I found out about that chart in the first post from Rachel Maddow, who got it from Ezra Klein's blog. One of her fans sent her a new chart. This shows the same thing, that when the dems are in charge our incomes rise a lot more than when pubs are in charge. But in this chart he lays it out when the dems are in charge of the House, or the Senate, or the Presidency, or have it all. Ezra's chart dealt only with the Presidency.
You see, the Republicans are lying to you, when they say the Democrats are tax and spend they mean the dems tax rich people and spend it on the other 95% of us. The taxes for us 95% don't change a whole lot, not a lot of room for change, but the top tax rate can change dramatically. All through the 40's and 50's the top tax rate was around 90% for all income over $400,000 - and what happened in the 50's? We had a strong growth that created a strong middle class for the first time, in fact, most of the country moved up from poverty to the middle class.
In 1980 Reagan dropped the rate down to around 25%, which made the rich very, very happy. Of course, the deficit and our debt grew faster than ever before in American history and he had to raise taxes. He's known for lowering taxes but a lot of people are surprised when they hear he then raised taxes 4 times during his 2 terms. His voodoo economics simply didn't work.
The big lie from the Republicans is that they got the middle class to think the raising or lowering of taxes was about them and not the rich. There are 2 ways a modern economy can function, the rich can be taxed at a high rate in order to supply the 95% of us with a variety of services, like roads, schools, police, military, welfare, medical care, etc. Or all the tax breaks can be for the rich which funnels all our money from us 95% upward to the rich, so they can get richer and richer. Since Reagan took office until today the top 1% saw their incomes increase by 250%, while the bottom 95% of us saw our income drop by 6%. Productivity increased quite a bit as well but the workers who are working harder and better don't get to reap the rewards, it all gets funneled up to the rich.
The end results of Republican economic policy is a total collapse. It happened once back in the 1930's and we had the Great Depression as a result, and happened again at the end of Bush's watch but we were saved from another depression by Obama's economic policies. So that instead of the Second Great Depression we got the first Great Recession. Semantics? No, it really does make a difference. When Bush left office and Obama took over we were losing 700,000 jobs per month - yes, PER MONTH!! Now, we have a net gain of jobs being added by about 40,000 per month.
Unfortunately people are still feeling it because we need to be adding 300,000 jobs every month just to keep pace with the population growth. In other words, 300,000 new workers enter the job market every month. Still, moving from a falling economy to one that is gaining is quite a grand feat and worth giving Obama much credit for.
Why, you ask? Look at this chart below, this alone is more than enough reason:
The blue lines show how much more we will all make under Democrat rule. Unless you are in the top 5% - those making over $200,000 a year - you WANT the democrats in and should dread the idea of Republicans gaining power again. Look at how bad it’s been lately, that all came from Republican policies going back 30 years but topped off by 8 years of George Bush
And make no mistake, Obama’s stimulus worked, it kept the economy from going over the cliff. It’s hard to make the argument that it would have been much worse without the stimulus, but I’d like to think most human beings are capable of at least that much abstract thought. We would all be in the second great depression right now if it wasn't for Obama.
What will the Republicans do if back in power? Tax cuts for the wealthy and subpoenas for everyone, shutting the government down. If tax cuts created jobs we wouldn’t be in this mess now because the tax cuts have ALREADY been there for 10 years and fewer jobs were created under George Bush's watch than any other president.
If you look at the chart you will notice that even the top 95% make more under Democrats, so why do the rich support Republicans? Because Republicans will lower tax rates. The majority of the money made by millionaires and billionaires comes from investments, which are taxed at a straight 15% rate. It used to be 20% under Clinton, so they have been making out like bandits over the past ten years. And instead of saying “OK, we’ve done really well for the past ten years, we should turn it around and help the lower 95% get a bigger cut of the pie, that’s only fair, after all.” What they really say is “KEEP YOUR HANDS OFF MY MONEY AAAARRRGGGGHHHH!!!!”
So vote Democratic if you want your income to go up, vote Republican if you want it to do down. And remember that while the tax breaks for everyone are over at the end of this year Obama wants to lock them in place permanently for everyone making under $200,000, but letting the tax breaks end for the top 95%. The Republicans want to continue with the tax breaks for the wealthy and are threatening to not vote for middle-class tax relief by itself. Those tax breaks for the wealthy mean an extra $100,000 per each million of income in the pocket of millionaires.
It really pisses me off that Obama is now taking the blame for Bush's crap.
Bush trashed the economy and bailed out the big banks. When Obama came into office he attached the caveat that the banks had to pay us back, Bush just gave them the money, no strings attached. But now everyone blames Obama for the bank bailout. It was already a law passed by Congress when Obama took office.
Obama kept the economy - and likely the entire world's economy - from going off the cliff. We'd be in the Greater Depression if McCain had been elected.
Jeff Shesol writes about the differences between Obama and FDR:
Heading into his first midterm, Roosevelt, too, faced an ailing economy and critics blasting him as a socialist. Jeff Shesol on how he beat the odds—and what Obama needs to tell America now.
FDR was not subject to a mid-term disaster that Obama seems to be heading toward, because he had vision.
One of the main reasons FDR prevailed—then and thereafter—was his ability to paint a clear, consistent picture of the kind of country he wanted America to be, the kind of country we needed to be in the industrial era.
....
In his inaugural address, President Obama spoke of a “new era of responsibility,” but soon dropped the idea in favor of another unifying theme (wrapped in a laundry list, inside a mixed metaphor): a “new foundation… built upon five pillars that will grow our economy.” The pillars—financial reform, education, clean energy, health care, deficit reduction—tell us a lot about his priorities, but little about his basic objectives. Where does this all lead? What defines Obama’s America? Absent a clear answer, Obama has, in effect, asked the country to infer his goals by inductive reasoning—to assume that on the basis of policies A, B and C, Barack Obama seeks X, Y, and Z.
I'm not sure if Obama is lacking in vision or is just unable to communicate it. What he has done is a number of individual acts, each that stands on it's own. It adds up to something very similar to what FDR did, but they don't reflect an overall vision for the country, nor do most people even know what he's done.
I sure hope he can turn this around. If we have fewer Democrats in the House and Senate things will jsut get tougher for him.
Ezra Klein talks about Obama's accomplishments on his blog, talking about the cash for clunkers program, which was wildly successful in every possible way:
But the policy wasn't popular. Few liked it. Some thought it socialism. Some thought it cronyism. Which presents, of course, a difficulty for the White House: Saving millions of jobs and the American auto industry at an ultimately very small cost to the taxpayer is the sort of major policy accomplishment you should be able to run for reelection on. But what if people don't really understand that you did it, or that it worked, or that it didn't cost them much?
This isn't the only time this has happened. Obama changed health care in America, the biggest accomplishment of it's kind since Medicare was passed in 1964, he should be riding high off of that, but he didn't get the credit he should have.
Republicans bashed him and what they called "ObamaCare" they called socialism. It seems like those so upset over socialism haven't a clue what it means because there is nothing socialist about the new health care bill, and that upsets those on the left. We all wanted a single payer system but Obama took that off the table right away, then we wanted the public option but he sold that option to the health care companies so they wouldn't oppose him.
And people are still complaining about the government getting in between you and your doctor even though there is no way for that to happen. It will STILL be what it's always been, your insurance company getting in the way of you and your doctor. That's because the government has little to do with any of this except to subsidize some people who are too poor to meet the insurance companies outrageous fees.
Why do so many still think absurdities about ObamaCare? Because the Republicans are excellent at getting their message out and Obama is very feeble at it. The right wingers lie all the time and because there is a huge amount of right wing media out there the lies get told over and over until many people believe it. But Obama's message doesn't get told very often at all.
Obama and every member of his administration should be out there talking themselves up 24/7 but they don't do it. The single sound bite they get out gets lost in the conglomeration of of media out there these days. Obama has accomplished a lot, most nobody knows about and the rest are unpopular because the right wing has lied about it.
He's been busy, Rachel Maddow goes over the list and it's impressive. A lot of progressives are upset because of the things he didn't do and seem to forget what he has done. Even something as simple as removing the ban on stem cell research shows why we need a Democratic president over a Republican one. Obama didn't put the public option in the new health care bill, which is serious but no one has been able to do as much since Johnson passed Medicare back in 1964. Yes, there have been disappointments but I'm not sure any other president could have done more under the circumstances.
Tonight Rachel Maddow decided to give the speech she really wanted President Obama to give last night. All I can say is - too bad Rachel isn't our actual president.
Obama's "brand" is competent government, that's one reason so much is expected of him, and this particular disaster is probably the worst possible for him because he has limited choices on what he can do. That's why it's essential he give the appearance of being in charge even if there is little he can do.
A lot of this is the media's fault. I've been watching the TV coverage carefully all along and my constant question has been "Where are all the boats out there sopping the oil up?" An Obama representative was on Meet The Press this morning saying there were 1,400 boats out in the Gulf doing all kinds of things to get rid of the oil. Well, then, WHY THE HELL HAVEN'T I SEEN THAT!! Or even heard it. We see the footage of the oil hitting the marshlands over and over and over, but pictures of boats in the Gulf are few and far between.
It's been my suspicion for a while and this adds to it, that the corporate media is doing it's best to deliberately put Obama in a bad light. They ignore news that would make him look good and focus only on news that makes him look bad.
But Obama is helping them. He believes in substance over appearance so he doesn't spend much time boasting over his accomplishments when he should have everyone in the administration announcing them every second of every day. I thought he had learned that but apparently he hasn't.
Make no mistake, I am not a big Obama fan, it's clear he is just another corporatist, but there have been dozens of things that show why it's better to elect Democrats over Republicans, but few people know about it. Taxes are the lowest they have been since the 1950's because Obama has lowered them (I got an extra 20% off my taxes this year), but when the Tea Party people were polled 80% of them thought he had raised them.
Jim DeMint was right, the health care reform bill has been Obama’s Waterloo, Good Ole Boy Jim just didn’t realize that Obama was playing the part of Wellington and the GOP were Napoleon.
I thought this summit thing with the Republicans, Democrats and the President was going to be a farce and it pretty much was, but I was also pleasantly surprised. The one good thing about it was Obama’s performance. He was strong, decisive and in charge, it was clear he had - finally - taken over health care and was going to get it done, no more nonsense. We’ve only been waiting for a year for him to do that, with a lot of people saying he needed to grow a pair.
Well, today he did. He dominated the debate, clearly pushing the Republicans around. He called them all only by their first names, that was absolutely brilliant, McCain really didn't care for that at all. He let them know they were in the White House and he was the president and he trumps all of them. I’ve never seen him be so forceful and commanding before, good show.
And he would not let the Republicans get away with their usual talking points (lies). Every time they told their lies he corrected them, strongly. He was so strong he was barely being polite and made sure he got his point across that the Republican talking point was completely wrong. And he did it over and over again. I’ve been wanting the Democrats in general to do that for years, instead they always just let the Republicans win the propaganda war.
One part that really stood out was when one idiot Republican kept saying how Congress should have high deductible insurance plans along with Health Savings Accounts, that way they would have skin in the game and be more responsible in their health care choices, implying that it would work well for America, too. Obama said that’s easy for him to say because he makes $160,000 a year, but that idea just isn’t viable to the farmer making $40,000 a year. The IR (Idiot Republican) came back and tried to make the point again and Obama slapped him down again and did it several times. The IR came across as this rich guy completely out of touch with 95% of the American public (because he was) while, for the first time since his Inauguration, I saw Obama acting as a true, and impassioned, advocate for the working man, for the struggling middle class. Instead of a supporter of the corporations.
At the end Obama gave a little speech to the press, the gist of which was he appeared to realize that the Republicans were never going to support the health bill, that it wasn’t in their political self-interest to do so. It’s about time he gave up on his idea of bi-partisanship. I’m feeling more hopeful in regards to both Obama and health care reform than I have at any point up until now. It finally looked like he understood the situation and knew what he had to do to get things done.
I have been a major critic of Obama from before he was even elected, he's far too conservative for me. This video shows him trying to get tough with the banks we have bailed out. It's relatively minor action but at least it's something and at least it something where Obama isn't in the back pocket of Big Money. Let's hope he does more.
Obama got totally dissed by the Chinese today in Copenhagen, to a degree that would never have happened in the pre-Bushian world. But good ole George lowered the bar so far world leaders think they can fuck with us now. It really makes my blood boil to see an American president treated that way, how far we have fallen. On the plus side Obama seemed to have rallied a bit and got a conversation going, but afterwards he looked visibly shaken. Rachel and Andrea Mitchell report:
And then there is Senator Inhofe. He wanted to go there and talk about global warming being a hoax. No one wanted to listen to him and one reporter called him ridiculous. Man, that's all we need, more embarrassing Americans abroad:
The administration has unveiled new plans to help the auto industry. It will entail a complete re-organization of Gm and Chrysler - “shared sacrifice” is what Obama called for, which means the re-negotiations of union contracts. And he also wants the head of GM to step down.
Excuse me???!!!! Is Obama serious? Now I’m having very serious doubts about his ability to get us out of this economic mess - he doesn’t seem to understand what caused it and what has to change.
I don’t mean that any of those things he wants the car companies to do are wrong - what I’m mad about is why didn’t he and Geithner make these same demands of the bankers and Wall Street guys and AIG??!!
When it came to the AIG bonuses they said “Oh, we can’t do anything about it, they have contracts.” Yeah? Tell that to the auto workers union members who also have contracts. They will tell you contracts aren’t sacred, in fact, they might even tell you that contracts are worthless. Except - they only seem to be worthless for a working man, if you are rich then your contracts will not even be questioned.
And why is the head of AIG still there? Actually the guy in there now is new and can’t be blamed for all the stuff that went on before he got there. But what about all those guys who got those bonuses? You know, the guys so indispensable they not only can’t be fired but we have to give them millions of dollars just to keep them around - who are the same guys who engineered a huge part of the problems. Or the people at all those over corporations?
Where the HELL is the “shared sacrifice” over at Wall Street? Can we even have any kind of “shared sacrifice” as long as the rich guys aren’t part of it?
On top of that he gave the 2 auto companies 60 days to turn things around or the hammer will fall. But Wall Street is given 5 times as much money with no demands on them at all. They don’t even have to account for where the money went.
All the people who have caused this financial meltdown are still there making far more than any auto worker ever did and are being handed billions of dollars with absolutely no strings attached.
UPDATE: Turns out that although the head of GM was fired by Obama he will be walking away with a $25 million golden parachute. Think the union people renegotiating their contracts will see the “shared sacrifice”? Think about it, working people making the HUGE fortune of $50,000 per year are asked to take a pay cut while the head of GM walks away with more money that any of them will ever see in their lifetime? GM stock went from around $30 per share to around $2 per share during his tenure. That's worth $25 million?
In his inauguration speech Obama mentioned all of America:
We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus - and non-believers.
I wrote about this in an earlier post. Many of us atheists were quite pleased that we would be included as Americans, we usually aren't. However, there are still a lot of people who think we aren't part of America: Non-believers
Earlier this week, Jackson was a guest on the popular conservative Christian radio show 'Janet Parshall's America,' where a succession of callers, many of whom identified themselves as African-American, said they shared the concern, and were perplexed and put off by the president’s shout-out to nonbelievers.
Gee, what a terrible thing for Obama to acknowledge that we exist and are actually citizens. I wonder what Rev. Jackson wants to do, round us all up and put us in ghettos? Maybe just shot on sight? Fortunately, in a poll on the same site 73% say they weren't offended by Obama's remarks.
Everyone seems to be having a problem with Obama's desire to include everyone in his America. Including atheists is going too far for some. Did they not understand what Obama meant or did they think he was just kidding?
In his inauguration speech yesterday Obama mentioned us:
We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus - and non-believers.Image via Wikipedia
Not a big mention but I did point it out when I reviewed his speech. I liked it but didn't think it was any big deal. IsThatLatin over on Wrong In Their Mind Tanks has a very different take on it:
Obama listed the big religions, and ones emerging, in our country, and then, after the briefest of pauses, he added us. I prefer not to read that pause as a hesitation. That pause seemed added so as to prepare the nation for what he was about to add--that he knew it was the first time, that it meant a lot. To my ear, it read like poety--not in some deep, sentimental way, but in it's construct. We were at the end, and maybe some cynics would prefer we were at the start, or mixed in the middle. But that pause, and that final word--"non-believers"--acted as punctuation. To my ear, that word became bigger and louder than the others. Maybe Muslims and Hindus feel the same way, but, as polls show, America hates us most.
I'm not really sure it's that big a deal but I got a real kick out of how excited she was over it, had me smiling for over an hour. And that is something that is always good for me these days.
Now, maybe she will pop over here and explain the name of her blog.
It has been quite a day today, Obama is now the President and he gave one hell of an acceptance speech. I won’t post the entire thing here because it’s too long, but I will comment on some key parts.
Our journey has never been one of short-cuts or settling for less. It has not been the path for the faint-hearted - for those who prefer leisure over work, or seek only the pleasures of riches and fame. Rather, it has been the risk-takers, the doers, the makers of things - some celebrated but more often men and women obscure in their labor, who have carried us up the long, rugged path towards prosperity and freedom.
For us, they packed up their few worldly possessions and traveled across oceans in search of a new life.
For us, they toiled in sweatshops and settled the West; endured the lash of the whip and plowed the hard earth.
For us, they fought and died, in places like Concord and Gettysburg; Normandy and Khe Sahn. Time and again these men and women struggled and sacrificed and worked till their hands were raw so that we might live a better life. They saw America as bigger than the sum of our individual ambitions; greater than all the differences of birth or wealth or faction.
He paints a vivid image of the sacrifices made by our parents and grandparents in order to show that we can’t betray their work nor whine that we can’t do as well. We must keep going and do the same for our children and grandchildren.
Starting today, we must pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and begin again the work of remaking America.
For everywhere we look, there is work to be done. The state of the economy calls for action, bold and swift, and we will act - not only to create new jobs, but to lay a new foundation for growth. We will build the roads and bridges, the electric grids and digital lines that feed our commerce and bind us together. We will restore science to its rightful place, and wield technology's wonders to raise health care's quality and lower its cost. We will harness the sun and the winds and the soil to fuel our cars and run our factories. And we will transform our schools and colleges and universities to meet the demands of a new age. All this we can do. And all this we will do.
And here is his call for action but said in a way that stirs the blood to take on the challenge. No president has made such a call for a very long time, since JFK in fact. And I really want to restore science to it’s rightful place, along with reason and fact-based actions.
What the cynics fail to understand is that the ground has shifted beneath them - that the stale political arguments that have consumed us for so long no longer apply. The question we ask today is not whether our government is too big or too small, but whether it works -
This is excellent and the heart of the speech, I think. He tosses out the mistakes of the past, he tosses out limitations and people with low expectations. He tosses out the Republicans and their stifling ideology. He has changed the rules as well as shining the light on the right, which looks thin and cruel when it’s seen clearly. He tosses out narrow minded ideology in favor of pragmatism.
whether it helps families find jobs at a decent wage, care they can afford, a retirement that is dignified. Where the answer is yes, we intend to move forward. Where the answer is no, programs will end. And those of us who manage the public's dollars will be held to account - to spend wisely, reform bad habits, and do our business in the light of day - because only then can we restore the vital trust between a people and their government.
Nor is the question before us whether the market is a force for good or ill. Its power to generate wealth and expand freedom is unmatched, but this crisis has reminded us that without a watchful eye, the market can spin out of control - and that a nation cannot prosper long when it favors only the prosperous. The success of our economy has always depended not just on the size of our Gross Domestic Product, but on the reach of our prosperity; on our ability to extend opportunity to every willing heart - not out of charity, but because it is the surest route to our common good.
This is something I’ve been waiting for someone to say for a very long time. When you help others it isn’t charity, it’s something that improves the world for all of us. America was at it’s best after WWII when we suddenly had a strong middle class and didn’t have a huge gap between the richest and the poorest. Before then was only rich and poor with hardly any middle class and we are almost there again, and America is not better because the multi-millionaires have become multi-billionaires.
For we know that our patchwork heritage is a strength, not a weakness. We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus - and non-believers.
Ah, he throws a crumb to us non-believers, we don’t see that too often.
Our challenges may be new. The instruments with which we meet them may be new. But those values upon which our success depends - hard work and honesty, courage and fair play, tolerance and curiosity, loyalty and patriotism - these things are old. These things are true. They have been the quiet force of progress throughout our history. What is demanded then is a return to these truths. What is required of us now is a new era of responsibility - a recognition, on the part of every American, that we have duties to ourselves, our nation, and the world, duties that we do not grudgingly accept but rather seize gladly, firm in the knowledge that there is nothing so satisfying to the spirit, so defining of our character, than giving our all to a difficult task.
Here he shows why he wanted to be president even though he is inheriting more problems than any other president has when coming into office. It is when the challenge is the greatest that success is the greatest. The presidents that we remember are the ones who led us when times were bleak and brought us out to the other side. Men like Washington, Lincoln and FDR. All progressives, too. For conservatives we have Hoover and Dubya - yuch.
This is the price and the promise of citizenship.
This is the source of our confidence - the knowledge that God calls on us to shape an uncertain destiny.
This is the meaning of our liberty and our creed - why men and women and children of every race and every faith can join in celebration across this magnificent mall, and why a man whose father less than sixty years ago might not have been served at a local restaurant can now stand before you to take a most sacred oath.
So let us mark this day with remembrance, of who we are and how far we have traveled. In the year of America's birth, in the coldest of months, a small band of patriots huddled by dying campfires on the shores of an icy river. The capital was abandoned. The enemy was advancing. The snow was stained with blood. At a moment when the outcome of our revolution was most in doubt, the father of our nation ordered these words be read to the people:
"Let it be told to the future world...that in the depth of winter, when nothing but hope and virtue could survive...that the city and the country, alarmed at one common danger, came forth to meet [it]."
America. In the face of our common dangers, in this winter of our hardship, let us remember these timeless words. With hope and virtue, let us brave once more the icy currents, and endure what storms may come. Let it be said by our children's children that when we were tested we refused to let this journey end, that we did not turn back nor did we falter; and with eyes fixed on the horizon and God's grace upon us, we carried forth that great gift of freedom and delivered it safely to future generations.
The idea that we sit in an emotional and economic winter, filled with ice and storms, is a powerful image. But he has not appealed to our fears the way Bush did. He did not tell us to go shopping. This was Bush’s biggest failure, that when he had the nation with him, Democrats and Republicans alike, he asked nothing of us, no sacrifice or challenge, just to go shopping. People want to be doing something to help overcome our problems, we would have all responded to calls for action, but none ever came.
Obama is made of better stuff. He understands hard work and overcoming challenges and calls out to what is better within each of us. Bush couldn’t do that because there isn’t anything better within him. There is no nobility, no desire for sacrifice. In his circles all anybody wants is power and money and they aren’t too concerned about how they achieve it. I can’t even describe how much of a relief it is that Bush is no longer in the Oval Office, it’s relief so strong it borders on joy.
I’m very optimistic about Obama, mainly because he’s really smart. He might be the only person alive today who is both smart enough and charismatic enough to pull us out of the headlong dive that the neocons have put us in.
Keith Olbermann does another special commentary, this one on why Bush and everyone in his administration has to invvestigated and prosecuted in the Obama administration. On Rachel Maddow she talks to Jonathan Turley who says that if we don't charge Bush that he could get arrested if he travels abroad and we would be looked on as a rogue state.
Cover via AmazonJonathan Alter, who has been on Countdown and Rachel Maddow Show often as well as on many progressive radio shows, wrote a book called "The Defining Moment: Franklin Roosevelt and the First Hundred Days". It's been said that Obama read the book several times and was very impressed, and he has used the phrase "This Is The Defining Moment" several times.
This is something I've wanted to see, that Obama realized that we are in a situation eerily similar to when FDR entered the presidency in 1932. It's important because FDR gave us 50 years of prosperity and a large middle class for the very first time. It only started falling apart when Reagan came into office and started dismantling all of it, which has led us directly to where we are now.
My favorite economist Paul Krugman wrote a long article on this called "What Obama Must Do" and brought up what FDR did. Image by Getty Images via DaylifeBut he had more detail:
The last president to face a similar mess was Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and you can learn a lot from his example. That doesn't mean, however, that you should do everything FDR did. On the contrary, you have to take care to emulate his successes, but avoid repeating his mistakes.
He then goes on to say that creating universal health care would be his biggest legacy:
Back in 1993, when the Clintons tried and failed to create a universal health care system, Republican strategists like William Kristol (now my colleague at The New York Times) urged their party to oppose any reform on political grounds; they argued that a successful health care program, by conveying the message that government can actually serve the public interest, would fundamentally shift American politics in a progressive direction. They were right — and the same considerations that made conservatives so opposed to health care reform should make you determined to make it happen.
Think for a moment about what Kristol said - they should oppose health care not because it is bad for America but because it is good for America. It would destroy their myth of government always bad and turn us in a proghressive path. He was perfectlyt willing to let people die due to lack of health care in order to advance the Republican political agenda. This is why I call Republicans evil.
Universal health care, then, should be your biggest priority after rescuing the economy. Providing coverage for all Americans can be for your administration what Social Security was for the New Deal. But the New Deal achieved something else: It made America a middle-class society. Under FDR, America went through what labor historians call the Great Compression, a dramatic rise in wages for ordinary workers that greatly reduced income inequality. Before the Great Compression, America was a society of rich and poor; afterward it was a society in which most people, rightly, considered themselves middle class. It may be hard to match that achievement today, but you can, at least, move the country in the right direction.
What caused the Great Compression? That's a complicated story, but one important factor was the rise of organized labor: Union membership tripled between 1935 and 1945. Unions not only negotiated better wages for their own members, they also enhanced the bargaining power of workers throughout the economy. At the time, conservatives warned that wage gains would have disastrous economic effects — that the rise of unions would cripple employment and economic growth. But in fact, the Great Compression was followed by the great postwar boom, which doubled American living standards over the course of a generation.
So we need health care and robust unions, the very things Republicans fight tooth and nail to stop. I very much recommend reading all of Krugman's article. It is long but easy to read and chock full of details. You will understand just how bad off we really are right now and what needs to be done to fix it.
There is an excellent article on Alternet by David Michael Green where he tells it like it has been for the last 8 years. He tells us what has really been going on:
This president -- and indeed the entire movement of regressive politics these last three decades (which I refer to as Reaganism-Bushism) -- can only be properly understood as class warfare. Its purpose was never to make America a better place. Indeed, if we define America as a country belonging to its 300 million inhabitants, then the purpose was actually precisely the opposite. The mission of this ideology was in fact to diminish, if not impoverish, the vast bulk of these citizens so that the already massively wealthy among them could become obscenely wealthy.
And to make us docile so we wouldn't go marching out on the streets against them. When a family is struggling just to survive there is nothing extra.
And, where Washington was concerned, that meant that government was to become a vehicle to serve not the 300 million, but rather the 300 families at the top, who already owned the most but craved ever, ever more. It was a cash cow that could provide enormous riches to buccaneers who make the Somali pirates look like Campfire Girls in comparison. Social Security is not, from this perspective, a program to serve seniors and keep a roof over their heads during their final decades of life, but rather a pool of money which the government had been kind enough to already collect and centralize, just waiting for barons to come along and robber it. Deregulation is another important purpose of the federal government. Protecting the long-term integrity of the economic system from the exploitation of short-term Ponzi schemers with their derivatives and their garbage loans was so mid-20th century, you know? And then, chief among all purposes of government under Reaganism-Bushism, are the tax cuts for the wealthy, even if -- especially if -- they can be made more massive by borrowing from suckers' -- I mean, citizens' -- children in future generations.
Think about it, they literally stole your children's future because that was the credit card they used to make themselves richer than ever. But the meat of it is this:
In short, if you merely hate the Bush administration for driving the country into penury, making us hated around the world, bringing on a global economic crisis, ignoring when not exacerbating a looming environmental catastrophe of planetary proportions, killing a million Iraqis on the basis of a host of lies, letting New Orleans drown, trying to wreck Social Security, sleeping through (at best) the worst terrorist attack on our shores, allowing -- when not assisting -- the Middle East in going up in flames, or dividing our country internally -- if that's "all" you've got against these guys, then you have no idea how bad it really is.
I've been talking about this for years but, sad to say, far too few people really understand what's been going on and how close we are to becoming a third world country. I just hope Obama is good enough to pull us out of it.
Follow the link at the top and read the whole article. It's very long but filled with good stuff.
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