Has Everyone Improved Except Working People?

A Middle Class Income is a Luxury
by DAVID MACARAY


Not to wax nostalgically, but when we look back at the social progress made over the last half-century or so, we have much to be proud of. Granted, in many instances it was unfortunate we had to wait so long before these progressive measures took root, but late to the party or not, the fact that they were eventually adopted and became part of America’s social landscape is, by far, the bigger story.

Over the course of the last half-century, we’ve seen real progress in civil rights, abortion rights, and gay rights; we’ve seen the birth of an anti-war movement, the rise of Second Wave feminism, the embrace of automobile safety and environmental consciousness (establishment of the EPA), acknowledgement of the rights of disabled citizens (passage of the ADA), liberalization of marijuana laws, laws against the harassment of pets, and passage of the 26th amendment, allowing 18-year olds to vote.

But alarmingly, over this same period, working people have been more or less victimized. The labor movement has not only failed to progress commensurately, it seems to have done a crisp about-face and begun marching in the opposite direction. Not to wallow in self-pity here, but while other groups (minorities, women, the disabled, stoners, teens, pets, et al) have all been given a well-deserved boost, the working-class appears to have had a “Kick me” sign attached to its backside.

Labor unions watched in disbelief as the gains made prior to and just following World War II were watered down beyond recognition or, in many instances, were summarily wiped off the slate entirely. One of the results of this systematic assault on working people is the battered state of today’s rapidly shrinking middle-class. In that ongoing rat-race we euphemistically refer to as the “global economy,” the rats are clearly winning.

The contrast between labor’s role, then and now, is staggering. Consider one example: In 1950, a milestone agreement was forged between labor and management. The media christened it the “Treaty of Detroit.” You don’t hear much about it today, even in labor circles, but without question it stands as a landmark in the social and economic history of the United States. Indeed, if any single event can be said to have “invented” the American middle-class, it was the Treaty of Detroit.

The U.S. labor situation following WWII was a mess. Disgruntled workers and lengthy shrikes were the order of the day. Workers who’d been asked to sacrifice during the war, but who’d seen U.S. industrialists reap enormous war-time profits, now insisted on getting their fair share, and were willing to hit the bricks for months at a time if that’s what it took to get it. But in 1950, Walter Reuther, president of the United Auto Workers made a deal with the Big Three automakers (GM was first, Chrysler and Ford soon followed) that changed everything.

Reuther promised the Big Three that if they gave workers health care and pensions, unemployment benefits, increased vacations, and COLAs (cost of living allowance), the UAW, in return, would not go on strike for five years. That’s five years of guaranteed labor peace—five years of no crippling strikes, five years of no idle factories; five years of every single car coming off Detroit’s assembly line being sold to a commodity-starved postwar public—in return for benefits the companies could easily afford. (Granted, this was back when companies paid more attention to their employees than their shareholders)

This arrangement—particularly company-provided health care and pensions—not only instantly became the gold standard of organized labor, but it’s been the template for union-management negotiations ever since. With European-style national health care off the table (it was anathema to U.S. politicians), it fell to businesses to provide it. Health care and pensions were no longer regarded as “luxuries”; they were now as integral to the job as general wages.

But that’s all changed. Things have regressed so dramatically, we now feel trapped in a hideous, atavistic nightmare, unable to wake. Health care is once again regarded as a luxury. A defined pension is a luxury. A full-time job is a luxury. Union membership is a luxury. A middle-class income is a luxury. In fact, everything north of genteel poverty is a luxury. In some ways, it feels like the storied American Labor Movement never happened.

Democrats: Masters of Self-Delusion

Oh powers otherworldly, hear my prayer: Fuck, do we need more political parties to establish fair representation in the land where democracy has failed...

Losing on Every Front
by MICHAEL BRENNER


Democrats are masters of illusion – especially self-delusion. Their abject performance over the past few decades has shorn them of identity and conviction. They have lost on every front against a Republican opponent that has abandoned the mainstream for cloud cuckoo land. Their natural constituencies have been ravaged: workers, teachers, civil libertarians, the poor and almost poor, the elderly, environmentalists. Yet, today, all we hear from the Democratic faithful are cackles about the plight of the Republicans. “Is The Republican Party Obsolete?” “Can The Republicans Be Saved?” Those are the headline stories being relished by Democrats.

Landmark features of today’s scene testify to a much harsher reality. Reactionary Republicans control the majority of the nation’s governorships and state legislatures. They ruthlessly are rolling back the great achievements of twentieth century social progress. Trade unions, women’s reproductive rights, environmental protections, public education and the health of the vulnerable are being degraded. This is the outcome of the electoral debacle of 2010. That dramatic Democratic rout stemmed from the White House’s, and Democrats’ timid inability to channel the discontents aroused by the financial crisis – allowing the Tea Party and their moneyed backers to exploit popular anxiety in order to advance their own regressive agenda. What could have been an historic opportunity for ushering in an era of progressive public policy, and casting Republicans into outer orbit for a generation, instead fed the forces of reaction.

In Washington, those same elements control the House of Representatives along with the Republican minority in the Senate. Yes, Democratic candidates for the House in aggregate did win more votes than Republicans; it was gerrymandering that gave the latter their majority. But they got the chance to rig the election by the landslide in the 2010 local contests.

Most significant for the longer term is the skewing of public discourse in an ultra-conservative direction. This is true of the media, the punditocracy and inter-party debates as well. The most glaring example is provided by the fate of Social Security. It has been placed on the cutting board by both the White House and the Congressional leadership. They have locked themselves into a bipartisan consensus that mislabeled “entitlement’ programs should be looted to cover fiscal imbalances – this despite the legal reality that Social Security and Medicare draw on dedicated trust funds independent of tax revenues. That could be done by putting off indefinitely the day when contributions to the trust funds are exceeded by payouts to recipient of their earned benefits. The fund remains wholly solvent after that point, BUT instead of moneys being available to drain into the general budget, the transfer would have to be made in the opposite direction. That is the witching hour that the bipartisan alliance desperately wants to avoid. It requires reducing benefits. Nefarious? Dishonest? Yes – but it will happen.

President Obama visualizes this plunder as the central element of a “grand bargain” which he hopes will stand as his presidential legacy. Repeatedly he has moved in that direction: by offering big cuts in exchange for a mess of porridge during the budget confrontation of summer 2011; in appointing two arch critics of the programs, Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson to head an extra-constitutional panel; in refusing to fence off “entitlements in this year’s round of hostage taking. Nancy Pelosi (a supposed liberal) just a few months ago voiced her support for cutting benefits by lowering the Cost-of-Living increment – this at the very moment she was lobbying to protect the tax breaks of the $250,000 – 400,000 earners who form her donation and support base back in California. Austerity overall has skipped across the aisle to be taken up by the Democrats as their own watchword – announced by Obama with fanfare in 2010. They have done so knowing full well that austerity is manifestly just a code word for cutbacks in domestic programs that serve primarily the “common people” who have been the backbone of the Democratic Party for almost a century.

The most grievous failure has been the surrender to Wall Street. Indentured to the big financial players by their perceived need for campaign money, identifying increasingly with their fellow elites, and drawing their candidates less and less from ordinary people – the Democrats shied from holding accountable the malefactors of financial privilege. Their tepid Dodd-Frank reform legislation does next to nothing to ward off the abuses that led to the crash; and its dilution during the prolonged process of writing specific regulations has vitiated whatever potential it had. Furthermore, they left intact a regulatory culture that is user-friendly for the biggest financial players, and sealed it by appointing persons with no enthusiasm for coming to grips with them. We need only look at Neil Barofsky’s account of his ordeal as Special Inspector General to monitor TARP for a blow-by-blow account of how the appeasers and compromisers took direction from the White House to ensure that the Wall Street barons came through the crisis unscathed.

Administration officials led by Treasury Secretary Geithner used every imaginable means to derail him. The most shocking incident involved a meeting with Herb Alison, Geithner’s right hand man whom the White House had appointed as Assistant Secretary of the Treasury responsible for TARP. It was right out of the Godfather. Alison told Barofsky amiably but bluntly that unless his curbed his righteous impulses his future, and that of his new-born daughter, would be financially bleak. Barofsky calls it the “the gold or the lead conversation.” That sort of thing does not occur unless the “proposing” party knows that he has the blessing of the top man. Barofsky, like Elizabeth Warren, was treated by the Obama administration as an enemy for presuming to stand in the way of the Wall Street juggernaut. In contrast, Mary Jo White of J P Morgan-Chase, newly appointed head of the SEC, is cut in the preferred mold.

Wherever one turns the story is the same. Be it income inequality where no Democratic plan or program worthy of the name has seen light of day; the environment – where regulation has been applied with such a light touch as hardly to be felt; trade union rights – which Obama has assiduously ignored with no protest from the party’s Congressional leadership; etc. This is not to mention the should-to-shoulder defense of the historic assaults on civil liberties under the blanket justification of the contrived “war on terror.” Last week, one heard only one recognizable Democratic voice (that of Senator Ron Wyden) denouncing Eric Holder’s latest rewriting of the Constitution in declaring that the President has legal authority to assassinate American citizens on United States soil. Nancy Pelosi went so far as to express her ambivalence as to whether it even was good idea to make public such killings. This despite polls showing fewer than 1 in 4 Americans favoring strikes against Americans even in face of an imminent threat.

Is all this simply a reflection of new political realities? The opinion surveys of public attitudes on the most salient socio-economic issues show this not to be the case. And to the extent that attitudes may have become less enlightened on certain matters, to the extent that the media are indeed in the grip of right-wing dogmatists – the meekness and inarticulateness of Democrats bears much of the responsibility. Party leaders and the sympathetic commentariat are not visibly over-exerting themselves to close the gap. Much easier, and gratifying, to laugh at the antics of the buffoonish – but winning – Republicans.

Democrats’ gravest sin is not confronting the ideological onslaught against government. The Republicans have turned back the clock a century or more in painting the state as the source of evil and government as its malign agent – except of course in the burgeoning national security domain. Reviving atavistic feelings from a bygone age, they undertook a crusade to cast Washington as the great villain. Reconciling American individualism with realities of the modern world was achieved long ago – only to be undone by a relentless campaign enabled by the Democrats’ passive acquiescence over the past 30 years. The battle wasn’t lost; the enemy was never engaged. As a consequence, all progressive forces are on their heels as their feeble attempts to preserve individual programs are thwarted by having the philosophical high ground cut from under them. It is telling that after the disasters produced by the unregulated private sector, they still could not muster the gumption or moral authority to set things right. Barack Obama instead embraced Bill Clinton’s silly, yet cynical proclamation that “the era of big government is over.” He never has made the case why government is vital and indispensable. Neither he nor Congressional leaders have framed the issues of reform, and of enlightened social policy, so as to expound the message that government and civilized society are necessary complements in this day and age.

They never tied around the Republicans’ necks the historical record of their opposition to all those programs that the large majority of Americans cherish – like Medicare. They never told audiences straight from the shoulder what the basic contradiction is between the Republican vision of a refurbished Gaslight Era and the well-being Americans have taken for granted. Why haven’t they? The excuse is Republican obstructionism. But isn’t the real reason lack of conviction – especially by a White House manifestly more comfortable with the celebrity world of movers and shakers than with the people who elected him? Indeed, is it just possible that Mr. Obama believes deep down that the Republican attitude resonates more closely with the authentic heartbeat of America?

The only thing that has prevented the Republicans from sweeping the board entirely is their own fanaticism and crude tactics. The Democrats have become like the defenders of Constantinople who for centuries withstood one siege after another from the East only because the massed besieging armies fell victim to the Plague. The Republicans indeed are plague prone given their primitive attitude toward collective management of public facilities. The spectacle of their running around in frantic circles hardly is occasion, though, for the Democrats to stand on the ramparts giddy with laughter. After all, on each of these occasions they have lost another province or two to the barbarians.

New Labor Stats Show GOP Assault on Public Unions Is Working

Wednesday, January 23, 2013 by Common Dreams
Numbers 'reflect concerted attack on organized labor'
- Jon Queally, staff writer

 

As the Washington Post's Jim Tankersley points out and new data from the US Department of Labor released on Wednesday confirms, the Republican push to destroy public sector unions in the last several years is having its desired effect.

 

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics' new figures on unionization, the percentage of organized workers in the US took a sharp—and 'unusual'—decline last year, dropping from 11.8 percent in 2011 to 11.3 percent in 2012.

Moreover, as the New York Times highlights, the largest dip came not from the typical source of private union attrition caused by offshoring or factory closings, but from job losses in the public sector, which caused overall public sector union rates to drop more than full point in one year—from 37 percent to 35.9 percent.

Private sector unions—long in decline due to outsourcing linked to corporate globalization policies—now currently have about 7 million members, whereas public employee unions have roughly 7.3 million members.

The curious trend that Tankersley points out is the role that government-pushed austerity has played in union attrition. He writes:

The big culprit for last year’s drop doesn’t appear to be outsourcing (though union factory employment has fallen since the recession, while non-union employment has risen). The issue was austerity.

Specifically, state and local governments laid off a lot of workers last year to help balance their budgets. That means they let a lot of union members go. The Labor Department reports that more than half of all U.S. union members work in the public sector; government is nearly 36 percent unionized, while the private-sector union membership rate is less than 7 percent. (Last year’s stats suggest that some Republican governors’ efforts to reduce unionization in their state public sectors is working – Wisconsin posted a 2.1 percentage point drop in union membership from 2011 to 2012.)

Asking labor leaders to respond to the statistics on membership, Tankersley said they 'roundly' agreed that the drop in rates "reflected a concerted attack on organized labor and an austerity hit to the economy that affects everyone, not just folks with a union card."

“The economic crisis—and the politicians who took advantage of it for their own anti-worker purposes—had a negative impact,” Lee Saunders, president of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, told Tankersley.

And Richard Trumka, president of the A.F.L.-C.I.O., the nation’s main union federation, added: “Working women and men urgently need a voice on the job today, but the sad truth is that it has become more difficult for them to have one, as today’s figures on union membership demonstrate.”

If Our Schools Are So Bad, Why Are They Teaching This Stuff?

I need my hope for the future restored in a big way. It's gone. I want to pack up my family and take them to another country. Shit, another world, another reality. Everything about this country is corrupt and it only gets worse, and if you stand up for your rights, or stand up for reform, the government and its corporate rulers have seen to it that they will crush you. Education reform is a joke.

The Hollow Reform Movement
by DAVID MACARAY


By now, thankfully, most people have come to the realization that the so-called “reform movement,” nominally dedicated to improving America’s public schools, is as bogus, misleading, and greed-driven as those tricked-out, bundled-up, sub-prime mortgages that almost sank Wall Street, and required a nearly trillion-dollar bailout from taxpayers.

Make no mistake. This well-coordinated effort to debase our schools is being fueled by (1) Republican anti-union forces who want to bust the teachers’ union, (2) entrepreneurs who see privatization as a potential gold mine, and (3) education mandarins and “consultants” who make their living peddling the view that our schools are in crisis.

Of course, all three groups blame the teachers and the teachers’ union for the mess we’re in, which, besides being vicious and duplicitous, is tantamount to blaming doctors for America’s obesity epidemic. (“Hey, you’re a doctor, aren’t you?? Then do something about all these fat people!!”)

Another thing most people probably realize is that there is an almost one-to-one correlation between bad, rundown, low-employment, high-crime neighborhoods and bad, low-achieving schools. Even though that correlation is a fact, the purveyors of public education horror stories continue to ignore it, and try, instead, to blame the teachers, accusing them of incompetence and apathy. Why? Because blaming teachers is so much easier than addressing those knotty sociological or economic problems.

But something that most people may not realize is that the curriculum being taught in those distressed inner city schools (where the percentage of students in foster care can be as high as 35-percent) is the exact same curriculum being taught in those affluent, stable, high-achieving school districts. Moreover, both sets of students take the exact same standardized tests to determine proficiency.

I asked a teacher in the LAUSD (Los Angeles Unified School District), the second-largest school district in the U.S. (behind New York City), for some sample 5th grade math questions from the CST (California Standards Test). At the bottom of the page are five (5) actual math problems from that test.

Take a peek at them and ask yourself this question: If our schools used to be “good,” and are now “bad,” why do these math problems seem harder than the ones we had as 5th graders? I don’t know about you, but I wasn’t exposed to this material until the 7th grade. They’re also teaching the periodic table to inner-city 5th graders, which, I vividly recall, we didn’t learn until high school.

Another thing people may not realize is that the CST has no bearing on a student’s report card or whether he or she will be promoted to the next grade. You can bottom out on the CST and pay no price (hence the concern over a student’s incentive to do well on an “irrelevant” standardized test). The CST is used solely as a means of measuring overall proficiency….and, of course, as ammunition for attacks on public school teachers.

Here are those test questions. I did not include the most difficult problems because the most difficult ones used geometric figures, algebraic graphs, and truth tables, none of which, alas, I was able to format.

But if the material I did include is the kind of material 5th grade teachers expect students to know, then the standards of our “bad” schools are not only significantly higher than people realize, but the 5th grade today is significantly harder than it was when I was a kid, back in the days when our schools were “good.”

1. 15.12 ÷ 2.4 =

A. 0.513
B. 0.63
C. 5.13
D. 6.3

2. What value of p makes this equation true?

44×73 = 44×( p + 3)

A. 41
B. 47
C. 70
D. 73

3. c + 2.5
Which situation could be described by the expression above?

A. Lia jogged c miles yesterday, and 2.5 miles farther today.
B. Lia jogged c miles yesterday, and 2.5 miles fewer today.
C. Lia jogged 2.5 miles yesterday, and c miles fewer today.
D. Lia jogged 2.5 miles yesterday, and c times as far today.

4. What is the prime factorization of 36?

A. 2-squared ×3-squared
B. 2-squared ×3-cubed
C. 4×3-squared
D. 4×9

5. Javier bought 9 pounds of ground beef. He saved $8.37 by using a store coupon. How much did he save per pound of ground beef?

A. $0.89
B. $0.93
C. $1.08
D. $75.33

Answers: 1. D, 2. C, 3. A, 4. A, 5. B

Approaching the Twilight of the Labor Movement

We're Sunk
by DAVID MACARAY


Private sector union membership in the U.S. stands at about 7-percent, meaning that 93-percent of all private sector jobs in this country are non-union, which makes those accusations of unions of being “too powerful” even more ridiculous and hysterical than they already were. (Not to resort to one of those tiresome Nazi analogies, but didn’t Hitler use the Big Lie to great effect?)

Yet, even with these depressingly low membership numbers, if America’s non-union workers rooted for unions to succeed, and aspired to join a union themselves, it would mean, at least in theory, that the labor movement was alive and well and had a decent chance of succeeding.

Unfortunately, that doesn’t seem to be the case. Alas, many (too many) non-union workers not only don’t admire or respect labor unions, they hate them. They envy them. They fear them. They resent them. It’s as if America’s corporate masters had gathered together all the underpaid, under-benefited non-union workers and done some hideous Manchurian Candidate brain-washing number on them, convincing them they could trust the profit-motive more than they could trust a workers alliance.

As a college student, I worked part-time as a breakfast cook. I’m not exaggerating when I say that, back in those days, it was the dream of every cook to get a job in a union manufacturing plant. That was their life goal. These guys didn’t dream of being millionaires or lottery winners or entrepreneurs; they dreamed of working in an industrial setting where the wages, benefits, and working conditions were first-rate.

Which is why it’s such a stunning disappointment to see so much antipathy directed toward unions today. One of the main complaints you hear is that workers shouldn’t be forced to join a union or forced to pay dues. That objection has always puzzled me. You hire into a union shop because the wages and benefits are roughly 15-percent better than non-union facilities, and yet you balk at having to embrace the very organization that made those wages and benefits possible?

In an odd way, the resentment at being “forced” to join a union (despite the obvious advantages) reminds me of the South’s resistance to desegregation. Southerners wouldn’t accept the fact that the federal government could tell a restaurant in Alabama that it no longer had the right to choose whom it could and couldn’t serve. Even though this was private property, your “Whites Only” signs had to come down. It was a concept people couldn’t absorb. Perhaps that same mind-set applies to union membership.

This classic labor vs. management adversarial relationship has been in place in the U.S. ever since the mid-19th century, and has existed in Europe far longer. Because everything and everyone—the Congress, the media, the police, the banks, the city fathers—were arrayed against the unions, it was a constant struggle, and any progress labor made came at a steep price.

But the one enduring resource unions could always count on—the one built-in advantage they had—was the support of working men and women. Because workers felt they were all pretty much in the same boat, this was truly an all-encompassing “labor movement.” Moreover, it was this grassroots, across-the-board solidarity that management feared the most because they had no way of combating it, other than by giving workers a larger slice of the pie.

Which is what makes the current anti-unionism so disturbing. Despite statistics clearly showing that the middle-class is losing more ground every year, the average worker, for whatever reason, continues to place more faith in the generosity and infallibility of the so-called “free market” than he does in the only lobbying organization working people have ever had.

If the support of decent, hard-working men and women continues to evaporate, it means we’re sunk. It means we’re more or less finished. It means Corporationism has won and the Working Majority has lost. And who knows? Maybe this is a done deal. Maybe we’ve already crossed that dreadful threshold.

Romney's Veep Choice: Paul Ryan, Koch Ally and 'Right-Wing Social Engineer'

And after Obama capitulates to his Wall St puppeteers, Romney's puppeteers--the Kochs--pick his VP running-mate for him...Paul Ryan. It can get plenty worse, though it doesn't seem possible.--jef

Gay or not gay?

In making the risky choice of picking Rep. Paul Ryan, Mitt Romney seals the deal on the Koch brothers' takeover of the Republican Party.
August 10, 2012

 |   By Adele M. Stan

It's official: The Republican Party is now officially a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Koch brothers. How else to explain Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney's pick of Rep. Paul Ryan, Wis., as his running mate. Yes, that Paul Ryan -- chairman of the House Budget Committee and author of the infamous Ryan roadmap budget plan, which promises to turn Medicare into a privatized voucher system, and yank health care from millions of children whose parents happen to be poor. And that's just the beginning. In addition to a raft of cuts, the Ryan plan would end the Earned Income Tax Credit, which millions of parents count on.

It's a plan that even former House Speaker Newt Gingrich deemed too "radical." Asked by NBC's David Gregory to respond to Ryan's proposal, Gingrich famously said [3] (video):

"I don't think right-wing social engineering is any more desirable than left-wing social engineering. I don't think imposing radical change from the right or the left is a very good way for a free society to operate."

(Of course that was before Gingrich walked back [4] those remarks, apparently reminded by some savvy operative that he might not want to anger the Kochs, to whom Ryan, 42, is something of a youthful ward, having been the beneficiary of years of support from the Koch-founded Americans For Prosperity.)

In case anyone should miss the point that Ryan is a very Kochy guy, Romney is doing his big reveal of Ryan this morning aboard the U.S.S. Wisconsin, a decommisioned ship docked in the all-important swing state of Virginia. However important Virginia is to the electoral math, Wisconsin is a symbolic icon for the Tea Party. It's not only Ryan's home state; it's the poster state of right-wing triumph, the place where Gov. Scott Walker successfully fended off a recall attempt by progressives in response to a bill he rammed through the state legislature that all but ended collective bargaining for the state's public employees. Much of the credit for Wisconsin's right turn goes to Americans For Prosperity, which boasts a particularly aggressive Wisconsin chapter, which began building a network of activists there in 2005.

Ryan's association with the group goes back almost that far. In 2008, he was granted [5] the Wisconsin AFP chapter's "Defending the American Dream" award, handed to him by a young county executive who served as emcee for those festivities -- a guy named Scott Walker. Since then, he has made countless appearances on the group's behalf, at anti-health-care reform rallies on Capitol Hill, on conference town halls across the country and at Americans For Prosperity and Americans For Prosperity Foundation events. (Just enter Ryan's name into the search engine on the Amerians For Prosperity Web site, and you'll come up with eight pages [6] of citations.) In fact, Ryan was due to speak at last week's conference sponsored by the AFP Foundation in Washington, D.C., forcing increased speculation about his running-mate prospects when he failed to show [7].

For Romney, the pluses in picking Ryan are these: the Tea Partiers, who are less than wild about Mittens, really love them some Paul Ryan -- as does David Koch, who will be seated as a Romney delegate at the Republican National Convention in Tampa. Koch and his brother, Charles, are major donors, not only to political candidates, but to a range of right-wing think tanks and groups [8]. In the post-Citizens United world, those donations add up to millions in political advertisements by all manner of non-profit groups. Already, Americans For Prosperity has made a $27 million air-time buy [9] for running anti-Obama ads.

Romney already owes some of his success in the primary season to Koch's favorite politicians in Wisconsin. Remember Rick Santorum? Right-wing base types -- Christian evangelicals and Tea Partiers -- just loved him. He was giving Romney a whole lotta agita during the primaries -- first stealing Romney's reported win in the Iowa caucuses back from the Mittster in a recount, and nearly besting Romney in Michigan, where Romney grew up.

In the weeks leading up to the Wisconsin primary, Santorum was running double-digits ahead of Romney. But then Paul Ryan endorsed Romney [10], and so did the Koch-bought U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson. When Ryan began campaigning with Romney in the final days of the campaign, the crowds at Romney events seemed to swell. While conventional wisdom holds that endorsements don't amount to a hill of beans, conventional wisdom had an epic #FAIL on Wisconsin's primary night, when 60 percent of those responding in exit polls [10] said that Romney's endorsers influenced their vote. (Romney also won the endorsements of a number of Americans For Prosperity-backed state legislators.)

But Romney's Ryan pick is not without its minuses, the largest one being running with a guy who has promised to end Medicare and replace it with something else entirely that could wind up costing seniors big-time. Don't be fooled by the fact that Ryan calls his voucher-health-care system for seniors "Medicare". That's just a trick -- like an employer who promises you dental coverage that amounts to a coupon for a discount on a visit to your favorite dentist.

Of course, photos of the children who would lose health-care under the Ryan plan would probably not play well for Romney, either. Democracy Corps, the polling outfit run by Stan Greenberg and James Carville, found the Ryan budget to be a drag on Romney's prospects for moving swing voters into his column. (Greenberg refers to the key Obama coalition of unmarried women, youth, and minority voters as the "Rising American Electorate.") From their latest memo [11], issued in July:

The Ryan budget’s impact on the most vulnerable is powerful among key swing voters, including unmarried women, who shifted a net 10 points toward Obama, the Rising American Electorate (net 3-point shift), and independents (net 9-point shift). Even conservatives were swayed, shifting a net 13 points toward Obama.
Among those who heard an even split of facts about the Ryan budget – including ones about cuts to programs aimed to help mostly lower and working class families – the shift is even more pronounced. With this group of voters, Obama leads Romney by 9 points, 52 to 43 percent, the largest margin of any of the groups in our experiment. It’s clear that focusing on what the Ryan budget does to the most vulnerable Americans can pay dividends for Obama.

Looks like the Koch brothers are going to have to throw a whole lot of money at this thing to make it work for them. But we know they've got plenty of that.

 Links

[3] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OsHw92j9P0Q
[4] http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2011/05/17/gingrich-apologizes-paul-ryan-right-wing-social-engineering-criticism/#ixzz23DfTabbG
[5] http://www.alternet.org/story/149965/wisconsin_is_a_battleground_against_the_billionaire_kochs%27_plan_to_break_labor%27s_back
[6] http://americansforprosperity.org/search/Paul+Ryan/
[7] http://www.politico.com/blogs/burns-haberman/2012/08/paul-ryans-weekend-131130.html
[8] http://www.alternet.org/story/150520/you_thought_the_koch_brothers_were_bad_turns_out_they%27re_even_worse_than_you_thought?paging=off
[9] http://content.usatoday.com/communities/theoval/post/2012/08/afp-to-announce-a-new-27-million-ad-buy-against-obama/1#.UCYW42NSREM
[10] http://www.alternet.org/newsandviews/article/876280/did_the_koch_machine_put_romney_over_the_top_in_wisconsin
[11] http://www.democracycorps.com/National-Surveys/serious-attack-on-ryan-budget-takes-toll-on-mitt-romney/#ftn1

Money, Power and Politics

Money Rules--But Only If We Let It

by ANN ROBERTSON and BILL LEUMER

 

There has been much talk recently about the impact of money on politics, especially in the wake of the Citizens United ruling that has ratcheted up the role of corporate money in political campaigns. Organized labor was quick to blame this ruling for its defeat in Wisconsin. And many have assumed that the relation of money to politics is like a law of nature: the more money one has, the more political power one can wield.

There is some truth to this claim. In a recent editorial (Money Rules, April 19, 2012) The New York Times noted that “big donors to Mr. Obama and the Democratic Party are far more likely to be welcomed at the White House than those who gave smaller gifts.”

The editorial continued: “And, despite decades of money abuses and scandal, neither presidential candidate [Obama nor Romney] has shown any interest in reforming the system.”

Of course, politicians always deny that there is any connection between campaign donations and their policy decisions, swearing that the strong statistical correlation between the two is entirely coincidental. However, given their fixation on “the bottom line,” it is inconceivable that corporations would continue to donate billions of dollars a year to politicians if they did not expect to get a “return” on their investment.

It should not be surprising that money and power tend to converge. Capitalism is not just an economic system that places profit above all other concerns; it breeds a culture in which money is the “bottom line” in every transaction. Money opens the doors to the best education available, to quality health care and spacious homes in crime-free neighborhoods, not to mention “attractive mates.” Money buys leisure time and can allow people to avoid work altogether. Money commands respect. When Jamie Dimon of JPMorgan appeared before a Congressional committee after having lost billions of dollars in risky investments, he was bombarded by obsequious questions by members of Congress, who probably would have preferred asking him for investing advice. And although not a sufficient condition, money is a necessary condition for winning political elections and is usually the determining factor. Finally, with individuals placed in perennial competition with one another under capitalism, social and community ties are weakened, leaving only money to fill the void.

Within the system of capitalism, the more money and power one has, the easier it is to acquire still more money and power. When the billionaire Warren Buffett recently invested $5 billion dollars with Goldman Sachs, he was guaranteed a 10 percent rate of return, meaning he will make $500 million a year without lifting a finger. Even worse, much of this money is acquired simply by the rich taking from everyone else. In their recent book, Winner-Take-All Politics: How Washington Made the Rich Richer – and Turned Its Back on the Middle Class, political scientists Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson argue that much of the new wealth enjoyed by the rich has resulted from their success at lobbying politicians to change the tax laws and business regulations to their advantage. Hence, when left to its own devices, capitalism tends to concentrate money and power in the hands of a few while allowing inequalities in wealth to grow ever greater.

Unions were created to combat these tendencies and to protect workers from their employers’ avid pursuit of money.  While employers want to maximize profits, workers want enough to pay their bills and lead a comfortable life. Hence, there is a power struggle between workers and employers over how much of the company’s profits will go to wages and benefits and how much to the owners. Given that the owners have far more money at their disposal than the workers, one might assume that they hold the reins of power in their hands and can dictate the outcome.

But there is a limit to the role that money can play. Unions operate on their own unique principles that provide the potential for a far greater exercise of power than what their employers can command, even with far more money at their disposal. Rejecting competition, workers organized unions on the principle of solidarity. It was a logical course for workers to pursue: while an individual worker is powerless in the face of a domineering employer and while workers who are competing against one another are collectively powerless in relation to the employer, workers quickly learned that power shifts in their direction when they join together and engage in coordinated action. If one person tries to conduct a strike, that person is simply fired. When the entire workforce conducts a strike, they bring the business to a grinding halt and become a force to contend with.

Because of this need to stand together and work for a common goal, unions generate their own culture. When they have successfully struggled together, camaraderie develops among the union members. They take care of one another, cover for each other, and form lifetime friendships in much the same way as soldiers who have endured battles together.

For this reason, union struggles can change the entire political and cultural landscape. When workers decide to take a stand in order to break the cycle of growing inequalities in wealth, when they fight for a decent standard of living that includes a living wage, job security, health care, access to quality education, homeownership, and retirement with dignity, not just for themselves but for everyone, they inspire all working people and create the possibility of a massive social movement that has the potential to forge historic changes, as was done in the 1930s. People are inspired by movements that aim at creating a better world for everyone, where those who need help are given what they need, where people contribute according to their ability, and where no one advances at the expense of others. This more ennobled sense of humanity engenders inspiration in a way that money never can. And people are inspired when workers wage a real fight, as opposed to the current ever so prevalent practice of organizing fake fights that involve porous picket lines that no one takes seriously or demonstrations of several hundred workers when the workforce includes thousands.

When these social movements achieve momentum, money no longer plays the deciding role. People shed their disconnected isolation, become engaged and talk with one another, become knowledgeable of the issues, and derive strength in their numbers. And massive numbers of people demonstrating for a common goal has proved time and again to be the prevailing factor.

At this time in history, organized labor, however, seems content to rely on money for power. Unions spend hundreds of millions of dollars trying to elect Democrats to office, leaving the vast reservoir of power of their membership untapped. Of course, corporations have even more money at their disposal and give generously to both political parties to hedge their bets, easily outspending labor in the process. When it comes to money, simple arithmetic is all that counts: because corporations give far more than labor, they get far more than labor, and the inequalities in wealth continue to grow.

As a result of the unions’ current orientation toward the Democratic Party, one must look long and hard for compelling examples, aside from the 1930s, when unions put up a valiant struggle. But in 1958 the unions relied on themselves instead of the Democrats, mobilized their members to defeat a right to work law, and won a stunning victory. The local newspaper reported: “Ohio voters rejected the ‘right-to-work’ proposal by the biggest margin ever recorded on an issue on the ballot in the state’s history.”

More recently, United Electrical workers conducted a sit-down strike in a Chicago windows and doors factory, demanding their severance pay from the Bank of America. Because of the outpouring of public support from across the country, Bank of America, one of the most powerful corporations in the world, backed down, and the workers won their demands.

When it is a question of the efficacy of money in politics and workers fail to put up a fight, money prevails. The moral is: money counts – but only if we let it.

GOP Enthusiasm for Romney (This Modern World)

Colonized by Corporations

Monday, May 14, 2012 by TruthDig.com

by Chris Hedges

 

In Robert E. Gamer’s book, The Developing Nations, is a chapter called “Why Men Do Not Revolt.” In it Gamer notes that although the oppressed often do revolt, the object of their hostility is misplaced. They vent their fury on a political puppet, someone who masks colonial power, a despised racial or ethnic group or an apostate within their own political class. The useless battles serve as an effective mask for what Gamer calls the “patron-client” networks that are responsible for the continuity of colonial oppression. The squabbles among the oppressed, the political campaigns between candidates who each are servants of colonial power, Gamer writes, absolve the actual centers of power from addressing the conditions that cause the frustrations of the people. Inequities, political disenfranchisement and injustices are never seriously addressed. “The government merely does the minimum necessary to prevent those few who are prone toward political action from organizing into politically effective groups,” he writes.

Gamer and many others who study the nature of colonial rule offer the best insights into the functioning of our corporate state. We have been, like nations on the periphery of empire, colonized. We are controlled by tiny corporate entities that have no loyalty to the nation and indeed in the language of traditional patriotism are traitors. They strip us of our resources, keep us politically passive and enrich themselves at our expense. 

 

The mechanisms of control are familiar to those whom the Martinique-born French psychiatrist and writer Frantz Fanon called “the wretched of the earth,” including African-Americans. The colonized are denied job security. Incomes are reduced to subsistence level. The poor are plunged into desperation. Mass movements, such as labor unions, are dismantled. The school system is degraded so only the elites have access to a superior education. Laws are written to legalize corporate plunder and abuse, as well as criminalize dissent. And the ensuing fear and instability—keenly felt this past weekend by the more than 200,000 Americans who lost their unemployment benefits—ensure political passivity by diverting all personal energy toward survival. It is an old, old game.

A change of power does not require the election of a Mitt Romney or a Barack Obama or a Democratic majority in Congress, or an attempt to reform the system or electing progressive candidates, but rather a destruction of corporate domination of the political process—Gamer’s “patron-client” networks. It requires the establishment of new mechanisms of governance to distribute wealth and protect resources, to curtail corporate power, to cope with the destruction of the ecosystem and to foster the common good. But we must first recognize ourselves as colonial subjects. We must accept that we have no effective voice in the way we are governed. We must accept the hollowness of electoral politics, the futility of our political theater, and we must destroy the corporate structure itself.

The danger the corporate state faces does not come from the poor. The poor, those Karl Marx dismissed as the Lumpenproletariat, do not mount revolutions, although they join them and often become cannon fodder. The real danger to the elite comes from déclassé intellectuals, those educated middle-class men and women who are barred by a calcified system from advancement. Artists without studios or theaters, teachers without classrooms, lawyers without clients, doctors without patients and journalists without newspapers descend economically. They become, as they mingle with the underclass, a bridge between the worlds of the elite and the oppressed. And they are the dynamite that triggers revolt.

This is why the Occupy movement frightens the corporate elite. What fosters revolution is not misery, but the gap between what people expect from their lives and what is offered. This is especially acute among the educated and the talented. They feel, with much justification, that they have been denied what they deserve. They set out to rectify this injustice. And the longer the injustice festers, the more radical they become.

"We are controlled by tiny corporate entities that have no loyalty to the nation and indeed in the language of traditional patriotism are traitors. They strip us of our resources, keep us politically passive and enrich themselves at our expense."

The response of a dying regime—and our corporate regime is dying—is to employ increasing levels of force, and to foolishly refuse to ameliorate the chronic joblessness, foreclosures, mounting student debt, lack of medical insurance and exclusion from the centers of power. Revolutions are fueled by an inept and distant ruling class that perpetuates political paralysis. This ensures its eventual death.

In every revolutionary movement I covered in Latin America, Africa and the Middle East, the leadership emerged from déclassé intellectuals. The leaders were usually young or middle-aged, educated and always unable to meet their professional and personal aspirations. They were never part of the power elite, although often their parents had been. They were conversant in the language of power as well as the language of oppression. It is the presence of large numbers of déclassé intellectuals that makes the uprisings in Spain, Egypt, Greece and finally the United States threatening to the overlords at Goldman Sachs, ExxonMobil and JPMorgan Chase. They must face down opponents who understand, in a way the uneducated often do not, the lies disseminated on behalf of corporations by the public relations industry. These déclassé intellectuals, because they are conversant in economics and political theory, grasp that those who hold power, real power, are not the elected mandarins in Washington but the criminal class on Wall Street.

This is what made Malcolm X so threatening to the white power structure. He refused to countenance Martin Luther King’s fiction that white power and white liberals would ever lift black people out of economic squalor. King belatedly came to share Malcolm’s view. Malcolm X named the enemy. He exposed the lies. And until we see the corporate state, and the games it is playing with us, with the same kind of clarity, we will be nothing more than useful idiots.

“This is an era of hypocrisy,” Malcolm X said. “When white folks pretend that they want Negroes to be free, and Negroes pretend to white folks that they really believe that white folks want ’em to be free, it’s an era of hypocrisy, brother. You fool me and I fool you. You pretend that you’re my brother and I pretend that I really believe you believe you’re my brother.”

Those within a demoralized ruling elite, like characters in a Chekhov play, increasingly understand that the system that enriches and empowers them is corrupt and decayed. They become cynical. They do not govern effectively. They retreat into hedonism. They no longer believe their own rhetoric. They devote their energies to stealing and exploiting as much, as fast, as possible. They pillage their own institutions, as we have seen with the newly disclosed loss of $2 billion within JPMorgan Chase, the meltdown of Chesapeake Energy Corp. or the collapse of Enron and Lehman Brothers. The elites become cannibals. They consume each other. This is what happens in the latter stages of all dying regimes. Louis XIV pillaged his own nobility by revoking patents of nobility and reselling them. It is what most corporations do to their shareholders. A dying ruling class, in short, no longer acts to preserve its own longevity. It becomes fashionable, even in the rarefied circles of the elite, to ridicule and laugh at the political puppets that are the public face of the corporate state.

“Ideas that have outlived their day may hobble about the world for years,” Alexander Herzen wrote, “but it is hard for them ever to lead and dominate life. Such ideas never gain complete possession of a man, or they gain possession only of incomplete people."

This loss of faith means that when it comes time to use force, the elites employ it haphazardly and inefficiently, in large part because they are unsure of the loyalty of the foot soldiers on the streets charged with carrying out repression.

Revolutions take time. The American Revolution began with protests against the Stamp Act of 1765 but did not erupt until a decade later. The 1917 revolution in Russia started with a dress rehearsal in 1905. The most effective revolutions, including the Russian Revolution, have been largely nonviolent. There are always violent radicals who carry out bombings and assassinations, but they hinder, especially in the early stages, more than help revolutions. The anarchist Peter Kropotkin during the Russian Revolution condemned the radical terrorists, asserting that they only demoralized and frightened away the movement’s followers and discredited authentic anarchism.

"Violent radicals are used by the state to justify harsh repression. They scare the mainstream from the movement. They thwart the goal of all revolutions, which is to turn the majority against an isolated and discredited ruling class. These violent fringe groups are seductive to those who yearn for personal empowerment through hyper-masculinity and violence, but they do little to advance the cause."

Radical violent groups cling like parasites to popular protests. The Black Panthers, the American Indian Movement, the Weather Underground, the Red Brigades and the Symbionese Liberation Army arose in the ferment of the 1960s. Violent radicals are used by the state to justify harsh repression. They scare the mainstream from the movement. They thwart the goal of all revolutions, which is to turn the majority against an isolated and discredited ruling class. These violent fringe groups are seductive to those who yearn for personal empowerment through hyper-masculinity and violence, but they do little to advance the cause. The primary role of radical extremists, such as Maximilien Robespierre and Vladimir Lenin, is to hijack successful revolutions. They unleash a reign of terror, primarily against fellow revolutionaries, which often outdoes the repression of the old regime. They often do not play much of a role in building a revolution.

The power of the Occupy movement is that it expresses the widespread disgust with the elites, and the deep desire for justice and fairness that is essential to all successful revolutionary movements. The Occupy movement will change and mutate, but it will not go away. It may appear to make little headway, but this is less because of the movement’s ineffectiveness and more because decayed systems of power have an amazing ability to perpetuate themselves through habit, routine and inertia. The press and organs of communication, along with the anointed experts and academics, tied by money and ideology to the elites, are useless in dissecting what is happening within these movements. They view reality through the lens of their corporate sponsors. They have no idea what is happening.

Dying regimes are chipped away slowly and imperceptibly. The assumptions and daily formalities of the old system are difficult for citizens to abandon, even when the old system is increasingly hostile to their dignity, well-being and survival. Supplanting an old faith with a new one is the silent, unseen battle of all revolutionary movements. And during the slow transition it is almost impossible to measure progress.

“Sometimes people hold a core belief that is very strong,” Fanon wrote in “Black Skin, White Masks.” “When they are presented with evidence that works against that belief, the new evidence cannot be accepted. It would create a feeling that is extremely uncomfortable, called cognitive dissonance. And because it is so important to protect the core belief, they will rationalize, ignore and even deny anything that doesn’t fit in with the core belief.”

"If we do not topple the corporate elites the ecosystem will be destroyed and massive numbers of human beings along with it. The struggle will be long. There will be times when it will seem we are going nowhere. Victory is not inevitable. But this is our best and only hope."

The end of these regimes comes when old beliefs die and the organs of security, especially the police and military, abandon the elites and join the revolutionaries. This is true in every successful revolution. It does not matter how sophisticated the repressive apparatus. Once those who handle the tools of repression become demoralized, the security and surveillance state is impotent. Regimes, when they die, are like a great ocean liner sinking in minutes on the horizon. And no one, including the purported leaders of the opposition, can predict the moment of death. Revolutions have an innate, mysterious life force that defies comprehension. They are living entities.

The defection of the security apparatus is often done with little or no violence, as I witnessed in Eastern Europe in 1989 and as was also true in 1979 in Iran and in 1917 in Russia. At other times, when it has enough residual force to fight back, the dying regime triggers a violent clash as it did in the American Revolution when soldiers and officers in the British army, including George Washington, rebelled to raise the Continental Army. Violence also characterized the 1949 Chinese revolution led by Mao Zedong. But even revolutions that turn violent succeed, as Mao conceded, because they enjoy popular support and can mount widespread protests, strikes, agitation, revolutionary propaganda and acts of civil disobedience. The object is to try to get there without violence. Armed revolutions, despite what the history books often tell us, are tragic, ugly, frightening and sordid affairs. Those who storm Bastilles, as the Polish dissident Adam Michnik wrote, “unwittingly build new ones.” And once revolutions turn violent it becomes hard to speak of victors and losers.

A revolution has been unleashed across the globe. This revolution, a popular repudiation of the old order, is where we should direct all our energy and commitment. If we do not topple the corporate elites the ecosystem will be destroyed and massive numbers of human beings along with it. The struggle will be long. There will be times when it will seem we are going nowhere. Victory is not inevitable. But this is our best and only hope. The response of the corporate state will ultimately determine the parameters and composition of rebellion. I pray we replicate the 1989 nonviolent revolutions that overthrew the communist regimes in Eastern Europe. But this is not in my hands or yours.

Go ahead and vote this November. But don’t waste any more time or energy on the presidential election than it takes to get to your polling station and pull a lever for a third-party candidate—just enough to register your obstruction and defiance—and then get back out onto the street. That is where the question of real power is being decided.

Wisc.Gov. Walker promised billionaire he would ‘divide and conquer’ unions

By David Edwards - RAW Story
Friday, May 11, 2012

Before Gov. Scott Walker (R-WI), who is facing a recall election, introduced legislation to strip some public employees of collective bargaining rights, he promised a billionaire donor that he would use a “divide and conquer” strategy to bust unions, a newly released video reveals.

In the video shot by documentary filmmaker Brad Lichtenstein on Jan. 18, 2011, billionaire Diane Hendricks asks Walker if he would make Wisconsin a “completely red state, and work on these unions, and become a right-to-work?”

“Oh, yeah,” Walker replies. “Well, we’re going to start in a couple weeks with our budget adjustment bill. The first step is we’re going to deal with collective bargaining for all public employees, use divide and conquer.”

Hendricks went on to give the governor’s campaign $510,000. That makes makes her not only Walker’s biggest donor, but the biggest donor to any candidate in Wisconsin’s history, according to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

Only a month later, Walker introduced the legislation that cut collective bargaining for most public workers, triggering months of protests and a wave of recall elections.

The video seems to contradict the governor’s claim that he had no intention of making Wisconsin a right-to-work state, which would cripple unions by prohibiting that they require that employees join or pay dues.

“Scott Walker told me directly that he believed in prevailing wage,” Operating Engineers Local 139 business manager Terrance E. McGowan recalled to the Journal Sentinel. “I tried to hold some dialogue with him when the collective-bargaining issue went down. I am a union man. I believe in collective bargaining. The one thing he assured me, time and again, is that he believes in private sector unions. I don’t know whatever beef he had with public sector unions. But he said he believed in private sector unions, and that’s why I believe I have no reason to believe that right to work would be a threat from his office.”

After seeing the newly released video clip, McGowan said he found the “divide and conquer” strategy troubling.

“It means turning worker against worker,” he explained.

Lichtenstein, who filmed the video, donated $100 to Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett in 2010. Earlier this week, Barrett won the Democratic primary and will face Walker in the June 5 recall election. His campaign has already used the video to created an online ad.

Watch this video from Barrett for Wisconsin, uploaded May 11, 2012.

What a scumbag! And I know that many out there approve of this strategy of crushing the working class--those people who are loyal to companies who aren't loyal to them back.--jef

Court Rules Parts of Walker's Anti-Union Law Unconstitutional

Saturday, March 31, 2012 by Common Dreams
Federal judge has struck down key provisions of Act 10

Key portions of Governor Scott Walker's controversial legislation limiting collective bargaining -- or Act 10 -- were ruled unconstitutional by a federal judge yesterday. The court ruled that the law, which has sparked a recall campaign against the Wisconsin governor, creates an arbitrary, and possibly politically-motivated distinction between "public safety" employees and other public employees. This, according to the court, violates the equal protection and First Amendment rights.

* * *

PR Watch: Federal Court Strikes Down Key Provisions of Walker's Act 10 as Unconstitutional

A federal judge has struck down key provisions of Act 10 -- Governor Scott Walker's controversial legislation limiting collective bargaining -- on grounds that the arbitrary, possibly politically-motivated distinction between "public safety" and other public employees violated equal protection and First Amendment rights. 

Several public employee unions had challenged the fact that Walker's bill exempted certain law enforcement and firefighter's unions from Act 10's restrictions, including the law's requirement that unions recertify annually with an absolute majority of members and its prohibition on voluntary union dues deductions. 

"So long as the State of Wisconsin continues to afford ordinary certification and dues deductions to mandatory public safety unions with sweeping bargaining rights, there is no rational basis to deny those rights to voluntary general unions with severely restricted bargaining rights," wrote U.S. District Judge William M. Conley. 

The suit was filed by multiple public employee unions, including the Wisconsin Education Association Council, the Wisconsin Council of County and Municipal Employees, multiple district councils of the AFL-CIO and AFSCME, SEIU Healthcare Wisconsin, CTW, CLC; American Federation for Teachers - Wisconsin; and the Wisconsin State Employees Union. 

Defendants in the suit included Governor Walker and head of the Department of Administration Michael Huebsch, as well as the heads of the offices tasked with implementing the law.

The War on Labor

Right to Work
by JACK RANDOM

“When you are approaching poverty, you make one discovery which outweighs some of the others.  You discover boredom and mean complications and the beginnings of hunger, but you also discover the great redeeming feature of poverty: the fact that it annihilates the future.  Within certain limits, it is actually true that the less money you have, the less you worry.” ~ George Orwell, Down and Out in London and Paris

As a fan of George Orwell I have grown to wonder if too many of our political geniuses misinterpreted his classic work 1984 as a how-to book on controlling the masses. Had they read his earlier autobiographical work Down and Out in London and Paris, they would have understood that Orwell was a man of the people and his sympathy was planted firmly with the poor, the outcast and the working class.

Of all the Orwellian phrases in common use these days one of the most egregious is the Right to Work. Adopted in twenty-three states, right-to-work laws effectively ban labor unions by prohibiting workers from gaining union representation by a majority vote. The Right to Work is the right of a worker to refuse to pay union dues. Because unions gain power by representing workers as a united front in negotiations with management, right-to-work laws negate that power.

As a result of these union-busting laws, unions have ceased to function and workers earn less. The average worker in a right-to-work state earns anywhere from $1,500 to $5,000 less per year than workers in other states. They receive less in health benefits, less in pension benefits and less protection from unsafe conditions or unfair dismissal.

Studies have been inconclusive on the decline of union representation as a result of right-to-work laws because unions must already have declined in order for such laws to be adopted. The law therefore serves as a substantial roadblock to rebuilding a union movement.

The war on labor does not end with Right to Work. Having decimated labor in the private sector (as of January 2011, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics, the number of union workers in the private sector fell to a 100-plus-year low of 6.9 percent), anti-labor forces have taken aim at the public sector. The tactic of choice against police, firefighters, teachers and other government employees is attacking the right to collective bargaining and binding arbitration.

To fully comprehend this attack, you need to understand that government employees are often prohibited by law from striking to achieve fair treatment in negotiations with their employers. In those cases where it is legal to strike, conscientious employees are loath to do so because of the harm it would do to students and communities. Binding arbitration by an impartial body is an alternative to the strike.

When you take away the right to fair arbitration, you leave workers at the mercy of their employers and you cut the union off at its knees.

These same politicians who yearn for yesteryear when the middle class was strong and the American dream of upward mobility was still alive, neglect to tell you that those were the days when unions were on the rise.

The peak rate of union workers in this nation was the mid 1950’s. After the experience of the Great Depression and the Second World War, Americans understood that if workers were to achieve financial security they needed representation to counter the power of corporations and bankers. Combined with the GI Bill, enabling veterans to gain a college education, the union movement more than any other single phenomenon created the working middle class.

The statistics are staggering. From a high of 35% of workers represented by a union to a low of 11.9 % today, if you wonder why wages have stagnated while corporate profits have exploded, look no further.

Both of the key strategies in the war on labor operate on the same principle: divide and conquer.

The right-to-work laws divide the workforce into those who support the union, who feel a sense of responsibility to fellow workers, who recognize the need for unity in representation against the powerful, against those who will not sacrifice a red penny of their paycheck for the common good.

The assault on collective bargaining is an attempt to divide private workers, who have already lost their union rights, against public workers, who earn more and claim greater benefits because they have retained union representation.

We are all in this fight together. If we wish to push back the most powerful force the world has ever encountered, corporate greed, we must unite against the tide. The right to organize the workplace, the right to unionize, must be fought for and defended.

We are under siege. We are the victims of a devastating fifty-year war against workers that is relentless and without mercy. The corporations have taken control of our government with unlimited sponsorship of elected officials. They have moved our industries to China, Malaysia, Indonesia and elsewhere, without any concern for the welfare of our nation or its people. They have outsourced our technology service, drafting and infrastructure planning jobs to India. They have reduced their share of tax responsibility to a minimum with offshore accounts and favorable legislation, forcing a beleaguered workforce to pick up the tab. And they have done all this with a sense of entitlement.

We are just beginning to fight back. We are beginning to understand that if we speak out in one voice, the 99 against the one, our politicians will begin to listen. We are beginning to understand that fighting for labor rights overseas will bring the jobs that are rightfully ours back home.

China does not own America.

The low point in this war on labor was in 2010 when the anti-labor forces took control of our legislatures but they overplayed their hand. In 2012 we must take back control and reverse the course of the nation.

The corporations do not own us.

The first part of the labor agenda must be to strike down right-to-work laws in the 23 states that now embrace them. The most efficient means is a federal law affirming the principle of majority rule as fundamental to the rights of labor. Barring that, states that uphold the rights of labor should establish a policy of preference to those states that do the same. Right-to-work states should be held to account. States that fail to acknowledge the basic right to organize the workplace should pay a price.

The second part of the labor agenda should be an affirmation of the right to collective bargaining and binding arbitration as an alternative to the general strike. Again, federal law is the most efficient means to this end but state alternatives should serve to provide motivation should the federal government fail.

The corporations that have taken control of our government will cry foul. They will accuse us of class warfare to which we will reply: yes, but now we are fighting back.

Lockouts: The Empire Strikes Back

Tuesday, February 14, 2012 by Common Dreams
by David Macaray

If you’re looking for evidence of just how confident, militant, and insufferably arrogant companies have become in recent years, look no further than the phenomenon of the lockout. A lockout is where a company closes its doors, refusing to allow its union employees to return to work until they accede to company demands—demands that typically call for staggering cuts in wages and benefits.

Unlike strikes—which, as the ultimate manifestation of employee dissatisfaction with management, are a universally recognized form of protest—lockouts are a form of extortion. A lockout represents an unambiguous threat, an ultimatum. Management figuratively places a gun to the employees’ heads and says, Take it or leave it.

There was a time not long ago when strikes were a regular part of the American economic landscape, and when, conversely, lockouts were about as scarce as hen’s teeth. In fact, lockouts were practically unheard of. But given that the business world has been recalibrated—and given the availability of replacement workers, part-timers and temps, coupled with the weakening of state and federal labor laws—strikes are now relatively uncommon, and, in a reversal, lockouts have become management’s new weapon of choice.

One of the uglier incidents occurred recently at Caterpillars’ London, Ontario, facility. After the membership refused company demands that they accept a whopping 55-percent wage cut, plus the elimination of the pension plan (along with other take-aways), the plant’s 465 production workers were abruptly locked out. No further negotiating, no compromises, no mediation; the company went directly to lockout mode. Then, after a 6-week lockout, Caterpillar announced it was shutting the plant down for good, and that everyone had lost their jobs. That’s what we politely meant by businesses “recalibrating.”

Strikes have always had a distinctly schizoid nature, being both dreaded and embraced, glorified and vilified Traditionally, when workers in a viable facility (i.e., one making a healthy profit) reached the point in contract negotiations where the company refused to budge, they hit the bricks. They shut the place down, walked off the job, thereby depriving the company of the ability to make a profit, and, very importantly, sacrificing their own economic well-being by no longer earning a wage or receiving benefits.

Because the stakes are so high, strikes have always been rightly regarded as spooky, monumental undertakings. While some strikes have been successful, many—perhaps most—have not. But successful or not, strikes need to be recognized as labor’s only real weapon. Depriving management of the opportunity to make money is the only bullet in the chamber; everything else is theatrics. Other than striking, what’s a union going to do to get the management’s attention—threaten to stand on the front lawn and scream insults through a megaphone?

Here’s a true story. In 1983 I was part of a union negotiating team that called a strike against a major manufacturing company, an action that put more than 700 men and women out on the street. It was a chaotic scene. Even though we got a 96-percent strike authorization vote prior to the shutdown, once the real thing happened, and the hammer dropped, people were understandably frightened and anxious. The strike lasted 57 days.

Looking to nip any problems in the bud, we immediately contacted the company’s HR rep and made clear our views regarding people crossing the picket line. Although we were a tight local, and didn’t anticipate scabs, you never know what people will do in a crisis. We told the company that if they allowed scabs to cross, we would be forced to retaliate by taking out full-page ads in local newspapers, exposing the company’s greed and stubbornness, and calling them bad names.

They didn’t take our peremptory salvo well. The strike was barely four hours old, and tensions were already running high. They told us to shut up, mind our own business, and not presume to lecture them on how to run their operation. But they also informed us that they had no intention of allowing people to cross over, believing that allowing people to cross would create more problems than it solved. We believed them.

But within a week or two, a handful of our guys tried to do just that. They approached at night (it was a 24-hour operation) hoping they wouldn’t be observed, and asked to be put to work. When the company refused, it occurred to them that being denied entry might very well constitute a “lockout.” While it was a known fact that strikers weren’t entitled to unemployment benefits, wouldn’t “locked-out” employees be eligible?

They went down to the unemployment office and made their case. They told the duty officer that even though their union had called a strike, they themselves wished to continue working, but the company wouldn’t let them. “Doesn’t that mean that this is a lockout and not a strike?” they asked eagerly. The duty officer seemed puzzled. She thought about it a moment and answered: “What’s a lockout?”

Verizon Strike Expected to End Soon

Verizon Strike: As Delays Mount, It's Time for the Company to Bargain With Workers in Good Faith (Update: Strike May End Soon)

By Laura Clawson, Daily Kos
Posted on August 20, 2011

Update: According to the Philadelphia Inquirer, "Verizon Communications Inc. and union leaders will announce today that employees will return to work starting Tuesday morning, ending for a time, the longest and largest strike in recent labor history."

Though Verizon has claimed that its managers and replacement workers would be able to keep up with the workload of striking workers, reports of significant service delays are spreading. And with inexperienced people trying to do complex work and not knowing what they're doing, as seen below, no wonder.
 

In that video, striking workers actually step in to help prevent injury or damage. Another video shows replacement workers blowing a transformer, and that's not the end of the problems striking workers have witnessed. So no wonder that while "Verizon acknowledges 'minor' disruptions since the strike began on Aug. 7," Steven Greenhouse goes on to report some issues that sound less than minor.

Mr. Marsh, who just graduated from Buffalo State College with a degree in urban planning, wanted to order Verizon’s FiOS Internet and television services for his new apartment on West 49th Street in Manhattan. 

"They let me go through the whole signup and then at the end they said, 'There are no installation dates available. Someone will contact you,' " Mr. Marsh said. "That was probably a week ago. They were trying to make it seem like everything is O.K., like the service is there but it’s not. I thought it would be a couple of weeks, but it might end up being a couple of months. I decided to go with Time Warner instead."

Meanwhile, Verizon workers have taken the pickets to the homes of top executives, saying:

"One can't possibly go up to the mansions in Mendham and not be struck by the grossness of destroying the standard of living of working-class operators and technicians while living in the lap of luxury. It is worth marking the contrast," said Hetty Rosenstein, CWA's New Jersey director. [...]

Blackwater Mercenary Security For Verizon

by Unions.org

Wait. What? Blackwater? That private, for-profit, trigger-happy army that killed 17 civilians in Nisour Square in Baghdad in 2007? Yeah. THAT BLACKWATER.

I have just confirmed with Communications Workers of America (CWA) Local 1104 that Blackwater is indeed being contracted by Verizon for security purposes. At this moment, CWA Local 1104 was not able to say how many security contractors have been hired or where they will be working. I’m sure more information will follow.

Blackwater, now called Xe, is considered to be the world’s largest and most powerful mercenary army. In 2004, they had 2,300 men actively deployed around the world and another 20,000 contractors ready to go. They claim that they have trained tens of thousands of security personnel since 1998.

In the aftermath of hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, The Nation’s Jeremy Scahill reported that, “I saw Blackwater mercenaries speeding up and down the streets in unmarked cars, heavily armed with M4 machine guns, flak jackets, other weapons strapped to their legs.”

The New York Times reports:

The company and its executives and personnel have faced civil lawsuits, criminal charges and Congressional investigations surrounding accusations of murder and bribery. In April 2010, federal prosecutors announced weapons charges against five former senior Blackwater executives, including its former president, Erik D. Prince.

Nearly four years after the federal government began a string of investigations and criminal prosecutions against company personnel, some of the cases have fallen apart, burdened by legal obstacles including the difficulties of obtaining evidence in war zones, of gaining proper jurisdiction for prosecutions in American civilian courts, and of overcoming immunity deals given to defendants by American officials on the scene.

But in April 25, 2011, a federal appeals court reopened the criminal case against four former American military contractors accused of manslaughter in connection with the Nisour Square shooting in 2007.

At the onset of the strike, Verizon employed the services of the NJ State Police to escort trucks and non-union workers through picket lines. Now, Verizon’s hiring of a for-profit army during the strike proves two things. First that this is indeed a war on the middle class, and second, that Verizon will bear any expense to win this war.

Can you imagine a country where the billion dollar corporations have the world’s largest and deadliest private, for-profit army at their disposal? What would Blackwater guards actually do on a picket line? I guess we will find out soon enough.

I already wrote about how the un-trained, non-union replacement workers are violating Verizon safety rules and costing the company thousands by making mistakes on the job, most notably by destroying a Verizon bucket truck. In addition to that, Verizon spent $20,000 in postage to mail letters to striking union workers stating that they are terminating their health care on August 31. A union delegate for the IBEW also said that Verizon is offering contractors in Florida $75 an hour, plus hotel rooms, to come up north to work as non-union replacements, but they refuse to keep the terms of the previous union contract.

Verizon said that the concessions they are seeking on the striking union workers from the IBEW and CWA will save their company $1 billion a year. So far, Verizon has refused to budge on these demands. I wonder how much longer Verizon can refuse to sit down at the bargaining table before their union busting activities exceeds that $1 billion mark. For a company sitting on $100 billion in revenue with net profits of $6 billion last year, $1 billion seems like chump change.