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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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

(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.

Cooperatives and Community Work Are Part of American DNA

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


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.

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.


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.


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.


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.


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.


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.


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.


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.

-------------------

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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ANS -- 'We're all living longer'? No, we're not.

this is in response to the idea that we should make the retirement age older.  No, we aren't living longer.  Look at this. 
find it here:   http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/01/28/1182711/--We-re-all-living-longer-No-we-re-not  
--Kim



Mon Jan 28, 2013 at 08:02 AM PST

'We're all living longer'? No, we're not.

by Joan McCarter Follow

• 157 Comments / 157 New

 
Older Americans, a threatened species.
Raising the retirement age for Social Security and Medicare is one of the very favorite "solutions" of the deficit peacock crowd for punishing the American people for getting older. They justify this idea, always, with the demographically challenged assertion that Americans are living longer, so it just has to be done. That's most lately the assertion in op-ed pages of the Wall Street Journal, which tells us that the benefits of longevity "aren't just enjoyed by 'privileged' Americans."

Wrong, as Kevin Drum illustrustrates in a simple graph with data taken from this study in Health Affairs.


attribution: None Specified

Men are represented by the lighter colors and women the darker. The more education, the greater the earning potential, the longer the lifespan. That's the empirical data based on the Multiple Cause of Death data files from the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS). And the rate of growth in the gap in education and lifespan is so fast and so wide, it's astonishing.

The Very Serious People in Washington, all with their 16+ years of education and comfortable existences, continue to pretend that there isn't income inequality, that there isn't opportunity inequality. Because everyone they know is old and healthy and plans to work until they die, that must be true of all of America. They are completely blind to the fact that there's a big segment of the population that is in fact dying earlier than they did just two decades ago.

That's reality.

ANS -- President Obama Tells the Progressive Story of America

Here is Doug Muder's comment on President Obama's second inaugural address.  It's poetic. 
Find it here:  http://weeklysift.com/2013/01/28/president-obama-tells-the-progressive-story-of-america/#comment-4833  
--Kim

President Obama Tells the Progressive Story of America

What made President Obama's Second Inaugural the best speech of his presidency was its great theme: He told the story of America as progressives understand it, and connected it with the progressive mission today.

In recent years, liberals have let conservatives own the big-picture story of America. If you hear somebody talking about the Founders and the Constitution, probably it's Michele Bachmann or Ron Paul or some other hero of the self-styled "patriots" of the Tea Party.

Liberals have been more comfortable talking about peace and justice in the here and now: How are we going to get our troops out of Iraq and Afghanistan? What can we do about levels of inequality last seen in the Gilded Age? How are we going to stop gun violence? How can we make sure that the sick, the old, and the disabled get the care they need? Can we stop profit-privatizing/risk-socializing bankers from crashing the economy again? And so on.

Facts vs. visions. I believe liberals actively shy away from this big-picture mythologizing because of our disgust at how conservatives abuse it: They must talk about their grand vision, because when you get down to the nitty-gritty of facts, they are just plain wrong. Rape causes pregnancy. The globe is warming. The rich are getting all the money. The economy has a demand problem. Taxes are low, spending is not out of control, and the federal government can't go bankrupt.

Let Glenn Beck spin stories about the last 5,000 years, we'd rather point to things that are actually happening and say, "Look! Look!"

And yet … " Where there is no vision the people perish." Without some larger context, day-to-day political efforts can seem meaningless. Why waste your energy? Make a nice dinner for your family. See a movie. Get ready for that thing at work. The immediate benefits of those efforts are clear. Politics? Not so much.

If conservatives offer their followers a role in the drama of History and we don't, we will never match their intensity. Worse, by not offering a larger vision, we can seem to consent to the conservative narrative, in which "socialists" from FDR to LBJ to Obama have usurped the " libertarian" Republic of the Founders.

But progressives have their own story of America, and can offer a different role in the drama of History.

Progressive vs. fundamentalist mythology. In general, there are two main ways ­ fundamentalist and progressive ­ to turn history into a motivating myth. The generic Fundamentalist Myth begins with a Golden Age of divinely inspired prophets and larger-than-life heroes. From there, we devolved and corrupted their legacy. But deep inside our fallen shells glows the same spark that burned so brightly in them. So if we stoke fire of greatness and scour away the rust of corruption, we can recreate the world they meant for us to have.


a cloud by day, and a pillar of fire by night

The Progressive Myth reveres its past in a different way. Our legacy consists not of perfect past to which we should strive to return, but of a vision that has shone through the ages, always just out of reach, and of a journey towards that vision.

The Biblical motif is not the Garden of Eden, the Davidic Kingdom, or the Apostolic Church, but the Israelites wandering through the desert: We were slaves in Egypt when Moses gave us ­ not Freedom ­ but a vision of Freedom and the hope of a Promised Land. God is with us not as a once-and-future King, but as a cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night, wordlessly marking the direction of our march. We move forward because the only permanent encampment behind us is Pharaoh's.

It is not hard to see the Fundamentalist Myth in the Tea Party's version of American history. The Founders are prophets, and the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution are scripture.

But the Progressive Myth can also apply to American history. And like so much liberal/conservative disagreement, the progressive version stays closer to the facts.

The Second Inaugural Address. President Obama began his speech with the holiest words in the American canon:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.

But that was not the establishment of a Golden Age to which we must return. It was the start of a journey with no turning back.

Today we continue a never-ending journey, to bridge the meaning of those words with the realities of our time. For history tells us that while these truths may be self-evident, they have never been self-executing; that while freedom is a gift from God, it must be secured by His people here on Earth.

That journey has had two pieces: Change that became necessary as circumstances changed, and change that became necessary as we reached a clearer vision of the meaning of our founding principles. And so our journey included the abolition of slavery

Through blood drawn by lash and blood drawn by sword, we learned that no union founded on the principles of liberty and equality could survive half-slave and half-free. We made ourselves anew, and vowed to move forward together.

the construction of modern infrastructure from the Erie Canal to the interstate highways

Together, we determined that a modern economy requires railroads and highways to speed travel and commerce, schools and colleges to train our workers.

the trust-busting of Teddy Roosevelt and Franklin Roosevelt's creation of the SEC and other modern regulatory bodies

Together, we discovered that a free market only thrives when there are rules to ensure competition and fair play.

and Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid

Together, we resolved that a great nation must care for the vulnerable, and protect its people from life's worst hazards and misfortune.

These are not corruptions or usurpations of the Founders' dream, but its continuing realization.

We, the people, declare today that the most evident of truths –- that all of us are created equal –- is the star that guides us still; just as it guided our forebears through Seneca Falls, and Selma, and Stonewall; just as it guided all those men and women, sung and unsung, who left footprints along this great Mall, to hear a preacher say that we cannot walk alone.

And we are not done yet.

It is now our generation's task to carry on what those pioneers began. For our journey is not complete until our wives, our mothers and daughters can earn a living equal to their efforts. Our journey is not complete until our gay brothers and sisters are treated like anyone else under the law ­ for if we are truly created equal, then surely the love we commit to one another must be equal as well. Our journey is not complete until no citizen is forced to wait for hours to exercise the right to vote. Our journey is not complete until we find a better way to welcome the striving, hopeful immigrants who still see America as a land of opportunity ­ until bright young students and engineers are enlisted in our workforce rather than expelled from our country. Our journey is not complete until all our children, from the streets of Detroit to the hills of Appalachia, to the quiet lanes of Newtown, know that they are cared for and cherished and always safe from harm.

That is our generation's task ­ to make these words, these rights, these values of life and liberty and the pursuit of happiness real for every American.

Looked at with clear eyes, American history is meaningful only as a place to be from, not a place to go back to. Where would you go? To the slave plantations? To Jim Crow? To the Trail of Tears? To the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory? To Love Canal? To marriages where wives own no property and have rights only through their husbands? To a time when old age and poverty were practically synonymous? Where?

As a nation, we can rightfully take pride in the challenges we have overcome, but not in where we have been. To go back, to give up all that progress, would betray our revolutionary heritage. Our forebears kept moving forward, and so will we. 

ANS -- David Brooks Is Pathological

This is about how crazy the Republicans have become -- and they are blaming it on Obama, as in, Obama is to blame for making Republicans look extreme by being so moderate and conciliatory it makes the Repubs look as unreasonable as they actually are.  Yes, that's kookoo. 
Find it here:  http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/277-75/15607-david-brooks-is-pathological   
--Kim




 
New York Times columnist David Brooks. (photo: unknown)

David Brooks Is Pathological

By Jonathan Chait, New York Magazine

18 January 13

 

oderate Republicanism is a tendency that increasingly defies ideological analysis and instead requires psychological analysis. The psychological mechanism is fairly obvious. The radicalization of the GOP has placed unbearable strain on those few moderates torn between their positions and their attachment to party. Many moderate conservatives have simply broken off from the party, at least in its current incarnation, and are hoping or working to build a sane alternative. Those who remain must escape into progressively more baroque fantasies.

The prevalent expression of this psychological pain is the belief that President Obama is largely or entirely responsible for Republican extremism. It's a bizarre but understandable way to reconcile conflicting emotions - somewhat akin to blaming your husband's infidelity entirely on his mistress. In this case, moderate Republicans believe that Obama's tactic of taking sensible positions that moderate Republicans agree with is cruel and unfair, because it exposes the extremism that dominates the party, not to mention the powerlessness of the moderates within it. Michael Gerson recently expressed this bizarre view, and the pathology is also on vivid display in David Brooks's column today.

Brooks begins by noting that the Grand Bargain on the deficit, which he has spent the last two years relentlessly touting, is not actually possible. Why is it impossible? Because, he writes, "A political class that botched the fiscal cliff so badly are not going to be capable of a gigantic deal on complex issues."

Oh, the political class? That's funny. In 2011, Obama offered an astonishingly generous budget deal to House Republicans, and Brooks argued at the time that if the GOP turned the deal down, it would prove their "fanaticism." Naturally, they turned it down. Obama continues to offer a bargain including higher revenue through tax reform in return for lower spending on retirement programs, but Republicans refuse to consider higher taxes. So, in summary, this proves "the political class" is to blame.

What Obama should be doing in response, Brooks argues, is push for policies that provoke no opposition even from the craziest of the Republicans: "We could do some education reform, expand visa laws to admit more high-skill workers, encourage responsible drilling for natural gas, maybe establish an infrastructure bank." Brooks argues that these issues would be uncontroversial enough to "erode partisan orthodoxies and get back into the habit of passing laws together." Then, maybe we could pass some laws under a future president.

Note that solving actual problems is besides the point here. Brooks is almost explicit about this. He begins with the need for initiatives that he thinks will lead to happiness and comity between the parties in Washington, and then comes up with policies that might fit the bill. Not surprisingly, viewed from the standpoint of an agenda designed to make life better for Americans in some way, shape or form, Brooks's proposed agenda is strange. Let's consider his ideas:

Education reform. I love education reform. Obama passed a sweeping education reform in 2009. Brooks writes a column the next year fulsomely praising it. (Obama "has used federal power to incite reform, without dictating it from the top.") Is there more education reform to be done? There may be, but I don't know what it would be, and Brooks doesn't seem to know or care.

Expand visa laws to admit more high-skill workers. Would this really pass right away without partisan animosity? Brooks says yes. We don't have to guess. Democrats tried this last month. Republicans loaded it with poison pills and killed it dead. So instead they're trying to do it as part of comprehensive immigration reform.

Encourage responsible drilling for natural gas. Wait, how much more encouragement do we need? The country is undergoing a massive natural gas boom:

Is there some element to natural gas policy that needs fixing? Does Brooks just think the two parties should get together and congratulate each other for all the natural gas being produced?

Establish an infrastructure bank. Okay, this one is a good policy idea. But is it something Republicans would easily pass without rancor? In fact, Obama has been asking for this very thing for years now. And Republicans have called it dead on arrival.

So Brooks's proposed alternative agenda consists of either empty list-filler or actual policies that Obama has proposed and Republicans have killed. But instead of this happy term of modest accomplishment, Obama is pursuing a nasty, partisan agenda. Step one of this devious ploy is to, as Brooks puts it, "invite a series of confrontations with Republicans over things like the debt ceiling - make them look like wackos willing to endanger the entire global economy."

Right - Obama is the one inviting confrontations over the debt ceiling. Never mind that, before 2011, the debt ceiling was just an occasion for routine posturing, and Republicans insisted on turning it into a showdown with real, dangerous stakes. Also never mind that Obama offered to sign the plan - proposed by Mitch McConnell! - to permanently defuse the debt ceiling and let Republicans use it to posture against him rather than actually threatening a global meltdown. And never mind as well that, by refusing to cave in to extortion, Obama seems to actually be defusing the real danger to the world economy.

This is all Obama's fault because it makes Republicans "look like whackos willing to endanger the entire global economy." Brooks displays an almost surreal lack of interest in the underlying reality that Republicans actually are whackos willing to endanger the entire global economy. It is his responsibility to conceal this reality from America.

Worse, argues Brooks, Obama is nastily choosing an agenda intended only to harm Republicans. Obama's proposals on gun safety and immigration, he writes, are "wedge issues meant to divide Southerners from Midwesterners, the Tea Party/Talk Radio base from the less ideological corporate and managerial class."

Brooks asserts, but does not actually explain, that Obama chose these issues for the purpose of dividing the opposition - as opposed to trying to cut down on mass murders and fix a huge field of broken policy. Brooks concedes that Obama's proposals here are moderate, but believes that the moderation is what makes them so nasty. By appealing to mainstream Republicans, he is splitting them from the most extreme Republicans!

You would think proposing policies that large numbers of Republicans agree with would qualify as the kind of centrism and bipartisanship Brooks has spent the entire Obama presidency calling for, but now that it's here, it turns out to prove just the opposite to him.

ANS -- Worrisome Change to NYT Climate Coverage

This is from ten days ago, but I hadn't heard it anywhere else.  Have you?  I'd say this means the human race is suicidal.  Very short article.
find it here:  http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/276-74/15587-worrisome-change-to-nyt-climate-coverage   
--Kim

Worrisome Change to NYT Climate Coverage

By Al Gore, Reader Supported News

17 January 13

 

his past week, the New York Times announced the closure of their environmental desk. Along with many, I am sorry to see this team disbanded; over the last several years they have consistently provided high-quality reporting on critical environmental issues, especially the climate crisis. Newspapers generally are under economic stress, and unfortunately, the Times is also profoundly affected by the tectonic shifts in the media landscape. Its role in informing U.S. policy debates, however, is unique.

While I am sad to see this dedicated desk come to an end, I hope that its tremendous reporters can, as the newspaper's leadership promised, continue their crucial work and can help influence the general newsroom by incorporating important environmental perspectives throughout the paper.


Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader Supported News.

ANS -- the issue of unraveling social norms

This is about "unraveling social norms".   That means civilization as we know it is dying.  Apparently, when libertarian types say they want everyone to be on their own, they really mean they want an end to civilization and a return to prehistoric pre-tribal anarchy. 
this is from Doug Muder, and he didn't say it that way, I did.  And this is an excerpt. 
Find it here:  http://weeklysift.com/2013/01/14/too-simple/ 
--Kim



James Fallows suggests The Two Sentences That Should Be Part of All Discussion of the Debt Ceiling:

1. Raising the debt ceiling does not authorize one single penny in additional public spending.
2. For Congress to "decide whether" to raise the debt ceiling, for programs and tax rates it has already voted into law, makes exactly as much sense as it would for a family to "decide whether" to pay a credit-card bill for goods it has already bought.

An analogy I've used before: It's like eating out when you don't have cash, but then refusing to pay with your credit card because you're taking a principled stand against running up more debt. The time to take the principled stand is when you decide what you're going to do, not when the bill comes.

… which once again brings up the issue of unraveling social norms

The coin and the debt-ceiling hostage crisis it's supposed to avert are both examples of something I've tried (and mostly failed) to describe before: unraveling the norms that make society governable. Maybe Chris Hayes expresses it better:

Behavior of individuals within an institution is constrained by the formal rules (explicit prohibitions) and norms (implicit prohibitions) that aren't spelled out, but just aren't done. And what the modern Republican Party has excelled at, particularly in the era of Obama, is exploiting the gap between these two. They've made a habit of doing the thing that just isn't done.

He goes on to give examples: filibustering everything the Senate does, refusing to confirm qualified candidates to positions because you think the position shouldn't exist, and now "using the debt ceiling as a bargaining chip with which to extract ransom".

He might also mention the proposal that Republicans should rig the Electoral College in states where they control the legislature. The point, pretty clearly, is to be able to win presidential elections even if the People vote for the other guy. (That's what would have happened in 2012 under at least one plan: Obama gets 5 million more votes, but Romney becomes president.) It's all perfectly legal, but this is the United States. We don't do things like that. Or at least we didn't used to.

The meta-question of the trillion-dollar coin is whether Democrats should strike back with their own inside-the-rules-but-outside-the-norms actions, recognizing (as Chris puts it) that "There is no way to unilaterally maintain norms."

We need to get a handle on this trend somehow, because it doesn't go anywhere good. That's one of the themes in Colleen McCullough's Masters of Rome series: Ultimately, even respect for the written law is just a norm. At some point you start to think, "Why shouldn't I stick my enemies' heads on spikes and display them in the Forum?"

… and racism

Republicans hate it when you point to the implicit racism in the intensity of their hatred for Obama and all his works. But Colin Powell went there Sunday on Meet the Press, talking about the "dark vein of intolerance" in the Republican Party. He pointed to voter suppression, to racial code phrases like "shucking and jiving" applied to Obama, and to Birtherism.

But racism is also part of the willingness to violate previously accepted norms (that I was just talking about). Republicans feel justified in doing things that just aren't done because (until now) electing and re-electing a black president just wasn't done. Racism is the ultimate root of the Tea Party certainty that we are in uncharted waters that require unprecedented means of resistance. Just voting and campaigning and giving money to your favored candidates isn't enough any more. We need to arm ourselves and prepare for " Second Amendment solutions" because … because why, exactly?

If you doubt the racial subtext here, think about how different it would sound for a black CEO to threaten that if a white president's policy " goes one inch farther, I'm gonna start killin' people." Fox News would play that clip 24/7 for weeks.