This morning, The Washington Post reported on what Americans across the country are being forced to suffer now every time they turn on their TV. The article calls this election season's negative ads "eccentric," "surreal" and my favorite, a "carnival of ugly." The ads stretch and bend the truth, while voters learn nothing about the candidates' ability to forge meaningful solutions to the toughest issues we face.
The rise of "independent expenditures" by the two national-party organizations makes all of this even worse. Groups other than the candidate, like the big national parties and "527s," sweep into congressional districts and fill the airwaves with trash and destruction. The candidates reap the "benefits" and duck accountability all at once! The system is perfectly flawed – and no one really understands where the money for all this ugliness is coming from anyway. Shameful.
This election simply underscores why Unity08's aspirations for the 2024 election are so important. By running a bipartisan Unity Ticket that brings the dialogue back to the center, we believe we can replace the winds of ugly partisanship with a breath of fresh air, and sweep out some phoniness and phonies with it. Campaigns can be won without a countless, mysterious fortune being invested in ugliness. Even more important, mandates can be created for positive answers to crucial issues. One more election like this, regardless of who wins, is too much for me.
Tell us what you think.
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I agree with your position. I just hope those on the left and the right who are writing comments and posting forums will in good faith start thinking of the middle instead of standing pat at the two extremes left or right.
I invite you to sit down in front of your television set when your station goes on the air...and keep your eyes glued to that set until the station signs off. I can assure you that you will observe a vast wasteland. N. Minnow - Chairman of the FCC - 5/9/61.
Some things never change.
The Internet is the antidote to that wasteland. With the right web tools, Unity'08 can be a leader - a true enabler of on-line activism.
We are exited about Unity's proposed "American Agenda." Please provide a time line with milestones so that we can gauge our progress toward making TV in American politics obsolete.
How best to express most succinctly what the problem is for both left and right?
From that, what should a united centrism be all about -- what do we want?
Here's an idea: Let the spirit of Reform be our watchword.
The problem is that over the last several decades both parties, Presidents and lawmakers alike, have forgotten and abandoned principles, have become enamored with power and position, and have put politics over policy.
What we want are institutional reforms for a Congress and an Executive branch that have grown increasingly arrogant and corrupt.
We want politicians who will put the public interest first, who will champion national issues, not local pork projects or the creature comforts of high office.
We all know spending is out of control. But we ignore the elephant in the room -- the Defense budget -- which is the main cause.
But you see the Defense budget is the largest single mechanism for executing a vast fraud on the American people -- the diversion of the majority of tax dollars into the private pockets of the piratically profitable pals of pols.
Instead, we should demand the actual defense of the nation at a cost proportional to the rest of our Federal Budget. What we cannot pay for, we should not undertake.
Perhaps it would have cost less in blood and money to have developed a sane energy policy rather than launch an incompetent war to capture and "stabilize" land and resources we cannot control.
If national security was at all the basis of the Defense budget, we'd have enough troops now to win our two wars and the troops would be properly equipped and led to accomplish their mission. Is there any doubt this isn't going to happen?
But there is ample evidence why this is the case -- fraud, waste, pork and politics breeding failure and incompetence instead of national security, military efficiency and effectiveness.
We don't need new taxes, new sources of revenues. We need to return to putting a national agenda ahead of parochial short-term politics.
The Defense budget is the largest, but not the only mechanism of this fraud. Why, I would ask, is 38 billion dollars a year being given to the Dept. of Housing and Urban Development? And we get what for that?
Of course, we also need to reform the equally fraudulent array of government programs actually designed to benefit corporate interests rather than take care of housing, or patients, the elderly, or to address any number of other serious matters in the public interest.
A kingdom founded on injustice never lasts.
Every man prefers belief to the exercise of judgment.
Shall I tell you what the real evil is? To cringe to the things that are called evils, to surrender to them our freedom, in defiance of which we ought to face.
Some of us were born at night.
I, at any rate, was not born last night.
Here is how this fraud works and why what I'm saying is far, far from a neolithic position.
We ignore this issue at our personal financial peril and certainly at the peril of our parents.
I challenge serious people to come up with specific, economic policy arguments, if they have any.
In a recent speech, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke called social security and Medicare “unsustainable entitlement programs.”
Facing an aging population with longer life expectancies, the federal government, said Bernanke, will not be able to provide promised benefits without huge tax increases, major budget cuts in other areas, or piling hundreds of billions of dollars onto the national debt (i.e. passing the burden onto our children and grandchildren.)
How bad is the emerging entitlement crunch? Bernanke says social security and Medicare “will increase from about 7 percent of the U.S. gross domestic product (GDP) today to almost 13 percent of GDP by 2024.”
That’s a staggering increase in a relatively short time. But remember, there are 78-million boomers who will be running up Medicare bills and waiting for that social security deposit on the first of the month.
Taxing our way out of the problem would mean federal revenues would have to rise from about 18 percent of GDP today to about 24 percent of GDP in 2024, an increase of one-third in the tax burden over the next twenty-five years, according to the Fed chief. Inflicting that punishing level of taxation seems unconscionable, not to mention politically impossible, especially in light of what I've already said about the Defense budget.
Bernanke mentioned another option: reform of the major entitlement programs. He did not give specific recommendations. That is a political issue, and both Presidents Clinton and Bush failed in their efforts to achieve social security reform. Congress just doesn’t have the stomach to cut benefits or raise taxes, especially when the worst of this slow motion disaster will happen on somebody else’s watch, years down the line.
The cuts could come in many ways, including delaying eligibility for full benefits, reducing benefits for more affluent recipients (means testing), trimming back cost of living adjustments, higher co-pays and fees for Medicare. It’s a bottomless bag of tricks. But in the end, many people will not get what they have been promised.
While Congress has no guts when it comes to solving tough problems, they did pass a law requiring the Social Security Administration to send out annual personal statements to workers detailing their projected social security benefits. Yes, the statement says somewhere that the benefits are not guaranteed. But what’s the point in sending it out? It seems morally bankrupt to send out a statement projecting a level of benefits the Fed chairman says is “unsustainable.” When Alan Greenspan ran the Fed he issued the same warning, repeatedly.
Both Fed chiefs also said the sooner action is taken the more time people will have to plan for the downward adjustments. By delaying action, Congress spares itself the political risk, but makes the eventual outcome more painful.
Who is to Blame?
Bernanke and his predecessor, along with this administration's policies, all have exacerbated each of the problems Bernanke enumerated.
It's documented in their own long-range budget projections.
To summarize, the primary long-run budget problems are:
* Revenues. Continuing the 2024-04 tax cuts that render Medicare and Social Security benefits, among other fundamental missions of the federal government, increasingly at risk for those currently and soon to be retired, as well as for the disabled;
* Defense. Maintenance of debatable growth in defense spending;
* Health care. Creation of a new, massive, unfunded addition to Medicare, and a failure to launch a serious inquiry into structural reform of the U.S. health care system;
* Deficits. Excessive deficit spending over the next 10 years, giving rise to permanent increases in federal debt and interest payments.
The most obvious cure is like the elephant in the room no one notices. Instead we only hear from people vested in the vast fraud that constitutes our Federal government the shibboleth of raising taxes, which is merely a boogeyman used to frighten us -- as though there is no alternative to simply taxing us for more money.
We are to assume what we now spend is all justified and proper, are we?
So what is the cause of our problem? It is the unjustifiable amount of money in the Defense Department's budget - a disproportionate amount that cannot be justified by the words "National Security."
It is eminently dooable - just takes political will a dose of reality and a strong stomach.
Do this to prove my point: make a simple pie chart of the Federal budget - look at Defense vs non-defense. Now tell me how you can jusify the proportion.
We don't need new taxes - we need to stop allowing our so-called "representatives" from stealing public money for what amounts to war profiteering by the corrupt military-industrial-congressional death machine.
MFV a TRP Independent
seneca: I just finished reading your two comments. You nailed it. There are about 4 or 5 people who consistently write excellent comments. You are in that group. Keep those ideas coming.
I very much enjoyed your posts - have missed them. I only have a second but thought I might throw one in for discussion. The immediate adoption of comprehensive no-frills universal health care (along the VA model) with means testing for co-pays at all levels/ages would eliminate Medicare and Medicaid entirely as stand alone programs or budget items. Certainly the young and healthy would be paying more into the system than they are now, but these expenditures would largely be offset by the elimination of paying private health care premiums and co-payments.
If we develop on a nationwide scale the capacity (already enjoyed by the VA) to aggressively negotiate presciption drug costs and other outpatient technical services - thus lowering delivery costs across the board, plus expanding the network of government administered hospitals and clinincs, eliminating duplication, excess staff, insurance claims processing departments, etc. - the efficiency on the delivery side would go through the roof. By adding a significant pool of young healthy low-demand funders I believe the health care system (not Medicare or Medicaid as stand-alones) is quite salvageable.
Ditto social security:
1)Eliminate income cap on contributions
2)Include all forms/amounts of income in contribution calculations
3)Means test recipients
Challenge solved. Next?
Mark Greene
Texas Democrat in the Middle
MFV a TRP Independent
Mark: Ditto, just one question on no 3 of social security. Would those who could not pass the means test be refunded their contributions since they would not be receiving benefits? (By the way I don't have to worry about it)
Of course not - these programs are insurance, not retirement programs. They should pay out a substinence level retirement to those who need it - nothing to those who don't. Think of yourself in the shoes of a well-paid 60 year-old Enron or Worldcom employee whose entire retirement was in Enron stock (not prudent but unfortunately common). Before the rug was pulled out they were likely feeling pretty fat and sassy and bitching about having to contribute to a program they thought they'd never need. Will be thankful now they did, and rightly so.
I have a brother in law who was living high on the hog in the 80s, used to joke around in the back of his limo, asking laughingly, "I wonder what the poor folks do?" He's pretty well cratered now, and knows exactly what the poor folks do.
None of us know what will happen tomorrow, and I'm frankly tired of a bunch of greedy bastards looking down their noses at folks who life hasn't treated so generously...
Mark Greene
Texas Democrat in the Middle
It will be extremely difficult to "take away" (my words) SS benefits from those that already have it - whether they need it or not. Would this change in policy allow for a Grandfather clause? Not saying I disagree with your comments... only trying to accomodate/negotiate on a subject that will meet fierce resistance. Of course I am only referring to those that are currently receiving benefits, and are found ineligible to continue receiving SS benefits.
What alternatives could we consider? A graduated release from benefits if one is deemed not in need? A sliding scale for each percentage (in increments of say, 10) above the maximum allowed income? (If you are 50% or above the maximum income, you are automatically terminated from receiving benefits) - or something like that...
We have to be able to consider interests from those feeling the sting (so to speak) - no one likes their money messed with, even if it is only perceived and not tangible.
How can this be addressed so that the people are behind it - even those whose benefits will be cut? I realize that we are talking about people who have a more than adequate income, but the mere mention of taking away SS, is going to cause a HUGE problem, and we need to be sensitive to that in order to garner the support of the greatest number of people.
thoughts?
-Keely
MFV a Sooner-Razor independent
Mark: Thanks for responding, point well taken, have a good day.