Like Senator Bernie Sanders, I'm unshamed to called myself a socialist. Like Sanders, I caucus with the Democrats. As a Popular Front Democrat, I also vote for them, contribute money to their campaigns and walk precincts for them. But I sure would like to hear a lot more of them talking like their colleague from Vermont.
As we used to say in the '60s, right on!
In his speech Tuesday night, President Obama offered some critiquing of the worst of the plutocrats who have their claws and fangs buried deep in every vein of American life:
I understand that on any given day, Wall Street may be more comforted by an approach that gives banks bailouts with no strings attached, and that holds nobody accountable for their reckless decisions. But such an approach won’t solve the problem. And our goal is to quicken the day when we re-start lending to the American people and American business and end this crisis once and for all.
I intend to hold these banks fully accountable for the assistance they receive, and this time, they will have to clearly demonstrate how taxpayer dollars result in more lending for the American taxpayer. This time, CEOs won’t be able to use taxpayer money to pad their paychecks or buy fancy drapes or disappear on a private jet. Those days are over.
Milder words than Senator Sanders's, but welcome nonetheless. The problem is that while the President rouses his audiences with such talk, his team holds back.
Take just one for instance, the continuing resistance to the inevitable for some of the bigger, more reckless players in the financial industry: temporary nationalization. A few economists have been making the argument in favor of this since at least September, saying that the Swedish solution is the proper way to go. But the administration, so far, seems determined to avoid this. And so far, the plan seems to lean closer to the Japanese solution, which was no solution at all.
Perhaps part of the problem, as digby has pointed out, is language.
With all eyes on the possibility of increased U.S. government ownership of embattled bank Citibank, and with increased discussion of the need for a government takeover of other major banks, a new USA Today/Gallup poll indicates that Americans' reactions to these prospects vary significantly, depending on how the process is described to them. A majority of Americans (54%) favor a temporary government "takeover" of major U.S. banks, but a much lower minority (37%) favor a temporary "nationalization" of the banks.
Uh-huh. Call it what you will, socialism, if you like, but Paul Krugman points out that, at 100 or so a year, bank takeovers are "as American as apple pie."
Of course, the administration's delay-for-apparently-the-sake-of-delay in this matter is not being driven by polls that produce different results based on a alternative phrases of identical meaning, but rather by an ideology in this allegedly post-ideological age. That ideology is the one that Sanders lays out in the clip above. It's an ideology entrenched in preternatural greed that operates even in the face of grave crisis. Failing CEOs and their subordinates dare to scarf up giant bonuses and to yuk it up in the spas at lavish conferences while their companies survive solely off the taxpayers' dime, or rather billions of their dimes. That's a pernicious form of "socialism," although the entitled plutocrats don't call it that.
But the fundamental economic issue needing attention isn't unearned bonuses or seminars at pricey resorts. Those are mere symptoms. What really needs addressing is profoundly structural in nature. Antidotes for what ails us can come everywhere from transforming corporate "personhood" to remaking "globalization" from their current predatory arrangements into something beneficial to the commons, from returning to a truly progressive tax system to substantial pushback against the massive growth in economic inequality during the past three decades.
Rahm Emanuel's dictum should be left-progressives' mantra: "You never want a serious crisis to go to waste. And what I mean by that is an opportunity to do things you think you could not do before."
Some "starter" projects in this waste-not approach should include Sanders's proposal for expanding the TARP Oversight Panel's current charge to one that "explor[es] why the financial crisis occurred in the first place. The panel should have subpoena power necessary to assure that it receives sound information and direct answers to the questions it is charged with answering."
In addition, a new Truman Commission to investigate war profiteering should be established. Another should look into corporate concentration, particularly but not exclusively in the media realm. And yet another should explore how best to re-regulate the country via modernized versions of the New Deal's Glass-Steagall Act, forbidding usury, strengthening oversight of workplace health and safety, and guaranteeing net neutrality.
And then we should act to enact the recommendations that emerge from these investigations.
Let the Republicans and the right-wing pundithuggery call these mild reforms socialism if they wish. We should call them Americanism. And we should remind everyone that the idea government can't do anything right has proved true only when those with an antipathy toward the common good hold the reins of power.