Democrats, on the right track at last

Bernie Sanders and Ro Khanna have introduced legislation that would impose a 5% annual wealth tax on all billionaires in the US.  The proposed law would, in its first year in effect, use some of the money raised to send a check for $3,000 to every person in the country in a household with an income under $150,000.  The rest of the revenue would be used to expand the ACA, build affordable housing, and meet various other needs, which you can see listed at the link above.

Over the last year or two I've pretty much given up on electoral politics on the grounds that both parties are thoroughly captured by billionaire donors, distracted by culture-war nonsense and identity politics, and most recently united in openly attacking democracy by super-gerrymandering states like California and Texas -- allowing the dominant party in each state, rather than the voters, to choose the make-up of its Congressional delegation.  I expect to move this year, and I was not planning to even bother re-registering to vote, on the grounds that there is nothing left worth voting for.

However, this proposal by Sanders and Khanna is something I have to highlight and give credit for -- this is exactly the kind of thing I've been saying the Democratic party should be doing and focusing on.

It's not perfect -- I would ideally want the wealth tax to be at least 50%, not 5%.  But it's a real step in the right direction.  The $3,000 payments to individuals would make a serious start on direct re-distribution of the billionaires' obscene mountains of wealth back to the working people who actually created it.

(I would hope that something would also be set aside for deficit reduction.  Decades of tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy have saddled us with a federal deficit and a national debt which are both, in the long run, unsustainable.  Something needs to be done about that.)

The plan is obviously inspired by the California wealth tax ballot initiative, which is being advanced by SEIU-UHW (a healthcare workers' union), not by politicians.  Governor Newsom, a craven puppet of the billionaire parasite class and an exemplar of what's wrong with the Democratic party these days, is opposing the initiative.  But it is popular with California voters.  50% intend to vote yes on it, with a further 14% "undecided, leaning yes".  The American people want economic populism.  If the Democratic party would fully commit all its energies to supporting proposals like this, instead of focusing on sneering at gun culture and letting mentally-ill men in dresses use the girls' bathroom, then it would sweep election after election.

Of course, it will not.  The Sanders-Khanna proposal obviously has little chance of actually passing the House and Senate and getting the president's signature, at least not while Republicans control all three.  It might not even pass with the Democrats in control.  They genuinely are in thrall to their billionaire donors, almost as much as the Republicans are.  The only way it could pass would be if there were an absolutely massive, overwhelming groundswell of public support for it -- massive enough to make every Congresscritter fear that voting against it would mean losing his seat, no matter how much money his billionaire donors give to his campaign.  The $3,000 checks to individuals may be partly intended to inspire such a groundswell, but I doubt they will be enough.  The public has a lot of things competing for its attention these days.

And the enemy will fight like hell on this.  Billionaires now own and control most of the old mainstream media, and they are already using that control to attack both the California initiative and the Sanders-Khanna proposal.  Expect every imaginable kind of scare story and doomsday scenario and the Devil knows what else to be vomited up on your computer screen every time you check the news, for months to come.  They will do anything, tell any lie, make any threat, to turn you against these proposals.  Because if they actually were to pass, especially the federal one, it would mean the beginning of the end of the oligarchy's power.  One major success would burst the economic-populist dam and re-shape this country's politics.  It would pull us out of our half-century tailspin and launch a rebirth of national vitality and prosperity.

And even if the Sanders-Khanna proposal cannot pass now, it will serve as a valuable litmus test to show whether or not there is still anything in the Democratic party worth saving:  how many House and Senate Democrats will come out in support of it?  How many will actually vote for it if it comes to a vote?  Even if it loses, the answer will be a near-perfect numerical score for how much of the party as a body is willing to publicly commit to economic populism.  For that matter, how many Republicans will?  They have mavericks too.  If it turns out there's a substantial economic populist element among them, I'm willing to give them a chance just as much.

Maybe there's something left worth voting for after all.  Now we'll get a chance to see.