A Tea Party of the Left: PROPOSED: A UNION OF PROGRESS FOR LABOR, OR, “Don’t Piss on Me and Tell Me it’s Just Raining”.

A TEA PARTY OF THE LEFT AND THE CONSCIENCE OF A CONSERVATIVE

Recently, a group of dedicated Progressive activists and myself formed a group (the New Georgia Progressives or NGP)  dedicated to the idea that the center-left has lost it’s moral compass over the past 30 years when it comes to Economic issues.   So if you don’t buy that premise, don’t worry about reading the rest.  If you think the Democratic party is almost totally out of power through no fault of it’s own, then by all means, stop reading, because this is addressed to those who think it needs some work.

This group (the  NGP)was founded to be a tea party of the left.  One thing that has defined the conservative movement in general, and the tea party in particular, is an insistence on consistency of message and values. For the past 50 years, since the Goldwater campaign established the “conservative bible” , the Conscience of a Conservative, the Conservative movement has been establishing it’s bedrock commandments:  “progressive” (equal), education is bad ;  environmental regulation, and indeed, all regulation is counter-to-good business practice.  .    Indeed, this philosophy has tried to reduce the only value of government to regulating “order” and protection from foreign enemies.   It is the essence of what is thought of as libertarian, or neoliberal economic thought.  To paraphrase Conservative disciple Grover Norquist:  the role of government should be so small we can drown it in a bathtub.

THE FAIRNESS OF A PROGRESSIVE INCOME TAX VS. REGRESSIVE TAXATION

In a time when Democrats like Jon Ossoff  renege on what has long been a fundamental premise of Progressivism, going back to Teddy Roosevelt’s “Fair Deal”, it bears a re-examination of the values behind Progressive, or graduated, or sliding-scale taxes.  Progressives espouse the model of “Noblesse Oblige”, that is, to whom much is given much is expected.  That understanding underlies a progressive income tax, which is a “real fair tax”, as opposed to the fake shell-game of a flat tax.  A progressive income tax is redistributive, but even at it’s greatest extent, in the 1950s, on the top brackets, Mr. Moneybags still had plenty of dough.   Progressive taxes don’t eliminate inequality, but they sure do help the Labor class, that is the Poor and the Middle class.

The adherents of this so-called economic conservatism (better described as neoliberal or laissez-faire economics) HATES the Progressive income tax, or any kind of progressive taxes that aren’t user-fees (the most regressive kind).  Somehow the GOP (and by default, some Democrats) embrace the idea that a graduated tax is “unfair. 

HOW A FLAT TAX SYSTEM FAVORS THE WEALTHY AND UNDERMINES LABOR

That’s right, instead of appealing to the idea of fair play in our society, like Teddy Roosevelt’s “Fair Deal,” the neoliberals would have it that our revenue system must skew to favor the rich, because that’s exactly what a flat tax does, and that’s what happens when Progressives don’t stand up for the value of economic fairness.  By cutting tax rates across the board, the wealthy receive far greater "handouts" than were ever imagined in terms of food stamps.   Allowing massive borrowing to continue while cutting public funding to schools , transportation, and hospitals has meant massive give-aways to the super rich while Labor is stuck with inflation and reduced availiblity of services.

Before our very eyes the “Conscience of a Conservative” has been laying waste to Public Institutions since the 1980s, sometimes with the complicity of the Democratic Party.  

THE DESTRUCTION OF THE PUBLIC TRUST

The Neoliberal ideal of destroying state regulatory institutions is all but gutting the EPA.  Republicans and Democrats alike have allowed K street and ALEC to all but dictate the terms of the people’s business and legislation in the Congress and State Houses throughout the land.   Legislators have given irresponsible and massive handouts to the rich.  These  japes have gone on and on and on and somehow we are to believe that it is perfectly fine if Democratic party politicians just “go with the flow” on this so they can get elected.  This is the “genius” behind the “winning” strategy of the establishment of the Democratic party since the “New Democrats”  took over in the 1990s.

THE LEGISLATIVE "WHIP" AND THE CLUB FOR GROWTH

The conservative movement has used the parliamentary notion of a “whip” to enforce the hard line of their unfair tax system.   A whip (a term with it’s origins in British hunting) is a means of enforcing party unity in order to keep party discipline.   There are 3 levels of “whipping” in the British parliament:   a one line whip (underlined in written instructions) one time, is advisement, and isn’t always binding.  The most stern form of this measure is a 3-line whip (underlined 3 times), a breach of which can cause a lot of trouble, possibly even expulsion from the party.

The conservatives have long been moving towards a 3 line whip on a fundamental premise of their Conservative “bible” that is , the progressive income tax.   Since 1999, the Club for Growth has held a 3 line whip on conservatives by forcing all GOP candidates to take their hard-line pledge, which is essentially that they agree to never raise income tax, and that generally they avoid all new taxes (except the ones that hurt Labor the most).  These kind of whips on the right have been a big part of what has moved the whole political spectrum to the right over the past 30 years.  

DEMOCRATIC DECAY AND TIME FOR A PROGRESSIVE LINE IN THE SAND

I contend that it is time for the left to approach this issue by fighting fire with fire.  We must insist that those who claim to be progressives hold the line on the progressive income tax and push the needle back to the left, towards the center.

Recently, Jon Ossoff revealed the decay on economic progress in the Democratic party, when on the June 8 debate with Karen Handel, he pledged that he would not be willing to raise income taxes on even the top bracket of income earners.  When asked, he said, “no” he would not raise income taxes.

This is very problematic, because while having an overly strict “3 line whip” on this issue could be impractical, should we be so permissive on the left that we count it credible that one would be considered “progressive” without expecting the wealthiest in our society to pay their proper share of the tax burden?

If anyone needs reminding, the wealthiest have been robbing the public till for years by having their taxes cut by leaps and bounds since the Reagan era.   On the state level, property taxes have soared creating huge burdens for the middle class and small group of poor people that happen to own their own homes.  The result has been people losing their houses, or drastic cuts in taxes that have disproportionately benefitted the well to do, hand in fist with massive cuts in State and local level government services, including police, fire departments, public health , and education.  Karen Handel is a great example of someone who took part in this, and Jon Ossoff was right to call her out on it.

But here is the problem of letting  the Jon Ossoffs of the world off the hook for being unwilling to address the lack of revenue support from those who can afford to pay it.

There are two ways to maintain budgets without additional revenue:  borrow money or cut services.

The problem of borrowing money is again, this is an action that disproportionately affects the poor.   A byproduct of governmental borrowing of money is inflation.  Furthermore, it is very hard to call for increased government intervention without additional funds.   The result, the government does not make progress on behalf of the public square.  We have seen the results of this regression (progress in reverse) over the past 30 years:  Labor (the poor and middle class) can’t afford to pay for college.   The loss of real income over the past 30 years continues to grow.  

THE DEMOCRATIC '3RD WAY" ESTABLISHMENT AND THEIR LOSING GAME OF "TRIANGULATION"

Meanwhile, centrists have driven party political strategy into the ground over the past 30 years, with a zig-zag tactics Bill Clinton’s Karl Rove -Dick Morris (notably a conservative) coined  as “triangulation.”   I think this strategy works more like a double-agent trojan horse on the left.  The way a zig-zag tactic works is the candidate avoids revealing their true “progressive” bona fides until just the right time after they’ve been elected, when, supposedly, they will jump out of the conservative mode and reveal their true progressive identity.   Those on the left of the party are sold on the idea of a “unity” strategy, where “winning comes first,” the only way “anything can get done”.  In other words, progressive economic ideas, like making the rich pay for needed tax increases to balance the budget, are to be sacrificed in order to get elected.  Supposedly, later, it will all get worked out in some kind of unspecified way.

In fact, what happens is just as likely this:  a candidate like Ossoff or Cory Booker is elected under the false notion that they will be progressive on economic  issues once the dust settles.  In  fact, if they are worth their salt, they will stick to their guns an d vote neoliberal positions that favor corporations and the wealthy over the poor and middle class, like Booker’s  voting against allowing free trade with Canadian Pharma; or Obama’s failure to prosecute the Big Banks or push for tougher regulations, or allowing the likes of Monsanto lawyer Michael Taylor in the FDA, etc.  The Trojan Horse often operates in a regressive manner that skews towards the powerful and wealthy.

The underlying belief behind the zig-zag triangulation of “3^rd way” liberal politics (neoliberal economics combined with liberal social values) is the following:   the American people, outside of a few left wing bastions like San Francisco, New York, and Vermont, don’t support the classic Democratic Socialist ideas (e.g.  TR’s Progressive Reforms and the New Deal) which underpinned the historic gains for US Laborers and led to the greatest gains in standards of living such as the Interstate Highways, the EPA, inexpensive college and trade schools; and Union shops. 

The champions of triangulation, the establishment or center of the party, believes that these ideas threaten the ability of the party to win elections.  Meanwhile, they ignore the fact that triangulation has been the de facto governing strategy of the Democratic party since the Clintons took over Democratic politics in the 1990s, after the dismal failures of McGovern, Carter, Dukkakis, and Mondale. 

Rather than reformulating a clear and concise new ideology, the “New Democrats” or “3^rd Way” Clintons (and their allies and defenders) on the one hand espoused and promoted legislation to shrink the size of Government (the era of Big Government is over) distancing themselves from state intervention and aligning themselves with the conservative idea that when it comes to economics, the government didn’t have much of a role to play.  

But where were the economic gains for the middle class and the poor that were supposed to issue from from "the era of big government is over"?

They faded in the de-regulation schemes of the Clintons and Bushes, whose deregulation of the banks and the housing sector under the guidance of Alan Greenspan led directly to the destruction of trillions of dollars in middle class wealth.   This was on top of massive handouts to the upper class from the Reagan era to the present day, while Obama allowed the pillaging of Social Security by agreeing to reduction in COLA adjustments for Social Security. 

The dishonest tactic of “triangulation” encourages the scourge of darkness that continues to shroud the Congress so that the well to do and the Corporations who fund candidates of both parties can carry out unbenknownst to Democratic voters and Republican voters alike.

Today, we propose a new way.

THE PENDULUM SWINGING LEFTWARD:KANSAS AND THE UK

Meanwhile, while conservative and centrist democrats continue to insist that Democrats must be willing to hide their true beliefs, or simply abandon progressive economic ideas like making the rich pay back what they took since Reaganomics, the Republican moderates are beginning to form and break away from the 3 line whip on the right wing.

In Kansas, the state legislature defied the pledge for the club for growth, and voted to increase taxes in order to have a balance budget.

A similar break also just happened in the UK, where the message of austerity has reached a breaking point allowing for huge gains for a Labor party which has moved to the left after losses of the “3^rd Way” Labor leader Brown in 2010.  Now it is the conservatives who have gone so far they have undermined their support from the middle, and the message of moving back to the left (in order to reach the center) is paramount and timely.

A UNION OF PROGRESS FOR LABOR; THE PLEDGE FOR TAX FAIRNESS

The time has come to create a pledge that secures an economic anchor for the Democratic party and for the left, generally, based on economic fairness.   While the right wing is crumbling over the impracticality of their political pledge of never raising taxes, I here propose a more efficacious pledge for Economic Progress. 

The pledge is simply this:  that candidates pledge they would not rule out raising taxes on the most well to do in our society (including treating Capital Gains as normal income).   This allows the candidates to avoid pledging that they will definitely raise said taxes, but rather that it is a consideration that can’t be excluded from the dialog.  This is part of a proposed Union of Progress for Labor, with Labor meaning the working class:  the poor, the middle class, the workers of our society.  

WEAK KNEED CANDIDATES BEWARE!  OR:  IF YOU DON'T STAND FOR SOMETHING YOU'LL FALL FOR ANYTHING.

If candidates can’t take this simple pledge for economic fairness , they can’t be counted on as progressives, but are just as likely to vote as regressives when push comes to shove.  And the long arm of the money behind K-street and ALEC does a lot of heavy shoving!   

It may sound harsh, but we must (figuratively)  tar and feather them so they know that we stand on behalf of the common people.  We can't any more allow those who favor their careers over the well being of the common people.  We must Unite and Stand firm, or Die! 

They have a saying in the Tea Party, echoing the American Revolution, “Don’t Tread On Me."   

 We on the left keep being pissed on by our own and, they say “it’s raining.”  Well I have a new saying by those that would destroy, or through passive means allow the destruction of  the great wealth of Public institutions which have made this country great:  Public Education, Public Parks, Public Rail, Public Investment in Technology, and yes, a Fair, Progressive Income Tax:  “Don’t Piss On Me and Tell Me it’s Raining.”  

We Progressives must Unite Or see Progressivism die, we must be the third rail that shocks the hell out of those candidates that doubt our commitment.    Rather than being afraid of offending those who are committed to the destruction of our great advances, the politicians should be at least a little bit afraid that they will be rejected by the defenders of the faith of what Lincoln called this “People’s Union.”