Social Security 101

This is what you need to know to follow every discussion on Social Security.

First of all, Social Security works by having those workers presently working pay for those workers presently retired. I remember my dad explaining this to me back in 1969 or 70, when he was retiring and we were moving to town. I asked him how Social Security worked and he explained that people of his generation were receiving a gift. That he was going to be receiving monthly checks and the total amount would almost certainly surpass what he had paid in to it.

Social Security is an insurance program. It is not a savings plan. This means that the money you pay in to it is used to pay claims. If you do not reach retirement age, you will receive no money back. If you live past 100, your benefits will never run out.

Understanding this is the key to understanding why George W. Bush's plan to privatize Social Security was a farce. People were going to be allowed to invest their Social Security payments in the stock market. Social Security would have been in an immediate financial crisis, unable to pay out the benefits it was committed to paying. Either it would have gone bankrupt or the government would have had to raise taxes. The end result would have been that money raised from a tax on the working and middle class would have been used to increase investment in the stock market.

From its creation Social Security has been treated as a financially independent entity. The government calculates how much money is taken in, and how much is paid out, and it knows that today it has a $2.6 trillion surplus. It plans ahead and knows that this is enough money to pay every benefit owed to every eligible American for the next 25 years. It also knows that in about 12 years it will start running into deficits. Either retirees need to receive a little less in the way of benefits or more money needs to be paid in to the system. In the budget shutdown game from earlier this year, Obama agreed, by reducing inflation adjustments, to cut the amount of money retirees would receive. He has since backed off on this, but not before losing the waning support of people like me who think that given the great expansion of wealth at the top 1/10th of 1%, it would be more proper to have them, rather than the working class, pick up the slack. But I digress.

Conclusion. Social Security is financially sound. It will need an adjustment some time, but that adjustment is very minor.

So why does Social Security somehow keep entering into every serious discussion about reducing the national debt? This is because in 1968, during the Johnson administration, the government adopted the unified budget. Prior to that time, Social Security dollars were held completely separate from the rest of the federal budget. After 1968, Social Security continued to maintain its own records concerning income, expenses, surplus or debt, but the federal budget added the net surplus or deficit from Social Security to the national debt number. This means that without the Social Security surplus the national debt would be $2.6 trillion higher than we are being told that it is.

Another way of looking at it is to note that in 2010, Social Security's total income was $781.1 billion and its expenditures were $712.5 billion. (All numbers from Wikipedia). This means that $68.6 billion was taken in 2010 from the Social Security tax and used to pay for other operations of the federal government. By about 2023, Social Security will begin drawing down on the surplus paid in to the system by baby boomers. The federal government will then have to find other sources of revenue.

The defense of Social Security is, to me, a basic test of whether a candidate is a true Democrat. Social Security is 100% funded by the American worker and his employer. It is a tax which does not target wealth. Income over $106,800 is not taxed. It is an example of a government program that is has worked exceedingly well and which today has no deficit.

Any call to end Social Security or to reduce the payment of Social Security benefits can only appear as an attempt to maintain the present circumstances in which a tax on the American wage-earner and his employer is being used to finance the general operations of the government.

When President Obama agreed to reduce future payments to Social Security retirement beneficiaries, he showed his true colors. He sided with the ultra-wealthy against the interests of the working and middle class. He revealed once again that he is neither a liberal nor a true Democrat.

http://donaldleach.blogspot.com/

Wall Street vs the American People

It is revealing to read in the paper on the same day about the Occupy Wall Street movement and the fact that the Obama campaign is breaking records in the amount of money it is raising. From Wall Street. It brags to its supporters about the record number of individuals who have donated, but the record amount of dollars it has received it owes largely to Wall Street.

It has been interesting how many people don't get the point of Occupy Wall Street, including people who are in many ways anti-establishment. I'm thinking of Paul Tukey, my expert for organic lawn care, who filled me in on the Obama administration's quiet approval of genetically modified (he calls it "mutant") alfalfa and Kentucky blue grass seed. Leave it to Suze Orman, of all people to understand it completely (see her October 11 blog: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/suze-orman/occupy-wall-street-approv_b_1005128.html).

Main points: The very year that the taxpayers bailed out the Wall Street "banking" industry, its leadership was maintained and was even paid its normal bonuses. Today these mega-"banks" are once again showing hefty profits. Meanwhile there are still 10 million more people unemployed today than before the crisis. Those who were conned in to buying houses they couldn't afford are living in poverty, sending their kids to schools with 50 kids in a classroom, seeing their police forces cut and dealing with whatever healthcare they can finangle through Medicaid. And it is not just the poor who have been left behind. "Inflation-adjusted median house income declined 7.6% from June 2009 to June 2011." (Suze Orman)

No one resents the wealth of Steve Jobs. The technology to which he contributed will be one of the pillars of the future, post oil economy. Wall Street bankers have done nothing to improve the long-term well-being of the American people. This is so clear to me that it leaves me astonished to listen to people who have no awareness of it.

A few numbers from my April 29, 2011 blog post: Wall Street banker Henry Paulson at that time was being paid 2.4 million dollars an hour. The combined salary of the top 25 hedge fund managers was listed at 25 billion dollars. This is enough money to pay the salaries of 658,000 school teachers. The Plain Dealer confirmed the accuracy of one of our local state senators when she asserted that the banking crisis brought about a loss of $5.5 trillion to American home owners. Banks as we knew them in our childhood shared in the cost of the bad loans they made. These banks did not.

I'm yearning for an alliance with the Tea Party. Could it be that they are not the same as the new Right? When the Tea Party first emerged, I was profoundly hopeful. Then they were suddenly putting forth notions that I still don't think represents them. It seems that they felt a need to put their authentic concerns on more intellectual grounds and became the victim of the right-wing (corporate money-making) propaganda machine.

For a populist alliance with the Tea Party, the left has to realize that the Democratic party has sold out to big money. The Tea Party has to end its alliance with big money. That would allow a national move to take back our government, which seems to be the common ground of the alienated on both the left and the right.

Our candidates for City Council get elected by going around and talking to the voters. We just had one at our door. He wants the support of the people. That is where we have to get to with our federal congressmen. Our Supreme Court ruled that spending money is a form of speech and that corporations, now considered to be people, have the constitutional right to spend as much money as they wish in pursuit of political aims. The right-wing justices did not need to make this ruling. They picked on a minor case (Citizens United vs The Federal Election Commission) to bring about a radical increase in the power of big money over our democracy. The Justices supporting this decision and, in particular, its leader John Roberts need to be impeached.

Slogan coming from Occupy Wall Street: "I'll believe corporations are people when Texas executes one. "

I'm using the term corporation excessively and inaccurately. Big money is also private companies like Cargill and Koch Industries. Also, I understand that corporations are diverse and not unified. But it seems to be the term which best reflects my concerns. I'm trying to shout as loud as I can that big money is squashing democracy. It provides us with our news, and is increasingly funding propaganda research so that its news can refer to its own studies.

The characteristic argument is that government can't do anything right, but it never focuses on how much of our taxes end up in the pockets of the very people getting rich by saying that government can't do anything right.

Lincoln said we fought the civil war so "that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."

Obama is neither a Liberal nor a true Democrat

I like to use the term "a true Democrat" to refer to someone who believes in and fights for the view of government entertained by Roosevelt, Truman and Johnson. Similarly, I hesitate to call the views today dominating the Republican party as Republican. Ronald Reagan is what I think of as a Republican. Or Barry Goldwater. Our retired Senator Voinovich of Ohio was a Republican. On the other hand, our current Ohio Senator Rob Portman and Governor Kasich are so different that I hardly feel it is accurate to refer to them as belonging to the same party. The first three were citizens. These new guys are political players who draw their inspiration from right-wing (corporate) think tanks and the right-wing press. When they left congress they hung around in the corporate sector and now they are working to bring corporate government to Ohio. (At the turn of the twentieth century, Standard Oil owned both Ohio Senators, so this is historical déjà vu).

It is becoming increasingly evident that Barack Obama is not a liberal. His views are very difficult to distinguish from those of Mitt Romney. Indeed, I've gone to referring to ObamaRomneyCare. (As governor of Massachusetts, Romney signed healthcare legislation into law that is eerily similar to the Affordable Healthcare Act.) Not only is Obamacare not socialist, it isn't even liberal democratic. It is based on the notion that the role of government is to leave initiative to the private sector, dominated today by international corporations. If you object to the mandate that people must buy health insurance, keep in mind that the mandate is for them to buy private insurance, which for practical purposes means buying it from some corporate entity.

During the debate over the debt limit, Obama repeatedly stated to his Republican opponents: "I have to deal with my people on the left just like you have to deal with those on your right." In other words, Obama was equating his liberal progressive wing with the Tea Party movement. His goal was and is to situate himself halfway between the Tea Party and the liberals in his own party, which situates him in that space that used to be occupied by something that was called "the moderate Republican," but which doesn't exist anymore. There's a blog to be written on the systematic elimination of this creature starting around 1980.

During the great debate on the raising of the debt ceiling, Obama took to referring to the need to cut "entitlements." In other words, he took up the perspective that either, 1) the United States of America is too poor to spend money on the poor, sick and elderly or 2) the "Government" is not the appropriate means of caring for the poor sick and elderly. These perspectives are by definition conservative perspectives. Of course he expressed pain at taking up these perspectives, which is typical of the now disappeared "moderate Republican" creature. Roosevelt, Truman, and Johnson argued explicitly that these perspectives were false and immoral. That's because they were Democrats. What today has come to be called Liberals.

Obama's course of sacrificing liberal principles in order to compromise with the new Right seems senseless and incoherent. It may be, however, that his advisors are simply responding to the power of big money. To maintain its power, big money needs to be perceived as independent of either political party, and donates to the candidate perceived as being independent of politics. This also explains Obama's simultaneous denunciation of the progressive left and the Tea Party. These are the two groups with the political patriotism to push for reform of the political status quo.

Thoughts on the Economy

A new economic term to be learned: the Liquidity Trap. This is when investors have money to invest, but no where to invest it. We have one today. In order to put money in the Bank of New York Mellon, you have to pay the bank. This is because neither the bank, nor the investors who put their money in this account, have any use whatsoever for cash. No one is buying anything, so it would be foolish to invest in the economy. It is obviously an absurd state of affairs, when the government seems unable to pay its bills and corporations are basically paying no taxes. Wall Sreet Journal blog, August 4, 2011, by Jon Hilsenrath. http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2011/08/04/bny-mellon-deposit-fee-life-in-the-liquidity-trap/

Interviewed an individual today who wanted a part-time retail job nights and weekends at Gabriel Brothers. She had worked 10 years in a factory and when it closed she was making $17.00 per hour. She spent two years in another factory which also closed. She then got hired at Lake West Hospital, but is paid so little that she now wants to take on an evening and weekend job to make things meet: $7.50 per hour. We talk to these people all the time, but they find it very difficult to actually perform well at two jobs.

Daniel Griswold, Director of Trade Policy Studies at the Cato Institute, founded and funded by the Koch Brothers, gave the following statistics in his talk to the City Club of Cleveland. I didn't right the numbers down, so my memory might be off, but very slightly. In 1990, it took 10 man hours to make a ton of steel. In 2000, it took 5. Today it takes less than 2. There are two obvious conclusions. First, this increased productivity means that all things made of steel are much cheaper than they would otherwise be, and this is a wonderful thing for all Americans, especially the working class. Second, the effect on employment is a catastrophe for the working class.

The international economy has undergone a fundamental shift in the last 30 or 40 years, which requires the American people to engage in thoughtful and open-minded discussion. The problem is that the the economic changes have created immense corporate and personal fortunes which have nothing to gain and everything to lose from thoughtful and open-minded discussion.

In a series of speeches in 1933, 1934, Franklin Roosevelt addressed the nation to state the necessity of government providing work to the people. He said that if industry was unable or unwilling to provide jobs, then the government would have to do it. Over the next 10 years, the US government created 11 million jobs.

Many Americans have been convinced that the government should not be involved in creating jobs, but I believe the alternative is an extended period of high unemployment and low wages and all the negative social consequences which result from that. There seems to be a mood sweeping the country that the time has come to suffer.

Why We Have a Large Federal Deficit

I. Our government decided that corporations should not have to pay for anything.

According to Richard Wolff, Emeritus Professor of Economics at University of Massachusetts Amherst, Democracy Now, 7/20/2011: "If you go back to the 1940s, here’s what you discover, that the federal government got 50 percent more money year after year from corporations than it did from individuals. For every dollar that individuals paid in income tax, corporations paid $1.50. If you compare that to today, here are the numbers. For every dollar that individuals pay to the federal government, corporations pay 25 cents."

II. Our government decided that the extremely wealthy should not be called on to contribute more than anyone else. From 1940 to 1970, the highest earnings were taxed at 70% or more. At one point the rate hit 91%. During these 30 years, the economy boomed. Reagan lowered the highest rate to 28%. Clinton raised it to 39% and balanced the budget. Bush lowered it back to 36%. You may think it unfair to tax anybody at a rate of 70% and up, but the results of this major shift in taxation have been dramatic. In 1977, the top 1% of Americans had 9% of the nation's wealth. Today, they have 20%. Today, 120 million at the bottom have the same combined wealth as the 150,000 at the top. While corporations publish record profits, wages and employment are in a long-term state of decline. The top 1% of Americans makes close to 25% of the total income made in America. Just moving the rate back to 39% would make a tremendous difference.

The right-wing propaganda machine likes to speak of "a vast expansion of government under Obama." This is total nonsense. Ezra Klein posts a blog reproduced in yesterday's Plain Dealer, which shows where the debt really came from. To read the original post: tinyurl.com/4xogtb5 (I can't seem to copy his graph, so I'll have to describe the content).

Under Bush, 2002-2009, new costs incurred totaled 5.07 trillion. The biggest four items being:

1.) 1.469 trillion: multiple wars. (Joel Stiglitz argues that the total cost of the Bush-Obama wars will hit 5 trillion.)

2.) 1.812 trillion: Bush tax cuts (non-stimulus tax cuts first proposed by Bush during the 2000 election. He was concerned about the Clinton surplus. This is true. Not sarcasm.)

3.) 0.773 trillion: 2008 stimulus and other changes

4.) 0.608 trillion: Non-defense discretionary spending

Under Obama, projected 2009-2017, the new costs minus planned cuts total 1.44 trillion

1.) 0.711 trillion: Stimulus spending

2.) 0.425 trillion: Stimulus tax cuts

3.) 0.278 Non-defense discretionary spending.

4.) 0.152 trillion: Health reform and entitlement changes

It deserves repeating that the bulk of the current deficit comes from the consequences of having over 9% of our workforce unemployed. Not only did those people stop paying taxes, they are receiving unemployment and other government benefits intended to help them until they find a job. In the meantime, the government is doing nothing to get them back to work. Indeed, the government is laying people off.

In the Cleveland Public Schools, they are discussing whether class sizes will hit 50.

So far Obama has:

1) Agreed to cut Social Security benefits. He backed off after pressure from his own party.

2) Agreed to raise the age when the elderly can begin Medicare. He backed after pressure from his own party.

3) Signed on to a deficit reduction package which does nothing to increase revenue.

In a speech to the U.S. Senate, Bernie Sanders, Senator of Vermont said the following: "Despite Democratic control over the White House, despite Democratic control over the Senate, despite overwhelming opposition from the American people, a small minority of the members of the Republican-controlled House have successfully pushed an extreme right-wing agenda onto the American political landscape. It is an ideology which believes that despite the fact that the rich are getting richer, the middle class is shrinking, and poverty is increasing, all—all of the burden for deficit reduction should rest on working people."

August 2, 2011

http://donaldleach.blogspot.com

Tidbits

I have thoughts for more developed thinking, but haven't had much leisure to write as my job is requiring me to work more hours than I think are appropriate. In this, I feel a lot of solidarity with the working class, where it is now common for both parents to work, or for one parent to work two and three jobs. This explains why there is no outbreak of political activism among the working class, which comes home and turns on the dribble of cable news, if they get any news at all.

Our largest corporations are making more by paying people less. Michael Cembalest, chief investment officer of J.P. Morgan Chase, asserted in his bank's regular report that "U.S. labor compensation is now at a 50-year low relative to both company sales and U.S. GDP." Corporate profit margins are now at 13%, compared to just under 11% in 2000. (Source, editorial by Harold Meyerson of the Washington Post entitled: "Corporate America's Chokehold on Wages.")

Our Democratic President has now agreed to 1) raising the age at which one can begin to be covered under Medicare, 2) reducing the inflation adjustments to Social Security so that the payments will be less likely to keep up with inflation. He seems to be inching further toward the Republicans on a couple of points of principle: 1) "Across the board" means million dollar tax breaks for billionaires and peanuts for the average American, 2) "Tightening your belt" only applies to the middle and working class.

Quote from the blog of Robert Reich, July 15: "A recent paper by Cornell political scientist Suzanne Mettler surveyed how many recipients of government benefits don’t really believe they have received any benefits. She found that over 44 percent of Social Security recipients say they “have not used a government social program.” More than half of families receiving government-backed student loans said the same thing, as did 60 percent of those who get the home mortgage interest deduction, 43 percent of unemployment insurance beneficiaries, and almost 30 percent of recipients of Social Security Disability."

Most of what passes these days for tax cuts is disguised corporate welfare.

Obama is now governing further to the right than Mitt Romney did when he was governor of Massachusetts. The democratic electorate is all about jobs, and Romney might well defeat Obama if he should manage to get the nomination. When is the last time you heard Obama discuss a plan for creating jobs?

A couple of poll results in today's Plain Dealer show what Obama is banking on. 66% of Americans want the President and Congress to compromise on raising the debt ceiling. 55% of Americans are more concerned with the deficit than they are with an economic crisis caused by the failure to raise the debt ceiling. So Obama works to be the leader of compromise and the leader in fighting the deficit. It's a center-right position.

Obama knows that people like me will never vote Republican, given the influence of the Tea Party and the whole right-wing propaganda machine on even a moderate Republican like Romney or Huntsman. It is urgent to get the Supreme Court out of the hands of Thomas and Scalia. Even after his recent betrayals, I am still confident Obama will do that.

Interesting also that the poll in the Plain Dealer doesn't ask people what they think about Medicare and Social Security being reduced. That's because Obama, the leader of the Democratic party, is himself leading the way in negotiating those reductions.

I am a regular reader of Paul Krugman's blog: "The Conscience of a Liberal," affiliated with the New York Times. He is my specialist on economics. For Krugman's take on the now rejected Obama-Boehner agreement to raise the age when you can join Medicare, go to http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/07/23/what-obama-was-willing-to-give-away/. Best point: by sabotaging and mocking any attempt to reduce the cost of private health insurance, and by raising the age when people can begin Medicare, the Republicans are ensuring that a group of people in their 60s will go without insurance for a couple more years. Many people in their 60s are already doing so. They wait for Medicare to begin treatment of chronic conditions.

The obvious fix for healthcare is to allow any body who likes to sign up for Medicare at any age. Between 3 and 5% of the cost of Medicare goes to its administrative costs. From 15 to 20% of private health insurance costs go to administrative costs. Its one of numerous examples where government does a better job than the private sector. (Numbers from Democracy Now, but I've heard similar statistics from many other sources.)

Ezra Klein on the Strategy of Republicans in Congress

I'll cede the floor on this one to Ezra Klein, Washington Post, June 28, 2011.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/post/column-in-praise-of-mitch-mcconnell/2011/05/19/AGoMj1oH_blog.html

Klein's column concerns the political tactics of the Republican Party and, in particular, the political strategy of Mitch McConnell, Senate majority leader.

Mitch McConnell is the one who, in October 2010, told the National Journal: "The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Barack Obama to be a one-term president."

So far, the Republicans seem to be succeeding. Obama challenged the Republicans to not participate in the healthcare debate. He thought they would have to participate or face an irate public, but they proved him wrong. Backed by their formidable spin machine they were able to convince almost half the country that the bill was an example of extreme incompetence and moved the country down the road toward socialism.

Now the same pattern is playing out with regard to economic policy. Obama presenting himself as the figure of compromise, willing to face-down his own liberal base; the right presenting themselves as unwilling to compromise with someone so liberal as Obama.

The Republicans have thus destroyed effective government for the four years of Obama's first term.

While the government thus produced has been horrible, politics have never been more interesting. When he finds himself trailing in the polls, will Obama come back to life? Could we finally be treated to a liberal who can articulate outrage? Or maybe his Republican opponent will be so out of the mainstream, that he won't have to. I don't know which of those two options I prefer. I don't even want to consider the option that he will go out like a sacrificial lamb.

Who is to Blame?

Our democracy is in a state of crisis. Where does the problem lie? Here is a listing of the players starting with #10, the least to blame, and ending with #1, the most to blame.

10. The Liberal Media. I didn't know there was any, until I started listening to Democracy Now. It stirred memories from my childhood in the 60s, when we had real liberals, with whom it was difficult to argue: Hubert Humphrey, Bobby Kennedy, LBJ.

9. Large Corporations and Big Business. Corporate money dominates our political system, but yet I am going to say that this is not the fault of the large Corporations. Our businessmen and women have the duty to make a profit for their company. If they do not, they go bankrupt and everybody involved is hurt. The nation as a whole is hurt. Business is, of course, much more than a game. However, it can be compared in that businesses compete to win according to rules. Their duty is to follow the rules, but it is not their place to make those rules. If blocking in the back is a legal part of the game, then any serious competitor will block in the back. Todays rules are such that large businesses have to invest in politics. Walmart had no full-time representative in Washington until 1999. That all changed when they decided they would like to go in to the banking business and were blocked by congress under the influence of the banking industry lobby. Almost immediately, Walmart's Political Action Committee became one of the largest PACs in America (read Robert Reich, Supercapitalism, chapter 4). Who can blame them?

8. The Mainstream Media, CBS, NBC, ABC, CNN, PBS, NPR. I think this is what the right refers to as the liberal media? I'm not sure.

Once there were large newspapers, and everybody argued over what the newspaper said. Most people disagreed in one way or another with the newspapers, but at least everybody was arguing over the same things. Then there was ABC, NBC, and CBS, Cronkite, Huntley and Brinkley, and that other guy. Here again, everybody knew that television wasn't giving the whole story, but everybody was arguing over the same thing. Today, everybody listens to whoever they agree with and don't even know what other people have to say. But this isn't really the fault of the news media. Or is it?

The mainstream media attempts to present all sides, and as a result they don't present any side. This is because of the gulf that has developed between the left and the right, as the right-wing has moved progressively more to the right over the last 20 years. We're moving to a system where every political party has its own media, which I have seen work quite well in Europe. The problem is that there is no media for American liberals, and their points of view are not being articulated nationally.

7. The Democratic party. The democratic party used to be a liberal party: help for the elderly, the children, the working class, the sick, the environment. Today it is the wimp party. The Democratic Party fought for Social Security, health care for all, the working class, equality, the minimum wage, and government intervention in the economy in order to avoid recessions. Today, we have a president liberal at heart, who has repudiated liberalism in public. His health care plan was written to appease large corporations, his energy program is based on tax incentives for large corporations, and instead of talking about the 8 million who lost their jobs in 2008-2009, he is focused on getting re-elected by raising 2 billion dollars from large corporations. He has apparently abandoned the small donors that won him the election last time. I'm not sure whether it is good politics, but it is surely bad for the Democratic Party and it is bad for the United States of America.

6. The Right-Wing Media. The right-wing media is part and parcel of the current Republican party. It has taken the lead in making politics a yearly, year-around form of entertainment. Its goal is to win elections for candidates supporting their right-wing ideology, and to make money for themselves while at it. It substitutes indoctrination for information. They are the marketing arm of the party. They are a threat to democracy, and liberals who don't realize this are fast asleep.

xx. The political parties. Let's be clear about one thing. It's not true that they are the same. They have never been more different. Let's look at them separately.

5. The Republican party. The Republican Party has become something quite new in American history. It sees itself as the instrument of a larger anti-government movement defined by think tanks such as the Cato Institute and the Heritage Foundation and disseminated by Fox News and right-wing radio. Membership in the Republican Party requires adherence to the details of Republican Party strategy. When Newt Gingrich criticized the Medicare provisions of his party's budget proposal, he was immediately chastised by the right-wing media and pushed to renounce his statements. The party has forced near 100% party unity in congress over the last two years. The Democrats have voted with a high degree of unity, but this is only by crafting bills to appeal to the far right of the Democratic Party (e.g. Obamacare)

The Party functions in a corporate manner with a product being first produced and then marketed. The production and marketing teams are brilliant in terms of their ability to sell the merchandise, but for the consumer, the American conservative, I think the product is poor. It doesn't take the country where the conservative American wants it to go.

A Democrat should be in favor of an active government engaged in ensuring the well-being of the citizens. A Republican should be in favor of a limited government which safeguards private initiative. What we have is a government which stifles both private initiative and effective government action, whether it be Democratic or Republican.

This presidential election period is going to be very interesting. Huntsman and Romney, for different reasons, are not in conformity with the right-wing propaganda machine. It may be that one of them will get the nomination. That would make me feel better about the American citizen.

4. Conservatives. Limited government as an ideological orientation, doesn't concern me. But the right-wing propaganda machine is not committed to effectual government. Only strong government can make the citizen free from government interference. If politics is taken over by profit-based media and funded by powerful big business interests, then government will serve those causes. Our government needs reform. The Republican party can only further true conservative values by becoming a party of true reform.

3. The wealthy class. If big business, per se, is not to blame, I feel quite the opposite about the wealthy class which has been created by big business. The role of big money in our system is insulting and is what, to a large degree, fuels this blog. While there are many exceptions, the general pattern is that our wealthiest citizens are driven by greed. Today, the top 1% of Americans are making close to 25% of total income in the country. You would think they would be thankful and generous, and all they think about is how to squeeze more billions out of the system. Take social security. Some time in the next 50 years, social security is going to need to increase revenue or cut benefits. This problem can be solved either by 1) working class Americans taking a bit less than they've been promised, or by 2) making people at the wealthy end of the scale pay a tiny bit more. To the wealthy, this is unacceptable, which is why you periodically hear talk of some sort of a crisis. The wealthy are maneuvering to avoid helping out those who have worked all their lives in their mines, in their factories, on family farms and in their offices. In the long term, their disregard for the welfare of all will lead to their own downfall.

2. Liberals. Liberals have been sleep-walking since the 60s. No major liberal program has been legislated since the 60s and liberals have stood by while the news has become dominated by forces bent on undoing the liberal pillars of our society. Today, they have little means of getting their message out. It's true that it is hard to be passionate when the liberal you elected president is selling out. Or maybe Obama's wimpishness is just typical of all liberals. (Read Sally Kohn's article entitled: "Liberals Pride Themselves on Being Tolerant. Are They Really Just Suckers."http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/liberals-pride-themselves-on-being-tolerant-are-they-really-just-suckers/2011/04/13/AFhsTZjD_story.html

1. The American citizen. Not many years ago, maybe 20 years ago, (I'm getting old!), I remember thinking that the American citizen was quite remarkable in his ability to sort through all the nonsense of competing claims and to make decisions based on independent deliberation. Today, I am disheartened. I don't see it happening. It is a very difficult time for the American citizen. Where do you get the truth?

But I do have a couple of thoughts. a) The notion that politics is a sport and that you are rooting for one side to win has to be rejected. Its not just about winning. You have to get the facts right in the same way you do for any other major life decision. b) You need to know and trust the morality of the salesman pitching a certain policy. He should be interested in all points of view, not just selling one because it is profitable to him. If the salesman of an idea makes money from pitching that idea, is funded by private interests, if he lives in Washington year-round, if he has made large sums of money in the politics business and if he won't tell you whether any of the above things are true, then you should not be investing in his product.

Sally Kohn on What is Wrong With Our Economy

I just discovered the writing of Sally Kohn, founder of the Liberal think tank: the Movement Vision Lab.

When I went to read one of her articles on line, a picture of a smiling face was presented with the question: "Do you own an oil company?" Why would that make me giggle? (I shouldn't laugh, because it sounded like it was mocking people with modest lifestyles who vote Republican.) Democracy Now a few weeks ago played this activist folk song entitled something like: "God Help Us, the President Is An Oil Man."

As for what is wrong with the economy, you can read Sally Kohn's op-ed piece in USA Today, May 24: http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/forum/2011-05-24-Dont-believe-national-debt-hype_n.htm#

A few highlights.

1) 8 million people lost their jobs during the last year of the Bush administration and the first few months of the Obama administration. No substantial progress has been made at putting these people back to work.

2) It is tragically misplaced to even contemplate tax cuts for large American business.

Why? Large American Industry is sitting on record levels of capital, which is not being invested to create jobs. Why? Because the American consumer is broke and is not buying anything. American corporations are using their tax-break money to invest in infrastructure, or just saving it for the time when their customers will start spending again.

Conclusion. Tax cuts need to be directed at the consumer. If the consumer is empowered to spend more, industry will be able to do what they already want to do: expand.

3) It is tragically misplaced to be reducing government spending at this time.

Why? Because cutting government spending directly reduces consumer spending. Not to mention that the government is itself a very important consumer.

4) It is tragically misplaced to be obsessed with the deficit and to see a Democratic president obsessing over the deficit with all these people unemployed.

Why? First of all, the biggest cause of the deficit (other than the Bush tax cuts) is that 8 million people stopped paying taxes three years ago, and started depending on the government programs set up to give them temporary support, thereby causing the government to spend more.

Why? Because our deficit, while a big, long-term problem, is not a major problem in the short-term. Sally Kohn provides some perspective. The American government has a debt-to-income ratio of 1-to-1. That means that what we owe is equal to what we take in during one year. The debt-to-income ratio of IBM is 2-1, Dupont 3-1, Boeing 4-1, Caterpillar 14-1. (I won't mention JP Morgan Chase which is at 50-1, because they are too big to fail.)

CONCLUSIONS:

1) Taxes need to be cut immediately on the American consumer. This is in the interest of American business large and small.

2) Republican economic policy is driven by an ideological obsession, hatred for government, which is counter to the interests of American business.

Another outstanding Sally Kohn article is from April 15, entitled: "Liberals Pride Themselves on Being Tolerant. Are They Really Just Suckers."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/liberals-pride-themselves-on-being-tolerant-are-they-really-just-suckers/2011/04/13/AFhsTZjD_story.html

Of course, I think this is a great article because it seems to say just what I am thinking. In fact, a future blog ruminating in my mind is entitled: "Why Liberals Repeatedly get their Butts Kicked In Debates With Right-Wingers."

Tea Party in Action in Missouri

In April, two University of Missouri professors, Judy Ancel and Don Giljum, were asked to resign in response to a right-wing smear campaign depicting them as liberal radicals and advocates of violence. Giljum, an adjunct professor who had worked for 27 years as business agent for the International Operating Engineers Union, was fired by the union one week before his retirement. The course being taught by the professors was the history of the American labor movement and the specific lesson attacked by the right-wingers was the historical causes of violence in confrontations between labor and management. The truth was that both professors had been very explicit in their condemnation of violence.

This is not an isolated incident. It has become common practice of the radical right-wing to concoct proof for some of their most far-fetched positions. In this case, the slander was directed at the labor movement and was timed to support an attempt in the state legislature to diminish the legal rights of labor, as has already been done in Wisconsin and Ohio. The people involved in concocting the Missouri video were the same people who slandered ACORN, leading to a weird bill about to be passed in Ohio making it difficult for poor people to vote. And remember the video of Shirley Sherrod, temporarily fired by Obama for sounding like a racist? That was made to support the comments of race-baiter Glenn Beck that black people hate America. NPR and Planned Parenthood have also been targeted by these undercover videos.

Here's the story from Missouri. In April, the website BigGovernment.com, run by right-wing blogger Andrew Breitbart, posted footage of the labor relations class being taught by Ancel and Giljum. The courses were video-taped by the university so that the two professors could work together with students at the two campuses. On the Big Government video, the professors make a number of statements appearing to back the use of violence in the struggle for labor rights. Judy Ancel of the University of Missouri-Kansas City is presented saying: "Violence is a tactic, and it's to be used when it's appropriate." Don Giljum is quoted saying: "We've had a very violent history, with violent protests in certain instances, strategically played out, and for certain purposes that industrial sabotage doesn't have its place. I think it certainly does."

In fact, the video had been spliced and edited to twist their words. When you watch the videotaped class, you learn that Ancel was actually quoting another person. The following words by Giljum were edited out: "I'm not sure that, as a tactic today, the type of violence or reaction to the violence we had back then would be called for here. I think it would do more harm than good."

The truth has come out, at least enough for the two professors to have their jobs back. But that doesn't mean the right wing won't continue to repeat the same lies. The notion of a university world infested with left-wing activists and allied with an immensely powerful and devious labor world is very important to their ends.

Here are the names of the people involved in this slanderous operation. A student at the St. Louis campus, Philip Christofanelli, was the founder of an organization called Young Americans for Liberty and is affiliated with the Tea Party. It is believed that Christofanelli passed the video on to James O'Keefe, the maker of the undercover videos targeting ACORN, NPR and Planned Parenthood. The spliced and edited video was then posted on BigGovernment.com, the website of Andrew Breitbart, who is currently facing a lawsuit from Shirley Sherrod who he slandered and whose career he ruined.

On April 18, Breitbart had appeared on Sean Hannity's Fox News show, declaring, "We are going to take on education next, go after the teachers and the union organizers." It appears that Ancel and Giljum were the first targets of that attack.

Breitbart's website went so far as to provide contact information for Ancel and Giljum who received a flurry of threatening e-mails. Giljum received at least two death threats over the phone.

From Breitbart's website, the slander was passed on by Right-wing talk show host and co-founder of the the St. Louis Tea Party, Dana Loesch, who drew Lieutenant Governor Peter Kinder into helping her exploit the situation. Here is what Kinder says on Loesch's radio program:

KINDER: What would be the reaction from the mainstream media, lame stream media, if we had a Tea Party leader out there-

LOESCH: Oh, right.

KINDER: -advocating violence-

LOESCH: Right.

KINDER: -and preaching violence to impressionable young minds? They sit around matter-of-factly- you can hear this on the two videos that are up on Big Government.com., you can see it-matter of factly discussing violent overthrow of the capitalist order or the existing order, the workers taking to the streets and committing violent acts of industrial sabotage. And the speaker, Don Giljum, is the business agent for the International Operating Engineers Union that works at Ameren UE. This is a matter of grave seriousness."

From the right-wing media, the slander was picked up and repeated by the St. Louis Post and a Columbia, Missouri paper.

Finally, the university is barraged with upset citizens, death threats are directed at the victims of the slander, who find their jobs threatened, and in the case of Giljum, he ends his job of 27 years at his labor union by being fired.

There are some bright spots. The university made a forceful defense of their professors and re-hired them. The students in the class responded very actively, defending their professors, denying the lies and also decrying the fact that they also were being slandered. Also, the slander does not seem to have hit any national media outlet.

For further details, you can click the links below:

http://www.democracynow.org/blog/2011/5/18/andrew_breitbarts_electronic_brownshirts

http://www.democracynow.org/2011/5/17/getting_wise_to_breitbarts_lies_missouri

Friends and Family: Calmer Version

Friends and Relatives,

I have begun writing a weekly blog. Our nation is facing a serious media crisis, manifested in the fact that centrist political positions, my political positions, are not being heard. The airways are dominated by right-wing rhetoric and their talking points mock the very existence of opposing points of view. It's time for centrists and liberals to talk back. My blog is a humble attempt to do that. I have a good life, but I feel morally obligated to express my deep concern with the present direction of our democracy. Politics is not just entertainment. Politics is not just about winning. Politics is also about what kind of a place the United States will be in 50 years, after I'm gone.

So I expect to just be a lone voice in the wilderness, but I do hope you'll check my blog periodically to tune in to some of the intense anger and discouragement that centrists and liberals are feeling at what's happening to our country. Believe me, we are every bit as upset as the Tea Party, even if we have received no funding to match the millions given to the Tea Party by big oil.

If you want me to e-mail my blog entries to you let me know. That would be very easy to do.

Don

The Truth about the Tea Party

A recent article in the New Yorker, August 30, 2010, by Jane Mayer, entitled: Covert Operations: The Billionaire Brothers who are Waging a War against Obama, documents the pivotal role played in the rise of the Tea Party by the right-wing political organization called Citizens for Prosperity. This organization was created and is funded by two of the world's richest men: Charles and David Koch (pronounced "coke"), owners of the oil-refinery conglomerate: Koch Industries. The combined wealth of the two brothers ranks behind only that of David Gates and Warren Buffet. They were the founders in the 1970s of the right-wing Cato Institute and have funded scores of right-wing causes over the years. Please read the New Yorker article on the Koch Brothers and the Tea Party at: http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/08/30/100830fa_fact_mayer

The key role played by the immensely wealthy, right-wing Koch brothers finally makes the whole episode of the rise of the Tea Party make sense. It explains how the government deficit created by 10 years of Bush tax cuts and a financial crisis caused by the greed of Wall Street, was blamed on a Democratic administration left to pick up the pieces. It explains how anger at our government's failure to regulate the industry was redirected toward the governments attempt to assist the victims.

From the beginning, the rise of the Tea Party was strange. I understood the anger, I was angry myself. To hell the deficit, we were told, if trillions of federal tax dollars weren't immediately pumped in to the banking system, the entire world would be plunged into another great depression. The American people were quite united about one thing. These banks by all rules of fairness should just be allowed to go out of business and everybody connected to their fraudulent mis-management should be in the street like the greedy speculators who lost everything in 1929. Derivatives, repackaged mortgages, ponzie schemes, junk bonds, things too complicated for the public to understand had led to immense fortunes. These people deserved to pay the price for their failed schemes. But hey, two presidential administrations came forward to say that these banks were too big to fail, so we went along with it.

Fast forward to 2012. How are the Wall Street mega-banks doing? Great. Stock market? All the way back. How about the 8 million people who lost their jobs from 2008-2010? Still unemployed. There has been no recovery for the working class. Employment is exactly where it was in the depths of the crash. (Yes, you hear how we create jobs every month, but it has only been enough to make up for the young people coming in to the labor force.) In Ohio, I read today that 4 out of 10 school children are on the free lunch program due to the financial difficulties of their families. And how about reforming the big banks? At least we can say they were broken up so that this would not happen again, right? But no. They are still there. They never once stopped paying the mega-bonuses, and now they are looking at smaller, more local banks as targets for future mergers.

All this left me mad as hell. Deeply disappointed in both political parties. Feeling powerless at the impotence of democracy in the face of immense wealth. Here again, I think my feelings were shared by the overwhelming majority of the American people.

I first became aware of the Tea Party sometime in 2009. Finally, someone was expressing my anger, I thought. But then it started to get really weird. These people had no concern for the bailout of the wealthy banks. They had no concern for the 8 million people who had lost their jobs through Wall Street greed. No concern that the Wall Street crisis had left us with homes worth half what they were. Indeed, one of their main objects of attack was the stimulus program, a modest, totally inadequate attempt to help the victims.

Today, the Tea Party is pushing the agenda of the Right-Wing propaganda machine the Kochs helped create. The Tea Party claims to be concerned with the deficit. But this is only the means to get at what really drives them. Nobody truly concerned with the deficit, would be talking about cutting taxes by 2.9 trillion dollars. What drives the Tea Party is hatred of government. This means, first of all, hatred of the programs of the New Deal: Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and hundreds of lesser programs ensuring children are educated and our people can maintain steady employment. But this also explains the meanness of the Tea Party. The goal of their propaganda is to make you think that our political system is a joke and that all our elected officials are morons. This is why they are completely brazen about lying and repeating lies. Their goal is to make us think that politics is all about lies. Everybody in politics lies, right? When ordinary citizens naively pass on insulting stories about our congressmen, senators and president, they are contributing to the Tea Party agenda (or should I say the the agenda of Charles and David Koch). The right-wing propaganda machine wants to make hatred of government a national sport.

Mountaintop Removal Coal Mining

The following is my summary of a report I heard today, May 23, on Democracy Now, a liberal 100% listener-supported news program hosted by Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzalez. I get it whenever I can by downloading their podcast at: http://www.democracynow.org/. They can be heard on over 900 stations, but that's not a lot when you consider that they are spread across the United States.

You won't hear this kind of news unless you look for it. The country needs you to start looking for it. If you just sit back and wait, you'll be fed information by those whose interest in politics is to ensure they can become ever more wealthy. The richer people get, the more obsessed they become with wealth.

Massey Energy is a leader in mountaintop removal coal mining in the states of West Virginia, and Kentucky. The process begins with the detonation of an explosion the size of a Hiroshima bomb, which blasts open the top 400 feet of a mountain. This opens up the coal reserves to exploitation. The process is completed by filling the hole back in, as much as possible, and the excess materials, including unwanted toxins, are dumped into the valley below. Originally, they were required to fill the area in with topsoil, but one of the early accomplishments of the George W. Bush administration, was the ruling that they could just fill in the damaged area with the rubble and waste from the mining operation.

You can imagine what this does to the environment. The rivers are polluted and sometimes simply disappear into cracks in the ground caused by the explosion. Entire small towns are purchased ahead of time, and boarded up. Some 500 mountains have been destroyed over the last 10 years. The total acreage destroyed is estimated at 1.4 million acres, the size of Delaware.

Of course, we all know the necessity of this, right. First of all, West-Virginians depend on the good-paying jobs provided by the coal industry. Our national economy depends on the cheap electricity coal provides. As for pollution, we are told how the Environmental Protection Agency has run amuck with its ridiculous and trivial regulations. Unfortunately, this is all propaganda and the true story is an example of how big industry has taken control of our country.

Let's start with the jobs. The mountaintops are being blown off to save labor. With this technique, they can get away with hiring 70% fewer miners. Good-paying jobs for West Virginians? Think again. While the CEO of Massey Energy makes 30 million a year, West Virginia is ranked 49th in the nation in terms of poverty. Massey Energy led the way ten years ago in breaking the United Mineworkers Union and slashing wages. One of the results of this union-busting strategy is that Massey today prefers to hire people from out of state, running ads in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, the Atlanta Constitution and in USA Today.

Regulated by the Environmental Protection Agency? Think again. Massey practices a policy of systematic obstruction and disregard for all environmental regulations. They have been cited 60,000 times for violating the Clean Water Act for a total of 1.8 billion dollars in fines. The West Virginia EPA, however, has never collected a penny. The federal EPA agreed that the fines should be reduced to 20 million. This from a company worth 7.1 billion dollars.

And there's the tax base, right? All that mining must be a real boondoggle for the local governments. Think again. The estimated annual tax revenue for blowing up a mountain is $30,000/year. The construction of a wind farm on the same mountaintop would provide 1.5 million annually in tax revenue, and this would continue indefinitely.

Behind this is a story of big money corrupting our political system. It has been estimated that the coal energy has invested a billion and a half dollars over the last 10 years to elect the right politicians and to influence the political process. The CEO of Massey Energy once spent 3 million dollars to ensure the defeat of a judge who had ruled against another coal company. When an appeal from Massey was being heard the same CEO was photographed on vacation on the French Riviera with a second judge hearing the case. And yes, surprise, Massey Energy won the appeal.

With the election in 2010 of Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia, they also have a senator they can count on to see things their way.

Friends and Relatives. Please start looking for this type of information. Our democracy and our future are in peril.

Does the Republican Budget Plan Really end Medicare?

Word has it that the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee is going to run an ad stating that the Republican budget plan, known as the Ryan plan, calls for the elimination of Medicare. Here's the scoop:

Ryan's plan calls for replacing Medicare with vouchers for seniors to buy their own insurance. There are a couple of problems with this. First of all, private insurance today costs 11% more than Medicare does. So right from the beginning, seniors are going to have to kick in from their savings. Secondly, it does not account for the rise of health care costs, which are projected to increase, and to increase dramatically if Obamacare is eliminated. The Congressional Budget Office (non-partisan) estimates that by 2030, the voucher will cover only between 35 and 40% of the cost of private health insurance. So after spending your life paying payroll taxes, yuo'll receive a check for 40% of the cost of health insurance. Actually, this will only apply to those who today are under 55. So don't worry about it, right?

Unfortunately, the rest of this bill, isn't any better.

Congressman Ryan proposes reducing deficits by 4 trillion over 12 years.

To do this, Ryan starts in the usual Republican way, by giving away 2.9 trillion to corporations and the wealthy. He reduces the income tax rates for millionaires, eliminates the capital gains tax, and eliminates the tax on estates over a million dollars. There is nothing in there for you.

He's going to finance that with various budget cuts, but he doesn't say how. He only says that spending on everything aside from health and Social Security can be cut in half. I don't know about your state, but in mine teachers, policeman and firemen are being laid-off even as we speak.

Then there are pure fantasies about the wonderful effects of how cutting taxes on the wealthy leads to prosperity for all. Ryan predicts that by 2015, unemployement will be back to the peak level of the 1990s, and by 2021 it will be the best we've had in 50 years! The 8 million who lost their jobs in 2007-2008, will all have their jobs back back plus a couple million more. Never mind that, last I saw, unemployment was still rising. With everybody working, tax revenues will actually go up by almost $600 billion. (Please note that this is the same House of Representatives that fights Global Warming by voting that it doesn't exist. Cut taxes on the wealthy and dreams come true!)

Then there's Medicaid. I guess you can always save money by reducing support for the poor. Ryan's plan is to stop paying for Medicaid directly and, instead, to give block grants to the states. That means that when health care costs go up, that will no longer be his problem. Leave it to the states to decide how to gut social programs.

Two thoughts to conclude:

1) This country can afford to pay for the programs it wants. We are still one of the wealthiest countries in the world.

2) We have 14 million unemployed people. That is the real problem. Put them to work and our deficit issues will be easy to solve. In this, Ryan is right. But giving trillions of dollars to wealthy people is not going to put these people back to work.

Basic Republican Propaganda Techniques, 1: The Preposterous Assertion

This involves saying and repeating preposterously false things until they come to pass as true among large numbers of poorly informed people.

For example, this morning, on WCPN, public radio, there was a debate over whether public sector unions in Ohio should be abolished. The Republican spokesman asserts that immense sums of money are being funneled by these unions in to lobbying the political process. This is total nonsense that you hear all the time.

The Democratic spokesman doesn't want to call the Republican spokesman ignorant and he doesn't want to call him a liar, so he just avoids the ridiculous statement. He stays civil and positive. He knows that in the end the truth will come out and that the American people are very good at separating truth from nonsense.

The trouble is that the American people, right now, are not doing a very good job of separating truth from nonsense.

It's time for Republicans to stop repeating shocking, surprising information just because it supports their preconceptions. It's time for centrists and Democrats to start contradicting those who repeat baseless, false information. It's time for all of us to take a look at who stands to profit if this false information is taken as truth.

It's called standing up for America.

(Note: While this propaganda technique is not unique to Republicans, there is no left-wing propaganda machine comparable, in any way, to that of the right.)

To My Friends and Relatives

Friends and Relatives,

For most of my life, I have been a detached observer of politics. I've voted more Democratic, than Republican, but I have voted for two Republican candidates for president, and by temperament I have sought the center where I could make an informed choice between two competing alternatives.

With the recent spectacle of the passage and opposition to the heath care bill and the election of a radically conservative House of Representatives, it became clear that my traditional centrist position is no longer tenable. The Republican party has become dominated by a propaganda machine financed by the extremely wealthy. Its stated goals are to dismantle the active and assertive government that grew out of the catastrophe of the Great Depression and dominated American Politics from the 1930s until 1980. So successful has this propaganda machine been, that Democrats seem embarrassed to stand up for what their party has achieved. As for you Republicans, you need to get back on firmer ground. It's time to stop passing on misinformation and downright lies, bought and paid for by the extremely wealthy.

Two considerations oblige me to become active in opposing what I consider to be a powerful and frightening right-wing propaganda machine:

1) The Republican party is winning elections by deceit. If I believed that all those Americans voting Republican really wished to go where the Republicans are taking them, I would keep quiet and sleep easily. I don't mind being in the minority. But when I see misinformation, not to say crude lies, being presented and repeated until the average uninformed American takes it as truth, then I feel obligated to speak up.

2) I am very concerned about where our society will be in 50 years. I am not concerned about myself. This society has treated me well. My education was affordable. Steady employment has allowed me to live in a comfortable house. Social Security and Medicaid are there to make me feel comfortable about my retirement. The end results of allowing big energy pollute the environment without restriction will not be felt in full force until after my death. Tax cuts for the wealthy have led to major layoffs in our schools and police departments, but if it becomes too violent, I can just move away when I reach retirement age. But for those being born in this country today, I am very concerned.

Over the last few years, I have received a large number of e-mails from friends and family transmitting right-wing propaganda. Please continue to send them to me. I have already begun a policy of responding to them, and will continue to do so.

This is the only unsolicited political e-mail you will receive from me. My relations with most of my friends and family are a-political and I want to keep open the option of keeping it that way.

For further development of the ideas I have just expressed, please read my blog at http://donaldleach.blogspot.com/

On average, new entries will appear weekly.

To give you an idea of what I have to say, here are two blog entries.

Another example of extreme wealth

In the April 28, 2011 edition of the Plain Dealer, a group called EnergyTomorrow.org runs a full-page color advertisement quoting a school teacher explaining that through 401ks we are all invested in oil and natural gas. Natural gas companies have also been running ads opposing funding the Environmental Protection Agency. This is at a time that natural gas companies are moving in to Ohio with the plan of establishing natural gas wells through the process of hydraulic fracturing, known as "fracking."

If you don't know about fracking, you need to see the movie "Gasland." Briefly, it involves shooting 400 to 600 tanker trucks of water, laced with hundreds of toxic chemicals into the underground shale to break it up and cause the natural gas to be released. The gas companies attempt to collect all the polluted water, but some of it inevitably ends up dissipating in to the rivers and the ground water. The process has caused earthquakes in Arkansas and has been banned there. Under Bush, this process was exempted from oversight by the Environmental Protection Agency. In any case, 30 years of chipping away at government has rendered the EPA totally understaffed and incapable of carrying out its mission. There is a bill in congress at this time to require companies to render public the chemicals they are putting in the water, and this is being resisted by the industry.

Fracking has already contaminated the well of a family near Youngstown, and an explosion in Bradford County, PA caused fracking chemicals to be released into the river.

The natural gas companies are currently moving in to Ohio and citizens groups are forming to resist them, but citizens meeting in the evening after work are overwhelmed at the prospect of competing with the wealth of international corporations showing record profits.

BP has announced profits this quarter of 7 billion dollars even as they drag their feet at paying for the clean-up in the Gulf. Exxon Mobil profits were up some 65% this quarter, even as gas prices were heading past 4 dollars per gallon.

An example of untaxed wealth

According to Seth Rosen of the Communication Workers of America, Henry Paulson, the architect of the Wall Street bailout of 2008-2009, is now earning 2.4 million dollars an hour. This is not a typo. He makes this per hour. This income is taxed at a rate of 15%. Before we eliminate Medicare and Medicaid, why wouldn't we tax that income at, say, 20%? I would vote for 30%, but if the richest 1% of Americans would pay just 5% more, we would be able to ensure minimal care of our nation's children and elderly.

(Note: Mr. Rosen's speech can be downloaded as a podcast from the City Club of Cleveland, March 4, 2011. He also states that the combined income of the top 25 hedge fund managers: 25 billion, is enough to pay the salaries of 658,000 school teachers teaching 13 million students. This is in response to the attempt by Ohio's governor to strip school teachers of collective bargaining rights. He's very concerned that school teachers make too much money.)