Progressive Thinking

Democrats have a habit of compromising with themselves. Democratic voters love the ideas Bernie Sanders is putting out there, yet Hillary Clinton is considered the safer presumptive nominee.

ALTOONA, WI - I don’t understand Democrats.

Today’s Republicans I get. It’s easy enough to see what kind of society they want. It’s just not a fit place to live.

Democrats, on the other hand, are hard to figure. I hear what they say they want to do. But when they are actually in power — like they were in Wisconsin in 2009 and 2010 — they never seem to do those things. I’m not alone in losing count of the number of times Democratic lawmakers have been overheard saying they couldn’t afford to act because it would jeopardize their ability to get reelected and hold on to their majority. Then one of them after another was not reelected anyway and they lost their majority.

I’m not alone in losing count of the number of times Democrats have been reluctant to deal with some issue or another because the polling didn’t show strong enough public support. Right there is a major difference between Democrats and Republicans. Democrats are resigned to polls shaping their message and guiding their actions. Republicans believe their message and actions will shape the polling.

Then there is the Democrats’ chronic habit of compromising with themselves. This tendency is on prominent display in public arenas all across the country, including in the presidential race. Democratic voters seem to love the ideas Bernie Sanders is putting out there, so much so that he’s gone from more than 50 points down in the polls to more or less even with Hillary Clinton.

Yet Clinton has won the most votes and the most states and is considered the presumptive nominee. Curiously, you rarely hear Democratic voters say why they prefer Clinton’s ideas to Sanders’. They say they doubt his ideas could ever become law. They say ideas like debt-free college and health care for all and a higher minimum wage — ideas they claim to believe in — are impractical or even “pie in the sky” or “pipe dreams.” Congress will never pass them, they say. Hillary’s the safer choice, the more practical option.

And how exactly do these Democratic voters imagine that if we have more or less the same Congress we have now, the investigations of Hillary’s emails and the hearings on Benghazi will be set aside and congressional Republicans will start working to make her presidency a success? Exactly what evidence is there to suggest Republicans on Capitol Hill hate Clinton less than Sanders, and would stonewall him more and her less?

Besides, how do you ever win by making unilateral concessions? It’s Negotiation 101, people. You never compromise with yourself. You never move in the direction of the other side unless and until the other side also moves toward you. You ask for a little, you get nothing. You ask for a lot, you can’t get less than nothing. And more often than not, you eventually get at least some of what you want.

As for Hillary being the safer choice, has it dawned on those who’ve reached this conclusion that there are unusually strong anti-establishment feelings among voters this year? Has it occurred to them that for Donald Trump to have a path to the White House, he desperately needs to run against an establishment figure? Or that Hillary Clinton is the consummate insider, a living embodiment of the political establishment? There is a reason thatnational polls show Sanders runs stronger against Trump than Clinton does. There is great risk for Democrats in a Clinton vs. Trump matchup.

While Democrats play it safe, Republicans are hellbent on destroying public education. They continuously feed the rich, never minding the grotesque inequality that results. They enshrine privilege at every turn and pulverize the common good in a hundred different ways. They are not the least bit squeamish about making blunt appeals to racism, sexism, xenophobia and other dark impulses to secure and hold on to power. All of this leaves them more unpopular with the American people than they’ve been in nearly a quarter of a century. And yet despite this growing unpopularity, they rule the country, thanks in large part to the Democrats’ identity crisis.

All of this leaves America’s future far more in peril than need be.

— Mike McCabe

Donald Trump is the Republican Party’s new national standard bearer. Trump’s pitch appeals to the darkest impulses, but it also zeroes in on how everyday Americans have been betrayed by ruling elites and how the government is serving a few at everyone else’s expense. The establishment types of both parties have conspicuous blind spots to this appeal, as both Trump and Bernie Sanders are seen as unwelcome intruders.

ALTOONA, WI - Establishment Republicans are having to come to terms in a hurry with the unsettling reality of having Donald Trump as the party’s national standard bearer. Nowhere is the discomfort higher than in Wisconsin where top GOP leaders and right-wing talk radio mouthpieces led the #NeverTrump movement, uniting behind a candidate they can’t stand in hopes of derailing one they despise and fear even more.

While they either can’t see it or won’t admit it, in some ways Trump is a perfect reflection of what the Republican Party has made itself. In other more important ways, Trump exposes the party leaders’ biggest blind spots.

Trump understands something the party brass can’t bring themselves to accept. Most voters — including many who consider themselves either Republicans or Democrats but also the self-described independents who make up the biggest single voting bloc — hate both major parties and believe that your average politicians are nothing but self dealers, interested first and foremost in advancing their own careers and feathering their own nests. Trump appeals to quite a few of those who are thinking this way because he’s already rich and famous and doesn’t need to hold any office to make a name for himself or line his pockets.

The other blind spot Trump is exploiting is that Republican insiders figure most Americans hate the government, period. For decades they have demonized anything having to do with government. Their message has been self-centered, putting the individual on a pedestal, and their policies have torn at the fabric of society. It’s clear Trump sees a miscalculation here. He’s found sizeable numbers of disenchanted voters — especially working-class white men — who clearly yearn for some common aim or uniting cause. He seems to instinctively sense that it’s not the government itself they hate, it’s a government that they believe stopped working on their behalf quite some time ago that has them exasperated. He’s offered them common enemies to unite around, tapping into powerful feelings of nativism and nationalism.

Trump’s pitch appeals to the darkest impulses, the fear of outsiders, the fondness for walls. But it also zeroes in on how everyday Americans have been betrayed by ruling elites and how the government is serving a few at everyone else’s expense. All of this leaves the Republican Party at greater risk of splintering and disintegrating than at any time in living memory.

You’d think this would put the Democrats in the proverbial catbird seat. But Democratic establishment types have conspicuous blind spots too. Those blind spots explain why they couldn’t see the Bernie Sanders insurgency coming and why they still can’t seem to fathom Sanders’ appeal, especially to young Millennials. Like Trump, but for different reasons, Sanders is immune from the “typical politician” characterization. With Sanders, the immunity was built up over a lifetime of standing on principle even when those principles weren’t fashionable. And like Trump, but in a vastly different way, Sanders calls Americans to a common purpose while Democratic insiders continue to cater to their most loyal constituencies and ignore other very large swaths of the population.

To party regulars, both Trump and Sanders are seen as unwelcome intruders, as skunks at the picnic. On one side, the skunk is feasting. The other side’s skunk is being shooed away. But the fact that the inner circle on both sides see both Trump and Sanders as such says a lot about the similar mindsets in the two major parties and the glaring vulnerabilities both parties have.

— Mike McCabe

It’s almost as if the unofficial slogan of the U.S. has become No We Can’t. Forgotten is how past generations of Americans who had far less than we have today made great progress. But we seem to lack their optimism and boundless faith in America’s potential.

ALTOONA - From the time of the nation’s founding through the first 180 years of the American experiment, our country’s motto was E pluribus unum. In 1956 it was officially changed to In God We Trust. But as more and more Americans grow increasingly pessimistic about the future — even more pessimistic than people in economically underdeveloped countries — it’s almost as if the unofficial slogan of the U.S. has become No We Can’t.

When it is suggested that we should stop sentencing the nation’s youth to debt and make education as affordable for our children and grandchildren as past generations made it for us, this aspiration is widely dismissed as a pipe dream. Some bitterly grumble about “free stuff” while many others wonder aloud how we could possibly pay to extend the promise of free public education all the way through college.

Seemingly forgotten is that past generations of Americans created and paid for a system of free public education through high school, and they were far poorer than we are now when they did it. Many who did the paying had no high school diploma of their own at the time, but knew that industrialization meant that many of their kids and grandkids would be leaving the land and heading to factories and offices and would need more education and job training if they were to have a shot at experiencing the American Dream. So they dug deep and provided future generations that shot.

Here’s the question for us: Is a high school diploma alone a sure pathway to the American Dream today? Of course not. Then where is the resolve in us that our grandparents and great-grandparents had in such abundance? Where in us is their willingness to pay it forward?

When it is suggested that every American should be able to get medical care, this ambition is roundly condemned as pie in the sky. Calls for universal health insurance produce more griping about “free stuff” and many a baseless claim that guaranteeing medical care for everyone would be the mother of all jobs killers.

Forgotten is how past generations of Americans who had far less than we have today made rampant poverty among the nation’s elderly a thing of the past by creating and paying for such things as Social Security and Medicare, and these inventions didn’t ruin the economy. Didn’t even slow it down. The U.S. economic engine roared as never before.

When it is suggested that high-speed Internet and mobile phone service be brought to every doorstep in America, this digital-age necessity is shouted down as an unaffordable extravagance. Still more complaining about “free stuff” ensues.

Forgotten is how past generations of Americans found it within their limited means to pay to bring electricity to every farmhouse and barn in the country. Electric companies never would have taken on the expense of stringing electric wires down every backroad just to pick up a handful of additional customers. Rural electrification took a decades-long national effort.  We all benefit today from that massive undertaking past generations of Americans were willing to support.

Today’s telecoms aren’t going to lay fiber optic or erect cell towers or mount transmitters in every nook and cranny of the country, just to get a few extra customers. The realization of universal access to high-speed Internet and wireless voice services will again require a sustained national effort.

In so many ways, we have more going for us today than past generations did. We have more money than they had, we are more highly educated than they were, we have far more material possessions, more free time on our hands, not to mention more and better ways to communicate with each other. The one and perhaps only thing they had and we seem to lack is their optimism and boundless faith in America’s potential.

— Mike McCabe

26 years ago, Wisconsin lawmakers started the Parental Choice Program in Milwaukee, the first Taxpayer-subsidized private schooling. It started with just over 300 students, now there are more than 30,000. Today, private schools are getting 20% more state aid per student than the public schools educating everyone else’s children. Why?

ALTOONA, WI - Some 26 years ago, Wisconsin lawmakers blazed a new trail by creating the nation’s first scholastic welfare program. It started in Milwaukee, expanded to Racine, and then was taken statewide. It started small, with just over 300 students. Now there are more than 30,000 in the program.

It’s officially called the Parental Choice Program. If there were truth in labeling, it would be called what it is: Taxpayer-subsidized private schooling. The small number of families getting the subsidies already had a choice. In fact,most of them were exercising their option to have their children privately schooled before handouts were ever offered.

So here’s what this boils down to: People who showed they have the means to send their children to private schools are now able to continue to send them to private schools but have the rest of us taxpayers pay their tuition for them.

The real kick in the teeth for taxpayers is that the value of the public-funded vouchers for private schooling is considerably higher than the amount of state aid for each student attending a public school in Wisconsin. The state is spending $236 million this school year on the Milwaukee, Racine and statewide “Parental Choice Programs,” and is cutting state aid to public schools by $75 million to help pay for it. Next year, the cost of the vouchers that scholastic welfare recipients receive will rise to $258 million and $83 million will be taken from the public schools to help cover the cost. This year, each voucher is worth $7,210 for elementary and middle school students and $7,856 for high school students. Next year, taxpayers will be picking up the tab to the tune of $7,323 for each elementary and middle school student and $7,969 for each high schooler. Meanwhile, when you look at all the different forms of state aid to public schools, the amount being spent on each of the more than 870,000 students attending public schools is less than $6,000.

Let that sink in for a moment. The private schools serving scholastic welfare recipients are getting roughly 20% more state aid per student than the public schools educating everyone else’s children are getting.

The lobbyists who sold Wisconsin lawmakers on this scheme a quarter of a century ago insisted at the time that the program would create competition and ultimately boost student achievement. It hasn’t. Students getting taxpayer-subsidized private schooling are doing no better than their public school counterparts. If anything, they actually are doing somewhat worse. And that holds true in other states that followed Wisconsin’s lead.

So why does Wisconsin keep throwing good money after bad? Scholastic welfare is a raw deal for taxpayers and a decades-long failure as an educational policy, but it has been very good for the campaign coffers of state politicians.

And why is so much money thrown at politicians to keep expanding a program that has never delivered on its promises? This is all about propping up private and parochial schools whose enrollments have been plummeting nationwide. Sure enough, while private school enrollments in Wisconsin were falling statewide, they were increasing in the counties where the scholastic welfare program was started. Keeping failing private schools alive is the one thing this program has succeeded in doing. That’s why the program was expanded statewide in 2013.

Ever since the 1980's, the American economy has been under the spell of "trickle-down economics", a theory that produces feed-the-rich policies. They have made the rich vastly richer, and everyone else’s earnings stagnant. But there’s a geyser ready to blow, if we’re smart enough to shift our attention from supply to demand.

ALTOONA, WI - For close to 40 years now, the American economy has been under the spell of supply-side theory, better known on the streets as trickle-down economics. The theory is that expanding the economy’s capacity to produce more goods is the best way to stimulate economic growth. In practice, that theory produces feed-the-rich policies — such as steep cuts in the income taxes corporations and the wealthiest Americans pay — aimed at encouraging private investment in businesses, production facilities and equipment.

Those policies have worked like a charm in one regard. They have made the rich vastly richer. With everyone else’s earnings stagnating, the gap between America’s rich and the rest has grown dramatically by every statistical measure since trickle-down took hold of our economy. Trickle-down economics has been a colossal failure when it comes to producing shared prosperity. George H.W. Bush called it “voodoo economics” for supercharging the accumulation of national debt, but its biggest sin is that America was growing together before the supply-siders took over and has been growing apart ever since.

There are conspicuous reasons why the only thing trickle-down economics does well is produce income and wealth inequality. Feed the rich and they don’t eat much of what they are fed. They store it away. They amass more wealth. Every dollar added to their net worth is a dollar out of circulation that creates no multiplier effect in the economy. Put more money in the pockets of everyday workers and consumers and they spend it. That creates demand. When someone wants to buy, someone else is eager to sell. The economy is stimulated.

That’s the fundamental flaw in supply-side theory. You can shower incentives on corporations and the superwealthy to supply more goods, but if no one is buying what they are making the new factories will be shuttered in no time. Demand drives economic growth, not supply. Shared prosperity doesn’t trickle down, it springs from the ground up like a geyser.

Shifting from failed trickle-down economics to geyser economics means concentrating on stoking demand rather than trying to politically manipulate supply. Boosting wages is a good place to start. The federal minimum wage has been increased 22 different times, and every time supply-siders screamed that increasing it would be a jobs killer. Never worked out that way. The national gross domestic product (GDP) steadily grew through every minimum wage increase. And states that increased their own minimum wages have seen faster job growth than those that didn’t. That’s because workers earning more end up spending more. Good capitalists figure out how to supply what consumers are demanding. They scale up their operations to meet the increased demand, and that means hiring rather than laying off.

A critical next step toward geyser economics is overhauling our tax system. America effectively has two tax systems, one for the rich and another for the rest. That needs to change. We don’t need new taxes. We do need to make sure everyone pays the ones we already have. That will reduce the share of total taxes paid by low-income and middle-class Americans, leaving them with more to spend on other things. Demand will be further stoked.

Big business handouts are a favorite recipe in the trickle-down cookbook. Funny how so many of the handouts wind up hidden in shell companies and tax havens overseas and don’t actually create any additional supply — or jobs — here at home. States have fallen in love with this recipe too. Wisconsin’s corporate welfare office spends hundreds of millions of dollars a year, creates no noticeable economic stimulation and hardly any jobs, and can’t even seem to keep track of how the taxpayers’ money is spent.

For the sake of free market capitalism and shared prosperity, geyser economics is predicated on doing away with crony capitalism. We’re better off taking the money wasted on handouts to corporations and the ultrawealthy and investing it instead in things like affordable, debt-free education. An entire generation of young Americans is buried under a mountain of college debt. With them spending 20, 30, even 40 years paying off student loans, think of how many are putting off purchases of cars and houses and other such goods. Imagine what it would do for auto manufacturers, car dealers, home builders and realtors if we made education as affordable for today’s youth as it was for us older folks. You don’t think they’d gladly supply what legions of young Americans would suddenly be able to buy?

There’s a geyser ready to blow, if we’re smart enough to shift our attention from supply to demand.