Three Major Issues The Presidential Candidates Are Ignoring

 

 What if they held an election but didn’t discuss the most important economic issues?

That’s what’s happening here in 2012.

Yes, taxes and the deficit are significant. But there are even more crucial issues that will determine whether the country continues to slide into wider income inequality and destroys what’s left of the middle class.

And these three crucial issues have been barely mentioned during a campaign obsessed with who pays what in taxes and who doesn’t.

Dean Baker, of the Center on Economic Policy Research, neatly summed up several of the left-out issues recently.

On one of the most critical economic issues, the so-called free trade pacts such as NAFTA and the more recent Korean trade agreement, both parties agree: they favor them.

The media cooperates in keeping this issue off the table by repeating the misleading claims of proponents of the agreements while omitting or marginalizing critics.

“Free trade” is really the big lie of our economy and our politics. As the critics point out, these agreements should be accurately labeled “corporate rights agreements” since they are much more concerned with that issue than with trade. Not only do they result in lower wages in the U.S. and devastated small farming in other countries, these agreements allow corporations to challenge environmental and labor protections in special courts in which the public has no voice.

Both parties crank up the rhetoric to promote the notion that the  “free trade” is the road to economic prosperity for everybody. But as Baker points out, the reality of “free trade” is far grimmer for those that work for wages to earn a living because it puts “downward pressure on the wages of manufacturing workers by putting them in direct competition with low-wage workers in the developing world.”

The absence of any discussion of these agreements in the political debate exposes a major fraud on the part of both parties. While the Democrats tout themselves as the party of the little guy, their support for “free trade” shows how closely they hew to the corporate agenda on issues that matter most. For the Republicans, their support for “free trade” agreements which, in the real world, prop up some corporations while punishing others shows they’re less interested in picking economic winners and losers than their free market rhetoric lets on.

And there’s a huge trade deal being secretly negotiated right now, the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), which I previously wrote about here, calling it a Free Trade Frankenstein. Others have called it “NAFTA on steroids.” As with other trade negotiations, the public has been kept out while the corporate lobbyists have full access.

The only TPP issue on which the president and his challenger disagree is who could whip out his pen faster and sign the TPP once the secret negotiations are concluded.

The second major economic issue left out of this election is the deeply unpopular 2008 bailout of the financial sector and corporate America, including the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program and the $16 trillion in cheap or free loans the Federal Reserve provided to corporate America in the wake of the financial collapse.

All this financial assistance was provided with little public debate and without any conditions imposed on the recipients.

The Obama administration dismisses all questions about the bailout by insisting that all the TARP money has been paid back. Case closed, the administration contends.

But could a different kind of bailout, one which imposed specific conditions on banks and corporations, helped more struggling Americans than the one we got, which propped up bank and corporate executives? Why did those portions of TARP that were targeted at ordinary Americans facing foreclosure fail so badly?

And how does this bailout, which picked winners and losers, jibe with the Republicans’ free market rhetoric? What about a belated bailout for the rest of us? Plenty of fodder for tough questions for the president and his challenger, if anybody cared to ask.

The third issue is one that the two parties have disagreed on: increasing the minimum wage.

As a candidate in 2008, President Obama promised to raise the federal minimum wage from $7.25 an hour to $9.50 by 2011 but has taken no action to do so. For his part, Republican challenger Mitt Romney has said he favors tying the minimum wage to inflation, until the right wing of his party objected.

According to a recent paper by the Economic Policy Institute, phasing in the $9.80 minimum wage would raise the wages for 28 million workers, who would earn an additional $40 billion during the phase-in, while gross domestic product would increase by $25 billion and 100,000 new jobs would be created.

We need a robust debate on these issues in the remaining weeks of the presidential campaign that challenges the president and Mr. Romney on where they stand and what actions they’ll take, not just a stale rehash of the same old arguments on taxes. But we won’t get that debate unless we demand it.

 

Going to the White House

I've been a politics geek since I was about 10 years old and I went from reading the sports page of the Detroit News to the front page. I've been reading about it, arguing about it, covering it on some level as a journalist, and some times writing about it as an advocate, ever since.
So getting invited to the White House as part of a delegation of California activists, organizers and bloggers, organized by the Courage Campaign, is a big deal. A lot of us have expressed frustration with the Obama administration for it’s unwillingness to focus on jobs and housing in a more effective way, for its embrace of the austerity agenda, and its failure to hold bankers accountable in any meaningful way for the financial collapse that the whole country is still suffering from.
I was ambivalent about going at first, because this administration has sometimes seemed so determined not to get to it, to prize elusive bipartisanship over a strong fight for what’s right, for its cluelessness about the depth of the unemployment and housing crisis that continues to cause so much misery across the country.
That cluelessness was on display again in the past few days, when the president proclaimed no deficit deal would be fair without “shared sacrifice” that would require hedge fund managers to pay higher taxes while the government cut Medicaid. Does the president really believe that the sacrifice is equivalent – millionaires having to get by on a little less while people who are dependent on the government for health care get less care?
Even in planning our visit, the White House doesn’t seem to get it. We’ll have break-out sessions on education reform, the new health care law, lesbian gay transgender bisexual issues, the environment and labor – but no session on the foreclosure crisis and housing. The administration’s efforts in this area, so crucial to California’s economy, have been particularly lame. Whether or not the president’s staff wants to focus on it, I’m sure they will get an earful.
What I will suggest to the president’s people is that he’s vulnerable because he hasn’t done enough to reduce unemployment or to address the foreclosure crisis, and because too often he has accepted the Radical Republicans’ and the deficit hawks’ terms of the debate. When the president debates on those terms, he loses. We all lose.
Still, I don’t want to give up on the administration or the people who continue to put their faith in him. I’ll go in memory of my father, Irving Berg, who would be 90 this year. He saw great promise in Obama and wouldn’t allow frustration to cause me to give up on him, or fail to participate in some effort that might set Obama on a firmer course.
We meet with the president’s top staff on Friday all day. Any messages you want me to deliver?

D.C. Disconnect: It's Just a JOBS Recession

According to one of the pontificators on NPR’s Marketplace, the economy is actually fine, we’re just in a “jobs recession.”

Now I feel better.

This is what passes for insightful commentary among the media elite on the day that unemployment shot back up to 9.2 percent.

“If you’re rich, it’s great,” says Felix Salmon, Reuters columnist. “But if you’re a working person it’s terrible.”
As for President Obama, he reacted to the terrible jobs report by saying: “We still have a long way to go.”

Except he shows no inclination to go there.

He’s wrapped up in the Republican austerity agenda so tight he can’t find his way to suggest anything to reduce unemployment.

He meekly suggested that reducing the deficit would help create jobs, though most economists acknowledge such cuts will hurt the economy – and the unemployed.

We all know that President Obama needs to raise $1 billion for his presidential campaign, and Republicans are falling over themselves to kill financial reform in their efforts to woo Wall Street. You have to admire the Republicans' focus: they don't give a damn about the economy, they only care about getting rid of Obama.

But both Obama and the Republicans they must be counting on only the rich voting.

The day before the jobs report, Obama’s top political adviser told Bloomberg News that the unemployment rate wouldn’t hurt Obama’s reelection chances. Obama adviser David Plouffe also asserted that people thought that the economy was getting better, based on anecdotal evidence.

Here’s what Plouffe had to say:

“You see, people’s — people’s attitude towards their own personal financial situation has actually improved over time. You know, they’re still concerned about the long-term economic future of the country, but it’s things like “My sister was unemployed for six months and was living in my basement and now she has a job.

There’s a — a “help wanted” sign. You know, the local diner was a little busier this week. Home Depot was a little busier. These are the ways people talk about the economy.”

Either Plouffe is drinking his own Kool-Aid or thinks he can play off the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression as a minor dip.

As emptywheel points out on Firedoglake, the measures of consumer confidence don’t agree with Plouffe’s blithe assessment. As emptywheel suggests, if they expect voters to keep them in their jobs, Plouffe, Obama and the rest of the administration need to get out of their bubble and start listening “to the pain of real people.”

Martin Berg

 

3 Steps Toward Real Economic Recovery

Democrats should be less worried less about Sarah Palin’s mangling of American history and more concerned about the Obama administration’s consistent underestimation of the recession since the financial collapse.

The president and his team has been downplaying the seriousness of the jobs and housing crises since they took office, repeatedly taking inadequate steps to address the twin fiascoes of foreclosure and unemployment, while wrongly conceding to Republicans that the political focus should be the short-term deficit.

This is not only bad for the country but bad politics for the Democrats, increasing the chances that voters will blame them for not fighting harder for programs to create jobs and straighten out the housing mess. Never mind that Republican efforts to address these issues amount to less than zero.

Nobody expects the president and his party to win every fight. But we do expect him not to wave the white flag before the fight starts.

Circumstances still offer the president opportunities to show that he finally gets it – and to signal a more aggressive approach.

First, the president can launch a fight for Elizabeth Warren to head the Consumer Financial Protection Agency. Warren is popular, articulate and sensible, and the agency was her idea in the first place. Of course the Republicans hate her, in fact they don’t want a single head of the agency. Republicans favor a committee to run the agency, the more easily for the banks to bamboozle it.

Second, he can replace his outgoing economic adviser, Austan  Goolsbee with somebody more tuned in to the jobs and housing crises. How bad was Goolsbee (and the administration’s economic policies he defended)?

Here’s how economist Firedoglake blogger Scarecrow put it after listening to Goolsbee Sunday, saying it was up to the private sector to create jobs now because government could do nothing: “If I’d been asleep for the last decade and woke up to ABC This Week’s interview of Presidential economic advisor Austan Goolsbee, I would assume that Mitt Romney won the 2008 election, that he was predictably following Republican dogma about how to recover from a severe financial collapse and recession...” Scarecrow wrote.

With Democrats like these, who needs Republicans?

Third, Obama can fire his Treasury secretary, Timothy Geithner, who has shamelessly pandered to his banker cronies while ignoring Main Street’s woes since he helped engineer the bailout as head of the New York Fed prior to the Obama administration.

Of course it will take more than gestures and a few appointments for the president to tackle the continuing severe economic challenges we face. But he can still saddle up and take a brave ride on the right side of history, if he chooses.

 

What About The Rest of Us?

In one of the most appalling aspects of our current politics, our elites – elected officials, media lords and corporate chieftains, have swept the opinions and concerns of most Americans off the table to pursue their own agenda.

So we’re stuck with sterile political games focused on the national debt, even while a majority of Americans favor higher taxes on the rich and more aggressive action to reduce unemployment.

We get the highly touted insider trading conviction of a hedge fund billionaire while the Justice Department doesn’t pursue its own FBI’s massive evidence of the too big to fail bank’s fraud at the heart of the financial collapse.

It’s clear that whoever is setting priorities is not us. Take for example President Obama’s deficit commission, which has worked hard to legitimize the austerity agenda embraced by most of both parties. Not only was it stacked with well-known deficit hawks, It was made up of a collection of lifetime politicians, bureaucrats, with a CEO thrown in – because we wouldn’t want the CEOs to feel left out of any big idea brainstorming.

But what about the rest of us? Over at Campaign For America’s Future, Dave Johnson has been asking some intriguing, relevant questions.

For one, what would the deficit commission have looked like if it truly reflected the population of the country, rather than the backroom.

If a 100-person deficit panel truly reflected the country, it would present a stark contrast to the gang the president relied on:

•                19 people on the commission would receive some form of Social Security benefits, 12 of those as retirees. And on this deficit commission they get to talk when the ones making over $250K propose cutting Social Security.

•                43 of the commission members would have less than $10,000 saved up for retirement. 27 of those less than $1,000.

•                98 of the 100 members would make less than $250,000 a year.

•                50 of the members would come from households in which the total income of all wage-earners is less than $52,029.

•                13 would have income below the poverty level.

•                14 members would be receiving food stamps.

•                16.6% of the commission members would be un- or underemployed, and would be wondering why they are on a deficit commission at all instead of a jobs commission.

•                The commission would include the right proportion of factory and construction workers, and people who work in a kitchen, and work waiting tables, and teaching, and nursing, and installing tires, and all the other things that people do except, apparently, those on DC elite commissions. (People who do hard, manual labor get an extra vote each on what the retirement age should be.)

•                74 members would not have college degrees.

•                20 would not have graduated high school.

•                18 would speak a language other than English at home.

Under present circumstances it’s highly unlikely that the president would appoint a commission to consider the deficit or anything else for that matter that wasn’t stacked with wealthy insiders intent on slashing government services for anybody who is not like them. But highlighting the disconnect does point out in a particularly graphic way why those at the top have managed to get left out when its time to divide up the sacrifices.

 

 

 

 

 

Bringing it All Back Home

Looking at the photo of President Obama and his advisers tracking the mission to kill Osama bin Laden, I was struck by the president’s extraordinary intensity.

In the photograph I read not only his passion for the mission and his concern for the Navy SEALS, but his knowledge that his own job could be at stake.

Looking at Obama so present in the photograph, I couldn’t help but think about how absent he’s been from the economic crisis that’s afflicting millions of people here at home. Yes, he’s been worried about Bin Laden; yes, he’s obsessing about the deficit; and yes, he’s got to raise a billion dollars to fund his reelection. But we are still facing an economic crisis that has left housing behind, with the worst unemployment in decades.

So where’s the situation room for the unemployed and those losing their homes? Where are the presidential commissions and crack teams focused on tracking down new ways to salvage communities ravaged by foreclosure and joblessness?

I had the opportunity to hear President Obama at a rally a couple of weeks ago. He talked about how he stays up late reading letters from the unemployed. But the president’s rhetoric rang hollow and slick in the face of his lack of aggression in fighting for benefits for the long-term unemployed. He abandoned them at the same time that he extended the Bush era tax cuts for the wealthiest.

They’re the Obama era tax cuts now.

We’re in a bitter fight for real economic recovery here at home, to keep the most vulnerable from further suffering, to narrow the widening gap between rich and poor, to keep the country from losing its soul. It’s a complex mission, in uncertain terrain, against implacable foes.

The mission in Abbottabad required guts, rigorous planning, determination and flawless execution to accomplish what was deemed just and right. Now we need our president and all of his intensity fighting for us here at home.

 

 

Stand Up Against Fear, Mr. President

Dear Mr. President:

I'm glad to see reports that you don’t intend to call for cuts to Social Security, as your hand-picked so-called deficit commission recommended.

But turning over the Social Security debate to Congress and standing back to see what they come up with is not good enough, Mr. President.

It’s time for you to take on those who want to undermine Social Security protections under the guise of concern over the deficit, rather than enable them, as you have been doing by stacking your deficit commission with members who had previously supported cuts to Social Security.

Now it’s time for you to fight back against the fear-mongering propaganda campaign that’s been trying to whip up a phony crisis around Social Security, not to stand on the sidelines, Mr. President.

Yes, it will be a tough fight. The pundits, Republicans, many in your own party and a gang of Wall Street tycoons are lined up against you.

But the good news for you politically, Mr. President, is that a majority of the people in the country are lined up with you, should you choose to lead them in this fight.

This is a fight we can win, Mr. President. It’s good politics and it’s good sense.

Yes, it means you’ll have to go up against some of the bankers you’ve been trying to get cozy with. You’ll have to stand up and speak out against the fear that the Social Security cutters are peddling. But if you choose to lead this fight, you may remember that’s why we elected you.

Happy Thanksgiving to You from California First LLC, the New Owner of Your State

This isn’t a tale about turkeys. It’s about pigs.

With America’s economy smashed, and American consumers no longer consuming, these are tough times for everybody, and that includes Wall Street investors and hedge funds. What are they supposed to do with the billions of dollars they have amassed courtesy of the US taxpayers?  Wouldn’t it be great if they could figure out a way to help us while helping themselves?

What the President SHOULD Say

Republicans may have driven the car into the ditch. But voters know the difference between a sales job and reality.

That’s why they didn’t trust President Obama and the Democrats’ pitch that they had gotten the car out of the ditch and gotten it running again.

It didn’t ring true because far too many Americans are still stuck in the ditch.

And all of the presidents’ talk about how much worse off we’d be without his team’s hard work fell on deaf ears.

From the time he took office through the election, the president and his team failed to adequately acknowledge how deep the ditch was. By all accounts, the president is a brilliant man, and he’s hardly the first president to suffer a midterm “shellacking.” And his opponents haven’t exactly been overflowing with creative ideas for how to get the economy going again for those of us who aren’t bankers.

I also realize it’s not just up to the president – we all have a responsibility. So here’s my humble contribution to help the president make a mid-course correction: some suggestions for what the president might say.

My fellow Americans:

You sent me a strong message on November 2. I have to admit it stung. It’s taken a while to sink in, but I get it now.

I haven’t taken the economic pain that many of you are feeling seriously enough. The range of solutions I’ve chosen have been far too narrow and not nearly ambitious or imaginative enough. I’ve paid too much attention to not riling the markets and not enough attention to getting you back to work and keeping you in your houses. For that I owe you an apology. I have also belittled your concerns that our government has fostered a system that favors the wealthy and connected over other Americans. I’m sorry for that too.

I know that words without action ring hollow. So I’m replacing my entire economic team with men and women who are more attuned to the economic crisis that many of you find yourselves in. We’re fortunate that we have such a distinguished group to choose from – Paul Volcker, Robert Reich, Bill Black and Brooksley Born among them.

I have previously attributed the lack of popularity of some of my administration’s policies to my inability to sell them properly. But in retrospect, I see that the problem wasn’t the message. It was my previous unwillingness to fight, and fight hard, for stronger policies, stronger solutions to the country’s economic problems. I should have done so earlier.

But I will do so now.

Make no mistake. These solutions will cost money. Putting people back to work will cost money. But that money is an investment in a future that we can all live with, not just the well-to-do, and that will pay dividends later. I know that my opponents have raised concerns about the federal deficit, and I share some of those concerns. But my top priority for the next two years will be putting Americans back to work and making sure that we have a recovery that works for everybody. If my opponents want to have a debate on the deficit, I welcome that. If they want to have a debate on whether the government can truly help people or whether the government itself is the problem, then I welcome that too. Let’s have it on television.

But mostly I welcome my opponents’ ideas about how to put Americans back to work. Because the American people don’t just want an endless debate. You want action.

We’ll have a debate and then we’ll get to it. I know that you’re impatient. You also don’t want excuses. You won’t get any from me. What you will get is a plan to reduce unemployment, stabilize housing and reduce the widespread economic misery. I promise you that will be my number one priority.

Thank you for the great trust you have placed in me.

Can I guarantee success if my opponents decide to stand in the way rather than cooperate? Probably not. But I promise you that for the next two years all of my energy, intellect and passion will be harnessed to this effort, whatever the obstacles or political costs.