Michael wrote:
What is the contradiction. People can be concerned, but real issues are not being honestly addressed; eg Iraq.
It's understandable that both the Democratic and Republican Party candidates and corporate media do not want to address real issues honestly, but there is no excuse for leftists not to address them.
Here is the latest example of bipartisan support for the Bush administration's program:
<blockquote>Democrats back fourth Bush tax cut for wealthy, business By Patrick Martin <http://www.wsws.org/articles/2004/sep2004/tax-s28.shtml> 28 September 2004
In an action that exemplifies the prostration of the Democratic Party before the Bush administration and corporate wealth, the vast majority of Democratic senators and congressmen voted with the Republicans to approve a $146 billion tax cut bill proposed by the White House. The legislation passed the Senate September 23 by a near-unanimous vote of 92-3, while the House approved the bill on the same day, by a margin of 339-65.
Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry and vice presidential candidate John Edwards did not leave their campaigns to return to Washington for the vote, but both indicated they would have voted for the bill. Kerry issued a statement that tried simultaneously to criticize Bush and endorse the fiction that Bush's tax cut would aid working people, declaring: "Millions of American families are being squeezed by the weak Bush economy, falling incomes and rising health costs, and we should extend middle-class tax breaks to help them."
Like the three previous tax bills pushed through by the Bush administration and the Republican congressional leadership -- in 2001, 2002 and 2003 -- the latest legislation uses modest cuts for working class and middle-class families as a smokescreen for far more generous benefits lavished on the wealthy and on favored business interests.
The bill extends to 2009 the $1,000-per-child tax credit, which would otherwise fall to $700 next year. It also extends an expansion of the 10 percent income-tax bracket until 2010, and a tax break for two-income married couples until 2008. All three tax breaks were adopted as part of Bush's original 2001 package, and were deliberately scheduled to expire at the end of 2004 to provide a vehicle for new tax breaks for the wealthy on the eve of the next presidential election.
Among the tax breaks piggy-backed on this extension of "middle-class" tax benefits are $13 billion in business tax breaks for a variety of purposes, ranging from subsidies to companies that use wind-generated energy to deductions for corporate research and development.
Another $22.6 billion will benefit an upper-income layer of the middle class, those with family incomes of $150,000 or more, who would otherwise be subject to the alternative minimum tax (AMT), a tax enacted in the 1970s to insure that wealthy individuals did not use various tax credits to evade taxation altogether. Because the AMT is not indexed to inflation, a sizeable layer of upper-income middle-class families now fall under its provisions, and that number will increase substantially over the next decade.
The tax cut legislation had a second purpose, besides continuing the looting of the federal treasury by the wealthy. It completes the process of locking in all of the tax cuts enacted during Bush's first term through the end of 2008. This means that if Kerry wins the election and succeeds Bush in the White House, he will face a federal budget with an enormous built-in deficit that will be a fixture throughout his entire first term in office. Kerry's endorsement of the bill thus amounts to an acknowledgment in advance that the Democratic candidate's promise of a major health care initiative will be scrapped soon after he takes office.
The combined impact of all the new tax provisions has not yet been precisely calculated. But one preliminary study by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP), a well-established domestic policy think tank, found that households in the middle fifth of the income spectrum would receive an average tax cut of $169 in 2005. Households in the top fifth would get an average tax cut of $1,196, while households with incomes between $200,000 and $500,000 would receive an average of $2,172. Lower-income families will gain virtually nothing from the new law.
In terms of total benefits received, households in the top 10 percent will receive 44 percent of the additional income in 2005. Households in the top 20 percent will receive 68 percent of the additional income, while households in the middle 20 percent of households will receive only 10 percent of the total. As the CBPP noted ironically, this is "a peculiar outcome for a 'middle-class' tax-cut bill."
This distribution of the tax cuts is a deliberate policy choice. In the case of the $22.6 billion from a one-year postponement of the alternative minimum tax, 96 percent will go to the top one fifth of households. The tax break for two-income married couples will extend 72 percent of its benefits to the same top fifth.</blockquote>
The overwhelming focus on Bush as one individual makes one blind to or silent on bipartisan support for much of the most egregious attacks on working-class people at home and abroad over the last four years (not to mention the long-term offensive that began in the mid-1970s or fundamental contradictions of capitalism) and therefore unable to fight back against them effectively (as a matter of fact, supporting most of Bush's positions and occasionally running to the right of them doesn't even help defeat Bush as one individual either, as voters can't see any big differences between Bush and Kerry). The myopic focus on Bush and Bush alone has allowed the Democrats to vote for the invasion of Afghanistan, the Patriot Act, the invasion of Iraq, etc., for it let the Democrats know that they won't pay _any_ price if they voted for wars abroad and repressions at home. The point should be to defeat the program of the Bush administration advanced with the support of the Democratic and Republican Parties, rather than just to defeat Bush. -- Yoshie
* Critical Montages: <http://montages.blogspot.com/> * Greens for Nader: <http://greensfornader.net/> * Bring Them Home Now! <http://www.bringthemhomenow.org/> * OSU-GESO: <http://www.osu-geso.org/> * Calendars of Events in Columbus: <http://sif.org.ohio-state.edu/calendar.html>, <http://www.freepress.org/calendar.php>, & <http://www.cpanews.org/> * Student International Forum: <http://sif.org.ohio-state.edu/> * Committee for Justice in Palestine: <http://www.osudivest.org/> * Al-Awda-Ohio: <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Al-Awda-Ohio> * Solidarity: <http://www.solidarity-us.org/>
