(The Progressive) Legislators across the country are launching a mean-spirited campaign to block poor people from purchasing certain kinds of foods, products, or services.
Missouri state Rep. Rick Brattin has introduced a bill to prevent food stamp recipients from buying “cookies, chips, energy drinks, soft drinks, seafood, or steak.”
A bill in the Wisconsin Legislature would require people who apply for food stamps or unemployment insurance to pass a drug test. Lawmakers also want to prohibit those on food stamps from purchasing “crab, lobster, shrimp, or any other shellfish."
Showing posts with label inequality. Show all posts
Showing posts with label inequality. Show all posts
May 11, 2015
What Baltimore Tells Us About America’s Racism and Inequality
(TakePart) The unrest in Baltimore following the death of Freddie Gray—who died of a severed spine while in police custody—seemed to have caught elected officials, the public, and the media off guard. And those who are far removed from the problems, the challenges, and the indignities facing poor and disenfranchised communities in that city shake their heads in disbelief and wonder why this is all happening.
Surely, the distant observer or armchair pundit has questions. Why are they protesting? Why are they destroying their own neighborhoods? Why did they loot the CVS? Why didn’t the suspect simply comply with the police and avoid causing his own death?
These questions reflect the very real disconnect between the haves and the have nots in the land of the free, and the gaping chasm on matters of race. It’s impossible to comprehend what’s happening here and now—or know the issues we have yet to face—without having an intimate awareness of black America’s history.
Surely, the distant observer or armchair pundit has questions. Why are they protesting? Why are they destroying their own neighborhoods? Why did they loot the CVS? Why didn’t the suspect simply comply with the police and avoid causing his own death?
These questions reflect the very real disconnect between the haves and the have nots in the land of the free, and the gaping chasm on matters of race. It’s impossible to comprehend what’s happening here and now—or know the issues we have yet to face—without having an intimate awareness of black America’s history.
February 27, 2012
The White Working Class was Bamboozled
Originally, this was to be a commentary on the plight of the white middle class, but that demographic no longer exists in America. So, let’s talk about the swindling of the white working class.
And although it has all come to a head in the past few years, it is a story that is years in the making. If Stockholm Syndrome relates to the feeling of empathy that kidnap victims have with their captors, then certainly what we are witnessing today is a Stockholm Syndrome of those on the losing end of American capitalism.
To single out white working people is not to assume that others are immune from identifying with those who would exploit them financially - their own economic kidnappers, if you will. At the same time, it was white working folks who made a deal with the devil a long time ago. And now they’ve been sent the invoice from that Faustian bargain. Allow me to explain.
American capitalism has promoted the mythology of the “American Dream,” the notion that everyone has a chance to get rich. In pursuit of that dream, poor and working white Americans chose their enemy years ago. They made a conscious decision to side with the “1 percenters” whose feet were firmly placed on their neck, rather than with similarly situated black and brown common folk. They decided it was those of a darker hue whose progress stood in the way of their own movement up the ladder.
Generation after generation, they fought and died in wars, someone else’s beef, designed to protect the interests of the 1 percent.
They opposed social programs that had any chance of helping blacks, even if they stood to benefit from the programs themselves. And ultimately they failed to join forces with workers of color to build a strong labor movement. As a result of that fatal decision, the jobs moved offshore to where the labor costs were cheapest. Chinese slave laborers are now making our iPhones, iPads, X-Boxes and other toys, and now even Chinese workers are becoming too expensive.
The most impoverished European immigrant had neither a pot nor a window to throw it out of. But at least he or she was not black, and thus could be considered a real American. Though poor whites had far more in common with their poor black-, Latino-, Asian- and Native-American counterparts than with some Wall Street banker or fat cat industrialist, nonetheless they viewed racial minority groups and others as the enemy. That’s how scapegoats are created.
So, the blame is not placed where it should, which is the über-wealthy sucking the lifeblood out of democracy. Rather the problem is identified as affirmative action, or welfare queens, or undocumented Mexican immigrants. Solutions to the nation’s woes are offered in the form of mass incarceration and the death penalty. Tighter social controls are introduced in the form of bans on Sharia law and Latino studies, voter ID, draconian anti-immigrant legislation and prohibitions on same-sex marriage.
Culture wars are the ultimate shell game, a cheap parlor trick of smoke and mirrors to mask the wide scale corporate theft taking place. These cultural issues - which also include gun proliferation and the war against a woman’s reproductive rights, including contraception - will do nothing to improve anyone’s station in life. Yet these time-tested culture wars are fought because someone is betting that the common folk will take the bait. And usually, such is the case.
Meanwhile, the sanctimonious and self-righteous rightwing among us, a morals police and Christian Taliban of sorts, would distract us with fertilized egg personhood and mandatory sonograms for women seeking an abortion. But in the face of injustice, like the white clergy in Martin Luther King’s Letter from Birmingham Jail, they “have been more cautious than courageous and have remained silent behind the anesthetizing security of stained glass windows.” King called the contemporary church “a weak, ineffectual voice with an uncertain sound. So often it is an archdefender of the status quo. Far from being disturbed by the presence of the church, the power structure of the average community is consoled by the church's silent - and often even vocal - sanction of things as they are.”
So, those who obsess over the sex lives of private citizens have said little about our national scourge of economic inequality or the suffering of the poor - you know, the stuff Jesus talked about. Preoccupied as they are with birth control bans and zygote rights, they were conspicuously silent when the living among them suffered and the innocent died. Last year, when the state of Georgia killed Troy Davis, an innocent black man, they said nothing. And they had remained silent seven years earlier, when the state of Texas wrongfully executed Cameron Todd Willingham, an innocent white man.
Yet, there is hope that for their own sake, people will not fall for the shell game forever. There is a chance that citizens are waking up, resisting the Stockholm Syndrome, and refusing to act against their economic self-interests. The spirit of the Occupy movement has liberated the public discourse, an alternative to the neo-segregationist Tea Party and its reliance on racial scapegoats.
October 14, 2011
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.
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.
October 2, 2011
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.
July 5, 2011
Harmful Policies Are Giving All Americans a Black Experience
Whenever you take a look at a bad law that is on the books, or a policy that the government has put into place, you can bet that someone paid for that. And in this most horrid of political seasons, you'd better believe that attached to each deplorable piece of legislation is a sales receipt.
Case in point: the proliferation of guns in our urban centers. It is an irresponsible policy, to be sure. Garry McCarthy, Chicago's new police superintendent, told some truth-telling that you rarely hear from a public official in his position these days. "So here's what I want to tell you. See, let's see if we can make a connection here. Slavery. Segregation. Black codes. Jim Crow. What did they all have in common? Anybody getting' scared? Government sponsored racism. I told you I wasn't afraid [of race]. I told you I wasn't afraid," said Chicago's top cop. He added: "Now I want you to connect one more dot on that chain of the African American history in this country, and tell me if I'm crazy: Federal gun laws that facilitate the flow of illegal firearms into our urban centers across this country, that are killing our black and brown children."
McCarthy received the predictable criticism from Andrew Breitbart, the gun lobby and others, but that doesn't change the fact that he spoke the truth. In fact, their response validated the truthfulness of that which he spoke. There is no reason for the sale, distribution and trafficking of these weapons of mass destruction, other than to kill people. Corporate greed on the part of arms manufacturers has turned an obscure and anachronistic amendment dealing with militias into a license to kill, literally, on a massive scale. The result is a gun for every American, with no system of licensing, registration and background checks.
And there is no valid or logical purpose for these guns, which injure nearly 100,000 Americans each year, killing a third of them and costing us $100 billion annually, according to the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence. Of the large high-income nations, 80 percent of firearm deaths occur right here. Over a million have died since Martin Luther King's assassination, and they are disproportionately black and brown. In 2007, African Americans accounted for 13 percent of the population, but 49 of all homicide victims. Black juveniles are five times more likely than their white peers to die from firearms. And we export our violence to other countries. The U.S. arms race fuels the Mexico drug war by supplying 70 percent of the weapons used by the drug traffickers in the carnage to our South.
The U.S. war on drugs has been an abysmal failure--primarily a war on poor people and black and brown people who fill the prisons and are separated from their families. A color-coded law enforcement policy hunts for drug activity not in the affluent suburbs, but in the inner cities, where such activity is more conspicuous, out in the open. President Jimmy Carter has called for an end to the global drug war, which was declared 40 years ago. During that time, Carter noted, worldwide consumption of opiates has jumped 34.5 percent, cocaine 27 percent and marijuana 8.5 percent from 1998 to 2008. Our drug policies have created a burgeoning prison population, busting at the seams. With 743 people in prison for every 100,000, America boasts the highest incarceration rate in the world. Government spending on incarceration has skyrocketed. And I don't see anyone challenging us for bragging rights. Over three percent of the U.S. adult population finds itself under the supervision of the criminal justice system, either in prison, on probation or on parole.
Meanwhile, America's attempts to craft positive alternatives to incarceration are thwarted by private prison profiteers, who lobby lawmakers, network and contribute handily to political campaigns, according to a new report from the Justice Policy Institute. Private prison companies work hard to put more people behind bars, and their efforts have paid off, for them that is. Last year, Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) and GEO Group, the two largest private prison companies, generated over $2.9 billion in revenue. The three major corporations have given $835,514 to candidates for federal office, over $6 million to state races, and spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on lobbying. In case you believe that the Arizona immigration debate was really about the interests of ordinary Americans and safe and secure borders, keep in mind that 30 of the 36 Arizona lawmakers who sponsored that state's atrocious anti-immigrant, anti-Latino law received contributions from the private prison lobby. Apparently, in the land of opportunity, if a profit can be made from the suffering of others, that extra buck has been tagged and will be claimed by someone.
And someone seeks to profit from the nation's failing public schools, which funnel poor, black and brown children into a school-to-prison pipeline. Groups such as the Koch Brothers--financiers to the Tea Party--and the Amway and Blackwater-affiliated DeVos family are pouring resources into radical rightwing schemes to privatize public funds, kill the public schools and pocket the money. When Tea Party types such as the Koch Brothers peddle vouchers and "school choice," feigning concern about poor children and children of color, it is time to walk the other way.
African-Americans and Latinos are the disproportionate victims of the deregulation craze, which led to predatory lending, the Great Recession, and a foreclosure crisis that decimated homeowners of color and eviscerated billions in private wealth. And at 16 percent, black unemployment has reached Depression-era levels, double that for whites. For black men, it is 17.5 percent, and for black teens, 41 percent. In New York City, 34 percent of black men between 19 and 24 are out of work and out of luck.
But really, Americans as a whole are out of luck-- the victims of deceptive policies created in the backrooms and boardrooms, by corporate lobbyists and rightwing think-tanks, and paid for by the fortunate few under a legalized system of bribery called campaign finance. Bad policies gutted Main Street, and facilitated a concept known as the jobless recovery. The wealthy--getting richer by the day and paying less in taxes-- are sitting on their money. They only need the rest of us to the extent that they can squeeze more money out of us. Yet, there are no new jobs, and the poor have nothing to spend.
Some of those who are elected to serve the people are really on the take, water carriers for the plutocracy. They are paid by wealthy interests to bring ordinary people down, to strip them down to the bone. Dressed up as shared sacrifice, a regressive regime of trickle-down economics and union-busting has hollowed out working people. Corporate socialism and welfare for the banks has meant austerity and crippling budget cuts for the common folk. The hallmark of such policies is America's upward income redistribution and rising inequality, the shame of the industrial world. The richest 400 Americans own $1.37 trillion, which is more than bottom 50 percent of all U.S. households combined.
And to that extent, everyone is having a black experience now. Get used to it, or do something about it. In boom times and bust, Black folks in America are used to being poor, of living without, and making do with very little or nothing. They always made it through with the help of the church, the blues, and each other. But somewhere in there, there was a movement, too, hint hint.
Case in point: the proliferation of guns in our urban centers. It is an irresponsible policy, to be sure. Garry McCarthy, Chicago's new police superintendent, told some truth-telling that you rarely hear from a public official in his position these days. "So here's what I want to tell you. See, let's see if we can make a connection here. Slavery. Segregation. Black codes. Jim Crow. What did they all have in common? Anybody getting' scared? Government sponsored racism. I told you I wasn't afraid [of race]. I told you I wasn't afraid," said Chicago's top cop. He added: "Now I want you to connect one more dot on that chain of the African American history in this country, and tell me if I'm crazy: Federal gun laws that facilitate the flow of illegal firearms into our urban centers across this country, that are killing our black and brown children."
McCarthy received the predictable criticism from Andrew Breitbart, the gun lobby and others, but that doesn't change the fact that he spoke the truth. In fact, their response validated the truthfulness of that which he spoke. There is no reason for the sale, distribution and trafficking of these weapons of mass destruction, other than to kill people. Corporate greed on the part of arms manufacturers has turned an obscure and anachronistic amendment dealing with militias into a license to kill, literally, on a massive scale. The result is a gun for every American, with no system of licensing, registration and background checks.
And there is no valid or logical purpose for these guns, which injure nearly 100,000 Americans each year, killing a third of them and costing us $100 billion annually, according to the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence. Of the large high-income nations, 80 percent of firearm deaths occur right here. Over a million have died since Martin Luther King's assassination, and they are disproportionately black and brown. In 2007, African Americans accounted for 13 percent of the population, but 49 of all homicide victims. Black juveniles are five times more likely than their white peers to die from firearms. And we export our violence to other countries. The U.S. arms race fuels the Mexico drug war by supplying 70 percent of the weapons used by the drug traffickers in the carnage to our South.
The U.S. war on drugs has been an abysmal failure--primarily a war on poor people and black and brown people who fill the prisons and are separated from their families. A color-coded law enforcement policy hunts for drug activity not in the affluent suburbs, but in the inner cities, where such activity is more conspicuous, out in the open. President Jimmy Carter has called for an end to the global drug war, which was declared 40 years ago. During that time, Carter noted, worldwide consumption of opiates has jumped 34.5 percent, cocaine 27 percent and marijuana 8.5 percent from 1998 to 2008. Our drug policies have created a burgeoning prison population, busting at the seams. With 743 people in prison for every 100,000, America boasts the highest incarceration rate in the world. Government spending on incarceration has skyrocketed. And I don't see anyone challenging us for bragging rights. Over three percent of the U.S. adult population finds itself under the supervision of the criminal justice system, either in prison, on probation or on parole.
Meanwhile, America's attempts to craft positive alternatives to incarceration are thwarted by private prison profiteers, who lobby lawmakers, network and contribute handily to political campaigns, according to a new report from the Justice Policy Institute. Private prison companies work hard to put more people behind bars, and their efforts have paid off, for them that is. Last year, Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) and GEO Group, the two largest private prison companies, generated over $2.9 billion in revenue. The three major corporations have given $835,514 to candidates for federal office, over $6 million to state races, and spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on lobbying. In case you believe that the Arizona immigration debate was really about the interests of ordinary Americans and safe and secure borders, keep in mind that 30 of the 36 Arizona lawmakers who sponsored that state's atrocious anti-immigrant, anti-Latino law received contributions from the private prison lobby. Apparently, in the land of opportunity, if a profit can be made from the suffering of others, that extra buck has been tagged and will be claimed by someone.
And someone seeks to profit from the nation's failing public schools, which funnel poor, black and brown children into a school-to-prison pipeline. Groups such as the Koch Brothers--financiers to the Tea Party--and the Amway and Blackwater-affiliated DeVos family are pouring resources into radical rightwing schemes to privatize public funds, kill the public schools and pocket the money. When Tea Party types such as the Koch Brothers peddle vouchers and "school choice," feigning concern about poor children and children of color, it is time to walk the other way.
African-Americans and Latinos are the disproportionate victims of the deregulation craze, which led to predatory lending, the Great Recession, and a foreclosure crisis that decimated homeowners of color and eviscerated billions in private wealth. And at 16 percent, black unemployment has reached Depression-era levels, double that for whites. For black men, it is 17.5 percent, and for black teens, 41 percent. In New York City, 34 percent of black men between 19 and 24 are out of work and out of luck.
But really, Americans as a whole are out of luck-- the victims of deceptive policies created in the backrooms and boardrooms, by corporate lobbyists and rightwing think-tanks, and paid for by the fortunate few under a legalized system of bribery called campaign finance. Bad policies gutted Main Street, and facilitated a concept known as the jobless recovery. The wealthy--getting richer by the day and paying less in taxes-- are sitting on their money. They only need the rest of us to the extent that they can squeeze more money out of us. Yet, there are no new jobs, and the poor have nothing to spend.
Some of those who are elected to serve the people are really on the take, water carriers for the plutocracy. They are paid by wealthy interests to bring ordinary people down, to strip them down to the bone. Dressed up as shared sacrifice, a regressive regime of trickle-down economics and union-busting has hollowed out working people. Corporate socialism and welfare for the banks has meant austerity and crippling budget cuts for the common folk. The hallmark of such policies is America's upward income redistribution and rising inequality, the shame of the industrial world. The richest 400 Americans own $1.37 trillion, which is more than bottom 50 percent of all U.S. households combined.
And to that extent, everyone is having a black experience now. Get used to it, or do something about it. In boom times and bust, Black folks in America are used to being poor, of living without, and making do with very little or nothing. They always made it through with the help of the church, the blues, and each other. But somewhere in there, there was a movement, too, hint hint.
April 1, 2011
GOP Overreach: The Mess That Greed and Ignorance Made
Republican overreach is in the air. You can see it, smell it, taste it everywhere, as you have in years past. And the only surprise is that is that it happened so quickly this time around.
In this last election cycle, the Grand Overreaching Party seized control of the U.S. House of Representatives and state legislatures and governorships around the country on a platform of jobs, balanced budgets and fiscal responsibility. It took not so long before conservatives revealed their true intentions.
On the federal level there was the sideshow of Rep. Peter King's (R-NY) hearings on radical Islam. People are foreclosed upon, out of money, out of luck and suffering out there, but what do the Republicans decide to go after? NPR and Planned Parenthood, and rape victims who want an abortion. On the state level there is the ban on Sharia law and the war on the unemployed. There are birther bills, bills to eliminate birthright citizenship, and voter ID legislation to deal with the nonexistent issue of voter fraud. Michigan Governor Rick Snyder represents the epitome of overreaching, with new powers to dissolve municipal governments, throw out union contracts, and eliminate school districts.
And in states such as Wisconsin, Michigan, Indiana Pennsylvania and Ohio, talk of shared sacrifice really has meant one-way sacrifice, with cuts to programs for the poor and working people and no demands made on the wealthy. In a perverse fashion, devastating cuts in education and health are paired with equally generous tax breaks to corporations, as if no one is looking and this grave crime being committed has no witnesses. Let's not forget the attack on unions' collective bargaining rights under the guise of deficit reduction. Now, that was diabolically slick of them.
Even many Republican voters are having buyer's remorse, with recall efforts underway, and some newly elected governors losing if an election were held today. Voters, be careful what you ask for. And yet, this was predictable, with history providing examples such as the 104th and 105th Congress and the Republican Contract with America. At that time, overreach came in the form of an impeachment of President for marital infidelity, and hypocrisy--and subsequent resignations--of GOP lawmakers who were guilty of the same.
Why voters send in the same crowd time and again, knowing their track record and their tendency to perform a bait and switch, is anyone's guess. My theory is that voters were attracted to Republican candidates on the false hope that eliminating wasteful government spending would create jobs. In the past, conservatives have used the "welfare queen" as the perennial scapegoat, a "whipping girl," if you will, to attack a bloated bureaucracy and further the cause of a smaller, limited government. The racial overtones were not too subtle, as it was understood that it was a black woman living in the projects on the South Side of Chicago who, according to President Reagan, "has eighty names, thirty addresses, twelve Social Security cards and is collecting veteran's benefits on four non-existing deceased husbands. And she is collecting Social Security on her cards. She's got Medicaid, getting food stamps, and she is collecting welfare under each of her names. Her tax-free cash income is over $150,000."
That was the Southern Strategy that served the GOP for decades--getting poor and working class whites to vote against their economic interests by convincing them that government programs mean unfair benefits to black people. But what do you do when, as is the case today, the so-called welfare queens are all public sector workers, who are accused of draining the public coffers with their million-dollar salaries, the teachers, police officers and firefighters who are only trying to feed their families and send their children to school? And what do you do when you realize some conservative politician considers you the welfare queen and makes you the scapegoat?
In the overreaching world of the conservative Republicans in power, the poor and the working class as a whole are the welfare queens. And struggling working people will bear the burden of this new regime of austerity and lopsided shared sacrifice. GOP overreach is part of a greater problem, made possible thanks to the growing inequality in America, the concentration of wealth, the relative weakness of organized labor, and the ubiquity of corporate power. In the absence of a national industrial policy--and given the state of U.S. political system, which is sold to the highest bidder each day--everything revolves around the short-term needs of corporations. Corporations have purchased big chunks of influence in our government, so the regressive policies we are witnessing reflect these corporations' quest for short-term profits, not the long-term needs of the people. True democracy cannot sustain these conditions, but feudalism can.
But it seems the people are waking up, finally. As President George W. Bush once said, "There's an old saying in Tennessee - I know it's in Texas, probably in Tennessee - that says, fool me once, shame on - shame on you. Fool me - you can't get fooled again."
In this last election cycle, the Grand Overreaching Party seized control of the U.S. House of Representatives and state legislatures and governorships around the country on a platform of jobs, balanced budgets and fiscal responsibility. It took not so long before conservatives revealed their true intentions.
On the federal level there was the sideshow of Rep. Peter King's (R-NY) hearings on radical Islam. People are foreclosed upon, out of money, out of luck and suffering out there, but what do the Republicans decide to go after? NPR and Planned Parenthood, and rape victims who want an abortion. On the state level there is the ban on Sharia law and the war on the unemployed. There are birther bills, bills to eliminate birthright citizenship, and voter ID legislation to deal with the nonexistent issue of voter fraud. Michigan Governor Rick Snyder represents the epitome of overreaching, with new powers to dissolve municipal governments, throw out union contracts, and eliminate school districts.
And in states such as Wisconsin, Michigan, Indiana Pennsylvania and Ohio, talk of shared sacrifice really has meant one-way sacrifice, with cuts to programs for the poor and working people and no demands made on the wealthy. In a perverse fashion, devastating cuts in education and health are paired with equally generous tax breaks to corporations, as if no one is looking and this grave crime being committed has no witnesses. Let's not forget the attack on unions' collective bargaining rights under the guise of deficit reduction. Now, that was diabolically slick of them.
Even many Republican voters are having buyer's remorse, with recall efforts underway, and some newly elected governors losing if an election were held today. Voters, be careful what you ask for. And yet, this was predictable, with history providing examples such as the 104th and 105th Congress and the Republican Contract with America. At that time, overreach came in the form of an impeachment of President for marital infidelity, and hypocrisy--and subsequent resignations--of GOP lawmakers who were guilty of the same.
Why voters send in the same crowd time and again, knowing their track record and their tendency to perform a bait and switch, is anyone's guess. My theory is that voters were attracted to Republican candidates on the false hope that eliminating wasteful government spending would create jobs. In the past, conservatives have used the "welfare queen" as the perennial scapegoat, a "whipping girl," if you will, to attack a bloated bureaucracy and further the cause of a smaller, limited government. The racial overtones were not too subtle, as it was understood that it was a black woman living in the projects on the South Side of Chicago who, according to President Reagan, "has eighty names, thirty addresses, twelve Social Security cards and is collecting veteran's benefits on four non-existing deceased husbands. And she is collecting Social Security on her cards. She's got Medicaid, getting food stamps, and she is collecting welfare under each of her names. Her tax-free cash income is over $150,000."
That was the Southern Strategy that served the GOP for decades--getting poor and working class whites to vote against their economic interests by convincing them that government programs mean unfair benefits to black people. But what do you do when, as is the case today, the so-called welfare queens are all public sector workers, who are accused of draining the public coffers with their million-dollar salaries, the teachers, police officers and firefighters who are only trying to feed their families and send their children to school? And what do you do when you realize some conservative politician considers you the welfare queen and makes you the scapegoat?
In the overreaching world of the conservative Republicans in power, the poor and the working class as a whole are the welfare queens. And struggling working people will bear the burden of this new regime of austerity and lopsided shared sacrifice. GOP overreach is part of a greater problem, made possible thanks to the growing inequality in America, the concentration of wealth, the relative weakness of organized labor, and the ubiquity of corporate power. In the absence of a national industrial policy--and given the state of U.S. political system, which is sold to the highest bidder each day--everything revolves around the short-term needs of corporations. Corporations have purchased big chunks of influence in our government, so the regressive policies we are witnessing reflect these corporations' quest for short-term profits, not the long-term needs of the people. True democracy cannot sustain these conditions, but feudalism can.
But it seems the people are waking up, finally. As President George W. Bush once said, "There's an old saying in Tennessee - I know it's in Texas, probably in Tennessee - that says, fool me once, shame on - shame on you. Fool me - you can't get fooled again."
March 29, 2011
When Japanese Dogs Teach Americans a Lesson in Humanity
Never before have I written a political commentary based on an animal video, but I suppose there's a first time for everything.
I was touched by the recent news coverage of two dogs suffering in the midst of the debris and devastation left by the Japanese earthquake and tsunami. Trembling and apparently afraid, a spaniel wearing a collar leads reporters to another dog that is injured. The dog is standing next to his sick, prostrate friend, as if to protect him. And in a few minutes of footage of these canine creatures-- struggling to survive under circumstances we dare not imagine-- we see the essence of humanity, more humanity than can be extracted by some humans who walk upright. And so we, as people, can learn from pets a lesson in compassion, in protecting the vulnerable and the suffering, as we fail to exhibit those qualities in our daily and political lives as Americans.
With over 18,000 estimated dead and countless displaced in Japan, a great deal of humanity is needed. And it is clear that the needs of people must and will take precedence over profit motives. The importance of community in hard times is on full display in japan, as even the Japanese mafia, known as the Yakuza, are providing tons of crucial goods in the relief effort. The word Yakuza is a self-effacing term which loosely translates as "loser" or the "losing hand" of society, a reference to a Japanese card game. "There are no yakuza or katagi (ordinary citizens) or gaijin (foreigners) in Japan right now. We are all Japanese," said one Yakuza member. "We all need to help each other."
And yet, it would be hard to imagine organized crime in the U.S.--specifically, the banks--displaying such acts of charity and selflessness. Recently I wrote that if a reconstruction effort ever came to the U.S., America would stop all efforts in their tracks, due to greed, a shambles of a political system, and the legalized bribery that finances our politics. I want to take it a step further and speak to the humanity which is in such scarce supply in American political discourse and public policy. America could use some humanity, a big smoothie made with the milk of human kindness.
In the U.S., we worship and honor those who have plenty, yet steal more when many others go hungry. Reality shows such as "Secret Millionaire" attempt to change the subject by depicting undercover rich people who go into impoverished neighborhoods and give away some of their money. Meanwhile, in the real world in which we live, the stewards of American government give tax breaks to millionaires and billionaires in these tough times, even as greed caused our recessionary problems in the first place. Conservative governors, appendages of the corporate interests who bought them with cash, preach as a stern parent to the common folk about the need for austerity. They lecture us on shared sacrifice, and cut social programs for poor and working people, funding for public schools, and collective bargaining rights for union workers. This, after they just rewarded the banks, big oil companies and other industries that bankrolled their campaign. And in the process, they would wreck the economy for no other apparent reason than as a 2012 election year ploy to change the occupant of the White House.
In a nation with so many millions unemployed, the unemployed are barely an afterthought. With all of this talk about the urgency of creating jobs, the Tea Party Congress takes their opportunity in the sun to holds hearings on radical Islam, as state legislatures, captured by the forces of insanity, pass legislation banning Shariah law.
Humanity is lacking because the good thinking people have surrendered their authority to the morally bankrupt, those whose priorities are warped and perverse. In 2011 a majority of Americans favor same sex marriage, which is astounding, given that most people opposed interracial marriage when it was legalized by a "liberal activist" Supreme Court in 1967. Further, back then nearly half believed such marriages should be prosecuted as a criminal offense. Yet today, our public discourse is controlled by homophobic hate groups and their elected enablers. The religious right claims to care about values, yet values to them is such a narrow term, curiously limited to a discussion about banning abortion, criminalizing gay marriage and upholding gun rights.
A nation short on humanity in its public policy fails to ask certain questions on purpose. For example, how can we sustain democracy when the top 1 percent takes home 34 percent of the pie (they only took 9 percent in 1976), more than the bottom 90 percent? How does this nation justify paying CEOs 300 times more than their workers, when they only made 30 times more in the 1960s?
Why are black and Latino boys in urban neighborhoods more likely to attend the penitentiary than the university? Why is it so easy for a child to acquire a gun, but so difficult for him or her to get a quality education, or a balanced and nourishing meal? And why do our lawmakers ignore the epidemic of gun violence across the land, responding instead to college shooting sprees with legislation that would allow students to pack concealed weapons on campus?
How can the quest for dollars consume some individuals so as to justify nuclear power as a viable energy source, in the midst of the nuclear disaster in Japan?
Animals teaching humans about humanity is a novel idea. And yet, unfortunately, it is rather "human" to dehumanize the "other," to depict groups as different, as animals, as a pretext for the humiliation and suffering inflicted upon them. It happened to black people under slavery, Jim Crow segregation and apartheid. Nazi Germany conjured up images of Europe's Jewish population as subhuman in order to enact laws to marginalize and eventually annihilate them. The U.S. depended on dehumanizing cartoon images of Asian people to justify the internment of Japanese-Americans and the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Genocide in Rwanda was facilitated by the Hutu referring to the Tutsi as cockroaches. And even today in the U.S., we are witnessing the racial and ethnic scapegoating of Muslims, people of Arab descent and Latino immigrants through measures designed to strip them of their civil rights and their dignity.
Right now, America is a cold-hearted place, and in our midst is an anti-democratic movement allying the uber rich and the super greedy with the plenty ignorant. Without question, they are cruel, callous and brutal, and we must resist them. But comparing them to dogs would be an insult to dogs.
March 12, 2011
The Limits of Tyrants Are Prescribed By the Endurance of Those Whom They Oppress
The Food Research and Action Center released a disturbing report about food hardship and hunger in the United States. According to the report, nearly one in five Americans simply does not have enough money to buy food that they and their family need. In 21 states, at least 20 percent of respondents said they did not have enough money to buy food in the past 12 months, while at least 15 percent of respondents in 45 states answered in the affirmative. No part of the country is untouched by this crisis.
And yet, Tea Party-sponsored governors and lawmakers around the country will make no mention of this, as they channel their inner tyrant and slash state budgets at the expense of the poor and working people. Megalomaniacs, they seem to derive pleasure from using their power to make people hurt -- certain people, that is. After all, their talk of fiscal responsibility is selective, as austerity is reserved for the poor. The rich are not being asked to tighten their belt, but rather are being rewarded with tax breaks. In that regard, Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker is doing exactly what his masters, the Koch brothers, instructed him to do. When America, backward and crumbling, should be investing in infrastructure and technology to create jobs and promote growth, some governors reject high-speed rail projects and wear their ignorance as a badge of honor.
Moreover, the concept of the budget crisis is being used as a subterfuge -- a scam, if you will -- to strip unions of their collective bargaining rights in states such as Wisconsin, Ohio and Indiana. And all the better for the extreme right if they can slip something devious like anti-gay language in the legislation when no one is looking. Because that's what tricksters do.
Unions have lost ground over the years, and not surprisingly, so too have working people, in terms of declining wages and a lower standard of living. New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and others would make public unions the new welfare queens, the new bogeyman. And we are supposed to believe that public school teachers are the new millionaires, getting rich at the public's expense and breaking the backs of state budgets with their exorbitant salaries -- if you consider $40,000 or $60,000 a lot, that is. And when nobody is looking, the true millionaires and billionaires are making out like true bandits, taking away most of the nation's wealth.
But people are starting to wake up, which is why they are engaging in nonviolent protest by the thousands in Madison and elsewhere in America. They have much in common with protestors in Tripoli, Cairo and other nations in the Mideast, where the masses are divesting themselves of the mob bosses, potentates and presidents-for-life that have passed for leadership in that part of the world. All they want is to be able to put food on the table, to feed their children. But they are unable to do so.
Like Egypt's Mubarak and Qaddafi, America's Tea Party rulers -- kleptocrats who feign populist tendencies -- are driven by delusions of grandeur and utter contempt for the will of the masses. When the people do not go along with the program, these authoritarian leaders maintain power by brute force, arrests or through the barrel of a gun -- or at least consider it is an option. The primary difference is that the Mideast rulers operate under no pretense of democracy. Politics in the U.S. enjoys at least a democratic veneer. And in a technical sense the electorate, however uninformed and prone to act in their own economic interests, actually cast their ballots for such walking disasters as Gov. Rick Scott of Florida, John Kasich of Ohio, and Walker of Wisconsin. But thanks to the U.S. Supreme Court's Citizens United decision, corporations and wealthy interests have unlimited influence over elections. America really is owned by a handful of individuals, and the electoral system has turned into a tool to do the bidding of the oligarchs. So what is the real difference between an autocrat who holds no elections, or holds a sham election and declares victory, and a plutocrat who purchases an election with cash and utilizes corporate cronies to rule by proxy?
When the poor and working poor cannot afford to feed their families, all bets are off. Faced with rising inequality, oppressive laws and the naked greed of the powerful, people take to the streets. Here in the land of opportunity, wealthy conservative interests are jonesing to destroy the unions, the only thing standing between them and unlimited political and economic power. Who wins depends on how far the common folks are able and willing to take it.
Perhaps Frederick Douglass said it best: "Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress."
And yet, Tea Party-sponsored governors and lawmakers around the country will make no mention of this, as they channel their inner tyrant and slash state budgets at the expense of the poor and working people. Megalomaniacs, they seem to derive pleasure from using their power to make people hurt -- certain people, that is. After all, their talk of fiscal responsibility is selective, as austerity is reserved for the poor. The rich are not being asked to tighten their belt, but rather are being rewarded with tax breaks. In that regard, Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker is doing exactly what his masters, the Koch brothers, instructed him to do. When America, backward and crumbling, should be investing in infrastructure and technology to create jobs and promote growth, some governors reject high-speed rail projects and wear their ignorance as a badge of honor.
Moreover, the concept of the budget crisis is being used as a subterfuge -- a scam, if you will -- to strip unions of their collective bargaining rights in states such as Wisconsin, Ohio and Indiana. And all the better for the extreme right if they can slip something devious like anti-gay language in the legislation when no one is looking. Because that's what tricksters do.
Unions have lost ground over the years, and not surprisingly, so too have working people, in terms of declining wages and a lower standard of living. New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and others would make public unions the new welfare queens, the new bogeyman. And we are supposed to believe that public school teachers are the new millionaires, getting rich at the public's expense and breaking the backs of state budgets with their exorbitant salaries -- if you consider $40,000 or $60,000 a lot, that is. And when nobody is looking, the true millionaires and billionaires are making out like true bandits, taking away most of the nation's wealth.
But people are starting to wake up, which is why they are engaging in nonviolent protest by the thousands in Madison and elsewhere in America. They have much in common with protestors in Tripoli, Cairo and other nations in the Mideast, where the masses are divesting themselves of the mob bosses, potentates and presidents-for-life that have passed for leadership in that part of the world. All they want is to be able to put food on the table, to feed their children. But they are unable to do so.
Like Egypt's Mubarak and Qaddafi, America's Tea Party rulers -- kleptocrats who feign populist tendencies -- are driven by delusions of grandeur and utter contempt for the will of the masses. When the people do not go along with the program, these authoritarian leaders maintain power by brute force, arrests or through the barrel of a gun -- or at least consider it is an option. The primary difference is that the Mideast rulers operate under no pretense of democracy. Politics in the U.S. enjoys at least a democratic veneer. And in a technical sense the electorate, however uninformed and prone to act in their own economic interests, actually cast their ballots for such walking disasters as Gov. Rick Scott of Florida, John Kasich of Ohio, and Walker of Wisconsin. But thanks to the U.S. Supreme Court's Citizens United decision, corporations and wealthy interests have unlimited influence over elections. America really is owned by a handful of individuals, and the electoral system has turned into a tool to do the bidding of the oligarchs. So what is the real difference between an autocrat who holds no elections, or holds a sham election and declares victory, and a plutocrat who purchases an election with cash and utilizes corporate cronies to rule by proxy?
When the poor and working poor cannot afford to feed their families, all bets are off. Faced with rising inequality, oppressive laws and the naked greed of the powerful, people take to the streets. Here in the land of opportunity, wealthy conservative interests are jonesing to destroy the unions, the only thing standing between them and unlimited political and economic power. Who wins depends on how far the common folks are able and willing to take it.
Perhaps Frederick Douglass said it best: "Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress."
February 27, 2011
Class Warfare Is Ugly but Necessary to Get Rid of the Bad Blood
Harvard University, my alma mater, has decided that students from low income families -- earning less than $60,000 a year -- will pay no tuition and have no student loan burden. This was a forward-thinking policy decision by a wealthy institution sitting on $27.6 billion, the largest university endowment in the land. Implicit in Harvard's decision is an acknowledgment that things are getting out of hand in higher education, and in society in general. A quality education, often prohibitively expensive and out of reach to many, should not be accessible solely to the wealthy or those who are able to afford it.
Harvard's spirit of equity and fairness should be shared around the country, in the Congress and in state houses throughout the wealthiest nation on earth. Despite what some people would tell you, America is a nation of plenty, the world's largest economy. The only problem is that in the so-called land of opportunity -- not unlike Egypt, Libya, and the various other unraveling countries in the Mideast -- only a few people are actually enjoying the wealth. Here, the bankers received their bailout, a reward for their greed, incompetence and inflated sense of self-worth. Meanwhile, the super duper-rich had their Bush-era tax breaks extended under a Democratic president whose idea of compromise has been to grant Republicans whatever they want.
The Obama budget reflects an acceptance of the conservative narrative that the poor must suffer in the name of austerity and balancing the budget. Wall Street enjoys record profits and bonuses, while the working poor must endure cuts to social programs, home heating assistance programs and access to graduate education. But the talk of deficit reduction is pure grandstanding. After all, the Bush tax cuts are driving the deficit, and significant cuts to America's bloated military behemoth are off the table.
In their quest to shrink government down to nothing, conservatives have found their new welfare queen in the form of public labor unions. Everyday people who are just trying to earn an honest living are suddenly scapegoated, blamed for the nation's financial and fiscal woes. Of course, there is a larger picture at play, which is why thousands of Wisconsin workers have protested against Gov. Scott Walker's plan to strip public employees of their collective bargaining rights. The Democrats in Wisconsin fled the state to deny Republicans the quorum to vote for the union-busting legislation, with Democrats in other states like Indiana following suit, and Republicans locking protestors out of the Ohio Statehouse. The Republican Party wants to remove all vestiges of union power in this country, so that corporations are allowed to roam, unfettered and unchallenged, and trample over the rights of American workers. The Supreme Court has allowed corporations to buy what was passing as democracy, and now Tea Party legislatures and governors would render this a full-fledged nation of serfs and sharecroppers.
In all manner of Talibanic extremism, the unhinged, lunatic rightward fringe is using this opportunity to push all of the foolishness they could imagine when they lived in the political wilderness and were jonesing for power. The lunatics are running the asylum, literally. It is a nasty little sideshow, and there would be some entertainment value in it all if actual lives were not at stake. Congress voted to defund Planned Parenthood. In South Dakota, a bill would sanction the murder of abortion providers as justifiable homicide. A bill in the Georgia legislature would punish miscarriages with the death penalty. A Missouri lawmaker wants to do away with those "over the top" labor laws that prohibit child labor. And Texas could allow college students to wear concealed weapons on campus. After all, what better way to deal with campus gun violence than to recreate the Wild West on campus, in Texas of all places? Meanwhile, the NRA, further revealing its kinship with rightwing extremist groups, advocates the formation of armed militias -- private police forces unanswerable to government authority.
In the midst of all of this, ordinary citizens are waking up, and thousands are taking to the streets in nonviolent protest. Although Glenn Beck would paint the workers marching in Wisconsin as anarchists, socialists and communists, not to mention allies of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, there is a thread which binds the protestors in the Middle East and the U.S. They all know authoritarianism when they see it, and they realize the government, reeking with oligarchy and plutocracy, is working to undermine their interests. As F.D.R. once said, in the words etched in his memorial, "They (who) seek to establish systems of government based on the regimentation of all human beings by a handful of individual rulers... call this a new order. It is not new and it is not order."
Class warfare is ugly, but sometimes it is necessary. It can be a liberating thing, and it is the best thing that can happen to a progressive movement that needs a president to "make me do it," as F.D.R. urged A. Philip Randolph. And as they said in The Godfather, "These things have to happen every five, ten years. Gets rid of the bad blood." Getting rid of the bad blood could also mean getting rid of an overreaching GOP living on borrowed time.
Playing both sides of the fence in the class wars, Democrats must choose a side, lest they get swept away, too.
Harvard's spirit of equity and fairness should be shared around the country, in the Congress and in state houses throughout the wealthiest nation on earth. Despite what some people would tell you, America is a nation of plenty, the world's largest economy. The only problem is that in the so-called land of opportunity -- not unlike Egypt, Libya, and the various other unraveling countries in the Mideast -- only a few people are actually enjoying the wealth. Here, the bankers received their bailout, a reward for their greed, incompetence and inflated sense of self-worth. Meanwhile, the super duper-rich had their Bush-era tax breaks extended under a Democratic president whose idea of compromise has been to grant Republicans whatever they want.
The Obama budget reflects an acceptance of the conservative narrative that the poor must suffer in the name of austerity and balancing the budget. Wall Street enjoys record profits and bonuses, while the working poor must endure cuts to social programs, home heating assistance programs and access to graduate education. But the talk of deficit reduction is pure grandstanding. After all, the Bush tax cuts are driving the deficit, and significant cuts to America's bloated military behemoth are off the table.
In their quest to shrink government down to nothing, conservatives have found their new welfare queen in the form of public labor unions. Everyday people who are just trying to earn an honest living are suddenly scapegoated, blamed for the nation's financial and fiscal woes. Of course, there is a larger picture at play, which is why thousands of Wisconsin workers have protested against Gov. Scott Walker's plan to strip public employees of their collective bargaining rights. The Democrats in Wisconsin fled the state to deny Republicans the quorum to vote for the union-busting legislation, with Democrats in other states like Indiana following suit, and Republicans locking protestors out of the Ohio Statehouse. The Republican Party wants to remove all vestiges of union power in this country, so that corporations are allowed to roam, unfettered and unchallenged, and trample over the rights of American workers. The Supreme Court has allowed corporations to buy what was passing as democracy, and now Tea Party legislatures and governors would render this a full-fledged nation of serfs and sharecroppers.
In all manner of Talibanic extremism, the unhinged, lunatic rightward fringe is using this opportunity to push all of the foolishness they could imagine when they lived in the political wilderness and were jonesing for power. The lunatics are running the asylum, literally. It is a nasty little sideshow, and there would be some entertainment value in it all if actual lives were not at stake. Congress voted to defund Planned Parenthood. In South Dakota, a bill would sanction the murder of abortion providers as justifiable homicide. A bill in the Georgia legislature would punish miscarriages with the death penalty. A Missouri lawmaker wants to do away with those "over the top" labor laws that prohibit child labor. And Texas could allow college students to wear concealed weapons on campus. After all, what better way to deal with campus gun violence than to recreate the Wild West on campus, in Texas of all places? Meanwhile, the NRA, further revealing its kinship with rightwing extremist groups, advocates the formation of armed militias -- private police forces unanswerable to government authority.
In the midst of all of this, ordinary citizens are waking up, and thousands are taking to the streets in nonviolent protest. Although Glenn Beck would paint the workers marching in Wisconsin as anarchists, socialists and communists, not to mention allies of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, there is a thread which binds the protestors in the Middle East and the U.S. They all know authoritarianism when they see it, and they realize the government, reeking with oligarchy and plutocracy, is working to undermine their interests. As F.D.R. once said, in the words etched in his memorial, "They (who) seek to establish systems of government based on the regimentation of all human beings by a handful of individual rulers... call this a new order. It is not new and it is not order."
Class warfare is ugly, but sometimes it is necessary. It can be a liberating thing, and it is the best thing that can happen to a progressive movement that needs a president to "make me do it," as F.D.R. urged A. Philip Randolph. And as they said in The Godfather, "These things have to happen every five, ten years. Gets rid of the bad blood." Getting rid of the bad blood could also mean getting rid of an overreaching GOP living on borrowed time.
Playing both sides of the fence in the class wars, Democrats must choose a side, lest they get swept away, too.
January 30, 2011
GOP Austerity Plan Is an Assault on Blacks and Latinos
"Them that's got shall get. Them that's not shall lose," as the Billie Holiday song goes. "Yes, the strong gets more while the weak ones fade. Empty pockets don't ever make the grade."
It is a tale of two cities in early twenty-first century America. Wall Street is enjoying hefty bonuses and corporate America is awash in cash. Yet, all you can hear, whether inside the Beltway or around state houses is talk of austerity, the new buzzword that's all the rage. Conservative politicians in Congress and in statehouses around the country rode a wave of Tea Party pseudo populism, funded by Republican philanthropy, corporate lobbyists and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
Austerity is certainly not for the wealthy -- those who paid for the election and have already been awarded their extended and possibly permanent tax breaks under the Obama-GOP "compromise" -- but rather for the folks of meager means. And so, those who are already struggling are told to tighten their belts even further. After all, they're told, it's good for you, builds the character and allows you to pull yourself up by your bootstraps.
And so, the public unions replace the welfare queens as the scapegoats of choice, the latest casualties in a long, protracted class warfare. And as the rich get more money, the poor, working poor, and what's left of a paltry middle class are given pep talks, tough love and sermons. The GOP and their Tea party compatriots have stepped up their austerity game of late, but you should know that this game has been played since the 1970s, when a conservative political backlash sought to widen the gaps along economic and racial lines that people such as Martin Luther King had sought to close. And yet, as we just celebrated the man's birthday, a man who was gunned down while fighting for sanitation workers, the nation fails to follow his philosophy of economic justice and caring for the needs of the poor.
The nonpartisan nonprofit group United For a Fair Economy just released a report called "State of the Dream 2011." The report makes the point that communities of color already had it harder than everyone else. And although the GOP austerity programs will negatively impact all working people, they will increase economic inequality and the racial divide. The social safety net programs that are under attack, such as Social Security, are of great importance to blacks and Latinos.
For example, 42 percent of African-Americans and 37 percent of Latinos are unable to meet their minimal household expenses even three months after they become unemployed. This underscores the devastating effect that cuts in public assistance programs will have on people of color.
Meanwhile, the benefits to the rich are almost exclusively benefits to whites. Blacks and Latinos have no capital gains -- they only earn 13 cents and 8 cents, respectively, for each dollar of dividends that whites earn. And with whites three times more likely than African-Americans to earn $250,000 -- and nearly five times more likely than Latinos -- so much for benefiting from the tax cuts for the big money people.
"The deficits that these tax cuts help create are being used to justify a host of austerity measures that will harm Americans of all races, but will hit Blacks and Latinos the hardest," says Brian Miller, executive director of United For a Fair Economy and co-author of the report. "With 42 percent of Blacks and 37 percent of Latinos lacking the funds to meet minimal household expenses for even three months should they become unemployed, cutting public assistance programs will have devastating impacts on Black and Latino workers."
Miller points out that state and federal workers such as teachers, police officers and food inspectors are on the front line of the budget cuts. Severe cuts to the public sector will hinder America's ability to need the needs of all citizens. But African-Americans will bear the brunt of the layoffs, since they have been disproportionately employed in the public sector. In fact, blacks are 30 percent more likely to work in the public sector, and 70 percent more likely to work for the federal government. So, austerity will only serve to erode any gains that racial minorities have made on the economic front. And given that the purveyors of these austerity measures are job killers -- scoffing at any suggestion that the government should play a role in job creation -- their policies will bring disproportional suffering to disproportionately unemployed workers of color.
This report contains many useful though sobering statistics. The devil's in the details. Here is a sample:
• The official unemployment rate for whites is 8.5 percent. For blacks it is 15.8 percent, and for Latinos the rate is 13 percent. These figures do not take into account the underemployed and those who stopped looking for work.
• 59.1 percent of elderly blacks, and 64.8 percent of Latinos depend on Social Security for over 80 percent of their family income, as opposed to 46 percent of whites, turning the attacks on Social Security into a war on black and brown people. Without the program, 53 percent of older black folks and 49 percent of older Latinos would be impoverished, in contrast to the current rate of 20 percent for these groups;
• Blacks earn 57 cents for every dollar of white median family income, and Latinos earn 59 cents. Looking at median household income, the numbers are 60 cents and 70 cents, respectively;
• Blacks hold 10 cents and Latinos 12 cents of net wealth for every dollar held by whites;
• Blacks are 2.7 times as likely as their white counterparts to have zero or negative net worth. Meanwhile, Latinos are twice as likely to have zero or negative net worth;
From the 1930s through the 1960s, the government played a pivotal role in wealth creation and opportunity. Now a new crop of politicians are perpetuating a regime of wealth inequality, with people of color on the losing end most of the time. Racial minorities are overrepresented among the low earners, and underrepresented among the top earners.
What are the solutions? The report suggests a number of remedies, including a Marshall Plan for the U.S. to create jobs and end the Great Recession; protecting public employees and increasing federal aid to the states; strengthening the social safety net; restoring progressive taxation; reducing wasteful spending such as in the Pentagon, and strengthening labor and the right to organize.
This new wave of austerity is a con game, and it's racist too. Now is the time to reverse the trend and restore equity, justice and sanity to America's economic system.
It is a tale of two cities in early twenty-first century America. Wall Street is enjoying hefty bonuses and corporate America is awash in cash. Yet, all you can hear, whether inside the Beltway or around state houses is talk of austerity, the new buzzword that's all the rage. Conservative politicians in Congress and in statehouses around the country rode a wave of Tea Party pseudo populism, funded by Republican philanthropy, corporate lobbyists and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
Austerity is certainly not for the wealthy -- those who paid for the election and have already been awarded their extended and possibly permanent tax breaks under the Obama-GOP "compromise" -- but rather for the folks of meager means. And so, those who are already struggling are told to tighten their belts even further. After all, they're told, it's good for you, builds the character and allows you to pull yourself up by your bootstraps.
And so, the public unions replace the welfare queens as the scapegoats of choice, the latest casualties in a long, protracted class warfare. And as the rich get more money, the poor, working poor, and what's left of a paltry middle class are given pep talks, tough love and sermons. The GOP and their Tea party compatriots have stepped up their austerity game of late, but you should know that this game has been played since the 1970s, when a conservative political backlash sought to widen the gaps along economic and racial lines that people such as Martin Luther King had sought to close. And yet, as we just celebrated the man's birthday, a man who was gunned down while fighting for sanitation workers, the nation fails to follow his philosophy of economic justice and caring for the needs of the poor.
The nonpartisan nonprofit group United For a Fair Economy just released a report called "State of the Dream 2011." The report makes the point that communities of color already had it harder than everyone else. And although the GOP austerity programs will negatively impact all working people, they will increase economic inequality and the racial divide. The social safety net programs that are under attack, such as Social Security, are of great importance to blacks and Latinos.
For example, 42 percent of African-Americans and 37 percent of Latinos are unable to meet their minimal household expenses even three months after they become unemployed. This underscores the devastating effect that cuts in public assistance programs will have on people of color.
Meanwhile, the benefits to the rich are almost exclusively benefits to whites. Blacks and Latinos have no capital gains -- they only earn 13 cents and 8 cents, respectively, for each dollar of dividends that whites earn. And with whites three times more likely than African-Americans to earn $250,000 -- and nearly five times more likely than Latinos -- so much for benefiting from the tax cuts for the big money people.
"The deficits that these tax cuts help create are being used to justify a host of austerity measures that will harm Americans of all races, but will hit Blacks and Latinos the hardest," says Brian Miller, executive director of United For a Fair Economy and co-author of the report. "With 42 percent of Blacks and 37 percent of Latinos lacking the funds to meet minimal household expenses for even three months should they become unemployed, cutting public assistance programs will have devastating impacts on Black and Latino workers."
Miller points out that state and federal workers such as teachers, police officers and food inspectors are on the front line of the budget cuts. Severe cuts to the public sector will hinder America's ability to need the needs of all citizens. But African-Americans will bear the brunt of the layoffs, since they have been disproportionately employed in the public sector. In fact, blacks are 30 percent more likely to work in the public sector, and 70 percent more likely to work for the federal government. So, austerity will only serve to erode any gains that racial minorities have made on the economic front. And given that the purveyors of these austerity measures are job killers -- scoffing at any suggestion that the government should play a role in job creation -- their policies will bring disproportional suffering to disproportionately unemployed workers of color.
This report contains many useful though sobering statistics. The devil's in the details. Here is a sample:
• The official unemployment rate for whites is 8.5 percent. For blacks it is 15.8 percent, and for Latinos the rate is 13 percent. These figures do not take into account the underemployed and those who stopped looking for work.
• 59.1 percent of elderly blacks, and 64.8 percent of Latinos depend on Social Security for over 80 percent of their family income, as opposed to 46 percent of whites, turning the attacks on Social Security into a war on black and brown people. Without the program, 53 percent of older black folks and 49 percent of older Latinos would be impoverished, in contrast to the current rate of 20 percent for these groups;
• Blacks earn 57 cents for every dollar of white median family income, and Latinos earn 59 cents. Looking at median household income, the numbers are 60 cents and 70 cents, respectively;
• Blacks hold 10 cents and Latinos 12 cents of net wealth for every dollar held by whites;
• Blacks are 2.7 times as likely as their white counterparts to have zero or negative net worth. Meanwhile, Latinos are twice as likely to have zero or negative net worth;
From the 1930s through the 1960s, the government played a pivotal role in wealth creation and opportunity. Now a new crop of politicians are perpetuating a regime of wealth inequality, with people of color on the losing end most of the time. Racial minorities are overrepresented among the low earners, and underrepresented among the top earners.
What are the solutions? The report suggests a number of remedies, including a Marshall Plan for the U.S. to create jobs and end the Great Recession; protecting public employees and increasing federal aid to the states; strengthening the social safety net; restoring progressive taxation; reducing wasteful spending such as in the Pentagon, and strengthening labor and the right to organize.
This new wave of austerity is a con game, and it's racist too. Now is the time to reverse the trend and restore equity, justice and sanity to America's economic system.
December 3, 2010
Wage Theft: Thou Shalt Not Steal From Your Workers
As we enter this holiday season, Americans are reminded of the massive suffering that millions of people are experiencing right now, with unemployment, foreclosures, poverty, hunger and homelessness. But Wall Street, which is celebrating a year of record profits, never had it so good. Surely, their bonus checks overfloweth this season, with vast sums of money that no one could possibly believe they deserve. In contrast, the common folk never had it so bad, at least not since the first Great Depression, as what Americans are living through surely must be the second.
To make things worse, as the wealthy bankers are propped up and subsidized by the government, everyday working people who have little as it is are robbed daily - by their employers. Now is a better time than most to discuss the crisis of wage theft in the United States.
Unfortunately, the problem is common and widespread, and affects millions of workers each year. According to the organization Interfaith Worker Justice (IWJ), the average low wage worker loses $2,600 per year in unpaid wages. Further, three-quarters of low wage workers who work more than 40 hours a week are not paid the overtime the law requires. And millions of people are wrongly classified as independent contractors so businesses can avoid paying minimum wage, overtime and FICA tax - which amounts to stealing from workers as well as robbing the government. Wage theft forces its victims to choose between paying rent and buying food, and forces the government to cut important services. Righteous employers who play by the rules are placed at a competitive disadvantage.
On November 18, IWJ kicked off a campaign to tackle the issue, with a National Day of Action Against Wage Theft. Over 35 groups across the country held rallies and events as part of the day of action. As the participants in this movement can attest, wage theft is as old as the scriptures, and the world’s religions have long ago spoken out against the unethical, illegal and immoral practice. “Unfortunately, stealing wages from workers is nothing new. The Hebrew prophet Malachi in chapter 3, verse 5 proclaimed that God will be quick to testify against those who defraud laborers of their wages,” said Kim Bobo, IWJ executive director. “Stealing wages was wrong then and it is wrong today.”
Rev. Daniel Klawitter, chairperson of the Interfaith Committee for Worker Justice of Colorado, also addressed the biblical mandate against wage theft. He noted that in Deuteronomy 24:14-15, it states “you shall not withhold the wages of poor and needy laborers whether other Israelites or aliens who reside in your lands or in one of your towns. You shall pay them their wages daily before sunset because they are poor and their livelihood depends on them. Otherwise they might cry to the lord against you and you would incur guilt.”
Rev. Klawitter - who believes it is imperative that communities of faith address wage theft - noted that nearly half of day laborers are victims of the practice. We are trying to minister to folks in our congregations and our communities during a time of great economic turmoil and uncertainty,” said Klawitter. “And we have to be clear as faith leaders that the practice of wage theft is a moral outrage and that it’s our duty to care for our neighbors.” He even recalled a heartwrenching story of a Denver man who was found abandoned in the streets. The worker had fallen from a roof and became seriously brain damaged. His employer, who had picked him up on a street corner, dropped him off in the dark to avoid taking responsibility for his well-being.
Rabbi Renée Bauer, Director of the Interfaith Coalition for Worker Justice of South Central Wisconsin, decries the lack of enforcement and prosecution of wage theft cases by the government. She calls the fight against wage theft not merely a political, legal and economic issue, but a religious mandate. “Jewish tradition is clear that not paying workers what they are due in a timely fashion is a crime,” Rabbi Bauer noted. “The Torah considers the lack or the delay of payment a form of theft and abuse, and the Talmud teaches that one who withholds an employee's wages is as though he deprived the worker of his life.”
And wage theft is inextricably linked with the poor state of the economy and widespread deprivation. According to Bobo, while the religious community gives out turkeys to needy families every Thanksgiving, millions of poor families could actually afford to buy their own turkeys if they were paid the wages due to them under the law. That’s food for thought for a nation struggling to find ways to jumpstart a troubled economy. “What better way to stimulate the economy, put more money back into neighborhood businesses than to actually ensure that workers are paid all their wages,” she said.
There are efforts afoot to get a Stop Wage Theft Bill through Congress. Further, Rep. George Miller (D-IL) introduced HR 3303, the Wage Theft Prevention Act. The legislation would amend the Fair Labor Standards Act and give the Department of Labor more power to protect workers. It would let workers file private lawsuits while the federal government is investigating a claim. And the Act would also eliminate the statute of limitations that forces the feds to resolve a wage complaint in two years.
Meanwhile, thanks to bad economic times, voter disillusionment and the buying of elections, the House of Representatives is about to be taken over by the Tea Party-infused Republican Party. Scrooge arrived just in time for the holidays, with Social Darwinism, bootstraps, slashing and cutting as a prescription for all our woes. And no doubt there will be an abundance of moralizing and self-righteous indignation in the lower chamber of our federal legislature, along with corporate greed and a shortage of caring for the needs of the least among us, much less solutions to make the poor whole. They would extend tax cuts to the wealthy as they preach fiscal responsibility. And they would cut healthcare and jobless benefits, and label even any noncontroversial attempts at restorative justice as communism, socialism and fascism.
Yet the struggle against this massive payroll robbery in America continues. This is part of a larger fight against the dramatic upward redistribution of wealth in recent decades, in which labor continually gets short shrift, and business seems to hold all the cards. But it is up to the people to make it right.
To make things worse, as the wealthy bankers are propped up and subsidized by the government, everyday working people who have little as it is are robbed daily - by their employers. Now is a better time than most to discuss the crisis of wage theft in the United States.
Unfortunately, the problem is common and widespread, and affects millions of workers each year. According to the organization Interfaith Worker Justice (IWJ), the average low wage worker loses $2,600 per year in unpaid wages. Further, three-quarters of low wage workers who work more than 40 hours a week are not paid the overtime the law requires. And millions of people are wrongly classified as independent contractors so businesses can avoid paying minimum wage, overtime and FICA tax - which amounts to stealing from workers as well as robbing the government. Wage theft forces its victims to choose between paying rent and buying food, and forces the government to cut important services. Righteous employers who play by the rules are placed at a competitive disadvantage.
On November 18, IWJ kicked off a campaign to tackle the issue, with a National Day of Action Against Wage Theft. Over 35 groups across the country held rallies and events as part of the day of action. As the participants in this movement can attest, wage theft is as old as the scriptures, and the world’s religions have long ago spoken out against the unethical, illegal and immoral practice. “Unfortunately, stealing wages from workers is nothing new. The Hebrew prophet Malachi in chapter 3, verse 5 proclaimed that God will be quick to testify against those who defraud laborers of their wages,” said Kim Bobo, IWJ executive director. “Stealing wages was wrong then and it is wrong today.”
Rev. Daniel Klawitter, chairperson of the Interfaith Committee for Worker Justice of Colorado, also addressed the biblical mandate against wage theft. He noted that in Deuteronomy 24:14-15, it states “you shall not withhold the wages of poor and needy laborers whether other Israelites or aliens who reside in your lands or in one of your towns. You shall pay them their wages daily before sunset because they are poor and their livelihood depends on them. Otherwise they might cry to the lord against you and you would incur guilt.”
Rev. Klawitter - who believes it is imperative that communities of faith address wage theft - noted that nearly half of day laborers are victims of the practice. We are trying to minister to folks in our congregations and our communities during a time of great economic turmoil and uncertainty,” said Klawitter. “And we have to be clear as faith leaders that the practice of wage theft is a moral outrage and that it’s our duty to care for our neighbors.” He even recalled a heartwrenching story of a Denver man who was found abandoned in the streets. The worker had fallen from a roof and became seriously brain damaged. His employer, who had picked him up on a street corner, dropped him off in the dark to avoid taking responsibility for his well-being.
Rabbi Renée Bauer, Director of the Interfaith Coalition for Worker Justice of South Central Wisconsin, decries the lack of enforcement and prosecution of wage theft cases by the government. She calls the fight against wage theft not merely a political, legal and economic issue, but a religious mandate. “Jewish tradition is clear that not paying workers what they are due in a timely fashion is a crime,” Rabbi Bauer noted. “The Torah considers the lack or the delay of payment a form of theft and abuse, and the Talmud teaches that one who withholds an employee's wages is as though he deprived the worker of his life.”
And wage theft is inextricably linked with the poor state of the economy and widespread deprivation. According to Bobo, while the religious community gives out turkeys to needy families every Thanksgiving, millions of poor families could actually afford to buy their own turkeys if they were paid the wages due to them under the law. That’s food for thought for a nation struggling to find ways to jumpstart a troubled economy. “What better way to stimulate the economy, put more money back into neighborhood businesses than to actually ensure that workers are paid all their wages,” she said.
There are efforts afoot to get a Stop Wage Theft Bill through Congress. Further, Rep. George Miller (D-IL) introduced HR 3303, the Wage Theft Prevention Act. The legislation would amend the Fair Labor Standards Act and give the Department of Labor more power to protect workers. It would let workers file private lawsuits while the federal government is investigating a claim. And the Act would also eliminate the statute of limitations that forces the feds to resolve a wage complaint in two years.
Meanwhile, thanks to bad economic times, voter disillusionment and the buying of elections, the House of Representatives is about to be taken over by the Tea Party-infused Republican Party. Scrooge arrived just in time for the holidays, with Social Darwinism, bootstraps, slashing and cutting as a prescription for all our woes. And no doubt there will be an abundance of moralizing and self-righteous indignation in the lower chamber of our federal legislature, along with corporate greed and a shortage of caring for the needs of the least among us, much less solutions to make the poor whole. They would extend tax cuts to the wealthy as they preach fiscal responsibility. And they would cut healthcare and jobless benefits, and label even any noncontroversial attempts at restorative justice as communism, socialism and fascism.
Yet the struggle against this massive payroll robbery in America continues. This is part of a larger fight against the dramatic upward redistribution of wealth in recent decades, in which labor continually gets short shrift, and business seems to hold all the cards. But it is up to the people to make it right.
October 16, 2010
When the Poor Conspire to Keep Themselves Poor
Sometimes we are our own worst enemies.
So the poor are conspiring with the wealthy, against their own self-interests, to keep themselves in poverty. How is it that economic inequality makes the poor more conservative and in opposition to government programs that are designed to fight inequality?
A new study by Nathan J. Kelly and Peter K. Enns suggests that income inequality is a self-perpetuating phenomenon. Based on responses to survey questions from 1952 to 2006, the authors concluded that as the gap between the haves and the have nots widens, public opinion moves towards a conservative mindset of smaller government. Meanwhile, as the wealth gap narrows, there is a more liberal attitude among rich and poor alike.
Oddly, according to the authors, despite all of this, poorer people are more acutely aware of increases in inequality. Kelly and Enns suggest that the elites are controlling actors in the distribution game, and can play a role in shaping public opinion by distracting and manipulating the masses. They also speculate that media and the nature of media coverage play a role. For example, during economic boom times the press covers stories emphasizing individualism, which will boost public antipathy towards welfare. And in hard times the media tend to report on the problems people are facing, and the role of government in solving these problems. I think there is some validity to this theory, given the popularity of welfare reform and dismantling the social safety net during the economic expansion of the Clinton years, and widespread support for health care reform and unemployment insurance under today's Great Recession.
This study is a good starting point in helping us understand the obstacles to forming a progressive-led movement for economic justice in America -- a fight against the cancer of neoliberal privatization of the public sphere, and a move towards social democracy, if you will.
Many people placed their hopes on the Obama presidency to bring about this new era of economic redistribution. Although the history still has yet to be written on the Obama presidency, it looks as if the second coming of F.D.R. ain't gonna happen just yet. There are very good intentions in this administration, mixed with conflicting allegiances and amateurism. Its flawed notion of bipartisanship was doomed to failure under the current troubling political landscape, one in which the opposing team is an unsavory assortment of neo-Nazis, the Klan, Christian Taliban and swamp-running hillbilly lynch mobs on their best days.
The ever-looming presence of Wall Street in the politics of this country -- and in this administration in particular -- has put the proverbial cold water on attempts to fundamentally change America's economic pie. Not only do we need to reassess the way the slices are doled out and the sizes of the slices, but we also need to change the recipe itself. When the president placed key neoliberal Clintonistas and Goldman Sachs enablers in his inner circle -- you know, the people who paved the way for the Great Recession -- he signaled he had no intention of rocking the boat. He decided against the "radical revolution of values" demanded by Martin Luther King, the man he so admired.
Job creation was not taken seriously, and stimulus funding was half-hearted. And health care reform was Rahm Emanuel's opportunity to cut deals with lobbyists and give away the store. Boldness of ideas was eschewed in favor of technocratic aloofness, and scolding the base for not beholding with awe this White House's missteps, triangulations and policy dilutions. Granted, inheriting a dysfunctional economy explains many of Obama's challenges, but does not explain away the self-inflicted wounds of this administration.
Crises demand far more than tweaking and nibbling at the edges. Obama squandered a unique opportunity, not realizing that you don't bring a spatula to a gunfight. He refused to do the class warfare thing and place blame where blame rests -- Wall Street elites that have hollowed out working class and poor Americans (there is only a token vestige of a middle class left). In the process, he gave a football stadium-sized opening for Republican gangsterism to thrive. The teabagged GOP has crafted a narrative of hate and anger, built on an infrastructure of corporate-sponsored, ersatz populism. Some white working-class and poor Americans are drawn to this phony movement the way they have acted against their interests time and again. But they need to be shown another way out.
With that said, President Obama is the best hope for progressives right now, and will continue to be until he isn't. Hope is not all lost, though. After all, President Obama is dismantling his privileged white-male roundtable and bringing in Elizabeth Warren. But at the same time, he still seems to want to protect the vested moneyed interests by lifting the ban on deep water oil drilling, and falling short of halting all foreclosures, opting to study the issue instead. And this president has accomplished more than many -- but then again, the expectations were high, and rarely have the stakes been higher.
To its credit, this White House is railing against the buying of democracy, which we have seen recently with Rupert Murdoch purchasing the Republican Party, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce apparently using foreign funding to buy the 2010 elections. The Supreme Court decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission allows unlimited money to influence politics on the grounds that corporations are people too, and deserving of free speech protection. But as Justice Stevens warned in his dissent:
It is this type of corruption of democracy that twists the system and causes the poor to act against their own interests. And this is one of the myriad issues that a progressive movement must tackle, whether or not the president chooses to. It is said there are no permanent friends or enemies, only permanent interests. Well, there are permanent values, and it takes a movement to articulate and sustain those values. Progressives can demand that Obama adhere to certain principles if he wants their support.
But a president does not a movement make, and we're learning that now. That's the job of the people.
So the poor are conspiring with the wealthy, against their own self-interests, to keep themselves in poverty. How is it that economic inequality makes the poor more conservative and in opposition to government programs that are designed to fight inequality?
A new study by Nathan J. Kelly and Peter K. Enns suggests that income inequality is a self-perpetuating phenomenon. Based on responses to survey questions from 1952 to 2006, the authors concluded that as the gap between the haves and the have nots widens, public opinion moves towards a conservative mindset of smaller government. Meanwhile, as the wealth gap narrows, there is a more liberal attitude among rich and poor alike.
Oddly, according to the authors, despite all of this, poorer people are more acutely aware of increases in inequality. Kelly and Enns suggest that the elites are controlling actors in the distribution game, and can play a role in shaping public opinion by distracting and manipulating the masses. They also speculate that media and the nature of media coverage play a role. For example, during economic boom times the press covers stories emphasizing individualism, which will boost public antipathy towards welfare. And in hard times the media tend to report on the problems people are facing, and the role of government in solving these problems. I think there is some validity to this theory, given the popularity of welfare reform and dismantling the social safety net during the economic expansion of the Clinton years, and widespread support for health care reform and unemployment insurance under today's Great Recession.
This study is a good starting point in helping us understand the obstacles to forming a progressive-led movement for economic justice in America -- a fight against the cancer of neoliberal privatization of the public sphere, and a move towards social democracy, if you will.
Many people placed their hopes on the Obama presidency to bring about this new era of economic redistribution. Although the history still has yet to be written on the Obama presidency, it looks as if the second coming of F.D.R. ain't gonna happen just yet. There are very good intentions in this administration, mixed with conflicting allegiances and amateurism. Its flawed notion of bipartisanship was doomed to failure under the current troubling political landscape, one in which the opposing team is an unsavory assortment of neo-Nazis, the Klan, Christian Taliban and swamp-running hillbilly lynch mobs on their best days.
The ever-looming presence of Wall Street in the politics of this country -- and in this administration in particular -- has put the proverbial cold water on attempts to fundamentally change America's economic pie. Not only do we need to reassess the way the slices are doled out and the sizes of the slices, but we also need to change the recipe itself. When the president placed key neoliberal Clintonistas and Goldman Sachs enablers in his inner circle -- you know, the people who paved the way for the Great Recession -- he signaled he had no intention of rocking the boat. He decided against the "radical revolution of values" demanded by Martin Luther King, the man he so admired.
Job creation was not taken seriously, and stimulus funding was half-hearted. And health care reform was Rahm Emanuel's opportunity to cut deals with lobbyists and give away the store. Boldness of ideas was eschewed in favor of technocratic aloofness, and scolding the base for not beholding with awe this White House's missteps, triangulations and policy dilutions. Granted, inheriting a dysfunctional economy explains many of Obama's challenges, but does not explain away the self-inflicted wounds of this administration.
Crises demand far more than tweaking and nibbling at the edges. Obama squandered a unique opportunity, not realizing that you don't bring a spatula to a gunfight. He refused to do the class warfare thing and place blame where blame rests -- Wall Street elites that have hollowed out working class and poor Americans (there is only a token vestige of a middle class left). In the process, he gave a football stadium-sized opening for Republican gangsterism to thrive. The teabagged GOP has crafted a narrative of hate and anger, built on an infrastructure of corporate-sponsored, ersatz populism. Some white working-class and poor Americans are drawn to this phony movement the way they have acted against their interests time and again. But they need to be shown another way out.
With that said, President Obama is the best hope for progressives right now, and will continue to be until he isn't. Hope is not all lost, though. After all, President Obama is dismantling his privileged white-male roundtable and bringing in Elizabeth Warren. But at the same time, he still seems to want to protect the vested moneyed interests by lifting the ban on deep water oil drilling, and falling short of halting all foreclosures, opting to study the issue instead. And this president has accomplished more than many -- but then again, the expectations were high, and rarely have the stakes been higher.
To its credit, this White House is railing against the buying of democracy, which we have seen recently with Rupert Murdoch purchasing the Republican Party, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce apparently using foreign funding to buy the 2010 elections. The Supreme Court decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission allows unlimited money to influence politics on the grounds that corporations are people too, and deserving of free speech protection. But as Justice Stevens warned in his dissent:
In the context of election to public office, the distinction between corporate and human speakers is significant. Although they make enormous contributions to our society, corporations are not actually members of it. They cannot vote or run for office. Because they may be managed and controlled by nonresidents, their interests may conflict in fundamental respects with the interests of eligible voters. The financial resources, legal structure, and instrumental orientation of corporations raise legitimate concerns about their role in the electoral process. Our lawmakers have a compelling constitutional basis, if not also a democratic duty, to take measures designed to guard against the potentially deleterious effects of corporate spending in local and national races.
It is this type of corruption of democracy that twists the system and causes the poor to act against their own interests. And this is one of the myriad issues that a progressive movement must tackle, whether or not the president chooses to. It is said there are no permanent friends or enemies, only permanent interests. Well, there are permanent values, and it takes a movement to articulate and sustain those values. Progressives can demand that Obama adhere to certain principles if he wants their support.
But a president does not a movement make, and we're learning that now. That's the job of the people.
August 1, 2009
Blacks and Latinos Hit Harder In Hard Times
I don’t have to tell you that it’s tough out there. I’m talking about the recession, of course. In the end, the bursting of America’s economic bubble is the worst financial news since the Great Depression. And ultimately, it is clear that the deleterious effects of U.S. capitalism know no race, ethnicity or class. Titans of industry are reduced to pauper status, working families are out of work, food, healthcare and a home, and people of all backgrounds are watching their life’s work eviscerate before their very eyes. We are all bit players in the casino, and with a few exceptions such as the lucky bailout winners, most of us have crapped out, the way the casino operators intended it to work.
But at the same time, it’s a little more complicated than that. While "official" unemployment nationwide is high at around 10 percent (far more when you factor in all of those people who are underemployed or have given up all hope of finding a job), unemployment is and always has been much higher in Black and Latino communities. But the gap has widened during this recession. In fact, Black unemployment is nearly double that of Whites, while Latinos are unemployed at a rate one-third higher than their White counterparts. The situation is particularly chronic in New York City, where there are 80,000 more unemployed Blacks than Whites, even though there are about 1.5 million more Whites than Blacks in that city.
One explanation is that people of color are the folks last hired and first fired, or that their communities have a lower level of entrepreneurship. Some people will be quick to attribute the difference in employment levels to differences in education levels. Their argument is that people of color are lazy and not so smart, and don’t apply themselves. But among those with a college education, as the Economic Policy Institute reported, Black unemployment in recent months has doubled that of Whites.
Perhaps institutional racism can explain some of the difference in unemployment levels. As James Koch, an economics professor at Old Dominion University noted, "When the economy is at or near full employment, employers don't have any choice. They have to hire the people that are available. Right now, employers can be fairly choosy. They may well choose not to hire African Americans."
This notion is worth exploring, at a time when civil rights foes have pushed back against the age of Obama. In the name of "reverse discrimination", they have declared that affirmative action and other diversity programs are a thing of the past. The unqualified minorities are taking all of the good jobs from the ever-qualified and ever-capable White men, they say. Blacks have the White House, after all, so what more do they want?
These malcontents yearn for the day when people of color were relegated to captive labor, or migrant labor, out of sight and out of mind, and nothing more. They point to the Supreme Court ruling in Ricci v. Stefano. In Ricci, the court found in favor of 17 aggrieved White New Haven firefighters (and one Latino) who claimed they were discriminated against in promotions after they passed a promotional exam. When no Black firefighters passed that exam, in a city where people of color are 60% of the population, the city discarded the results.
Little is said, however, of the recent ruling by a federal judge that New York City discriminates against people of color in the hiring of its firefighters. Specifically, New York City, which is over 60% of color, has a fire department which is over 90% White (and nearly all male), a statistic that stands in marked contrast to other major cities. Blacks and Latinos disproportionately failed the recruitment exams, and those who did pass were placed further down the list than White candidates. The judge determined that "the city did not take sufficient measures to ensure that better performers on its examinations would actually be better firefighters." He added that "when an employment test is not adequately related to the job for which it tests – and when the test adversely affects minority groups – we may not fall back on the notion that better test takers make better employees."
In a majority-minority city such as New York, African Americans and Latinos are seldom found as firefighters, and some professions apparently are the functional equivalent of a family business. It seems more than mere coincidence that unemployment among people of color has skyrocketed.
Some people will always point to the scores, but the truth is that intelligence, achievement and merit cannot be reduced to a single score. But gatekeepers in education and the professions have long used standardized testing as a tool to keep racial, ethnic, class and gender diversity from entering the gate. The tests and the racism always went hand in hand. As anthropologist Carolyn Fluehr-Lobban points out in Race and Racism: An Introduction, standardized intelligence testing was born of the eugenics movement and the IQ tests. These pseudo-scientific tests were first used to prove that immigrant groups, "certain undesirable non-Anglo-Saxons - especially Jews, Hungarians, Poles, Russians, and Italians - ‘were mentally defective.’" What worked as a tool of class and ethnic discrimination against European immigrants was then utilized to prove the racial inferiority of "Negro, Mexican and Spanish-Indian children." And according to the National Center for Fair and Open Testing, "IQ tests are nothing more than a type of achievement test which primarily measures knowledge of standard English and exposure to the cultural experiences of middle class whites." Yet, society still relies on these exams, commonly known today as the SAT, ACT, GRE, MCAT, GMAT, LSAT, and bar exam, among others.
Society’s gatekeepers have a lot of power. They decide who gets the job and why. They determine who is a team player, who is a good fit, who is fit to lead and who is not. They decide who is too much of this or not enough of that, who is qualified, underqualified, or overqualified. They decide if an applicant’s name sounds too "Black" or "Latino", whatever that means. They determine whose hair looks too Black. Gatekeepers create the reality, however subjective, flawed or biased the methodology. They choose the images in Hollywood and on TV, and which people will portray criminals or upstanding citizens, or nothing at all. Gatekeepers make the policies that create a mostly Black and Brown prison population, and a mostly White legal profession. They decide to fill the special education classes and foster care systems with children of color, who will, in turn, fill the prisons. Gatekeepers decide to have a panel discussion on a cable news program, and the topic is the nation’s first Latina Supreme Court justice, yet none of the panelists are Latinas.
And gatekeepers lack diversity, in a nation that is becoming more and more diverse by the day. Often, their goal is to maintain a system where everyone looks the same, like the good ol’ days. That is why steps are needed to ensure that the game is not rigged, as it has been for so long, so that we do not revert to the nation’s default settings of power and privilege.
Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates - who had a less than positive experience with the Cambridge police department of late - said it best in his commencement address to Berea College in 2008:
For me, no matter how intelligent I may or may not be, for me to have been one of those six black boys who graduated from Yale in 1966, affirmative action was a class escalator. As far as I’m concerned, ladies and gentlemen, no one in the American academy has benefited more from affirmative action than I have. And that’s why I will go to my grave as an ardent and passionate defender of affirmative action. For me to become so successful in America, and for me to become a gatekeeper of American society and stand at the gate and protest affirmative action to keep out women or people of color would make me a hypocrite as big as Justice Clarence Thomas, and I’m not that kind of person. We need more affirmative action in this country, not less affirmative action. I don’t care what the White House says, and I don’t care what the minority on the Supreme Court says, and that’s the subject of my address this afternoon.
(From BlackCommentator.com.)
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)