The Startling Success of the Occupy Movement-December 15, 2011

“OK so I still don’t understand what this Occupy Wall Street movement is all about.”

While the criticisms of Occupy from the Limbaughs and Gingrichs of the world are typically insulting; calling the protesters dirty thieves and rapists, and suggesting they bathe, many independents and even moderate Democrats are still trying to wrap their arms around the movement, looking for some sort of definition.

Journalists are doing the same thing; asking the same questions.

For those busy with their lives; raising kids, going to work, trying to get something out of life, it’s certainly understandable to have a sense of confusion about the millions of protesters across the world, braving cold weather, batons and pepper spray to occupy the streets, parks and public spaces across the world for a cause that so many see as indefinable.

 Journalists, however, should know better. They have the ability to go into the crowds and talk to people and compare the protests with the alarming statistical trend of the distribution of wealth and power in the United States and across the world from the middle class to the top 1 or even .001 percent of the population.

Ross Douthat, the New York Times columnist recently wrote, “The O.W.S. protesters, on the other hand, haven’t even settled on concrete political objectives. As two of the movement’s more perceptive conservative critics —Matt Continetti in the Weekly Standard and James Panero in The New Criterion — have said, many protesters seemed more interested in founding a kind of Paris Commune or Oneida Community in Zuccotti Park than in actually participating in public-policy debates.”

What these journalists and conservative critics have missed wildly is that the Occupy Movement is doing far more than finding people with nice suits and ties and seasoned Public Relations teams participating in debates on packaged talk shows.

The new reality is simple: The Occupy Wall Street Movement is now defining the economic debate in our nation. That alone makes the movement, still in its nascent stages, an extraordinary success.  

 How is that possible? They’ve inspired no real legislation or policy that has transformed our economy or brought wealth and power back to the middle class. They’ve elected no government leaders and have barely put out any press releases giving journalists the answers they are too lazy or too budget-constrained to figure out themselves.

In an earlier Muscular Liberalism Column I talked about the “Conventional Wisdom” and how Conservatives have done a masterful job of creating context for debate that creates a winning outcome before the conversation starts. They took control of the direction of the American economy when Ronald Reagan announced at his 1981 inaugural that “Government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.”  

For thirty years of well funded conservative think tanks have pushed forward millions of derivates of that Reagan mantra and created an alternate reality that has resulted in the largest distribution of American wealth from the middle class to the top 1 percent, since the Great Depression. (See link to stats on that at the end of this column).

And I believe many conservative leaders believed as recently as last August that they still had full control over the conversation. After all the Democrats, complicit in their Mondale/Dukakis/ Kerry/Gore model of “we’re not all that bad” branding of liberalism, allowed the Limbaughs of the world to walk all over them with the heavy feet of distortions, distractions and outright lies.

Barack Obama, inspiring in his election win in 2008, yet victorious mostly because the country’s economy was spiraling out of control, has in many ways reverted back to a position of trying to convince Republicans that liberals were more open to conservatism than the accusations against him claimed. 

In fact just three months ago Conservatives had full control of that conversation. During the summer of 2011 debt ceiling debacle—an effort by Republicans in the House to bring the nation to the brink of economic default  in order to win a political victory—all the talk; among Democrats and Republicans, Journalists and pundits, was how we should cut spending to get rid of the debt.

Many were even rapidly advancing the idea the most of the debt we now have in this nation was the exclusive fault of President Obama through the Stimulus and the Affordable Health Care Act. The two wars, Medicare Prescription Drug Act and massive tax cuts—unpaid for by the GOP led Congress and President Bush—were virtually ignored in their role in creating our ever growing debt.

“How much should we cut?” was the question.

Republicans asked it. Democrats asked. Anchor people asked it.

The answer came in John Boehner’s “98%” victory in those disappointing negotiations with President Obama.

Massive spending cuts in everything from Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security were on the table for chopping up and spitting out into the trash bin of history.  Once again middle class and impoverished Americans were to shoulder the burden for Wall Street greed and government deregulation.

Not today.

After 4 months of global Occupy protests there’s a new question driving the economic debate of our times.

“How can we achieve economic equality?”

Make no mistake; this is a massive and pivotal shift in the national conversation. Millions of Americans are waking up to the idea that the top 1% in the country have been playing a 30 year trick on the middle class and they are, at long last, connecting their struggling economic fortunes to the policies that created them.

For decades middle class Americans believed that their taxes were going to lazy, poor people who just wanted to feed off the public teat with their hard earned tax dollars. There’s no easier political promise than to ‘cut your taxes.’

And there’s no easier political point scoring than ‘they want to raise your taxes and give your money to people who just don’t want to work for it.’

There’s no more effective scapegoat than the fictional character created by Reagan called the ‘welfare queen’.

Yet since the Occupy Wall Street protests began, Americans are tossing out the stereotypes of the lazy good for nothing recipient of free tax dollars and coming to the harsh realization that they cannot educate their children successfully without good public schools, that they will never save the million dollars or more it will take to retire with decent health care and a roof over their heads if Medicare and Social Security are gone.

The Occupy Protests were followed directly by the Wisconsin and Ohio Tea Party supported governments seeming to blame the economic collapse of 2008 on Teachers, Firefighters and Police Officers.

The Occupy Protests were followed by Tea Party conservatives deliberately trying to keep elderly citizens, impoverished citizens and college students from voting.

And now across the landscape of both journalism and public debate the idea that we must cut, cut, cut to reduce our debt is being replaced with the clear-eyed realization that income and power inequality is now front and center at the debate.

The canary in a coalmine for the demise of the Conservative conventional wisdom came from none other than our dignified yet, far too polite President, Barack Obama. It was both shocking and refreshing to hear him say this in early December, pushing for the continuation of a payroll tax cut for 160 million Americans, paid for by a small tax increase on people earning more than $1 million a year.

"Let your members of Congress know where you stand," Obama said last week in his weekly radio and Internet address. "Tell them not to vote to raise taxes on working Americans during the holidays. Tell them to put country before party. Put money back in the pockets of working Americans.”

A couple of months ago President Obama even dared to call for the wealthiest Americans to “pay their fair share. We can't just cut our way out of this hole…If we're going to make spending cuts, many of which we wouldn't make if we weren't facing such large budget deficits, then it's only right that we ask everyone to pay their fair share,"

That’s tough talk from a President who many supporters believe has backed down far too many times.

Democrats in the House and Senate are slowly but surely unwrapping their inner FDR and with less and less fear going after adding more welfare for the rich.

In fact I think many Progressives were happily shocked that none of the Democrats on the so-called ‘Super Committee’ caved into the Republicans on that committee. They refused to agree cuts without revenue increases.

Since the Republicans in the Senate used the filibuster to prevent the American people from getting a fair vote on the entire jobs bill, President Obama and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid decided to put it in front of the Senate in a piecemeal fashion. First was the $35 million package that would have gone directly to states and localities to hire teachers and schools workers and police officers, firefighters and first responders.

With the Tea Party giving orders in the House and Mitch McConnell adding to his historic record of filibustering in the Senate, there’s little chance any provision would be passed. But for once the Democrats are pushing forward and President Obama is talking the talk.

"For the second time in two weeks, every single Republican in the United States Senate has chosen to obstruct a bill that would create jobs and get our economy going again," Obama said in a statement after the vote. "Every American deserves an explanation as to why Republicans refuse to step up to the plate and do what's necessary to create jobs and grow the economy right now."

A breakthrough did happen however because even the Republicans couldn’t deny tax breaks for businesses that hire Iraq and Afghanistan Vets. And while some booed Michelle Obama for appearing at a NASCAR race to promote the hiring of America’s returning soldiers and Rush Limbaugh called her “uppity” in his daily dog whistle to white racist working class voters, few others in the Fox-right wing political movement joined in on the critique of our most dignified First Lady.

Poll after poll shows large majorities of Americans, 60% and more, favor raising taxes on the Americans making more than $200,000 a year to balance the budget and pay for jobs programs to jump start the economy.

Occupy is both responsible for this change in attitude and at the same time represents a very clear reflection of the sense that Americans are no longer in lock step with the ‘my-tax-dollars-are-going-to-lazy-people-who don’t-want-to-work’ attitude that prevailed in America since the Reagan Revolution against the middle class.

Furthermore the Occupy movement has put wind the sails of formerly frightened Democrats who are now going into the Christmas holiday fighting for the payroll tax cut and millionaire tax increase.

Even Frank Lutz, the pollster who has helped create much of the deceitful language of the right for the last 20 years, sees the effect of the Occupy movement. Lutz said recently that he is “scared of this anti-Wall Street effort. I’m frightened to death.” The pollster warned that the movement is “having an impact on what the American people think of capitalism.” 

And the American people are waking up to very clear and undeniable evidence of the massive redistribution of wealth from the middle class to the top 1%.

No one can say for sure whether the Occupy movement inspired President Obama’s striking December 5^th Kansas speech promoting Progressive economics and demanding the end to Supply Side Economics, but it’s become quite clear he feels much more secure about painting a broad picture of the failure of Conservative economics.

“The theory of “trickle down economics…It’s a simple theory — one that speaks to our rugged individualism and healthy skepticism of too much government. It fits well on a bumper sticker. Here’s the problem: It doesn’t work. It’s never worked.”

I cannot imagine Walter Mondale, John Kerry, Michael Dukakis and Al Gore circa 2000 making that kind of bold statement.

The Occupy movement has compelled even the most frightened Democrats to finally stand up for the truth of Progressive Economics and the failure of Conservative economics.

Occupy may not put out well crafted press releases delivered by men and women in sharp suits and coiffed hair-dos. But these protesters are now occupying the American debate and beginning to drive the American conventional wisdom toward a far more truthful and factual debate.

That will translate into something very different when 2012 comes around.

(FOR A GOOD LOOK AT THE TRENDS IN ECONOMIC INEQUALITY IN THE LAST 30 YEARS CHECK OUT THESE STARTLING STATITSTICS ON THE RISE OF INCOME INEQUALITY IN AMERICA)  

http://motherjones.com/politics/2011/02/income-inequality-in-america-chart-graph

October 22, 2011

If Barack Obama wins a second term and Democrats gain big in Congress in 2012, we will all look back to September/October 2011 as the launching pad for this rocket to significant change in the United States.

I say this fully aware that Liberals have a unique ability to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory so this is, in some ways, a cautionary tale. 

But many things changed in this pivotal two month period to redirect the philosophies that guide our nation. Four key factors are transforming both the conversation and the conventional wisdom in America. These factors have all come together this autumn, 2011, to create this significant pivot point for America. 

 From the summer Health Care Reform battles of 2009 through the 2010 mid-term elections and up to the Debt Ceiling Debate, President Obama and Progressives found themselves playing  defense, their typical position on issues from  the Stimulus to Health Care Reform to debt to the ‘weak on defense’ stereotype.

Then the air started to cool, the leaves began to saturate with color and the all powerful Conservative movement began to weaken and wilt.

Here’s why:

 Factor 1: The Jon Stewart/ Stephen Colbert/ Bill Maher/ MSNBC phenomenon. Laugh if you must but these people, using everything from brilliant satire to well researched facts to a barrage of video taped busts of conservative hypocrisy, have leveled the playing field with Fox “News” , helping viewers on the liberal side codify their arguments. Progressives have long had the frustrating tendency to try to explain economic conditions in the most professorial terms while Conservatives were brilliant at creating bumper sticker ideology. 

Bless his heart but Barack Obama never stood a chance trying to convince the American people that Health Care Exchanges were something to rally behind when Sarah Palin was scaring the bejesus out of everyone with her fake Death Panel accusations (the modern day Welfare Queen). 

The relentless pursuit of, not just the truth, but a new way to convey the truth, by Stewart, Colbert, Maher, Olberman, Maddow, Mathews and O’Donnell, have given Liberals a new way to talk that put matters into perspective.  And the fact that they never relented, never gave up the argument as liberals so often do has had a long term effect.    

It’s very difficult now for a Conservative like Eric Cantor to make a statement, say, calling Occupy Wall Street Protesters a ‘mob’ without one of these communicators pulling up the video of racists slogans, guns and the heckling of the disabled from Tea Party rallies and town halls that Cantor has supported from the very beginning. 

When Michelle Bachmann slams the Stimulus, it takes less than one news cycle for a Rachel Maddow or Lawrence O’Donnell to pull a quote from Bachmann lobbying for Stimulus funds for her district because she knows it will create jobs. While it’s tragic these “Infortainers” are doing the jobs journalists should be doing, their efforts are no less effective because they expose the ugly truth. 

And now all these entities have longevity and mainstream credibility. Maher has been at it since 1993 beginning with Politically Incorrect and then Real Time on HBO. Stewart is beloved and his brilliant satire is usually replayed by all the morning shows the next day like David Letterman’s Top Ten List used to in the 90s. 

The information they are presenting is out there. Conservatives can no longer cloak their misinformation and hypocrisy behind the frightened, under resourced and lazy journalism industry. 

Factor 2: The face of the Conservatism:  When we think of the conservative movement these days, we rarely think of Reagan, Kemp, Eisenhower and Dole. Instead the face of this movement is Palin, Bachmann, Perry, Gingrich, Beck and Limbaugh. With the people in Factor 1 leveling a daily barrage of truth, the face of conservatism has lost respect from independent and middle of the road thinkers who could be easily swayed one direction or another.

The Republican primary debates have been a disaster for Republicans. Americans don’t hate gays and lesbians anymore. Most people know someone who is gay or lesbian and understands they are humans who are biologically born that way. So when Bachmann’s husband tries to convert them, or audience members in a Republican debate boo a gay soldier who is putting his life on the line for the American flag, that’s not inspiring anyone. 

 And it’s being replayed and replayed and replayed for all to see. 

When Herman Cain says people who don’t have a job and are not rich must be lazy, the millions of men and women who have been trying desperately to find a replacement for the job they lost when CEOs of a large corporations found it more profitable to lay off thousands at a time, don’t just disagree, they are insulted. And what’s more, they understand now more than ever that the Republicans are representing the richest 1 percent in our society, the largest corporations and not the other 99%. 

Sarah Palin is one of the keys here. Tea Partiers absolutely love her. They worship her. 50+ Conservative men have the hots for her. Conservative women see her as an inspiration. But Sarah Palin proved to be a woman of little substance, extraordinary ignorance, high school level pettiness and, frankly a liar. From the Bridge to Nowhere lie at the 2008 GOP convention to death panels and lies about Obama being a pal of terrorists, Sarah Palin has lost her allure. When someone speaks passionately of family values and abstinence while everyone knows she let her daughter’s, boyfriend stay overnight in the house while impregnating her, then her arguments become nothing more than a house of well coiffed cards. 

Replayed and replayed and replayed by the Factor 1 crowd and spread like wildfire on Facebook. . 

Sarah Palin still represents, in a spiritual and cultural way, the modern Conservative movement. That’s very bad for conservatives. Palin’s credibility was all but destroyed among middle of the road thinkers a few nights after the horrific shooting in Arizona that left a 9 year old bright and engaging girl dead and Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords with a bullet in her head.

Hours before President Obama gave one of the most calming and galvanizing speeches of his life; a memorial to 9 year old Christina Taylor Green, Sarah Palin was bemoaning the fact that she felt everyone was blaming her for the shooting. Sarah made it all about Sarah, while her sworn enemy, President Obama made it all about that little girl and the brave Congresswoman and asked us as a nation to stop belittling and insulting each other. 

From booing Iraq War soldiers, to the applause from Cain when he blamed joblessness on the jobless, from the audience members cheering the idea of letting a hypothetical uninsured man die, these debates have been an absolute disaster for Republicans. They may very well recover with Mitt Romney, the only sensible candidate in the entire race, but he will not get the support of the Tea Party crowd and most importantly, Rush Limbaugh in the general election. Those voters will stay home. 

Besides, Rush makes more money when a political opponent is in office. 

Factor 3: Obama the Steamroller: Many of us who are used to President Obama following inspirational speeches with months of badly played negotiations behind doors, were surprised to see him standing in front of the Brent Spence Bridge that borders’ Mitch McConnell’s Kentucky and John Boehner’s Ohio, demanding that the bridge and other public works projects be fixed. We were equally surprised to see the President call out McConnell, Boehner and House Majority Leader Eric Cantor by name in shaming them for their obstruction of his Jobs Bill. 

But the President didn’t stop there. He has been touring across the country making statements that are nothing less than left hooks to the jaws of the right wing. "Well you know what? If asking a billionaire to pay the same tax rate as a plumber or teacher makes me a warrior for the working class, I'll wear that charge as a badge of honor…Because the only class warfare I've seen is the battle that's been waged against the middle class in this country for a decade."

Those kinds of statements are a complete transformation of the conventional wisdom in America. For so many years progressives have taken defensive stands on the class warfare accusation. The President has given a very clear signal that those days may be over. 

Obama has been relentless; moving across the country, from Texas to North Carolina, from Virginia, from Colorado to Nevada; a state with low taxes, very little regulation and perhaps the most depressed economy in the nation. 

Then the President and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid made a very smart strategic move.  Yes I said it. They made a smart strategic move. 

 They broke up the bill and forced the Senate to once again filibuster a segment of the Jobs Billl; this one called, “Teachers, First Responders Back to Work Act.” denying funding for provide funding for Teachers, police officers and first responders. To pay for it every millionaire would pay a 5% increase in taxes for every dollar earned over a million. 

Reid will no doubt put more of these bills up for a vote. They will lose every one of them to the GOP filibuster, adding to the absurd record of more filibusters than at any time in American history. Americans will continue to see Republicans vote against building and fixing roads and bridges, electrical grids and sewage systems. They will see Republicans obstructing the hiring of teachers and police officers. And they will see Republicans` railing against tax hikes on the likes of millionaires like Eric Cantor.  

Once again the President channeled the spirit of Franklin Roosevelt in a visit to conservative leaning Chesterfield County, Virginia; the heart of Eric Cantor’s district. “If they vote against these proposals, if they say ‘no’ to steps we know that will put people back to work right now, they’re not going to have to answer to me. They’re going to have to answer to you.”

Polls show the President’s relentless verbal attack is gaining significant traction. An NBC News/Wall Street journal poll that asked about a bill that “would cut payroll taxes, fund new road construction, extend unemployment benefits, and that it would be paid for by increasing taxes on the wealthy -- 63 percent say they favor the bill and 32 percent oppose it.”

And then of course there were the photos of the bloodied and now dead brutal dictator Muammar Gaddafi. Not only did every single Republican of significance berate President Obama when he moved forward with his strategy of the United States’ involvement in the NATO action to protect the Rebels and civilians in the overthrow of Libya’s government, they also continued to criticize him after his strategy was as clearly vindicated as vindication gets. 

The following day the President announced plans to get America the hell out of Iraq by the end of the year. Once again the GOP went after him, giving Americans a stark reminder of how so many were called unpatriotic for not believing George Bush and Dick Cheney in their buildup to that foolish and deadly war.

40 years of Progressives playing defense on Defense ended at the same time the Colonel’s heart stopped beating. 

Factor 4: Occupy Movement: This movement is becoming more and more powerful every day. From a small group we read about in Facebook in early September to massive protests of hundreds of thousands of people across the world, Eric Cantor’s description of these people as “mobs”  did not appeal to middle of the road thinkers. 

As Fox “News”, Limbaugh, Cantor and the rest of the righty crowd tried to use the same old tired tactics to paint a negative portrait of these protesters, more and more Americans who are struggling every day in the wake of Wall Street greed, ignored those insults and quickly identified with the protesters.

Limbaugh had several gems in describing the senior citizens, construction workers, police officers, working parents and young students in the Occupy movement that spread quickly across the nation.

 "Pure, Genuine Parasites,"

 "Bored Trust Fund Kids" 

"Perpetually Lazy, Spoiled Rotten, 99 Percent White Kids".

The red meat Dittoheads in Rush Nation loved it. The rest of American ignored him. John Stewart ridiculed him. And Rush’s ludicrous insults were played and replayed and replayed to equal ridicule.

As the Occupy Protests have grown and gathered attention, something else has happened that hasn’t happened, frankly, since Ronald Reagan came on the scene and created a 3 decade long 

conventional wisdom; the Conservative side of the conversation is no longer in the forefront. 

Journalists and modern day Democrats are no longer accepting the Conservative conventional wisdom that liberals want to give hard earned middle class tax dollars over to lazy people who don’t want to work. 

The new narrative is now in the forefront. The top 1% have followed the immoral philosophy of greed to the tipping point, putting the rest of the country on a path to economic devastation. 

 And now all of these hard working and devoted parents and grandparents, soldiers and police officers and teachers, construction workers and students working their way through school, are no longer distracted by birth certificates and death panels. 

Autumn, 2011 may well prove to be the shot of real change heard around the world.

President Barack Obama, reflecting the Hawaiian culture where he was raised, spent the last three years reaching out to his political opponents in a quixotic effort at bipartisan American harmony.   

This noble effort in the face of unrelenting character assassination by the Conservative movement reminded me of former Senator Tom Daschle after George W. Bush gave the best speech of his life. The speech, delivered from the halls of Congress, united the entire nation following  September 11^th attacks on America. 

I remember Daschle, then the Senate Majority Leader, hugging Bush after the speech. It appeared real and heartfelt and was followed by Daschle delivering on his support. In the months that followed 9-11, Daschle delivered everything from the Patriot Act to the Afghanistan War for Bush. Democrats saw this as a time to unify behind our President, even though many believed he didn’t legitimately win the 2000 election. 

But as the Bush-Cheney Administration was picking up steam to go into Iraq and some Democrats were calling for the President to slow down, here is what Bush had to say, "The Senate is more interested in special interests in Washington and not interested in the security of the American people."

The mild mannered and compromising Tom Daschle hugged the president and his hug was returned with a metaphoric knife in the back.   

This has been the case with President Obama and the Republican Party, which is now dominated by the Tea Party movement. The genteel President, hoping to create a new way of finding areas of agreement, reached out to Republicans, included their ideas into legislative negotiations and talked and talked and talked. 

And what did Boehner, McConnell, Cantor and company do? Merely breaking off negotiations was not enough. They accused the President of being against the well being and long term viability of the American economy. Sound familiar?

So many of us have been waiting and waiting for President Obama to put his Hawaiian roots aside and channel the muscular liberalism of Franklin Roosevelt who displayed no fear of calling out his political opponents in 1936.  

"For twelve years this nation was afflicted with hear-nothing, see-nothing, do-nothing Government. The Nation looked to Government but the Government looked away. We had to struggle with the old enemies of peace: business and financial monopoly, speculation, reckless banking, class antagonism, sectionalism, war profiteering. Never before in all our history have these forces been so united against one candidate as they stand today. They are unanimous in their hate for me and I welcome their hatred."

Those words convinced the country that policies needed to change and they did. It wasn’t a negotiation with Congress that convinced them to end the Depression by enacting the New Deal. It was a discussion with the nation, who then pressured their members of Congress.

 From Roosevelt to Kennedy to Johnson to Reagan and Bush, Presidents who have been able to convince the people that their policies are best for the country create not only a negotiating edge with Congress, they put electoral pressure on Congress to break from their fears and obligations to the moneyed interests and do what the people demand. 

President Obama took his first step toward this approach when he spoke to Congress and presented his Jobs Bill. Then he continued to pressure Congress with fiery speeches that at long last didn’t include an appeasement to Republicans or an apology for showing off his Progressive philosophy. 

“Now, you’re already hearing the Republicans in Congress dusting off the old talking points,” he said. “You can write their press releases. ‘Class warfare,’ they say. You know what? If asking a billionaire to pay the same rate as a plumber or a teacher makes me a warrior for the middle class, I wear that charge as a badge of honor."

FDR would have been delighted. 

But he wasn’t done. President Obama laid it on thick, calling out his two most powerful antagonists, Senate Minority Leader and Filibuster-in-Chief Mitch McConnell and Speaker of the House John Boehner on their own turf.  The President spoke in the shadows of the Brent Spence Bridge that carries two interstates connecting Kentucky and Ohio over the Ohio River. The bridge is in bad shape, Obama called it ‘functionally obsolete” and needs either a $2.4 billion repair job or replacement. Obama says his Jobs Bill will speed up the repair/replacement process and Boehner and McConnell are preventing the repair of their own constituents’ bridges.  "Mr. Boehner, Mr. McConnell, help us rebuild this bridge," Obama said. "Help us rebuild America. Help us put this country back to work. Pass this Jobs Bill right away."

 President Obama has been quite aggressive in support of his two big proposals, ending the debt with a combination of large spending cuts and increasing taxes on millionaires and billionaires, and his $447 billion Jobs Bill. 

The nerdy pencil-necked big-eared geek from Aloha Land just punched the bullies in the nose. And as many of us have been predicting for decades, the bullies whined like five year olds.

McConnell: "If a bridge needs fixing, by all means, let's fix it. But don't tell us we need to pass a half a trillion dollar stimulus bill and accept job-killing tax hikes to do it.

Boehner : “It's a very simple equation. Tax increases destroy jobs.” 

 Eric Cantor’s office issued a statement saying the cuts in what the top 2% can deduct on charitable donations will drop and therefore Obama deficit reduction is a “tax on soup kitchens.”

Fox “News” Senior Business Correspondent and alleged journalist, Dennis Kneale:  “How is it that his (Warren Buffet’s) company, though it reaps billions, it pays very low in taxes? You know what? He's allowed to do that. He should do that. We should hold onto as much of our money as we can. We'll make the economy better not worse.”

This whining by the bullies who also, get this, accused President Obama of taking his ball and going home, is exactly the response many of us, who have been hoping for a more aggressive posture by the President, believed would happen. And their whining paints them into a very difficult corner. At every turn, while millions of Americans are barely making ends meet, barely paying the monthly bills, barely hanging on to their mortgages and competing against hundreds of people for the same jobs, they see the  Republicans whine about the top 2% of the wealthiest people in the country having to play a role in balancing our budget and creating jobs. 

Every statistical evaluation of the Bush years show that tax cuts for the so-called job creators—millionaires  like Eric Cantor—did  not create jobs; instead jobs sunk through the wormhole of the Wall Street and economic meltdown in 2008. And when Obama gave in and allowed passage of another extension of the Bush tax cuts for the “job creators’ in December 2010, we saw no uptick in job increases. 

And the response by other progressive thinker has forcefully dispelled the myths the Limbaugh crowd have been pushing around for 30 years. Tax cuts for the wealthy do not create jobs and tax increases on the top earners are not ‘job killers’. 

It’s very simple. During the Clinton Administration when taxes on the top 2% were increased we saw a 22 million jobs increase. 

During the Bush Administration we saw huge tax cuts with only 3 million jobs created and a hemorrhaging of jobs at the end of the Bush administration, with 700,000 jobs falling by the wayside every month. 

What we’re seeing now in the wake of Obama’s proposals is…more of the same. If the President would have offered $2 trillion in tax cuts and $1 billion in tax increases, we would have heard the exact same rhetoric and Obama would be negotiating from a very bad position.

But now we see the same cloud of whining as the President forcefully offers up his Progressive proposal to balance our budget and bring jobs back to American workers. 

Despite what Bill Maher says, I believe the American people will get it, eventually. As Muhammad Ali would say, “They’re not as dumb as they look.” I think most Americans are simply too busy to pay attention. When they do, they get it. When the President speaks out forcefully, they listen. And then they get it. 

 I also believe Democrats are very much to blame for many Americans not getting it thus far. From Carter to Mondale, from Dukakis to Gore to Kerry and at times Obama, Democrats have cowered at the firestorm of Limbaugh inspired accusations about Liberalism. They have more or less apologized for their beliefs and defended themselves as ‘not as bad as you think.’ At the same time the so-called journalists in our world are so frightened of being labeled liberally biased, they overlook crucial facts and report the inaccurate statements of Conservatives as if they were true. But what they don’t understand and what so many Democrats haven’t understood is this simple truth. Even if you abide by their wishes to the letter, the Conservatives will always label you as an unpatriotic, anti-American, big tax, big government cult. 

So if they’re going to lie and whine when you are cooperative, then why not just state what’s true? Put the Progressive truth up against the Conservative story. Be aggressive about it and put them in the position of defending the idea that the wealthiest among us should not contribute to the two wars, the Medicare drug plan and the recovery of our economy.

 We can’t afford to wait for Rick Perry to be president for the American people to get it. Republicans are their own worst political enemies when they are in a position to govern. That’s because when they go ultra conservative, jobs are lost, debt is increased and gap between the very rich and the middle class grows wider and wider. 

But President Obama has put himself in a position (hopefully not too late) to change the conversation and put the Republicans on the defensive.

Of course the GOP House is not going to ‘pass this bill’. They will only pass a bill that has draconian cuts to everything from education to Medicare. But if the nation is convinced, if the American people see both positions with clarity, they will pressure many of these Republicans to relent, or vote them out in 2012. 

President Obama has finally begun to talk the talk. But he must not retreat into his familiar conciliatory position.  He must continue to demand that they give in.  

He must now walk the walk.  

 His presidency and the future of the middle class and impoverished among us, are at stake.