There are basically two views of the American people.
In one, we're the patriots ready to do whatever it takes for our country. If a crisis requires sacrifices, we won't flinch when our leaders summon us to make them. We're the people FDR asked not only to fight and die for freedom, but also to pay higher taxes on profits, "to forgo higher wages" and "spending money for things that we want... which are not absolutely essential." We rise to the challenge and ask what we can do for our country.
In the other, we cry bloody murder when anyone tries to take anything away from us. We're entitled to benefits, but we're outraged by costs. We're the mob pointing fingers at everyone but ourselves, the sheep that demagogues herd toward outrage, the puppets that political candidates spend hundreds of millions of dollars to con with outrageous attacks on their opponents and preposterous promises of their own.
For 40 years, the arena where these schizoid embodiments of our nature have battled most ferociously has been energy policy.
In the 1970s, President Carter declared that America's "intolerable dependence on foreign oil threatens... the very security of our nation," and that "every act of energy conservation... is an act of patriotism." In the last year of his presidency, he advocated a course of "pain" and "discipline" including a fee on imported oil that would raise gasoline taxes 10 cents a gallon. The reaction? A hundred thousand copies of the Boston Globe hit the street the next morning containing an editorial about the speech under the headline "More Mush From the Wimp" before the prank was discovered and the title changed to "All Must Share the Burden." Take your pick: Sacrifice is for wimps; sacrifice is for patriots.
At the start of the next century, Dick Cheney dismissed conservation as "a sign of personal virtue," and in the days after 9/11, George Bush told America to go shopping. In the decade since then, New York Times columnist and best-selling author Tom Friedman has pounded on the failure of that administration to use 9/11 to summon Americans to sacrifice and greatness.
Bush blew a priceless opportunity to slam the brakes on America's dependence on foreign oil and to stop financing terrorism with American petrodollars. What he should have done, says Friedman, was to slap a $1-a-gallon "Patriot Tax" on gasoline, then selling at $1.66. With Obama elected, Friedman renewed his call for a tax on gas or carbon. "Today's financial crisis," he said at the end of 2008, "is Obama's 9/11." Now the BP disaster has given Friedman a new peg for his case: "The oil spill is to the environment what the subprime mortgage mess was to the markets -- both a wake-up call and an opportunity to galvanize a constituency for radical change that overcomes the powerful lobbies and vested interests that want to keep us addicted to oil." As the Senate takes up the energy bill this week, expect more calls for a carbon tax from Friedman, as well as from his fellow Times op-ed columnists who also have signed on to that solution: David Brooks, Nicholas Kristof and Bob Herbert.
But so far, Obama hasn't done that. In a speech last week at Carnegie Mellon University, he called for "putting a price on carbon pollution," which has been interpreted as an endorsement of the alternative, complex-to-explain "cap-and-trade" system in the energy bill passed by the House last year. The reason he won't step up to a carbon tax, says Friedman, is political cowardice.
Channeling Malia Obama, he wrote, "'Daddy, why can't you even mention the words "carbon tax"?'" The answer is Obama's fear that Republicans will kill Democrats in the midterm elections by reminding Americans that he wants to raise their taxes. But as Friedman points out, Republicans have already turned "cap-and-trade" into "cap and tax." Whatever Obama supports, and no matter how tepidly he supports it, and no matter how much he tries to hide behind Congress's skirts, the Republicans will continue savaging Obama as a tax-raiser, and the energy industry -- freed by the Supreme Court to buy unlimited campaign ads -- will spend whatever it takes to hammer that message home.
Friedman says Obama can beat them. "The people are ahead of the politicians," he says. We have to abandon "the paralyzing notion that the American people are not prepared to do anything serious to change our energy mix." A carbon tax won't pass unless Obama "gets behind it with all his power, mobilizes the public and rounds up the votes. He has to lead from the front, not the rear." If he summons, as Lincoln did, "the better angels of our nature"; if he tells the truth, as FDR did; if he asks us to step up and do the right thing, as Bush didn't -- if Obama leads, we will follow.
On some days, I believe that. I think Americans will reward sober, brutal honesty way more often than political operatives give them credit for. I think we're yearning to enlist in the war on our dependency on foreign fossil fuel. I think that the bully pulpit, especially as wielded by Obama when he chooses, can be an awesome force.
But on other days, I think there's an empirical basis for politicians' unwillingness to stick their necks out, to give ammunition to their opponents, to be cautious with words and votes. Americans are not only the people who rose to Roosevelt's challenge. We are also the people who give Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck their ratings. I want to believe that we're not the manipulable morons that political ads presume we are, that our educations and our news media are effective countervailing forces against demagoguery. But then I also believed that Americans would reward Walter Mondale for telling the country that cutting the Regan deficit required repealing the Reagan tax cuts for the rich. No voter in that 1984 election can forget the 49-state blowout that followed.
This is my column from The Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles. You can read more of my columns here, and e-mail me there if you'd like.
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Obama, on the other hand, has already had numerous opportunities to embrace his purported vision. Instead of playing politics, he could have held his ground in support of the public option; he could have refused to compromise on his response to the corruption that brought down American banking, and he could have immediately taken control of the BP disaster. But in each case thus far, President Obama has compromised the vision and given in to special interests and business as usual.
I voted for Obama, and I still believe that he has the potential to be the greatest president of my lifetime, but if that’s going to happen, he will have to leave his “good politician†senses behind and take a stand. I agree with Marty Kaplan that the American people will follow a great leader, and that Obama has the bully pulpit from which he alone can reach the masses. Americans are ready for a change, but we need real change — we want honesty, not more politics.
Obama still has the opportunity to unite Americans . . . more: http://www.thinkersjam.com/obama
Statistics show it is people who hate taxes that expect the most from government help when they need it.
Just look at the largest banks who created this mess. The sooner the results of their actions put them in jeopardy, the faster they extended their high hats to receive billions of dollars to help them to keep on trucking, doing the same callous machinations that put the whole of society at risk for their own benefit.
TAXES HAVE TO COME UP AND EXPENSES DOWN. PERIOD.
It's really a thing of perverse beauty when you think about it. Even after 30 years of redistributing wealth to the very top and playing lap dog to corporate power brokers, the Republicans are still able to sell their twisted notion of free marketism.
I am descended from Irish immigrants, and consider myself American. I don't know what that means anymore? I am living in a country that I don't recognize or am able to communicate in or with. What is an american? We are not represented by our government any longer. Businesses of all sizes have forgone their social responsibility for honesty and fairness in exchange for greed and profit. America has become a sea of parona and sharks that forces everyone to be on the defensive. Quite frankly, I am exhausted from being an American, only to find out that someone will tax me for it to save the rest of the world.
It’s no wonder all those new immigrants don’t identify with being American. The strength and spirit of America is our middle class, but the "conservative" policies of the past 30 years have favored the rich to such an extent that the middle class is being squeezed from existence: http://www.thinkersjam.com/robber-barons-built-robber-bankers-destroy/.
1. Higher energy prices will force our Nation away from dependence on Middle Eastern Oil.
2. The additional tax revenue can be added to the National Transportation Trust Fund and help to rebuild infrastructure.
3. Demands for more fuel efficient cars because of higher energy costs will force car makers to get serious about fuel efficiency.
4. Taxes on effluent or carbon taxes make the polluter responsible for the pollution, not the general public.
We cannot continue on the path that we are on. We are in Irag and Afghan, in a large part, because of a failed National energy policy since the days of Reagan. Since Carter was villified for telling American's what they did not want to hear, the oil companies have been running our energy policy. It is time for we as a Nation to take control of our destiny and act like responsible adults.
It is nice that the Republicans are running some female candidates for office, but they are all from the corporate sector and will just be a rehash of Republican coziness with big oil, big business, big insurance................it is really discouraging.
Forget the few bad apples that make the news, many many CEO's are great people, extremely smart, and most of all have financial smarts, something that the current political arena obviously lacking.
And successful business people have a mixed bag of accomplishments when looked at nationwide. Mike Bloomberg spent $110 M on a squeaker of an election, and there's widespread discontent with his performance. John Corzine lost his governorship. The 'guvernator' has not had a happy tenure.
BTW, there's something wrong with our system when politicians need a huge amount of money to consider political office. In our European counterparts, there are people in elective office who've been schoolteachers or laborers or activists--people who don't have inherited wealth. We should widen the talent pool so that the ability to pick up the check at the Four Seasons is not the primary qualification for any elected office.
I doubt that Cap and Trade will ever be anything but a witches' brew of taxes and loopholes and lobbyists' wish lists writ large. A tax on fossil fuel would help fund the transition that we will need to make, and will possibly help us catch up on solar and wind. This is a horrible time to impose a new tax that will disproportionately hit working people. On the other hand, there are no 'good' times for something this massive.
Excuse my venting, but as a marine and freshwater biologist, I'm feeling a bit peevish lately, and can't figure out quite why.
For now, the gas tax needs to happen for a variety of good reasons. We sent nearly a trillion dollars abroad in 2008 to pay for oil--an amount the size of the first TARP. There's no way to tame our balance-of-trade deficit absent a severe cutting of our oil imports. And there's no way to drill out of this problem--we'd need to find the equivalent of another Saudi Arabia off the US coast, and nobody expects us to do anything like that.
Once oil loses its price advantages, we can start to concentrate on building alt energy. At the same time, we can't encourage false hope here--the era of the car is over. We can't build a new fleet of cars with electric power in any case--it takes about 42 barrels of oil to create a conventional car, and the electrics require lots of rare earth metals that will be needed for solar panels and wind turbines.
It will be a hard transition, but it's better than watching the Gulf die.
And we should stop encouraging the development of suburban sprawl, which seems to be the dominant construction pattern in this country. In cities like NY where there's a functional mass transit system, three of five households don't own cars. It's an extra $7,000 after tax for each of them.
I don't disagree with higher taxes for the billionaires, but there's a larger problem with the gas usage patterns--we'll never be able to get a handle on our energy use as long as we let gas prices not reflect the real cost to the US of car dependence.
If the USA invested in alternative energy and reduced consumption, developing economies would see lower fuel prices and run global consumption right back up again. But even without the investment, the lower incomes of the middle class is driving consumption down, which is driving retail profits down, which is driving down corporate profits in developing economies- whose middle classes will also take the hit.
Which has a lot to do with the types of economic stimulus Heller and Keynes suggested not working. Each of the power elites does what it can to maintain profitability while at the same time trying to drive down the cost of payrolls. Trying to attract more investment money to create jobs has not worked either. Money is like any other commodity. When there's a lot in the hands of the elites, they are less careful in managing it. But their control of the govt precludes lowering the cost of management to increase the incomes of the workers- who are their customers.
Keynesian economics do not work. You only trade corporate corruption for goverment corruption. You still have a 2 tier system, those who have and those who don't. I would much prefer my chances in a free market system where I can depend on myself and not be a leach on a society and depend on the government to provide my job, my housing, my health care.
Since they were gonna get ripped off anyway, they invented the open source movement where they can sell consulting services because they are the people who understand what software does.
Transnational pharma corrupted the FDA, which wont way a word about German and Chinese scientific studies proving alternative herbs are effective. The corporate mass media, which gets so much ad revenue selling drugs wont say anything either. This is not a free market system.
In 2008 the country welcomed "Hope" because we were all so demoralized by W. Since then the hope has soured and morphed into justified anger -- an anger that reaches into nearly every voter from far right to far left and across this country.
Yet as consistent as that anger is, just as surely is the diversity of reasoning behind it, as well as the targets of blame for it. Teabaggers and ultra righties may represent just the noisy flash that gets the ephemeral attention, while the less visible and steady majority have no media profile -- at least not until an election gives them sudden notoriety.
This large middle group in all the niches of America has had a bellyful, and I for one, am less inclined to prejudge how their anger and their intellect (or lack of) is going to shape our future.
America seems to be standing at the edge of a political precipice below and a rock-wall cliff above. We'll be hearing the voters tonight discuss the route ahead, but there will be no going back.
The cap and trade approach just opens up a political, pandering mess of lobbyists and special interests all covered in a top down approach to what might be best.
CA had a law requiring a certain number of "zero" emission vehicles which effectively postponed the hybrid vehicle for three to four years (since it didn't meet the requirement). The same amount of funds would have reduced overall emissions and fuel use by several fold if put toward hybrids. We can expect more of the same.
Put a tax on all energy and let the entrepreneurs provide what works best.
We can't have that.
We all want something done to solve our problems, but nobody wants to shoulder the cost.
We need to get off of our Oil addiction, but are not willing to pay higher energy costs.
We need to stop the emission of greenhouse gases, but also not willing to pay those costs.
We have become the United States of Teabags.
We are lost, angry, need solutions, but do not have the fortitude to get the right things done.
We are yelling, screaming, protesting, but still doing NOTHING!
The US government is the only entity in America with any money though borrowed to spend.
Figure about15% of our population out of work and any new tax makes it even less likely that the rate will descend to an even still terrible7%.That means the dimwits in the T(errible) party and the carrions in the GOP(Gas and Oil Party)will be in a position to mess up America even more than the previous 8 Bush years did.
Idiots like Rand Paul the wierd one mixed with Senator Dimwit of S.Carolina and the Reddest Redneck Senator from Georgia and a few others will totally ruin government as we know it mixed in with a few survivors from the GOP.(they will lose seats too) will holdup theFederal government in a cloud of greed,mendacity and stupiidity, if Obama really wantsto "win"either of the unwinnable wars we are in we will bankrupt the nation in the 2 years>
The carbon tax will die on the vine for four years or more and other countries will have to lead .We cannot accomplish themovement with debt of$350,000 per person,THE INVOICE FOR WARS AND TAX CUTS SINCE REAGAN TIMES HAVE FINALLY COME IN THE MAIL.
Move away from waterfront property and live it up in some mountains with livestock and farming.