I didn't read the entire book, but what I did read of Christopher Hedges The Death of the Liberal Class was a tedious disappointment. The author of the excellent War Is A Force That Gives Us Meaning has a good idea: How the decay of liberal institutions such as the press and the Democratic party has opened the door to a corporate assault on the middle-class way of life. But the sections I read were just another tired left-wing assault on liberalism, the kind of thing I've been reading and hearing since high school.
Hedges can't understand, for example, why liberals detest Ralph Nader. Nader is a saint, after all. And his candidacy had nothing to do with Bush's win in 2000. Bush cheated, Gore ran a poor campaign, and anyway there is really was no difference between the two. Hedges doesn't consider why liberals found this claim wrong in 2000 and ludicrous by 2008. He merely shakes his head sorrowfully when Eric Alterman explodes at Nader in the film An Unreasonable Man.
The problem with liberalism, Hedges argues, is that it never heeds the left. But that's a two-way street: The left never listens, either. It issues policy pronouncements and then accuses liberals of selling out on imagined commitments that could have been met had they only believed more.
Progressive systemic change in this country has typically been driven by mass movements. Hedges' liberal establishment cannot by definition produce movements, but historically it has (eventually) heeded them. Despite a disappearing middle class, the left has failed -- if it's even tried -- to organize. What is needed is not yet another left wing critique of liberalism, but a left wing critique of the left...
Extending the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy is anathema to me. But I have to ask myself: If my choice is to extend the cuts and extend unemployment benefits or let the cuts expire at the price of the Republicans killing unemployment benefits, what do I do? Do I call their bluff? But what if it's not a bluff? Do I put people in danger of losing food and shelter when I can take on the tax cuts next year when when the economy may have improved?...
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5 comments:
Actually what you do is let the Bush tax cuts expire and then allow the republicans to take credit for filabustering unemployment benefits then go and take the funds from another source to fund the extension of unemployment benefits via executive order.
Now you have distinctly distinquished Democrats from Republicans and you will have shown the country who's side you are on really and shown that you can act decivisely.
If in ten years the tax cuts total 3.7 trillion dollars you can take credit for reducing the deficit also.
The 12 billion dollars that the unemployment benefits would cost pale in comparsion and since they would be funded out of existing funds they would not create any new debt.
Let the right bluster over that one....
Veto defense spending if it doesn't include repeal of DADT.
That would really shake up Washington wouldn't it?
It's not that easy to transfer funds from another source, is it? Social Security and Medicare are protected from that by statute. The obvious candidate is the DoD, but can the president arbitrarily move money that has been appropriated by Congress for a specific purpose?
Even if the president could, virtually every member of Congress would oppose him if he did. It could conceivably precipitate a constitutional crisis as well -- I'm no constitutional scholar, but the Constitution seems pretty clear that the legislative branch appropriates and directs funding.
Of course, you're absolutely right about the hypocrisy of the thing. If you really and truly believe that the deficit is the chief issue facing the country, then you want to repeal all of the tax cuts.
K,
All of the stimulus money has not been spent....
Obama could very easily tap those funds because the republicans have argued that rather than create new debt they want him to use already allocated money.
As far as a constitutional issue...well, FDR tried to pack the Supreme Court because most of his New Deal legislation had been sent to the court for a ruling and he knew that they would find it unconstitutional...which they did.
But the legislation went forward anyway because it was an accomplished fact by that time.
If FDR had worried about the constitution then most of the New Deal legislation would never have been enacted.
What really needs to be done is extending unemployment benefits beyond 99 weeks, but that's not liable to happen, given the new ideology shift in Congress. If they have so much trouble legislating funding for the extension benefits (Tiers 3 & 4), then actually extending benefits beyond 99 weeks moves out of the realm of the possible. And yet several weeks ago 60 Minutes did a report on the "99ers", people who, like me, have exhausted all benefits and gone beyond the 99 week limit. In the course of the report they estimated that if you include the 99ers in the unemployment statistics, the unemployment rate actually approaches 20%. I would think that those kinds of numbers would make legislators think twice about sticking to the 99 week limit. But maybe that's just me...
TAO: Well, FDR definitely went ahead with legislation even though he doubted its constitutionality. Nonetheless, I'm wary of drawing parallels between the political environment of the Depression and today.
Roy: My take is that few legislators not named Bernie Sanders want to draw that conclusion. 20% unemployment means that something is fundamentally wrong, which they don't want to deal with. It means they might have do think and debate outside of their comfort zone.
What I really don't understand is why people on the left haven't taken to the streets like the teabaggers. As barbarous as they are, the 'baggers get that elected officials are products of the system and won't initiate systemic change unless pushed from the outside. Have you been to a MoveOn rally? The ones I've been to are a joke.
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