People Before Profit blog

Anti-communism: More than one kind of smear

Fri, 01 Mar 2013 14:28:00 +0000

With the McCarthyite antics of newly elected tea party Senator Ted Cruz from Texas, we see an increase in right-wing efforts to smear liberal opponents as Communists, as supporters of terrorism, as un-American. Apparently, several years ago, Cruz falsely proclaimed that there were 12 Communists on the faculty of the Harvard Law School, of which he was a graduate.

Last year, Allen West, since-defeated congressman from Florida, accused the entire Congressional Progressive Caucus of being Communists, declaring that he "knew" of 80 or 81 members of the Communist Party currently in Congress.

Michele Bachman famously told Chris Matthews on Hardball that congresspeople should be investigated for "anti-Americanism." They want the public to think of any opposition to their right-wing ideology as being allied with Communists, terrorists, or both.

We also see this in tea party fulminations against Obama as a socialist, fascist, communist, Marxist, foreign tyrant, based on nothing but their own nightmare visions.

Such moves are drawing condemnation, from other senators, from some editorial pages, from the New Yorker blog, and many others. This is a welcome development, when mainstream politicians, including some Republicans, publicly reject such attacks.

Most liberal condemnation of Cruz, West, and their ilk, however, points out the ridiculousness of these false claims. However they often also implicitly accept the premise-that Communists are to be condemned, just for being Communists.

Several decades ago in Seattle, there was a horrific murder of the Goldmark family. The father was a prominent liberal Democrat. A demented individual, goaded on by the propaganda of a fringe right-wing group then known as the "Duck Club," murdered him, his wife, and their two children on Christmas Eve.

The entire community was properly outraged; the perpetrator was arrested and convicted. The Duck Club had to disband. In the process, the editorial page of the Seattle Times opined that this crime was particularly vicious and idiotic because the delusion that Goldmark was a Communist was so egregiously phony.

However, the way they discussed this, it seemed as if, had the accusation been true, the crime would have been less horrific. This liberal acceptance of the terms of anti-communism betrays a second form of anti-communist smear.

Yes, the right-wingers sling around stupidity and ignorance when they accuse liberals of being Communists. Yes, they are vicious and malicious, creating false issues to bash their liberal opponents, now even bashing staunchly conservative former Republican Senator Chuck Hagel during the hearings on his nomination to be Secretary of Defense, because he eventually rejected the Bush invasion of Iraq.

But too many take for granted that if the accusation were true, then the tactics of these right-wing foaming-at-the-mouth reactionaries would be more acceptable.

No, these attacks are wrong, no matter who they are aimed at. In part, the problem with McCarthyism was that he (and his allies) falsely and publicly attacked people for being Communists who were not, even by the loose standards of congressional rhetoric. But these accusations were also wrong when they attacked actual Communists.

After many years of legal and political struggle, many of the anti-communist laws of the period, or portions of them, were rejected as unconstitutional by the Supreme Court. The Smith Act, the McCarran Act (which authorized the government to set up concentration camps for radicals, among other things), and the congressional witch-hunt House Un-American Activities Committee and the Senate Subversive Control Committee, all eventually had to retreat, though the anti-communism they promoted never went away.

The Communist Party USA is a legal party (in spite of efforts to criminalize membership) and a valid participant in the political life of our country. We have just as much right as any other citizen to hold and state our views on issues of the day, on the nature of our political and economic systems, and anything else we actually want to say (not what reactionaries use their fevered imaginations to dream up what they claim we advocate).

The right wing is wrong. Wrong when it falsely accuses mainstream liberals of being Communists. Also wrong when they falsely accuse Communists of conspiracy, of trying to "overthrow" democracy, of advocating violence. None of those accusations are true.

They lie because they want to avoid engaging with our actual ideas and policies. They lie because they want a convenient cudgel to beat their opponents with. They lie because they want to divide liberals, progressives, and radicals from each other, much as McCarthy and others wanted to do in the late 1940s and 1950s. They lie because it draws attention away from the hollow and anti-human policies they are trying to impose on the country.

Allen West and Ted Cruz are wrong. They have proven themselves to be capable of public idiocy, of propagating lies and false implications, of ignoring common decency. But they are also wrong when they accuse the Communist Party USA, either explicitly or implicitly, of not being a legitimate part of U.S. political life. They are wrong when they claim, without proof, without logic, without sense, that we advocate anything other than what we feel is the best path for the majority of people. They lie about what we advocate, and then use those lies to swing wildly at everyone who disagrees with them.

Photo: PW

Is full employment possible under capitalism?

Wed, 27 Feb 2013 16:22:00 +0000

Editor's note: The following are remarks given by Communist Party USA chair Sam Webb at a Feb. 25 University of Georgia debate sponsored by Phi Kappa Literary Society. The debate topic was "Is full employment possible under capitalism?" Webb debated Greg Morin from the Libertarian Party of Georgia. See video at end of article.

Billed as "The Debate That Never Happened," UGA's Phi Kappa Literary Society decided to recreate an attempted 1963 debate between CPUSA's Arnold Johnson and UGA economist David Wright. That attempt had been squelched by a unanimous vote of the Faculty Committee on Student Affairs. The society was accused of attempting to "incite riot." In the spirit of free speech, the society hosted this debate during its 50^th anniversary.

Thank you, and thanks to Phi Kappa Literary Society for the invitation to participate in this debate on this beautiful campus and in this historic chapel. Thanks also to Speak Progress.

The debate question - "Is full employment possible under capitalism" - is by no means an academic one.

By last count, approximately 12 million Americans were officially unemployed. Of those, 4.7 million have been jobless for 27 weeks or longer.

If we include in our calculations discouraged workers who have stopped looking, and part-time workers who would prefer full-time work, the number is much higher - roughly 20 million people.

If you are African American, Latino, Native American Indian, and/or young, you are going to be overrepresented in those figures.

Here in Georgia the unemployment rate stands at 8.6 per cent. Without fundamental changes in public policies, it is hard to see how this awful situation will change.

Which prompts the question: Is persistent and high joblessness - not to mention stagnant and falling living standards - U.S. capitalism's "new normal?"

If it were, it would contrast with the world that I grew up in. That era, stretching from the end of World War II to the early 1970s, is sometimes referred to as the "Golden Age" of capitalism.

This phrase doesn't capture the full complexities of that period, but it does capture some of its most salient features, namely, that it was an era of sustained growth, diminishing inequality, and low unemployment - the likes of which we hadn't seen before or since.

My father, for example, who was a lineman in the backwoods of Maine, never experienced a layoff, even a short one, in a work life that began during the Depression and ended in the late 1960s.

At the time, economists thought that the cyclical ups and downs of the economy had been tamed and that full or near-full employment was the normal condition of capitalism, not only here but also in Western Europe and Japan.

But looking back a half-century later, one has to think that this period might well be the exception rather than the rule of capitalist development.

Now it's true that during the Clinton and Bush years rates of unemployment were relatively low and the recessions were relatively mild, but I would add four caveats.

First of all, the expansion of employment during this period took place mainly in low-wage, non-union and service sector jobs. The growth of Walmart into the nation's largest employer is emblematic of this phenomenon.

The second caveat is that under the weight of chronic overproduction in global commodity markets, a new phase of the technological revolution, and the relocation of production to low wage economies, tens of millions of jobs, especially in manufacturing, were permanently lost. Many of these jobs provided livable wages and modest health and retirement benefits to "middle class families."

Another caveat is the Clinton-Bush years were marked by growing income inequality and downward social mobility. The gap between the top income layers of our society - the one per cent - and the vast majority of wage and salary workers grew enormously to an historic high.

A final, and especially damning, caveat is economic growth and employment levels rested on enormous stock, housing, and financial bubbles, massive deregulation of markets, and the production of unending amounts of business and consumer debt.

While providing a lift to an otherwise sluggish economy, this financial frenzy engineered on Wall Street and in Washington and driven by corporate capital's drive for maximum profits wasn't sustainable, and eventually came to an end in an economic crisis, the likes of which we haven't seen since the Great Depression.

To sum up, the Clinton-Bush years are not cracked up to what conventional wisdom would like us to believe.

Since 2008, some pickup in economic activity has occurred, but overall employment gains and economic growth have been fitful and meager.

Moreover, it's hard to see where the economic dynamism and jobs are going to come from without action by the federal government, and the restructuring of the economy on a scale that only a few in Washington are ready to embrace.

After all, debt and bubble-driven growth that greased the wheels of the economy during the Clinton and Bush years is not an option.

Nor should any help be expected from our global partners. Europe is stuck in an economic quagmire and its austerity policies are only making it worse. China isn't positioned to carry the rest of the world on its shoulders. In fact, the Chinese economy's growth has also slowed, and it is feeling the contradictions that come from its deep integration into the capitalist global economy.

Furthermore, the longer-term processes that I mentioned earlier - overproduction in global commodity markets, job-displacing technologies, and global supply lines that fan out to distant lands - will only become more pronounced in the years ahead.

Economic crises are supposed to be how capitalism clears away the debris that impedes a revival of production, profits, employment and growth, but that scenario doesn't appear to be the case today.

So I'm guessing you know how I'm going to answer the question of this debate: is full employment possible under capitalism in today's conditions?

My answer, in case there is any doubt, is NO!

Transnational corporate capitalism, in its endless quest to accumulate capital and wealth, has morphed from a generator of jobs and rising income to a generator of unemployment, inequality, and insecurity.

I would quickly add that there are ways to ameliorate the jobs crisis. But only if the American people bring the power of their numbers and unity to bear on government at all levels, much like Americans did in the 1930s.

In his first four years, President Obama enacted policies that prevented the floor from falling out of the economy - an economy, by the way, that was stalled primarily due to insufficient demand for goods and services.

In his recent State of the Union address, President Obama proposed a higher minimum wage, stronger educational opportunities, rebuilding the deteriorating infrastructure, immigration reform, and investment in green technologies and jobs.

He also resisted calls for sweeping austerity measures from his Republican counterparts, since if enacted, they would reduce aggregate demand and in turn exacerbate the economic and jobs crises.

All of which are welcome.

Nevertheless, the president's package of proposals addresses only the edges of the deep and long-term jobs crisis that faces our country.

Indeed, he missed an opportunity to project a bold, transformative "new jobs" agenda. For the sake of our fragile planet and ourselves, such an agenda would transform our economy from one dominated by Wall Street, Lockheed Martin, Peabody Coal, Exxon and Walmart to a Main Street economy rooted in a green, demilitarized production, clean and renewable energy, livable wages and union protections, publicly-owned banks, public controls over the investment policies of the Fortune 500, affirmative action and equality, the modernization of mass transit, aid for small and medium-sized businesses, renewal of both urban and rural communities, democratic forms of worker ownership, and a progressive tax structure.

This reorientation of our economy would create millions of jobs, raise living standards, promote fairness and equality, and give us a fighting chance of mitigating the worst effects of climate change.

Of course, if I had my druthers, I would prefer socialism - democratic, working people driven, and people not profit centered.

But that debate is for another time.

The Debate That Never Happened from Phi Kappa Literary Society on Vimeo.

Photo: Hundreds of job seekers gather at the Los Angeles Mission for the ninth annual Skid Row Career Fair last month. (AP/Adam Lau)

Things coming together for a change in U.S. Cuba policy?

Wed, 27 Feb 2013 12:21:00 +0000

There may be an improved chance to get the U.S. to back off some of its anti-Cuba policies, due to a series of new developments.

*There is a new Secretary of State, John Kerry, who has in the past shown a more reasonable attitude on Cuba. There is a new Secretary of Defense, Chuck Hagel, who has greatly annoyed the right wing by his tendencies toward relative sanity in foreign affairs. There was a rumor that Kerry has ordered a review of, among other things, the presence of Cuba on the State Department's list of state sponsors of terrorism. State Department spokesperson Victoria Nuland told the press that there is no such review going on now, but did not say there would not be in the near future.

*A high level Congressional delegation just got back from Cuba. One of their stated reasons for going was to ask the Cuban government to release U.S. agent Alan Gross. They were told by the Cubans that such a release is not possible unless the United States agrees to discuss it in the context of the situation of the Cuban Five. Two Democratic members of the delegation (Senator Leahy and Congressman McGovern) have spoken to the press to the effect that they think the whole of U.S. Cuba policy is stupid and needs to be overhauled completely. This is not the first time U.S. politicians have said this sort of thing, but it comes at a key moment. It is also newsworthy because those of us who work to normalize U.S.-Cuba relations have been told lately that there can be no progress until Cuba unilaterally releases Gross. Maybe that logjam is now about to break up.

*The U.S. administration has got itself into a real tangle with the Alan Gross situation. The Cubans caught him dead to rights violating their laws and doing work aimed at destabilizing their country. Gross and his wife claimed that they did not know what they were doing was illegal, but this is preposterous on the evidence. The wife sued the U.S. government and the subcontractor for whom her husband worked for not adequately warning her husband that the work he was doing could get him into trouble. The government countered by detailing information which shows not only that Gross knew or should have known he was violating Cuban law, but also that the government sent him to Cuba for the purpose of harming Cuba's government, not to help out Jewish communities as per the now thoroughly discredited cover story. The result of the clash between the U.S. government and the Grosses is that they now have managed to discredit each other's cover stories.

*This demonstrates the non-equivalence between the Gross case and the cases of the Cuban Five. It is clear that Gross was sent to harm Cuba and knew it, while nobody even claims that the Five were sent to harm the United States-the targets of their surveillance were extremist right-wing Cuban exile groups in Florida who have a history of terrorist actions. So, as Cuba has strongly hinted that it is willing to trade the Five for Gross, it shows the Cuban position to be one of generosity. It also shows that in effect Gross is being held hostage not by the Cubans, but by the United States. The U.S. has raised the fact that one of the Five, Gerardo Hernandez, was also convicted of murder for allegedly having prior knowledge of the shooting down of the "Brothers to the Rescue" airplanes in 1996, but the government refuses to release some vital flight data which might show that the airplanes were shot down over Cuban waters after violating Cuban airspace.

*A worry with the appointment of Kerry as Secretary of State is that he would be replaced as Chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee by New Jersey Senator Bob Menendez. Though a Democrat, Menendez is a hard line anti-Castro zealot who would certainly have tried to block any changes in U.S. Cuba policy. But now Menendez is in trouble about a possible corruption and cronyism scandal. The investigation is just starting, but if it turns out to be a big problem, someone else may end up chairing the Committee.

This may all come to nothing: We have been disappointed before. But it seems like the moment for an extra hard push to publicize the Cuba issue.

We should intensify our activity behind the following demands:

Take Cuba off the state sponsors of terrorism list immediately. This can be done by President Obama with the stroke of a pen.

Do a quiet humanitarian exchange, releasing the Cuban five, who have already all done 14 years in prison, in exchange for Gross, who has done three. This, also, is within the rights of the executive branch.

Allow the broadest possible interpretation of the government's power to permit U.S. citizens to visit Cuba, instead of the narrow criteria now being used.

Ending the blockade completely requires congressional action. But we should nevertheless get to work with mobilizing, mass pressure and lobbying to achieve this end also.

Let us always remember that neither this U.S. administration nor any other will change its policies without mass struggle and pressure. We should be asking ourselves "how do we turn the Cuba issue into a mass issue, the way we did with the Vietnam War and the anti-apartheid struggle?"

Photo: Lightning illuminates the sky over the Malecon in Havana, Cuba, Sept 19, 2012. Ramon Espinosa/AP

Lincoln, Obama and the sweep of history

Tue, 26 Feb 2013 16:41:00 +0000

"We're not going back," says it all.

We are here today to celebrate the 150^th Anniversary of The Emancipation Proclamation, an act by President Lincoln that was a turning point in the Civil War and the whole fight against slavery. This was done with the strong urging of abolitionists like Frederick Douglass.

With a stroke of a pen the Union government outlawed the enslavement of about 4 million people. This was a great humanitarian act.

The truth was however, that the war was not going well for the North and they had to pass the Emancipation Proclamation in order to win.

The proclamation created a new surge in the mass movement of escaped slaves within the Confederate states. In "Black Reconstruction," W.E.B. Du Bois described how the slaves carried out a general strike that crippled the slaveholder's army. Slaves escaped by the thousands behind Union Army lines which then had to protect them.

The Emancipation Proclamation in 1863 opened the way to recruit black soldiers into Union Army regiments. Over 178,000 served in 175 segregated regiments.

These black soldiers comprised 10 percent of the Union forces and made a big difference. Some 40,000 gave their lives even as they did not receive equal pay. But they were fighting for something money couldn't buy. Two years and 3 months later the South was forced to surrender.

Karl Marx's wrote a regular anti-slavery column in the NY Tribune newspaper while also successfully organizing dockworkers in Liverpool to not unload goods from the slave states. Marxists rallied the working class in Europe as well as here against slavery, inspired by Marx's powerful slogan: "Workers in white skin can never be free as long as workers in the black skin are branded."

In 1864, Marx sent a letter to Abraham Lincoln congratulating him on his reelection. In it he called him a "son of the working class" and described his reelection as "the death of slavery".

While the movie "Lincoln" showed the 16^th president as very clear on his anti slavery positions, in reality Lincoln vacillated. First he wanted to end the war without ending slavery. He offered all kinds of concessions to the South including compensating the slave holders if they would release their slaves, and then proposed deporting them back to Africa en mass. But none of concessions worked, an important lesson from the past, please take note President Obama.

Ultimately Lincoln grew to understand that he had to end slavery in order to save the Union. Such was the sweep of history.

Thus, it matters big time who is in the White House especially at times of great crisis and change.

I think it is interesting that a year after he signed the Emancipation Proclamation when asked why he did it, "Honest Abe" made a very important admission. He said,

"I claim not to have controlled events, but confess plainly that events have controlled me."

If Karl Marx, the father of communism, could support a Republican capitalist like Lincoln (heaping great praise on him) in the fight against slavery, should the left need to feel timid about supporting Obama in the fight against the 1% and the extreme right Republicans today? Certainly not.

The slavocracy was defeated. The Republicans have been defeated twice. The struggle continues.

The election results demand a new offensive against racism, poverty and for jobs and social justice. In the post election period, there is an intensifying upsurge for justice and peace. The president is speaking with more conviction and militancy, but the right, while still staggering from the defeat at the polls, is more divided but they are still pushing the same ideas that defeated them. The struggle is moving to a higher level -- let it continue.

This is a section from the speech by Jarvis Tyner at the "We're not going Back" Celebration of African American History at Winston Unity Center on February 24, 2013.

Photo: Julius Giardina

Jarvis Tyner speaking at the Celebration.

The Second Amendment and racism

Tue, 19 Feb 2013 16:49:00 +0000

The Second Amendment continues to provide cover for racism just as its original intent was to protect slavery.

As clearly demonstrated by Prof. Carl T. Bogus in his remarkable article, "The Hidden History of the Second Amendment," in the Univ. of California Davis Law Review in 1998, James Madison wrote the Amendment after narrowly winning support for the Constitution in Virginia's ratification convention.

The Constitution was a compromise that Southern states would only support if the federal government was denied power to end slavery, but the proposed document had a provision giving Congress authority to arm and control state militia. The slave owners, outnumbered and living in constant fear of slave revolts, depended on being able to muster and mobilize militia composed of all free white males. Others, led by Patrick Henry, vigorously opposed ratifying the Constitution fearing Congress could disarm state militia as a way to abolish slavery.

Madison led the fight at the Virginia convention to endorse the Constitution. His resolution, adopted by a vote of 89-79, also set up a committee to write a proposed bill of rights including a provision to let states continue to be able to arm militia on their own. That is exactly what the ultimately adopted Second Amendment does in asserting the necessity of a "well-regulated militia to secure a free state" and denying federal infringement of the "right to bear arms."

Like the Third Amendment prohibiting quartering soldiers in homes without the owner's permission, the Second Amendment is an anachronism. Its purpose ended with the abolition of slavery.

But what hasn't ended is racism. In 1977 the National Rifle Association was taken over in a coup by an extremist right wing group led by former U.S. Border Patrol Chief Harlon Carter. Carter had been convicted as a teenager of murdering a Mexican boy he believed helped steal the family car. The conviction was overturned on appeal on grounds the jury had not considered a self-defense argument.

According to Adam Winkler, a Second Amendment scholar at U.C.L.A. Law School, in his 2011 book, "Gunfight: The Battle Over The Right To Bear Arms In America," Carter's top deputy, Neal Knox, believed Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy were killed by the government as "part of a plot to advance gun control." The same claim has been repeatedly made by NRA fanatics about the massacres in Newtown and Aurora.

In "Bowling for Columbine," Michael Moore's documentary on gun violence, NRA Pres. Charlton Heston states the Second Amendment "was passed on to me by those wise old dead white guys that invented this country" and claimed the high level of gun violence in the U.S. is due to the fact that "we have a problem of more mixed ethnicity than other countries....We had enough problems with civil rights."

This irrational racist fear of African Americans and other minorities goes far to explain the clearly defined political divide over gun control. Republican leaders who seek to suppress the vote of minorities, use code language about food stamps, and "takers" and "makers," oppose immigration reform and have treated the first African American president with unprecedented disrespect, are the same people promoting unrestricted gun ownership.

It also explains the startling finding by the 2010 Univ. of Chicago General Social Survey that most gun owners are Republicans. In fact, 50% of Republicans own guns, but only 22% of Democrats. Assuming the Democrats are not hostile to the Obama Administration, it would seem they primarily own guns for hunting, sport and legitimate self-defense. If the same proportion of Republicans own guns for those reasons, that leaves 28% of Republicans who amass weapons out of political reasons and racist fears.

This is the tea party base of the GOP. It shows why the fight to end gun violence is not only an urgent matter of public safety but is also key to the fight against racism and essential to secure American democracy from right wing extremism.

How Medicaid expansion will help thousands in W.Va.

Tue, 19 Feb 2013 16:12:00 +0000

SHEPERDSTOWN, W.Va. - In West Virginia, 250,000 workers are waiting on tenterhooks to find out if expanded Medicaid eligibility under provisions of the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) will be embraced by Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin.

Under Obamacare the federal government pays 100% for expanded state Medicaid coverage for three years, followed by incremental state contributions of up to 10%.

Because the expansion of Medicaid offsets already uncompensated costs of emergency rooms and free clinics, the actual increment for West Virginia, after the three years, would be less than 2.6%, according to an Urban Institute/Kaiser Commission study.

Medicaid in West Virginia currently puts applicants through a bureaucratic battery of red tape and "assets tests," and ends up excluding up to 30% of the workforce from coverage.

Under expanded eligibility, minimum wage workers, and hundreds of thousands more who still make less than 138% of the "official" U.S. poverty line, will be automatically enrolled - with just one phone call and a simple income tax statement. Further, both benefits and reimbursements to doctors will rise to Medicare levels, since many Medicaid doctors reported that paperwork expenses exceed reimbursement levels. In the past this has made finding Medicaid providers a real obstacle to care for many workers.

West Virginia currently spends $740 million each year in uncompensated care (emergency room and free clinic services). The increase in Medicaid expansion - after three years - will cost the state $330 million. Combined with the federal partnership exchange for above-poverty coverage, and well-administered by the states or regions, Obamacare should greatly reduce the states' burden for uncompensated care.

But these factors only address the hard-core health care pluses (and do not even deal with the economic pluses of a healthier workforce). The potential boon to small- and medium-sized businesses from virtually universal coverage is immense. First there is the huge shot in the arm to the health care occupations and related economic activity from the large infusion of federal money - over $10 billion for West Virginia. Second, the ability to start a business knowing that no employee will be driven away by medical costs removes a large burden on innovation and entrepreneurship.

So why should noted West Virginia "blue dog" Democrat Gov. Tomblin hesitate over the 2.6% cost increments, given the much greater potential benefit? Because increased costs, no matter how small, can only come from one place in West Virginia: coal, the source of the state's trillions of dollars in underground mineral wealth.

Coal companies, and perhaps the shale gas industry as well, are not interested in a diversified economy or in growth, except in their sector. Their operations are usually not compatible environmentally or culturally with most other industries or service economies. Thus coal has historically viewed alternative economic development as an endless array of threats and costs imposed on their operations.

Further, the industry is not interested in sharing any greater portion of West Virginia wealth with the state's citizens. When, after a hundred years or more of tax-free status in the state, a severance tax on coal production was enacted, the industry used it as bait and bribery to enable mineral interests to overwhelm competition. The curse of a resource-based economy, when the resources are extracted by an elite, our own little Libya, comes home again.

Unless the people demand greater control over their common wealth, the risk of blue dog, coal-owned politicians making them even poorer, even as the real wealth rises, will never end.

In a week we will know what Tomblin will do. In the meantime, health care advocates, patients, and anti-poverty organizations are deluging the governor with one message: "Expand Medicaid."

Photo: Jobs With Justice, Flickr.

Pistorius offers another example of violence against women

Tue, 19 Feb 2013 14:45:00 +0000

On February 14, One Billion Rising, an annual feminist event, highlighted the fact that one out of three women will be beaten or raped in her lifetime. It called for a "refusal to accept violence against women or girls as a given."

Unfortunately, this same day was marred by news that South African model Reeva Steenkamp was killed and the perpetrator allegedly was her boyfriend, Olympic track star Oscar Pistorius.

Much of the media's attention has been on every salacious detail of the case, as it has become known. However, relatively little has focused on this tragedy as the most recent example of the enduring problems of domestic violence and violence against women across the world.

South African police have publicly stated that the Pistorius residence had multiple domestic violence calls for police help. Yet, some are still hanging on to the now debunked claim that Pistorius mistook Steenkamp for an intruder.

Reports are swirling that Steenkamp and Pistorius argued Thursday morning over a text message she received from a male friend, rugby player Francois Hougaard. When paired with the media sexualization of Steenkamp, one can begin to see the victim-blaming begin yet again - even though violence and killing are clearly not acceptable ways to end relationships.

The point of this column is not to pass judgment on Pistorius' guilt or innocence. The point is to recognize that this is yet another situation where a woman has been killed, and to highlight the institutional problems of violence against women across international borders.

Instead of developing a society that teaches men to treat women respectfully, we have morphed into a society where mass protests are needed in India to ensure that the perpetrators of a brutal gang rape are arrested; 17-year-old South African Anene Booysen was gang-raped and disemboweled by a group of men including her ex-boyfriend; the killing of Kasandra Perkins by Jovan Belcher and his subsequent suicide is acknowledged then forgotten; judges tell rape victims, "If you wouldn't have been there that night, none of this would have happened to you;" and numerous other examples - and then we wonder why violence against women still endures.

As more comes out about this most recent tragedy, it is incumbent on us to fight the notion of inevitability - that these crimes will always occur. We need to highlight the connectedness of violence against women across the world. We need to push for a society where the onus is 1) on men not to rape, assault or abuse women (instead of assuming women are somehow culpable for their abuse because of where they were, what they were wearing, whether they were intoxicated, etc.) and 2) on society to appropriately assign blame to the perpetrators and not to the victims.

Photo: Taken during the first round of the 400m at the London 2012 Olympic Games. Jim Thurston, Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0.

Obama, coalition politics, and the struggle for reforms

Thu, 14 Feb 2013 13:49:00 +0000

President Obama's State of the Union speech reveals once again that president is a democratic reformer (on domestic issues) in the mold of Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson.

And the fact that the president has a disposition toward reform is of great significance - not only to the millions who are struggling to mitigate the worst effects of 30 years of right-wing extremism and capitalist globalization, but also to people who desire social change of a radical nature.

Here's why.

First of all, we are not in a revolutionary period. Despite the severity of our economic crisis and the urgency of socialism, the subjective conditions don't yet exist for a revolutionary transformation of our society to put people before profits. What do I mean by that? It's true that capitalism doesn't enjoy the same support as it did in the decades following World War II, and the resistance to its destructive effects is growing. But the array of social forces struggling against three decades of right-wing domination and neoliberal globalization are not of sufficient breadth, depth, unity or inclination to challenge capitalist class rule. I wish that were not the case, but it is.

Contrary to what some on the left think, the starting point of transformative politics isn't its political desires and wish list, but a sober and concrete assessment of the balance of class and social forces on the ground - not least of which is the political consciousness of the majority of working-class people and what they are ready to do. And by this measure, socialist transformation is not on the agenda in the near and medium term. The American people, much like the president, are - to paraphrase Billy Joel - in a reform state of mind. They don't yet have the desire or the wherewithal to bring down the curtains on U.S. capitalism.

Second, the bottom-up version of history, as exemplified by Howard Zinn, among others, contains an absolutely crucial insight - the dynamic role of masses of people in driving the process of social change. But it suffers from simplicity too. In every period of far-reaching social change in the 20th century, a broad mass upsurge has combined with reforming elements in elite circles to effect that change.

Indeed, the reforming impulse of Roosevelt and Johnson - shaped by many factors, including but not exclusively by the mass movements of their era - helped to create a terrain on which millions could intervene and expand the boundaries of freedom. Similarly, Obama's reforming inclinations open up space for the broader movement to fight and win victories today - not to mention lay the necessary groundwork (ideologically, politically, and organizationally) for radical change in the future.

Of course, this president, just as Roosevelt and Johnson did, will surely attempt to limit the sweep and depth of the reform process. But to turn that into a rationale not to join him on issues of mutual concern such as jobs, immigration, climate change, gun violence, taxing the rich, cutting the military budget and nuclear stockpile and so on, is a recipe for the left's political marginalization.

Moreover, it forgets that the outcome of these struggles will depend on two things. One is the relative strength of the opposing sides - the Obama-led coalition for reforms vs. the Republican right and its corporate supporters. But the other is the ability of the organized people's movement to put its political imprint on the reform process within the broader coalition that they are a part, while at the same time, (and this is where politics becomes an art) maintaining the coalition's broad unity against the main obstacles to social progress - again the Republican right and its corporate supporters.

Coalition politics and reform struggles are anything but pure; they are, by nature, a polyglot; an uneasy amalgamation of disparate forces. Still they are the ground - and the only ground - out of which change, including radical and socialist change, will come.

Photo: merlune/Flickr

It’s simple: Talk, don’t shoot

Thu, 14 Feb 2013 12:39:00 +0000

It's not complicated. Less guns equals less murders. There are some exceptions to this rule in lawless or failed states, where nothing equals less murders. But how can we not know that civil society is only possible if we agree, as a society, to "check the guns" as we enter "town," to borrow a moral from most western movies dated before World War II. Indeed, I watched Destry Rides Again, with Jimmy Stewart and Marlene Dietrich, last night. The hero wins all the civil arguments with the bad guys while disarmed. When force must be applied, he mobilizes the whole town, not just himself, to get the job done. How vastly different from the extra-legal fantasies of bulletproof Ahhnold or Dirty Harry taking care of business with some super-weapon and a bad attitude.

The following sums up my understanding of civilization: It begins with the surrender of violence to a democratic state and prevails when the state itself becomes disarmed. There are strong scientific and philosophical arguments for this understanding.

This is an important moment in the history of our country. Given the inequalities, injustices and inequities ravaging the United States, the time is now, 50 years after Dr. King's "I Have a Dream" speech in Washington, to re-ignite an important flame in that dream - nonviolence. Nonviolence as not just as a preference, not just a tactic, but a condition of any human civilization whose historical arc bends toward justice.

Proving that self-government is preferable to barbarism would seem to be an easy argument. But arms sales are through the roof now, as Congress considers the president's entirely worthy proposals.

Can we live in peace? If we, as a country, learn to live and let live, check our guns at the edge of civilization, and turn away from, not toward, arms, then paths to peaceful conflict resolution can appear on every level of life that otherwise fears will darken.

I attend a Quaker meeting near my hometown in West Virginia. The meeting adopted a "minute" - Quakerese for a resolution - on gun violence. It was not an easy process, even for Quakers, to come to consensus on this matter. In the end the message that was adopted spoke more in moral than in expressly political terms. But the most important thing was not the particulars of the resolution, but the process in finding unity, of listening to each other, of seeking common ground. Why? Because before the process, most doubted that unity could be achieved!

The sense of empowerment and new life in genuine unity is the big payback when it comes to taking effective action. Now other parishes in the community are undertaking the discussion, a civil discussion, proving that a civil discussion about disarmament can take place. What can we learn from the terrible losses suffered under the scourge of violence horrifically branded on our memories, forever, in the Newtown, Conn., tragedy?

We agreed. We feel right about it. So can many more. Essence of the resolution: "Do not remain silent on this matter." Talk. Don't shoot.

Photo: Sheila Steel/Flickr

End of the post office as a public institution?

Tue, 12 Feb 2013 13:25:00 +0000

"When the post office is closed, the flag comes down. When the human side of government closes its doors, we're all in trouble." Senator Jennings Randolph (West Virginia) 1958-85

For the post office the end game is on. This year the post office will close half its processing centers. By late spring a first class letter will take 1-3 days longer to arrive at its destination. By the end of this summer Saturday delivery is scheduled to end. Over the next year the post office plans to close over 3,000 local post offices while slashing some 220,000 of the its 650,000 employees.

How did we come to this place? In retrospect, it is easy to distinguish three discrete stages in the 221-year life of the post office.

Stage 1: The Post Office has a Broad Public Mandate

The first stage began in 1792 when President George Washington signed legislation making the United States Post Office a Cabinet-level department. It was a public institution with a clear mandate: to enable universal low cost access to information. In its early years this led it to initiate free and low cost delivery of newspapers and eventually, to offer a special rate for periodicals and books.

The post office helped tie the country together physically as well as intellectually. Post roads were essential to the early development of the country. Rural free delivery, established in the late 19th century, spurred improvements in roads and bridges since the post office would not offer service where roads were bad. In the 20th century mail contracts underwrote the embryonic aviation industry

In the 1820s, when private companies began charging a handsome fee to deliver information faster, enabling cotton speculators to make a killing on the difference in prices at the docks of New York and the plantations of Alabama, the post office responded by establishing its own express mail service. The private sector complained. A Congressional investigation concluded "(T)he Government should not hesitate to adopt means ... to place the community generally in possession of the same intelligence at as early a period as practicable.

In the 1840s, when the private sector began siphoning off the most profitable mail routes, leaving to the post office only money losing routes, Congress gave the post office a monopoly, enabling it to dramatically reduce the price of postage and initiate free door to door delivery in cities. In 1858 the first mailboxes appeared on street corners.

At the end of the 19th century, when private parcel companies began treating their customers badly, the post office introduced parcel post. The competition resulted in reduced prices and improved customer service.

In the 1890s and early 1900s financial panics and the closures of hundreds of banks led the post office to introduce postal savings banks. At their peak after World War II postal banks had over 4 million accounts and deposits exceeding $3.3 billion.

Stage 2: The Post Office Becomes a Public-Private Institution

But after World War II the post office's inability to borrow money and invest long term coupled with the dramatic increase in the volume of mail put an increasing strain on its system. In 1966 the mail system in Chicago literally collapsed under an avalanche of mail. Which led LBJ to appoint a commission to study the future of the post office. The commission's chairman, retired CEO Frederick R. Kappel, envisioned a more corporatized post office. Indeed, in testimony before Congress Kappel revealed his ultimate goal, "if I could, I'd make (the post office) a private enterprise ... and the country would be better off financially. But I can't get from here to there."

In the l950s low paid postal workers often moonlighted to make ends meet. It took 21 years for an entry-level worker to reach the maximum wage level. Strikes were illegal. Workers demonstrated, lobbied and even held prayer services to publicize their plight.

In 1970 Congress voted itself a pay raise while stalling postal wage increases, sparking a wildcat strike by letter carriers in New York City. Other postal workers honored the picket lines and the strike spread throughout the nation. President Nixon sent in 25,000 National Guard and Army troops to attempt, unsuccessfully for the most part, to sort and deliver the mail.

The Postal Reorganization Act of 1970 was a compromise between management and labor. Unions were given the right to collectively bargain over wages and hours and working conditions for the first time. Wages increased significantly. For the first time, postal work became a middle class job for hundreds of thousands, many of them minorities.

For management the Act gave the new quasi-public corporation now called the United States Postal Service (USPS) the right to borrow money and make long-term investments. In return Congress eliminated taxpayer subsidies, which amounted to 25 percent of the budget in 1971 (about $18 billion in current dollars) and demanded the USPS act more like a business.

Largely as a result of huge capital improvements, productivity soared. In 1966 Fortune Magazine credited USPS with improving its service more than any other company or agency in America. In 1997 audits by Price Waterhouse found on time delivery at 92%. The postal service was by far the most popular public agency. And between 1995 and 1997 postal operations produced a surplus of $4.6 billion.

But the tension between the public mission of the post office and the demand that it act more like a business, continued to grow. Management tried to close post offices and raised the possibility of ending Saturday service as early as the 1980s, leading Congress to pass laws forbidding the latter and significantly restricting the former. Under President Clinton, the Postal Service began contracting out services. Today contracts comprise about 20 percent of its operating budget or $12 billion.

In 2000 the USPS began a formal partnership with FedEx and later UPS. FedEx provides air service for USPS parcels domestically as well as providing international logistics. In 2011 Alan Robinson Executive Director of the Center for the Study of the Postal Market determined that the USPS delivers 30.4 percent of FedEx ground shipments. The USPS Fed Ex partnership is known as SmartPost. The USPS UPS partnership is known as UPS Basic or UPS Mail innovations. These may be the fastest growing parts of their businesses.

Stage 3: The Dismantling of the Post Office

The third and current part of the life of the post office began in 2006 with the passage of the highly misleadingly titled Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act.

A bit of background is necessary to understand this historic piece of legislation. In 2001 the GAO placed the Postal Service on its High Risk list because of concerns about its economic future given the poor management labor relations and increased competition from electronic mail. At the request of Congress and the GAO the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) conducted a review of the Postal Service's liability to the Civil Service Retirement System.

Almost everyone expected OPM to discover huge liabilities. Instead, it concluded the USPS had overfunded its pension plan by more than $70 billion. In 2003 the GAO raised the estimated overfunding to more than $100 billion.

In a sane world the USPS would have been able to use these funds to expand services, pay down existing debt, and invest in new technology. But Washington is anything but sane. The USPS is considered part of the unified budget used for scoring purposes to estimate any legislation's impact on the deficit. If the USPS were to tap into its surplus funds it would increase the overall federal deficit. For three years Congress debated what to do. Finally, in 2006 it passed a law that requires the Postal Service to pre-pay its health insurance fund by depositing an additional $5 billion a year for the next 10 years into the insurance fund to offset for the phantom accounting deficit under the unified budget. No other public or private agency is required to do anything remotely comparable.

In 2007, unsurprisingly, the USPS suffered a $5 billion deficit. Today that deficit is over $20 billion and is used to justify the death of the post office by amputation of its work force, its processing centers, and its local offices.

The 2006 law also specifically prohibited USPS from offering new products that would create "an unfair or otherwise inappropriate competitive advantage for the Postal Service..."

Elaine C. Kamarck of Harvard Kennedy School of Government has observed the essential contradiction in Congress's attitude toward the post office from the very beginning of its new life as a corporation. "Congress wants it to be self-sufficient but doesn't want it to make money."

For example, in the mid-1970s the post office was told to remove copy machines from post offices under pressure from lobbyists representing office equipment stores who feared that USPS was taking away its business. Later when the USPS initiated a "Pack and Send" service, the outcry from Mailboxes Etc. and other private packing stores successfully challenged the service. Years later, when Internet shopping took off, the delivery of packages to individual households should have resulted in a dramatic increase in USPS business. But parcel shipments were generated by large organizations and the USPS was not allowed to negotiate discounts and thus lost business. It was forbidden by law from lowering prices to get more business. This resulted in the entirely incredible situation in the 1990s where the United States Government negotiated an agreement for the delivery of U.S. government package services with Fed Ex because the USPS was not allowed to negotiate for lower prices!

Today the strongest force in shaping the future of the postal service, aside from Congress, is the bulk mailers. Indeed, bulk mailers are formally represented in the USPS through the Postmaster General's Mailers Technical Advisory Committee. Bulk mailers don't care about post office closings because big mailers present their mail at Bulk Mail Entry Units. Saturday delivery is not a major concern either because advertising mail would do fine with even three day delivery. Nor do they care about having a blue collection box on every corner, half of which have disappeared in the past 20 years.

What bulk mailers do care about is price. They receive huge discounts for pre-sorting that is far in excess of what the postal service saves by receiving mail pre-sorted.

Where do we go from here?

So here we are, at the end game. Few any longer are even talking about saving the post office as is. Fewer still are talking about resurrecting the post office as an institution with a broad public mission. The debate now focuses on how many parts of the post office we can lop off.

Kevin A. Hassett the director of economic policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute has written, "The Postal Service owns or operates 33,000 facilities nationwide and owns 219,000 vehicles. If we were to auction it off to private investors, the bids would likely be enormous."

Tad Dehaven of the Cato Institute insists, "The one size fits all model where you have six days delivery to every home in the country at a fixed price just doesn't make any economic sense. What I envision is eventually consumers and customers dictate what they want and entrepreneurs figuring out how to satisfy those wants and needs."

The National Academy of Public Administration will issue a report this spring on what it calls a Thought Leader proposal submitted in January. The 8-page paper urges the post office to be engaged only in last mile delivery and pick up. All other parts of the post office would be sold to private companies. Among the four signatories to the paper, astonishingly, is the Director of Advocacy of the Atlas Institute, dedicated to promoting the writings of Ayn Rand

The post office can and should be saved, but doing so will require a massive grassroots and lobbying effort. It is an effort that could cut across class and race and geography, cutting across rural Republican and big city Democratic districts. Such an effort could educate the American public about five key issues.

First, savings from cutting back postal services are largely illusory, even if we use the narrow cost-benefit analysis used by the USPS. In 2008 the GAO found that the USPS had no way to measure savings from contracting out. Ending Saturday delivery will not save nearly the amount of money the USPS predicts. There are alternatives to closing processing centers that achieve comparable savings.

But we should argue for a wider cost-benefit lens. Remarkably, the post office does not need to take into account the actual cost to the local community of closing a local post office! It does not have to take into account the increased out of pocket costs for people who have to travel longer distances, often on dangerous roads in the winter. The only cost benefit analysis that did bring these community costs into the equation concluded that the out of pocket costs to the community exceed the internal savings to the post office even in the worst-case scenario.

Second, the deficit is illusory. Over 80 percent of the deficit is a result of a phantom accounting system that imposes on the USPS an unprecedented, unparalleled and unfair financial burden.

Third, the post office remains a world-class institution and a remarkable bargain. A first class letter in the United States costs 20-75 percent less than in countries a fraction of our size, like Austria, Germany, Norway, Great Britain, Italy.

Fourth, the universal infrastructure of the post office is of enormous value and could be the foundation not only for it to provide increased services but also to compete with the private sector if it were allowed to do so using the same marketing and pricing tools the private sector uses.

Fifth, the post office plays an important unquantifiable part in American life. In rural areas, the local post office may be the only community gathering place remaining, a place to meet one's neighbors and share truly local needs and news. In a nation where more than one in five votes are cast by mail and in some states mail ballots have to be received by the close of polls, closing post offices can significantly burden some groups. In Nevada, for example, about half of the 27 Indian tribes rely heavily on the post office to register and to vote and the closure of a post office can effectively strip them of that right.

Closing post offices and delaying the delivery of mail places a significant burden on the most vulnerable of us.

William C. Snodgrass, owner of a USave Pharmacy in North Platte, Nebraska, talked about the end of next day first class delivery to local areas. His store mails hundreds of prescriptions a week to residents in mostly rural areas of the state that lack local pharmacies. If first-class delivery were lengthened to three days and Saturday mail service also were suspended, a resident might not get a shipment mailed on Wednesday until the following week.

"A lot of people in these communities are 65 or 70 years old, and transportation is an issue for them," said Snodgrass. "It's impossible for many of my customers to drive 100 miles, especially in the winter, to get the medications they need."

The Post Office can still be saved. But the grave has been dug. The coffin has been built. And funeral music is in the air. Only the most aggressive effort by the AARP, the NAACP, Consumers Union and other affected constituencies can save this most public of all public institutions.

David Morris is director of The Public Good Initiative at the Institute for Local Self-Reliance. This article originally appeared at the ILSR website and is reposted by permission of the author.

Photo: Ben Skirvin/WFIU Indiana Public Media CC BY-NC 2.0

Can we cure inequality, and how?

Thu, 07 Feb 2013 12:40:00 +0000

Joseph Stiglitz, a Nobel prize winner in economics, views growing inequality (a Marxist might say "the growing class divide") as a threat that may block economic recovery from our "Lesser Depression." In other words, it's possible that the "Lesser Depression" might yet become the "Greater Depression." The news that our country's GDP (gross domestic product) has declined again makes this threat more than just speculation.

Stiglitz writes, "Politicians typically talk about rising inequality and the sluggish recovery as separate phenomena, when they are in fact intertwined. Inequality stifles, restrains, and holds back our growth. When even the free-market-oriented magazine The Economist argues - as it did in a special feature in October - that the magnitude and nature of the country's inequality represent a serious threat to America, we should know that something has gone horribly wrong. And yet, after four decades of widening inequality and the greatest economic downturn since the Depression, we haven't done anything about it."

Stiglitz cites four principal causes of the growing class divide.

First, the working class, broadly defined, is too weak economically to support the consumer spending that has historically driven economic growth.

Second, the hollowing out of the "middle class" since the 1970s means that working people are unable to invest in their future by educating themselves and their children.

Third, stagnating working class incomes are holding back tax revenues. The recent modest agreement to restore tax rates for incomes over $400,000 did very little to change this, considering the multitude of tax breaks for corporations and the rich that remain. Further, investment income from Wall Street speculation is still taxed at a far lower rate than wages. Regressive taxes mean that vital investments in infrastructure, education, research and health that are crucial for restoring long-term economic strength go wanting.

Fourth, inequality is strongly associated with more frequent and more severe boom-and-bust cycles that make our economy more volatile, vulnerable, and likely to generate political instability.

Economist Paul Krugman is a bit more cautious about the direct impact of inequality on the recovery. He notes that economics "is not a morality play" and that a market economy could reach "equilibrium," and you could have virtually full employment based on purchases of yachts, luxury cars, and the services of personal trainers and celebrity chefs. The returns from rising productivity can go, and indeed have been going, ever more to the rich - not to those who do the producing! A democratic society with a political interest in fairness might not like such an economy, but there is little economic evidence that this would not be possible.

But there are "equilibriums" and then there are sustainable equilibriums. The scenario Krugman describes is clearly unsustainable.

Solutions

Beyond this theoretical debate, what are real solutions? I can only think of three ways - plus the obvious fourth - to redistribute wealth on the scale that fairness requires.

1) More progressive taxation to pay for investment in health care, education, security, a clean environment, roads, bridges, green energy and transport. These are public goods. They constitute a substantial portion of social wealth. In addition, most intellectual property - for example, biomedical and technology innovations - are also inherently quasi-public goods - because they exist in people's heads or in a form that can be easily and cheaply copied. Public goods will be the principal sources of wealth in the society that successfully emerges from this depression with democracy intact.

2) Provide for national collective bargaining. For example: Mandate collective bargaining for everyone over two things: the employer's minimum wage, and employee safety. Skip the entire embattled union certification/election process. A workplace organization, or any section of it, can affiliate with a labor federation, or not. End of the "right-to-work" debate, since there is no longer any threat of "decertification." This is analogous to the approach Brazil's former president Lula took to reviving labor law in that country after the military dictatorship. It united organized and unorganized workers in a demand that did not rely on any trickle-down theory to promise gains to multitudes of workers in real time.

3) Enact new laws protecting and expanding the value of "human capital." Human capital represents the education, accumulated know-how, training and other "tools" that an employee brings to an enterprise. The good-paying jobs of the future will be jobs where the "human capital" investment is large. Hourly wage- or salary-based compensation cannot generally retrieve the full value of "human capital" inputs. In the high tech boom, employees with stock or other capital options were one of the few income pluses in the 1990s, offsetting the longstanding stagnation of U.S. working class income. Yet this kind of income is not regulated, and many workers were literally robbed and fleeced of promised wealth in spite of their Herculean efforts for their employers.

And the obvious fourth option:

4) Nationalize the "too big to fail" companies - then we won't have to worry about taxing them fairly.

Any one of these four is the equivalent to a social revolution. Time to think anew.

Photo: mSeattle/Flickr

The Second Amendment and “insurrection”

Wed, 06 Feb 2013 14:48:00 +0000

At the Jan. 30 Congressional hearing on legislation to curb gun violence NRA spokesman Wayne LaPierre repeated the mantra of the right wing extremist movement:

"I think without any doubt, if you look at why our Founding Fathers put (the Second Amendment) there, they had lived under the tyranny of King George and they wanted to make sure that these free people in this new country would never be subjugated again and have to live under tyranny."

This is a complete fairy tale but unfortunately, as a result of a 36-year campaign by the National Rifle Association, it is widely accepted including among some progressive people. Just the previous week former Congressman Dennis Kucinich, now a commentator on Fox News, shocked and delighted Sean Hannity when he stated, "the people are weaponizing themselves historically because - you go back to the beginning of the Constitution - it was to protect themselves against a tyrannical government. So now, with the government getting ever more powerful, people weaponize themselves.

It is disheartening to say the least that such a progressive and intelligent person as Kucinich has fallen for the fraudulent position of the ultra-right.

The theory that the Second Amendment was enacted to protect individual gun ownership and the right to resist or overthrow the government is known in legal circles as the "insurrectionist" interpretation. It was never taken seriously by any court or legal scholars until the NRA was taken over by extremists in 1977 and began a campaign at the behest of gun manufacturers to repeal all gun control legislation. Former Chief Justice Warren Burger, a conservative appointed by Pres. Richard Nixon, denounced this effort in no uncertain terms. The Second Amendment, he said in 1991, "has been the subject of one of the greatest pieces of fraud - I repeat the word 'fraud' - on the American public by special interest groups that I have ever seen in my lifetime."

A thorough and highly informative rebuttal of this "insurrectionist" interpretation can be found in an article, "The Hidden History of the Second Amendment," by law professor Carl T. Bogus that appeared in the University of California Davis Law Review in 1998. Here is the link.

Bogus showed that James Madison, author of the Second Amendment, was motivated by the concern of slave owners, like himself, that the Constitution could empower the federal government to disarm state militia in the South that were essential for preventing and suppressing slave revolts. The amendment was a concession to the powerful opponents of the Constitution like Patrick Henry, who feared the new document would permit Congress by these means to subvert and abolish slavery.

It was adopted to reassure Southern states that the federal government could not interfere with their ability to muster and maintain an armed force to secure slavery.

The Amendment reads: "A well regulated militia being necessary for the security of a free state, the right to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed."

There was no public clamoring for the right of individuals to own guns for self defense and there certainly was no support among the Framers - slave owners in the South, bankers, large land owners and merchants in the North - for authorizing armed resistance to actions of the federal government. In fact, the Founding Fathers were virtually unanimous in supporting the violent suppression of Shay's Rebellion in 1787, a revolt by disenfranchised small farmers, shopkeepers and hired workers in Western Massachusetts, being driven into foreclosure and debtor's prison by Boston banks.

Madison called the revolt "treason" and urged Congress to send troops to help the State militia. John Hancock, elected governor to deal with the rebellion, mobilized troops with instructions to "kill, slay and destroy, if necessary, and conquer by all fitting ways, enterprises and means whatsoever, all and every one of the rebels."

The suppression of the rebellion was heartily endorsed by George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, Samuel Adams and John Marshall. Only Thomas Jefferson, then living in Paris as U.S. Ambassador to France, temporarily floated the idea of the right of revolution before realizing that he was alone in his views.

Later in 1794, a similar revolt by small farmers in Western Pennsylvania, known as the Whiskey Rebellion, was suppressed by Pres. George Washington, who under the provisions of the new constitution, led 13,000 troops mobilized from four state militia to disperse the rebels.

The Founding Fathers limited the franchise to white males with property over the age of 40 - approximately 15% of the population. If they were unwilling to arm ordinary people with votes to change the government, they certainly were not for arming them with guns.

Thus, the "insurrectionist" twisting of the Second Amendment has no basis in history. It is a fantasy promoted by reckless profiteers and delusional right-wing extremists.

It should be noted that while the proliferation of guns has reached record levels of over 300 million, the number of households possessing them has sharply declined from 54% in 1977 to 32% in 2010 according the Univ. of Chicago General Social Survey. Fewer people are amassing more guns and the study found that these new gun buyers are primarily Republicans. In fact, 50% of adult Republicans now own guns, but only 22% of adult Democrats.

The fight to end gun violence is not only a matter of public safety. It is an essential part of the fight to secure democracy from right wing extremism.

Photo: March on Washington for Gun Control. Elvert Barnes // CC 2.0

Long Distance Revolutionary: A journey with Mumia Abu-Jamal

Wed, 06 Feb 2013 13:56:00 +0000

Possibly the most prominent political prisoner in the world, radical revolutionary journalist Mumia Abu Jamal, is the subject of a new and informative documentary that focuses on his life and beliefs rather than his world famous case. Director Stephen Vittoria (One Bright Shining Moment: The Forgotten Summer of George McGovern) has crafted a creative documentary interviewing a seemingly endless amount of illuminaries of the Left, and a few opposites added in for flavor. Michelle Alexander, Cornel West, Dick Gregory, Angela Davis, Amy Goodman, Juan Gonzalez, Tariq Ali, Ramsey Clark, Giancarlo Esposito, Michael Parenti, Alice Walker and Dave Zirin to name just a few, provide fresh details about Mumia and insight into what made him such an eloquent spokesman for social change.

The film humanizes a dedicated 'long-distance revolutionary,' a term coined by the eloquent hip hop intellectual Cornel West. His imprisonment has steeled his resolve as a revolutionary for peace, justice and equality. He has remained fiercely committed mostly, as Juan Gonzalez states, "because he has been in jail so long this system has not had the opportunity to calm him down."

Opening with a phone call from Amy Goodman ebulliently proclaiming 'welcome to the airwaves of Democracy Now,' Mumia ironically responds, 'well, welcome to Hell.' His early years being followed and kicked around by the police, (he credits one of them for literally kicking him right into the Black Panther Party), his early journalism experience with the BPP and eventual radio journalism are all documented and wonderfully supported with stories by his sister, close friends, and fellow BPP members. Angela Davis, referring to Mumia's limited resources in jail, states, "he reminds us of what writing is all about -" just ideas and a paper and pencil.

Comedian Dick Gregory adds levity to the constant flow of thoughts from great thinkers, 'in the future they'll look back and say 'he WAS the Voice of America.'"

The film first focuses on the city that shaped Mumia's life - Philadelphia, home to keen observers like W. E. B. Dubois and Paul Robeson, with it's racist and white supremacist history. Ramona Africa, one of the victims of the MOVE bombing massacre, and others, talk of the reign of Police Commissioner (and eventual 2 term Mayor) Frank Rizzo, police brutality and the resulting police state, and note this influence on a young Black journalist. Mumia was one of the only reporters willing to cover the anarchistic African American group, MOVE, who became victims of the only bomb dropped on Americans in modern times.

The film reveals his family life, how and why he changed his name from Wesley Cook, his love for his mother and siblings and, although raised Baptist, his almost journalistic approach to all religions, searching out the centers of love. His sister, son Mazi and daughter add poignant moments.

We learn of his early radio career, helping to pave the way for a young Juan Gonzalez, refusing to cut his hair to get a high paying job. People were transfixed by his radio voice, and he easily could have gone on to commercial fame, but chose to remain committed to radical journalism without it being edited by the system.

With the proliferation of digital documentaries in the hands of so many camera owners, it's getting hard to find a film that takes the art to a new level. But director Vittorio has offered a passionate partisan portrayal of a world figure loved by many who feel he was unjustly convicted, a film filled with love for Mumia and his quest for justice, beautiful artwork, artistically framed interviews and loads of new pertinent information for those following Mumia's journey and others who will join the march.

We were able to ask the writer/director/producer/editor, Stephen Vittorio, some questions regarding his latest project:

PW. Why did you avoid any details of Mumia's trial and imprisonment in your documentary?

SV. It was a practical and creative decision. Almost every film, book, article and video has primarily focused on the case. There's nothing new that is that much different with the case, so I wanted to make a film that would get distributed. What did interest me about Mumia was the arc of his life. He is much more than just Dec 9, 1981 - an up and coming journalist, snuffed out by a tragic incident. But lo and behold he resurrects his career under incredibly harsh and draconian conditions on Death Row. He gains an impact around the world and remains committed to his revolutionary ideals. This was the uniqueness for me, the complicated case has been covered over and over again. Also I wanted to depict the remarkable Herculean task that he has to go through to create his work, with no computers or modern electronic resources.

PW. Who is your target audience?

SV. I was trying to aim the film at a progressive audience that understands the impact the American Empire has had on the population of the world. Mumia's writings have expanded into new territory including the machinations of the American Empire. The business we did at the recent opening in New York did so well the run was extended. We reached more than the radical Left. There was mainstream, probably liberals, that said "this is a whole different narrative." A good story will appeal to almost everybody. I tried to make the movie a mirror image of Mumia, a person who through the many years never backed off from his radical thinking. It's a personal journey with him, his writings and beliefs. When people ask me what it's like to make a movie about a radical, I say 'I don't think Mumia is much of a radical at all. He chooses peace over war, feeding people over starving them, healthcare over no care. To me radical means lobbing cruise missiles into neighborhoods. Or the guys on Wall Street, that's radical what they're doing to the people of the world.

PW. How do you feel about the need to be impartial when you make a movie, as opposed to being one-sided or partisan?

SV. That's one of the biggest fallacies - all filmmakers go into a project with an agenda. It's about the interpretation of the facts, it's not about being 50-50. For 30 years Mumia's opposition, the Philadelphia media and establishment, have had a narrative that they've pounded home in a very biased fashion. A few have attacked my strong point of view, saying 'who the hell am I to say the things I'm saying,' rather than address the facts I present. That's the classic role of the press - to protect the status quo, and anyone who steps out of that is some kind of heretic. Like Oscar Wilde said, 'If you're an artist, your responsibility to history is to re-write it," because we know who it's written by, like the 'embedded reporters' in the Middle East who provide obviously slanted reporting. Amy Goodman once said, "if we had state run media in this country, how would it be any different than what we have right now?" The idea of strong impartial journalism does not mean a 50-50 presentation of everything.

PW. Will Mumia be able to see the film?

SV. It's gonna be tough. They don't allow any playback devices in prison. In prison they have BET on television and if we can sell it to them, he might have a chance that way, if the prison doesn't pull the plug on it.

PW. What kind of relationship did you develop with Mumia?

SV. A really nice one. We worked on a previous project that didn't get off the ground, but we used parts of it for this film. We're actually writing a book together now, called Murder Incorporated: Empire, Genocide and Manifest Destiny. It's going to tell the 500 year story of the Euro-American march across the continent and the building of the American Empire. I should say that Mumia calls usually on Monday nights and we chat. It's been an absolute privilege.

PW. How did you select the many great subjects that were interviewed?

SV. Most of the names came from the research, folks in the BPP, family members, political names that come up in the readings. When I read Mumia's work, I was looking for names of people that HE found interesting and was inspired by. Many were given the same questions to answer and it was a tough job in the editing room. There were some who gave great answers but didn't end up in the mix. I didn't want to go longer than 2 hours with the film. I tried to do it artistically and let the story dictate to me, and let the people talk and see who says it the best. I had a co-editor on the film, Erik Sorensen. You can check out our website for more info on the cast and crew.

The film was acquired by First Run Features and opened in New York last weekend, it will open in Los Angeles March 1st, soon to open in Seattle, Miami, New Orleans, Calgary, Chicago, DC, Detroit, across the country and overseas. Blue Ray and DVD comes out May 21^st. For more info on the film go to www.mumia-themovie.com And for some awesome daily radio reports check out Mumia at www.prisonradio.org

My struggle for mental health care in a broken system

Mon, 04 Feb 2013 13:35:00 +0000

I recently had to live through the experience of a mental health crisis. It interrupted my studies as a social work student, and caused changes in the way I live my life. And it brought me into contact with one of the most broken, ill-equipped social safety nets in the United States.

Mental health issues have been highlighted throughout the news media following the recent mass shootings in Colorado, Arizona, and Connecticut. The system is chronically underfunded, and there are shortages of both services and qualified mental health workers to handle the caseloads. We in America have a large-scale mental health crisis on our hands. Here I want to highlight my own struggle within the system before I was finally able to secure treatment and services that stabilized my condition.

What is mental illness? It is simply a "mind disability." It can come in many forms, such as depression, schizophrenia, or a personality disorder.

I used to work in direct support with individuals with intellectual disabilities and mental illness. I had no idea I would eventually fall into the same category. I'm diagnosed with what's known as severe clinical depression. I knew something wasn't right when I began to lose interest in a lot of the things I used to enjoy. I stopped reading books and writing. I stopped studying in school. I was sleeping for most of the day. I would have spells of crying that would last for hours on end.

Eventually it got so bad I started thinking about suicide. That's when I knew I had to get help. First I went to my local hospital emergency room after I found out they offered psychiatric services. This began a week-long battle to even get initial treatment. I'm on my parents' health insurance plan. There's no mental health parity for privately purchased insurance policies. My parents' insurance wouldn't even cover my hospital stay.

However I was in luck: by law hospitals have to treat you if you walk into an emergency room in an emergency including mental health situations. I was admitted and spent a week in the hospital, where I was given antidepressants and took part in therapy. Although this inpatient admission was helpful it was only what is known as "crisis stabilization." That means that hospitals only need to stabilize your situation, then you have to be discharged.

Upon discharge I was faced with the daunting task of connecting myself to the complex and expensive web of services that make up the mental health system. I had to apply for Medicaid and SSI - Supplemental Security Income - because I did not qualify for regular Social Security. Medicaid is the main insurer for mental health because many private insurance plans won't offer mental health services. I had to fight to find a psychiatrist and counselor who even took Medicaid.

I also had to find case management. Case managers are social workers who work with people with mental health and behavioral problems. The problem is it's a for-profit business. Government agencies contract out case management to for-profit companies who hire too few case managers, for low wages, few or no benefits, and long hours.

The average case manager has several dozen "consumers" (the mental health term for client), all of whom he or she must be responsible for without any help. The turnover rate is high and I've gone through seven different case managers in a one-year period. They're supposed to help connect you to community resources and social services as well as employment training. However because I've had seven case managers, I haven't been able to get any kind of job training or community resources. Unions are surely needed for mental health workers, who go above and beyond the call of duty.

Mental health "consumers" are on waiting lists for services. They're homeless in the streets. There's a lack of housing. Stigma and fear of violence prevent the mentally ill from getting access to jobs or education. The fact is, most mentally ill people aren't violent. These are real, ordinary people we're talking about. I had to fight to get the services I have today. And even though I'm stable now, and getting the treatment I need, other people aren't so lucky.

The system is broken. It's especially shocking in the aftermath of all the recent mass shootings. We need real mental health reform along with national health care. I am living proof of that.

Photo: A rally protests proposed cuts in county mental health services, Albany, N.Y., Nov. 12, 2009. PilotGirl CC 2.0

Senate hearings on Hagel were a disgrace

Fri, 01 Feb 2013 18:13:00 +0000

After the Senate hearings Thursday on President Obama's nomination of former Republican Sen. Chuck Hagel for Secretary of Defense, several important points need to be made.

First, as far as Sen. Hagel is concerned, he does not have the kind of record that progressives conclude will make him a Secretary of Defense who would chart the entirely new foreign policy direction the times require. He does, however, represent the more sober elements who have called in our national discourse for rejection of the old cold war tactics, the unilateralism and the continual push for wars all over the world.

The main issue at yesterday's hearings however, was not Hagel himself. It was the performance of the U.S. Senate.

If you accept much of the national media's interpretation, you'd think that the main features of the hearing were brutal verbal attacks on Hagel by three or four GOP Senate ringleaders and that Hagel wasn't coached enough for his "performance." You'd have the feeling that the nomination itself could be in trouble.

The confirmation hearings, in truth, said very little about the qualifications of Chuck Hagel's for the position of Secretary of Defense. They spoke volumes, however, about the disgraceful inadequacy of the U.S. Senate as an institution to be trusted, under our constitution, with gathering information on whether presidential Cabinet nominees deserve to be confirmed.

Much of the Senate's inadequacy is reflected in what the senators failed to ask the nominee.

There is a hot war raging at the moment in Afghanistan. Americans are dying and Afghans are dying. The war is consuming billions of our hard-earned tax dollars. There were no questions from the senators about how the war will be wound down, how many U.S. troops might be left there or whether the war itself was justifiable from any point of view.

The United Nations has launched an investigation into the U.S. use of drones, which have been resulting in mounting civilian casualties. None of the senators asked about these.

You would think, if you watched the hearings, that the GOP deficit hawks had suddenly been struck speechless on matters of money. None of them asked about cutting the Pentagon budget, something that would shrink the deficit and allow America to do some nation-building here at home.

Conduct of the war in Afghanistan and cutting the defense budget are two things Sen. Hagel will have much to say about if his nomination is confirmed.

Instead, senators focused on matters that Hagel is powerless to change.

Led by Sen. John McCain, the neocons tried to force Hagel to disavow his opposition to what they call the "successful" surges in Iraq and Afghanistan. They chastised and tried to embarrass Hagel over his opposition to George W. Bush's surge in Iraq. It was as if they didn't realize that the overwhelming majority of Americans think the entire war in Iraq was a policy blunder and that many Americans consider ending the war in Iraq to be President Obama's most important first-term accomplishment.

What the neocon senators were trying to do, in reality, is rewrite the history of the Iraq war - from the terrible disaster it actually was into some type of success story. It was shameful behavior for a handful of GOP senators whose war policies have already been rejected by the American people.

Republicans are in a position to sandbag the nomination, as they have sandbagged so much of President Obama's agenda. They could filibuster the nomination, meaning that Hagel would need 60, rather than 51 votes for confirmation.

It was the U.S. Senate, not President Obama's nominee, Chuck Hagel, that fell down on the job at the hearings. It was allowed to become a place for right-wing grandstanding and unacceptable efforts to rewrite history.

Photo: U.S. soldiers board a U.S. military plane, as they leave Afghanistan, at the U.S. base in Bagram north of Kabul. Musadeq Sade/AP