Riane Eisler and Kimberly Otis: The debt, women and our future
What do women really want from our President? This is a question President Obama should be asking if he wants to keep his job for another term — which hinges on the women’s vote. His campaign emphasizes the appointments of very talented women: Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan to the Supreme Court, Elizabeth Warren to launch the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau; and other outstanding women to top Cabinet posts; such as Secretaries Hillary Clinton, Janet Napolitano, Kathleen Sebelius, and Hilda Solis.
But such accomplishments do not begin to go far enough. For one thing, by authorizing major cuts to traditionally women’s jobs in education, health care, and family planning, the President allowed an assault on women’s economic status and health-care access. Moreover, he allowed opponents to divert the conversation about economic recovery from the millions of unemployed and the massive increase in Americans in poverty to an obsessive focus on reducing the deficit through government program cuts. And because women comprise the vast majority of public-sector teachers, nurses, social workers, caregivers, and others being laid off, women are now bearing the brunt of job losses.
These shortsighted and cruel cuts are not only harming millions of people and their families; they will soon harm us all. With health, education, and poverty alleviation programs being scrapped, our nation is undermining the most important asset for our economic future: the “high-quality human capital” economists tell us is essential for success in our post-industrial knowledge/service economy. Yet instead of educating the public about this, the Administration has itself started to talk about job creation exclusively in the private sector – with no mention of the havoc being created by gutting employment in the public sector, or of its dire future consequences.
Instead, the Administration joined “the sky is falling” talk about the deficit, failing to point out that our federal debt (roughly equal to our annual GDP or about $14 trillion, a ratio of 1-to-1 according to the most alarmist calculations) is actually far lower than our debt to GDP ratio during World War II. It is also far lower than that of many other countries. Japan had a 2.25-to-1 debt to GDP even before the massive earthquake and tsunami disaster. Certainly we have to watch our national debt, especially because so much of it is owed to foreign nations. But it must not be used as the rationale for cutting essential services or for a wholesale firing of public employees, much less as an excuse for demonizing unions, without which we would not have had a middle class.
As television and radio host Larry King stated recently, “The average guy isn’t sitting today in a diner going ‘Oh, the deficit.’” Instead we’re supposed to genuflect to the “wisdom” of the old boys clubs on Wall Street and the Chamber of Commerce about the importance of addressing the deficit through spending cuts alone to jobs which provide needed human capital. Continued focus on cutting teachers, health care workers, and other traditionally female jobs will not address the stalling of the economy, but instead will mean a lot more pain and no gains for a lot more people both in the short and long term.
We’ve got to also debunk clichés about a typical American family sitting around the dinner table being better at understanding how to balance a budget than officials in Washington. In reality, most Americans’ mortgages average about $172,000 – more than four times the $40,000 average annual salary. College students also amass heavy debts with student loans, but few would encourage young people to forgo the enormous future value of a higher education. Moreover, businesses routinely take on substantial debt in order to invest in future research and development that produces a high return. As Sally Kohn reported in her USA Today op-ed, “IBM borrows twice as much money as it earns annually. Boeing borrows four times more than it earns. JP Morgan Chase… borrows 50 times more than it earns … If the U.S. were borrowing anywhere near as much as Chase bank, we’d have legitimate reason to worry. But in general, borrowing money is necessary to invest in the future — whether the future of a business or the future of a nation.”
With the recent announcement of an opening for a new Chair of the President’s Council on Economic Advisors, there is an opportunity for the Administration to re-direct the conversation to what has been ignored at our peril: the urgent need for investing in our nation’s human infrastructure. And choosing a woman who understands these vital matters could go a long way to applying the fundamentals of economics in a more balanced way. We need the voices of women to talk about what really counts: increasing the real wealth of our nation by investing in its human beings.
Riane Eisler is best-selling author of The Chalice and the Blade and most recently of The Real Wealth of Nations and founder of the Center for Partnership Studies (www.partnershipway.org). Kimberly Otis is a women’s rights advocate and Director of the Center’s Caring Economics Campaign.
David Cox: Quiet progress
Lately, the federal deficit has been decreasing its increasing.
With all the hype over burning Korans, building mosques, protesting Tea Partiers, not to mention the triumph of good over evil of the Redskins beating the Cowboys a week ago Sunday, you might have missed that point of some, if small, consolation.
So I’ll repeat: The monthly deficit is growing but at a slower rate. The Treasury Department reported a decrease in August of 12% with what it had been in August, 2009. July’s improvement was just over 8 percent, and in June the decrease was 27.3 percent from the year before. Individual and notably corporate income taxes are heartening. So while the deficit grows, at least it’s not growing at the rate it was.
There’s more news that might have gotten smothered.
Numbers of illegal immigrants in the United States decreased by a million or more by 2009, according to many reports, from 12 million to 11.1—and well below the 13 million that Congressman Goodlatte quoted on this page last week. In Virginia, the Washington Post reported, the numbers went down by 65,000 to 240,000 between 2008 and 2009.
After a terrible summer, the stock market has lately resumed its slow upward climb.
Many of those bailed-out companies have been repaying what the government provided, with interest. In retrospect, the move that started under President Bush was an investment that not only propped up (if not saved) the economy but also gave a good return to taxpayers. Turning a profit might not be the government’s job, but in this case, it sure beats the alternative.
Just before Labor Day, President Obama assembled leaders of the Middle East, notably of Israel and Palestine, for talks on bringing peace there. The talks were civil, productive, and may actually lead somewhere; and they have continued. This is huge, for reducing tensions and increasing stability would give less for radicals to protest and more for moderates to advance.
Let’s not forget that combat troops withdrew from Iraq (you probably heard that) and Iraq hasn’t yet collapsed. Though far from resolved, let’s recognize another step forward.
Many of the fears of a year or two ago have vanished. Remember how the new President was going to take away guns? Or that he would ban bullets, such that there was a run to stores to stockpile them? Didn’t happen.
Of course far too many Americans lack good jobs. Illegal immigrants number about a third more than a decade ago. Craziness still upsets relations between Israel and Palestine. War continues in Afghanistan. A monthly deficit adds to too-high levels. Our world is not nearly as perfect as we wish it were.
But the sky is not falling, either. Those who claim it is, notably for partisan gain, may be rushing around conveying their fears that they don’t look up to see if, just maybe, the sky is doing OK. Or maybe they don’t want to. Especially if they’ve based their lives or their political careers on breeding fear.
For all our troubles, the sky isn’t falling. The monthly deficit is. Those are both worth noting.
Column by David Cox. This column originally appeared in the Sept. 22 issue of The Rockbridge Weekly.
Vanke fights Capitol Hill convention
A question for Jeff Vanke. You’re an independent candidate for Congress. Let’s say you’re elected. Who do you caucus with?
The answer will surprise you.
“I wouldn’t caucus with either party. I would have a vote on the House floor,” said Vanke, a self-described “independent centrist” from Roanoke who is challenging Republican incumbent Bob Goodlatte for the Sixth Distict seat in the U.S. House of Representatives.
A third candidate in the race is Libertarian Stuart Bain. The Democratic Party is not fielding a candidate in the Sixth after Sam Rasoul ran head-to-head against Goodlatte in 2008 and received just 36 percent of the vote in the two-way contest.
Vanke’s move to say that he wouldn’t caucus with either party if elected is, by his own admission, “a unique situation.”
“But the party system isn’t in the Constitution,” Vanke said. “I’m sure an independent in Congress can work out a fair set of committee assignments appropriate for a freshman. They can’t run a duopoly to the point where somebody comes in and says, I don’t want to be in your clubs, they can just shut you out.”
Vanke has made fixing the federal budget the centerpiece of his campaign. Goodlatte, at first glance, would seem to have as a conservative Republican some political insulation on budget issues, but Vanke points out the congressman’s support for big-business and agribusiness subsidies and his votes for deficit budgets under President George W. Bush that added trillions of dollars to the national debt.
The disenchantment with Washington reflected in recent polling numbers from Public Policy Polling that have both parties facing voter-disapproval ratings approaching 60 percent is something that Vanke is hoping to be able to capitalize on in the 2010 election in the Sixth.
“The system is broken,” Vanke said. “What can we do about it? That’s what we’re trying to do with this movement. We understand that we’re in it for the long haul.”
Story by Chris Graham. Chris can be reached at freepress2@ntelos.net.
Vanke: ‘Both parties’ part of the problem in Washington
Story by Chris Graham
freepress2@ntelos.net
Republicans are talking tough on federal spending and the national debt right now, but where we they just a few years ago when they had control of Congress and the White House?
“Both parties, Republicans and Democrats, have left these issues unaddressed,” said Jeff Vanke, an independent on the ballot for Congress in the Sixth District who will challenge incumbent Republican Congressman Bob Goodlatte in November.
Vanke is making the budget and the national debt a central focus of his campaign. The 40-year-old former college professor proposes tying federal income taxes to the national debt to ensure that everyone, from the working class to the middle class to the wealthy, contibutes toward paying down our debt, within a simplified system stripped of or reducing many existing tax deductions.
“Not one single person in Congress will propose in specifics how to change the course we’re on, but I do,” said Vanke, noting that Goodlatte, who touts his conservative budgeting stands, is part of the problem as well, going along with budgets passed by Republican majorities in the House and Senate and signed into law by President George W. Bush in the 2001-2007 time frame when the GOP was talking the game of spending restraint but acting very much to the contrary of its public positions.
“He’s part of the big spending and deficit spending problem,” Vanke said. Continue reading “Vanke: ‘Both parties’ part of the problem in Washington” »
Susan Shaer: Inside the Pentagon’s Rockwell family holiday
Posted by afp on November 21, 2011 · Leave a Comment
During the holidays I feel especially thankful and proud to live in a country where few have to walk miles to get water, or pray for a midwife to come deliver a live baby. I am thankful for those things we too often forget – police and firefighters who protect us, with no graft “tipping” charge.
We are so fortunate. Some say we are the richest country in the world and in the history of the planet. On the other hand, the occupy movement is drawing attention to the growing divide between rich and poor, and I despair that “he who dies with the most toys wins” will replace any other high-value legacy. Lawmakers are now struggling to find ways achieve deficit reduction – leaving many of us wondering what will remain after Congress has picked the budget bird?
All of this economic insecurity is making many of us feel downright pinched and miserly. In listening to the latest GOP presidential debates, it’s clear that in this fiscal environment, candidates are ready to pull back from foreign assistance, cut back on programs that enhance civil society, and even cut into the basic social safety net by waging epic battles over programs like Social Security and Medicare. At the same time, there is fearful resistance, both on the campaign trail and in Washington, to cutting back on Pentagon spending. This sort of ungracious Scrooge-like behavior might be a natural response in our current fiscal climate, but it is ineffective and unsustainable. In the longer term, this approach will make us less secure.
When it comes to foreign humanitarian assistance, we should think about the strategic benefit that comes from being known as the country delivering vaccines, developing opportunities for girls to go to school, providing communities access to clean water. At this point, the U.S. budget allocates less than 1 percent of its federal spending to poverty-focused assistance for other countries. Even cutting this aid completely, as some have suggested, will have hardly an iota of effect on deficit savings — though it would have an effect on our U.S. reputation and the good will of other countries – not to mention, lives.
We also need to cut back on excessive Pentagon spending and focus on strengthening our own economy. It’s really simple arithmetic. Well over half of the spending that Congress annually appropriates goes to the Pentagon. We cannot get sufficient deficit reduction by merely cutting the arts, National Public radio and foreign aid – it’s just not a big enough portion of our spending. Dismantling Social Security, Medicare and other programs that sustain the American way of life so that we remain armed to the hilt in the name of defending that American way of life is what my Mom called “bass akwards.”
There are places to cut in the Pentagon’s budget that will help us create a sustainable national defense in the 21st century. One example is our Cold War-size nuclear arsenal. There are other examples of wasteful contracting and procurement practices that military experts and even Republican candidates for president say need to be scrutinized.
As we careen into the end-of-the-year round of holidays, we in the United States should recognize our abundance. We are so blessed. We should take opportunities to look after each other and to look outside ourselves. Let us wish for others what we have for ourselves, and in that spirit build a more secure nation and world.
Susan Shaer is executive director of Women’s Action for New Directions.
Filed under Blogs · Tagged with budget deficit, budget priorities, defense spending, Economy, pentagon