Democracy: April 2010 Archives

14 Ways A 90 Percent Top Tax Rate Fixes Our Economy And Our Country

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By Dave Johnson on April 29, 2010 8:55 AM 1 Comment(s) Vote 0 Votes Favorites

This post originally appeared at Campaign for America's Future (CAF) at their Blog for OurFuture. I am a Fellow with CAF.

A return to Eisenhower-era 90% top tax rates helps fix our economy in several ways:

1) It makes it take longer to end up with a fortune. In fact it makes peoplebuild and earn a fortune, instead of shooting for quick windfalls. This forces long-term thinking and planning instead of short-term scheming and scamming. If grabbing everything in sight and running doesn't pay off anymore, you have to change your strategy.

2) It gets rid of the quick-buck-scheme business model. Making people take a longer-term approach to building rather than grabbing a fortune will help reattach businesses to communities by reinforcing interdependence between businesses and their surrounding communities. When it takes owners and executives years to build up a fortune they need solid companies that are around for a long time. This requires the surrounding public infrastructure of roads, schools, police, fire, courts, etc., to be in good shape to provide long-term support for the enterprise. You also want your company to build a solid reputation for serving its customers rather than cheapening the product, pursuing quick-buck scams, cutting customer service, etc. The current Wall Street/private equity business model oflooting companies, leaving behind an empty shell, unemployed workers anda surrounding community in devastation will no longer be a viable business strategy.
Continue reading 14 Ways A 90 Percent Top Tax Rate Fixes Our Economy And Our Country.

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Prop 16 - A Monopoly Wants To Stay That Way

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By Dave Johnson on April 20, 2010 11:15 AM 0 Comment(s) Vote 0 Votes Favorites
Proposition 16 is being sold -- and sold, and sold, and sold -- as a "right to vote."  The Prop 16 website makes it sound so reasonable,

"It requires voter approval before local governments can spend public money or incur public debt to get into the electricity business."

So reasonable!  But that isn't really what Prop 16 does.  Proposition 16 is entirely financed with million of dollars from one company - PG&E - and it is intended to perpetuate their monopoly.  

Here is the background: Currently municipalities can choose to form Community Choice Aggregation Projects that let communities buy power for their citizens, instead of using PGE as an intermediary.  The result is that people can buy power at a lower cost, and can choose to buy a mix with more renewable energy.  PGE, of course, doesn't like that.

Prop 16 takes away a community's right to choose to buy their own power and imposes a 2/3 vote requirement.  A community can usually gather a majority to make such decisions but a 2/3 requirement means that PG&E can swoop in and spend some money to get a minority to oppose such a decision, and kill it.  

California already has a 2/3 requirement to pass a budget, and we know how that is working.  Democracy is suppressed and budgets can't pass.

We know monopolies don't work in our society.  While we're trying to create competition to encourage the development of clean, renewable energy sources, PG&E is taking your rate-payer dollars to try to squelch that effort.  PG&E wants to stay a monopoly, continue to use dirty fuels which cause climate change and keep the competition out.  That's not very democratic now, is it?

We need to say no to big corporations that use their money (rate/taxpayer in this case, actually) to bully us with phony claims that really serve to perpetuate fat payouts to executives while undermining consumer choice.
 
Let's not be deceived. Spread the word that Prop 16 is about protecting corporate fat-cats, not you and me, not democracy, not fair competition.

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What Conservatives Mean By "Freedom" and "Big Government"

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By Dave Johnson on April 16, 2010 1:29 PM 0 Comment(s) Vote 1 Vote Favorites
Many of us have wondered what conservatives mean by terms like "big government" and "freedom." Today the vice chairman of the California Republican Party gives us a hint. In Constitution guarantees freedom, not a cushy life, published in the Rev. Moon's Washington Times (do Christians know he's writing there?), Thomas G. Del Beccaro writes,
   
Today, politicians literally speak of the "rights" of people as they attempt to guarantee a certain standard of living for their constituent-subjects. Of course, most recently, the federal government took on the role of guaranteeing that Americans had a minimum standard of health care because, to the government, it was a right - however unenumerated. 
Now, it would be one thing if a government could actually guarantee such standards of living, but it cannot. After all, before the Great Society was enacted to take on the War on Poverty, the government-measured poverty rate was 14 percent.The pre-Great Society federal budget was less than $130 billion.Since then, we have spent tens of trillions of dollars in good intentions and have a nearly $4 trillion budget, yet the poverty rate remains virtually the same 14 percent. 
 In the process, of course, we have diminished freedoms immeasurably - whether by forcing people to pay for those trillions or by being forced to be subject to government rules....
So "big government" means more rights for Americans, like the right to health care. And by "freedom" he means not being "forced" to help out other Americans. (Of course, the poverty rate was much lower before conservatives took over the government a few years back...) 

Conservatives opposed civil rights for women, minorities, and now gay people. They opposed and fought to the last against Social Security, Medicare, unions, public schools, libraries, parks, worker safety rules, food safety riles, consumer safety rules, bank regulation, even public health programs. These are the "cushy life" big-government programs he complains about. And by "freedom" he means not pitching in to pay for things like roads, bridges, education. 

Government is We, the People watching out for, empowering and protecting each other. It means WE make the decisions and "big government" means WE make decisions that help US. Think of the alternative to We, the People making the decisions and you will realize what opponents of government are pushing for. 

 Apparently conservatives want us all to be disposable economic units with no value beyond what we are able to consume and how much money we make for the wealthy few.

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This page is an archive of entries in the Democracy category from April 2010.

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