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Acting Together: Don’t Tell Us What You Believe, Demonstrate What You Are Willing to Do [1]
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Date: 2025-06-06
Some may suggest that what I propose below is another single-issue item that someone wants the Democratic party to focus on. I would preface the specific proposal below with the suggestion that this is a litmus test that, if elevated as the top issue presented to every Democrat, or others, running for office, it will be a predictor of what course the Democratic party is willing to take over the next decade at a minimum. A test that determines what force of will our representatives in all branches of government, not only federal, but a glimpse at statewide force of will, they are willing to expend for you.
I am suggesting a demand we do not apply to our party. It is at a level regarding taxation. The lack thereof, that Republicans might routinely demand of their party. Our representatives rarely suggest this themselves. This is one about us that has to do with high progressive taxation on the wealthiest American families and businesses.
And that rather than focusing on a single issue, this is about having more and better Democratic representation. To be clear, I believe that the Democratic activists, rank and file, and any other interested parties even outside liberal ranks, need to focus hard on bringing the idea to the voters first, educating and inciting, rather than simply addressing it to any representative or candidate. Not that we shouldn’t start asking this of Democratic representatives today or tomorrow. But any real, honest response will require the majority of voters to lay it at their feet. To make a noise so loud it bleeds and leads as a social and mainstream media issue as a subject of great human interest.
The title of this story is more than being addressed to the reader, at the end of the day, it is much moreso addressed to those who lead the party, to those who represent us.
This diary is extracted from the my comments under Peter Olandt’s diary today about getting enough of us to agree to act about stopping ICE. A fine diary, but there was one offhand comment he made which was…
Not buying from Billionaires will also get, … hey. This one is legal and won’t get you arrested at all. So where are you all on that one?
While commenters agreed, it was pointed out by Mercy Ormont that:
It COULD be “highly effective” if it were simply “stop buying anything except the minimal basics you need to live”, AND if it were “every day” (not just one day a week), AND (most important) if enough people got behind it to make a serious difference in the bottom line of most stores, AND if they stuck to it indefinitely.
I haven’t been buying on Fridays, but I don’t delude myself that it will make the slightest difference. I don’t buy anything but the “minimal basics” any more anyway.
So, here below is where I came in to comment, and is at the heart of this diary suggesting a different way perhaps we must all agree to act upon:
I essentially responded to Mercy (edited for this story), Yes, a nice idea, but how do we determine how to boycott a billionaire? Which ones, which products, etc.? I will suggest even the most minimal basics, except maybe the water out of your tap, feed into money built into what the nearly 1000 of them invest in.
*****
Spend your time educating voters, getting them riled and angry and organized around a single or a couple of points and demand Democrats tax the billionaires. Start by asking for the 90% Republican party president Dwight Eisenhower’s rate. If it was good enough for a Republican — and a Democratic Congress — then it should be good enough for today. That rate lasted more than Ike’s 8 years. Even with all the later loophole reforms, America had perhaps 2 or 3 billionaires at the time. I think such obscene, extreme wealth, hundreds or thousands of times above the median average, should ultimately get to such rates.
Spend your time educating voters, getting them riled and angry and organized, DEMANDING Democrats sign in to law a better than 50% tax on individuals and families and even a slightly over 50% tax on billionaires and the most profitable, often profiteering businesses. Where are the Democrats on even proposing as a party a plus 50% rate? Much less a 90%, 70%, 60%? I’ve heard of none; it’s quite quiet if being proposed.
Demand as soon as we can to expand Ronald Reagan’s cut from about a dozen tax brackets to 7, that we expand them to 20, in part to surgically isolate the top .01%, 1%, 2%. If need be the top .001% of earners, as individuals and families and businesses as well, so this can be done. Also having the remain ing ¾ of the other brackets could be set up so that those earning under, maybe $250k a year, $500k a year, have very slowly rising taxes that don’t jump up nearly as high as they do under 7 brackets if you earn an additional $2k, $5k, %10k, $20k a year as they do now. A very gradual nickel and diming of work based earnings. In other words, a real, substantial tax cut for working Americans on a schedule.
Businesses paid up to 52% under that 1950s and early ‘60s era explosion of wealth prosperity across the widest span of American society ever seen in the world at that time, nor since. They stayed rich. Some wealth I believe is good and would wish more for every one of you.
Get voters and ourselves ready for the fight though, when Democrats balk at taxing other colleagues with incomes that produce and sustain assets of tens and hundreds of millions of dollars, perhaps their own taxes, having above a 50% tax rate imposed. Perhaps a tax rate well above 50%. And they will. They will at first ignore you.Because, until our party is willing to do this thing, whatever they say about fighting for us, it’s all happy talk without going after Wall Street and regulating it as we once did.
Wealthy Democrats once sacrificed at this level for nearly 50 years, and if the butts in the seats refuse to, we need widespread, angry-as-never-before liberals, left, centrist, moderate Democrats, Independents and even the occasional stray Republican, to put new butts into the seats. This does raise the bar on the DNC, DCCC, DSCC as, if this question is seriously asked over and over again, we may see a flood of new primary challenges not seen at least since 2018. Perhaps much longer ago than that. Let’s see if their promises to fight for us are true. Or if they will wage war against voters for asking.
Again, I suggest if you want more and better Democrats running this country or your state (again, I suggest using New Deal to Great Society era standards as a guide to state taxation), I can think of no better litmus test, one better single issue, that will separate the wheat from the chaff. No other single issue that we do not ask which will help you determine the personal and career, political and ideological standings, of any representative or challenger in the Congressional or Executive, or Judicial branch nominees you will vote for in the next decade or more.
This is more than a single issue because demanding an answer, and action, will affect everything the party does going forward. It will force Democrats running our country if they enable such taxes into having to take a powerful antitrust defensive, and offensive posture. It will force them to find new ways to engage voters without mega donations from the wealthy. A media onslaught so many here detest yet have few tools, other than breaking new ground in social media, will unfold. We will need new tools to overcome it. The wealthiest will not go quietly into a dark night of their fall from billionaire status as individuals, as this will likely, ultimately, bring about a decline for a large proportion of that class and those worth hundreds of millions of dollars as they will face selling actual assets to pay their taxes. Their heavily leveraged wealth will be endangered. Donations will dry up. Some, because the extremely over-leveraged wealthy may no long have the bucks.
Or if Democrats ignore it, refuse to engage then where do we stand? Something we all need to start considering now in our fight for democracy.
Not only, with backs forced up against the wall on taxation, will Democrats need to powerfully reign in Wall Street with new regulations just to save their own butts and the butts of their colleagues to control the firestorm, In regards to new tools to reach voters; I suggest it means, ultimately doing more for voters, raising their wages steadily and consistently any way possible. Going from current concerns over kitchen table issues to instead seeing citizens getting into new houses ASAP. As perhaps the only way for the public to ignore the media and Big Money Ad Campaigns (our current leading re-election strategy). Give people money, make permanent the child tax credit, lower taxes and clear the way of unnecessary state and local regulations for small businesses.
Putting significantly more money into wages every possible way we can with the desperate speed needed by the Franklin Roosevelt administration, which included legalizing unions. Cutting credit card interest rates that people need to make up for inadequate wages, down into single digit rates. Perhaps tie them to saving interest rates; perhaps if you’re not a bank or offering a savings account, you can’t even issue them anymore. Get people as soon as possible within a decade, a moon-shot proposal, for Americans to earn a save enough to no longer need to rely on credit cards. Find ways to make personal savings rates a competitive need for banks and credit unions and other institutions. Rather, have credit cards used by Americans as a convenience or an occasional financial strategic tool when it makes more sense to purchase something now rather than saving for it months later.
I think doing these things will bring in substantially new votes as Republicans will want to undo citizen benefits because they cannot compete against this. 50 years of Democratic control given by voters in the mid-20th century suggests this is a viable path to all our goals. Making Republicans a minority party again for decades.
Undoing Reaganomics and restoring Keynesian, or most likely post-Keynesian economic policy as law of the land. A labor and antitrust economy to raise wages through work and keep prices down through heavy, fair competition in the marketplace by old-time government protective regulations. While clearing the way for small business in aggregate to compete against the Fortune 500. Perhaps one day collectively holding as many or more assets as them. And using large smart, tax investments, in infrastructure, human infrastructure, education every which way, un-DOGE-ing the damage done to institutions and then turbocharging them to new heights of usefulness and security. To bring more many dollars into the economy for every single dollar spent, through taxes or bonds.
This is how we wage war against Republicans, against Trump, oligarchy and Wall Street… for Main Street. At the end of the day there is no other “powder” we can light against them to bring their ships down. If we keep it dry, I argue, democracy dies.
This gets into more than our representative’s politics, it tells you as Democrats, as liberals, exactly how their personal lives and fortunes and businesses interface with their decisions in Washington and could allow America to return to a path of Having Nice Things Again. This gets into saying “No More” to the rich and mollycoddled entitlement class. This is “Don’t tell me what you believe, this is show me what you will do and how far you are ready to take it.”
Nothing less will fight against those who collect the vast majority of interest paid, both private debt, and by the government. Giving them control over government and the economy. Nothing less will begin the fight to throw their yoke of ownership off of your neck.
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