The Intellectual Mosquito

WHAT THE RICH AND POWERFUL BETTER REMEMBER ABOUT OCCUPY WALL STREET

Oaklnd Police had an all night standoff with Occupy protesters and later broke up their campsite.

The Occupy Movement

Could Go From Lamb to Lion

 

The Occupy Movement isn’t going to go away. You can’t stomp it out or beat and gas the protesters forever. You can’t steal people’s jobs, homes, life savings, retirement dreams, and their children’s college educations and expect them to just walk away.  

Sooner or later, you won't be able to gather safely on the terraces high above Wall  Street sipping cocktails, smirking, and snapping pictures as you make fun of the waves of scruffy people singing and chanting for change in the street below. [See video left column.]

Whatever you think about the Occupy Movement, you’re wrong about its people. They aren't a bunch of boisterous college kids, Hippies or Flower People from the 1960s.

They're war vets, a number of whom have been wounded or disabled in Iraq or Afghanistan; union members who've been shafted out of their benefits, jobs and rights to collective bargaining; worn out men and women in their 60s, 70s and 80s who are grinding it out  daily in minimum wage jobs with little hope of retiring; they are teachers, small business owners, public and service industry workers, construction workers, truckers and homeless people who are seeking reentry to mainstream society.

At right, a U.S. Marine who is among thousands of vets who support Occupy and turn out to participate in its events, leads a protest march in the San Francisco Bay area. Below left, retired Philadelphia Police Captain Ray Lewis believes he was arrested last week for carrying a sign that city officials felt was unfairly critical of NYPD officers.

Lewis, who retired in 2004, says he was living a peaceful Walden-like existence in a secluded area of the Catskill mountains. He followed Occupy via computer streaming for a couple of weeks, then became so inspired by the courage and spirit of the New York demonstrators he was compelled to join them.

On his release from jail, he apologized for the "poor wording" of his sign and explained that it was intended to warn fellow policemen against being manipulated into becoming corporate mercenaries. "All the cops, he said, "are just workers for the one percent, and they don't even realize they're being exploited." 

So forget it. The Movement isn't going away. People are demanding a return to equality in America, or what they were willing to settle for before you declared war on the Middle Class: decent pay--meaning a living wage--good homes for their families, affordable health care and pharmacy costs, the ability to save for the future. And respect. They would have accepted these  modest rewards for hard work—things they thought had been fought for and won sixty years ago--and a return to fairness. Their demands can change.

 You're  mistaken if you think Occupy will go away. You've stirred this mess up and now there is something in the air:

 

Call out the instigators
Because there's something in the air
We've got to get together sooner or later
Because the revolution's here, and you know it's right
And you know that it's right

We have got to get it together
We have got to get it together now

Lock up the streets and houses
Because there's something in the air
We've got to get together sooner or later
Because the revolution's here, and you know it's right
And you know that it's right

Last week I watched police at the University of California at Davis pepper spray Occupy  students who were protesting a steep tuition hike. Linked arm in arm, they were quietly sitting down, blocking a sidewalk at the edge of the school's quad. A couple dozen of them  leaning forward, heads tilted to shield their eyes and lungs from the stinging, choking red clouds of pepper gas. Lt. John Pike (at left) in  black uniform with helmet and face shield, stepped forward holding up a red aerosol can. He walked toward the students brandishing the can flamboyantly, as if it was a ceremonial sword of some kind. Whatever his intended message, his gestures transformed the scene into a surrealistic one. [See video left column.]

Slowly, he strolled down the line of students, shooting powerful bursts of thick reddish mist down on them, taking care to coat their heads and shoulders. The submissive position of the students’ bodies was reminescent of the position assumed by thousands of men and women who received a bullet to the back of their heads seventy years ago in Europe. 

There were dozens of officers, members of the UC Davis police force, in small phalanxes strategically spread along the edge of  a crowd of several hundred angry students who began  chanting, “Shame on you! Shame on you! Shame on you!” as they watched fellow students and friends being sprayed. They were incensed but, amazingly, their outrage never neared any level of violence.

Momentarily, a second officer, aerosol in hand, stepped into the now sprawled and broken line of students who were writhing on the sidewalk, coughing and choking, but determined to sit or lay where they were. He opened up on them with his pepper spray. More members of the riot squad began moving in on the dazed students, turning over bodies, zip-cuffing their  hands behind their backs and dragging them off by their arms or feet, to waiting transport units several yards away from the quad.

Hundreds of students standing near and on the edge of the quad began chanting “Who do you serve! Who do you protect! Who do you serve! Who do you protect!” As the arrest process began drawing to a close, the crowd started inching towards police who wisely, but slowly and guardedly began pulling back. Each step the officers took backward was inches long and matched by an equal step forward by protesters. Tense moments passed like hours. The police stood shoulder to shoulder as they pulled back, then formed a concave protective front as they completed their pullback.                                                                                                                                 

As it became apparent that the confrontation was about to end peacefully, the students began chanting “This is our quad! This is our quad! This is our quad!” When the officers' retreat became complete the protesters' chant switched to a victorious "This is our university! This is our university! This is our university!" And that is how the confrontation ended for the day.

That evening when UC Davis Chancellor Linda Katehi left her office, she was escorted to her car through a long and silent cordon of students.[See video at left.] Their tent encampment was up again by Monday when Katehi addressed them from an outdoor stage to apologize for the pepper-spraying which she said was not authorized by her. She ended her remarks with an appeal for student protesters to work with her to restore the previous calm and congenial atmosphere of the campus. The crowd was unmoved and stood firm in calling for Katehi's resignation.  

The rich and powerful believe they hold all the cards, have all the power. They own Congress thanks to their lobbyists. The Supreme Court has ruled they can now plow billions of dollars  into smothering the voice of the people during elections and influencing the passage of  laws favorable to their special interests. They control thousands of state and national office holders whom they pay well to abuse their powers by clamping down hard on protesters of their heavy-handed tactics. The elitists are gambling that they can rely on law enforcement and the National Guard to protect them, their wealth, their homes and businesses and to maintain the status quo.

Conservatives want to see the degree of force police use against the Occupy Movement cranked up. They want Constitutional rights to free speech and public assembly narrowly interpreted and restrictively applied to Occupy by state and federal courts. They are pushing states and communities to strictly enforce local laws and ordinances to minimize or eliminate the use of public spaces by the people of Occupy.

There have been pepper-sprayings and police clashes with Occupiers in Seattle, Portland and other cities, but Oakland has the longest record for unleashing the most brutal responses to activists. This year its police force used rubber bullets, bean bag pellets and tear gas in attacking the Occupy Oakland encampment and a subsequent protest march. The first police assault resulted in a skull fracture to Marine vet Scott Olsen who served two tours of duty in Iraq.

There is an on-going lawsuit from 2005 against the Oakland Police Department for excessive use of force against non-violent anti-war demonstrators. Police Chief Howard Jordan was recently deposed about his command of the department during that period. He testified that he defines peace demonstraters as "anarchists" who oppose any kind of government action including requiring people to pay taxes. [Video at left shows a conflict at  UC at Berkeley.]

Robert Reich,  well-known economist, holder of the Chancellor's Professor of Public Policy Chair at the University of California at Berkeley and author of the books Supercapitalism and Aftershock, argues nothing less is at stake in the Occupy Movement than the First Amendment. What we've been seeing across the country, he says, is Americans being assaulted, clubbed and pepper-sprayed for exercising their right to free speech and assemnly--for protesting the ever increasing concentration of income, wealth and political power among the top one percent.

"And what's Washington's response? Nothing. . . the Supreme Court says money is speech and corporations are people." There's a revolving door between Washington and Wall Street  where bank executives become public officials who make laws that benefit the banks and then head back to the Street to make money off the rules they created."

The core message of the Occupy Movement, Reich says, is that the  concentration of income and wealth in the hands of the top 1% endangers our democracy.                                              

"When real people without money assemble to express their dissatisfaction with all this, they're told the First Amendment doesn't apply. Instead, they're treated as public nuisances--clubbed, pepper-sprayed, thrown out of public parks and evicted from public spaces."

As the recession grinds on Congress remains deadlocked over passing legislation that would put about 100 million people to work. Banks continue foreclosing on homes. Qualified students cannot afford college without taking on huge loan debt they will not be able to repay given the likely continued downward spiraling of wages, even if the economy improves.

Meanwhile, public schools are firing teachers and vital social services are being cut off.

The right wingers' objective is to break up Occupy Wall Street, hence the uptick in resistance and state sanctioned violence toward the Movement. The Right is desperate to destroy their most visible, widely supported and strongest opponent while it can. It thinks that if it can drive Occupy underground, it will be silenced or forced out of existence. This logic is contradicted by  history which tells us that once a resistance faction is forced underground, the enemy deprives itself of the ability to know what it's opponent is saying, doing or planning. And it has no sure way of knowing where the Movement is or who its members are. 

The rich and powerful are ignoring history at their peril. If they don’t like studying history, I suggest they pick up two novels: Charles Dickens’s A Tale of Two Cities or Boris Pasternak’s Dr. Zhivago.  Because there is a second course to the famous song whose lyrics are printed here. It goes like this:

 

We have got to get it together  
We have got to get it together now

Hand out the arms and ammo
We're going to blast our way through here
We've got to get together sooner or later
Because the revolution's here, and you know it's right
And you know that it's right

We have got to get it together
We have got to get it together

 

Song performed on video above left:

Something in the Air: Thunderclap Newman

(John Keene) Courtesy of MCA Records, Inc.

 

 

Copyright 2011

Anthony P. Mario

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Grand Nuttiness of Iowa's Straw Poll

 

    The Grand Nuttiness of Iowa's

Straw Poll
 

Above: Tea Partiers Rush the Stage at Republicans' Beauty Pageant

 

Welcome back to the Divided States of America. What a mess. What a mess! A Straw Poll it was and aptly named for the straw men and woman who drew 16,892 Tea Baggers out to   vote in Iowa’s sort-of presidential primary. The voting in Iowa means nothing, which is something we all should be grateful for. Mitt Romney, who’s become irrelevant to the wild and wooly new breed of Republicans, did some light campaigning around the state, but refused to participate in Ames. Thus, “Mittens,” as he’s derisively referred to by the Righter-Than-Thou party, proved to Iowans that they are irrelevant to him.

Texas Gov. Rick Perry stole Michele Bachmann’s shining moment by announcing his candidacy the day before the poll and then finishing sixth. Frustrated over Perry’s  antics,    Bachmann threw a handful of  “victory” tinsel confetti at a nearby newsman when the Texan's sudden appearance drew cheers and thunderous applause from the crowd. Before things could  get worse, Marcus “Rotunda” Bachmann stepped in, grabbed his wife’s throwing hand and whirled her away, dancing to “Turkey in the Straw” played by a local jug band.

As we steel ourselves for the barrage of lying election rhetoric and storm of TV commercials, a disconnect occurs to me that the national media doesn't talk about: What is it that makes Tea Party presidential hopefuls think they are remotely qualified to sit in the Oval Office? Even a gold star presidential candidate of average  modesty has to think long and hard  about  tackling the most public and difficult job in the world. For Tea-Baggers, who  consider humility a character flaw, the decision is a no-brainer. They jump right in as if running the country is like being class president. You don’t have to worry about screwing up, because the adults will always be there to save your chestnuts. But then we’re reminded, “Hey, George Bush did it.”

Michele Bachmann

The list of Republican candidates is like a Who’s Who of Mad Magazine. Michele Bachmann—says our Founding Fathers, “. . . worked tirelessly until slavery was no more in  the United States.” She wished Elvis a “Happy Birthday” on the 34^th anniversary of his  death. And here is her take on the environment: “This big thing we are working on now is the global warming hoax. It’s all voodoo, nonsense, hokum, a hoax.” This is a woman who should not be given the Nuclear Codes. Her ignorance is matched in scope only by the genius of Einstein.

Ron Paul

Ron Paul, the last real Libertarian in America, is a man of integrity  and honor. Clearly then, he is ill-suited to play Texas Hold’em with the card sharps of the Republican inner circle, especially if fellow Texan Rick Perry is seated at the table. Unfortunately for Paul, he repeatedly tries to get to the White House by skipping along the Yellow Brick Road. He’s such an idealistic conservative he can't be realistic.

Rick Santorum

Rick Santorum, who received 291 more votes than pizza king Herman Cain, is obsessed with his bizarre anti-abortion philosophy. In an appearance on Meet the Press, Santorum preached, "Life begins at conception, no  exceptions for incest or rape, and doctors performing abortions should be criminally charged."

The photo of the Santorum family out on the stump with him may be a sad, but accurate look what it's like to live with a guy who thinks like he does.                                                        

Asked why he opposes rape or incest as legal exceptions in abortion cases he says,” That is a person. I believe that life begins at conception, and that that life should be guaranteed under the Constitution.”  Santorum, who is also anti-gay, argues that the morning after pill is the exact same thing as abortion if it is taken after “the egg has been fertilized.”

Herman Cain

Herman Cain’s presidential credentials spring from having made millions playing  Don C0rleone as CEO of Godfather’s Pizza where deliveries were made by flinging boxed pizzas to customers from the passenger side windows of long black 1930s-style sedans.

Cain is unique. He’s actually promoting his blackness to the Tea Party as the key to beating    Obama.  He predicts that Black people will definitely vote for him because he has two Black parents to Obama’s one. He's also pledged not to sign a single bill if it exceeds three pages.

Angry over the planned mosque in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, Cain told Fox News, "Our  Constitution guarantees the separation of church and state. Islam combines church and state. They're using the church part of our First Amendment to infuse their morals in that  community, and the people of that community do not like it. They disagree with it."

Okay, I can see where it would be different if they were all Born  Again people instead of Muslims.  A Christian theocracy is acceptable in America.

 Cain says, “This isn’t an innocent mosque. This is just another way to try to gradually sneak   Sharia law into our laws, and I absolutely object to that." The way he sees it, "Islam is both a religion and a set of laws -- Sharia laws. That's the difference between any one of our traditional religions where it's just about religious purposes."

That’s it, Herman. Now just explain why we need a constitutional amendment prohibiting abortion. And while you’re at it, name the “traditional” religions for us.

 Newt Gingrich

Newt Gingrich got 385 votes, even though he supposedly didn’t have the money to take part in  the poll. Remember how he slipped back into view from the shadows of disgrace shortly before last year’s midterm elections? He sauntered in with his nose in the air, sniffing for a whiff of Obama’s blood. Back in the sun, it took Newt  five minutes to warm up before he was walking the streets of Washington like a monarch back from exile,  waving to people,  making the rounds of K Street and talking about testing the water for a run at the presidency.

The resurfacing of Gingrich tells us what a blessing it is for Republicans to have the Christian Fundamentalists so heavily embedded in their ranks: They make it possible for backsliders like Newt to be swiftly forgiven, politically reborn and recycled back into the party with a fresh coat of respectability.

Rick Perry

The sudden entry of Rick Perry’s Texas-size ego into the fray brought out sheer giddiness from even usually restrained Iowans. Though he bagged a lowly 718 votes, the fuss that the racous crowd made over him ruined Bachmann’s day.

Perry is a dangerous politician. His cowboy good looks, western suits, fancy leather boots and silky twang bowl over people who normally aren’t awestruck by celebrity. He’s reminiscent of a traveling medicine show huckster who could roll into a town and have the    citizenry eating out of his hands in a couple of hours. He’d deliver a pitch for his miracle elixir with the fervor of a revivalist preacher, empty the folks' pockets, then disappear before they realized they had a bad case of the trots and the enamel on their teeth was gone.

That’s pretty much what Perry’s done to Texas, but his charm has allowed him to stick around Austin  for 12 years. Whatever he’s done, he had people believing they loved it till recently. How’d he do it? With big bucks from big business and their lobbyists, by depressing the Hispanic vote and fervent public prayer.

Perry is considered a rainmaker. He created tens of thousands of jobs for Texans when other states were reaping the dry, wild wind. But his kind of jobs are wretched minimum-wage ones with no benefits. The ones that mean slow death for the working man. That’s why corporations flock to the Lone Star State: they’re virtually unregulated and pay more for a tank of gas than they do in taxes. In eight years the governor blessed them with $500 million in corporate subsidies.

There’s a joke down there that goes, “Sure Perry has created thousands of jobs. I’m working   three of them.”

Perry’s Texas is a godforsaken land for working people. It has the fourth-highest poverty rate in the nation; it’s tied with Mississippi for the highest percentage  of workers in minimum-wage jobs; it’s Number One among states with the lowest number of high school graduates; and it’s has the highest percentage of medically uninsured people in the country.

No question Perry is the most popular politician in Texas—among conservative white males. They like the way he handles money. Earlier this year it looked like he was about to be brought down by a $27 billion budget deficit because of all his tax breaks for business.  It was time to raise taxes, but not for Perry. Instead, he cut $4 billion from the education budget and laid off thousands of teachers.

Mitt Romney

One can almost feel sorry for Mitt Romney. But how can you take pity on a guy with a $200 million fortune, who's been governor of Massachusetts, has once run for president and    is having another go at it with other people’s money? How can you bleed for a guy who has never had to wait on people, wash their cars or bag their groceries? Mitt Romney has never spent a day in the real world.

This pleasant-looking, seemingly affable man's career has been spent as a Corporate Carnivore. His salad days were as CEO of Bain Capital, a firm he helped start with $37 million. Bain’s modus operandi was to buy other companies or controlling interest in them. Romney and his partners would proceed to gut their prey. Their “business plan” was to rake in fees for managing a business and get themselves appointed to the board of directors.

They then sold off assets, fired workers and purposely hired inept managers to run the businesses. When a company was about to keel over, Bain bailed out by selling the shell to duped investors. Once this scheme backfired and Bain wound up having to defend a messy shareholder lawsuit.

Between 1987 and 1995 Bain invested in five business—Stage Stores, American Pad & Paper, GS Industries, Dade, and Details. They made Bain $587 million in profit but it wasn't enough to keep any of them from being driven into bankruptcy and leaving thousands of workers unemployed.

Watch Romney on TV you may think he’s some rich guy who happens to be a hopeless klutz. Visualize this scene in Ames: obviously uncomfortable in a pair of khakis and work shirt, he was speaking to an obstreperous crowd when he made the dumbest and funniest election gaff so far. He told the folks that "corporations are people."

One of the men demanded to know why Republicans are  focusing on entitlement reform as  a means of deficit reduction versus forcing corporations to share part of the nation’s financial burden, Romney said:

"Corporations are people, my friend . . . of course they are. Everything corporations earn ultimately goes to the people. Where do you think it goes? Whose pockets? Whose pockets? People's pockets. Human beings, my friend."

Here's a multi-millionaire who tells people he’s unemployed. Is he extravagantly clueless, or the slick front man for predatory interests like Bain Capital?                                                 

If there’s one sure thing about Romney it's that he’s a comedian’s dream:                                                                                                                                               "Mitt Romney looks like the photo that comes with the frame.He looks like the guy who tells you how to buy real estate with no money down . . . He looks like the guy on the ‘ Just For Men’ bottle . . . Mitt looks like  the guy who goes to the restroom when the check comes.”—David Letterman

“. . . Mitt Romney, who is running for president as Ward Cleaver, is for change. Every time he gets up there, he says, ‘I love change. Change is good. Who doesn’t like change?' " –Bill Maher

“ . . . Mitt Romney was asked to explain why none of his five sons are in the military and he said that his sons demonstrate their patriotism by going on the road and campaigning for him. Now there’s a tough choice: ‘Iraq or Iowa? Fallujah or Cedar Rapids? Honey, what do you think?”—Jay Leno

“Last week, presidential candidate Mitt Romney called himself a lifelong hunter. Turns out he’s only hunted twice in his life. And, of course, both of those times were for Easter eggs.”—Jay Leno

Jon Huntsman

Clueless or not, Romney is not presidential material. Neither are any of the others who were there in Iowa with  the exception of Jon Huntsman, whose chances look as good as Custer’s were.

The paltry lineup of Republican candidates isn’t surprising or shocking. Given its win-at-all-costs approach, the caliber of people the GOP chooses to support shouldn’t astonish anyone. Having been willing to roll with the likes of Sarah Palin three years ago, we were on notice that the Republicans have no standards anymore.  For them, it’s not a question of who is capable, but who is saleable.

The intransigence and meanspiritedness of Republicans in both houses of Congress has made it crystal clear that they aren’t interested in fixing anything. The only goal they have set themselves to accomplish is making sure Obama is a one term president. Even if it means we all go down with the ship.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  Say Goodbye to Capitalism

  

If anyone has been thinking I've painted a grimmer picture than need be to show just how bad the plight of the Middle Class is, here's the low down from Michael Snyder (shown at right), a graduate of the McIntire School of Commerce at the  University of Virginia, holder of two law degrees from the University of Florida and writer/editor of The Economic Collapse Blog at http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com.

  In my last post I described the blistering pace at which the rich became filthy rich, all at the expense of the Middle Class, through the purposeful redistribution of income to those at the pinnacle of  annual income and accrued wealth. In 2009 according to the U.S. Census Bureau, the household median income, adjusted for inflation, was $49,777. Do you know what it was in 1975? $42,936! That's 13.8% over 34 years.

The cost of wheat shot up 60% last year.Yesterday, a loaf of fresh baked sourdough bread cost me $4.99 at Publix. Last month economists announced that the price of a bag of family groceries is up 29% this year. It makes me wonder how a family of four trying to make it on $49,777 ($4,148 a month  before state and/or federal taxes are deducted, paying $3.85 a gallon for gas, $550 a month for health insurance, $950 mortgage/rent and $555 a month for  groceries are doing.

The numbers I've tossed out don't include a car payment, car insurance, water, electricity, TV and internet cable, telephone, entertainment and a plethora of other things    many of us don't think twice about when we purchase them. How much has the quality of life changed for families forced to do without life's small luxuries--a  trip to the book store, replacing a broken TV or iPod,  taking the family out for dinner, keeping a supply of the kids' favorite treats on hand?

Our big, global corporations are profiting magnificently while exploiting third world workers and they're salivating over the rapidly approaching day when jobs and wages will bottom out here and they’ll have us all at the mercy of their soulless black hearts. Then we'll have what Arianna Huffington has chosen for the title of her new book, Third World America.

"Proletariat? What Proletariat?"

Here are Snyder's 22 statistics that leave no room for doubt that the Middle Class has been in the the process of systematic erosion for decades. 

1.    83 percent of all U.S. stocks are in the hands of 1 percent of the people.
2.    61 percent of Americans "always or usually" live paycheck to paycheck, which was up from   49 percent in 2008 and 43 percent in 2007.
3.   66 percent of the income growth between 2001 and 2007 went to the top 1% of all Americans.
4.   36 percent of Americans say that they don't contribute anything to retirement savings.
5.   A staggering 43 percent of Americans have less than $10,000 saved up for retirement.
6.   24 percent of American workers say that they have postponed their planned retirement age in the past year.
7.  Over 1.4 million Americans filed for personal bankruptcy in 2009, which represented a 32 percent increase over 2008.
8.   Only the top 5 percent of U.S. households have earned enough additional income to match the rise in housing costs since 1975.
9.   For the first time in U.S. history, banks own a greater share of residential housing net worth in the United States than all individual Americans put together.
10.   In 1950, the ratio of the average executive's paycheck to the average worker's paycheck was about 30 to 1. Since the year 2000, that ratio has exploded to between 300 to 500 to one.
11.  As of 2007, the bottom 80 percent of American households held about 7% of the liquid financial assets.
12.  The bottom 50 percent of income earners in the United States now collectively own less than   one percent of the nation’s wealth.
13.  Average Wall Street bonuses for 2009 were up 17 percent when compared with 2008.
14. The average federal worker now earns 60% MORE than the average worker in the private sector.
15. The top 1 percent of U.S. households own nearly twice as much of America's corporate wealth as they did just 15 years ago.
16. In America today, the average time needed to find a job has risen to a record 35.2 weeks.
17. More than 40 percent of Americans who are currently employed are working in service jobs, which are often very low paying.
18. For the first time in U.S. history, more than 40 million Americans are on food stamps, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture projects that number will go up to 43 million Americans in 2011.
19. This is what American workers now must compete against: in China a garment worker makes  approximately 86 cents an hour and in Cambodia a garment worker makes approximately 22 cents  an hour.                                                                                                                                           
20. Approximately 21 percent of all children in the United States are living below the poverty    line in 2010 - the highest rate in 20 years.
21. Despite the financial crisis, the number of millionaires in the United States rose a whopping 16 percent to 7.8 million in 2009.
22. The top 10 percent of Americans now earn around 50 percent of our national income.

 

 Hear That Giant Sucking Sound?

The reality is that no matter how smart, how strong, how educated or how hard working American workers are, they just cannot compete with people on the other side of the globe who happily put in 10 to 12 hour days  for less than a dollar an hour. What corporation will pay an American worker 10 times more (plus benefits) to do the same job? The world labor market  has  been flipped. The mega corporations are making massive amounts of money paying foreign workers  pennies on the dollar. In time, after the will of the American Middle Class is completely exhausted, U.S. workers will be merged into the new "global" labor pool. And they will learn what it was like to be a galley slave.

What do most Americans have to offer in the marketplace other than their labor? Not much. The truth is that the Great Recession has made them absolutely dependent on someone giving them a job. U.S. workers are "less attractive" than those overseas because their wages and benefits make them extremely expensive. But are these wages and benefits unreasonable demands or necessities in the country they helped build?

Corporations argue that the costs of labor and a coalescence of financial events they had no control over--the transformation of the world economy--make it impossible for them to continue to do business in the U.S. and make a profit. But that is not true. What's more likely is that the time has come to pull the plug on capitalism.

                                                                            

 "Keep Your Capitalist Hands Off of My Internet!"

Capitalism is no longer a viable economic system because it is an inward-looking, closed-ended means of serving selfish corporate interests while disavowing any social responsibility and working against the ideals of a democratic society. For example, as I write this, AT&T, Verizon, Comcast, and Time Warner Cable are  scuffling amongst themselves and with the FCC to take over the internet and turn it into their personal, money-making enterprise.

These corporate egotists have the audacity to presume they can acquire ownership of what has been a free and open marketplace for worldwide communication, the exchange of limitless  information, thoughts, opinions, news and ideas and sell it back to us.

The internet as it exists, is democracy in its purest form. No governmental, philosophical, religious, economic, political or revolutionary entity owns or censors it. Until just a  few  years ago it was a non-existent place, a dream world of possibilities and promise beyond technology's reach.

Today it's where people who can read and write go to acquire vast amounts of knowledge, explore  all manner of things previously inaccesible to them, and form their own notions of what the world is and what its inhabitants--man and animal--are all about. The net is a limitless Garden of Eden brimming with  free roaming  thoughts about everything--both known and yet to be discovered--and it's always in full bloom. It is the history of Man and the World, uncensored and free of charge.

Now some misanthropes are using their money and political influence to convince the government to grant them license to package and sell it. Their initial proposal is to turn the internet into two lanes: a fast one and a slow one. The fast lane will cost more. And we can all ready see where our future lies: the fast lane will cost more and more until it becomes the exclusive superhighway of big business, political interests, and monopolistic entities that will control news, entertainment and information.

Free speech will disappear and there will be little or no competition in the marketplace of goods, services and, most important, ideas.

 Capitalism Has Outlived It's Usefulness 

 The End Time is near for capitalism because it requires corporations to look after their own interests at all times. Profit comes before god, people and country. The cheaper you can make a product and the more you can sell it for, the better. In America, to keep labor costs down, workers were as expendable as old draft horses. That's why it took over a hundred years--from 1830 to 1950--and dozens of bloody clashes between workers and hoodlums hired by corporate employers to get to a minimum wage, an 8-hour work day and five-day work week, paid holidays, paid sick time and personal leave days, safe work places, health benefits and paid vacations.

Today, with minimal resistance from Washington and no labor unions to intervene, workers' historic gains are disappearing like sandcastles drifting into the sea with the tide.

From the onset of the economic bust in 2008 till now, hugely successful corporations like General Electric and Exxon Mobile have continued making billions of dollars, but they've  evaded paying corporate taxes by moving their "headquarters" to tropical islands in the Carribbean. Wells Fargo is taking its billions in bailout money and using them to construct dozens of branch banks in China where the grass is greener. The muckety-mucks of Wall Street like Goldman Sachs, the criminals who brought down the economy, continue to wallow like pigs in million-dollar salaries and millions more in bonuses. 

The capitalist system is a close-ended, circular one. The wheel grinds round and round, pumping billions of dollars out of the earth, oceans, woodlands, lakes and rivers. Corporations suck natural resources out of every nook and cranny, despoil the environment and give as little back to the cities, states and workers as they can get    away with, frequently leaving critical infrastructure aged and deteriorated,  a large element of widespread urban decay.The cream, or profit, is divided among corporate directors, upper tier executives and rich stockholders. 

Many American cities no longer pulse with the sounds of manufacturing but live with the silence of depressed neighborhoods strung around the destitute edges of empty industrialized areas.Vacant factories, standing side by side, lean like drunken derelicts trying to hold each other up. You see them huddled along  the streets and roadsides throughout New England and the Mid-West. Empty knitting cotton and textile mills squat in small towns dotting the Appalachians from Upstate New York south through the Carolinas.

The hills of Pennsylvania and West Virginia bear the furrowed scars of mountain top mining and the streams often flow bright orange with drainage from the mines. Where western New York and Pennsylvania meet, the steel mills have been dead silent for decades, the only sounds  being the eery whistling  made by winds that occasionally blow through them. Somehow, these old towns hang on and you wonder where the money comes from that puts food on the tables of residents.

Polluting For Profit

When I say capitalists look inward only, here's what I mean: In corporate minds, there is never a limit on profits so there is never a reason to let up on the money throttle and treat workers fairly  or humanely by turning some of those extra dollars into higher wages, benefits and retirement pensions; the environment we all share can be damned  as businesses go about concealing their polluting ways in order to keep profits growing; they knowingly injure the public by giving us cancer and other diseases through contaminated factory runoff water; chemical and manufacturing plants routinely  dump poisonous waste anywhere they're not likely to be seen. Besides, even if caught  dumping hazardous waste, they know profits can always offset most fines.

 Supposedly reputable companies kill and maim people through defective products--exploding automobile tires, faulty brake systems and hazardous prescription medications--lie about it then drag their victims through courts for years on end, hoping to beatdown their resolve to be compensated for a death or injury. Manufacturers bristle when juries return huge verdicts against them, blame their legal problems on personal injury lawyers and turn to lawmakers to restrict access to the courts by plaintiffs and to cap damage awards to the people they've injured.

As our national economy moved into globalization, big business began bolting the country. Rather than taking the time to prepare for a future they foresaw and contemplating strategies for taking on foreign competition or helping the government develop policies to cushion the economic blow, corporations took their money and jumped ship, taking the life boats with them. By fleeing overseas they avoid government regulation, free themselves from fair labor practices, pursue new and cheaper sources of raw materials, and are permitted exploit foreign workers in nations where leaders look for personal gain and not after the welfare of their people.

What makes capitalism close-ended is that corporations see themselves as rightfully amoral--responsible only to their stockholders--and their horrendous history proves it.

 

 " Dyin' Just Tryin' to Make a Livin' "

Last April's explosion killing 25 West Virginia miners in the worst mining disaster in more than a quarter century is ugly proof of capitalism's profits-at-all-costs philosophy. The media reported on how the Massey Energy coal company had received dozens of warnings and citations concerning its reckless operations, yet the mine was never shut down  until  all conditions that threatened the lives of workers were corrected. The miners' deaths were foreseeable and avoidable.

The conditions in the Appalachian coalfields have, except for easily absorbed  fines here and there, been ignored for decades. Drive through these gray, desolate hills and you'll see the  mining sites are little changed from a century ago. The history of coalmining is replete with stories of multimillionaire mine operators, exactly like the ones at Massey Energy, who ignored elemental safety concerns while demanding that miners work 12-hour shifts under hazardous conditions for the sake of maximizing profits.

Other labor problems exist in the cozy relationships between businessmen and public officials.  An example of such unhealthy ties went almost undetected during the political standoff  between Republican Governor Scott Walker and the Wisconsin teachers union. The issue there was much larger than labor unions and balanced budgets. While the conflict appeared to be centered on the proposal to eliminate the collective bargaining rights of state employees, it wasn't. Hidden in the new legislation was a proposal that would allow Walker to sell off or lease the state's several dozen energy plants to private companies, with or without the approval of the Wisconsin Public Service Commission and--get this--with or without a competitive bidding process!

Here's some fun facts to go along with the Walker story. Standing in the wings, hoping that the Democrat Senators would scurry back from Illinois in time for a quick vote on the bill were billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch. Although ideologically and financially "invested" in Walker through their $43,000 campaign gift (the second largest one he received) and a multi-million dollar attack ad campaign against his opponent (which was run through through their political action committee, Americans for Prosperity), nothing exists to prove that the Kochs would directly benefit from privatizing the state's power plants. What is widely known, however, is that they own Koch Industries, the largest privately held company in the U.S. with extensive coal interests in Wisconsin.

Today, in this historically deep Recession, big corporations, the Republicans and their symbiotic Tea Party appendage are looking to cut away every last sliver of gains Working Class and Middle Class Americans have made since President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's New Deal created in 1934. President Obama and the Democrats haven't given us any solid reasons to believe they can handle the onslaught. We all need to do whatever we  can to let the White House and our Congressmen and Senators (whether they are Democrat or Republican) know that we don't just expect a good fight  to keep Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid intact,we demand nothing short of victory.

Mega-corporations claim it was capitalism and sound business management that brought this country to the heights of greatness and prosperity, forgetting they didn't do it alone. Not by a long shot. From 1830 on, it's been the muscle, hard labor and dedication of Working and Middle Class people who actually ran the plants, turned out the products and  transformed the capitalists' investments into profits. 

Capitalists have never given workers a thing without forcing them not  merely to work for it, but fight for it. Now that the time has come to help workers and the country meet the challenges of globalization, and what have the major corporations done? They 've cut and run.

But the biggest question begs for an answer: What are we going to do about it?

 

 

  

 Unions

Last Hope of the Dying

Middle Class?

 

 SAVING AMERICA

 Part II

 

The Second in a Series of Ten Things We Must Do in the

Next Eight Years to Restore Our Nation

When the economy imploded back in 2008,

 throwing millions of people out of work,

pushing families out of their homes and on to

 the streets,  uprooting masses of them,

sending them packing to grandma and

grandpa’s house or to living out of their

SUVs parked at WalMarts

around the country,

it probably didn’t occur to you that this

calamity was caused by some

avaricious bastards

on Wall Street.

And if it did, you never would have thought

they were going to get away with it.

But they have.

  Average people aren't paranoid so when

   they hear a  phrase like“class warfare” they

   associate it with college sociology classes or

 Sunday morning talk shows.

By “average people” we mean middle

   class people, hardworking,

nose-to-the-grindstone

 types who are busy playing it straight—

 bringing their kids up right,

taking care of their homes, paying their bills,

(some smoke a little weed now and then)

saving money for college educations and

retirement.

 

They don’t think there are whole groups of  

people out in the world looking to steal

 their way of life from them, least of all rich

 bankers and businessmen. Or politicians.

They’re just Average Joes,

upright members of the middle class—

The Backbone of America.

Day in, day out they put in an honest day’s work, 

they don'tcause trouble

and every four years they vote.

What’s to worry about?

 “Remember the labor unions years ago?

Those guys were never satisfied

with anything, always bellyaching

about jobs, wanting more money, more

time off, more benefits.

More, more, more.

All the time. And what’d it get them?

More dues to pay. That’s what.

And where are they now? Pretty much gone

and most of us live in

  Right to Work states. Me and my family

are doing just fine.

Who needs unions?”

 

What’s happened to labor unions since 1980? What’s happened to the Middle Class since 1980? More to the point, what’s happened to the Middle Class since 2008?

Labor unions—those most responsible for the surging Middle Class between 1960 and 1980—with few exceptions, have been dying off for thirty years and will, if we do not take immediate steps to reverse their fate, be gone. As we’ve seen in Wisconsin, unions are in tatters and disarray. And on the verge of extinction.

                                                                                                                                                     

Should you care? If you want to have a Middle Class—the largest swath of American society with incomes of $35,000 to $250,000 per year—you should be very concerned.

 Before 1930 there were four social classes: The Rich, the Working Class, the Working Poor and the Dirt Poor. We did not become a Middle Class society until the end of World War II when labor unions played the pivotal role in the elevation of the American standard of living.

 It was through unions that the living wage, pensions, healthcare, vacations with pay, sick leave and paid holidays became benefits for millions of citizens, whether union members or not. Unions raised the quality of life for non-union people because employers were forced to offer benefits to workers to prevent them from leaving or unionizing themselves.

 By the 1950s labor unions had become the protectors of workers and guardians of the Middle Class. Unions essentially shaped the core of American society—strong middle class families full of solid, hardworking people—blue collar workers, middle managers, teachers, small businessmen, college professors and other highly educated professionals. Middle class families of the 1950-1970s felt rich and secure. And by today’s standards, they were.             

Unfortunately, by the late 1960’s corrupt union leaders, drunk on power they wielded through millions of dues-paying members, began assaulting management with one demand after another. Public opinion turned on them, even rank and file members felt the calls for ever increasing wages and benefits were overreaching. People working in other sectors of the  economy agreed: the unions were way out of control.

 Throughout the 70s unions continued to fall out of favor. In some instances business reclaimed the loyalty of workers, in others union bosses struck bargains with weak corporate management. Ultimately, the voice of labor was stilled as labor leaders and management shared the wealth.

The decline of union membership isn’t solely attributable to the hostility unions and union leaders in particular attracted. Political change was, perhaps, the most significant reason.

   Reganomics Dribbled All Over

                               the Middle Class                                        

When Ronald Regan became president in 1980, Republicans unleashed a highly successful political and legislative campaign that flattened the unions. A couple of years later, Regan introduced the infamous “Trickle Down Theory of Economics,” a covert affirmation of one  of life’s truisms, “The rich get richer and the poor get screwed.”                                           

As union power and membership dwindled, the value of the output of the average worker grew. Adjusted for inflation, by 2008 it was almost 50% higher than it was in 1973. Workers, however, never received a share of the economic gains they helped create. If gains in productivity had been evenly distributed across the workforce, workers’ income today would be 35% higher than it was in 1973.

The 1980’s witnessed a widening inequality in America driven by the deliberate distribution of income away from all classes of society to the very rich, a trend that accelerated in the 90’s when greed at the corporate top lifted CEO compensation  from $1.3 million to $37.5 million annually. But avarice doesn’t stop at the executive offices of corporations, move over to Wall Street and you’ll find several hedge fund managers making over $1 billion a year!

As Nobel prize-winning economist Paul Krugman of Princeton University (seen  below) has commented: “My sense is that few people are aware of just how much the gap between the very rich and  the rest has widened over a relatively short period of time. In fact, even bringing up the subject exposes you to charges of ‘class warfare,’ ‘the politics of envy’ and so on. And very few people indeed are willing to talk about the profound effects—economic, social and political—of that widening gap.”

 During the past thirty years, as the rich became phenomenally rich,   the average annual salary in the U.S. (adjusted for inflation), rose from $32,522 in 1970 to $35,864 in 1999. Krugman theorizes most Americans don’t perceive this gross disparity because they “. . . assume that because we are the richest country in the world, with G.D.P. per capita higher than that of other major advanced countries [we] must be  better off across the board—that it’s not just our rich who are richer . . . but that the typical American family is much better off than the typical family [in other parts of the world].”

 Most noteworthy is that he sees that the growth of income and wealth in the hands of very few has reshaped our political system and accounts for the demagogic shift to the right and the extreme polarization of our politics.                                                                         

 Lost in the Seventies

What has been absent in the forty years since 1970? Strong labor unions. They’re what’s been missing from the economic equation. Without their intervention on behalf of Working Class and Middle Class workers, the mega corporations have run wild and gotten away with demanding ever more from workers while offering them not less, but nothing in return.

The surprising pushback from the Wisconsin teachers union against the Republican majority in the state house and the governor has raised the hackles of corporate moguls because just when they thought they had workers where they wanted them . . . .

 That’s why you’re seeing corporations and right-wing billionaires like Charles and David Koch spending millions trying to stomp out what they thought were the dying embers of the labor movement. And they’re being assisted by the Republican governors of Wisconsin, Ohio and Michigan (each with generous campaign contributions from the Kochs) who are delighted to serve them by oppressing the people who elected them and stripping unionized public workers of their right to collective bargaining.

 The rich, as F. Scott Fitzgerald famously wrote, are different than you and me. The rich think  Fitzgerald was 1,000% right in the sense that they believe their money makes them superior. The Wall Street Banksters and the Corporate Cabal scorn people without “real money”. The economic interests of our “aristocracy”—the richest 15,000 families in America—do not include an egalitarian bent toward sharing with working people who, in reality, produce the wealth.

Without money, there is no power. This is the stuff that has the makings of revolution.   

 As the response of the White House and both political parties to the meltdown of 2008 has proven, the Middle and Working classes can go to hell. The greatest crime in history committed against a social class (something I call “economic genocide”), has been committed. We know who did it and how they did it, but not a single person responsible for it is in prison.

 The average man has been so mind-blitzed by the lies and electioneering of the empty suits of both political parties, he doesn’t know if he’s on foot or horseback.                                 

Throughout the buzz an insidious political Muzak has been playing—a persistent Right Wing propaganda theme played in variations by political action committees, lobbyists and public relations experts who specialize in disinformation campaigns. Their work has engendered a frustrated public that is angry, disoriented and disenfranchised but doesn’t know who to blame or what to do about it.

We Can Help the Middle Class By

 Fighting for Unions

Rescuing and revitalizing labor unions would be a smart move. My opinion is that if the Working and Middle Classes had a resurgent labor movement watching their backs, much of the economic and social damage of the past thirty years could have been avoided.

Sure, labor unions of the past deserved the wrath and rejection they received from the public. That was then, this is now. To put it plainly, in their absence Big Business, Wall Street Banksters, Insurance Scammers and Corporate Criminals have been raping and pillaging. They own the Democrats and Republicans and Washington is their shared branch office.

 For me, a sign being waved at a rally in Madison drove the message home: “United We  Bargain, Divided We Beg.”

Existing labor unions need our support and giving them that doesn’t cost much. You can send a letter to your local newspaper and copy all your friends, you can blog on the subject, when you hear someone spreading anti-union blather, stand up and correct them. Better yet, if non-union workers are demonstrating against employers’ unfair dealings, find out how you can support them. If union workers are walking a picket line, go out and show your solidarity by walking with them.

 Most important, urge your elected officials at every level to support the Employee Free Choice Act. Private sector workers’ union membership has dropped from a high of about 35% in the 1950s to 7.5% today while public sector union membership is a shaky 36%. Workers have  attempted organizing over the years, but employers have managed to obstruct, intimidate and defeat them at every turn. Consequently, there has been no one to oppose the fall in wages, health insurance benefits or declining workplace conditions.      

The Employee Free Choice Act has come close to passage but has been languishing since 2007. The Act balances the power between employers and employees, restores fairness to the bargaining process and revives respect for workers. It allows employees to make their own decision about their need for union representation in bargaining with employers. It’s most valuable feature is the use of a secret ballot (signing a “Yes” or “No” card) in which a majority wins. Named the “card-check” system, it’s objective is to  protect the workers’ right to accept or reject collective bargaining without fear of co-worker harassment or employer retribution through loss of their jobs.

Here's What They Taught Us:

No Unions, No Fair Play

The law allows a union to be certified as the official union to bargain with an employer upon union officials presenting the signatures of a pro-union majority. It eliminates the right of  an employer to demand an additional, separate ballot when more than half of the employees have already voted in favor of organizing. This aspect of the law prevents employers from getting a second bite of the apple by giving them an opportunity to reverse the vote through pressuring or intimidating workers.

Do we need labor unions? Yes, and we need them badly. Without them, the Middle and Working Classes will be compressed into one giant Lower Class and we will all become slaves working on the Great American Plantation.