We previously discussed the disconnect between Democratic leaders and liberal voters in the increasing complaints of leaders like Vice President Biden over Democratic “lethargy.” Democrats in Washington once again seemed shocked that voters are not eager to fight for their retention. Now, Biden has added the helpful advice to Democratic voters to “stop whining” about things that they did not get in Washington and to “buck up.”
The “buck up” comment was meant as an improvement over the “whining” comment. It turned out that “whining” was not greeted by voters as an improvement over “lethargy.”
Here is the latest statement:
“And so those who don’t get — didn’t get everything they wanted, it’s time to just buck up here, understand that we can make things better, continue to move forward and — but not yield the playing field to those folks who are against everything that we stand for in terms of the initiatives we put forward.”
By “everything [we] wanted,” I assume Biden is including the fulfillment of our treaty obligations to investigate and prosecute war crimes such as torture — which the Administration blocked.
I assume it includes removing the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy, which the Administration is trying to preserve by asking a court not to impose a national injunction freezing the policy.
I assume it includes allowing dozens of privacy lawsuits to go forward against companies, which the Administration blocked despite evidence of unlawful surveillance by the Bush Administration.
I assume it includes allowing torture victims to seek review in federal court, which the Administration has successfully blocked.
I assume it includes protecting pristine areas along the East Coast from drilling, which the Administration has fought to open up for development even after the BP accident.
I assume it includes reducing the faith-based programs of the Bush Administration which raised concerns over the separation of church and state, which Obama expanded.
Well, it includes a lot of things that democratic and independent voters wanted. What they got was a Democratic majority saw power as the end to itself rather than the means to fight for principle. For civil libertarians, “those folks who are against everything that we stand” include the Obama Administration which has been a perfect nightmare in the adoption and expansion of Bush policies.
Yet, Biden wants civil libertarians, environmentalists, and liberals to stop whining and buck up. The Administration made a cynical calculation that liberals and civil libertarians and environmentalists have no where to go and that they have to support the Democrats regardless of these obnoxious policies. Now, they are simply shocked that voters are not enthusiastic about their continuing in power.
The Democratic leadership has conveyed that the only principle that they are committed to is their retention of power. All other principles — torture, the environment, privacy, free speech — are immaterial to that one overriding goal. They just do not understand why everyone does not see it that way.
Well, I am one of those whining, lethargic voters and I cannot get myself to buck up to support leaders who turned their back on such core values. Perhaps if enough Democrats are replaced, the party may rediscover the benefit of being principled and standing for something other than their own insular interests. They need to actually represent something other than “we are not as bad as those guys.” The problem for voters is that, by retaining these leaders, we reaffirm that they cynical calculation by the White House was correct. There is no reason why Democrats should fulfill their commitments in these areas if voters do not hold them accountable. I know some on this blog may disagree, but I personally think I will stick with the whining for now.
Source: Real Clear Politics
Tony C:
I doubt most of the rich would agree with what I have to say.
Tony C:
sorry to disagree but corporations will not pay extra taxes, they will either pass them along our move to a lower tax venue.
Your friend pays taxes to the state on every purchase made, does he eat part of that tax or pass it on to his customers? My guess is that there is a line on the receipt that says – sales tax. Do you honestly think that other taxes aren’t passed along as well? Property taxes, sales taxes on his raw materials. All calculated in the cost of a sandwich or a cup of soup. He would go out of business otherwise.
Individuals pay taxes, corporations do not even when you make them.
@Byron: So the free market doesn’t work, you say? Corporations can charge just as much as they want and people will pay it? I think some economists would disagree with that.
I think most people would disagree with that, it is so simplistic it is laughable. I know a restaurant owner that earned $72,000 last year, working six days a week. He is a smart guy with a bachelor’s degree in business. If he raise his prices, he earns less, because he serves a lunch crowd that balks at a $12 lunch. If he lowers his prices he earns less too, for the obvious reason: His costs remain the same and he has less revenue. In the eight years he has been in business he has found the mark that maximizes his profit. If his costs go up a bit, he absorbs that by just making less profit, not by increasing prices. He has to wait until people make more MONEY before he can raise prices without losing business.
The same principle applies at the large scale. Prices are chosen by giant corporations to maximize PROFIT, which means raising their prices decreases their overall sales so much that the additional margin is lost because of lesser volume. This is true for all products, if you try to sell peas for $5 an ounce, you sell NO PEAS, if you sell peas for 25 cents a gallon, you sell all the peas but lose money. The price of peas that maximizes profit is in-between those extremes, just like the price of a sandwich that maximizes profit, or the price of a car or jet.
Corporations do not get to raise prices at will, as you suggest, they can raise prices when their customers earn more money (due to inflation or a good economy). Otherwise, raising prices will cost them money, and that is not the goal. For my friend, there are other restaurants his customers can frequent; or they can just bring a sandwich or candy bar or a can of almonds to work if restaurant prices get too outrageous.
If we increase taxes on corporations, that DECREASES inflation by letting the government borrow less money and therefore having to print less money. Increased taxes on corporate income also HELPS the economy by encouraging corporations to re-invest their profits (which avoids tax on those profits altogether) instead of realizing those profits as income (and getting taxed on them).
If inflation is lessened, worker wages do not automatically go up, so corporations cannot charge more to cover the added taxes. If taxes are high enough that, in order to legally avoid them, they instead divert their profits into business expansion, they create jobs, buy equipment, build factories, buy supplies and in general help the economy.
Higher taxes on corporations is the ANSWER to the economic troubles. The CAUSE is the lower taxes that do the opposite of what we are told: If a rich business person is going to create jobs with their money, they invest with PRE-TAX income, not POST-TAX income. Why pay a dime in taxes when business expenses (like the purchases necessary to expand a business) are 100% tax deductible?
You have been duped by the talking points of the rich, spoken by their paid shills in Congress.
Swarthmore mom:
good article and scary, but reinforces my belief that the Christian Right Republicans want your soul and the secular liberal democrats want your body. One wants submission to God the other wants submission to the state/collective.
Why cant they just leave us alone to go about our business as we see fit?
God help us if the religious right and the far left ever get together and figure out they are ideologically the same except for some window dressing.
“There is little wonder the corporations pay off politicians. over 65% of American corporations pay zero income taxes.”
Corporations would not pay any taxes even if they did pay taxes. Why you ask? Because taxes are nothing more than a cost of doing business and those costs get passed on to the consumer. So while it may be politically expedient to stick it to those rascally, nefarious corporations all they do is pass the tax bill to you and me. And most people and politicians don’t seem to understand that simple fact.
So why would anyone want to pay $12 for an item when they could pay $10?
This is simple economics folks. So next time someone says tax “evil” corporations just say “no thanks I am taxed enough already”.
http://blogs.alternet.org/speakeasy/2010/09/29/alan-graysons-fl-republican-opponent-tied-to-biblical-stoning-movement-aka-christian-reconstructionism/ Alan Grayson is down seven points to this guy.
Elaine I guess DeLay wins again. Many of his candidates will be taking over powerful committees. Gohmert is from the piney woods of East Texas next to the Louisiana border. Remember we need to get rid of Pelosi and put these good christian folks in charge so the change can happen. The lonestar state will be on the rise again. That’s what the newspapers here say. These folks make Bush look like Rockefeller. I hear Perry is getting presidential aspirations. That reminds me I need to go make calls for Bill White.
@Slarti: I guess I do think being a research scientist is worth something, or I wouldn’t have mentioned it. In order to be a research scientist you have to learn something that cannot be taught: original thinking and solving problems that haven’t been solved before, or even imagined before.
This is how one gets published; at least in first tier journals and conferences.
The reason this is relevant is we are faced in this country with a dilemma I believe unanticipated by the founding fathers. How do we solve it? As a research scientist I am accustomed to solving problems with constraints. I cannot just imagine there is more oxygen in a solution, I have to provide it. I cannot just imagine a computer is faster, somebody has to MAKE it faster. I cannot pretend there exists a cable with sufficient tensile strength to hold a load, there must actually be such a cable or a design is pointless.
So what tool actually exists in our political system that can solve this problem? The vote. That’s about it.
And what IS the problem, precisely? Corruption. When the founding fathers set up their system of checks and balances, I do not think they anticipated the advent of global corporations with (collectively) hundreds of billions of dollars at stake, that could afford (collectively, and I am speaking literally) to buy off every representative, senator, judge and governor in the country with a million bucks just to get their way. That is our situation: We have 438 House Members, 100 Senators, 50 Governors, a President and about 100 other “important” people with power and aspirations. Call it around 800 people. Now, General Electric and Exxon earned $10B and $45B in 2009, that is profit after ALL expenses, and they paid no income taxes (in the USA). Zero. They get away with this because of political influence, which they buy (along with other corporations). But they could drop a million on all 800 of those politicians without a blink: Proportionately, that would be 0.8 billion out of 55B, or 1.46%.
What percentage of your income, *before* all of your expenses? The last study I saw on that was three or four years ago, and concluded over 50% of your paycheck went to all forms of government revenue (that includes payroll taxes, sales taxes, property taxes, licensing fees, court costs, tolls and charges collected by city, county, state, and federal government). There is little wonder the corporations pay off politicians. over 65% of American corporations pay zero income taxes. Their only “tax” comes in the form of campaign donations and cushy no-duty high-pay jobs for retired politicians.
Our founding fathers were not naive in their judgment of human nature, that is WHY they set up checks and balances. But there ARE no checks and balances if everybody colludes to get paid off. What they failed to anticipate would have seemed like science fiction to them, before science fiction was invented: A country with ten thousand people every bit as rich as King George, and a hundred corporations with far more wealth than even King George imagined. They did not set up a system that could withstand being drowned in money. They relied upon honor and solemn oaths (this was a time when duels were fought over broken oaths and cowardice was shameful).
So, Slarti, I doubt the problem is as bad as you say, because I do not believe anything will be that different if Republicans control the House. The people you care about I care about. For the first 16 years of my life my mother waited tables and my father was a sergeant by day and a bartender by night; my last three years of high school I also worked 30 hours a week as a dishwasher, and turned over 2/3 of my pacheck to my family to help pay the bills. The people you care about I consider family.
But I also consider them screwed if we continue on the current path of corruption. The Democrats caved to special interests on the most important thing they could have; health care. They are about to cave on Medicare and Social Security.
DEMOCRATS, for god’s sake, are going to gut SS and Medicare. Can you even IMAGINE that being a serious proposition for DEMOCRATS during the Johnson administration? It is unimaginable.
Yet this is the slope we are on, by reelecting liar after liar bought by the corporations, we slide further and further to the right and the destruction of the social safety net, civil liberties, and plutocratic rule. Corporations do not want to pay any tax for any reason, they want complete freedom to do as they choose to employees, and they want zero oversight from government, and that is precisely what they are buying.
I do not have the money or wherewithal to do anything about it, but for me, I think the problem has to get worse or it won’t get better. Leaving an incumbent in power rewards them for lying and corruption. I won’t vote for a politician I am convinced is serving the corporations or his personal interest.
If that makes the problem worse for the lower classes of society (from which I came), perhaps it will anger them enough to pay attention and force a change, to keep throwing out incumbents until a change is made. If that doesn’t work, then I suppose acquiescence is a vote as well.
My father worked 75 hours a week for 35 years. And found time to read about candidates and vote. The lower class can change this country, they just need to get pissed off enough to do it.
I am not acquiescing to the status quo. I will vote, I will give the benefit of the doubt to some unknowns, but when there is no doubt I am refusing to vote for proven liars. It is the only possible solution I see, and if others did the same, it is the only way I see to hold politicians accountable in any way, before they steal the entire country.
Swarthmore mom & Slarti,
Here’s one of the Republicans’ finest–Louie Gohmert–who’ll become a committee chairman if his party takes over the House. Louie’s one of my favorite Republicans.
😉
Louie Gohmert (R-TX)
Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime
Terrorism and Homeland Security
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=10kOrLXwZZU&fs=1&hl=en_US]
I’m temporarily breaking my self-imposed exile to make a couple of comments (and because I want to subscribe to this thread). First off, the comment by Mike Spindell linked at the top of this thread –
http://jonathanturley.org/2010/09/24/biden-laments-the-lethargy-of-democratic-voters/#comment-162252
is, in my opinion, the best argument in support of the position that I and others have been advocating – a Republican takeover of either the House or the Senate will, in all likelihood, result in a burden that will be borne by precisely those of our brothers and sisters that have been hardest hit by this economy (and being currently unemployed I can definitely empathize with them, even though I have far greater education (and therefore more options) than most – I’m a research scientist too, Tony, for what it’s worth). Additionally, if you don’t think that the Republicans taking over committee chairmanships and subpoena power is significant, then you don’t really understand how Congress works…
Elaine I have been watching it for years, and that probably places me more in the mainstream than some who post here.
Swarthmore mom,
I assume we both watch MSNBC–the news channel that introduced me to Professor Jonathan Turley!
I caught it. Thanks Elaine.
Swarthmore mom,
Matt Taibbi is going to be on the Lawrence O’Donnell show talking about the Tea Party in a few minutes.
Swarthmore mom,
Thanks for the link to the Taibbi article.
@Byron: Self-exile is a rejection of living in your own country. Greenwald is not self-exiled.
I didn’t mean to his chief of staff (Rahm) I meant to his Secretary of Defense.
@Swarthmore: Yeah, that is good. You have to stop thinking I want them to win. I am not going to vote for any racist, thief, corporatist or hypocrite. I am not going to vote for any incumbent that has broken their oath to defend the Constitution, which as far as I know is all of them. Palin is a sociopathic bitch that will say literally anything for money (or fame that leads to money).
In my view the stuff Taibbi is saying in that article applies to BOTH parties, just as the Republicans will castrate the Tea Party and buy off its leaders and channel their energy into tax cuts for the rich, so are the Democrats castrating the liberal movement to gain power so they can kill it with cuts to Social Security and Medicare and Unemployment benefits and Deficit Reduction because these are the things the Rich do not like.
Obama is commander in chief AND the President. He could stop DADT tomorrow by executive order, by order to his chief of staff, or by issuing a Presidential pardon to any homoesexual the minute a DADT investigation is launched on that person, that would be entirely within his Constitutional rights as president. He can stop the appeal of the court decision. He can veto the Pentagon spending bill if it doesn’t contain the DADT repeal. Obama can end enforcement of DADT tomorrow, and get rid of the law, by standing his ground. He has complete power, and pretends he is powerless. He is a liar, and it is not some little lie, some courteous lie, some omission that saves face or avoids embarrassment. It is a big lie, and I will not vote to support a liar.
Tony C:
self exile is different from renouncing your country. I don’t think many of the intellectuals and artists at that time renounced America. Paris was the hub of intellectual life and the young wanted to be where the “action” was.
@Byron: Thanks for the support your quote gives to my position. “Self-exile…”
@Elaine: I haven’t read any of his books; I keep up with his articles online. My job requires frequent experiments that take time to complete, and I am self-managed, so I end up with a lot of ten and fifteen minute breaks. I also work six days a week. So if I read a book, it is on Sunday, and usually I am reading Science News or New Scientist or Scientific American on Sundays. Nowadays I can barely finish a non-work-related book every other month. The last two I read were by Malcolm Gladwell and Irene Pepperberg. The next on the nightstand is by Drew Westen, I like his psychology articles.