New Deal, Fair Deal, ... Raw Deal!

If the rich paid taxes, there would be no poor.

If the rich paid taxes, they’d know what money’s for.

It’s not for furs and diamonds, and a great big fancy car.

It’s not to pay our government to let them have a war.

Oh, where is the justice in this great big land of ours?

It’s in the hands of the chosen few, the schemers and the liars.

If they made the rich pay taxes, we’d have no national debt.

The poor could live and work and eat ‘cause there’d be no rich, I bet.

- from Elaine Purkey’s song “If the Rich Paid Taxes”

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When Franklin Roosevelt was told that he had been chosen as the Democratic nominee for president in 1932, the country was in the grip of the Great Depression.  He flew to Chicago and told the crowd at Convention Hall, “I pledge you, I pledge myself, to a new deal for the American people!”   

It was a new deal, and he delivered on his promise.  Once elected, Mr. Roosevelt acted swiftly to give people not just a rhetoric of hope, but ambitious new efforts to lift them out of their desperate straits and forge a better life.  Despite Wall Street’s opposition and Herbert Hoover’s attempts to force him to abandon his “socialist” notions (that sounds familiar, doesn’t it?), he and his administration swiftly created and set into action a virtual cascade of new agencies and programs.  Together, they provided security, stability, and opportunity to people who had never known such things before. 

The New Deal set out to protect workers like my parents against the common cruelties of the capitalist system, and assured them a more just share of its benefits.  Government acted on common people’s behalf.  It could be argued--and has been--that its reforms actually saved the capitalist system from itself, in a time when its greed and callousness had driven workers to the brink of revolution.  

A program known as Social Security, for the first time in history, enabled us ordinary citizens to enjoy our retirement years rather than be forced to work right up to the waning moments of our lives.  It also provided for those of us who were disabled, and for dependent women and children.  Unemployment insurance kept us from losing our homes and belongings and the life we had painstakingly built for our families when our jobs disappeared.  

We were guaranteed a minimum wage, and the hours we could be forced to work were actually limited.  We were guaranteed the right to form unions.  Child labor was abolished.  Huge public works programs were designed to create jobs and build useful things for our common benefit--highways and bridges and sidewalks and parks and schools.  The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) was created as a public utility, with the goal of providing electricity to one of the most dismal, depressed regions in the U.S.  It spurred economic development, controlled floods, created recreational areas, enabled navigation on the area’s rivers, provided fertilizer, and taught farmers how to control erosion and increase crop yields.

All of that has been around so long now that we take it for granted, just as casually as we expect water to flow when we turn the handle of a faucet.

That was the New Deal, the greatest leap forward in promoting the general welfare that has ever occurred in this country.  It was carried out in the face of vitriolic opposition from the financial elite and the upper class.  Hatred for Roosevelt and his programs immediately became an article of faith for the wealthy oligarchy, and their efforts to repeal the New Deal have been unrelenting in the eighty years since it was launched.

Mr. Roosevelt’s successor, Harry Truman, followed the New Deal by calling for a Fair Deal in his 1949 State of the Union address.  The Fair Deal was to expand on the social programs of the New Deal, adding things such as national health insurance, civil rights legislation (this in 1949!), public housing, an increase in the minimum wage, and federal aid to education.  A good deal of Truman’s program was stalled in Congress by a growing coalition of conservative Republicans and Southern Democrats, who denounced them as socialist (there we go again), but the minimum wage was eventually increased--from 40 cents to 75 cents an hour--and a Housing Act was passed, funding 800,000 new homes.

Now, in a sorry sequel to Roosevelt and Truman’s efforts, we’re seeing a historic third “Deal” by yet another Democratic president--but this time it’s a “Raw Deal.”  In a grand stroke of historical irony, it’s a Democratic president who is collaborating with Wall Street and the Republican leadership in a carefully-orchestrated scheme to begin tearing down what his predecessors worked so hard to build.  Instead of fighting to preserve or even expand on Roosevelt and Truman’s vision, Mr. Obama is simply making a gift of victory to their opponents, rewarding the right wing’s eighty-year effort to repeal the New Deal.

Mr. Obama’s Raw Deal was preceded by propaganda about a “grand bargain” that would keep us from going over a “fiscal cliff.”  The truth is, it’s a great betrayal intended to stampede us over nothing more than a political barrier.  

After years of campaigning as the party that would protect Social Security and Medicare from the evil clutches of Republicans, here’s what Democrats are rewarding their supporters with.  The administration’s 2014 budget, unveiled April 10, outlines huge cuts in Social Security and Medicare.  Medicare is to be sliced $400 billion over 10 years, at a time when the poplulation is growing and aging.  A new, stingier way of calculating the cost of living will effectively slash $130 billion from Social Security.  These cuts are in addition to $1.4 trillion in spending cuts already enacted over the past two years.

Mr. Obama also plans to privatize the TVA, selling it off to private utilities which will jack up rates to 9 million people in 7 states (as a public utility, TVA is a nonprofit) and are almost certain to dump worker pensions and other retirement benefits.  He proposes to slash environmental programs such as the EPA, Clean Water and Drinking Water enforcement, and the Superfund program by hundreds of billions of dollars.  He will also use a federal commission as a smokescreen behind which other social programs can be dumped. 

But perhaps those cuts are unavoidable in tough times, you might tell yourself.  Surely the Democrats to whom we’ve given our votes and campaign contributions wouldn’t do this if it weren’t absolutely essential. 

Unfortunately, that’s the furthest thing from the truth.  

There are numerous options to avoid hurting ordinary people.  One would be to simply increase the figure at which Social Security contributions are capped.  Another would be to deal with the ruinous costs of our for-profit health care and health insurance system.  And a third would be to restore some fairness to a tax system that the rich and powerful have unrelentingly gamed to their advantage over the past thirty years.  

Some of the most obvious ways the system has been rigged to fatten the wealthy include: 

• Special subsidies in the form of tax credits, exclusions, capital gains, and other loopholes which benefit the richest among us to the tune of $1.25 trillion dollars. 
• Underpayment of taxes, generally from those in higher brackets, amounting to over $450 billion per year.  
• At least a quarter of a trillion dollars squirreled away by rich Americans, untaxed, in offshore tax havens.  
• A sharp decrease in corporate taxes from 22.5% twenty years ago to 10% now, even though corporate profits are skyrocketing.  

In short, it’s not at all difficult to identify several trillion dollars being siphoned out of the system to further fatten the gluttonous among us.  And rather than disturb them as they feed happily at the public trough, the Raw Deal chooses to take more from those who have much less.  

In presenting his budget, Mr. Obama portrayed himself as a leader “willing to make tough choices,” glossing over the fact that his choices are only “tough” on the poor and middle class, not on the privileged class to which he belongs, and which is doing extremely well, thank you.  Instead of protecting people from an increasingly predatory economy, he serves as the predators’ enabler.  This is a man who campaigned as a champion of “Main Street, not Wall Street,” and on vague themes of “hope” and “change.”  People who voted for him and are paying attention must rightly feel betrayed as they see the actual changes he and his party are delivering.

© Tony Russell, 2013

"The Enthusiasm Deficit"

As soon as Janet stepped through the kitchen door, she could hear the sound of crying--deep, gasping, soul-wrenching sobs.  “Oh no,” she sighed to herself.  “Not again.” 

  She put the tea kettle on and then walked over to put her arm around her friend’s shoulders.  “Brenda, honey, what is it?  What’s wrong?”

Brenda kept her head bent, tears pouring down her cheeks, as she stared at the kitchen table.  “It’s Barry,” she finally managed to choke out.  “He and his friends are saying the meanest things about me.”

“What kind of things, Brenda?”

Brenda had temporarily brought her crying under control.  “He accused me of being unfaithful.  He said I didn’t really love him, that I didn’t understand all the things he has to struggle with.  He acted as if I was stupid and ungrateful!”  And she burst into a new round of tears.

Angry on her friend’s behalf, Janet said, “What’s the matter with him?  Why is he saying those things?”

Brenda looked up, distraught.  “I don’t know!  I don’t know!  Oh, I think I’m going to be sick....  She jumped up and raced to the bathroom.

As she pulled two cups from the cupboard, Janet could hear Brenda retching.  “What would be best at a time like this?” she asked herself.  “Mint?  Chamomile?”  Finally she settled on Tension Tamer™.  “When will she ever learn?” she thought.

Brenda finally emerged, looking wan and shaken.  She sat, cuddling the warm teacup with both hands.  “Thanks, Janet,” she whispered.  “You’re such a good friend.  I don’t know what I’d do without you.”

She seemed to settle herself, and then reflected, “He seemed so perfect.  Not just tall, dark, and handsome, but so articulate, so intelligent, so sensitive.  He convinced me that we shared so many hopes, so many dreams.  We were going to walk together into a new world.  And now it’s all gone wrong.”  She raised her eyes, and she had the look of someone staring into an infinite, sucking void.

“It’s not fair!” she screamed, and then burst into a new set of tears, this time hot, scalding tears of rage.  “He betrayed me, he turned his back on me, he acted as if I didn’t even exist!  And now he expects me to be enthusiastic when he turns up at my door.  When I’m not, he accuses me of being unfaithful!  After all the money I gave him, after all the calls I made on his behalf, all the friends I nagged to give him a job!  I walked the streets for him!”  

“You gave him money?  How much money, Brenda?” demanded Janet, shocked.

“I don’t know,” said Brenda despondently.  “A lot.  Sometimes a check.  Sometimes my credit card.  He just always needed a little more.  Every bit was critical, you know.  He kept saying he was desperate.  He depended on me.”

“Brenda, you work in a daycare center.  He’s a lawyer.  And you were giving him money?  When this is all over, he’ll be even richer, and you’ll be no better off than you are now.”

“It was never about me,” Brenda said.  “It was always about making the world a better place.  The common good.”  She looked up.  “You think I’m hopelessly naive, don’t you?  You think I’ve been a sucker for the same old line.  As soon as he was elected, he stopped calling.  He found new friends.  But I just thought that he was really busy getting settled in, that he still cared, that he was still true, that he would keep his promises to me.

“But I finally got tired of waiting.  He never had time for me and my friends.  He surrounded himself with the same people I thought we were hoping to replace.  He kept so many of the same policies he attacked during his campaign.  I still gave him the benefit of the doubt.  I told myself I might be exaggerating.  Blowing minor things out of proportion.  So I made myself sit down and put together a list of ways he had changed.  When I finished, I could hardly stand to look at it, it hurt so much. Now he’s in trouble, and he’s angry because I’m not satisfied with the way things are going.  He says that I need to fall in line, that I’m hurting him, and I’m the only hope he has.”

“Oh, Brenda,” said Janet sadly.  “Sweetie, we’ve been through this before.  You’ve got to learn sometime.”

“I don’t know what to do!” shrieked Brenda.  “Why does it always come down to a choice between being assaulted by people whose entire political philosophy revolves around greed and aggression, or being betrayed by people who claim to care about fairness, community, and peace?”

© Tony Russell, 2010

Brenda’s list (admittedly incomplete and a work in progress) :

• Instead of the change he campaigned on, he actually kept Bush’s Defense Secretary, Robert Gates, and Bush’s favorite warrior, Gen. Petraeus, as his leading voices on national security policy.  For all the rhetoric, we are still at war in Iraq, and waging expanded campaigns now in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

• Instead of repudiating Bush’s landmark embrace of  “preemptive war,” Obama used the occasion of his Nobel Peace Prize acceptance in Oslo to specifically endorse it as a strategy.  His “Peace Prize” speech was seen over most of the globe as a glorification of militarism.

• After criticizing the Bush administration for its use of torture and promising to comply with a court order to release Pentagon torture photos , Obama moved to block any investigation of the torture, denied the release of the photos, and has worked hard to help cover up this violation of human rights and international law.

• Obama has incorporated the most heinous and undemocratic features of the Bush administration’s police-state policies, including support for “extraordinary rendition,” domestic spying, and the holding of terror suspects indefinitely, without charges.

• Despite campaigning on behalf of the struggling middle class, with its millions of unemployed and underemployed, he has shown none of the urgency his administration demonstrated when Wall Street investment firms, banks, and auto makers were threatened.

• Instead of taking steps to embody the hope he campaigned on, he has done nothing to stop the endless drumroll of home foreclosures.

• Instead of using his “stimulus bill” to drive work on alternative energy expansion, environmental improvement and restoration, or to build permanent social assets, as did the CCC and the WPA, he aimed 90% of the new jobs created toward traditional, existing private businesses.

• During his campaign, Obama championed the public option for health care and opposed forcing people to purchase private insurance; once elected, he ruled out the public option before negotiations on health care even began, and supported mandating the purchase of private insurance.

• During his campaign, Obama promised to negotiate health care reform in public sessions televised on C-SPAN; once elected, he negotiated behind closed doors.

• Instead of the change he campaigned on, he turned his economic policy over to Tim Geithner and Larry Summers--the same Wall Street corporate insiders who helped get us into our current mess--and only accelerated the widening of the gap between the haves and the have-nots.

• Obama promised to close Guantánamo within a year; that hasn’t happened.

• During his campaign, Obama supported ending the Cuban embargo; in office, he has ignored the embargo, allowing it to continue.

• During his campaign, Obama promised to reopen negotiations on NAFTA; once in office, he has done nothing, perpetuating the status quo.

• As a Senator and candidate, Obama courted labor and supported the Employee Free Choice Act; since being elected, he has done nothing to secure passage of EFCA, which will be dead in the water once these mid-term elections hand Congress over to the GOP.

"Obama's Plan to Raise Taxes on Wealthy Meets Fierce Opposition"

President Obama’s plan to raise taxes on the wealthiest 5 percent while cutting taxes for the remaining 95 percent has raised fierce opposition nationwide. Protests against the proposals are scheduled later in the month in major metropolitan areas coast to coast. Organizers expect the largest turnout since the futile demonstrations of 2003 against a U.S. invasion of Iraq. Officials in New York and Los Angeles both anticipate turnouts of more than a million demonstrators.

Rep. David Camp of Michigan, the top Republican on the Ways and Means Committee, said that with unemployment exceeding 10 percent in many parts of the country, numerous former workers will have time on their hands to show their opposition to the increase. “As CEOs slash workforces to maintain their company’s bottom line, that frees up huge numbers of people to show their support for maintaining the status quo,” he said.

Evan Rouse, a teacher whose contract will not be renewed for next year because of budget cuts, was among many local citizens protesting the tax increase for the rich. “Those at the top need our help,” said Rouse. “I feel their pain.” Facing the possibility of losing his health insurance for his family of four, and of having his mortgage foreclosed, Rouse remained upbeat in his support of the well-to-do. “I just think it’s unfair to put people in a position where they might have to rethink the purchase of a Rolex or downsize their yacht,” he said.

Bibi Weinhart, a local socialite, appreciates the outpouring of support from across the community.

“It’s so heartening to see the housekeeping staff at hospitals and universities, Hispanic landscape workers, retail clerks, fast food servers--just the whole range of little people who make our lives easier--come to our defense,” she declared. “I’m giving our nanny and housekeeper an extra hour for lunch to attend the local rally.” “They can make it up on the weekend,” she added. “They understand that my friends and I regularly donate our cocktail dresses and sportswear to thrift stores once we’ve worn them a few times. We have a social conscience; we’re not ogres.”

“It’s not just the increase in the tax rate that’s so unfair,” contends local real estate developer Max Wilmoth. “The president also wants to keep us from using tax havens to avoid paying taxes. That’s a double whammy. My friends and I salt away part of our capital gains on a little tropical island, thinking we can hide it from the IRS, and then along comes this Obama fellow, breaking an unspoken compact between the rich and our government. Wealth has its privileges, and avoiding taxes is one of them.”

“It’s not the principle,” he added, “it’s the money of the thing.”

Wilmoth knows what he’s talking about. The top tax rate people pay for money they earned at work is 35 percent. But the top rate for income from dividends and capital gains is only 15 percent. So the super-rich are taxed a much lower percentage on much of their income than their cooks and chauffeurs pay on their earnings.

“That’s as it should be,” says Wilmoth. “ It’s all about job creation. It’s how we can afford so much help. Obama is trying to take us back to the fifties, when people in the top income bracket paid more than 50% of their income in taxes. Who would want to go back to those days?”

Rouse, the math teacher, agreed. “Just think, if we had kept those fifties tax rates, we could have afforded universal health care, maintained the levies in New Orleans, kept from robbing the Social Security system, cleaned up the environment, and invested in education,” he said. “It’s frightening even to contemplate. The preference of every ordinary voter I know is to line the pockets of the rich instead of squandering money on those kinds of programs. Where are this administration’s priorities? I’m organizing the staff of my school. We’ll show up en masse to oppose Obama’s budget.”

“I never imagined he’d actually follow through on his campaign pledges,” added Rouse. “He would never have been elected if people had understood he was serious about this kind of change.”

Don Hagerman, an investment banker, joined in praise of the usually-silent Americans who are flocking to the defense of the elite. “Who knew there would be this overwhelming popular support for people in our tax bracket?” he asked. “We thought we were dependent on thousands of lobbyists and hundreds of millions of dollars in political donations to make our case. But it turns out the voice of the people is more powerful than the cries of cash, and it’s making itself heard.”

The cause of the rich is being aided by Republicans in Congress, who are nearly unanimous in their opposition to Mr. Obama’s proposals. “ When we cut taxes for the rich and shifted the burden of the budget to the poor and the middle class, that was intended to help everyone; when Obama wants to cut taxes for the lowest 95%, that’s class warfare!” declared Eric Cantor, R-VA, the Minority House Whip.

“President Bush, over a period of eight years, fought for a series of tax cuts for the wealthy, tax cuts that helped forge the economy we have today,” Cantor continued. “How quickly people forget.”

© Tony Russell, 2009