We did it for Europe after the most devastating war in world history. We did it in Japan, the country that attacked us and brought us into World War II. Now it’s time for America to declare it has lost wars abroad and declare a Marshall Plan for the United States of America.
A combination of poor fiscal policy (tax breaks to the rich for 30 years) and devastating economic policies (like the “free trade” pacts or repeal of the Glass Steagall Act) with the relentless thrust for American Empire that has led to countless wars since World War II–has blighted our country and depleted our treasury. We are virtually broke nationwide; our largest and wealthiest state (previously) California, has been bankrupt for several years. Michigan, the site of a formerly vibrant industrial economy, has been turned into a wasteland with almost 15% unemployment. Nationwide we have 10% of our work force unemployed and almost 20% of it underemployed. A Democratic administration with overwhelming majorities in the Senate and House has set up a “deficit reduction commission” stacked with people who want to privatize social security and poised to undermine one of the greatest of FDR’s achievements. The Congress, corrupt and petty, is held in the lowest esteem it has been ever viewed.
We need change, not just an ambitious Chicagoan who bandies about the phrase to get elected either. Real change, now.
America needs to launch a Marshall Plan at home. We gave Europe (including our military adversary) billions. Now is the time to do the same thing here at home.
We must spend billions of dollars building our own infrastructure (note the stories in the press recently about the oil spill of 800,000 barrels in Michigan, due to a pipeline that was built in 1969). Billions for roads. Billions for a new railroad system. Billions for schools and hospitals and medical schools (more doctors means lower medical bills). Billions for the poor and needy who do not have enough food or cannot see a doctor. Billions for job creation programs. Billions in grants to needy states. A Marshall sized program for the United States.
Why is it that a President who was elected on a mandate of change seems to settle for less than half a loaf and seems to be without any ideas and without any fight? Why is it that our politicians do not care for the cries coming from their own people (but recently gave $8 billion “in aid” to Pakistan)? Why is it that the response to the economic troubles have been so slow and so timid? Why is it that the government is so often in bed with corporate interests to the detriment of average Americans? Why is it that our Supreme Court turns farther and farther to the right, even striking down well meaning and well though out legislation on campaign contributions?
We need a Marshall Plan for the United States. We need for our Democrat in Chief in Washington, D.C. to stop thinking of only deficit reductions and start thinking about massive plans to stimulate the economy. We need our President to stop stocking his “deficit reduction commission” with corporate elitists opposed to the best of the New Deal programs. We need action from our leaders, not pretty but vapid speeches.
We need a Marshall Plan for the United States. We don’t need a $37 billion supplemental spending bill for a war in Afghanistan that is already lost. We don’t need a $700 billion DOD budget that is higher than W’s budget by 8%. We don’t need costly bases in Germany and Japan 65 years after the end of World War II. We don’t need more than 700 military bases worldwide.
The distinguished military historian, Andrew Bachevich, had this to say about President Obama’s failed strategy on Afghanistan. Talking with Democracynow’s Amy Goodmanhttp://www.democracynow.org/2010/8/2/andrew_bacevich_on_afghanistan_war_the , he said:
“I mean, we’re bankrupt in the country. We are headed towards, I think, ever greater, more difficult economic times that will result in us failing in our most fundamental obligation, laid out in the Preamble of the Constitution, which is to provide the blessings of liberty for ourselves and our posterity. The path on which we have embarked and on which we continue to pursue is very much at odds with what the founding purpose of this republic was supposed to be.”
We need a Marshall Plan now for the United States of America.
We don’t need a half-hearted “insurance reform” bill that simply builds on the failed system of private insurance. We don’t need this bill which doesn’t even kick in until 2014: we need real health reform now. We don’t need a half-loaf of a financial reform bill that is mostly smoke and mirrors. Bring back Glass-Steagall now. We need a Marshall Plan now for the United States of America.
We did’t need an underfunded $765 billion stimulus bill when by the accounts of several Nobel Prize winning economists, that amount was too little too late. We need a government that recognizes that the private sector is doing nicely (big business profits are up 42% in the first quarter according to the New York Times) but that it is incapable and unwilling to create meaningful new jobs. As Harold Meyerson http://host.madison.com/ct/news/opinion/column/article_ffd4a9ea-3ef9-5fee-b96c-88d36a3328a3.html has pointed out:
“The problem isn’t merely the greatest downturn since the Great Depression. It’s also that big business has found a way to make big money without restoring the jobs it cut the past two years, or increasing its investments or even its sales, at least domestically. …How can America’s corporations so defy gravity? Ever adaptive, they have evolved a business model that enables them to make money even while the strapped American consumer has cut back on purchasing. For one thing, they are increasingly selling and producing overseas. General Motors is going like gangbusters in China, where it now sells more cars than it does in the United States. In China, GM employs 32,000 assembly-line workers; that’s just 20,000 fewer than the number of such workers it has in the States. And those American workers aren’t making what they used to; new hires get $14 an hour, roughly half of what veterans pull down.
The GM model typifies that of post-crash American business: massive layoffs, productivity increases, wage reductions (due in part to the weakness of unions), and reduced sales at home; increased hiring and booming sales abroad. Another part of that model is cash retention. A Federal Reserve report last month estimated that American corporations are sitting on a record $1.8 trillion in cash reserves. As a share of corporate assets, that’s the highest level since 1964.
We need a Marshall Plan now for the United States of America.
Robert Kuttner has over at the Huffington Post http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-kuttner/the-appeal-of-austerity-i_b_666762.html asked the right question:
“But where is the high-profile Obama speech making clear that the top priority for now is putting America back to work, that deficit reduction will come when the economy is back on track — and that the budget will not be balanced on the backs of those who depend on Social Security, Medicare, and other key social outlays?
The misguided Erskine Bowles, with his austerity program, did not drop into the budget debate from Mars. He was appointed by Barack Obama [To Obama’s Deficit Reduction Committee just as Obama picked Alice Rivlin and Anne Fudge, both who want to privatize social security].
…Maybe if Obama got serious about putting Americans back to work and explaining the real connection between an economic recovery and deficit politics, incumbent Democrats — and voters — might welcome the president into their districts.”
We need a Marshall Plan now for the United States of America.
We don’t need timid politicians. We don’t need corrupt politicians like Charlie Rangel or Max Baucus. We do’t need politicians who do not fight for average Americans (which means most of the politicians in Washington). We don’t need a political party that is afraid to do away with a senate rule (60 votes) that undermines democracy.
We need a Marshall Plan now for the United States of America.
e. j. dionne had a similar essay in last thursdays wapo, albeit, without a marshall plan component, but essentially, saying many of the same things…In American politics, stupidity is the name of the game:
unfortunately, the stupidity he alludes to is much to dominant a theme in todays take no prisoners political climate. when approximately 1/3 of the american populace has been dumbed down to the level of functional illiteracy…which unfortunately manifests itself at the ballot box…there’s really not a lot of hope for “change” in the foreseeable future.
meet the new boss[es], same as the old…
Thanks Dada for your thoughts and the link to the article in WaPo.
I chose the “Marshall Plan” language for a specific reason: it emphasizes the scope of what needs to be done by the American government for its own people and it also shows that vast, costly governmental measures can work. What is missing today–even in the Obama administration–is the will and the determination to do something.Alas, the lessons that the Marshall Plan provide seem to have been lost, even on the party in control that has lost its way for the past several decades and really turned into a neo-Republican kind of party.
Specifically, peak oil production. From here on out, oil production world-wide will decline, and the oil that is produced will become more expensive.
Since oil is used directly or indirectly to run every aspect of our civilization, that civilization–often called “the American Way of Life”–is at an end.
Now, that way of life actually consists of destroying the earth as quickly as possible, to grab as many resources as possible, to create as much stuff as possible–that then had to be discarded as quickly as possible to make way for new stuff–so the end of our way of life is not all bad. But since it depends upon cheap and plentiful energy, which by the 20th century came to mean cheap and plentiful oil, that way of life is indeed ending whether we wish it or not. No government or program can alter this.
Not that there is not plenty to be done. There is plenty to be done. The survival-minded will be thinking about food (and water) and shelter and clothing, and thinking about how to manage each of these things using about 90% less energy than we currently use, and utilizing about 90% less stuff, as well. Start by thinking at the level of your own household, and your friends and neighbors.
The national government might do a good deal to ameliorate and encourage, but it won’t. Even Michelle Obama’s garden–a nice gesture by the way, that everyone should emulate–was too extreme, for by failing to use oil-intensive fertilizers and industrial poisons (part of that destroying the earth thing) she was failing to properly uphold the “American Way of Life” and Agribusiness, which it is her job as First Lady to promote.
If a garden-sized gesture by the First Lady is to extreme to become government policy, then obviously any measure that would actually do something helpful is doomed.
Government is not your friend. The large corporations have already bought it to use for their own purposes, and those purposes are not yours.
Start making your own plans.
Sorry, I don’t agree at all. Other countries (like China, Thailand and even Germany) have been doing quite nicely in this “new oil environment.” That is much, much too simplistic thinking.
The problem in the United States is that we have some ossified institutions (like the U.S. Senate; the Democratic party leadership etc.) that block even minor changes. The Democratic party will have to do something about the filibuster rule especially after November when it is likely they will have fewer senators: there is NO WAY with the rule of 60 that anything significant can or will be passed after November. We also have a poorly thought out tax code that most businesses take advantage of (many pay no taxes at all) and we have laws in place that encourage outsourcing of jobs overseas. Barack Obama in April 2006, in a speech at the Hamilton Project encouraged more outsourcing, more NAFTA-like agreements, and cuts in entitlements.
We also have the military industrial complex which has kept us at near perpetual war since World War II. This is one of the major reasons the country is heading toward bankruptcy, not the social security system.
Unfortunately, the man who campaigned on change has brought very little of it and has shown repeatedly he is not a fighter for average Americans. Our middle class is being decimated and he has a major hand in that especially with his so-called “deficit reduction commission” which Obama stacked to cut Social Security.
The country is in deep, deep trouble and quite frankly I see no successful resolution. Obama was pretty much the last hope and he has failed as an agent of change. The United States is repeating the history of the decline of empires: Rome, the British Empire, the USSR and others. Unless drastic steps are taken, we will continue to go down.