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4 Views
21:00:06 12/29/11
There's No Mystery About Romney's Taxes and Tax Plan
[LESS INFO] 4 VIEWS | ADDED 21:00:06 12/29/11
Why is Mitt Romney alone among the Republican presidential candidates in refusing to release his tax returns ? And why is the former Massachusetts Governor also the only major GOP contender not calling for the complete elimination of the capital gains tax ? As it turns out, the answer - horrible political optics - is the same to both questions. Because Romney's continuing millions in annual income from Bain Capital are taxed at the 15 percent capital gains rate, Mitt already pays a much lower share to Uncle Sam than most middle class families . And if he called for changing the capital gains rate to zero, Mitt Romney would have to explain to voters why the $250 million man should pay virtually no tax bill at all .
Despite his famous demand in the 1994 Senate race that Ted Kennedy release his tax returns to show he has "nothing to hide," Romney last week reiterated his own paperwork would not be forthcoming. "We don't have any current plans to release tax returns, but never say never," Romney said, adding: >
"I can tell you we follow the tax laws, and if there's an opportunity to save taxes, we like anybody else in this country will follow that opportunity."
Truer words were never spoken.
In October, Citizens for Tax Justice estimated that the Romneys paid only 14 percent of their income in taxes . (It's no wonder Mitt opposes the " Buffett Rule .") As Time reported: >
Just how much Romney pays in taxes is, for the moment, a private matter. But his income is public knowledge. In August, Romney disclosed that in 2010 he and his wife made between $1.1 million and $2.8 million in royalties, salary, speaking fees and interest, most of which was likely taxed at a marginal rate of 35%, after accounting for deductions. The Romneys made an additional $5.5 million to $37.3 million from dividends and capital gains, which is generally taxed at a much lower rate of 15%.
Two weeks ago, the New York Times shed light on that "$5.5 million to $37.3 million from dividends and capital gains" that represents most of Romney's income. Though Mitt left Bain Capital in 1999, 13 years later his windfall continues uninterrupted: >
In what would be the final deal of his private equity career, he negotiated a retirement agreement with his former partners that has paid him a share of Bain's profits ever since, bringing the Romney family millions of dollars in income each year and bolstering the fortune that has helped finance Mr. Romney's political aspirations... >
In the process, Bain continued to buy and restructure companies, potentially leaving Mr. Romney exposed to further criticism that he has grown wealthier over the last decade partly as a result of layoffs. Moreover, much of his income from the arrangement has probably qualified for a lower tax rate than ordinary income under a tax provision favorable to hedge fund and private equity managers, which has become a point of contention in the battle over economic inequality.
And that creates what Steve Benen aptly called "Romney's 'carried interest' problem." >
In case anyone needs a refresher, there's a tax loophole on "carried interest" -- sometimes called "the carry" -- that taxes private equity and venture capital income at a lower, 15% rate, as compared to 35% on ordinary income. Hedge-fund managers and the Wall Street have fought tooth and nail to protect this loophole -- even after the Obama White House tried to eliminate it -- and so far, they've been successful.
Which is why Mitt Romney has thus far refused to join his fellow GOP White House hopefuls in proposing the elimination of the 15 percent capital gains tax. Newt Gingrich, Rick Perry and Herman Cain all called for zeroing out the capital gains levy, which is one reason why their tax plans represent such a huge windfall for the wealthy . (Their support for a flat-tax is another.) The Washington Post explained why for the rich that would be "better than any Christmas gift": >
While it's true that many middle-class Americans own stocks or bonds, they tend to stash them in tax-sheltered retirement accounts, where the capital gains rate does not apply. By contrast, the richest Americans reap huge benefits. Over the past 20 years, more than 80 percent of the capital gains income realized in the United States has gone to 5 percent of the people; about half of all the capital gains have gone to the wealthiest 0.1 percent.
For his part, Romney has proposed reducing the capital gains tax rate only for the first $200,000 in income. But as ThinkProgress pointed out, Romney's claim that "The people in the middle...I focused my tax cut right there" is preposterous: >
Romney may think he focused his tax cut on the middle-class, but according to a ThinkProgress analysis of Tax Policy Center data*, nearly three-fourths of households that make $200,000 or less annually would get literally nothing from Romney's tax cut, due to the simple fact that most of those households have no capital gains income.
But while Mitt Romney didn't want to create the appearance of slashing most of his own tax bill, that doesn't mean his proposals wouldn't produce a massive payday for his own and other rich families while piling up yet more debt. Romney's 59-point economic plan calls for extending the Bush tax cuts, ending the estate tax and reducing corporate taxes. The result, as ThinkProgress explained: >
Romney's tax plan includes a $6.6 TRILLION giveaway to corporations and the wealthiest Americans. Meanwhile, Romney's Medicaid cuts are even more draconian than the ones in Paul Ryan plan. Both of their plans end also end Medicare, naturally.
Still, in an interview last weekend the reliably Republican Wall Street Journal wondered why Romney had been so "timid" compared to his rivals. In a rare moment of candor, Mitt revealed that his real preferences would make for very bad politics: >
What about his reform principles? Mr. Romney talks only in general terms. "Moving to a consumption-based system is something which is very attractive to me philosophically, but I've not been able to sufficiently model it out to jump on board a consumption-based tax. A flat tax, a true flat tax is also attractive to me. What I like--I mean, I like the simplification of a flat tax. I also like removing the distortion in our tax code for certain classes of investment. And the advantage of a flat tax is getting rid of some of those distortions"... >
Amid such generalities, it's hard not to conclude that the candidate is trying to avoid offering any details that might become a political target. And he all but admits as much. "I happen to also recognize," he says, "that if you go out with a tax proposal which conforms to your philosophy but it hasn't been thoroughly analyzed, vetted, put through models and calculated in detail, that you're gonna get hit by the demagogues in the general election."
"The president," Romney complained, "will characterize anyone running for office, and me in particular, as just in there to lower taxes for rich people, and that is not my intent." Perhaps, but that's the inevitable impact. As John McCain learned in 2008 , refusing the release the details of his beer heiress wife Cindy's fortune while calling for tax policies delivering his family lottery-sized winning courtesy of the U.S. Treasury is not going to endear you to working Americans. (In Mitt Romney's case, revealing the 10 percent tithe he dutifully pays to his Mormon church probably won't endear him to the GOP's evangelical primary voters, either.)
All of which explains why Mitt Romney won't release his tax returns or call for abolishing the capital gains tax, the love which dares not speak its name. Besides, Mitt Romney wants Americans to believe he's just part of the "80 to 90 percent of us" who are middle class.
And, no doubt, Mitt's willing to bet you $10,000 to prove it.
(This piece also appears at Perrspectives .)
1 Views
19:00:30 12/28/11
Notable Death of the Year: RIP Austerity Economics, 1921-2011
[LESS INFO] 1 VIEWS | ADDED 19:00:30 12/28/11
"Smokestack Lightnin'," with Hubert Sumlin backing Howlin' Wolf in 1964
This is the time of year when we're reminded of all the famous people who died over the last twelve months, a list which includes two of my favorite guitar players ( Hubert Sumlin and Cornell Dupree ). But there were also some notable non-human deaths in 2011, especially in the world of economic policy.
One of those deaths should have completely altered the political debate in Washington. The name of the deceased was "Austerity Economics," and it was first glimpsed in a 1921 paper by conservative economist Frank Wright. Austerity died of natural causes brought on by prolonged exposure to reality.
But the debate in Washington didn't change nearly enough after its passing. In the nation's capital, dead things still rule the night.
Why Austerity?
"Austerity economics" backers claim that today's economic woes can only be fixed by dramatic reductions in government spending, which will lead to increased private-sector confidence and therefore to greater investment and growth.
But it's never worked. And if investors have lost confidence in the U.S. government's fiscal stability, they're sure not acting that way. There hasn't been this much demand for Treasury bonds since the government began tracking it twenty years ago, and they haven't performed as well since the go-go 1990s.
It's easy to understand austerity's attraction for power elites inside and outside of government. The people who suffer from austerity budgets aren't the kinds of people they know personally, since they're typically public employees like teachers, police, firefighters and the administrators of social programs; people who need government assistance, like the poor; and middle-class people with the temerity to either grow old or become disabled.
Austerity's attraction became even greater in the U.S. because once it became conventional wisdom that tax increases on the wealthy was "politically infeasible." That made it a program whose sole purpose was to cut government spending, lowering the pressure to increase taxes on the wealthy from today's historically low levels.
For a one-percenter, what's not to love?
Austerity Comes of Age
The idea's been around in one form or another since that 1921 paper, and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) had been imposing it on Third World nations for decades.
But 2009 was the year that austerity really came of age. That was the year that a wealthy stockbroker's son named David Cameron began campaigning for Prime Minister of Great Britain on an explicitly pro-austerity platform.
It was also the year that Cameron helped to form a group named European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) dedicated to electing like-minded politicians across Europe and helping them collaborate on ways to slash government spending. It was also the year that right-leaning Angela Merkel won reelection as the Chancellor of Germany with a stronger mandate than she'd been given in her first term.
With Nicolas Sarkozy as President of France, Great Britain was the only major European power not yet in the hands of the corporate-backed austerity crowd.
The Global Sado-Erotic Thrill Machine
That changed with Cameron's election as Prime Minister in May 2010, an event that threw pro-austerity Americans into throes of near-erotic ecstasy. And if that sounds like hyperbole, consider conservative Anne Appelbaum's reaction to Cameron's budget in September of 2010: >
Vicious cuts." "Savage cuts." "Swingeing (sic) cuts." The language that the British use to describe their new government's spending-reduction policy is apocalyptic in the extreme. The ministers in charge of the country's finances are known as "axe-wielders" who will be "hacking" away at the budget. Articles about the nation's finances are filled with talk of blood, knives, and amputation.
And the British love it.
What can I say? There are people who collect serial-killer memorabilia, too. But Appelbaum wasn't just speaking for herself. It became unacceptable for any politician in Washington, Democrat or Republican, to advocate anything other than an austerity budget for the United States.
And it was more than an economic strategy to its backers. Austerity became a way to demonize those who had suffered most from the banking abuses and self-indulgences of the wealthy, a totemic "blame the victim" response that turned the political debate into a grotesque inversion of morality. Again, Appelbaum: >
"Not only is austerity being touted as the solution to Britain's economic woes; it is also being described as the answer to the country's moral failings."
Bad Metaphors vs. Good Economists
The Democratic President of the United States, Barack Obama, jumped onto the bandwagon with both feet by repeatedly lecturing Americans on the need for government to stop "spending beyond its means." Obama recycled the popular conservative metaphor of a family that has to sit around the kitchen table and decide how much money it has to spend.
That's one of the worst metaphors in modern politics. Does a family establish its own currency -- especially one that has the unique position of the dollar? Can a family borrow money at rates so low they're effectively less than zero? Would a family let Grandma go hungry because Junior bought too many Porsches out of the family kitty and then gambled it away on lousy mortgage investments?
The world's top economists, those who had successfully predicted the crisis of 2008, tried telling the rest of the world what was wrong with the idea: Joblessness and consumer fears were killing any chance of real recovery. More short-term spending was needed to get the economy moving again. Austerity would make things worse, not better.
But nobody listened. Austerity's S%M-like attraction had the world's elites in its grip.
Death of a Delusion
And then something else came into the picture: Reality.
Cameron's austerity budget had a shattering effect on the already-struggling British economy. His government's financial stability was downgraded five times during his first year in power and retail sales had fallen 2.5 percent. Household income was projected to fall an additional 2 percent if his austerity plans were carried forward. Britain's modest employment gains were reversed, youth unemployment reached record levels, and income inequality was the worst it had been in more than half a century.
Anne Appelbaum's erotic dreams had become Great Britain's nightmare.
As Europe's ruling austerity class pushed forward with their plans, even the IMF tried to dissuade them. It was clear to anyone who wasn't blinded by ideology or political cynicism that austerity economics was a failed program. Even in countries like Greece, where government was far graver than elsewhere, the austerity programs imposed from outside threatened to destabilize society while other reasonable measures like improved tax collection were still not taken seriously enough.
And now the entire Eurozone hangs in the balance. Bankers became wealthy by treating governments as if they were mortgages, lending recklessly and pocketing their fees without considering the long-term reliability of their loans. European leaders insisted for months they were take the kind of sensible steps that should've been taken in the United States by requiring bankers to accept at least part of the losses for the bad loans they had issed.
That plan was quietly dropped last month. "Austerity economics" never calls for austerity from those who have gotten rich by being irresponsible, only from those who didn't benefit from it at all.
The Afterlife
President Obama has dropped his austerity rhetoric, at least for the time being, but the Republicans have not. Listening to Mitt Romney discuss economics is like having a doctor wave a dead chicken over your head and saying he's decided to cast a spell on you rather than operate on that thing they found in your X-rays.
Aside from the bill introduced this month by the House Progressive Caucus to almost no media attention, there's no comprehensive plan for dropping this country's ineffective austerity strategy and replacing it with an agenda that works.
Rational solutions to our economic problems are being ignored. There won't be a real debate about alternatives to austerity until an entire political party, not just part of it, adopts this kind of program. Until then there will be chaos. And where there is chaos, austerity's powerful advocates can step in and take charge.
Austerity economics died in 2011 and is survived by the British, German, and French governments as well as the GOP and large portions of the Democratic Party. Instead of sending flowers, the family has asked the public to abandon all hopes of future economic growth.
5 Views
19:00:30 12/28/11
Notable Death of the Year: RIP Austerity Economics, 1921-2011
[LESS INFO] 5 VIEWS | ADDED 19:00:30 12/28/11
"Smokestack Lightnin'," with Hubert Sumlin backing Howlin' Wolf in 1964
This is the time of year when we're reminded of all the famous people who died over the last twelve months, a list which includes two of my favorite guitar players ( Hubert Sumlin and Cornell Dupree ). But there were also some notable non-human deaths in 2011, especially in the world of economic policy.
One of those deaths should have completely altered the political debate in Washington. The name of the deceased was "Austerity Economics," and it was first glimpsed in a 1921 paper by conservative economist Frank Wright. Austerity died of natural causes brought on by prolonged exposure to reality.
But the debate in Washington didn't change nearly enough after its passing. In the nation's capital, dead things still rule the night.
Why Austerity?
"Austerity economics" backers claim that today's economic woes can only be fixed by dramatic reductions in government spending, which will lead to increased private-sector confidence and therefore to greater investment and growth.
But it's never worked. And if investors have lost confidence in the U.S. government's fiscal stability, they're sure not acting that way. There hasn't been this much demand for Treasury bonds since the government began tracking it twenty years ago, and they haven't performed as well since the go-go 1990s.
It's easy to understand austerity's attraction for power elites inside and outside of government. The people who suffer from austerity budgets aren't the kinds of people they know personally, since they're typically public employees like teachers, police, firefighters and the administrators of social programs; people who need government assistance, like the poor; and middle-class people with the temerity to either grow old or become disabled.
Austerity's attraction became even greater in the U.S. because once it became conventional wisdom that tax increases on the wealthy was "politically infeasible." That made it a program whose sole purpose was to cut government spending, lowering the pressure to increase taxes on the wealthy from today's historically low levels.
For a one-percenter, what's not to love?
Austerity Comes of Age
The idea's been around in one form or another since that 1921 paper, and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) had been imposing it on Third World nations for decades.
But 2009 was the year that austerity really came of age. That was the year that a wealthy stockbroker's son named David Cameron began campaigning for Prime Minister of Great Britain on an explicitly pro-austerity platform.
It was also the year that Cameron helped to form a group named European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) dedicated to electing like-minded politicians across Europe and helping them collaborate on ways to slash government spending. It was also the year that right-leaning Angela Merkel won reelection as the Chancellor of Germany with a stronger mandate than she'd been given in her first term.
With Nicolas Sarkozy as President of France, Great Britain was the only major European power not yet in the hands of the corporate-backed austerity crowd.
The Global Sado-Erotic Thrill Machine
That changed with Cameron's election as Prime Minister in May 2010, an event that threw pro-austerity Americans into throes of near-erotic ecstasy. And if that sounds like hyperbole, consider conservative Anne Appelbaum's reaction to Cameron's budget in September of 2010: >
Vicious cuts." "Savage cuts." "Swingeing (sic) cuts." The language that the British use to describe their new government's spending-reduction policy is apocalyptic in the extreme. The ministers in charge of the country's finances are known as "axe-wielders" who will be "hacking" away at the budget. Articles about the nation's finances are filled with talk of blood, knives, and amputation.
And the British love it.
What can I say? There are people who collect serial-killer memorabilia, too. But Appelbaum wasn't just speaking for herself. It became unacceptable for any politician in Washington, Democrat or Republican, to advocate anything other than an austerity budget for the United States.
And it was more than an economic strategy to its backers. Austerity became a way to demonize those who had suffered most from the banking abuses and self-indulgences of the wealthy, a totemic "blame the victim" response that turned the political debate into a grotesque inversion of morality. Again, Appelbaum: >
"Not only is austerity being touted as the solution to Britain's economic woes; it is also being described as the answer to the country's moral failings."
Bad Metaphors vs. Good Economists
The Democratic President of the United States, Barack Obama, jumped onto the bandwagon with both feet by repeatedly lecturing Americans on the need for government to stop "spending beyond its means." Obama recycled the popular conservative metaphor of a family that has to sit around the kitchen table and decide how much money it has to spend.
That's one of the worst metaphors in modern politics. Does a family establish its own currency -- especially one that has the unique position of the dollar? Can a family borrow money at rates so low they're effectively less than zero? Would a family let Grandma go hungry because Junior bought too many Porsches out of the family kitty and then gambled it away on lousy mortgage investments?
The world's top economists, those who had successfully predicted the crisis of 2008, tried telling the rest of the world what was wrong with the idea: Joblessness and consumer fears were killing any chance of real recovery. More short-term spending was needed to get the economy moving again. Austerity would make things worse, not better.
But nobody listened. Austerity's S%M-like attraction had the world's elites in its grip.
Death of a Delusion
And then something else came into the picture: Reality.
Cameron's austerity budget had a shattering effect on the already-struggling British economy. His government's financial stability was downgraded five times during his first year in power and retail sales had fallen 2.5 percent. Household income was projected to fall an additional 2 percent if his austerity plans were carried forward. Britain's modest employment gains were reversed, youth unemployment reached record levels, and income inequality was the worst it had been in more than half a century.
Anne Appelbaum's erotic dreams had become Great Britain's nightmare.
As Europe's ruling austerity class pushed forward with their plans, even the IMF tried to dissuade them. It was clear to anyone who wasn't blinded by ideology or political cynicism that austerity economics was a failed program. Even in countries like Greece, where government was far graver than elsewhere, the austerity programs imposed from outside threatened to destabilize society while other reasonable measures like improved tax collection were still not taken seriously enough.
And now the entire Eurozone hangs in the balance. Bankers became wealthy by treating governments as if they were mortgages, lending recklessly and pocketing their fees without considering the long-term reliability of their loans. European leaders insisted for months they were take the kind of sensible steps that should've been taken in the United States by requiring bankers to accept at least part of the losses for the bad loans they had issed.
That plan was quietly dropped last month. "Austerity economics" never calls for austerity from those who have gotten rich by being irresponsible, only from those who didn't benefit from it at all.
The Afterlife
President Obama has dropped his austerity rhetoric, at least for the time being, but the Republicans have not. Listening to Mitt Romney discuss economics is like having a doctor wave a dead chicken over your head and saying he's decided to cast a spell on you rather than operate on that thing they found in your X-rays.
Aside from the bill introduced this month by the House Progressive Caucus to almost no media attention, there's no comprehensive plan for dropping this country's ineffective austerity strategy and replacing it with an agenda that works.
Rational solutions to our economic problems are being ignored. There won't be a real debate about alternatives to austerity until an entire political party, not just part of it, adopts this kind of program. Until then there will be chaos. And where there is chaos, austerity's powerful advocates can step in and take charge.
Austerity economics died in 2011 and is survived by the British, German, and French governments as well as the GOP and large portions of the Democratic Party. Instead of sending flowers, the family has asked the public to abandon all hopes of future economic growth.
3 Views
17:00:31 12/23/11
#OccupyLA: Take 'Free Speech' Class After Arrests for Exercising Freedom of Speech
[LESS INFO] 3 VIEWS | ADDED 17:00:31 12/23/11
[Alanis Morissette: "Ironic"]
Occupy LA protesters who have been arrested are being offered a deal that would allow them to avoid court trials. For $355, protesters can pay a private company for lessons in free speech. American Justice Associates offers the educational program taught by an attorney - Neil G. Anderson - a former police officer and Supervising Deputy District Attorney for Sacramento County, and his partner attorney Deborah Bryce McKinley of Atlanta, GA.
Via : >
Los Angeles Chief Deputy City Atty. William Carter said the city won't press charges against protesters who complete the educational program offered by American Justice Associates.
He said the program, which may include lectures by attorneys and retired judges, is being offered to people with no other criminal history and who were arrested on low-level misdemeanor offenses, such as failure to disperse.
...
Carter said the free-speech class will save the city money and teach protesters the nuances of the law.
"The 1st Amendment is not absolute," he said, noting that the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled government can regulate when, where and how free speech can be exercised.
American Justice Associates , and it’s founders include Neil G. Anderson , previously a police officer and Supervising Deputy District Attorney for Sacramento County, and Deborah Bryce McKinley , a lawyer currently based in Atlanta, Georgia. Anderson, who lives in Newcastle, is currently listed as “inactive” by the State Bar of California and therefore ineligible to practice law in the state. McKinley is currently licensed to practice in the state.
In a 1997 interview, Anderson told the Los Angeles Times that "We run defendants through a comprehensive approach to keeping a job and maintaining self-esteem, so we don't have to see them back here again."
The majority of Occupy LA protesters, those who were arrested the night of the LAPD's eviction of the encampment, were already held for at least two days with a bail of at least $5,000.
A civil rights attorney who has worked with the protesters called the free speech class "patronizing," and said the demonstrators who were arrested are the last people needing free-speech training.
"There they were exercising their 1st Amendment, their lawful right to protest nonviolently," said attorney Cynthia Anderson-Barker.
[Hat tip to Alternet ]
2 Views
18:00:07 11/05/11
Vetoing Democracy: In Athens or Washington, Elites Still Call the Shots
[LESS INFO] 2 VIEWS | ADDED 18:00:07 11/05/11
Greeks protest austerity measures, October 19 (RT Television)
This week was a sharp reminder that the ancient ideal of democracy is just as threatened -- and to some, just as threatening -- as it's ever been. In government offices in Athens, G20 meeting rooms in Cannes, and "Super Committee" chambers in Washington, we learned that there are still places where the will of the people can be overruled by the whims of the powerful.
From the Parthenon to the Potomac, it was the same story: Elites still hold veto power over the democratic process, and they're not afraid to use it.
Democracy: 'Radical,' 'Irrational,' 'Dangerous'
Ironically, this week's ferment began in the country that's usually credited with creating democracy. In many ways the Greek economy couldn't be more different from our own. The government's fiscal problems there are due in large part to widespread corruption and massive tax evasion -- not tax breaks , tax evasion -- which are very different from our own problems. The government's finances dramatically worse than our own -- almost like night and day -- and a default could create the next major financial crisis.
A certain level of fear and concern was understandable when Greek President George Papandreou announced there would be a referendum on the new bailout plan imposed on his country. The global economy is still unstable, top-heavy, and still riddled with too-big-to-fail institutions. In a worst-case scenario, Greece could trigger another financial meltdown.
Yet the fear was rarely balanced with an understanding of what's really happening in Greece. There was no acknowledgement that the bailout's terms might be grossly unfair (they are), that they're likely to make a terrible situation even worse (they will), or that Greece is in chaos, misery, and despair. (It is.)
And what was most striking was the assumption the elite -- the 1%, if you will -- have veto power over the democratic process. In most of the commentary that flowed from the powerful and the press, a surprising number of world leader didn't even acknowledge that Greece had the right to its own democratic decision-making process.
South Korean President Lee Myung-bak, whose nation will benefit from "bipartisan" U.S. actions to create a free trade agreement between the two countries, said that "The world has plunged into fears again because of the Greek prime minister's radical step to hold a referendum." Closer to home, French President Sarkozy said that "the Greek's gesture is irrational and, from their point of view, dangerous."
The first part of that statement is a slur against democracy. The second part is, of course, a threat.
What's the Greek word for 'shafted'?
Few are asking who created the Greek debt problem, or who benefited. As in the United States, deficit-creating behavior primarily served the wealthy, the powerful, and the banks. Tax collections for corporations and the wealthy have been very low in Greece. And while tax evasion is commonly for everyone from taxi drivers to millionaires, it takes a lot of cheating cabbies to equal one rich tax dodger.
Bankers didn't give Greece these loans out of kindness, either. They saw an opportunity and they took it. That's why they're being asked to take "haircuts" and lose part of the loan repayment (a reasonable measure that hasn't been yet considered in the US mortgage crisis.)
Greeks are struggling with devastating levels of unemployment, a declining standard of living, and widespread social unrest. While the austerity measures imposed on it do include tax hikes and measures to reduce tax evasion, they will have an especially devastating impact on already hard-hit middle class Greeks. They're the ones who went to work, paid their taxes (wage earners were disproportionately taxed because of the evasion), and paid into their Social Security and health funds with the expectation these services would be available when they were needed.
It doesn't matter now. They won't get their say. Once again the elites were given veto power over democracy. A "bipartisan" revolt of politicians in both major parties made sure of that, and today George Papandreou is looking forward to joining the swelling ranks of Greece's unemployed.
The public's widespread dissatisfaction is understandable, and this stifling of democracy should raise even more fears for Greece's future stability than the referendum did. What will happen if the Greek people continued to be denied a place at the bargaining table as their fate is decided? Given that nation's troubled past, and its tormented present, there's always John F. Kennedy's quote to consider: Those who make peaceful evolution impossible make violent revolution inevitable.
Elites Only
But what does this have to do with us? We certainly don't face Greek-level problems. In fact, it serves the elite's narrative to suggest otherwise. Our currency is the dollar, which helps a great deal. We're a commanding world economy. We have the money and resources to fix our joblessness problem, if we only had the will, and we're not part of a larger group like the European Community.
Bet we are part of the G20, which this week reaffirmed its obsession on austerity measures even as Europe sinks under the weight of those already imposed. Washington's Powers That Be are still obsessing about austerity, too.
Here, as in Europe, public opinion is expected to take a back seat to the elites. Yet another poll has been released which shows that a majority of people in all age groups oppose cutting Social Security to fix the deficit. Past polls have shown that strong majorities of Republicans, independents, and even Tea Party member oppose such measures.
Yet despite the strong public objections, and despite the fact that there's overwhelming evidence these cuts are unnecessary and counterproductive, an elected "Super Committee" is likely to recommend them anyway. The usual Congressional rules have been waived in order to force their proposal to a simple up-or-down vote, with no possibility of filibuster and no chance to offer amendments. And US politicians will be under as much pressure to vote for this austerity measure as their Greek counterparts were.
Vetoing Democracy
The same week that democracy was under siege in Greece, the "Super Committee" heard from a blue-ribbon panel representing the austerity elite: a Republican hater of Social Security recipients; a Democratic member of Morgan Stanley's Board of Directors; a Republican ex-Senator; and an economist aligned with the Democratic establishment advocates for entitlement cuts. The activities of all four been funded by Republican anti-government-spending billionaire Pete Peterson.
In words that echoed those of the South Korean and French Presidents, the quartet told the unelected committee that if it fails to offer austerity measures which the public rejects, "We haven't got a prayer and neither have you." The elites have spoken: The public is to be ignored. Democracy's been vetoed.
Here's what they didn't teach us in civics class: Democracy has always been controversial. "Democracy... is a charming form of government," said Plato, "full of variety and disorder; and dispensing a sort of equality to equals and unequals alike." He could sound like a Tea Partier at times. "Dictatorship naturally arises out of democracy," he said, " and the most aggravated form of tyranny and slavery out of the most extreme liberty."
Plato's aversion to democracy is shared by a lot of powerful people these days. But politicians, especially those whose party derives its name from the democratic principle, would be better off remembering another Greek philosopher, Aristotle, who said that "The only stable state is the one in which all men are equal before the law."
Representatives from groups that represent Social Security and Medicare recipients, the disabled, and the elderly requested an opportunity to address the Super Committee. They wanted to present their case for preserving these programs, a position that's supported by compelling evidence and supported by majorities in all political parties and of all generations.
Their requests were ignored.
