Katrina vanden Heuvel | The Nation
The Better Bargain: Transaction Tax, Not Austerity
On the eve of Occupy Wall Street’s first anniversary, Congressman Keith Ellison introduced a much-needed common sense bill: HR 6411, the Inclusive Prosperity Act. The bill taxes financial transactions to generate revenue for social needs. Amid our consensus-narrowed, deficit-obsessed political debate, it’s a call to arms, and a breath of fresh air.
As I’ve often argued, a financial transaction tax is deeply pragmatic, broadly popular and sorely needed. At a time when budget slashing is a bipartisan obsession, it offers vital revenue. As we struggle to escape the recession wrought by the 1 percent, it presents a simple solution to discourage speculation. As progressives fight too many defensive battles, the financial transaction tax presents an urgent opportunity to go on offense.
Victory won’t come easy. Sarah Anderson, who directs the Global Economy Project at the Institute for Policy Studies, notes that “Obama’s communications director was asked about this at a press event during the convention and didn’t get an enthusiastic response. So that was a disappointing moment.”
This Week: The 1 Percent Court. Plus: Occupy's Anniversary
THE 1 percent COURT. As we enter an election season that could determine the direction of the Supreme Court for the next generation, this week’s special issue, “The 1 Percent Court,” examines the Court’s transformation into a highly politicized institution where the 1 percent keeps winning and the 99 percent keeps losing. As outlined by Nan Aron, progressives need to take a more aggressive approach to combat corporate dominance of the courts. Jamie Raskin and I sat down with Bill Moyers—who is a contributor to the issue—to discuss the Court and what its big business interests mean for the future of our democracy. Also, be sure to read my WashingtonPost.com column from this week, in which I discuss the history of an extremist conservative legal movement that has moved the Court to the right over the past forty years.
VOTING RIGHTS WATCH 2012. In this week’s Voting Rights Watch blog, a collaboration with Colorlines.com, Aura Bogado and community reporter Meta Mendel-Reyes reveal that one of five black Kentuckians can’t cast a ballot—and that’s not even because of voter ID laws. Read their piece to find out more on how a grassroots group is working to overturn voter suppression laws in the state. Also in Voting Rights Watch, Bogado and community journalist Maegan E. Ortiz highlight ways in which voting rights activists are working with their communities to fight voter suppression in innovative ways in “Wanna Protect Your Vote? There’s an App for That.” And there may be hope in Pennsylvania this week, as Ari Berman reports that the PA Supreme Court has shifted the burden of proof to the state on Voter ID laws—making the case less about constitutionality of laws and more about whether or not voters are disenfranchised. Be sure to watch Ari Berman on “Melissa Harris-Perry” today at 11am on MSNBC as he breaks down what the court rulings mean for voter suppression in PA.
Progressives Must Work to Retake the Supreme Court
Editor’s Note: Each week we cross-post an excerpt from Katrina vanden Heuvel’s column at the WashingtonPost.com. Read the full text of Katrina’s column here.
While the election is dominated by talk of the economy and Mitt Romney’s latest foreign policy blunder, don’t lose sight of one important fact: Perhaps nothing will have a bigger impact on the United States’ future than the Supreme Court. And with four justices above the age of 70, the next president of the United States could have enormous power to shape the court for generations to come. Age is not, as Playboy mogul Hugh Hefner has suggested, just a number.
In a government paralyzed by partisan gridlock on the most important matters of the day, the Supreme Court has become what Bill Moyers calls “The Decider.” A majority of the justices has taken a far right turn in its decisions.
Predistribution: A Big, New Idea
Today marks the first anniversary of Occupy Wall Street, the movement that forced inequality back onto the front page. As if on cue, the Census Bureau reported last week that 2011 spelled big income gains for the top 5 percent, declines for the middle and stagnation at the bottom. Unlike the federal deficit, inequality actually is a moral failing and a national crisis. So what do we do about it? One possible answer comes from across the pond.
This month, in a speech at his country’s stock exchange, British Labour Party Leader Ed Miliband embraced a big new idea: predistribution.
The term was coined here in the US, by political scientist Jacob Hacker (you may know him as the man who came up with the public option). In a 2011 paper, Hacker noted that our discussions of government responses to inequality often begin and end with redistribution—taxing the rich to provide benefits for the rest. But Hacker argued that’s only half the equation (maybe less). He urged his fellow progressives to pay more attention to predistribution: “the way in which the market distributes its rewards in the first place.” That includes regulations that protect consumers and empower workers. “The regulation of markets to limit extremes and give the middle class more voice is hardly easy—witness the fight over financial reform in the United States,” wrote Hacker. “But it is both more popular and more effective than after-the-fact mopping up.”
Change We Can Believe In, 2.0
At this week’s convention, we’ll be reminded that elections matter—and they do. But electoral victories, though necessary, are never sufficient. Uprooting inequality and restoring prosperity will require much more. Last week, we got an important reminder of the importance of grassroots organizing. It came from the president of the United States.
During an “Ask Me Anything” session with readers of the website Reddit, President Obama lent his personal support to the effort to amend the Constitution to reverse the Supreme Court’s devastating Citizens United decision.
“Over the longer term,” said the president, “I think we need to seriously consider mobilizing a constitutional amendment process to overturn Citizens United (assuming the Supreme Court doesn’t revisit it). Even if the amendment process falls short, it can shine a spotlight [on] the super-PAC phenomenon and help apply pressure for change.”
This Week: RNC Roundup. PLUS: How Big Business Is Buying the Election.
RNC ROUNDUP. We hope you were able to follow The Nation’s coverage of the Republican National Convention in Tampa this week, including video reports from Francis Reynolds and a nightly illustrated RNC live blog from cartoonist Steve Brodner. George Zornick reports that a collection of transportation companies threw a party for Congressional leaders, using a trick to avoid breaking ethics rules. Ben Adler exposes the tokenism of the RNC speaker schedule. And we’re setting the record straight on the reality of a Romney/Ryan administration: read more from Betsy Reed on Obama and welfare and John Nichols on Paul Ryan’s lies. And be sure to check out “The Nation at the RNC” on Storify for more from our reporting team, as well as analysis from around the country.
“Paul Ryan’s Growth Agenda” by Steve Brodner.
The GOP's Split-Screen Convention
This week, the anti-disaster assistance party scrambled to shuffle its anti-government convention speakers in the face of Hurricane Isaac. Meanwhile, the New York Times reported, “As the American Petroleum Institute planned a concert and a party here to push its agenda, which includes expansion of oil exploration on federal lands, some of its members were ramping down production in the gulf and removing workers from platforms.”
Welcome to Republicans’ “split-screen” convention week. On one side of your TV screen, competitive condemnations of the government boot on the American economy’s neck. On the other: a dangerous storm that dramatically symbolizes the need for strong infrastructure, sane environmental policy and solid emergency response. Unlike the Republicans, the storm won’t talk. But the contrast speaks volumes.
Why Subsidize CEOs?
By now, most Americans recognize—and resent—that top corporations compensate their executives in ways that are simply indecent. Eye-popping salaries. Outlandish bonuses. Lavish stock options. Golden—nay, platinum—parachutes. What fewer realize about this obscene compensation is that we’re all paying for it. Literally.
Last week the Institute for Policy Studies released a blockbuster report exposing how US taxpayers subsidize executive compensation, and revealing some of the worst offenders.
Those tax subsidies for executive excess add up to over $14 billion a year. That equals 12 percent of the planned savings from the deficit deal sequesters, 211,732 times the annual cost of hiring an elementary school teacher, or $46 for each American. In other words, says co-author Scott Klinger, “Every man, woman and child in America is buying a CEO lunch.”
Our Shrinking Democracy
Editor’s Note: Each week we cross-post an excerpt from Katrina vanden Heuvel’s column at the WashingtonPost.com. Read the full text of Katrina’s column here.
Last week, Judge Robert Simpson of the Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania refused to halt a discriminatory new state law requiring voters to show photo identification.
It was the judicial equivalent of giving democracy the bird.
Paul Ryan: Cruel, Not Courageous
Editor’s Note: Each week we cross-post an excerpt from Katrina vanden Heuvel’s column at the WashingtonPost.com. Read the full text of Katrina’s column here.
A word of advice: if you’re announcing the most radical and reactionary Republican ticket in half a century, don’t do it on a ship named for the birthplace of progressivism, to Aaron Copland’s “Fanfare for the Common Man.”
But that is precisely the kind of audacity congressman-turned-vice presidential-nominee Paul Ryan brings to the flailing Romney campaign. Courage! Vision! And that hair! (Within minutes of the announcement, @VPRyansCowlick boasted dozens of follicle-fixated followers.)
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