This is now clearly a war on all immigration, legal and otherwise. The history of this country would be immeasurably different—and immeasurably worse—if you eliminated from it all those people who came here fleeing violence and oppression. In fact, if you did that, you wouldn’t have a country here at all. Maybe we don’t any more.
We've posted this graph before here at Hullabaloo, but it's been a while and with the latest media focus on inequality, it bears reposting:
That is the death of the American Dream in a single chart. It is harder for the poor to get into the middle class, and for the middle class to become wealthy, in America than in almost any other industrialized country. Our income distribution is the most unequal of any industrialized country, and at the highest level since 1928.
Simply put, it is harder to be Horatio Alger here in America than in most of Europe or democratic East Asia. The American Dream is dead, and conservative policies designed to benefit the rich killed it.
Given the severe attacks on civil liberties since 9/11, I'm surprised we still rank in the top 10.
Nonny Mouse at Crooks and Liars:
We Americans like to think, and in fact have been indoctrinated for decades to believe, that we are the greatest country in the world, the best at just about everything. Sadly, that hasn’t been true for quite some time. Words patriots once gave their lives for, like ‘freedom’... and ‘patriots’... have become almost meaningless.It gets worse, especially on education and health care.
So if you’re curious about who’s taken our crown, you might be surprised. The latest international index of 123 countries released by the Fraser Institute, Canada's leading public policy think-tank, and Germany's Liberales Institut, ranked New Zealand number one for offering the highest level of freedom worldwide, followed by the Netherlands then Hong Kong. Australia, Canada and Ireland tied for fourth spot. The survey measured the degree to which people are free to enjoy classic civil liberties - freedom of speech, religion, individual economic choice, and association and assembly - in each country surveyed, as well as indicators of crime and violence, freedom of movement, legal discrimination against homosexuals, and women's freedoms. Pretty extensive stuff.
The United States tied Denmark for seventh. We didn’t even get bronze.
As for the idea that the United States is the envy of the world when it comes to free markets and business? Wrong again. The U.S. continues to lose ground against other nations in Forbes’ annual look at the Best Countries for Business. The U.S. placed second in 2009, but in 2012 it ranks 12th, trailing fellow G-8 countries Canada (5th), the United Kingdom (10th) and Australia (11th) The world’s biggest economy at $15.1 trillion scores abysmally when it comes to trade freedom and monetary freedom.
One of the smallest countries in the world is kicking our ass when it comes to actually living up to the standards we Americans pretend we still have. Isn’t it about time we stopped kidding ourselves, stopped living on past glories that mostly never were, and started actually trying to be at least as good as one of the smallest nations on earth?
This is my only religion: the political commonwealth of We The People. Not we the corporations. Not we the rich. Not we the white xian straight males.
These are my only prophets: writers like Charles Pierce who can explain it this well:
Freedom becomes free. That's the undeniable truth of it. You cannot forever hem it in with nuance and exception, with carefully crafted compromises that say that freedom is one thing in Wisconsin, but another thing in Tennessee, and maybe both things in Kansas and Missouri. And it was not merely over the gigantic issue of slavery in which this most basic American conundrum was contested and resolved, Americans also found their freedom bounded by class, by a structured social system in which higher education remained pretty much the province of the well-to-do, and pretty much glued to the eastern part of the country. Freedom, however, will make itself more free because people, together, through the free government that is the clearest expression of the political commonwealth, will make it so.
SNIP
You see, you really didn't build it by yourself, no matter what they tell you. You stood on the shoulders of other people while you did it, the people like Justin Morrill, who helped construct a political and social context within which the opportunity for individual initiative and entrepreneurial risk could be rewarded and, as much as it may be popular to deny it, the government was very much a part of it because the government is the clearest manifestation of the political commonwealth that made that political and social context possible.
SNIP
We are now in the middle of a strange political campaign in which the very existence of a political commonwealth seems to have been made into a matter of open debate. There are places that we all own together. There are things that belong to all of us. Yosemite belongs to us. So do Iowa State and Cornell and Purdue, and everything that is taught in all those places. The government is one of those things. So are the national parks. So are the land-grant universities, born 150 years ago this summer, and delivered by a guy who doesn't even have a statue in the hall of statutes he helped to create. Knowledge, Justin Morrill believed, knows no class, no race. It is part of of what belongs to all of us, because none of us, not one of us, built anything by ourselves. We decided that question once before. It is to our discredit as a country that we're arguing about it again.
No, don't bother sending this to your elected officials. Share this with your friends and neighbors. Ask them if they agree. Ask them to share it with more people. Talk it up every chance you get.
It's about the issues.
Crooks and Liars:
On a conference call (Tuesday) launching the new "Contract for the American Dream," Van Jones said that the American people have more wisdom about what's going on in the country than those inside the beltway.
More than 131,000 Americans submitted ideas for the platform, more than 1600 house meetings were held and more than 25,000 ideas were submitted. Of those ideas, the ten most popular were included in the contract. Compare that to the right-wing Contract From America, in which only 50,000 people submitted ideas and only 800 house meetings were held. This disparity was despite the fact that the Contract for the American Dream did not get a big push from Fox News (or any equivalent) and there wasn't a big funding push from anyone like the Koch brothers.
"This movement is real. It's big. It's growing," Jones said. The movement is already active in every congressional district in the country. Jones said that what we need now is for the majority of Americans who agree with the contract need to stand up and speak out for the mainstream American values it represents. These values are what helped make the twentieth century "the American Century." He points out that while both parties have responded to the tea party, that group only represents 10-15 percent of the country. The Rebuild the Dream movement represents 70 percent.
SNIP
The full text of the contract is below:
We, the American people, promise to defend and advance a simple ideal: liberty and justice . . . for all. Americans who are willing to work hard and play by the rules should be able to find a decent job, get a good home in a strong community, retire with dignity, and give their kids a better life. Every one of us – rich, poor, or in-between, regardless of skin color or birthplace, no matter their sexual orientation or gender – has the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That is our covenant, our compact, our contract with one another. It is a promise we can fulfill – but only by working together.
Today, the American Dream is under threat. Our veterans are coming home to few jobs and little hope on the home front. Our young people are graduating off a cliff, burdened by heavy debt, into the worst job market in half a century. The big banks that American taxpayers bailed out won’t cut homeowners a break. Our firefighters, nurses, cops, and teachers – America’s everyday heroes – are being thrown out onto the street. We believe:
AMERICA IS NOT BROKE: America is rich – still the wealthiest nation ever. But too many at the top are grabbing the gains. No person or corporation should be allowed to take from America while giving little or nothing back. The super-rich who got tax breaks and bailouts should now pay full taxes – and help create jobs here, not overseas. Those who do well in America should do well by America.
AMERICANS NEED JOBS, NOT CUTS: Many of our best workers are sitting idle while the work of rebuilding America goes undone. Together, we must rebuild our country, reinvest in our people and jump-start the industries of the future. Millions of jobless Americans would love the opportunity to become working, tax-paying members of their communities again. We have a jobs crisis, not a deficit crisis.
To produce this Contract for the American Dream, 131,203 Americans came together online and in their communities. We wrote and rated 25,904 ideas. Together, we identified the 10 most critical steps to get our economy back on track and restore the American Dream:
10 CRITICAL STEPS TO GET OUR ECONOMY BACK ON TRACK
I. Invest in America's Infrastructure: Rebuild our crumbling bridges, dams, levees, ports, water and sewer lines, railways, roads, and public transit. We must invest in high-speed Internet and a modern, energy-saving electric grid. These investments will create good jobs and rebuild America. To help finance these projects, we need national and state infrastructure banks.
II. Create 21st Century Energy Jobs: We should invest in American businesses that can power our country with innovative technologies like wind turbines, solar panels, geothermal systems, hybrid and electric cars, and next-generation batteries. And we should put Americans to work making our homes and buildings energy efficient. We can create good, green jobs in America, address the climate crisis, and build the clean energy economy.
III. Invest in Public Education: We should provide universal access to early childhood education, make school funding equitable, invest in high-quality teachers, and build safe, well-equipped school buildings for our students. A high-quality education system, from universal preschool to vocational training and affordable higher education, is critical for our future and can create badly needed jobs now.
IV. Offer Medicare for All: We should expand Medicare so it's available to all Americans, and reform it to provide even more cost-effective, quality care. The Affordable Care Act is a good start and we must implement it -- but it's not enough. We can save trillions of dollars by joining every other industrialized country -- paying much less for health care while getting the same or better results.
V. Make Work Pay: Americans have a right to fair minimum and living wages, to organize and collectively bargain, to enjoy equal opportunity, and to earn equal pay for equal work. Corporate assaults on these rights bring down wages and benefits for all of us. They must be outlawed.
VI. Secure Social Security: Keep Social Security sound, and strengthen the retirement, disability, and survivors' protections Americans earn through their hard work. Pay for it by removing the cap on the Social Security tax, so that upper-income people pay into Social Security on all they make, just like the rest of us.
VII. Return to Fairer Tax Rates: End, once and for all, the Bush-era tax giveaways for the rich, which the rest of us -- or our kids -- must pay eventually. Also, we must outlaw corporate tax havens and tax breaks for shipping jobs overseas. Lastly, with millionaires and billionaires taking a growing share of our country's wealth, we should add new tax brackets for those making more than $1 million each year.
VIII. End the Wars and Invest at Home: Our troops have done everything that's been asked of them, and it's time to bring them home to good jobs here. We're sending $3 billion each week overseas that we should be investing to rebuild America.
IX. Tax Wall Street Speculation: A tiny fee of a twentieth of 1% on each Wall Street trade could raise tens of billions of dollars annually with little impact on actual investment. This would reduce speculation, "flash trading," and outrageous bankers' bonuses -- and we'd have a lot more money to spend on Main Street job creation.
X. Strengthen Democracy: We need clean, fair elections -- where no one's right to vote can be taken away, and where money doesn't buy you your own member of Congress. We must ban anonymous political influence, slam shut the lobbyists' revolving door in D.C., and publicly finance elections. Immigrants who want to join in our democracy deserve a clear path to citizenship. We must stop giving corporations the rights of people when it comes to our elections. And we must ensure our judiciary's respect for the Constitution. Together, we will reclaim our democracy to get our country back on track.
Don't say you weren't warned. George Carlin nailed it back in 2005.
From Down with Tyranny, via Digby.
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