Commonwealth Commonsense

So, Why Are the Rich Getting Richer?

The income chasm between middle class America and the richest Americans has grown enormously over the past 50 years. Few would dispute that. Harold Meyerson lays out the stats.

From 1947 through 1973, according to the Economic Policy Institute's State of Working America report, released this week, the incomes of the poorest 20 percent of Americans rose 117 percent, while the middle 20 percent saw a rise of 104 percent and the wealthiest 20 percent a rise of 89 percent. From 1973 through 2000, however, the income of the bottom fifth increased by a scant 9 percent, the middle fifth by 23 percent and the richest fifth by 62 percent. Since 2000, the concentration of income gains at the very top has grown only more pronounced. The share of income going to the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans, which was less than 10 percent in the early '70s, reached 23.5 percent in 2007 - the highest level on record save for 1928. (Note: Both years preceded epic crashes.)

No doubt conservatives don’t think this is a problem. And they are given a pass by progressives, who decry the income gap but don’t put the question to conservatives—Why? Meyerson and others have offered some reasons—the demise of labor unions, globalization and financial schemes that add nothing to the economy but line the pockets of the few. All perhaps true, but why don’t progressives keep hammering the GOP with actually two questions:

Why do you think this is happening? Give them a chance to explain the phenomenon. By forcing a explanation, there’s a good chance progressives will get fodder for a strong counter-narrative to the second question:

Do conservatives think this income gap is a good thing?

One book I’m almost finished relates.  It’s The Soul of Capitalism by William Greider. But rather than explain the gap, the book is really more about the book’s subtitle, “Opening Paths to a Moral Economy.” I’ll have more on it in another post.

Another waiting to be read promises to offer another reason. It’s Perfectly Legal: The Convert Campaign to Rig Our Tax System to Benefit the Super Rich—and Cheat Everybody Else by David Cay Johnston, a former New York Times tax reporter. This has always intuitively made sense to me. The folks who love to hail free enterprise ignore the fact the problem is not free enterprise versus a planned economy. It’s whether our free enterprise is really fair enterprise. Or are the rules, including tax rules, slanted to favor the wealthy?

Still, if progressives would demand answers from conservatives re why our economy increasingly seems to help only the few, they could set the foundation for the “free and fair narrative” that I think Americans would respond to.

Mark Herring’s Wishy-Washy Stance

The GOP has made a market in the deficit this past year. Borrowing is simply bad business that passes the buck to our children, and they won’t have anything of it. Except of course, when they do like borrowing. Such as Gov. McDonnell’s plan for transportation.  He borrows money that gets us some of what we need for the next three years but saddles taxpayers with debt for the next 20. Debt that will come from funds that would have gone to education and social services. McDonnell looks like he solved the problem. He forecloses any other transportation funding for years to come because the GOP will say we’ve already dealt with it. In the election this year, the GOP will appear to be heroes and likely consolidate further its hold on the House and probably take over the Senate.

And we have legislators like Mark Herring saying on the one hand he doesn’t like borrowing, but on the other hand transportation needs are great, so he lays the groundwork in this video to capitulate to the GOP view of things, proving once again Dems don’t know how to play politics and that they have absolutely no principles that ground them. Voters will see them as weak and again ignore them at the polls.

 

Poised, Passionate, Articulate and Left

At a time when Democratic leaders from Richmond to Washington and beyond are inarticulate, cowed and flustered, we have Vermont independent Senator Bernie Sanders. After seeing this performance, I may have to reassess my opinion of him. Until last night when I saw him on “The Last Word,” I thought he too often sounds a little too angry.  He still looks angry, which would hurt him as a spokesman, but his passionate and clear speaking was a breath of fresh air. My daughter commented on his cogency while we we watched him.

I’m not sure who can match him.

By the way, he plans to introduce a bill similar to Paul Ryan’s “Roadmap for America’s Future” because he wants to have that debate.

Speaking of the “Roadmap,” listen to Rachel Maddow skewering Ryan and his coupon program to replace Medicare. It starts at about 4:00.

“Alternative Vision of Governing”

I’ve posted on Blue Virginia about the Democrats inability to articulate a vision.  Thanks to Lowell for the opportunity.

Apropos of that post, this is from today’s email from Howard Dean.

I want to hear from you. What do our shared values mean to you? What should be our priorities for the coming year? How will we work together to move America forward in 2011?

Our movement is best when it's a conversation. You just heard from me and I want to hear from you.

Please take a moment to a let us know your thoughts at DemocracyforAmerica.com or join me live at Daily Kos tonight at 9pm eastern for a live chat. I'll answer questions and discuss with you what you care about most and your ideas on how to move forward on our shared values.

No Vision, No Strategy, No Message

A few years back I tried to convince the Virginia Democratic leadership about the desperate need for a coherent, strategic communications plan to convince voters that its vision and plans for the future would be what’s best for Virginia. The only way to succeed in changing the conversation in, and direction of, the Commonwealth is to change the frames we talk about issues.  I admitted to them that it would take courage, discipline and patience.   They all said that it sounded good, but ultimately, the leadership did nothing.

The chickens come home to roost every January when the Republicans in Richmond roll out exactly what Democrats should be doing. The conventional wisdom was defined in Monday’s Washington Post article by Roz Helderman.

[T]he governor's agenda could earn [Democrat} the same criticism that Democrats have been lobbing at Republicans in Washington - that they are obstructionists who have not advanced an alternative vision for governing.

While individual Democratic lawmakers have submitted bills they say they will prioritize, the caucus has not announced plans to roll out a unified legislative package.

"The dilemma will be if McDonnell maneuvers them into a position where they are vulnerable to the same attack that's been made against Republicans for a decade - that they're the 'party of no,' " said Robert D. Holsworth, a former Virginia Commonwealth University professor who writes a blog on state politics. "I think it's very clear they're going to be feistier. Whether the Democratic Party puts forward a very clear alternative on issues beyond social issues is their challenge."

Nowhere is the dilemma likely to be more pronounced than on transportation, a perpetual dividing line between the parties that has bedeviled state politicians for a decade. Most experts agree that fixing Virginia's overburdened road network and crumbling bridges would cost more than $1 billion a year over the next 20 years.

Democrats have long maintained that the problem requires finding a new stream of revenue, such as a tax increase. But Republicans have said they will not raise taxes.

…Although Democrats agree the top priority should be job creation, they do not have a cohesive response to McDonnell's economic development proposals.

This lack of an agenda keeps Virginians wondering what Democrats stand for other than vaguely for a tax increase for roads.  The party refuses to be strategic and develop a narrative about what Democrats stand for.  It is killing them, as now the key reporter covering Richmond has called them out. Hers will be the narrative that describes this session. Alas, I have no faith that anyone in the Virginia Democratic party has a clue as to how to change it.

Are Nuts and Bolts the Only Things Needed to Build a Coalition?

E.J. Dionne makes the argument that Republicans are too abstract.

Their rhetoric is nearly devoid of talk about solving practical problems - how to improve our health care, education and transportation systems, or how to create more middle-class jobs.

Instead, we hear about things we can't touch or see or feel, and about highly general principles divorced from their impact on everyday life.

Their passion is not for what government should or shouldn't do but for "smaller government" as a moral imperative. During the campaign, they put out a nice round $100 billion in spending cuts from which they're now backing away. It is far easier to float a big number than to describe reductions for student loans, bridges, national parks or medical research.

The problem is that Democrats too often ignore principles and instead get wonkish. Such an approach assumes voters make rational decisions based on specific policies. They don’t. Why else would lower middle class people, especially men, vote for the party that is set on destroying it? Instead those hurt most by Republican economic policies vote for GOPers because they like their principles.

Of course, they may like Democratic principles, too, but Democrats spend little time articulating them and instead let the Republicans define those principles for them. The same is true for overall messages. During the time I worked with Virginia politicians, I found far too many unconcerned with delivering overarching messages and much more concerned with budgets for direct mail.

Dionne also errs when he suggests that “men aren't angels, but the professors in Congress seem to believe that another great abstraction, ‘the free market,’ can obviate the need for messy and complicated statutes.” The Democrats problem is that they have constantly offered “messy and complicated statues” that are seen by voters as examples of Congressional mischief and malfeasance. Laws, as Philip Howard has argued, are far too complicated. They should be more concise and set out principles and overarching goals and leave the details to those carrying them out. That, of course, are the hate “government bureaucrats.,” who are left to follow arcane and specific rules embodied in laws and necessarily eschew commonsense.

Dionne, however, has one thing right, as he continues his assault on the media.

If journalism in a democracy is about anything, it is about bringing the expansive rhetoric of politicians down to earth and holding them accountable for how their ideas translate into policies that affect actual human beings.

It may be easier to report windy speeches about "liberty" and "entrepreneurship" than to do the grubby work of examining budgets, regulations, programs and economic consequences. But journalists surely want to be more than stenographers.

One wonders if they really do.