He should have fought this one. The richest 2 percent of the country just got an extension of tax cuts they didn't need at great cost to us all. President Barack Obama should have been fighting against the self-interest of the very wealthiest Americans long before this. So he is now backed into a corner, and just made a compromise that he thinks is the best deal possible when up against the clock. He got some good things for working families in the payroll tax cut, the extension of unemployment benefits, various refundable tax credits, and the important middle class tax cut. But the president is now presiding over the great redistribution of wealth that has been going on for a very long time -- the redistribution of wealth from the middle and the bottom to the top of American society -- and leaving us with the most economic inequality in American history. This will only grow larger with the Obama "compromise."
Had he fought earlier, he could have answered the issues concerning the protection of the small businesses who are the primary job creators. Obama could have focused the higher tax rates on the very rich and protected those more in the middle who are really creating jobs. But now, most of the people who will be keeping their tax cuts are not job creators. After all, how many jobs will the Goldman Sachs traders create, or the hedge fund gamblers, or the celebrities who dominate our lives? Almost none. On the contrary, they have been the "job destroyers," having wrecked this economy and the lives of so many people.
Let's be clear here. At the root of the crisis was just a handful of banks -- not the banking industry, not business in general, but a handful of very rich people taking big risks. They are already getting richer because of our taxpayer bailout, and now we're giving them more tax breaks and estate tax bonanzas. There is socialism in America, but it's only for the rich. Risk has been socialized for some of the very richest people in the country, and then, the "free market" pain is distributed to all the rest.
The rich are too big to fail in America, while many in the rest of the country really are failing. The president did want to keep some things for average Americans in this compromise, but he lost the big battle a long time ago by not fighting the people whose greed, recklessness, and utter lack of concern for the common good have led us into this terrible crisis. He waited too long to fight, to force a national debate on economic fairness, to counter the distortions of the Republicans who clearly don't mind adding huge sums to the deficit as long as it benefits their wealthy patrons; and who will now seek to reduce the deficit by adding more pain to the rest of us -- especially those on the bottom and increasingly shaky middle rungs of the economy. And now, he and the rest of us are all backed into corners without a way out.
Our national economic philosophy is clearly now to reward the casino gamblers on Wall Street and to leave the majority of the country standing outside the casino with a tin cup -- hoping that the gamblers are at least big tippers. More tax breaks and benefits for the very wealthiest people in America is not only bad economics and bad policy; it is fundamentally immoral. In a letter to the president signed by over 100 religious leaders, we said just that.
So far, they haven't listened.
Jim Wallis is the author of Rediscovering Values: On Wall Street, Main Street, and Your Street -- A Moral Compass for the New Economy, and CEO of Sojourners. He blogs at www.godspolitics.com. Follow Jim on Twitter @JimWallis.
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Philip Goldberg: The Cosmic Dancer: Obama and Shiva
Is how Christ says to judge FALSE PROPHETS
He said nothing about how cool the Talk or how many other false prophets back the fix.
1) Take from the rich and give to the poor
2) Take from the poor and give to the rich
So let's be clear which one we all prefer.
Each speak of REWARD for EFFORT and ABILITY they disagree with who owns the means of production or distribution of wealth.
History has taught they all can be cruel without FAIRNESS, EQUALITY and JUSTICE.
Unfortunately, at no time in our history has the Wealth owned so much, allowed stock market appreciation with no TAX while workers savings accounts are TAXED as income. Capital Gains so little while the least worker pays more in INCOME and PAYROLL TAX. Where the worker PAYS BANKS, CORPORATIONS, FOREIGN Investment in Windmills and Solar Powers, and our Power Companies. Then after purchasing the investment, get charge for the commodities the free market or wind and sun generate
In short Capitalism and our Society of Life, Liberty and Pursuit of Happiness IS SOLD DOWN THE RIVER. Never to return.
The rich do pay more ABSOLUTELY only, because the own 50% plus of everything. Why if you make $100K a year you are in the top 20% earning 49% of all income.
YOU like a future where the children can only rent ASSETS and never OWN. It is progressive either way because, it has yet to happen, but is moving faster in the direction of a FEW OWNING it all every day if it is not made equal for those work the HARDEST and CONTRIBUTE the most
This form of Wealth Accumulation is Monarchy, Royalty or Oligopoly not capitalism
Machiavellianism may be the right title
he gave that away during his run for election when he praised reagan.
his staff has given it away how he really feels about liberals and progressives but being weak and spineless like they are most still dont get it how he really feels about them.
you see americans politicans are a reflection of their voters and the demos are weak. think of reid as the poster child for the demos. he could have given all americans medicare with 51 votes.
corp fascism has come to america through the reelection process. money buys politicans thing.
Cecil Rhodes spoke of this Supply Side Economicism the best in 1890. He to was for repealing DADT
We will kill the terrorist anyway
We will kill the Taliban anyway
We will give tax cuts to the Rich anyway
I will get paid for Public Service, but you can give it away for free anyway
Don't his followers get it yet - HE'S A REPUBLICAN, who ran Democrat because he knew the GOP wouldn't allow a man with so much melanin in his skin on their presidential ticket.
He did a good job pulling this off for so many years - but tax gifts to the wealthy form the Reaganomicist Holy Grail, and he' not going to let them expire without a fight.
The president DID get 53 votes out of 100. He couldn't get the extra 7 votes he needed. That isn't peanuts. That isn't a sign the president has "abandoned" his supporters.
If I put myself in the President's shoes, realizing that if I do not compromise here, just three weeks before Dec. 31, millions of unemployed Americans will go hungry and be put out on the street because they have zero money to live on, and millions of middle class working Americans will see their taxes go up significantly and knowing Republicans will NEVER budge on this issue, and Democrats have been unable to get the votes they need just three weeks before Dec. 31...I would have compromised, to keep millions of Americans from being put out in the cold, homeless.
I HATE the tax cuts for the wealthy Republicans extorted, which will add to our deficit. It is depraved. BUT the fact is this President brokered a DEAL that saves millions of Americans from being destitute right now, in the eleventh hour before the point of no return. A "deal/compromise/alternative" that was better then what was coming from Congress.
That's a fact.
He could have let Pelosi and Reid to the same DEAL. After all there was no DEAL. Same old No public option and No from the republicans and the big O, nothing is not a deal. It is nothing
Perhaps I assume wrong, but chances are that if you can afford to leave a message on this forum you might be in a good situation, where you can afford to stick to your idealist "guns". GOOD FOR YOU. I agree with you in principle, but our reality required a compromise.
I have an unemployed fiancee who cannot find a job, so we literally have to choose which bills get paid every month. There is no more belt-tightening for us.
It stinks that the GOP chose to pursue the "no compromises" stance but if the President HAD called their bluff and things had gotten worse, then Obama would have been blamed for THAT debacle also. Obama was caught between a real rock and an idealist hard place, and he took action the best way he could.
What could he have done differently? Would it have worked?
We got nothing. That is not a DEAL, it is a steal
Sacrifice is not stealing from the middle and giving it to both ends (getto and rich)
It's absolutely imperative that citizens with my kind of wealth and political power give it back to the people. At the same time, and if it's not too late, the rich and powerful of this Nation should immediatelÂy begin building massive moats and razor-wire fences around their homes and places of business to protect themselves from violent poor folks, dispossessÂed middle-claÂss, and various left-wing organizatiÂons.
Also, send a message to our friends at the Supreme Court that the Second Amendment should be revised to read: A well regulated Militia financed and beholden to the rich and powerful, being necessary to the security their homes, places of business and very existence, the right of the well-healeÂd to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.
It's fascinating!
Blame the rest of it on Republicans.
But the basic description? Some truth there. Like his idea of "collection of wealth in the hands of the few." What is that but the last two decades of trickle-up?
Each to his effort and ability -not America
MASSES over the few -not America
When you are told there are those "too big to fail," understand that the prerequisite is a never-ending buffet of those "too little to succeed".
Surely a country's greatness can be no more effectively demonstrated than the transmission of every civic burden to those least able to shoulder them, for only they--apparently--have the strength of character to overcome them, the majority of our well-heeled having been convinced of a symbiotic relationship to wealth which renders them not only necessary but exceedingly delicate. In short, they come to believe their money (and hence the nation) needs them as much as they need it. Consequently, it is incumbent upon those of the rest of us to provide them with any protection they deem prudent.
Surely class warfare will not long endure with victory so close.
Equal Tax Code
60% of production for all the SWEAT and GENIUS
DUMP Obama
But it makes as much sense as "cutting your nose off to spite your face" or "2 wrongs do not make 1 right"
Bingo.
Unfortunately, those of us, myself included, who viewed Barack Obama as a transformative president were guilty of projecting our own desires onto him rather than seeing him for what he is -- a centrist in the Clinton mode who will keep the worst of what the crazies want to do at bay but who will not redefine the public discourse in this country or change the underlying political power dynamics that have been at work for the last 30 years.
That was a week ago and they have not returned
Will never do that again, never