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Ronald Reagan said "big government is the problem". George W. Bush proved it. Bigness create complications ignored by an apathetic public and exploited by tyrannical special interests representing no more than two percent of the population at the expense of the other ninety-eight.
Only such a big government could get away with knowingly building an economy based on economic bubbles, empire, and war while, at the same time, deregulating, privatizing to “for profit” legitimate government functions, maintaining the most expensive most inadequate healthcare system in the developed world, reducing taxes on corporate war profits, and making individual tax rates excessively regressive.
The result: deflationary property values, excessive debt, scandalous private companies such as Blackwater, Corrections Corporation of America, et al, a failed economy, loss of credit availability, economic and social welfare inequities pushed to what can only be hoped to be their outer limits.
As to the trillions of dollars in banking losses, unlike Warren Buffet, Obama and Congress apparently favor forking borrowed taxpayer money to bail out the banking industry with only limited ownership and oversight. We cannot do the right thing and simply nationalize our banks because private interests manage so much better. And, just who got us into this current economic mess? Come on folks, just who is BSing whom?
We need to:
1. Nationalize banks.
2. Re-regulate business.
3. Put in place a single payer universal health care program.
4. De-privatize contracted government services.
5. Revert to a heavily progressive tax system.
6. Remove the legal status of personhood of corporations.
Nationalize banks. Banks are broke. Equity owners should take the hit. Revitalization through nationalization would simplify correction for mortgage contracts, reestablish trust and confidence and make credit available. Establishment of profitability would, over time, accrue benefit to taxpayer. Equally if not more important, it would remove the Federal Reserve System from the control of, coupled with it’s monitory policy favoring, private banking interests.
Re-regulate business, Healthcare and Privatization.
Re-regulation of industry and Wall Street is a no brainer as is single payer universal health care. Business has proven it’s ineptness in self-regulation. Excesses, including healthcare costs, at the expense of the public can no longer be tolerated.
Healthcare is undeserving of a profit motive. Single payer universal healthcare would reduce costs and make industry more competitive with foreign competition. Moreover, doctors, nurses, and the public favor it. Opposed are insurance companies, HMO’s, PPO’s, for profit hospitals, pharmaceutical companies, medical equipment manufacturers and their congressional coolies. Nothing is as undemocratic as 47 million, and growing, citizens without healthcare insurance.
Privatization of government functions results in favoritism, pay to play, added cost, scandalous behavior, and lack of accountability. Privatization is a trend that must be reversed.
Progressive Taxation. With the rich not requiring public services, they much prefer not paying for them. Little was more disingenuous to the public interests than the Bush tax cuts; personal income, capital gains, estate, and corporate taxes. Look at reality. Tax cuts increase debt, decrease public services, or both. New jobs where not created. Increased income and wealth accrued to the rich, not the rest. At minimum, the Bush tax cuts must be reversed. Taxes on speculative financial transaction as well as “excessive” income, say above $500,000 per year, must be considered.
Remove the legal status of personhood of corporations. Providing corporations (money) with protected free speech is equivalent to their ownership and control of government, exactly what we continue to have and that which got us into the current economic mess. Nothing will change until or unless government by the people can be established.
Big government is a reality. Class warfare is real. Ninety-eight percent of the population is loosing.
Unless we begin to accept responsibility for our government while holding it accountable for the public good, economic tyranny against the public interest will continue. Implementation of the above six needs would resolve much of the current quagmire.
