A break for politics

I mostly intend this blog for lighthearted discussions of family, posting pictures and that sort of thing, but I feel compelled to take a break from that for a bit and talk the serious business of politics.

I think this is a crossroads election. As a nation we've been traveling down the wrong path most of the time since the unfortunate election of Ronald Reagan in 1980, and when the Supreme Court awarded the Presidency to the current incumbent, the speed of that wrong-way travel increased exponentially. We are now hurtling towards hell at breakneck speed in a very shopworn basket. The politics of fear, division and hate have allowed these evil people to steal our civil liberties, fight an unnecessary war to enrich their cronies, deny basic facts (global warming) to enrich other cronies all while American lives were being lost at home and abroad. Electing John McCain will mean 4 more years of these policies and will leave an America broken at home, disrespected, even hated, abroad, and deeply in debt, while fueling the ambitions of a man who sees war as the first alternative for settling international disputes. His election will mean death and destruction--not metaphorical, but real--and could lead to the end of the USA as we have known it. In 2000 we allowed an unelected president to steal the office because we valued internal peace too much. We cannot allow that to happen again. In 2008 we must win clearly and cleanly (as we did in 2000) and then not allow the inevitable attempt to steal the election to go unchallenged.

We must elect Barack Obama in 2008. His politics are not perfect, but they at least stop the insane swing towards the ultra-extreme right that we've been making. I regret that he voted to expand FISA, but I have some hope he will curtail the illegal eavesdropping and surveillance of political opponents that's going on now.

I have some hope that tax rates will be restored to somewhat less insane levels, with the very wealthy asked to pay their share and with the overall tax burden eased on middle and working class Americans. The current tax policies, along with this administration's policies of contracting out basic government services, have led to a situation in which the government is performing a massive income transfer--from the middle class to the upper classes and the largest corporations. No reasonable government with even the slightest intention of acting on behalf of the people would ever have such a policy. At the same time, we've accrued an enormous debt (does anyone remember that in 2000 there was debate about what to do with the surplus?), and most of that paper is held by China.

Our position as a great economic power is at extreme risk. The debt mentioned above is one reason, but deregulation of our economic markets has led to bubble after bubble as irrational investor optimism in tech stocks and real estate has been fueled by deceptive practices, once again enriching the wealthy few and leaving middle class and working class Americans holding the bag. This deregulation of business has been accompanied by increased levels of regulation on labor unions, making an uneven playing field even less even. I know that many people, especially the young, think that the relative affluence of working Americans happens because people work hard, but that's only partly true. People have worked hard for centuries and have nevertheless lived and died in poverty--lives that were, in the words of Hobbes, "nasty, brutish and short." It was the emergence of powerful organized labor in Western Europe and North America that led to better lives for working people. It is not a coincidence that the years in which America has had the most widely shared prosperity has been the years in which labor unions had their highest membership. Big corporations don't give anything to workers, the workers have to take it! Regular Americans forget this at their peril! If you think large corporations give high salaries, good vacations, health benefits and such willingly, take a look at their pay scales in the third world. To quote Dennis Kucinich, "wake up, America!"

I have some hope that we can restore our reputation abroad by returning to the international community and reversing our current policies of acting like a one-nation vigilante posse. There is in the world, I think, still a reservoir of sympathy for basic REAL American values, and we can tap into that again if we begin to act as one nation among many rather than pursue independent policies based in an irrational belief in American exceptionalism. We cannot act ourselves in ways that we would not tolerate from other nations. It is clear that Mr. McCain does not understand this--reference his statement in response to Russia invading Georgia that "in the 21st Century, nations don't invade other nations."