Category: politics

Is Jon Bon Jovi the Key to the Supercommittee Tax Compromise? (This Is Not the FarmAid You’re Looking For)

~ Chris Cocca ~ 3 Comments
James Coburn in Charade2
If only.

Maybe so.

As The Hill notes today:

A leading Senate conservative is taking aim at tax breaks that he says amount to welfare for millionaires, a line of critique that usually comes from liberal Democrats.

Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) released a report detailing special tax breaks for wealthy income earners that could give members of the supercommittee common ground for raising tax revenues.

And just who are these welfare millionaires? Oil executives and bankers, every last one of them, right? Well, not exactly. From The Daily Caller:

Wealthy celebrities including Bruce Springsteen, Jon Bon Jovi, Quincy Jones and Ted Turner have received federal subsidies, according to “Subsidies of the Rich and Famous,” a new report from the office of Oklahoma Republican Senator Tom Coburn.

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) identified several individuals receiving farm payments “whose professions had nothing to do with farming or agricultur[e],” says the report. These individuals include real-estate developer Maurice Wilder, a “part-owner of a professional sports franchise [who] received total of more than $200,000 in farm program payments in 2003, 2004, 2005, and 2006.”

The report also says millionaires Jon Bon Jovi, Bruce Springsteen and Ted Turner have collected farm subsidies.

“These individuals include Scottie Pippen and Ted Turner, respectively. Millionaires also receive state tax breaks on farm land. For example, Jon Bon Jovi paid property taxes of only $100 last year on his extensive real estate holdings in New Jersey that he uses to raise bees. At the same time, Bruce Springsteen received farm subsidies because he leases his property to an organic farmer,” the report explains.

Oh, super-rich artists.  I respect and admire your endeavors in sustainable agriculture, horticulture, apiculture and so on.  We need better ways forward with regard to farming practices and safe food supplies.  But subsidies for millionaire gentlemen farmers?  We, the working poor and middle class, paying for Bon Jovi’s bees? If there’s an Occupy New Jersey, maybe they can move it on over to JBJ’s Bees of Glory Apiary Prototype Community of Tomorrow.

Let’s keep railing at Wall Street and Congress, but let’s also rail at people who identify with the working poor and middle class on one level, have made zillions of dollars doing so, and whose agribusiness is being paid for by those same working people.  Talk about double and triple taxation.  We buy their music, go to their shows, and help fund their farms with our taxes?  And the they is people like Bon Jovi or, even more incongruously, Bruce Springsteen?  How can this be?  Bruce, listen to Nebraska again and get back to us.
Jon Bon Jovi on stage live at Dublin May 2006.
Apiarist.

Disclaimer:  I don’t own so much as a Bon Jovi single.  But I’ve seen them in concert (and they were awesome, so there).   Bruce Springsteen is one of my favorite artists of all time.  Brucie, baby, I expect you to fix this.  Let’s get you on up to Capitol Hill for some hearings where you’ll say things like, “yeah, man, I don’t need that subsidy stuff.  Save that for the real working farmers.  Shit.”

Thanks, Boss.

But “Venn” Is Just So Fun to Say!

~ Chris Cocca ~ 1 Comment

A few days ago, I shared this schematic and called it a “Venn Diagram for the New Revolution.”:

One reader responded thusly:

“except the statement in the middle neither says that the government has too much power nor is part of the tea party opinion pool

conclusion: the author neither understands venn diagrams nor political opinions.”

I’m glad she/he did so, because it brings up an important point I should articulate further:

The daily talking points from the Libertarian Party, which I understand is NOT the Tea Party as such but draws form the same well, tows this line: “corporations have too much power because the government has too much power.” Even though strong elements in the Tea Party believe that limited government inevitably means more real power for corporations (and crazily, they’re okay with that), I do believe that there’s an equally sizable pool that agrees with corresponding parts of OWS on the idea that both corporations and the government have too much power, and that the problem is self-sustaining. Yes, a simple diagram doesn’t get at these nuances. But it’s helpful for people who believe as do I and many readers that powerful constituencies in OWS and the TP could collaborate in meaningful ways.

Who Is the American Middle? Almost Everyone You’ve Ever Known Is Crazy (but Might Not Know it Yet)

~ Chris Cocca ~ 3 Comments
CRAZY LIKE A ME!

Who is the American Middle that has the power to make the 2012 election something different?

Most people reading this post.  That huge nexus of overlap between the responsible Tea Partiers and the responsible Occupiers.  The employed. The unemployed.  The insured and uninsured.  Homebuilders and homeless.  Students with too much debt, families without enough food.

A reader writes:  “I know you joke about your Kuccinich/Paul dream ticket, but I go one step further: it takes a group of crazy D’s and a group of crazy R’s putting aside all that easily divides them and works toward helping real people overcome the big government and big business working against them. What a concept?”

What a concept.  I hereby propose the noble and wrongly-maligned fox as the symbol of the next American electoral revolution.  If crazy is Ds, Rs, Is, TPs, OWSs all working together for the kind of change we need, I’m crazy all day long.

Ross Perot Was Not My High School History Teacher (The Election’s Not Achtung Baby)

~ Chris Cocca ~ Leave a comment
Ross Perot at the United States Department of ...
Not my 11th-grade history teacher.

This grew out of a response to comments by Mr. Salk and Chad Hogg (not a friend of Buddy Roemer, necessarily), but I thought I’d share it here, lest ye forget, lest, as my 11th-grade history teacher used to say, ye be bored.

Before Perot left the race in ’92 (only to come back later), he was polling double digits nationally, leading many or most of them. He was at 39% at one point in the cycle. In a three-way race, obviously, that’s saying something. Yes, his numbers started to fall as the summer went on and he made some critical blunders (or was compromised by outside forces, which he claimed).

Could he have ever won in the first place? It’s not likely, but it’s conceivable. Had he not dropped out of the race under bizarre circumstances, only to come back later, I do believe he would have polled the 20 percent nationally required for federal funds. That whole process itself is out to lunch, but it would have made enabled Perot to build what could be, by now, a truly viable third party. If if if if.

Incidentally, Perot advocated for electronic town hall style democracy 20 years ago. That’s actually possible now. Nevermind the fact that he owned an IT/data company with government contracts at the time…

Around here, we all know I heart the 90s.  But this “we’re really done with you, Republicans and Democrats” thing isn’t just some flight of nostalgic fancy.  It’s not that Legends of the Hidden Temple marathon you watched a few weeks ago or the forthcoming Achtung Baby reissue.   Still, the changes in the air in early 90s Europe resonate with me here, and that’s not just because of how hard the Scorpions rock.

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Americans Elect: Common Ground Between Tea Partiers and Occupiers of Good Will?

~ Chris Cocca ~ 10 Comments
Citizens registered as an Independent, Democra...
Image via Wikipedia

Our good friend Chad alerted me to the Americans Elect project a few months ago in a comment here on The Daily Cocca.  Americans Elect aims to by-pass the major parties and nominate a centrist candidate directly on the internet.  I love the concept, and yesterday’s post about the Tea Party and Occupy needing to recognize common ground comes from same anxiety that motivate most third-party pushes on a popular level.  Since the head’s up from Chad, I’ve been getting Americans Elect email updates and have been quietly following their presence on Twitter.  We’ve all learned to be cautious about these kinds of things, and I’m far from saying that Americans Elect will be the vehicle to bring substantive change over the next decade, but it certainly could be one important piece to the puzzle of which Occupy and the Tea Party are clearly a part.

In addition to having an outstanding name, Doyle McManus has a  piece up about Americans Elect in today’s LA Times.  An excerpt:

Americans Elect is a collection of Republicans, Democrats and independents who say they’re fed up with the polarization that has poisoned American politics. Some of its backers have previously contributed to Obama, Romney or other candidates. Several are fans of New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who has flirted with the idea of running as a third-party centrist. The group’s central figure is Peter Ackerman, a wealthy investor and former banker who considers himself an independent and who was active four years ago in a similar effort called Unity08.

Chad’s friend Buddy Roemer even gets a shout out.  Chad asked yesterday if I still have hope about 2012 being different.  I said that the election may not be (I hope it is), but the year must be, and the year after that.  We can’t have another 1992 fizzling into another 1996 (at least not politically. I still miss you, The 90’s).  We need to think of efforts like Americans Elect or the drives toward unity between disaffected groups less as “third-party” movements and more as logical responses to the truth that the entrenched parties are ridiculous and don’t really speak for most of us at the national level.  Why is it that in 2011, I have no one to the left of Obama to consider no one in the GOP field besides Ron Paul that’s worth my time?  And why no unity tickets, no great American middle, no options that make real sense to most of us?  Are we free or aren’t we?

Americans Elect should have a presence at every Tea Party event and every Occupation.  I said yesterday that we all need to work together to move beyond the b.s. status quo.  Most of us hate it.  Most of us have grown up hating it.  We’ve allowed ourselves to divorce the faithful execution of our other civic virtues from the basic failure that is our federal government.  We might be good neighbors and community leaders, but as long as we let slash-and-burning sycophants set the national agenda, we enable false choices and division and we give away our power.  Enough of that, already.

I remember learning as a child that Athens had a system of direct democracy, and that one day, maybe one day, with advancements in technology, maybe the US could do the same.   The Tea Party and Occupy are analog versions of this kind of shift.  Is Americans Elect the technical piece that helps us with real change?  Doesn’t that depend on us?

More Thoughts on the American Spring, Maxine Waters, and Reform-Based Populism

~ Chris Cocca ~ 7 Comments

I get it.

Some people think Obama was supposed to be the American Spring.

Some people think the Tea Party is the American Spring.

Some people think the Tea Party should go straight to hell.  Some Congresspeople go and say it.

Al Gore says we need an American Spring to counteract the Tea Party.

With all due respect to the former Vice President, it blows my mind that he thinks true change and true progressive populism will somehow come from the Left.  It won’t come from the Right, either.  It will have to come from all quarters and cannot be about hating our ousting the Other.  It has to be about reforming the entire process of government, about locating power back in the hands of the people and away from the military-corporate-special interest-political complex.

You’d think Al Gore would know this.  But the heartstrings of  Establishment politics are strong. He might as well suggest that the American Spring will come prepackaged as a plank in his party’s platform, that it will leap, full-grown and ready to fight, from the DNC.  That’s what political parties need you to think, after all, that they are, to borrow a phrase from church studies, reformed and reforming.

But I’m not sure what Al Gore really gets from this.  I’m not sure why he doesn’t run against Obama, or why the Clintons don’t. They all know they’re each bigger than their party, more progressive, in certain ways, than their party’s been for quite some time.  But they are also American elites, and Gore’s a cradle case.  As global figures, the Clintons are so far removed now from their people-power roots.

Any populism orchestrated from the top is demagoguery meant to serve a party line.  In the case of the Tea Party, Republican elites are having to conform or align themselves to a movement they did not create and probably despise.  They don’t hate  it for the reasons Maxine Waters claims to, though.  They hate it because it’s not theirs and they can’t control it.  They’d tell it to go to hell, too, if they could.  But they offer nothing better.  No one does.

Obama’s old populist strength was framed as a charge from the outside, he was the Anti-Clinton and Anti-Bush who united people around promises of change and Rorschach memes like hope and “yes we can.”  And yes he did, by God, and what he achieved in his mere election is something to be celebrated then and now.  His presidency has been a mixed bag like all are, but gone forever is any semblance of Obama as Outsider, Populist, or Agent of Sweeping and Systemic Change.

Sweeping and systemic change will not come from the people we empower unless truly new political leadership emerges, post-partisan and pro-reform.  Our system is so broken, so corrupt, even the good things our leaders do can’t outweigh the need for consensus tickets willing to address the fundamental issues of decency and common good long-buried beneath the few things the parties manage to get right.

Yes, the Democrats are right about some things.  And so are the Republicans.  And the Green Party and the Libertarians.  There’s no seamless party garment (try being progressive, pro-life, and anti-death penalty if you don’t believe me.  Or trying being fiscally conservative and gay).  But before we even get to social questions, a fundamental shift in how our leaders pledge to lead us is essential.  Free people are not meant to be ruled. We are to be led, and we are to lead.

We Must Become the Shire: American Spring, Dr. King, and Please, God, Something Different

~ Chris Cocca ~ 1 Comment

Last week’s post, “How Broken are OurPolitics? Will Gen-X Save the World?” generated a lot of discussion and creativity.  A good friend of mine, one of those Boomers who do amazing things for their communities and in the lives of people, suggested (via Facebook) a new political model based on the communal virtues of JRR Tolkien’s Hobbits:

 Here’s an idea: why not pool say, 5 candidates (of differing political philosophies) randomly every 2 years, have them write an essay about what needs to be done in DC, vote on them, and send the winner to DC for a non re-electable 2 year term, repeating the process every 2 years.  Those who wield power best are those who don’t seek it. It’s why hobbits carried the seductive ring of power better than all others. We need hobbit rule. (Btw, this won’t happen bc those who love power (our elected reps ie Sauron) would have to amend the constitution and voluntarily relinquish power. One can dream, though).

Yes. We all can dream.  Which reminds me when some people dream, amazing things happen.  Today, the public gets its first glimpse of the new Martin Luther King, Jr. National Memorial on the National Mall in Washington.  It stands between the Jefferson and Lincoln Memorials and is, to paraphrase one observer, the only monument on the Mall to a man of color and a man of peace.

Think about that.  All of our other monuments are to men who have administered wars.  Observing that is not to disparage them, (there are other reasons for that in most cases) but to recognize King’s unique voice and prophetic place as an American  leader committed to waging change by waging peace.  The centerpiece of the MLK memorial is his form on the “Stone of Hope,” and I hope his memory will stand there on the Mall as an indictment of a system that has long since given up on the work entrusted to it.  I hope it stands there like a scandal, preaching peace to national bodies who tear our body politic apart with their addictions to power, their allegiances to lobbies, their cynical crocodile patriotism and two-party no-choice  horseshit rodeo.

As the Arab Spring becomes, even as I type, the Late Summer of Gaddafi, I wonder what we’ll do a year from now.  Will we be in the process of nominating, again, two clowns from two circus parties to pantomime a contest between competing visions for the future?   Will someone from the left have come to save us from Obama?  Will a libertarian deliver us from Perry?  Will we, the pissed-off Middle, flock to our party primaries and rummage through that discount bin again?  God help us. Can Spring 2012 please be something different?  Can we start planning now our own little process of renewal?  We have free speech and the freedom to assemble.  We have the right to demand better options, better leaders, better people.  An American Spring would cost us nothing, but what might it accomplish? What would it look like? Who would even show?

How about families with their kids? How about college students? How about the  homeless, uninsured, and unemployed?  How about conservatives, progressives and libertarians who, it will have turned out, are united around the issues of government reform more than they’ve been driven apart by nonsense party lines and structures? How about people of all faiths and people of no faith all committed to being people of goodwill?  How about veterans and pacifists?  How about immigrants?

Imagine meeting at the Mall at the great scandal of a monument. Imagine finding poetic, sublime irony in the fact that yes, it’s made from Chinese granite, and that yes, the oppressive Chinese government, eager to own us all,  financed part of its construction.  Oh confused and frustrated body politic, oh 20-45 demographic, take your place, for God’s sake! And for your children’s.