Why Conservatives Need to Support the #OccupyWallStreet Movement

Alright, it is clear that conservatives don't like the Occupy Wall Street movement.

Rep. Eric Cantor (R, Virginia) characterized the protestors as a mob. One Fox News host even called the protestors dirty and useless. Glenn Beck said they are only interested in destruction, while his compatriot Ann Coulter compared them to Nazis and the beginnings of totalitarianism.

And presidential candidate and former pizza guy Herman CaIn called them un-American and against Wall Street. "They're the ones creating the jobs," Cain said of Wall Street bankers and brokers, adding that those who are not rich or are unemployed should blame themselves.

Now, for those in the media and in politics who make a career out of bashing poor and working folks -- and are paid handsomely to look out for the interests of the Koch Brothers and others who belong in that select group of 1 percenters -- there's no surprise here. But what of ordinary, hardworking and struggling people who call themselves conservatives? How should they feel about the goals of this nascent movement that appears to be gaining steam? And why do some of them vote against their economic interests?

One should note that recent polls find huge majorities -- Democrats, Republicans and independents alike, even the wealthy -- supporting tax increases for the richest among us. This would suggest there is a broad consensus demanding fairness in the American economic system.

And really, that is all the Occupy Wall Street people are asking for. Their website says "We are the 99% that will no longer tolerate the greed and corruption of the 1%." The message is simple and makes a lot of sense.

Wages have stagnated or fallen for working people, and poverty is on the increase. And yet, those with the most are accumulating even more everyday -- not necessarily because they are deserving, hardworking and ingenious, though some may be. Rather, the haves became the have-mores because the have-nots have less. This is called upward wealth redistribution, and it is a matter of public policy, including regressive tax policy that favors corporations and the rich on purpose.

The wealthiest 1 percent now owns 40 percent of the nation's wealth, whereas they only claimed 33 percent 25 years ago. Meanwhile, the top 20 percent own 85 percent of the wealth, and the bottom 80 percent is left with 7 percent -- effectively zero. U.S. inequality is greater than at any time since the Great Depression, and greater than most OECD nations. America is a banana republic.

If F.D.R. saved capitalism from itself years ago, he also saved America from capitalism. What is needed today is what Martin Luther King called a "radical revolution of values," as "an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring."

A few people control the wealth in this country, and those people control the system of governance. American politics is a scheme operating on legalized bribery. Money has corrupted the Democrats and the Republicans alike, especially Republicans. But even President Obama, who rode on a wave of populism and a demand for reform has appeared beholden to that Goldman Sachs money. Just look at the Wall Street lackeys doubling as his team of economic advisors these first three years, not to mention ill-advised policies, or lack thereof, on jobs and the financial system.

And the masses are angry because they are struggling, as they see the banks rewarded, by government, for their greed and failure. The banks wrecked the economy and now the working stiffs are paying the price. The TARP was in the hundreds of billions of dollars, while the Fed gave a total of $16 trillion in financial assistance to U.S. and foreign financial institutions from 2007 to 2010 -- more than the nation's 2010 GDP of $14.5 trillion.

The Tea Party was right to oppose the TARP bailout, but something went wrong along the way.
Actually, they were hijacked by billionaires, if not a creation of them to begin with. And while they have every right to be angry, as many of us are these days, their anger is misplaced and misdirected. Their enemy is misidentified.

Conservatives proclaim that they believe in freedom and the free market. But freedom never meant the right of a handful of to steal most of the nation's wealth, run roughshod over the rest of us and wreck the country for a buck. Further, ours is not a free market capitalist system. Rather, it is a system of subsidized corporatism where only the people are forced to sink or swim. And increasingly America is looking like feudalism, and most of us are serfs or sharecroppers spinning our wheels and going nowhere. Perhaps some people think that is a good thing.

Meanwhile, the Republican Party -- which is a 100 percent certified water carrier for Wall Street -- is adept at making its voter base believe its interests are aligned with that of the party's funders. When it comes to the American Dream, these are the true Kool-Aid drinkers.

Part of the GOP's success is its skill at sidetracking its base with contrived cultural issues. So, rank-and-file conservatives are kept busy hating undocumented Mexican immigrants, with promises to ban sharia law, gay marriage, abortion and voter fraud, and other issues that have no positive impact on their economic well-being.

Yet, in this crisis of U.S.-style democracy and capitalism, conservatives are hurting like everyone else. Who knows what conservatives are conserving these days, but it is hard to conserve when there's nothing left. That's why even they need to support Occupy Wall Street.

We Could Use A Little Class Warfare Right Now

Recently, the jobs crisis in America prompted New York mayor Michael Bloomberg to predict that riots will come if jobs are not created soon.

“We have a lot of kids graduating college, can’t find jobs,” Bloomberg said on his weekly radio show.  “That’s what happened in Cairo. That’s what happened in Madrid. You don’t want those kinds of riots here.”

“The damage to a generation that can’t find jobs will go on for many, many years,” he added.

As for a nation with multimedia diversions—not to mention a stubborn, widespread belief that the American Dream of upward mobility still will come to all who want it— I have maintained that it will take a great deal for riots to come to this country once again.  I certainly would not want to see violence fall upon anyone in any community.

At the same time, as a student of history I understand that things do happen.  In the 1960s, communities of color reached a tipping point.  Call them riots, civil disturbances or urban rebellions, they often arose from acts of police brutality.  But ultimately, they came to reflect frustration over poverty and inequality, a lack of economic opportunity, no jobs, bad schools and a shortage of housing.

And it was also a time of heightened political awareness and political activism, with the civil rights, antiwar and Black Power movements in full force.  Meanwhile, J. Edgar Hoover and the police made their best effort to neutralize these protest movements, even if it meant assassinating their leaders.

Now, I’m sure that some commentators at the time dismissed the riots as acts of vandalism and mayhem on the part of “those” lawless people, meaning black folks, who just don’t know how to behave.

And yet, while blacks, Latinos and other historically marginalized groups have always known pain, whether back in the day or under the current recession, today we are witnessing something fundamentally different.  Today, the thumbscrews are being applied to America’s poor, working class and middle class, as a collective.  And you can’t help but believe that the torturers are engaged in a perverse experiment to see how much they can get away with.

If the U.S. has not reached a tipping point of sorts, you can’t help but think it will come soon.  Some 6.9 million jobs have been lost since the trap door came aloose on the nation’s flawed economic system in 2007.  Add to that the jobs needed to keep up with population growth and America has a jobs deficit of 11 million jobs.

A jobs crisis exists side-by-side with a staggering rate of poverty unmatched in over half a century.  One in six Americans lives in poverty—46.2 million people, or 15.1 percent—a third of them children.  The Latino poverty rate is 26 percent, with 27 percent for blacks.  The U.S. is experiencing a lost decade, and beyond the numbers there exists a profound psychological toll that defies any degree of quantifying.

It is one thing to say that half of all Americans earn less than less than $26,000, and only 1 percent earn  over $250,000.  You can also point out that in the land of opportunity, the nation with the highest inequality in the industrialized world, 400 people have more wealth than half the entire country combined.

But it is an entirely different proposition to ask why, and how to stop it.

Simply put, America’s political governance system has been purchased by the nation’s top 1 percent, and they are getting their money’s worth.  Corporate money has taken over the government, and the government is unable, no, unwilling to take care of the needs of its people, sans the 1 percent who possess their sales receipt in hand.

American politics is legalized bribery and corruption.  With the social welfare system peeling away for austerity’s sake, American capitalism, unfettered, is reverting back to its natural state of exploitation—allowing a few winners, mostly losers, and a lot of cold-bloodedness and cold-heartedness to go around.

The party controlling Congress is a Koch Brothers-led sideshow of extremism, lunacy, instability and racial paranoia.  And the party in the White House is led by a man who means well on his best days, but has placed far too much faith in Ivy League white dudes.  He has sought friendship with those who plan his demise— and that of the nation’s economy for political gain— as he legitimizes and embraces their pathological ideas.  Half-measures and Clintonian triangulation have appeared misplaced and wholly inadequate, falling far short of the bold promises of hope and change in the 2008 election.

Right now, the president is on the right track in his populist efforts at pushback against the GOP, including a proposal to end the Bush tax cuts and tax the wealthy more, or at least as much as the rest of us.

Ultimately, public pressure will turn all of this around, as it always does.  What we learned is that elections are not enough, and politics is not a spectator sport.  The people must demand what they want from their elected officials, and change the terms of the public debate.  Mass protest, not President Obama, will do the job of saving us from American capitalism.

A movement called Occupy Wall Street has decided to take a cue from the Arab Spring, and engage in nonviolent mass occupation to fight the greed and corruption of the top 1 percent and restore democracy in America.  The movement, which plans to camp out on Wall Street for a few months, is not getting as much attention as it should.  Hopefully that will change.  We could use a little class warfare right now.  It is always good to know where things stand.

What Will It Take to Bring Obama Home? Making Him Realize There's No Other Choice

The following is part of the ongoing "Moving Left" series in BlackCommentator.com:

When it comes to the 2008 election of Barack Obama, the mistake people made was mistaking voting for activism. I believe that before we have any discussion on whether and how we can bring Obama home to progressive values, we must first come to terms with this reality.

It's not as if you can blame them. After eight years of a disaster that was the Bush administration, voters wanted and needed a major change in the direction of the country. We needed to wipe the slate clean and set a new tone for America. A new man for the times came on the scene. He was a person of color, clean and articulate, and with lofty rhetoric. And he provided hurting, hungry people with hope and promises of change. In fact, he was the embodiment of change.

Now, in 2011, things are a little different. Main Street is hurting, and unemployment is high and seemingly intractable. Meanwhile, as poor and working people struggle and fail to keep their necks above water, Wall Street and the corporate elites never had it so good. Profits are at a record high, and the gap between the richest of Americans and the rest of us is higher than at any time since the first Great Depression.

In the midst of this, the current administration has lacked the backbone, the heart and the intestinal fortitude to fight for ordinary folks. There have been some successes for progressives over the past few years, to be sure, but sprinkled among a larger host of disappointments and missed opportunities. The President made no attempts at a public option or single payer health insurance system, opting instead for a watered-down compromise plan that has proven itself as a giveaway to corporate interests. He extended the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest people in this nation, and embraces budget cuts that support the fraudulent Republican narrative of austerity and trickle-down economics. The Bush military policies continue, as does the practice of rendition and detaining terror suspects at Guantanamo. And when the President goes to the bargaining table to negotiate with the Republicans, he gives away the store right away and asks for nothing in return. Democrats, progressives and other Obama supporters are shaking their heads in disbelief. Where is the fighting spirit, the will to work hard for our values?

Part of the problem is that Obama took the Goldman Sachs money in the presidential campaign, and has to play their tune. He stacked his inner circle with Wall Street water carriers and Clinton-era neoliberals with a deregulation fetish. These are the people who helped create the country's economic mess, in which the plenty greedy were allowed to plunder America's resources by gambling it all away at the casino.

The other part of the problem is Obama's quixotic journey to the political center. There is nothing in the middle of the road but yellow lines and road kill, and you'd better believe it. Although his campaign rhetoric was progressive, this president chooses to govern from the middle. That decision in itself is questionable for a number of fundamental reasons:

• First, the people who elected Barack Obama did not want a centrist who stands for nothing, sees how the wind is blowing and splits the difference. They wanted bold, decisive leadership, not a referee-in-chief.
• Second, such a strategy hopes to garner support from undecided independent voters who want Democrats and Republicans to play nice together, while ignoring the base. Sometimes, compromise is not a prudent step, particularly if your opponent has an unacceptable point of view. These voters live solely in the minds of inside-the-Beltway prognosticators and pundits.
• Third, governing from the center is a tough proposition when you fail to define what the center actually is. Ultra-rightwing Christian fundamentalism is driving the center in its traditional sense rightward. So, if your desire is to be Republican-light, be forewarned that when a fake Republican runs against a real Republican, the Republican always wins.
• Fourth, President Clinton was able to get away with triangulation, but that was Clinton's style. Plus, Bill had the benefit of a booming economy. So, although the base was angry when he sided with the Republicans to end welfare as we know it, he remained popular. But there is a sense today that voters are done with the foolishness. And the protests in Wisconsin and elsewhere point to a pushback against a conservative onslaught that would dismantle the New Deal-Great Society legacy.

If the disgruntled Obama supporters thought they would get everything they wanted from this White House - without lifting a finger other than to cast their ballot in the voting booth - they were sorely mistaken. Elections are important, but are no substitute for the hard work of building movements, coalitions and institutions. At the same time, diehard Obama supporters and apologists who say he is just one man and cannot do it alone must realize that he is not doing it alone. He has an administration filled with intelligent, capable individuals. Yet, Democrats have not put enough pressure on Obama, which is why we are here today. But Democratic leaders--including progressive lawmakers and members of the Congressional Black Caucus-- and groups such as MoveOn.org and the Progressive Change Campaign Committee(PCCC) are pushing back, challenging the President to reject the Republican budget agenda, and not to cut programs for low income people.


President Franklin D. Roosevelt asked civil rights leader A. Phillip Randolph to "go out and make me do it," that is, make him use his power and the bully pulpit to right the wrongs and do the things they both agreed should be addressed. That is precisely what today's progressives must do with Obama. They must build the infrastructure of an independent movement that supports the President when he deserves it, and pressures him out of love, like a wayward family member, when necessary. Most of all, this movement must look toward the future, with the goal of surviving beyond an Obama administration or any other presidency.

Progressives must also craft a media narrative that places their ideals squarely in the political center, with the President having no choice but to embrace them. Justice for union workers, a living wage and benefits, a clean environment, social safety net and fighting against wealth inequality are mainstream policies. Triangulation is both unnecessary and counterproductive for a president who already enjoys support among moderates, who have fled the GOP in droves. The once mainstream Republican Party is now dominated by conspiracy theorists, crackpot Birthers in the mold of Donald Trump, self-righteous religious zealots and morality police, and Neo-Confederates. They want to turn extremism into the mainstream, and make ignorant the new smart. It is hard to imagine finding common ground with a party whose core constituencies include hate groups.

Further, the base must remind President Obama that the Republican goal is to run the economy into the ground -- and his presidency with it -- all for political gain. Therefore, he has no choice but to come home. And progressives should make it clear that if he wants a second term, he most certainly must come home in order for his supporters to come out next Election Day. That is not to say the Obama voters will flock to a viable challenger from within or outside the Democratic Party. Rather, many of them, demoralized and lacking in enthusiasm, simply will stay home and, by default, bestow victory upon the Republicans. That's what happened in the 2010 midterms, and the rest is history.

Dysfunctional Politics Begets Suicidal Policies

America is in a whole lotta trouble, but I'm not telling you anything you didn't already know.

We unleash the so-called free market, and then once that free market has destroyed millions of lives and livelihoods, government must come to the rescue to save the system from itself.  And once the oil company despoils the oceans with millions of gallons of black goop, or the criminally greedy mining company allows its workers to perish in an unsafe mine, government must intervene to restore a regulatory framework and rein in corporate excess.

And yet, the guardians of the status quo would seemingly fight reform, even if it meant bringing down the entire country.

The standoff in the Senate over the extension of unemployment benefits is a perfect example of the depths of the problem.  To be sure, they did pass unemployment benefits for the 2.5 million people whose checks ran out in May.  But there will be another standoff in the months to come.  And the fundamentals of the political dysfunction will be the same.

In a normal world, helping out distressed families in a virtual depression is a no-brainer.  It is the right thing to do from a moral standpoint, but it also makes good sense to use unemployment benefits to help stimulate an anemic economy.

But Congress, particularly in the Senate side, is being held hostage by a minority party that clings to a failed economic philosophy known as trickle-down economics.  This is the theory that if you give the wealthy more money in the form of tax cuts, subsidies, corporate welfare and the like, those benefits will trickle down to the lower rungs of the population, and everyone will be happy and prosper in the end.  Remember the Reagan years?  In simpler lay terms, trickle down is also known as theft.

That is what the $1.6 trillion in Bush tax cuts have amounted to--theft of the middle and working classes, the poor, and everyone else at the bottom.  The top 1 percent now owns about 35 percent of America's wealth, and the top 20 percent owns 85 percent.

This gross disparity was exacerbated by horrendous policies such as the Bush tax cuts, of which half went to the top 5 percent of U.S. households, while the bottom 60 percent of Americans received a mere 15 percent of the leftovers.  No investment, no economic growth, no jobs--just highway robbery, the way it was meant to be in the first place.

The Republican party faithful care little about the lives of everyday people. But they do care about their corporate benefactors.  They claim to care so much about deficit reduction that they do not want to extend unemployment benefits, yet they want to extend the very tax cuts that wrecked the U.S. economy.  Three GOP-inspired policies-- financial ruin, the senseless yet costly wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and tax cuts for the rich--put us in this mess that turned a Clinton-era surplus into a $1.4 trillion deficit.

And yet, we're in a recession, a Great Recession, and perhaps even for another ten years.  This year, foreclosures could reach one million or more.  Still, conservatives are on the deficit reduction bandwagon.  The Obama administration, having learned nothing from the lessons of history, is drinking the Hooverade as well, saying there is "no great appetite" for aid to the states.

Now that's just dumb.  Stressing deficits over job creation is suicidal in a broke economy.  This strategy speaks to an administration that, however brilliant and accomplished, expends too much energy appeasing its adversaries and protecting those of its advisors who rate in the mediocre-to-incompetent range, even as it throws good people under the bus amidst right-wing smear campaigns.

Speaking of good people, it is speculated that the Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner will use his authority under the newly-minted financial reform and block Elizabeth Warren as head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

Perhaps he doesn't want anyone to learn where the bodies are buried, in a metaphorical sense, and he knows the Harvard law professor will protect consumers and not allow banks to continue their abusive practices.  For an administration that has backtracked and settled for second best when faced with the prospects of great reform (i.e., single payer and the public option in the healthcare debate) this would be the last straw.  But time will tell.

In the meantime, when presented with viable options to fix our problems, there is this tendency for America to take the road to ruin.  You have no choice but to come to this conclusion when you look at this country's military spending. While other nations seek to achieve economic and technological superiority, the United States aspires to win the Cold War.

Expensive, deadly and pointless, America's exploits in Iraq and Afghanistan, at a price tag of $1 trillion, have amounted to the second most expensive military action after World War II.  And with hundreds of military bases around the world, the U.S. spends far more on its military than any other nation, and about as much as all other nations combined, for that matter.      

Slaves to our dysfunctional politics, America treats a dysfunctional and racist movement as legitimate.  We walk a fine line when dealing with the Tea Party--pay too much attention and we give them more publicity than they deserve, but ignore them and we fail to learn the lessons of our troubled racial history.  But in any case we must "refudiate" them.

Not actually a movement, the Tea Party is little more than a corporate lobbyist-supported project of the GOP, with a pseudo-populist overlay.  Their aversion to taxes, to government spending, social programs such as universal healthcare, and their visceral hatred of a black president, have their origins in the Republican Southern Strategy.

Lee Atwater taught them well, though he repented on his deathbed.  Taxes, big government, social programs, all of these were code words for fear of black people, when it was no longer acceptable to use the "N" word.  Atwater was able to finesse the racist sensibilities of the Dixiecrat legacy in order to secure Republican victories.  The strategy worked, but the moderates left the policy and the base remained.  Some of the base has aligned with white supremacists, militias and jingoists, with a hate group helping to write Arizona's anti-immigrant law, and white supremacists donating money to defend the law.  These are the folks who are providing the energy in the Republican Party today, and some conservative politicians hope to harness this energy, racism and all.  

So, the question is, why does America allow dysfunctional politics to result in horrible, even suicidal policies?  The question is not rhetorical, I really want to know.              

These Foliticians Are America's Problem

If you look at the problems plaguing this nation today, from economic collapse to environmental catastrophe, it is safe to say that some politicians had some hand in the mess.  Corruption in politics did not just become an issue.  Obviously, this is a centuries-old crisis in the making.  But the consequences of misguided policies and sub par politicians are so dire today--and the direct link between bad people and bad outcomes is so clear--that we must take notice.

After all, the disaster of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans was a failure of political leadership as much as it was a failure of the levees.  The current BP oil deluge which has turned the Gulf of Mexico into chocolate milk has eclipsed the Exxon Valdez oil disaster of 1989.  To be sure, the BP accident is an environmental threat that speaks to the deadly serious pitfalls of off-shore drilling.  But it is also a crisis of bad political intentions, from the right-wing lobbyists such as FreedomWorks that worked with BP to push for more oil drilling, to the corporate lackeys at the 2008 GOP convention who shouted "drill baby drill."  Let's not forget former Vice President Dick Cheney, who championed deregulation of the oil industry with his energy task force, and whose company Halliburton figures prominently in the oil rig disaster.

Similarly, the Great Recession and the destruction of America's middle and working class is as much the creation of deregulation-loving, Wall Street-enabling bipartisanship as anything else.  Political greed almost killed healthcare reform.  And for what it's worth, although reform was historic, individual politicians' quest for self-aggrandizement watered down the reform package, with the public option as a casualty.  

This is not to say that all politicians are rotten.  To the contrary, many are dedicated and committed to their constituents, and have a long, proud record of accomplishments.  These are the honest public servants who were grown by the community, and who answer to the needs and concerns of the people.  Perhaps they were propelled into office because of some issue or cause to which they were personally devoted, or a personal tragedy that changed their life.  Nevertheless, these politicians take their job seriously, and might even take principled stands, sometimes to the detriment of their political career.

But these days, I can't help but think of the lyrics to the old UB40 song "Folitician":  

You come chatty chatty chatty run up you' mouth; (repeat)

One man, one vote you hear from the shout. (repeat)

You full of pure promise but you tell damn' lies; (repeat)

You make a mistake And then somebody dies. (repeat)

Hey folitician, me seh hey folitician

Me seh hey folitician

What you doin 'bout the slums?

You sit around all day, jus' a twiddle your thumbs;

You have a strange expression

Mek you look like you' dumb. (repeat)

You worry everybody 'til you put them in a box. (repeat)

Who is the folitician which the song decries?  I think of a poor shlub, maybe someone who is selling hot dogs on Market Street, or your thoroughfare of choice.  Perhaps he or she is clueless on political matters.  Perhaps this person isn't too bright, maybe even dumb as bricks or semi-illiterate.  In any case, this individual is malleable, a marionette looking for a puppet master.  Some powerful interests may identify this shlub as someone they can use as their front man (or front woman, because pimping is an equal opportunity game).

Or, perhaps the folitician comes to Washington, or Albany, or Sacramento, or some other city of choice, with good intentions and great ideas.  But the lobbyist money is just too good to pass up--it flows just like water, or oil for that matter.  This supplemental income becomes their crack, if you will.  Foliticians depend on the money to help support the lifestyle to which they have become accustomed.  They blatantly flaunt their greedy inclinations in front of their constituents, casting their lot (and their votes) with those who paid them off, rather than who voted them into office.  The voters are too clueless to notice, the foliticans think, and far too often they are correct.  

Alternatively, the folitician might come to the scene, fully formed, as a slick, savvy, wholly-owned subsidiary of the corporation whose water (s)he was paid to carry.

Now more than ever, the public is beginning to understand that we, our economy, our health and our environment are paying a helluva price for pathetically corrupt political misleadership.  America's political system has a quality control issue.  The product is flawed because the raw materials are flawed.  If we allow them, this dysfunction will become our undoing.  Blame the wholly-owned foliticans as we will for our current situation, and we should, we must assume responsibility as well.  After all, they were not elected by themselves, and democracy wasn't meant to be a spectator sport.

Absolute Corruption is the Rule in America

Often, people will look at a high-profile example of corruption, and conclude that the egregious act is an exception to the rule. In reality, it might be the tip of the iceberg.

On October 29, 2009, the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania did a wonderful thing when it expunged the records of as many as 6,500 juveniles in Luzerne County. That’s not a misprint.
 
Two judges in that county were sent up the federal river for locking up thousands of innocent children over five years, in exchange for $2.6 million in kickbacks from private juvenile detention centers.  Judges Mark A. Ciavarella Jr. and Michael T. Conahan helped the developers secure the county contracts to build the prisons.  Moreover, they filled the detention centers with warm bodies— many of whom were first-time offenders with minor infractions— and illegally denied the teens access to an attorney.

In the case of Luzerne, the “cash for kids” scheme was a coldblooded expression of greed, and we should not downplay the seriousness of the crimes committed.  Yet, what happened in this rural county in northeastern Pennsylvania is a reflection of what America’s criminal justice system has become— a for-profit, money-making enterprise. 

Often, our poorer children, disproportionately of color, are funneled into a cradle-to-prison pipeline through adulthood.  With a criminally negligent public school system, and job opportunities outsourced abroad, many children at the bottom of the socioeconomic ladder are ensured a future of little else than street corners or prison bars.  In fact, many urban schools are nothing more than prison prep, complete with police and metal detectors. 

Interestingly, the children of Luzerne, a county which is nearly 97% white, did not resemble the “usual suspects” in the criminal justice system.  But that really is not the point— when prisons are a capitalistic endeavor, warm bodies are needed as the raw materials, and so they must come from somewhere.  And consequently, justice takes a backseat to dollars.  From the foodservice industry and the phone companies, to the Wall Street bankers and the investors, many people have a vested interest in filling up those empty prison beds and maximizing their cut.  American capitalism made the U.S. prison population the world’s largest at 2.5 million, with mass incarceration for nonviolent drug offenses and victimless crimes.

And American-style capitalism is problematic for the culture of corruption it has enabled, in the absence of an effective regulatory framework.  Much attention has been paid to Bernie Madoff, that poster child of the Ponzi schemes, who defrauded investors out of $65 billion.  The damage he created is impressive, from the family savings that were forever lost, to the charities that went under.  But like the judges in Luzerne County, Madoff was merely a cog in a wheel of corruption that enabled greed.

Madoff himself said he was surprised his scheme lasted so long, and that the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) investigators were so clueless about his fraudulent activities over 16 years.  The fact is, some members of the SEC staff were inexperienced or just idiots.  Further,Madoff had too much credibility with the SEC and was not properly investigated, with red flags uncovered yet ignored. 

With the deregulation of the financial sector and the evisceration of the Glass-Steagall Act came the financial crisis of 2008.  The system had become the Ponzi scheme.  The economy was built on paper shuffling and no tangible products.  Consumers were preyed upon with sketchy, deceptive and destructive subprime mortgages.  Banks gambled people’s money in high-risk, high-stakes poker games.  And with a revolving door between Wall Street and the Treasury department, the same people with the gambling problem are running the casino, and “monitoring” it as well. 

The banks that ruined the country swore by the free market when it suited them.  But now, they gladly accept their corporate welfare bailout checks, and scoff at the rest of us.  Wall Street has rebounded, business as usual, and Gordon Gekko is smiling.  Meanwhile, America’s former middle class is joining the ranks of the poor, and the foreclosed are filling the nation’s homeless shelters.  Short of bold government action of Rooseveltian proportions, there will be no economic recovery for everyday people.  After all, the unemployed, the homeless, and the soon-to-be unemployed and homeless generally are not big spenders.

The moneyed interests also have corrupted the political process, and a prime example is the behavior of Senator Joe Lieberman (I-CT) and the “Blue Dog” Democrats in the health care reform debate.  Lieberman has earned a special place in the hearts and minds of progressives of late for vowing to stand with Republicans, and filibuster any health care bill that contains a public option.  He has even said he would rather have no bill at all than a bill with a public option.

In American political folklore, the Senate is presented as an august deliberative body where cooler heads prevail, where genteel statesmen and stateswomen put the brakes on rash and potentially harmful legislation, for the betterment of all.  In reality, the Senate is a place where bold legislation for the public good is killed, because industries put a contract out on democratic ideas.  And they instruct their employees, the senators, to stop these ideas in their tracks.  This is a bipartisan endeavor.  The Blue Dog Democrats, who are the self-proclaimed fiscal conservatives of their party, distinguish themselves from other Democrats by their greed and hypocrisy.  They receive the most corporate money, and have rejected less costly health reform bills that would hurt their benefactors.  Ask Sen. Max Baucus of Montana, chair of the Senate Finance committee, and a key player in this year’s health reform debate.  Baucus received $3.4 million from health and insurance industry interests between 2003 and 2008, more than any other member of Congress.  Judging from the sad excuse for a health reform bill that came out of his committee, the industry got its money’s worth.

And Lieberman, the dirty dog that Democrats love to hate, is a fully-owned subsidiary of the insurance industry.  Over the course of his career, he has received $2.6 million from the insurance companies.  In addition, his wife is a health care industry lobbyist.  Despite the overwhelming popular support in Connecticut for a public option, Lieberman has decided to follow the money.  The Democrats must take Lieberman to the woodshed for his double-crossing ways, and relieve him of his coveted chair in the Homeland Security and Government Affairs committee.  Not to be outdone, Sen. Evan Bayh (D-IN), whose wife has made at least $2 million sitting on the board of a major health insurance company, hinted that he would filibuster the public option as well.  Apparently, faced with the prospect of the Democratic leadership opening a big can of whup ass on him, he backed off.

The problem here is not just Senators Lieberman, Baucus, Bayh and a few other unscrupulous politicians.  The fact is the entire political game, the link between money and politics, is rancid and is killing democracy.  In the case of health care reform, the corrupting influence of money is literally sucking the country’s life blood. 

As in the days of old before the 1929 stock market crash and the New Deal, corporations have far more influence in this society than they are entitled.  Citibank gleefully proclaimed in a series of reports in 2005 and 2006 that the U.S. is a plutonomy— a system of wealth inequality in which the richest 1% hold a disproportionately large share of wealth.  The rich are likely to get even wealthier, at the expense of labor.  This rising inequality, Citibank predicts, will lead to a political backlash. 

And some backlash is needed now.  It is certain that the outrageous displays of greed and corruption deserve our attention and our outrage.  But to dismiss them as exceptions to the rule, rather than products of a systemic, vulturous culture that must be attacked, is to choose a perilous path.   

Our House is on Fire, Part 5: How About a Student Loan Bailout?

By David A. Love, BlackCommentator.com

The following is the fifth part of an ongoing Color of Law series.

Click here to read any of the commentaries in this series.

The education bubble is going to burst. It has to happen. On a daily basis, we hear about the bursting of the housing bubble. Housing values were over inflated. Millions of people found themselves with mortgages they could not afford to pay—whether through hard times and job loss, racial profiling and predatory lending by unscrupulous, avaricious banking institutions, or other reasons.

But neither can many Americans pay their college loans. Few people really talk about the unholy alliance made between institutions of higher learning and educational lenders to create a travesty in American education—that hot mess known as the student loan hustle.

Here is yet another reason why American capitalism is the scourge of the global community.

Colleges, grad schools and professional schools have become profit centers, cash cows and vocational processing plants, rather than places to expand one’s mind and understanding of the world.

And each year, the cost of a college education increases far in excess of the rate of inflation, twice the rate of inflation to be exact. Private law school tuition increased nearly three times the rate of consumer prices between 1990 and 2003. In this time of economic gloom, parents—financially straightjacketed, perhaps unemployed or underemployed, no savings, or their investment portfolios eviscerated— cannot afford to send their children to school.

According to the College Board, the average cost of four years at a private college is $136,000, $57,000 at a public university. Meanwhile, the student loan industry makes $85 billion a year. Federal loans are at $544 billion, up $42 billion from 2008. And students borrowed a record $17.3 billion in private student loans in 2005-6, a 913% increase from a decade earlier. In 2008, according to FinAid.org, there was nearly $131 billion in outstanding private student loans. These private loans, the fastest segment of the student loan market, often have exorbitant and variable interest rates, highly punitive late fees and charges, and are based on the borrower’s credit rating rather than his or her need. Thanks to the power of the student loan industry— and hack politicians who believe we must leave no corporation behind—these loans, unlike mortgage foreclosures, are not covered by bankruptcy protection.

And then there are those unscrupulous and unduly influenced university officials who accept kickbacks, gifts, trips, revenue sharing agreements and other goodies from the lenders (who are eager to earn even more profits on the backs of students), in exchange for access to students. Andrew Cuomo, New York State attorney general, uncovered much of this scandal in a 2007 investigation. For example, the financial aid director at the University of Southern California owned 1,500 shares of Education Lending Group, parent company of the university’s preferred lender, Student Loan Xpress. In addition, the financial aid directors at Columbia University and University of Texas owned stock in that company, with the former selling his shares at a $100,000 profit. All three officers were terminated by their respective universities. The director of student financial services at Johns Hopkins University resigned after Cuomo’s probe revealed that she had received $65,000 from Student Loan Xpress, giving the impression that she was an employee of the lending company rather than of the university. And Matteo Montana, a Bush Department of Education official, held at least 10,500 shares (at least $100,000) of the company’s stock, and he was supposed to be overseeing that lender, as well as others who participated in the Federal Family Education Loan Program (FFELP).

When greed rules the student loan process—not unlike financial deregulation and the Wall Street meltdown, the Madoff scandal, and the subprime mortgage mess— no one is looking out for the interests of ordinary students. The result is that students get shafted, and the banks and their enablers get rich. People of meager or modest means, just hoping for education as a way up and a way out, are crushed under the weight of loans they cannot afford to pay when they graduate. They emerge no better, or even worse off, than the previous generation, with six-figure, mortgage-sized indebtedness, and monthly payments that exceed all other expenses, if not their entire paycheck. Some young people must forego homeownership because they cannot afford a mortgage, or must live with their parents until things get better, if they ever get better.

But in this system of American capitalism, where education provides false and empty promises of hefty rewards, not everyone is even supposed to have a job. The proliferation of prisons for the surplus population—in Dickensian fashion—and the doling out of tax breaks for corporations that move jobs overseas, provide more than ample proof of that proposition. High college debt levels drive people into corporate jobs they might not want, but there are not nearly enough of those jobs available for those who want them, in any case. For evidence, look at the legions of thousands who are being shown the door in corporations and law firms throughout the country right now. Often, those who prefer a public interest job must forego a career of community service, dismiss it as financially unsustainable, or choose that potentially perilous path only through extreme personal sacrifice and a commitment to a life of near impoverishment—that is, just a stone’s throw away from the plight of some of their clients.

What is missing here is that education can and should be an enriching experience, to build character and knowledge, and create productive members of society. But for many, it appears that is not worth the cost. And yet, why isn’t education considered a civil right, a human right? Why isn’t it free, or at least close to it? And if AIG, Citibank, General Motors and other corporations deserve a financial bailout, what about the debilitated student loan debtors? What about a national student loan forgiveness program? Let’s wipe the slate clean and start anew. A Facebook group was created to call for just that, to petition Congress to eliminate the estimated $600 billion or more in U.S. student debt, on the grounds that doing so would stimulate the economy. The Facebook group has nearly 167,000 members.

Is there hope on the horizon? Well, as a start, President Obama wants to eliminate the role of private industry in the federally guaranteed student loan program. This step would eliminate the $4 billion in annual government subsidies to these private companies, which include such big names as Citigroup, SallieMae, Bank of America and JPMorgan Chase.

Also, under The College Cost Reduction and Access Act of 2007, monthly federal student loan payments are capped at 10% of a debtor’s gross income for 25 years. The rest of the debt is forgiven.

In addition, Rev. Jesse Jackson is leading a campaign called Reduce The Rate. The movement is calling for Congress to do the following:

1) Reduce the interest rate on all student loans to 1%, the same rate the banks enjoy;

2) Extend the grace period before loan repayment begins from 6 months after graduation to 18 months;

3) End the penalties assessed to schools for student loan defaults, and

4) Increase Pell Grants to cover the average yearly cost of a public 4 year institution, rather than the amounts in the current stimulus package (which are $5,350 starting July 1, 2009, and $5,550 in 2010-2011).

What happens next will depend on public pressure, and the power of youth and others whose voices were heard in the 2008 election. To be sure, the influence of Wall Street insiders in the Obama administration, individuals such as Treasury secretary Timothy Geithner and Lawrence Summers, is by no means encouraging. And the pimps and prostitutes for the student loan industry who double as members of Congress will do what they can to stop any further pushes toward that ever-dreaded “European-style socialism”. We shall see. If nothing else, it will be interesting to watch.

Our House Is On Fire, Part 1: Now the Robber Barons Replace the Welfare Queens (and Rightly So)

By David A. Love, BlackCommentator.com

The following is the first part of an ongoing Color of Law series.


Gordon Gecko had a long run of it, but now the party is over. I’m talking, of course, about the character in the film Wall Street, that conniving titan of finance who would sell his mother for a buck and a quarter, and there is scant evidence that he had not already accomplished that goal. "Greed is good," he declared.

Gecko began to have his heyday in the Reagan era. That’s when the "conventional wisdom," fueled by greed, began to call for a supply-side economic policy in which financial benefits would be bestowed upon the wealthy and businesses in the form of tax cuts. And as the theory goes, the benefits would "trickle down" to the common folk. In reality, the result was more like "trickle on".

Another hallmark of the Reagan era, which was perfected in the Clinton and Bush years, was the deregulation of the financial markets and other industries. Over the years, these policies were bought and paid for to the tune of $5 billion in contributions, given by Wall Street to Democratic and Republican politicians alike, to keep the government out of the gambling casinos, I mean financial markets. This led to the proliferation of exotic financial instruments called derivatives, which have turned out to be a little more than a high-tech, blue chip hustle. Unregulated, unmonitored, and getting their money’s worth, the banks were able to engage in predatory lending, sucking homeowners - particularly homeowners of color - into unconscionable subprime mortgages. When applied to the environment and food and safety standards, deregulation has resulted in salmonella - and rat - infested peanuts, E-coli tainted beef and climate change.

Meanwhile, as the land of opportunity became the most unequal, top-heavy society in the West, the media - deregulated, conglomerated and with fewer diverse voices (thank you, President Clinton) - provided us with empty calories for our entertainment. Many of us did not realize what was taking place right under our noses: the most dramatic upward redistribution of wealth in history, and a level of income inequality which makes democracy unsustainable.

Since the 1980s, when much of the New Deal regulatory framework has given way to the best unbridled capitalism money could buy, society has steered its best and brightest into the whole Wall Street thing. As the nation’s infrastructure began to crumble and its students fell behind the rest of the developed world in math and science, everyone, including yours truly in a former life, wanted a job shuffling paper and moving numbers around but not creating anything tangible, not building anything of much use to society.

With the adoration of the rich and famous, and the glorification of wealth as a virtue, came the vilification of the poor and the stigmatization of poverty. This gave birth to the concept of the welfare queen, the fictional Black woman on welfare who has six children, wears a mink coat and drives a Cadillac. The typical welfare recipient is White, but never mind. What a worthy scapegoat, no doubt created in some conservative think tank. And what better justification for taking from the poor (unworthy as they are, living off the government dole), and giving to the rich (needy as they are, and unable to live the American dream)? It was "reverse Robin Hood", as Jesse Jackson aptly described it, which culminated in the passage of welfare reform by President Clinton and a Republican Congress.

A Dickensian treatment of the poor was in full fashion. Poverty became a moral failing, an issue of genetics. "Are there no debtors’ prisons? No poor houses?" Well, given that American capitalism never was meant to employ everyone (for more information, see slavery), and given that many of the good blue collar and even white collar jobs have been sent overseas, what do you do with that surplus population, as Dickens called it? It seems no accident that the prison boom, the war on drugs, and draconian prison sentencing came at a time when there were no jobs to be found in the inner cities. The "land of the free" has the world’s largest prison population, even more than China, which is a police state and has over four times the population of the U.S. Prisons are one of America’s primary forms of social control, and there is profit in the warehousing of Black, Brown, and poor bodies.

And as all of this was going on, the people at the top were having a big party at our expense. There has been very little mention of the plight of the poor, although their ranks rose under Bush. In America, over 41 million people were poor as of 2005. Further, 18 percent of children live in poverty, and 1 in 50 children is homeless. With the collapse of the financial system, how can you scapegoat the poor when everyone is either poor or has real potential to join its ranks? This time around, the anger is directed towards the real culprits: the people who, like the robber barons of old, actually stole the money and brought us to where we are today.

It is cathartic to watch the spectacle of bank executives hauled before Congress to explain themselves. What got these people in trouble was not merely their obscenely immense wealth or the manner in which they earned or stole that wealth. Rather, in the midst of all the destruction they left in their path, the broken lives and stolen futures, these individuals still wanted to be rewarded for their failure, for being the special people they think they are. With their pernicious sense of entitlement, the robber barons looked at the rest of society with contempt, as if they are superior to the regular everyday chumps at the bottom of the pyramid scheme.

In a moment of clarity, everyday people have identified the real problem - unfettered capitalism. The robber barons have replaced the welfare queens, and so we have come full circle. This time around, the public refused to fall for the okeedoke and allow themselves to be distracted by some straw man or scapegoat. The Right’s early contention - that Black and Latino homeowners brought the financial system down with mortgages they could not afford - did not hold water. So, is this a sign of political maturity for the common folk, a new populism? Perhaps, but it is too early to tell. The test will come in how society responds to the crisis, learns the lessons of history, and constructs an economic system that seeks fairness, equity and justice. Heaven forbid we become more like those so-called "socialist" Europeans, with their universal healthcare, lower levels of inequality, lower poverty rates and higher educational standards. In the meantime, it will probably get worse before it gets better. But no one said it would be a pretty sight.

A Book Review of Wage Theft In America, By Kim Bobo

Color of Law
By David A. Love
BlackCommentator.com Editorial Board
February 5, 2009

Do not take advantage of a hired worker who is poor and needy, whether that worker is an Israelite or is a foreigner residing in one of your towns. Pay them their wages each day before sunset, because they are poor and are counting on it. Otherwise they may cry to the Lord against you, and you will be guilty of sin.

-Deuteronomy 24:1-15

And O my people! Give just measure and weight, nor withhold from the people the things that are their due.

-Qur’an 11:85

In this winter of economic discontent in America, many people feel as if they have been robbed, and in fact they have. Unscrupulous Wall Street investment managers run off with billions of dollars of hard-earned money. Retirement savings and 401k’s vanish without a trace and seemingly without a remedy. Unregulated markets allow banks to prey on the public with mortgages containing unconscionable hidden terms and penalties. Meanwhile, corporate beneficiaries of the taxpayer-financed bailout extravaganza plot with conservative activists to kill the Employee Free Choice Act - which will facilitate the formation of unions - in order to “save” American capitalism and prevent the U.S. from turning into France.

The free market run amok, combined with regulatory police asleep at the wheel, a decline in bargaining power for workers, and an upward redistribution of wealth, has been a recipe for disaster for ordinary people. Meanwhile, most people do not realize that each year, employers steal billions of dollars in wages from millions of hard working low and middle-income employees. Someone could face a year or two in jail for stealing $1000, yet a crime of this grand scale goes unpunished.

On this second anniversary edition of the Color of Law column, it is fitting that I review the book, Wage Theft in America: Why Millions of Working Americans Are Not Getting Paid - And What We Can Do About It by Kim Bobo. Bobo is the founder and executive director of the Chicago-based nonprofit organization Interfaith Worker Justice, and a columnist for Religion Dispatches. And in this fascinating yet disturbing (and ultimately optimistic) book she provides the reader with nothing less than the anatomy of an invisible epidemic.

Car washers, wait staff, drivers, hotel workers, stock brokers, farm workers, department store employees, poultry workers, the list goes on and on. These are the victims of wage theft. The crime takes many forms. Some employees are paid below the minimum wage, which is against the law. Others have their tips stolen from them, or are forced to work off the clock, without the overtime pay they deserve. Many are denied workers’ compensation and other benefits to which they are entitled, or denied rest and lunch breaks, or made to pay a fee in order to work on the job. Some are denied their first or last week of pay. Many of the victims are immigrants, particularly undocumented, but the typical victim is native-born and White or Black.

Although the full extent of the damage in absolute dollars is unknown, even a pro-business source, the Economic Policy Foundation, estimates that companies steal $19 billion in unpaid overtime each year. And over the past few years, companies have paid over $1 billion annually to settle unpaid overtime claims. For example, in 2005 Allstate paid a $120 million settlement to 3,000 insurance adjusters in California. In 2006, Citigroup paid $98 million to 20,000 brokers who were shortchanged. UPS had to pay $87 million in 2007 for 20,000 drivers who were not paid overtime. That same year, Walmart settled with 86,680 workers for $33 million.

There are numerous factors which explain why wage theft is committed on such a large scale in the United States. Of course, there is racism and sexism, and the dehumanization of immigrant groups. Sometimes, the labor laws are so confusing that employers do not realize they are breaking the law. In addition, there are the global conditions which encourage wage theft. For example, globalization has created a downward shift in wages across the world. Some companies may not explicitly engage in wage theft as official policy, but may promote and fire managers based on how low they can keep costs. In a competitive environment where all companies are stealing from their workers, the company which does what is right, ethical, and legal is penalized. Meanwhile, many workers, unorganized and afraid to stand up for their rights, face retaliation and termination for demanding what is due to them.

Bobo provides a number of solutions to the problem, including stronger unions, providing incentives to businesses to do the right thing, substantial financial penalties for lawbreakers, and beefing up the Department of Labor with more enforcement staff.

In the book, the author takes a look back at the heyday of the department, when Frances Perkins was secretary of labor under President Franklin D. Roosevelt. The first woman cabinet member under any president, Perkins played a major role in creating Social Security, the National Labor Relations Act, the Fair Labor Standards Act, the Civilian Conservation Corps, and many other programs. This proud legacy stands in marked contrast to recent years at the Department of Labor, where former DOL secretary under Bush, Elaine Chao, used every speaking opportunity to pat herself on the back and praise the state of the economy under that administration. Not once during her tenure did Chao, who lacked labor experience, advocate for higher pay, better benefits or reduced injuries for workers.

Bobo believes that community groups and religious groups have a role to play in fighting wage theft as well. The book decries the recent trend towards prosperity gospel among some churches, and acknowledges the important role that progressive religious organizations have played in the labor movement. After all, the major religions have much to say regarding the treatment of the poor and the rights of workers, if only people would dare to heed their words. Moreover, social justice-oriented scriptures from Islam, Judaism and Christianity that are quoted by Bobo are a welcome part of this book. The author notes that Moses, who led a workers strike in Egypt against Pharaoh, was one of the world’s first labor organizers.

As the product of a union household, whose father is a retired printing pressman, and whose mother is a municipal employee in New York, I appreciate and applaud Bobo for writing Wage Theft In America. At a time when the possibilities for a resurrected labor movement are stronger than in any time in decades, I trust that the ideas articulated in this book will find their way to the Obama administration.