Easing America into the Future Economy

ILLUSTRATED: Democrats want a fiscally strong government, a national healthcare risk pool, and permanent access to quality education and training.
All marketers and psychologists know that most people are romantic and comfortable with the past, but fearful of the future. Politicians know that too. Many, perhaps most of them, take the low road and play off of fears of social and economic change. It is hard to optimistically project a vision of the future. Most politicians lack the verbal skills required so they take the low road.
The future can be scary with talk of closing factories and “new technologies”. Yikes! People weren’t educated for jobs in “new technologies”. Progressive (in the generic sense) Democrats need to be sensitive that massive layoffs ravage the social stability in those communities.
But the fact is a static American business is one that will eventually be caught up with overseas more cheaply. In the long run, a vibrant economy of percolating businesses is the best way America stays ahead and keep the best standard of living.
But before you explain the inevitable, ease your friends and neighbors into the future by mentioning that Democrats want a fiscally strong government, a national healthcare risk pool, and permanent access to quality education and training.
More specifically:
-The American economy should be a bubbling pot of new technologies and business ideas. Our advantage is still our brainpower, and its ideas can best be unleashed with 1) low interest rates (that means lowering the deficit by taxing the rich), 2) incentivizing savings and investment, 3) more aggressive antitrust enforcement, and 4) a healthy dose of investment from a government that believes in science and technology.
-Create a national risk pool for health insurance. It will cut costs for businesses big and small, as well as provide a sense of security.
-Persuade all Americans that they will regularly be returning to classrooms throughout their lives. Oh…and of course the government will help provide instructors for those classrooms from early childhood through senior citizenship.

How to explain Bush vs. Democrats

ILLUSTRATED: Point for point, how to explain why they're wrong, and how we are right.

An excellent article by Richard Reeves offers a succinct critique of the Bush Administration. But not to simply whine about what’s wrong, here is how to explain in PLAIN ENGLISH how Democrats will improve things.

· He has taken the country into an unwinnable war and alienated friend and foe alike in the process;
· He is bankrupting the country with a combination of aggressive military spending and reduced taxation of the rich;
· He has deliberately and dangerously attacked separation of church and state;
· He has repeatedly "misled," to use a kind word, the American people on affairs domestic and foreign;
· He has proved to be incompetent in affairs domestic (New Orleans) and foreign
(Iraq and the battle against al-Qaida);
· He has sacrificed American employment (including the toleration of pension and benefit elimination) to increase overall productivity;
· He is ignorantly hostile to science and technological progress;
· He has tolerated or ignored one of the republic's oldest problems, corporate cheating in supplying the military in wartime.

How we respond:
-Democrats will reach out to the Sunnis politically, and win their trust by drawing down our troop levels. We will being a massive diplomatic outreach effort to rebuild the international system that Truman built and Bush destroyed.

-We will bring back the tax rate on the wealthy to that during the Clinton Economy. We will have rules that any spending, must be paid for up front, not on credit.

-Churches are actually strengthened when the government is not paying them. Democrats will work with faith based groups for mutual goals, but we will not outsource basic government functions to churches.

-Democrats will restore integrity and trust. First by holding government officials accountable.
Government is for the public interest. Competent managers will be in place to urn the government. Democrats will provide you the services you deserve, and not waste your money.

-The most pro-business thing the government could do is to have a big healthcare risk pool for businesses to buy into. Contracts with workers should be honored just like any other contract.

-Science will be supported, from your kid’s classroom, to federal funding for lab research.

-War profiteering must stop. It is your tax money for troops being stolen by companies.

The Weak Link in the Iron Triangle

ILLUSTRATED: The key point that the Right is beating us is translating policy into poetry.
I see the Right Wing as a solid triangular flow of power and influence. At one point is the Academy with think tanks and conservative professors who conceive of policies and legal theories. At another point is the media, including talk shows, columns, and of course, a certain cable news channel. The last point is the Republican political establishment, from the precinct captains up to their elected officials. The three points flow well amongst each other. The key point in the value chain is discussed below…
But first the illustration that gave me this paradigm, the Reagan Revolution. In the late 1970s a professor at USC named Art Laffer came up with the idea that a tax cut would so stimulate the economy it would actually increase government revenues. He drew a picture of the “Laffer Curve” on the back of a napkin to Jude Wanniski, an editorial writer of the Wall Street Journal. They came up with the phrase “Supply Side Economics”. The Congressman Jack Kemp ran with the idea and passed the Kemp-Roth Tax Bill of 1981. Laffer developed the idea in the Academy, Wanniski promoted it in the Media, and Kemp implemented it in the Political Arena.
The key point in the value chain is the point where the Right Wing translates policy prose into campaign poetry (that’s what this blog is for, hence the subtitle). The key point was when Laffer and Wanniski drew a picture on a napkin and came up with a catchy phrase. That is the point were the Right Wing is really beating us.A lot is made about “billions of dollars in right wing think tanks in the last 30 years”. I think it is overblown. We have our think tanks: Stanford, Harvard, and Yale. Professors are overwhelmingly liberal, that’s why the conservatives created their fake universities. We need to translate the law review articles and studies from our universities and translate them into plain language. Add your ideas please….