Monday, February 04, 2013

ANS -- Fwd: Well now, this is rather interesting........Reward card trims NJ taxes

Hi everyone -- One of our readers sent this on.  What a great idea!  We should start this here. and everywhere.
--Kim








Taxes Blog







Reward card trims NJ taxes





By Kay Bell · Bankrate.com
Tuesday, January 29, 2013
Posted: 11 am ET
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New Jersey property taxes are regularly found atop lists of the highest in the United States. Residents of one township, however, now can trim their real estate tax bills simply by shopping at local merchants.

Marlboro, N.J., property owners who have Shop Marlboro cards can cut their tax burden a bit every time they swipe the plastic at one of the city's participating merchants.

The card is not a debit or credit card. Rather, it's a reward card that's been issued at no charge to cardholders thanks to the local Investors Bank. It's administered by Fincredit. So far, around 1,700 cards have been issued and around 40 Marlboro merchants are participating.

Each time a cardholder swipes the plastic, a credit toward the cardholder's annual property tax bill is registered. There's no set credit percentage. Each participating merchant establishes its own level of credit.

The card's website offers this example of how it works:
"The price of your dinner for four people at a restaurant that is participating in the Shop Marlboro program with a 20 percent program rebate is $200. When paying the bill (either cash or credit card), just present your Shop Marlboro card, which is then swiped. Thereafter, $40 (less third-party program management and processing fees) will be applied as a credit against your annual property tax bill. Annually, when the Township issues its next property tax bill, the cumulative transactions will show up as a tax credit, thereby reducing your tax due."

Theoretically, says the Shop Marlboro website, cardholders could spend enough over the year to completely pay off their property taxes.

Shop Marlboro is a brainchild of Mayor Jonathan Hornick, who says that to his to knowledge it's the first-of-its-kind tax reduction program in the country. The beauty of the program, says Hornick, is that local businesses and property owners all benefit.

I'm not a big fan of credit card rewards programs. I find them to be too much hassle for too little reward.

But I do love my Starbucks card, which gives me a free Frappuccino on my birthday, as well as after I buy a dozen drinks. So I'd probably find a way to use a property tax rewards card if my local tax collector ever set up a similar deal here.

Would you choose to shop at one place over another if it would help reduce your property tax bill?

Want the latest news on taxes, tax reform prospects, filing deadlines, Internal Revenue Service alerts and tax-saving tips? Subscribe to Bankrate's free Daily Tax Tip newsletter, our Weekly Tax Tip newsletter or, if you're a true tax geek, both!

You also can follow me on Twitter @taxtweet.

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Sunday, February 03, 2013

ANS -- Henry Wallace, America's Forgotten Visionary

Here's a little bit of history for those of you who like such things. 
Find it here:  http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/14297-henry-wallace-americas-forgotten-visionary  
--Kim


Henry Wallace, America's Forgotten Visionary

Sunday, 03 February 2013 06:55 By Peter Dreier, Truthout | Historical Analysis


Henry Agard Wallace. Henry Agard Wallace. (Photo: Department of Commerce)One of the great "What if?" questions of the 20th century is how America would have been different if Henry Wallace rather than Harry Truman had succeeded Franklin Roosevelt in the White House. Filmmaker Oliver Stone has revived this debate in his current ten-part Showtime series, "The Untold History of the United States," and his new book (written with historian Peter Kuznick) of the same name.

In the late 1930s and early 1940s, only FDR eclipsed Wallace - Roosevelt's secretary of agriculture (1933-1940) and then his vice president (1941-1944) - in popularity with the American people. Stone's documentary series and book portray Wallace as a true American hero, a "visionary" on both domestic and foreign policy. Today, however, Wallace is a mostly forgotten figure. If Stone's work helps restore Wallace's rightful place in our history and piques the curiosity of younger Americans to learn more about this fascinating person, it will have served an important purpose.

Wallace almost became the nation's president. In 1940, he was FDR's running mate and served as his vice president for four years. But in 1944, against the advice of the Democratic Party's progressives and liberals - including his wife Eleanor - FDR reluctantly allowed the party's conservative, pro-business and segregationist wing to replace Wallace with Sen. Harry Truman as the vice presidential candidate, a move that Stone calls the "greatest blunder" of Roosevelt's career. Had Wallace remained as vice president, he would have become president when FDR died in April 1945.

Wallace opposed the cold war, the arms race with the Soviet Union and racial segregation. He was a strong advocate of labor unions, national health insurance, public works jobs and women's equality. He would have been, without question, the most radical president in American history. He would have served out the remaining three years of FDR's fourth term and certainly would have sought to be elected on his own in 1948.

Stone raises several titillating but unknowable questions: Had Wallace become president, would the United States have dropped the atom bomb on Japan? Would the country have spent several decades engaged in a costly cold war and arms race with the Soviet Union? Would we have created a permanent war economy (one that President Eisenhower later warned had become a "military-industrial complex") and replaced England as the world's most assertive imperialist and colonial power, leading the country into numerous military adventures, including Vietnam? Would our society have postponed for at least a decade the civil rights and women's rights revolutions?

Today, if Wallace is remembered at all, it is as a fringe candidate who ran on the Progressive Party ticket against Truman in 1948 and garnered less than 3 percent of the popular vote. That is unfortunate, because Wallace was a remarkable public servant. He was, according to John Kenneth Galbraith, "second only to Roosevelt as the most important figure of the New Deal."

Wallace was born on an Iowa farm in 1888. After graduating from Iowa State College in 1910, he went to work for his family's newspaper, Wallaces' Farmer, which was widely read by farmers and was influential in educating farmers about new scientific techniques and political issues shaping agricultural life. In 1921, Wallace took over as editor when his father became secretary of agriculture in the administrations of Warren G. Harding and then of Calvin Coolidge.

Wallace had a great passion for what was then called "scientific agriculture" and a talent for agricultural research. In 1926, he started the Hi-Bred Corn Company - later renamed Pioneer Hi-Bred - to market a new high-yield corn seed he had developed during his years conducting scientific experiments on a part-time basis. The company was hugely successful, making Wallace rich and his heirs secure. The new company revolutionized American agriculture. (DuPont bought the business for $9.4 billion in 1999.)

Wallace recognized that farming followed an unpredictable boom-and-bust cycle due to the weather, overproduction and consumers' ability to pay for food. In the 1920s, almost half of all Americans made their living directly or indirectly from agriculture. Wallace saw that farmers had not shared in the decade's prosperity and that their plight worsened when the economy crashed in 1929. Between 1929 and 1932, farm income fell by two-thirds. Farm foreclosures were occurring at a record pace. Farming communities were emptying as family farmers and sharecroppers abandoned the land looking for jobs elsewhere, a situation portrayed in John Steinbeck's 1939 novel The Grapes of Wrath and in the film based on it.

As Adam Cohen recounts in Nothing to Fear (2009), his book on the first 100 days of FDR's administration, these experiences radicalized many farmers throughout the farm belt. In May 1932, for example, 2,000 farmers attended a rally at the Iowa state fairgrounds and urged fellow farmers to declare a "holiday" from farming, under the slogan "Stay at Home - Buy Nothing Sell Nothing." In effect, they were urging farmers to go on strike - to withhold their corn, beef, pork and milk until the government addressed their problems. They threatened to call a national farmers strike if Congress did not provide farmers with "legislative justice." In Sioux City, Iowa, farmers put wooden planks with nails on the highways to block agricultural deliveries. In Nebraska, one group of farmers showed up at a foreclosure sale and saw to it that every item that had been seized from a farmer's widow sold for five cents, leaving the bank with a total settlement of just $5.35. In Le Mars, Iowa, a group of farmers kidnapped Judge Charles Bradley off the bench while he was hearing foreclosure cases and threatened to lynch him if he did not agree to stop foreclosures.

Wallace, a scientist and economist as well as a farmer, believed that the solution to the farm crisis was a combination of better farm management and government relief. Both Wallace and his father had been loyal Republicans, but in 1928, the younger Wallace changed his allegiance, supporting Democrat Al Smith for president. Four years later, Wallace endorsed FDR in the pages of his newspaper. Iowa, a traditionally Republican state, gave FDR almost 60 percent of its votes. Soon after winning the presidency, FDR recruited Wallace to become his secretary of agriculture - at 44, Wallace was the youngest member of the cabinet.

The Farm Belt protests continued after FDR took office in March 1933. Wallace used the growing farm rebellion to persuade the president to support a number of innovative and controversial programs, including crop subsidies, to keep farmers afloat. Wallace was the key advocate for the Agricultural Adjustment Administration, the Rural Electrification Administration, the Soil Conservation Service, the Farm Credit Administration, and the food stamp and school lunch programs. Wallace added a program for erosion control. The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) sponsored research to combat plant and animal diseases, to locate drought-resistant crops, and to develop hybrid seeds to increase farm productivity.

As a result, the USDA changed from a marginal department into one of the largest agencies, in size and influence, in Washington. Wallace's agency was also widely considered the best-run department in the federal government.

Business groups and Republicans in Congress opposed Wallace's plans, as they did most of the New Deal initiatives. Radical farm groups, like the National Farmers Union, thought the plans did not go far enough. But it is clear that the New Deal farm programs saved the farm economy and helped stabilize rural areas.

Wallace, Frances Perkins, Harry Hopkins, and Rex Tugwell formed the progressive wing of FDR's inner circle. Wallace had FDR's ear on a wide variety of issues, and he used that influence to push for policies to help industrial workers and the urban poor as well as farmers. Wallace became the New Deal's evangelist. In 1934 alone, he traveled more than 40,000 miles to all 48 states, delivered 88 speeches, signed 20 articles, published two books, and met regularly with reporters to promote the president and his program.

Because the fate of American farming is closely linked to global issues - particularly the export and import of food, but also hunger and famine around the world - Wallace was well versed in foreign affairs. In the late 1930s, he became alarmed by the rise of fascist dictatorships in Germany, Italy and Japan. Many Midwesterners, including progressives, were still isolationists, but Wallace had become a vigorous internationalist and a strong advocate for "collective security" among the United States and its allies.

During FDR's first two terms, Wallace developed a broad following among farmers, union activists and progressives. FDR was impressed by Wallace's popularity, his intelligence, and his integrity and believed that they shared a common view of government's role in society. In the summer of 1940, having decided to run for an unprecedented third term, FDR picked Wallace to be his vice presidential running mate.

During World War II, FDR involved Wallace in many military and international matters. Wallace also traveled throughout the war-torn world. FDR encouraged him to speak out about the possible shape of the postwar world. "Henry Wallace," wrote columnist James Reston in The New York Times in October 1941, "is now the administration's head man on Capitol Hill, its defense chief, economic boss and No. 1 post war planner."

Wallace faced significant opposition from the Democratic Party's conservative, business and segregationist wings. He feuded openly with Jesse H. Jones, a one-time Texas banker and businessman who was FDR's secretary of commerce and head of the Reconstruction Finance Corporation (RFC), which controlled the purse strings for purchasing wartime supplies. For example, Wallace and Jones disagreed over the importing of essential materials for the war effort, such as rubber from South America. Wallace knew that about 40,000 workers were needed to extract the 20,000 tons of rubber that the United States needed each year. But each year, one-third of the rubber workers died and another third were too sick to work, afflicted with malaria, malnutrition, venereal disease, contaminated water, and other conditions. To guarantee a steady supply of rubber, Wallace (with the support of Perkins, the labor secretary) wanted the United States to provide the workers with healthy food and to require labor clauses in contracts with South American suppliers that mandated health and safety standards. Jones was adamantly opposed to Wallace's proposal and rounded up allies within the Roosevelt administration (including the State Department) and in Congress, including Republican Sen. Robert Taft of Ohio, who accused Wallace of "setting up an international WPA."

On May 8, 1942, Wallace delivered a talk in New York City that became famous for his phrase "the century of the common man." It was, noted John Culver and John Hyde in their biography, American Dreamer: A Life of Henry A. Wallace, "as pure an expression of progressive idealism as Wallace could muster." Wallace defined America's wartime mission as laying the groundwork for a peaceful world of global cooperation, "a fight between a slave world and a free world." Modern science has made it possible for everyone to have enough to eat, Wallace said, but it will require cooperation among the major nations to raise the standard of living for the common man in every corner of the world.

The speech was Wallace's response to a 1941 article by Henry Luce, the publisher of Time and Life magazines, which called for an "American century" after the war - meaning a century dominated by the United States, "to exert upon the world the full impact of our influence, for such purposes as we see fit and by such means as we see fit."

Wallace's rebuttal was very explicit. He envisioned an end to colonialism, a world in which "no nation will have the God-given right to exploit other nations. Older nations will have the privilege to help younger nations get started on the path to industrialization, but there must be neither military nor economic imperialism." Wallace was aiming for a kind of global New Deal.

Millions of copies of Wallace's speech were distributed around the world in 20 languages. It drew praise in liberal and progressive circles, but it also stirred controversy. The British prime minister, Winston Churchill - who hoped that Britain would still have an empire to run after the war - was upset by Wallace's stark anticolonial sentiments. American business groups objected to Wallace's views about economic imperialism. The New York Times and, of course, Luce's publications, thought it was too radical.

Wallace's speech framed the debate between progressives and conservatives. Opponents viewed Wallace as naive, a dreamer and a radical. These opponents included influential Democrats who worried that FDR might anoint Wallace as his successor, or at least give Wallace a big enough stage from which to launch a presidential bid once FDR had retired.

Led by Robert Hannegan, chairman of the Democratic National Committee, local and state party bosses quietly lobbied FDR to replace Wallace with Truman. Going into the 1944 Democratic convention in Chicago, Wallace was strongly favored to keep his position as FDR's running mate. Too ill to attend the convention and too busy overseeing the American war effort to get in the middle of an intraparty battle, FDR let it be known that either Wallace or Truman (a little-known senator from Missouri with few accomplishments to his credit) would be an acceptable vice presidential pick. On the first ballot, Wallace beat Truman, but lacked sufficient votes needed to secure the nomination. Then the party's conservative influence-peddlers went to work making deals with leaders from different states to gain votes for Truman. They maneuvered successfully and handed Truman the

nomination.

Wallace was deeply hurt by FDR's failure to back him. After the election, FDR appointed Wallace to be secretary of commerce, but he stripped Wallace of control of the RFC, which he left in Jones' conservative hands. Wallace had a prestigious title, but he was no longer an influential insider. After FDR died in April 1945, Wallace continued to speak out in public, often in terms critical of Truman. Within a year, Truman had purged most of FDR's key appointees. In September 1946, he fired Wallace, too.

On the major issues facing postwar America - the cold war and the arms race (particularly the atomic bomb), strengthening New Deal social policies and boosting organized labor, and addressing segregation and racism - Wallace believed that Truman was too cautious and conservative. These were themes Wallace would pick up on when he campaigned for president against Truman on the Progressive Party ticket. He attacked Truman's support for loyalty oaths to root out communists and radicals from government jobs, unions, and teaching positions in schools and universities. He called for national health insurance, an expanded public works program, and reparations for Japanese Americans who had been interned during the war. He said it was time to elevate women to "first-class citizenship." And when Wallace campaigned in the South, he refused to speak to segregated audiences.

On foreign policy, Wallace opposed the so-called Truman Doctrine, which aimed to contain communism through military intervention if necessary. He refused to support the Marshall Plan to rebuild Europe, considering it an instrument of the cold war. He preferred a multilateral aid program that would be administered through the United Nations.

Some early polls showed that Wallace had the support of more than 20 percent of the voters. Democratic Party officials, as well as some left-leaning union leaders, feared that even if Wallace could not win the election, he might attract enough Democratic voters that the White House would fall into the hands of the Republicans. Although his campaign initially attracted support from a wide political spectrum of liberals and radicals - including high-profile figures like scientist Albert Einstein and singer and actor Paul Robeson - much of that support soon withered as Wallace became closely identified with communists.

There were communists in key positions within the Wallace campaign, particularly among the left-wing unions that supported him after most other unions had abandoned his crusade. In some ways, Wallace was naive about the Soviet Union. He visited the port city of Magadan in Siberia in 1944 and described it as "combination TVA and Hudson's Bay Company." In reality, it was a slave-labor camp filled with political prisoners. Only later did he acknowledge that he had been conned by his Soviet guides.

Wallace believed in what would decades later be called "détente" - finding ways to cooperate with the Soviet Union rather than getting trapped in a spiraling arms race. Even as cold war tensions were growing, Wallace simply did not subscribe to the anticommunist hysteria that emerged after the war. "I say those who fear communism lack faith in democracy," he said.

In the 1948 contest, Truman beat New York Gov. Thomas Dewey, the Republican candidate, in a historic upset. Wallace received only 2.38 percent of the national vote. He even trailed third-place Strom Thurmond, the Democratic governor of South Carolina, who was running on the segregationist Dixiecrat Party ticket.

After this humiliating defeat, Wallace bought a farm in New York State, where he enjoyed working with plants and keeping chickens and made only occasional forays into public life. He was soon forgotten or reviled as a misguided radical. It is easy to see, with 20-20 hindsight, that running as the Progressive Party's presidential candidate transformed Wallace into a marginal figure. But an honest examination of his 1948 platform reveals that most of the ideas for which he was condemned as a radical are now viewed as common sense.

For further reading

Adam Cohen. Nothing to Fear: FDR's Inner Circle and the Hundred Days That Created Modern America. New York: Penguin Press, 2009.

John C. Culver and John Hyde. American Dreamer: A Life of Henry A. Wallace. New York: W. W. Norton, 2000.

Richard J. Walton, Henry Wallace, Harry Truman and the Cold War, New York: Viking, 1976.

Copyright, Truthout. May not be reprinted without permission of the author.

ANS -- Will Exaggerated Deficit Talks Lead to an "Obama Recession?" We Must Still Ask These Questions

Here is another article by Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers, the first of a new series.  It's about the deficit -- we don't need to worry about it, it's "austerity" we need to worry about.  And the government isn't paying attention. 
Find it here:  http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/14227-will-exaggerated-deficit-talk-lead-to-an-obama-recession-we-must-still-ask-these-questions   
--Kim



Will Exaggerated Deficit Talks Lead to an "Obama Recession?" We Must Still Ask These Questions

Wednesday, 30 January 2013 10:31 By Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers , Truthout | News Analysis


President Barack Obama speaks about immigration reform in Las V President Barack Obama speaks about immigration reform in Las Vegas, January 29, 2013. (Photo: Stephen Crowley / The New York Times)Combat the epidemic of misinformation that plagues the corporate media! Click here to make a tax-deductible donation to Truthout and keep independent journalism strong.

Austerity is the absolute wrong answer for what ails the US economy - or even for reducing the deficit, argue Zeese and Flowers. There are real solutions.

In the last year of his life, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. shifted his focus to the American economy, poverty, full employment and how these issues related to militarism. In his 1967 speech, " Where do we go from here: chaos or community?" he urged the country to ask some tough questions and advocated for full employment or a guaranteed national income. He said:

. . . as we talk about 'Where do we go from here,' that we honestly face the fact that the movement must address itself to the question of restructuring the whole of American society. There are 40 million poor people here. And one day we must ask the question, 'Why are there 40 million poor people in America?' And when you begin to ask that question, you are raising questions about the economic system, about a broader distribution of wealth. When you ask that question, you begin to question the capitalistic economy.... One day we must come to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring. It means that questions must be raised. You see, my friends, when you deal with this, you begin to ask the question, 'Who owns the oil?' You begin to ask the question, 'Who owns the iron ore?' You begin to ask the question, 'Why is it that people have to pay water bills in a world that is two-thirds water?'

Cheri Honkala, a poverty and housing activist who founded the Poor People's Economic Human Rights Campaign, and who ran for vice president with the Green Party in 2012, sees her work following the path of Dr. King. She says, "There will be over one million families who will lose their homes to foreclosure or eviction in the upcoming year. I live on a block in Philadelphia where there are about 23 kids and we know that at least one week of each month many of these families will have inadequate food."

Decades after Dr. King's anti-poverty campaign, poverty and homelessness remain growing problems in the US economy and we must still ask the question: How do we restructure the economy so it works for people?

The Washington Consensus: A Bipartisan Call for Austerity

The Washington consensus on economic policy has been used to inflict neoliberalism, privatization and massive cuts to basic services on developing countries. When this is instituted in Europe, it is called austerity. In both Europe and Latin America, austerity resulted in large protests. In the United States, this is known as "bipartisanship on the deficit" and results in cuts to social programs. No matter what it is called, the end is the same: People's basic necessities are not met; the economy shrinks and the wealth divide expands.

The consensus, driven by big banks and concentrated wealth through compliant politicians, has been trying to cut the meager social safety net in the United States and loot the economy. Over and over, President Obama has tried to makes cuts to Social Security and Medicare; thus far he has failed because people revolted. Now Obama says he wants to seek " common ground" with the Republicans on Medicare and there is agreement on a 3 percent cut to Social Security - a new Washington consensus.

The call for cuts ignores important facts about the economic reality many Americans face. The wealth divide continues to get starker. Corporate profits have increased 171 percent under Obama, the fastest profit growth since 1900, while America's poorest lost 91 percent of their wealth.

At the same time, one in three working families cannot make ends meet, 50 million Americans live in poverty, seniors have higher credit card debt than youth in large part due to health costs, and one-third of Americans are likely to live in poverty during retiremen t. Students are graduating heavily in debt into a lousy job market. And housing problems are so severe that when housing vouchers were being given away in Michigan, thousands showed up - single moms, homeless and veterans - resulting in the event being cancelled.

The urgent economic problems the US and world face are lack of employment and an extreme wealth divide. Economist Joseph Stiglitz wrote that it is the wealth divide that is preventing economic recovery. Indeed, the wealth divide is so extreme that the annual income of the world's 100 richest people could end global poverty four times over.

The Deficit Is Not as Serious as They Want You to Think

The bipartisan consensus in Washington does not face important facts: There is no serious immediate deficit problem. Actually, the US deficit is shrinking at the fastest pace since World War II, shrinking from 10.1 percent to 7 percent of the gross domestic product (GDP) during Obama's first term. Economists are pleading with incoming Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew to acknowledge this. The truth is that the deficit problem, which is being used to justify cuts to Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and other social programs, is well within control.
2013 0129ch1

Even if it wasn't in control, cuts are unnecessary. One of the few advantages of being an empire economy and holding the world's dominant currency is that we could maintain a high debt-to-GDP ratio. Great Britain, when it was an empire, for more than a century had a debt to GDP ratio of more than 100 percent, sometimes over 200 percent. The US is not Greece. The American Empire does not have to starve people at home in order to enrich transnational corporations and oligarchs around the world. When our economy contracts, the government can create money to fill the gaps and when the economy grows, it can reduce the stimulus spending. In fact, the government could mint its own money and cut out the costs of the middlemen - the Federal Reserve and banks. Of course, an even better path for the American Empire would be to bring the troops home and invest in our domestic economy. This would create a more stable economy and strengthen our position as the world's reserve currency.

Military Spending Can Be Cut

In his "Where do we go from here?" speech, Dr. King contrasted human needs with military spending:

John Kenneth Galbraith said that a guaranteed annual income could be done for about twenty billion dollars a year. And I say to you today, that if our nation can spend thirty-five billion dollars a year to fight an unjust, evil war in Vietnam, and twenty billion dollars to put a man on the moon, it can spend billions of dollars to put God's children on their own two feet right here on earth.

Robert Pollin, co-director of the Political Economy Research Institute (PERI) and author of Back to Full Employment, points out that military spending has nearly doubled, now standing at 5 percent of GDP, compared to 3 percent in 2000. His research also shows the military is a very expensive way to create jobs; $1 billion in spending on the military creates about 11,200 jobs. That same $1 billion invested domestically would create 16,800 jobs through clean energy infrastructure, 17,200 jobs within the healthcare sector or 26,700 jobs in education. In other words, investments in clean energy, healthcare and education will produce between 50 percent and 140 percent more jobs than if the same money were spent by the Pentagon.

Unfortunately the Iraq and Afghanistan wars have been very expensive. Even if both wars were to end today, we would have billions in ongoing residual costs to pay for the expenses of treating veterans' mental and physical wounds. Joseph Stiglitz and Linda Bilmes write: "The eventual costs of caring for veterans of the Afghanistan war will exceed $1 trillion. To put these numbers into perspective, the debate surrounding the fiscal cliff has centered on expenditure cuts over 10 years of $1 trillion to $2 trillion."

But even with these expected costs, there is room to cut military spending. The Pentagon's "base budget," excluding the costs of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, has grown by 40 percent over the past decade. There are multiple conservative military cost-cutting plans that would save $50 billion to $100 billion annually. The 1,100 US military outposts cost $170 billion annually. Billions could be saved by closing bases built in wars that are now over. Stopping cost overruns and the manufacturing of unnecessary weapons could save billions more. A Government Accountability Office (GAO) study of 96 weapons programs found that almost two-thirds suffered major cost overruns - 40 percent above contract prices, overall - totaling close to $300 billion. Cost overruns are equal to the amount of President Clinton's last full military budget request a decade ago.

Cutting Spending Now Will Cause an "Obama Recession." Full Employment Will Solve the Deficit

In the midst of this ongoing economic crisis the bipartisan view in Washington ignores these facts and insists on more cuts to social programs. Taking the approach of the bipartisan consensus will almost assuredly lead to an "Obama Recession," just as FDR's anti-deficit consensus, which cut New Deal spending in 1936, led to the "Roosevelt Recession" in 1937-38. The lesson of history is obvious, but the prescription of the bipartisan consensus does not operate on facts or evidence. It will bleed the patient even though the hoax of austerity is economic malpractice.
2013 0129ch2

A more recent example of austerity measures causing the economy to worsen is happening in the UK right now. The last four years have produced the worst economic performance in a non-post-war period since records started being collected in the 1830s. Britain could be at the beginning of a triple-dip recession, their economy shrank 0.3 percent in the final quarter and manufacturers suffered their worst year since the financial crisis of 2008. David Cameron delivered on his campaign promise of austerity and the result has been a prolonged recession. Let's hope that US policymakers learn from the mistakes of Great Britain and don't repeat them.

Economists who are fact-based rather than purely ideological are telling policy-makers that public investment in jobs will restore growth of the economy and resolve the deficit. Stiglitz prescribes a comprehensive response that should include, at the least, significant investments in education, a more progressive tax system and a tax on financial speculation. Economist Robert Pollin urges a goal of full employment by 2016 and reducing poverty from 15 percent to 11 percent, the level in 2000, which he shows are achievable goals. RoseAnn DeMoro of National Nurses United urges a poverty program that begins with stopping cuts to Social Security and expanding improved Medicare to all. As Robert Reich says, Medicare isn't the problem it's the solution.

Indeed, decades of history show that the national deficit parallels unemployment. In other words, the lower the unemployment rate, the lower the deficit will be in relation to the GDP. This chart shows the deficit as a percentage of GDP (red line) vs. the unemployment rate (blue line) and indicates the only way to solve the deficit problem is to solve the employment problem first.
2013 0129ch3

Of course, creating a full employment economy also ameliorates poverty and homelessness. And it will not make the wealthier poorer. On the contrary, putting Americans to work to meet the many needs of the nation for infrastructure, health care, education and green energy will create more opportunities for businesses to profit. It will also allow the United States to have the resources to create the clean energy, sustainable economy that is urgently needed as part of a Green New Deal.

Let Us Be Dissatisfied

In Washington, DC, the two corporate parties that each ran billion-dollar presidential campaigns do not hear these calls and are immune to the facts on which they are based. Life in the United States continues to get harder for the vast majority. In 1988, the US ranked first in the world as the country to live in; today we have dropped to 16th.

How do we stop the madness in Washington? We organize and mobilize against austerity and for prosperity, for a new clean energy economy and a democratic economy that empowers the people fairly. We have the power, we must exercise it.

Dr. King concluded his 1967 speech urging people to go out with "divine dissatisfaction." He pointed to many problems Americans still face today: poverty, homelessness, the wealth divide and mass spending on war. Despite our dissatisfaction, King urged, "We must walk on in the days ahead with an audacious faith in the future."

----------------
You can hear our interview with Cheri Honkala and Robert Pollin on Martin Luther King, the Poor People's Campaign and Green Jobs on Clearing the FOG Radio.

This is Part I in a series on the deficit and real solutions. Next week we examine how Social Security and Medicare are the solutions, not the problems, and need to be expanded not contracted.
Copyright, Truthout. May not be reprinted without permission.

Saturday, February 02, 2013

ANS -- The Foundation of a New Democratic Economy Is Worker Self-Directed Enterprises and Cooperatives and Community Work Are Part of American DNA

Two articles, a short "series".  this is it: the answer to the country's problems.  And the world's.  Are you going to read it?
find it here:  http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/14076-cooperatives-and-community-work-are-part-of-american-dna   
and here:   http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/13823-the-foundation-of-a-new-democratic-economy-is-worker-self-directed-enterprises  
--Kim
P.S. apparently, you can read them in either order.


The Foundation of a New Democratic Economy Is Worker Self-Directed Enterprises

Thursday, 10 January 2013 15:02 By Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers , Truthout | Op-Ed

Cash. (Photo: Andy / Flickr)A commitment to democracy logically should extend to the place where adults spend most of their lives. Workers in control of their own workplaces are much less likely to ship their own jobs overseas, underpay employees or pollute their own communities.


The economic collapse and slow recovery that has led to high unemployment and under-employment, coinciding with an extreme wealth divide in which workers have a shrinking share of the GDP, means people are looking for new approaches. How can we create an economy that works for all Americans?

Through his new project, Democracy at Work, economist Richard Wolff strives to develop a social movement that puts in place a reorganization of the economy built on a foundation of employee control of the workplace. Employees would act together as their own bosses in a fully egalitarian, democratic workplace where workers run the business, share the assets and create a workspace that runs in harmony with not only its workers, but the entire community.

We join him in this effort through our project, It's Our Economy, which seeks to create economic democracy, with worker ownership at its foundation. Economic democracy is consistent with the democratic ideals of the United States. And employee ownership is an all-American approach to problem-solving that has been supported by people on the Right and Left. Workers will relish the democratic structure; businesspeople will appreciate its entrepreneurial spirit. In our next column we will review the history of worker ownership and communalism that dates back to the founding of this country, indeed, pre-dates European settlement of North America.

We are not starting from scratch. There are thousands of successful, majority worker-owned businesses in the United States. The largest majority employee-owned business is Florida-based Publix Super Markets, a $27 billion company that employs 152,000 people. That's more workers than Costco and Whole Foods combined. As we finish the international year of the co-op, worker ownership is growing. One in five adults in the world are members of co-ops; and a majority of Americans find cooperatives to be less expensive, more trustworthy and to provide better service than traditional businesses.

As political economist Gar Alperovitz reports, "There are 120 million members of cooperatives in the United States; 20 percent of the American electric system is either co-op or municipal, essentially socialized. Land trusts are developing at the local level. At the state level, there are many approaches, like public pension funds, for example. California's is the most well-known, but the state of Alabama is heavily using its pension funds and even investing in some forms of worker-owned companies."

Wolff argues that workplaces need to go beyond majority ownership, to "Worker Self Directed Enterprises" (WSDE). He makes a strong case that workers in control of their own workplaces are much less likely to ship their own jobs overseas, underpay employees or pollute their own communities. As workers' enterprises become fully functioning, they benefit those who participate as workers as well as the customers and communities they serve.

Much of what goes wrong in US-European capitalism is due to how corporations are organized - hierarchical and undemocratic. As Wolff says "people go to work and do what they are told rather than participate." The undemocratic workplace is dominated by a handful of people - owners, stockholders or a board of directors. Those who make the decisions create greater wealth and power for themselves, usually at the expense of their workers; and not surprisingly they get involved in politics to ensure that they continue to keep their power and wealth.

Worker Self Directed Enterprises are a new way of organizing. Workers have the capacity to direct decisions in their workplace. As decision-makers they have to live with the decisions they make, like moving jobs overseas, replacing workers with technology or polluting their environment. Wolff says: "If we are committed to democracy, then the workplace where people spend most of their adult lives should be democratic."

Especially when an economy is not working, it is time to say "this system does not do what we need, we can do better." Throughout history, there has been a gradual move to self-governance. As Wolff notes, "We don't need kings, nor do we need to be governed by a few at the workplace." To accomplish this transition to a decentralized and democratized economy, we need to build a social movement that takes this message to the American people.

A large portion of the population already agrees with us. These ideas are majoritarian, but are not realized because wealth is in the hands of a few and politicians need concentrated wealth to sustain them and remain in office. This wealth also controls the media and limits discussion. Thus, we also need to continue building an independent, citizen's media to broaden discussion and understanding.

Worker Self Directed Enterprises are built on the experience of the worker cooperatives. The phrase WSDE is used to emphasize that workers make the decisions. The largest cooperative in the world is the Mondragon Cooperative - a network of 250 co-op enterprises that makes up the 7th largest corporation in Spain, with 85,000 worker-members who make the decisions. Mondragon defied the economic collapse in Spain. And now Mondragon is joining with US steelworkers to develop worker-owned steel mills in the US.

There is experience-based evidence that worker directed enterprises can have advantages over traditional corporate models. According to a study by Harvard and Rutgers researchers, companies with substantial employee ownership often outperform those without, because of lower staff turnover, stronger trust relationships at work and greater innovation.

The companies that succeed do so in large part because of the "innovation engine" that is unleashed by worker ownership. Group innovation is free fuel for a business that is created when people's passion is ignited toward innovating together and employees are engaged in creating better products and better ways to deliver them. This strategy seeks to create a competitive advantage in the marketplace.

What are the some of the keys to success? Research shows successful businesses realize that innovation comes from differences in thinking, therefore engaging many workers encourages innovation. Most of the time innovation does not mean new technology, but new solutions to problems, rearrangements and improvements in operation. Allowing experimentation, trying new approaches and sharing the lessons from these efforts means all can learn and innovate further. And success comes from sharing information not only with employees, but also with suppliers and customers. The entire organization is rewarded for its innovation and values of teamwork and sharing. Worker ownership is a practical, not utopian, model of organizing workplaces.

Changing the workplace is not only about more successful business; it is about people living more fulfilled lives. Wolff points out that many workers view work and workplaces negatively because they are not organized to be positive experiences for workers; that "Happy Hour" is something that takes place outside of work. "If more enterprises were employee-owned, fewer workers would face daily exploitation. The ratio of average CEO pay to worker pay (currently, an astounding 380:1) would shrink. Inequality, which harms society and hampers economic growth, would lessen."

Employee Self-Directed Enterprises will also change politics as they put democratic power in the workplace and build wealth among workers. As the balance of power shifts, majoritarian solutions to the challenges the country faces will no longer be taboo. The foundation of political democracy will move from a small number of owners, to worker directors thereby broadening the base of government.

This article is based on a radio interview with Richard Wolff on Clearing the FOG (Forces Of Greed). You can listen to the interview here.
Copyright, Truthout. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Cooperatives and Community Work Are Part of American DNA

Tuesday, 22 January 2013 16:28 By Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers , Truthout | Op-Ed


Zeese main A United Farm Workers (UFW) activist speaks about the organization's flag and its history to a reporter. In the 1960's the UFW set up several community mutual-aid associations, including a credit union and cooperative store. (Photo: Randy Bayne / flickr)There is so much in US history that has been hidden or mythologized that ignorance is more common than knowledge even among the best informed. That is how we felt when we read For All the People and then interviewed the author, John Curl, on Clearing the FOG radio.

Curl's area of expertise is very important for those of us seeking transformational change to a new, more equitable economy and participatory democracy. His book methodically and authoritatively traces the hidden history of cooperatives, cooperation and communalism in US history. He shows how these models of economic democracy were intertwined with many of the transformational changes the country has made, including breaking from English empire, ending slavery, and gaining women's suffrage, worker rights and union rights, as well as civil rights. He also shows how economic democracy has been in constant battle with concentrated-wealth-based capitalism, which is threatened by a more equal distribution of wealth. This history is critical for advocates to understand; therefore, For All the People is essential reading.

Why Cooperatives, Cooperation and Communalism Matter

Creating transformational change is not only about protesting what we do not like and resisting and refusing to cooperate with the power structure; it also requires us to simultaneously build the world we want. If big-finance capitalism does not serve the people, what will? The mass of people who struggle through their daily lives need to know there is an alternative available that will meet their needs and improve their lives. People who urgently require employment, housing, food and other immediate needs can work together now to solve their problems in ways that also undermine big-finance capitalism and build democratic and sustainable systems.

Changing the economic system to one that is more democratic is fundamental to shifting political power away from concentrated wealth and to people. However, decentralized and democratic economic systems will not address all of the crises that exist sufficiently. Some, such as finance, health care, energy, climate and transportation require national approaches and coordination. When political power begins to shift, these bigger solutions can be put in place and greater transformation will be possible.

History reinforces the idea that to achieve transformational change, we must proceed on twin tracks: protesting and building. Mahatma Gandhi changed his emphasis in the mid-1930s, a dozen years before independence from the British Empire, to work focused on building economically self-reliant communities from below (sardovaya, or social uplift for all). This became an adjunct to the strategy he is most known for, satyagraha (noncooperation and civil disobedience to unjust laws). Gandhian economics meant thousands of self-sufficient small communities with self-rule and the need for economic self-sufficiency at the village level joined together in a cooperative federation of village republics. This is bookended by the Gandhian social ideal of dignity of labor, equitable distribution of wealth, communal self-sufficiency and individual freedom.

We discovered this two-path necessity when we were organizing the Occupation of Washington, DC at Freedom Plaza. We learned that change required a strategy of two parts: protesting what we oppose, and building what we want; to make the goals of the occupation clear, we called it Stop the Machine, Create a New World. The latter approach is important for many reasons and deserves more attention than the former because it builds community, solves urgent problems, builds wealth for individuals and communities, and creates the society we want.

The Early History of Cooperatives and Communalism

Curl begins before the European settlement of North America with the continent's natives. There were hundreds of tribes and nations north of Mexico which were based on community and working together to solve problems. Curl writes, "every account stresses community over individualism as their overriding core value." Indeed, the concept of individual private property in land and natural resources was unknown; tools were shared, as were the bounty of agriculture and hunts.

When it came to European colonists, "cooperation permeated the entire way of life." This was true in wave after wave of settlers, whether from Britain, France or Spain. They built houses for each other, plowed fields and shared food; they cleared land and built communities together. There were community gatherings to husk corn, quilt and sew, pare apples and launch ships.

The Spanish colonies, now the Southwest of the United States, were given community land grants by the king for groups of ten or more people. Large sections of common land (ejidos) were put aside for the entire community to share for farming, hunting, water and wood gathering. Of 295 land grants, 154 were community land grants. The common ejido could not be sold. Restoration of ejido lands was one of the central goals of the Zapatistas in the Mexican Revolution of 1910.

In New England, the battle between corporate power and individual rights existed from the very beginning. The first colony of Pilgrims threw off their investors who treated them as indentured servants (a forerunner to modern wage slavery) and instituted self-government. Their community started as a commune and evolved into a cooperative. People worked communally, the product of their work was stored in a community warehouse and needs were taken from a common store. The first major independent industry in Plymouth was a fishing cooperative.

To summarize the early colonial experience, Curl writes, "Cooperation, not competition resounded as the dominant chord across the continent." This self-government and cooperative economy was in constant conflict with the corporations empowered by the British Crown that ruled the colonies, finally leading to the American Revolution with rebellions like the Boston Tea Party, a revolt against the corporate monopoly of the British East India Company.

After the American Revolution, Cooperatives Continued, as Did the Battle With Concentrated Wealth

After the revolution, cooperation continued as a mainstream of the colonial economy. Artisans joined together in "cooperative warehouses" to buy materials at reasonable cost and distribute their products without a middleman. Benjamin Franklin organized 50 neighbors and friends to form the first subscription library, each paying 40 shillings to start the collection. The Union Fire Company, also organized by Franklin, provided for mutual aid in case of fire and was copied in many cities. These evolved into mutual insurance companies owned by a group of people together to insure each other against loss from fire, death or accident. These were copied in ten cities by 1800 and spread to farmers in the 1820s, becoming one of many forms of farmer cooperatives.

In 1831, Alexis de Tocqueville wrote admiringly of mutual aid associations in the United States in Democracy in America: "Americans of all ages, all conditions, and all dispositions constantly form associations ... associations of a thousand kinds ... I have often admired the extreme skill with which the inhabitants of the United States succeed in proposing a common object for exertions of a great many men and inducing them voluntarily to pursue it...."

Throughout the early 1800s, there were a variety of cooperatives. As conflict between workers and owners developed, cooperatives supported workers during strikes. Workers formed cooperatives when they walked off jobs because of low pay and the requirement to work sun-up to sun-down in 75 hour work weeks. These gradually developed into the first unions, which courts often found to be illegal restraints of trade. By the 1830s, workers were winning the right to ten-hour workdays.

This was also a time when economic panics and bank failures became a pattern in the US economy. When there was economic collapse, communalism and cooperatives arose. People worked together to meet their needs. Among the most common were cooperative stores that involved barter, mutual aid and low prices for members. Often when these cooperatives grew to compete with traditional capitalism, capitalists fought back by refusing to sell them goods or transport their products and by undercutting their prices.

Mutual cooperatives formed to build homes for workers. A group of workers would pay monthly into a fund that was used to pay for building homes. The mutual co-op would hold the mortgage until the homes were paid for. These essentially became mutual savings banks, forerunners to the community banks and credit unions of today.

The issues of westward expansion, homesteading and slavery became dominant in the mid-1800s. The wage slaves of industry realized that if chattel slavery moved west, it would mean wages would stay low. This helped create a mass movement for stopping the westward expansion of slavery as well as for abolition. A number of key leaders of the abolition movement were also involved in the labor and cooperative movements, including Horace Greeley and Frederick Douglass.

Many workers put their hopes for liberation from wage slavery in the Homestead Act of 1862 signed by President Lincoln, which gave federal land grants to people (including freed slaves and women). Westward expansion and homesteading also presented a conflict with concentrated wealth, which wanted the land for its profit. In the end, homesteaders only received a quarter of the available land, with railroads and developers taking the rest.

As farming moved west, so did the cooperative movement. Farmers found themselves a small cog in a national chain, forced to buy overpriced seed, supplies and equipment and to pay excessive prices to transport their goods to market on railroads. A national grange movement developed, initially as a secret society. In 1868, the Minnesota Grange organized the first purchasing and marketing cooperative. In a few years, granges sprung up throughout the Midwest and Southwest as mutual aid societies fighting floods and bug infestations, with farmers educating each other and joining together for purchasing and marketing. Granges operated cooperative grain elevators, warehouses, shipping stations, processing plants, grist mills, bag factories, brick yards, blacksmith shops, cotton gins, rail and ship transport, and even banks. Cooperatives were the backbone of the famed farm belt of American agriculture.

The granges became political, joining the Greenback Party, which sought to put more money in circulation to break the power of banks and monopolies. The railroads were a particular impetus because they charged farmers huge freight rates. Farmers made no profits off their crops even though the prices were so high that people in urban areas starved.

There was rapid growth when the granges joined the Greenback Party; by 1875, there were 19,000 local granges with 758,000 members. Their slogans were "Down with Monopolies" and "Cooperation." In 1878, they joined with the Knights of Labor, uniting farmers and workers in the Greenback-Labor Party and adding the eight-hour workday, union rights and women's suffrage to their agenda. They elected members of Congress and state offices, "Repudiationists," who called for the cancellation of many debts. They never gained enough strength to enact their programs and when they passed laws regulating freight charges, industry fought back by refusing to carry grange goods.

Worker and farmer rights movements were on the rise and the cooperative movement was rising with them. The largest workers' organization in history up to that time, the Knights of Labor, which formed in 1869 and had more than 500,000 members, included replacement of the wage system with worker ownership as one of its central beliefs. The Knights were involved in strikes as a protest against wage slavery, building cooperatives to construct a liberated future and Greenback-Labor politics to pursue their agenda in government.

In 1877, there was a national railroad strike involving tens of thousands of workers. Knights of Labor from many trades joined in and farmers from granges provided the strikers with food. State militias supported the strikers by refusing orders to break the strike, instead fraternizing with the strikers. The strikers took control of the cities of Pittsburgh, St. Louis and Chicago.

The tides turned after the stolen election of 1878. Rutherford Hayes made a deal with Southerners to remove troops who were protecting blacks during Reconstruction in exchange for the electoral votes of three states that New York governor Samuel Tilden had actually won. Once troops were removed from the South, President Hayes turned the troops on the strikers, killing over 100 workers, injuring 500 and arresting more than 1,000. The strike was broken and the Knights of Labor wounded.

In the mid-1880s, the movement for an eight-hour day was in full force. A national general strike was called on May 1, 1886; 200,000 workers joined the strike and hundreds of thousands more joined in protests marches. The strike continued for four days, and on May 4, Chicago police shot six picketing workers in the back. A protest was held at Haymarket Square that night. Police moved in to break it up and a bomb went off. Police shot wildly into the crowd, injuring many. This triggered police violence across the country to break up the general strike. Three months later, eight "anarchists" were unjustly found guilty of the bombing, among them a leader of the Knights of Labor Eight-Hour League. This verdict led to a reaction against the Knights of Labor by the entire economic system, marking the group as a source of violence and destroying their cooperatives and movement.

The 20th Century New Deal and the 60s Revolt

Despite initial legal challenges, the cooperative movement continued and unions grew during the 20th century. Rather than breaking up monopolies, the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890 was used against cooperatives and unions because it declared any "combination or conspiracy" to restrain interstate commerce to be illegal. Fortunately, the number of independent farmers' cooperatives continued to grow because the government looked the other way. It would have been politically costly to enforce the law against farmers. Then the Clayton Antitrust Act of 1914 exempted many cooperatives from the Sherman Act and legalized collective bargaining.

During the New Deal, programs developed that helped to build cooperatives in rural areas. For example, in 1935 the Rural Electrification Administration (REA) was created to promote bringing electricity to rural areas, where only 10 percent had electricity at the time. The REA made loans available to electricity cooperatives. In four years, 40 percent of rural homes had electricity. The cooperatives also forced private power corporations to lower rates and expand coverage.

The Tennessee Valley Authority, established in 1933, encouraged electrical and soil conservation and cold storage, as well as canneries, mills, dairies and craft cooperatives. The Farm Security Administration (FSA), set up in 1935 to combat rural poverty, supported a variety of mutual aid cooperatives that helped with supply purchasing and product marketing, veterinary services, insurance, water and medical care. In the South, land-leasing cooperatives were set up to resettle farmers on land that was more productive. Farmers leased large plantations together, a program opposed by the more conservative Farm Bureau. The FSA supported every form of mutual aid, helping to organize 25,000 cooperatives among 4 million low-income farmers.

The 1933 New Deal National Recovery Act created a Consumers Advisory Board to protect consumers. Mary Rumsey, appointed by FDR as chair, said, "Today, the need is not for a competitive but a cooperative economic system." Roosevelt signed executive orders protecting cooperatives when business interests tried to weaken them.

But it was not all good news from the New Deal. Support for cooperatives stopped at urban areas, where they would directly challenge concentrated economic power. The Federal Emergency Relief Act only allowed barter pay at their cooperative-funded production facilities, not much-needed cash, while the Works Progress Administration (WPA) promised a cash job at a decent wage to every unemployed person able to work. Advocates tried to convince Roosevelt to count cooperative work hours as WPA hours but were rebuffed. This one-two punch undercut the self-help movement. The New Deal was unwilling to make self-help cooperatives a permanent part of the economy. Hundreds of self-help groups around the country collapsed.

During World War II, much of the farmer cooperative infrastructure was dismantled by agribusiness, which weakened the FSA. When wages were reduced after the war, President Truman used wartime powers to seize basic industries and end strikes. The passage of Taft-Hartley started the slow decline of unions, which continues today. The cold war and the McCarthy Era purged radicals from unions and public life.

When social justice movements developed in the 1960s, collective work and cooperation reappeared. The National Farm Workers (later the United Farm Workers) set up several community mutual-aid associations, including a credit union and cooperative store. The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee set up producer and marketing cooperatives. The Selma to Montgomery civil rights march led by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. resulted in the formation of the Southwest Alabama Farmers Cooperative, which had 1,800 families as members. The Black Panther Party ran a series of survival programs including a health clinic, free shoe factory, food and clothing co-ops, communally built and owned housing, transportation for elders and a breakfast program for children. In the counterculture of the 60s, people sought to build a new social system "within the shell of the old" based on cooperation and sharing. Collectives were formed as nonhierarchical groups that lived or worked together, based on equality and participatory democracy. These included free health clinics, law collectives and free schools, as well as bookstores, media and films.

Since the 1970s, cooperatives and communalism have continued. In our last article, The Foundation of a New Democratic Economy Is Worker Self-Directed Enterprises, we described the state of cooperatives today and quoting political economist Gar Alperovitz: "There are 120 million members of cooperatives in the United States; 20 percent of the American electric system is either co-op or municipal, essentially socialized." Economic democracy is gaining a foothold in the United States, and worker ownership and credit unions are only part of the progress. Today there is a strong cooperative infrastructure that can assist people in developing and managing cooperatives.

The American Personality Is Cooperative; Transformational Change Is Within Us

Understanding this history allows us to better understand ourselves and the character of the nation. We are people who work together for the common good. Cooperation is embedded in our DNA. We are not the false stereotype portrayed in the corporate media of people who "make it on their own" by not caring for others and becoming driven by greed. In fact, all people who rise to the top do so on a broad foundation of inherited and unearned commonwealth infrastructure, scientific and technological knowledge, as well as labor. As Warren Buffett has said, "society is responsible for a very significant percentage of what I've earned." From the founding of the country, community - people working together to solve common problems and make a better life for all - has been central to the national personality.

Throughout history there has been a struggle between economic democracy and capitalist economics over social justice transformations. As Curl writes: "The tapestry of US history is woven with the day-to-day struggles of hundreds of millions of ordinary people for better lives. Mutual-aid organizations such as cooperatives and unions have always been near the heart of those struggles. Those struggles embody the 'pursuit of happiness' that the Declaration of Independence boldly asserts is our inalienable right."

The current rise of economic democracy comes at a time when there is an awakening to the power of protest and resistance. The concentrated wealth of a big-finance dominated economy which hoards wealth while millions starve is more fragile than it seems. Once again, social justice transformations are taking hold at the same time as economic democracy and worker-owned enterprises fill the void of collapsed economies. If we are intentional about building the economy we want while protesting what we oppose, and if we learn the lessons that past efforts provide, we will more quickly achieve the transformations we seek. Resistance and economic democracy will continue to rise because dysfunctional government cannot respond adequately to any of these urgent crises.

The rise against neoliberal economic globalization began in the late 1990s with protests against the World Trade Organization and has continued with the Arab Spring, Spain's indignados, and with the Occupy and Idle No More movements. It comes at a time of tremendous ecological challenges, the end of cheap carbon-based energy, a massive wealth divide, high levels of poverty and extraordinary communication abilities between people all over the world. We are at a critical convergence in history where, as Thomas Paine said at the conclusion of Common Sense, "We have it in our power to begin the world over again."

You can hear our interview with John Curl, author of "For All the People: Uncovering the Hidden History of Cooperation, Cooperative Movements and Communalism in America" on Clearing the FOG Radio.

This article is part of a two-part series with " The Foundation of a New Democratic Economy Is Worker Self-Directed Enterprises."
Copyright, Truthout. May not be reprinted without permission.

Friday, February 01, 2013

ANS -- Brin Classics: "The Jefferson Rifle"

Here is an article about gun control that proposes a compromise that is based on the thinking and fears of both sides.  I think considering the fears involved is essential to finding a do-able compromise. 
Find it here:  http://davidbrin.blogspot.com/2007/01/brin-classics-jefferson-rifle.html?m=1   
--Kim


CONTRARY BRIN


Monday, January 29, 2007


Brin Classics: "The Jefferson Rifle"

I have been asked to post a few "David Brin Classics".... some of my older riffs and rants... here online for a new generation to share and ponder.

I've been mulling which ones. Then the topic of the Second Amendment and gun control recently came up. Along with the observation that some liberals are starting to nurse fantasies of needing to be armed, themselves, in the era that they see coming down the road.

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Of course, at one level, this topic is a special example of one of my frequent complaints, that many issues in modern life are artificially posed as either-or, zero-sum choices between one rigid position and another. I have always felt that Gun Control is especially tipe for "off-axis" compromise solutions. Indeed, it might make a great test for one of my Disputation Arenas. It also serves to demonstrate the poisonous effects that addiction to self-righteous indignation will always have upon intelligent, pragmatic discourse. But that's another topic.

For now (and with a present day afterword), let's go back to an article first written in 1992 and updated circa 1998...

==Guns and the Insurrection Myth==

The issue of guns in America is intransigent. True believers on both sides hold fixed positions, portraying their opponents in the darkest possible terms. Enforcement of the Brady Law has thwarted thousands of ex-cons and criminals from acquiring arms without seriously inconveniencing legitimate gun buyers, but this hasn�t led to a new era of pragmatic compromise.

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Polls show that most Americans don�t wish to eliminate personal gun ownership, they simply want more accountability. In 1998, Attorney General Janet Reno made an apt parallel between firearms and automobiles. Both are potentially lethal devices, yet close to two hundred million drivers participate in a system of training, licensing, registration and regulation that results in remarkably low levels of injury, averaged over billions of human-hours on our roads. Despite drunk drivers, pollution, and traffic jams, motorists seem to handle their metal behemoths -- each car filled with flammable liquids -- for the most part courteously, reliably and with great skill.

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We accept a state interest in demanding that all drivers be licensed and that all cars be registered and well-maintained. Why not apply similar standards to the other machines most responsible for premature, violent death in this country -- firearms? In California, where the DMV has lately acquired an astonishing reputation for good service, one could envision renaming it the �Department of Motor Vehicles and Firearms�. A hunting shotgun might be treated like a normal car. You want an AK-47? Then take as many tests -- and get as much insurance -- as a professional trucker who wants to drive an 18-wheeler. If your gun is stolen, report it like a missing auto. Fail to lock it up properly? Your insurance rates go up.

Unfortunately, as logical as all this sounds, it won�t ever be tried. Because it fails to address the underlying reason why NRA members resist even mild forms of gun control.

To understand why, try asking even moderate and reasonable gun owners about their underlying nightmare. They'll explain the scenario that drives them to sleepless anxiety is fear of confiscation. To a great many gun owners, any new law, however benign, is simply a step down the proverbial slippery slope, leading inevitably to seizure of all firearms by the state.

Activists on the other side are too quick to dismiss gun aficionados as macho know-nothings. In fact, many NRA members express a coherent philosophy based on a deeply American distrust of government, coupled with a belief that citizen firearm ownership may yet prove to be a bulwark against dictatorship, even as it was in Jefferson�s day.

Are they foolish to think this? Throughout history, there has been a tendency for governments to grow ever more remote and overbearing, until citizens face a choice between submission or rising to teach their would-be masters a lesson. Many on the left today forget that they once had insurrection fantasies of their own, back when Richard Nixon's paranoid agenda seemed bent on stripping political opponents of their rights. There has always been a notion, at the back of the American psyche, that our leaders don�t oppress us because they know we might fight back.

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Of course, things were different in Jefferson's day, when a militia of musket-bearing farmers was nearly as well-equipped as a company of professional soldiers. Today, in contrast, how could any ragtag uprising of angry citizens hope to face a technological army, sent to quash a popular revolt? Yet consider -- how many cities could the dozen or so U.S. Army divisions hold and pacify against an angry, united and armed citizenry? One or two urban centers? Maybe three? Remember that the soldiers in those divisions, Americans themselves, might mutiny if ordered to blow up whole neighborhoods with cluster bombs. Certainly any urban rebellion would fail without support from the populace, but in case of a true mass rising, I'd put even money on the people.

No, I�m not arguing that this insurrection scenario is likely or plausible! Certainly we all pray to never see it tested. Those few who declare that it looms on the near horizon are, for the most part, out of touch with common sense.

My point is that the mere existence of such an option, no matter how remote, affects the basic power relationship between government and governed. Jefferson argued that an implicit threat of rebellion counterweighs the natural tendency of states to grab power. It can be argued that this hasn't changed in two hundred years.

Whatever its fallacies or merits, this rarely-discussed mythos is crucial to understanding why millions resist gun control in general, and weapon registration in particular. Innumerable gun owners are deeply convinced that their opponents' real agenda is to compile a comprehensive list of private weapons, so that some future bureaucracy will know exactly where to confiscate every firearm not already in state hands. Talk to them as I have, and don�t be too quick to call them crazy.

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The Slippery Slope Syndrome poisons so many issues on the national agenda (e.g. abortion, sex education, the right-to-die.) Fear of an insidious erosion of liberty spurs obstinacy on all sides, thwarting the American genius at compromise. In the case of gun control, we might start toward a solution by noting what NRA members fear most about proposed regulations -- not the inconvenience or paperwork, but a long slide toward confiscation and eventual loss of a traditional (if perhaps illusory) insurrectionary recourse. As a nation, we should consider ways to allay their deep fears, while at the same time demanding action against a plague of firearm-related deaths.

==The Militia Rifle==

Here is a possible compromise, one of many. Moderate gun owners just might accept reforms that treat most personal weapons like motorcars -- including registration, mandatory training, licensing and insurance -- if they were also offered some surety against the dreaded slippery slope. This could consist of a grand compact permanently setting aside one class of firearms from oversight.

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Traditional bolt-action rifles and simple shotguns are rarely used by criminals, impulse murderers, or children. They are hard to conceal, slow to reload, difficult to bring to bear in close quarters, and not much help to hit-men or muggers. They have produced victims, to be sure, including some famous ones. Still, these basic firearms wreak havoc at a minuscule rate compared to the carnage spread by other weapons favored by criminals for concealment and rapid fire. They are also the firearms most appropriate for hunting, target shooting and home defense.

Oh , there is one more place where the bolt-action rifle proved itself -- on the battlefield. It was the primary weapon of most armies in both world wars. One criminal using such a rifle can be taken out by any SWAT team. But events in Bosnia and Chechnya have shown that it takes artillery and bloody-minded ruthlessness to root out large bands of dedicated neighbors, supporting and covering each other with hunting rifles.

If matters ever reached total civil war in America, with napalm and carpet bombing, a civilian militia would crumble, no matter how well armed. But in a borderline case, where soldiers and commanders refuse to stomach bombarding citizens, ten thousand men and women with simple rifles just might force a tyrant to negotiate. Maybe. At least it�s a scenario believed by millions.

Okay, such talk about protecting a citizen�s right to a �militia rifle� may sound romantic -- even bizarre to some -- but radicals on the other side are just as quixotic to imagine they will ever rid this society of all personal weapons. Nothing is more likely to cause civil war in America than a full bore effort to achieve a total ban. Neither side has a monopoly on unreasonableness.

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Perhaps we should try listening to each others� fears, instead of simply ridiculing our opponents. It may be the only way to move beyond slippery slopes and silly extreme-scenarios toward the kind of pragmatic problem-solving that we are best known for in the world.

One thing is certain -- the present situation is intolerable. We need a compromise on gun control. If moderate gun owners will accept a constitution-level guarantee, keeping the least harmful class of weapons unregistered and forever safe from confiscation, we might finally see automobile-style regulation of handguns, semi-automatics and the other true engines of death that make life needlessly perilous in a decent civilization.

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AFTERWORD January 2007:

Of course this was written in an earlier, somewhat more innocent age. A time when it was the far-right wingnut jobs who spoke of �black helicopters� and not regular joe soldiers in Iraq, whispering about �Blackwater Helicopters.� A time when the Army Reserves and National Guard were still in their homes, at their jobs, training on weekends and fulfilling the �well-ordered militia� role, instead of being squandered in a foreign adventure, leaving us all wondering what stands between us and peril, if a surprise disaster hits. A time before power began consolidating so heavily among a few thousand golf buddies, that the actual �aristocratic control ratio� may soon be worse than it was when the Founders rebelled against King George and his cronies.

Under those circumstances, might any decent person... even a liberal... ponder a fresh view of the �insurrectionary recourse,� at least in fantasy?

It bears pondering, and not just by liberals and moderates. The top aristos may want to start wondering... do they really want to head down a path that starts to alienate... and even radicalize... a well-armed and super-educated middle class? Over the long run, is that really smart or wise?

Worth pondering.


David Brin
http://www.davidbrin.com
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