People Before Profit blog

Government wage freeze — a bad idea

Tue, 30 Nov 2010 15:55:00 +0000

Yesterday President Obama announced his proposal for a two year wage freeze for all non-military government workers. Richard Trumka, president of the AFL-CIO, nailed it when he said, "No one is served by our government participating in a 'race to the bottom' in wages. We need to invest in creating jobs, not undermining the ones we have."

There are a number of reasons the proposal is a terrible idea, but two stand out in my mind. First is the one that Trumka points to: It is bad for the economy.

Even if it's a bargaining ploy for dealing with the Republican obstructionists (or should I say destructionists) it will cause real harm to the economy. The tea party Republican mantra is cut social programs. This proposal feeds right into that idea. Cutting spending on wages and on programs is a prescription for economic disaster. It means less money in circulation, which means less demand, which means more layoffs and unemployment.

This idea feeds right into the notion that cuts and short-term deficit reduction will grow the economy. That sure isn't working too well in Europe. It also highlights the incredible hypocrisy of the far right Republicans who want to cut benefits for millions of the unemployed, while claiming that tax cuts for the super rich will benefit the economy.

This while Big Business America is sitting on several trillion dollars, instead of investing in job creation and building the things the country needs - like green energy and green manufacturing, health care, infrastructure and education. All programs that would put millions back to work and save the economy.

But I think there is another important reason that a federal wage freeze is dangerous. It also feeds into racist, anti-worker stereotypes of the "lazy" public worker.

This was the real meaning of the ultra-right's hullabaloo attack on airport screeners. I don't love the pat down or scanning stuff, as a travel nuisance. But hey, the TSA workers didn't make the policy.

Yes, there are some federal workers who make really big salaries. The far right's stereotype of public workers ignores the reality that the vast majority of federal employees make modest to meager wages. Custodial and hospital workers at the Veterans Administration that make in the $20,000 to $30,000 range are more the norm.

More than that, the overwhelming majority of federal workers provide important services that help people and keep the economy and our country going. Further the savings from a federal wage freeze wouldn't make even a tiny dent in the deficit.

It's not clear to me if members of Congress and Senators are included in the freeze. If they are, we can expect some more self-righteous crying and posturing like we heard from freshman Republicans. They sure were bitter about having to wait a month for their government health care.

Another troubling aspect of the proposed freeze is the question of whether it will violate existing union contracts. It's hard to imagine that it doesn't clash with scheduled pay raises and cost of living provisions. In which case, the proposal sets up a labor struggle between a pro-labor president and the unions. This would be a set back for the coalition that is needed to stop the Republican right-wing destruction machine.

This kind of disunity can hurt the progressive movement and make it easier for the far right to further shift the crisis on to the backs of the working class.

Photo: Pepe Lozano/PW

Tea party movement's new politics: dangerous shape-shifting

Tue, 30 Nov 2010 12:57:00 +0000

Usually parties run on platforms. They advocate a set of values and ideas and mobilize a constituency around those values, ideas, beliefs and practices. As a result, they generally attempt to legislate based on a commonly defined set of shared interests, the interests of their supporters.

It doesn't take a political scientist to understand this typical party-constituency dynamic.

The usual norms of political discourse would emphasize a party's ability to ask pertinent questions and provide salient answers; to probe facts, poll members and seek solutions based largely on consensus or majority sentiment. However, today's politics seem different.

Today's politics seem based on contradiction, on a party-constituency dynamic that turns the norms of political discourse on its head.

If the November mid-term election teaches us anything, it should be that the normal party-constituency dynamic is in great danger, as the tea partiers and their right-wing Republican supporters demonstrated.

For the first time in my lifetime a party did NOT run on a platform. It did NOT advocate any coherent set of values and beliefs. It did NOT mobilize a constituency around values, ideas, beliefs and practices. And, most importantly, it will NOT legislate based on a commonly defined set of shared interests.

For the first time in my lifetime we have a party - the tea party - that disdains its constituency and will likely govern with a set of values, ideas, beliefs and practices that contradict the majority interests of its supporters. The norms of the party-constituency dynamic have shifted to such a degree that it may be decades before we can recover, before we can actual govern again from a point of reciprocity.

The tea party movement's claim to answers - to solutions based on one simple ideological premise - is vain and paranoid, and illustrates what we can expect when the worst kind of pseudo-populist, anti-intellectual currents are given a platform that reaches millions of people.

The one simple ideological premise - the only tea party platform as far as I can tell - is a desire to shrink government to such a degree that it can no-longer function, can no-longer provide services, can no-longer act as a limited counter-balance to corporate control and domination.

"Let the free market reign supreme! Stop government regulations! Save BP from the government shake-down! Keep your government hands off my Medicaid! Get rid of the minimum wage! Abandon affirmative action! Privatize Social Security!" - All supported by the tea party movement, all answers so vain and paranoid, so individualistic and isolated, so confused and disconcerting that they are nearly incomprehensible.

Additionally, the tea party movement seems unwilling or unable to learn from others' experiences. In fact, it discounts experiences not in-line with its prescriptive, often contradictory answers.

While prescriptive analysis based on hard facts, objectively verified and proven by experience, can act as a guide in troubling times, in times of hardship and economic duress, prescriptive analysis based on conjecture, rumor, fear, subjectivity, unverified by real-life experience, will pull us ever closer to a dangerous abyss, the tea party abyss.

Not because it has a platform or an intelligible worldview - because it doesn't! Not because it advocates a core set of beliefs and mobilizes a constituency around those beliefs - because it has neither core beliefs nor a real constituency! Not because it will legislate for the common interest - because it won't!

The tea party movement is dangerous because it is an irrational beast without a head; because it is an amorphous shape-shifter guided by flight and fancy, by self-serving expediency; because it is a fad based on anger, misdirection and lies; because it lacks decency and tolerance!

The tea party movement is dangerous because it has shifted the norms of the party-constituency dynamic; because it has convinced ordinary Americans to support policies that will cripple America!

Photo: Members of the Tea Party Patriots hold an election night party in Washington on Nov. 2. Ann Heisenfelt/AP

Two progressive deficit plans put workers, jobs first

Tue, 30 Nov 2010 12:52:00 +0000

The Economic Policy Institute, Demos and the Century Foundation have combined efforts to publish a budget and deficit reduction plan alternative to the regressive Simpson-Bowles plan recently announced by the president's deficit reduction commission.

In a nutshell, the plan shows that it is possible to have job creation, reinvestment in America, improvement in retirement security and health care for all, while at the same time balancing the budget. All of this, the progressive groups argue, can be done without cutting workers' income or benefits.

The plan focuses on job creation and investment. Some of the additional revenue comes from indirect taxes - green taxes and fuel taxes - but the rest comes from measures that would raise taxes mainly on upper-income Americans. Taxing bad energy to promote good (i.e. cutting coal and foreign oil to promote renewables and green technologies) is the only practical way to compete with Germany and China on the critical industrial paths of the future. The plan supports taxing the rich to restore equity and fairness to rewards for work as opposed to enriching flim-flam artists on Wall Street. It proposes drawing down the large deficits from Bush-era wars, profligacy and tax cuts that let to the current depression.

The "Investing in America's Economy" executive summary says the nation's first priority "is to secure the fundamentals of the economy: strong growth and good jobs."

"In order to reduce our long-term national debt we must refuel the engine of our economy: the middle class," the report says. "We strongly oppose the idea that America's fiscal challenges should be solved by cutting longstanding social insurance programs that have brought security and prosperity to millions of Americans."

According to the AFL-CIO, the proposal recommends increased public investments in the first 10 years for economic and job creation boosters. One example is transportation infrastructure investment, which, says Tamara Draut, vice president of policy and programs at Demos, returns $2.50 to the economy for every $1 spent. The blueprint also calls for investments in early childhood care, health care technology, broadband expansion and fundamental research and development.

The plan expands upon the cost-cutting features promised in the recent health care reform act by strengthening the public option to improve bargaining power of consumers at the expense of big hospitals and their partners in the insurance industry.

The plan reimposes budget constraints on the Department of Defense, which has had carte blanch since Bush took office.

None of these changes will reduce US competitiveness. As Paul Krugman notes, "even with the revenue measures in the progressive plan, the US would have lower overall taxation than almost any other advanced country."

Lastly, unlike the Simpson-Bowles plan, or the current path, the progressive plan would achieve budget balance as early as 2018, five years earlier than Simpson-Bowles.

A second alternative plan is scheduled for release today by the The Citizens' Commission on Jobs, Deficits and America's Economic Future. The commission is sponsored by the Institute for America's Future. This is a more centrist paper that proposes a longer schedule of debt reduction, a truer Keynesian position, to ease the impact of eventual austerities. Don't overly fear the debt, this plans says: jobs are first, with less emphasis on military cuts as a budget target. Do not extend tax cuts for the rich.

The main lesson of these and other progressive plans, such as the one put forth by Rep. Jan Schakowsky: don't let them tell you Simpson-Bowles/cut social security is the only option.

The two Koreas: new approach needed

Mon, 29 Nov 2010 13:55:00 +0000

The United States and its ally the Republic of Korea (South Korea) are holding naval exercises in the Yellow Sea, on the west side of the Korean Peninsula, Nov. 28-Dec.1. These maneuvers, long planned but for which a date had supposedly not been set, come after the shelling by the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (North Korea) of Yeonpyeong Island, resulting in the death of two South Korean military personnel and two civilians.

Yeonpyeong Island is only 7.5 miles from the North Korean coast, and is also close to the border between the two Koreas and the South Korean capital, Seoul. The North Korean government says it opened fire in response to South Korean artillery practice.

This situation is dangerous to the peace and stability of the whole region. Things could quickly escalate. The U.S. government needs to pull back from the brink of a possible disaster, and for all parties to seek a peaceful settlement.

There is no justification for the unnecessary deaths on Yeonpyeong Island. The loss of life is tragic and wrong. It's the first time North Korea's actions have resulted in civilian deaths since the war, a dangerous precedent.

The U.S.-South Korean maneuvers are billed as a "response" to the shelling incident, but such responses are not new. Last week, similar maneuvers took place on the other side of the Korean peninsula. They had been scheduled to take place in the Yellow Sea, but were moved to the other side as a response to a Chinese demand. As recently as this past summer, similar maneuvers took place.

Since a 1953 truce ended the active fighting in the Korean War, there have been other episodes, on land and sea, of shelling and hostilities. In the spring of this year, there was an incident involving the sinking of a South Korean warship, the Cheonan, in which 46 sailors were killed. South Korea blames the North for the sinking and the North denies it.

However, this latest series of incidents seems to constitute an escalation of the danger of a full scale clash.

U.S. corporate media spin on these events is unhelpful, to put it mildly. North Korea is portrayed as a rogue state whose leaders are crazy and whose behavior is aggressively irrational. But the bizarre fact is the Korean War has never been formally ended. So North Korea on the one side, and South Korea, plus the United States and the United Nations are on the other. And technically all are at war with each other still.

Americans tend to forget this, but in the two Koreas it is not forgotten, and adds to the tension in the area. Military maneuvers near a country's borders and coasts are one thing in peacetime; quite another when there is a suspended war.

Nevertheless, up to two years ago, there had been progress at least in normalizing relations between the two Koreas. During the presidency in South Korea of Roh Moo-hyun, a treaty was signed with the North in which the Yellow Sea was to be demilitarized and made into a joint fishing area. There was progress on trade and other matters also.

But with the election of Lee Myung-bak to the presidency of South Korea in 2008, things took a turn for the worse. Lee, the former mayor of Seoul, had initially promised to continue Roh's détente policy, but, with the instigation and support of the Bush administration, turned to a sharply confrontational approach.

Bloodcurdling rhetoric and saber-rattling on any side does not help, either. For example, the head of the South Korean armed forces is quoted as swearing "a thousand fold revenge" for the people killed in the shelling of Yeonpyeong Island. North Korea issued a statement guaranteeing a "merciless counter-attack" that would "wipe out all enemies."

The United States is sending a nuclear powered aircraft carrier, USS George Washington, into the Yellow Sea, which is also a form of saber rattling if there ever was one.

This saber-rattling may play well with respective domestic audiences, but it only serves to escalate the conflict, and runs the danger of it getting out of hand.

China opposes the maneuvers in the Yellow Sea (which also is partly in Chinese coastal waters) and is constructively trying to cool tempers and belligerent rhetoric in Pyongyang and Seoul. Chinese diplomats have been shuttling back and forth between the two Korean capitals in a search to find a way of deflating the high level of tension. China has called for a resumption of the six-party talks (among the two Koreas, China, Russia, the U.S. and Japan), which had until recently been dealing with the issue of North Korea's development of nuclear capacity.

However, at writing, Japan, U.S., South Korea and North Korea have shown reluctance to go this route of negotiations, and the U.S. corporate controlled press is blasting China for not having taken action to suppress the North Koreans, a role China is simply not going to play.

Key to de-escalation is putting pressure for a negotiated settlement, in the context of the talks and any other format that shows a promise of defusing the present crisis.

More intermediate and longer-term demands should include the demilitarization of the waters around the Korean Peninsula, the denuclearization of both Koreas, and normalization of relations between the two Koreas and between North Korea and the U.S. A formal end to the Korean War is needed to achieve these aims.

The sanctions regime against North Korea is politically and morally wrong, and experience shows nothing good comes from such sanctions. Material assistance to North Koreans would do far more to defuse tensions than the present policy of sanctions.

Finally, the U.S. policy - that it has a right to "project power" and exercise military pressure in the China-Korea area - is as outdated as it is dangerous and wrong. It's a Cold War relic. The Obama administration and Congress need to hear from all concerned that the U.S. needs a new policy of peace, mutual respect and denuclearization. The war hawks and others will be pushing, cajoling and lobbying for more and more belligerent responses. It's critical for the government to hear strong voices for a peaceful resolution.

Photo: Map of Korean Peninsula and disputed name of sea. (CC)

Better read than dead: the Communist Manifesto and southwest Ohio

Mon, 29 Nov 2010 11:56:00 +0000

How could the Communist Manifesto, a 160-year-old book, have any relevance in explaining southwest Ohio labor's recent electoral defeat?

For one, workers should carefully read it. As this old but very well-written book states in Frederick Engels's 1888 preface, "... the defeats even more than the victories, could not help bringing home to men's minds the insufficiency of their various favorite nostrums, and preparing the way for a more complete insight into the true conditions for working-class emancipation."

Before the U.S. Civil War, Cincinnati was an economic gateway to the Southern slave states. The city still has currents of virulent white supremacy, economic reaction and class hatred in its ruling class base. Within a 100-mile radius of Cincinnati is the power base of the right wing. The House speaker-elect; the senator-elect and Republican presidential hopeful for 2012, Rob Portman; the re-elected "impeacher" of President Clinton, Representative-elect Steve Chabot; and, right across the Ohio River, the ultra-right Senate power broker, "Mr. Filibuster," Mitch McConnell and his friend Mr. "Abolish the 14th Amendment," Senator-elect Rand Paul.

What might be learned from living in the middle of this cauldron of the ultra right?

The first and foremost lesson, once again echoing the Communist Manifesto, is, "Our epoch, the epoch of the bourgeoisie, possesses, however, this distinctive feature: It has simplified the class antagonisms. Society as a whole is more and more splitting up into two great hostile camps, into two great classes directly facing each other: bourgeoisie and proletariat." No matter how much we of southwest Ohio's organized labor movement may have wanted a cautious, middle of the road victory, we could not escape the fact that the ultra right was out for blood - our blood - and they got it.

We learned more deeply what the representatives of the ultra-right section of the capitalist class know full well: "This organization of the proletarians into a class, and consequently into a political party, is continually being upset again by the competition between the workers themselves." The first and most powerful weapon of division used by the ultra right is a three-part racist offensive, against Blacks, immigrants and Muslims. Often they hurl all three at President Obama. Ultra-right talk radio, including local hosts, plays a crucial role in splitting off or demobilizing a sizable minority of union members. This radio fog of lies has as it's most powerful slogan, "'They' want your job!"

Another lesson of our "political pounding" is that the leadership in the Democratic Party in southwest Ohio has a fatal political weakness when dealing with the powerful and vicious assault of the ultra-right section of the capitalist class. "A part of the bourgeoisie is desirous of redressing social grievances, in order to secure the continued existence of bourgeois society. To this section belong ... reformers of every imaginable kind."

This section, which leads the Democratic Party, "...want[s] all the advantages of modern social conditions without the struggles and dangers resulting therefrom." When this group comes under the ultra-right onslaught, they tend to start talking about their tax cutting credentials or their belief in balancing the budget, tactics that seriously weakened their message on job creation. Workers stayed home in droves. That always means victory for the Republicans. Democrats can never "out Republican the Republicans" and when they try to do so, it means defeat.

The simple working-class truth is that the ultra-right capitalists, represented by the Republican Party, want high unemployment to keep labor cheap and and any statement to the contrary is a lie. Jobs come with stimulus spending on infrastructure, not from Wall Street gamblers. The Democrats' weak message in southwest Ohio did more to put a Wall Street gambler in the State House than the Republicans' attack ads.

Only the diverse but unified working class is capable of learning the lessons and leading the way forward.

All quotes from the Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx and Frederich Engels. Image by Kevin Steinhardt // CC BY-SA 2.0

Unions — a reason to give thanks this Thanksgiving

Thu, 25 Nov 2010 16:01:00 +0000

Thanksgiving is a grand American holiday: secular, focused on family, food, friends, celebrating and giving. Celebrating the bounty of nature and the hard work that goes into harvesting the bounty. Giving thanks for what is good in your life and the world, and giving back to the community and those who need a helping hand. (Plus, no pressure to buy, buy, buy -- that is, presents or decorations or turkey lights, only food and ingredients for stuffing and pumpkin pie.)

It is a wonderment why some would want to equate capitalism and Thanksgiving, given the very cooperative and social progress substance that is known as an American Thanksgiving.

But we know why some would do that. Because even on holidays that many Americans rightfully think would be politically "neutral," the class struggle doesn't take a day off. Tea party Republicans and other far-right ideologues at the Cato Institute and beyond push the historical hypothesis that "rock solid" private property rights and "free enterprise" saved the pilgrims. It wasn't the cooperative living, and sharing of land and harvest, they say, and it certainly wasn't any neighborly help from the Pilgrams' savior and teacher, Squanto (Tisquantum), and his people of the Patuxet nation.

It's a testament to the American people's skepticism -- and anger -- at Wall Street and the so-called free market system that crashed and burned and now leaves a 10 percent -- plus -- "new normal" jobless rate, which has led to the extreme right ideological machine to have to constantly belch out their ideas designed to prop-up the "rightness" of casino capitalism among Americans. And even on and about Thanksgiving!

That said, who wants to be ranting and raving on Thanksgiving? So here's a thought and something to be thankful for, especially during these trying times. Let's give thanks to unions. Yes. That's right. Unions. Organizations of workers, whether blue collar, white collar or pink collar that are the backbone of the movement for economic, political and social progress.

Yes. Let's give thanks to unions. Why, you doubters may ask? For one thing, it makes everyone happier.

According to a recent study, unions make not only their own members happier -- they make non-union members happier!

This Thanksgiving -- and looking toward the new year -- we should give thanks to labor unions, leaders, members and families present and past -- and resolve to spread the happiness through the hard work of organizing.

After all, Thomas Jefferson wrote, life, liberty and pursuit of happiness -- not pursuit of private property. That's a very American concept, too.

Happy Thanksgiving.

(Photo: Ben+Sam/CC)

Harry Potter and Deathly Hallows, darkest and best of series yet

Wed, 24 Nov 2010 15:38:00 +0000

Movie review

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows Part 1

Directed by Robert Yates

2010, 146 min., PG-13

The 20^th century wasn't a particularly good one in historical terms: more people were killed in war than in previous centuries combined; we saw fascist states for the first time; and the century ended with multiple wars raging around a world cowed by the threat of terrorism.

Still, it was that same century that, among other historical breakthroughs, brought us Nelson Mandela and the overthrow of apartheid, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and the U.S. Civil Rights Revolution, women began to assert their rights and the United Nations was established.

Clichés are only clichés in that they are truths repeated too many times, and it therefore would not be a total loss to use one here: it was an age of extremes.

The preceding 100 years or so brought the world great evils never before imagined - who could have conceived of the awesome terror of the nuclear bomb? - but those same evils produced an opposite, if not yet equal, reaction. Humanity began to assert and reassert its generally cooperative nature, though how things will turn out in the long run is anyone's guess.

Perhaps we'll move on to better society; perhaps we'll wipe ourselves away in a cloud of greenhouse gases.

Given that background, J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter series, most especially in its original written form but also in its film version, provides a literary finale to the century. Begun in 1998, these works can be interpreted as something of a summing-up.

Children's tales have always dealt with good vs. evil, but Rowling's work, while acknowledging a timeless feature of all that which is bad, gave evil a modern feeling: the villains were totalitarians and fascists, racists and bigots, dictators and environmental destroyers - all in magical form.

Another question is brought to the fore as well: what is the nature of good and evil? Where do they overlap? Can the "good guys" have evil tendencies?

The series, of course, chronicles the story of Harry Potter and his two best friends, Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger (in the film version, Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint and Emma Watson respectively) growing up under the threat of Voldemort, an evil wizard bent on world control, and his Nazi/KKK-like minions.

Their journey from innocent wonder at a magical world to scared fighters under siege parallels humanity's loss of innocence.

The most recent film, "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part One," is the darkest of the series. While the series had been growing increasingly serious, Deathly Hallows represents a qualitative change. At the movie's opening, Hedwig, Harry's owl and long-time companion, is struck dead by evil wizards, as is another member of the Order of the Phoenix, a sort of magical guerilla army working to defeat Voldemort. Hermione, in order to protect her family, casts an "obliviate" spell, wiping her parents' memories away - including any thought of her.

The wizard world's government, the Ministry of Magic, falls near the beginning of the movie, only to be replaced by a puppet regime. The new government, under control of Voldemort, is essentially an enchanted Third Reich, bent on enslaving or exterminating "inferiors" - non "pure blood" wizards.

Harry Potter and his friends don't return to Hogwarts this time; instead they spend their time "underground" attempting to plan their strategy.

The acting is superb. The adult character, since the series began, have been played by British A-list actors, including Alan Rickman. But Radcliffe, Grint and Watson were sorely lacking in credibility during the early films. Now, however, they have seemingly magically transformed into actors. Aside from one particularly unfortunate scene in which Ron sees a truly silly vision of Harry and Hermione scorning him, the trio are able to pull off a high degree of emotional intensity.

This intensity is surprising for a series that started out as a children's story. Previous films shyly explored the characters' budding sexuality, but in the current installment, that sexuality is in bloom - and, like in the real world, is preyed upon by enemy armies. At several points in the film, one gets the impression that Hermione is about to be raped. Of course, this is a PG-13 film, and such things are implied only, but the shock felt by the audience is no lesser.

The action sequences are also top-notch. But perhaps the most interesting aspect of the film is the way the characters deal with their quandary. On previous outings, they had been full of hope and a syrupy-sweet you-can-do-anything-with-your-friends attitude, but in Deathly Hallows, each of them vacillates between hope, despair and cynicism. Is it better, Hermione asks while she and Harry are in the woods alone, to continue the fight, or to just give up, "to stay here and grow old?" The future of their world is very much up in the air.

The film, being the first of a two-part finale, doesn't offer any resolve to this question. In that sense, it mirrors a humanity embarking on the 21st century. For me and perhaps the non-magical world, Voldemort is environmental destruction, war and terrorism, the tea party, increased poverty and wealth gaps. And, for the first time in history, people question the viability of humanity going forward.

Deathly Hallows Part 1 mirrors us; hopefully Part 2 will inspire us.

Murderers among us

Wed, 24 Nov 2010 12:37:00 +0000

Shortly after WWII in the Soviet zone of occupied Germany, anti-fascists made a fiction film, Murderers Among Us, that sought to deal with the crimes of the Nazis after their defeat. I thought of that title when reading about the release of a Justice Department report concerning U.S. government, and especially CIA, complicity in the use and shielding of fascist war criminals after WWII.

Written by Judy Feigin and edited by Mark Richard, former Deputy Assistant Attorney General of the DOJ's Criminal Division, the report outlines the history of the Office of Special Investigations, created at the end of the 1970s to deal with the war criminals; the opposition OSI faced; and its achievements

In their trials, the fascists' standard "defense" was that they were fighting against Communists and the Soviet Union, which was what they continued to do with U.S. military and CIA support. And this defense worked for decades to keep them from being seriously investigated.

Let me cite three little-known significant cases. Vladimir Sokolev was a Ukrainian who edited Rech, the Nazi journal in occupied Ukraine (the Nazis considered him ideologically trustworthy in their war against "Jewish Bolshevism"). Some of Sokolev's writings were as obscene as those of the official German Nazi propagandist, Julius Streicher, who was hanged at Nuremburg.

Sokolev came to the U.S. in 1951 as an anti-Communist refugee, and was "interviewed" by the FBI in 1954. He denied both his role and Rech's pro fascist, anti-Semitic policies. Both the FBI and, two years later, the INS, chose to believe him without much investigation. In 1959 Sokolov was hired by Yale University as an instructor in foreign languages and had no difficulties until his dismissal in the mid-1970s, after Soviet sources discovered his new occupation and began to write about his Nazi activities.

This had little effect until the Morning Freiheit, a Jewish left publication quoted materials from Sovietische Heimat, a Yiddish language Soviet publication, which in turn quoted from Sokolev's rabidly anti-Jewish articles.

From the early postwar period on, Sokolev had been involved in various anti-Soviet Russian-language activities and publications. Although Sokolev was reappointed to his position and some of his colleagues and other Yale sources used anti-Sovietism to defend his actions, he resigned from Yale and was eventually forced out the U.S., thanks to OSI perseverance. William Buckley Jr., a Yale graduate, defended Sokolev, who was given "asylum" in Canada where he died years later. Buckley, of course, went on to launch his career as a right-wing publisher, editor and celebrity with the publication of his God and Man at Yale, a redbaiting anti-liberal assault on the Yale faculty.

Andrija Artukovic was a major leader of the Croatian fascist Ustasha government, a Nazi puppet state, during WWII. He served as Minister of Justice, the Interior and Religion. Artukovic came to the U.S on a temporary visa, and, in 1948, under an assumed name, worked for a California company owned by his brother.

In 1951, Artukuvic was exposed as someone wanted for war crimes in Yugoslavia. Since that country was not an ally of the Soviet Union, the U.S. launched deportation proceeding against him. But these proceedings were to go on for the next thirty-five years.

Artukovic was a fascist leader involved in ordering the mass murder of Serbians, Jews, Gypsies and anti-fascist partisans. But his lawyers successfully gained endless reprieves with the Catch-22 argument that he would face persecution by Yugoslavia's Communist government since he had persecuted and ordered the murder of Communists during WWII!

In 1978, New York Democratic Rep. Elizabeth Holtzman, sponsored legislation to create the OSI, and to vacate reprieves for those who had played direct roles in Nazi persecutions. Artukovic's case was then taken out of the State Department's hands. Eventually, he was deported to Yugoslavia and tried in a televised trial for his war crimes and crimes against humanity. His initial death sentence was commuted to life imprisonment, and he died in a prison hospital in Yugoslavia in 1988 - making him perhaps the only major fascist war criminal found in the U.S. to face something more than deportation.

Baron Otto Von Bolshchwing, who few Americans have ever heard of, is perhaps the most interesting of these fascist criminals. A German aristocrat and something of a chameleon, Bolschwing was a Nazi party member, SS man, and served as Nazi intelligence liaison in British colonial Palestine from 1935 to 1937. He then joined Adolf Eichmann's "Jewish Affairs Office" from1937 to 1939.

Here he worked on ways to more effectively terrorize Germany's remaining Jewish population. He was an official of the Jewish Affairs Office in November 1938, when the Nazis launched the national pogrom against Jewish Germans known as Kristallnacht (the night of the broken glass)

As the war ended, Bolschwing literally switched sides. In 1946, with U.S. support, he joined Reinhard Gehlen, former head of Nazi counter-intelligence who now recruited Nazis to work for the U.S., and later the West German government. He was "hired" directly by the CIA in 1949 and served them in and out of the Gehlen organization.

Bolschwing entered the U.S. in 1954, with advice from the CIA to deny his Nazi activities. If cornered, he "should admit [Nazi affiliations] but attempt to explain it away on the basis of extenuating circumstances."

Bolschwing became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 1959, and his case lay dormant for the next twenty years. When the OSI finally took up the case, it contacted to the CIA and was careful not to compromise the agency that Bolschwing had served. When the case came forward, Bolschwing was in a nursing home.

He worked out a plea agreement in which he admitted his Nazi involvements, which he had lied about under CIA advice, but not his work for Eichmann in the Jewish Affairs Office, even though that was a matter of record (the report has "Dear Adolf " letters to Eichmann in which Bolschwing discusses his plans to more effectively persecute Jewish people).

But the plea agreement had the U.S. drop its deportation prosecution until Bolschwing's health improved (which, from my readings, the U.S. knew very well that it would not). Ten weeks after the agreement, he died in his nursing home.

Perhaps as many as 40 million people were murdered by the German fascists and their fascist allies in WWII - twenty-seven million in the Soviet Union alone. Over six million Jewish people, about one third of the Jewish world, were murdered due to the policy of racist genocide carried forward by fascists like Bolschwing, Artukovic and Sokolev.

The report deals with this sordid history. It also shows the positive role of anti-fascist organizations, papers like Morning Freiheit and progressive politicians like Rep. Elizabeth Holtzman in fighting to establish the OSI and punish fascist criminals whom the CIA and other U.S. agencies had used and rewarded.

It deserves to be read widely.

Image: While most of the U.S. and the world looked upon Nazi atrocities with horror, erecting memorials such as this one in Boston, some U.S. agencies worked to keep the criminals responsible for the atrocities free. Photo by Wally Gobetz // CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

New films to watch for, from around the world

Wed, 24 Nov 2010 12:21:00 +0000

The inspiring labor film depicting the 1968 women's strike for equal pay at the Ford plant in England, "Made In Dagenham," is making its rounds at film festivals before it hopefully gets picked up for commercial release. Appearing at both the Toronto and Chicago International Film Festivals, this movie is by far the most entertaining and progressive story about labor struggles to be shown on the big screen since the classic "Norma Rae."

There have been several films addressing the attempt to bring Jewish and Palestinian youth together to help heal the wounds in the Middle East. The Seeds of Peace project was the first to document this approach in the inspiring 2001 film "Promises," showing Middle East youth discovering their commonalities. The most recent project along these lines is "Circus Kids," a charming documentary and effective tale of young American circus performers who are invited to Israel to work with their Jewish and Palestinian counterparts. The diverse St. Louis troupe of young performers, some from extremely poor communities, travel to Tel Aviv to join a troupe of Arabs and Jews who are themselves learning about working with each other. Their objective is to learn each other's circus skills and create an entertaining show for local audiences composed of both Palestinians and Jews. Signs of hopeful collaboration and frustrating obstacles are documented in this humanistic attempt to bring understanding to the youth involved. In the process the viewer is treated to deeply emotional scenes and exhilarating heights of circus bravado performed by youth who are learning not only gymnastic skills but important lessons of life.

"I Miss You" is yet another heartbreaking story of the thousands who disappeared during the military coup in Argentina in the 1970s. A family is bereft when the oldest son fails to return home one day from school. His recent activities in resistance protests pegged him as a target of the military dictatorship. His younger brother is sent away to Mexico to live with family members to avoid also being drawn into the violence. The sensitive and subtle portrayal of the boy who gradually realizes his brother will probably never return makes the film a powerful statement about the personal losses brought on by a violent military dictatorship.

We've all heard of "French farce" but "Hitler in Hollywood" takes it one step further with this thriller "mockumentary" forged from the European concern about American dominance of their film industry. This playful but biting attack on American cultural hegemony creates a fantasy plot centered around the career of an aging French actress, played by the real Micheline Presle, who helps to solve the mystery of what happened to the director of a 1945 film about Hitler's unknown plan to create a Hollywood in Germany. In the process of uncovering the American plot to subvert the European film industry, discoveries are made of secret meetings with American politicians, one being a senator named "McCabe," a not-too-subtle reference to the rabid anti-communist Senator Joseph McCarthy. Famous directors and stars play cameo bits in this ingenious and clever political farce.

Several of the films premiering at the Chicago Film Festival last month address some of the urgent issues facing American society today. "The Minutemen" documents the self-appointed vigilantes guarding our border with Mexico. Their main occupation is to report to law officials any sightings of attempts to cross the border illegally. In the process, varying causes of this phenomenon are expressed in this compelling film that challenges immigration concerns head-on.

In "Mooz Lum" the issue of anti-Muslim fear is addressed in a story about a young American whose strict Muslim father sends him to a special school where he is unknowingly abused. When he enters college questioning his faith, the tragic incidents of 9/11 take place and his identity is challenged. Directed by a young Muslim, Qasim Basir, the well-acted and tightly scripted autobiographical film carries the viewer through the life of an American caught up in the injustice of religious intolerance.

The Chicago festival offered many films for progressive viewers, including "Fair Game," based on the real-life story of CIA operative Valerie Plame and her husband Joe Wilson. Several films dealt with the power of art in poor communities. "Louder Than a Bomb" praises the slam poetry community in a Chicago school district. "Wasteland," directed by Lucy Walker, examines the life and work of famed Brazilian activist-artist Vic Muniz as he creates beauty in the world's largest landfill just outside Rio, where the extremely poor inhabitants of Brazil live their desperate lives. His inspiring projects bring an income to the poor inhabitants who discover the overwhelming power of art to transform society. The film has won multiple awards around the world.

Websites:

www.chicagofilmfestival.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7lPK9LUdsi4 (Circus Kids)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xO0c7FWZ_Mc (I Miss You)
http://www.videosurf.com/hitler-in-hollywood-328131 (Hitler in Hollywood)
http://vimeo.com/6380439 (The Minutemen)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V4axp5V_j6E (Mooz-Lum)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=81hXGdFF6TQ (Louder Than a Bomb)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BWPU5WNgQ2w (Wasteland)

Photo: A scene from "Circus Kids." www.circuskids.tv

Corporate capital has pulled the plug on America

Tue, 23 Nov 2010 15:39:00 +0000

The conventional wisdom is that corporate capital has an enduring commitment to science, education, transportation, health and nutrition, public amenities, urban development, equal opportunity, and more. Business executives are considered solid citizens as well as savvy investors. We are told that they are interested in the modernization of the state, economy, and society as well as their own enterprises.

There was at one time a grain of truth to this portrayal of the corporate class. Coming out of World War II, a broad alliance, with U.S. corporations occupying a dominant position, expanded the public sector, trained a skilled workforce, steadily improved wages and social benefits, renovated the infrastructure, built a national system of interstate highways, invested in public education, struck down the most egregious barriers of racial exclusion, and promoted vigorous economic growth.

Corporate capital's principal reason for being was still profit-making, but its profit-making strategy was tethered to the modernization of the domestic economy, state and society.

To a degree, it was a win-win situation insofar as both the corporations and the people gained, even though very unequally, from this arrangement. The socialist Michael Harrington, in an analysis of this era, wrote:

"The welfare state was thus not simply the result of socialist and liberal conscience and working class struggle. It was also a function of a capitalist socialization process, a way of allowing the system to absorb the enormous productivity of the new forms of collective labor."

But the arrangement didn't last. By the mid-1970s, this commitment of significant sections of the corporate elite began to fray, and then in the decades that followed it came apart at the seams, as the transnational corporations, with the assistance of right-wing extremists occupying powerful positions in government, drastically and negatively restructured the state, economy and society.

By the first decade of this century, the effects were apparent.

On one side we have experienced a historically unprecedented shift of wealth and power to the moneybags on Wall Street and across America.

On the other side, we have seen the deterioration of infrastructure, the destruction of the social safety net, the undermining of the public school system, the decay of urban and rural communities, the privatization of public assets, the growth of poverty and inequality, the hollowing out of the manufacturing sector and massive loss of jobs, the dismantling of regulations on corporate misbehavior, the lowering of workers' wages, the lifting of barriers inhibiting international capital flows, the imposition of unfair trade agreements, and a faltering - now stagnant - domestic economy.

It isn't pretty!

What explains the change of heart of big sections of the transnational corporate class? Why did they pull the plug? Are they meaner than capitalists and wealthy families of the previous era? Perhaps, but that really doesn't answer the question.

The explanation in my view lies in the evolution, dynamics and profit imperatives of the world economy over the past three decades.

The markets, supply of exploitable labor, and investment strategies of U.S. transnational corporations are worldwide in scope now.

Their production sites stretch across regions and time zones, thanks to new technologies that, in effect, reduce time and distance (think Internet).

That doesn't mean that domestic production sites, consumption markets and workforces are of no consequence, but their importance to the transnational masters of the world is far less today. Unlike in the early postwar period, the corporate planning unit is a world economy, now cluttered with powerful foreign-based corporations and new state competitors like China and India.

This being so, the commitment of major sections of the transnational elite to a people-friendly public sector, a vibrant national economy and a modern society has waned in recent decades. In fact, this elite is turning the state into its personal ATM machine and a military juggernaut to enforce its will at home and abroad. It's not an exaggeration to say that this social grouping has become a parasite sucking the life out of our government, economy and society, while living in bubbles of luxury, racial exclusion and class privilege and exploiting labor globally.

This new reality has ominous implications for the future of the American people.

It doesn't alter the strategic necessity of defeating right-wing extremists, whose plan is to regain complete control of the federal government in 2012.

Why? Because, in the midst of the deepest economic crisis since the Great Depression, this supposedly "neo-populist" political bloc (tea partiers and their far-right Republican allies) is leading the charge for, doing the dirty work of, that grouping of the transnational corporations.

So we have to keep at it - maybe make some adjustments to take into account the objective basis for broadening and deepening the people's coalition. Let's also keep in mind: the stakes couldn't be much higher, both now and in 2012.

Film recalls 1999 Royal Oak Post Office murder suicide

Tue, 23 Nov 2010 13:57:00 +0000

Movie Review

"Murder by Proxy: How America went Postal"
Directed By Emil Chiaberi
2010, 75 mins., unrated

ROYAL OAK, Mich. - Nineteen years ago on November 14th one of the country's more shocking examples of workplace violence took place at the Royal Oak Post Office. "Murder by Proxy," a documentary film examining workplace conditions that drive people to do extreme things, premiered last Monday, right around the corner from the post office where the murders and suicide took place.

As Director Emil Chiaberi said before the showing, the shooting of ten people (five, including the shooter died) "didn't have to happen."

"Sadly," he warns, "we haven't learned to prevent these killings. The very same conditions are coming back. This film is to remind us that it can happen again and not to ignore other people's pain. I hope it makes a difference."

In the 80's, the term "going postal" was mockingly used to describe workplace violence. It put emphasis on "malcontent workers," not the boiler cooker pressure people labor under, or the bullying led by a profit at all costs management.

The film puts the Royal Oak killings and other similar ones in the context of workplace changes that began in the 80's.

Early in his presidency, Ronald Reagan fired the Air Traffic Controllers, which ushered in a new and more serious attack on workers' rights on the job.

In addition, new technology was coming into manufacturing and offices, forcing people to work faster and faster. As one person in the film commented, "the body can't keep up with the machines." Companies wanted a lean and mean workplace. Workers were being squeezed to increase profits and CEO pay.

The "Proxy" in the movie's title reflects this "squeeze." Workplace killings are often driven by injustices and forces much larger than those who become a shooter's victims.

Problems quickly mounted for all postal workers in Royal Oak when the management group from the Indianapolis Post Office came north. This management group had previously been investigated by the General Accounting Office for abuses toward workers.

In Royal Oak, they zeroed in on the letter carrier, Tom McIlvane.

Charlie Withers is a letter carrier who since 1988 has been his union's steward. In the movie Withers said McIlvane "was a real good worker who loved his job," but the new management was used to getting their own way. They didn't like McIlvane because "he stuck up for himself and other workers."

They began to harass him. He was written up for "driving two miles over the speed limit" for his shorts being an inch too short; that he "gassed up his truck too early." Petty things that made his file thicker and thicker, said Withers.

Withers said these were rules any employee could have been accused of and were impossible not to break.

McIlvane was fired and not able to collect unemployment insurance. After 15 and one-half months without work and still waiting the outcome of his grievance, which was in arbitration, he returned to settle the score. Management received most of his fire.

After the movie Withers told this reporter that management should never have been "left off the hook" for their previous actions in Indianapolis.

Following the shooting, the remaining management was allowed to retire and receive Workmen's Compensation. No one from the union was allowed to retire or receive any compensation, said Withers.

Unbelievably, Withers said paid visits for therapy were limited to a maximum of six for union members.

He says there are still "ongoing problems." To force the Postal Service to address those problems and to take responsibility for what occurred in 1991, Withers started a campaign for "Accountability Day."

Since 1993, on every November 14th, the union lays a wreath outside the post office to both remember the victims and to call for the Postal Service to accept its share of responsibility.

Chiaberi sees workplace killings as an American phenomenon. The film strongly makes the point they are preventable.

It's featured in several film festivals and hopefully it will be coming to a screen near you.

Image: Royal Oak Post Office, John Rummel/PW.

Latin America in Republican cross hairs

Tue, 23 Nov 2010 11:27:00 +0000

The Nov. 2 elections gave the Republicans a new sense of self confidence that is expressed in bold and reactionary plans for foreign and domestic policy. This is particularly dangerous in terms of U.S. policy toward Latin America.

While the Bush administration was elsewhere occupied, the working class in Latin America, with its allies among poor farmers, indigenous people and other minorities, and youth, made very big advances.

In Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia and Nicaragua, radical governments have come to power. They have erected the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America (ALBA) as a counterweight to regional U.S. imperialist hegemony. Until the Honduras coup of June 2009, this grouping included Antigua and Barbuda, Bolivia, Cuba, Dominica, Ecuador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines and Venezuela.

Beyond ALBA, left-leaning governments came to power in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, El Salvador, Guatemala, Paraguay and Uruguay. Through mechanisms of regional integration such as MERCOSUR and UNASUR, this group works in amity with the ALBA group to realize the dreams of major protagonists of Latin American history such as Simon Bolivar and Jose Marti, whose fear was that once independent of Spain and Portugal, the region would fall under an equally oppressive and restricting hegemony of the United States. Jose Marti's famous statement that "I have lived in the monster and I know it from its entrails" expressed this. And it was prophetic: President William McKinley intervened in the Cuban war of independence against Spain, seized Puerto Rico and also put humiliating restrictions on Cuban national sovereignty.

U.S. hegemony in Latin America has been felt in many ways: profoundly unequal trade arrangements that keep U.S. corporations rich and millions poor, a mind-bogglingly long list of direct military interventions and support for some of the most revolting despots that the world has ever produced: Duvalier, Trujillo, Rios Montt, Stroessner, Pinochet, Videla and more.

The "Bolivarian" project aims to reverse that history. For this reason, it has become the ray of hope for millions of Latin American workers, farmers, indigenous people and other minorities, urban and rural poor, and youth.

But none of the left and center-left governments are securely in power, except Cuba (and even Cuba keeps its guard up). The right recently won the presidency of Chile. Leftist President Manuel Zelaya of Honduras was overthrown by a coup. Prime Minister Ralph Gonsalves of Saint Vincent is threatened by intrigues cooked up against him in the United States and Britain.

Powerful internal and international groups plot to reverse the Bolivarian dynamic and restore U.S. hegemony: traditional and new ruling classes (landowners, bankers and various major business interests), the top military, people on the payroll of transnational corporations, the conservative hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church, militant evangelical churches and the oligarchy-controlled press. Some countries are governed by right-wing regimes that connive in destabilizing the left-led countries: Colombia, Mexico, Costa Rica, Panama, Peru and now Chile.

As always, major government and non-government forces within the United States play a large part keeping the right in power in Latin American countries.

This was emphasized last week with a remarkable meeting in Miami of right wing Latin American leaders out of power and right wing Republican U.S. politicians. According to various reports, participants included U.S. reactionaries such as Republican Reps. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and Connie Mack, Republicans of Florida, both linked to the Miami Cuban exile circles; former Ecuadorian president Lucio Gutierrez, who is credibly accused of fomenting the recent police uprising in Ecuador; and various other U.S. and Latin American reactionaries. The purpose of the meeting, called "Danger in the Andes," was to find ways to force the Obama administration to take a harder line against the ALBA countries.

While, the Obama administration has not been terribly friendly to these governments, nor to socialist Cuba, these people are talking about overthrow and regime change, and they will have the backing of the most powerful transnational corporations as well as some in the U.S. military and security establishments. Of course, the pretext is going to be "protecting human rights and democracy." Oh, and fighting terrorism, of course.

This is not just talk. Many of these individuals were up to their necks in the plotting that brought about the coup in Honduras, and in keeping the coup regime in power against the pressure of most Latin American governments. Rep. Mack talks about allying with right-wing Democrats to achieve his objectives, starting with pending free trade agreements with Colombia and Panama. This is a perfectly achievable goal.

These are very powerful forces. We are in for a fight.

Image: Left-wing President Correa of Ecuador, left, speaks with reporter. Photo supplied by the Office of the President of Ecuador // CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

I love baseball but I hate capitalism

Mon, 22 Nov 2010 15:30:00 +0000

I recently wrote on Facebook that I love sports but I hate capitalism. Let me explain.

Baseball, probably my favorite game to follow, really does unite entire cities together. Fans who may otherwise disagree on many issues come together on game day to support their home teams. It's truly a beautiful and American tradition highlighting everything great about family fun, healthy competition and town pride.

However, in professional baseball, like all major sports, there remains an ugly side.

The New York Times recently ran an article entitled, "New Exotic Investment: Latin Baseball Futures." Even the headline sounds disturbing.

The lead paragraph states, "Investors from the United States believe they have found an exotic new prospect: Latin American baseball players, some as young as 13, and many from impoverished families."

Yikes! Has it really become okay to call children from poverty stricken countries "exotic new prospects"? I immediately thought of the slave trade and other forms of human bondage, all for profit. What a downright dirty, and yet unsurprising, expression.

It's no secret that historically many Latino and especially Afro-Latino baseball players come from extremely poor backgrounds all around South and Central America. Think of Roberto Clemente from Puerto Rico, Sammy Sosa from the Dominican Republic, Dennis Martinez from Nicaragua, Mariano Rivera from Panama or Ozzie Guillen from Venezuela, to name a few. The list goes on.

The Times details how these so-called "investors" recognize that major league teams offer multimillion-dollar contracts to some teenage prospects. Looking to reap the financial benefits of such future prospects - for themselves - these investors are "up-starting" trainers and building "academies" in the Dominican Republic, one of the poorest nations in all Latin America.

"In exchange, the investors are guaranteed significant returns - sometimes as much as 50 percent of the player's bonuses - when they sign with major league teams," notes the article. Agents in the U.S. typically receive 5 percent.

The investors mentioned, all highly suspect, include Brian Shapiro, a New York hedge fund manager working with Reggie Jackson; Steve Swindal, former general partner of the Yankees; Abel Guerra, a former White House official under George W. Bush; and Hans Hertell, a former U.S. ambassador to the Dominican Republic.

Many criticize the lack of professional oversight and responsibility in professional sports. The question is why American investors are adding to an already controversial system that takes Dominican teenagers out of school and possibly exposes them to steroid abuse. And that's only the tip of the iceberg.

One investor, Gary Goodman, a real estate lawyer from Cranford, N.J., opened up an academy on the island in 2009. "Are we there to make a profit? Absolutely," he admitted.

Every month Goodman wires thousands of dollars to feed, clothe, house and train the prospects, ages 13 thorough 19, many of whom cannot read and do not attend school. Goodman and others like him believe they are actually helping to improve the lives of these youth and their families who otherwise have little to no economic or educational opportunities.

Another American investor in the Dominican Republic is Greg G. Maroni, a dentist who owns several fast-food franchises. Maroni finances a baseball camp on the island that opened in 2007. He says he's unaware whether the teenagers recruited to his camp went to school or not.

"It would sure be a nice goal in the long term," he said. "Maybe we can give them some English and basic arithmetic classes so they know what a social security number is and know a checkbook."

Meanwhile David P. Fidler, a professor of international law, says the Dominican scouts, known as "Buscones," are really in the business of selling children. "And it's very disturbing that American investors would come in to profit from a system that exploits and discriminates against young children," he said.

The sports industry, which makes billions of dollars yearly, has its dark side. Boxing, football, basketball, you name it - all continue to profit tremendously off its players, many of whom risk their physical and mental health in the ring or on the field.

Baseball is a beautiful game and is becoming more and more international. Children worldwide love the bat and ball and whether it's cheering a homerun slugger or an outstanding pitcher, the game truly inspires greatness.

But baseball's beauty and greatness should not be exploited by a system that strips the purity and fun from its most innocent fans. No child should have to play the sport to survive.

That's just wrong.

Image: America's favorite sport has a dark side. Photo by Erin Ryan // CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

Crumbling bridges, rotting pipes and a jobless economy

Mon, 22 Nov 2010 14:24:00 +0000

The nation's crumbling infrastructure is in serious need of rebuilding. There's absolutely no doubt about that.

Miles and miles of roads, highways and airport runways need to be repaired or replaced, as do miles and miles of railroad track. Many bridges and other public structures need to be fixed. So do streets and streetlights, water and flood control systems and parks. Many port facilities' high-speed train systems need developing. The list goes on.

Look around you. You can't possibly miss examples of crumbling infrastructure. The AFL-CIO and its affiliated unions have been pointing that out for many years, and noting that the obviously necessary repair and replacement work would provide jobs for many thousands, if not millions, of the unemployed, who need work as badly as the infrastructure needs it. Those jobs are good, relatively well paying and exactly what we need to escape the Great Recession that's continuing to plague the nation.

It's pretty much what was done during the Great Depression of the 1930s, when President Franklin Roosevelt, with the support of Congress, put together the Works Projects Administration, or WPA, to put millions of jobless Americans to work on building and repairing the infrastructure. It worked then, and it would work now.

Last month, President Obama's Council of Economic Advisers and the Treasury Department issued a report detailing the benefits of doing the needed infrastructure work, including the "long term economic benefits." The report also noted that a huge majority of Americans support spending tax money on infrastructure improvement.

President Obama's labor endorsed plan for infrastructure improvements over the next six years calls for rebuilding 150,000 miles of roads, laying and maintaining 4,000 miles of railroad tracks, and creating a new air-traffic control system that would reduce delays.

President Edward Wytkind of the AFL-CIO's Transportation Trades Department hailed the president's plan for its promise of "putting millions of Americans to work in the type of good jobs that transportation investments have supported for more than a century."

Laborers Union President Terry O'Sullivan noted that "time is running out." He said, "We need to invest in our country, and we need to create jobs as soon as possible. It's a no-brainer let's build our country, create jobs, keep America competitive in the 21st century and leave behind real assets for future generations."

Author Ezra Klein, writing in the Washington Post, put it this way: "infrastructure investment creates the right jobs, for the right people, doing the right things and at the right time. Or, to say it more clearly, infrastructure investment creates middle-class jobs for workers in a sector with high unemployment and it puts them to work doing something that we actually need done at a moment when doing it is cheaper than it ever will be again."

He's right. Boy, is he right. Yet there's a considerable body of naysayers in Congress, most of them Republicans, who threaten to block the bills necessary for implementing Obama's ambitious infrastructure plans.

We need those bills passed in a hurry. We need the millions of jobs they'll provide. We need to carry out the long delayed modernization of our crumbling infrastructure.

Image: Bill Jacobus // CC BY 2.0

A do-it-yourself kit on plutocracy and the deficit

Mon, 22 Nov 2010 12:18:00 +0000

The rich, many Americans have come to believe, rule. But how? The current hubbub over the federal budget deficit opens a welcome window to understanding just how our rich keep riding so high.

How can you tell whether you live in a plutocracy? Easy. Just conduct this simple test. First, identify a "pressing problem" that pundits are splashing over your nation's op-ed pages. Then take a glance at the "solutions" to this national woe that pop up, on these same op-ed pages, as "politically possible."

If you live in a plutocracy, not one of these "politically possible" proposals will ever do more than, at worst, inconvenience your nation's super rich.

Ready to put this plutocracy test to a real-life trial? Let's consider the problem that America's pundits have this fall tabbed as our nation's most pressing: the federal budget deficit.

Earlier this month, the New York Times offered readers an interactive online opportunity to solve this deficit situation. Our national newspaper of record published a long list of deficit-cutting options, all culled from Washington insiders, and invited readers to choose enough of these options to end the deficit.

But readers who accepted this invitation to "fix the budget" quickly found themselves in a bit of an quandary. If these readers went through the Times list of insider suggestions and avoided all the options that would inflict pain on middle class families, they couldn't get the deficit down to zero.

These same readers could, by contrast, hit that zero deficit target quite readily if they avoided any option that could inflict pain on America's wealthy. In fact, the Times list had no options for inflicting significant sacrifice on people of wealth.

Some options on the list did, to be sure, call for higher taxes on high incomes. But these options, if ever adopted, would still leave the nation's wealthy paying taxes at less than half the rate that the nation's wealthy faced in the 1950s, under President Dwight Eisenhower, a Republican.

In Ike's time, income over $400,000 - about $3.3 million today, after adjusting for inflation - faced a 91 percent tax rate. The strongest tax-the-rich options on the Times list - a return to the 39.6 percent top rate in effect during the Clinton years, coupled with a 5.4 percent surcharge on income over $1 million - would, if adopted, bring today's top tax rate to only 45 percent.

That 45 percent essentially represents what America's mainstream media consider the upper limit of the politically possible. We have, in other words, a society that defines as politically "impossible" a state of affairs - a 91 percent top marginal tax rate - that existed, for years, as a political reality.

A widely accepted political reality, we might add. Back in the mid 20th century, even celebrated conservative thinkers could and did support steep tax rates on high incomes. One example: University of Chicago economist Henry Simons, an influential free marketeer who consistently promoted progressive taxation.

Simons believed, as analysts Neil Brooks and Linda McQuaig have recently written, "that capitalism could only survive in a democracy if the general public benefited from it, and this involved redistributing its bounty, which otherwise ends up concentrated in the hands of the few."

Many of America's mid-20th-century wealthy did certainly disagree with Simons and whine incessantly about their heavy tax burden. But that tax burden had, over the years, trimmed the resources these wealthy could bring to bear. They simply did not enough dollars to bend U.S. politics overwhelmingly their way.

In 1955, as IRS records show, the nation's 400 most affluent taxpayers averaged, in today's dollars, just $12.8 million in income. To put that meager $12.8 million in perspective: In 2007, our top 400 averaged $344.8 million.

The rich of the mid 20th century had, of course, packs of politicians ready to do their bidding. But these politicos seldom dared to openly attack stiff progressive tax rates. By taking that step, these pols realized, they would almost certainly end up marginalizing themselves. Just like T. Coleman Andrews.

A close ally of Virginia's top political boss, Andrews had become Eisenhower's first Internal Revenue Service commissioner in 1953 and ran the IRS, by all accounts, in a workmanlike fashion. But Andrews resigned his IRS post in 1955 to take a job running an insurance company and then, a year later, suddenly and surprisingly emerged as an intense and shrill critic of the federal income tax.

High tax rates on high incomes, this "new" Andrews charged, amount to an "instrument of vengeance" that reflects a "dangerous trend toward socialism."

"Maybe we ought to see that every person who gets a tax return," Andrews told the US News & World Report in a May 1956 cover-story interview, "receives a copy of the Communist Manifesto with it."

That interview endeared Andrews to the rich who saw red every April 15 - and essentially ended any hopes Andrews may have had for political success.

The November 1956 elections would see Andrews running for President on the fringe States' Rights party ticket. From that debacle he would gravitate, by the early 1960s, to the John Birch Society - and total political irrelevance.

Throughout the years right after World War II, the savviest of the politicos who carried rich people's water understood quite clearly that openly pushing for rich people-friendly changes to the tax code was never going to gain them much traction. These pols accepted, as a given, the public's strong and solid support for progressive tax rates - and did their best to end run that public.

One end-run came in the 1940s, with a business drive to amend the Constitution and limit the top tax rate on high incomes to 25 percent. The strategists behind this effort recognized they had no shot at getting such a tax-cap amendment through Congress. They chose instead to take their case to state legislatures.

The states, notes University of California historian Isaac William Martin, offered business groups a "venue where public awareness of and participation in policy debates was limited." To keep the public even more unaware, the groups launched their tax-cap blitz "in states far outside of national media markets."

But public awareness did come eventually, and the tax-cap campaign, after scoring some initial backroom-deal successes, fizzled out by the late 1950s.

How distant those 1950s today seem. Our contemporary rich no longer feel the need to conspire in the shadows. They openly, at every turn, demand relief from taxes - and any other government action that might crimp their grand fortune-building capacity.

These rich don't always get the exact relief they seek. They don't yet have the power to win every battle they engage. But they do have the power to routinely define the issues and options that make their way onto the battlefield.

"The deficit, the Social Security shortfall, difficulties with Medicare," the president of the United Steelworkers union, Leo Gerard, observed last week, "they could all be solved if the nation returned to taxing policies that existed under Republican President Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower."

At the moment, that return sits nowhere near our mainstream political radar screen. And even more modest tax-the-rich proposals, like the deficit-reduction package Rep. Jan Schakowsky from Illinois presented last Tuesday, go almost totally ignored. That's not right. That's plutocracy.

Sam Pizzigati edits Too Much, an online weekly on excess and inequality published by the Institute for Policy Studies. This article is reposted from OurFuture.org.

Photo: Grace C CC 2.0

Can anybody beat Rahm?

Fri, 19 Nov 2010 14:04:00 +0000

CHICAGO - Can anyone beat Rahm? That's the question on the minds of many Chicagoans as the Nov. 22 candidate petition-filing deadline for mayor of the nation's third largest city fast approaches.

Rahm Emanuel, former White House chief of staff to President Obama, officially announced his candidacy Nov. 13 He hopes to win the Feb. 22 mayoral primary outright and avoid a runoff. To do so he'll have to defeat a broad field of candidates.

In some ways the primary is Chicago's corporate elite vs. the people.

According to Crain's Chicago Business, Rahm is the pick of corporate Chicago. They write, "Members of the business community are lining up behind Mr. Emanuel because they think he most shares [outgoing mayor] Mr. Daley's strongest traits. They see the one-time investment banker as an economic centrist who will play hardball with municipal unions, someone who knows the labyrinth of Washington ... "

Aside from an internal local Democratic Party machine power struggle that could block Emanuel from gaining ballot access, the only thing that can stop him is the emergence of a broad grassroots multi-racial people's coalition around one of the opposing candidates.

This is a tall order.

The Chicago electorate is 40% African American, 38% white, 17% Latino and 5% Asian American. Anyone hoping to win will have to build a coalition that unites communities.

While discussions are taking place among activists and in organized labor to formulate a people's agenda to both judge and push the candidates, the necessary unity hasn't yet begun to crystallize.

The crises facing Chicago are many-sided: the skyrocketing unemployment - especially in the African American and Latino neighborhoods, a budget deficit that could reach $1 billion, severely underfunded schools and mass transit, crumbling infrastructure, lack of affordable housing, and more. Confronting the deep crisis facing the city is the basis of a broad coalition.

Many are looking for a repeat of the Harold Washington election of 1983 when a multi-racial coalition helped elect the progressive, reform candidate as the city's first African American mayor. Such a development now is complicated by the presence of multiple candidates, including in the African American and Latino communities, that can end up splitting the primary election vote.

The two most progressive voices in the field capable of rallying a broad coalition are US Rep. Danny K. Davis and City Clerk Miguel del Valle.

Davis, from Chicago's west side African American community, made an appeal for a broad multi-racial grassroots coalition in announcing his candidacy Nov. 14.

"You don't have to be rich, you don't have to be wealthy, you don't have to be high in the penthouse, all that you have to be is highly motivated and involved to make a difference," said Davis, who has a long history of progressive politics.

"We the grassroots, everyday people, we the policemen, postmen, clerks, electricians, we the nurses, hotel workers, cooks, bartenders, teachers, taxi drivers, doctors, we the people can exercise our God-given rights to participate, be involved and make decisions about ourselves and our city." said Davis

Davis, former US Senator Carole Moseley Braun and Rev. James Meeks, a state senator and pastor of Salem Baptist Church, all have support in the African American community.

Braun is remembered from her days as a Senator. Meeks, whose reactionary views on school vouchers and gay rights have riled many, was introduced in his official announcement by the former head of the state Republican Party, Andy McKenna.

Miguel Del Valle has long been a leading independent voice since his days in Harold Washington's administration. He became the state senate's first Latino elected official. He is an advocate of equitable education funding and opponent of government corruption and patronage.

The candidacy of Gery Chico, President of the City College system and an advocate of expanding charter schools and vouchers, will impact Del Valle's ability to consolidate support in the Latino community.

The most promising possibilities for breakthroughs for labor and forces independent of the Democratic machine appear to be in the City Council races where a sizeable turnover of aldermen is expected. In 2007, the labor movement allocated immense resources to electing pro-labor candidates including several trade union members. It appears they and others may put similar resources in this election leading to a growth in independent voices in the council.

Photo: U.S. Rep Danny Davis, center, along with his wife Vera, announces his candidacy for Chicago mayor Nov. 14. Paul Beaty/AP

Love, revolution, Lula: films from Latin America

Thu, 18 Nov 2010 13:23:00 +0000

Two new films from Latin America dramatize the progressive histories of Cuba and Brazil: one an allegory, the other a biopic of a charismatic leader.

Cuban cinema was represented at the Chicago International Film Festival last month with the most politically themed film to come out of the island in quite a while. "Lisanka," a comedy drama set during the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, is a cleverly constructed allegory of the nascent Cuban revolution. The heroine's name, Lisanka, is a Russified version of Lisa, concocted by a father enamored with the Soviet Union.

Lisanka is courted by three men of varying intent, each vying for the heart and soul of the beautiful tractor-driving heroine. One young man represents the bourgeois capitalist class and the hatred for the revolutionary movement that's pounding on Cuba's doorsteps. One is a revolutionary soldier defending the new progressive government. The three of them have grown up together, but now their differences form this potential battle for the heart of the country. Add to this mix a Soviet soldier newly arrived on the burgeoning socialist island, helping in its defense against the looming threat of a potential U.S. military attack, who is also love-struck by the beautiful maiden.

Lisanka represents the island itself, and the successes and mistakes of the Cuban revolution are depicted in the way that the three men court their reluctant lover. They each fail in their attempts to totally win over the complete love and trust of Lisanka. The Soviet soldier knows little of the culture and history of the island, the capitalist and socialist beaus fight, plot and threaten each other to the detriment and disappointment of the country (Lisanka) and its people.

As if the interplay isn't complex enough, director Daniel Diaz Torres adds an additional twist by adding another character, the local town prostitute, who often ends up being the most pragmatic and supportive of the revolution, and who develops the most trusting and personal relationship with Lisanka. Her tragic fate is tied in with the looming threat of American aircraft hovering over the tiny island that symbolizes the meddling interference of future U.S. aggression on the island.

But the story is kept light and fanciful, with political satire that eventually chastises all the characters one way or another. Torres is known as a sharp observer of Cuban society, exemplified in his highly controversial and daringly creative film, "Alice in Wondertown." Once again he addresses the achievements and shortcomings of the constantly maligned socialist experiment in the Western hemisphere, but in a totally entertaining and creative manner.

Brazil has been in the news recently with the exciting victory of Dilma Roussef as the country's new president. The outgoing president, Luiz Inacio da Silva, known simply as Lula by millions of Brazilians, was term-limited after eight years and Roussef was his personal choice as successor. Lula is leaving office as the most popular president in Brazil's history, with an 80 percent approval rating, higher than most any other world leader.

Producer Paula Barreto, sister of the director Fabio Barreto, appeared at the Chicago Film Festival screening and stated that "Lula, Son of Brazil," the full-length feature that was shown to millions in Brazil, had absolutely no input from the president himself. Rarely has a biopic been made about an incumbent president of a nation, but Barreto felt Lula had led an exciting and eventful life that was ripe for the big screen.

The film starts with the dramatic depiction of his poor working class childhood, threatened by an abusive alcoholic father. As a result Lula bonded closely with his siblings and loving mother who all played a close role in his rise to leadership in the nation. He learned to read when he was 10 and dropped out of school in the fourth grade to work to help feed the family. Later he became a lathe operator in a factory and lost one of his fingers in a work accident when he was 19. His brother, Frei Chico, a communist union leader, had a great influence on his political activism and Lula worked his way up the ladder of the steelworkers union.

Tragedy followed him constantly, however. He married his childhood sweetheart who died giving birth to their first child, a son, who also died during the delivery. He later married a fellow worker who was a widow with a son the same age as his would have been.

As he gained prominence in the workers' struggle in Brazil, he often spoke at large rallies. These scenes are dramatically recreated in the film using actual footage to augment the action. He spent time in jail during the military junta, and was released only to attend the funeral of his beloved mother.

The film moves at a dramatic pace as one eventful scene follows another, and Lula continually gains a strong following as he leads the largest country in Latin America out of poverty into the modern world with a sound economy.

Lula's popularity was obviously pumped by his record of reducing hunger and moving over 30 million Brazilians out of poverty during his term. The controversial but highly successful Bolsa Familia social program helped turn the economy around and now Brazil is the eighth largest economy in the world.

The film utilizes several actors who convincingly portray Lula at different stages in his life. The film is reminiscent of "The Motorcycle Diaries," another history of a great political leader, lovingly and beautifully told. "Lula, Son of Brazil" is scheduled for release soon and this is a rare opportunity to see the history of an emerging country through the life of a progressive leader.

Photo: Scene from "Lula, Son of Brazil." Confraria de Cinema

Austerity is wrong medicine for bleeding economy

Wed, 17 Nov 2010 16:14:00 +0000

The labor movement has persuasively argued that the election's mandate was to create jobs and resolve the economic mess in the interests of working people. The election's mandate was not to make that mess worse. And yet, this is precisely what the Republican policies of draconian spending cuts would do. Nothing could be more harmful.

What is delaying an economic recovery is not too much spending and a growing deficit, but not enough federal spending.

The economy is stalled and spending is down. Consumers are up to their ears in debt and are understandably reluctant to use scarce dollars to buy things like refrigerators, cars, houses, or home improvements. And don't hold your breath waiting for the capitalist class, sitting on roughly two trillion dollars - yes, $2,000,000,000 - to invest its surplus cash in new hiring and productive capacity.

The crisis gripping the country and world is one of demand insufficiency. Thus to cut government spending for jobs, infrastructure, green technology, public education, and aid to local governments in these circumstances is like throwing fuel on a fire - things will get worse, maybe much worse, before they get better.

Nevertheless, the Republican right, if it has its way, is determined to take a meat axe to people's programs at the federal, state and local level. Government, it is said, has to live within its means like everyone else does.

But the truth is just the opposite. For the time being government has to live, not within, but beyond its means. Its immediate imperative is to put dollars in the hands of people who will spend those dollars, namely working and poor people, people of color, youth, and seniors. Nothing could be worse than for the government to tighten its belt in a period when the economy is slumping, unemployment is stuck in the double-digit range, investment in new plants and equipment is meager, and consumer demand is low.

That would be economic suicide. It could turn the warnings of a "double dip" of the economy into a reality.

The millions who went to the polls two weeks ago didn't cast their vote for policies that will drive the economy further downward.

Many were influenced by the toxic environment that was engineered by the right-wing media and corporations and, sorry to say, abetted by the inadequate responses of the Democratic Party to an avalanche of misinformation, demagogy and lies. But it is still a good bet that for millions change looks like a job at a livable wage, a moratorium on mortgage payments, an extension of unemployment insurance, tax breaks for everybody but the richest families and corporations, stiffer regulations on banks and bankers' pay, an expansion of public infrastructure projects, a health care plan that is affordable, universal and easy to understand, well-funded public schools, and retirement security.

Ask Americans feeling the pinch of this economic crisis if their priority - if they have to choose - is the list above or a balanced budget.

I strongly suspect it is the former, not the latter.

President Franklin Delano Roosevelt drank the Kool-Aid of austerity in 1937 and as a result a steep price had to be paid - the economic recovery that was under way lost its steam, hardship grew, and the president and the New Dealers in Congress took a hit in the 1938 elections. Hopefully, this mistake will not be repeated today, because the results will be much the same, including in 2012.

The Republican right won a major victory in this month's midterm elections, but the Democrats and people's movement retain important bases of power.

2010 is not 1994. Obama is not Bill Clinton, who was quick to declare the "era of big government is over." The Senate remains in Democratic hands. The Progressive Caucus in the House is bigger and battle-tested. The coalition opposing the right is more united and more politically attuned. And the people reeling under the weight of a protracted downturn want relief first of all.

The economic policies of the Republican right are also full of contradictions and unsustainable.

The next two years are going to be a dogfight on the ground and in the corridors of political power. And, if the recent elections taught us anything it is that the battle over ideas cannot be underestimated. Right-wing extremism learned this lesson years ago. Our side of the class struggle has to learn and master it now.

To be successful everyone who desires a way out of the current crisis has to become a voice for reason, decency, fairness and economic justice. Simple logic tells us, and we should say it loud and clear: We were not at the switch when the economy unraveled, but we know who was - high finance and the same Republican voices who are now insisting that the government rein in spending for jobs and people's needs and walk away from a wounded and bleeding economy.

Photo: Budget cuts protest at San Francisco State University last year. (coolmikeol CC 2.0)

The deficit trap

Tue, 16 Nov 2010 13:55:00 +0000

The preliminary report by the chairs of the deficit commission has been getting headlines since it was released Nov. 10. The co-authors are Democrat Erskine Bowles and Republican Alan Simpson. Bowles gets paid $335,000 per year as a director of Morgan Stanley, one of the recipients of the Wall Street bailout. Simpson, a former senator with a generous government pension, calls Social Security "a milk cow with 310 million tits."

The Bowles-Simpson report is a poisonous prescription, likely to kill the patient while attempting to cure the symptom. And while focusing on a symptom (the federal deficit), the commission ignored the underlying disease: the decay of the U.S. economy.

Even on the stated goal of deficit reduction, the report comes up short. The authors admit that their proposals to cut Social Security benefits and raise the retirement age are not even related to deficit reduction. The radical changes they propose in the tax system do little to increase revenue, but include huge cuts in the already-low tax rates paid by billionaires. At the same time, progressive proposals, like a financial transactions tax on Wall Street speculation, were not even considered. And Simpson and Bowles' solution to Medicare costs, which account for most of the long-term deficit, is to make patients pay more and, if that doesn't work, "take additional steps as needed." In other words, punt.

Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman summed up the overall impact of the report. It "clearly represents a major transfer of income upward, from the middle class to a small minority of wealthy Americans," he wrote. "Under the guise of facing our fiscal problems, Mr. Bowles and Mr. Simpson are trying to smuggle in the same old, same old -- tax cuts for the rich and erosion of the social safety net."

Krugman is absolutely correct. But I would go further. The whole deficit discussion, including the Bowles-Simpson report, is a three-fold trap.

First, the report includes dozens - maybe hundreds - of specific proposals. A few sound good - like ending the capital gains and dividend tax break for Wall Street investors, or raising the minimum Social Security benefit for low-income retirees. But these few proposals do not change the overwhelming impact - almost everyone gets clobbered by this proposal, except the super-rich, who do very well. Any gains made by low- and moderate-income workers will be far outweighed by fee increases, cuts in benefits and services, and increases in state and local taxes made necessary by the drying-up of Federal programs. It is indeed a "major transfer of income upward."

The second trap: focusing on the details of the Bowles-Simpson proposal risks getting sucked into the whole premise that the deficit is the single most urgent economic problem the U.S. faces, and that it has to be dealt with right now. Economist Dean Baker answers this eloquently: "It is utterly loony to be focused on the projected deficit in 2030, when we have tens of millions of people who are seeing their lives ruined today by the downturn. This is like debating the colors to paint the classrooms when the school is on fire with the students still inside."

The deficit grew under the Bush administration, with tax cuts for the rich and wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. With the economic crisis, the deficit soared: sales and income fell, which meant less tax revenue, and unemployment soared, resulting in higher payments for unemployment benefits, food stamps, etc. The fastest way to reduce the deficit is to get the economy moving. But the Bowles-Simpson report proposes immediate cuts in government spending and the government workforce. This would act as a brake on any economic recovery, and add to the unemployment crisis.

The third trap is the idea that the deficit is the nation's biggest long-term problem, and that we owe it to our grandchildren to fix the problem now. This is false.

The real threat to our economy and to our grandchildren is our decaying infrastructure; an environmentally and technologically unsustainable dependence on wasteful energy consumption and a growing population without access to adequate education or health care.

The budget deficit is a symptom - not the cause - of an out-of-balance economy increasingly based on speculation and profiteering instead of production of useful goods and services. Instead of a deficit commission, we need a commission for an industrial policy for America's physical and social infrastructure.

Public opinion polls show that for the overwhelming majority, the most urgent issues are jobs and the economy, not the deficit. The deficit commission is being used as a smokescreen to block measures urgently needed to help victims of the economic crisis and to create jobs. Only a mass movement - with letters, phone calls, and demonstrations - can put the focus where it belongs: extending unemployment benefits, funds to states and cities to stop the wave of layoffs, and enacting a new stimulus program.

Image: erci731 // CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

Election thoughts from the guy who delivers your mail

Mon, 15 Nov 2010 18:17:00 +0000

"People often say that, in a democracy, decisions are made by a majority of people. Of course, that is not true. Decisions are made by a majority of those who make themselves heard and who vote - a very different thing." Walter H. Judd.

Wow - Election 2010 is over. I am still tryin' to put the whole thing in perspective. Lucky for me, I had a Saturday off from work. It's a rare occasion for me to be a weekend warrior, too bad the little lady had to go off and schlep the U.S. mails. I considered scratchin' my ass and going back to bed as I kissed her goodbye, but instead I vacuumed the house, cleaned the bathrooms, and waited to see if it was gonna be a good day for a ride. As the sun began to break through the clouds, around 11 a.m., I put on my leathers and mounted the Great White Steed.

As I roared down the roads leading to my friend's house, I saw many letter carriers performing their daily duties. Each and every one of them looked very professional and, I thought to myself, how proud I was to be part of their ranks. On this sunny Saturday, I just felt that I was a big juicy piece of the American pie. It is so good to see a mailperson walking down the street. It gives the community an indescribable sense of stability and security. I picked up my friend at her house, and we proceeded to take a shortcut to Big Beaver Road. I swore I knew where I was going. Being nicknamed "Cementhead" means you're gonna get lost from time to time, and I didn't fail to disappoint my friend. We got lost. And then I saw the mailman.

Now, I've been asked a thousand times for directions as I was delivering the U.S. mails. Thankfully, this nice feller in his postal uniform was there to help me out this time. With the dumbest look on my face, I introduced myself and told him I was lost in this confounded subdivision. He said "Aren't you the guy who writes for New Vision?" I admitted I was, asked him his name, and proceeded to forget that name two minutes later. So to that anonymous carrier in Troy, "Thank you for getting me to Big Beaver (exit 69)." Your assistance was much appreciated and I'll buy ya a beer at the Christmas party.

Speaking of direction, this country appears to be lost in its own windy subdivision looking for the main road. Take another look at my opening quote and read it carefully. I examined the voter turnout for my city of Royal Oak and found the results disheartening. Fifty percent of registered voters cast their ballots, and in the neighboring city of Clawson, it was 51%. In the previous gubernatorial election of 2006, 60% of Royal Oak voters turned out and 59% in Clawson. I would expect this was typical of cities all over Michigan on November 2 this year. This is a 17% drop off from the last midterm election. So, whose voices are being heard, and who is voting?

In 2008, our country seemed ready for Change. The idea of change was embraced by the citizenry so resoundingly that our first African-American President was elected along with a Democratic House and Senate. The people said enough of the Bush era policies that were leading us to the precipice of an economic meltdown. Participation in all the various election campaigns, including Labor 2008, was happening in unprecedented numbers. Our own branch saw levels of volunteerism in "Getting Out The Vote" that we've never seen before. There was an optimism and electricity of hope in the air. Unfortunately, all that changed two short years later.

What happened? I am not one to point fingers at others. I've always said, when you point a finger at someone, there's three more pointing back at you. I do believe that two great myths have been promulgated by the Right to the voters in this election, but I also believe that we did not do the proper job of discounting those myths and promoting the hard work done by our President and other advocates of the working class over the past two years. Here are the two Great Myths (in my humble opinion) used to overcome the "Audacity of Hope."

1. Government is too big. The federal deficit will saddle our nation for decades to come. Our great-grandchildren will never forgive us.

It's as if we have never had a federal budget deficit before. Do we forget what happened in the final months of 2008? We, as a nation, were on the verge of an economic meltdown akin to the Great Depression of 1929! In Detroit, two of the Big Three were announcing plans to go bankrupt. Financial institutions were falling like the house of cards that they were literally built like, and we as citizens looked to the Federal government for leadership. The Stimulus Package was enacted; the banks got the bailout package, and the bankrupt auto companies got a chance to restructure and rebuild. And this was all used against the Democrats in 2010.

First, let's talk about the Federal stimulus money. I see roads being rebuilt and, most importantly, folks working. We need to take a look back at how this country got out of the Great Depression. In plain English, the federal government spent money to put the jobless back to work. Through programs like the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), and the Works Progress Administration (WPA), millions of unemployed and underemployed in America were put to work doing thousands of projects across this great land. Many of the grand murals decorating U.S. Post Offices were commissioned by the WPA, as well as highway construction, and reforestation of public lands. In 1936, the WPA rolls had reached 3.4 million people. During its eight year history, our government spent $11 billion with the WPA building 651,000 miles of roads, 124,000 bridges, 125,000 public buildings, and 8,200 parks. Many of the public lands and buildings we pass by every day are products of this Federal government spending. Without it, our country would have never recovered from the Great Depression.

Fifteen million Americans are out of work today. Roughly ten million more can only find part time jobs. Forty five percent of the jobless have not worked in the last six months. Last year's $789 billion government stimulus commitment (The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act) "worked". It stopped the economic free fall in the wake of the financial crisis. It put folks to work, but it was not enough. Why not spend more Federal dollars putting more people back to work, rebuilding this country's aging infrastructure and road system?

There are leading economists who are on my side. Jeff Faux, who spoke at this year's National Association of Letter Carriers convention in Anaheim, is the Founder and Distinguished Fellow of the Economic Policy Institute. He writes: "The basic economic problem is not very complicated: If no one spends, no one works. In order to keep people working, as the Great Depression taught us, the Federal government must therefore compensate by increasing its own fiscal deficit. As jobs return, consumers resume buying, businesses respond by investing, and state and local revenues grow. When we're back to full employment, the Federal budget should return to balance."

And yes, if we spend and grow our Federal deficit now by putting Americans back to work, we will have to return to a balanced budget in the future. But I believe most of us got hoodwinked during this election. We, as working folks, were told that government spending is bad. We were told that the Federal budget should be like our own household budget. Can't spend more than you bring in! Well, our fairly recent national history proves otherwise. Myth busted.

More folks working mean more tax dollars in the coffers. It means stronger communities with fewer home foreclosures. It means restoring the American Dream. It means believing that we have a government capable of doing great things, instead of drowning ourselves in pools of skepticism and meaningless slogans. It means listening to the lessons of our own history.

And it means sometimes asking the Mailman for directions.

Never above you, never below, always by your side

John "Cementhead" Dick

P.S. I'll try to remember to get to the Numero Dos great myth next issue. Being a Myth buster is a great hoot. Happy Holidays to All!

John "Cementhead" Dick is an active member of the National Association of Letter Carriers, Branch 3126, Royal Oak, Mich.

This article appeared in his union's newsletter.

Photo: USPS letter carrier watches his footing carefully while delivering mail in northeast Philadelphia last winter. Joseph Kaczmarek/AP