McCain smears now coming fast & furious

The Obama campaign has articulated pretty clearly lately how it feels about Fersatz News, our State TV Network. On Monday, Matt Drudge, who functions as the assignment editor for our right-wing corporate media, ran with another phony news story - this time it's about what Barack Obama allegedly said about the Supreme Court during a 2001 interview. First, what he actually said:

You know if you look at the victories and the failures of the Civil Rights movement and its litigation strategy in the Court, I think where it succeeded was to invest formal rights in previously dispossessed peoples so that I would now have the right to vote, I would now be able to sit at the lunch counter and order as long as I could pay for it I would be okay.

But the Supreme Court never ventured into the issues of redistribution of wealth and sort of more basic issues of political and economic justice in this society. And to that extent as radical as I think people try to characterize the Warren Court, it wasn't that radical, it didn't break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the Founding Fathers in the Constitution, at least as its been interpreted and the Warren Court interpreted it in the same way that generally the Constitution is a charter of negative liberties says what the states can't do to you, says what the federal government can't do to you, but it doesn't say what the federal government or the state government must do on your behalf and that hasn't shifted.

And one of the I think the tragedies of the Civil Rights movement was because the Civil Rights movement became so court focused I think that there was a tendency to lose track of the political and community organizing and activities on the ground that are able to put together the actual coalitions of power through which you bring about redistributive change and in some ways we still suffer from that.

This is a far cry from how the right, led by Drudge and the McCain campaign, has been spinning what Obama said. Fortunately, the Obama campaign isn't letting the lies and smears go unanswered; they are responding swiftly and firmly, just as they should. Bill Burton, an Obama spokesman, appeared on Fox on Monday to talk about the allegations:

This is a fake news controversy drummed up by the all-too-common alliance of Fox News, the Drudge Report and John McCain, who apparently decided to close out his campaign with the same false, desperate attacks that have failed for months. In this seven-year old interview, Senator Obama did not say that the courts should get into the business of redistributing wealth at all. Americans know that the real choice in this election is between four more years of Bush-McCain policies that redistribute billions to billionaires and big corporations and Barack Obama's plan to help the middle class by giving tax relief to 95 percent of workers and companies that create new jobs here in America. That's the change we need, and no amount of eleventh-hour distractions from the McCain campaign will change that.

Very well said - this is one of the many last- gasp, pathetic attempts to distract voters from the real issues by McDrilly's dying campaign, but it certainly won't be the last; McCain's handlers no doubt have plenty more tricks, misinformation and lies up their sleeves.

Honestly, every time I hear McCain or Palin talk about "spreading the wealth around" or "wealth redistribution" or "class warfare," I can't help but hope that Obama throws this right back in his face. What he really needs to do is force McCain to defend wealth concentration, which has risen to new heights under the Bush administration. Obama should go on the attack and force both of these economical morons to defend how the top one percent of wealthy Americans control 90 percent of the wealth in this country. Good God, would I love to hear their answers.

Actually, I'm guessing we'd just hear crickets.

Welcome to the new trite: Socialist

This week, The Daily Show's Jon Stewart took aim at the McCain campaign's use of the word socialist in characterizing Obama's economic and tax proposals. For the love of God, I'm happy that someone took these two to task for doing so, because most media simply parrots the McCain talking point about Obama's economic and tax proposals as being "socialist," sans any meaty commentary.

I was discussing the myth of Obama's socialism the other day online with a few friends, and I really did begin to get fired up, essentially for this reason - we already have "socialism," but in reverse! How so? Wall Street firms, greedy traditional and investment banks and insurance companies have all successfully raped the working men and women in this country, and when these companies went belly-up (AIG, Bear Sterns, Goldman-Sachs, Countrywide, etc.), who is bailing them out? The American taxpayer, that's who. But, Republicans don't want to talk about that. And I'm willing to bet everything I'm worth (which seems to be less and less every day) that when these bailed out companies return to profitability, the American taxpayer won't be paid back (enter the corporate lobbyists).

It's simply amazing to me how willing people in our society are to attack the disadvantaged among us, yet most willfully turn the other cheek (or are grossly misinformed) about corporate welfare in this country.

Of course, the party of big business, the GOP, is doing all it can to scare the living shit out of Americans, saying over and over and over again that "we must cut taxes so corporations will hire more people!" What a sham and a fraud. Millions of jobs have been lost on President Bush's watch, and off shoring is the new corporate MO - there are literally thousands of companies who are guilty of sending jobs to Asia, China and India this decade, yet now we must cut their taxes? Please. I really hope that people would wake up to this crippling, debilitating problem, before it's too late.

However, don't get me wrong, I'm not so sure that we should hike the American corporate tax rate, but I don't think we should give these greedy, selfish corporations, who see no problem doling out millions, and in some cases, billions of dollars in compensation packages to company execs and CEOs any more tax breaks. What we MUST do is close the tax loopholes that corporations are taking advantage of by off shoring jobs and operating offshore tax shelters. Barack Obama has proposed giving companies tax breaks for creating jobs and building factories here, and penalizing companies that offshore jobs. It's about time, and I sure hope it comes to pass.

Under Bush, the IRS has more than doubled its workforce to audit individual tax returns. Just wondering, what has the IRS done to combat corporate tax cheating? I don't even need to look that one up.

I digress, I know, but my point is that Repubes love to talk about lazy workers and not wanting to give them their hard-earned money, and to be honest, I agree with them. But, where's the outrage about giving companies billions in tax breaks, so they can enrich their execs and offshore the jobs?

Oh wait, maybe I've got it - big business helps keep the GOP in power.

So, when I hear Obama say that we should "spread the wealth around," I cringe, because it probably allows Rush Göring to shelve his Viagra for a few days. It's not the best way to say it, but it's about time we reverse the trend of the rich getting richer, and the working class in this country getting screwed at every turn.

Some stats that you may or may not know about the concentrated wealth in this country. ...

• The top 1% of income earners in this country currently own 90% of the wealth in this country, and 50% of the income. This was exactly the same in 1929, after three consecutive Republican administrations.

• 59% of the capital gains in this country are paid by people who earn over $1 million per year, and fewer than 2% of capital gains are paid by people who earn under $50,000 per year. Why does this matter? Investors who sit around the pool and wait for the dividend check to arrive pay 15% taxes (the top capital gains rate). So, these investors pay less taxes than I do. Outrageous.

• Among the developed countries in the world, only two industrialized nations have a larger gap among the richest and the poorest: Turkey and Mexico. Yes, you read that correctly.

• According to the General Accounting Office (the non-partisan accounting office of Congress), 68 percent of corporations in this country don't pay taxes. Yes, 68 percent! What's wrong with this picture?!?

• Under President Bush, there are now over 400 billionaires in the United States, more than any other time in this nation's history, by far. And what's more, where is the Dow now compared to when Bush took office? Even before the most recent free fall in the markets, the Dow has actually realized very little growth under eight years of Bush and mostly Republican rule in Congress. Yet the rich have continued to get richer and richer. If that's not a big, fat neon sign that the rich have gotten much richer under the Bush tax cuts, than I really don't know what is.

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It's this simple - Obama will save you money if you earn under $250,000 per year. And I find it outrageously offensive that people who make more than that are bitching and complaining that they will have to pay a little more. If I were making that kind of money, I would gladly pay a little more to the government. Why? Because I've had a pretty damn good year!

Republicans have so denigrated paying taxes in this country that it's gotten way out of control. As a progressive, very liberal Democrat, I'm not at all happy to pay taxes (who is?), but we have to pay for things in this country.

That military that Bush loves to use unilaterally? It only eats up about $650 billion per year out of the federal budget. Our police, firefighters, roads, government, infrastructure, national parks, state and federal governments, etc. all cost money, and it has to come from somewhere.

The greedy and selfish among the rich in this country want to keep all they make, thinking, "it's mine - why should I give it back?" (It's important to note that I don't think everyone in this country who is wealthy is greedy and selfish - in fact, there are plenty of examples of millionaires and billionaires who are not - Bill Gates, Ted Turner, the Annenbergs, the Kimmels [two local, Pennsylvania examples], etc.)

The argument for giving it back? You're using the commons! The country's infrastructure, military, economy, government, police, postal service, etc. all make it possible for innovative, successful business people to earn, keep and grow their wealth. And all of these things cost money.

If fact, ever since Reagan, we've devoted appallingly little to our infrastructure. So much, in fact, that it's beginning to fall apart. Remember the bridge that collapsed in Minnesota last year, killing 35 people? Bush's answer was to "use funds already allocated" to fix items in urgent need of repair. Wow, thanks for the help, Mr. President. Or, how about the steam line that exploded in New York City a few summers ago, maiming and even killing people? Get used to these types of incidents, because they are going to get more and more frequent unless we act, now.

But, the minute any candidate talks about fighting the fiscal fight for the common working men and women in this country, it's "socialism," or my personal favorite, "class warfare."

It's all one big, tragic joke. More like a nightmare, really. My response to it all is this - They only call it "class warfare" when we fight back. Well, it's time to fight back, because ever since Reagan, war has been declared on the middle class, and it's continued unabated. (And I'm including President Clinton in this assessment, who behaved very much like a Republican on fiscal matters.)

The time has come to take back and fight for what's rightfully ours - a chance at a decent wage and a little money at the end of the line - retirement, which, unless things change, is only going to be a pipe dream for Generation Xers and successive generations. That is, unless you're a corporate CEO. Those lucky few have been getting golden parachutes for years, and they've ramped up to epidemic proportions under Bush.

As for the rest of us? We're just getting golden showers.

The Dow is up! All is well! Yea, right.

I'm soo tired of hearing from (mostly) politicians something that goes like this: "The economy is strong, the stock market is (choose one from: booming, surging or rising)."

For the millionth time - just because the stock market is booming, that doesn't mean that a great deal of America (and as of right now, dare I say the majority) thinks the economy is headed in the right direction.

From Gallup:

I won't pretend to be an economist, but to me, when the stock market is on the rise, that means that company profits are up. And two of the principle ways companies have increased their profits in the last decade are offshoring and downsizing - two things that devastate the average American worker.

Proof positive came last Friday on Bill Maher's HBO show, Real Time With Bill Maher. On of his guests was John Fund of the Wall St. Journal. During a discussion on the economy, when Maher brought up some not-so-great statistics about the economy, the first thing Fund said was, "but the stock market is up!" Thankfully, Maher pounced, and when Fund boasted about a four percent unemployment rate, Maher jumped on that, too.

A low unemployment rate is a good thing, but it's not completely indicative of the "health" of the workforce. When I lost my full-time, well-paying corporate job nearly five years ago, I could not find one that even remotely paid what I was earning. This forced me to wait tables and go back to graduate school. But, the minute I took a part-time job, I was no longer considered unemployed. And right now, there are millions of people in that same boat.

Another critical factor is the price of gas. At right is what the price of a gallon of gas was in San Francisco a week or so ago. (It's probably higher now.) And it's not going to get any better, probably ever. I've read in some places that a barrel of oil could top $150 by the end of the summer.

More on the oil crisis in a separate post later tonight or tomorrow.

My point here is that the economy isn't so rosy because stock prices are high. You know who that's good for? Corporations and the very rich, who are only paying 15 percent on dividends now, thanks to the Bush tax cuts. I find it nuts that a vast majority of the middle class pays well into the twenties, yet millionaires and billionaires pay 15 percent on stock dividends.

When I mention this to some Republicans I know, they accuse me of "class warfare." To me, it's only class warfare when liberals fight back. And we need to fight back more.