California Free Press

Liberal Tea Party? U.S. Uncut Disrupts Service At Bank Of America

by Lucia Graves

First Posted: 02/28/11 01:55 AM Updated: 03/ 1/11 01:50 PM by the Huffington Post

Demonstrators posing as a liberal Tea Party disrupted service at banks across the country on Saturday, in an effort to spotlight the gimmicks multi-billion dollar corporations use to avoid paying their fair share in taxes.

Self-organized through anti-austerity movement U.S. Uncut, regional captains helped organize demonstrators at more than 40 different branches of Bank of America. The newly-minted group was inspired by an article published recently in The Nation by Johann Hari: "How to Build a Progressive Tea Party." Hari writes:

Imagine a parallel universe where the Great Crash of 2008 was followed by a Tea Party of a very different kind ... Instead of the fake populism of the Tea Party, there is a movement based on real populism. It shows that there is an alternative to making the poor and the middle class pay for a crisis caused by the rich. It shifts the national conversation ... This may sound like a fantasy--but it has all happened. The name of this parallel universe is Britain. As recently as this past fall, people here were asking the same questions liberal Americans have been glumly contemplating: Why is everyone being so passive? Why are we letting ourselves be ripped off? Why are people staying in their homes watching their flat-screens while our politicians strip away services so they can fatten the superrich even more?

Hari evokes the spirit of UK Uncut -- a movement made up of British citizens, who, in the face of brutal budget cuts, have sought to shame corporate tax dodgers through public demonstrations -- and suggests Americans follow suit. U.S. Uncut is doing just that; though many members of the group have disowned the title of Tea Party, telling HuffPost that while they were inspired by the article in The Nation, they do not want to be identified as an opposition group.

Saturday marked the group's first coordinated event.

"Billionaires got bonuses, bailouts and tax cuts, too -- the least they can do is pay their fair share of taxes," said Ryan Clay, a 28-year-old media analyst who helped organize the U.S. Uncut demonstration in Washington, DC. "I got inspired, other people got inspired, we met online, and we're working through social media to really bring these abhorrent facts to the public."

A rally in San Francisco drew scores of protesters to a branch of Bank of America at Union Square; dressed in ordinary street clothes, they filed into the bank one by one, getting in line to speak with the tellers. Each of them carried a fake check from Bank of America made out to "The United States c/o Tax Paying Citizens," for $1.5 billion. The sum would cover all the bank's unpaid taxes on its 2009 earned income of $4.4 billion, demonstrators said.

Only a few people had presented their fake checks to the tellers before the bank temporarily closed for business; protesters were peacefully escorted out of the building by the police. Once on the street, however, they stayed put and kept handing out fake checks, which had facts about corporate tax avoidance written in fine print on the back, as fliers. "Two-thirds of all U.S. corporations do not pay federal income tax," the fliers said. "BofA is the largest bank and the 5th largest corporation in America."

"People seemed more eager to accept these fliers and actually read the information they contained than what one would usually expect from handouts with political messages," said Leslie Dreyer, 32, a resident of Oakland, Calif., who came up with the idea of using checks as props. "When asked 'would you like a check for 1.5 billion to cash at any BoA?', they were amused and intrigued enough to 'read the fine print.'"

A Bank of America spokeswoman did not immediately return a request for comment.

Many of the largest corporations in the country have mastered the art of evading taxes, booking expenses in the U.S. and profits in low-tax countries. A list compiled by Forbes shows that Bank of America was far from being the only multi-billion dollar corporation to avoid paying taxes on billions of dollars in earnings in 2009; it is also not the only bank to spark angry demonstrations this week.

On Wednesday morning, New York City Councilman Jumaane Williams marched into a Park Avenue Chase bank to denounce the bank's failure to help homeowners avoid foreclosure. HuffPost's Laura Basset reports:

After denouncing the bank to a cheering crowd and calling its executives "bloodsuckers" for accepting bailout money and refusing to help the suffering homeowners they "preyed on," Williams was stopped by security guards at the door and told the branch was closed. The mob then chanted "open the door" until Williams was let in, at which point he closed his account.

Williams told HuffPost that when campaigning in New York City, he met at least two people on every block with mortgage troubles. He said he doesn't want the bank to use his money to "further deteriorate the community" he represents, especially in light of chief executive Jamie Dimon's recent $17 million bonus.

"It's incredible what these banks are making people go through," he said. "It's disgusting. They're like bloodsuckers, just sucking the lifeblood out of communities and refusing to help out. I understand that people need to get paid to get the best and brightest and these bonuses help with that, but you can't do that and then not assist the community and then get a taxpayer bailout to the tune of billions of dollars. That's just greed at its worst."

Wisconsin Continues Right-Wing Structural Reforms That Have Decimated the United States

Published on Thursday, March 10, 2011 by The Guardian/UK

The real story of Wisconsin is the Republican right's long war to refashion American society without unions

by Mark Weisbrot

With the latest turn of events in Wisconsin, Republican state senators have circumvented the need for a quorum vote on Scott Walker's budget bill by leaving out the fiscal clauses and passing the new laws curbing collective bargaining rights for state and public employees. This dubious tactical manoeuvre strips away the pretence that Walker and his GOP allies have hitherto maintained that the legislative package was necessary to close the state's budget deficit: Walker's objective is, as protesters in Madison have argued all along, to break the last vestige of organised labour strength in the US – the power of public sector workers to organise and negotiate collectively. Stated or not, Walker's ambition is to complete what Ronald Reaganbegan 30 years ago.

 Like Margaret Thatcher in the UK, Ronald Reagan broke the power of trade unions and set the US on a rightward path that has lasted decades. (Photograph: AP)

But the legislative chicanery in Madison's Capitol smacks of desperation. It may yet prove that the right in the US has overreached in its attack on public sector unions, provoking the left/liberal base of the Democratic party, a popular uprising in Wisconsin and elsewhere, and a backlash among the public. The latest Rasmussen poll shows Wisconsin voters disapproving of Governor Scott Walker by a margin of 57% to 43%, with 48% saying they "strongly disapprove". But there are also some positive lessons that American progressives and liberals could learn from the right's political strategy.

It is not just that these rightwing governors like Scott Walker and John Kasich (Ohio), and other Republican leaders, are willing to take risks and fight for what they want. It is also that they fight for structural reforms – reforms that change the political terrain so that it will be more favourable for the next battle and for the "long war" to which they are committed.

Undermining and destroying collective bargaining rights is one of the most important structural reforms that any rightwing government in a developed country can win. And it is not just because, as has been widely noted, that unions contribute money to the campaigns of Democratic candidates. It is much deeper than that. Organised labour is relatively weak now, but for more than a century, it has been the most important force for positive economic reforms in the United States, from the eight-hour work day, to health insurance and Medicare, social security, pensions and minimum wages. The labour slogan, "Unions: the folks who brought you the weekend", is a true but vastly understated historical reality in America.

Ronald Reagan understood this very clearly when he fired 12,000 air traffic controllers soon after taking office in 1981 to break their strike and begin a new era of labour suppression, in which private sector workers all but lost their rights to organise unions. His agenda was so radical that it scared many conservatives – which was one reason he lost the 1976 Republican nomination. Even after he won the presidency in 1980, much of the business class was not convinced that it was possible to revert to 19th-century labour relations – until Reagan did it. Unions were 20% of the private sector labour force when Reagan was elected; they are 6.9% today.

Crushing organised labour was essential to a number of Reagan's other historic achievements, including launching the most massive upward redistribution of income and wealth in US history. During the 25 years after he took office, the after-tax real (inflation-adjusted) income of the richest 1% would more than triple, while the average American's income would barely grow at all. But there was so much more that he accomplished in the world of rightwing ideas – on foreign policy, tax reform and more. Without much of a mandate from voters, Reagan was nonetheless a president who transformed the world, perhaps more than any single person in the second half of the 20th century. Unfortunately for the world, the changes that he led made most people worse-off – and in places like Central America, tens of thousands were killed by the dictators, death squad governments and "freedom fighters" that he championed.

Contrast the leadership of Reagan and even today's far less skilled Republicans to their counterparts on the Democratic side. Bill Clinton also fought for structural reforms. His top legislative priority during his first year in office was fighting for Nafta, which helped to further undermine labour in the United States. By creating the World Trade Organisation and implementing welfare reform and financial deregulation, Clinton continued the rightwing structural changes of the Reagan era – so much so that there wasn't much left for George W Bush to do when he took office. Bush tried to go after social security, but was defeated. (Clinton had a very similar plan for partial privatisation and cuts to social security, but had also backed off under political pressure.)

Now we come to President Obama, who really did have a mandate for change, as the majority of the electorate finally rebelled against nearly four decades of rightwing reforms and the pain and anxiety caused by the Great Recession. One structural reform that Obama had promised in his campaign to support was the Employee Free Choice Act, which would have gone a long way towards restoring the collective bargaining rights that Reagan had destroyed. President Obama quickly backtracked on this promise.

On healthcare, Obama also retreated from his pledge to support a public option – which was not so much a structural reform in itself as merely an opening to the structural healthcare reform that this country needs. Real healthcare reform would be a vital progressive structural change, not least because it would eliminate the long-term deficit problem in the United States and thereby remove the main pillar of the rightwing budget cuts agenda.

The list could go on, but my point is not to attack Obama. He is simply representative of Democratic political leadership after nearly four decades of rightward drift, which has been helped along by conservative structural reforms. This is something that the pundits get wrong every day: it is not because this is an inherently conservative country that liberal leadership is so weak. Although polling results fluctuate widely with media coverage and the framing of the polling questions, for decades there have been polls showing majorities in favour of real healthcare reform (Medicare for all), deep cuts in military spending, an end to US military intervention abroad, increased taxes for the rich, government spending to increase employment (as needed now) and most of the progressive agenda.

The problem lies not in the people but in the corridors of power, in the media and the Congress and the many institutions – including liberal ones – that have been shifted rightwards by strategic efforts over the last 40 years. That is why progressives find themselves fighting defensive battles, as in Wisconsin – while the right, which has neither the presidency nor the Senate – plays offence. It will take some time to get to the point where progressive structural reforms are on the agenda.

But that time will come, and the mass uprisings in support of collective bargaining are a great and inspiring start where new leadership and organising will emerge. Inshallah (God willing), as they say in Egypt.

© 2011 Guardian News and Media Limited

Mark Weisbrot is Co-Director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR), in Washington, DC. He is also co-author, with Dean Baker, of Social Security: The Phony Crisis. E-mail Mark: [email protected]

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Why Obama Isn’t Fighting the Budget Battle

by Robert Reich

Friday, March 11, 2011

In the next week the action moves from Wisconsin to Washington, where the deadline looms for a possible government shutdown over the federal budget. President Obama has to take a more direct and personal role in that budget battle  – both for the economy’s sake and for the sake of his reelection. But will he? Don’t count on it.

Worried congressional Democrats say the President needs to use his bully pulpit to counter defections in Democatic ranks, such as the ten Democrats and one allied Independent who on Wednesday voted against a Senate leadership plan to cut $6.2 billion from the federal budget over the rest of fiscal year 2011. They want Obama to grab the initiative and push a plan to eliminate tax breaks for oil companies and for companies that move manufacturing facilities out of the country, and a proposal for a surtax on millionaires.

Most importantly, they’re worried the President’s absence from the debate will result in Republicans winning large budget cuts for the remainder of the fiscal year – large enough to imperil the fragile recovery.

But Obama won’t actively fight the budget battle if the current White House view of how he wins in 2012 continues to prevail.

Shortly after the Democrats’ “shellacking” last November, I phoned a friend in the White House who had served in the Clinton administration. “It’s 1994 all over again,” he said. “Now we move to the center.”

The supposed parallel between 2010 and 1994 is something of an article of faith in the Obama White House. That’s partly because so many of President Barack Obama’s current aides worked for Bill Clinton and vividly recall Clinton’s own shellacking in 1994. It’s also because the Clinton story had a happy ending, at least electorally. The fact that Bill Clinton went on to win re-election is a source of comfort to the current White House as it looks ahead to 2012.

From this, many in the Obama White House have concluded that the president should follow Clinton’s campaign script — distancing himself from congressional Democrats, embracing further deficit reduction, and seeking guidance from big business. If it worked for Clinton, it must work for Obama — or so it’s supposed.

The superficial logic that so often passes for thought in Washington typically sees causation where there’s only correlation. In fact, there’s no reason to believe that Clinton’s lurch rightward at the start of 1995 is what won him re-election the following November. He was re-elected because of the strength of the economic recovery.

By the spring of 1995, the American economy had bounced back, averaging 200,000 new jobs per month. By early 1996, it was roaring — creating 434,000 new jobs in February alone. I remember suggesting to Clinton’s political adviser, Dick Morris, that the president should come up with some new policy ideas for the election. Morris scowled. This election will be about the economy — nothing more, nothing less, he said. Morris knew that voters didn’t care much about policy. They cared about jobs. “The president,” said Morris, “is going to say, ‘You’ve never had it this good, and you ain’t seen nothing yet.’”

The 1991-1992 recession was relatively mild as recessions go. As is typical of most recessions, it had been brought on by the Federal Reserve raising interest rates too high in response to fears of inflation — meaning that a recovery would occur when the Fed reversed course and reduced short-term rates, which then-Chair Alan Greenspan obligingly did.

President Obama won’t be as fortunate. The Great Recession resulted from the bursting of a giant debt bubble. Wall Street’s irresponsible lending and speculating, negligible oversight by federal regulators, and the insatiable desire of Americans to use their homes as ATMs created a toxic mixture that exploded at the end of 2007 and continues to sicken the economy.

The Fed has kept interest rates near zero for more than a year and has opened the spigots of its discount window, without much result. Unemployment continues to hover around 9 percent. Economic growth is pathetic.

While jobs used to follow corporate profits, American corporations now rack up big profits without expanding employment. Their profits are coming mainly from buoyant sales by their foreign operations — especially in China and India — combined with cuts in jobs, wages, and benefits here in the U.S.

The richest 10 percent of Americans, who own about 90 percent of all financial assets, are buying again (sales at Neiman Marcus and Tiffany’s are way up). But most Americans still have little purchasing power. Under a huge load of debt, worried about meeting mortgage payments, and seeing their major asset — their home — continue to drop in value, they’re holding back from the malls.

A strong recovery cannot be sustained by the richest 10 percent. Before the Great Recession, the top 10 percent received about half of total income, but they accounted for only about 40 percent of total spending. Forty percent of spending isn’t enough to convince businesses to invest in new capacity and jobs, which is why corporations are still sitting on $1.4 trillion of cash.

So many jobs have been lost since Obama was elected and so many people have entered the workforce needing jobs that even if job growth were to match the extraordinary pace of the late 1990s, year after year, the unemployment rate wouldn’t fall below 6 percent until 2016. That pace of job growth is unlikely, to say the least.

If Republicans manage to cut federal spending significantly between now and Election Day while state outlays continue to shrink, the certain result is continued high unemployment and anemic growth.

Obama’s challenge in 2012 has nothing to do with Bill Clinton’s in 1996. He must fight the Republican plans to cut the budget deficit this year and next, and explain to the public why he’s doing so. And he must convince Americans that public spending during the next few years is necessary to get the economy moving, reduce the long-term debt as a portion of the total economy, and get jobs back.

Cut Head Start But Keep Subsidies for Big Oil? Earth to Boehner...Come In!

 

by Robert Creamer

Political organizer, strategist and author

Posted: March 10, 2011 08:56 AM by Huffington Post

Earth to Boehner... come in! When you look carefully at Republican Speaker John Boehner's spending proposal for the rest of 2011 you'd think these guys must have been hanging out on one of those newly-discovered exo-planets on the outer edger of our solar system.

The Republican proposal, HR1, actually proposes cuts in the Head Start program that would mean:

• 218,000 children from low income families will lose Head Start/Early Head Start services;
• 16,000 Head Start/Early Head Start classrooms will close;
• 55,000 Head Start/Early Head Start teachers and staff will lose their jobs;
• 150,000 low-income families and their children will lose assistance in paying for child care.

They say they need to make these cuts because we must "tighten our belts" to cut spending because "America is broke." But at the very same time they voted to cut Head Start, the Republicans voted to continue $4 billion worth of subsidies to Big Oil. That's right, they want to continue to hand over $4 billion of the taxpayers' money to companies like Exxon-Mobil, the most profitable company in human history.

These subsidies are suppose to provide an incentive for them to produce more oil -- as if the price of oil that closed yesterday at $105.02 per barrel does not do the trick.

In the last quarter of 2010, Exxon-Mobil's profits surged 53% to $9.25 billion on the strength of rising oil prices and increased demand for petroleum products. That means Exxon-Mobil is earning profit at a rate of about $37 billion per year.

How much is $37,000,000,000? It's what 740,000 average American families make for working all year long.

So while the Republicans have proposed to cut back on providing a critical educational boost for the future generation, they have voted to have a tag day for the most profitable company that has existed since the dawn of humanity. Now I'd call that seriously out of touch with the priorities of everyday Americans.

Of course that's not all. The Republicans in the House voted to cut Pell Grants, that help middle class kids go to college, by 25%.

They voted to kill a program that helps low-income families weatherize their homes and permanently reduce their energy bills. Guess we just have to tighten our belts!

They voted to cut funds for employment and training service for jobless workers -- so much for "jobs, jobs, jobs."

They voted to cut funding for clean, safe drinking water by more than half, to cut funding for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention by 10% and to cut funds for the Food and Drug Administration by another 10%. All the while handing out billions to the oil companies.

And remember, they are giving handouts to the oil companies at the same time that oil and gas prices have been skyrocketing.

Increases in gas prices siphon money from the pocketbook of ordinary families. The New York Times reports that some economists calculate that, "each $10 increase in the price of a barrel of oil knocks 0.2 to 0.3 percentage points off the growth rate of the economy." According to a report by Morgan Stanley investments earlier this month, "... a US$1 sustained increase in gasoline prices will act like a US$120-130 billion tax hike, equal to 1.1% of disposable income."

There are, however, two big differences in the "tax hike" caused by gas price increases and a real tax hike. First, most of the money comes from the pockets of ordinary middle class Americans. Second, it all goes into coffers of Big Oil companies instead of paying for things like education, public safety, roads, bridges, subways and health care. It goes instead into the pockets of these huge companies and their shareholders -- who are overwhelmingly the wealthiest people on the planet.

Then, of course, Exxon-Mobil has to be able to afford to pay its CEO, Lee R. Raymond, who last year made $25.7 million dollars. In case you're counting, Mr. Raymond earns 514 times the salary of the average $50,000 per year worker. He is paid $12,355 per hour (for a 40 hour work week). Which means he is paid as much as a minimum wage worker makes all year long in the first hour and half of his first day of the year.

Mr. Raymond made more money before he had a coffee break on January 3rd this year than many moms who get on a bus at 5 AM every day, take no vacations, and scrub floors for eight hours every day -- and repeat that drill for 260 work days all year long.

And with all of that, the Republicans think the taxpayers should reach into their jeans and hand over yet another subsidy from the federal treasury, while at the same time they are cutting slots in Head Start because, Boehner claims, "America is broke." I guess unless you happen to be an oil company -- or a Wall Street speculator.

Increasing oil prices not only benefit oil companies -- whose reserves of oil skyrocket in value with every increase in world oil prices. They also benefit Wall Street speculators who are the proximate cause of current world oil price inflation.

At the moment, the supply of oil is adequate to meet world demand. We are not experiencing an oil shortage. The price of oil has gone up because Wall Street speculators are betting the turmoil in many Arab counties will disrupt oil supplies and make oil scarcer in the future. It's their bets -- and their trading strategies -- that are making world prices rise, not short-term fluctuations in supply and demand.

The influence of speculators on oil prices could be limited if the Commodities Futures Trading Commission (CTFC) were to vote to impose position limits that restrict the ability of speculators to influence oil prices. The CTFC was mandated by Congress to set those limits by the first of this year, but have not yet done so. They have dragged their feet because Republican Commissioners and Republicans in Congress oppose tough position limits since they would also limit the amount of speculative profit that can be made by the base of the Republican Party: Wall Street.

The latest spike in oil prices shows us once again, that our dependence on oil is a grave danger to our economy and our national security. That uprisings half a world away can threaten our economic stability -- at the same time they enrich oil giants -- should send a clear signal. America has to free itself from our addiction to oil.

It also demonstrates the danger posed to our economy by failure to effectively regulate Wall Street speculation.

But the Republicans not only want to give subsidies to the oil companies, their spending plan would cut our investments in clean energy that would allow us to throw off the yoke of foreign oil. H.R. 1 slashes key Department of Energy (DOE) programs that promote clean energy by about $1.7 billion -- approximately a 23 percent decrease from current levels. What's more, they have included non-budget "riders" that gut the clean air act.

The Republicans are not only endangering our economic security. They are endangering our national security by guaranteeing we are held hostage by whoever happens to control the oil fields thousands of miles from our shores.

In fact, a good case can be made that the Republican Party should register with the Justice Department as an agent of a foreign power: international oil companies that operate across the world's borders, owe no allegiance to any country -- and are perfectly happy to compromise America's economic and national security so they can continue to make more and more money by siphoning dollars from the pockets of America's middle class.

Boehner's Republican Party is certainly out of touch with everyday Americans -- and its spending priorities endanger America's future.

Robert Creamer is a long-time political organizer and strategist, and author of the book: Stand Up Straight: How Progressives Can Win, available on Amazon.com.

 

Governor Walker’s Coup D’Etat

by Robert Reich

Thursday, March 10, 2011

Governor Scott Walker and his Wisconsin senate Republicans have laid bare the motives for their coup d’etat. By severing the financial part of the bill (which couldn’t be passed without absent Democrats) from the part eliminating the collective bargaining rights of public employees (which could be), and then doing the latter, Wisconsin Republicans have made it crystal clear that their goal has had nothing whatever to do with the state budget. It’s been to bust the unions.

That’s no surprise to most people who have watched this conflict from the start, but like any coup its ultimate outcome will depend on the public. If most citizens of Wisconsin are now convinced that Walker and his cohorts are extremists willing to go to any lengths for their big-business patrons (including the billionaire Koch brothers), those citizens will recall enough Republican senators to right this wrong.

But it’s critically important at this stage that Walker’s opponents maintain the self-discipline they have shown until this critical point. Walker would like nothing better than disorder to break out in Madison. Like the leader of any coup d’etat, he wants to show the public his strong-arm methods are made necessary by adversaries whose behavior can be characterized on the media as even more extreme.

Be measured. Stay cool. Know that we are a nation of laws, and those laws will prevail. The People’s Party is growing across America — and the actions of Scott Walker and his Republican colleagues are giving it even greater momentum. So are the actions of congressional Republicans who are using the threat of a government shutdown to strong-arm their way in Washington.

The American public may be divided over many things but we stand united behind our democratic process and the rule of law. And we reject coups in whatever form they occur.

How Republicans Are Using Budget Crisis to Impose Privatization

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

 

Philanthro-Feudalism Is the Future!

Published on Wednesday, March 9, 2011 by Grit TV 

 

by Laura Flanders

China’s new economic plan is a relic of the past. It focuses on raising standards of living. How quaint!

When China’s leaders unveiled their latest five-year plan recently, they revealed that their focus is on lowering inequality, investing in railroads, highways and hospitals and expanding domestic demand through income subsidies. Fancy that!

Those old world Chinese just don’t seem to get it, that the modern way is the American way: deregulate, concentrate wealth in the top 1 percent and then make sure those at the top don’t pay taxes!

Treated well enough, the rich will fund desperately-needed things like cancer research. Just look at David Koch. Keep government regulators’ hands off his cancer-causing formaldehyde, and he’ll happily put $100 million toward a new Institute for (some) Cancer Research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. (As long as it’s named after him. )

It’s the modern new twist on an Old World theme. We call it Philanthro-feudalism.

Those Chinese by contrast, so stuck in the past, are still looking to government to fund government things. They’re even spending public money on public projects—things like broadband internet for peasants and medical and technological research. Communists!

After all this time, they just don’t understand that the best guardians of public dollars are private bankers.

Here at home, we’re making remarkable advances! Our corporations recently gained the right to free speech and they’re so advanced that they’re preparing to spend billions to influence our next election! And a few pesky Wisconsin protesters aside, workers have realized that they don’t need rights, or jobs, or much in the way of wages.

The government of China clearly has a lot to learn. But meanwhile, let’s give ’em our thanks for still buying our bonds—and taking all those jobs off our hands.

One last thing, we’ve learned names matter. The poor aren’t eating so much these days in the US, but don’t call them peasants. They don’t like that. Here we call them consumers.

© 2011 The Nation

The F Word is a regular commentary by Laura Flanders, the host of GRITtv and editor of At The Tea Party, out now from OR Books. GRITtv broadcasts weekdays on DISH Network and DIRECTv, on cable, and online at GRITtv.org and TheNation.com. Follow GRITtv or GRITlaura on Twitter and be GRITtv's friend on Facebook.

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UN: Eco-Farming Feeds the World

Published on Wednesday, March 9, 2011 by Civil Eats

by Paula Crossfield

For years now, the most-asked question by detractors of the good food movement has been, “Can organic agriculture feed the world?” According to a new United Nations report, the answer is a big, fat yes.

The report, Agro-ecology and the Right to Food, released yesterday, reveals that small-scale sustainable farming would even double food production within five to 10 years in places where most hungry people on the planet live.

“We won’t solve hunger and stop climate change with industrial farming on large plantations,” Olivier De Schutter, UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food and author of the report, said in a press release. “The solution lies in supporting small-scale farmers’ knowledge and experimentation, and in raising incomes of smallholders so as to contribute to rural development.”

The report suggests moving away from the overuse of oil in farming, a problem that is magnified in the face of rising prices due to unrest in the Middle East. The focus is instead on agroecology, or eco-farming. “Agroecology seeks to improve the sustainability of agroecosystems by mimicking nature instead of industry,” reads a section.

The report shows that these practices raise productivity significantly, reduce rural poverty, increase genetic diversity, improve nutrition in local populations, serve to build a resilient food system in the face of climate change, utilize fewer and more locally available resources, empower farmers and create jobs.

Of 57 impoverished countries surveyed, for example, yields had increased by an average of nearly 80 percent when farmers used methods such as placing weed-eating ducks in rice patties in Bangladesh or planting desmodium, which repels insects, in Kenyan cornfields. These practices were also cost effective, locally available and resulted from farmers working to pass on this knowledge to each other in their communities.

While the report admits that agroecology can be more labor-intensive because of the complexity of knowledge required, it shows that this is usually a short-term issue. The report underscores that agroecology creates more jobs over the long term answering critics who argue that creating more jobs in agriculture is counter-productive. “Creation of employment in rural areas in developing countries, where underemployment is currently massive, and demographic growth remains high,” states the report, “may constitute an advantage rather than a liability and may slow down rural-urban migration.”
Mark Bittman put it aptly in his column on the UN report at the New York Times, saying:

Agro-ecology and related methods are going to require resources too, but they’re more in the form of labor, both intellectual—much research remains to be done—and physical: the world will need more farmers, and quite possibly less mechanization.

This is not the first time such a report has declared more productive ways to feed the world other than leaving that important task to large corporations. In April 2008, the IAASTD report (the International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development)–which was supported by the World Bank, the UN Food & Agriculture Organization and the World Health Organization, among others, with the participation of over 60 world governments and 400 experts–found that not only would industrial food production not be able to feed the world in the long term, but the practices being employed are actually increasing hunger, exhausting resources and exacerbating climate change. However, the U.S., under the Bush Administration, was one of the countries that decided not to endorse the findings.

Though agroecological farming has benefits for industrialized countries too, both reports focus largely on what to do in the least-developed nations on the globe. The status quo for U.S. foreign policy in agriculture up until now has been to leverage our political muscle to force countries to except our subsidized crops, even if it meant destroying local agricultural economies. (Former President Bill Clinton apologized for this policy last year, saying that it has “failed everywhere it’s been tried,” and “we should have continued to work to make sure [Haiti] was self-sufficient in agriculture.”) Will the Obama Administration be more receptive to these findings and could there be a change in the way we work with other countries in our support for agriculture?

Looking back at this (proudly pro-business) administration’s follies in hiring a pesticide lobbyist as our Agricultural Trade Representative, maintaining the USDA in the confusing role of promoting and regulating agriculture, and focusing on “improved seeds,” which usually means funding for the development of genetically modified crops for poor countries and you might be discouraged.

But De Schutter argues that real change to improve the livelihoods of rural farmers requires governments to be on board. “States and donors have a key role to play here,” he said. “Private companies will not invest time and money in practices that cannot be rewarded by patents and which don’t open markets for chemical products or improved seeds.” In other words, feeding the worlds hungry should not be left to the market alone.

The report makes these specific recommendations for governing bodies:

• making reference to agroecology and sustainable agriculture in national strategies for the realization of the right to food and by including measures adopted in the agricultural sector in national adaptation plans of action (NAPAs) and in the list of nationally appropriate mitigation actions (NAMAs) adopted by countries in their efforts to mitigate climate change;

• reorienting public spending in agriculture by prioritizing the provision of public goods, such as extension services, rural infrastructures and agricultural research, and by building on the complementary strengths of seeds-and-breeds and agroecological methods, allocating resources to both, and exploring the synergies, such as linking fertilizer subsidies directly to agroecological investments on the farm (“subsidy to sustainability”);

• supporting decentralized participatory research and the dissemination of knowledge about the best sustainable agricultural practices by relying on existing farmers’ organizations and networks, and including schemes designed specifically for women;

• improving the ability of producers practicing sustainable agriculture to access markets, using instruments such as public procurement, credit, farmers’ markets, and creating a supportive trade and macroeconomic framework.

The report also gives recommendations for donors seeking to decrease hunger and improve rural livelihoods and for research organizations.

You can read the full report here [PDF]

© 2011 Civil Eats

Paula Crossfield is the managing editor of Civil Eats. She is also a regular contributor to the Huffington Post's Green Page and is a contributing producer at The Leonard Lopate Show on New York Public Radio where she focuses on food issues. She is currently tending a vegetable garden on her roof in the Lower East Side. You can follow her on Twitter.

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Why The Street’s Euphoric Birthday Has Almost Nothing to Do with a Buoyant Economy

by Robert Reich

Tuesday, March 8, 2011

What a difference two years makes. On March 9, 2009 the Dow Jones Industrial Average hit the bottom — closing at a 12-year low of 6,547. Today the Dow is soaring well over 12,000.

From its peak in October, 2007 until its trough two years ago, the stock market lost almost $8 trillion in value. That value hasn’t been completely restored but the Street is well on the way.

Some say the Street’s buoyant revival should pull the rest of the economy with it. But this is hardly a buoyant recovery.

In theory, at least, the extraordinary bull market should be making Americans feel far wealthier than they felt two years ago. So they should be spending far more, and that spending should be fueling far more job growth than it is.

Why hasn’t it happened? In reality, the vast majority of Americans don’t feel wealthier because they hold few if any shares of stock. In fact most feel poorer because their major asset is their homes – now worth 20 to 40 percent less than they were worth in 2007 (and there’s no sign of a rebound in housing).

The Street’s bull market over the last two years has seriously enriched only the wealthiest 5 percent of Americans who hold the lion’s share of stock. While their earned income starts at $210,000, their unearned income – dividends and capital gains — now puts them considerably above that.

Shouldn’t the shopping of the top 5 percent spur lots of new jobs? Not really. While the top 5 percent are spending more, they’re not spending all that much as a proportion of their earnings. The rich sock away a bigger share of their income than everyone else. After all, being rich means you already have most of what you want.

Moody’s Analytics estimates that the shopping of America’s richest 5 percent now accounts for 35.5 percent of all U.S. consumer spending. Just think how much more spending would be going on — and jobs thereby created — if more Americans shared in Wall Street’s gains.

The remaining 95 percent of Americans are still holding back from the malls because they’re worried about their jobs, their falling wages, their higher health-care deductibles, and their dropping home values. And as long as they continue to hold back, this recovery will be painfully slow.

Happy Birthday Wall Street. Party away. Just know that most Americans aren’t joining the celebration.

Collective Bargaining Essential to Democracy

By Bruce T. Boccardy

Posted Mar 05, 2011 @ 06:33 PM

Last update Mar 05, 2011 @ 08:51 PM, from The Herald News

Political events in Wisconsin have questioned the necessity of collective bargaining. The governor of Wisconsin notwithstanding, collective bargaining is recognized as a human right in international conventions, constitutions, and courts.

Our Constitution addresses the right of collective bargaining in the thirteenth amendment. The amendment appears to refer to only the issue of slavery. However, according to the Supreme Court in 1911, the purpose of the thirteenth amendment was not simply to eliminate slavery, but release one person’s labor from the exploitation of another.

The Norris-LaGuardia Anti-Injunction Act of 1932 was the primary statute that declared the right of collective bargaining. This was followed by the National Labor Relations Act of 1935 and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948. Both confirmed that right.

Today, corporate power is strangling the natural American impulse of political democracy. Collective bargaining is an extant instrument that ensures at least a modicum of fairness for employees.

Corporate billionaires pay swarms of lobbyists to influence legislators to enact anti-union legislation. This cohort also transfers gobs of cash to legislators as the Koch brothers did for the governor of Wisconsin. Additionally, they finance reactionary think tanks that churn our staggering amounts of false data. Individual employees are obviously no match for such corporate power. Unions are essential to balance that asymmetrical relationship as a “countervailing power,” as coined by economist John Kenneth Galbreath.

The other power facing employees is government power. Like corporations, they wield an enormous amount of economic power over a vast workforce. Moreover, public sector union employees are subjected to the same work issues as private sector employees. It is hypocritical to deny them the same protections that private union employees have won.

Our history is replete with patterns of employer abuse absent a union with the collective bargaining instrument. Employees were routinely underpaid, overworked and dismissed unjustly at the caprices of employers. Their lives were arbitrarily disrupted and sent into financial and personal chaos. The issue of collective bargaining crystallizes our justification to provide a serious voice for those who perform the work in our cities and towns.

Decent work standards that facilitated the growth of the middle and working class emanated from collective bargaining. These included the 40-hour workweek, the weekend, vacation time, employer-supported health insurance, pensions, family and medical leave, and basic safety and health protections in the work environment. A union contract can prevent splenetic supervisors from unfairly unleashing their wrath on employees.

When unions improve the work conditions of their members, there is a concentric effect that can benefit all working people. The non-partisan Economic Policy Institute released a report in August 2003 concluding that unions have contributed to employment standards and practices adopted throughout the nation. The record shows that when unions are strong, wages and salaries increase for all. Health care coverage and pensions are strengthened. When private and public unions are weak, the quality of life for our families and communities is jeopardized.

Moreover, unions have contributed to legislation and standards that benefit all working people such as the Occupational and Safety and Health Act of 1970 and the Family Medical Leave Act of 1993.

Finally, there is no correlation between states that have collective bargaining rights and states burdened with large deficits. Data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics in January this year and the Center on Budget Policy and Priorities this February confirmed this. States that deny employees bargaining rights such as Nevada, North Carolina, and Arizona have huge deficits of over 30 percent. Others states that possess bargaining rights such as Massachusetts, New Mexico, and Montana have smaller deficits of less than 10 percent.

State budget deficits are not the product of collective bargaining, but largely reflect the disastrous impact of our latest recession. The test for states now is to provide essential services to cities and towns with fair budget and tax policies that do not break the backs and spirits of middle and low income folks.

Unions are demonstrably imperfect entities. However, without collective bargaining rights, employment conditions are flagrantly rigged for corporations and governmental bureaucrats. Collective bargaining is the sine qua non for union members. It is an instrument to ensure some measure of economic democracy. Our cherished institutions of political democracy require an authentic economic democracy to achieve the just aspirations of all working people.

Bruce Boccardy is the president of Local 888, of the Service Employees International Union, representing public employees throughout Massachusetts.

Trauma for Working Class in America: Fray or Distraction?

Published on Tuesday, March 8, 2011 by CommonDreams.org

by Donna Smith

All over America, working class people are trying hard just to maintain.  Jobs are not plentiful.  Good jobs are less so.  Most experts on the economy think it will be years, if ever, before the U.S. economy recovers to the point where unemployment dips much below 8 percent.

Think what you will about the will to survive and the drive to achieve, but it is not always possible for people to lift up and out fast enough to avoid horrible consequences for themselves and for their kids.

Last night, I watched a CBS News, 60 Minutes, segment on childhood poverty and homelessness in America.  Reluctant as many of us are to praise the mainstream media for doing much investigative reporting at all in recent years, this segment was astounding in its clarity and impact.  (http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=7358670n)

 

Listen to the kids in this segment.  Some go to bed hungry.  And they live in shabby motels within blocks of more touristy attractions near Disneyworld in Orlando.  Their shame is palpable.  Listen to the one young girl who says what so many of the kids feel – she believes somehow the struggles her family is having with money are her fault. 

I wish CBS had gone on to contrast the piece with a swing through the bawdy and haughty neighborhoods where the wealthy Florida CEOs gate themselves off safely from the rest of us and where the recession has done a whole lot less damage to families and children, but I was thrilled to see the piece nonetheless.  Children always speak with such clarity and honesty that it’s harder to spin their messages.

I also watched in amazement this weekend as the same mainstream media continued to purposely ignore the tens of thousands of protestors still on the streets in Madison, WI, and the other growing protests by working people across the country.  It is a disgrace that we have to watch reports of what Sarah Palin is thinking about doing a few months from now with her political future while thousands of our fellow citizens fight just to make sure they have decent jobs now.  Our mainstream media’s devotion to the cult of celebrity is more than disturbing, it is self-fulfilling mass destruction of a whole class of people who are not decadent enough, wealthy enough or well-connected enough to plot the course of public discourse.

Part of me wants to believe that some of our elected officials are apart from and somehow above this cultural worship of wealth and stardom.  But in reading this week about what our President and his staff think really matters, I saw this piece by Jackie Calmes  of the New York Times:

“...Similarly, the White House mostly has sought to stay out of the fray in Madison, Wis., and other state capitals where Republican governors are battling public employee unions and Democratic lawmakers over collective bargaining rights. When West Wing officials discovered that the Democratic National Committee had mobilized Mr. Obama’s national network to support the protests, they angrily reined in the staff at the party headquarters.

“Administration officials said they saw such events beyond Washington as distractions from the optimistic ‘win the future’ message Mr. Obama introduced with his State of the Union address, exhorting the country to increase spending.”

Surely, surely, we don’t see the children CBS reported on from Central Florida as distractions, do we?  The homeless kids elsewhere in America?  The jobless?  How about the hundreds still dying every day in America who lack access to healthcare when they need it?  Distractions, one and all?

The reality is that if the mainstream media were to cover the trauma unfolding in America and cover the enormous protests on-going in Madison and beyond right here in the United States, many would be punished  by getting less access to report on and interview the President and his staff or others who might be somehow embarrassed by some real reporting work on conditions in America.  Producers and publishers know that if they show too much of the truth, it will cost them dearly in future reporting efforts.  And if the media outlets don’t get that access and those interviews, then they fear a loss of revenue that could follow if viewers sought their celebrity-fixes on other celebrity and corporately owned media outlets.  I understand the Catch-22.  

On the other hand, if reports were straightforward and done as well as the 60 Minutes segment, it would be very difficult for elected officials to run from the reality unfolding from sea to shining sea.  Then those same celebrity-hungry leaders might find it more difficult to shield themselves from distractions like pesky homeless children or unemployed citizens or sick people without healthcare and that reality or might at least seem more obvious in their self-selected oblivion.

I still recall the powerful segment 60 Minutes did some time ago about Yolanda Colemen of Las Vegas.  Yolanda was a young single-mother with cancer who became too ill to work, lost her job, then lost her insurance benefits, then lost the ability to fully cover her own treatment and finally had the hospital bed in which she was dying repossessed because she couldn’t pay for it out-of-pocket.  Creating that sort of “stardom” is what shakes people to act.

When we cannot stand to see the reality is exactly when we need to most.  We are not distractions.  The average citizens of this nation, the working class and the poor, far outnumber the wealthy and those who profit from our suffering, including the stars both in Hollywood and in Washington, DC.   But for today, I actually think I have to thank CBS for letting those beautiful children speak their truth.  It may be the only dignity they get in a very rough period of life and maybe in death which ought to be filled with joy – but for the distractions of poverty these beautiful, harmless children face in Mr. Obama’s America in 2011.

 

Donna Smith is a community organizer for National Nurses United (the new national arm of the California Nurses Association) and National Co-Chair for the Progressive Democrats of America Healthcare Not Warfare campaign.

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Koch Bros.: Pulling Back the Curtain on Political Puppetmasters

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

 

How Wisconsin Could Turn Austerity into Prosperity: Own a Bank

Published on Monday, March 7, 2011 by YES! Magazine

 

by Ellen Brown

Public sector worker sitting in a bar: “They’re trying to take away our pensions.”
Private sector worker: “What’s a pension?” —Cartoon in the Houston Chronicle

As states struggle to meet their budgets, public pensions are on the chopping block, but they needn’t be. States can keep their pension funds intact while leveraging them into many times their worth in loans, just as Wall Street banks do. They can do this by forming their own public banks, following the lead of North Dakota—a state that currently has a budget surplus.

Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, whose recently proposed bill to gut benefits, wages, and bargaining rights for unionized public workers inspired weeks of protests in Madison, has justified the move as necessary for balancing the state's budget. But is it?

After three weeks of demonstrations in Wisconsin, protesters report no plans to back down. Fourteen Wisconsin Democratic lawmakers—who left the state so that a quorum to vote on the bill could not be reached—said Friday that they are not deterred by threats of possible arrest and of 1,500 layoffs if they don't return to work. President Obama has charged Wisconsin’s Governor Scott Walker with attempting to bust the unions. But Walker’s defense is:

“We're broke. Like nearly every state across the country, we don't have any more money."

Broke Unless You Count the $67 Billion Pension Fund . . .

Wisconsin's pension program could save another $195 million annually just by cutting out its Wall Street investment managers and managing the funds in-house.

That’s what he says, but according to Wisconsin’s 2010 CAFR (Comprehensive Annual Financial Report) [pdf], the state has $67 billion in pension and other employee benefit trust funds, invested mainly in stocks and debt securities drawing a modest return.

A recent study by the Pew Center for the States showed that Wisconsin’s pension fund is almost fully funded, meaning it can meet its commitments for years to come without drawing on outside sources. It requires a contribution of only $645 million annually to meet pension payouts. Zach Carter, writing in the Huffington Post, notes that the pension program could save another $195 million annually just by cutting out its Wall Street investment managers and managing the funds in-house.

The governor is evidently eying the state’s pension fund, not because the state cannot afford the pension program, but because he sees it as a potential source of revenue for programs that are not fully funded. This tactic, however, is not going down well with state employees.

Fortunately, there is another alternative. Wisconsin could draw down the fund by the small amount needed to meet pension obligations, and put the bulk of the remaining money to work creating jobs, helping local businesses, and increasing tax revenues for the state. It could do this by forming its own bank, following the lead of North Dakota, the only state to have its own bank—and the only state to escape the credit crisis.

This could be done without spending the pension fund money or lending it. The funds would just be shifted from one form of investment to another (equity in a bank). When a bank makes a loan, neither the bank’s own capital nor its customers’ demand deposits are actually lent to borrowers. As observed on the Dallas Federal Reserve’s website, “Banks actually create money when they lend it.” They simply extend accounting-entry bank credit, which is extinguished when the loan is repaid. Creating this sort of credit-money is a privilege available only to banks—but states can tap into that privilege by owning a bank.

How North Dakota Escaped the Credit Crunch

The state-owned Bank of North Dakota (BND) has allowed North Dakota to maintain its economic sovereignty, a conservative states-rights ideal. The BND was established in 1919 in response to a wave of farm foreclosures by out-of-state Wall Street banks. Today, the state not only has no debt, but it recently boasted its largest-ever budget surplus. The BND helps to fund not only local government but local businesses and local banks, by partnering with the banks to provide the funds to support small business lending.

The BND is also a boon to the state treasury, having contributed over $300 million to state coffers in the past decade, a notable achievement for a state with a population less than one-tenth the size of Los Angeles County. In 2008, the BND returned a 26 percent dividend to the state. In comparison, California’s public pension funds are down more than $100 billion—that’s billion with a “b”—or close to half the funds’ holdings, following the Wall Street debacle of 2008. It was, in fact, the 2008 bank collapse rather than overpaid public employees that caused the crisis that shrank state revenues and prompted the budget cuts in the first place.

Seven States Are Now Considering Setting Up Public Banks

Faced with federal inaction and growing local budget crises, an increasing number of states are exploring the possibility of setting up their own state-owned banks, following the North Dakota model. On January 11, 2011, a bill to establish a state-owned bank was introduced in the Oregon State legislature; on January 13, a similar bill was introduced in Washington State; on January 20, a bill for a state bank was filed in Massachusetts (following a 2010 bill that had lapsed); and on February 4, a bill was introduced in the Maryland legislature for a feasibility study looking into the possibilities. They join Illinois, Virginia, and Hawaii, which introduced similar bills in 2010, bringing the total number of states with such bills to seven.

If Governor Walker wanted to explore this possibility for his state, he could drop in on the Center for State Innovation (CSI), which is located down the street in his capital city of Madison, Wisconsin. The CSI has done detailed cost/benefit analyses of the Oregon and Washington state bank initiatives, which show substantial projected benefits based on the BND precedent. See reports here and here.

For Washington State, with an economy not much larger than Wisconsin’s, the CSI report estimates that after an initial start-up period, establishing a state-owned bank would create new or retained jobs of between 7,400 and 10,700 a year at small businesses alone, while at the same time returning a profit to the state.

A Bank of Wisconsin Could Generate “Bank Credit” Many Times the Size of the Budget Deficit

Economists looking at the CSI reports have called their conclusions conservative. The CSI made its projections without relying on state pension funds for bank capital, although it acknowledged that this could be a potential source of capitalization.

If the Bank of Wisconsin were to use state pension funds, it could have a capitalization of more than $57 billion—nearly as large as that of Goldman Sachs. At an 8 percent capital requirement, $8 in capital can support $100 in loans, or a potential lending capacity of over $500 billion. The bank would need deposits to clear the checks, but the credit-generating potential could still be huge.

With a state bank, Wisconsin might be able to amass over $24 billion in deposits and generate an equivalent sum in loans—over six times the deficit complained of by the state’s governor.

Banks can create all the bank credit they want, limited only by (a) the availability of creditworthy borrowers, (b) the lending limits imposed by bank capital requirements, and (c) the availability of “liquidity” to clear outgoing checks. Liquidity can be acquired either from the deposits of the bank’s own customers or by borrowing from other banks or the money market. If borrowed, the cost of funds is a factor; but at today’s very low Fed funds rate of 0.2 percent, that cost is minimal. Again, however, only banks can tap into these very low rates. States are reduced to borrowing at about 5 percent—unless they own their own banks, or, better yet, unless they are banks. The BND is set up as “North Dakota doing business as the Bank of North Dakota.”

That means that technically, all of North Dakota’s assets are the assets of the bank. The BND also has its deposit needs covered. It has a massive deposit base, since all of the state’s revenues are deposited in the bank by law. The bank also takes other deposits, but the bulk of its deposits are government funds. The BND is careful not to compete with local banks for consumer deposits, which account for less than 2 percent of the total. The BND reports that it has deposits of $2.7 billion and outstanding loans of $2.6 billion. With a population of 647,000, that works out to about $4,000 per capita in deposits, backing roughly the same amount in loans.

Wisconsin has a population that is nine times the size of North Dakota’s. Other factors being equal, Wisconsin might be able to amass over $24 billion in deposits and generate an equivalent sum in loans—over six times the deficit complained of by the state’s governor. That lending capacity could be used for many purposes, depending on the will of the legislature and state law. Possibilities include (a) partnering with local banks, as in the North Dakota model, strengthening their capital bases to allow credit to flow to small businesses and homeowners, where it is sorely needed today; (b) funding infrastructure virtually interest-free (since the state would own the bank and would get back any interest paid out); and (c) refinancing state deficits nearly interest-free.

Why Give Wisconsin’s Enormous Credit-generating Power Away?

The budget woes of Wisconsin and other states were caused not by overspending on employee benefits, but by a credit crisis on Wall Street. The “cure” is to get credit flowing again in the local economy, and this can be done by using state assets to capitalize state-owned banks.

Against the modest cost of establishing a publicly owned bank, state legislators need to weigh the much greater costs of the alternatives—slashing essential public services, laying off workers, raising taxes on constituents who are already over-taxed, and selling off public assets. Given the cost of continuing business as usual, states can hardly afford not to consider the public bank option. When state and local governments invest their capital in out-of-state money center banks and deposit their revenues there, they are giving their enormous credit-generating power away to Wall Street.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License

Ellen Brown is a frequent contributor to YES! Magazine. She is an attorney and the author of eleven books, including Web of Debt: The Shocking Truth About Our Money System and How We Can Break Free. Her websites are webofdebt.com and ellenbrown.com.

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This Time We’re Taking the Whole Planet With Us

Posted on Mar 7, 2011, by truthdig
 
By Chris Hedges

 
People collect scraps from a garbage dump in Hyderabad, India.

I have walked through the barren remains of Babylon in Iraq and the ancient Roman city of Antioch, the capital of Roman Syria, which now lies buried in silt deposits. I have visited the marble ruins of Leptis Magna, once one of the most important agricultural centers in the Roman Empire, now isolated in the desolate drifts of sand southeast of Tripoli. I have climbed at dawn up the ancient temples in Tikal, while flocks of brightly colored toucans leapt through the jungle foliage below. I have stood amid the remains of the ancient Egyptian city of Luxor along the Nile, looking at the statue of the great Egyptian pharaoh Ramesses II lying broken on the ground, with Percy Shelley’s poem “Ozymandias” running through my head:

“My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away."

Civilizations rise, decay and die. Time, as the ancient Greeks argued, for individuals and for states is cyclical. As societies become more complex they become inevitably more precarious. They become increasingly vulnerable. And as they begin to break down there is a strange retreat by a terrified and confused population from reality, an inability to acknowledge the self-evident fragility and impending collapse. The elites at the end speak in phrases and jargon that do not correlate to reality. They retreat into isolated compounds, whether at the court at Versailles, the Forbidden City or modern palatial estates. The elites indulge in unchecked hedonism, the accumulation of vaster wealth and extravagant consumption. They are deaf to the suffering of the masses who are repressed with greater and greater ferocity. Resources are more ruthlessly depleted until they are exhausted. And then the hollowed-out edifice collapses. The Roman and Sumerian empires fell this way. The Mayan elites, after clearing their forests and polluting their streams with silt and acids, retreated backward into primitivism.

As food and water shortages expand across the globe, as mounting poverty and misery trigger street protests in the Middle East, Africa and Europe, the elites do what all elites do. They launch more wars, build grander monuments to themselves, plunge their nations deeper into debt, and as it all unravels they take it out on the backs of workers and the poor. The collapse of the global economy, which wiped out a staggering $40 trillion in wealth, was caused when our elites, after destroying our manufacturing base, sold massive quantities of fraudulent mortgage-backed securities to pension funds, small investors, banks, universities, state and foreign governments and shareholders. The elites, to cover the losses, then looted the public treasury to begin the speculation over again. They also, in the name of austerity, began dismantling basic social services, set out to break the last vestiges of unions, slashed jobs, froze wages, threw millions of people out of their homes, and stood by idly as we created a permanent underclass of unemployed and underemployed.

The Mayan elite became, at the end, as the anthropologist Ronald Wright notes in “A Short History of Progress,” “… extremists, or ultra-conservatives, squeezing the last drops of profit from nature and humanity.” This is how all civilizations, including our own, ossify and die. The signs of imminent death may be undeniable. Common sense may cry out for a radical new response. But the race toward self-immolation only accelerates because of intellectual and moral paralysis. As Sigmund Freud grasped in “Beyond the Pleasure Principle” and “Civilization and Its Discontents,” human societies are as intoxicated and blinded by their own headlong rush toward death and destruction as they are by the search for erotic fulfillment.

The unrest in the Middle East, the implosion of national economies such as those of Ireland and Greece, the increasing anger of a beleaguered working class at home and abroad, the growing desperate human migrations and the refusal to halt our relentless destruction of the ecosystem on which life depends are the harbingers of our own collapse and the consequences of the idiocy of our elite and the folly of globalization. Protests that are not built around a complete reconfiguration of American society, including a rapid dismantling of empire and the corporate state, can only forestall the inevitable. We will be saved only with the birth of a new and militant radicalism which seeks to dethrone our corrupt elite from power, not negotiate for better terms.

The global economy is built on the erroneous belief that the marketplace—read human greed—should dictate human behavior and that economies can expand eternally. Globalism works under the assumption that the ecosystem can continue to be battered by massive carbon emissions without major consequences. And the engine of global economic expansion is based on the assurance that there will always be plentiful and cheap oil. The inability to confront simple truths about human nature and the natural world leaves the elites unable to articulate new social, economic and political paradigms. They look only for ways to perpetuate a dying system. Thomas Friedman and the array of other propagandists for globalization make as much sense as Charlie Sheen.

Globalization is the modern articulation of the ancient ideology used by past elites to turn citizens into serfs and the natural world into a wasteland for profit. Nothing to these elites is sacred. Human beings and the natural world are exploited until exhaustion or collapse. The elites make no pretense of defending the common good. It is, in short, the defeat of rational thought and the death of humanism. The march toward self-annihilation has already obliterated 90 percent of the large fish in the oceans and wiped out half of the mature tropical forests, the lungs of the planet. At this rate by 2030 only 10 percent of the Earth’s tropical forests will remain. Contaminated water kills 25,000 people every day around the globe, and each year some 20 million children are impaired by malnourishment. Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is now above the 350 parts per million that most climate scientists warn is the maximum level for sustaining life as we know it. [Editor’s note: The preceding sentence has been revised since this article was first published here.] The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change estimates that the measurement could reach 541 to 970 ppm by 2100. At that point huge parts of the planet, beset with overpopulation, droughts, soil erosion, freak storms, massive crop failures and rising sea levels, will be unfit for human existence.

Jared Diamond in his essay “The Last Americans” notes that by the time Hernan Cortés reached the Yucatán, millions of Mayan subjects had vanished.

“Why,” Diamond writes, “did the kings and nobles not recognize and solve these problems? A major reason was that their attention was evidently focused on the short-term concerns of enriching themselves, waging wars, erecting monuments, competing with one another, and extracting enough food from the peasants to support all these activities.”

“Pumping that oil, cutting down those trees, and catching those fish may benefit the elite by bringing them money or prestige and yet be bad for society as a whole (including the children of the elite) in the long run,” Diamond went on. “Maya kings were consumed by immediate concerns for their prestige (requiring more and bigger temples) and their success in the next war (requiring more followers), rather than for the happiness of commoners or of the next generation. Those people with the greatest power to make decisions in our own society today regularly make money from activities that may be bad for society as a whole and for their own children; those decision-makers include Enron executives, many land developers, and advocates of tax cuts for the rich.”

It was no different on Easter Island. The inhabitants, when they first settled the 64-square-mile island during the fifth century, found abundant fresh water and woods filled with the Chilean wine palm, a tree that can reach the size of an oak. Seafood, including fish, seals, porpoises and turtles, and nesting seabirds were plentiful. Easter Island’s society, which split into an elaborate caste system of nobles, priests and commoners, had within five or six centuries swelled to some 10,000 people. The natural resources were devoured and began to disappear.

“Forest clearance for the growing of crops would have led to population increase, but also to soil erosion and decline of soil fertility,” Paul Bahn and John Flenley write in “Easter Island, Earth Island.” “Progressively more land would have had to be cleared. Trees and shrubs would also be cut down for canoe building, firewood, house construction, and for the timbers and ropes needed in the movement and erection of statues. Palm fruits would be eaten, thus reducing regeneration of the palm. Rats, introduced for food, could have fed on the palm fruits, multiplied rapidly and completely prevented palm regeneration. The over exploitation of prolific sea bird resources would have eliminated these for all but the offshore islets. Rats could have helped in this process by eating eggs. The abundant food provided by fishing, sea birds and rats would have encouraged rapid initial human population growth. Unrestrained human population increase would later put pressure on availability of land, leading to disputes and eventually warfare. Non-availability of timber and rope would make it pointless to carve further statues. A disillusionment with the efficacy of the statue religion in providing the wants of the people could lead to the abandonment of this cult. Inadequate canoes would restrict fishing to the inshore waters, leading to further decline in protein supplies. The result could have been general famine, warfare and the collapse of the whole economy, leading to a marked population decline.”

Clans, in the later period of the Easter Island civilization, competed to honor their ancestors by constructing larger and larger hewn stone images, which demanded the last remnants of the timber, rope and manpower on the island. By the year 1400 the woods were gone. The soil had eroded and washed into the sea. The islanders began to fight over old timbers and were reduced to eating their dogs and soon all the nesting birds.

The desperate islanders developed a belief system that posited that the erected stone gods, the moai, would come to life and save them from disaster. This last retreat into magic characterizes all societies that fall into terminal decline. It is a frantic response to loss of control as well as despair and powerlessness. This desperate retreat into magic led to the Cherokee ghost dance, the doomed Taki Onqoy revolt against the Spanish invaders in Peru, and the Aztec prophecies of the 1530s. Civilizations in the last moments embrace a total severance from reality, a reality that becomes too bleak to be absorbed.

The modern belief by evangelical Christians in the rapture, which does not exist in biblical literature, is no less fantastic, one that at once allows for the denial of global warming and of evolution and the absurd idea that the righteous will all be saved—floating naked into heaven at the end of time. The faith that science and technology, which are morally neutral and serve human ambitions, will make the world whole again is no less delusional. We offer up our magical thinking in secular as well as religious form.

We think we have somehow escaped from the foibles of the past. We are certain that we are wiser and greater than those who went before us. We trust naively in the inevitability of our own salvation. And those who cater to this false hope, especially as things deteriorate, receive our adulation and praise. We in the United States, only 5 percent of the world’s population, are outraged if anyone tries to tell us we don’t have a divine right to levels of consumption that squander 25 percent of the world’s energy. President Jimmy Carter, when he suggested that such consumption was probably not beneficial, became a figure of national ridicule. The worse it gets the more we demand illusionary Ronald Reagan happy talk. Those willing to cater to fantasy and self-delusion are, because they make us politically passive, lavishly funded and promoted by corporate and oligarchic forces. And by the very end we are joyfully led over the cliff by simpletons and lunatics, many of whom appear to be lining up for the Republican presidential nomination.

“Are the events of three hundred years ago on a small remote island of any significance to the world at large?” Bahn and Flenley ask. “We believe they are. We consider that Easter Island was a microcosm which provides a model for the whole planet. Like the Earth, Easter Island was an isolated system. The people there believed that they were the only survivors on Earth, all other land having sunk beneath the sea. They carried out for us the experiment of permitting unrestricted population growth, profligate use of resources, destruction of the environment and boundless confidence in their religion to take care of the future. The result was an ecological disaster leading to a population crash. ... Do we have to repeat the experiment on this grand scale? Do we have to be as cynical as Henry Ford and say ‘History is bunk’? Would it not be more sensible to learn the lesson of Easter Island history, and apply it to the Earth Island on which we live?”

Human beings seem cursed to repeat these cycles of exploitation and collapse. And the greater the extent of the deterioration the less they are able to comprehend what is happening around them. The Earth is littered with the physical remains of human folly and human hubris. We seem condemned as a species to drive ourselves and our societies toward extinction, although this moment appears be the denouement to the whole sad show of settled, civilized life that began some 5,000 years ago. There is nothing left on the planet to seize. We are now spending down the last remnants of our natural capital, including our forests, fossil fuel, air and water.

This time when we go down it will be global. There are no new lands to pillage, no new peoples to exploit. Technology, which has obliterated the constraints of time and space, has turned our global village into a global death trap. The fate of Easter Island will be writ large across the broad expanse of planet Earth.

Chris Hedges is a weekly Truthdig columnist and a fellow at The Nation Institute. His newest book is “Death of the Liberal Class.”

 

 

The Birth of the People’s Party

by Robert Reich

Monday, March 7, 2011

Look at the outrage in Madison, Wisconsin. Look at the crowds in DesMoines, Iowa. Look at the demonstrations in Indiana and Ohio and elswhere around America.

Hear what they’re saying: Stop attacking unions. Stop making scapegoats out of public employees. Stop protecting the super-rich from paying their fair share of the taxes needed to keep our schools running.

Stop gutting the working middle class.

Are we finally seeing average Americans stand up and demand a fair shake in an economy now grotesquely tilted toward the wealthy and the privileged? Are Americans beginning to awake to the fact that our economy now delivers a larger share of total income to the very top than at any time in living memory? That big corporations are making more money and creating more jobs abroad than in the United States?

That this concentration of income and wealth has so corrupted politics that corporations can extort whatever they want from the government — tax breaks, loan guarantees, subsidies — while the super-rich can take most of their income as capital gains (taxed at 15 percent), and the rest at the lowest top rate in 25 years? And that because of this our kids are crowded into classrooms, our streets and highways and bridges are falling apart, and our healthcare bills are out of control?

The Tea Party grew out of indignation over the Wall Street bailout — an indignation shared by the vast majority of Americans. But the Tea Party ended up directing its ire at government rather than at big business and Wall Street. Was this because billionaires Charles and David Koch and their like funneled money to the Tea Party through front organizations like Dick Armey’s Freedom Works, and thereby co-opted it?

Now we may be seeing the birth of a genuine populist movement. Call it the People’s Party. Like the Tea Party, the People’s Party doesn’t have a clear organization or hierarchy or single address. It doesn’t have lobbyists in Washington. It’s not even yet recognized by the mainstream media.

But the People’s Party seems to be growing in numbers and in intensity. And it’s starting to push elected officials — first at the state level — to listen and respond.

Why the Democrats Should Never Have Started Paying Ransom to Avoid a Shutdown

by Robert Reich

 Monday, March 7, 2011

 

It’s called ransom. That’s what Republicans are demanding from the White House and congressional Democrats for not pulling the plug on the government.

Problem is, when you pay ransom once, you’re almost begging to pay it again. And that’s exactly the pickle the Obama administration is finding itself in.

In order to avoid a shutdown last week and buy time until March 18, the White House agreed to more spending cuts for the remainder of this fiscal year than it originally put on the table. Now, in order to get past March 18, Republicans want even more. Democrats have offered to cut an additional $10.5 billion but Republicans want $61 billion. The White House is hinting it’s ready to compromise further.

Of course it is. Both sides want to look as if they’re willing to compromise because neither side wants to be blamed by the public if a shutdown happens.

That means they’ll have to agree to split the difference - which will result in around $35 billion of additional cuts. Not in Social Security or Medicare or national defense - no, those programs are too popular or politically potent for any short-term political deal. The $35 billion will come out of what’s called non-defense discretionary spending for the rest of this year.

Non-defense discretionary is 12 percent of the federal budget. It’s also where most federal education programs appear, as well as most programs for the poor apart from Medicaid. In effect, a third of non-defense discretionary spending is handed over to states and locales. Which means cities and states will be taking a huge hit. Detroit is already making plans to put 60 students in each of its high school classrooms.

This is ludicrous.

Yes, fix the budget deficit when we’re safely out of the gravitational pull of the Great Recession. Raise taxes on the super-rich, contain the explosion of health-care costs, cut the defense budget, end agricultural subsidies, stop corporate welfare.

But don’t hurt the most vulnerable members of our society.

And don’t cut anything now — not with unemployment still hovering around 9 percent, and 15 million people without jobs. Not just as the federal stimulus is coming to an end.

Not at a time when state and local governments are slashing their own budgets a total of more than $100 billion this year and next.

Where will demand come from? Consumers won’t be able to make up the shortfall. They’re still under a huge debt load. A quarter of homeowners are still under water.

And with fuel prices heading toward $4 a gallon consumers will have no choice but to pull in their horns.

Compromising over budget cuts this year isn’t just unfair in terms of who will be hurt the most. It also compromises the fragile recovery, and puts the entire economy at risk.

The White House should never have started paying ransom. Once ransom starts, there’s no end to it.

The Republican Plan: Destroy the Economy, Blame Obama, Reclaim Senate and Presidency in 2012.

by John Lawrence

Deficits. Deficits. Deficits. Spending cuts. Spending cuts. Spending cuts. But nary a word was heard of deficits as long as Republican Presidents were occupying the White House and running them up. And nary a word will be heard about deficits after a Republican President wins the 2012 election. Intead Republicans will hail the birth of a new day, the renewal of the middle class, the creation of good-paying jobs instead of those paltry low paying jobs Obama created. How will they pull off this miracle? The same way they pulled it off before. By massive increases in the military budget. The military-industrial complex is the last bastion of good paying middle class jobs with benefits. By running up the national debt and deficit and creating a huge number of good paying middle class jobs in the military industrial complex, the Republicans will create a massive recovery of the middle class ... and run up the national credit card in so doing. Only you won't hear any cry baby calls for lowering the deficit or crocodile tears about passing it on to our children and grandchildren. Republicans and their right wing echo chamber reserve that bit for when Democratic Presidents are occupying the White House. It's called "the two Santa Claus theory" developed by Jude Wannisky. It calls for tax breaks and deficit spending (with no mention of deficit spending by the right wing echo chamber) when Republicans are in power, and raising a huge hue and cry about the deficit and a demand for less spending when Democrats are in power.

When a Republican arrives in the White House, there will be the traditional clamor for lowering taxes and cutting spending. Lowering taxes increases the class divide between rich and poor as it mostly benefits the rich and cutting spending mostly adversely affects the poor. Governor Walker in Wisconsin is a preview of what's in store for the US when Republicans control the House, the Senate, the Presidency and the Supreme Court. You can kiss social security good-bye. You can kiss Medicare and Medicaid good-bye and you can kiss unemployment insurance good-bye. It will be Morning in America for those college educated engineers who choose to work for Lockheed Martin, Boeing, GE, General Dynamics and other defense (now mostly offense) contractors. All others will be working for minimum wage. The national security state will be on full throttle. Double engines for military planes will become de rigeur. Threats will be perceived all over the place resulting in new battle groups, new foreign bases and Bush style hectoring of "evil doers."

The cry will go up: No New Taxes. No New Taxes. No New Taxes. Spending cuts (in programs that benefit the poor and unfortunate) will be mandatory in order to balance the budget. Tax breaks for the wealthiest among us will become necessary in order to create new jobs because after all the wealthy are the job creators. All the while the government will be doing increased hiring in the military-industrial complex. Oh, excuse me. Did I say government? Of course not. The private sector - Boeing, Lockheed Martin, GE, General Dynamics, Halliburton - those paragons of the private sector, will be doing the hiring. Private sector hiring will soar. Only the dirty little secret is that government money will be furnishing private sector defense contractors with the funds to do the hiring. So there will be a surge in private sector employment. The unemployment rate will come way down as 400,000 or 500,000 new jobs will be created each and every month. Republicans will have saved the day. Government will become "smaller" because everything will have been outsourced to the private sector. You might say that this will make everything more expensive because it might have been done cheaper "in house." Think private contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan. So one might argue the "size" of government will have decreased while government spending will have increased. But that's alright as long as the spending is for defense (offense) and not for social programs which benefit the poor and middle class. Everyone will be getting a college education in order to work for the FBI, the CIA, the aforementioned corporations, Blackwater, Halliburton etc. etc. The oil and gas sector will surge as new contracts for drilling in the Gulf of Mexico are opened up. Yessirree, Bob, the Republicans really know how to get the job done and create Morning in America again. Meanwhile, the dirty little secret will be that the national debt will be surging as well. But who cares as long as Republicans are in power? Dick Cheney said, "Reagan proved that deficits don't matter." That is as long as a Republican is in the White House. However, they do matter, they matter very much when a Democrat is in the White House. Republicans have defined a Democratic President's job as bringing down the deficit as Clinton dutifully did.

Expect the Defense Department budget to double from $1 trillion to $2 trillion when a Republican President is elected in 2012. After all any amount that we have to spend to protect the American people is worth it. We cannot take the chance of another terrorist attack. And it will also create jobs. More jobs are needed in Homeland Security, in non-Homeland security and protecting our allies and interests around the world. We need to prop up more dictators that will preserve and enhance stability in the name of freedom instead of these rabble rousing youths who want what they call "democracy." What do they know about democracy? They think democracy will get them a decent job. Hell, no. Democracy isn't about that. Democracy occurs when lobbyists interact with politicians to create loopholes in the tax code. This enhances laissez faire capitalism which is the true goal of democracy. That's the only way to prevent wage inflation as Alan Greenspan so eloquently stated and increase corporate profits. No, these middle eastern rabble rousers need to understand that stability in the region and low oil prices above all else are the desired attributes of a true democracy. And they need to disabuse themselves of the notion that a free education, which is what they've had up to now, is the way to go. Instead a true democracy would encourage tuition hikes. Student loans will allow any student to go to college, but why should taxpayers pay for a free education? It just taught these middle eastern rabble rousers how to use Facebook and organize a revolution. That kind of education needs to be suppressed.

So Republicans are right where they need to be at the present time. Their modus operandi of union busting, social program destruction and tax cuts will maximize the destruction of the US economy and set the stage for a Republican victory in 2012. After that it will be off to the races and Morning Again in America brought to you by increased military spending with the happy concomitant by-product of a resurgence in good paying middle class jobs as contracts are lavished on the likes of Lockheed Martin, Boeing, General Dynamics, Halliburton and many others too numerous to name. It will be in US national interests to secure the shipping lanes in order to insure a steady flow of light sweet crude (mmm, how tasty!) from the middle east to keep our automobiles and light duty pickup trucks humming. High speed rail? Who needs it? Electric cars? Who needs them? And don't give me any crap about global warming. We had record snowfalls this year.

Isaiah's Day at the Zoo

Isaiah's Day at the Zoo from John Lawrence on Vimeo.

 

Michael Moore's Speech in Madison, WI

 

The Real News on Jobs

by Robert Reich

Friday, March 4, 2011

Are we making progress on the jobs front? The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports 192,000 new jobs in Februrary (220,000 new jobs in the private sector and a drop in government employment), and a drop in the overall unemployment rate from 9 to 8.9 percent.

We’re heading in the right direction but far too slowly to make a real dent in unemployment. To get the unemployment rate down to 6 percent by 2014 we’d need over 300,000 new jobs a month, every month, between now and then.

Overall, the number of unemployed Americans – 13.7 million – is about the same as it was last month. The number working part time who’d rather be working full time – 8.3 million – is also about the same.

But to get to the most important trend you have to dig under the job numbers and look at what kind of new jobs are being created. That’s where the big problem lies.

The National Employment Law Project did just that. Its new data brief shows that most of the new jobs created since February 2010 (about 1.26 million) pay significantly lower wages than the jobs lost (8.4 million) between January 2008 and February 2010.

While the biggest losses were higher-wage jobs paying an average of $19.05 to $31.40 an hour, the biggest gains have been lower-wage jobs paying an average of $9.03 to $12.91 an hour.

In other words, the big news isn’t jobs. It’s wages.

For several years now, conservative economists have blamed high unemployment on the purported fact that many Americans have priced themselves out of the global/high-tech jobs market.

So if we want more jobs, they say, we’ll need to take pay and benefit cuts.

And that’s exactly what Americans have been doing.

Employers have demanded wage and benefit concessions from their unionized workers and often got them. Detroit is creating auto jobs again — but new hires are getting about half the pay that auto workers were getting before. Airline workers are taking home 30 to 50 percent less than they did years ago. And so on.

Conservatives say it’s not enough. That’s why unions have to be busted – and why some governors are seeking to abolish laws requiring workers to become dues-paying union members in order to get certain jobs. Hence, the fights brewing in the Midwest.

Meanwhile, millions of non-union workers have accepted cuts in pay and benefits just to keep their jobs. Health benefits have been slashed, pension contributions from employers dramatically cut, wages dropped or “frozen.”

Millions of private-sector workers have been fired and then re-hired as contract workers to do almost exactly what they were doing before, but without any benefits or job security.

The current attack on public-sector workers should be seen in this light. The charge is they now take home more generous pay and benefit packages than private-sector workers. It’s not true on the wage side if you control for level of education, but it wasn’t even true on the benefits side until private-sector benefits fell off a cliff. Meanwhile, across America, public-sector workers have been “furloughed,” which is a nice word for not collecting any pay for weeks at a time.

At this rate, the unemployment rate will continue to decline. But so will the pay and benefits of most Americans.

Conservative economists have it wrong. The underlying problem isn’t that so many Americans have priced themselves out of the global/high-tech labor market. It’s that they’re getting a smaller and smaller share of the American pie.

Republican War on Working Families

 

Ending Corporate Welfare in San Diego!

by Rocky Neptun on March 4, 2011, from the OB Rag

Serra Mesa, San Diego: To kill the Beast or not, was the question. Has it grown into an enormous creature with an insatiable hunger for more and more tax dollars supporting the profits of developers and wealthy speculators? Has what was once a modest program to end blight in inner cities by creating safe, decent, affordable housing and helping neighborhood businesses band together for remodeling and nearby infrastructure improvements been hijacked by bribed politicians to become a lucrative entitlement for large conglomerates and economic cartels?

 What has got the mayor of San Diego peeing his political pants, ranting and raving and flying off to Sacramento for personal begging outside the Capitol building with a implicit hand-written sign which read ‘how dare you consider ending welfare for the rich?” What has got a spineless City Council (with the exception of Sheri Lightner and newcomer David Alverez) falling all over themselves to pass a resolution which urges the governor not to ax funds to their financial benefactors – developers, real estate agents, hotel moguls, speculators and various snake oil salesmen still pushing the nonsense of “trickle down economics?” Todd Gloria in his vote for the resolution did base it on the need to continue affordable housing projects in his district, including my neighborhood in City Heights.

Those were some of the questions which arose at the March 2 forum, entitled “Redevelopment: Abolish or Reform?” Sponsored by the Affordable Housing Coalition of San Diego and the Grantville Action Group, and held at the Salvation Army’s Door of Hope facility in the Birdland neighborhood of Serra Mesa, the gathering drew a diverse crowd who were each given time to discuss their personal views on Governor Brown’s proposal to abolish redevelopment agencies statewide and what that would mean for San Diego.

Ever so often, we in California elect a politician who rises to the stature of statesman; a person of both vision and courage. Progressive Republican Governors Hiram Johnson (1910) and Earl Warren (1943) and Democratic Governor Edmund “Pat” Brown (1959), who built the finest free college and university system in the world until Ronald Reagan and the corporations through Proposition 13 began to dismantle it, were all Governors of vision who had the audacity to challenge the excesses and power of “robber barons,” corporate CEO’s and megalomaniac tyrants of wealth.

Jerry Brown, whose first two terms as governor was a faint-hearted reign in order not to offend the powerful, had his eye on higher office. He dribbled around the edges with modest environmental programs and “small is beautiful” rhetoric rather than whack away at the underpinnings of the corporate state Reagan had cunningly begun. Now, being too old to run for President of the United States and having to answer only to his conscience and faith, he seems to be taking a hard look at the systemic bulwark of corporate welfare and how their lobbyist’s force the public to pay for infrastructure improvements near their developments – roads, sidewalks and traffic mitigation projects which they should being financing, in the first place, for the privilege of doing business in the community.

The Lie that Redevelopment Has Become

As I sat, listening to dozens of citizens take to the podium illuminating their personal experiences about the excesses and abuses of the redevelopment processes in San Diego, it seemed so similar to the painful voices of villagers and indigenous leaders I had heard traveling through northern Mexico with the Zapatista commandants during their “La Otra Campana” movement in 2006. Time and again, village elders would complain about huge, multinational corporations moving into their communities, exploiting resources, paying non-livable wages and then sending the profits off to distant investors, while their local elected officials took bribes and were given positions in the corporate hierarchy for their success in selling off of the public commons. However, the participants at the redevelopment forum in San Diego were no peasants; they represented the best and the worst in each of us.

I had come to the forum expecting to vote in a planned final show of hands for the elimination of redevelopment agencies in San Diego. Vehemently opposed to the obscene amount of money used to subsidize corporate profits, particularly downtown through the Center City Development Corporation (CCDC), and the massive bribery and municipal corruption that the redevelopment process has engendered, I was happy initially that the participants at the March forum seemed 5 to 1 in favor of abolishing redevelopment. Their pleas for neighborhood autonomy and a voice in quality of life issues stripped away the mask of representative democracy, showing the power of the corporate state to dominate, dictate and distribute the common wealth to an elite using the redevelopment process.

For me, once imprisoned by the Fascist dictator of Portugal, Antonio de Oliviera Salazar, I am a strong opponent of the corporate state. After all, it was Benito Mussolini who said in 1939, “Fascism should more appropriately be called Corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power.”  To concentrate political and economic power together in a hierarchy of unelected marionettes, as in CCDC, whose control over municipal assets and whose dispensation jurisdiction has grown each year to the point they own politicians outright, from Councilman Kevin Falconer to Assemblyman Nathan Fletcher, is a reflection of corporatism at its worse. The CCDC agency’s recent end-game around our elected representatives on the city council over the cap limit points to not only the power and arrogance of the corporate state, but the brokenness of representative democracy and the need to replace it with participatory democracy. So, a stake through the heart of the redevelopment process seems to be a first step in that direction.

As the forum progressed, and more and more speakers mounted the podium, many of them from the city’s local planning committees, calling for capital punishment for redevelopment; I realized the dynamic which was playing out at the gathering. As a former elected member of the City Heights Area Planning Committee, who had fought for years on behalf of affordable housing against the developer and real estate interests which dominated the committee, members who worried more about property values rather than human values and nimbyists who fought every project or improvement for anyone below the middle-class economic level, I realized at the forum that those same old battles about the priorities of class-cleansing were emerging in the discussion about redevelopment.

The two principal speakers for eliminating redevelopment were Brian Peterson of the Grantville Action Group, who has fought redevelopment, mostly over eminent domain issues and the lack of input by the local planning group, and Fred Schnaubelt, a former city councilman and myopic real estate broker, who crystallized the whole debate when he said “the housing coalition is just making the situation worse by the policies they are attempting to get adopted,” alluding to high-density, affordable housing projects

Affordable Housing Beyond Redevelopment

Then, the last speaker, Doris Camp, of the San Diego Housing Federation, reminded the audience that without the redevelopment process many of the affordable housing projects in the city would not have been built. And, when she asked people to reconsider their terminal bias for redevelopment, I realized that there just wasn’t enough political will on the part of ambitious council persons to fight for affordable housing against the property rights fanatics and not in my neighborhood guardians who sit on the planning committees throughout the city. That without the redevelopment agencies, in spite of their pimping the corporate addiction to public funds, there is no mechanism to advocate and support any affordable projects in the city.

 Brian Trotier

Brian Trotier, a former interim CEO of the Southeastern Development Corporation (SEDC), spoke in favor of reforming the redevelopment agencies with concrete legislation that would specifically define “blight,” require that all efforts go toward the neediest citizens and neighborhoods in the city and that a specific ratio of public money to developer money be established rather than a blank check for corporate welfare. He also called for a formal agreement, a contract, where developers would be required to meet their threshold of promised jobs, tax increment estimates and neighborhood improvement pledges.

With the end of redevelopment, he spoke of the loss of “a tool” to entice and allow developers to build affordable housing projects in neighborhoods where they not normally would build because the economic profit margins weren’t there. Gregg Robinson, a professor at City College, blasted the redevelopment agencies for using affordable housing “as a battering ram to get funding and support.”

With a lack of accountability, excesses in corporate welfare, staffed by shady characters, like Fred Maas of CCDC, and downright criminals, like Carolyn Y. Smith, former director of SEDC, who not only wrote herself personal checks but spent an astounding 38% of total spending on administrative costs, the major redevelopment agencies in San Diego have, by a recent estimate, spent an incredible $2 million per apartment or condo for affordable housing, when staff costs and corporate hand-outs are factored out.

What a perversion of the primary intent of the legislature in its redevelopment law which required 20% of all tax increment money be earmarked for low and moderate income housing. They further required that if there was any modification or change in the original project plan – such as Petco Park or numerous other corporate welfare projects such as hotels or office buildings – that the affordable housing percentage raises to 30% of tax funds raised and that expenditure on “moderate” housing could only come after 49% had already been earmarked for “low, very low, or extremely low income housing.”  Another requirement was that the redevelopment agency could not exceed 15 percent of its total allotment for “moderate” housing in any 5 year period.   CCDC has not only consistently broken the law by spending 90% of its housing funding on “moderate” income housing, which hovers around market priced housing, but distorts, lies and fails to account for a lot of its expenses.  Five years ago, when I took a CCDC organized tour of downtown buildings financed with redevelopment funds, along with other members of the Housing Coalition, we heard the outrageous claim that a $250,000 condo constituted “affordable housing.”

Today, CCDC continues to vomit its fabrication that it has created affordable housing in the inner city. For instance, the latest addition to the rental housing market downtown at Ninth Avenue and B Street, the Pointe of View, charges from $1,600 to $3,400 a month for its one- and two-bedroom units.  Now to CCDC’s board members and publicists that may be very affordable with their six figure incomes from our pockets but to the vast amount of families in San Diego, it is not.

If Governor Brown succeeds in shutting down San Diego’s 17 redevelopment agencies, controlling 11,700 acres, ending corporate welfare as we know it locally, he will also be throwing the baby (affordable housing) out with the rancid bath water. Tens of thousands of families are on a waiting list for rental assistance. Over 8,000 families are on another list for public housing, while 5,000 people a month are evicted because of outrageous rent. Fifty seniors a month, hit city streets homeless. So what are we to do to make housing more accessible and affordable?

The San Diego Renters Union has called on the city council to make the San Diego Housing Commission an elected branch of city government, with its commissioners being elected every four years and answering to the voters of the city rather than politicians and their lobbyist cronies. Only then can the very important issue of safe, decent, and affordable housing be decided by the citizens, rather than back-room deals and store bought politics.

Announcing four two-hour sessions on redevelopment, Richard Lawrence, co-chair of the Affordable Housing Coalition ([email protected]) said that the proposed community think tank would be for those who “have not had sufficient opportunity to think through your position on redevelopment and want to be in on the action with recommendations to policymakers.” Sponsored by the housing coalition and the Berkeley based Western Institute for Social Research (WISR), the March gatherings will be held at the Center for Policy Initiatives in Mission Valley.

 

Koch Family Foundations

From SourceWatch

Koch Family Foundations consist of the David H. Koch Foundation, the Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation, and the Claude R. Lambe Charitable Foundation. ^[1]

Billionaire brothers Charles (L) and David Koch

Funding for the foundations comes from the conglomerate Koch Industries, the "nation's largest privately held energy company, with annual revenues of more than $25 billion. ... Koch Industries is now the second largest family-owned business in the U.S., with annual sales of over $20 billion."

"The company is owned by two of the richest men in America," David H. Koch and Charles G. Koch, who are described as "reclusive billionaires", who have a combined personal fortune estimated at more than $3 billion and who have emerged as major Republican contributors in recent years. ... Both David and Charles Koch are ranked among the 50 richest people in the country by 'Forbes'."

The Koch brothers control the three family foundations that have "lavished tens of millions of dollars in the past decade on 'free market' advocacy institutions in and around Washington."^[2][3]

The foundations are financed via the oil and gas fortunes of Fred C. Koch, a founding member of the John Birch Society. David is a libertarian who "provides a significant amount of funding for the Cato Institute's $4 million annual budget."

Curtis Moore's Rethinking the Think Tanks (subtitled How industry-funded 'experts' twist the environmental debate) appeared in the September/October 2002 issue of Sierra magazine. Moore states that, "The views will seem to be coming from an independent think tank -- the Cato Institute or Citizens for a Sound Economy (CSE), for example ... behind these groups stands the [Koch] brother's vast fortune."

In fact, Charles Koch is a co-founder of Cato in 1977 and David helped to launch Citizens for a Sound Economy in 1986. This, says Moore, is the brothers simply following in "dad's footsteps: Fred Koch was a charter member of the ultraconservative John Birch Society in 1958."

Contents [hide] 1 Finances 2 Funding libertarian organizations 3 Organizations funded 4 Contact 5 Related SourceWatch articles 6 External links 7 References

Finances

According to their filings with the Internal Revenue Service (available at guidestar.org), the Koch Family Foundations owned combined assets of more than $60 million in 2001 and gave away $9,071,793, almost all of it to libertarian causes:

• The Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation had assets of $31,403,724 and gave away $4,589,825.
• The David H. Koch Charitable Foundation had assets of $23,204 and gave away $2,821,022.
• The Claude R. Lambe Charitable Foundation had assets of $29,237,598 and gave away $1,660,946.

Funding libertarian organizations

The Claude R. Lambe Charitable Foundation is one of Koch Family Foundations. Several of the organizations in the list below were founded by one of two Koch brothers, Charles G. Koch or David H. Koch to pursue their ideological agenda.

Organizations funded

Below is a list of recipients listing the cumulative amount, unadjusted for inflation, granted by the Claude R. Lambe Charitable Foundation[1]

1) Cato Institute $8,450,000
2) Citizens for a Sound Economy Foundation $6,025,375
3) George Mason University $2,311,149
4) George Mason University Foundation, Inc. $2,074,893
6) Heritage Foundation, The $1,004,000
7) Institute for Justice $1,000,000
8) Foundation for Research on Economics and the Environment $810,000
9) Reason Foundation, The $642,000
10) Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies, The $504,000
12) Institute for Humane Studies $455,000
13) Pacific Research Institute for Public Policy $385,000
14) Washington Legal Foundation $350,000
15) Capital Research Center $340,000
16) Competitive Enterprise Institute $254,460
20) Ethics and Public Policy Center, Inc. $190,000
22) National Center for Policy Analysis $175,000
23) Citizens for Congressional Reform Foundation $175,000
24) Manhattan Institute for Policy Research, Inc. $125,000
25) American Legislative Exchange Council $120,000
26) Acton Institute for the Study of Religion and Liberty $115,000
28) Political Economy Research Center, Inc. $80,000
29) Media Institute $60,000
30) National Foundation for Teaching Entrepreneurship $60,000
31) University of Chicago $59,000
32) Defenders of Property Rights $55,000
33) University of Kansas Endowment Assocation $50,000
36) Texas Public Policy Foundation $44,500
37) Center for Individual Rights, The $40,000
38) Heartland Institute $40,000
39) Texas Justice Foundation $40,000
40) Institute for Policy Innovation $35,000
42) Center of the American Experiment $31,500
43) Atlas Economic Research Foundation $28,500
44) Young America's Foundation $25,000
45) Henry Hazlitt Foundation $25,000
47) Atlantic Legal Foundation $20,000
48) National Taxpayers Union Foundation $20,000
49) Families Against Mandatory Minimums $20,000
50) Philanthropy Roundtable $19,200
51) Free Enterprise Institute $15,000
52) John Locke Foundation $15,000
53) Hudson Institute, Inc. $12,650
54) Alexis de Tocqueville Institution $12,500
55) National Environmental Policy Institute $12,500
56) Washington University $11,500
57) Pacific Legal Foundation $10,000
58) American Council for Capital Formation $10,000
60) Institute for Political Economy $8,000
62) State Policy Network $6,500
64) Fraser Institute, The $5,000
65) Mackinac Center, The $5,000
66) Institute for Research on the Economics of Taxation $5,000
68) Institute for Objectivist Studies $5,000
69) Americans for Prosperity

Some additional recipients by amount granted by the Charles G. Koch Foundation http://www.mediatransparency.org/recipientsoffunder.php?funderID=9

David H. Koch Charitable Foundation $2,000,000
Fred C. & Mary R. Koch Foundation $1,097,000
Bill of Rights Institute $992,000
Mercatus Center $400,000

Contact

URL: http://www.kochind.com

Related SourceWatch articles

• Conservative foundations
• Foundations and Funders
• Koch Industries
• Oil industry
• Americans for Prosperity (Koch-funded conservative political advocacy group)
• Charles G. Koch
• David H. Koch

External links

• Koch Industries and the Pollution of the Bush White House, Parts I & II; on-line article includes source links.
• "Ari & I; White House Press Briefing with Ari Fleischer related by Russell Mokhiber regarding relationship between White House and Koch Industries, May 3, 2001.
• http://www.mediatransparency.org/funderprofile.php?funderID=9
• Koch Family Foundations, Buying a Movement section of People For the American Way website, accessed April 2004.

References

1. ↑ Media Matters Action Network Who's Funding the Conservative Movement?, accessed March 1, 2011
2. ↑ Media Matters Action Network Who's Funding the Conservative Movement?, accessed March 1, 2011
3. ↑ Robert Parry [htp://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=5002269834 What Wouldn't Bob Dole Do for Koch Oil?], The Nation, Vol. 263, August 26, 1996

How Koch Industries Makes Billions By Demanding Bailouts And Taxpayer Subsidies (Part 1)

by Lee Fang from Think Progress March 1, 2011

Koch Industries, the international conglomerate owned by Charles and David Koch, is not only the second largest private company in America, it is the most politically active. As ThinkProgress has carefully documented over the last three years, Koch groups have spent tens of millions to influence government policy — from financing the Tea Parties, to funding junk academic studies, to undisclosed attack ads against Democrats, to groups promoting climate change denial, to a large network of state-based and national think tanks. In an opinion column for the Wall Street Journal today, Koch Industries CEO Charles Koch fired back at his critics, who have grown more vocal as it has become clear that Koch groups are providing the political muscle for Gov. Scott Walker’s (R-WI) union-busting power grab.

In his piece, Charles portrays himself as simply an ideological advocate, and says his money to political groups is only meant to “enhance true economic freedom.” He chides special interests that have “successfully lobbied for special favors,” claiming “crony capitalism is much easier than competing in an open market.” But in reality, the focus of the Koch political machine is geared towards “crony capitalism” — corrupting government to make Charles and his brother David Koch richer. Koch’s Tea Party libertarianism is actually a thin veneer for the company’s long running history of winning special deals from the government and manipulating the market to pad Koch profits:

– The dirty secret of Koch Industries is its birth under the centrally-planned Soviet Union. Fred Koch, the founder of the company and father of David and Charles, helped construct fifteen oil refineries for Joseph Stalin before expanding the business in the United States.

– As Yasha Levine has reported, Koch exploits a number of government programs for profit. For instance, Georgia Pacific, a timber company subsidiary of Koch Industries, uses taxpayer money provided by the U.S. Forestry Service to provide their loggers with taxpayer-funded roads and access to virgin growth forests. “Logging companies such as Georgia-Pacific strip lands bare, destroy vast acreages and pay only a small fee to the federal government in proportion to what they take from the public,” according to the Institute for Public Accuracy. Levine also notes that Koch’s cattle ranching company, Matador Cattle Company, uses a New Deal program to profit off federal land for free.

– Koch Industries won massive government contracts using their close relationship with the Bush administration. The Bush administration, in a deal even conservatives alleged was a quid pro quo because of Koch’s campaign donations, handed Koch Industries a lucrative contract to supply the nation’s Strategic Petroleum Reserve with 8 million barrels of crude oil. The SPR deal, done initially in 2002, was renewed in 2004 by Bush administration officials. During the occupation of Iraq, Koch won significant contracts to buy Iraqi crude oil.

– Although Koch campaigned vigorously against health reform — running attack ads, sponsoring anti-health reform Tea Parties, and comparing health reform to the Holocaust — Koch Industries applied for health reform subsidies made possible by the Obama administration.

– The Koch brothers have claimed that they oppose government intervention in the market, but Koch Industries lobbies aggressively for taxpayer handouts. In Alaska, blogger Andrew Halcro reported that a Koch subsidiary in Fairbanks asked Gov. Sarah Palin’s administration to use taxpayer money to bail out one of their failing refinery.

– SolveClimate recently reported that Koch Industries will reap huge profits from the proposed Keystone XL Pipeline, which runs from Koch-owned tar sands mining centers in Canada to Koch-owned refineries in Texas. To build the pipeline, politicians throughout the Midwest, many of whom have received large Koch campaign donations, have used eminent domain — government seizures of private land. In Kansas, where Koch-funded officials advise Gov. Sam Brownback (R-KS) and the Republican legislature, the Keystone XL Pipeline is likely to receive a property tax exemption of ten years, a special loophole that will cost Kansas taxpayers about $50 million.

– Koch Industries has been the recipient of about $85 million in federal government contracts mostly from the Department of Defense. Koch also benefits directly from billions in taxpayer subsidies for oil companies and ethanol production.

Charles has compared himself to a libertarian “Martin Luther,” evangelizing to the world for their supply side cause. However, the tens of millions in campaign donations and the dozens of front groups funded by Koch work in tandem to promoting the business interests of Koch Industries.

Koch funds both socially conservative groups and socially liberal groups. However, Koch’s financing of front groups and political organizations all have one thing in common: every single Koch group attacks workers’ rights, promotes deregulation, and argues for radical supply side economics. Not only do the Koch’s front groups pad Koch Industries’ bottom line, they supply the Koch brother’s talking points. In fact, for his opinion piece today, Charles heavily relied on front groups he finances for statistics. The “freedom index” cited by Charles is a creation of the Koch-funded Heritage Foundation, and the erroneous “unfunded liabilities” claim was supplied by the Koch-funded National Center for Policy Analysis.

Main Street Goes to War Against Itself as Job Crisis Persists

Published on Friday, March 4, 2011 by Huffington Post

by Les Leopold

The February unemployment rate is 8.9 percent. The broader Bureau of Labor Statistics U6 jobless rate is 15.9 percent. The report shows a net increase of 192,000 jobs. However, we need 127,000 new jobs every month to keep up with population growth. At this rate it will take 11.2 years to get back to full employment.

A Wall Street billionaire, a unionized public employee, and a Tea Party member are sitting at a table eying a plate of a dozen delicious cookies. The financier reaches across and takes 11 cookies, looks at the tea partier and says, "Watch out for that union guy. He wants your cookie."

How did this happen? How did we get to the point where governors all over the place are blaming the economic crisis on working people?

We're here because we didn't take the fight to Wall Street. The White House, Congress, and even trade unions let Wall Street off the hook. And now working people and the middle class all over the country are paying a heavy price.

The battle actually started thirty years ago when our nation embarked on a real-time experiment: Would wholesale financial deregulation and tax cuts for the super-rich drive a massive investment boom that would make all boats rise? It turned out, no. Instead, working families' incomes stalled. But the wealthy were left with such thick wads of cash that they didn't know where to spend it all. So they bought up Wall Street's new toxic "financial innovations." And presto: the largest financial crash since the Great Depression. (My apologies for the self-promotion but please see The Looting of America for an accessible account of the meltdown.)

Remember a couple years back, when Wall Street was on its knees, begging for our support? That was the perfect moment to reverse the 30-year trend and create a new kind of financial system that wouldn't gamble away our nation's wealth. Instead we resurrected too-big-to fail institutions and bailed out virtually every Wall Street investor.

And now, the right wing, which has been banging its drum against unions, government, and taxes for years, is having a field day using our recession-induced budget problems as a cover for slicing their enemies -- the unions -- to smithereens.

There's plenty of blame to pass around.

The White House:

President Obama started out with populist rhetoric that reflected America's disgust with Wall Street's greed. But soon, he tucked behind his Wall Street-friendly corps of advisors -- Geithner, Summers and Bernanke -- who told him there was only one way to avert another Great Depression and start generating jobs: Resurrect Wall Street with trillions of dollars in loans, asset swaps and guarantees -- and throw in a modest stimulus program.

So Obama stopped talking about shrinking Wall Street's profits and wages. He stopped talking about how our best and brightest should forgo Wall Street and instead build productive careers in education, science and medicine. He stopped talking about how appalling it was to be bailing out the very people who'd brought the economy to its knees. What could he say given how much the administration had done for the Wall Street billionaires? Now it's hard even to remember that our cocky financiers were so recently on their knees begging for survival.

It turned out that Geithner, Summers and Bernanke were only half right: The US did avert (or postpone) a Great Depression -- but jobs did not follow. Thanks to the US taxpayer, Wall Street's profits and bonuses went back to record levels, as if nothing much had happened. People stopped talking about financial nationalization and "hair cuts" for investors.

Obama squandered the progressive moment. Because had had refused to make Wall Street pay for the damage it had caused, we had no way to fund serious job creation. As a consequence, the "nationalization" we saw was of deep, persistent unemployment in every corner of the country. And the people getting the hair cut were the Democrats. They were pummeled in the mid-terms not because of health care reform, but because the traditional "Party of Jobs" failed to create them. In my opinion, they were punished for being the Party of Wall Street.

After the massive electoral defeat, the President turned into a deficit hawk, pushing the entire debate to the right. When he called for freezing public employees' wages, he fired the first shot in the war against workers on Main Street.

Congress:

Of course the President had many fainthearted enablers on Capitol Hill. Congress failed miserably to build on Main Street's anger against Wall Street. Lawmakers couldn't even bring themselves to close a simple loophole to force the richest hedge fund financiers -- people making $2.4 million an HOUR -- to pay normal income taxes. Instead these hedge honchos still only pay 15 percent -- a lower rate than their own office cleaners. Closing that loophole on the top 25 hedge fund managers alone would have reduced the deficit twice as much as Obama's two-year wage freeze on federal employees.

Congress members also couldn't bear to break up too-big-to-fail institutions. They couldn't stomach windfall profits taxes or transaction taxes on the financial sector to help pay for our continuing bailout. (Who do you think now owns and guarantees hundreds of billions in toxic assets? You do!) And of course, the Capitol Hill crew didn't have the nerve to put Americans back to work through visionary moves like free higher education or the nationwide weatherization of all our homes and businesses.

The Labor Movement

Unfortunately, most trade unions also missed the moment. They were so invested in Obama and the Democrats that they didn't want (and maybe forgot how) to mobilize en masse against Wall Street. Americans needed a clear narrative explaining how Wall Street caused the financial crisis and a coherent program to create millions of sustainable jobs. They got neither from organized labor.

To be fair, labor had its hands full. With union jobs rapidly evaporating, it had bet the farm that a Democratic administration and Democratic Congress would pass the Employee Free Choice Act. (EFCA aims to level the playing field so that workers who want unions can form them without being fired.) This reform, they hoped, would unleash a great new surge of union organizing. But the bill didn't even come up for a vote. Now, in state after state -- even in old union strongholds like Wisconsin, Iowa and Michigan -- politicians are hacking at workers' basic collective bargaining rights, as if somehow those workers caused the financial crisis. As one savvy union staffer quipped, "Workers don't make synthetic CDOs!"

So let's square up. Where we are, and how did we get to this fateful moment?

1. Because we bailed out Wall Street banks and then let them off the hook, they're now back to collecting record profits. Hedge fund managers are making billions for themselves thanks to our blanket bailout of the financial sector. Not only are they not paying reparations, they're fighting hard to roll back even more regulations so they can run their financial casinos with full impunity. Their contribution to deficit reduction is minuscule. Equality of sacrifice is a joke on Wall Street.

2. Because of the financial crisis set off by Wall Street and Wall Street alone, 8.75 million jobs were lost in one year. With economic growth still feeble and corporations hoarding their money, it will take over 11.2 years to reach full-employment again at the rate we're going.

3. Because of high unemployment and the resulting drop in tax revenues (as well as years of tax cuts for the wealthy and large corporations), state and local government budgets are having a fiscal heart attack. It's open season on public employees, the last bunch of American workers who are a) unionized in large numbers, b) still have decent health care benefits and c) still have defined benefit pension plans (which don't force workers to shoulder all the financial risks in retirement). Meanwhile, no one's going after the ultra-rich for shirking their state and local taxes. In every state of the union, the richest one percent of residents pay a lower percentage of their income in total state and local taxes than do middle- or low-income residents.)

4. Political demagogues are playing working people against each other with the rhetorical cry, "Why should taxpayers pay for public employee benefits that they themselves can only dream of?" The obvious answer is that private sector workers should also have decent health care benefits and pensions. Meanwhile, a windfall profits tax on Wall Street could close every state budget gap in the country.

Thank goodness for the intrepid workers and students in Wisconsin, Indiana, and elsewhere who are resisting the assault. And thank goodness most Americans are on their side, according to a recent New York Times/CBS News poll. It showed that a majority support public sector collective bargaining, favor tax increases over cuts in public sector benefits, and don't think unions are too influential.)

The bagpiping firefighters camped out at the Wisconsin capitol are blocking the maniacal march to lower our standard of living. But that's not good enough. It's time for the bagpipes to march on Wall Street... and for the rest of us to join them.

© 2011 Huffington Post

Les Leopold is the author of The Looting of America: How Wall Street's Game of Fantasy Finance destroyed our Jobs, Pensions and Prosperity, and What We Can Do About It, Chelsea Green Publishing, June 2009.

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Fighting Over Crumbs Left from Military Spending

Published on Thursday, March 3, 2011 by GRITtv

by Laura Flanders

There's been a joke going around the labor protests. It goes something like this:

A union member, a CEO and a Tea Party member are sitting at a table with 12 cookies. The CEO grabs 11, turns to the Tea Partier and says “The Union's out to take your cookie!”

I've been thinking that the joke applies pretty well to another situation. For instance, the military. Our military spending grabs 11 cookies and leaves us all battling over the 12th.

Christopher Hellman at TomDispatch added up all the military-related spending in the budget and came to a startling number: for fiscal year 2012, the actual military budget is something like $1.2 trillion dollars.

Trillion with a T.

Just to put that in perspective for a second, a million seconds is 12 days. A trillion seconds is 31,688 years.

So after all that cash is gone, what are we left with? Not a whole heck of a lot for the rest of us. “Discretionary” spending is nearly 40% of the budget, but if Hellman's numbers are accurate, that $1.2 trillion eats up nearly 90% of discretionary funds, leaving just 10% for the rest of us. (That doesn't include mandatory spending on things like Social Security and Medicare, which are separate.)

To be fair, Tea Partiers have called for military spending cuts, too. Rand Paul, hardly a progressive, pointed out that you could cut all of the non-military discretionary spending and not balance the budget—and Politifact rated it True.

The point behind the joke still holds, though. Instead of fighting over the last crumbs, maybe it's time to team up and grab some of the cookies back from the people who've been hanging on to far more than their share.

The F Word is a regular commentary by Laura Flanders, the host of GRITtv and editor of At The Tea Party, out now from OR Books. GRITtv broadcasts weekdays on DISH Network and DIRECTv, on cable, and online at GRITtv.org and TheNation.com. Follow GRITtv or GRITlaura on Twitter and be GRITtv's friend on Facebook.

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Clarence Thomas and the Politicization of the Supreme Court

by Robert Reich

Thursday, March 3, 2011

Justice Clarence Thomas, in a speech last weekend to the Federalist Society, accused his critics of “undermining” the legitimacy of the Supreme Court – politicizing it in ways that jeopardize the Court’s credibility in the eyes of the public. He warned:

You are going to be, unfortunately, the recipients of the fallout from that – that there’s going to be a day when you need those institutions to be credible and to be fully functioning to protect your liberties. That could be either a short or a long time, but you’re younger, and it’s still going to be a necessity to protect the liberties that you enjoy now in this country.

Odd coming from Clarence Thomas — who has done more to politicize the Court than anyone in recent years, with the possible exception of his brother on the bench Antonin Scalia.

Last year, you’ll recall, the votes of Thomas and Scalia swung the Court in the direction of the right-wing group Citizens United – plaintiffs in the case that struck down federal laws limiting corporate campaign contributions.

Before the decision, Thomas and Scalia also participated in a political retreat hosted by Tea Party billionaire financiers Charles and David Koch, driving forces behind loosening restrictions on big money in politics.

Back in 1991 when Thomas was nominated to the Supreme Court, Citizens United spent $100,000 to support his nomination. The in-kind contribution presumably should have been disclosed by Thomas.

At the very least you’d think that, given his connections with Citizen’s United and with the Koch brothers, Thomas would have recused himself from the Citizens United decision in order to avoid the appearance of a conflict of interest. He would have recused himself, that is, if he were as concerned about the legitimacy of the Supreme Court as he says he.

Thomas has also failed to disclose financial information about his wife’s employment. Virginia Thomas is the founder of Liberty Central, a Tea Party organization now receiving unlimited corporate contributions due to Citizen’s United. Among the things she’s lobbying for are the repeal of what she terms the “unconstitutional” healthcare legislation.

Because of his wife’s direct involvement, seventy-four House Democrats have sent a letter to Justice Thomas asking him to recuse himself from any case questioning the constitutionality of the legislation.”Your spouse is advertising herself as a lobbyist who has ‘experience and connections’ and appeals to clients who want a particular decision,” the legislators wrote. “They want to overturn health-care reform.”

Scalia isn’t much better. In December he met in a closed-door session with Michele Bachmann’s Tea Party Caucus, a group formed in large part to fight for the repeal of health-care reform. Can you imagine the firestorm if Justice Sonia Sotomayor met in secret with the House Progressive Caucus?

Even Thomas’s choice last weekend of the Federalist Society as a venue to air his grievances about his critics reveals his affinity for partisan politics. The Federalist Society, after all, is a well-established network of conservative lawyers and politicians dedicated to rolling back regulations. It’s financed in part by the Koch brothers.

Look, I’m not so naive as to believe that Supreme Court justices don’t have political views and values. The point is precisely the one Thomas himself made last weekend: If the Court is perceived by the public to be politically partisan, it loses the public’s confidence. That confidence, as described by Justice Stephen Breyer in his impassioned dissent in Bush v. Gore (a case like Citizens United that could be understood only in partisan political terms) “is a public treasure. It has been built slowly over many years” and is a “vitally necessary ingredient of any successful effort to protect basic liberty and, indeed, the rule of law itself.”

When Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia go to secret political strategy sessions with Republican partisans they jeopardize everything the Supreme Court stands for. They make a mockery of the common sense of Americans.

If it wants to maintain its legitimacy the Court has to appeal to that common sense rather than to partisan politics. As Justice John Paul Stevens wrote in his dissent to Citizens United:

At bottom, the Court’s opinion is thus a rejection of the common sense of the American people, who have recognized a need to prevent corporations from undermining self government since the founding, and who have fought against the distinctive corrupting potential of corporate electioneering since the days of Theodore Roosevelt. It is a strange time to repudiate that common sense. While American democracy is imperfect, few outside the majority of this Court would have thought its flaws included a dearth of corporate money in politics.

Citizens United is an illegitimate decision, arrived at by at least two justices who should never have participated in it.

Payrolls Up 192,000; Jobless Rate 8.9 Percent

by The Associated Press from NPR

March 4, 2011

U.S. employers hired in February at the fastest pace in almost a year and the unemployment rate fell to 8.9 percent — a nearly two-year low.

NPR

CHARTS: Tracking The Unemployment Rate, Payrolls

The economy added 192,000 jobs last month, with factories, professional and business services, education and health care among those expanding employment. Retailers, however, trimmed jobs. State and local governments, wrestling with budget shortfalls, slashed 30,000 jobs, the most since November. Federal government hiring was flat.

Private employers added 222,000 jobs last month, the most since April. That shows that companies are feeling more confident in the economy and about their own financial prospects. And it bolstered hopes that businesses will shift into a more aggressively hiring mode and boost the economic recovery.

The unemployment rate is now at the lowest point since April 2009. It has been falling for three months, down from 9.8 percent in November, marking the sharpest three-month decline since 1983.

"These number can be sustained and built on," economist Joel Naroff at Naroff Economic Advisors. "The economy is recovering, there is no question about it. Businesses are finally taking some of those profits they are earning and putting them back into the work force."

The number of unemployed people dipped to 13.7 million, still almost double since before the recession.

When factoring in the number of part-time workers who would rather be working full time and those who have given up looking for work, the percentage of "underemployed" people dropped to 15.9 percent in February. That's the lowest in nearly two years.

The positive news on the hiring front comes as the larger economy is gaining momentum.

Americans shoppers are spending more. U.S. exporters are selling more abroad. Manufacturing is growing at the fastest pace in nearly seven years. And the service sector, which employs about 90 percent of the work force, is expanding at the fastest clip in more than five years.

The 192,000 jobs added in February was a significant improvement from the 63,000 notched in January. Some of the boost came as people resumed work, after dropping off payrolls because of bad weather in January. Still, the gains were widespread.

Factories added 33,000 jobs. Education and health care added 40,000 positions. Professional and businesses services added 47,000. Leisure and hospitality added 21,000 jobs. Construction companies added 33,000 jobs, although a good chunk of those reflected people coming back on payrolls after January's harsh winter weather; transportation and warehousing added 22,000 jobs.

The number of "long-term" unemployed, people out of work six months or more, sank to 5.99 million, a decline of 217,000 from January.

Workers' paychecks were mostly flat. Average hourly earnings rose to $22.87 in February, up only one cent from January. Workers have little bargaining power to demand big pay raises because the weak jobs market.

Rush Lumbaugh Continues his Distortion and Demagoguery

from Robert Reich's blog:

 

Ed. Note: There is plenty of redistribution of wealth in the US only it's not from rich to poor as Limbaugh suggests. It's the other way around - from poor and middle class to rich. 30,000 lobbyists on Capitol Hill see to that. And where are the lobbyists for the poor. Oh, I forgot. They can't afford one. Republican governors give tax breaks to the rich, then try to balance their budgets on the backs of the poor and middle class.

Surgeon Billed Brunei Patient $40m Over 4 Years

This article was submitted by An Nguyen, our Singapore correspondent.

By Ng Wan Ching

from Asiaone Health 

THE $26 million bill that Dr Susan Lim charged for her medical services to a woman member of Brunei's royal family was eye-popping, to say the least.

That was for five months of services provided from Jan 15 to June 16, 2007.

But it appears that multi-million-dollar sums had been charged by Dr Lim and paid by the Brunei High Commission for several years.

The patient under the care of Dr Lim, a general surgeon in private practice, was Pengiran Anak Hajah Damit, the younger sister of Brunei's queen and a cousin of the sultan.

Dr Lim treated her for breast cancer from 2001 until she died in August 2007.

Documents filed in court provide details of the bills between 2004 and 2007, which total $40 million. Details of the charges for the earlier three years are not known.

The Bruneians paid all her bills, which she had submitted till March 27, 2007.

But after the patient died, Dr Lim was queried on the rest of the 2007 bill (from Jan 15 to June 16, 2007), which came up to $26 million. This is inclusive of GST, which was 5 per cent then.

She is now fighting to stop the decision of the Singapore Medical Council (SMC) to appoint a second disciplinary committee to investigate an accusation by the Health Ministry here that she overcharged her patient.

In the High Court on Wednesday, Senior Counsel Alvin Yeo, representing the SMC, cited the allegedly inflated bills to show there was a case for a new disciplinary committee.

Documents filed in court show that on the days for which services were rendered during this period, Dr Lim's charges per day allegedly ranged from $29,600 to $660,000 before GST.

Dr Tan Yew Oo, an oncologist at Gleneagles Cancer Centre who was an expert witness for the prosecution at the first disciplinary proceedings, said for non-procedural services, where the doctor does not perform procedures or surgery on the patient, fair daily professional fees of a senior practitioner may range from $10,000 to $15,000.

Procedural fees (for procedures and surgery) would carry a higher rate of $20,000 to $40,000.

For exceptional cases when a specialist is required to go beyond the call of duty, a rate of 50 per cent more than the norm may be justified.

He said that even if Dr Lim was given the benefit of her seniority, her daily professional fees appear to be completely out of range.

He said that even if Dr Lim's possible losses from not seeing her other patients were considered, her daily fees were still inordinately high.

Continued to see other patients

Submitted medical records showed that Dr Lim continued to see other patients in 2007.

She had also charged fees for cancellation of other professional commitments such as conferences.

These were on top of fees she charged for her services set out in the same invoice.

For example, she charged $180,000 for the cancellation of a conference in France on May 2, 2007. She also charged $158,000 for services rendered that same day.

It was alleged that Dr Lim had so far not produced any supporting documents to show the expenses incurred for the conferences.

As another example of inflation, the prosecution showed an invoice of $320,000 from Dr Lim stating "Emergency long-distance coordination with oncologist in United Kingdom".

This was for consultations with Professor Ian Smith, a top breast cancer specialist.

His bill covering three days in 2007 when he travelled to Singapore to see the patient (and no other patients) was 45,000 pounds ($135,000 in 2007).

Well-known figure

Another expert witness for the prosecution at the disciplinary proceedings, Professor Soo Khee Chee, said Dr Lim should not compare her charges with that of Prof Smith as he is an internationally known figure.

Prof Soo, director of the National Cancer Centre Singapore, said: "In any case, Prof Smith charged 45,000 pounds for a period of three days...at 15,000 pounds per day, after flying into Singapore to examine the patient. This is far less than what Dr Lim charged the patient on a per-day basis."

She also allegedly inflated fees for services provided by other doctors, who were requested to send their invoices directly to Dr Lim's clinic.

According to court documents, Dr Lim said her role in relation to treatment provided by the other doctors was to organise, coordinate and manage their involvement in the patient's care. She did not provide the treatment herself.

Yet, her fees were many times in excess of what those doctors had charged.

An example is Dr Chin Kin Wuu, an anaesthetist, who had sent her an invoice for $15,000.

She then charged the patient more than $320,000 before GST.

"Very high bills"

In July 2007, the Brunei High Commission alerted Brunei's Ministry of Health (MOHB) to the "very high bills" from Dr Lim.

That month, two MOHB representatives came to Singapore and spoke to Dr Lim Cheok Peng, chief executive of Parkway Holdings, which runs the medical centres where Dr Lim has her clinics.

She then started to reduce her fees.

On Aug 1, she wrote off bills for services by the other doctors and gave a 25 per cent discount on her own bills. On Aug 18, she apologised to MOHB for the "inadvertent mistakes" made by her office.

But on Aug 27, MOHB asked Singapore's Health Ministry to intervene.

On Nov 12, Dr Lim offered to waive her fees from January to June 2007 as a goodwill gesture, suggesting that MOHB pay only $3.25 million.

In January 2009, she and her husband went to Brunei and offered to waive all her fees and third-party bills if MOHB was prepared to issue a "letter of good standing" stating that the Brunei government would not pursue the matter further and would take no issue with her bills. Her request was not taken up.

In a letter dated Jan 26 last year, MOHB said that as part of its review of Dr Susan Lim's 2007 bills, it also reviewed her bills issued before January 2007.

"We observed that there were numerous bills previously issued by Dr Lim in 2004 to 2006 for Dr Lim's services and other doctors' services that appeared similarly excessive.

"As stated earlier, we do not ordinarily question the reasonableness of the bills of doctors because we trust that they will render fair charges. This is especially when compared to the work carried out by the other doctors and their bills, which we were not aware of at that time."

According to court documents, Dr Lim said that she had informed the patient early on in their relationship that the close care and attention she needed would cost $100,000 to $200,000 a day.

She said her fees were reasonable, given her professional standing and the special identity of the patient.

She also said she had issued "omnibus" invoices covering the entire suite of services provided and they should be viewed on a "holistic" basis.

The hearing continues tomorrow.

WHAT DR LIM CHARGED BRUNEI PATIENT EARLIER
YEAR        BILL
2004        $2.8 million
2005        $3.8 million
2006        $7.5 million
2007        Brunei paid all her bills till March 27, 2007

This article was first published in The New Paper.

 

Pay Up, Corporate Tax Dodgers

Published on Monday, February 28, 2011 by OtherWords

 

We're chumps unless we force Congress to stop tax haven abuse.

by Chuck Collins

Instead of cutting state and federal budgets, the United States should crack down on the corporate tax dodgers thumbing their noses at us.

Across the nation, states are making deep cuts that will wreck the quality of life for everyone to close budget gaps that total more than $100 billion.

But there's a more sensible option. Overseas tax havens enable companies to pretend their profits are earned in other countries like the Cayman Islands. Simply making that ruse illegal would bring home an estimated $100 billion a year.

The next time you read a story about some politician bemoaning that "there's no money" and "we have to make cuts," just point to artful tax dodgers in our midst.

They include some of the banks that trashed the economy but gladly took our tax dollars to stay alive after the economic meltdown. Bank of America. Wells Fargo. Citigroup.

Goldman Sachs took a $10 billion taxpayer bailout but then gamed its effective tax rate down to one percent through what its shakedown-artist executives call "changes in geographic earnings mix." Shame on them. Pay up.

See that FedEx delivery van go by on the roads you paid for? Pay up FedEx! Don't pretend you're not making billions in the U.S. Don't lie and tell us you made all those profits on some island with more palm trees than people. We know the demand for coconut delivery isn't that big.

These corporations are heavy users of our taxpayer funded public infrastructure and property rights protection systems. They use our regulated marketplace, call upon our law enforcement system and judiciary to remedy disputes. They're protected by U.S. police forces and firefighters. They enjoy all the privileges and benefits of tax-paying citizens. They just don't pay their fair share for them.

So, ExxonMobil: the next time your gas station erupts in flames, why don't you call the fire department on the Cayman Islands? Or when someone holds up the joint, how about calling the Luxembourg police, since that's where you claim your profits so you don't have to pay the taxes you owe Uncle Sam.

Hey, Pfizer. Without our remarkable taxpayer-funded system of patents and intellectual property rights protections, everyone and their brother would be making Viagra and undercutting your sales of little blue pills. Pay up!

Those of us who pay sales taxes and have income taxes withheld from our paychecks will bear the brunt of state and federal budget cuts in schools, public transportation, and recreational facilities. Our most vulnerable family members and neighbors will suffer thanks to cuts in mental health services, elder care, and Medicaid.

Oh yes, and children. Arizona is cutting health care for 47,000 children. California, New York, and Mississippi are cutting K-12 education funding. Hey, kids don't vote. Nor do they have corporate lobbyists. An estimated 900,000 jobs will be cut, including teachers, firefighters, police officers, and medical first responders.

Boeing, you want another contract for a taxpayer-funded military jet? Well, pay up! Pay up General Electric, Mattel, Dow Chemical, Hewlett-Packard, and Cisco. Yes, we know you pay some taxes. But look these children who are losing their health insurance and teaching aides in the eye. Tell them you're paying your fair share.

These global corporations will complain that forcing them to pay their fair share of taxes will "kill jobs." Let's be clear: the patriotic businesses that currently pay their taxes and have to compete against these tax dodgers are the employers we want. It undercuts U.S. jobs for domestic banks, retailers, and manufacturers to have to compete against companies that can game the tax system.

The next time you're waiting longer for a bus or train than you should, or someone you know can't get timely mental health or drug treatment services, remember the tax dodgers. The next time your car hits a pothole or your kid's teacher loses her job, remember the corporations that are using armies of accountants to lower their tax bills.

In a democracy, if we sit back and just grumble, we get what we deserve. We're chumps until we wake up and force our members of Congress to stop tax haven abuse.

Chuck Collins is a senior scholar at the Institute for Policy Studies where he directs the Program on Inequality and the Common Good (www.inequality.org). He is co-author of The Moral Measure of the Economy and with Bill Gates Sr. of Wealth and Our Commonwealth: Why America Should Tax Accumulated Fortunes

more Chuck Collins

Governor Walker's Budget Bill Proposes to Sell Off State Power Facilities to Private Investors on a No-Bid Basis

by John Lawrence

Not only does Scott Walker of Wisconsin want to bust the public workers' unions, he wants to sell off state facilities to private investors on a no bid basis and for any amount he deems appropriate. Needless to say they will be give aways to cronies and campaign contributors including Koch Industries. He took a phone call recently from a  David Koch impersonator. David Koch is a billionaire and big campaign contributor who is in the power and oil business. What a good way to reward him! Here is the language from Walker's Budget Bill:

16.896 Sale or contractual operation of state−owned heating, cooling, and power plants. (1) Notwithstanding ss. 13.48 (14) (am) and 16.705 (1), the department may sell any state−owned heating, cooling, and power plant or may contract with a private entity for the operation of any such plant, with or without solicitation of bids, for any amount that the department determines to be in the best interest of the state. Notwithstanding ss. 196.49 and 196.80, no approval or certification of the public service commission is necessary for a public utility to purchase, or contract for the operation of, such a plant, and any such purchase is considered to be in the public interest and to comply with the criteria for certification of a project under s. 196.49 (3) (b).

Notice that Walker is proposing to privatize the state's power plants by selling them to anyone he pleases for any amount he chooses. This is precisely how crony capitalism works. Public facilties are sold off to cronies for practically nothing thereby enriching campaign contributors and other financial backers. This is how it was done in Iraq, Brazil, Chile, Argentina, Russia and other countries influenced by US policies. Now Republican Governors are proposing to do it here. Naomi Klein, author of The Shock Doctrine, explains how countries (and now states) are privatized practically overnight by ramming through legislation. Certainly, in the case of Wisconsin, Governor Walker's aim was to ram through legislation with no discussion which a) busted public service unions, b) defunded the public education system to the tune of $900 million and c) privatized the state's power plants among other things. If it weren't for the fact that 14 Democratic Senators took flight to prevent the establishment of a quorum, the bill would have gone through and Wisconsonites would have awakened to find themselves living in a vastly different state than they thought they lived in.

Here is the video:

 

It wasn't too long ago that California privatized its power system to Enron. Remember the Enron - one of whose confiscated emails purported to "screw California Grandmas"? The privatization of California's power plants caused energy prices to increase 800% and caused rolling blackouts as Enron traders took plants offline during peak periods in order to increase the wholesale price of electricity. That wasn't that long ago - just about 10 years. What happened to California could well happen now to Wisconsin if Scott Walker's Budget Bill gets passed.

Scott Walker's Budget Bill is nothing more than the Shock Doctrine writ large and applied to Wisconsin to be followed by the same procedure in other states with Republican Governors. First they will ram the legislation through busting unions, privatizing public facilities, converting civil service positions to political appointees, eliminating environmental controls. All these things and more are done by Scott Walker's bill. The only thing is that Scott Walker did not figure that any of this would come to the light of day until it was too late. If it weren't for the 14 Democratic Senators leaving, none of this would have received any publicity at all. That was the plan. Instead, regardless of the outcome, the American people are starting to wise up. Scott Walker created his own budget crisis by giving huge tax breaks to corporations and then trying to take this money out of the hides of union workers, the school system and by selling off public assets. This would have resulted in the Enronization of the state of Wisconsin. Fortunately, Enron was put out of business thanks to an investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission. However, even though Enron bit the dust, this doesn't mean that Republicans today aren't pursuing their quest to privatize everything, bust unions and gut regulatory agencies such as the SEC. Unions are the largest contributors to the Democratic Party. Union busting will do much to eliminate the Democratic Party as a serious contender in American politics.

The True Cost of the American National Security State

Published on Tuesday, March 1, 2011 by TomDispatch.com

$1.2 Trillion: The National Security Figure No One Wants You To See

by Chris Hellman

What if you went to a restaurant and found it rather pricey? Still, you ordered your meal and, when done, picked up the check only to discover that it was almost twice the menu price.

Welcome to the world of the real U.S. national security budget.  Normally, in media accounts, you hear about the Pentagon budget and the war-fighting supplementary funds passed by Congress for our conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan.  That already gets you into a startling price range -- close to $700 billion for 2012 -- but that’s barely more than half of it.  If Americans were ever presented with the real bill for the total U.S. national security budget, it would actually add up to more than $1.2 trillion a year.

Take that in for a moment.  It’s true; you won’t find that figure in your daily newspaper or on your nightly newscast, but it’s no misprint.  It may even be an underestimate.  In any case, it’s the real thing when it comes to your tax dollars.  The simplest way to grasp just how Americans could pay such a staggering amount annually for “security” is to go through what we know about the U.S. national security budget, step by step, and add it all up.

So, here we go.  Buckle your seat belt: it’s going to be a bumpy ride.

Fortunately for us, on February 14th the Obama administration officially released its Fiscal Year (FY) 2012 budget request.  Of course, it hasn’t been passed by Congress -- even the 2011 budget hasn’t made it through that august body yet -- but at least we have the most recent figures available for our calculations.

For 2012, the White House has requested $558 billion for the Pentagon’s annual “base” budget, plus an additional $118 billion to fund military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.  At $676 billion, that’s already nothing to sneeze at, but it’s just the barest of beginnings when it comes to what American taxpayers will actually spend on national security.  Think of it as the gigantic tip of a humongous iceberg.

To get closer to a real figure, it’s necessary to start peeking at other parts of the federal budget where so many other pots of security spending are squirreled away. 

Missing from the Pentagon’s budget request, for example, is an additional $19.3 billion for nuclear-weapons-related activities like making sure our current stockpile of warheads will work as expected and cleaning up the waste created by seven decades of developing and producing them.  That money, however, officially falls in the province of the Department of Energy.  And then, don’t forget an additional $7.8 billion that the Pentagon lumps into a “miscellaneous” category -- a kind of department of chump change -- that is included in neither its base budget nor those war-fighting funds.

So, even though we’re barely started, we’ve already hit a total official FY 2012 Pentagon budget request of:

$703.1 billion dollars.

Not usually included in national security spending are hundreds of billions of dollars that American taxpayers are asked to spend to pay for past wars, and to support our current and future national security strategy.

For starters, that $117.8 billion war-funding request for the Department of Defense doesn’t include certain actual “war-related fighting” costs.  Take, for instance, the counterterrorism activities of the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development. For the first time, just as with the Pentagon budget, the FY 2012 request divides what’s called "International Affairs" in two: that is, into an annual "base" budget as well as funding for "Overseas Contingency Operations" related to Iraq and Afghanistan.  (In the Bush years, these used to be called the Global War on Terror.)  The State Department’s contribution? $8.7 billion.  That brings the grand but very partial total so far to:

$711.8 billion.

The White House has also requested $71.6 billion for a post-2001 category called “homeland security” -- of which $18.1 billion is funded through the Department of Defense. The remaining $53.5 billion goes through various other federal accounts, including the Department of Homeland Security ($37 billion), the Department of Health and Human Services ($4.6 billion), and the Department of Justice ($4.6 billion). All of it is, however, national security funding which brings our total to:

$765.3 billion.

The U.S. intelligence budget was technically classified prior to 2007, although at roughly $40 billion annually, it was considered one of the worst-kept secrets in Washington. Since then, as a result of recommendations by the 9/11 Commission, Congress has required that the government reveal the total amount spent on intelligence work related to the National Intelligence Program (NIP).

This work done by federal agencies like the CIA and the National Security Agency consists of keeping an eye on and trying to understand what other nations are doing and thinking, as well as a broad range of “covert operations” such as those being conducted in Pakistan. In this area, we won’t have figures until FY 2012 ends. The latest NIP funding figure we do have is $53.1 billion for FY 2010.  There’s little question that the FY 2012 figure will be higher, but let’s be safe and stick with what we know.  (Keep in mind that the government spends plenty more on “intelligence.”  Additional funds for the Military Intelligence Program (MIP), however, are already included in the Pentagon’s 2012 base budget and war-fighting supplemental, though we don’t know what they are. The FY 2010 funding for MIP, again the latest figure available, was $27 billion.)  In any case, add that $53.1 billion and we’re at:

$818.4 billion.

Veterans programs are an important part of the national security budget with the projected funding figure for 2012 being $129.3 billion. Of this, $59 billion is for veterans’ hospital and medical care, $70.3 billion for disability pensions and education programs. This category of national security funding has been growing rapidly in recent years because of the soaring medical-care needs of veterans of the Iraq and Afghan wars. According to an analysis by the Congressional Budget Office, by 2020 total funding for health-care services for veterans will have risen another 45%-75%.  In the meantime, for 2012 we’ve reached:

$947.7 billion.

If you include the part of the foreign affairs budget not directly related to U.S. military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as other counterterrorism operations, you have an additional $18 billion in direct security spending.  Of this, $6.6 billion is for military aid to foreign countries, while almost $2 billion goes for “international peacekeeping” operations. A further $709 million has been designated for countering the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, combating terrorism, and clearing landmines planted in regional conflicts around the globe.  This leaves us at:

$965.7 billion.

As with all federal retirees, U.S. military retirees and former civilian Department of Defense employees receive pension benefits from the government. The 2012 figure is $48.5 billion for military personnel, $20 billion for those civilian employees, which means we’ve now hit:

$1,034.2 billion. (Yes, that’s $1.03 trillion!)

When the federal government lacks sufficient funds to pay all of its obligations, it borrows. Each year, it must pay the interest on this debt which, for FY 2012, is projected at $474.1 billion.  The National Priorities Project calculates that 39% of that, or $185 billion, comes from borrowing related to past Pentagon spending.

Add it all together and the grand total for the known national security budget of the United States is:

$1,219.2 billion.  (That’s more than $1.2 trillion.)

A country with a gross domestic product of $1.2 trillion would have the 15th largest economy in the world, ranking between Canada and Indonesia, and ahead of Australia, Taiwan, the Netherlands, and Saudi Arabia.  Still, don’t for a second think that $1.2 trillion is the actual grand total for what the U.S. government spends on national security. Former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld once famously spoke of the world’s “known unknowns.”  Explaining the phrase this way: “That is to say there are things that we now know we don't know.” It’s a concept that couldn’t apply better to the budget he once oversaw.  When it comes to U.S. national security spending, there are some relevant numbers we know are out there, even if we simply can’t calculate them.

To take one example, how much of NASA’s proposed $18.7 billion budget falls under national security spending? We know that the agency works closely with the Pentagon. NASA satellite launches often occur from the Air Force’s facilities at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California and Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. The Air Force has its own satellite launch capability, but how much of that comes as a result of NASA technology and support?  In dollars terms, we just don’t know.

Other “known unknowns” would include portions of the State Department budget. One assumes that at least some of its diplomatic initiatives promote our security interests. Similarly, we have no figure for the pensions of non-Pentagon federal retirees who worked on security issues for the Department of Homeland Security, the State Department, or the Departments of Justice and Treasury. Nor do we have figures for the interest on moneys borrowed to fund veterans’ benefits, among other national security-related matters. The bill for such known unknowns could easily run into the tens of billions of dollars annually, putting the full national security budget over the $1.3 trillion mark or even higher.

There’s a simple principle here.  American taxpayers should know just what they are paying for.  In a restaurant, a customer would be outraged to receive a check almost twice as high as the menu promised.  We have no idea whether the same would be true in the world of national security spending, because Americans are never told what national security actually means at the cash register.

To listen to Timothy MacBain’s latest TomCast audio interview in which Hellman explains how he arrived at his staggering numbers, click here, or download it to your iPod here.

[Note on Sources: The press release from the Office of The Director of National Intelligence disclosing the Fiscal Year 2010 $53 billion intelligence budget consists of 138 words and no details, other than that the office will disclose no details. It can be found by clicking here (.pdf file).  An October 2010 analysis by the Congressional Budget Office entitled "Potential Costs of Veterans' Health Care" projects rapid cost growth for Veterans Administration services over the next decade as a result of spiraling health care costs. To read the full report, click here (.pdf file).  To see all the federal agencies that contribute to homeland security funding, click here (.pdf file)]

© 2011 Chris Hellman

Lack of Coverage of Saturday’s Rally Displays the San Diego Union Tribune's Tea Party Favoritism and Spurs Letter Writing Campaign.

by Frank Gormlie on February 27, 2011 from the OB Rag

in: Civil Rights, Media, Popular, San Diego

The total lack of coverage by the San Diego U-T of Saturday’s 1000-strong demonstration in support of the Wisconsin protests here on the steps of the County Admin Building displays the local daily’s favoritism toward the tea parties.

And it has spurred us to mount a letter-writing campaign to the U-T. (See below.)

Here is the OB Rag’s coverage of the rally from yesterday.

In today’s (Sunday, Feb. 27) Sunday edition of the Union-Tribune and in its online SignOnSanDiego, there is coverage of protests in Libya, of course, and even of nation-wide protests in support of the Madison unions, with a few words of how a thousand people rallied in Denver, CO, and briefly of how there were rallies in New York City and even in Los Angeles.  But still not one word nor one photo of the San Diego Labor Council sponsored event on Saturday the 26th.

The U-T did have coverage of the Black  History Month Parade and that a couple hundred people watched it, but nothing about San Diego’s unions and progressive organizations holding the largest non-electoral demonstration within San Diego in months, and how up to a 1,000 people attended.

Our local daily, historically conservative despite significant demographic changes in its home town and new ownership that vowed to represent the community, did not publish one word, not one tidbit about the demonstration. Yet on last Wednesday of this past week, it carried an article and photo of a local tea party event where less than twenty people attended.  Plus on Friday, they published a reference to that same event, its sponsor and spokesperson.

So the “new” U-T covered a tiny tea party thing but intentionally ignored a labor-sponsored event fifty times the tea party event size. What do you call this, besides favoritism toward a politics that holds onto a radical, far-right agenda?

The U-T is supposed to represent all of us, and inform the community at-large about important news and events. Yet a large progressive event that does not set well with the editorial policies of its owners gets no mention. This must be countered! We must do something!

What to do?

We have something … – please join us …:

We are today mounting a letter-writing campaign to the San Diego U-T !

Write a letter to them complaining of their lack of coverage – and then send us a copy – or leave a comment here below.  Please send us a copy so we can keep track – send it to us at our email:  [email protected]

Here is the U-T‘s letter-writing requirements, reprinted verbatim:

San Diego UT
http://www.signonsandiego.com/letters-commentaries/#letters

To be considered for publication, a letter must include a daytime phone number and, if faxed or mailed, be signed. E-mail it to [email protected], or fax it to (619) 260-5081. You can also send it to Letters Editor, The San Diego Union-Tribune, P.O. Box 120191, San Diego, CA 92112-0191.

How Democrats Can Become Relevant Again (And Rescue the Nation While They’re At It)

by Robert Reich

Tuesday, March 1, 2011

Republicans offered Democrats two more weeks before the doomsday shut-down. Democrats countered with four. Republicans held their ground. Democrats agreed to two.

This is what passes for compromise in our nation’s capital.

Democrats have become irrelevant. If they want to be relevant again they have to connect the dots: The explosion of income and wealth among America’s super-rich, the dramatic drop in their tax rates, the consequential devastating budget squeezes in Washington and in state capitals, and the slashing of public services for the middle class and the poor.

It is not a complicated story. Begin with what’s happened to the typical American, whose wages have been stagnant for thirty years. Today’s typical 30-year-old male (if he has a job) is earning the same as a 30-year-old male earned three decades ago, adjusted for for inflation. (Although women are doing better than they did 30 years ago, their wages still trail men’s.)

The bottom 90 percent of Americans now earn, on average, only about $280 more per year than they did thirty years ago. That’s less than a 1 percent gain over more than a third of a century. Families are doing somewhat better but that’s only because so many families now have to rely on two incomes.

But wait. The American economy is more than twice as large now as it was thirty years ago. So where did the money go? To the top. The richest 1 percent’s share of national has doubled – from around 9 percent in 1977 to over 20 percent now. The richest one-tenth of 1 percent’s share has tripled. The 150,000 households that comprise the top one-tenth of one percent now earn as much as the bottom 120 million put together.

Given this explosion of income at the top you might think our tax system would demand a larger share from them. But you’d be wrong. You’re not taking account of the power of the super rich. As income and wealth have risen to the top, so has political power. As a result, their taxes have plummeted.

From the 1940s until 1980, the tax rate on the highest earners in America was 70 percent or higher. In the 1950s, it was 91 percent. Even if you include deductions and credits, the rich were paying a far higher share of their income than at any time since.

Under Ronald Reagan the top rate dropped to 28 percent. Under Bill Clinton it rose to 39 percent and then under George W. Bush dropped to 36 percent. As you recall, Republicans have managed to keep it there. Their avowed aim is to keep it there permanently.

Meanwhile, estate taxes (which hit only the top 2 percent) have been slashed, as have taxes on capital gains – which comprise most of the income of the super rich. In the late 1970s, capital gains were taxed at well over 35 percent. Under Bill Clinton, the capital gains rate was 20 percent. Now it’s 15 percent.

So who’s going to foot the bill for everything we need? Even before the Great Recession, the middle class’s share of the nation’s total income had shrunk. Yet their tax burden had grown. They were paying a bigger chunk of their incomes in payroll taxes, sales taxes, and property taxes than decades before.

Then came the Great Recession – and with it, lower tax revenues. That means all levels of government are squeezed. Obviously, the middle class can’t pay more in taxes. But because the Democrats seem to lack the intestinal fortitude to suggest the obvious – that taxes need to be raised on the super rich – we’re left with a mess.

Teachers are being fired, Pell grants for the poor are being slashed, energy assistance for the needy is disappearing, other vital public services shriveling. Regulatory agencies don’t have the budgets to pay the people they need to enforce the law. Even if it wanted to the Securities and Exchange Commission couldn’t police Wall Street.

All of which is precisely where Republicans want the nation to be. It sets them up perfectly to blame government, blame public employees, blame unionized workers. It lets them pit workers against one another, divide the Democratic base, and promote the false idea that we’re in a giant zero-sum game and the nation can’t afford to do more.

It diverts attention from what’s happened at the top – so no one sees how well CEOs and Wall Street bankers are doing again, no one views the paybacks and tax giveaways engineered by their Republican patrons, and no one focuses on the tide of money flowing from the likes of billionaires Charles and David Koch into Republican coffers.  

Where are the Democrats? Shuffling their feet, looking at the floor. “Please oh please give us four weeks before you shut us down,” they ask. “No,” say the Republicans, “you’ll get only two.” “Well, alright then,” say the Democrats.

Here’s what Democrats should be saying:

Hike taxes on the super-rich. Reform the tax code to create more brackets at the top with higher rates for millionaires and billionaires. Absurdly, the top bracket is now set at $375,000 with a tax rate of 35 percent; the second-highest bracket, at 33 percent, starts at $172,000 for individuals. But the big money is way higher.

The source of income shouldn’t matter – salary, wages, capital gains, other unearned income – all should be treated the same. There’s no reason to reward speculators. (Don’t penalize true entrepreneurs, though. If they’re owners who have held their assets for at least twenty years, keep their capital gains low.)

And while you’re at it, raise the ceiling on income subject to Social Security taxes. And bring back the estate tax.

Do this and we can afford to do what we need to do as a nation. Do this and you prevent Republicans from setting the working middle class against itself. Do this and you restore some balance to a distribution of income and wealth that’s now dangerously out of whack.

Do this, Democrats, and you have a chance of being relevant again.