This appeared first at Open Left, but I wonder if it applies to California as well? Is it already too late for California?  Have the conservatives done so much damage that the state is just bankrupt and ungovernable?

When you sell the farm, the farm's gone.

Is it already too late for America?  I'm starting to think that the anti-tax, anti-government conservative movement that started in the mid-70s, elected Reagan and led to the terrible Bush Presidency may have effectively destroyed the country, leaving it bankrupt, corrupt,ungovernable, ruled by a wealthy elite -- and we're only now just starting to realize it.   To cover tax cuts we stopped maintaining the infrastructure and started borrowing.  To satisfy their  hatred of government we increasingly stripped away rule of law, regulation, and belief in one-person-one-vote.  We are seeing the consequences of all of that coming back to roost now.

Reagan left us with massive debt and ever-increasing interest payments. Bush left us with $1.3 trillion deficits and a destroyed economy that would force further increases in the borrowing for years - to be blamed on Obama.  The "free marketers" gave away our manufacturing base that will take decades and massive capital investment to recover.  Obama can try, but it may just be too late to do anything about the borrowing.  We need massive investment in jobs and infrastructure, and a national economic/industrial plan.  But, with their own Reagan/Bush debt as ammunition, conservative ideologues continue to block every effort at investment to get out of the mess we are in.

The conservatives destroyed the regulatory structure of the government.  They removed the inspectors, administrators, regulators and replaced them with corrupt cronies.

The conservatives killed off, contracted out or sold off - "privatized" - so much of our in-common resources and heritage of public structures.  Water systems, oil and mineral leases, government functions, elements of the military, etc.

The conservatives destroyed the rule of law, leaving behind public perception of rule by cronyism, favoritism and mob.

The conservatives destroyed public understanding of democracy, leaving behind a one-dollar-one-vote system that their Supreme Court just formalized, along with a corporate media that works to keep people uninformed.  And to make matters worse, now the telecoms can argue before Federalist Society judges that their "speech rights" are violated by rules making them carry labor and progressive websites over the internet lines they control.  And forget about the idea of them ever letting anti-corporate-rule candidates raise money on "their" internet.

I hate to reference Friedman but this from last week has been sticking in my mind.  He says the world is looking at the mess in the US and is turning away from democracy as a result.

[Foreigners] look at America and see a president elected by a solid majority, coming into office riding a wave of optimism, controlling both the House and the Senate. Yet, a year later, he can't win passage of his top legislative priority: health care.

"Our two-party political system is broken just when everything needs major repair, not minor repair," said ... who is attending the forum. "I am talking about health care, infrastructure, education, energy. We are the ones who need a Marshall Plan now."

Indeed, speaking of phrases I've never heard here before, another goes like this: "Is the 'Beijing Consensus' replacing the 'Washington Consensus?' " Washington Consensus is a term coined after the cold war for the free-market, pro-trade and globalization policies promoted by America. ... developing countries everywhere are looking "for a recipe for faster growth and greater stability than that offered by the now tattered 'Washington Consensus' of open markets, floating currencies and free elections." And as they do, "there is growing talk about a 'Beijing Consensus.' "

The Beijing Consensus, ... is a "Confucian-Communist-Capitalist" hybrid under the umbrella of a one-party state, with a lot of government guidance, strictly controlled capital markets and an authoritarian decision-making process that is capable of making tough choices and long-term investments, without having to heed daily public polls.


It is too late to recover?  

Accountability is a first step.  If the current administration would hold the corrupt actors accountable, maybe we could begin to restore governance.  And the public would know who to blame for what has happened to us, enabling them to support policies that will get us out of this.  But so far they won't.  If they won't even investigate torture and illegally invading a country why should we expect any accountability for the financial collapse, corrupt government contracts, bribery, embezzlement, corruption and other crimes of the Bush era?

More equitable distribution of the fruits of our economy is another step.  Our system worked so much better back when the top tax rate was 90%.  The returns from our investment in infrastructure were more widely shared.  And back when it took many years to build a fortune businesses had an interdependence with their communities.  Executives needed the schools and roads and other public structures functioning well. They needed long-range business and community planning.  But just imagine trying to do something about the concentration of wealth today.

So where do we go from here.  Is democracy over?  Is rule of law a thing of the past?  Is predatory monopoly control by the largest corporations the way things are and will be?  Does the world now move to governance by a wealthy elite?

Or is the winter and the rain and the snow just getting to me?

What are your thoughts?


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Remember last year when the Republicans laid out the price of a budget deal and it was a giant tax cut for the biggest corporations?  So in the middle of a revenue crisis they forced ... less revenue.  Well, imagine that you are a struggling small or medium business in California, and the Republicans gave your nemesis even more power to crush you.

Corporate taxes are on profits. So a tax cut means that the more profitable companies pay back less to the government for their use of the roads, schools, police and fire protection.  The very infrastructure that supports new businesses is weakened.

Meanwhile, smaller businesses that are struggling don't pay corporate taxes, so tax cuts do nothing for them. And small businesses that make modest profits only pay modest taxes, and don't care.

On the other hand, the giant monopolistic corporations that are chewing up small businesses, destroying local and regional retailers, take those tax cuts and use them to turn themselves into even better small-business-destroying machines.

For example, the giant Wal-Marts are destroying local and regional retailers.  But it is the Wal-Marts, not the local and regional retailers that are the beneficiaries of tax cuts.  This is why the "usual suspects" who get their campaign funds from the giant companies, and work with lobbyists for the largest corporations are the same ones who always advocate corporate tax cuts.

Businesses Need Customers Not Tax Cuts.



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Voters in Oregon passed tax increases on corporations and the wealthy.  This was in spite of well-funded corporate campaigns against the measures.

Measure 66 raises tax rates on individuals who earn more than $125,000 and couples with incomes greater than $250,000. Measure 67 increases business taxes. Fifty-four percent of voters had approved both measures with more than 80 percent of the vote counted late Tuesday.

At Calitics Robert Cruichshank writes, Oregon Voters Deliver Game-Changing Victory,

The opposition ran a well-funded campaign, led by Nike, Columbia Sportswear, and other big businesses. They were joined by Ari Fleischer's FreedomWorks and the libertarian publisher of the Oregonian, who used to be at the Orange County Register before it went belly-up. Together they ran a campaign arguing that the tax increases would worsen unemployment. But 55% of voters have rejected that, and instead showed that when a truly progressive campaign is waged, the right-wingers can be beaten. Even on taxes.

... Their message was deeply progressive:
These reforms protect nearly $1 billion in vital services like education, health care and public safety. These funds preserve class sizes, save jobs for teachers, provide seniors with in-home care, and provide health care for thousands of Oregonians through the Oregon Health Plan. In this time of economic crisis, we must protect those who have been hit the hardest - seniors, children and the unemployed - without putting more of a burden on the middle class.


It's a message that works nationally. And it's a message that'll work here in California. Voters don't like seeing their neighborhood schools close, or mass layoffs of teachers, or ending care for the disabled, or kicking kids off of health care. They don't want it, and are willing to raise taxes to prevent it.

The important lesson to learn is that the public wants government: good schools and roads and courts and police and fire protection.  And the public understands that building solid public structures is the key investment in future prosperity.

California leaders can now feel free to lead and understand that the public is behind them if they raise taxes on the wealthy and corporations in order to find needed state government programs.

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The Supreme Court has unleashed the unlimited use of corporate resources to influence our elections.  This doesn't immediately change our state and local elections, which already suffered under a great deal of corporate influence.

In the understatement-of-the-week the Sacramento Bee writes, Supreme Court decision could affect Barbara Boxer race,

California state campaign finance rules already allow corporations and unions to give directly to independent expenditure campaigns without limits, so the court decision will have little impact on state contests.

But the decision overturns federal rules requiring that corporations and unions establish political action committees, or PACs, to spend on elections.

. . . "It certainly changes the Boxer race," Stern said. "It means corporations, without setting up a PAC, can spend as much as they want opposing Boxer."

let's see, will unlimited corporate resources unleashed against Boxer make a difference?  Do ya think?

Meanwhile, over at Calitics, some of the diaries express a stronger opinion:

The Day Democracy Died

"The outlook isn't pretty after today. Elections will never work in the same way as they have before, and power has taken a giant swing towards the right."

Did Democracy Die in America

We already have a dominance of corporate spending in CA elections.  It really takes place in the machinations involved in the ever increasing number of initiatives, where the airways fill with misleading hyperventiated negative commercials that only Gary South could love.  

Take any major issue we are dealing with: Health Care and Climate Change come most to mind, and figure out how the will of the people is anything more than the will of the corporation.  Consider the power of Exxon-Mobil and or Chevron vis-a-vis climate change legislation and offshore drilling.  Consider the power of Stewart Resnick regarding water.

It is universally agreed that in the short-run this will bring a huge advantage to Republican candidates, who already are big supporters of one-dollar-one-vote corporatism over one-person-one-vote democracy.  However, in the long term this really means the parties will become factions of corporate interests lining up against other factions of corporate interests.  Perhaps ExxonMobil on one side and Chevron on the other, each trying to buy legislation to give them advantages over the other.  The people won't be players any longer.


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Lessons From Massachusetts

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The Republican candidate won the special election in Massachusetts to replace Senator Kennedy, giving them 41 votes.  The Republicans have filibustered every single bill this year, and this clinches their ability to block the President's agenda.  If this sounds familiar to Californians, it's because in California the Republican minority is able to block budgets, and we have seen the results.

There are lots of sophisticated explanations for the election's outcome, mostly involving people being upset at particulars of the health care bill.  But I don't really think that the people who voted for the Repubican candidate were all that well informed about differences between the House and Senate versions of the bill, the "public option," or other intricacies of in-progress legislation.  

Instead, when looking for the reasons people voted this way, I think we should take the Republican candidate's word for it.  On his website he says it is for the following reasons:

At his September 12 announcement of candidacy for the U.S. Senate, Senator Brown articulated a core set of beliefs that guide his thinking.
  • Government is too big and that the federal stimulus bill made government bigger instead of creating jobs
  • Taxes are too high and are going higher if Congress continues with its out-of-control spending
  • The historic amount of debt we are passing on to our children and grandchildren is immoral
  • Power concentrated in the hands of one political party, as it is here in Massachusetts, leads to bad government and poor decisions
  • A strong military and vigorous homeland defense will protect our interests and security around the world and at home
  • All Americans deserve health care, but we shouldn't have to create a new government insurance program to provide it
Here's the thing.  Most of the assumptions underlying these statements are simply wrong - factually incorrect.  They have been pounded out by a corporate/conservative misinformation machine that just makes stuff out and puts it out there on TV, the radio, email forwarding and every other channel they can find.  

But the facts are that the federal stimulus didn't "make government bigger," the "out-of-control spending" occurred under the previous Republican president, we spend more on military than every other country in the world combined - and it is the largest government spending program and contributing to the debt, and the health care reform specifically doesn't create a government insurance program (it should) and saves money rather than increase spending.

The Right has a message machine that has been repeating misinformation and getting away with it, because: 
1) The leadership of the other party has let them get away with it.
2) There is no comparable megaphone with which to refute the misinformation.

The same is true here in California, and we may be heading for similar election turnovers.  Republicans repeat things that simply are not true, but there is lack of leadership from elected democrats and almost no megaphone with which to counter the untruths. The example we regularly bring up here is the assertion, repeated over and over, that businesses and rich people leave California because of taxes and regulations.  Of courase this just isn't true, but is formulated in a way that sounds like it could be true if you just don't think about it, and leads to large corporations having even more power over our lives and the wealthy having an even greater share of all income and wealth.

Of course, people and businesses that do leave the state do so because of the high cost of living, which is the result of so many poeple wanting to live here.  It just costs more to live in a nicer place.  And as I wrote last week, it is a nicer place because of the government and the public structures that We, the People built.  In other words, California is a nicer place because of those regulations and taxes!

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Support Women's Health Care

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We are passing this along:

We Will Not Be Thrown Under the Bus!

On January 13th, Not Under the Bus, the premier women's health care campaign from the Women's Media Center, is asking women everywhere to take action against the discriminatory, anti-choice language that exists in both the House and Senate health care bills. These bills would effectively roll back women's health care coverage in the area of reproductive rights. It is up to all of us to make sure we don't get thrown under the bus by politicians in Washington.

Here's how you can TAKE ACTION on Wednesday, January 13th:
Tweet: Take Action today with @NotUnderTheBus. Demand that women's rights be protected in #HCR: http://bit.ly/7u15IG #underthebus

Post our video to your Facebook page, Blog, or status:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gUtLTB6zKbo

Donate your Facebook Status to raise awareness:
"Today is Take Action Day with NotUnderTheBus.com. What are you doing to demand pro-choice, fair health care? http://bit.ly/7u15IG Take Action. Write an op-ed, call your Senator, and sign a petition. Demand that women's rights be protected in health care reform."

Sign and Share Our Petition: Tell lawmakers in Washington to keep women's health care safe, fair and covered and urge them to strike any anti-abortion amendments from the final bill. http://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/do-not-throw-women-under-the-bus


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Lots of people want to live in California.  This is a good thing.  Conservatives try to portray this as a bad thing.  Let me explain.

George Will repeats the conservative narrative that people and companies leave California because of taxes and regulations.  He writes,

It took years for liberalism's redistributive itch to create an income tax so steeply progressive that it prompts the flight from the state of wealth-creators: "Between 1990 and 2007," Voegeli writes, "some 3.4 million more Americans moved from California to one of the other 49 states than moved to California from another state."

Actually, any people and companies that move from California do it because the cost of living is so much higher and that is because it is a desirable place to live.  California was the envy of the rest of the country through most of the 20th century.  The best state government in the country used our taxes to build the best public structures -- the schools, colleges, roads, courts, water systems, etc. that attracted the innovative industries and the economy prospered even more.

What conservative propagandists like Will leave out is that so many people want to live here because of what the taxes and regulations created.  These public structures are what attracted so many people and businesses that the cost of living here went up.  They are trying to make people think this is a bad thing, and are trying to make people think the government and the public structures it builds are the problem rather than the source of our prosperity.  In essence they want to sell off what We, the People built and keep the proceeds for themselves.

The social contract used to be that We, the People built up the infrastructure of "public structures" like the legal system, schools, roads, water system, etc.  And this is what enabled businesses to prosper.  Then the businesses and people who did well paid back by pitching in with the proceeds to keep that system of public structures up to date.

It worked.  California built up the best schools and colleges, etc. so places like Silicon Valley and biotech grew up and thrived, and the state became a great place to live, attracting so many people and industries.  But this infrastructure was taken for granted.  Because this system was so solid and well-maintained people were able to start deferring maintenance, cutting everything, etc so that the big corporations and wealthy could have their taxes cut.  (Yes, the middle class got a bit of that through Prop 13 but even that primarily benefited commercial property.)

In essence the state has been living off of the past savings account of infrastructure that was built up in the 60s and 70s.  But now we're in 2010 with a 70's system. The schools are near the bottom in the country and the college and university system has been gutted.

We're STILL just getting by on living off of the last of what we built up in the 60s and 70s, but that is at an end now and the savings account is exhausted.  It is time to start to rebuild the infrastructure we used to be so proud of.  It is time to ask the wealthy and corporations that are here because of what the taxes and regulations built to pitch in again and start to rebuild that savings account of public structures and infrastructure.

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One of the key right-wing priorities is to outsource government functions and privatize whatever they can. We've seen the trend from the early '80's with allowing the healtcare industry to become a for-profit based industry (and how they have profited!), to deregulation of the airlines, charter schools, water systems, war (hence the title Blackwater for the infamous private army that has wreacked havoc on the people of Iraq and elsewhere) to establishment of private prisons to house our criminal population.
 
There are reasons that we have government-run services and programs. Those reasons have been glossed-over or forgotten, but shouldn't be. First, the government, unlike the private sector, is answerable and responsible to the people. Second, there is accountability and "sunshine" or transparency with how these government run entities operate.
 
With none of the above, and with private profit the singular purpose, we lose our ability to control how these programs are run and the impact they have on us as a society. Plain and simple, this is bad for democracy and bad for our communities.
 
Regardless of how it's couched, privatizing our prisons as an excuse to improve our public universities is dishonest at best, and destructive to the fabric of our nation at worst. Assemblyman Ted Lieu provides a look at this as our guest blogger of the day. -- HBJ

The Blackwater Solution to California Prisons is Unacceptable
By Ted Lieu
Lieu.jpg

I agree with the Governor that we need to increase higher education spending so that California spends more on higher education than prisons. However, there are smart ways to reform our prison system, shortsighted ways, and outright dangerous reforms. The Governor's proposal to hand over our corrections system to for-profit corporations is dangerous. We should reform our prison system by better rehabilitating prisoners and reducing California's sky-high recidivism rate. Contracting out government's core responsibility of public safety will not reform our prisons; instead we will endanger the public and cause inhumane consequences.

Religious institutions across the board condemn private prisons as both inhumane and ineffective. The Presbyterian Church USA stated, "Since the goal of for-profit private prisons is earning a profit for their shareholders, there is a basic and fundamental conflict with the concept of rehabilitation as the ultimate goal of the prison system...for-profit private prisons should be abolished." The Catholic Bishops in a resolution stated, "We bishops question whether private, for-profit corporations can effectively run prisons. The profit motive may lead to reduced efforts to change behavior, treat substance abuse, and offer skills necessary for reintegration into the community."

Private prisons are also dangerous, both to prisoners and to the public. In 2003 a report by Grassroots Leadership detailed a range of failures by CCA, a for-profit private prison company, including: failure to provide adequate medical care to prisoners; failure to control violence in its prisons; and escapes.

I voted no last year on the corrections budget bill because it was cutting rehabilitation programs and parole supervision, both of which will result in increased recidivism. The Governor's current proposal is even worse. Abandoning government's core responsibility of public safety by contracting out and injecting a profit motive will result in disastrous consequences. Our nation has already been burned by our experience with Blackwater. California cannot afford to have its own Blackwater problem.


Assemblymember Ted W. Lieu, candidate for Attorney General, represents the 53rd Assembly District, which stretches from Venice and parts of Los Angeles to Torrance and Lomita along the coast. He was elected in September 2005, re-elected in November 2006, and re-elected again in November 2008.

Assemblymember Lieu has led the fight in California against Wall Street's excesses and fought to reform the subprime mortgage system and reduce home foreclosures. As an activist legislator, he has taken on special interests and successfully authored laws in the areas of public safety, child sex offenders, domestic violence, the environment, education, health care, veterans issues, and transportation. Numerous law enforcement, civic, and community groups have recognized Ted for his accomplishments.


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You hear it over and over again from California conservatives, "Cut taxes and cut spending," and "government spending is too high."

So what does this mean to YOU? How does this affect your life?

Simple answer, cutting spending means that your schools, roads, police and fire protection, lines at the DMV, parks, environment, food safety inspections, services to help small businesses and courts all deteriorate. It means that it costs more - much more - for you to send your kids to college. That is what "cut government spending" means.

And in spite of what you think, their promise of cutting taxes rarely means your taxes. There is a huge concentration of income and wealth at the very top, which means that tax cuts really mostly benefit the very, very wealthy. Even the well-known Prop 13, thought of as helping homeowners, shifted the tax burden from the corporate owners of commercial property to middle class citizens. From, Corporate loopholes make Prop. 13 crippling for state:

Thirty years ago, commercial property owners contributed 59 percent of property tax revenues and residential property owners contributed 41 percent. Today, we see a virtual flip: commercial property owners contributed just 43 percent of property taxes in 2008, while residential property owners contributed 57 percent.

Another thing you constantly hear are calls to cut the number of government employees and their benefits. If you think about it, layoffs and pay cuts for government workers (teachers, police, firefighters, road workers, etc.) translates into increasing pressure to cut your own wages as well, plus it means fewer customers for California's small businesses, fewer teachers in our schools, increased crime rates, etc. Cutting their benefits means that your own benefits come under pressure as well.

Conservatives promising that cutting taxes and spending are good for you have held sway for the last few decades. They are always promising that tax cuts will make things better for regular people. But they haven't gotten better. The real tax burden keeps shifting further and further away from the wealthy and powerful and onto the backs of the middle class. Meanwhile the things that our government does for us are reduced and reduced, so life gets harder.

The lesson to learn is: glowing promises of a free lunch usually mean that you are the lunch.


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Dear Friends;

 

If you love and believe in California as I do, and I know you do (!), then help us here at Speak Out California as we work to restore our state's luster and justify its reputation as "the state that invents the future."

 

We experienced it first in Sacramento and now in Washington, D.C.: majority rule has been replaced by minority control. With a 2/3 requirement in California to pass a state budget and 60 votes to pass legislation in the US Senate, the will of the people has given way to the will of a few. And these few are more often the extremists or those controlled by big corporate interests that don't care about anything but their profits.

 

Why are we-the progressive majority of Californians-losing out to the radical fringe of right-wing extremists who are dictating the dismantling of our state's infrastructure, education system, environmental and consumer protections and safety net for the less-fortunate among us?

 

The reasons are clear: The right-wing noise machine is drowning out the more reasonable, compassionate voices who seek meaningful change and a return to the values of hope, opportunity and fairness that made this state -and nation-great.

 

We need to get our megaphone turned on! Our voice that calls for real investment in our education system, protection of our natural resources, environment, healthcare for all Californians and protection against the corporate special interests whose uncontrolled greed and power has set our families, state and nation on the precipice of financial disaster.

 

We here at Speak Out California believe it is time to make our voice heard and to be able to rise above the hysterical din of hateful, selfish rhetoric and focus on what we want our future to look like. We have been a voice for change, explaining progressive values, telling Californians how a progressive approach will benefit them.  We are on the Internet, on the radio, in op-eds, and speaking to groups.  We want to maintain and expand our effort.   WILL YOU HELP?

 

With your contribution of $ 5, $10, $25 or even $100 per month, or a one-time contribution, we can continue to discuss the issues and frame the message from a progressive perspective and increase the size of our own megaphone.

 

The year ahead is full of big challenges and opportunities. There are over 80 ballot measures already in circulation for the 2010 elections.  Included among them are more challenges to a woman's reproductive decision-making including one to define fertilized eggs as "persons", one creating a special constitutional rule for speech based on "biblical authority" and one to eliminate all funding for public schools.  These are just a few of many dangerous and extremist initiatives circulating.

 

Speak Out California has big plans to combat those efforts. We're planning to produce our highly acclaimed Progressive's "One-Stop" Voter Guide. During prior elections, our highly respected guide was clicked over 1.7 million times by people like you and me looking for an honest, straight-forward and accurate progressive perspective on just what each of these ballot measures would do. No hype, no paid advertising, no propaganda, just a clear analysis so we, the people, can decide where we want the future to head and what we want our beloved California to be.

 

Can you help us?

 

Please click here and make your pledge now or send your check to Speak Out California, and send to PO Box 92010Santa Barbara, California 93190.

 

We need your help so we can help you see progressive democracy in action! Let's reclaim our state and regain the megaphone to do it.  That's why we're here. That's why we're Speak Out California at www.speakoutca.org.

 

Please sign up and ask your friends to do so as well.


Thank you,



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Hannah-Beth Jackson

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