Gov. Patrick Must Tax Corporations and the Rich to Stave Off Financial Crisis - Not Impose Austerity

With international events lurching forward day by day in the face of the global financial crisis, the economic and political situation in Massachusetts is swiftly going from bad to worse. One could describe our state as fortunate for having elected an enlightened technocrat in the person of Gov. Deval Patrick. But the disadvantages of having elected a neoliberal in the same person are becoming glaringly apparent.

Not that the two qualities are mutually exclusive. They aren't. They are merely two sides of the same bad coin of the current American realm. Still we don't want to be perceived as complaining about a politician who seems a decent administrator. Patrick the technocrat is probably as good as one could reasonably expect out of any representative government. But Patrick the technocrat who orchestrates billion dollar giveaways to fashionable industries of the moment (the biotech industry), and is now moving to impose austerity on his own state, is perfect example is why the good of 2008 isn't nearly good enough for working families. We'd like a good administrator who really believes that the public good virtually always trumps the private good - certainly if we're talking macro-political economy, as we are. And there hasn't been anyone like that in charge of state government for a long time.

A bit of explanation is in order here. To begin, a technocrat is generally described as being the kind of person who is chosen to rule others based on the (usually intellectual) skills that they have.

A neoliberal is someone who believes in free trade, free markets and in the need to eliminate governments' ability to regulate corporations for all but the most grave violations of human rights.

It is perfectly possible for a government official to be both a technocrat and a neoliberal, and most of our more rational government officials at all levels fit both appellations - Sen. Barack Obama perhaps most of all.

As a left publication, it is still reasonable for Open Media Boston to say that when the capitalist economies of the United States in general and Massachusetts specifically are running smoothly - during periods of economic expansion like the late 1990s - politicians like Gov. Patrick and Sen. Obama aren't too objectionable. Because they are both decent people who do genuinely seem to care about others, and when there's extra money in the kitty they're both willing to spend it towards the goal of building a better society.

However, in down economic times - like, say, right now - the neoliberal will always tend to dominate the technocrat in such politicians. Because any politician knows which side his or her bread is buttered on, and corporations do a great deal of such buttering these days. As everyone knows.

Since those who hold the purse strings get to make politicians dance in our political system, when times are tight, corporations will step up their usual demands for government to serve its needs first. And the devil take the hindmost. The hindmost, in this case, being most everyone currently residing in Massachusetts.

So we find ourselves watching with a dismay tempered with the above understanding as Gov. Patrick proceeds to impose austerity on the Commonwealth. Austerity, for those of you who were not issued a copy of the neoliberal playbook, is a very nasty term of the "dismal science" of economics. In street parlance, it means destroying as many social programs - that are the core function of most governments - as is necessary to be able to keep taxes low for corporations and the rich people that own them. And therefore to "maintain a favorable business climate" - or to put it less decorously, to allow businesses to hold the polity hostage to their caprices. This is done simply by refusing to do the one thing that would reverse the down economic situation. Raising taxes on corporations and the rich.

And with that digression completed we arrive at the matter at hand. Gov. Patrick, faced with a crisis striking at the very heart of capitalism, and confronted at every turn by his corporate backers and the huge political apparatus they have bought over the last 50 years in the Democratic party as in the Republican party, is now engaged in the only course of action allowed him under the existing political logic of this state and this nation - he has asked the more than willing leadership of the state legislature, courts and executive offices to make voluntary budget cuts across the board by October 15th. In advance of fighting for emergency powers to make really deep cuts in the near future. Not that the current legislature is likely to fight him on that goal, although they'll probably fight giving him all the power he wants.

This move came after State Treasurer Timothy Cahill's Wednesday announcement that there was a projected shortfall in tax collections for the just-ended 1st quarter of the Fiscal Year 2009 state budget of $223 million. And things are only projected to get worse in the months to come.

The logical thing for political leaders to do in situations like this is to ask "which sector of society isn't paying their fair share?" Which sector has spent the last couple of generations trying to undo New Deal and Progressive Era reforms that had solidly established a progressive taxation system where the "good and great" were expected to pay back the nation that made their wealth possible and the working people that built their fortunes for them in the form of higher tax rates - as part of an unwritten agreement between capital and labor? The correct answer is corporations and the rich. But, we've already established that this most logical of questions can't be asked, and therefore the answer isn't allowable.

Even to raise the question is anathema in the political arena, and in the polite corporate-owned media and in much an increasingly corporate-influenced academia.

The more unscrupulous and boorish wealthy people and their allies like to publicly mock even the most tepid calls for taxing them properly as "soaking the rich." Well they're right, of course. We would be doing just that. But it is precisely the right thing to do. For too long, corporations and the rich have laughed all the way to the bank as this country has gone to hell in a handbasket.

Now politicians like Gov. Patrick have a very simple decision to make. Who are they going to side with - the rich few or the increasingly at-risk many? It's likely going to take a few more ugly shocks to the system before this question really gets asked on the state or national level.

But it's obvious, in any event, that most societal sectors have not made their voices heard yet in this incipient debate.

So it's critical that all the people most affected by this coming round of cuts to the public trust - all the working people, and all the students, and all the folks who need decent housing and transit and health care and heating and power and water - that all of us protest this situation and demand that Gov. Patrick raise taxes on the people who are largely responsible for the financial crisis to begin with.

Only by doing that, by demanding a new politics for a new day, will anything begin to change for the better in Massachusetts or in the U.S. Because if it's bad in this state, it's going to be much worse in states like Indiana or Florida that don't have affable technocrats as governors.

As for Patrick he really needs to think his next few moves over very carefully. Here's hoping he will.