This is a sample of the new video version of News from Neptune (radio with pictures), from the studios of Urbana (IL) Public Television, with thanks to Jason Liggett. It features CGE and David Green. Topics include *elitism and contempt*, *class in America*, and *the Pareto principle*.
New programs will be posted inshallah in the new year.
Don’t tax productive economic activity, tax wealth. Remove all corporate taxes (that’s practically been done) but also remove the civil rights of corporations as “legal persons.”
But wealth owned by corporations should be assigned to individuals (principally shareholders) for accounting purposes and then taxed. (We do that now informally — that’s why we say Bill Gates and Warren Buffett are rich.)
Wealth should be taxed in a way that reverses the accelerating trend to inequality (and plans for that exist). Under the pressure of neoliberalism, those European countries that had (small) wealth taxes have removed them (except France and Switzerland).
Removing taxes from productive investment (but not speculation — the Tobin tax) would presumably create jobs, as would the removal of income taxes (a much larger stimulus than is being contemplated). But the existence of jobs shouldn’t depend on whether they enrich corporations. People have a right to exercise their talents of head and hands in a useful way, and government must organize and apply that work. Everyone has a right to a job and a livable income.
I defended these proposals — which are hardly original — when I ran for Congress in Illinois’ 15th Congressional district in 2002. –CGE
Friday’s NYT has an obit for an Italian anti-fascist, Vittorio Foa, who recently
died at 98. Jailed by Mussolini, he led a left-wing labor union after WWII and
was a socialist senator. The Times describes him delicately as “a leading
intellectual of the non-Communist left [who] in the 1960s inspired some
extra-parliamentary leftist groups.”
La Repubblica published his impatient answer to the question of what today’s
left should do:
It’s a waste of time and sense to try to define a leftist identity. You have to do what’s right and necessary for the country. It’s up to posterity to decide whether it came from the right or the left.
Amen. Requiescat in pace. La lotta continua.
Senator Barack Obama said Wednesday he would order a surge of U.S. troops – perhaps 15,000 or more – to Afghanistan as soon as he reached the White House [Globe & Mail 20081022].
Obama’s position has been clear for some time. But it’s been expressed in such a way that he and the Democrats have been able to eviscerate the anti-war movement, owing to the false notion that he was an anti-war candidate.
Remember that the largest anti-war demonstrations in human history occurred before the Bush administration’s descent upon Iraq, with more than a million dead? Where did that sentiment go? In fact, it never went away — three-quarters of he American populace still disapprove of the war. But the American parody of democracy has made that fact irrelevant.
It testifies to a form of control — of media, of propaganda, of politics, and of what is generally thought — that any 20th-century totalitarianism would envy, that the Democrats and Obama have been so successful in co-opting and neutralizing the anti-war movement.
The only answer we have is to begin to build a serious movement in opposition to the Obama administration and its war policy, in the first place by exposing its lies — such as his lie that we are deterring terrorists by killing children in AfPak.
“The people can vote for whoever they want.
I control the nominations.”
–Boss Tweed of Tammany Hall, ca. 1870
The presidential election campaign was primarily a distraction. There were serious issues presumably at stake, notably the war and the economy, and the campaign not only ignored them but purposely obscured them.
The reason’s not far to seek. As the late Australian social scientist Alex Carey wrote, “The 20th century was characterized by three developments of great political importance: the growth of democracy, the growth of corporate power, and the growth of corporate propaganda as a means of protecting corporate power against democracy.” A trillion dollars spent every year on marketing in the US — where political candidates are sold like cars or coffee — has some effect.
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[A DC lawyer of my acquaintance sends the best analysis of the bailout I've seen, and a counter-proposal.]
Taxpayers receive preferred stock and collateral from a bank borrowing from the Taxpayers, both in the full amount of the loan sought by the bank. In other words, stock plus collateral in double the amount of the loan. Taxpayers profit from a bailout before anyone else does.
Thanks to Warren Buffett and Goldman Sachs for the heads-up by disclosing the terms of their deal, which should be the low water mark for any Taxpayer bailout. A higher water mark would be the terms suggested above, which are not uncommon in private equity deals and chapter 11 bailouts.
[1. US WAR POLICY] Perhaps the most ominous story of the week is that of the attack by American ground troops inside Pakistan. US soldiers were landed from helicopters and killed as usual women and children — but inside Pakistan. The Pakistani military was outraged. Within Bush’s war council Defense Secretary Gates has been advocating for months a secret plan for a much broader campaign by Special Operations forces inside Pakistan, and a new step seems to have been taken that way on Wednesday. [NYT 9/3]
In regard to the much-ballyhooed Palin interview with Charlie Gibson, I think it’s important to try to separate the form (altho’ that’s politically important, too) from the content. Look at what Palin actually said about foreign policy and war, and tell me if you can find any substantive difference with Obama’s positions. I can’t.