By Gary Berg-Cross
Saturday, Nov 3rd, from (2-4 p.m.) the MDC chapter of WASH will have a talk Margaret
Flowers & Kevin Zeese (co-directors of Its Our Economy) entitled: "Shifting
Economic and Political Power to the People. ” This will be at the Wheaton regional library 11701 Georgia Avenue Wheaton, MD 20902.
As attorney Kevin Zeese notes the Roman
philosopher/statesman Marcus Tullius Cicero defined “Freedom” as “participation
in power.” By that standard most of we Americans are not free since do not
participate in real power and decision making. Yes, we get to vote every now
and then, but this seems a distant form of influence now. Real power resides in organizations like the Bank
of America which has spent millions lobbying the US Congress to pass laws that
benefit then directly or indirectly by deregulating industry. One example cited is their spending millions to
oppose bills like the Credit Cardholders Bill of Rights & the Foreclosure Prevention Act, Helping Families
Save their Homes Act, Mortgage Reform and Anti-Predatory Lending Act, all of
which would have directly benefited consumers and hence the Public.
Self advancement and deregulation explains
in part why our system could not avoid a Bush-era economic/financial system
collapse in 2008. This followed the
longer, contextual 30 year decline of basically stagnant and minimized worker wages.
The result has been to produce a numbing, record household, personal and educational
debt.
An article on the Its Our Economy site
described the scene this way:
At the same time working Americans saw jobs
disappearing, hours reduced, salaries shrinking and more
under-employment. They also saw their retirement savings disappear, 5
million foreclosures, record bankruptcies, record poverty and shrinking housing
values. The cost of everything from health care, to food to energy kept
rising while incomes fell. And, the social safety net, limited as it was
compared to other developed countries, was shredded, a process continuing as
austerity budgets take hold across the United States.
Why doesn’t the economy work better for most
Americans?
One particular chicken and egg problem seems
to be the growing wealth gap caused in part by stagnant wages and debt. This inequality
creates an imbalance of actual intertwined economic & political power. Eggs
that hatch from such confluence craft economic and political policies that
seemed designed to extract wealth from the economy and direct it at a favored
few. The result is a form of structural poverty leading to struggle on many
fronts (education, health care, home ownership, saving etc.).
Margaret & Kevin will
describe a 20 point:“ strategy and tactics to shift economic power, and
thereby political power, to the people. “
As time permits they may cover parts of
their 20 point agenda to stabilizes the economy in the short term & turn
things around from misguided policy to a more sustainable democratic economy. The
outlined action evolved from a Prosperity Agenda (www.ProsperityAgenda.US)
written in 2009 to provide for a democratized economy that combines policies
that have proven to be effective along with innovative new solutions. Here
are highlights of the proposal.
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New, Efficient, Clean Energy Economy
1. The foundation for a new economy is a carbon-free/nuclear-free energy economy;
that distributes energy production down to individual homes and businesses and
uses energy efficiently.
2. The U.S. automobile industry, recovering
from near collapse, is caught in the web of long-term costs for its retired and
current employees, especially the uncontrollable cost of health care and
rapidly changing transit
needs. Further, the auto industry has to move toward the new green
economy, instead continuing to build SUV’s rather than hybrids and electric
cars.
3. Infrastructure
in the United States is literally falling apart and not keeping up with the
needs for a sustainable carbon-free/nuclear-free energy economy. Long term investment
is needed for new infrastructure.
4. The U.S. and world need to dramatically
reduce carbon emissions.
A critical step is to tax carbon emissions at the source as they enter the
economy, i.e. tax coal, oil and gas for their emissions
5. Develop local economies to reduce use of fossil fuel in
transport and allow local businesses and communities to flourish.
Creating Jobs, Providing Housing,
Health Care and Building Local Economies
6. Individuals as well as state and local governments
are in fragile financial positions and thus in need of an economic and social safety net.
7. Another tool for developing local
economies, particularly around housing
and land use. This is a nonprofit corporation which acquires
and manages land on behalf of the residents of a community.
8. To address housing we must stop the mortgage
crisis by requiring mortgage holders to reconfigure mortgages to allow
homeowners to stay in their homes and not lose them to foreclosure.
9. Face up to the health care crisis which is
approaching 20% of U.S. GDP. The United States has the most
cost-inefficient health care system in the world.
End the Wars and Reduce the Military
Budget
10. End the Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and
Libyan wars and reduce military
spending. The United States needs to end a foreign policy
based on empire and militarism
Re-making Finance, Shared Prosperity
11. Transform corporate welfare into taxpayer investment. Even before the
current bailout, the U.S. government provided hundreds of billions of dollars
annually to big business interests in loans, tax breaks, under-valued access to
federal lands and a host of other mechanisms.
12. Democratize access to financing by re-making the Federal
Reserve and re-forming the nation’s money system. The Federal Reserve’s Board
of Governors leadership is the exact opposite of democracy; it is control of
the money system by the wealthy few, plutocracy.
13. Democratize corporate power by
increasing shareholder rights,
expanding the rights of shareholders to choose directors of corporations and
submit resolutions to set the direction and priorities of the corporation they
invest in and of which they are part owners. End corporate personhood, so that
corporations do not have the rights of human beings.
Financing the Government: Taxes and
Deficits
14. Reconsider the tax structure to make it more
equitable.
15. Be mindful of the deficit and debt at all levels of
government but also recognize there times when government must spend to rebuild
the economy.
Workers Rights
16. Democratize the workplace by encouraging
employee-owned businesses
17. Reduce the work week with no reduction
in pay. Before the economic collapse, 7% of the U.S. GDP was based on consumer
buying. Since the early 1970s wages
have been flat in the U.S. and the consumer economy has continued because of
two-income families, increasing personal debt and cheap goods from
abroad. This is unsustainable
18. Establish a national guaranteed income for all
Americans based on the model proposed by Richard Nixon in 1969.
International Trade and Finance
19. End World Bank and IMF dominance (which
means ending U.S. and European dominance) of the world financial markets. These
entities need competition and regional banks in Latin America, Asia, Africa and
other regions should encouraged as should stabilization funds to assure
currency stabilization. These organizations need to be democratized, made
more transparent and include appropriate representation and decision-making by
developing nations.
20. Remake international trade from corporate trade to people’s
trade. The current rhetoric calls trade agreements “Free Trade” but in
reality they are trade agreements that favor corporations over the interests of
labor, the environment and consumers. Trade agreements need to be
redesigned so they serve the interests of people and the planet rather than the
interests of corporations.
Kevin Zeese, co-director of Its Our Economy, is an attorney
who has been a political activist since graduating from George Washington Law
School in 1980. He works on peace, economic justice, criminal law
reform and reviving American democracy.
Margaret Flowers, co-director of Its Our Economy, is a
Maryland pediatrician. After graduation from the University of Maryland School
of Medicine in 1990 and completion of pediatric residency at Johns Hopkins Hospital
in Baltimore, Flowers worked first as a hospitalist and then in private
practice. She left practice in 2007 to advocate full-time for a single payer
health care system at both the state and national levels.
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