Read the Bernie Buzz

The following paragraph is taken from Senator Bernie Sanders' website: http://www.sanders.senate.gov/
It contains some basic information about the way political power is being transferred from the American people to the world's extremely wealthy:

"At a time when the middle class is collapsing and poverty is increasing and the wealthiest people are doing phenomenally well, many Americans are wondering whether this country is moving toward an oligarchic form of government where a handful of very wealthy people control the economic and political life of the nation. At a time when the richest 400 Americans own more wealth than the bottom 150 million people, it was not surprising to learn from a recent study that between 2009 and 2010, 93 percent of all new income went to the top 1 percent of U.S. taxpayers. Additionally, it is extremely disturbing that because of the absurd Citizens United Supreme Court decision, many of these billionaires are now using their money to strengthen their political hold on the country. This is not what democracy looks like. This is what oligarchy and plutocracy look like."

On Senator Sanders' website, you can sign up for his e-newsletter, entitled "The Bernie Buzz."  Senator Sanders is one of the limited number of elected liberal politicians in this country who have not allowed their positions to be influenced by right-wing propaganda. I encourage you to sign up for his newsletter.

President Obama has led the way in letting America think that there is some validity to the positions of the modern Republican Party.  If a Democratic president is leading the way, can we really blame our television and newspaper news from acting as if the Republican party still represented the interests of American conservatives?

Grover Norquist at the City Club of Cleveland

On January 13, the City Club of Cleveland welcomed as its guest speaker: Grover Norquist, President and Founder, in 1986, of Americans for Tax Reform. Norquist's appearance provides a perfect opportunity to examine the work of one of the Right's most influential propagandists. Norquist is the creator and enforcer of the Taxpayer Protection Pledge and has succeeded in convincing 98% of Republican House Representatives and 90% of Senate Republicans to sign it. They apparently have to go to his office and sign it in front of two witnesses.

Let me explain briefly why I refer to Norquist as a propagandist. First of all, a propagandist begins with a core set of beliefs and seeks data to corroborate those beliefs. Any data which do not support the core belief are rejected. On this score, Norquist can be compared to another speaker who appeared at the City Club of Cleveland: Thomas Schatz, President of Citizens Against Goverment Waste. Schatz advocated cutting taxes, but with regard to the data concerning how the government spends its money, he presented information which both strengthened and weakend his own case. Schatz demonstrated that it is completely possible to take sides in a political struggle while remaining true to facts and without becoming a propagandist.

Secondly, Norquist appeals to various emotions, such as feelings of solidarity and animosity, to gain support for a position which is expressed as something factually established. This can be seen in the fact that 98% of House Republicans have signed his pledge. Such a level of agreement is obviously the result of some type of peer pressure.

Grover Norquist is a propagandist by profession. He lives in Washington, D.C. and makes his living by influencing the American political system. Norquist has a B.A. and a M.A. from Harvard University, a background similar to other professional right-wing political activists.

Norquists core set of beliefs are fundamental to the modern Republican party as it has developed since the 1970s.

1. Norquist famously asserted that his goal was to shrink government down to where we can drown it in a bathtub. He didn't repeat this statement at the City Club, but neither did he deny it. Norquist contrasts the European style social welfare state to a more traditional American limited government. Note first of all, the choice of language. Even a liberal like me identifies more with the words "traditional" "American" "government" than to "European" "welfare" "state." But there is no actual content here. The American welfare state is very American and owes its existence to prestigious historical figures such as T. Roosevelt, Wilson, F. D. Roosevelt, Truman, Johnson and Kennedy. When Norquist speaks of something more traditional, I doubt he is referring to the nineteenth century. He is in fact, referring to something which never existed. What is called the "welfare" state is made up almost entirely of programs which Americans support overwhelmingly: Social Secuirity, Medicare, unemployment insurance, disaster relief.

2. Norquist asserts that the Obama administration has brought about a massive expansion in the role of the federal government, which has gone from 20 to 25% of GDP from 2007 to 2012. The truth is that the expansion in federal spending, in terms of dollars, can be entirely attributed to two temporary events: the great rise in unemployment payments and the cost of the economic stimulus. Norquist refers to a percentage, and this has to be attributed to the fact that the GDP went down at the same time as spending went up. There has been no permanent expansion of the federal government at all.

3. Norquist claims the mantle of libertarianism, saying that what the Right wants is for the government to leave them alone. However, the NRA is not leaving us alone in Cleveland. They've passed legislation forcing us to allow concealed hand guns in our city parks. Republicans in Washington have fought against the right of Californians to legalize marijuana. As for business, it is simply not true that businesses lobby principally to be left alone. They lobby to receive benefits from the government and in some cases receive a check from the government at tax time. But yet, Norquist does not refer to them as parasites.

4. Norquist would have you believe that Republicans are against all taxes. In fact, the Republicans are against taxes on the rich and only refer to the income tax and corporate taxes. If they were to look in to the finances of the people employed by Gabriel Brothers, some of whom are those lucky ones paying no income taxes, they would soon learn that the taxes paid by the poor: sales tax, registration fees, social security and medicare taxes have, over all, been increased during the same years Norquist's friends have succeeded in massively reducing the income and estate taxes on the wealthy. Overall, taxes have not been lowered for the middle class.

5. Norquist is a merchant of anger. He equates the following groups with the Democratic party and calls them competing parasites: trial lawyers, labor union leaders, big city political machines, government workers' unions, people locked in to welfare dependancy, well-paid government workers, and "coercive utopians who receive government grants to tell the rest of us how to run our lives." We were encouraged in Ohio when our right-wing governor tried to abolish government workers' unions and the voters overwhelmingly rejected his proposal, understanding that government workers meant first of all: policemen, firemen and teachers and that it is simply ridiculous to say they are overpaid.

6. The stimulus program is referred to as taking money from those who earned it and giving it to some one who is politically connected. The truth is that the wealthy in this country have been sitting on their money ever since the recession began. That is what businesses do in a recession. Only governments are able to spend money in a recession. The Obama administration should have spent much more than 800 billion, and their failure to do so means that we are only now, five years later, beginning to reduce unemployment. A truly significant stimulus would have gotten enough people off unemployment and back to paying taxes that it would have paid for itself in a fairly short term.

7. Obamacare involved the "nationalization of healthcare." This goes along with references to Obamacare as "socialized medicine." I have no interest in defending a law which requires me to buy my health insurance from a large corporation and leaves in place the immense profits of the insurance industry. However, it must be said that Obamacare is a corporatist law. It seeks to empower corporations to take care of our healthcare issues. It is false to say anything was socialized or nationalized.

8. Norquist argues that the Reagan tax cuts turned the economy around. The truth is that there is just no evidence that all the tax cuts on the wealthy have had any positive effect on the economy. The massive tax cuts of George W. Bush led to massive deficits and massive unemployment at the end of his administration. The tax increase of Clinton led to a balanced budget and very low unemployment.

We have to rescue our political system from the likes of Grover Norquist. Your congressmen need to stop buddying up to political activists based out of Washington, D.C. and who derive their living and their wealth from misdirecting the justified anger of American citizens.

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