So, I was at DemocracyFest in San Diego over the past weekend. It was a very fun trip, and I was intending on writing a diary about it today, complete with a photostream, but something happened this morning that just compelled me to write something else instead:
I seem to have personally created a former dittohead. And what it proves to me is that healthcare, economic populism, supporting the troops and not the defense industry, and alternative energy are the keys to victory in 2006 and beyond.
I hereby apologize to Jim Derych, author of Confessions of a Former Dittohead, for use of his phrase. (Jim, if you happen to read this, it was really cool hanging with you at DemFest!)
The full story is below.
My cousin and her boyfriend--both from rural Central California--happened to be in L.A. for a few days while I was at DemFest, and they were staying at my duplex. They were leaving early Sunday morning, and I got back into L.A. from San Diego at 4:00am, so I assumed I would just sleep through their departure.
Nevertheless, I got up for breakfast with them a couple of hours later, because I had never met my cousin's boyfriend and it seemed like it would be a courteous gesture. Seemed like a really nice guy too. He asked where I had been, and I answered that I had been at a political convention for Democrats in San Diego (I'm not one to hide my political beliefs, especially if it would mean giving less than a complete answer to a question!)
I was a little taken aback when the first thing my cousin's boyfriend said to me was:
So, do you really think socialism is the answer?
Clearly, someone has been listening to too much right-wing radio! But he was very polite and respectful with the question--there was no anger in it, and it was actually a genuine request for information, rather than a rhetorical challenge. I know it doesn't seem like it, but I've talked to enough people to know the difference. Throughout this whole question and answer session, there was nary a hint of animosity, no loud voices, no upset. Just some friendly facts and data. Here's a paraphrase of my response:
Well, it's not really a question of that--it's not an issue between socialism and capitalism. Take countries like France, Germany or Canada. They have socialized education and healthcare, but they still have capitalist free markets. Do they have higher taxes? Sure. But you can also send your kids to the best universities for $500 a year, and you can get a heart transplant without going bankrupt. You're going to pay either way. Do you have to wait a long time for non-essential procedures with socialized medicine? Sure. But 47 million people in this country don't have any health insurance in this country, and if you don't, you'll have to pay up the nose for a procedure that could save your life. I'll take that trade.
The next question was far from surprising:
But if you giver people free medical care, won't that give them less incentive to make money?
My response:
Well, you know, the right wing likes to say that the only reason people don't make more money is because there's not enough incentive to do so--as if somehow, being wealthy isn't its own reward. The first problem is that being wealthy is already tax-advantaged--capital gains income is generally taxed at a lower rate than wage income. And if you take a look at the recent budget numbers, the vast majority of the recent gains in federal revenue are from non-wage income--that is to say, dividends, stock options, and the like--but the numbers for wage earners are actually stagnating. And that's exactly what's happening in the economy: the rich are getting far richer, but millions of people are falling below the poverty line. And all the while, the budget deficit just keeps accumulating.
Reagan did the same thing: cut tax rates for the wealthy and pull aid and economic development for the poor. The exact same thing happened: millions fell into poverty, the rich got much richer very quickly, and the budget deficit ballooned. Bush did it too, and, well, the exact same thing. You know what they call it when you do the same thing and expect different results?
He laughed, and said:
yeah, insanity. So, ok, what would you do to fix it?
Damn, I live for opportunities like this! My response:
Well, I'd do the same thing Clinton did. The first thing I'd do is let the Bush tax cuts expire on schedule, if not repeal them sooner. The second is to do exactly what Clinton did: invest heavily in poor areas with economic empowerments zones by encouraging investment in depressed areas. And it worked. Clinton set a record by bringing literally millions out of poverty, including record cuts in the number of minorities in poverty. You do it by investing in people, and that includes health care. If someone is able to stay healthy, they'll be a lot more able to work, to go to school and to get better jobs, not less.
Next question--this time, on the size of government:
Well, it just seems like government is a lot more powerful than it used to be a long time ago. How did that happen?
A softball, if ever there was one...
Well, that's easy. It was the Great Depression in the 30s. You see, what happened there was that whenthe collapse hit, there was a run on the banks. But when the banks ran out of money, ther ewas nothing left for the people that didn't get there in time. So FDR set up the FDIC system to make sure that the government guaranteed that people actually had the money they earned if something happened to their bank. The same thing with Social Security: with a collapse in pensions, people who had worked their entire lives and were counting on being taken care of in their retirement suddenly had nothing and were starving and begging in the street. So FDR set up the social security system to make sure that it didn't happen again.
The right wing likes to call social security a ponzi scheme, and in a sense, they're right. After all, we're paying the benefits for the current retirees so someone else will pay ours down the road. But the difference is that the system is supported by the government, so it's not like someone is going to be left stuck holding the bag. Government got the power it got because it was clear that the system was failing people without government help.
And I was just getting warmed up! Next question:
Ok. Do you think the government should step in and artificially lower gas prices?
A tasty opportunity to plug alternative energy!!!
Well, that's a tough one. See, gasoline is already subsidized by the government. We're not paying market value right now. So, as a consumer, I don't like to pay higher prices. But at the same time, I have to take a long-term view: if prices stay the same, there won't be nearly as much consumer demand to change the system, and we absolutely need to change the system.
The first thing we need to do is control price gouging--and yes, there is price gouging. It takes many months for oil bought on the futures markets to be extracted, refined, and shipped to the pumps, but if there's any instability at all, the price of gas will go up immediately. It's not being based on the free market, it's price gouging.
But by far the most important thing we need to do is get alternative energy. It's not just that oil is going to run out, which it will. And it's not just that we have to keep on paying billions of dollars to foreign governments to supply us with energy. We also need to think about the many billions of dollars that we have to spend on military protection of oil resources, from extraction to patrolling the merchant marine. And we have to think about the fact that because of urban pollution, inner city populations have far higher cancer rates than other populations. Inner city children have asthma rates that are up to 50% higher. And that's not just a moral thing, it's an economic thing. The state has to pick up a lot of those costs, and it also hurts the economy because that creates a whole slew of people that aren't able to work, and another whole slew of people that have to do caretaking instead of contributing to the economy.
I'll give you an example. If you converted every car in America to electric power and made up for the difference in the power grid, you could burn straight coal--the dirtiest fuel we have--to make up the difference, and still have a cleaner environment than what you get with all the gas-powered cars and trucks on the road.
You have to think ahead on these things. Let's take insuring children as another example. Children are releatively cheap to provide medical care for. If you make that investment, those children will be able to be better educated and get better jobs. That will not only help economic development, but you'll also significantly reduce the amount of money that we need to spend on chronic and catastrophic medical care when these kids are adults. We need to think about things like long-term.
He was really seeming rather impressed by this point.
But would you say that smaller government is better?
And we'll have fun, fun, fun till daddy takes the questions away!
Well, two things to say about that. First, the Republicans keep on talking about smaller government. But the truth is that Bill Clinton presided over the smallest government since the 1960s, and guess who significantly increased the size of government from their preceding administrations? Yeah, Reagan, and this current President Bush.
But beyond that, it all depends on what parts of the government are smaller. Yeah, of course streamlining and efficiency are better. But government is only as good as the people that run it, and right now, those people are bought and pair for by special interests--on both sides of the aisle. I'll give you some examples.
First off, the bankruptcy bill. It was written wholesale by the credit card industry. Nobody anywhere disputes that. What that bill did was to make it much harder for middle-class people to get their debts relieved by a bankruptcy court. Now, the credit card companies obviously stand to profit by that. But the way the bill's supporters passed it off was that we needed to make it harder for profligate spenders to get their debts relieved.
However, what they don't say is that 80-90% of bankruptcies are caused by medical bills or job loss. And in addition to that, there's a specific provision of the bill--I know it sounds too bad to be true, but it is--that actually expands protections for people with $20 million in business debts. And this issue cuts across both parties. Yeah, Republicans are worse at this, but we have a bunch of people on our side of the aisle that were beholden to the credit card companies, and they voted for the bill.
Another example is the defense industry. Many defense industry projects--planes and such--are made in all fifty states because that way, the defense contractors have the most leverage over politicians. You know, if a politician votes against a particular program, the other party, whichever it is, can accuse them of voting against a program that would keep jobs in the state.
Same thing with oil. This whole government is full of oil executives, and there are about a trillion barrels of oil still in the ground. At $100 a barrel, that's $100 trillion worth of business left to be done--so given all the money they have--
yeah, they're making shitloads of money.
exactly, and they use it to own politicians. So it's hard to do what's so obviously right for country because of the huge amount of money that influences all the politicians.
Getting really good now! Here's the next quetion:
Okay, so how do you fix it?
More tasty opportunities!
Well, we need public financing of elections. Imagine if there was no such thing as a campaign contribution, every candidate who qualified had the same amount of money to spend, and the only thing you could legally do was just try to publicize a candidate through your own efforts and turn out the vote. You'd take a big step toward solving this problem. It wouldn't cost very much at all for taxpayers to fund all elections everywhere--and it certainly would cost a lot less in the long run than all the healthcare, education, military, environmental and other costs that we pay on a day-to-day basis.
Impressed he was.
Wow, I had never thought of that before, but it sounds really good. So, who's your favorite politician? I mean, who comes closest to what you actually believe?
So much fun.
Well, I got to meet Paul Hackett over the weekend, and I really like his style. Especially when he called for a draft, which I really agree with--
Yeah, and when he said that Bush should make his daughters sign up! That was great.
Yeah, it was. And I agree with him on that. If we had a draft, and if Congressmembers' children had to serve, we'd be a lot less likely to get into wars without serious, serious consideration. But the candidate that comes closest to my actual view? That would be Howard Dean. You know, the right-wing loves to portray Dean as this ultra wacko liberal, but the truth is that Howard Dean, as governor of Vermont, balanced the budget, cut taxes, and got an A rating from the NRA. And I'm with him on all of that. I have some guns myself--got them from my late grandfather. I believe in local gun control, and so do a whole ton of other Democrats. But we also believe in background checks and some other things that put us at odds with the gun industry. But as a whole, we have no problem with qualified gun ownership.
We discussed a couple of other things for a few minutes--like the presidential race in 2008, Hillary and a few other things--but the preceding was the gist of the important stuff. And at the end of the conversation, he said something I never expected:
You know, you're a real breath of fresh air. When you start listening to Rush Limbaugh, you don't really agree with everything he says. But the more you listen, the more you agree. And when you listen to other people, they all say the same thing, so it must be true. I really appreciate the talk.
Now, I don't know if this new-found revelantion will only last a week. But even if it does, I know I've embedded the kernels of truth back there, and all that needs to happen is for them to be sprouted by a constant Democratic message.
And you know the amazing thing? I didn't use one-third of what was in my arsenal. I didn't talk about civil rights for gays. I didn't talk about abortion. I didn't even talk about terrorism, and I barely touched on support for the military--and yet, what I had to say still had a huge effect.
THE BOTTOM LINE IS THAT WE CAN WIN ANYWHERE ON THESE MESSAGES. Americans everywhere are ready for a message of clean energy, economic populism, proper effective healthcre, and getting money out of politics.
Are our politicians up to the task? Maybe they are, and maybe they're not. But if they're not, we have to start being the politicians ourselves.
With great power comes great responsibility. Those of us who are armed with the facts have an enormous responsibility to share our knowledge, to spread it far and wide, and to force accountability for those who are elected in our name but do not share our values.
Make it happen, everyone. One person at a time.