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President Obama made a strong stab at outlining a progressive narrative last night that envisions a nation where "everybody plays by the same rules." It's a pretty simple idea, tapping the powerful American ideal of egalitarianism -- that all of us should get a "fair shot" and that nobody is too high and mighty not to be held responsible for their actions.
All presidential candidates jettison long-held beliefs in exchange for political gain. One need look only as far back as the last election, when Barack Obama professed opposition to gay marriage, despite being on record as a proponent as early as 1996, and John McCain came out against the DREAM Act -- legislation he'd actually cosponsored two years earlier.
Over the last year, the American public has been inundated with conservative austerity arguments. Medicaid and Medicare needed to be reined in (or handed over to the states entirely, according Paul Ryan), unemployment insurance was, at times, too costly a burden for the nation, and even heating oil subsidies to poor families had to be cut if the economy was going to rebound. All of this formed to core of the Republican economic orthodoxy. Cut to stimulate was the motto and everything else was deemed voodoo economics.
I wrote last week about how we can shift our tax model to taxing things that are harmful, like pollution, and away from taxing things that are productive, like work and wealth creation. But, there has been little discussion in the mainstream on this issue, even though tax reform is almost certainly set to become a top issue in Washington in the next year or two, with both parties agreeing that the tax system is due for an overhaul.
A comfortable formula has emerged in the past decade for dealing with corporate crime, and it goes like this: Government authorities amass evidence of wrongdoing, confront malefactors with this evidence, and then the two sides agree to a "settlement" to resolve the charges.
Citizens United, the misbegotten Supreme Court case granting corporations the right to spend unlimited money to influence elections, has entered its terrible twos.