Enter, stage far right, Koch-lobbyist and former derivatives maven Senator Pat Toomey (R-PA).

In a recent hearing Toomey (pronounced, perhaps not coincidentally, “to me”) suggested to Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke that there would be no financial crisis if the debt ceiling were not raised because they would direct the Treasury Secretary to “pay off bondholders first” from money coming into the government.

Soldiers fighting in Afghanistan, Social Security recipients, Medicare/Medicaid providers and recipients, veterans, children’s health care, food stamps…all would have to line up behind Wall Street to get their money.

Bernanke became visibly uncomfortable and tried as gently as possibly to warn Toomey that it might not work out so simply. Toomey then became visibly angry and cut off the answer stating, “I was a bond trader, and I know they would not consider the possibility of default real”.

One wonders how many examples the electorate needs before they realize who these Republicans are, and whom they serve with complete obedience. Yes, many Democrats take money from these vested interests and support their positions, but the difference in support levels on the one hand, and obeisance on the other, is hardly subtle.

Moreover, Toomey is more than just a little crazy. Not raising the debt ceiling means the government cannot pay all its obligations. Any fiduciary, any holder of an IOU from the government, any vendor, would be negligent if they did not demand immediate full payment. It only takes one, and the others would be foolish not to follow.

What would be the value of holding US government obligations with loons like Toomey playing Russian roulette with the US and world economy?

The Social Security Trust Fund, for example, holds “Special Issue” Securities from the US Treasury, redeemable at any time for face value. Usually, the Trust Fund just redeems what it needs (“just-in-time-redemption”, sounds like a revival!) and leaves the other money collecting interest. If the debt ceiling were not extended, a responsible fiduciary would demand payment of principal on some of the Special Issue Securities beyond the just-in-time-redemption requirements.

Toomey’s proposal is thus not only mean-spirited, it is also unworkable. It will spook the markets at any time, and especially at a time of world-turmoil and high economic fragility.

Joe Sestak, Toomey’s Democratic opponent in the 2010 election, was an Admiral who had spent his life in service to his country. Instead, Pennsylvania chose someone who spent his career in service to himself…and his corporate paymasters.

Any surprise then that he would not only shut down the government, risk YOUR economic future by playing games with the debt ceiling, but also insist that Wall Street get paid ahead of soldiers, veterans, the elderly, the ill, children, disaster victims…?

Is this what Pennsylvania really wanted?

Anyone following the developments in Wisconsin knows that this is a result of a falsely created budget deficit and an excuse to eliminate the freedom to contract by public workers – something that has absolutely no impact on the current budget. Indiana is going through a similar assault on public employees with legislation targeting collective bargaining. And no sooner was Andrew Cuomo elected as Governor in New York that he attached public workers.

In New Jersey – a state whose public schools are consistently in the very top tier of the country, Governor Christie has attacked and demonized teachers unions, skipped out on the state’s pension plan payment in order to “balance” his budget last year, while cutting taxes for those earning over $400,000 and costing the state $1 billion in revenue. Most ironically here, Christie talked about “two classes of citizens” but instead of talking about those who can afford such things as heat, food and medicine all at the same time and those who can’t, he focused on health and pension benefits. Even more ironic is that these are the same people who either don’t think anyone should have “rich health benefits” or that you should only have if you can afford to pay for them. On top of this, while Christie is being hailed by those who don’t know any better, he too is looking to raise the estate tax exemption in NJ and give more tax breaks to the wealthy.

On the Federal and state level, “budget and spending cuts” merely translate to slashing of services that are needed most at this time – all in the laughable name of responsibility – coming from the same Republican Party that is directly responsible (maybe that is why they are using that term) for the economic ruin that many Americans face now. The key element of this “blueprint for disaster” is the job killing tax cuts (which clearly didn’t work for the Bush tax cuts) and the cutting of services.

Couple this with massive income tax breaks for the top 1-5%, a reduction in social security tax payments at the same time a manufactured “crisis” is trotted out (with the help of Obama administration), and the reality is that even if every single public worker is fired, the structural problems that directly relate to the lowest income and estate taxes in history on those who need it least while vital services to everyone else are drastically reduced will only lead to a widening of the already overwhelming wealth gap between the small number of “haves” and the huge and growing number of “have-nots”.

This is precisely what the Republicans want. This is precisely what they have done in the past – pick a scapegoat to distract from their real agenda of killing jobs and killing the middle class, all while lining the pockets of the super rich that keep them in power. Lather, rinse, repeat.

This time, hopefully Americans are on to this deadly game and will recognize this for what it is – a direct assault on the economy, since an economy can’t function without a robust middle class. When even Goldman Sachs sees danger in the Republican blueprint for disaster, you know it is serious.

“We are the first generation to leave our kids worse off than we were. How did this happen? Why is there such a wide distance between the rich and the middle class and the poor? What happened to the middle class? We did not buy boats or fancy cars or diamonds. Why was it possible to change the economy from one that was based on what we made and grew and serviced to a paper economy that disappeared?”

Those are the words of a 69-year-old woman, written to Bernie Sanders. They appear in At Grave Risk, Bob Herbert’s New York Times op-ed this morning.

For all our focus on what is happening in Wisconsin, which is certainly important, let us not lose sight of what has already happened, to far too many.

As Herbert puts it at the beginning of his column, which you MUST read,

Buried deep beneath the stories about executive bonuses, the stock market surge and the economy’s agonizingly slow road to recovery is the all-but-silent suffering of the many millions of Americans who, economically, are going down for the count.

going down for the count – an image from the boxing ring, where one of the competitors has been knocked out, or, if you prefer, down and out.

Those here know that Bernie Sanders would read letters like this. He personally responds to stories like these. He has been screaming for years about what is happening to ordinary Americans.

He is unusual. Too many of our political leaders are too focused on the next election, on not offending those whose financial and political support they want for that next election.

In the meantime, consider other words from that opening paragraph: all-but-silent suffering – the stories that somehow our media ignore in favor of the manufactured assemblage of tea party types.

Yes, the destruction of unions over the past few decades has been a part of it. So has globalization. Both are the product of mindsets that cross party lines, that focus on “economic competitiveness” to the degree that everything else becomes subservient. Thus we have a Democratic administration whose focus on education is framed in terms of international competition and which place such emphasis on STEM – science, technology, engineering, and math – in a way that surprises considering how many in those fields are currently without jobs. It is a corporate wet dream to have an oversupply of labor that is unprotected by unions and by government to drive down their labor costs.

Corporate interests, and their lackeys – in the Republican party to be sure, but among far too many Democrats – frame their arguments in terms of greedy workers, in industry as well as in education and other government functions. Having unconscionably slashed benefits to their own workforces they now seek to turn those workers again the few people who still have full benefits, government employees. This kind of turning out of power groups against one another is an ancient practice of the rich and powerful in this country. Among the landed gentry of the South, it was to turn the white working class against the blacks. Racism was a convenient tool then, it remains one today. Only now it is not just blacks, but Hispanics, foreigners of all stripes. Never mind that many of the rich benefit directly from the work of undocumented aliens, as a certain state-wide Republican candidate in California illustrated last year with household help, and as one Republican presidential aspirant trying yet again for his party’s nomination illustrated with the lawn service he used.

We read of the angst, the depression, the approaching desperation in the words offered to Senator Sanders.

“All we want to do is work hard and pay our bills. We’re just not sure even that part of the American Dream is still possible anymore.”

People want to work, yet unemployment, if calculated honestly, is well above 10% and likely to remain there for many years. In some communities it is over 20%. What do people with family ties there do?

Instead we continue to waste trillions upon unnecessary military expenses and endeavors. Iraq and Afghanistan have financially burdened our progeny to an extend of national indebtedness unimaginable when I was the age of the teenagers I now teach. Yes, we assumed great burdens during World War II, but when that war and the fighting in its offshoot in Korea came to an end, we taxed ourselves and paid down that burden on future generations. We had incremental tax rates of more than 90%. We even forgave the debts European nations owed us through the Marshall plan. And the nation thrived economically.

We recognized as a nation that we still had unmet needs, and expanded the social network through the programs of the Great Society, and even while fighting another unnecessary war in Southeast Asia paid down the debt, had a national surplus. The American dream stayed alive, was expanded for many.

And now? I read Herbert and my heart aches. But I am not surprised. He is not the only one who has been trying to call our attention to what is happening. Other writers, some politicians, many bloggers – including me – have been saying that the American dream is disappearing.

Bernie Sanders gets letters like this because people believe he still cares. They may not feel that way about other politicians.

The final paragraph in Herbert’s piece is from outside Sanders’ constituency:

A couple facing foreclosure in Barre, Mass., wrote to Senator Sanders: “We are now at our wits end and in dire straits. Our parents have since left this world and with no place to go, what are we to do and where are we to go?” They pray to God, they said, that they will not end up living in their car in the cold.

Can I be cynical and point out that at least they have a car to turn to, and many in this country do not.

I have a job. Some of my fellow teachers will lose theirs at the end of this school year. Many entered teaching for less pay in return for what they thought was job security and delayed compensation of pensions and health insurance. Now in our economic crisis they are losing those, if they keep their jobs. Teachers in many jurisdictions have lost stipends, are undergoing unpaid furlough days. We struggle to pay our bills, to maintain our homes. Yesterday we had to spend over $1,000 on plumbing that had to be addressed. We are now two highly educated people of middle class background who have no margin of error. And we are lucky. We do not have our own children, and so far we have not had to help support our older relatives, although one is dependent upon government assistance for her care, assistance that may soon disappear, and thus fall upon her children, including us.

If this nation is unwilling to be honest with what is happening, it will not just be the American dream that disappears. it will be hope. It will be democracy.

It already is justice. People have ripped off the system for trillions and gotten away with it. Any attempt to hold them accountable gets blocked – by politicians and judges bought and paid for by those who are transgressing against the rest of us.

This is perhaps not new. After all, one reason we went to direct election of US Senators is because the state legislatures that used to elect them were in some cases effectively subsidiaries of railroads and banks. It was a populist uprising that changed that. Now the wealthy fund “popular” uprisings that include in their agenda removing direct election of Senators.

But forget about political ideology. It is a cover for our shame as a nation.

Bernie Sanders speaks out. People write to him.

We need more than one senator.

We need people across the nation to speak out, to act.

Except for too many it is already too late.

Their dream is no longer dying. It is cold and in the ground.

The numbers of whom that is true is increasing, far too rapidly.

Bill Clinton used to quote from Proverbs 29:18, that where there is no vision, the people perish. Vision is the ability to look ahead. Vision combined with hope is what makes positive change possible.

People are losing hope. Some have already given up. Their voices are not heard, they are shouted out by anger provoked and manufactured by those who seek to profit for themselves and those like them, and to hell with the rest of us.

Letters to a Senator. Perhaps my title is too mild? Perhaps it should be screams of agony written to the one politician who still seems to listen?

I read Herbert. That is, I read the letters he quotes and the additional words he offers.

I did not need to.

I see it around my state of Virginia, where there are communities with effective unemployment rates over 30%.

I hear it in the voice of a student who asked to speak with me after class on Wednesday, who told me her family had lost its business and was about to lose its home, and she did not know how much longer she would be coming to school.

I read it in newspapers, on line and in dead tree editions, when they pay attention long enough to realize what is happening in this nation.

Herbert’s column should be read by everyone here. It should be sent to every elected official and candidate for public office. Of course some will ignore, others will politicize.

America is becoming immoral.

We already have a GINI coefficient that is embarrassing in how much economic inequity we have, and that inequity continues to increase. But as a nation we refuse to address the causes of that inequity, and pursue policies that only make it worse.

In the process we make our people insecure at the most basic level, the ability to know one can feed and house and clothe oneself and one’s family.

Letters to a Senator – letters that tell a Senator who will listen that the American dream is dying, that America is dying.

What else can we say?