Our Republican National Congress has done it again. In less time than it takes to say "morosely ironic" Congress has both voted to give themselves a raise (those are the only votes that always pass) and NOT to raise the minimum wage. I mean really, at $5.15 an hour, haven't those greedy working poor gotten enough out of our struggling corporate empires? They're lucky their jobs haven't gone to 5 year old Indonesian kids by now (for those of you who only recognize sarcasm in the tone of one's voice, I invite you to apply that tone to your inner narrator right about now).
Conservatives place too much faith in the capitalist system. The simple fact is that laissez faire capitalism proved itself a failure years ago. Need I remind us that the Great Depression really did earn the title, "great" for a reason. But laissez faire is no longer an issue. Congress has expanded its power under the Commerce Clause of the Constitution by exponential proportions. Our conservative forbears have been forced to admit that there is no longer such a thing as intrastate commerce, at least for the most part. Now we must once again force reality down the throats of the conservatives.
The basic, driving principle of our economy boils down to greed, pure and simple. Proponents of the system will call it self-interest, but that's just a candy coating on the harsh reality of our economic existence. The story goes that capitalism works because each individual is motivated to accumulate as much wealth as possible, thereby encouraging both production and consumption, while the free, unimpeded market is guided by the "invisible hand" (I'm not making this stuff up, read "The Wealth of Nations") that works to fairly dispense commodities to those who work hard enough to deserve them. The problem is that with accumulated wealth comes great power and, when accompanied by a largely unregulated inheritance system, that wealth and power stays in the hands of a few individuals until we end up with the picture we all now see (or at least ought to see): the overwhelming majority of the world's resources concentrated under the control of the overwhelming minority of people. Karl Marx thought this phenomenon would lead to the inevitable uprising of the working class and subsequent mass redistribution of wealth. Marx, however, was wrong because he underestimated the stranglehold of power associated with great wealth and the phenomenon we Americans like to call our "dream," but what rightly ought to be called what it is- greed.
Now for those of you with just enough sense to know that Marx founded his own economic system, one that became a very dirty word in this country, let me clarify my own stance. I am not promoting a communist revolution. Communism has its own set of very dire problems that I will not address here, but suffice it to say that's not what I want. I simply have to add this caveat because the very mention of Marx's name tends to invalidate most arguments in this country, particularly those arguments with the ill informed.
My purpose here is to give a Stephen Colbert-esque "wag of the finger" to Congress for not increasing the minimum wage. $5.15 an hour is a joke, albeit a very unfunny joke to those who have to live with it. What I am saying to my conservative friends is this: don't whine about our welfare system, state-supported healthcare, or those dirty poor people who so inconvenience your lives and rob you of your hard-earned money through taxes when YOUR Congress, full of those people YOU keep voting for, won't even raise their wage to a paltry 7 bucks an hour. YOU asked for it, YOU got it, now deal with it.
Tuesday, June 27, 2006
Saturday, June 10, 2006
A Strategy of Denial
Under the guise of some lofty notion about freedom of choice, many of our state republicans, including our embattled governor, are pushing for government subsidies to send children to private schools. For those of you who read my previous post about the racist roots of the republican stranglehold on South Carolina politics it might benefit you to know that the overwhelming majority of these private schools were founded in the mid-50's and early 60's...hmmm right around the time our national government was forcing an end to segregation. Why is it that today, in 2006, we are still debating incentives to segregate our schools?
But the racist roots of the republican push to privatize education is not my main concern here. The fact is that our public school system is suffering in many ways and that providing a tax incentive for upper-middle class white kids to flee our public schools is simply the wrong answer to the plight of our school system. School vouchers are a band-aid fix to our educational problem. Meanwhile, those poorer students who really don't have a choice even if the government offered tax breaks, would be sent back into a separate and unequal school system that perpetuates the cycle of poverty in our state that can only be broken with quality education for all.
And yet one of the firmest foundations of GOP dominance in our state comes from poor, rural whites who are continually preyed upon to vote against their own interests by saavy politicians who appeal to their sense of freedom. Sure, you'll be free...free to watch as the priveledged remain priveledged and the good jobs go to the only kids whose parent could afford to send them to a school that provided a decent education. State money for private schools is simply wrong. The money spent by the government (and yes, tax incentives are de facto government spending) rightly belongs to all the people, not just those who can afford to pay the balance of private school tuition, the cost of transportation to and from school, as well as the hidden costs that come along with poor kids trying to fit in with the rich.
Sanford and his republican colleagues are espousing a policy that is devisive and insidious and our state will continue to suffer for it. South Carolina is a relatively poor state and one of the key ways to break that trend is to provide a quality education to all of the state's students, rich and poor, black and white. We have to understand that our state cannot progress, cannot attract meaningful jobs, unless we provide business owners with a pool of well-educated, goal-driven, hopeful employees. So conservatives, if you really want to keep things as they are, if you really want to remain at the bottom, then vote republican and your wish will come true.
But the racist roots of the republican push to privatize education is not my main concern here. The fact is that our public school system is suffering in many ways and that providing a tax incentive for upper-middle class white kids to flee our public schools is simply the wrong answer to the plight of our school system. School vouchers are a band-aid fix to our educational problem. Meanwhile, those poorer students who really don't have a choice even if the government offered tax breaks, would be sent back into a separate and unequal school system that perpetuates the cycle of poverty in our state that can only be broken with quality education for all.
And yet one of the firmest foundations of GOP dominance in our state comes from poor, rural whites who are continually preyed upon to vote against their own interests by saavy politicians who appeal to their sense of freedom. Sure, you'll be free...free to watch as the priveledged remain priveledged and the good jobs go to the only kids whose parent could afford to send them to a school that provided a decent education. State money for private schools is simply wrong. The money spent by the government (and yes, tax incentives are de facto government spending) rightly belongs to all the people, not just those who can afford to pay the balance of private school tuition, the cost of transportation to and from school, as well as the hidden costs that come along with poor kids trying to fit in with the rich.
Sanford and his republican colleagues are espousing a policy that is devisive and insidious and our state will continue to suffer for it. South Carolina is a relatively poor state and one of the key ways to break that trend is to provide a quality education to all of the state's students, rich and poor, black and white. We have to understand that our state cannot progress, cannot attract meaningful jobs, unless we provide business owners with a pool of well-educated, goal-driven, hopeful employees. So conservatives, if you really want to keep things as they are, if you really want to remain at the bottom, then vote republican and your wish will come true.
Friday, June 02, 2006
Onward into the Great Morass
The single biggest issue of late in South Carolina politics has been what its supporters have termed "Property Tax Relief." It was recently pointed out to me by someone intimately involved in the debate that when politicians include the term "relief" in any sentence about taxes, the public tends to support it without question. Of course, no one likes to pay taxes and tax "relief" seems like a good deal for everybody. But let us examine exactly what this property tax "relief" is, who it benefits, and who it does not.
First, the gentleman who I have personally witnessed in the lobby of the Statehouse and in the gallery for every Senate debate on property taxes, the man who is arguably one of civil society's greatest proponents of the tax bill, lives in an old house in Charleston overlooking the Battery. For those of you unfamiliar with Charleston real estate, his house is on one of the most valuable pieces of land in the state. This is that man who is championing property tax "relief." It seems to me, a man of relatively meager assets, that any tax legislation supported so vigorously by someone holding such valuable assets is dubious in nature and deserves close scrutiny by those of us who find ourselves out of the highest tax brackets.
Also, because our local property taxes provide for the vast majority of the money spent on education, eliminating such taxes opens a Pandora's box of issues for those of us concerned with South Carolina's public schools. The Senate Democrats saw this opportunity to push for an equitable school funding program to be attached to the property tax "relief" bill. Under this bill, monies from the richer counties would be filtered through statewide programs into the school systems giving a roughly equal amount of money, per student, to each school in this state. I have personally attended public schools in both poor, rural counties and richer, more urban counties and I can vouch for the vast difference between the two. We must ask ourselves, is it fair to those kids who have the misfortune of being born in a rural area that their schools are underfunded and void of any of the newer technology and innovation that has made a few of the schools in this state great?
Paul Harrison wrote a famous book in the 1970's on the subject of worldwide poverty and, according to him, one of the root causes of poverty is geographic location. The logic goes that those peoples living in places that are naturally disadvantaged by climate and topography make up the vast majority of the systematically impoverished peoples of the world. Seems to make sense: if you live in the desert, it's probably thought to grow crops. Along the same lines, those students who were born in rural areas, where property values are low, attend underfunded schools. By allowing such a system to persist, we are dooming these kids to a life of poverty because we refuse to sacrifice a few of the creature comforts of our rich schools in order to promote equality of opportunity.
You should have seem the look on the President Pro Tempore's face when the issue of equitable school funding came up in Senate debates. I was a look of shock, horror, and disdain. The problem with our state's schools is that we allow a small percentage of them to prosper at the expense of the vast majority. But hey, we need people to shine our shoes, pump our gas, and bring us our filet mignon...right?
First, the gentleman who I have personally witnessed in the lobby of the Statehouse and in the gallery for every Senate debate on property taxes, the man who is arguably one of civil society's greatest proponents of the tax bill, lives in an old house in Charleston overlooking the Battery. For those of you unfamiliar with Charleston real estate, his house is on one of the most valuable pieces of land in the state. This is that man who is championing property tax "relief." It seems to me, a man of relatively meager assets, that any tax legislation supported so vigorously by someone holding such valuable assets is dubious in nature and deserves close scrutiny by those of us who find ourselves out of the highest tax brackets.
Also, because our local property taxes provide for the vast majority of the money spent on education, eliminating such taxes opens a Pandora's box of issues for those of us concerned with South Carolina's public schools. The Senate Democrats saw this opportunity to push for an equitable school funding program to be attached to the property tax "relief" bill. Under this bill, monies from the richer counties would be filtered through statewide programs into the school systems giving a roughly equal amount of money, per student, to each school in this state. I have personally attended public schools in both poor, rural counties and richer, more urban counties and I can vouch for the vast difference between the two. We must ask ourselves, is it fair to those kids who have the misfortune of being born in a rural area that their schools are underfunded and void of any of the newer technology and innovation that has made a few of the schools in this state great?
Paul Harrison wrote a famous book in the 1970's on the subject of worldwide poverty and, according to him, one of the root causes of poverty is geographic location. The logic goes that those peoples living in places that are naturally disadvantaged by climate and topography make up the vast majority of the systematically impoverished peoples of the world. Seems to make sense: if you live in the desert, it's probably thought to grow crops. Along the same lines, those students who were born in rural areas, where property values are low, attend underfunded schools. By allowing such a system to persist, we are dooming these kids to a life of poverty because we refuse to sacrifice a few of the creature comforts of our rich schools in order to promote equality of opportunity.
You should have seem the look on the President Pro Tempore's face when the issue of equitable school funding came up in Senate debates. I was a look of shock, horror, and disdain. The problem with our state's schools is that we allow a small percentage of them to prosper at the expense of the vast majority. But hey, we need people to shine our shoes, pump our gas, and bring us our filet mignon...right?
A Quick Note...
I have gathered from some of the comments posted that I was not as explicit as I should have been about my wishes not to discuss religion in this blog. Politics is a contentious enough issue without involving religion which is why I don't wish to continue any more theological dialogue. I'll never be able to change anyone's mind about religion, that is a matter of faith and something I have no desire to do anyway. But I'm not going to reply to any religiously charged comments here because I don't want this forum to turn in that direction. If you desire to debate politics that is fine, I'll debate you until I'm blue in the face, but I don't think its my place to comment on anyone's religious views, so I'm not going to.
Monday, May 29, 2006
On Memorial Day
Being that today is Memorial Day, I think it is appropriate to take a moment and reflect on the many sacrifices that have been made over the years that have enabled people like me to say the things we do. Apart from any politics, from any feelings for or against a certain war, or war in general, it is of paramount importance to recognize that since our country was founded war has been a part of our heritage, and that over that span of time many people have given their lives and livelihoods in times of crisis in order to preserve our great country.
I am not just speaking of those who have died in war, but also those who have survived. It is much easier to recognize the sacrifice made by a fallen soldier, but we must not forget those who have witnessed the atrocities of war and have returned, forever changed, to rejoin the society for which they fought so bravely.
A stark reminder of these people came to me today in the form of an article in The State about a new Pentagon-backed program to develop better prosthetic limbs for the mounting numbers of disabled veterans returning from Iraq. The older model limbs were said to be cumbersome and often so useless that they were shelved, serving only as a daily reminder of the sacrifice made by a disabled soldier.
There will be a lot of high sentence today about how the sacrifices of soldiers have contributed to our most fundamental and basic rights and freedoms, but my point here is aimed at the more mundane priveledges we enjoy, like the ability to button a shirt, to walk to work, or to live an emotionally stable life. Even those soldiers who returned from war with no physical injuries carry with them images so atrocious that those of us who are fortunate enough to be ignorant of the gruesome reality of war will never be able to relate to those soldiers in the same way, on the same level.
My point here is that these people, both alive and dead, have sacrificed so many things that we overlook in the grand scheme of things. So please, whether you are a raging liberal or a staunch conservative, or anything in between, forget about our petty differences, at least for today, and take a moment to reflect on those that we know and those that we don't know who have given up their very existences and plunged themselves into a world of horror and atrocity, all so that we who are lazy, content, and spoiled can know and love our freedoms- not just the freedoms of speech or of religion, but our everyday freedoms like the freedom to dress ourselves and to live reasonably happy lives.
There are many among us who will never see those freedoms again and to those people I say "Thank You, I love you, our country needs more people like you!"
I am not just speaking of those who have died in war, but also those who have survived. It is much easier to recognize the sacrifice made by a fallen soldier, but we must not forget those who have witnessed the atrocities of war and have returned, forever changed, to rejoin the society for which they fought so bravely.
A stark reminder of these people came to me today in the form of an article in The State about a new Pentagon-backed program to develop better prosthetic limbs for the mounting numbers of disabled veterans returning from Iraq. The older model limbs were said to be cumbersome and often so useless that they were shelved, serving only as a daily reminder of the sacrifice made by a disabled soldier.
There will be a lot of high sentence today about how the sacrifices of soldiers have contributed to our most fundamental and basic rights and freedoms, but my point here is aimed at the more mundane priveledges we enjoy, like the ability to button a shirt, to walk to work, or to live an emotionally stable life. Even those soldiers who returned from war with no physical injuries carry with them images so atrocious that those of us who are fortunate enough to be ignorant of the gruesome reality of war will never be able to relate to those soldiers in the same way, on the same level.
My point here is that these people, both alive and dead, have sacrificed so many things that we overlook in the grand scheme of things. So please, whether you are a raging liberal or a staunch conservative, or anything in between, forget about our petty differences, at least for today, and take a moment to reflect on those that we know and those that we don't know who have given up their very existences and plunged themselves into a world of horror and atrocity, all so that we who are lazy, content, and spoiled can know and love our freedoms- not just the freedoms of speech or of religion, but our everyday freedoms like the freedom to dress ourselves and to live reasonably happy lives.
There are many among us who will never see those freedoms again and to those people I say "Thank You, I love you, our country needs more people like you!"
Saturday, May 27, 2006
One Trillion Junior Bacon Cheeseburgers
I want to turn my attention away from South Carolina politics for a moment to discuss a bit of the national debacle. As of a few minutes ago our national debt was sitting at just over 8 trillion dollars. A little more than half of that debt is said to be held by the public and the rest lies in intergovernmental holdings. Each American family's share of the debt, according to the National Debt Clock website, is about $131,000 (much more than the average family can make in a year).
But what I'm really concerned with is what exactly is 8 trillion dollars? Is it even possible for the human mind to grasp such a figure and really understand what it means? I don't think so, but in an effort to make the debt a little more concrete, I've thought of a few comparisons:
$27,000 per person in the U.S. alone (a bit less than what the average U.S. family makes in a year)
Things you could buy with $8 trillion:
9 machine guns for everyone under the age of 18 in the U.S.
28,000 sexy dresses (priced at $56) for every woman in Afghanistan
534,000 private islands in Fiji (based on what Mel Gibson paid for his)
5,000 world peace flags for every member of the NRA
1 junior bacon cheeseburger a day for every impoverished American for the next 591 years
But what I'm really concerned with is what exactly is 8 trillion dollars? Is it even possible for the human mind to grasp such a figure and really understand what it means? I don't think so, but in an effort to make the debt a little more concrete, I've thought of a few comparisons:
$27,000 per person in the U.S. alone (a bit less than what the average U.S. family makes in a year)
Things you could buy with $8 trillion:
9 machine guns for everyone under the age of 18 in the U.S.
28,000 sexy dresses (priced at $56) for every woman in Afghanistan
534,000 private islands in Fiji (based on what Mel Gibson paid for his)
5,000 world peace flags for every member of the NRA
1 junior bacon cheeseburger a day for every impoverished American for the next 591 years
Thursday, May 25, 2006
Welcome to the Blue South
These days it seems that South Carolina politics has been plunging deeper and deeper into an ultra-conservative, archaic debate on issues that should have been settled years ago. There is no doubt that most of the voting population of our fair state votes Republican, even when those votes are so obviously against their own interests, not to mention any idea of the "public good." My problem with conservatives, though, doesn't stem from their moralistic, holier-than-thou attitudes, false pretenses of "small government", or even their misuse of public trust and power...no, I think that those attributes are intrinsic to politics and unavoidable in a form of government such as ours. My problem with conservatives stems from what I believe to be a fundamentally mistaken view that they take in regard to human nature.
There is little debate among those who spend their lives thinking about politics that the decisive difference between a liberal and a conservative boils down to their basic assumptions about human nature. If you were to draw a continuum ranging from conservative to liberal, you would have to place the assumptions that human nature is essentially "bad" on the conservative side and that human nature is essentially "good" on the liberal side (I'll define "bad" and "good" as best I can a little later, but I don't want this particular discussion to devolve into semantics). One can trace philosophically the positions taken by both conservative and liberal politicians to these fundamental assumptions about human nature.
While I personally don't believe that either camp has it all right, my beef with conservatives is the sheer hypocrisy contained in their fundamental assumption about human nature. Conservative Republicans spend tons of money espousing and promulgating images of themselves as good, moral, dependable people...precisely the types of people that they believe do not exist. Therefore, if the conservatives have it right, then they spend their entire campaigns (or even lives) lying to the public (and often themselves) about their images. You'll never find a Republican candidate for any office that will tell you he thinks that all people are essentially "bad," themselves included. That would be political suicide. So I encourage you conservatives out there to look in the mirror and ask the question, "Am I essentially a bad person?" My guess is that none of you will say "yes," except for those of you who recognize the Calvinist doctrines and can add the caveat that you have been made "good" by some exogenous factor (at which point this conversation would turn to religion, which is another conversation for another day). But really, are you intrinsically, inescapably, NATURALLY, evil? I didn't think so.
There is little debate among those who spend their lives thinking about politics that the decisive difference between a liberal and a conservative boils down to their basic assumptions about human nature. If you were to draw a continuum ranging from conservative to liberal, you would have to place the assumptions that human nature is essentially "bad" on the conservative side and that human nature is essentially "good" on the liberal side (I'll define "bad" and "good" as best I can a little later, but I don't want this particular discussion to devolve into semantics). One can trace philosophically the positions taken by both conservative and liberal politicians to these fundamental assumptions about human nature.
While I personally don't believe that either camp has it all right, my beef with conservatives is the sheer hypocrisy contained in their fundamental assumption about human nature. Conservative Republicans spend tons of money espousing and promulgating images of themselves as good, moral, dependable people...precisely the types of people that they believe do not exist. Therefore, if the conservatives have it right, then they spend their entire campaigns (or even lives) lying to the public (and often themselves) about their images. You'll never find a Republican candidate for any office that will tell you he thinks that all people are essentially "bad," themselves included. That would be political suicide. So I encourage you conservatives out there to look in the mirror and ask the question, "Am I essentially a bad person?" My guess is that none of you will say "yes," except for those of you who recognize the Calvinist doctrines and can add the caveat that you have been made "good" by some exogenous factor (at which point this conversation would turn to religion, which is another conversation for another day). But really, are you intrinsically, inescapably, NATURALLY, evil? I didn't think so.
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