This is not a normal election year. American forces have been in Iraq for more than five years while the insurrection in Afghanistan deepens. The economy crashed a month ago, prompting an unprecedented $700 billion bailout of the banking industry. There are thousands of new voters, many of whom are talking about change. Tom Wyka, the Democratic candidate for Congress in the 11th District says one can not expect change if we return the same people to Washington.
So vote for Rodney for more of the same. :-)
Unless lightning strikes, Frelinghuysen will win his eighth term.
Do you mean not since 1932 kind of lightning?
We hope that he will recognize an opportunity -- if not a mandate -- for a new approach. We hope the congressman will use his seniority to stake out new and independent positions when the status quo has failed. We hope he will sharpen his appetite for "best-practice" approaches to long-standing problems (see Wyka and Tedholm above), regardless of which party suggests them.
Congressman Frelinghuysen has had an opportunity the last 2 years to "stake out new and independent positions". Congressman Frelinghuysen has had the opportunity over the last 2 years to "sharpen his appetite for "best-practice" approaches to long-standing problems". How many more chances do the voters of the 11th give the Congressman to disavow the failed policies of extreme neo conservatism?
On Sunday the 23rd in the debate at the Temple Beth AM, Congressman Frelinghuysen said he can't imagine a worse job killer than raising taxes. Progressive taxation with hi taxes for the richest, created jobs as we worked our way out of the Great Republican Depression, and won WW2.
The 12 million men & woman that served in the military in WW2 came home, the GI Bill sent vets to college, and they started families. This created the largest, most vigorous and the best educated middle class, in the history of the planet. Labor unions were at the zenith of their power, our educational institutions were the envy of the world, corporations made money, the wealthiest made money, and the middles class made money.
Its quite clear when the US had a thriving economy, and when the middle was the driver of that economy, from WW2 to the early 1980's. I thought it mildly interesting that the Great Republican Depression starting with the Crash of '29, and the 2 year recession in '89 to '90, and our current fiscal crisis occurred during periods of low tax rates on the wealthy, and occurred during Republican Administrations. Coincidence ? I think not. First they come for jobs, then they come for your homes.
A Middle class is a rare thing, occurring only 3 times thru-out history. The first rising of a middle class occurred as a result of the Black Plague. The Black Plague killed about 50% of the worlds population, creating a labor shortage. This allowed that Trades & Craftsman to command a higher wage, which trickled down to the common yeoman, much as the unionization of US labor in the middle 1900's allowed non union labor to command wages akin to union labor. Some have written that the renaissance, without a middle class that had the leisure time to even consider art & music, let alone the time to paint, sculpt, write & perform music, would have never occurred. Have you ever heard of the Enlightenment?
The second rising of a middle class occurred in the US colonies in the middle 1700's. Once we drove away the Indians, there was free land available for farming. In an agrarian society this was a big deal in that you could own your own land, grow & sell your own crops & keep the profits, much as a family owned business does today.
The third rising of a middle class occurred during the Great Republican Depression of the early 1930's. FDR's New Deal brought forward tax progressivity, as well as labor rights earned thru the union movement, such as the Child Labor laws passed in 1937 & 1938, (Kids do belong in school afterall). But I've gotten ahead of myself, let me backtrack a bit.
"the entry of the United States into World War I greatly increased the need for revenue and Congress responded by passing the 1916 Revenue Act. The 1916 Act raised the lowest tax rate from 1 percent to 2 percent and raised the top rate to 15 percent. Another revenue act was passed in 1918, which hiked tax rates once again, this time raising the bottom rate to 6 percent and the top rate to 77 percent."
Chart from MSN.com
After WW1 tax rates dropped during the "Roaring Twenties" as income disparity increased until the Stock Market crash of 1929, the start of the Depression. Under the guidance of Franklin D. Roosevelt, tax progressivity returned, and the top tax rates went up, programs like Social Security and Unemployment relief got started, the CCC & the WPA put people back to work creating infrastructure thats still in use to this day. This what Frelinghuysen fails to grasp, this is how we created jobs for 50 years.
Thom Hartman wrote , " but the real events of the 1930s and 1940s that set the stage for a second American Middle Class were primarily the Wagner Act, the G.I. Bill, and tax changes ranging from raising the top rate on the most rich to 90 percent to offering an emerging middle class home interest tax deductions."
Hartman known for, amoung other things, quoting Jefferson, continues ,
"Progressive taxation has a long history: As Jefferson said in a 1785 letter to James Madison, "Another means of silently lessening the inequality of property is to exempt all from taxation below a certain point, and to tax the higher portions of property in geometrical progression as they rise." Hartman concludes, "Progressive taxation has helped create every middle class in the First World, and without it the middle class will vanish."
Enter Ronald Reagan and the start of full spectrum warfare on the middle class. The opening salvo, the PATCO strike. Busting the Air Traffic Controllers Union was the start of a multi front military style operation to destroy the middle class. Then the Reagan White House told us that Social Security was going broke, this represents the opening of a second front of the War on the Middle Class that resulted in the doubling of payroll taxes.
From monthlyreview.org
The Chart above shows how tax breaks for the wealthiest have amounted to cuts of 2/3rds (purple), while the burden on payroll taxes have doubled (blue). Corporate taxes are shown in green.
"But as president, Reagan cut the top tax rate for billionaires from 70 percent to 28 percent, while effectively raising taxes on working people via the payroll tax and using inflation against a non-indexed tax system. It was another hit to the already-beginning-to-shrink middle class, to be followed by more "tax cut" bludgeons during the first three years of the W. Bush administration."
Acting as the propaganda mill of the Aristocracy, groups like the Heritage Foundation have been telling us there is nothing to see, move along. This chart, from the Heritage Foundation proclaims "Higher tax rates don't raise more revenues", if this was true why would the Government raise taxes in wartime? In fact the US Treasury, states that the result of these taxe rate increases, in both World Wars, did result in increased revenue. Whats more telling is the fine print on this chart, the 2 bottom lines are labeled "federal taxes as a % of GDP" & "Income taxes as a % of GDP."
Well I would offer to the Heritage Foundation that since 1940 GDP per capita has increased 80 fold, it might be fair to assume that as a % of GDP, so have tax revenues. The real point is not producing more tax revenues, the point is having a large and vigorous middle class that can participate as citizen legislators, send its kids to college, so those kids can invent lots of cool stuff for the corporations to make money off of. Consider kids as assets. How do you make best use of those assets? Educate those assets of course.
Progressive taxation engages the working and middle class in the economy, while regressive taxation dis-engages the working and middle classes in the economy, and regressive tax policies are commonly used as an instrument to transfer wealth from the working and middle classes to the very wealthy. We've seen that during the Great Republican Depression in the 1930's, and we're seeing it happen again.
See Rodney talk about killing jobs, the man has no clue what he's up against. If the voters of the 11th want change, they will change who they send to Washington.
