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It's been a slow news day. All we've had is the Republicans on the Senate Armed Services Committee rebuffing their own president
in order to avoid gutting the Geneva Conventions, the former loyalist Colin Powell kicking W in the teeth with a snappy letter
calling Bush's proposed mistreatment of detainees a moral and military mistake, and the season premiere of the Jim Crow edition
of "Survivor."
So here, as I promised, are the next entries in the Democracy Laundry List -- my list of friendly suggestions for making the
United States a representative democracy. [For previous entries, see my 9/9/06 post.]
I'll pick up where I left off. In a functioning American democracy:
3. HEALTH CARE WILL BE A RIGHT, LIKE POLICE OR FIRE PROTECTION, UNIVERSALLY PROVIDED AND (AT LEAST LARGELY) PUBLICLY FUNDED.
As with campaign finance reform, universal health care is an issue on which the American public's virtual unanimity is not
allowed to interfere with private-sector-driven policy. The facts -- the contrast between the nation's vast wealth and its
miserable distribution of health care services, the incessant desire of the public for universal health care, the near-Third-World
statistics on infant mortality and malnutrition and infectious disease in parts of the country -- are so clear and well-known
as to require no elaboration here. And the underlying cause -- the dictatorial influence of corporate money in defining health
care policy -- is equally clear. When we have corporate lobbyists drafting the actual text of bills for privately-funded senators
and congresspersons, as we now do, it's safe to say we've fallen short of democracy. In a representative American democracy,
the House and the Senate would right now make universally-available health care something pretty close to Job One. We could,
and should, argue over the mechanics: how to end the colossally wasteful redundancies of the private system while preserving
incentives for innovation; how to create a federal health care organization that works more like the Social Security Administration
(that is, relatively efficiently) and less like, say, the Department of Defense; how to ensure fairness in both benefits and
access. But come on, folks: in a country where a quarter of the population has no health insurance, can anybody say with a
straight face that exploring a federal universal health care system would make things worse? If not for the anti-democratic
interference of corporate money, we might have solved these problems already.
4. PRINCIPLES OF TAXATION FOR THE RICH WILL BE THE SAME AS FOR THE REST OF US.
In what universe can a billion-dollar American-based company have its "headquarters" on an overseas island, or a corporation
have the same legal rights as a citizen, or the wealthiest one percent receive massive tax cuts while federal services are
slashed? A universe where private wealth shapes policy, of course. Contrastingly, in an American democracy the rich would
be legally required to abide by the same principles that govern the taxation of a $40,000-a-year bus driver. That is, as a
citizen you are taxed at a rate generally agreed to constitute a reasonable portion of your income and assets, and you live
with it even though you don't entirely like it. As it is now, however, being fabulously rich means that if you don't like
existing tax policy, you simply tell your hired politicians to change it. The irony here is that all of the virtues on which
the rich lecture the poor -- fiscal discipline, the rigor of reason, patience -- go out the window when the rich design tax
policy for themselves. In a democracy, at tax time the wealthy would have to swallow their castor oil like the rest of us
-- and console themselves, as we peons do, with the fact that our coughing up tax dollars goes toward the common good.
5. PUBLIC EDUCATION WILL BE FULLY FUNDED.
Funny how when it comes to ramping up an unneeded war or bailing out a failing industry the rationale is all about providing
sufficient funding, but when it comes to educating poor kids it's suddenly all about the need for "reform" and "smarter use
of resources" and everything else except money. It is, after all, no coincidence that so many of the private and suburban
schools coveted by the middle class spend more per pupil than their urban counterparts. And when they don't, the difference
is generally due to the massive additional burdens carried by urban school systems in providing services to needy, unhealthy,
or emotionally damaged children from traumatized or broken families in violent impoverished neighborhoods. You would think
that some policy-makers in Washington, now pumping our nation for the resources to get a handle on an Iraq that we ravaged,
would understand that the same economic concept applies to repairing our own ravaged communities here at home. That is, it's
an expensive proposition. The good news, though, is that the United States has the money to provide a sound education for
every American child, and the majority of Americans would like to see those funds used for that purpose. In a democracy, we
citizens would get our way.
6. THERE WILL BE A NEW WPA IN COMMUNITIES THAT NEED BOTH JOBS AND REBUILT INFRASTRUCTURES.
I am too young to remember the Works Progress Administration, a massive employment program established by President Franklin
D. Roosevelt in 1935. But I've heard about it. The WPA solved two great problems at once: the dire need to provide jobs during
the depths of the Great Depression, and the equally urgent need for certain kinds of work to be done. The WPA built public
buildings, roads, airports, sewers, dams, libraries and parks, and also sustained the livelihoods of working artists. At its
height, it was the largest employer in the United States. More than any other program, it helped unemployed Americans get
back on their feet in a nation in which jobs were few, people were desperate, and public work needed to be done. Meanwhile,
look at what we have today in our nation's poorest urban and rural communities: Few jobs, desperate people, and work that
needs to be done. Homes need to be razed or rebuilt in falling-down neighborhoods. Crumbling or nonexistent schools, clinics,
libraries, streets and sewers need to be repaired or built outright. Public parks need to be cleaned up, replanted and refurbished.
Mass transit systems, particularly those that can carry urban workers to the growing number of suburban jobs, need to be installed
or improved. One couldn't ask for a more perfect setting for the modern equivalent of a WPA. It answers the concerns of virtually
everyone: the poor unemployed, the struggling city governments, the suburbanites who wish that cities had less crime and homelessness
and that welfare recipients would go to work. A new WPA, in fact, would make everyone happy -- except for a small group of
the very rich and/or radically conservative who prefer that government policy serve the accrual of wealth by the plutocracy.
In an American democracy, we would likely have already put such a program into motion. Make you want to kick the deadbeats
out of Washington? It should.
(MORE ENTRIES TO COME. NEXT: BREAKING UP MONOPOLIES.)
© 2006 Bruce A. Jacobs (Posted 9/16/06)
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