Tuesday, October 6: One Day, No Hate

Posted on 09/30/2009 by Jane Devin

1976, Clayton Junior High. The jocks against the hoods. Me and others somewhere in the middle or maybe on the outside — nerds, bookworms, artists-in-waiting, ROTC members, goody two-shoes. We were too uncoordinated to excel in sports, too scared of getting in trouble to be really bad, and too much (or too little) of something to be wildly popular. So we muddled through, one foot in childhood, the other wanting to sprint through our teens until we reached the magical age where it didn’t matter what jacket we wore, or whom we chose to be friends with. I remember the divisiveness of those days. There were separate lunch tables and sweeping judgments. Kids who had been friends since grade school ended up in different groups, studiously avoiding each other for fear of being found uncool by their new friends.

Lately, I have been feeling that same kind of uncomfortable, seemingly ready-made divisiveness online, except this time it’s not about sports or the ability to decipher Beowulf, but about politics.

No one has ever accused me of being a Pollyanna, and I’m realistic enough to know that sometimes there’s not really a light at the end of every tunnel, but I do know that most of us have more in common than we have differences. Most of us, regardless of how we check our ballots, want healthy kids, good opportunities, decent jobs, and safe communities — we want more of the good things in life and less of the bad.

I was speaking with a new friend on the phone today, and the discussion briefly turned to Twitter and politics. I don’t know whether she’s a Republican, a Democrat, or something else, but it doesn’t matter. The thing that was bothering both of us equally was how divisive and hostile political speech has become.

The social media that draws us together to converse and share has become something of a battleground for left/right politics. Sometimes, these arguments are intriguing. Sometimes — okay, a lot of the time — they are not arguments at all, but angry rants that leave little room for real discussion.

Later in the day, I made the comment on Twitter that I wish we could have a one-day moratorium on angry, hostile speech. I know that probably means little or nothing to those who engage in such language as a habit, but it seemed to strike a chord among those who would like to see people come together as people first, political party members second.

There’s nothing weak or politically apathetic about wanting a nation less divided. There are probably more of us near the middle of the political spectrum than not, or at least desirous of finding some middle ground. Most of us are feeling the effects of a down economy and sharing the same worries and hopes. I doubt there are many people out there, regardless of party affiliation, who don’t want things to get better. We may have different views about how to go about improving our world — we may not even agree on what “better” entails — but at the heart of every political matter being discussed aren’t just ideas or beliefs, but people. Not just Democrats, not just Republicans, or Libertarians, or Green Party members, but all of us.

Along with several other Twitterers, I wondered if we could have one day where we don’t sit at separate tables and toss spitballs at each other. Maybe it’s a bit idealistic, but perhaps those of us who are interested can just pledge one day where we don’t engage in or respond to the vitriol, but instead concentrate on what we have in common, what we are grateful for, and what we appreciate.

The twitter hashtag is #1Day0Hate. The day to come together is October 6th. If you’d like to make this happen, please start using the tag and promoting it on Twitter and your own blogs. Corina Fiore at Down to Earth Mama even made this badge/avatar you can use on Twitter or on your site! Feel free to steal the picture from here, or grab the code from her post.

Thank you to everyone who expressed support for this idea and suggested I kick it off. I’m looking forward to a day of renewed and new friendships!

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Between Blinders & Bible-Thumping, Fanciful Flights & Party Suicide, Where is America Heading?

Posted on 09/08/2009 by Jane Devin

Radio Flyer is a small 1992 film about two brothers, Mike and Bobby, who invent a flying machine out of a little red wagon so that Bobby can escape the brutal abuse he regularly suffers at the hands of his drunken stepfather.

The end of the film never baffled me. It seemed clear that Bobby’s escape down the side of a mountain failed, and that in order to ease the pain of his brother’s death, Mike invented an alternate reality that had Bobby sending him postcards from all over the world. As a grown man, Mike tells his children the story and says:

“Do you guys understand what I meant about history being in the mind of the teller?”
“I think so.” “Yeah.”
“Good. Good, because that’s the way I remember it.”

I wasn’t aware until recently that there was a controversy about the movie’s end. Some people, it seems, are adamant that the little red wagon sailed off into the sky and that Bobby spent the rest of his life happy and traveling. This fantastical possibility was offered by the film’s somewhat cryptic ending and many fans decided that, despite the grim reality of the rest of the story, a fantasy ending was somehow fitting. The director, Richard Donner, seemed to want that, too, but he couldn’t sink the weight of writer David Evans’s final few lines.

Even as a writer and a creative person, it has always surprised me that some people are so willing to suspend reality in favor of even the most obvious fantasies — like karma and its accompanying bromides like “what comes around goes around” or “there are no accidents”. Bad things happen to good people every day. Some ignorant or bad people are greatly rewarded. Sixteen year old girls blow lottery fortunes on fake boobs and cocaine, while people who’ve worked hard for 30 or 40 years lose their jobs and homes. Talent and persistence don’t always win out — sometimes luck, nepotism, or family connections matter more.

And the chances are that if you see a baby being thrown against a wall, or a woman getting raped, or a gay man being beaten by a bunch of thugs, you’re not going to think it’s karma, or the mythical fates at work – you’re not going to think “there are no accidents” – instead you’re going to think that such events are wretched, horrible, often preventable, and totally unacceptable.

I believe that people buy into the karma myth because it comes with blinders attached. If people can delude themselves into believing that there’s some higher reason for unacceptable acts or circumstances, and that the world runs as it is supposed to, then they’re essentially letting themselves off the hook from having to consider the realities of the world they live in and, consequently, their place and role in those realities. If they believe that “there are no accidents”, then they don’t have to put forth much effort in righting the wrongs, or even acknowledging them, because wrongs simply don’t exist — and if they do, well, karma — not effort — will take care of them.

Many otherwise smart and liberal-minded people I know have fallen under the spell of karmical thinking. They are so enamored with idealized concepts of peace, fairness, inclusiveness, and supporting the underdog that they have become intellectually lazy. They may be willing to lend their names to the progressive cause du jour of the day — Palestine, free elections in Iran, health care reform — but their understanding of the issues may be extremely narrow, often on purpose and adamantly so, because they refuse to see anything beyond their magical blinders.

While some liberals may be bent on mystical, karmic thinking, even more pervasive, particularly when it comes to politics and religion, is the dogmatic adherence being exhibited by many conservatives. Here, people have ceased to think critically, as independent beings, and have instead subscribed to a rigid, and often fantastical, set of beliefs as proffered by their religion’s or party’s most prominent spokespeople.

Paradise in exchange for murder and suicide; heavenly forgiveness for even the most brutal and intentional of acts; forced marriages of young girls to older men; oppression and brutality heaped upon women, children, minorities, and the underclass — there are those, in America and abroad, who insist that God is a co-perpetrator of these and other savage and systematic abuses of humanity, and that man is only carrying out God’s will when he bombs an abortion clinic, forces a thirteen year old Texas girl into a polygamous marriage, or stones a Sudanese rape victim to death.

The horrors of oppressive religion become entwined with culture. In Afghanistan, a ten year old girl beaten with wires by her two older brothers for visiting a skateboard park says, “I’m not upset with my brothers for beating me, they have the right.” In Canada as well as the U.S., women and teenage girls defend a lifestyle in which it is common for 14 and 15 year old girls, most of whom have never experienced life outside of their isolated communities, to marry and bear children.

And while American conservatives have leaned on the gospel of Christianity a great deal, almost none of their social responses are merciful, e.g. Christian, in nature. They buck against the idea of society helping the poor or uninsured. They seek the harshest of punishments against even non-violent offenders. They bring guns to town hall meetings. They favor the deregulation of corporations and a mitigation of corporate responsibilities. They fight against increases in the minimum wage. They either don’t believe in global warming, or don’t think measures to curb it are fair to industry. They think the Constitution and Bill of Rights should bend to their whim — making things like The Patriot Act morally acceptable, but a secular, inclusive government evil.

Under the umbrella of Christianity, the Republicans have stood against equality for women. They have sought to undo affirmative action. They do not believe gay people should have equal rights to the benefits of marriage. They believe that hate crime legislation imposes on their religious freedom. They continue to fight against The United Nations Bill of Rights for Children, which seeks to make children less the chattel of their parents and give them protections as autonomous but dependent beings. 193 countries have signed the bill over the past decade. America and Somalia are two who have not.

In the fantastical world of fundamentalist religiopolitics, it is acceptable for Glenn Beck to call Obama a racist, but not acceptable to question the racial motives behind the continuous, frivolous, and often frighteningly ignorant attacks on President Obama. It was acceptable when a Republican President put the country into trillions of dollars of debt, lied to the American people, advocated torture, kept prisoners without due process, and allowed companies like Halliburton and Blackwater to fill their coffers with tax money — but it is unacceptable that Obama works towards health care reform, and speaks to school children about working hard and not giving up. It was unpatriotic to criticize war and torture under Bush, but it’s perfectly patriotic to bring a gun to a protest against health care.

Ever since Obama became a contender, I have watched the dogmatic branch of the right-wing slip into a state of near hysteria. While there was just something sad and pathetic about watching religious Republican mouthpieces like Jerry Falwell debate the sexuality of Tinky Winky or blaming gays, feminists and pagans for the attack of 9/11, what’s happening now is steeped in a vicious and hateful brew that makes yesterday’s spewed ignorance seem almost innocuous. From conspiracy theories about the President’s birth certificate, to ongoing accusations that Obama is a Muslim, socialist, Marxist, thug — even Satan incarnate — these attacks step way outside the realm of political disagreement or religious differences, and seek to illigitimize and demonize a President who hasn’t even been in office for a full year; who hasn’t yet significantly changed the political or social landscape of America; and who, coincidentally, happens to be America’s most powerful and popular minority figure.

Of course, the possibility that racism is behind much of the expressed hatred is met with staunch denial. Then again, as long as they don’t mention blackness, but instead insist that Obama is an A-rab and play on the fears of their most ignorant followers, then that’s not racist but somehow proper and worthy of consideration.

If a parallel between the Radio Flyer movie and today’s political climate were to be drawn, the mystical thinkers in the liberal party would be the blinders-on idealists who really believe that their little red wagon can effortlessly defy the laws of physics and reality, and fly happily into the sunset to live happily-ever-after in some future made of dreams and wishes. They actually do little to accomplish their imagined flight because that would involve having to fight and possibly alienate the people that don’t want them to take off in the first place. Instead, the mystical thinkers seek to build consensus even among the most inhospitable people, compromising themselves right into a steady holding pattern where little gets done but hey — the intentions were good and in the end isn’t that what’s most important?

Conservatives, on the other hand, may be helping the Republican party commit suicide with their outlandish escapades & maniacal speech but they’re playing it off as if they, too, were taking flight — into a future that glorifies and seeks to replicate the past — when uppity black and poor people, women, and children knew their places; labor laws and unions didn’t interfere with business; war was glorified; prayer was considered more fruitful than knowledge; and non-white, non-Christians were viewed as less than equal or heretical.

In between the two extremes, there are those who seek neither fanciful flight nor destruction of progress. We wonder why it’s not possible to effect a rescue before the wagon goes careening down the mountainside in the first place.

The ending that wasn’t offered by the movie Radio Flyer also seems absent in politics. The question is, between the inaction of the karmic thinkers and the screaming of the backward dogmatists, will the country be able to save itself from the kind of cryptic politics that leaves the future precariously hanging from the side of a cliff?

This article also appears on The Huffington Post if you’d like to comment.

9/11, correction to director’s name.

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Mobs, Guns & Cloaks

Posted on 08/18/2009 by Jane Devin

When I was nine years old, I was very excited about ordering the Jumping Spider toy that Bazooka Bubble Gum was offering for .25 cents and a few wrappers. After I sent off my envelope, I waited for the mailman every day like some kids wait for Santa Claus. The summer ended, school began, winter came, and still the Jumping Spider didn’t arrive. It never did. I was so mad that I went on full Bazooka strike, refusing to buy any more hard squares of pink gum, and warning all my friends not to send them money.

A year or so later, it occurred to me that sending a bulky envelope full of change through the mail system probably wasn’t the wisest thing to do. The envelope could have easily ripped, and may have gotten shredded in the USPS’s letter sorting machines. I ended my Bazooka strike then, realizing that the Bazooka people might not be the heartless, dream-stealing, penny-thieving, child haters I once thought they were.

However, at least I had a tangible reason for feeling the way I did. A real thing was actually lost — not just a philosophical thing, or a principle, or an argument. And while I was upset with Bazooka, I never once thought, “Hey, I’ll show them how mad I am and bring a gun to their next event.” Not only because that would be a really sick way to think, and an ignorant thing to do, but because the chances are that the folks at Bazooka would have just found me scary and, well, kind of repugnant.

Watching the rage-filled Republicans (as opposed to the more sensible ones) at the town hall meetings on health care reform, I don’t see reasonable debate and sincere questions. I see a mob out for blood where no crime has been committed, and conservatives who refuse to take any responsibility for how the actions of their party have affected the country and other citizens. I see a rage that is totally out of proportion to the issues being discussed.

So far, taxes are the same as they were under Bush. The unemployment and foreclosure rate has not changed drastically. The cost of living now is no higher than it was eight months ago. So far, the very real and tangible things that directly impact our daily lives have not changed — but some Republican protesters are behaving as if they’ve been personally robbed by the health care debate. They’re charging into town screaming and angry, some with loaded guns, and with a lynch mob mentality that smacks of constrained racism.

The fury of mobs is often stoked by convoluted stories that spread like wildfire, and that increase in animus with every telling. During the election, the angry Republican mob insisted that Obama was a Muslim and hoped that would scare people. They claimed he lied about his schooling, his work background, and even the origin of his name. Now that he’s President, they claim that he has a fake birth certificate and that his health care reforms will kill Grandma via “death panels”.

Members of the mob have insisted that their bloated anger is not about race or hate, but about “conservatism” versus liberalism. However, their level of rage is out of line with any tangible, or even foreseeable, deficit in the quality of their personal lives. It exceeds the boundaries of heated political differences. I believe the backstory, and the motivation for such raucous displays, is found in the presence of guns.

Guns were not displayed for President Carter, who was far more liberal than Obama, and who led this country during a time of double-digit inflation, high interest rates, and oil shortages. Nor were they brought out for President Clinton, even while the right-wing was working very hard to have him impeached. And even when the majority of the country disagreed with the war in Iraq, no one brought guns to the protests. So I have to ask why now, why with Obama?

I am not a knee-jerk reactionary when it comes to issues of culture and race, but the arguments made by the mobs in defense of their atrocious behavior simply don’t wash. They seem to be using the issue of health care reform to express an anger that goes deeper than mere politics or philosophy, and there is a maliciousness to their public gun toting that goes far beyond debate and protest.

I don’t think that any die-hard Republican, much less one who joins or encourages the mobs, will ever come to the understanding that their party is largely responsible for the economic disaster we are in today. I don’t think they’re likely to pry themselves from the dogmatic notion that government programs (and regulations) are like Satan in the angelic world of a free market society, where competition is believed to weed out the gluttons and thieves — even when competition is scarce due to huge conglomerates and monopolies.

I disagree with many core Republican philosophies, but I realize that a multi-party system is fundamental to a thriving democracy. I am deeply disappointed that moderate Republicans have not stepped up the plate in any substantial number to condemn the mob mentality, ignorant speech, and underlying racism that has become front and center of their party.

Racism, no matter how overt or guised, should not be tolerated, much less encouraged by any political party. Racism is not just a belief, but an act of fear, cowardice, and regression – it has nothing to do with patriotism, “freedom”, the Second Amendment, or any other political cloak the mob has used to swaddle their hatred and sense of racial entitlement.

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The Zucchini Stimulus

Posted on 02/19/2009 by Jane Devin

I was a 16 year-old wanna-be love child in a lace shirt, faded jeans, and moccasin boots. Bill was a real 30-something hippie, who had camped out at Woodstock and demonstrated at Berkeley. He drove an old Volkswagon Bug the color of chewed-up Wrigley’s gum, and was fond of quoting both Carlos Castaneda and Ayn Rand, sometimes in the same sentence. In Bill’s mind, there was no real span of difference between a Peruvian mystic and a Capitalist philosopher-novelist. “A million fucking ideas, that’s all the world is. The ideas stop, we stop. We turn back into bacteria, or protoplasm, or fucking zucchini.”

“Zucchini?”

“Yeah man, vegetables. Look around, half the world is there. They’re planted in their shit gardens, sucking in whatever nutrients they need to survive, but they’re not living, man. They’ve ceased to have ideas bigger than the vine they’re clinging to, whether it’s religion, academics, the rat-race, or something else. Whatever else you do, beware of that. Don’t become a fuckin’ zucchini.”

Most of the people I’ve met aren’t remembered, at least not vividly. Although I only knew him for a couple of years, Bill stuck with me. I’ve spent thirty years with the zucchini analogy branded in my brain, and have done my best to avoid becoming a clinging, myopic vegetable – which wasn’t nearly as easy as I thought it would be. There’s something about being hurt, struggling, overwhelmed, or frustrated that seems to stop life on a macro level. The world of ideas becomes less important than the need for a Band-Aid, a break, or an immediate solution – even if the solution is temporary, or detrimental in the long-run.

I’ve managed to keep myself out of the shit garden for the most part, if only because I love the idea of potential. I love knowing that, barring death or a cruel disease of the mind, the human brain can keep on learning, thinking, and creating up until the last of its neurons are fired and its gray matter grows cold. I get a special thrill out of stories about 70 year-olds graduating college or middle-aged artists having their first art show. Stories like that stoke hope, no matter how slim, that it really never is too late – not for a degree, for talent, for love, for dreams – not for anything.

I wonder, though, if it’s not too late to change America back to the innovative, thriving power it once was. I can’t be the only Democrat who believes that the bank bailout, and now the $900B(+) Economic Stimulus Plan, is like the governmental version of a shit garden. After browsing through the 1071 page document, I’m convinced that we are fertilizing soil for the benefit of the vegetables among us.

Bureaucracy is often a self-perpetuating monster, and the collective greed of big corporations has been well-documented. These are the major beneficiaries of spending in the bailout and stimulus packages, and for decades into the future, taxpayers will have the noose of this debt wrapped around their collective necks.

This stimulus package is just one humongous gambling marker, and the ideas within it seem to have sprung from the same kind of mentality that compels chronic gamblers to throw good money after bad, hoping that if they spend enough, Lady Luck will grace them with a winning streak. It’s irrational, it has no grounding in reality, but even otherwise smart people will rub their lucky pennies, throw a pinch of salt over their shoulder, or appeal to the fates when they’re losing.

The ideas contained in the bailout and stimulus plans cater to the chronic spenders and vegetables in our midst – there’s not an original thought or innovative, long-term approach within either package.

America didn’t become a superpower due to its government bailouts. We got there with revolutionary inventions – by the creation and manufacturing of goods no other country had, or could produce as well as we did. We got there by being innovative, competitive, and tireless in our search for ways to improve life for people here and around the globe. We got there by opening doors of opportunity, paying decent wages, making housing affordable, and being willing to challenge traditions and social policies that impeded human potential.

Greed and avarice overtook America during the Bush years, particularly in the corporate and banking sectors. It seems to me that the way back to greatness isn’t going to be found in borrowed money, mass bailouts, or by reviving sagging bureaucracies, but in a new vision that incorporates and rewards innovation, attempts new strategies, and insists on ethics.

Instead, we’ve just tilled a massive shit garden, and I think many working class Americans understand that, even if they don’t have a degree in economics. Most of us are aware that if someone stood out on the street tomorrow handing out $10 bills, people would take them, regardless of need. Free money is free money. There’s no innovation there, and no incentive to spend it wisely, or with the long-range interests of the country in mind. The zucchinis will plant themselves quickly enough, sucking up everything they can until the garden is dry.

My friend Bill was right. We are a world built on ideas, and the finest ideas aren’t contained in any one school of thought. Beyond every other consideration, our humanity, and our common desire for better circumstances, binds us.

“Does this path have a heart? If it does, then the path is good. If it doesn’t, it is of no use.” – Carlos Castaneda

“Whatever their future, at the dawn of their lives, men seek a noble vision of man’s nature and of life’s potential.” – Ayn Rand

I’m not sure what any one person can do at this point to avoid shit garden economics, but as a nation of newly invigorated citizens I hope we demand accountability from all of those who seek to plant themselves there, and insist that those who show signs of wasting their handouts be plucked from the program.

And, of course, we have do whatever it takes to keep new ideas from flowing out of the hemisphere and into the vacuum of apathy.

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Courting the Jester: The Slippery Right’s Love Affair With Rush Limbaugh

Posted on 01/30/2009 by Jane Devin

When George W. Bush was campaigning for President, I thought there was no better man he could have in his corner than Rush Limbaugh. After all, who could understand the political aspirations of a privileged, party-going, service-avoiding, C-average candidate better than a privileged, two-and-a-half semester college flunk-out, with a penchant for Oxycontin and bombastic talk, who got out of the service altogether for having a hairy butt boil?

They were a match made in a blinders-on Republican heaven, where the conservative faithful still believe that with a little bit of faith and a lot of charm, they can transform failures and shortcomings into delusory gold, and rebirth multimillionaires into everyday people who really care about the plights of their Joe Six-Pack and Soccer Mom peers. Operating under the premise that if something is said often enough it will become accepted as the truth, they tend to blame the mythical devil of the Liberal Media for their public embarrassments, and don’t find it odd at all when their counterparts wave off abuse-of-power reports, and even court convictions, as if they were the conspiratorial fantasies of an unpatriotic public. Behind the thick cigar smoke and carnival mirrors of such political propaganda, Limbaugh isn’t just a barker, but a godhead with a loyal legion of followers hailing from the furthest backwoods shacks to the hallowed halls of Washington. Those followers are called, appropriately enough, dittoheads.

The slippery, delusional thought processes of dittohead candidates and their lobbying groups were never as transparent as they were during the 2008 election. In the midst of a economic crisis, with the highest national debt in the history of the nation — after eight years of iron-fisted Republican domination — millions of Americans were bombarded with political slogans like these:

Who can fix our economy? Only one party will fix the damage and prevent another crisis. Vote Republican.
Jobs lost. Spending up. Economy down. Energy prices Up. Vote Republican to end America’s economic crisis.
Vote Republican & Restore Balance to Our Economy.
Republicans will eliminate wasteful spending, balance the budget and regain the trust of the American taxpayer.

Of course, Rush Limbaugh was there to lead the charge. And in the foggy realm of Republican obfuscation, Limbaugh is not just a college dropout with an inflammatory radio show, but an authority on capitalism, economics, defense, domestic policy, world relations and more. Never mind that Limbaugh has not passed so much as one college course in business, law or political science — he has a $400M dollar contract with Clear Channel Radio, and a show that reaches an estimated 20 million viewers a week between 600 stations. According to figures obtained by Forbes, Limbaugh’s eight-year contract is only $87M short of what Hollywood’s 10 best-paid actors earned in the year between June 2007-June 2008, and $155.5M more than what the 10 best-paid actresses earned in the same time.

$400M can buy a lot of prestige in Washington, but a charismatic personality is worth much more, particularly when it comes attached to a substantial base of fans. Just ask James Dobson or Pat Robertson. Like Limbaugh, Dobson and Robertson managed to hold political sway based not on their intellectual credentials or objective reasoning skills, but on the basis of their Arbitron ratings. They were given credibility by Washington politicians not because they were giants of integrity, ethics, or reason, but because they were media giants — willing to stand up for even the most beleaguered Republican politicians and truth-bereft party messages in exchange for Washington-sanctioned political standing.

Without that sanction, it is unlikely that personalities like Limbaugh, Dobson, and Robertson would have ever been considered newsworthy outside of the entertainment or religion pages. Certainly, without the sanction of Washington politicians, the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal would not be doing what amounts to PR for Limbaugh.

Instead, thanks to Washington and the slavish capitulation of congressmen like Phil Gingrey-R (who backed off of his justified criticism of Limbaugh after fans inundated his office with complaints), Americans who would not normally tune in to hear the opinions of an unschooled political shock-jock, are being inundated with his ridiculous, uninformed messages.

Businesses need tax cuts. The US corporate tax rate is obscene. It is the highest of all industrialized nations. It’s 35%. Cut it. Cut it in half. – excerpt from Rush Limbaugh’s stimulus plan.

Taking his cue from dogmatic Republicans who can’t stop repeating the mantra of corporate tax cuts long enough to address the truth, Limbaugh used his PR opportunity to mislead more Americans than usual. The 35% tax rate is born from a paper figure that has little to do with the reality of what corporations actually pay. At the risk of repeating information that seems to bounce right off the collective conscience of the dittoheads, the fact is that despite the high bracket tax rate on paper, many corporations pay no taxes at all, and those that do pay, don’t pay anywhere near 35% after deductions, incentives, and loopholes.

America has known many charismatic media personalities but Republican politicians, perhaps still impressed by the number of conservative evangelicals thought to be delivered by television and radio preachers in the Reagan and Bush years (as if they would have voted otherwise), seem especially inclined to lend credence to Rush Limbaugh, even at the expense of their own reputations outside of the Republican party.

I don’t think President Obama was being flip when he told congressional leaders that “You can’t just listen to Rush Limbaugh and get things done”. Rather, it seems he might have been responding to the lack of original thought and leadership within the Republican party, and the seeming eagerness of Republican politicians to hand the intellectual reins of their platform over to whatever colorful pundit they think can best deliver them voters in the next election. If it’s a strategy, it would seem to be one as disastrous as the Palin pick, and if it’s a habit, it’s one that surely needs breaking if the Republican party is to recover from the Bush years with any integrity.

This article also appears on the Huffington Post.

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McCain’s Tax Lie

Posted on 01/25/2009 by Jane Devin

Forgive me for getting a little Rahm Emanuel here, but the lead story of The Huffington Post this afternoon is worthy of a middle finger and some righteous indignation.

McCain Slams Stimulus – Joins GOP Leaders to Attack Stimulus Package. Well, okay. I’m all for healthy debate, even if it is with a party that turned itself inside-out during the last decade to become the unaccountable, freedom-snatching, bloat-ridden, free-spending, debt-driven, war-mongering party it is now. It would be unfair to hold every Republican responsible for the failure of the Bush administration even if, like McCain, their Senate votes supported Bush 90% of the time.

Putting aside the fact that the majority of Americans voted against furthering the Republican agenda, elected representatives from the Republican party still represent millions of Americans. Their voices need to be heard, and their ideas deserve serious consideration.

However, when an idea is not just flawed, but based on a pervasive lie, it needs to be called out until facts overcome propaganda and truth rings from the rafters. In McCain’s case, the lie is that businesses are overwhelmed by taxes, and that a business tax cut is necessary to stimulate the economy.

“We need to make tax cuts permanent, and we need to make a commitment that there’ll be no new taxes,” Mr. McCain said. “We need to cut payroll taxes. We need to cut business taxes.”

While McCain was hawking lower business taxes during his run for President, many of us had already learned the ugly truth. I wrote an article about it in October 2008.

In a stunning report released by the United States Government Accountability Office in July 2008, Americans learned that many corporations, including those with assets over $250M, reported no tax liabilities. In fact, from 1998-2005, 72% of foreign-controlled domestic corporations (FCDC’s), and 55% of US-controlled corporations (USCC’s), reported zero tax liability for at least one of those years. In total, two-thirds of the corporations doing business in the U.S. paid no taxes from 1998-2005, while collectively reporting $2.5 trillion dollars in sales.

In that article, I pointed out that the cuts McCain wanted were something of a manufactured myth, not just because so many corporations paid no taxes at all, but because the majority of those who did pay, paid nowhere near the 35% McCain claimed.

McCain and other Republicans continue pushing the mirage of high corporate taxes despite the nuts and bolts of facts as presented by the government’s own accounting office. At a time when they should be demanding an end to the loopholes and special breaks that allowed so many corporations to exist tax-free, they are instead pushing for more corporate tax breaks.

One has to wonder what America’s bottom-line might look like if all the corporations in question paid taxes at even 10% during the last decade. My guess is that it might have been enough to fund the $700B+ business bailout that the Senate voted for, despite the the fact that the majority of Americans disapproved. We’re tired of paying the price for corporate negligence and greed, a point that is driven home every time we hear about multi-million dollar bonuses, million dollar office makeovers, or lavish parties.

There are small businesses — those without teams of attorneys and accountants at their disposal — who might benefit from tax breaks and other incentives. If the corporations that paid no taxes at all paid their share, we might be able to give relief to those small businesses that are struggling due to the economy, and not their own bad business practices.

With our country in crisis, this is not the time for smokescreens, mirages, and propaganda. It is time to face the truth, hold businesses and people accountable, and give relief where it is needed — and not just where it’s politically expedient or advantageous to do so.

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