Chemical Danger: Industry's Greed Is Putting Millions of Americans at Risk

When it comes to chemical safety, we're more at risk of industry incompetence or greed than a terrorist attack. Safer alternatives exists, so why won't industry use them?
By Scott Thill, AlterNet
Posted on September 23, 2010

Responsibility for chemical security may be shared among federal, state and local governments, as well as the private sector, according to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security's online factsheet on that fearsomely vulnerable area of critical infrastructure. But right now they're all epically failing us, which make us sitting ducks if there is a catastrophe.

But the American public probably has much less to fear from terrorists out murderously prowling the nation's wide-open industrial sites than it does from the sites themselves, whose corporate owners are being dragged kicking and whining into safer chemical conversions and technologies that are a new-millennium no-brainer to everyone but them. And even if terrorists do pose an astronomically probable threat, it's only at the behest of industry and government, which have colluded to basically do nothing to upgrade their sites since 9/11 to safeguard over 80 million Americans from catastrophic accident or attack on petroleum refineries, bleach plants, chemical conversion facilities and more.

"These facilities are inherently dangerous if they're storing dangerous chemicals on site and have communities around them," John Deans, toxics campaigner for Greenpeace, told AlterNet by phone. "We're trying to prevent the American version of the Bhopal disaster. It could happen any number of ways. Look at the recent Mariner rig exposion, the BP spill, the mine accidents and more. We see industry accidents all the time."

What Americans have yet to see are foreign or domestic terrorist attacks on any of these facilities. Which begs the inevitable question: Who are the real terrorists, and who are the invented ones? Is industry incompetence or greed, which has been nakedly evidenced in the Gulf of Mexico's various rig blasts and bleeds, more lethal in our supposedly securitized homeland than al Qaeda, Tea Party or other fringe lunatics? Should we be adding Dow, Sunoco, Occidental and Koch to the FBI's most wanted list?

Not according to Senator Frank R. Lautenberg, D-NJ, who in July put forth a comprehensive legislative package designed to protect the nation's chemical, wastewater and drinking water facilities from "debilitating terrorist attacks." The Secure Water Facilities Act (PDF) and Secure Chemical Facilities Act (PDF) would force companies with high-risk sites to apply Inherently Safer Technology (IST) that would, according to the American Chemical Society, "greatly reduce potential threats to public and worker safety, health, the environment and plant and public infrastructure from a variety of scenarios that might result in the release -- fugitive or otherwise -- of hazardous and toxic materials."

In other words, the technology exists to do things more safely; companies just aren't doing it. This legislation would help force that change.

IST is a mostly no-brainer upgrade; it doesn't mandate that these facilities need to tear everything down and rebuild all over again. Instead, it just suggests that, for example, water utilities switch from chlorine and sulfur dioxide gas to liquid bleach or UV light, petroleum refineries replace hydrofluoric acid with newer solid acid catalysts or, most importantly, facilities generate or employ on-site alternatives that negate the need to transport lethally unstable materials by rail or truck. Keeping this stuff off freeways and railroads alone could avoid endangering millions of Americans who live near delivery routes.

"It's not as if the technologies to make these companies safer are out of reach," Lisa Gilbert, democracy advocate for United States Public Interest Research Groups (USPIRG) told AlterNet. "Both acts have the components to reduce risk to Americans."

Of course, proposing an Act, or two, is comparative cake to actually getting an Act passed, especially in our currently debilitating partisan deadlocks on Capitol Hill and the White House. As recession-proof as anything with the phrase "terrorist attack" happens to be these days, Americans must still rely on both scattered Democrats and sellout Republicans to meet in the middle for the obvious safety of their constituents. And that evidently is hard to do when the same companies relentlessly opposed to change of any kind are buying off the committees in charge of the regulatory environment.

According to the recent USPIRG report, Chemical Insecurity, prepared by Gilbert and USPIRG public health advocate Elizabeth Hitchcock, the 14 companies in danger of widespread human collateral damage due to industrial accident or terrorist attack -- Clorox, Kuehne Chemical, JCI Jones, KIK Custom Products, DuPont, PVS Chemicals, Olin, DX Holding, Solvay, Valero, Occidental Petroleum, Honeywell, Dow Chemical, and Sunoco -- and their affiliated trade associations have funneled more than $70 million to the politicians charged with overseeing them.

"Of the 14 companies we found to be most dangerous, we found that political action committees for Valero, Sunoco and Occidental contributed double to the Energy and Commerce Committee compared to what they contributed to the rest of the House," Gilbert said. "Corporations have a real incentive to make contributions to committees that regulate them, and what they're spending on lobbyists is pretty impressive."

But not as impressive as the mounting evidence that industry inaction is getting more dangerous by the day. You can add last week's explosion at a Honeywell uranium enrichment facility to the list of recently extravagant chemical screw-ups mentioned by Greenpeace's Deans above. The sad part? Nuclear regulators had allowed the plant to reboot core production at the facility only the day before, after shutting it down for two months because too much uranium was showing up in workers' urine samples.

The scariest part? Those aforementioned workers were actually replacement workers -- scabs, in union jargon -- pulled in to supplant the facility's original employees, who weren't too happy that Honeywell was slashing their health care coverage and retirement benefits. To cap this bit of salacious idiocy, it should be noted that Honeywell's plant is the only facility in the nation capable of enriching uranium oxide into uranium hexafluoride, which produces fuel for nuclear reactors and weapons.

Honeywell's facility is definitely not alone in its dire need for a reality upgrade. Greenpeace has recently issued failed citizen inspection reports to Kuehne Chemical Co. and DuPont, which together combine to put around 14 million Americans at catastrophic risk. Future independent assessments of Dow and even the BP spill in the Gulf of Mexico are likely to be just as disheartening. Only Clorox has truly stepped into the chemical industry's inevitable future and converted to safer technologies and processes. "Clorox is an industry leader," said Deans of one listed threat looking to change its chemical game. "We'd certainly hold them up as an example in this particular arena to show that conversion of facilities are possible. If they can do it, why can't everyone?"

Of course, Deans knows the answer, and so do you. The industry laggards are being enabled by a horde of compromised politicians they happily paid to do nothing. You need look no further than Homeland Security's Chemical Facility Anti-Terrorism Standards (CFATS), whose regulations finally came into effect in June 2007, nearly six years after 9/11. Its false security blanket is full of toxic holes, according to Deans. "Even Senator Susan Collins [R-ME] called it a placeholder," he said. "Under CFATS, there are several security gaps: 125 refineries are exempt from the program, including those of Valero, Sunoco and Occidental. A Maritime Transportation Security Act loophole allowed plants on waterways to be defined as a port facilities, so they're under the watch of the Coast Guard, who don't have as comprehensive facility regulations. Wastewater and drinking water facilities are also exempt. But they all have the same vulnerabilities; the chemical agents might be different, but they're just as dangerous. So we want something that's more comprehensive."

"We are attempting to amend CFATS," agreed USPIRG's Hitchcock. "There has been a longstanding effort that predates 9/11 to reduce the consequences of an accident posing a danger to the surrounding community. We gained steam after 9/11, because the issue operates in both the security and safety frames. We know accidents regularly happen, such as at the Bayer facility a few years ago, which could have been as bad as Bhopal. Accidents are regular events. So we're continuing to urge the Senate to do what the House did, which is to pass comprehensive legislation to safeguard our communities from both industrial accidents and terrorist attacks."

But don't be fooled by that comparatively paranoid terrorism talk. These unnecessarily overdue regulations are designed to protect Americans not from mosque-crazy Muslims or their alleged plant in the Oval Office. They're to protect poor, usually disenfranchised Americans from vastly richer Americans who want their devalued labor or capital more than they need to make sure not to kill them on the job. "It's your money or life," John Lennon infamously sang in his 1974 hit single "Whatever Gets You Thru the Night."

Whether it is because of misplaced paranoia over foreign terrorism or because of common-sense domestic disaster prevention, it's obvious that true chemical security needs to happen, and happen now. Whatever gets it through "federal, state, and local governments, as well as the private sector," as DHS explained above, is, as Lennon sang, "All right." But it's nevertheless wrong to assume that this is simply a terrorism issue. As rampant deregulation of the global economy, energy sector, mass media and more has so far proven without contravention, we are our own worst enemies, which is to say terrorists. Especially when we exchange lives for money.

"Chemical facilities are prepositioned WMDs," said Deans. "Even Mohammed Atta looked at them. But this policy was worked on before 9/11, so it's about what direction we want to go in. The Secure Water Facilities Act and Secure Chemical Facilities Act would provide a local stimulus for communities and the chemical industry, while creating 8,000 new jobs. So the industry's only argument is against disrupting the status quo. And we've learned that's disastrous."

Exploitable Illusions

Managed Misconceptions
By JAMES ROTHENBERG

Labeling something as a misconception assumes a burden of proof. The acceptance of the proof that something is indeed a misconception is dependent on the number of people desiring the proof. This is not always apparent.

For example, one may hold a belief that nobody has ever walked on the surface of the moon, and another may call this a misconception. To bring the non-believer around, the believer may offer detailed specifics of rocketry capability, launch and pick-up data, and surviving video of suited astronauts prancing light-footedly over a lunar landscape.

The rigid non-believer will always be able to find this type of persuasion unconvincing: rocket capabilities as too abstract, launch and pick-up as so much sophistry, and video evidence technical trickery.

This would result in a stalemate were it not for one thing. An overwhelming number believe it as fact and not just because they believe their own eyes, but because it has been thoroughly infused into habit of thought by its continued reference as being factual by respected opinion. Thus it is generally considered to be a misconception leastly because doubters were convinced but owing to the sheer weight of the opposition.

The degree of stubbornness of a misconception is proportional to the amount that it has been infused into habitual thought, which in turn is proportional to the amount it is supported by respected opinion.

Quickly examining two of our most persistent, national misconceptions will reveal the inadequacy of bare facts when set against a dominant, propaganda producing entity, in this case the US Government together with its supporting cast.

Misconception Number 1 is that we have a functioning democracy due to our form of representative government, and that the political system works equally well for all citizens. There is scant evidence for this. There is abundant evidence that the two major political parties are completely absorbed in self-perpetuation and to this extent serve the interests of a narrow sector of powerful elites and corporate structures that fund and, therefore, control them.

The citizen is encouraged to believe that the successes of giant, multi-national corporations are part of what makes America great. Even the stunning achievements of the capitalist system like outsourcing, plant shutdowns, mass layoffs, forced relocations, environmental degradation, staggering healthcare costs, decreased competition, and ever-escalating wealth and income disparities do not diminish enthusiasm for our two political parties that are wedded to this economic system.

There are some signs of backlash against the political system, popularly summed in slogan form as “Just Vote Them Out”. And then what? Leave the slogan up? Both major parties are inherently corrupt because their fate is tied not to the general public but to the narrow interests they serve.

Necessarily the powerless desire change. It is well to recognize that change is not in the best interest of the wealthy and powerful. The explanatory power of this recognition makes present day circumstances intelligible.

This speaks to something that dares not speak its name. Class warfare. It’s a third rail for political aspirants because it undermines the carefully prepared myth that we are all equals under our political system, that we are all one class. This is a great illusion, although a persistent one.

Misconception Number 2 is that our military defends the country, implying all the people in it. Equally. War is an economic question, and going to war is an economic decision by the stakeholder class. It is the greatest psychological trick ever played on great mankind to convince the masses that someone who has died for economic expansion has died for country. It is also the most cynical as the true motivation for war must be skillfully cloaked by an appeal to that which our organism will instinctively react to. Self-defense.

We defend ourselves from other people by fighting them in their countries. The count is alarming. The illogic even more so. All one has to do is picture the opposite, say Russians defending themselves by invading us, to spot the fallacy.

How did our war criminals get away with it? In attacking Iraq both US and international law was broken. This is quite straightforward. It was a violation of Articles 41 and 42 of the UN Charter, a treaty ratified by the US Senate in 1945 thereby becoming, in accordance with Article 6 of the Constitution, the supreme law of the land. Without first engaging in collective measures with other member states of the UN or gaining the prior assent of the UN Security Council, a war of aggression was waged against a sovereign nation.

This is incontrovertible. Even the criminals would have to admit as much. Where they got around things was appealing to (and expanding) UN Charter Article 51 dealing with self-defense, although there are two glaring catches.

First, Article 51 begins, “Nothing in the present Charter shall impair the inherent right of individual or collective self-defense if an armed attack occurs against a Member of the United Nations…”. Enough said.

The second catch is that any remaining claim of legitimate self-defense went out the window when the claims about Iraq posing an imminent threat to the United States were revealed as lies. At that point everything resets to the incontrovertible breaking of US law. The war criminals got away with it and, from the point of view of the arid and sanctimonious state, the nation’s honor was saved.

Young men and women are duped into believing that their heroics are preserving the nation’s freedom. This manipulation can be terminal. For this reason utmost care must be taken to insure that the sensibilities of a trained, patriotic public are not offended. Crass descriptions of war as dollar profit and loss must be replaced with comforting, exploitable allusions to high ideals.

GOP 'Pledge To America' Director Lobbied For AIG, Exxon, Pfizer, Chamber

by Sam Stein - Thursday, September 23, 2010 by The Huffington Post

The Republican Party's 21-page blueprint, "Pledge to America," was put together with oversight by a House staffer who, up till April 2010, served as a lobbyist for some of the nation's most powerful oil, pharmaceutical, and insurance companies.

This is a snapshot of the document properties of "The Pledge" listing Wild as the author.

In a draft version of The Pledge that was being passed around to reporters before the official release, the document properties list "Wild, Brian" as the "Author." A GOP source said that Wild -- who is on House Minority Leader John Boehner's payroll -- did help author the governing platform that the party is unveiling on Thursday. Another aide said that as the executive director of the Republican leadership group American Speaking Out, Wild's tasks were more on the administrative side of the operations.

Until early this year, Wild was a fairly active lobbyist on behalf of the firm the Nickles Group, the lobbying shop set up by the former Republican Senator from Oklahoma, Don Nickles. During his five years at the firm, Wild, among others, was paid $740,000 in lobbying contracts from AIG, the former insurance company at the heart of the financial collapse; $800,000 from energy giant Andarko Petroleum; more than $1.1 million from Comcast, more than $1.3 million from Exxon Mobil; and $625,000 from the pharmaceutical company Pfizer Inc.

Not all of his work has been done in the world of influence peddling. From 2001 through 2004, Wild was the legislative director for then Representative Pat Toomey (R-Penn.) the current Republican Senate candidate in Pennsylvania. From 2004 through 2005 he was a Deputy Assistant For Legislative Affairs to Vice President Dick Cheney. There also was a tenure on the staff of former Colorado Republican Senator Hank Brown.

But the career door has been revolving. And in between his time in Johnson and Toomey's office, Wild served as a lobbyist for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce where he helped steer more than $34 million worth of lobbying activity for the business interest group.

Past associations with entities like the Chamber are hardly character disqualifiers, certainly on the Republican side of the aisle where fidelity to the business lobby is a virtue. But having been paid to lobby on behalf of major companies with legislative business before Congress does create an obvious optics problem for Republican leaders hoping to promote their agenda as clean of big-moneyed influence.

Asked about the perception of conflicting interests, Brendan Buck, a spokesperson for the House GOP Legislative Initiatives stressed that there was none. Wild, he said, played a role in steering "The Pledge" project. But he was not involved in actually authoring its specific provisions -- a task saved for the actual members.

"Brian's job as much as anything has been to keep the trains running between all the leadership offices and members who contributed," said Buck. "The contents of our agenda, however, were written by our members, based on the priorities they heard from the American people. Staffers don't write things like this - they carry out the orders of the members they work for."

Good Riddance, Larry Summers!

by Matthew Rothschild - Thursday, September 23, 2010 by The Progressive

Good riddance, Larry Summers.

Obama’s top economic adviser is going back to Harvard by the end of the year, and Harvard can have him.

Summers has a resume of disaster.

As chief economist at the World Bank, he proposed dumping the West’s toxic waste on the Third World.

As Clinton’s Treasury undersecretary, he forced privatization on the Russian people, who experienced enormous poverty as a result. (See Naomi Klein’s The Shock Doctrine.)

And when he was Clinton’s Treasury secretary, he helped deregulate Wall Street, which led to the current crisis.

When he was President of Harvard, his sexism did him in.

Under Obama, Summers and Timothy Geithner were largely responsible for understimulating the economy.

And Summers and Timothy Geithner were largely responsible for not extracting meaningful concessions from the banks when they were on their deathbeds. “The first big economic debate of the new administration was over whether the government should use the leverage of TARP to force new behavior on lenders (credit was frozen) and on companies awarding outlandish bonuses,” writes Jonathan Alter in his book on Obama’s first year, The Promise. “In a meeting less than two weeks after Obama took office, [Presidential adviser David] Axelrod argued yes, but Summers and Geithner opposed attaching big strings to bailouts. They thought it wrong to kick banks when they were down, not to mention violating their contracts.”

Wrong to kick banks that had destroyed the whole economy?

Alter quotes Summers as saying: “Just as war had unintended victims, bailouts had unintended wealthy beneficiaries.” Unintended my ass!

Summers helped land Obama in the fix he’s in today: unemployment’s very high, resentment at the banks is even higher, and few people can feel the economic benefits that Obama and Summers say they’ve brought about.

So adios, Larry.

Now Obama has a chance to put a progressive economist in.

How about Paul Krugman of the New York Times?  (no--jef)

Or Joseph Stiglitz of Columbia? (maybe so...-jef)

Both have Nobel Prizes in economics.

Obama sure could use their wisdom, their tenacity, and their humanity now.

And so could we.

Stoned on Righteousness

by Robert C. Koehler - Thursday, September 23, 2010 by CommonDreams.org

It’s not just about us. If Californians legalize marijuana on Nov. 2, maybe Mexico will end its horrific drug war.

The “war on drugs,” like the war on terror, is a simplistic and brutally stupid solution imposed on a complex, multifaceted human problem, born out of the notion that you can take evil out of context and eradicate it with the firepower of righteousness. Science and the arts have long ago moved on to new realms of awareness, but we’re still playing politics the way we did in the 19th century — or the 12th or 1st — with the primary difference being that we have the capacity to do far more harm these days.

And righteousness, indeed, all too often becomes a far greater cause of harm than the original problem; in tandem, problem and solution may combine to turn chronic trouble into unfathomable disaster, especially for innocent bystanders.

Mexico’s drug war, for instance, which began in late 2006, has so far resulted in the deaths of 28,000 people and consumed billions of dollars in military expenditures. Meanwhile, government human rights violations are rampant, crime in general is on the rise — and most Mexicans think the drug cartels are winning.

Writing earlier this month in the Washington Post, Héctor Aguilar Camín and Jorge G. Castañeda ask: “If California legalizes marijuana, will it be viable for our country to continue hunting down drug lords in Tijuana? Will Wild West-style shootouts to stop Mexican cannabis from crossing the border make any sense when, just over that border, the local 7-Eleven sells pot?”

If Californians pass Proposition 19 and make marijuana fully legal, Mexico may choose to legalize it as well, they suggest. The two countries are inextricably linked via drugs; what Mexico produces, the U.S. consumes. Thus: “If the initiative passes, it won’t just be momentous for California; it may, at long last, offer Mexico the promise of an exit from our costly war on drugs.”

All of which puts Prop 19 and the entire issue of legalizing pot in the United States in a context larger than the one we generally acknowledge. Our country’s anti-pot bureaucracy is wreaking harm and punishing the innocent beyond our borders as well as within them — all the while turning a plant with extraordinary medicinal and other highly useful properties into our arbitrary enemy, “devil weed,” to no serious end except to waste law-enforcement resources and keep our prisons full to bursting.

Indeed, in 2009, police busted 858,408 people for pot violations, according to the FBI’s recently released Uniform Crime Report. This is the second highest total ever, and just shy of the record set in 2007. What gives? Even as the country inches its way toward marijuana sanity — medical marijuana is now legal in 14 states and two more (Arizona and South Dakota) have the issue on the November ballot — a “stoned righteousness,” you might say, seems to be fighting back and punishing people when and where it can.

My friend Bernie Ellis, who was arrested eight years ago for growing medical marijuana on his farm near Nashville, Tenn., calls it “the farces of evil” — which have not stopped harassing him even though he has served 18 months in a halfway house run by the Federal Bureau of Prisons. Last month, the final hideous ritual of false justice was enacted, as the feds auctioned off the 25-acre piece of his farm they had confiscated in a plea-bargain arrangement that allowed him to keep the other 147 acres. Originally they were going to take the whole thing.

All of this, as Ellis wrote recently, was “for the crime of growing seven pounds of pot and giving it away to four terminally ill neighbors, a crime that I never denied I committed from the moment that two helicopters and ten four-wheelers descended on my farm.”

And in the three weeks before the auctioning of his land, he wrote, his farm was buzzed three times by pot-seeking government aircraft, “low enough to rattle my windows and blow down my late summer sweet corn.” What it sounds like is governmental stalking.

Lavishing so much righteous, punitive energy on marijuana users and growers is doubly ironic. The plant’s abuse potential is miniscule compared to its value. Harvey Wasserman, writing irreverently in the December issue of Hustler, points out that George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and other Founding Fathers not only grew but in all likelihood smoked hemp; and that the plant’s national value was extolled in a 1942 video produced by the U.S. Department of Agriculture called Hemp for Victory (five years after marijuana was declared illegal).

But even if marijuana was a clear social problem, on the order of cocaine, declaring war on it and proceeding ruthlessly, consequences be damned, to eradicate it, not only doesn’t work, but causes incalculable and pointless harm. Mexico’s nation-wrecking drug war is one example. The spraying of highly toxic herbicides across the landscape of Third World countries is another.

Prop 19, which no mainstream California politician has the nerve to support, could do more than legalize adult possession of an ounce of marijuana in the nation’s largest state. It could legitimize sanity and put a lid on the forces of simple-minded righteousness in politics and government.

America Is Suffering a Power Outage...

...And the Rest of the World Knows It
by Dilip Hiro - Thursday, September 23, 2010 by TomDispatch.com

“Make poverty history!” A catchy slogan, and an admirable aim, it was adopted by world leaders at the United Nations summit in New York on the eve of the New Millennium. A decade later, it is America which has made history -- even if in the opposite direction. The latest U.S. Census Bureau statistics show that, in 2009, one in seven Americans was living below the poverty line, the highest figure in half a century. Last month’s 95,000-plus home foreclosures broke all records.

These were only two of the recent glaring signs of the sagging might of the globe’s “sole superpower,” now heavily indebted to Beijing. Other recent indicators include its failure to corral China into revaluing its currency, the yuan, against the dollar, and to compel Russia, China, India, or even Pakistan to follow its lead in suppressing the oil and natural gas trade with Iran. With Washington failing to impose its monetary or energy policies on the rest of the world, we have entered a new era in history.

America’s Struggling Economy

It’s crystal clear that jobs and the economy have emerged as the key preoccupations of American voters as they approach the November 2nd midterm Congressional elections.

The economic “recovery” is proving anemic. An already weak gross domestic product (GDP) growth figure, 2.4% for the second quarter of 2010, was recently revised downward to 1.6%, and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, consisting of the globe’s 30 richest countries, has predicted a paltry 1.2% U.S. expansion in the fourth quarter of the year.

Soon after retiring as vice-chairman of the Federal Reserve, where he served for 40 years, Donald Kohn summed up the dire situation in this way: “The U.S. economy is in a slow slog out of a very deep hole.”

Consider one measure of the depth of that hole: between December 2007 -- the official start of the Great Recession -- and December 2009, the American economy made eight million workers redundant. Even if the job market were to improve to the level of the boom years of the 1990s, it would still take until March 2014 simply to halve the present 9.6% unemployment rate and return it to a pre-recession 4.7%. Little wonder that James Bullard, president of the St. Louis Federal Reserve Bank, warned of the American economy creeping closer to the black-hole years of deflation experienced by Japan in the 1990s.

By now, the Obama administration’s $862 billion stimulus plan has largely worked its way through the system without having had much impact on job creation. And keep in mind that the high official unemployment rate is significantly less than the real figure. It doesn’t take into account part-time workers who would prefer full-time jobs, or those who have stopped seeking employment after countless failed attempts. In the end, the administration’s policy makers seem to have failed to grasp that a recession caused by a banking crisis is always much worse than a non-banking one.

China Roars Ahead

Just as the Obama administration revised those anemic GDP growth rates downward, China’s economy was passing Japan’s to become the second largest on the planet. While the Chinese GDP is steaming ahead at an annual expansion rate of 10%, Japan’s is crawling at 0.4%.

China’s leaders responded to the 2008-2009 recession in the West that led to a fall in their country’s exports by quickly changing their priorities. They moved decisively to boost domestic demand and infrastructure investment by sinking money into improving public services.

While Western governments tried to overcome the investment slump at the core of the Great Recession indirectly through deficit spending, China raised its public expenditures through its state-controlled banks. They provided easy credit for the purchase of consumer durables like cars and new homes. In addition, the government invested funds in improving public services like health care, which had deteriorated in the wake of the economic liberalization of the previous three decades.

Altogether, these measures boosted the GDP growth rate to 9% in 2009, just when the American economy was shrinking by 2.6%. Such a performance impressed the leaders of many developing countries, who concluded that China’s state-directed model of economic expansion was far more suitable for their citizens than the West’s private-enterprise-driven one.

On the ideological plane, the spectacular failure of the Western banking system on which the private sector rests revived socialist ardor, long on the wane, among China’s policymakers. In response, they decided to bolster state-controlled companies, proving wrong Western analysts who bet that public-sector undertakings would lose out to their private-sector counterparts.

The upsurge in government spending and generous bank lending policies led to increased investments by state-owned companies. Whether engaged in extracting coal and oil, producing steel, or ferrying passengers and cargo, such companies found themselves amply funded to upgrade their industrial and service bases, a process that created more jobs. In addition, they began to enter new fields like real estate.

Overall, the Great Recession in the West, triggered primarily by Wall Street’s excesses, provided an opportunity for Beijing to stress that, in socialist China, private capital had only a secondary role to play. “The socialist system’s advantages enable us to make decisions efficiently, organize effectively, and concentrate resources to accomplish large undertakings,” said Prime Minster Wen Jiabao in his address to the annual session of the National People’s Congress in March.

The Sacred Yuan and Gunboat Diplomacy

In March and early April, there was much sound and fury at the White House about China's currency, the yuan, being undervalued, and so giving Chinese exporters an unfair advantage over their American rivals. This assessment was faithfully echoed by a compliant media. Pundits anticipated a U.S. Treasury report due in mid-April condemning China’s manipulation of its currency, a preamble to raising tariffs on Chinese imports. Nothing of the sort happened.

Instead, the Treasury delayed its report for three months. When released, it said that, while the yuan remained undervalued, China had made a “significant” move in June by ending its policy of pegging its currency tightly to the dollar. Hard facts belie that statement, highlighting the former sole superpower’s impotency in its dealings with fast-rising Beijing. Between early April and mid-September, the yuan appreciated by a “significant” 1%.

More worrying to White House policymakers is the way Beijing is translating its economic muscle into military and diplomatic power. The controversy surrounding the sinking of the South Korean patrol ship Cheonan in March is a case in point. Following a report in May by a team of American, British, and Swedish experts that a North Korean torpedo had destroyed the vessel, the U.S. and South Korea announced joint naval exercises in the Yellow Sea off the west coast of the Korean Peninsula. China protested. It argued that, since the planned military drill was very close to its territorial waters, it threatened its security. Later that month at a South Korea-Japan-China summit, Chinese Premier Wen refrained from naming North Korea as the culprit and instead emphasized the need to reduce tensions on the Korean peninsula.

Washington ignored Beijing’s advice. It went ahead with its joint naval maneuvers in early July. Six weeks later, it announced another such drill in the Yellow Sea for early September. Incensed, Beijing responded by conducting its own three-day-long naval exercises in the same maritime space. Breaking with normal protocol, it gave them wide publicity. Unexpectedly, nature intervened. A tropical storm approaching the Yellow Sea compelled the Pentagon to postpone its joint maneuvers.

By then, Beijing had locked horns with Washington, challenging the latter’s claim that the Yellow Sea is an international waterway, open to all shipping, including warships. This is an unmistakable sign that the Chinese Navy is preparing to extend its reach beyond its coastal waters. Indeed, plans are clearly now afoot to extend operations into the parts of the Pacific previously dominated by the U.S. Navy.

China’s naval high command now openly talks of dispatching warships to the waters between the Malacca Strait and the Persian Gulf, principally to safeguard the sea lanes used to carry oil to the People’s Republic of China.

Washington’s Iran Policy Challenged

As China’s third biggest supplier of petroleum (after Saudi Arabia and Angola), Iran figures prominently on Beijing’s radar screen. So far, Chinese energy corporations, all state-owned, have invested $40 billion in the Islamic Republic's hydrocarbon sector. They are also poised to participate in the building of seven oil refineries in Iran. When, earlier this year, European Union (EU) companies stopped supplying gasoline to Iran, which imports 40% of its needs, Chinese oil corporations stepped in. That was how in 2009, with a $21.2 billion dollar two-way commerce, China surpassed the EU as Iran’s number one trading partner. It is estimated that China-Iran trade will rise by 50% in 2010.

Like Russia, China backed a fourth set of United Nations economic sanctions on Iran in June only after Washington agreed that the Security Council resolution would not include provisions that might hurt the Iranian people. Therefore, the resulting resolution did not outlaw either investment or participation in the Iranian oil and gas industry.

Much to Moscow’s chagrin, on July 1st, President Obama signed the Comprehensive Sanctions, Accountability, and Divestment Act of 2010 (CISADA) into law. It banned the export of petroleum products to Iran and severely restricted investment in its hydrocarbon industry. It also contained a provision that authorized the White House to penalize any entity in the world violating the act by restricting its commercial dealings with U.S. banks or the government.

Two weeks later, Russian oil minister Sergey Shmatko struck back. He announced that his country would be “developing and widening” already existing cooperation with the Islamic Republic’s oil sector. “We are neighbors,” he emphasized. Russian oil companies were, he added, free to sell gasoline to Iran and ship it across the Caspian Sea, which the two countries share. The Kremlin also warned that if Washington chose to penalize Russian companies for their actions in Iran, it would retaliate. The Russian ambassador to the U.N., Vitaly Cherkin, stated categorically that Russia had closed the door to any further tightening of the sanctions against Iran.

As promised publicly and repeatedly, in August the Russians finally commissioned the civilian nuclear power plant near Bushehr, which they had contracted to build in 1994. It meets all the conditions of the International Atomic Energy Agency. Russia will provide it with nuclear rods and remove its spent fuel which could be used to produce weapons.

Little wonder, then, that Russia and China appear on the list of the 22 nations that do “significant business” with Iran, according to the White House. What surprised many American analysts was the appearance of India on that list, which reflected their failure to grasp a salient fact: “energy security trumps all” is increasingly the driving principle behind the foreign policies of a variety of rising nations.

Soon after the enactment of CISADA, India's Foreign Secretary Nirupama Rao stated that her government was worried “unilateral sanctions recently imposed by individual countries [could] have a direct and adverse impact on Indian companies and, more importantly, on our energy security.” Her statement won widespread praise in the Indian press, resentful of foreign interference in the hallowed sanctum of energy security. Delhi responded to CISADA by reviving the idea of building a 680-mile marine gas pipeline from Iran to India at a cost of $4 billion.

More remarkably, Washington’s policy has even been sabotaged by political entities which are parasitically dependent on its goodwill or largess.

In a black-market trade of monumental proportions, more than 1,000 tanker trucks filled with petroleum products cross from oil-rich Iraqi Kurdistan into Iran every day. On the Kurdish side, the profits from this illicit energy trade go to the governing Kurdish political parties which have been tightly tied to Washington since the end of the First Gulf War in 1991.

An even more blatant example of defiance of Washington in the name of energy was provided by Pakistan which would be unable to stand on its feet without the economic crutches provided by America. In January, Washington pressured Islamabad to abandon a 690-mile Iran-Pakistan gas pipeline project that has been on the planning boards for the past few years. Islamabad refused. In March, its representatives signed an agreement with the Iranians. And a month later, Iran announced that it had completed construction of the 630 miles of the pipeline on its soil, and that Iranian gas would start flowing into Pakistan in 2014.

An Irreversible Trend

In whole regions of the world, U.S. power is in flux, but on the whole in retreat. The United States remains a powerful nation with a military to match. It still has undeniable heft on the global stage, but its power slippage is no less real for that -- and, by any measure, irreversible. Whatever the twenty-first century may prove to be, it will not be the American century.

Those familiar with stock exchanges know that the share price of a dwindling company does not go over a cliff in a free fall. It declines, attracts new buyers, recovers much of its lost ground, only to fall further the next time around. Such is the case with U.S. “stock” in the world. The peak American moment as the sole superpower is now well past -- and there’s no overall recovery in sight, only a marginal chance of success in areas such as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, where the United States remains the only major power whose clout counts.

For almost a decade, Washington poured huge amounts of money, blood, military power, and diplomatic capital into self-inflicted wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Meanwhile, the U.S. lost ground in South America and all of Africa, even Egypt. Its long-running wars also highlighted the limitations of the power of conventional weaponry and the military doctrine of applying overwhelming force against the enemy.

As the high command at the Pentagon trains a whole new generation of soldiers and officers in counterinsurgency warfare, which requires the arduous, time-consuming tasks of mastering alien cultures and foreign languages, "the enemy," well versed in the use of the Internet, will forge new tactics. Given the growing economic strength of China, Brazil, and India, among other rising powers, U.S. influence will continue to wane. The American power outage is, by any measure, irreversible.

Russ Feingold, the Senate's True Maverick

by John Nichols - Thursday, September 23, 2010 by The Nation

When Russ Feingold jogs onto the stage of the Barrymore Theatre on a Friday night in Madison, Wisconsin, a thousand old-school progressives—not liberals avoiding the L-word but heart-and-soul believers in a political ethic that traces back to the trustbusters and anti-imperialists of a century ago—rise to cheer the living embodiment of their faith. The three-term senator speaks to them in the language of another time in America, when populists shouted from the backs of farm wagons and urban radicals mounted soapboxes to spread the social gospel. "There is no institution in our society that is safe from the power and greed and corruption of these corporations," rages Feingold, who speaks against the warping of foreign policy by military contractors, the molding of the national debate by consolidated media and the pay-to-play politics of business interests, before lowering his voice for a dramatic declaration: "Now, after they attacked the media, the Congress and the executive branch, they have managed to corrupt the US Supreme Court."

Echoing former Wisconsin Senator Robert La Follette, whose memory he has come to honor with activists from across the state, the only senator to vote against the Patriot Act says he knows there are reasons to fear big government. "But," he adds, in a speech that decries the High Court's decision to let corporations spend as they choose on elections, "there is one thing that's worse: government controlled by, dominated by, corporate special interest."

For Feingold, though he is locked in a brutal battle with a free-spending millionaire Republican who cloaks allegiance to Wall Street in the populist rhetoric of the Tea Party, the essential question of the moment has less to do with party politics than with the money that's turning the major parties into two sides of one corporate coin. His re-election fight is being covered by much of the national media as just another partisan horse race, one of several in which senior Democratic senators, like California's Barbara Boxer and Washington's Patty Murray, are in unexpectedly tough re-election struggles that could determine whether their party retains control of the Senate. But Feingold's race raises more basic questions about how much our politics are becoming nationalized and homogeneous, about whether the parties are more than mere extensions of sitting presidents or in opposition to them, about whether there is a place for the independent man or woman of principle—especially one who rejects the dictates of Wall Street and multinational corporations—in an increasingly managed and manipulated Senate.

Feingold has taken these questions on the road in a campaign that is like no other this year. With the Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission ruling opening the floodgates for special-interest spending, the Senate's fiercest campaign finance reformer says the Court is "turning our system of government and our democracy into another example of what is essentially corporate naming rights."

"What do they want us to do: choose between Republican toothpaste and Democratic toothpaste?" asks Feingold over an approving roar from the crowd that has gathered on a late summer night. The progressive faithful are with him, but the polls show Feingold struggling to keep even with GOP businessman Ron Johnson, who has pledged to spend as much as $15 million on a campaign so carefully plotted to exploit frustration with President Obama, fears about the economy and anger at Washington that it appears to have been squeezed from Karl Rove's tube. The contrast is sufficiently stark that the result on November 2, no matter what happens elsewhere in the country, will tell us something about the politics of our era.

Everything about Feingold's Senate career has been a fight against a future where Crest Democrats do battle with Colgate Republicans. More than his sometime ally John McCain, the man from Wisconsin is the Senate's true maverick. And unlike McCain, whose "independence" always had about it an air of self-absorption and attentiveness to the media, Feingold has never been a maverick for the sake of being a maverick. His eighteen years in the Senate have been defined by a steadiness of commitment that pays little regard to presidents or parties.

Feingold opposed Bill Clinton's North American Free Trade Agreement and normalization of trade with China; he opposed George W. Bush's Central American Free Trade Agreement; now he is challenging attempts by the Obama administration to advance trade policies that do too much for multinational corporations and too little for workers and farmers here and abroad. Feingold was the leading Senate critic of Clinton's failure to abide by the War Powers Act; he opposed Bush's rush to war in Iraq and was the first senator to call for a timeline to bring the troops home; now he complains that the Obama administration is not moving fast enough to wind that war down. Feingold noisily challenged constitutional abuses during the Clinton and Obama years, and as chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee's Constitution subcommittee, he is pressing the Obama administration to get serious about civil liberties. Feingold opposed Clinton's proposal to loosen bank rules, arguing that doing so could threaten financial stability; he opposed Bush's bank bailout; and he was the sole Democrat to object that the reforms Obama backed did not go far enough because they did not do away with "too big to fail" banks and did not adequately protect consumers or taxpayers.

Much has been made this election season of Democrats distancing themselves from Obama; but Feingold and the president parted company years ago. The Illinoisan said during his 2004 Senate campaign that he saw Feingold as a role model. But once in the Senate, Obama kept clear of Feingold's effort to censure Bush over abuses of privacy rights and the Wisconsinite's lonely defense of arms control treaties. Feingold cast his Wisconsin primary vote in 2008 for Obama over Hillary Clinton, and he backed Obama's economic stimulus and healthcare reform. But he opposed Timothy Geithner as treasury secretary, objected to Obama's plan to surge more troops into Afghanistan and has complained loudly about the administration's uneven response to soaring unemployment.

This independent streak has frustrated Democrats who don't "get" Feingold's votes. He's not a movement politician, in the sense that his friend and frequent ally former Senator Paul Wellstone, was; while Wellstone worked with liberals when they said they needed him to take the lead in challenging conservative overreach in fights about the impeachment of Bill Clinton or the nomination of John Ashcroft as attorney general, Feingold cast the sole Democratic vote to continue Clinton's Senate trial and argued, based on their joint service on the Judiciary Committee, that Ashcroft was more respectful of the Constitution than anyone else George Bush would pick. Those votes infuriated interest groups and Democratic leaders in Congress. But many Feingold backers share the opinion of Wisconsin union activist Terry Fritter, who says, "A lot of people get mad at Russ when he casts one of those 'only Democrat' votes. Then they calm down and think, if Russ did it, there had to be a principle involved."

Over time, Feingold's antiwar and anticorporate record, as well as his defense of civil liberties, have made him a hero to progressive populists. "Russ is not shy about taking on the forces of arrogance and ignorance in my party," says author and activist Jim Hightower. Since the death of Wellstone, says Hightower, "Feingold's the one Democrat I don't have to apologize for." Unfortunately, Feingold's independence isn't inspiring the enthusiasm it once did among Wisconsin swing voters. He's running well with Democrats, but polls have him trailing among unaffiliated voters. And Republicans give him no more credit than they do party-line Democrats. "Politics are more partisan now, more cynical," says former Wisconsin Attorney General Peg Lautenschlager. "You used to hear people say, 'I don't agree with him on the issues, but he's his own man' or 'I'm not a Democrat, but I'm proud of him.' Now a lot more people are in their camps; they don't want to think someone on the other side might be honorable."

Lautenschlager's words apply not just in Wisconsin but nationally. Bush's Iraq War, abuses of civil liberties and failed economic policies have resulted in growing division between the two major parties. Rhode Island Democrats and independents, furious with Bush and Senate GOP leaders, refused to vote as they once had for liberal Republican Lincoln Chafee in 2006. Pennsylvania Senator Arlen Specter stopped believing that Democrats would cross over and vote for him, and Delaware Congressman Mike Castle learned—after his Senate primary defeat at the hands of a Tea Party firebrand—that there are no longer many moderates voting in GOP primaries. The remarkably unified "Party of No" response to Obama's initiatives by Congressional Republicans, combined with the relentless assault by right-wing media on Democrats and compromise-oriented "RINOs" (Republicans in Name Only), appears to have fostered an edgy and unforgiving partisanship even in states where ticket-splitting was once common. This explains the devolution of McCain on issues ranging from immigration to climate change; it also explains why Chuck Grassley, who once served as a reasonably rational "Bob Dole Republican" (working with Democrat Tom Harkin to enact the Americans With Disabilities Act), is now best known for repeating absurd claims about "death panels."

The bitter divisions over the Bush and Obama presidencies have highlighted longer-term shifts in the makeup and dynamics of the Senate. When Feingold arrived in Washington, regional differences and personal styles were still very much on display in what were far more ideologically diverse party caucuses. The Senate's most consistently antiwar member in the early 1990s was a Republican, Oregon's Mark Hatfield, who also happened to be a steady foe of the death penalty, school prayer and discrimination against gays and lesbians. There were more conservative Democrats from the South in those days, but there were also Southern Democratic populists like Fritz Hollings, who backed Jesse Jackson for president in 1988 and often sounded like Ralph Nader when talking about corporate power. New England Republicans weren't the faint hopes represented by the likes of Maine's Susan Collins; they were proud independents like Rhode Island's John Chafee, one of the biggest backers of moves to expand Medicaid coverage for low-income children and pregnant women. When the Senate debated whether to ban flag-burning, there were votes when more Republicans opposed the assault on freedom of expression than Democrats.

Feingold has seen the Senate grow more partisan and dysfunctional since the days when McCain crossed the aisle and asked the young reformer from Wisconsin to help him squeeze soft money out of national politics. The men and women of principle, the outliers who cast unexpected votes and who forged unlikely coalitions, have mostly been replaced by programmed politicians who dare not deviate from party talking points. The late Senator Robert Byrd—Feingold's ally in resisting the steady creep of executive power—worried aloud in his last years about the way the "history and tradition of being the world's greatest deliberative body is being snubbed."

Yet it is not merely an increasingly White House–focused politics—and the media that reinforce it—that has changed the character of the Senate. The most significant change has been in the way senators get elected and re-elected. In 1992, when Feingold first ran, most races cost millions, with only a few costing tens of millions. Candidates rarely relied entirely on home-state donors, but it was still possible to suggest that most politics was local. Now serious Senate contenders—if they are not independently wealthy—count on massive spending by the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and the National Republican Senatorial Committee, which collected $162 million and $94 million, respectively, in 2008, and on the myriad special-interest groups that have wildly inflated the cost of getting elected. And those staggering figures do not take into account the enormous spending by supposedly independent groups. The "money power," as Feingold's progressive forebears referred to it, has redefined Senate races and senators. "In most cases, candidates no longer control their own campaigns," says Ed Garvey, who once sought Feingold's seat and over the past quarter-century has been a leading campaign finance reform activist. "Even candidates who get into politics with the best of intentions start thinking they can't get re-elected without money from the party leaders, from the people in Washington, to keep their jobs. Senators get so reliant on the money that they reflect it; they stop thinking for themselves, stop thinking like the people who elected them. They just worry about getting the money."

More than any current senator, Feingold has resisted the march of money, not merely by fighting for campaign finance reform but by trying to get opponents to agree to limit spending and keep special-interest groups from pouring money into Wisconsin. But his opponent, Johnson, secured the GOP nomination with a promise to use his family fortune to mount one of the most expensive TV ad campaigns in Wisconsin history. Johnson's ads not only distort Feingold's record on specific issues but foster the fantasy that the only Democrat to oppose Obama's mild banking reforms is a rubber-stamp for president and party. "Russ Feingold normally and almost always votes on party lines," claims a Johnson TV ad. "He's right in the Reid, Pelosi, Obama camp." The claim is absurd—Feingold crosses party lines more frequently than all but six senators. But the relentless attacks have had an impact; Johnson pulled even with Feingold in summer polls, and the race moved from a "safe Democratic" rating to one of the year's most competitive. That's certain to steer more corporate money into Wisconsin. Karl Rove says he expects to raise $50 million to defeat Democrats, and Democracy 21's Fred Wertheimer says, "Shadow Republican groups formed by longtime party officials and party operatives are raising and spending hundreds of millions of dollars in this election."

So it is that Russ Feingold finds himself in the fight of his life. He has built a campaign fund of almost $14 million the hard way: with an average contribution of $53. In the past, that would have been more than sufficient to keep the poorest Democrat in the Senate competitive. But not this year, in the aftermath of Citizens United, with corporate money flowing more freely than ever before. Corporate-allied groups like the Club for Growth are already buying heavily to attack Feingold and support Johnson.

Feingold's sure he'll be outspent. But he's also sure he'll win. A political junkie whose father was active in Wisconsin's independent Progressive Party of the 1930s and '40s before becoming a Democratic stalwart in the factory town of Janesville, Feingold is betting it's still possible to counter organized money with organized people. Borrowing a page from Wellstone's remarkable re-election races of 1996 and 2002, Feingold is determined to "win this campaign at the grassroots." To that end, he has opened sixteen field offices, from Ashland on the shores of Lake Superior to Kenosha on the Illinois border. Twenty-seven regional steering committees have taken his campaign into the most rural counties. By early September, canvassers had knocked on more than 105,000 doors and made more than 107,000 phone calls to targeted voters. Feingold is doing much of the asking himself, keeping to a relentless schedule that sends him to the state's most Republican counties to compare notes on the Constitution with conservatives, who don't see many Democrats these days.

The tech-savvy Feingold campaign has 25,000 Facebook friends and 11,000 Twitter followers. Supporters even download "Feintunes"—the senator's picks of songs by Wisconsin artists like Bon Iver and the BoDeans. Yet while he embraces the bells and whistles of modern campaigning, Feingold is betting more on message than mechanics. "I still think people understand," he says, that they need senators willing to stand up to "the power and greed and corruption of Wall Street...the power and greed and corruption of the pharmaceutical companies...the power and greed and corruption of the health insurance companies." Feingold is counting on that understanding to see him through a year when more cautious Democrats may not make it. He says that like the progressives of old, he wants to beat the "money power" in this race so he can go back and fight it in the Senate. "I want you to know that I am committed to this cause because I think it goes to the very core of our democracy," the senator declared on that Friday night when he rallied the faithful.

"You do it, Russ!" came a shout from the crowd.

If Feingold does it, if he wins this race in this year, it will not be as just another Democratic senator. It will not be as a maverick, nor even as an idealist. It will be as a signal that maybe, just maybe, people power can still beat the money power. That senators aren't just extensions of parties and presidents, and that politics can be about something more than Democratic toothpaste versus Republican toothpaste.

US Poverty Data Tells Only Half the Story...

by Ananya Mukherjee-Reed Thursday, September 23, 2010 by CommonDreams.org

In April this year, Fortune magazine published an insightful analytical piece Fortune 500: Profits bounce back.  Two days ago as I went back to the Fortune website to read the piece again, I found something very interesting: sitting right next to it was the story Poverty in the US Spikes. I took a screen-shot right away.  The picture is worth much more than a mere thousand words: I think its worth 391 billion dollars (2009 the Fortune 500 earnings) or the 14.9 million Americans without jobs. You choose.

Some excerpts from Profits Bounce Back: 

Amazingly, as consumers struggle, U.S. corporations are staging a nearly unprecedented comeback that's largely escaping notice. The gargantuan, dispiriting job cuts that seem to dominate the news have also been the spur for an epic resurgence in profits. For 2009, the Fortune 500 lifted earnings 335%, to $391 billion, a $301 billion jump that's the second largest in the list's 56-year history, approaching the increase in the robust recovery of 2003.

The crucial reductions came in the item accounting for two-thirds of their costs: labor. In 2009, the Fortune 500 shed 821,000 jobs, the biggest loss in its history -- almost 3.2% of its payroll. ... ... The result was a wondrous surge in productivity, defined as the hours needed to make a bicycle, a PC, or a ton of insulation (emphasis mine)

That ‘wondrous surge in productivity’ came from layoffs and by getting less workers to produce the same, or more. No wonder then, that during this same 2009 when profits bounced back and productivity soared, 4 millions more Americans fell into poverty. Or that almost 44 million Americans lived in poverty and 50.7 million were uninsured – the highest ever since the Census was taken.


Let us flip back to the Fortune piece:

The star of 2009 is undoubtedly health care. The sector's earnings jumped to an all-time high of $92 billion.. Health-care earnings rose by $23 billion, or 33%. It wasn't the band of new arrivals that accounted for most of the bounty, but extremely strong earnings from two groups ... medical insurers and pharmaceuticals.

In medical insurance, profits recovered by cutting jobs and raising premiums. Obviously, the number of the uninsured grew.


And there is more.  Almost at the same time that the Census Report on poverty was released, Phoenix Marketing released its report on the Size of Affluent Markets in the US.


‘Impressive Resilience of Affluent Investors’ reads the headline of its executive summary. It estimates that there are about 182,000 ‘deca-millionaire’ households in the US - with $10 million or more in liquid wealth, up 17 percent.  ‘Wealth households’, i.e. those with $1 million plus investible resources, grew by eight percent from 2009 to 2010 and now constitute nearly 5.6 million households.


The exact same story is being played out country after country. Private ‘fortunes’ of the few continue to grow alongside the misfortunes of many.  These fortunes come directly from production and investment strategies which involve layoffs, paying pittance to workers, tax dodging, abuse of tax payers’ money and so on.


And yet, while policy makers speak of poverty, hunger, maternal mortality etc., with so much moral outrage, there is a stony silence on inequality.  Even worse, governments actually design and implement policies which fuel inequality.  The ‘crisis’ was one such moment of policy intervention for inequality par excellence. Those who laid off the most workers got the most by way of bonuses. As a student of mine once said, “this is so not rocket science!”


What lies at the bottom of this inequality? Fundamentally, a completely irrational and unjust way of valuing people’s work.  Over time, the ‘value’ of how much a CEO’s work is worth has increased exponentially while that of the workers have fallen.


In the 70s, American executives made over 30 times what workers made. In 2007, it was 364; in 2009, the figure stands at 263.  By and large, an average CEO made in one day what a worker made in the entire year.  In Canada from where I write, the highest paid 100 Canadian CEOs earned 173 times the average pay of a Canadian in 2008 - up from 104 times in 1998.


Get this: by 1:06 pm on the first working day of the year, the Canadian CEO had already made what an average Canadian earns in the entire year.  Not even a whole day.


The comparisons are much worse if we look at the average worker in the developing world, who are all ‘informal’ workers with no contract or security or bargaining. In India, the alleged emerging economic giant, 93 percent of its workforce is in the informal sector. Wonder how long it takes for a CEO to earn what they earn in 16-17 hours of grueling labor every day, and mostly on empty or quasi-empty stomachs. A nano-second perhaps?


But why is this the case? As Leo Leopold asked very straightforwardly in his piece yesterday: What do these guys actually do that earns them such wealth?


They control.  Their decision-making power is without limits.  The corporate model allows for unlimited control by a few, a very few.  All other stakeholders have only residual power.


This is not to say that corporate power goes entirely unchallenged. Indeed, there are numerous ongoing struggles worldwide that are doing exactly that.


But the challenge is not yet as loud in North America as it needs to be.  And there are perhaps important historical reasons for that. Most importantly, when one is out of work and waiting for another, it is difficult to think of challenging those who we think are our prospective employers.


This is not merely a question of asking the minimum wage to be raised, although that would help. But really, seriously asking how those enormous salaries on the one hand – and the minuscule ones on the other - can be justified.  In some parts of the world they would not be. It depends entirely on how a society collectively comes to decide on the value of people’s work.


A very interesting example is the Scandinavian model, the ‘Management Theory S’ as Professor Robert Schuter calls it.  As he explains, ‘S’ is based on two principles: everyone is equal, and the common good is more important than individual success.  Schuter shows how these two principles keep employee compensation differences to the minimum, allows ‘extras’ to be taxed, and subjects all decision-making to constant scrutiny.
There are also other alternatives. The corporate model is not the only one we have. In India, the largest food products marketing organization, Amul, is a cooperative, i.e., it is owned by its producer members.  It has 2.79 million members, produces 11.22 million liters of milk per day and has very solid fundamentals certified by India’s top credit rating agencies.


Crucial here are the principles at play. In addition to the principle that everyone is equal, and that everyone’s work is of roughly equal value, the cooperative model also asserts that it is the workers/the producers who should collectively own and control what they produce.  Implicit here is the belief that it is people’s work and not just ‘management strategies’ that produces value.


Unfortunately, every crisis drives down the value of work even further and heightens our insecurities so that it is even more difficult to raise these questions.  But we have to: and now.

Stewart 'saddened' by Obama

vidlink

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Posted by Alexander Mooney

(CNN) – Count Jon Stewart among the legion of frustrated supporters of President Obama.

Appearing on Fox News' The Bill O'Reilly show Wednesday, the comedian said he thought Obama would do a better job when he voted for him in the 2008 presidential election.

"I think people feel a disappointment in that there was a sense that Jesus will walk on water and no you are looking at it like, 'Oh look at that, he's just treading water' … I thought he'd do a better job," said Stewart.

Stewart, who maintains he ultimately does not regret his vote for Obama, said he is "saddened" the president hasn't done more to change the structure of Washington.

"I thought we were in such a place [in 2008], much like the Tea Party feels now, that the country … needed a more drastic reconstruction – I have been saddened to see that someone who ran on the idea that you can't expect to get different results with the same people and the same system has kept in place so much of the same system and same people," he said.

***

(that last quote in bold & red type is exactly how I feel.--jef)

The New CPR

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GOP's 'Pledge to America' is nothing new and nothing to win an election

(Ho hum...*yawn*...so it's the same shit they've been saying since 2008? Since Obama got elected? Oh, stop down the media for THAT! I'm thinking that whatever gains they made in the polls over the summer were just piddled away. The Dems don't offer much--not enough to support them in an election--but it's better than this. That's not saying much. Why is it neither side will stand up for the people?--jef)

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GOP's 'Pledge to America' lays out a governing agenda
By Deirdre Walsh and Dana Bash, CNN
September 23, 2010

Washington (CNN) -- House Republican leaders will unveil a 21-page "Pledge to America" on Thursday that presents a "governing agenda" for what Republicans would do if they win control of Congress in November.

CNN obtained a copy of the document Wednesday.

The plan focuses primarily on jobs and the economy, with a short reference in the "preamble" to the party's position on social issues.

According to the document, House Republicans want to permanently extend all the tax cuts due to expire at the end of this year, give small businesses a tax deduction equal to 20 percent of their income and require Congress to review any new federal regulations that add to the deficit. (You mean, like those tax cuts?--jef)

The document lacks, however, a pledge against unrelated pet projects that members of Congress insert in spending bills to bring funding to their home districts -- known as earmarks. Banning earmarks is typically a staple of Republican policy.

Some provisions matched positions of the conservative Tea Party movement that has helped defeat mainstream Republican candidates in several primary elections this year. For example, the document calls for a federal hiring freeze on nonsecurity employees and requiring all legislation to include a clause showing that it is authorized under the Constitution.

Other items would cancel unspent funding authorized by the economic stimulus bill, roll back spending to levels before the stimulus bill and earlier federal bailout legislation and repeal the health care reform bill passed in March.

The document also calls for permanently prohibiting taxpayer funding for abortion.

Several Republican sources said there was no intention to directly address social issues because the electorate is so heavily focused on jobs and spending.

Republican leaders settled on a line that states: "We pledge to honor families, traditional marriage, life, and the private and faith-based organizations that form the core of our American values."

This language was a late addition, according to a GOP source, after conservative Rep. Mike Pence of Indiana argued that social issues should be included in the document representing the agenda of House Republicans.

House Democratic leaders said the document showed that Republicans want to return to what they called failed policies of the past. A statement from House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer's office mocked the GOP positions, saying they showed that Republicans pledged allegiance to hedge fund managers on Wall Street, insurance companies, the "wealthiest of the wealthy," oil companies and big corporations that outsource jobs, "with a recession and huge deficits for all."

The GOP document represents an updated version of the 1994 "Contract with America." That much shorter, 10-item document, with specific bills attached to each item that would be passed with a Republican victory, was rolled out on the steps of the U.S. Capitol and signed by GOP members of Congress and candidates.

The 2010 version has more than 20 items, including changes to how Congress works and broad policy goals such as tougher sanctions against Iran. While it does contain legislative proposals, it does not include specific bills that would be introduced and passed if Republicans gain control of the House.

Introduced at roughly the same time as the previous contract, several weeks before midterm congressional elections, the "Pledge to America" will be unveiled at a hardware store in Sterling, Virginia, outside Washington.

A GOP lawmaker involved in putting together the document said House Republicans realize that voters are angry with both Democrats and Republicans. The agenda contained in the "Pledge to America" is intended to convince such voters that their concerns are taken seriously by Republicans, who will act differently if returned to power than they did when controlling Congress during parts of the Bush administration, the legislator said.

GOP candidate: Hitler invented separation of church and state

(Thanks to Sam off Google Buzz for this...--jef)

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By Muriel Kane - Friday, September 17th, 2010

Christine O'Donnell isn't the only Delaware Tea Party candidate making waves.

The seat in the House of Representatives currently held by Republican Mike Castle -- who was defeated by O'Donnell in Tuesday's Senatorial primary -- is also up for grabs. The Republican primary for that office was won by Tea Partier Glen Urquhart, and it turns out that his political positions may be even more unique than O'Donnell's.

"Do you know, where does this phrase 'separation of church and state' come from?" Urquhart asked at a campaign event last April. "It was not in Jefferson's letter to the Danbury Baptists. ... The exact phrase 'separation of Church and State' came out of Adolph Hitler’s mouth, that's where it comes from. So the next time your liberal friends talk about the separation of Church and State ask them why they’re Nazis."

"My jaw dropped when I heard it," rival candidate Kevin Wade told Delaware Online. "And he was emphatic about it -- it was not like a slip of the tongue. He got applause from half the crowd, and that disturbed me. I'd say half the room was stunned and the other half applauded."

According to Delaware Online, "Urquhart says the statement was taken out of context and that he did not explain his point very well. If he could do it over, he said, he would add more historical context and explain why he rejects Hitler's take on the relationship between government and the church."

"I didn't mean to suggest -- and I am not suggesting -- that people who are liberals are Nazis," Urquhart told the paper. He did continue to insist, however, that "the Nazis used the same separation-of-church-and-state rhetoric for a very, very bad purpose" and charged that "the pendulum has swung dramatically against the Christian faith. It's almost become a whipping boy in our society."

That explanation did not satisfy his critics. "Urquhart has had trouble with Thomas Jefferson before," blogger Celia Cohen noted. "Judging by the campaign Web site, Urquhart seems to think Jefferson included 'life' in the unalienable rights of 'Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness' in the Declaration of Independence because he was against abortion."

Other bloggers pointed out that Urquhart was correct about Jefferson only in the technical sense that Jefferson's exact phrase in his letter to the Danbury Baptists was "building a wall of separation between church and State." The concept is deeply rooted in America and goes back to Roger Williams, who founded the colony of Rhode Island in the 1600s.

Now that Tea Partier Urquhart has defeated the candidate backed by the Republican establishment and will be running against former Delaware Lt. Gov. John Carney. his remarks are drawing fresh scrutiny. "There aren't many 'red' House seats Dems hope to flip this year, but this is clearly one of them," Washington Monthly's Steve Benen noted on Friday. "A survey this week from Public Policy Polling showed Carney leading Urquhart by double digits, 48% to 37%."

And at PPP's own website, Tom Jensen explained that "in contrast to most races across the country Carney has a more unified base, winning 75% of Democrats to Urquhart's 66% of Republicans. Urquhart does have a 38-36 lead with independents but that's not nearly as large as most GOP candidates across the country have and certainly not as large as he needs to win a strongly Democratic leaning state like Delaware."

One anonymous commenter on Jensen's post, however, suggested, "That's not a particularly strong result for Carney. Weak favorability, running against a decent opponent with a supercharged conservative base?"

If the commenter's assertion is correct -- and some of the other comments disputed it -- Urquhart's "Hitler" remark could yet become a factor in the campaign.

The following video is from a Republican candidates forum in April 2010 and was posted to YouTube on May 31, 2010.

G20 'Secret Law' to Undergo Independent Review

by Rob Ferguson - Wednesday, September 22, 2010 by The Toronto Star

A so-called "secret law" widely criticized for giving police excessive powers during June's G20 summit protests and riots will be the subject of an independent review, The Star has learned.

Government sources said Tuesday that former Ontario chief justice Roy McMurtry has agreed to lead the examination of the 1939 Public Works Protection Act, passed to deal with home front security risks during the Second World War.

The move follows repeated calls for the law's modernization in the wake of the G20, which saw thousands of protesters take to the streets and small bands of vandals torch police cars and smash store windows. Police arrested 1,105 people and charged 278. The rest were released or never booked. Most charges have been subsequently dropped.

At issue is widespread misinterpretation of a "five-metre rule," under which authorities fuelled the belief that anyone coming within five metres of the outer security fence snaking through downtown Toronto could be required to provide identification or submit to a search.

Civil libertarians complain that impression emboldened police and had a chilling effect on the rights of citizens to free expression and association.

"We need to make sure our laws reflect the security concerns and values of our society today," said Community Safety and Corrections Minister Jim Bradley, who will announce the review Wednesday.

"That includes maintaining both public order and freedom of expression."

McMurtry, an attorney general and solicitor general in the 1970s and 1980s under premier Bill Davis, will look at the scope of authority given to police and requirements for public notice of regulations made under the act, how it applies to major events, and what constitutes a "public work" under the law.

It was a regulation under the act, quietly rubber-stamped by Premier Dalton McGuinty's cabinet early last June, that designated areas within the downtown G20 security zone as a "public work." Misunderstandings over the significance of the regulation catapulted the Ontario government and Toronto Police Chief Bill Blair into controversy.

McGuinty's cabinet made the temporary change at Blair's request.

The chief wanted clarification for officers if they had to apprehend anyone inside the restricted area, including the Metro Toronto Convention Centre and Royal York hotel where world leaders met June 26-27.

The Star first revealed the unusual modification June 25, three days before it was to expire and eight days before it was published in the Ontario Gazette.

In the wake of that story, the prevailing, incorrect impression was that police had been given the power to arrest people who refused to provide identification or submit to a search within five metres of the security zone's outer perimeter.

But Blair, McGuinty and then-community safety minister Rick Bartolucci, who defended the "extraordinary" powers during the G20 summit, didn't set the record straight until two days after the event ended.

Blair admitted there was no five-metre rule, saying, "No, but I was trying to keep the criminals out."

Bartolucci was replaced by Bradley in a recent cabinet shuffle, taking Bradley's former post as minister of municipal affairs and housing in a sign of McGuinty's displeasure over the fiasco.

"There was no five-metre rule. It was constantly published in print and republished on TV and radio and there was no foundation in fact for that," McGuinty later acknowledged. "And we should have acted on that sooner to make it clear."

The regulation was published on the specialized provincial legislation website known as e-Laws on June 16, more than a week before the G20. But the site is not well known, meaning the regulation was not adequately publicized.

"When passing regulations under this act, we have to make sure we provide the public with proper information and notice," a senior government official said Tuesday.

McMurtry is expected to report next spring after consulting with lawyers, police, civil liberties groups and others.

He will also consider recommendations from Ontario Ombudsman Andre Marin's previously announced review of the act and take into account the Toronto Police Services Board investigation of the G20 command structure and policing model. The province's Special Investigations Unit is also probing five alleged incidents of police brutality against protesters.

A number of the more than 60 complaints to the ombudsman's office were critical of the government for confusing the public in the way the policy change was "communicated or not communicated or miscommunicated," Marin said when he launched his probe in July.

"What our complainants are telling us is the way it was explained and sold to the public as the ‘five-metre rule' led to contravention of their constitutional rights to freedom of expression and association...it had a chilling effect."

"The other thing they're telling us is it had a misguided effect on the law enforcement around the fence and that it led to liberties by law-enforcement officials and how they reacted to demonstrators within those five metres," Marin added.

The review by McMurtry will help the government, which faces a provincial election on Oct. 6, 2011, develop a foundation for future legislation, sources said.

Both McGuinty and Prime Minister Stephen Harper have ruled out holding public inquiries into the handling of security at the summit.