I sometimes wrote pieces for PA online under the title "Capitalism Gone Mad," and I was thinking of doing another one recently.

I  was going to do it on  a promotional email  I received for learning foreign languages which had  this  come on "How the FBI Masters Multiple Languages:  Learn Like a Spy: Pass for a Native."  The languages in alphebetical order ranged from Arabic(Eastern)  to Vietnamese.  But just as I was thinking of applying for a  loan to advance these studies – I could choose between Chinese Cantonese and Chinese Mandarin –  the debt ceiling crisis struck

Then I remembered something that Tom Lehrer , the satirical folk singer of the 1960s and 1970s  said in the 1990s when he returned to singing after more than a twenty year hiatus:  "who could do satire after Henry Kissinger won the Nobel Peace Prize.?"  Who can do satire in the face of what the Republicans are trying to do in Congress today?

But I will try.  If I could find five people, let's say two CPUSA members and three Moveon activists, I would form a "gang of six," to come up with a compromise solution. 

My compromise would be between laissez-faire capitalism  associated with no policies of regulation of business or social protection for labor  and no income or corporate taxes of any kind  on one extreme and  the 20th century model of state controlled, owned, and planned socialism most associated with the Soviet Union on the other.  By the latter I mean public ownership of all productive property, production of everything according to five year plans, iron clad social guarentees, and virtually no place for markets except for farmers to sell some surplusses in farmers markets and unfortunately, "black markets" where consumer good were bought and sold illegally.

What would my  gang of six policy be.  First the deficit could be paid down in two ways:  First, a sharp increase in taxation against Wall Street, including restoration of capital gains tax to both limit and increase public revenues from specuation, corporations, with tax reductions for corporation which  accept unions, invest in  productive capacity wihic increases well paying domestic jobs, and of course, upper income people, with similar  tax benefits for those who invest in productive capacity to increase well paying domestic jobs.

But I know that taxation with representation is often condemned by reactionaries and their fans as "socialism."  

 I would come forward with an alternative to socialism--"free public enterprise."  Free public enterprise would be to public ownership of a profitable section of the economy(not just social services) like energy/oil, high tech, etc, and then invest the profits from that sector into deficit reduction and reducing regressive social security and other taxes.  That would have the effect of lowering taxes generally  and reducing deficits.  Then, as the Republicans say we would have the purchasing power to "live within our means," because we the people would control a part of the means of production. " Read my lips." we would watch a presidential candidate  in front of  Peoples aka Exxon and New Microsoft, : no new taxes" as his  private army of economists contended that the best way to keep taxes low and expand the economy was through a policy of "supply side" subsidies to "free public enterprise.

I don't expect my "gang of six" proposals to get much traction in our capitalist media.  Instead all of the attention today is on the Kamikaze legislation that the Republicans are pushing through the House, which fortunately should be blown up in the Senate before it explodes on the American people. 

 Contrary to some others, I don't see the bipartisan "gang of six"proposals as they have been reported as the basis for any serious policy as against a kind of humoring of the right Republicans to calm them down before they try to implement their delusions into action.

There are demonstrations through the nation to save social security and medicare, to come forward with a rationale deficit policy rooted in serious tax reform--where I live there will be a demonstration this Saturday in front on the local social security office, a demonstration supported by the the Industrial Union Council of New Jersey's AFL-CIO.  These are the kinds of labor and peoples movement demonstrations that should escalate in quantity and quality if he are to overcome this crisis without mortgaging our future to reactionaries, whose policies  of "deficit reduction" amount to dividing the working class between present workers and retirees and protecting the profits, stocks and bonds of the capitalist class by making the working class pay in reduced incomes and living standards for their past profiteering at the expense of  the working class. 

And that, like Henry Kissinger winning the Nobel Peace Prize, would turn anyone off on satire.