behind capitalism. It only exists through an ethic of exploitation of (wo)man by (wo)man, both physical and mental. The more the economy does well, the more junk and useless consumption we've been manipulated into acquiring. The "better off" we are, the worse off we really are by rushing from useless purchase to the next, never satisfying the urge that's promoted all around us to still consume more. And now, since 9/11 we've become convinced it's patriotic to buy what we don't need or even like; we must keep our economy "healthy" or else the terrorists and/or China will win.

Of course there's a minimum amount of stuff we truly need in order to thrive. But we all know the impulses that we feel to get out of our couches and run to the gadget store don't have anything to do with thriving. They arise because the brain and spirit is weak, and because everyone else is doing it and because we must report what we've accumulated on Facebook.

And all of the "economic development" projects, local and national, are based on feeding this psychosis of buying. We're all so glad we "saved" GM. So now in our grand state of accomplishment, GM too, in addition to Toyota, Hyundai and Ford, can continue sending smiling avatars at us through the tube, roaring along the highway, happy as can be, encouraging us to pour GM carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, helping to kill 40,000 people a year on our roads. And we give tens of millions to Comcast so it can send as much drivel our way as possible, promoting all the car companies, all the "defense" industries through army/marine/navy recruiting and Fox News, the latest horror flicks, and of course, a thousand varieties of perfume, beer and mouthwash.

The Citizens' United ruling is getting set to formalize what is already the case. Big business owns us, not just physically, but emotionally and spiritually. Not that we shouldn't fight this latest encroachment on our autonomy. By all means we should. But we need to realize how far we need to go to win back our souls. Do we live to buy, or buy to live? Until we can stop being bedeviled by that question, our basic humanity will remain at risk.

was pretty much invented by the military, which, before the Blackwater takeover, was pretty much a govt. run entity I'm pretty sure. Much of the pharmaceutical research resulting in new drugs was done by the National Institutes of Health. The opensource movement is doing much of the best work on web browsers like Firefox. So much for the notion that people magically get stupider if they work for govt. or dispense with the profit motive.

On the plus side for the private sector's creativity, however, you somehow failed to give due praise to credit default swaps and Wall Street's transformation into a giant vacuum cleaner capable of robbing every man, woman and child not a Goldman Sachs chief exec of most of everything they own. (That wealth stripping job is not complete yet as the Fortune 400 richest now have net worth still equaled by the bottom 50% of all Americans. That still leaves several trillion yet to be looted.) Logging and farming combines are also on schedule to destroy the rain forests and drain the earth of the very oxygen we need to breathe; other corporations are busy making weapons of mass destruction to more directly kill people in the name of insanely profitably nationalisms of one sort or another. A very good business model there. And then of course we have the creativity of companies such as Monsanto that are changing the very DNA of the seed grain we need to feed whatever populations survive their rapacious cousins.

Thank you so much monopoly, military-industrial complex-financial robber baron capitalism. Profuse apologies for any offense previously given.

http://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/?article=307

I no longer call myself a Democratic Socialist because the term is associated with too many eurofile haters of one stripe or another, and I'm definitely a proud and patriotic American to begin with, and a happy reformist-warrior against government waste to boot.

European classism, ethnocentrism and other bigotries drive me up a wall too. Ugh, dying continent (with nice classical music, medieval architecture and new wave cinema though).

I sure like universal health care, universal day care, free college, and a well-regulated business community.

The Supreme Court ruling totally sucks.

It's going to make holding the large Democratic majorities in Congress, as well as holding the White House, more difficult than it already was.

But hey, if there were a time to wallow and whine, a year when Democrats hold the White House, the House and the Senate just ain't it, Stan.

Democrats definitely have their work cut out for them, trying to legislate around a horrific ruling, I'll grant you.

But we have enough money and incumbency, even progressive incumbency, to put up a better fight than we have for most of the last thirty years. People with gray hair, as we have, are supposed to remember that.

Since 1980 those corporate oligarchs have been calling the shots all too often -- far too often and long for you to call them quickly emerging.

Our real rulers are still our elected leaders, and every left wing conspiracy theorist or Foucault-ian wise guy who says otherwise needlessly helps the right by doing so by discouraging left wing political participation.

They still don't regulate business as much as they should, and the Supreme Court wants to give away the store.

But the fact is they can.

The thing that should get progressives out of bed and fighting every day is that we have more opportunity to accomplish real regulation, real reform, and real good -- like passing a health care bill -- now in 2010 than we have in a very, very long time.

It's easy to get down after some hard fights and tough losses (or to want to pretend government waste doesn't exist or doesn't matter just because corporations steal billions).

But if progressives fight smart, regulate smart, reform smart, and work hard to spend smart, we still can make things better.

maybe even whining a bit. (If Keith Olbermann could concede that much to Jon Stewart, I can do that for you.) But it's truth-based whining. I'm a LOST fan, so hopefully there's an alternate reality out there in which 70 or so Democrats don't need to be elected to the Senate just to get confirmation of decent members of the NLRB. But I'm not seeing it.

Still, let me clarify. We need to continue to fight, and fight hard, for that alternate and better reality, if for no other reason than it's the right thing to do, and because not fighting helps create self-fulfilling bad prophecies. But I'm growing serious doubts about the project of reforming the Democratic Party from within. Half of all the Wall Street money goes to Democrats. They just love that money; they're addicted to it. I don't know where the 12 step program is that will cure them of that.

This problem of money and the Democrats has to be discussed; it can't be swept under the rug. Something drastic has to be done. I'm thinking out loud here. Maybe we should only support Democrats who take this pledge: Job 1 when I get elected is to enact public financing for all candidates for all offices above the level of dogcatcher.

So again, we have to keep going. Maybe some kind of decent health care plan is still in sight. Let's keep going for it. And let's go for other tough things. That certainly includes curbing government waste. But, Sam, the very definition of government waste is the billions that are siphoned off the top for agribusiness, financial "consultants" of every stripe, insurance and drug companies providing no value to Medicare recipients, and defense contractors. It's the money, Sam, it's the money that's running everything, and that enables all the graft. So as we recommit ourselves to working as hard as we can for as long as we can, let's also be clear about what we have to do. And it's not just going after corrupt politicians -- although it's definitely that -- without also going after their paymasters.

Election reform is the answer. Accomplishing it is the question.

Do we need an amendment to the U.S. Constitution, one of the best things they ever wrote down on 5th Street?

Maybe. Legal scholars are weighing in. At Philly For Change Meetup last night, State Representative Babette Josephs said she's convening a conference at Harrisburg next month to deal with that very question at the state level.

I'll post details when I get them.

Is the Democratic Party unreformable?

No, I'd say, adding that I very much prefer the Democratic Party of 2010 to the party of 2000 or 1990.

The increased presence of Wall Street money is problematic but is largely attributable to the fact that we've been winning most of the seats in Washington recently. Wall Street always backs a winner (don't forget -- lest we despair in excess -- because it is in their best interest to do so).

Progressives need to stay active, and active in electoral politics, in order to be politically relevant. In most parts of the country that means being the Democratic Party, just as conservatives have stayed loud and unfortunately overly-represented in the media, thanks to Fox, and have taken over a lot of the Republican party (though their recent victories have been achieved by sounding like moderates in Massachusetts, New Jersey and Virginia).

Bring back Howard Dean, I say, by the way. I did prefer when he was running the DNC.

I love public financing too, Stan.

But I also love the ideal of democracy, so I respect fellow voters who don't agree with me all the time but who are liberal enough so that they might; I respect them enough to care about whether enough of them are likely to back public financing right now. My guess is probably not, not while the recession is going on.

So insisting that all politicians back public financing now may not be such a good idea because if it means a) more Democrats will lose or b) fewer Democrats will listen to the left.

Just a thought, and no reason to not push and push hard for public financing now; it just may not be the best time for public financing to be a litmus test.

Oh, and I continue to believe that if I want more and better social spending, I damn well ought to be loud and relentless in rooting out government waste and corruption, of course including fat cat contracts with businesses that back politicians.

That's how democracy usually works, not waiting for the scales to fall from the eyes of everyone who disagrees with you, or even bullying them into submission from any given pulpit.

Read the Dionne article. Reagan used the bully pulpit and started changing voters' minds regarding government spending (changing it in the wrong direction), but even he had to deal with political realities and hand over budget victories to his opponents.

You can blame Obama for not agreeing with you enough, that's fair; he needs to start talking about government spending as ponying up for Education and infrastructure to stay competitive with other countries; but it's just as accurate in 2010 to blame American voters for not believing in increasing government spending by large amounts in the manner of FDR and LBJ. For at the moment, they do not.

I want to deal with that electoral reality and move the ball as far as we can while winning elections -- rather than ceding elections and seeing how much worse the next George W. Bush or Sarah Palin can make things.

For as much as you may despair in this year of 58 Democratic senators, a Democratic House and president, don't pretend that things can't get a whole lot worse.

When Stan wrote:

Maybe we should only support Democrats who take this pledge: Job 1 when I get elected is to enact public financing for all candidates for all offices above the level of dogcatcher.

My problem is with the word "only".

It's just one line out of many many, so I can see how you missed it.

I support public financing too, but I don't think we're yet at a place where making public financing that kind of litmus test makes sense.

I'm glad you're optimistic enough to read public financing's 75-25 loss in one of the most progressive states as a mixed message. Keep it up.

In general it's not easy to build public support for new large spending initiatives that aren't linked to national security, but I really believe public financing has a future in the U.S. beyond matching funds in presidential races.

It's likely it will take time however.

Same article.

If you raise their taxes, 75% bail. No surprise.

I agree we should raise taxes on rich people.

We likely will, by the way, by ending the Bush cuts for those making over $250K, but I believe we can politically benefit from restoring the graduated income tax up to the 50% bracket. I believe we should study the idea of going back to the even higher taxes on the rich we had in the 1950s.

on the City on a Hill when Reagan blazed into town to wipe out all the tax and spenders. And we've lived happily ever after, except when anyone had the termerity to scare all the poor sensitive capitalists by even questioning Reagan's policies. Fortunately, all of that scaring stuff went away from 2001-2009 when our low taxed entrepreneurs went crazy producing all kinds of fabulous entrepreneurial products like predatory mortgage loans that made us all live happily ever after. I still thrill to the millions and millions of dollars that came back into the country under Reagan, which, unfortunately, the dirty democrats once again drove away, and then, not content with that, they convinced Bush to utterly destroy whatever was left by allowing the bankers to turn everything else into Monopoly money. ian, I'm so hoping that you can convince your Party, and the rest of us to just leave everything to the magic, not to mention the high ethical standards, of a completely uncontrolled market, where the efficiencies include not only having just a handful of people decide who gets to play with our money and actually get any, but where also just a handful of people -- the filthy beyond measure super rich -- have to trouble their poor heads deciding for the rest of us what things the so-called government ought to be allowed to pretend to do.

That's my idea of capitalist paradise. And I expect anyone who doesn't agree to be waterboarded until they get it or die.

Zell Miller is a Democrat and so is Ben Nelson. But that's not what I consider them. And btw, I don't know if it's a socialist affectation to use capital letters, but it does make stuff much easier to read.

Oh, and marginal tax rates were around 90% under Eisenhower, and we didn't have 17% unemployment. The catastrophe that happened in 2008 occurred after massive Bush tax cuts. Just a reminder.

50% probably makes sense right now.

This John Cole graph shows how the top rate has varied over time.

As Yglesias noted when he used the graph last March:

And yes, please pay no attention to the fact that the three periods of ultra-low taxes were followed by a budget crisis (Reagan) and catastrophic global economic collapse (Coolidge-Hoover, Bush).

but I'm all for simplification. And progressivity. Capital gains should be taxed at the same rates as the wages earned through actual work. Or maybe at a higher rate, particularly if we can't bump up the highest marginal rates to 50 or more.