It's my view that the City, fairly or unfairly, is "protecting businesses" with its odious taxing scheme by not jacking rates sky high is that it does not want to see what the City has seen historically with the other half of its revenue (the residents of the city): namely an exodus of businesses.

If businesses that can choose to leave Philadelphia, do... where does that leave us? Does it leave us with an even larger household income hole to backfill with social services that are much more mediocre than a living wage was providing before?

Can a city's household wealth be sustainable on the backs of cell phone stores, Chinese takeout, dollar stores, discount big box, strip clubs and reverse-redlining consumer finance companies? Are the few homegrown 15-150 employee companies that remain in Philadelphia bad for us? Why do other Democratic counties in Pennsylvania welcome the entrance of those businesses into their areas while we revile them?

Let's forget the tax rates and methods for a minute and just look at the economic picture we face.

Philadelphia has a basket of core local problems that have been around quite a long time, longer than many of us have been alive. Little has been done to address these issues directly over the last 30 to 40 years:

• We are not cost competitive by any means except for one place, New York, but we have few of the services, infrastructure or draw that New York has. We have never come even close to equaling this draw which we had in the past (we were the manufacturing center of the Northeast, but NYC is the nation's central banking capital). We do have other industry and centers of employ, but as can be seen with our poverty rate, it is insufficient to provide meaningful household income for all of our local population, since 1 out of every 4 Philadelphians is at or below poverty level. If we had the level of employer draw that NYC enjoys, it would support our taxing structure.
• We are surrounded by other areas which fakely or genuinely are perceived as a cost-savings to locate businesses much to our chagrin, so anybody coming to the Del Val can play cost arbitrage between cities, counties and also states yet service the same population center. It's easy to escape Philadelphia's tax structure: don't locate your business inside Philadelphia. That's easy to do.
• Our city suffers from a combination of burdensome debt obligations and future payment promises which aren't EASILY offset by what revenue we, ourselves, generate. Our local tax revenue void has robbed our public school systems, degenerating them into the disgraces they are today. "School Reform" by Republicans has only masqueraded this issue, which is a compound problem of dis-education because of the lack of direct investment in our young over a multigenerational period of time, which generates new populations of city residents who mostly remain here primarily despondent, dejected, and denigrated, with few options.
• We have a dependence and reliance on Harrisburg for funding many items and this dependence only increases over time. This kills us because when the Burg shifts political wind away from us, we can be hurt fairly badly while Harrisburg legislators suffer little political expense from our misery. If we lose population, our voice and control in the state is compromised and creates a Catch-22.

I won't even go into the political make-up of the City because that's really a red herring to our economic structure that's the crux of all of our present-day crises.

And it doesn't end there. Look at the national issues that directly impact our economy:

• Philadelphia has no way to levy excise taxes on goods Philadelphians buy, so the wealth that exits Philadelphia cannot be recaptured in any meaningful way. This also happens at a national scale. The common term for this is a TRADE DEFICIT, which I believe is the core reason for much of our economic malady. Free trade is extremely costly to our national income even though we save a little money in our domestic budgets.
• If we were forced to actually PAY the external costs of cheap imports into the goods and services we buy, consumers would go back to weighing quality and durability over price because prices would marginalize between domestic products and imports. Employers woudln't be off-shoring the means of production overseas. Because these costs are mostly hidden from us and are added back on to the National Debt, our lust for buying imports that don't generate sustainable incomes close to home only robs us as a nation.

Democrat or Republican, you cannot deny that the biggest gorilla in the room is our giant unbalanced, un-fair trade agreements we have signed with a multitude of countries at the expense of small business, local business, local workers, in favor of a select few individuals in multinational corporations.

As a Libertarian, I think it's quite funny that Republicans give a lot of lip to avoiding Socialism, where the means of production is shared between the public and private interest. Late-generation Republicans have been more than willing to give away the means of production, so long as the means of production is not public.

Fox News Republicans think it's better that China owns all the means to produce what we buy, but it would be horrible for Washington to ever do so. As long as the storefront where we shop sponsors a NASCAR driver, life is good.

The cost of our wealth exporting is enormous. And these costs are disguised in the form of debt coupons which we don't ever see or pay attention to, but we have to pay them. All of us. [Yup, that's called the National Debt]. Every time there is a large Treasury auction, and the Secretary of the Treasury has to ask Congress to raise the debt ceiling... that's us collectively tapping our Federal credit card to cover our spending because we don't have the income to pay.

Michael Moore failed to address this issue in depth in his film, which I think is a tragedy of incomplete information. Because capitalism isn't really WHAT is causing our economy to suck so hard, it's our trade policy that does. Communist countries can fall into the same trap that we laid for ourselves. Countries can enter trade agreements no matter what political and economic structure they have going for them. That's the source of most of our headaches. No, really. It is.

It's also why we will never be able to have a universal healthcare system because we will never be able to borrow enough money to give ourselves the care that we really want to have. It is also why the private healthcare system cannot meet any of these needs, because private healthcare doesn't have access to the capital required to provide the healthcare that we demand from our payors. Tort reform is a red herring. Pay-Go Healthcare which was proposed by Sen. Bauchus is also a red herring.

Why? Medicaid is adding to our Federal deficit now, and Medicare is soon to follow. That means we have to auction Treasury notes to somebody to pay our medical bills. If Chinese bankers do not buy this debt, then your grandma might be getting her Boniva, no matter if it's Medicare or CIGNA paying the drug company.

And as it stands now, we really, REALLY do not have the incomes to sustain the full cost of total healthcare, not if you want to see United States sovereign Treasury Bonds default because our creditors no longer believe we can repay our obligations.

We have a new set of unemployed Americans created in the last 18 months that is TWICE the population of New York City. The prospects for their future employment look really grim in the private sector. Their prospects are equally as bad in the public sector.

The talk about redistribution of wealth is meaningless if we continue to actively promote exporting wealth out of our nation so we can't support ourselves, publicly or privately.

That's the real issue. That's the real problem. No Neo-Con or Progressive wants to ever address it because the issue is so large and complicated pols fear collateral damage. The Credit Crisis is just one step on a larger path of wealth despair. The next shoe to drop is the inflation that is coming (and most everyone is anticipating).

There are solutions to our problem. Plenty of them. All of which leave a bad taste in everyone's mouth, which is why they'll never see the light of day (like the Federal Excise Tax on Gasoline, which will never get raised to what it should be).

So, let us continue to wallow ourselves in sovereign debt obligations, paying for things which we cannot afford.

I just wanted to briefly jump in on this discussion and in particular build on the notion of the development of an independent politics that Bryan and Milena argue for and Ray has picked up on. What we at Media Mobilizing Project mean by this is a politics not associated or beholden to any party, because as we have seen, both parties have agendas that put profit before people. For us an independent politics is a politics that grows out of the real concerns of the half of Philadelphians--and folks in this state, nation and globe--that are suffering and struggling to survive. As Ray mentioned this means real focused grassroots organizing, but it must be grassroots organizing and the development of a movement and agenda that comes from those who have the most at stake in social change. We believe this is a movement that must come "from below." Moreover, we believe the task of building an independent politics consists of creating the leadership, organizational infrastructure, political clarity, accountability and communications platforms that will enable a shared movement across the multiple fragmented struggles in this city and beyond.

Everyone worries about showing favoritism to businesses by providing incentives to keep them here. What happens if they leave? Class envy is not a motivator. Motivation comes from within. That is where many in poverty need help. They need to know they can offer abilities, skills, and enthusiasm to someone somewhere. If we keep telling them they will need help all of their lives they will just fall back into that dependency cycle that helps no one. casino online

First Milena and I would like to thank Ray for pointing people to our article. We wrote it to start what we see as a needed discussion and debate that brings to the forefront the connections between the events of the last year and ways for people to organize "from below" to solve them.

We know we couldn't give all the answers, and we don't suppose to have them all. But we do have some hunches that comes from a long rich movement history in our nation and the years of work Media Mobilizing Project has done in this city to document the experiences of poor and working people organizing for change and to elevate our issues from isolated battles to a shared struggle. As Todd pointed out, the call for an independent politics not beholden to business and acting in the interest of "the least of us which is the most of us," is a call to build a movement. http://mediamobilizing.org/video-weve-been-crisis-long-time

The role of social movements - grassroots work that is connected to a larger vision of what our society can be - is something even people at the highest levels of power recognize. I recall these remarks from then Senator Obama when asked with other Democratic candidates for the presidency "Why would Dr. King endorse you?" His response, "I don't think Dr King would endorse any of us… what he would call upon the American people to do is hold us accountable." (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-pkkdjngBu0) This is a central part to the type of independent politics we are talking about, it is when the people act not because of their side with one political party or another, but with their neighbors in a struggle to make sure their shared needs are met.

MMP and the network of groups that we work with are doing what we can in our little corner of things to build this movement. The examples that Ray sites are amazing ones, and shows the energy in our city and nationally to sustain the type of action and change Dr. King would endorse. The road and work of building a movement is uncertain, it rests with very hard decisions of what actions to take and what ways people take those actions. The direct actions of the last week from health care to casinos is part of making the right decisions.

To come back again to what Todd points out, "the task of building an independent politics consists of creating the leadership, organizational infrastructure, political clarity, accountability and communications platforms that will enable a shared movement across the multiple fragmented struggles in this city and beyond." This is difficult and real practical work, but it is the only work that may save our society.

Milena, myself and MMP look forward to following up on this question, putting out more of what we think this means in theory and practice, and working with others who are committed to building a movement to address the defining issue of our time - poverty and the growing inequality between the wealthy and everyone else.

build a movement. Another is just sheer turning out sheer numbers.

Despite the unwillingness of our newspapers to cover the actions of mere citizens, sometimes you can get attention with a big rally as we did two weeks ago when we turned out about 700 for a rally and march against Cigna.

Progressive don't have the capacity to do this regularly in the city right now. We can turn out a few hundred when libraries are directly threatened. But not for other issues and not consistently.

We are going to have to figure out how to do that, and also, how to do massive emailing and phonebanking to people around the city, as we are doing in the health care campaign.

Many of us have been trying to build the capacity to do this. We are not there yet. We need to talk about why not and what to do to overcome the barriers that stand in our way.