Tina Dupuy

Americans used to buy savings bonds to support the war effort. These were securities liquidated after the war was over which ideally would spur an economic boom. During World War II, Defense Bonds, War Bonds and what was called Series E Savings Bonds offset the massive costs. The gush of liquidity after that war created the middle-class, the suburbs and the Baby Boomers.

Buying war bonds has been a tradition in the United States since before we were the United States. That’s how the Revolutionary War was funded. That’s how we raised money to “wage” war. We taxed, rationed and pitched in. It was part of patriotism.

The Iraq War? Afghanistan? Now, Libya? How are we paying for it? With the deficit.

During Bush’s “bullhorn moment” after the towers fell on 9/11 – when stunned Americans desperately needed their Commander to tell them what they could do for their country – he told them to go shopping. Americans put something shiny on their personal credit cards, and Bush put a couple of wars on our collective one.

Now “deficit” is the GOP’s doomsday buzzword. Veep Dick Cheney famously told the Treasury “deficits don’t matter.” Of course, that was while they occupied the White House.

But now deficits will destroy the country! Ed Gillespie, Counselor to the President during the Bush Administration, said Obama, the nation’s multi-tasker-in-chief has “deficit attention disorder.” They pretend the GOP never voted to compound the deficit by okaying unpaid-for tax cuts, spending increases and corporate welfare during the blank check days of the Bush Administration. But now everything distasteful is pinned to Obama – the Republicans will tell you they’re the only ones serious on this deficit issue…and by the way – it will kill us all!
Last week every House Republican (except Ron Paul and three in purple districts) voted to privatize Medicare, cut taxes further on the rich and hope this will magically reduce the deficit. Even though the Congressional Budget Office reported it wouldn’t.

“Fiscally responsible” has become code for “tax cuts for the wealthy.”  “Adult conversation” means “poor people pay up.” Throw in a misplaced “socialism” or two, pretend the corporate-funded Tea Party speaks for the majority of Americans, and you’ve been chewing the fat with the current GOP.

So all that trying to scare old people during the health care debate about rationed care and death panels? Guess what? The Republicans in the House just voted FOR that. It’s an interesting tactic to vilify your opponent for what you later gleefully vote for when your party suggests it. Like when Bush called Al Gore a “big-spending, big-government candidate” – right before Bush nearly doubled the national debt from $6.1 trillion to $10.4 when he was in office.

Here’s where the fight comes in: The Republicans have decided that unlike their demigod Ronald Reagan – they will never ever raise taxes for any reason – ever. Speaker Boehner called it a “non-starter.” They not only want to renew the Bush Tax Cuts (which even Alan Greenspan says should expire), they want to give the top 2% an added tax cut. “We don’t have a revenue problem, we have a spending problem.” No. Actually we have both.

Republicans claim to be the arbiters of fiscal discipline, but their record says otherwise. The Ryan Plan, which passed the House, was like a cat burglar writing the charter for the neighborhood watch.

“We’ve never had a war with no tax to support it, including the Revolution,” said former GOP senator Alan Simpson, co-chair of Obama’s National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform, to a Denver audience over the weekend. He continued, “People are told in Congress if they raise taxes by a nickel, they’ll be strung up by their heels in the town square.”

It’s not a novel idea. It’s not a new idea. And if you’re into Originalism it’s an idea the Founding Fathers created: Tax for wars. Tax for them or issue savings bonds. But pay for wars. But pay for them another way than a deficit. Put the trillions we dole out to stay in foreign countries at the center of American public debate.

It’ll bring into focus the literal battle cry uttered repeatedly by troops in Baghdad: “We’re at war; America is at the mall.”

We must love boisterous blowhards. As Americans, we are fixated on people who make loud, definitive declarations so we can stand behind them waving our oversized number-one foam-fingers chanting: “Go team! Win!” If you take away all the nebbishy number-crunching and bureaucracy – which is most of government – politics is all posturing and platitude landing.

There’s an entire industry (cable “news”) solely devoted to bold assertions as entertainment. This means we’re subjected to a colossal amount of failed predictions and prognostications. Yes, if both sides say they’re absolutely correct – at least one has to be wrong.

But as Americans we like the courage it takes to stand up and be inaccurate. We hate handwringing and pandering – it’s just not fun to watch. We still like that swagger of a sure-of-himself cowboy. We love to love them, and we love to hate them – which is why Republicans tout Congressman Paul Ryan’s budget plan as “brave” despite being unable to bring themselves to call it “pragmatic.”

Ryan, widely admitted Ayn Rand fanboy who seems unaware that she wrote libertarian-fantasy fiction while collecting social security and Medicare, is the new GOP “it” guy. After the State of the Union, Ryan gave the rebuttal (dubbed a Debbie Downer), and his name is what the GOP wants you to think of since they’ve been re-branded as the fiscally fretful Tea Party.

And, in homage to Republican titles meaning the opposite of what they’ll actually do (e.g., The Clean Skies Act), Ryan’s plan is titled, “The Path to Prosperity.”

In early April, Ryan wrote in a Wall Street Journal op-ed: “A study just released by the Heritage Center for Data Analysis projects that The Path to Prosperity will help create nearly one million new private-sector jobs next year, bring the unemployment rate down to 4% by 2015, and result in 2.5 million additional private-sector jobs in the last year of the decade. It spurs economic growth, with $1.5 trillion in additional real GDP over the decade. According to Heritage’s analysis, it would result in $1.1 trillion in higher wages and an average of $1,000 in additional family income each year.”

Ooh, a study! How authoritative! The Heritage Foundation also loved the Bush Tax Cuts. LOVED them. In April 2001, they released a study stating: “The Heritage Foundation Center for Data Analysis (CDA) conducted a dynamic simulation of the proposals in the President’s tax relief plan. The final results show that the Bush plan would significantly increase economic growth and family income while substantially reducing federal debt.”

The federal debt grew nearly $5 trillion under the Bush Administration.

And increased economic growth? New York Times’ economic journalist David Leonhardt wrote of the Bush Years, “In the four decades that the Census Bureau has been tracking household income, there has never before been a full decade in which median income failed to rise.”

In the 14-page 2001 report complete with color graphs and footnotes, Heritage Foundation authors D. Wilson and William Beach decided the Bush Tax Cuts would:

1) Effectively pay off the federal debt;

2) Reduce the federal surplus by $1.4 trillion;

3) Substantially increase family income;

4) Save the entire Social Security surplus and increase personal savings;

5) Create more job opportunities.

They continued, “As Chart 1 shows, over 1.6 million more Americans would be working at the end of FY 2011…”

You don’t need to be an economist or have ever uttered the phrase “think tank” to know each point, to put it gently, did not come to fruition.

To their credit the Heritage Foundation still has the report on their website, which is what I call actually “brave.” Especially since their “analysis” was erroneous – completely and unequivocally wrong. The limp excuse that the Heritage Foundation couldn’t have accounted for 9/11 still doesn’t explain why they continue touting the same failed policies over and over again. This time – Ryan’s. Trickle-down, supply-side, make-the-rich-richer policies have not done what they were supposed to do. In fact and in “reality,” they’ve done just the opposite.

How will this time be different? It won’t.

But being louder and doubling down can effectively obscure the track record.

And has.

Republicans will tell you they’re the sole Constitutional purists in the country; they worship the document more/better than you do. But imagine if the First Amendment had to be voted on today. It would need two-thirds majority in both Houses just to be proposed.

Consider it: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

First, it’s way too progressive for today’s rabid rightwing. And if the Republicans saw this Amendment as a win for Obama – it would have to be stopped by any means necessary.

All the President would have to do is say he thinks it’s important for Americans to have freedom of speech, religion, the press and assembly.

Then the Tea nee Republican Party would call them “Obama Freedoms.”

Right-wing blogs next would tap, “What do Hitler, Machiavelli, Darwin, Che Guevara and the New Black Panther Party all have in common? They all love Obama Freedoms.”

“Obama Freedoms will indoctrinate our children to be secular Islamists who want taxpayers to pay for gay marriage abortions at Ground Zero,” Newt Gingrich would say in some Vaseline-lensed ominous music-packed video he’d hawk on his website.

Lawmakers would rush the House floor to accuse freedom of speech as being “bad for business.” Others would call it “disruptive.” Speaker John Boehner, calling himself an originalist, would decry (get it?) any changes whatsoever to the Constitution. “Hell no, you can’t!”

AM talk radio would chime in: “Obama Freedoms will even apply to people here illegally! Drug dealers will be able to protest in your front yard! We’re a nation of laws, not Obama Freedoms!”

Others would use it as an opportunity to rail against the press. Media critic Sarah Palin would take to her Twitter account, “LSMwnt 2Bfree noh8ve Obma& wrk,cost jobs. Hurt 4US kllrep$. SeeFB post.” Inadvertently proving themselves, in fact, lame — an entire 24-hour news cycle would be devoted to deciphering her tweet. Then the self-proclaimed modern-day Shakespeare would make up a word just for the occasion: virrification. It’s a cross of verification and vilify and maybe viral, but no one would know for sure. It would just seem to fit perfectly for the issue, and then it would be overused until it lost all irony.

UrbanDictionary.com would offer to use the new word in a sentence: To kill the bill, use virrification (see: refudiate and squirmish).

Lopsided meaningless polls will be taken: “Do you think people who just so happen to call themselves journalists should be free to do so?” The results will be split. People will comment, “I don’t know how comfortable I am with people being able to say ANYTHING they want. We’re in three wars!” And, “Free speech will shove pornography down our throats!”

Commercials would be launched, and the amendment would be called a “government take over of religion” by Koch-brother-funded shadow groups. Average-looking character actors would be hired to say how scared they are of Muslims stoning their children in schools.

“You know what Obama Freedoms will do to this country?! Criminalize bacon! What could stop them?”

Fox and Friends would snicker that being able to assemble peacefully should be called “The Gridlock Amendment.” They’d point out if it gets passed, it would cause traffic and clog America’s thoroughfares. Traffic costs jobs and money! It will ruin this country! “People should be working, but instead the government wants to force us to be on the streets with picket signs.”

Democratic lawmakers, trying to sound reasonable instead of merely capitulatory, would say there’s too much in the bill – that these controversial freedoms need to be in separate bills so they can be debated individually. “It’s just not realistic to put all these – what the rightwing are calling ‘Obama Freedoms’ – what I’m calling basic rights – in one Amendment to the Constitution. I’m proposing a series of Amendments which can be voted on individually – that way we can have an opportunity to debate each one.”

The First Amendment – arguably the foundation of our democracy – if brought up today would die in committee.

Yes, our time is just that stupid.

The ravages of the economic downturn have left a series of empty storefronts in my neighborhood. They exist as specters of a former up-and-coming enclave of local businesses. Now they’re home to hurried graffiti, the occasional panhandler and once a year to tax accountants. Yes, the hallows of what used to be a local retail gems are now spots for seasonal businesses to sort out how much you’re paying the government for, as Oliver Wendell Holmes put it, “civilization.”

Which pretty much sums up Tax Day 2011. The middle class and small businesses have been wrecked by “too big to fail” Goliaths who engaged in ethically reprehensible – yet shockingly legal practices. And now regardless of how our government failed to guard against an economic catastrophe, we still have to pay our share of taxes to that same government.

So we all have to “tighten our belts” now, right? All of us? In this together? To get through this tough economic climate…together?

Well, apparently, “too big to fail” also means too big to pay federal taxes.

Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) released his list of the top 10 worst corporate tax avoiders. A post on his website notes, “Exxon Mobil made $19 billion in profits in 2009.  Exxon not only paid no federal income taxes, it actually received a $156 million rebate from the IRS, according to its SEC filings.” It continues, “Over the past five years, while General Electric made $26 billion in profits in the United States, it received a $4.1 billion refund from the IRS…Bank of America received a $1.9 billion tax refund from the IRS last year, although it made $4.4 billion in profits and received a bailout from the Federal Reserve and the Treasury Department of nearly $1 trillion.”

There are other names on Senator Sanders’ list: Chevron, Boeing, Valero Energy, Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, ConocoPhillips and Carnival Cruise Lines.

Yes giant corporations – making giant profits – and keeping it all by engaging their cost-effective cavalry of accountants. In some cases actually getting paid by the treasury.

A Government Accountability Office report in 2008 found that nearly two-thirds of US companies pay no income tax. So when teachers, firefighters and policemen are being fed a line about “shared sacrifice,” it really means “shared sacrifice” among other teachers, firefighters and policemen.

Those on Sanders’ list of corporate tax cheats, Bank of America seems to be in the crosshairs of a few of organizations. And rightly so, Bank of America paid no federal income tax in 2009. None. And yes, it was a bailout recipient during the final days of the Bush Administration. Some 115 foreign tax-haven subsidiaries enabled the Bank of America – to not pay federal taxes to its namesake – America. So it’s fitting that the Move Your Money project mentions them specifically. Wikileaks is also releasing damaging documents about the banking behemoth.

And US Uncut, which describes itself as “a grassroots movement taking direct action against corporate tax cheats and unnecessary and unfair public service cuts across the U.S. Washington’s proposed budget,” calls Bank of America their primary target.

US Uncut accepts no donations whatsoever and held demonstrations over the weekend. The rallies successfully shut down BofA branches in DC and San Francisco for the day.

So far the idea of corporations actually paying their taxes has garnered a wide spectrum of support. Last week, Bill O’Reilly and guest Lou Dobbs got miffed at General Electric not paying any federal taxes. It’s mainly because O’Reilly could somehow blame it squarely (and unfairly) on Obama even though it’s been going on since the current President was a state senator. On his Fox News Channel show, O’Reilly said, “I want GE to pay their fair share like the rest of us.”

And the leftwing – most notably The Nation magazine among others – has been covering US Uncut’s actions with interest.

Wait – Bill O’Reilly and The Nation actually agree on something?!

Carl Gibson spokesperson for US Uncut explains the support: “This message is magnetic – if you make money here – you should pay taxes here.”

Here. Here.

This week, AT&T announced its plans to buy their competitor T-Mobile. Now it’s up to regulators to approve the merger.

Politicians pandering to the Tea Party love to talk about a free market. It sounds sexy. It sounds like wealth and freedom got married and had a perfect concept. If capitalism is a religion – free market is the savior. This free market will punish bad behavior and reward virtue. The free market knows all and endows accordingly. We don’t need to worry because the free market will figure it all out.

What is never mentioned when propping up the immaculate free market is the defining characteristic of the idea – honesty. It’s transparency and allowing shareholders and consumers access to real information, good or bad. A free market is essentially crowdsourcing or democratizing business. And you can’t make informed decisions without accurate information. That’s a tenet lawmakers and business tycoons tend to glaze over when touting their “principles.”

Deregulation is also a tenet of free market economics – it’s keeping the government out of Business. Deregulation has proven to be much more popular than its “honesty” counterpart.

And if the word “deregulation” brings to mind Gulf seagulls suffocating in crude oil and rows of tract homes in foreclosure, then you have the gist of it. The housing bust crashing on bundles of what became toxic assets was not technically the “free market.” It was a horribly mutated half-breed hybrid of the venerated free market.

And the free market can fix it just like Sasquatch can fix it. Meaning: they can’t. Because no matter how much they’re talked about neither exist.

The housing crash was a semi-legal, giant and complex Ponzi scheme. Yes, the Ponzi scheme named after 19^th century-born fraudster Charles Ponzi who fittingly didn’t use the name Ponzi while doing his namesake scheme.

The truth is we don’t have a “free market.” Never have and probably never will. So when politicians like representatives Paul Ryan and Michele Bachmann talk about how this savior-in-theory can deliver us – it can’t. Using this super sexy sounding concept of “the free market” is exactly what got us demonstrably bad policy. Just like the inadequate regulation and insufficient honesty which caused our current gigantic recession.

The debate over regulations is always “less vs. more.” Instead, how about better regulations and more of those?

So AT&T, a huge cell phone provider, wants to become even bigger. The first thing you need to know is, according to OpenSecrets.org, AT&T is the number two “heavy hitter” of the last 20 years. The company has given to both parties a total of $46,292,670. The top single recipient was Speaker of the House John Boehner – a politician who loves talking about the illusory free market, occasionally with a dry eye. Second, AT&T was already broken up after an anti-trust case in the 1980s. AT&T regrouped and started growing bigger in 2005.

In the next 12 months there will be debate over whether regulators should allow this giant merger. One of the arguments for the merger will be: “This is the free market at work.” How rewarding a giant company for being a giant is a good thing and the government (i.e., the people who’ve been receiving campaign donations from said giant company) should stay out of it. It’s akin to saying we should feed horses what we feed unicorns – because look how great unicorns are.

The bottom line is: Lack of competition hurts consumers. The cell phone companies are already unique in that if their service is awful (as an iPhone user I can testify that with AT&T there’s no “if”) – you have to PAY to leave them. It’s like if a restaurant gave you food poisoning, and you had to pay them $200 to let you stop eating there. Congress could have outlawed this practice – but they didn’t.

Already, all cell phone companies except T-Mobile were compliant in George W. Bush’s NSA warrantless wiretapping – so much for the government staying out of business.

Now if regulators approve of this purchase, a company which already doesn’t have to work that hard for our business will have to work even less. While this is great for AT&T – it’s not great for us. AT&T should not be allowed to buy T-Mobile.

And politicians shouldn’t be allowed to say this anti-competition, secret, virtual monopoly is somehow their mythical “free market.”

Wisconsin adopted “Forward” as their state motto in 1851. Sculptor Jean Pond Miner was commissioned to create a representation of her home state and in 1893 created a seven-foot tall bronze statue of a female figure bearing the state’s maxim. The Wisconsin Historical Society notes, “Forward is an allegory of devotion and progress, qualities Miner felt Wisconsin embodied.” The statue is dedicated as a women’s memorial and now stands proudly at the west entrance of the Capitol in Madison.

Notably, Forward, predates the signing of the national civil rights bill by the better half of a century. She was nearly 30 years old before women had the right to vote. Ditto for the first labor movement.

When it comes to progress, Wisconsin and Forward have been ahead of their time.

Now Forward has been at the heart of the last month of protests and rallies in Madison. She’s the centerpiece. Protesters have utilized her as a billboard to express their frustrations. She’s been blindfolded while wearing “recall” signs. She’s been adorned with pro-union and anti-Republican lawmaker placards. Last Saturday during the biggest rally since the standoff began, she was wearing a Guy Fawkes now identified as an Anonymous mask while holding the “blue book” of Wisconsin Law and procedure in her hand.

The morning after, a handful of Wisconsin women removed all the debris and instead laid flowers at Forward’s feet. They held a sign, “Women’s Vigil for Labor Rights.” Their children clad in “Cops for Labor” t-shirts bounced around the stairs of the Capitol as they posed for pictures from passers-by.

Melissa Austin, wife of a Madison Police Department detective explained, “Flowers sometimes mean saying good-bye. You put flowers on somebody when they die…But flowers are Spring. Flowers are coming. Flowers are a renewal.” She added, “It’s not saying good-bye to Forward, it’s what’s to come.”

Sarah Mackesey also held the sign. A Madison police officer on her day off, Mackesey offered, “Forward is our motto and Forward rocks.”

Wisconsin’s new Republican governor Scott Walker had been insisting he needed to eradicate the public employees’ collective bargaining rights to “balance the budget” – a budget he made worse when he gave tax breaks to corporations.

Walker’s real goal was revealed in a conversation with a man impersonating the oil heir David Koch. Walker wants to be like Ronald Reagan. He wants to “do something big.” Under the guise of “fiscal responsibility,” Walker has been trying to kill a long time foe of the right wing – organized labor – and with it wages, pensions and working conditions for which people have fought for decades.

“Balancing the budget” has become the lukewarm excuse to bust unions much like the iffy deviated septum is why you have to get that nose job. “I do Botox…for my headaches.” Sure. “People making $40K a year to teach kids are greedy parasitic union thugs.” Uh huh.

If this had happened in another state, the response would have been different. But in Wisconsin people have always thought of themselves as easygoing, open-minded and mellow – and their reaction has been visceral. Besides the big rallies overtaking the Capitol, many Wisconsinites have been showing up to be near Forward as a part of their daily errands. “Go grocery shopping, protest Scott Walker taking away union rights, pick up school uniforms and start dinner.”

These purported “union thugs” held G-rated, family-friendly, stroller-packed affable demonstrations. In true courteous Wisconsin fashion one of their chants to the 14 senators who left the state to hold off a vote was “Thank you!”

The several generations of Wisconsinites sauntering around the Capitol in the cold are even more of an apt symbol of what organized labor, pensions, health care and a living wage mean for working people: It’s family. The ability to take care of their families.

The protesters I talked to are afraid for their families and concerned for their neighbors. They’re shocked by the injustice and ashamed they weren’t more vigilant when electing Walker. But mostly they’re resolute.

“It’s painful standing up for your rights,” said Austin, noting her generation born in the ‘70s has never before had to deal with this kind of strife.

Austin relayed, “They [rights] were fought for…” Mackesey jumped in, “Again and again and again!”

I consider myself to be a decent citizen. I vote. I recycle. I don’t litter. I yield to most pedestrian traffic.

But when I received notice I was selected for jury service, I did what every red-blooded American does – I wondered if I should pretend it got lost in the mail.

“Notice? What notice? I’ve never seen any notice. Maybe this notice you speak of, maybe it had a little…accident?”

The draft has been gone for over 30 years. Today if you’re like me, you consider “compulsory service” to be putting down a book to listen to a flight attendant go over the safety announcements.

Plus, I suspected the phrase “No good deed ever goes unpunished,” was written by a juror. But that still didn’t stop me. No proverb was going to deter me. This was my chance to participate in a justice system of the people, by the people, for the people. I didn’t even ask for a deferment. I was going against my instincts.

I was stepping up to my civic duty enthusiastically…even if it was 7:30 AM…across town…during road construction. No prob.

The notice stated jurors should dress “business casual.” I’ve always considered business casual to be something ironed worn with uncomfortable shoes. Maybe it depends on your vocation. From the looks of some of the other jurors plodding along the halls of the courthouse their “business” was either a Crocs model, a lifeguard or an adult industry professional.

It’s justice who’s blind…as for the rest of us – we see you!

It was like their outfits were trying to increase their chances of being dismissed. “You’re looking for someone who is impartial and has common sense. As you can see from my corduroy cut offs and Megadeth t-shirt – clearly that’s not me.”

I felt like some dingbat on a reality show who just realized the other housemates have a STRATEGY!

When we reported for jury service, we were asked to sit in a large waiting room. We were given our badges. We were asked to fill out paperwork and turn it in. Then they called out a list of everyone who filled out their paperwork wrong or incomplete. Out of 80 people, about a third weren’t able to fill out the paperwork on the first try. No butterfly ballots or anything. Just a straightforward – fill in the bubble and sign here questionnaire of eligibility. At first I thought this was a good argument against the death penalty – obviously these folks shouldn’t be able to dole out any punishment you can’t go back and correct later. But afterwards, I think it was another attempt – feeble of course – to get out of serving. “If I don’t know my zip code, how am I gonna know ‘reasonable doubt?’”

But there I was: dressed appropriately, on time, paperwork correctly completed in black ink. Just a sitting duck, vulnerable with no exit strategy. I felt like Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker. Not even a Koch brother could save me.

We were told to wait for our names to be called. I read a couple of magazines. More names were called. I scrolled Twitter. More names were called. I played iPhone Scrabble and listened to the kvetching of the others without a strategy. You’d think they had been forced to stack marbles in Siberia by the whining. Hours went by. My name was never called. Finally at four in the afternoon, the announcement was made – I had fulfilled my duty and could go home. That was it. I was done.

Maybe I was over qualified. Maybe it’s random. Maybe I should be happy about it.

I literally sat around, did nothing and it was performing my civic duty. It made me feel like a member of Congress.