Given: System-wide, US healthcare costs have been on an upward trajectory for decades.

Given: The #1 reason Americans go bankrupt is that they cannot pay their medical bills.

Given: As we grow older, our healthcare (and health insurance) costs increase.

Given: Baby Boomers are entering their Golden Years, and between 2010 and 2040, the US population over 65 years of age will double.

Given: Fiscal hawks at the state and federal level want to reduce, dramatically change, or eliminate government-backed health insurance (Medicare and Medicaid), as well as social safety net programs (ie, Social Security, food stamps, and unemployement).

Given these facts: It is not difficult to see how the colliding forces of an aging population, increasing healthcare costs, and decreasing government support could create a perfect storm in US in the not-so-distant future.

New research published in the September 2011 issue of The American Journal of Medicine gives us a glimpse of what that perfect storm may look like.

Using statistical modeling, scientists from the University of California, San Francisco and Columbia University reported that without significant changes in risk factors or treatments, “…the aging of the US population will result in a sizeable increase in coronary heart disease incidence, prevalence, mortality, and costs.”

More specifically:

• “…incident coronary heart disease [new cases] is projected to increase by approximately 26%, from 981,000 in 2010 to 1,234,000 in 2040…
• “Prevalent coronary heart disease [is projected to increase] by 47%, from 11.7 million to 17.3 million.
• “Mortality will be affected strongly by the aging population; annual coronary heart disease deaths are projected to increase by 56% over the next 30 years, from 392,000 to 610,000.
• “Coronary heart disease-related health care costs are projected to rise by 41% from $126.2 billion in 2010 to $177.5 billion in 2040 in the United States.”

The public health and economic consequences of these projections are staggering– particularly if extremist Teapublicans like Congressman Paul Ryan and sheep-like followers (including Arizona’s own Jeff Flake) have their way.

Let’s assess the current situation…

• 52 million Americans don’t have health insurance.
• 61% of bankruptcies in the US due to medical costs.
• 9.1% of Americans are unemployed.
• Teapublicans– with the help of President Obama– want to fix the “deficit problem” by cutting entitlement programs WITHOUT cutting military spending or raising revenues or creating jobs (which would boost the economy).

If you think income disparity and greed are destroying our country now, just wait. If Teapublicans like Michelle “down with entitlements” Bachmann, Rick “minimum wage” Perry, Mitt “the oligarch’s baby” Romney, Sarah “cut NPR to balance the budget” Palin, Jeff “I was against austerity before I was for it” Flake*, and, of course, FOX “the poor need to pay their fair share” News have their way, there will be literally millions of sick, elderly Americans living at the subsistence level without healthcare services or medicine.

Is this the future we want?

The balanced budget deal passed earlier this month is the only one in history that includes cuts in spending and no increases in revenue. We need sanity in government, and I’m not sure we’ll get it from the Gang of 12.

We need to put people back to work– at good-paying jobs (not the kind Perry created in Texas)– so they can contribute to the economy and contribute to Medicare and Social Security through their paychecks. To control healthcare costs, we need universal healthcare– instead of this hybrid system that allows insurance companies to continue their rape of the American people. We need to eliminate the Bush era tax cuts for the rich and cut tax loopholes for individuals and corporations. We need to end the wars and cut military spending.

Yes, we need sanity in government.

* In all fairness, this is also the position of Senators Jon Kyl, John McCain, and Mitch McConnell and Congressmen John Boehner and Paul Ryan.

Members of Progressive Democrats of America (PDA) Tucson Chapter demonstrated their support for Medicare on the recent 46th anniversary of this important component of President Lyndon Johnson’s War on Poverty.

Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps, and other social safety net programs were under attack by Congressional Republicans during the recent budget deficit/debit ceiling fiasco in Congress.

Extremist Teapublicans– including Arizona’s five Teapublican Congressional Representatives, Paul Gosar (CD1), Trent Franks (CD2), Ben Quayle (CD3), David Schweikert (CD5), and Jeff Flake (CD6)– brought the country to the brink of default by choosing to cling to their ideology, rather than thinking about what’s best for our country and voting with the majority of Americans.

For the final vote, Gosar joined Democratic Blue Dog Gabirelle Giffords (CD8) and voted for the compromise debt ceiling bill. Progressive Democrats Raul Grijalva (CD7) and Ed Pastor (CD4) voted against the bill– since it included no revenue increases and leaves Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid volunterable to future cuts.

Franks, Quayle, Schweikert, and Flake voted the straight Teapublican line on every vote– including voting against the debt ceiling deal because it didn’t include a balanced budget amendment.

In these tough economic times, it is disheartening that so many Congressional representatives are more concerned with ideology over the health and economic well-being of US citizens.

This graphic, based upon Department of Labor statistics, shows that overall middle class income has decreased with union membership.

According to Michael Moore, the beginning of the end was 30 years ago yesterday. On August 5, 1981, President Ronald Reagan fired striking air traffic controllers who had defied his back-to-work order. They had been on strike only two days. From Michael Moore’s The Day the Middle Class Died.

From time to time, someone under 30 will ask me, “When did this all begin, America’s downward slide?” They say they’ve heard of a time when working people could raise a family and send the kids to college on just one parent’s income (and that college in states like California and New York was almost free). That anyone who wanted a decent paying job could get one. That people only worked five days a week, eight hours a day, got the whole weekend off and had a paid vacation every summer. That many jobs were union jobs, from baggers at the grocery store to the guy painting your house, and this meant that no matter how “lowly” your job was you had guarantees of a pension, occasional raises, health insurance and someone to stick up for you if you were unfairly treated.

Young people have heard of this mythical time — but it was no myth, it was real. And when they ask, “When did this all end?”, I say, “It ended on this day: August 5th, 1981.”

Beginning on this date, 30 years ago, Big Business and the Right Wing decided to “go for it” — to see if they could actually destroy the middle class so that they could become richer themselves.

And they’ve succeeded.

Thirty years of trickle down economics later…

Productivity is up, wages are in decline, union membership continues to decline, corporate profits are breaking records, unemployment and housing forclosures are ravishing the middle class, Americans are going bankrupt due to sky-rocketing medical costs, and income disparities between the richest 1 percent and the rest of us are ever-widening.

Meanwhile, Congress– owned by big business and paralyzed by ideology– fiddles while Rome burns.

Americans are weary from grinding recession and disenchanted [putting it mildly] with our out-of-touch government. After the recent debt ceiling fiasco and the shutdown of the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) due to an ideological, anti-union battle, a full 14 percent of Americans approve of the job Congress is doing, according to a recent CNN poll. (A commentator on National Public Radio’s Diane Rehm Show quipped that the 14 percent who said they approved of Congress’ performance must not have understood the question.)

And why shouldn’t we feel disenfranchised by this corporate-controlled government? In poll after poll taken during the protracted debt/deficit battle, Americans said they favored a balanced approach to deficit reduction– one that decreased spending + increased revenues– but that’s not what we got in the end. What we got was a Tea Party dream, a deficit reduction deal based solely on cuts which will likely cost the US 1.8 million jobs. Congressional Teapublicans– including five from Arizona (Jeff Flake, Trent Franks, Phil Gossar– even scared Wall Street and financial markets worldwide with their intransigence and extremism.

From Noam Chomsky’s America in Decline…

For the public, the primary domestic concern is unemployment. Under current circumstances, that crisis can be overcome only by a significant government stimulus, well beyond the recent one, which barely matched decline in state and local spending – though even that limited initiative probably saved millions of jobs.

For financial institutions the primary concern is the deficit. Therefore, only the deficit is under discussion. A large majority of the population favor addressing the deficit by taxing the very rich (72 percent, 27 percent opposed), reports a Washington Post-ABC News poll. Cutting health programs is opposed by overwhelming majorities (69 percent Medicaid, 78 percent Medicare). The likely outcome is therefore the opposite.

The Program on International Policy Attitudes surveyed how the public would eliminate the deficit. PIPA director Steven Kull writes, “Clearly both the administration and the Republican-led House (of Representatives) are out of step with the public’s values and priorities in regard to the budget.”

The survey illustrates the deep divide: “The biggest difference in spending is that the public favored deep cuts in defense spending, while the administration and the House propose modest increases. The public also favored more spending on job training, education and pollution control than did either the administration or the House.”

The final “compromise” – more accurately, capitulation to the far right – is the opposite throughout, and is almost certain to lead to slower growth and long-term harm to all but the rich and the corporations, which are enjoying record profits.

Is Tucson the new ‘Hooverville’?

Homeless shanty towns-- Hoovervilles-- sprang up during the Great Depression. (Photo Credit: Dorthea Lange for the Farm Security Administration.)

What has all of this got to do with life here in Tucson? Plenty. Two recent studies show that: 1) Tucson has the highest rate of poverty of any major city in the sunbelt and 2) Tucson has the “sickest” housing market in the US.

These statistics– coupled with Arizona’s Starve-the-Beast-Feed-the-Capitalists state government and Teapublican Congressional representatives–Gosar (CD1), Franks (CD2), Quayle (CD3, Schweikert (CD5), and Flake (CD6)– paint a pretty bleak future for the Old Pueblo.

What can we do about it? A few weeks ago at a City Council meeting, political activist Jim Hannley suggested that the Tucson Mayor and Council set up a citizens’ commission to study local poverty (Check out the video at about 3:16 minutes in part 2.) In 2007, then Tucson City Councilman Steve Leal’s office compiled a “Poverty and Urban Stress” report. With dozens of statistical graphics, the 90+ page document details poverty, educational attainment, crime, and other urban stress indicators citywide and by Council ward. At the time, the Arizona Daily Star lauded the report and the City Council agreed to revisit the report annually… but didn’t. That was 2007– before the market crash of 2008 and the ensuing recession. Obviously Tucson’s economy– as well as the state’s and the nation’s– has slid since the report was created.

Repeatedly, the Tucson City Council has bowed to local business interests, at the expense of citizens and workers. The City’s budget– like the state’s and the nation’s– has been cut by cutting jobs, thus worsening our economy by increasing unemployment.

It’s time for Tucson’s Mayor and Council to take the long view on our economy. Leal’s report should be updated and expanded to include multi-year trend data. After the update, a citizens’ commission focusing on poverty, the local economy, and jobs should be created to study the data and make recommendations based upon economic research and best practices from other cities.

As Tucson celebrates its 236th birthday this month, it’s time for Tucsonans to stop grumbling, to start fighting for economic and social justice, and to take a lesson from The Little Engine that Could: I think I can. I think I can. I think I can.

It’s highly ironic that the current social and political battle over our nation’s debt and deficit is occurring this week with the 46th anniversary of the signing of Social Security Act of 1965 on Saturday, July 30.

After a long political battle dating from Harry Truman’s presidency to Lyndon Johnson’s, Johnson signed this legislation creating universal, single payer healthcare insurance for the nation’s elderly (Medicare) and indigent (Medicaid).

From The Nation…

With reporters and photographers surrounding them, Johnson took a place beside former President Harry Truman, who the sitting president thanked for “planting the seeds of compassion and duty which have today flowered into care for the sick and serenity for the fearful.” [Emphasis added.]

These healthcare reforms were part of Johnson’s Great Society, which had two primary goals: to eliminate poverty and to eliminate racial injustice. After his landslide victory over Barry Goldwater in 1964, Johnson and his progressive Democratic Congress enacted forward-thinking reforms that were reminiscent of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal and began the full-on War on Poverty, which reduced the poverty rate significantly over the subsequent 10 years. Many important Great Society programs– aimed at improving labor, healthcare, and education for poor and working class Americans– are still in existence: Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps, student loans for college, work study, and Head Start. These programs were strengthened under Republican Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford.

It is so sad how far we have fallen from this level of compassion. The programs of Roosevelt’s New Deal and Johnson’s Great Society– programs that have provided a social safety net for millions of Americans and wiped out many inequities of the past– are now facing a full-frontal attack by conservatives, bankrolled by big business.

Republican Congressmen would have you believe that the nation’s financial problems can be fixed by just cutting spending– specifically dramatically changing Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid (long-term spending) and dramatically cutting other discretionary (non-military) spending (ie, food stamps, children’s healthcare, food safety, pollution abatement, etc) which actually makes up less than 20 percent of the budget. Oh, yeah, and they want to protect oil subsidies, corporate tax loopholes (which allow multinational corporations like Bank of America to pay no taxes; tax loopholes for the rich; continue the Bush era tax cuts that they fought so hard for in December 2010; dismantle Social Security (so retirement funds for those under 50 can be gambled on the stock market); and offer more tax cuts (more trickle down economics).

At a time of high unemployment, high gasoline costs, high food prices, escalating college education tuition, skyrocketing healthcare expenses, a disintigrating social safety net, and soaring corporate profits– Republicans want workers, the elderly, and the indigent to “tighten their belts” to protect the profits and tax breaks of corporate jet owners, big oil, big pharma, big insurance, and Wall Street gamblers and corporate execs everywhere.

From the Associated Press (via the Arizona Daily Star)…

Two years after economists say the Great Recession ended, the recovery has been the weakest and most lopsided of any since the 1930s.

After previous recessions, people in all income groups tended to benefit. This time, ordinary Americans are struggling with job insecurity, too much debt and pay raises that haven’t kept up with prices at the grocery store and gas station. The economy’s meager gains are going mostly to the wealthiest.

Workers’ wages and benefits make up 57.5 percent of the economy, an all-time low. Until the mid-2000s, that figure had been remarkably stable – about 64 percent through boom and bust alike.

Executive pay is included in this figure, but rank-and-file workers are far more dependent on regular wages and benefits. A big chunk of the economy’s gains has gone to investors in the form of higher corporate profits.

“The spoils have really gone to capital, to the shareholders,” says David Rosenberg, chief economist at Gluskin Sheff + Associates in Toronto.

Corporate profits are up by almost half since the recession ended in June 2009. In the first two years after the recessions of 1991 and 2001, profits rose 11 percent and 28 percent, respectively.

And an Associated Press analysis found that the typical CEO of a major company earned $9 million last year, up a fourth from 2009.

Driven by higher profits, the Dow Jones industrial average has staged a breathtaking 90 percent rally since bottoming at 6,547 on March 9, 2009. Those stock market gains go disproportionately to the wealthiest 10 percent of Americans, who own more than 80 percent of outstanding stock, according to an analysis by Edward Wolff, an economist at Bard College.

But if the Great Recession is long gone from Wall Street and corporate boardrooms, it lingers on Main Street:

• Unemployment has never been so high – 9.1 percent – this long after any recession since World War II. At the same point after the previous three recessions, unemployment averaged just 6.8 percent.

• The average worker’s hourly wages, after accounting for inflation, were 1.6 percent lower in May than a year earlier. Rising gasoline and food prices have devoured any pay raises for most Americans.

• The jobs that are being created pay less than the ones that vanished in the recession. Higher-paying jobs in the private sector, the ones that pay roughly $19 to $31 an hour, made up 40 percent of the jobs lost from January 2008 to February 2010 but only 27 percent of the jobs created since then.

Hard times have made Americans more dependent than ever on social programs, which accounted for a record 18 percent of personal income in the last three months of 2010 before coming down a bit this year. Almost 45 million Americans are on food stamps, another record…

Federal Reserve numbers crunched by Haver Analytics suggest that Americans have a long way to go before their finances will be strong enough to support robust spending: Despite cutting what they owe the past three years, the average household’s debts equal 119 percent of annual after-tax income. At the same point after the 1981-82 recession, debts were at 66 percent; after the 1990-91 recession, 85 percent; and after the 2001 recession, 114 percent. [Emphasis added.]

At a time when Americans can least afford it and the income gap between the richest 1 percent and the rest of us is larger than the Grand Canyon, Republicans are asking for even further financial sacrifices from Main Street Americans AND they are willing to throw the world into financial crisis as they cling to their trickle down ideology of protecting the rich while casting the rest of us aside. If they want to “fix” Social Security, they should put Americans back to work at good-paying jobs. According to 2009 figures from the US Census, 14.3 percent of Americans (and 20.7 percent of American children) are living in poverty; 43 million Americans– the largest number ever.

What can you do about it?

Call your Congressional Representatives today and tell them to vote to:

• raise the debt ceiling (and stop the grandstanding),
• raise revenues (by cutting military spending, eliminating corporate loopholes that allow them to avoid paying taxes, eliminate Bush tax cuts for the wealthy, etc.),
• protect the programs that benefit millions of Americans: Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps, unemployment, college tuition grants, etc.
• solve the deficit problem by putting Americans back to work.

Here are the numbers:
CD8 Gabrielle Giffords: 520-881-3588 (local) or 202-225-2542 (DC)
CD7 Raul Grijalva: 520-622-6788 (local) or 202-225-2435 (DC)

CD6 Jeff Flake from Mesa (We need to lean on this guy who wants to be our next Senator.):
480-833-0092 (in Mesa) or 202-225-2635 (DC)

Senator Jon Kyl 520-575-8633 (local) or 202-224-4521 (DC)
Senator John McCain 520-670-6334 (local) or 202-224-2245 (DC)

What else can you do?

Progressive Democrats of America’s Tucson Chapter is holding a demonstration to show support for protecting Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid on Saturday, July 30 from 10 a.m. – noon at the corner of Speedway and Campbell.

MoveOn.org is calling on us– all of us– to visit our Congressional representatives’ offices today, July 26, at noon and tell them to protect Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. Don’t let extremist Teapublicans destroy our economy and our country’s social safety net– as they play chicken with President Obama and the world financial markets over raising the debt ceiling. (If you know anyone who lives in John Boehner’s Ohio district, forward it to him.)

From Move On…

This weekend, it became 100% clear that Republicans would rather see America default, Social Security checks stop going out, the stock market plummet, and unemployment soar than give one inch on their position: that the very richest people and most profitable corporations shouldn’t pay one penny more in taxes.

Even after the president offered Republicans a debt-ceiling deal most MoveOn members probably consider unconscionable—with trillions in cuts, even to Medicare and Social Security—speaker Boehner still walked away from the table.

Republicans hope the threat of default will be enough to force Democrats to sacrifice and compromise even more.

But Democrats like Raul Grijalva are standing strong. Rep. Grijalva is one of 80 Democrats who have joined Leader Pelosi in saying that cuts to Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security benefits are off the table. Over the next few days, Rep. Grijalva will face extreme pressure to cave into every Republican demand and let irresponsible threats drive terrible decisions in Washington.

That’s why, with other leaders of the American Dream movement, we’re putting out an urgent call for every patriotic American to show up outside progressive congressional offices on Tuesday at noon to deliver a crucial message of support: “Thank you for protecting Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. Keep standing strong.”

Can you deliver the message to Rep. Grijalva at his office on Tuesday at noon?

Yes, I can drop by on Tuesday!

We’ll follow up with all the details and a link to print your own “Keep standing strong” signs to bring to Rep. Grijalva.

Then you just have to show up on Tuesday here:

738 North 5th Avenue, Tucson, AZ 85705

We need to show as much public support as possible, so please pass this along to anyone else you know who could join in on Tuesday. This is a moment when we need to bring the progressive movement together to show our strength and show our boldest leaders that we’re with them. 

Let’s get out there on Tuesday and let leaders like Rep. Grijalva know how important it is to keep standing up to Republican threats. We can’t let Republicans crash the American economy to protect tax giveaways for the rich.

As someone who lives in CD8– Gabrielle Giffords’ district– I received a different version of this MoveOn letter urging CD8 residents to go to her office (3945 E. Fort Lowell Road, Suite 211) to encourage her to support the position that Pelosi and Grijalva have taken. I don’t know how many people will show up at Giffords’ office, but I think it’s a good idea because it emphasizes that CD8 residents need to have a dog in this fight.

Raising the debit ceiling and reducing the deficit by cutting corporate subsidies and tax loopholes for the rich– while protecting Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid– are crucial issues. If you can’t go to your Congressional representative’s office today in person, contact them. Here is their contact information: Raul and Gabby.

Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords' staff sponsored a deficit reduction town hall on June 30, 2011 in Tucson.

The featured speakers at a recent deficit reduction town hall in Tucson– David Walker from the Comeback America Initiative and Robert Bixby of the Concord Coalition– were well-versed in how bad the US economy is, the dangers of out-of-control spending, revisionist history on how we got here, and the right-wing solutions for fixing our financial problems.

The ideas covered in the talks (eg, government is too big; we need to cut spending; entitlement programs are burying us economically; healthcare reform costs too much; corporations are taxed too much; Washington is in gridlock) were almost as disturbing as the budget-balancing ideas that were left out (eg, end the wars; drop our inefficient and costly, capitalism-based healthcare system for single-payer national healthcare; put people to work at good-paying jobs, so they can fuel the economy and contribute to Social Security; end the Bush era tax cuts; raise the Social Security contribution cap; close corporate tax loopholes; disincentivize sending US jobs to other countries; end the war on drugs, legalize marijuana and tax it; invest in research to create new good jobs going forward; invest in public education and subsidize college to grow our next generation of leaders and entrepreneurs; end our love affair with trickle-down economics).

Walker repeatedly said that both Democrats and Republicans are to blame for the out-of-control spending that has increased the deficit and the debt. Ironically, Walked never mentioned trickle-down economics or Presidents Ronald Reagan or George Bush #2– two people whose failed economic policies did more to bury our country in debt than anyone else. He said that the deficit and debt were under control until 1982, when magically everything went south– with no mention of who was elected in 1982 and what he [Reagan] did to destroy the economy.

Walker did give Presidents George Bush #1 and Bill Clinton credit for being fiscally responsible and reducing the deficit but didn’t mention that they both raised taxes (something Republicans in Congress refuse to do now). He also never mentioned that after Bill Clinton raised taxes on the rich and controlled spending, he oversaw the longest economic boom in US history and handed George Bush #2 a budget surplus. In fact, when Walker mentioned the recent 10-year period where all hell broke loose financially, he left out the role of Bush #2 and his Republican-controlled Congress, who cut taxes, started multiple unfunded wars, spent money we didn’t have, handed pharmaceutical companies a blank check with the Medicare prescription drug benefit, and oversaw the largest economic collapse since the Great Depression. This is revisionist history at its best… or worst.

The evening ended with small-group, interactive deficit-reduction roundtable discussions where people could share ideas. Check out this post which includes a link to the New York Times’ deficit reduction exercise if you want to try your hand at reducing the deficit and debt.

This town hall was awash right-wing ideals. So, why was it sponsored by Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords’ staff? And, why was Giffords’ staff overtly suppressing free speech at the event? It should have been sponsored by the Tucson Tea Party. Check out the video for clips of the speeches and discussion.

Randy Parraz, primary cheerleader for the Recall Russell Pearce campaign, updated the Progressive Caucus of the Arizona Democratic Party at their recent meeting in Tucson. The recall effort has exceeded the minimum number of signatures needed, but since some signatures are always rejected as invalid, they will use the next 40 or so days to collect as many signatures as possible.

If you would like to donate to the recall effort or volunteer to collect signatures in Mesa, check their website.

UPDATE on the Disappearing Video

Well, if you didn’t watch the attached video during the few short hours it was available on You Tube and the Citizen, you’re not going to watch it now.

Parraz contacted the amateur videographer who shot it and asked her to pull the video of his public speech at a public meeting. (The Arizona Democratic Party’s Statewide Committee Meeting and related caucus meetings are open to the press and any self-proclaimed Democrat. Several political bloggers and a reporter from the Arizona Republic were there.)

Frankly, I don’t understand this suppression of free speech. Wearing my TucsonCitizen.com press pass, I was sitting next to Alison while she openly filmed Parraz and other speakers. Parraz could see that she was taping his presentation. (I also would have been filming– if I hadn’t forgotten to charge my camera batteries. Doh.)

Parraz claimed the speech included sensitive campaign information and should be pulled for that reason, but I don’t remember hearing anything really new in the speech. Yes, we can bring this guy down. We’re working hard, but we need more signatures! You can help! I thought it was a great speech– fiery, not too long– which is why I asked Alison for the link.

What is highly ironic about the disappearance of this video-taped campaign speech shot openly at a public meeting is that the anti-Pearce bloggers practice guerilla journalism against Pearce, Tom Horne, and other people they don’t like. They shove video cameras in the faces of politicians and aggressivley shout questions to provoke a reaction.  Would these bloggers ever pull a video because the subject didn’t like it? I don’t think so.

So, there are lessons learned all around. Alison now knows her rights as a citizen journalist; she had every right to shoot that video of a public speech in a public forum and publish it online.  Randy now knows that every time he makes a public speech in a public meeting he could be quoted or filmed or both. And I know to keep my camera batteries charged!

Here is an awesome commentary on the national debt debate from The Nation…

In the ever-so-smug company of the rich and powerful it is a given that there is never to be any expression of remorse or other acknowledgment of the pain they have inflicted on the lesser mortals they so cavalierly plunder. It’s convenient for them that the media and the politicians, which they happen to own, rarely connect the dots between the scams that made the rich so rich and the alarming rise in the federal debt that is crushing this nation.

The result of this purchased public myopia is that we are left with an absurd debate over how deeply to cut teachers’ pensions and seniors’ medical benefits while preserving tax breaks for the superrich and their large corporations. At a time when 10 million American families will have lost their homes by year’s end, when $5.6 trillion in home equity has been wiped out, when most Americans face steep unemployment rates and stagnant wages, a Democratic president is likely to compromise with Republican ideologues who insist that further cuts in taxes for the rich is the way to bring back jobs.

Let’s deal right off with that canard. There is currently no shortage of corporate profits or excessive executive compensation to explain away the failure of the private sector to create jobs. On the contrary, as the New York Times reports, “In the fourth quarter, profits at American businesses were up an astounding 29.2 percent, the fastest growth in more than 60 years. Collectively, American corporations logged profits at an annual rate of $1.678 trillion.” And to add insult to injury, the top executives, who seem unable or unwilling to create jobs or adequately reward their workers, have increased their own compensation by a whopping 12 percent over the previous year, setting the median pay at $9.6 million per year for those in control of the leading 200 companies. The Times adds that “CEO pay is also on the rise again at companies like Capital One and Goldman Sachs, which survived the economic storm with the help of all of those taxpayer-financed bailouts.”

Lost in this faux debate is the reality that our debt now looms so large because the government had to bail out many of those same corporations, quite a few of which, like General Electric and AIG, pay no taxes and have no problem paying truly obscene amounts to their top executives. GE CEO Jeffrey Immelt, whom President Barack Obama named chairman of the Council on Jobs and Competitiveness, is making as much as he did before the recession hit, a recession that his GE Capital division did much to cause with its reckless loans. AIG, saved with a government infusion of $170 billion, has just lavishly rewarded its top executives but has providing no relief for the homeowners ripped off by its phony credit default swaps.

The AIG deal was engineered by then-President of the New York Fed Timothy Geithner, who was rewarded for his efforts to save the bankers by being named Obama’s treasury secretary. Geithner, an energetic member of the team of Robert Rubin and Lawrence Summers that ran Treasury when the Bill Clinton administration cooperated with Congressional Republicans in gutting regulation of the financial community, is proud of saving the banks from the wreckage that they and the Clinton policies caused. Last October he proclaimed the TARP banker bailout program “the most effective government program in recent memory.”

What he is referring to is that in order to escape the federal restrictions on executive compensation, the banks have been eager to pay back the TARP funds. What he and other apologists for the Obama and George W. Bush administrations’ Bankers First program choose to ignore—as Paul Atkins and two other members of the Congressional Oversight Panel for the Troubled Asset Relief Program revealed in a damning Wall Street Journal column titled “TARP Was No Win for the Taxpayers”—is that the banks are not paying back the trillions of dollars in non-TARP governmental assistance that saved them from bankruptcy. “It hides the full story of the government’s financial crisis effort, of which TARP is but a minor part,” the op-ed column said of the maneuvering. The major part is the $1.1 trillion in toxic-mortgage-based securities that the Fed purchased, relieving the banks of their obligations, and the $380 billion bailout of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, organizations that backed those securities, along with “other Fed and FDIC programs [that] added another $2 trillion of taxpayer money at risk to the 19 stress-tested banks alone.”

What Geithner celebrates is a shell game of his own construction in which far more costly federal programs, with no serious restrictions on banker greed, were used by the banks to “repay” the TARP funds. Nothing was obtained in return from those banks in the way of mortgage cramdowns to keep people in their homes or any restrictions on the interest rates that banks charge on credit cards: Clearly usurious rates of more than 25 percent are now the norm for those struggling to keep their families above water. No wonder consumer confidence is down, the housing market is expected to decline an additional 10 percent over the next year, and the job market is predicted by most of the experts to stagnate for years to come. Continued tax breaks for the 1 percent of the population that controls 40 percent of the nation’s wealth will do nothing to restore the confidence of the other 99 percent of consumers who are suffering so.

This at least Obama seems to understand, but count on him to betray his own better instincts by once again following the advice of his treasury secretary and the Wall Street crowd that contributed so lavishly to his first presidential campaign and whose support he seeks once again. [Emphasis added.]

All of the players are counting on the continued myopia of the American public. If we were really paying attention, we wouldn’t stand for this.

The People’s Budget– proposed by the Congressional Progressive Caucus earlier this week– will be heard on the floor of the US House of Representatives on Friday, April 15.

Republican budget proposals balance the budget on the backs of the working people, children, and the poor by destroying Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid. The People’s Budget creates jobs, bolsters our infrastructure, supports a public option and price negotiations to control healthcare costs, and cuts military spending.

In the above video at about 12 minutes, Congressman Raul Grijalva contrasts the People’s Budget, with Obama’s Plan, and Rep. Paul Ryan’s Plan, which dismantles Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid, while cutting taxes for the rich and preserving the military budget. Democracy Now commentator Amy Goodman hits the nail on the head regarding mainstream media coverage of the various budget plans. In my article earlier this week, I chided the Arizona Daily Star for not even mentioning that the People’s Budget– which is being supported by our Congressman!– exists, while running multiple lengthy articles on Ryan’s budget and the nuances of the 2011 budget negotiations.

For more information, check out this story from the Progressive Democrats of American Tucson Chapter blog: US House to Vote on People’s Budget: CALL Your Representative Now!

Is the sleeping giant of the American electorate awakening to the destruction of our country by greedy corporatists? Well, maybe.

A new poll released by a Toronto company shows that Americans’ enthusiasm for capitalism has dropped from 80% in 2002 to 59% in 2010.

Since 2002, Globescan has been asking the question “Is the free market the best ecomonic  system in the world?” every year to citizens in 23 countries.

According to an article in Globalpost, Americans are less happy with the free market than citizens in Germany (the happiest capitalists at 68%), China (aren’t they supposed to be communists? 67%), or Brazil (67%).  Those socialists in France, of course, really don’t like capitalism; only 30% of the French said capitalism was a good economic system. From Globalpost…

“America is the last place we would have expected to see such a sharp drop in trust in the free enterprise system,” Globescan chairman Doug Miller said in a statement announcing the results. “This is not good news for business.”

The U.S. figure dropped 15 percentage points from 2009. It was led by a huge decline in America’s poor and women. Here’s how Globescan parsed the decline in these two groups:

“Americans with incomes below $20,000 were particularly likely to have lost faith in the free market over the past year, with their support dropping from 76 percent to 44 percent between 2009 and 2010. American women have also become much less positive, with 52 percent backing the free market in 2010, down from 73 percent in 2009.”

I find it telling that the Germans are the happiest capitalists, since Germany has the strongest unions in the world + has a thriving economy (because they didn’t dismantle their manufacturing base, as the US and the UK did). Comparing the Germans with the low-income Americans, you find that happy, well-paid workers who have universal healthcare say that capitalism is a good system, which underpaid and/or underemployed US workers with little or no healthcare say capitalism is not working for them.

By oppressing unions in the US and trying to squeeze every once of productivity out of workers while cutting wages and benefits, the capitalists are unwittingly breeding unrest. Now that the capitalists own the US House of Representatives and several state Legislatures, I don’t see the greed train slowing down any time soon. If Teapublicans continue to cut jobs in the name of fiscal responsibility while freely doling out corporate welfare, Americans are going to continue to be disgruntled. Is it November 2012 yet?