I started out this morning writing a diary about how the American people were once again robbed of meaningful discussion on economic policy and transformational politics when John Edwards appeared on "This Week" with George Stephanopoulos. But wouldn’t you know I was also trying to listen to The Young Turks on Air America.
Suddenly through the fog of early morning coffee and blogging I heard Ari Berman’s name and so I stopped typing and started listening. Ari was on talking about his new piece for "The Nation" called "Spinning Hillary Centrist." You can read the article at http://www.thenation.com/
and while you are there check out Thomas Palley's "The Flaws in Rubonomics".
Suddenly the two topics merged into one.
Like the article that he did on Max Baucus, Ari ferrets out who Hillary’s advisors and sponsors are. But it wasn’t the article that was the most fascinating for me, it was rather the actual discussion between Cenk Uygar, Ben Mankiewicz, and Ari Berman. Cenk is a former Republican and became a Democrat partially, he said this morning, because of deals like NAFTA and welfare reform. Ben, whose father worked with the Kennedys, brings an inside baseball view to the left wing radio show. I love this show despite its occasional centrist tilt. Cenk, trained as a lawyer, has a brilliant mind with great passion for justice. He bashed the Democrats regularly for not filibustering and now for not hanging tough. He can sniff out baloney better than most and does devastating interviews because he actually listens and asks really good questions like he did this morning. He and Ben generally let the interview take its natural course i.e. they "go with the flow". You can see and hear them on line on a 24 hour loop. Ari’s interview is in the last half hour of their 3 hour show.
http://www.theyoungturks.com/
What happened this morning was a fascinating interview where Cenk admits that Ari was actually making him lean towards Hillary because Cenk was a big NAFTA, free trade guy. When Ari contended that Bill Clinton’s economic policies were in some ways as corporate as Reagan and Bush I, Ben said "I don’t buy it." To which Ari replied "I feel like I’m talking to Bill Kristol." I laughed at that one. But it was a great example of establishment thinking butting up against an economic populist in a tough, but polite way.
Ben tried to make the argument that at least there would be some labor guys and environmental guys at the table in a Hillary Clinton administration. And, boy, did Ari punch back on that. It’s something we all should remember. He said, "Well, great, so we get two labor guys surrounded by 20 corporate guys.
Then he made a great point. He said that no matter who is the next Democratic president, that person will have to fight the corporatists in their own party. Like the Sirota article yesterday about the Dems who did not support Byron Dorgan’s bill to allow FDA approved drugs to be imported from other countries, this is a constant battle with entrenched corporate welfare for any Democratic president. http://www.workingassetsblog.com/...
Ari added that the important question to ask each candidate is "How hard will he or she fight for the American public over these powerful corporate entities?" Clinton was the thrust of his article. From his research he couldn’t see her taking this fight to the maximum. When asked specifically about the other candidates, he believed that Edwards would "fight hard" and he wasn’t sure yet about Obama since he is relatively new to Washington.
In contrast to the discussion above on how politics influences policies, we got Karl Rove attack dog questions from George Stephanopoulos. Instead of an in depth discussion of what Edwards meant by "keeping capital in the U.S.", we got "aren’t you just a big hypocrite cuz you love hedge funds" attack ad fuel.
I could see Karl Rove in the background rubbing his hands together like Uriah Heap and then dancing around the room to a hip hop beat as he sang, "Hypocrisy, Hypocrisy, yeh that’s the ticket. That’s the ticket ... that’s the ticket...to lick it...the Edwards ticket...
Politics is supposed to be a discussion amongst us of how we want our lives together to look like. But instead we get some sort of Restoration Comedy filled with fops and gossipers. We don’t talk about now, we speculate about what would happen if...
My take on the discussion that Sunday was that Edwards isn't personally attacking Wall Street Republicans when he talks of looking at our tax code. He's asking them to be patriotic again; to be the civic minded Kevin Phillips type Republicans, the Eisenhower Republicans. Not the extremely radical Reagan Republicans. He's asking Wall Street to join Main Street and build our country back up again. Slogan anybody? Joining Wall Street with Main Street to Repair Our Ship of State, perhaps?
When I worked in a large agency in Hollywood, I sometimes despaired. Some of the bad behavior was hard to take. Despite my clients with brains and a heart like Emma Thompson and Alan Arkin, the day to day grind could be a bit slimey. On a particularly chum filled day in the shark infested pool, I confessed to Alan that it was hard for me to say that I was an agent. He pooh poohed that and complimented me as a fair and principled person. He said, "It’s not what you do as a occupation, it’s HOW you do it." So there is something to be said for how you work in hedge funds or the insurance business or in Hollywood or in cancer research.
There are principled used car salesmen and selfish creeps in cancer research.
I found an article recently about hedge funds and philanthropy that makes a similar point.
http://www.philanthropy.com/...
It’s a very interesting article with many great quotes. I liked this section especially:
The Fairfield County Community Foundation, in Wilton, Conn., counts seven hedge-fund managers among its donors, with single contributions ranging from $25,000 to $3.5-million, says Susan M. Ross, the foundation's president.
"It's a pool of donors we have just barely begun to identify and try and determine how we can be of service," she says.
While yesterday's donors might have been satisfied that community-foundation officials knew best how to spend their gifts, hedge-fund donors want to know exactly what was accomplished by their donations, says Ms. Ross.
"We have to be able to present them with philanthropic opportunities that have the kind of result metrics they are going to want," she says. "They are not interested in giving back in a general way."
And hedge-fund donors are not necessarily interested in starting a donor-advised fund at the foundation, because they often prefer to manage their own money, she says. Instead, several donors have made contributions to the foundation's efforts to help women and girls and to improve low-cost housing options. "They are not donors as perhaps would have been common here 10 and certainly 15 years ago," says Ms. Ross.
She adds: "They are really saying, 'Show me how I can make a difference on this issue.'"
Philanthropy is one way that wealthy Americans have been and can be patriotic about something other than war. And it’s good to see that some people are giving back in practical meaningful ways. But philanthropy or after tax relief that trickles or even gushes to communities is not the transformational way that Americans want their politics to go now. Americans want meaningful change. It is time for a "The Great Turning" as David Korten describes in his book by the same name. It is time to turn away from empire and back towards democracy. And it will demand sacrifices all around, but will give us the great gift of pride in our accomplishment.
So the other way to get Wall Street involved and keep capital in the U.S. is to have Wall Street help repave Main Street with good jobs and good pay. To invest in trickle up and demand side economics which creates an atmosphere to restore the ability to dream and to rise out of poverty and to be a real neighbor. With good jobs, a community will begin to revive civic institutions and civic pride. We can really feel that we are all in this together not drifting in inner tubes waiting for the tide to raise us up to where we can hoist ourselves aboard somebody's yacht. It brings back memories of civic leaders working in their communities again like in "It’s a Wonderful Life." It brings back a bit of Norman Rockwell to a nation caught in the Hieronymus Bosch’s painting "The Garden of Earthly Delights". http://en.wikipedia.org/...
I can't and don't speak for John Edwards, but I don't believe that he was saying that the super rich should get screwed. But the time for the rest of us getting screwed should end. The tax burdens should not continue to be shifted to the middle and lower classes. The tax burden should not be shifted to people who work for a living whether it's pushing paper or pushing a broom; whether it's working as a machinist or a surgeon. And CEO’s should not be shifting their risks from themselves to their employees.
Edwards is saying that right now the people who work for a living (which is almost all of us) deserve the same kind of fair taxes that the uber rich get now. As an example, I think any combat vet, firefighter and cop should pay no taxes or at least never pay any more than what the capital gains tax is. Oh, and add teachers.
The extreme radical Reagan experiment is a bust. Drowning government in the bathtub only left scum around the edges and cockroaches coming out of the drain. What happened was that they decimated the public's ability to regulate anything from our food supply to our electricity to our media. Our labor laws also went down the drain and with it the 40 hour week for which our workers fought and died.
We have seen from Washington only angry co-existence that has led to bad compromises since Reagan poisoned the waters of Washington. Doubling the payroll tax for workers in 1984 was a huge screw up by the Democratic leaders. It was that day that the mantra "wealth valued more than work" was firmly written into our psyches and our tax code. It was written in stone next to the Ten Commandments.
Edwards is the candidate that I see moving this country forward by uniting corporate America with the rest of us by asking them to do their share; to come out of their gated communities and become Americans again. Reagonomics, and its slightly more benign form called Rubonomics, put the ship of state in reverse and now we are stuck in the muck. With the other candidates I see us shifting into neutral and asking us all to look at the muck and think it's a clear clean lake. Maybe we can paddle our way out. But not likely. I'm looking for someone to shift gears and get us going forward up and out of the muck and on to the high seas by rolling up his sleeves, picking up the repair manual and getting it done.
Enough metaphors. Quite simply, Edwards is the candidate for me who gets it. He gets that this is a unique time to make big changes. The way to do this is to form real workable coalitions with new partners (yes, even rascally hedge fund managers) and not the same old ones. But he also has been very clear that each and every one of us is going to have to sacrifice. Some will have to give more money. Some will have to give more time. Some will have to drive less. Some will have to whine less. But we cannot afford to sit around in this simmering pot any longer and think it's a jacuzzi. Jump out my fellow frogs. Grab a hammer and hammer out justice all over this land. Edwards promises to fight hard and we can see him daily growing in strength as a warrior, but he also demands the same of us. I tell you that being a supporter of his is exhausting, but like flopping into a chair at the end of a hard day with a cool one, it feels really good.
Which side are you on,my friends? Which side are you on?