Winning Policy Speeches for Losers
Lately, I've been working a bunch of overtime. My job doesn't grant me LJ access, to say the least. (We can, in fact, be fired for having a cell phone or MP3 player on our person that's actually on, but that's another can of silly.)
I've also been mulling the campaign speech of a new candidate that, rather than simply being elected, aims to, well, implement policies that run contrary to the zeitgeist of our current political currents and, like a spawning salmon, seed changes. Almost universally, these policies can be branded non-starters. Though I feel strongly they would work to improve the lives of a vast majority of Americans, entrenched forces would fight these policies until they die without even seeing press.
That's why I envision a radical candidate making a radical speech in a national medium, and putting these policy moves in his speech. He or she would have to be famous enough to actually get the speech covered, true; and the press would actually have to cover not just the bald spots, the stutters and the choice of garb but the content of the speech, also true.
The press would further have to be able to understand what the candidate is saying, and that proves for me the most problematical. The press are completely clueless about policy today. They are overworked, most are also underpaid, so they don't have the time to research individual policies, preferring instead to bounce new ideas off spin doctors of whatever stripe and simply rely on these pronouncements and conclusions, or to treat whack-job minority opinions with the same weight as the mainstream and call it "balance."
My problem is that I've been wanting to post the speech in a magnum opus post, but new policy angles keep rearing their heads. I've decided instead to give individual policy segments and save the lot under a new tag eponymous with this post's title. The tag implies directly that new and vibrant policy directions, if noted on the campaign trail, would disqualify the candidate from competition or office in the eyes of gatekeepers, and thus would never be mentioned. If you don't believe me, look at any presidential campaign from the last few and note the changes leading candidates had to make just to get the nod from their party - all of them. It's laughable.
I haven't decided if my candidate is running for a local, state or national office, so there will be inconsistencies in the policies as they apply. I hope you enjoy, or at least are enraged enough to comment.
Part I
Folks, I am hear because of the economic crisis that has blighted our land. We as a nation are unable to find gainful employment or a job at all. We as a nation struggle to maintain what we have while those benefits and dreams that give us hope for the future are slipping away, often by becoming too expensive to consider. We as a nation are dying the proverbial death from a thousand cuts, and more bits of sharp paper, more tiny shards of glass, more razors and even revving chainsaws appear daily on the horizon.
I stand here, though, not to fill your ears with the common pablum that passes for promise, but to tell you the truth as I see it. I don't expect many of your to accept these truths. But of those of you who do, I hope I can depend upon you to get me into office to make my speech a reality.
First of all, many of us complain how high taxes are. I agree, but conditionally. If you earn about $42,000 a year, congratulations! You are officially middle class. $42,327 per year is the current median income in the United States. You are officially overtaxed. If you earn more than that, say, just over $85,000 a year, congratulations! Only 25% of the nation's population earn more than you, and 75% of Americans earn less. Statisticians call you earning $85,811 the 75th percentile. And you, too, may be officially overtaxed.
Let me be very, very clear: If elected, I will do my level best to make sure that no one - and I mean no one - who earns less than those in the 75th percentile would pay even one dime more in taxes per year. Those earning less than those in the 50th percentile would see their taxes go steadily down.
The fact is, ladies and gentlemen, that for decades you have been fed an enormous meal of lies. High taxes do not lead to unemployment. High taxes do not lead to a stagnant economy. If you don't believe me, please, take a trip to Europe where the very wealthy pay some of the highest taxes on earth. Their economies are doing much, much better than ours. Germany's factories are running, its workers gainfully employed. It is, in fact, the number two exporting nation on the planet, even with its high taxes.
We don't have to go half way across the globe to see the benefit high taxes can make. I'll read from John Michael Greer for just a moment:
Consider an example from the not-too-distant past: a large industrial nation with a capitalist economy that had remarkably tough regulations restricting the growth of private fortunes and the abuses to which capitalist economies are so often prone. The wealthiest people in that nation paid more than 90 percent of their annual income in tax, and monopolistic practices on the part of corporations faced harsh and frequently applied judicial penalties. The financial sector was particularly tightly leashed: interest rates on savings accounts were fixed by the government, usury laws put very low caps on interest rates for loans and legal barriers prevented banks from expanding out of local markets or crossing the firewall between consumer banking and the riskier world of corporate investment. Consumer credit was so difficult to get, as a result, that most people did without it most of the time, using layaway plans and Christmas Club savings programs to afford large purchases.
According to the standard rhetoric of free market proponents these days, so rigidly controlled an economy ought by definition to be hopelessly stagnant and unproductive. This shows once again the separation of rhetoric from reality, however, for the nation I have just described was the United States during the presidency of Dwight D. Eisenhower - that is, during one of the most sustained periods of prosperity, innovation, economic development and international influence this nation has ever seen. Now of course there were many factors behind the America's 1950s success, just as there were other factors behind the decline since then; still, it's worth noting that as the economic regulations of the 1950s have been dismantled - in every case, under the pretext of boosting American prosperity - the prosperity of most Americans has gone down, not up.
(John Michael Greer, The Wealth of Nature: Economics as if Survival Mattered, New Society Publishers, 2011, pp. 196-197.)
Mr. Greer notes what I firmly believe, that people with money simply bought their way into outlets of promotion Americans access, as many as they could afford, and simply paid the messengers to spout the lie of "Taxes Bad." As their tax burden fell, they were able to buy more outlets, able to spread the "Taxes Bad" lie further and further. As the economy of our country stagnated and collapsed, as the average standard of living fell by tiny cuts from prosperity to struggle to poverty, the more the "Taxes Bad" message was amplified to the point where people actually believed it. The more manure spreaders the liars bought, the less average people noticed the bad smell and mess on their shoes.
In fact, consider an author many of these liars consider essential, the early economist Adam Smith. He is the one who coined the term "invisible hand," the observation that a free market can make the best decisions possible. He made this observation exactly once in his enormous 1776 book The Wealth of Nations. What the liars don't tell you is what else Mr. Smith wrote in his book. For example - and this should be very interesting for those of you who earn in the 50th percentile or less - he wrote,
Is this improvement in the circumstances of the lower ranks of the people to be regarded as an advantage or as an inconveniency to the society? The answer seems at first sight abundantly plain. Servants, labourers, and workmen of different kinds, make up the far greater part of every great political society. But what improves the circumstances of the greater part can never be regarded as an inconveniency to the whole. No society can surely be flourishing and happy, of which the far greater part of the members are poor and miserable. It is but equity, besides, that they who feed, cloath, and lodge the whole body of the people, should have such a share of the produce of their own labour as to be themselves tolerably well fed, cloathed, and lodged.
The liars would also have you believe that any bit of government oversight into business practice is somehow "intrusive," that oversight somehow construes "coercion." Smith saw the lie in that statement as well. Again, from the Wealth of Nations, he wrote, "People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy to raise prices."
Even in Smith's time monopolies and monopolistic practices were known well enough to be feared. The "Government Bad" liars would have you ignore this important wisdom.
Should I actually attain the elected office for which I am running, I promise that will stop with me.
First of all, I want to assure you people today that I cannot be bought. To prove it, I am asking for your campaign contributions, yes, but I will take no more than $5,000 from any person. All of my contributions will be anonymized, so if you think it would be wise to call me up in my ivory tower later and mention the startling sum you sent me, I'll be able to honestly say it is an amount that won't buy my vote.
Oh, and even though the Citizens United decision gives corporations the "right" to buy speech, I will take contributions only from natural persons.
If what I'm saying excites you and drives you to want to help with more than my limit, please, I still need your efforts. I am mobilizing an army of volunteers to do what any campaign needs.
Sadly, I suspect that my campaign will be marginalized by the press more than usual. After all, what candidate that limits his contributions has any money to spend on advertisements, and why should a television or radio station, a magazine or newspaper dedicate any reporter to follow any candidate that doesn't fatten its coffers? This is a key problem in politics today, the connection between those that make the news and the money that pays for the news.
For that reason, I am going to need volunteers to follow the news. We will document every press report made on my and my opponents' campaigns. If after my campaign we can trace a connection between negative pieces and the amount of money dedicated to advertising on the offending outlets, we will pursue legal action to the fullest extent of the law. That extent is probably not enough, but we must make Americans aware of the financial ties all viable candidates have with the mainstream press.
Americans must wake up to the fact that our press has been bought, that we are getting only the news that proves profitable, not the facts we so desperately need.
I've also been mulling the campaign speech of a new candidate that, rather than simply being elected, aims to, well, implement policies that run contrary to the zeitgeist of our current political currents and, like a spawning salmon, seed changes. Almost universally, these policies can be branded non-starters. Though I feel strongly they would work to improve the lives of a vast majority of Americans, entrenched forces would fight these policies until they die without even seeing press.
That's why I envision a radical candidate making a radical speech in a national medium, and putting these policy moves in his speech. He or she would have to be famous enough to actually get the speech covered, true; and the press would actually have to cover not just the bald spots, the stutters and the choice of garb but the content of the speech, also true.
The press would further have to be able to understand what the candidate is saying, and that proves for me the most problematical. The press are completely clueless about policy today. They are overworked, most are also underpaid, so they don't have the time to research individual policies, preferring instead to bounce new ideas off spin doctors of whatever stripe and simply rely on these pronouncements and conclusions, or to treat whack-job minority opinions with the same weight as the mainstream and call it "balance."
My problem is that I've been wanting to post the speech in a magnum opus post, but new policy angles keep rearing their heads. I've decided instead to give individual policy segments and save the lot under a new tag eponymous with this post's title. The tag implies directly that new and vibrant policy directions, if noted on the campaign trail, would disqualify the candidate from competition or office in the eyes of gatekeepers, and thus would never be mentioned. If you don't believe me, look at any presidential campaign from the last few and note the changes leading candidates had to make just to get the nod from their party - all of them. It's laughable.
I haven't decided if my candidate is running for a local, state or national office, so there will be inconsistencies in the policies as they apply. I hope you enjoy, or at least are enraged enough to comment.
Part I
Folks, I am hear because of the economic crisis that has blighted our land. We as a nation are unable to find gainful employment or a job at all. We as a nation struggle to maintain what we have while those benefits and dreams that give us hope for the future are slipping away, often by becoming too expensive to consider. We as a nation are dying the proverbial death from a thousand cuts, and more bits of sharp paper, more tiny shards of glass, more razors and even revving chainsaws appear daily on the horizon.
I stand here, though, not to fill your ears with the common pablum that passes for promise, but to tell you the truth as I see it. I don't expect many of your to accept these truths. But of those of you who do, I hope I can depend upon you to get me into office to make my speech a reality.
First of all, many of us complain how high taxes are. I agree, but conditionally. If you earn about $42,000 a year, congratulations! You are officially middle class. $42,327 per year is the current median income in the United States. You are officially overtaxed. If you earn more than that, say, just over $85,000 a year, congratulations! Only 25% of the nation's population earn more than you, and 75% of Americans earn less. Statisticians call you earning $85,811 the 75th percentile. And you, too, may be officially overtaxed.
Let me be very, very clear: If elected, I will do my level best to make sure that no one - and I mean no one - who earns less than those in the 75th percentile would pay even one dime more in taxes per year. Those earning less than those in the 50th percentile would see their taxes go steadily down.
The fact is, ladies and gentlemen, that for decades you have been fed an enormous meal of lies. High taxes do not lead to unemployment. High taxes do not lead to a stagnant economy. If you don't believe me, please, take a trip to Europe where the very wealthy pay some of the highest taxes on earth. Their economies are doing much, much better than ours. Germany's factories are running, its workers gainfully employed. It is, in fact, the number two exporting nation on the planet, even with its high taxes.
We don't have to go half way across the globe to see the benefit high taxes can make. I'll read from John Michael Greer for just a moment:
Consider an example from the not-too-distant past: a large industrial nation with a capitalist economy that had remarkably tough regulations restricting the growth of private fortunes and the abuses to which capitalist economies are so often prone. The wealthiest people in that nation paid more than 90 percent of their annual income in tax, and monopolistic practices on the part of corporations faced harsh and frequently applied judicial penalties. The financial sector was particularly tightly leashed: interest rates on savings accounts were fixed by the government, usury laws put very low caps on interest rates for loans and legal barriers prevented banks from expanding out of local markets or crossing the firewall between consumer banking and the riskier world of corporate investment. Consumer credit was so difficult to get, as a result, that most people did without it most of the time, using layaway plans and Christmas Club savings programs to afford large purchases.
According to the standard rhetoric of free market proponents these days, so rigidly controlled an economy ought by definition to be hopelessly stagnant and unproductive. This shows once again the separation of rhetoric from reality, however, for the nation I have just described was the United States during the presidency of Dwight D. Eisenhower - that is, during one of the most sustained periods of prosperity, innovation, economic development and international influence this nation has ever seen. Now of course there were many factors behind the America's 1950s success, just as there were other factors behind the decline since then; still, it's worth noting that as the economic regulations of the 1950s have been dismantled - in every case, under the pretext of boosting American prosperity - the prosperity of most Americans has gone down, not up.
(John Michael Greer, The Wealth of Nature: Economics as if Survival Mattered, New Society Publishers, 2011, pp. 196-197.)
Mr. Greer notes what I firmly believe, that people with money simply bought their way into outlets of promotion Americans access, as many as they could afford, and simply paid the messengers to spout the lie of "Taxes Bad." As their tax burden fell, they were able to buy more outlets, able to spread the "Taxes Bad" lie further and further. As the economy of our country stagnated and collapsed, as the average standard of living fell by tiny cuts from prosperity to struggle to poverty, the more the "Taxes Bad" message was amplified to the point where people actually believed it. The more manure spreaders the liars bought, the less average people noticed the bad smell and mess on their shoes.
In fact, consider an author many of these liars consider essential, the early economist Adam Smith. He is the one who coined the term "invisible hand," the observation that a free market can make the best decisions possible. He made this observation exactly once in his enormous 1776 book The Wealth of Nations. What the liars don't tell you is what else Mr. Smith wrote in his book. For example - and this should be very interesting for those of you who earn in the 50th percentile or less - he wrote,
Is this improvement in the circumstances of the lower ranks of the people to be regarded as an advantage or as an inconveniency to the society? The answer seems at first sight abundantly plain. Servants, labourers, and workmen of different kinds, make up the far greater part of every great political society. But what improves the circumstances of the greater part can never be regarded as an inconveniency to the whole. No society can surely be flourishing and happy, of which the far greater part of the members are poor and miserable. It is but equity, besides, that they who feed, cloath, and lodge the whole body of the people, should have such a share of the produce of their own labour as to be themselves tolerably well fed, cloathed, and lodged.
The liars would also have you believe that any bit of government oversight into business practice is somehow "intrusive," that oversight somehow construes "coercion." Smith saw the lie in that statement as well. Again, from the Wealth of Nations, he wrote, "People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy to raise prices."
Even in Smith's time monopolies and monopolistic practices were known well enough to be feared. The "Government Bad" liars would have you ignore this important wisdom.
Should I actually attain the elected office for which I am running, I promise that will stop with me.
First of all, I want to assure you people today that I cannot be bought. To prove it, I am asking for your campaign contributions, yes, but I will take no more than $5,000 from any person. All of my contributions will be anonymized, so if you think it would be wise to call me up in my ivory tower later and mention the startling sum you sent me, I'll be able to honestly say it is an amount that won't buy my vote.
Oh, and even though the Citizens United decision gives corporations the "right" to buy speech, I will take contributions only from natural persons.
If what I'm saying excites you and drives you to want to help with more than my limit, please, I still need your efforts. I am mobilizing an army of volunteers to do what any campaign needs.
Sadly, I suspect that my campaign will be marginalized by the press more than usual. After all, what candidate that limits his contributions has any money to spend on advertisements, and why should a television or radio station, a magazine or newspaper dedicate any reporter to follow any candidate that doesn't fatten its coffers? This is a key problem in politics today, the connection between those that make the news and the money that pays for the news.
For that reason, I am going to need volunteers to follow the news. We will document every press report made on my and my opponents' campaigns. If after my campaign we can trace a connection between negative pieces and the amount of money dedicated to advertising on the offending outlets, we will pursue legal action to the fullest extent of the law. That extent is probably not enough, but we must make Americans aware of the financial ties all viable candidates have with the mainstream press.
Americans must wake up to the fact that our press has been bought, that we are getting only the news that proves profitable, not the facts we so desperately need.