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Thom's blog
Did Democrats finally get the message?
Democratic lawmakers may have finally heard our voices. For the first time in a long time, party leaders in the House of Representatives have put forth a progressive tax plan that would tax Wall Street to give Main Street a little relief. This week, Representative Chris Van Hollen announced the Democratic plan to create “the kind of economy where the pie is growing and everyone is getting a better slice.”
That new plan would levy a transaction tax on Wall Street to expand or create new tax breaks for apprenticeship programs, child care, people who save for retirement, middle class working families, and even companies that give workers a raise.
Although these ideas aren't likely to come to fruition while Republicans are in charge, many people are happy to see Democrats once again demonstrating how they're different from those on the Right. During the last election cycles, party leaders seemed to miss the message when it came to what voters wanted.
Instead of calling for bold, progressive solutions, many Democratic candidates moved toward the so-called middle, and lost touch with the social and economic ideas that separated them from the Republicans. Unsurprisingly, that didn't pan out well for Democrats.
This bold new tax plan can put the Left back on course towards a future of shared prosperity. We used to be the party of strong unions, the party of making the rich pay their fair share, and the party that fought for the middle class. Somehow, our lawmakers forgot those points, but losing big in the last elections may have woken them up.
This tax plan may not become reality under this Congress, but hopefully it's the first of many steps that Democrats take on the path towards progress.
-Thom
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Thom Hartmann Program
There are, at least, two kinds of capitalism. There is a) productive capitalism and b) paper capitalism. The U.S. system has shipped the productive part abroad and now majors in piling paper (illusory) assets as high as possible before the pile collapses. Let's always clarify which type we're talking about rather than conflating the two meanings. The stock market is a lousy measure of how our nation is functioning!