Thom's stack - September 2007

Occasionally I link to an article that covers a story even though Thom did not mention that article.

Friday 28 September '07 National show

• The show was live from KLSD, San Diego.
• "Brunch with Bernie" with Senator Bernie Sanders, Independent of Vermont. He applauded Thom (and others who do similar work) for what he does. Bernie just came back from Costa Rica. On Oct 7 Costa Rica will have the first ever public referendum on free trade. There's a strong ruling class, a media aligned with it, lots of big money coming in urging them to pass it. The ratio of money spent for and against is around 100:1, yet the polls have it tied, and swinging towards 'no'. Small country. There are more Americans visiting there than vice versa. It's the only country in the hemisphere with no army. It has health care, education. The publicly-owned phones cost $7-8 per month.
  
  The Senate and House condemned moveon.org's ad. Harry Reid pointed out about the Swift Boat ads. Bernie was in committee. Max Cleland ads. The Republicans have the right to offer so many amendments, and this was one of those. Yesterday they passed the expansion of SCHIP. They can override a veto in the Senate, not the House. Senate just approved a Truman-like commission, they will fight to keep it in committee. Truman like commission passed, will fight to keep it in committee. He's a member of the Veterans committee. Private contractors in Iraq are ripping of the American taxpayer. War profiteering. He was one of those who fought for the largest increase in VA funding ever. Category 8 vets will be included again. Bush had decided that if they made over $27,000 they were too rich. Description of Medicare.
  
  Will congress let the mercenaries operate in this country instead of the National Guard? Many are foreigner The waste of time on the moveon.org ad resolution. Rush Limbaugh speaking to a military person, said anybody not supporting the Bush administration is a phony soldier. Council of Foreign Relations. Michael Moore: me or we society? United we stand, divided we fall. Hang together. VA budget.
• Bumper Music: We Can't Make It Here Any More, James McMurtry.
  "There's a Vietnam Vet with a cardboard sign
  Sitting there by the left turn line
  Flag on the wheelchair flapping in the breeze
  One leg missing, and both hands free
  No one's paying much mind to him
  The V.A. budget's just stretched so thin
  And there's more comin' back from the Mideast war
  We can't make it here anymore
  
  That big ol' building was the textile mill
  It fed our kids and it paid our bills
  But they turned us out and they closed the doors
  We can't make it here anymore"
• [Bernie]: "Medicare is a federal program passed in the 60s by Lyndon Johnson, who recognized that older people have greater health care needs, and many of those people had no insurance. In recent years, the Republicans and President Bush have tried to move toward a privatization of Medicare which, while it has its share of problems, is run administratively in a pretty cost effective way, especially compared to private insurance companies. Much less money is spent on administration in Medicare than is the case in the private sector. The Medicare costs have been soaring, as have the costs of health care in general. And sometimes people, opponents of Medicare, will point to figures and say, "look what's going on; Medicare costs are soaring". Well, the truth is, because of our dysfunctional and convoluted and bureaucratic system in general, health care costs are soaring. So what you are seeing now, are some of us strongly defending Medicare. We want to increase funding for Medicare while at the same time we want to make the entire health care system more efficient in general.
  
  On the other hand there are those people who do not like government programs in general. They are upset that the private medical companies are not able to get their hands on senior citizens, and they want to move toward a privatized system. The president has underfunded Medicare which always means that there will be a cut in services for seniors or else seniors are going to have to pay more money. We recently passed a prescription drug bill which I voted against, because it was written by the pharmaceutical industry, making the cost of drugs for seniors much more expensive than they have to be. So, that's kind of a snapshot of what's going on there."
  
  [Thom]: "Right, in part it's funded as part of the FICA, isn't it?"
  
  [Bernie]: "Of course, that's where it's funded, of course. We all pay for it, right."
  
  [Thom]: "So we're all paying for it. And if the FICA cap were eliminated..."
  
  [Bernie]: "Well, in Medicare, the FICA cap has been eliminated."
  
  [Thom]: "Oh, it has."
  
  [Bernie]: "But not in social security."
• Bumper Music: I'm a Liberal, Neal Gladstone (video).
• Bumper Music: Stand By Me, John Lennon.
• Quote: "We must all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately." Benjamin Franklin.
• Larry Craig voted against the hate crimes legislation.
• Article: Iraq Vet And Dem Congressman Patrick Murphy Blasts Rush.
  "Someone should tell chicken-hawk Rush Limbaugh that the only phonies are those who choose not to serve and then criticize those who do. I served proudly, so did two of my fellow paratroopers in the 82nd Airborne who spoke out and died just weeks ago. Generations of American veterans have worn the uniform with pride and we know it is no contradiction to serve your country and still disagree with the Bush-civilian leadership that mismanaged this war."
• Article: Rep. Pallone slams Rush’s ‘phony soldiers’ comment.
  "Soldiers may question the war, but it does not mean that they’re any less committed to their mission, and now I wonder if Republicans who showed so much outrage towards MoveOn.org yesterday will hold Rush Limbaugh to the same standard — and I wouldn’t hold your breath."
• Article: Limbaugh expands group of "phony soldiers" to include Vietnam veteran Murtha.
  "Mr. Speaker. Yesterday, House Republicans offered a motion to recommit condemning MoveOn.org for its advertisement stating that Gen. Petraeus had betrayed us. I'm wondering if they'll show similar outrage over statements made yesterday by conservative radio talk-show host Rush Limbaugh. Yesterday, Limbaugh called service members who support a withdrawal from Iraq "phony soldiers." Is Limbaugh serious? Is a soldier who is honorably serving our nation in Iraq any less a soldier if he questions what appears to be a never ending war? Last month seven soldiers from the US Army 82nd Airborne Division wrote an op-ed in The New York Times questioning our continued war efforts, but also stating, and I quote, ‘we need not talk about our morale, as committed soldiers we will see this mission through.’ Now since publication of that op-ed, two of the soldiers have died. As this op-ed showed, soldiers may question the war, but it does not mean that they’re any less committed to their mission, and now I wonder if Republicans who showed so much outrage towards MoveOn yesterday will hold Rush Limbaugh to the same standards — and I wouldn’t hold your breath."
• Thom:

  What it does though is shows how the Republican Party, tragically, and there's a reason for this by the way, and that is that they're not where mainstream America is, the Republican Party, tragically, is taking virtually every issue that comes down the road and playing politics with it rather than playing statesmanship with it. Taking issues like the war in Iraq, or, you know, this ad that moveon.org ran, which isn't an issue but, you know, relevant to the war in Iraq. Taking these things and turning them into political gotchas, rather than asking the question, 'What's the best thing for this country? What's the best thing for the people of the United States? What's the best thing for all life on Earth?' ultimately.
  
  And frankly I'm seeing, in increasing numbers, particularly over the last decade, but I think the Bush administration has been a huge wake up call for a lot of people, I'm seeing, in increasing numbers, not just Americans but also politicians, mostly in the Democratic Party, there are a few in the Republican Party who have been stepping out and speaking out; I've been quite impressed, frankly, for example, with Chuck Hagel, lately, the guy that I've been picking on for years, who are standing up and speaking out on behalf of America and on behalf of peace in the world. This radical concept whose last major proponent in the Republican Party, arguably, was Dwight Eisenhower.
  
  And so I commend Congressman Pallone, you know, who you just heard from, Congressman Patrick Murphy who spoke out about this, I think it's great. And I think we need to continue thinking about the larger picture.

• Site: OPEC. Member Countries' Crude Oil Production Allocations ('83 - '07).

• Let me just riff a little bit more on this concept of land, labor and capital, 'cause there's this video of the guy who's the president of the Henry George Society, this has kind of gone viral on YouTube and a lot of people are talking about it, and he's right. Henry George, the, I think he was writing in 1890 [1870s] as I recall, more or less an economist, talking about there is land, there is labor, and there is capital. These are the three things that make up an economy.
  
  And his suggestion was that we should only tax land, and we should tax it at 100% of value, and then we should give it away. So, people pay 100% tax on it every year, but they get it for free, and that we should eliminate taxes on labor and we should eliminate taxes on capital. And the reason why, he said, is because land is the one thing that we all hold in common; it is the common property of the community, and therefore it shouldn't be ownable by individuals beyond a certain range, and the tax is giving back to the community. It's a little complex, but it's really not, you know, when you get right down to it.
  
  Where I disagree with him, is I would submit that labor is also a function of the community, because we learn to be laborers, we learn, you know, how to do things, we have public education, we have society, a public culture, we have all the infrastructure of society, that allows us to grow up to participate in society and become labor and so I would say that labor is also part of the common wealth, although I agree with Henry George that land is part of the common wealth, and I would submit that capital, to a large extent, is the consequence, again, of all that infrastructure. Not just money capital, but factories and technology and tools, and all this kind of stuff. All of that also comes about as a consequence of society existing.
  
  So the question then becomes, you know, what do you tax? Thomas Jefferson wrote about this at some length. He argued that you could basically tax labor income, you could tax wealth, that is, every year you say, "OK, how much are you worth?" Not property, he wasn't talking about property taxes back in that day, but the wealth tax. So, every year you say, "OK, you're worth X, and however you hold that, whether it's in stocks or land or, you know, cash in your back pocket, whatever it may be, we're going to tax that wealth". Or you tax transactions; sales taxes. And he suggested that we should pick one, and his preferred one was income, because that varied from year to year, although he wasn't opposed to taxing wealth.
  
  We don't tax wealth in the United States, the closest we get to it is property taxes, is taxing property. But I would submit to you that the one thing that we do tax that you can't justify, if the justification for tax is that tax is the way that we pay back all the rest of us for everything that's there, in other words, when I pay income tax I'm paying for the police and the fire and the streets and the intellectual and all that kind of thing. I think you could build a good case that land is part of the commons and therefore taxing land makes a certain amount of sense, that arguably wealth, that makes sense. Labor, taxing labor, I just made the case for. Taxing capital I made the case for.
  
  But taxing transactions - sales tax - I can't build a case for that. Outside of the one exception being communities that get most of their income from tourism, and there you have people coming from outside the community coming into the community and using the resources, and not paying for the resources that they're using beyond simply buying things. And that money then doesn't go back into the community; it's going into private hands. So you could build a case for a sales tax being a viable and justifiable; economically, morally justifiable thing in a tourism economy. But outside of that I don't think you can build a case for it. It's the most regressive of all of our taxes.

• Bumper Music: Amazing, Aerosmith.
• Article: Fox's Bill O'Reilly Says His Stereotypes Taken Out of Context.
• Sustainable farm model.
• Bumper Music: Play Something Country, Brooks & Dunn.
• Victoria Jones of Talk Radio News. Her first White House press briefing for 10 weeks, here first with Dana the official spokesperson. Climate change - Bush spoke at US conference. SCHIP veto threat. Bush is getting the biggest polluters together - like getting heroin dealers together to solve the drug problem, tobacco companies for tobacco use, murderers, rapists, etc. Texas pollution went up under Bush. Big Middle East peace conference in Annapolis - not in the war college, but nearby. She asked if unattainable goal, to require 90% of the neediest children to be enrolled first. Rush Limbaugh phony soldiers remark - Dana had not heard it, but said it was not a phrase Bush would use.
• Article: Limbaugh previously called Vietnam veteran Kerry "a fraud," "a total phony".
• Hillary Clinton is following a dangerous strategy, running a presidential rather than a primary campaign. FDR's campaign. How Howard Dean was dropped when he said break up the media. Columbia University president's remarks. Banks simulating pandemic flu, with some staff staying home.
• Bumper Music: Five to One, the Doors.
• Iran executes tens of thousands of homosexuals. Nobody is doing anything. Political industrial complex. It's like asking the junkies, not the dealers?
• Bumper Music: What a Wonderful World, Louis Armstrong. Thanks.

Thursday 27 September '07 National show

• Senate just passed the hate crimes bill - gender, sexuality, disability. 60 votes to avoid filibuster (need 67 for veto).
• The Democratic presidential debates last night. Tonight there's a Republican debate without the top 4. Everybody had chance to talk last night, it was handled well, but it was reduced to 30 second sound bites. They are sound-bite throwing competitions, not debates. Gravel is finished because of his bankruptcy. Social security, taxes, do away with the cap.
• Bumper Music: We Can't Make It Here Any More, James McMurtry.
• Iraq occupation and civil war update.
• Clip:
  [Russert]: "Senator Edwards, will you commit that at the end of your first term, in 2013, all U.S. troops will be out of Iraq?"
  
  [Edwards]: ... "Good people have differences about this issue. For example, I heard Senator Clinton say on Sunday that she wants to continue combat missions in Iraq. To me, that's a continuation of the war. I do not think we should continue combat missions in Iraq. And when I'm on a stage with the Republican nominee, come the fall of 2008, I'm going to make it clear that I'm for ending the war. And the debate will be between a Democrat who wants to bring the war to an end, get all American combat troops out of Iraq, and a Republican who wants to continue the war."
  
  [Clinton]: "Well, Tim, could I just clarify that, you know, I said there may be a continuing counterterrorism mission, which, if it still exists, will be aimed at Al Qaida in Iraq. It may require combat, special operations forces or some other form of that. But the vast majority of our combat troops should be out."
  
  [Edwards]: "But, can I just say that my only point is -- I don't have any doubt that Senator Clinton wants to take a responsible course. There is a difference, however, in how we would go about this. And I think Democratic primary voters are entitled to know that difference. And the difference is really very simple. I would have our combat troops out of Iraq over a period of several months, and I would not continue combat missions in Iraq. Combat missions mean that the war is continuing. I believe this war needs to be brought to an end. "
  Democratic debate, 26 September 2007.
• Bumper Music: I'm a Liberal, Neal Gladstone (video).
• Bumper Music: Crazy, Gnarls Barkley.
• Article: Ahmadinejad Invites U.N. Inspectors to Search for Homosexuals.
• Clip:
  "Now many of our Christians have what I call the goo-goo syndrome. Good government. They want everybody to vote. I don't want everybody to vote. Elections are not won by a majority of people. They never have been from the beginning of our country and they are not now. As a matter of fact, our leverage in the elections quite candidly goes up as the voting populace goes down." Paul Weyrich (mp3) (video).
• Article: Ohio, Florida laws could dampen Democratic voting.
• Bumper Music: My Conservative Girlfriend, Roy Zimmerman.
• Article: The American Economy: Being Hollowed Out At Near Record Pace.
• March Against the War, New Orleans, Saturday, September 29.
• Guest: Conservative David Harsanyi, award-winning columnist at The Denver Post. His book, "NANNY STATE: How Food Fascists, Teetotaling Do-Gooders, Priggish Moralists, and Other Boneheaded Bureaucrats Are Turning America into a Nation of Children."
• Article: Mike: Iraq Is Like 1776. Only This Time, 'we're The British'. Mayor Bloomberg.
• Nanny state rant. Book: The Conservative Nanny State, Dean Baker.
• Thom:

  Do we want a nanny state or corporate state? 'Nanny State' is one of the favorite frames of the cons. It is, in fact, I would submit to you that it is probably the favorite conservative frame. And what it completely omits is that a corporation cannot do business without the state; that it can't do business without the state creating laws that define what the medium of exchange is, creating a currency, creating a court system to enforce those laws, without particularly laws that protect intangibles.
  
  Dean Baker wrote a book called The Conservative Nanny State ... it was one of my books of the month over at Buzzflash.com... in which he calls out Bill Gates and says he's America's biggest welfare queen because, you know, he's made money based on a law that was passed that protects intellectual properties in a very particular way that made Bill Gates a billionaire. And without that law, Bill Gates would have merely been a millionaire and there probably would have been a lot more competitors for Microsoft and we all wouldn't be using Windows.
  
  So, the conservatives love this frame of the nanny state, and Libertarians love this frame of "oh, you know, the government thinks we're too stupid to..." and I'm sorry, it's not, first of all, the government, it's not, the government is not a 'them over there'; it's an 'us right here', at least to the extent we're still participating in it. And that's the important thing, is that we have to remember to still participate in it, you know, we have to get in there and get active. But it's us. and the extent to which the conservatives are going, "oh no, the government is a them, it's over there", Yeah, that's because, as Paul Weyrich pointed out,

  Elections are not won by a majority of people. They never have been from the beginning of our country and they are not now. As a matter of fact, our leverage in the elections quite candidly goes up as the voting populace goes down." (mp3) (video).

  And similarly, I would suggest that the leverage of corporatists, those who want to make sure that, to the extent you call it a nanny state, that the corporate nanny state is intact; that people who earn over $97,000 a year don't have to pay any social security tax whatsoever, for example, on the money that the make after the first $97,000. Or, for that matter, that the corporations who are paying those people more than $97,000 don't have to make a matching payment on anything over $97,000. That that corporate nanny state is intact. They want that, oh, that is so important to them.
  
  I mean, this may even have something to do with why Senator Clinton last night was waffling on the issue of eliminating the social security cap, why a couple of the candidates, in fact, were waffling on it, is because if you do away with the social security cap, somebody's making a million dollar income, they're going to pay 7% FICA tax, they're going to pay the 7% social security tax on their entire million dollar's worth of income. Right now they only pay it on the first $97,000. But their corporation is also going to pay a matching amount on the entire million dollars. So, if you're trying to be friendly to the corporations, they don't like that.
  
  And that was my point where I said that I thought that John Edwards had come up with an elegant solution. And perhaps that word is a bit of an overstatement. But his suggestion was, that in many cities in America, earning $150,000 or $100,000 doesn't make you rich. But nobody's going to dispute that earning a couple of million dollars makes you rich no matter where you live. So, by John Edwards suggesting that, for the moment, let's not hit people with a sudden tax increase between $97,000 and $200,000, but anybody earning over $200,000, fine, they can afford it, lay it on. It's also going to hit the corporations, because they pay, you know, they match that social security amount. And those corporations that want the nanny state, the corporate nanny state, that keeps protecting them, that makes them rich, that keeps their taxes low, they're going to say, "mm, no, don't like that at all".
  
  And so, it's interesting. It's an interesting debate. It's an interesting topic. And particularly, I think it's an interesting frame and it's amazing to me that for the better part of 30 years, since the Heritage Foundation and these other think tanks that were first funded by these hard reich guys first came out with this frame of the nanny state, that it is only now that we're beginning to push back and say, "wait a minute, what about the corporate nanny state?"

• Bumper Music: Radio, Paul Wright.
• Upcoming Event: October 6, Thom is giving a keynote speech at the Washington DC Green Festival at 6:00PM on the main stage. He may even have advance copies of "Cracking The Code: How to Win Hearts, Change Minds, & Restore America’s Original Vision", but no promises.
• Article: Six Nation Survey Finds Little Enthusiasm for Free Market Capitalism in Western Europe or the United States.
• Tomorrow's show will be live from KLSD.
• Guest: