Web Letters | The Nation

Web Letter

The Democrats have to slam supply-side economics, and tell it like it is about this obscenely selfish and self-serving policy. Show voters with hard, cold facts how the top one percent of the wealthiest have grown richer and richer at the expense of our children and their children. Democratic candidates have to bring it home in every way and in every speech, how demand-side economics works--how tax cuts should be going to tens of millions of workers and the middle class, not to a few thousand multimillionaires.

Web Letter

This article has many excellent suggestions straight out of the "New Deal" play book, but I do think we need to look at long-term fixes for the economy. American companies have not completely gone overseas. Some companies have become brand names that have subcontracted production to Chinese manufacturers. Reflecting Ross Perot's famous "sucking sound" analogy, those industries, along with agribusiness, that are directly under American management are heading south of the border. The only way we will be getting these industries back or grow new ones is to make it too expensive to produce products in another country. (It would be my preference to grow new "American" companies.) We cannot, of course, compete with cheap labor and maintain our "middle class" life style. We therefore need steep tariffs to protect American industries and labor.

We can also dump those private contractors that have increased the costs of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, along with that useless missile defense system. Let's not forget to get out of Iraq, too.

Web Letter

It's very clear to me the Democratic leadership doesn't get it. We see more trade deals, problems getting hedge fund managers to pay income tax instead of capital gains taxes, more rhetoric than regulation on the financial institutions and the continuation of neoliberal econometrics at home and abroad.

We need a wide range of consumer protections, not just a modification of the bankruptcy bill. Privacy, truth in lending, usury and credit laws.

We need bold action on labor rights not a piecemeal appproach. Taft-Hartley and everything after should be on the table.

We need to reevalute our whole security aparatus, starting at the Defense Department and running through the Homeland Security Department with an eye to slashing costs of cold war military systems, reducing budgets, eliminating redundancies, and streamlining bureaucratic agencies while guaranteeing personal privacy.

We need a real safety net including single-payer healthcare, longer unemployment and disability periods and increased daycare resources for young and old.

The most egregious failing is our non-existent energy policy. The world is facing a looming energy crisis. Peak Oil and Peak Natural Gas are staring us in the face. We could tackle both global warming and this energy crisis together with electric vehicles, solar and wind.

America needs a whole new economy, built on sustainability, not unlimited growth. The United States, indeed the world, cannot sustain the current trend of unlimited growth.

The Democrats need to tell the American public the truth, that we all will have to sacrifice. Americans will endure if the pain is meted out by ability to sacrifice.

Will any of this happen? Of course not, the fix is already in. The crisis that is going to befall this country will be profound. The White House and Congress are only going to protect the special interests that paid their way. This strategy will only deepen the problems and leave the Democrats as discredited as the Republicans.

It is no accident that the fastest growing choice for afffiliation is Independent, a choice that now exceeds that of Democrat or Republican. It is no accident that Congress has lower ratings than Bush. This country is looking at financial meltdown and rising facism, and the leading Democrats are cowering.