Senator Steinberg and the California Budget Crisis

 I just returned fro a Town Hall with Senator Darrell Steinberg  about the state budget crisis at the Belle Cooledge library in Sacramento.  As you know, Senator Steinberg in the Senate Pro Tem ( Democratic Leader) of the Senate, thus he has one of the major inputs on the budget.

Senator Steinberg started with a general view of the budget and the political situation of the coming votes.   Essentially Governor Brown and the Democrats are proposing 12.5 Billion in budget cuts and proposing passing a special initiative to extend the current ( temporary ) tax increases for 5 more years to recover 12.5 billion in revenue.

The room was packed to overflow with persons some of whom agreed with the Senators argument that these cuts were necessary and others who disagreed and argued that these cuts were destructive to life and opportunity.   Advocates for the disabled, for child care workers, teachers, and others made their case.

California can continue the current process of cuts and reductions.  The fiscal crises of the states – all the states- has caused major cut backs and retrenchment and made the economic crisis approach a depression.  The state cut backs are greater than the federal stimulus producing a prolonging of the crisis for working people.   The proposed state cuts will make the recession longer and deeper than is necessary.  Continuing on the present direction produces protection of  obscene profits for billionaires along with growing poverty and hardships for the majority.

The Brown- Democrats approach  would  follow the process of Ireland and Greece and dramatically cut services and impoverish the economy.  Then, since the state  is poorer and has less income you will need to raise more taxes and cut more services all in an effort to protect the excessive profits of bankers and bond holders.  This produces a race to the bottom.

            Detailed copies of important budget documents are at the Legislative Analysts office http://www.lao.ca.gov/ including an overview, and at the California Budget Project  http://www.cbp.org/

            The current plan is to pass a budget, probably the Democrats budget by March 15.  This budget would require that voters also pass an extension of the current (temporary) taxes for 5 years in a June election.  This is similar to Propositions 73.74. & 75 two years ago.  If the voters fail to pass the tax extensions the cuts would be extended to a second 12.5 billion of cuts ruining many of our current services.  A task of the Sacramento Progressive Alliance is to decide if we want to support these tax extension plans.  ( We lost this election last time).

            Eric Vega raised an alternative approach which I was prepared to speak to, but was prevented from speaking due to the many other speakers some on task, some ridiculous.  This is the argument of  taking a high road to creating jobs.  Manny Gale made an impassioned statement that the budget cuts were an issue of values, who is to be valued.   Nell Ranta was assertive in wanting to know why corporations were not paying their fair share of taxes.  She and others pointed out that over 50% of corporations in California pay no taxes at all. 

           

Budget cutting to balance the budget will not get us out of this hole.  Look at Ireland, Greece, or Spain.  Budget cuts only start a downward spiral of pain. We can not simply cut our way out of the crisis, budget cuts and lay offs make the recession worse.

The current dominant themes  with the political elite of both parties and in the media are that cuts are necessary, public employee unions should give up more, and taxes should not be raised. We need to contest against  these basic themes.

At least half of the current  state budget crisis was caused by the national economic crisis.  This crisis was created by finance capital and banking, mostly on Wall Street ,ie. Chase Banks, Bank of America,  Washington Mutual, AIG, and others.   Finance capital produced a $ 2 trillion bailout of the financial industry, the doubling of the unemployment rate and the loss of 2 million manufacturing jobs in 2008.   15 Millions are out of work.  You and I, and did not create this crisis.

While their will be cuts, we on the left should explain an alternative, an expansion of public jobs and fiscal stimulus.  The money for such as stimulus is available. Government must protect and empower our citizens. To foster prosperity  it must prepare the young for civic participation.  Protection includes health care, social security, safe food, environmental protection, safe streets, job protection, etc.

Our economy needs roads, bridges, telephone lines, communications systems, energy and quality education.  These services make freedom and prosperity possible. Conservative tax cut fever ignore the economies need for infrastructure.

We need to build the promise of California.  The promise is an opportunity for a good job.   That promise is a good job for all and the opportunity to have of a good career.  The budget cut-  tax cut mania does not promote good jobs and careers.  It is not true that budget cuts are the only option.

We need to invest in the future.  There are funds available to do this.  A list is here

http://choosingdemocracy.blogspot.com/2011/01/california-budget-crisis-sources-of.html

below.

Duane Campbell

Electoral Chair. Progressive Alliance

Possible tax vote in California

An important piece from Dan Walters.
Prop.25 may actually help.

Dan Walters: Vote margin on taxes key factor

PUBLISHED WEDNESDAY, JAN. 12, 2011 in Sacramento Bee.

A key factor in Gov. Jerry Brown's plan to balance the state budget is whether he and fellow Democrats could do it by themselves, or whether the votes of at least a few Republican legislators would be required.

Politicians and stakeholders are consulting attorneys, but at the moment, no one appears to know for certain – in part because the sections of the state constitution involved have never been legally tested.

….Republicans who voted for the temporary taxes two years ago were hammered by anti-tax groups and radio talkers. So far, GOP leaders have shunned an election to extend them.

If that holds, Brown and his chief legislative partner, Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg, leave open the possibility of moving ahead without a supermajority vote.

"We'll look at every and any way we have at our disposal to save California," Steinberg says.

There are two potential pathways for placing taxes on the ballot in June with a simple majority legislative vote and Brown's signature.

One would be a section of the state constitution that allows the Legislature to propose amendments to previously approved statutory initiatives. In theory, therefore, the additional taxes could be framed as amendments to a previous tax measure, such as Steinberg's own Proposition 63, which imposed an income tax surcharge on the rich for mental health programs.

Under this theory, the amendment would be passed in the Legislature's special session on the budget and after a 90-day wait would be placed on a special election ballot.

The second potential pathway would be Proposition 25, enacted by voters last November. It reduces the legislative vote on budgets from two-thirds to a simple majority and also applies the lower vote margin to measures needed to implement the budget, called trailer bills in Capitol jargon.

While the constitution requires a two-thirds vote to enact new taxes directly, would Proposition 25 allow taxes to be placed before voters with a simple majority vote as a budget implementation measure?

Lawyers inside and outside of government are hurriedly seeking an answer. And since the legal picture is cloudy, were Democrats to move on their own, court battles would surely follow.

edited for space. Read the entire piece at the Sac Bee.  here.http://www.sacbee.com/2011/01/12/3317494/dan-walters-vote-margin-on-taxes.html

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The End of the New Deal Liberalism- Greider

The End of New Deal Liberalism

William Greider | January 5, 2011

We have reached a pivotal moment in government and politics, and it feels like the last, groaning spasms of New Deal liberalism. When the party of activist government, faced with an epic crisis, will not use government's extensive powers to reverse the economic disorders and heal deepening social deterioration, then it must be the end of the line for the governing ideology inherited from Roosevelt, Truman and Johnson.
Political events of the past two years have delivered a more profound and devastating message: American democracy has been conclusively conquered by American capitalism. Government has been disabled or captured by the formidable powers of private enterprise and concentrated wealth. Self-governing rights that representative democracy conferred on citizens are now usurped by the overbearing demands of corporate and financial interests. Collectively, the corporate sector has its arms around both political parties, the financing of political careers, the production of the policy agendas and propaganda of influential think tanks, and control of most major media.
What the capitalist system wants is more—more wealth, more freedom to do whatever it wishes. This has always been its instinct, unless government intervened to stop it. The objective now is to destroy any remaining forms of government interference, except of course for business subsidies and protections. Many elected representatives are implicitly enlisted in the cause.

A lot of Americans seem to know this; at least they sense that the structural reality of government and politics is not on their side. When the choice comes down to society or capitalism, society regularly loses. First attention is devoted to the economic priorities of the largest, most powerful institutions of business and finance. The bias comes naturally to Republicans, the party of money and private enterprise, but on the big structural questions business-first also defines Democrats, formerly the party of working people. Despite partisan rhetoric, the two parties are more alike than they acknowledge.
In these terms, the administration of Barack Obama has been a crushing disappointment for those of us who hoped he would be different. It turns out Obama is a more conventional and limited politician than advertised, more right-of-center than his soaring rhetoric suggested. Most Congressional Democrats, likewise, proved weak and incoherent, unreliable defenders of their supposed values or most loyal constituencies. They call it pragmatism. I call it surrender.
Obama's maladroit tax compromise with Republicans was more destructive than creative. He acceded to the trickle-down doctrine of regressive taxation and skipped lightly over the fact that he was contributing further to stark injustices. Ordinary Americans will again be made to pay, one way or another, for the damage others did to society. Obama agrees that this is offensive but argues, This is politics, get over it. His brand of realism teaches people to disregard what he says. Look instead at what he does.
With overwhelming majorities in Congress and economic crisis tearing up the country in 2009, incumbent Democrats opted for self-protection first, party principles later. Their Senate leaders allowed naysayers to determine the lowest common denominator for reform—halfway measures designed not to overly disturb powerful corporate-financial interests, and therefore not able to repair the social destruction those interests had wrought. Senate Democrats say they didn't have the votes. Imagine what Mitch McConnell would have done if he were their leader: Take no prisoners. Force party dissenters to get in line and punish those who don't. Block even the most pedestrian opposition proposals.
Democrats are not used to governing aggressively. They haven't done so for decades, and they may no longer believe in it. For many years, incumbent Democrats survived by managing a precarious straddle between the forces of organized money and the disorganized people they claim to represent. The split was usually lopsided in favor of the money guys, but one could believe that the reform spirit would come alive once they were back in power with a Democratic president. That wishful assumption is now defunct.
Obama's timid economic strategy can be described as successful only if the standard of success is robust corporate profits, rising stock prices and the notorious year-end bonuses of Wall Street. Again and again, Obama hesitated to take the bolder steps that would have made differences in social conditions. Now it is clear that the bleeding afflictions experienced by the overwhelming majority of citizens will not be substantively addressed because Democrats, both president and Congress, have chosen to collaborate in the conservative cause of deficit reduction: cut spending, shrink government, block any healing initiatives that cost real money.
Republicans, armed with strong conviction, are resurgent with what amounts to ideological nihilism. Leave aside their obvious hypocrisies on fiscal rectitude and free markets. Their single-minded objective is to destroy what remains of government's capacity to intervene in or restrain the private sector on behalf of the common welfare. Many of government's old tools and programs are already gone, gutted by deregulation, crippled by corporate capture of the regulatory agencies originally intended to curb private-sector abuses and starved by inadequate funding. The right wants smaller government for the people, but not for corporate capitalism. It will fight to preserve the protections, privileges and subsidies that flow to the private sector.
* * *
Once again, Republicans are mounting an assault on liberalism's crown jewel, Social Security, only this time they might succeed, because the Democratic president is collaborating with them. The deficit hysteria aimed at Social Security is fraudulent (as Obama's own experts acknowledge), but the president has already gravely weakened the program's solvency with his payroll-tax holiday, which undercuts financing for future benefits. Obama promises the gimmick won't be repeated, but if employment is still weak a year from now, he may well cave. The GOP will accuse him of damaging the economy by approving a "tax increase" on all workers. Senate Democrats are preparing their own proposal to cut Social Security as a counter to the GOP's extreme version. In the end, they can split the difference and celebrate another great compromise.
This is capitulation posing as moderation. Obama has set himself up to make many more "compromises" in the coming months; each time, he will doubtless use the left as a convenient foil. Disparaging "purist" liberals is his way of assuring so-called independents that he stood up to the allegedly far-out demands of his own electoral base. This is a ludicrous ploy, given the weakness of the left. It cynically assumes ordinary people not engaged in politics are too dim to grasp what he's doing. I suspect Obama is mistaken. I asked an old friend what she makes of the current mess in Washington. "Whatever the issue, the rich guys win," she responded. Lots of people understand this—it is the essence of the country's historic predicament.
To get a rough glimpse of what the corporate state looks like, study the Federal Reserve's list of banking, finance and business firms that received the $3.3 trillion the central bank dispensed in low-interest loans during the financial crisis (this valuable information is revealed only because reform legislators like Senator Bernie Sanders fought for disclosure). If you were not on the list of recipients, you know your place in this new order.
The power shift did not start with Obama, but his tenure confirms and completes it. The corporates began their systematic drive to dismantle liberal governance back in the 1970s, and the Democratic Party was soon trying to appease them, its retreat whipped along by Ronald Reagan's popular appeal and top-down tax cutting. So long as Democrats were out of power, they could continue to stand up for liberal objectives and assail the destructive behavior of business and finance (though their rhetoric was more consistent than their voting record). Once back in control of government, they lowered their voices and sued for peace. Beholden to corporate America for campaign contributions, the Democrats cut deals with banks and businesses and usually gave them what they demanded, so corporate interests would not veto progressive legislation.
Obama has been distinctively candid about this. He admires the "savvy businessmen" atop the pinnacle of corporate power. He seeks "partnership" with them. The old economic conflicts, like labor versus capital, are regarded as passé by the "new Democrats" now governing. The business of America is business. Government should act as steward and servant, not master.
This deferential attitude is reflected in all of Obama's major reform legislation, not to mention in the people he brought into government. In the financial rescue, Obama, like George W. Bush before him, funneled billions to the troubled bankers without demanding any public obligations in return. On healthcare, he cut deals with insurance and drug companies and played cute by allowing the public option, which would have provided real competition to healthcare monopolists, to be killed. On financial reform, Obama's Treasury lieutenants and a majority of the Congressional Dems killed off the most important measures, which would have cut Wall Street megabanks down to tolerable size.
Society faces dreadful prospects and profound transformation. When both parties are aligned with corporate power, who will stand up for the people? Who will protect them from the insatiable appetites of capitalist enterprise and help them get through the hard passage ahead? One thing we know for sure from history: there is no natural limit to what capitalism will seek in terms of power and profit. If government does not stand up and apply the brakes, society is defenseless.
Strangely enough, this new reality brings us back to the future, posing fundamental questions about the relationship between capitalism and democracy that citizens and reformers asked 100 years ago. Only this time, the nation is no longer an ascendant economic power. It faces hard adjustments as general prosperity recedes and the broad middle class that labor and liberalism helped create is breaking apart.
My bleak analysis is not the end of the story. Change is hard to visualize now, given the awesome power of the status quo and the collapse of once-trusted political institutions. But change will come, for better or worse. One key dynamic of the twentieth century was the long-running contest for dominance between democracy and capitalism. The balance of power shifted back and forth several times, driven by two basic forces that neither corporate lobbyists nor timid politicians could control: the calamitous events that disrupted the social order, such as war and depression, and the power of citizens mobilized in reaction to those events. In those terms, both political parties are still highly vulnerable—as twentieth-century history repeatedly demonstrated, society cannot survive the burdens of an unfettered corporate order.
People are given different ideological labels, but Americans are not as opposed to "big government" as facile generalizations suggest. On many issues, there is overwhelming consensus that media and pundits ignore (check the polls, if you doubt this). Americans of all ages will fight to defend social protections—Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, among others. People are skeptical to hostile about the excessive power of corporations. People want government to be more aggressive in many areas—like sending some of the financial malefactors to prison.
One vivid example was the angry citizen at a town hall meeting who shouted at his Congressman: "Keep your government hands off my Medicare!" I heard a grassroots leader on the radio explain that basically the Tea Party people "want government that works for them." Don't we all? In the next few years, both parties will try to define this sentiment. If they adhere to the corporate agenda, they are bound to get in trouble, and the ranks of insurgent citizens will grow. Nobody can know where popular rebellion might lead, right or left, but my own stubborn optimism hangs by that thread.
Whatever people on the left may call themselves, they have a special burden in this situation because they are deeply committed to the idea that government should be the trustworthy agent of the many, not the powerful few. Many of us believe further (as the socialists taught) that the economy should serve the people, not the other way around.
The current crisis requires people to go back to their roots and re-examine their convictions—now that they can no longer count automatically on the helping hand of government or the Democratic Party. Obama's unfortunate "hostage" metaphor led Saturday Night Live to joke that the president was himself experiencing the "Stockholm syndrome"—identifying with his conservative captors. Many progressive groups, including organized labor, suffer a similar dependency. They will not be able to think clearly about the future of the country until they get greater distance from the Democratic Party.
I suggest three steps for progressives to recover an influential role in politics. First, develop a guerrilla sensibility that recognizes the weakness of the left. There's no need to resign from electoral politics, but dedicated lefties should stake out a role of principled resistance. In the 1960s uncompromising right-wingers became known as "ankle biters" in Republican ranks, insisting on what were considered impossible goals and opposing moderate and liberal party leaders, sometimes with hopeless candidates. They spent twenty years in the wilderness but built a cadre of activists whose convictions eventually gained power.
Where are the left-wing ankle biters who might change the Democratic Party? It takes a bit of arrogance to imagine that your activities can change the country, but, paradoxically, it also requires a sense of humility. Above all, it forces people to ask themselves what they truly believe the country needs—and then stand up for those convictions any way they can. Concretely, that may lead someone to run for city council or US senator. Or field principled opponents to challenge feckless Democrats in primaries (that's what the Tea Party did to Republicans, with impressive results). Or activist agitators may simply reach out to young people and recruit kindred spirits for righteous work that requires long-term commitment.
Second, people of liberal persuasion should "go back to school" and learn the new economic realities. In my experience, many on the left do not really understand the internal dynamics of capitalism—why it is productive, why it does so much damage (many assumed government and politicians would do the hard thinking for them). We need a fundamental re-examination of capitalism and the relationship between the state and the private sphere. This will not be done by business-financed think tanks. We have to do it for ourselves.
A century ago the populist rebellion organized farmer cooperatives, started dozens of newspapers and sent out lecturers to spread the word. Socialists and the labor movement did much the same. Modern Americans cannot depend on the Democratic Party or philanthropy to sponsor small-d democracy. We have to do it. But we have resources and modern tools—including the Internet—those earlier insurgents lacked.
The New Deal order broke down for good reasons—the economic system changed, and government did not adjust to new realities or challenge the counterattack from the right in the 1970s. The structure of economic life has changed again—most dramatically by globalization—yet the government and political parties are largely clueless about how to deal with the destruction of manufacturing and the loss of millions of jobs. Government itself has been weakened in the process, but politicians are too intimidated to talk about restoring its powers. The public expresses another broad consensus on the need to confront "free trade" and change it in the national interest—another instance of public opinion not seeming to count, since it opposes the corporate agenda.
Reformers today face conditions similar to what the Populists and Progressives faced: monopoly capitalism, a labor movement suppressed with government's direct assistance, Wall Street's "money trust" on top, the corporate state feeding off government while ignoring immoral social conditions. The working class, meanwhile, is regaining its identity, as millions are being dispossessed of middle-class status while millions of others struggle at the bottom. Working people are poised to become the new center of a reinvigorated democracy, though it is not clear at this stage whether they will side with the left or the right. Understanding all these forces can lead to the new governing agenda society desperately needs.
Finally, left-liberals need to start listening and learning—talking up close to ordinary Americans, including people who are not obvious allies. We should look for viable connections with those who are alienated and unorganized, maybe even ideologically hostile. The Tea Party crowd got one big thing right: the political divide is not Republicans against Democrats but governing elites against the people. A similar division exists within business and banking, where the real hostages are the smaller, community-scale firms imperiled by the big boys getting the gravy from Washington. We have more in common with small-business owners and Tea Party insurgents than the top-down commentary suggests.
Somewhere in all these activities, people can find fulfilling purpose again and gradually build a new politics. Don't wait for Barack Obama to send instructions. And don't count on necessarily making much difference, at least not right away. The music in democracy starts with people who take themselves seriously. They first discover they have changed themselves, then decide they can change others.

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Source URL: http://www.thenation.com/article/157511/end-new-deal-liberalism

What is next ? A progressive agenda. Richard Flacks

What is next? Richard Flacks.

Are you as tired as I am with never-ending critiques of Barack Obama coming from the left as well as the right? Mainstream punditry has decided that he is largely a failed president (never forget that the MSM thought he was a failed candidate before he wasn't). Everyone on the left thinks, as one friend (a committed feminist) said the other night, ‘he has no balls.' The current rage is focused on apparent White House support for some sort of compromise on extending those Bush tax cuts. And there's plenty of other betrayals over which to wring hands and gnash teeth.

Handwringing and teeth gnashing don't bring the needed change, however. Why do we keep playing this blame game?

Let's stipulate, the administration needs to be criticized and pressed to correct course. There's no doubt that the president needs to figure out how to explain his key policies to those whose disapproval seems based on misunderstanding. This seems especially true for health care reform, the complexity of which has been key to its apparent unpopularity (I say this in light of the fact that large majorities approve of most of the specific provisions of the act when these are described). But the demand that Obama become more confrontational in order to challenge the fatuous and foolish GOP in congress isn't good strategic advice for him. The country sees him as trying to solve problems and govern, and sees the GOP already as obstructionist. A significant number of people who once identified as Republican now declare as independents. Here's some recent polling evidence. For us on the left, Obama's reasonableness is frustrating. But it could be his best chance to prevail in terms of policy as well as politics.

But...

As I keep saying in this space, if progressives want to promote real change we can't be waiting for Barry, it's up to us. We should be asking each other, not what should he be doing, but what should we do. Of course it's fine to mobilize for a progressive/populist tax measure in the lame duck congress and to defend social security in the face of the Bowles-Simpson initiative. These very focused issues lend themselves well to on-line actions that will give counter-weight to the rightwing onslaught.

But there are more far-reaching measures we should be figuring out how to mobilize for-measures that might really help the people:

       A new WPA?

In a recent web posting, Jeanne Mirer and Marjorie Cohen, argued that Obama could do what FDR did-create a lot of jobs by executive order:

"Can the President directly create jobs by executive order? The answer is a resounding yes. Remember when the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008, which created the $700 billion Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP) was passed, one of the purposes was to preserve homeownership, and promote jobs and economic growth.

Much of the TARP money has been repaid and the administration refers to the profit on the payments. If one assumes an average cost of one job is $50,000, 6 million jobs could be immediately created for $300 billion. 12 million jobs could be created for $600 billion. Because this is already appropriated money, Congressional Republicans could not block it""

Such funding could also be used to support state budgets to protect education and public safety, and to promote weatherization and other green economy job creation.

       A national infrastructure bank?

This past Labor Day the President proposed establishment of an infrastructure bank that would leverage federal seed money to get private and public capital investments to begin dealing with the $2 trillion in infrastructure development the country needs. It's an idea that has been supported by labor movement economists as well as libertarians. LA Mayor Villaragoisa's 30/10 plan to develop massive public transit in LA is in the same spirit. It's likely to attract avid support from all kinds of business interests. It strikes me as the sort of proposal that would substantially outflank TOP obstructionism-and that potentially could result in millions of jobs.

       Solve the foreclosure crisis

One of the administration's largest failures is the effort find relief for homeowners who are being foreclosed or are below water. The crisis is intensifying because of the tremendous bank fraud. Moratorium on foreclosures, and/or real pressure on banks to modify loans are at least two possible pathways.

       Toward a progressive anti-deficit agenda

Socialist senator Bernie Sanders has convened a progressive gathering of major organizations to formulate an alternative deficit reduction program focusing on corporate tax benefits and the Pentagon budget. Congressperson Jan Schakowsky, a member of the deficit commission, has outlined a five year deficit reduction program with a similar thrust.

I list these in order to show that there are very promising major initiatives that could really help the hurting ‘middle class' (i.e. working class). I don't think they will be led from the White House-but I do think they could be next steps for the coalitions that pushed for healthcare and financial reform and that brought about the One Nation march in October. I don't think these formations will do anyone a favor by simply lining up to support whatever the White House considers politically feasible, nor just by waging defensive battles to ‘save' social security and the like.

And, if truth be told, I don't have a lot of hope that the national organizations I've mentioned will easily decide to promote the grassroots action that such initiatives will require. Somehow a national grassroots jobs movement needs to stir-just as it did in the early Thirties. Socialist and communist activists in 1930-32 organized unemployed councils, marches on city hall and the white house, disruptions of relief centers, storming of state capitol buildings, and massive rent strikes.  The evidence is pretty clear that these uprisings propelled the reforms now attributed to the New Deal. I've no idea what the contemporary equivalent of such action might look like. But here's the thing-the little inventory of job creating measures I listed earlier shows that something real could be done but for the political stalemate that now rules. History suggests that such stalemates can be dissolved when people with grievances take matters into their own hands.  That's what democracy looks like.

Some resources:

Dan Froomkin has been running a series at Huffington Post on ideas to create jobs of which the above are some but there are a number of others.

Please go see the new documentary Inside Job which depressingly dramatizes how we are controlled by a kleptocracy. Some exceedingly rich people, one feels, need to be in jail. And some very prominent academic economists are exceptional embarrassments to the academic profession.

Incidentally, if you take a look at this interesting web article on the unemployed movement of the thirties you will see significant reference to the tenants battles in the Bronx in 1932 in buildings on the same block as where Mickey Flacks grew up a decade later. These events were news to us!

Please comment below-you just need to know that State St. is the great street in Santa Barbara to access the comment box.

Fact based and perspective challenges to Waiting for Superman

I have posted here several critiques of  the film, “Waiting for Superman,” so I do not need to repeat these criticisms.  The most fact based criticism is here What Superman got wrong. http://voices.washingtonpost.com/answer-sheet/guest-bloggers/what-superman-got-wrong-point.html

My goal in the following is to share my own reaction to the film. First, it is an important film and I encourage people to see it.  It illustrates to a rather uninformed public and an often poorly informed press   several of the important issues including the budget crisis in schools and the importance of having quality teachers. 

Second. The film makes two glaring claims that were assertions by anti union advocates  when the film was made and now are wrong.  The film claims that the teachers union leadership in Washington D.C. would not allow the Michele Rhee offered contract to come to a vote.  In fact, since the film was made, the contract was submitted to a vote and it passed.  That is Rhee got the contract she wanted- which the film claims was made impossible by union obstruction.  Also, the film supports its claim that incompetent teachers are difficult to remove by citing the extreme case of the New York City room, called by the press the “rubber room.”  It is a compelling story.  However, the so called “rubber room was eliminated last year by the very union contract which the film makers claim was protecting incompetent teachers.

Yes, the film has several anti union charges by various selected speakers.  For example there is the assertion by a  New York Times writer that the two teachers’ unions dominate the Democratic Party.  This is a common claim among Republicans and a few Democrats.  And, yes, the film claims that the teachers’ unions gave significant funds to elect Obama.

However, it is not true that the teachers’ unions were the largest contributors to the Obama campaign.  The records clearly show that Finance Capital was the major large donors to the Obama campaign.

In addition, under Secretary Arne Duncan federal policy has continued and perhaps even accelerated in its anti union course.  The federal policy known as Race to the Top used competition between the states and a $ 4.1 billion dollar allocation  to get more than 34 states to change their laws and to encourage more charter schools- a policy supported by the film makers and generally opposed by the teachers’ unions. 

The film promotes a particular direction as reform. 

The narrator several times  says,  “reform experts agree “ when in fact they do not agree.  The narration recognizes only the Michelle Rhee, Joel Klien, direction of reform and does not recognize  the literally hundreds, perhaps thousands, of persons who have been working  in the trenches for substantive reform for decades.

Randy Wingartner, President of the AFT and seen if edited and clipped statements in the film described this group in August this way,  “Never before have I seen so few attack so many, so harshly, for doing so much—often with so little.

I don’t know if I should call the people attacking us, quote, “reformers,” as they like to be

known—or performers, which might be more accurate. Because many of them seem more interested in engaging in political theater than constructive conversation.

So I’ll just call them the “blame-the-teacher crowd,” and even though many of them have set their sights on all public institutions, I will focus on the institution that has gotten the most abuse—public education.

The blame-the-teacher crowd would have Americans believe that there is only one choice when it comes to public education: either you’re for students, or you’re for teachers.

That is a bogus choice.

When a school is good for the kids, it’s also good for the teachers, and vice versa. And if our leaders fail to recognize this, and fail to create a positive vision for our schools, we must lead the way.”

And, Diane Ravitch, the formerly neo conservative “reformer” during the Reagan Administration calls these folks, the “Billionaires Boy’s Club” In her new book.  For one of the many problems with this view of reform see, “Crooks, Fools, charlatans, and carpet baggers and school reform,” here http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=11455634&postID=2295608821022666888

The film maker distorts the needed discussion of school reform by citing only one side of the debate- that of the  Billionaire Boy’s Club and their well funded spokespersons.  The film decries the teachers unions as a special interest while reporting on Bill Gates, the Olin Foundation, the Bradley foundation, the Broad Foundation, and the entire raft of very conservative economic interests.   Their declared interest is the shrink the public sector – as in public schools- and to spend less money on tax supported institutions.   A second goal of several of these foundations is to defeat the power of teachers unions and the Democratic Party- that is why Meg Whitman, Arnold Schwarzenegger and others find them so appealing.  

 On several occasions the narrator is  the film is loose with the data, making claims that should require several qualifiers to be adequate.

Most of us do not regard the test based accountability  as required in No Child Left Behind and many state laws as sufficient nor adequate. It is often not even helpful in producing school improvement. 

The film also under reports the interventions of  the Harlem Children’s Zone.  Not only are the schools intensified, the children get health care, food, parental counseling, and a wide variety of supportive services in the Zone.  That is great. It is the way to intervene.  But, other schools do not have these funds and services.  For more on this approach see: http://www.boldapproach.org/.

So, the producers and the television talking heads claim that they want to discuss the film.  Fine. Lets discuss it.  But, lets let all sides in on the discussion and not frame the discussion as the film does as reformers v the teachers’ union.  That is a limited view of the many issues.  More to follow.

The California budget crisis

What caused this  budget crisis?

The proposed state budget takes 3.1 billion from k-12 schools, closes parks, forces state worker furlough’s and more.  County and city budget cuts reduce our police protection, cause limits on fire protection, and close mental health facilities pushing some of the mentally ill into jails and prisoners out of our jails early  on to the streets.

While  state budget reforms are needed, the basic cause of this crisis is the economic crisis in the nation.

 Crisis in the states.

The current  economic crisis has forced the cutting of higher education, of k-12 education, and of social welfare systems.  This crisis was caused by the greed and avarice of the financial class and aided by the politicians of both major political parties.

First came the housing bubble and the selling of near fraudulent home mortgages.  To make a profit m ajor banks and corporations looted the economy creating an international meltdown.  Now, they have been rewarded with bail out money.  The crisis was not caused by students, teachers, public employees  nor recipients of social security.   Now we have cuts in parks,  in universities, in nurses, libraries.  School children did not create this crisis.

The major bankers, finance capitalists in the U.S. robbed the bank last year  – and the federal treasury.  They took hundreds of billions of dollars.  – Goldman Sachs alone took $10 Billion.  For example,  Ken Lewis of Bank of America received an $ 81 million dollar pension.  They have not even been punished.  One thing we should do is arrest the top 100 executives and CEO’s of these companies, give them a fair trial, and throw them in jail.  Until we arrest some people – there will be no real changes.”

Our financial system as a whole crashed not because of one bank. Goldman Sachs ( with Meg Whitman on the Board) certainly played a major role as did JP Morgan Chase, Morgan Stanley, and CitiCorp, along with the many corporate finance institutions  like Bear Sterns, Merrill Lynch, Lehman Brothers, WaMu, Depfa.  We had a systemic breakdown because nearly all of our policy makers, academics, politicians, and pundits promoted  a failed, self serving  ideology of self-correcting financial markets. Finance  profiteers walked off with big bucks while contributing to the  crash  of the system.  

As of  this week we know that the TARP bailout of the banks worked.  While $700 billion was allocated to rescue the banks, now all but $50 billion of that has been repaid.  It was a successful intervention to stop the Wall Street Crisis.  But, now the crisis remains in the states, the counties and the cities.

While we look at the California budget crisis, lets keep the issues in perspective.  

Bill Gates et al and Waiting for Superman

            When Generosity Hurts: Bill Gates, Public School Teachers and the Politics of Humiliation

Tuesday 05 October 2010

by: Henry A. Giroux, t r u t h o u t | Op-Ed

So-called reformers such as Michelle Rhee, who took over the District of Columbia public schools three years ago, have become iconic symbols for enacting educational policies based on a mix of market incentives such as paying students for good grades, merit pay for teachers and firing teachers en masse who do not measure up to narrow and often discredited empirically based performance measures.(18) Reform in this case is driven by a slash-and-burn management system that relies more on punishment than critical analysis, teacher and student support and social development. The hedge fund managers, billionaire industrialists and corporate vultures backing such policies appear to view teachers, unions and public schools as an unfortunate, if not threatening remnant, of the social state, and days long past when social investments in the public good and young people actually mattered and public values were the defining feature of the educational system, however flawed. This hatred of public values, public services, public schools and teachers is only intensified by a wider culture of cruelty that has gripped American society.

Read the entire post here:

http://www.truth-out.org/when-generosity-hurts-bill-gates-public-school-teachers-and-politics-humiliation63868


This work by Truthout is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License.

The continuing economic crisis

The financial crisis is not over although it has been moved off of the front pages of many papers.  On Thursday, September 23, 2010, the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission came to Sacramento chaired by Phil Angelides.  In his opening statement Angelides noted that there were 26 million out of work, over 2 million have lost their homes, over $12 trillion in wealth has been wiped out, and California has an official 12.8 % unemployment.

The crisis started in the housing markets, particularly  in places like Sacramento. The economic problems were accelerated by the near larceny of business practices by corporations including Washington Mutual and Long Beach Savings.  Sub prime and Alter A mortgages were promoted and sold to make outlandish profits even though it was clear that many home buyers could not pay for their mortgages.

The  current Great Recession was accelerated far beyond  Sacramento and the Central Valley by finance capital and banking, mostly on Wall Street, ie. Chase Banks, Bank of America, Goldman Sachs,  AIG, and others.  Finance capital owned the banks, and they robbed the banks through investment and trading  schemes including investments in mortgage backed derivatives. Wall Street’s actions plunged the U.S. into the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, destroying jobs and lives, and triggering a recession in much of  the developed world.

One person testifying ( I did not get his name), said this was , “capitalism at its most unregulated.”  The effects of the housing crisis spread to Wall Street because it was Wall Street firms backing the mostly fraudulent mortgages – and then they were bailed out.

We are now  in the greatest economic crisis since the 1930’s.  WE need  a new  consistent, comprehensible narrative  to explain how the economic system is only working for the rich and powerful, not for working people.   Such a narrative  would explain  to working families  the economic  reality and the destruction  which they are seeing around them and provide an alternative to the narrative being offered by the  media, the Tea Party and the other corporate front groups.

The  recent work 13 Bankers. The Wall Street Takeover and the Next Financial Meltdown. ( 2010)  and a number of other books  develop  the important thesis that the U.S. is being directed and exploited by an oligarchy.  This oligarchy protects  their profits and their privileges, they dominate the government.  And, they will continue to do so until they are stopped.

Johnson and Kwak  argue that in the crisis of 2007/2009, which the oligarchy created, the rich seized billions of dollars for themselves.  They made massive profits from the economic disaster. The Great Recession cost  the homes, the jobs, and even the lives of working people.

 In  The Wall Street Takeover and the Next Financial Meldown,  Johnson and Kwak describe in detail the self serving economic theories which the wealthy and the powerful promote, such as those advanced most notably by the University of Chicago economists.

Perhaps most important is to understand that the system has not been fundamentally changed – it will all happen again.  Johnson and Kwak note

 “ In the dark days of late 2008- when Lehman Brothers vanished, Merrill Lynch was acquired, AIG was taken over by the government, Washington Mutual and Wachovia collapsed, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley fled for safety morphing into bank holding companies, and Citigroup and Bank of America teetered on the edge of being bailed out- the conventional wisdom was that the financial crisis  spelled the end of an era of excessive risk –taking and fabulous profits.  Instead,  we can now see that the largest, most powerful banks came out of the crisis even larger and more powerful.  When Wall Street was on its knees, Washington came to its rescue- not because of personal favors to a handful of powerful bankers, but because of a belief in a certain kind of financial sector so strong that not even the ugly revelations of the financial crisis could uproot it.”  ( P.11)

To see more on this see, “The easiest way to rob a bank is to own one,” on a prior post.

A hopeful counter point  to oligarchic power was offered in a presentation by Barry Lynn of the New America Foundation at a noon conference downtown.    Lynn argues in his book, Cornered: The New Monopoly Capitalism and the Economics of Destruction, (2010) that the growth of monopoly power in the U.S. has given the powerful, or those referred to by Johnson and Kwak as the Oligarchs, a new power to control our economy and to govern our lives.  He gave examples from beer brewing, agriculture (chickens and milk), to Wall Mart and Google to argue for an effort to renew our democracy.  Interestingly, his anti monopoly of power argument came from a rather conservative perspective- not from the Left.

California Schools- not in compliance????

Update on Education Jobs Money

Education Secretary Arne Duncan is urging governors to act quickly and submit their state applications for their share of the $10 billion education jobs funding as soon possible so that the emergency aid can begin flowing to districts. So far, 17 states have had their funding requests approved:

	Funds	Estimated Number of            Teaching Positions              Created/Saved*
Alabama	$149.5 million	2,250
California	$1.2 billion	13,318
Colorado	$159.5 million	2,393
Connecticut	$110.5 million	1,251
Georgia	$322.3 million	4,397
Illinois	$415.4 million	5,118
Iowa	$96.5 million	1,503
Kansas	$92.5 million	1,572
Maine	$39 million	614
Massachusetts	$204 million	2,083
Nebraska	$58.9 million	966
Nevada	$83.1 million	1,184
New Mexico	$64.9 million	1,077
New York	$607.6 million	6,263
South Dakota	$26.3 million	574
Tennessee	$195.9 million	3,279
Wisconsin	$179.7 million	2,329

The $10 billion education fund was created to support education jobs in the 2010–11 school year and will be distributed to states by a formula based on population figures. States can then distribute their funding to school districts using their funding formulas or districts' relative share of federal Title I funds.

However, a provision in the bill requires states to have maintained their level of higher education spending this year, something many of the states have not been able to do. And the bill does not offer waivers for states to opt out of this requirement, which means that those states that have made drastic cuts to higher education could miss out on the windfall. Some states—such as California, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Rhode Island—are believed to be caught in this noncompliance situation.

Only Congress can rectify this issue by repealing this provision.

Despite the uncertainty, and given the general budget emergency at the state level, money has already started to flow because the Obama administration has been willing to send the funds out now and wait for administrators to prove their eligibility later. It remains to be seen, however, if states that are found to fail the requirements will have to return the money.

If you have any suggestions or feedback about the planned uses of edujobs funding, please e-mailpolicy@ascd.org. Read the letter from Duncan to governors accompanying application information. 

Elizabeth Warren appointed : Consumer Financial Protection

HUGE news: President Obama just appointed populist hero Elizabeth Warren to establish and lead the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau!!  

This is the boldest step Obama's taken so far to rein in the big Wall Street banks. And it's a major victory for grassroots progressives who rallied for Warren. 

The banks fought to keep her out of this job—and now that she has it, they'll do whatever they can to keep her from exercising her full authority. That's why we need to get the word out—to make sure she has the grassroots support she needs to aggressively police Wall Street.

So we made a video of Warren's greatest hits from her appearances on the "Daily Show" and a list of five cool facts about her. Check them out at the link below and send them to all your friends:

http://pol.moveon.org/warren_fivethings_share.html?id=23486-2956400-gvpaARx&t=2

Top Five Things You Should Know About Elizabeth Warren

1. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau was her idea.  Here's why she thinks this agency is so critical: "It is impossible to buy a toaster that has a one-in-five chance of bursting into flames and burning down your house. But it is possible to refinance your home with a mortgage that has the same one-in-five chance of putting your family out on the street."¹

2. The Republicans are so scared of her, they tried to pass a law blocking her from leading the agency. Republicans in Congress and the big Wall Street banks have always been against Warren leading the new consumer agency. Republicans even offered an amendment that was widely understood as designed to block Warren. That amendment failed.²

3. She is one of the most prominent, successful and fierce female lawyers in America. Coming from working-class roots, she graduated from high school as a debate star at 16. She finished law school when she was nine months pregnant. And she has repeatedly been named one of the 50 most influential female lawyers by the National Law Journaland was twice nominated as one of Time magazine's 100 Most Influential People (among other honors).³

4. She spoke truth to power about the failed foreclosure program. The Home Affordability Modification Program was supposed to save homeowners from losing their homes but has left many deeper in debt than they were before. Warren used her position on the Congressional Oversight Panel to bring the voices of these disaffected homeowners right to the decision makers in the administration and demand accountability. ⁴

5. She may have actual superpowers. She once calmed a crowd at an NBA game with her encyclopedic basketball knowledge. She explained the financial meltdown so clearly to Jon Stewart that he said it made him "want to make out with" her. And there's a viral cowboy rap video about her.⁵

Check out the video of Warren on the "Daily Show" and share it with your friends and family. Just click here:

http://pol.moveon.org/warren_fivethings_share.html?id=23486-2956400-gvpaARx&t=3

Thanks for all you do.

Republicans make economic crisis worse + Krugman

Things Could Be Worse

By PAUL KRUGMAN

TOKYO. from the N.Y. Times 

“Japan’s problems now are the same as they were in the 1990s, when you were writing about them. It’s depressing.” So declared one economist I spoke to here. “But the Japanese don’t seem all that depressed,” objected another. Both were right — and the conversation crystallized some thoughts I’ve been having about Japan’s situation, and ours.

A decade ago, Japan was a byword for failed economic policies: years after its real estate bubble burst, it was still suffering from chronic deflation and slow growth. Then America had its own bubble, bust and crisis. And these days, Japan’s record doesn’t look that bad to an American eye.

Why not? For all its flaws, Japanese policy limited and contained the damage from a financial bust. And the question in America now is whether we’ll do the same — or whether we will take a hard right turn into economic disaster.

In the 1990s, Japan conducted a dress rehearsal for the crisis that struck much of the world in 2008. Runaway banks fueled a bubble in land prices; when the bubble burst, these banks were severely weakened, as were the balance sheets of everyone who had borrowed in the belief that land prices would stay high. The result was protracted economic weakness.

And the policy response was too little, too late. The Bank of Japan cut interest rates and took other steps to pump up spending, but it was always behind the curve and persistent deflation took hold. The government propped up employment with public works programs, but its efforts were never focused enough to start a self-sustaining recovery. Banks were kept afloat, but were slow to face up to bad debts and resume lending. The result of inadequate policy was an economy that remains depressed to this day.

Yet the picture is grayish rather than pitch black. Japan’s economy may be depressed, but it’s not in a depression. The employment picture has been troubled, with a growing number of “freeters” living from temporary job to temporary job. But thanks to those government job-creation plans, the country isn’t suffering mass unemployment. Debt has risen, but despite constant warnings of imminent crisis — and even downgrades from rating agencies back in 2002 — the government is still able to borrow, long term, at an interest rate of only 1.1 percent.

In short, Japan’s performance has been disappointing but not disastrous. And given the policy agenda of America’s right, that’s a performance we may wish we’d managed to match.

Like their Japanese counterparts, American policy makers initially responded to a burst bubble and a financial crisis with half-measures. I’ve lamented that fact, but at this point it’s water under the bridge. The question is: What happens now?

Republican obstruction means that the best we can hope for in the near future are palliative measures — modest additional spending like the infrastructure program President Obama proposed this week, aid to state and local governments to help them avoid severe further cutbacks, aid to the unemployed to reduce hardship and maintain spending power.

Even with such measures, we’ll be lucky to do as well as Japan did at limiting the human and economic cost of the economy’s financial woes. But it’s by no means certain that we’ll do even that much. If the Republicans go beyond obstruction to actually setting policy — which they might if they win big in November — we’ll be on our way to economic performance that makes Japan look like the promised land.

It’s hard to overstate how destructive the economic ideas offered earlier this week by John Boehner, the House minority leader, would be if put into practice. Basically, he proposes two things: large tax cuts for the wealthy that would increase the budget deficit while doing little to support the economy, and sharp spending cuts that would depress the economy while doing little to improve budget prospects. Fewer jobs and bigger deficits — the perfect combination.

More broadly, if Republicans regain power, they will surely do what they did during the Bush years: they won’t seriously try to address the economy’s troubles; they’ll just use those troubles as an excuse to push the usual agenda, including Social Security privatization. They’ll also surely try to repeal health reform, which would be another twofer, reducing economic security even as it increases long-term deficits.

So I find myself almost envying the Japanese. Yes, their performance has been disappointing. But things could have been worse. And the case Democrats now need to make — the case the president finally began to make in Cleveland this week — is that if Republicans regain power, things will indeed be worse. Americans, understandably, are disappointed over, frustrated with and angry about the state of the economy; but disappointment is better than disaster.

What created the populist explosion and how Democrats can avoid the Shrapnel in November

By Drew Westen, AlterNet

To say that the American people are angry is an understatement. The political brain of Americans today reflects a volatile mixture of fear and fury, and when you mix those together, you get an explosion. The only question at this point is how to mitigate the damage when the bomb detonates in November.

The bad news is that it's too late for Democrats to do what would have been both good policy and good politics (and what the House actually did do), namely to pass a major jobs bill when it was clear that the private sector couldn't keep Americans employed. The "Obama Doctrine" should have been that Americans who want to work and have the ability to contribute to our productivity as a nation should have the right to work, and that if the private sector can't meet the demand for jobs, we have plenty of roads and bridges to fix, new energy sources to develop and manufacture, and schools to build and renovate so our kids and workers returning for training can compete in the 21st century global economy. From having spent much of the last four years testing messages on a range of issues, from immigration to taxes and deficits, I can say with some certainty that nothing John Boehner or Eric Cantor could say could come within 30 points of generating the enthusiasm -- particularly among swing voters -- of a message that began, "We don't have a shortage of work ethic in this country, we have a shortage of work." That message resonates across the political spectrum. And it isn't even the strongest message we've tested in the last weeks or months that beats back the toughest deficit-cutting language the other side can muster.

But it's too late for that. The administration opted for an alternative doctrine, which Larry Summers enunciated on This Week several months ago: that unemployment is going to remain high for the foreseeable future and eventually come down -- as if there's nothing we can do about it -- and that they will push here and there for small symbolic measures whose symbolism tends to escape people who are out of work. It's hard to be excited by symbolism when your children are hungry or the bank is repossessing your home -- although you didn't do anything to deserve it -- while the people who did are once again making out like bandits.

Although the situation looks bleak for Democrats in November, it ain't over 'til it's over. Republicans are shooting themselves in the foot all over the country, running Tea Party candidates who are so far to the right you can't see Middle America from their porch. And some endangered Democrats will likely see victory in November from theirs if they understand the public mood and speak to it.

What is that public mood? It can be characterized by a single phrase -- populist anger -- and it cuts across partisan lines. On the right, it is alloyed with racial anxiety and prejudice. On the left, it is alloyed with tremendous disappointment at what could have been if we had the kind of bold leadership for which times like these cry out. And among people in the vast political center, populist anger is alloyed with anxiety and uncertainty -- about their jobs, their homes, and their children's future.

How to Create a Populist Explosion: A Tragedy in Two Acts

So how did we get here? The story can be told as a tragedy in two acts.

Act I: The GOP Sets the Country on a Course of Economic Destruction and the President Calls for Truth and Reconciliation without the Truth Part

• A strong economic downturn devolves into a Great Recession, as the stock market crashes and major banks fail. By October 2008, upper middle class moderate Republicans in the suburbs are so frightened by what's happening to their assets that they're willing to give Democrats a chance.
• A Republican administration that believes in neither government nor regulation creates a 700 billion bank bailout with no accountability. Unlike Republicans, who would say "no" in a situation like this and let a Great Recession turn into a Great Depression, Democrats do the right thing, but they don't make it clear from the start that these are Bush Bailouts and remind Americans, over and over, that the cause of all the bankruptcies is the bankruptcy of Republican ideology.
• A charismatic young president raises people's hopes and expectations, as he uniquely can. Americans are frightened, but they are willing and waiting to hear an alternative narrative to "government is the problem, not the solution" and a path back to economic recovery and security.
• The White House refuses to tell the American people three stories they desperately need to hear.
• The first is why the economy has gone into the ditch, and who did it. The president is steadfast in his position that we should "look forward, not backward," even as the GOP is blocking his every initiative to clean up its mess. As conservative attacks on him and Democrats increase, he refuses to indict the Republicans in Congress or President Bush for having destroyed our economy and putting one in eight Americans out of work and one in five either behind on their mortgage or in the process of having their homes foreclosed by the same bankers who gambled them away. Why did he need to tell the American people who was responsible for their misery -- and to repeat it again and again? Because otherwise, if the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression didn't subside within a year and half, voters would start to associate it with him and his party. This is Neuroscience 101 -- it's how mental associations are formed. But the president never even uttered George W. Bush's name in his first year in office, and the first time he did mention Bush was to appoint him, along with former President Clinton, to co-lead American relief efforts in Haiti. The president doesn't like putting antagonists in any of his stories, but if forced to, he would cite unnamed "naysayers," "Washington politics as usual," or "Congress," which was counterproductive given that Congress was held by his party. The guiding belief at the White House implicit in this messaging strategy was that Americans have a good grasp on economics and good memories.
• The second story the American people needed to hear from the president was why deficit spending is essential when the economy is spiraling downward. It's not a hard story to tell, even in a sound bite. But one of the best educators to occupy the Oval Office in decades chose not to educate -- he actually did it once, with prodding, but never repeated what was a superb explanation --- nor did he remind voters every time his opponents attacked him for deficit spending that they had left him with a 1.2 trillion dollar deficit on the day he walked into office because of their unpaid-for tax cuts to millionaires and unpaid-for war on Iraq that called on no one to sacrifice except our soldiers and their families (and our kids and grandkids, who will be paying off this war for generations). A year later, with Democrats on the ropes, the president started to tell that story. It was the right move, but appeared defensive because it hadn't been part of his guiding narrative from the start.
• The third story the president needed to offer was an alternative narrative on government. The president and his party were about to offer effective government as a solution to multiple problems after 30 years of solid branding by conservatives since Ronald Reagan about how government is the problem. But the narrative never came.
• The White House and Democratic Congress pass what virtually all economists outside the Goldman Sachs-to-Washington pipeline consider a half-stimulus that they predict will likely produce half-results. It fulfilled its promise. But the equally predictable political result was a discrediting of the concept of government intervention to stimulate the economy in the eyes of the public -- enough to scare off Democratic lawmakers from doing what they learned about Keynesian economics in intro economics for the indefinite future. Instead of blasting the Republicans for having hurled the country toward an abyss that would now take drastic measures to avert and warning the American people that this could easily be the first of two or three trillion-dollar packages that might be needed to get Americans back to work and to get the gears of the economy grinding again before we could start returning to the kinds of surpluses Bill Clinton had left the last time a Democrat was in the White House, the president chose to compromise with a party that was so unpopular when he took office that only 20 percent of voters at that point would even admit to a pollster that they considered themselves Republicans -- the lowest point for the GOP since the rise of public opinion polling 50 years earlier.
• The economy continues its free-fall, shedding 700,000 jobs a month. Meanwhile, Democrats don't take the kind of dramatic steps necessary to stop the bleeding. Americans are becoming desperate, but they remain hopeful that this new president will turn things around, and that perhaps the jobs provisions of the new "stimulus" act will do cauterize the wound. Meanwhile, the stimulus is being portrayed by Republicans as a mixture of pork and fat, and no one is effectively answering the charges, creating increasingly negative associations to an act that was never adequately crafted or sold.
• The logical follow-up to a bill designed to pull the economy out of a ditch is to make such a bill unnecessary in the future, by attacking Wall Street for having thrown us into crisis and passing strong legislation to rein in the excesses that created the economic meltdown. This would have sealed the American people's loyalty to the new president and Congress. (Heading into November, this is, in fact, the most popular piece of legislation the Democrats have passed, but it took them nearly a year and a half to get there, and by then, neither the president nor the Democratic Congress enjoyed the good will of the average American.) Instead, the same banks that received bailouts are foreclosing in record rates on the homeowners whose payroll taxes funded the bailouts but don't seem to get the same kind of attention to their needs from the federal government. Adding insult to injury, the banks double and triple credit card interest rates to as high as 30 percent, including on people's existing credit card debt -- while continuing to receive no-interest loans from the federal government.
• Despite talk of accountability, no one is fired (except one auto executive), virtually no one is prosecuted or even investigated as far as anyone knows, and banks that received bailouts flaunt record bonuses.

Act II: An Anemic Economy Meets an Anemic Health Care Plan

• The public has been clamoring for health care reform. Over 40 million people don't have health insurance at all, and the 85 percent of voters who do have health care have seen their costs double during the Bush years at the same time as real income has declined. Effective narratives on health care are widely available that win by a 2:1 margin against the toughest Harry-and-Louise anti-reform language from the other side. The opposition knows it, as evident in a leaked memo by Republican wordsmith Frank Luntz, who warns that this will be an uphill climb for opponents of reform, who would do well to accept some major elements of it.
• But instead of using any of the well-tested narratives that were highly effective during the campaign or devising any new ones of its own, the administration decides to try to "sell" health care without a narrative. (I wrote about this in detail a year ago and will not repeat that history here, except in telegraphic form.) The president refuses to state where he stands on any of the substantive debates about health reform for a year, such as whether we should have a "public option" (a term so ill-conceived it's hard to believe the public supported it anyway; imagine the support it might have received if it had been called instead "the one health care plan the health insurance companies don't get to control"). Instead, the White House uses phrases such as "bending the cost curve" while conservatives flood the airwaves with evocative phrases such as "government takeover," "a bureaucrat between you and your doctor," and "death panels."
• Instead of using Big Pharma and the health insurance industry as the villains of the health care story, which would explain why we need an overhaul rather than a Band-Aid, the White House once again offers a story without protagonists or antagonists, and cuts secret deals with both industries that become public.
• Over interminable months of trying to get the votes of the same Republicans who fought against Medicare for seniors for 30 years until the program was just too popular to keep attacking it and who are still trying to gut Social Security despite its popularity, the public then watches what George Will describes as the "serial bribery" of Republican and Democratic Senators alike, as each gets to take his or her turn as the 60th vote.
• At the 11th hour, as a compromise plan is finally going to pass, the president nixes the idea of a Medicare-like alternative Americans can choose over a health-insurance industry plan if they so desire, despite 60 percent of even swing voters wanting it included in the bill.
• Instead of being the signature bill that demonstrates both that Democrats can govern effectively and that government can be a force for good for working and middle class Americans (who have just been told that the better plans they've negotiated or been offered for years by their employers are "Cadillacs" that are going to be taxed out of existence), the entire process proves to the average American that government can't do anything right and scares moderate Democrats away from voting for any other bill that would ever put them on the record supporting government or spending.
• "Government" hits an all-time low in the polls, matching the popularity of big corporations, CEOs, and bailouts.
• Populist anger emerges as the primary emotion across the political spectrum, and the president's job approval with swing voters drops into the high thirties.
• Following the conventional wisdom, Democrats return to their all-too-familiar defensive crouch, and conclude that when in trouble, tack right. On health care, the president and his Cabinet fan out all over television to "reassure" the public on health care that abortion won't be covered (thanks for the reassurance, but most of us didn't find that reassuring), that domestic partners won't be covered, and that immigrants won't be covered. None of these issues needed to be conceded. (I know this because I tested messages on them, and well- messaged progressive positions on them would have boosted the popularity of the bill with swing voters.)
• The White House starts adopting failed conservative policies and talking points that leave the public utterly confused about where the president, and by extension, his party, stands on the central issues of the day. The president talks about cutting deficits and increasing spending in the same breath, using the metaphor of families tightening their belt in tough times, which only strengthens resolve against stimulating a faltering economy; pledges support for massively expanding offshore drilling and "clean coal" (which doesn't exist, by the way) in a speech on climate change; and sends in 1200 additional National Guards to Arizona as an apparent reward for passing "No Latino Left Behind," while publicly objecting to the legislation.
• The underlying psychological assumption of these moves is that if you mix policies from the right and left in equal parts, you win the center. In fact, no one has ever won the center that way. It appears weak, opportunistic, and incoherent to the average swing voter, which is particularly problematic at a time when people in the center desperately want to know that their leaders have a vision and a coherent plan for what to do (which is why both FDR and Ronald Reagan were so effective in moving voters in the center). It doesn't win any votes on the right. But it does have one predictable effect: It sucks the motivation out of your base, who feel demoralized and betrayed (if they're part of the "professional left") or less likely to vote (if they're average voters who don't follow politics carefully but just don't feel very enthusiastic anymore, even if they don't really know why).
• Capping it all off, the BP disaster occurs two weeks after the president has adopted the "drill here, drill now," "all of the above" position of the Republican Party and the oil companies. This could have been the perfect opportunity to go on the offensive, contrast what Democrats stand for (common sense, protection of our safety, the land we leave our children, and key American industries and jobs, and sticking up for ordinary Americans against big businesses and their lobbyists) with what Republicans stand for; and connect the dots between what happened on Wall Street (with regulators owned and operated by the companies they were supposed to regulate) and what happened in the Gulf (where precisely the same thing happened). Instead, the administration finds itself on the defensive, increasingly sounding like a subsidiary of BP, allowing BP to call the shots and control information for weeks, defending increasingly hard-to-believe statistics, and issuing press releases that appear indistinguishable from those issued by BP but are inconsistent with assessments of independent scientists.

Where Do We Go from Here?

So that is where we find ourselves today: a Democratic Party and Democratic base that is demoralized and unlikely to vote in high numbers in November; a Republican Party that is selling replanted Bushes with tremendous enthusiasm; and a vast political center filled with voters who are utterly confused and unsure who to turn to but certain that things aren't going well.

In January 2009 no one could have predicted that Democrats would be in this predicament today. Perhaps Democrats might lose a few seats lost in an off-year election, but certainly no more than that. We had just seen -- and the American public knew we had just seen -- the most disastrous performance by a president and party in living history, and the American people had elected a tremendously charismatic young president with enormous Democratic majorities in both houses of Congress. They had given the president and Congress a strong mandate for whatever kind of change was necessary to get us out of economic free-fall and to put Americans back to work.

But there were red flags already by the end of Obama's first week in office that led me to offer the following advice to the new administration: Tell the story of how we got in this mess or you'll own it. Tell a coherent story about deficit spending. Re-brand government because there's only one story out there now (Reagan's), and it's not one that supports a progressive agenda. Never let attacks go unanswered, because doing so only emboldens your opposition and leads the public to believe that you have no answers to them. And if you throw a bipartisan party and no one comes, don't throw another one. All of what followed has been as predictable as it has been unfortunate. A year and a half later, the White House hasn't consistently done any of these things, although the President is now intermittently doing some of them, and when he does, he does them well.

The question today is whether Democrats can channel the populist anger we are seeing around the country this late in the game. The answer is that we'd better try. Having recently tested messages on economics and jobs, including how to talk about deficits and taxes -- widely assumed to be Democrats' Achilles Heel, particularly now -- there is little question that if Democrats and progressives from center to left simply say what they believe in ways that are evocative, values-driven, and speak to people's worries and anger, many stand a good chance of surviving November, particularly when their opponents have nothing to say other than warmed-over rhetoric about cutting taxes to millionaires and multinationals and fiscal restraint except where it cuts into profits of their campaign contributors. Even the most evocative boilerplate conservative messages fall flat against honest messages that speak to the need to get Americans working again. And on issue after issue, no message is more resonant right now than one that sides with working and middle class Americans and small business owners against special interests, big business, and their lobbyists.

But actions speak louder than words, and Americans want to see action. It may be too late for the kind of jobs bill we should have seen a year and a half ago, but it isn't too late for Democrats to go on the offensive against the Republicans -- virtually all of them -- who opposed extending unemployment insurance to millions of Americans who were thrown out of work by the Republicans' corporate sponsors. It isn't too late for Democrats to contrast their support for the highly popular aid to state and local governments that just saved the jobs of hundreds of thousands of teachers, firefighters, and police all over the country with Republicans' desire to throw them out onto the street. It isn't too late to make a voting issue out of the bill the Republicans are stalling that would give small businesses a fighting chance in an economy stacked against them, and to make clear that one party stands for small businesses, which create 75 percent of the new jobs in this country, and the other party stands for big businesses that outsource American jobs and offshore their profits to avoid paying their fair share of American taxes. It's not too late to pass a bill that would limit credit card interest rates to a reasonable percent above the rate at which credit is made available to credit card companies. It's not too late to pass the first badly need "fix" to the health care reform act to demonstrate to Americans that Democrats mean it when they say this was just the first step, namely a law that stops insurance companies from increasing their premiums by 40 percent while cutting the size of their networks by 50-75 percent, which violates the principles of affordability and choice that were so essential to efforts to sell health care reform to the public. It's not too late to vow to change the rules of the Senate to prevent the use of the filibuster to give every special interest veto power over every important piece of legislation. It's not too late to introduce legislation that's been on hold in both the House and Senate to guarantee fair elections, so that the voice of everyday Americans is heard over the voice of the special interests that finance political campaigns.

On every one of these issues, a strong populist message trounces anything the other side can say. But Democrats need to play offense. They need to take up-or-down votes on bill after bill, including those they expect the other side to block, knowing that every one of those votes has the leverage of a campaign ad behind it. They need to change the narrative from what sounds to the average American like a whiny and impotent one -- "the Republicans won't let us do it" -- to a narrative of strength in numbers shared with their constituents. And they need to make every election a choice between two well-articulated approaches to governance -- and to offer their articulation of both sides' positions and values.

That leads to a final point. What Democrats have needed to offer the American people is a clear narrative about what and who led our country to the mess in which we find ourselves today and a clear vision of what and who will lead us out. That narrative would have laid a roadmap for our elected officials and voters alike, rather than making each legislative issue a seemingly discrete turn onto a dirt road. That narrative might have included -- and should include today -- some key elements: that if the economy is tumbling, it's the role of leadership and government to stop the free-fall; that if Wall Street is gambling with our financial security, our homes, and our jobs, true leaders do not sit back helplessly and wax eloquent about the free market, they take away the dice; that if the private sector can't create jobs for people who want to work, then we'll put Americans back to work rebuilding our roads, bridges, and schools; that if Big Oil is preventing us from competing with China's wind and solar energy programs, then we'll eliminate the tax breaks that lead to dysfunctional investments in 19th century fuels and have a public-private partnership with companies that will create the clean, safe fuels of the 21st century and the millions of good American jobs that will follow.

That's what Democrats stand for. It's time they said it.

Drew Westen, Ph.D., is Professor of Psychology and Psychiatry at Emory University, founder of Westen Strategies, and author of The Political Brain: The Role of Emotion in Deciding the Fate of the Nation.