What Could Be Done

[Daveparts still]

What Could Be Done
By David Glenn Cox


Where have they gone, the forty million? Have they, like Handsome Johnny, just walked over the horizon to where perspective ends? Have space aliens come down and abducted forty million of our people? We have ten million families put out in the snow, with 300,000 more added per month to their rolls. That's the entire population of New Orleans made homeless every thirty days in the land of hope and change, and this news is greeted with a thundering silence. There's not even a note of air guitar to be heard, or any sign of assistance.

The President has claimed that his administration are 'fierce advocates' of the free market. Nothing wrong with that, I guess, in a “I got your back Wall Street, screw these clowns" sort of way. I myself am an advocate of free boating; let everyone take boats wherever they choose to travel. However, if the boat begins to sink it becomes a question of humanity. You save the people and you don’t worry about the boat. Screw the boat.

The President, in his State of the Union speech, proposed a $100 billion jobs bill. Apparently this shrank in the Washington snow and was reduced to $85 billion in the Senate’s bipartisan compromise jobs plan. This was crafted by those ever-so-capable and concerned legislators, Max Baucus for the Democrats and Chuck Grassley for the Republicans. Then Harry Reid came in, riding in on a white armadillo, to announce that the Baucus/Grassley plan had been watered down yet again to a $15 billion plan. What’s next, a discount card for Value City?

“This is a simplified, focused bill that addresses our core priority: putting millions of Americans back to work,” Reid said.

A tax break for employers who hire new workers, yep, can’t have too many tax breaks. An increase in highway spending, and an extension of the “Build America” bond program that Wall Street bond traders have been so anxious about. And, of course, number four. Drum roll please, more tax cuts! Ta da!

I read this and was reminded of the Bonus Marchers, tens of thousands of veterans who marched from all over America to Washington, DC in the depths of the last Great Depression for a peaceful redress of grievances against their government. They were asking for the early payment of a war bonus that wasn’t due until 1945. The bonus was their goal but misery was their motivator. Many had lost everything and hung on only to their faint hopes for a new start on even just a piece of the bonus.

Tens of thousands of Americans were rallying on the steps of the Capitol Building on the last day of the Senate calendar, and the Senate voted down the measure. When the vote was announced the Bonus Army became quiet. They took the tongue of the dead because they were lost. All of their hopes and dreams had rested on the comfortable, reasoning assurances that certainly their government, seeing their misery and distress, wouldn’t just say to them, “Get off the lawn.”

Yet that’s exactly what the Senate did. So today we have a call for a $100 billion to help the jobless; it is followed up with, “No, eighty-five!” and then, “No, fifteen, and we’re throwing in the Patriot Act!” This isn’t just some appropriation to assist salmon fishermen or widget manufacturers. This is an appropriation to assist the struggling owners of this country, and the United States Senate, led by Harry Reid, just told them to “Get off the lawn.”

So, what would a real Democratic administration and Congress do?

Do away with the withholding cap for Social Security. People live longer and there is no limit on benefits, so why do we discontinue withholding for the affluent after $106,000?

Cut the $159 billion budget for the Department of Boogeymen Security in half with an eye towards phasing it out entirely. It was a creation of the Bush administration with the purpose of consolidating power in the hands of the executive branch. As the recent ball sack bomber so aptly illustrated, these guys couldn’t catch Grandpa playing Santa Claus. Travel restrictions might hurt the airlines' business but wouldn’t hurt America. Do you think Cubans and North Koreans hopscotch across America’s skies? This is a job for the Customs Department, just like every other country in the world.

Cap the defense budget at $500 billion. No kidding, no fooling, $500 billion and that’s it. If you can’t defeat your nameless, faceless enemy on half a trillion dollars per year then you will have to find another way. Try bake sales, no one here signed up for perpetual war and a decade is long enough, so get over it.

Roosevelt’s Home Owners Loan Corporation refinanced fifteen-year loans to thirty years. They consolidated fees and second mortgages into a single note at a below market interest rate. We should do the same thing now, extending new loans to forty or even fifty years with a 3% interest rate. These loans would be non-assumable and the dollar value of the property for the new mortgage would be based on an independent market appraisal.

As it stands today the banks are borrowing new money at .25%; they earn a maximum of $1,500 on each mortgage bailout. The banks hold every card in the deck and the homeowners are at their mercy, and when the bank can borrow a million dollars for $2,500, they ain’t got no mercy. The loans would then be rebundled and sold through the Treasury and would cost us less than the lose-lose Treasury Bonds issued every day.

Contact every state parks director and national parks director in the country. Ask for a list of low-cost projects like cleaning trails, clearing fire roads, picking up trash. Then offer thirty-hour per week jobs paying $10.00 per hour tax-free. Not enough to keep anyone from a real job but enough to maybe keep their car or pay their rent or utilities. You could expand that program to feed the workers lunches and continue expanding it by setting up feeding stations for the public.

You use these workers to reopen libraries shuttered by budget cuts. You pay them to offer tutoring sessions to students at these libraries. You begin a new Tennessee Valley Authority and where the first TVA was focused on hydroelectric energy, this one will focus on renewable energy of wind and solar.

You build these wind and solar farms, you train the workers and you save the people and you screw the boat. These monies would go directly into the economy and filter throughout the economy. The money wouldn’t be parked in banks or invested on Wall Street, but invested instead in struggling Americans. No trickle down or second-hand tax credits, but direct financial assistance; not because it’s left or right, but because our people need help and deserve no less.

I’m sure that clever people could come up with a thousand more ideas. It wouldn’t be difficult for those who cared, for those who gave a damn about the people to spend a minute to think of what could be done instead of only how much money could be made.

[DemReadingDU]

1. We are Americans first, not Democrats vs Republicans

The politicians need to think what is best for our country. Solar and wind projects, factories to make clothes and shoes, infrastructure maintenance, etc. There is a great need to have these projects to employ people and others to buy the products. Yet the government preferred to bail out banks. Perhaps Obama is waiting for the financial Ponzi to implode, and then to rebuild. Seems crazy to me, but nothing much makes political sense anymore.

[dixiegrrrrl]

2. I heard someone say today, in a talk, that we lost when

we went from being considered Americans to being considered...consumers.

My denial is breaking down.
The simple fact is our government is doing exactly what it wants to do.
The sad fact is not enough people are able to get that fact, yet.

[Mira]

3. Recommended, this needs exposure

[Tutankhamun]

4. We've all known for a long time that the Republicans have no real interest in bettering the lives of

American citizens (except the extravagantly wealthy). Unfortunately, it's now abundantly clear that Democrats are sold out too. Their actions only make sense in that context. Hence perpetual war(s), health care reform that only helps insurance co's, far too little stimulus money to jobs, corporate welfare, no real green energy initiatives that might threaten oil/coal industry profits...

We've been $$$old out.