Anti-tax pols should look to the Greeks

Any U.S. Republican or Democrat who believes we can cut the deficit and balance the budget without a tax increase should listen closely to Greek protesters who ask "Why me?" when their government insists on austerity measures.

The Greek poor have a good argument if they haven't benefited from the huge debt their society built up before going bust over the last decade.

On the other hand, the hypocrisy of anti-tax politicians in Washington resounds all the louder because they ignored and allowed the speculative practices of Wall Street bankers and traders who got America into the mess we all find ourselves in today.

President Barack Obama took to the White House press-conference podium yesterday to scold Congress when he said, "These are bills that Congress ran up. ... Now they are saying, 'Maybe we don't have to pay.'"

Instead, the congressmen and women who oppose raising taxes -- mostly Republicans but including some Democrats -- want to cut government spending to the bone, which means they want the burden of curing the deficit placed squarely on the backs of the middle class and the poor.

Not only did the poor draw no benefit at all from the wealth generated on Wall Street before 2008, but companies all across America whittled away at the middle class by eliminating jobs; cutting salaries; pushing people into part-time, no-benefits positions; increasing health-insurance co-pays and deductibles; and forcing employees out of defined-benefit pensions into 401ks where their retirements were put at risk by the same Wall Street traders who caused the 2008 crash.

But the "cut-spending-only-crowd" has yet another motive. Opposing increased revenues for government today essentially means the rich will escape paying the government back for Bush tax cuts that made them even more wealthy over the past 10 years. Anti-tax pols have but one constituency it seems: the people who fund their re-election campaigns year after year.

Because George W. Bush promoted a lack of dissent as the only true expression of patriotism in America while all that was happening, neither the poor nor the dwindling middle class took to the streets to protest their lot.

But the Greek rock-throwers offer a glimpse of what could happen in America as more of the poor get poorer; more of what's left of the middle class gets pushed into poverty; and the rich inexorably keep getting richer, as seems the goal of the current Republican majority in the House.

Revolutions get started in the back streets of any nation; and the middle class in the U.S. elected Obama to change things for the better, not worse. If anti-tax Republicans and Democrats believe the population of their country will remain somnolent forever they should look to Greece and the Arab Spring, then remember the anti-Vietnam-war demonstrations of the 1960s.

The people here are not afraid to peacefully stand up against their government. They just have to be pushed hard enough.

Stop the pain at 8.5 percent unemployed

I read in the news today that charitable giving was down nationwide by 11 percent in 2009 compared with 2008, and that the lingering end of the Great Recession might have had something to do with the decline.

The recession officially ended during the early part of last year, and yet most news stories that mentioned it also point out a stubbornly high, 9.5 percent national unemployment rate and anecdotal evidence from most everyone that they don't feel like they've recovered from the economic shock of the past three years.

Maybe we should redefine a recession, which currently is described by sustained negative economic growth over a period of time. Any sustained positive growth, no matter how small, officially ends the recession.

Maybe we should automatically consider the United States in recession as long as the national unemployment rate is at or above 8.5 percent. That way public pressure could be maintained on both business and government leaders to create jobs that increase consumer spending.

Consumer spending has been regarded as the only true savior of American workers and owners during all of the recessions and near recessions during my life.

When consumers spend their money, workers and owners, managers and employees, even government officials prosper. Fewer children remain in poverty. Fewer food stamps are distributed to feed the hungry.

Some might say 8.5 percent is a bit high. But during my lifetime, full-employment for the nation was once described at a 5 percent unemployment rate, until, during boom years and after welfare mothers were forced to go to work, even lower unemployment rates were accomplished in many states of the union.

Lots of people are working and tons of money is being made when the national unemployment rate dips below 5 percent. But real pain starts to be felt among middle- and lower-income people at around a 6 percent rate.

Yet pain has never been a signal to the rich in this country that middle- and lower-income people deserve some economic relief. When someone else is feeling economic pain, our American-Calvinistic work ethic kicks in, and we blame joblessness on a lack of character among the poor and uneducated.

So 8.5 percent, though high, seems an appropriate level to consider the workforce automatically worthy of a little bit of aid from the nation's pool of wealth.

It doesn't seem unreasonable at that point to increase taxes on the top 1 percent of earners in the country, as well as on those who earn money purely from their invested assets. We could hold those taxes in place at least until enough jobs are created to allow the middle class and working-class poor to regain the economic footing necessary to boost consumer spending again.

Middle-class spending will, as usual, give the economic engine of the country enough momentum to warrant pulling back again on any extraordinanry taxing of the rich.

That's a 63-three-year-old non-economist's perspective of the world on this Monday morning.

Let me know what you think.

Self-interest, a Republican earmark

Dick Wadhams, Colorado's cutthroat Republican chairman, says Tom Tancredo's third-party bid for governor is based in his own self-interest.

So what's new about that?

All Republican Party politics in Colorado is driven by the self-interests of its rich, establishmentarian membership. Conservative or not, Republicans in the state consistently argue for the least amount of government in order to preserve their privileged existence. Most of Colorado's executive business community also subscribes to that party line.

Check out the rising percentage of poor children in Colorado: 15 percent of all children in Colorado lived in poverty in 2008 compared with 10 percent in 2000. In 2008, they numbered about 179, 000 kids, said Lisa Piscopo of the Colorado Children's Campaign.

Guess who was in power for most of that time: a Republican governor who did nothing for Colorado's poor through 2006, and diminishing Republican majorities in the legislature, although a quartet of Democratic millionaires started to chip away at that power base late in 2004.

Limited government, which Republicans in Colorado hold up as one of their highest values, naturally limits the ability of the state to care for its poorest citizens, and naturally leads to lower and lower taxes that eventually starve the government of any sustenance at all.

That's the philosophy Republican Party leaders are trying to take to Colorado voters in November, and only the financially struggling Republican middle class are politically blind enough not to see that's what their party stands for.

Tancredo's run for governor will not only split the Republican vote in Colorado, it will cut down statewide voter turnout. Self-interested people don't go to the polls when they know there will be no victor to throw them their rightful share of the spoils.