Derrick Jackson nails the financial crisis right on the head in his column today:

No bailout should happen without recreating the nation’s social bargain with the rich. The nation can no longer afford the disparity where the average American CEO makes 344 times the pay of the average worker, according to the Institute for Policy Studies and United for a Fair Economy. The CEOs and their boards should pay toward the bailout before a penny of that possible $2,333 comes out of the pockets of Americans.

There is more than enough money among the financial elites to pay for the bailout. The Institute for Policy Studies last week calculated that a securities transaction tax of a penny for every $4 invested would add $100 billion a year to the treasury. Had such a tax been in place after the 2001 Enron scandal, it would have added up to the current cost of the bailout.

A wealth surcharge of no more than 3 percent on households worth more than $10 million would add another $300 billion. In response to the news this year that two-thirds of American corporations paid no income tax between 1998 and 2005, a corporate minimum income tax could add another $60 billion.

The institute said a 50 percent tax on salaries of $5 million or more and 70 percent on salaries of $10 million or more – until the bailout is over – would add another $105 billion. Killing overseas tax shelters, loopholes for excessive CEO pay and the sale of mansions, and creating a progressive inheritance tax would add another nearly $300 billion.

Isn’t always good for the gander.  When thousands of people were defaulting on mortgages they couldn’t afford, the financers’ attitude was that those people were the victims of their own poor financial judgement, decisions and planning.  Now the same crowd, more or less, is up to its own eyeballs in financial free fall, but the same people, John and Jane Doe taxpayer who lost their home on the mortgage they couldn’t afford are now expected to bailout the Wall Street crowd because of Wall Street’s, well, poor financial judgement, decisions and planning.  Join me in a big “D’oh!” if you’re scratching your head too.

I must admit that I, like Markos Moulitsas Zuniga, think Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-OR) is onto something with this idea:

a new government fee of .25 percent of every stock transaction to ensure that the government can recoup funds to pay for the aid that it provides to lenders. “If this is truly such a catastrophe, I don’t see how anybody can object to a one-quarter of one percent fee,” DeFazio said. Others who attended the session said that proposal seemed to be gaining little traction.

Senator Bernie Sander (I-VT) proposes (hat tip to kos, again):

a “five-year, 10 percent surtax on income over $1 million a year for couples and over $500,000 for single taxpayers,” which he says he would “yield more than $300 billion in revenue.”

Friday night Barack Obama and John McCain will meet in the first of a couple of joint televised media appearances that are still called in common paralance “debates”, although I can’t for the life me figure out why, because they stopped resembling actual debates long ago.

This event will do and be many things, but it won’t be part of a democratic process.  Bob Barr won’t be there, Cynthia McKinney won’t be there and Ralph Nader won’t be there.  It doesn’t matter what you think of their politics, or what you think of Obama’s or McCain’s politics, the fact remains that Barr,  McKinney, and Nader the Libertaian, Green and Independent candidates for President, respectively, are each on enough state ballots to conceiveably collect enough electoral votes to win.  That’s not a likely scenario for any of them, but it’s a possibility and as such, they should each be on the stage for all Presidential Joint Media Appearances or “Debates”.

But the process for these “debates” is anything but democratic. The “debates” are controlled by the Commission on Presidential Debates, which sounds like a wonderful and dignified title for a commission, until you realize that the commission is solely comprised of members of the Democratic and Republic National Committees and the Commission has little interest in democracy and inclusion and a lot of interest in promoting only their own two political parties in a deal with devil “if I can’t win you win” bargin.

The real loser is the American people and our democratic process.   The range of ideas discussed will be narrow without Barr, McKinney and Nader.  The range of solutions to the problems facing us will be fewer. Worst of all perhaps is that the political game of spin and image will in some way continue to take precedance over issues and facts because with less chance to actually win, Barr, McKinney and Nader has less to lose in actually holding Obama and McCain to facts and ficgures and calling them on anything they might try to evade or dance around.  It would be healthy for the entire process and our democracy to include all these candidates and for our entire political system to become a multi-party system. More voices equals more choices and that’s democracy. Democracy is not about stifling debate, but about opening debate and letting the best argument win.

Many countries in the world work just fine with a multiparty system and multiparty national elections debates, including Canada.  I truly believe the American people deserve to hear all the voices in the national debate represented by these candidates in order to be able to make the most educated, informed choice possible.  The Commission on Presidential Debates, obviously disagrees with me. I encourage you tell both me and the Commission on Presidential Debates how you feel about this. – Well, you can contact the Debate’s corporate sponsors and tell them how you feel because on the entire CPD website there is absolutely zero information on how to contact the commission – that’s not very democractic!  Think for a minute about what it means to have presidential debates controlled by corporations instead of the public, the way it used to be.

Presidential Debates used to be run the League of Women Voters (Great Ghost of Susan B. Anthony, we need you now!). The Commission on Presidential Debates took control of the debates after the 1984 election and in time for the debates during the 1988 campaign:

The CPD takes complete control of the debates, after the League of Women Voters refuses to let the Republican and Democratic campaigns dictate terms of the 1988 events and ceases cooperating with the Commission: “The League of Women Voters is withdrawing its sponsorship of the presidential debates…because the demands of the two campaign organizations would perpetrate a fraud on the American voter. It has become clear to us that the candidates’ organizations aim to add debates to their list of campaign-trail charades devoid of substance, spontaneity and answers to tough questions. The League has no intention of becoming an accessory to the hoodwinking of the American public.” (League news release, 10/3/88)

This post is not an endorsement of Barr, McKinney or Nader. It isn’t an endorsement of Obama or McCain. It is a cry in the wilderness for more real democracy in America.  People can’t vote for the candidate of their choice if they don’t know what their choices really are.  People can’t know what their choices are if three of the five candidates who qualify for an electoral majority are kept from the public debate.  That’s not what democracy looks like.

I’ve been taking myself and my son to a new doctor on a new (the UUA) health insurance plan this week in the wake of the still breaking and still imploding financial crisis.  The experience has not only reinforced once again the need for National, Universal, Single-Payer Health Care (which, while it may not solve all our problems, will at least, most likely will ensure no more drops in anyone’s coverage ever again, sigh), but has me also thinking once again just how far American society has come from the idea of Commonwealth or Commonweal.

Poor man wanna be rich,
rich man wanna be king
And a king ain’t satisfied
till he rules everything

- Bruce Springsteen, “Badlands”

Pastor and teacher, the Rev. Dr. of Rock, The Boss sums up America’s approach to economics in four lines.  It’s not a boast or something to proud of however because the speaker in the lyric is no rich man and certainly no king and has little hope of becoming either.  The glass ceiling in America is the one over the American Dream. It’s the one over every kitchen table where women (and men) of every color and every faith sit and less and less hope of moving up an economic ladder.

Our society is not set up to allow a situation where everyone wins, but set up a situation where the few win at the expense of the many.  And when the few lose and lose big, they expect, demand the many to bail them out, so as to not lose the life to which they’ve become accostomed.  Sooner rather than later, the many are going to say, “get lost.”

The 14th century term “common weal” or “common wealth” means common good and comes from the old definition of wealth as “well being” not how much cash you’ve got on hand.  Commonwealth meant governing or at least thinking about society in terms of the common good, not in terms of the benefits of a landed, aristocratic (and autocratic), or royal, monied class that had all the power.

American society has just about completely lost any sense of commonwealth. When congress can move with, what is for that body, lightening speed to aim legislation at bailing out the monied, autocratic class of American society, yet things that benefit the commonwealth such as National, Universal, Single-Payer Health Care can’t get the time of day in congress, it’s clear indication of where our national priorities and our national soul are at.  As Unitarian Universalists, if we are going to take Interdependence seriously, this has to give us deep and great pause.

I take my hat off once again to my friends Mary (for pointing me to Eric) and Eric (for writing about it) for Senator Bernie Sanders’ (I-VT) take on the current financial crisis (full op-ed available on Sanders’ web site):

In my view, we need to go forward in addressing this financial crisis by insisting on four basic principles:

(1) The people who can best afford to pay and the people who have benefited most from Bush’s economic policies are the people who should provide the funds for the bailout.  It would be immoral to ask the middle class, the people whose standard of living has declined under Bush, to pay for this bailout while the rich, once again, avoid their responsibilities.  Further, if the government is going to save companies from bankruptcy, the taxpayers of this country should be rewarded for assuming the risk by sharing in the gains that result from this government bailout.

Specifically, to pay for the bailout, which is estimated to cost up to $1 trillion, the government should:

a)  Impose a five-year, 10 percent surtax on income over $1 million a year for couples and over $500,000 for single taxpayers.  That would raise more than $300 billion in revenue;

b) Ensure that assets purchased from banks are realistically discounted so companies are not rewarded for their risky behavior and taxpayers can recover the amount they paid for them; and

c) Require that taxpayers receive equity stakes in the bailed-out companies so that the assumption of risk is rewarded when companies’ stock goes up.

(2) There must be a major economic recovery package which puts Americans to work at decent wages.  Among many other areas, we can create millions of jobs rebuilding our crumbling infrastructure and moving our country from fossil fuels to energy efficiency and sustainable energy.  Further, we must protect working families from the difficult times they are experiencing.  We must ensure that every child has health insurance and that every American has access to quality health and dental care, that families can send their children to college, that seniors are not allowed to go without heat in the winter, and that no American goes to bed hungry.

(3) Legislation must be passed which undoes the damage caused by excessive de-regulation.  That means reinstalling the regulatory firewalls that were ripped down in 1999.  That means re-regulating the energy markets so that we never again see the rampant speculation in oil that helped drive up prices.  That means regulating or abolishing various financial instruments that have created the enormous shadow banking system that is at the heart of the collapse of AIG and the financial services meltdown.

(4) We must end the danger posed by companies that are “too big too fail,” that is, companies whose failure would cause systemic harm to the U.S. economy.  If a company is too big to fail, it is too big to exist.  We need to determine which companies fall in this category and then break them up.  Right now, for example, the Bank of America, the nation’s largest depository institution, has absorbed Countrywide, the nation’s largest mortgage lender, and Merrill Lynch, the nation’s largest brokerage house.  We should not be trying to solve the current financial crisis by creating even larger, more powerful institutions.  Their failure could cause even more harm to the entire economy.