“The American Spring”

“American Spring”

Some demonstrators camping out in Wall Street and in other US cities protesting corporate power say they are taking inspiration from the “Arab Spring”. Except for the sleeping bags and volunteer caterers, it doesn’t seem obvious that the comparison holds. In Egypt the protest movement was bringing down a long standing political dictatorship risking death, prison and torture. At it’s most trivial, the Wall Street demonstrators when asked what they intended to do could say, “hand out chalk to write grafitti on walls”. But that is not the end of the story. Both the American and Arab springs want to have a system where the real power holders are held accountable.

Hosni Mubarak was Egypt’s supreme power. He is now in the dock. Egypt had the skeleton of democratic institutions. It held rigged elections. It looks like there will be flesh on upcoming elections, where the voters’ ballots will count.

In the US, protestors are not after the military or executive branch dictators. They are after corporate power for using its resources to subvert democratic accountability. In Egypt, political institutions were not responsive to the needs and aspirations of the people. This might seem to be analogous to protestors’ view of the situation in the US, where money trumps the express preferences of the people. After all, poll after poll shows the American public in favor of increasing taxes on the wealthiest. Why aren’t their taxes increased?

To answer that question, it isn’t enough to say that corporate money is responsible. Polls reflect the general public’s preferences. However, only 41.6% of the eligible voters voted in the 2010 elections (a record for mid term elections). If election day was a day off from work in the US, as it is in a number of European countries, perhaps elections would play their role in holding power accountable, as more citizens exercise their rights.

Protestors should look to solutions that are right under their noses. For example, at the same time they work to expose corporate misuse of power, they should work to stop efforts in a growing number of states to suppress voter turnout in the 2012 elections. We don’t have to rebuild democratic institutions from scratch, just repair them.
— Elizabeth Spiro Clark

 

Women, Jobs and the Republican Drive to Cut Back Government

The Republican idea that cutting government at all levels and reducing taxes on business will free capitalism to work its mythical magic and create jobs, is also a back door to cutting back the empowerment of women. In the present political climate, who is even talking about the Lilly Ledbetter Act to ensure equal pay for equal work? Who in federal, state and local governments Republicans are working to emasculate is going to enforce it?

The New York Times published September 15 the results of a study that finds that government contracting out its services to the private sector is more expensive than performing the services with government employees. Although not a part of any study I am aware of it, is obvious that privatizing public sector jobs also would reduce pressure on fair employment practices and the availability of jobs for women.

When I lived in Norway in the early nineties, my colleague’s wife delivered triplets, one of whom had Downs Syndrome. They were visited almost immediately by a social worker whose responsibility was to work with health problems in the area where they lived. Even though they were not Norwegian they continued to enjoy valuable and intensive help. These health and welfare offices and departments were disproportionately staffed by women. This was directly connected with the fact that a very significant portion of Norwegian members of Parliament had had backgrounds in public service. While the US Congress is dominated by male lawyers, Norway’s Parliament had then almost 50% women, many with experience in the public welfare sector. Norway’s funding priorities reflected this gender composition.

If the Republicans succeed in reducing government it will reduce American democracy – the less government, the smaller the area for democratic accountability and the less pressure to build a fair and compassionate society. When we look at the impact various plans for job creation will have it is important to link the opportunities for women with the Republican drive to reduce public sector employment.
— Elizabeth Spiro Clark

 

Hurricane Irene, Small Government and Building a Passive Population

Eric Cantor’s message on Hurricane Irene is basically “no helping hurricane victims without cutting some other federal expenditure that might help the poor”. To translate: America doesn’t exist as a community whose members feel obligations towards each other. Outrage is the appropriate reaction to Cantor. However, looking past the outrage there is much material to draw from the Hurricane Irene case to push back hard against the Republican small government crusade, according to some polls the one policy area where they have public support.

For Republicans, aside from the dictates of religious ideology, nothing but economic incentives count. The system punishes when people don’t buy your products or your stocks. That is the only idea of “accountability”. Where does this dogma leave customers of the private company, Connecticut Light and Power, or United Illuminating, when over 600,000 of them are left without power in the wake of Hurricane Irene. One town’s mayor was quoted as saying ”we did our job” and were now just waiting to CP&L crews to arrive to advise them where the live wires were. Widespread complaints about slow response from these private companies and lack of information finally produced liaison officials, called revealingly “account executives”. One such liaison in Stonington was a lawyer from CL&P’s parent company NorthEast Utilities (United Illuminating has a parent company also, UIL Holdings).

No wonder US Representative Joe Courtney is pressing for federal assistance. The federal government is a democratic institution structured for accountability to citizens. Is there a North East government to hold NorthEast Utilities accountable?

In San Bruno, California eight people died when a natural gas pipe line ruptured. It turned out the company Pacific Gas and Electric had installed a defective pipeline in 1956. A National Transportation Safety Board issued a report August 30 on the incident, blaming it on poor planning, resulting in the inability to realize that a pipe had ruptured. Crucial work to close the ruptured value was left to an off-duty mechanic who was “self-dispatched”. The California Public Utilities Commission was criticized for lax oversight and “trusting the company.”

Since the Republican drive for smaller government would, if successful, lead to fewer public boards, weak or strong, overseeing the private companies providing public services, why isn’t it fair to see the small government crusade as a way to let corporations do a better job ripping us off? Americans need to reverse the Republican mantra of “good private institutions, bad public institutions.”

If you are a citizen without the power to stop buying the product (power, light and natural gas) and no say on what the provider of the public service does, then you are put in a passive position. At some point democratic institutions are incompatible with a passive citizenry.

 

HERvotes Blog Carnival

On the anniversaries of the 1920 passage of the 19th Amendment and the 1963 March on Washington, which are this week, MomsRising joins our colleagues in working to mobilize women voters around preserving women’s Health and Economic Rights (HERrights) in order to build an even stronger nation that lives up to its full potential.
The current extremist attacks on women’s health and family economic security serve to weaken the United States and our families, not strengthen them. Frankly, when family economic and health security is threatened, we are all threatened.

To counter these threats, MomsRising has joined forces with the quickly expanding leadership of #HERvotes, which includes organizations that are on the very forefront of women’s equity issues, including those representing women of color, women’s faith groups, women labor leaders, along with a mixture of long-standing organizations like the 130 year old AAUW, to relatively new organizations like the five year old MomsRising, along with many more organizations, and many more to come.

We have all joined forces in order to bring the power of grassroots on-the-ground and online organizing to mobilize women voters.

As a start, this week, we are launching that effort with a cross organization #HERvotes blog carnival and social media effort.

Read more.

 

On the Debt Ceiling Stalemate: A Sermon for the Republican Right

I have been many times to see La Boheme, sometimes railing against Puccini’s universal plot structure, where the women always die and the men walk away. The last time I went – at a music festival deep in the Virginia countryside – I saw another theme. In the opera’s last scene, Puccini aims straight and true for the heart, when as Mimi is dying she and Rodolfo reprise the first moments of their love in Rodolfo’s darkened apartment, where each is pretending to look for Mimi’s key in order to stay together longer. Puccini is brief, as Mimi’s life is brief, but his music opens up their feelings to us, feelings that become infinite because shared through empathy.

The scholar Lynn Hunt has written on the origins of human rights (Inventing Human Rights, Norton, 2007). She identifies the invention of the novel as an important trigger for a new sensibility, especially the extension of the feeling of empathy across class lines coming from identification with the interior lives of ordinary persons. She discusses in particular the widely popular episolatory novels, Clarissa and Pamela by Samuel Richardson and Julie by Rousseau. “Human rights could only flourish when people learned to think of others as their equals, as like them in some fundamental fashion. They learned this equality at least in part by experiencing identification with ordinary characters who seemed dramatically present and familiar even if ultimately fictional.” A century and a half later Puccini draws us into a poor young woman’s life as Richardson and Rousseau had with a different artistic form, but creating the same powerful empathy.

The real Mimis lived – and live – lives that seem no more than a gnats bite, quickly brushed away. Mimi didn’t have health care; research had not come up with a cure for TB; there were no minimum labor protections. A poor seamstress was virtually forced into prostitution in a world of people who mattered and people who didn’t matter. It seemed that we had moved to an understanding that we all matter as human beings and are bound together in a community. Government is one vehicle that creates actions and institutions to better lives, following up on that feeling of empathy. Instead of the evanescence of a gnat’s bite, Mimi’s spirit is a big as the universe the minute we say no one should die of destitution.

Many on the conservative right today appear to live in a world where human beings do not have a right to be recognized in some moral sense as equally valuable and that sense of equality is essential if we are to feel duties and obligations to others. Republican politicians have denounced using government to better lives as evil socialism. For many on the religious right, charity is the way to deal with need and is a matter of an individual choice the government should not interfere with. The fact that charity’s reach will be random and inadequate is not seen as a deficit.

Empathy builds in us an enlarged moral vision. Without it we are free to see government, for one thing, solely as it impinges on our defined-down selves. Who can forget Republican Senator Rand Paul’s rant that the government should get out of his decisions on what toilet to buy (water usage!). Defining ourselves down, as we have seen in the debate over deficit reduction and raising the debt ceiling, leads inevitably to a small minded vision of our country and what we, together, are capable of accomplishing. We become, as President Obama said, addressing the nation on the debt ceiling stalemate, “disjointed individuals, but not a society.”

 

More on Michele: Winning is the only issue

Dana Milbank leads off his “Washington Sketch” piece on Michele Bachmann (WP, 7/14) with Bachmann’s answer to an interviewer’s question whether higher unemployment would increase her chances of winning the Presidency. She answered, “I hope so”. A gasp is in order here. Bachmann is saying, in effect, bring on misery for Americans if it leads to her victory.

There is an old saying “hypocrisy is the tribute vice pays to virtue”. It would have been easy for Bachmann to say hypocritically “of course we are all working to reduce unemployment and feel for the hardships of the unemployed.” But she didn’t. Would her honest answer have been that her job as President wouldn’t have anything to do with employment? Freed by the Republicans from taxes, unshackled business, not government, would be doing the hiring. She would have “starved the beast”, the government, fulfilling her mandate from heaven. Or Bachmann could have said that her job as President was to facilitate the expansion of religious authority, curbing secular government. Her job as President would be to restore morality in America; her top priority not unemployment but banning gay marriage.

The best bet on an honest answer is to take Bachmann’s “I hope so” at face value. Winning is the goal. Winning is the value. Her voters would understand that. Following the 2004 election I wrote an article for the University of Southern California’s Public Diplomacy Press Review in which I said that Bush’s winning issue was winning. “In polarized America, politics is war. You can’t win unless you put your “team” first… the belief they were the “strong” team held on to and expanded Republican voters, regardless of issues. If “strength” is the issue then campaign atmospherics become a key factor in election outcome. …Bush’s rallies seemed to be deliberately crafted to be the antithesis of deliberative democracy. Huge crowds of screened supporters were injected with endlessly repeated catch phrases –“flip flop, flip flop”—and hyped up to boo and hiss in knee jerk reaction to the enemy, Kerry. The spirit was pre game rally and harsh as a warm up to a Roman gladiatorial blood bath. Bush crowds saw their job as cheering on their team and their team’s job as crushing the opponent. The medium – a sports framework—was the message. By contrast, Kerry seemed almost reluctant to stop for applause in speeches and debates that were earnestly directed at making his case on the issues.”

Seven years later this party difference is why Mitch McConnell can say he won’t compromise in the deficit talks because Republican supporters don’t want it; his goal is defeating Obama.

What can Democrats do? It would certainly be honest for Democrats to say over and over that a Republican position, threat or action was a “weak” option for America and that it is the Democrats that put forward plans for a “strong” America. A good simple message.

 

Michele Bachmann Joins the Race: Religion defines her Personal Narrative; Her governing style too?

When asked about who she is Michele Bachmann unequivocally answers she is the person who was “born again” in college, who got married because her husband to be had a revelation in a dream, got a degree in tax law because the Lord, through her husband, instructed her to do so, and who declared for President because God told her that was the right decision. The issues that she has chosen to push are justified in the strongest possible religious terms, especially her anti gay and lesbian agenda, calling the life of a gay member of her family “part of Satan” and homosexuals as in “bondage to sin”. She has described gay marriage as the biggest issue for the nation “in the last, at least, 30 years”. (Note: One may well ask what the rest of the world will think of American leadership that thinks combating gay marriage is its highest priority.)

Mitt Romney made it clear in his “Faith in America” speech in the last electoral cycle he was for less authority for government and more authority for religion. He said there was a place for all religious denominations but did not mention a place for the non-religious. Bachmann seems even more inspired than Romney to get rid of secular government, a goal which might make her job as President easier, since in the broad area of social welfare and public institutions her answer to needs can always be no. It is by no means clear she will think she needs to consult experts or rely on factual information in making Presidential decisions on, say, dealing with a narco-state future Mexico, or the collapse of a major ice sheet in Antarctica.

Trent Lott, Senate Majority Leader in the 90s, once made the policy statement that it was “immoral” for the government to take more than 30% in taxes from an individual’s income. In like manner, Bachmann may just offer religious fiats without factual justifications for her choices. Bachmann, in announcing for President, certainly didn’t trouble herself with any fact checking when she praised the spirit of her birthplace, Waterloo, Iowa, by invoking its other native celebrity, John Wayne. The trouble was that, in fact, the John Wayne born in Waterloo was John Wayne Gacy, a serial killer.

 

Protecting the Rich: the Employment Future?

A noted political scientist Sam Bowles (The Santa Fe Institute) has estimated that one third of employed Americans are working to protect private property and that means, inevitably, of the very richest Americans. June 12 the New York Times (“For Executives with Everything…”) reported just how arcane and extreme this protection business can get. Harrison Prather trains very high end guard dogs, so high end that top price can go to $230,000, which is what Julia, one of his German shepherds, sold for. Julia is now guarding John Johnson in his Minneapolis and Arizona homes (he has five other protection dogs). Johnson was, until recently, the CEO of the Northland Group, a debt collection company in Minneapolis. Julia now has a part time trainer, Jeremy Norton. Norton, also works as a firefighter, and ruefully admits Julia cost half the value of his house.

If he were alive, Charles Dickens would no doubt have rubbed his hands in glee at the idea of “Mr. Johnson” for a novel: just how well you could make out with a business built on squeezing those poor, or the about to be poor; just how to teach government employees like firefighters know how little they count for their public service. Training killer dogs, yes, saving people, no.

Also on June 12, the Times Magazine carried an article on the extreme upscale Las Vegas mall, “Crystals”, and on its eerie emptiness, the reporter being one of three humans in a 23,000 square foot Prada store (the other two being a security guard and a saleswoman). The reporter was assured that the fact that the store was empty didn’t mean no one was buying. Personal shoppers for the very rich were sent before the store hours to scoop up, say, a $21,500 chinchilla bolero shrug. The saleswoman shows off some $8,000 gowns to the reporter: “The casino owners buy (them) for their wives”.

In his research and writing Bowles concludes reducing inequality does not compromise efficiency or economic growth. Also against conventional wisdom, the religion of self interested action does reduce the altruism of the individual which Bowles says, on the contrary, must be harnessed and recognized. We don’t know whether Sam Bowles has done research on the gaming industry as a percentage of GDP. But we would not be willing to bet against the chinchilla shrug. The empowered rich show every sign of bidding up the guard dogs.

 

Mitt Romney Announces: Public Discussion on his Beliefs on Freedom and Religion is Necessary

When Mitt Romney was fighting the last time around for the Republican nomination his Mormonism was an issue. He gave a major speech, “Faith in America” (12/6/07) to put concerns about his religion to rest, which most commentators believe he did. His speech, however, focused on ideas that underpin Republican fanatic support for “small government”; ideas that are alive – if not healthy – today. These ideas must be challenged.

In the views of some of its followers the small government ideology is a moral crusade which rests on the link between freedom and religion, specifically the idea that an individual must be free in his relationship to his god to decide to be charitable or not. The government must not get in the way of this freedom through, among other things, its social welfare programs. Romney said: “Freedom requires religion just as religion requires freedom. Freedom opens the windows of the soul so that man can discover his most profound beliefs and commune with God. Freedom and religion endure together, or perish alone.” This was Romney’s central theme, using “freedom requires religion” to mean absolute opposition to the “religion” of secularism, and secular government. Romney’s thinking is quite in line with former Defense Secretary Dick Cheney who once said that environmental action was a question “personal virtue”. Anything moral cannot be in the realm of the government

The second half of his formulation – “religion requires freedom” – is in line with another Bush Administration figure, and former RNC Chair, Ed Gillespie. Gillespie wrote in a recent op-ed (WP 5/26) that compassion for the poor should be directed at moving them to self sufficiency and the “dignity of work.” Gillespie acknowledged that the poor need better education, but praised Speaker Boehner for raising money in private charitable donations as a paradigm for funding education.

For these small government fanatics protecting the private charitable action is the moral priority. To put it charitably, the figures do not add up. Their prescriptions cannot be a serious solution to American’s social and economic needs. In addition, they are a rejection of the ethical principle that all human beings should be treated with dignity. The rich are not “better” human beings because they are able to dispense charity, they are only given an entitlement to feel better about themselves.

 

Power Running Amok: Strauss-Kahn and John Ensign

There are major differences between the rape charges alleged against (soon to be former) IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn and former Senator John Ensign’s illegal buying off of his lover’s husband. Both, however, reek of the sense of entitlement that washes over all too many powerful men, drowning all common sense as well as any ethical restraint that might lie buried within. The French culture appears to tolerate unlimited sexual activity (but not violence) from its “Big Men”. Elaine Sciolino in the NYT (5/17) described the culture as linking a political man’s sexual prowess to his vigor in running the country. Alas, for him, and unlike Strauss-Kahn, Ensign gets his political support from a religious right at least ostensibly sexually prudish.

There is a more disturbing comparison between the two cases worth highlighting, and that is French outrage that US justice is going to treat the high and mighty the same as everyone else. I am someone who does not like the “perp walk”, but is pleased to see that Strauss-Kahn is treated like any other suspected criminal. A prominent French historian was quoted as saying the French were surprised by the “egalitarianism in the American justice system”. Which brings us back to John Ensign. Perhaps Ensign’s sense of entitlement feels like a good fit with his Republican Party’s war on egalitarianism. Too many Republicans support the right of the rich and powerful to do whatever they want with what they get — and think they deserve — because they are worth so much more than a poor African immigrant chambermaid.