot has been slow and steady for Forty years, and now, in the last decade, the rot has moved into high octane overdrive.
A steady mix of a juvenile, scandal-obsessed, substance-obtuse media, a political enterprise only too capable and willing to feed said idiot-media falsehoods and jingoism, and an exhausted middle class has driven our politics off the cliff of sanity.
The national discourse over birth certificates, death-panels, government takeovers, debt-ceilings, and underwear is only the latest iteration of a planned distraction of the populace.
What’s the antidote?
Boldness.
Let us take the idiotic debt ceiling debate as an example of how boldness could repel the planned distraction of a craven 1Percenter class.
Instead of playing the hostage game that the GOP has laid out, Democrats should turn the tables and up-end not just the terms of the debate but the whole substance of the debate itself. How? What should Democrats be doing and saying?
Not only do we want to raise the debt ceiling, we want to double how high it will go, and we intend to spend every dime of it.
Interest rates have never been lower. It has never been cheaper for the government to acquire investment funds (see what I did there?).
ACQUIRE THE DAMN FUNDS.
Then spend them. Spend them on roads, bridges, schools, hospitals, levys, trains, buses, education grants, renewable energy infrastructure. Our nation is literally rotting, and these projects are desperately needed to prevent physical and economic death. The longer we wait, the more costly it will be. Now is the time to act, to reinvigorate the economy, to prevent infrastructure calamity, and to create the kind of nation that could once again be an example of American innovation and drive.
Raising the debt ceiling is not enough, we must raise taxes, and spend those taxes
Yes. I want Democrats to boldly, loudly, and proudly walk the walk of TAXING AND SPENDING. The last ten years of “slashing and gutting,” the Koch brothers GOP alternative policy, has left the nation rotting and in ruins. Democrats need to make the bold argument that taxing the rich, taxing corporations making historic profits, is not only reasonable it’s responsible.
If America’s finances are to be akin to a household’s (they aren’t, it’s an asinine argument, but the frame is deeply embedded), then tell me what household can buy food, clothes and shelter without earning a salary? Taxes are our national household’s salary. And just like we expect the doctor in the family to go out and earn more than the 15 year old kid, we expect the 1Percenters and corporations of our American family to go out and earn more than those hovering at or below the median.
Unions and government employment are the best solution for long term stability
We are not communists. Capital will always be held and controlled by private individuals. As an individual acquires more capital, they will acquire a more disproportionate influence over what is supposed to be an egalitarian political process. To counteract this, individuals must be given the freedom to associate together (nice Constitutional phrase there, huh?), and those associations must be empowered to provide effective balance against 1Percenter power.
We’ll not rid ourselves of 1Percenters, but we must constrain their currently outsized influence. Unions are the best economic mechanism to do that. Effective government regulation is a close second. More of that, too please.
Government employment, too, provides an antidote to the cruel whimsy of corporate profit obsession. Democrats should argue that Government jobs not only provide useful services to the nation, they provide employment stability to the citizenry. We have a lot of stuff that needs doing, and government jobs are the mechanism to do them.
We need more government regulation of private capital and enterprise
Have the forces of the private market stopped reckless drilling that destroyed an ecosystem? Have they prevented outbreak after outbreak of e-coli in our food supply? Have they kept our miners alive? Have they kept our water drinkable in fracking regions?
If we want to stop the rot, we must stop the adolescent tendencies of private enterprise that only look to the next quarterly gain with no regard for the next quarter century. That is and has always been the role of government regulation. Democrats should boldly argue that regulation doesn’t constrain private enterprise, it sustains it.
1)Raise and spend the debt ceiling
2)Tax the 1Percenters at a fair level
3)Embrace, encourage and empower unions
4)Increase the government’s payroll
5)Increase government regulation
If Democrats present a bold counter-vision to the nasty, brutish and shortsighted 1Percenter agenda of the GOP, they will win in a landslide. And we will all win, because we will finally be talking about a plan for the nation that looks to move us all forward instead of a vision that seeks to merely entrench the 1Percenters ad infinitum.
BE BOLD DEMOCRATS Fly in the face of the stagnent opinion pages’ water-carrying corporatist world view. Realize, Democrats, that there are a lot more 99Percenters than 1Percenters, Citizens United be damned. Realize, Democrats, that the current debates are not only framed on the GOP’s masters’ terms, but they have nothing to do substantively with the problems that face us 99Percenters.
Be Bold.
Originally posted to fromer on Fri Jun 03, 2011 at 05:12 AM PDT.
Also republished by Community Spotlight.
Once again, here is the link to the original article.
I think that fromer has gotten it right in this article. His five points are a starting point for a movement to reverse the income inequality in this country. I also think we need to build pressure to get rid of the Citizens United decision also. I don’t know exactly what that will take but I think it will mean passing a Constitutional Amendment to reverse it. Whatever it takes it needs to be done. That decision is a large menace to our democratic system. It is giving the rich and corporations the right to buy our elections. We need to also couple that amendment with true election financing reform. We need to make it so our politicians are not all bought and paid for by the oligarchy we are fighting. It won’t be easy but otherwise its already over. I refuse to believe that we cannot save our country. None of this will be easy but somehow we have to get it done. I will post more as I see more solutions and ways to help improve our position. Please think about what he has written and what you see being done daily in our country. What happened to compassion for the little guy? What happened to caring for your fellow man? When did all that become wrong? Why are they making it that way and why are we letting them do it?