Tag Archives: democracy

Conservatives Say It Out Loud: They Hate Democracy

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The roots of today’s toxic conservative movement lie in Ayn Rand’s teaching that wealthy “producers — now called “job creators” — should be left alone by the government, namely the rest of us. The rest of us are “freeloaders,” “moochers,” “leeches” and “parasites” who feed off these producers and who shouldn’t be allowed to make decisions to collect taxes from them or regulate them or interfere in most other ways. The Randians hate democracy, and say so, declaring that “collectivism” sacrifices individual rights to majority wishes. (See Concern Over Republican Embrace Of The Ayn Rand Poison.)
For decades these selfish, childish, “you can’t make me” beliefs stayed largely below the radar, because conservatives understood that voicing them in public risked alienating … well, anyone with any sense at all. But for various reasons sense has departed the country and conservatives are finally saying it out loud, for everyone to hear: they hate democracy. They want to limit the country’s decision-making and the rewards of our society and economy to those they feel “deserve” to be on top, namely the “producers” and “job-creators.”
Writing in Registering the Poor to Vote is Un-American conservative columnist Matthew Vadum reflects these views, writing that democracy is “like handing out burglary tools to criminals.” He writes,

It is profoundly antisocial and un-American to empower the nonproductive segments of the population to destroy the country — which is precisely why Barack Obama zealously supports registering welfare recipients to vote.
A decade before the Motor-Voter law that required states to register voters at welfare offices was enacted, NAACP official Joe Madison explained the political economy of voter registration drives. “When people are standing in line to get cheese and butter or unemployment compensation, you don’t have to tell them how to vote,” said Madison, now a radio talk show host in Washington, D.C. “They know how to vote.”

Vadum echoes the Randian ideology that we should be government by the “producer” supermen, and the parasites (the rest of us) should have no say in this, calling it communism:

Encouraging those who burden society to participate in elections isn’t about helping the poor. It’s about helping the poor to help themselves to others’ money. It’s about raw so-called social justice. It’s about moving America ever farther away from the small-government ideals of the Founding Fathers.
Registering the unproductive to vote is an idea that was heavily promoted by the small-c communists Richard Cloward and Frances Fox Piven, as I write in my new book, Subversion Inc.: How Obama’s ACORN Red Shirts are Still Terrorizing and Ripping Off American Taxpayers.

Thom Hartmann talks on his TV show with Vadum about this:

In response, conservative outlets like FOX News have been giving Vadum a platform to repeat his views to large numbers of people:

Other Conservatives Weigh In

Vadum’s perspective are not unique in conservative circles. Rush Limbaugh has questioned on the air whether poor people should be allowed to vote. Judson Phillips, president of Tea Party Nation thinks voting should be limited to those who “own property.”
Other conservatives are also on the record as opposing democracy. Walter Williams, in Democracy Versus Liberty, writes, “I find democracy and majority rule a contemptible form of government.” He echoes the old “taxes are theft” line, writing, “Laws do not represent reason. They represent force.”
Pat Buchanan picks up the baton and mocks democracy, calling it a “childlike faith,” and laments the downfall of a corrupt tyrant, in The Democracy Worshipers,

…Hosni Mubarak, though a ruthless ruler, had been our man in Cairo since the assassination of Anwar Sadat, fighting alongside us in the Gulf War, keeping the peace with Israel, allying with us in the war on terror.
But as soon as the tide turned against him, we ditched him and cheered on the crowd in Tahrir Square, a few of whom celebrated the downfall of despotism with a sexual mauling of Lara Logan.

Some Good Points

Earlier this year, writing at the Cato Institute, Senior Fellow Steve H. Hanke offers a more nuanced view of democracy’s failings, in, On Democracy Versus Liberty Mr. Hanke makes very good points about the tendencies of the public to be steered toward bad decisions by panic during crisis. “The result is that crises acted as a ratchet, shifting the trend line of government size and scope up to a higher level.” Later, he equates the power of organized wealth (Cato’s funders, anyone???) to influence lawmakers with the problems of majority rule! He uses examples including farmers continuing to receive subsidies long after the depression ended, and the Bush-era expansion of government in response to 9/11.
But Hanke fails to see that it is not democracy that causes these distortions, but the failure of our system to keep the power of concentrated wealth from shouting down the collected wisdom of the people. It is the suppression of democracy that causes the very problems Henke attributes to democracy.

Republican War On Voting

Today in several states Republicans are making it harder to vote. In The Next Voting Rights Movement Must Start Now, CAF’s Isaiah J. Poole warns,

In state after state, new hurdles, such as voter ID laws, are being constructed to the right to vote that will especially trip up low-income people, students, rural residents and seniors. They disproportionately affect many of the groups who helped put Barack Obama in the White House in 2008 and who are in the vanguard of opposition to right-wing economic policies today. This disenfranchisement is largely happening below the radar of a populace and a national media preoccupied with the poor state of the economy and with the series of attacks by governors on public employee unions.

Ari Berman, in The GOP War on Voting at Rolling Stone,

As the nation gears up for the 2012 presidential election, Republican officials have launched an unprecedented, centrally coordinated campaign to suppress the elements of the Democratic vote that elected Barack Obama in 2008. Just as Dixiecrats once used poll taxes and literacy tests to bar black Southerners from voting, a new crop of GOP governors and state legislators has passed a series of seemingly disconnected measures that could prevent millions of students, minorities, immigrants, ex-convicts and the elderly from casting ballots.
. . . In a systematic campaign orchestrated by the American Legislative Exchange Council – and funded in part by David and Charles Koch, the billionaire brothers who bankrolled the Tea Party – 38 states introduced legislation this year designed to impede voters at every step of the electoral process.
All told, a dozen states have approved new obstacles to voting. Kansas and Alabama now require would-be voters to provide proof of citizenship before registering. Florida and Texas made it harder for groups like the League of Women Voters to register new voters. Maine repealed Election Day voter registration, which had been on the books since 1973. Five states – Florida, Georgia, Ohio, Tennessee and West Virginia – cut short their early voting periods. Florida and Iowa barred all ex-felons from the polls, disenfranchising thousands of previously eligible voters. And six states controlled by Republican governors and legislatures – Alabama, Kansas, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas and Wisconsin – will require voters to produce a government-issued ID before casting ballots. More than 10 percent of U.S. citizens lack such identification, and the numbers are even higher among constituencies that traditionally lean Democratic – including 18 percent of young voters and 25 percent of African-Americans.
Taken together, such measures could significantly dampen the Democratic turnout next year – perhaps enough to shift the outcome in favor of the GOP.

In Taking Back The Vote, CAF’s Terrance Heath writes about the Republican war on voting,

If tea party conservatives have their way, the right to vote will revert back to a privilege — and one enjoyed by far fewer people. It’s easy to dismiss media motormouths like Ann Coulter, when she says that women should not have the right to vote, because too many of them vote Democratic (single women, anyway). But it’s a mistake to shrug off someone like Tea Party Nation President Judson Phillips, who thinks it would be a good idea to put "certain restrictions on the right to vote," like restricting voting to property owners.

Phillips’ claim is reminiscent of Republican attempts to use a list of foreclosed homes to block people from voting in the 2008 election in states like Michigan and Ohio. When right-wing pundits like Matthew Vadum (author of the ACORN "exposé" Subversion, Inc.) and Rush Limbaugh say that the poor shouldn’t have the right to vote, they’re expressing the same sentiment. It’s a manifestation of the conservative concern that too many of the "wrong people" have too much of a voice in politics, and too few of the "right people" have any. That’s what Paul Weyrich meant when he said to a group of evangelical activists in 1980: "I don’t want everybody to vote. As a matter of fact, our leverage in the elections quite candidly goes up as the voting populace goes down."

Undermining Democracy On Purpose

We are not dealing with the Republican Party we used to know. This is not even George W. Bush’s Republican party anymore. In Goodbye to All That: Reflections of a GOP Operative Who Left the Cult, retiring Republican Congressional staffer Mike Lofgren writes,

Far from being a rarity, virtually every bill, every nominee for Senate confirmation and every routine procedural motion is now subject to a Republican filibuster. Under the circumstances, it is no wonder that Washington is gridlocked: legislating has now become war minus the shooting, something one could have observed 80 years ago in the Reichstag of the Weimar Republic. As Hannah Arendt observed, a disciplined minority of totalitarians can use the instruments of democratic government to undermine democracy itself.
[. . .] A couple of years ago, a Republican committee staff director told me candidly (and proudly) what the method was to all this obstruction and disruption. Should Republicans succeed in obstructing the Senate from doing its job, it would further lower Congress’s generic favorability rating among the American people. By sabotaging the reputation of an institution of government, the party that is programmatically against government would come out the relative winner.
A deeply cynical tactic, to be sure, but a psychologically insightful one that plays on the weaknesses both of the voting public and the news media. There are tens of millions of low-information voters who hardly know which party controls which branch of government, let alone which party is pursuing a particular legislative tactic. These voters’ confusion over who did what allows them to form the conclusion that “they are all crooks,” and that “government is no good,” further leading them to think, “a plague on both your houses” and “the parties are like two kids in a school yard.” This ill-informed public cynicism, in its turn, further intensifies the long-term decline in public trust in government that has been taking place since the early 1960s – a distrust that has been stoked by Republican rhetoric at every turn (“Government is the problem,” declared Ronald Reagan in 1980).

Please read that again, and then read the whole piece. This is a Republican writing, from the inside. They are doing it on purpose. They are making the government dysfunctional on purpose. They are making people hate government on purpose. They are working to turn people against democracy and put themselves in power in its place.
This post originally appeared at Campaign for America’s Future (CAF) at their Blog for OurFuture. I am a Fellow with CAF.
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A Bipartisan Move Against Democracy

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Step back from the day-to-day, hour-to-hour details of the debt-ceiling negotiations for a minute and look at the bigger picture. Look what we’re in the middle of. Our legislators are being stampeded by a manufactured “crisis” into profoundly changing the nature of our country and who our economy is “for,” on extremely short notice, against the clear wishes of the majority of the public. They are doing so without following the long-established process for due consideration of important issues; they are not holding hearings, not giving time for public input, not going through committees… The act of negotiating with these hostage-takers at all is itself a violation of our established, democratic system. The question to ask is not, “What painful cuts should we agree to to save our country,” but rather, “Why are we engaged in this anti-democracy exercise at all?”
A Functioning Democracy?
In a functioning democracy an informed public considers and debates its options and then comes to a decision on how best to proceed. In a representative republic our representatives are called “representatives” because they represent us, and vote to implement our wishes.
The founding idea of our country is that We, the People are in charge, and our country exists to promote the common good — “welfare” — of all of us. Elected officials take an oath of office to protect and defend our Constitution, which begins with those words, “We, the People.” Over time we have built up a system of institutions, processes, procedures, traditions and mechanisms to implement this founding idea. The oath they take is to protect and defend this system.
Oath Of Office: Protect and Defend Our System
Today all of this seems all to have fallen away from us. A fanatical but extremely well-funded minority is using a manufactured “crisis” to hold the country’s economy hostage. As ransom — if we don’t want the country to go into default, destroying our economy — they demand that we force fast and dramatic changes to the nature of our country and our social safety net. These changes will take effect before the public can react and gather the forces of opposition. They will be “locked in,” creating “facts on the ground” that we have to deal with, and which are extremenly difficult to undo, no matter what We, the People want or need.
Rather than honor their oath of office to protect and defend our We-the-People system from all enemies, foreign and domestic, and to listen to “We, the People,” and to promote the common good of all of us, our leaders have instead entered into negotiations with the hostage-takers. The act of entering into these negotiations is by itself an agreement to work outside of our established system, and the result of these negotiations will be to change the equation of who our system is for.
Crisis?
Is there really a “debt crisis” necessitating such a dramatic and immediate response? Just 10 years ago the “crisis” we faced was that we were paying off the debt too fast and it was claimed this would lead to socialism as government surpluses were invested in private assets. So taxes for the wealthy were cut. At the same time, enabled by another “crisis,” the military budget was dramatically increased — in ways that enriched “private contractors.”
The result of these changes was an immediate return from budget surpluses to the dramatic budget deficits initiated by President Reagan. Then-President Bush called these deficits “Incredibly positive news” precisely because they would bring on a debt crisis that would enable today’s stampede to change our system of government. The debt “crisis” was intentional.
Cause Of Deficits and Debt
The increase of deficits beyond $1 trillion occurred in President Bush’s last budget year — the consequence of the financial collapse and the resulting drop in tax revenue combined with increases in social safety-net program payments. But the underlying cause of the deficits was the Bush tax cuts and wars. Today, in How the Deficit Got This Big, the NY Times offers charts and figures that show that:

…under Mr. Bush, tax cuts and war spending were the biggest policy drivers of the swing from projected surpluses to deficits from 2002 to 2009. Budget estimates that didn’t foresee the recessions in 2001 and in 2008 and 2009 also contributed to deficits. Mr. Obama’s policies, taken out to 2017, add to deficits, but not by nearly as much.

As for the causes of the longer-term debt picture The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities has put together this chart, explaining:


Longer term most of our country’s future debt problem is from tax cuts, increases in military spending, and the effects of the economic downturn. Most of the rest is because of our private healthcare delivery system. These “debt-ceiling” negotiations are not addressing these causes of the problem at all. Instead they are about using whipped-up panic over those intentionally-created problems to move the common wealth into private hands.
Not The First Time
This tactic of whipping up panic over a “debt crisis” has been used before to stampede legislative bodies into making radical changes on short notice, moving common wealth into private hands. In the post Debt Crisis? Really? I hilighted a 1993 example from Canada that was very similar to today’s. From the source’s account,

By the time Canadians learned that the “deficit crisis” had been grossly manipulated by the corporate-funded think tanks, it hardly mattered – the budget cuts had already been made and locked in. As a direct result, social programs for the country’s unemployed were radically eroded and have never recovered, despite many subsequent surplus budgets.

There is example after of example of the use of manufactured “crises” to panic and stampede legislatures into privatizing public wealth, just as we are experiencing today.
Democracy Eroded
What is happening here is not supposed to be the process of decision-making used in a representative democracy. Instead what we are experiencing is designed specifically to engineer circumstances that persuade us to bypass established processes and safeguards. These safeguards are in place to protect us from making the very sort of panic-driven decisions that we are about to make. And they are designed to “lock in” the changes, so we can’t reverse the damage when we are able to catch our breath.
How can our leaders not recognize and resist what is being done here? Have our own leaders drifted so far from America’s traditional love of democracy that they accept this and fall into playing the game?
Elitist Mindset
It seems that our own leaders have fallen into an elitist mindset, which enables them to go along. Persuaded by decades of corporate-funded propaganda, many now believe that the public doesn’t know what is good for them, that the things democracy entitles them to — “entitlements” — will bankrupt the country, that taxing the wealthy and corporations — the “job creators” — will harm the economy. They do not seem to see how much of our wealth is now flowing to a very few at the top of the pyramid. The fact that taxes on the wealthiest have been cut from a top rate of 90% all the way to a rate of only 15% for hedge-fund managers making billions — far lower than many of the rest of us pay — is ignored. And the fact that we did not have budget deficits when the wealthy paid higher taxes is also ignored. In fact, today just 400 people now have more wealth than half of our population, and the trend is accelerating. But many of our leaders believe that the things We, the People do for each other are a problem, and we must be protected from ourselves.
One example of the slow drift away from love of democracy is the recent “Deficit Commission.” This was a commission of elites — there were no teachers or unemployed or plumbers or disabled or poor people in that room — that was assigned to come up with ways to lower our budget deficits. They did not come up with any recommendations, but the leaders of the commissions came up with a plan of their own — to cut taxes on the wealthy while cutting the things that We, the People do for each other.
Again and again our elites try to create bodies like this that act as an external force they have to submit to, allowing them to escape accountability to voters.
These commissions come up with plans that benefit the wealthy few but violate what the vast majority of Americans want. They are designed to come up with recommendations that benefit the wealthy few, and are presented to Congress with “up-or-down-vote” procedures that leave legislators and voters with no recourse – on purpose. Pre-ordained conclusions with non-democratic force-through procedures.
“Super Congress”
Another example of this kind of anti-democratic, elitist drift was a proposal floated over the weekend to establish a “Super-Congress” — a Politburo of elites, that sits above the Congress and is not accountable to the public. The idea is to save the people from themselves by creating a special 12-member panel of lawmakers who come up with proposals that the Congress must vote on, with no changes and an “up-or-down vote” to implement, thus bypassing the established, democratic system and keeping individual members from being held accountable for the results. The idea is to “tie the hands” of Congress, keep them from meddling, and get things done quickly before the public can rally opposition.
That this idea was even floated shows the extend of separation that exists between our elected officials and We, the People.
Public Will Revolt
Regular Americans are not currently following this, and are turned out because it is just one more Chicken Little coming out of DC. But the public will revolt when the final decisions are put in front of them. The public overwhelmingly supports Social Security and Medicare, and overwhelmingly want taxes increased on the wealthy.
So when the results are presented to them there will be trouble. And that is also part of the plan.
In the 2010 election Republicans campaigned on a theme that “Democrats cut $500 billion from Medicare” and won the election. In 2012 the public will be presented with hundreds of millions of dollars spent on campaign ads, crying out that “Democrats cut your Social Security and Medicare, while keeping taxes low for the rich.”
Think I’m kidding? They have already started.
This post originally appeared at Campaign for America’s Future (CAF) at their Blog for OurFuture. I am a Fellow with CAF.
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Government Spending Cuts Don’t Cut, They Shift Costs To US

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The conservatives are following up on their decades-old plan to use tax cuts to create terrible deficits, and then use the resulting “debt crisis” to cut government. But cutting government doesn’t mean the costs go away, it means that we each have to bear those costs ourselves, on our own, without the help of the rest of us. This is really about cutting democracy so the very rich can be even very-richer.
A Huge Tax Increase On Regular People
A government budget cut is like a huge tax increase on regular people because it increases what each of us pays for the things government does — or forces us to go without. This is because cuts in government spending don’t actually cut the cost of things, they just shift those costs onto each of us on our own.
For example, if you cut the the government’s Medicare or Medicaid budget our health problems don’t disappear, but each of us has to find ways to pay the cost of medical care or a nursing home on our own. If you cut what government spends for maintaining infrastructure, the roads/bridges/dams/schools/etc. deteriorate and we all pay for that through a less competitive economy, car-repair costs, and sometimes with our lives. And when each of us has to pay more for these things, it really does take money out of the economy. We’re spending on those things, instead of more usefully contributing to the economy.
Cuts Just Shift And Increase The Costs
So spending cuts really just shift the spending and cost of the things we have to do – and often increase those costs. This is because doing things on our own instead of collectively through our government is the smallest possible economy-of-scale. The best example of this shift-and-increase effect is the Republican plan to phase out Medicare. As I wrote above, our health problems won’t disappear just because government cuts out Medicare. But the costs of treating – or not treating – those health problems is now on us, individually, instead of aggregated through the mechanism of democracy. And that is money that would otherwise be spent elsewhere in the economy.
In Cost of Medicare Equivalent Insurance Skyrockets under Ryan Plan the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) explains what happens to the cost of health care if Medicare is eliminated. Summary: it shifts the costs to us, except each of us ends up paying seven times as much as the same care costs under Medicare. This is because Medicare covers millions, and that economy-of-scale means the government can negotiate bulk discounts, etc. that we cannot get on our own. From the CEPR explanation:

[The Republican] plan to revamp Medicare has been described as shifting costs from the government to beneficiaries. A new report from the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR), however, shows that the [Republican] proposal will increase health care costs for seniors by more than seven dollars for every dollar it saves the government, a point missing from much of the debate over the plan.
… In addition to comparing the costs of Medicare to the government under the current system and under the [Republican] plan, the authors also show the effects of raising the age of Medicare eligibility. The paper also demonstrates that while [the Republicanplan ] shifts $4.9 trillion in health care costs from the government to Medicare beneficiaries, this number is dwarfed by a $34 trillion increase in overall costs to beneficiaries that is projected …

The Mechanism Of Democracy
In other words, the Repubican plan to phase out Medicare would cost the economy seven times as much as it cuts government. In this case the mechanism of democracy works seven times better than doing the same thing on our own. The economy of scale introduced by democracy — We, the People gathering together to watch out for and take care of each other — saves the economy sevenfold on costs. And that is money that would be spent by each of us but now goes just to cover the healthcare costs. This is one more reason why democracies are more prosperous for regular people than other forms of government that leave people on their own against the wealthy and powerful and drive all of the income and wealth to a few at the top.
Budget Cuts Deals Hurt Us And The Economy
When you hear that the “debt-ceiling” deal being negotiated in Washington is going to cut $4 trillion from the government’s budget it doesn’t mean that $4 trillion is is going to be saved and put into the economy, it means the opposite, and worse. It means that $4 trillion in costs will be shifted from the mechanism of democracy and onto our backs, each of us, on our own. And that means that the total costs of accomplishing the same things will go up. And that means each of us will have less to spend in the economy. Think about what that will do to jobs.

  • As government health care is cut each of us will take on those costs on our own, and will be paying up to seven times what the same care would have cost.
  • As infrastructure maintenance and modernization is cut, our economy will become less competitive, unemployment will increase and our wages and spending power will fall.
  • As spending on education is cut, our costs of educating ourselves and our kids will increase. College costs will soar.
  • As environmental regulation and enforcement is cut the costs of the resulting health problems and cleanups will increase.
  • As enforcement of labor laws is cut, our wages and protections will fall.
  • As etc. is cut, the costs of etc. are shifted to each of us, on our own, and the total costs of accomplishing etc. actually increase.

This Is About Democracy
In the bigger picture budget cuts are about shifting away from the mechanism of democracy — where We, the People aggregate and cover these costs in a more effective way — and instead moving costs to each of us on-our-own. And because of the effect of reduced economies-of-scale we then each face a much greater cost-per-person than if we did these things through the mechanism of democracy. This hurts our economy.
Don’t be fooled: this is really about shifting from democracy to a system where we are on our own, up against the wealthy and powerful. This is about shifting from a system where we can all be prosperous to a system where a few have all the wealth and power.
This post originally appeared at Campaign for America’s Future (CAF) at their Blog for OurFuture. I am a Fellow with CAF.
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Can US Hold Corporations Accountable Anymore?

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In the UK the News-Of-The-World/News Corp/Murdoch scandal seems to be reawakening democracy. A big, powerful corporation has been found to be engaged in criminal activity, manipulating news, paying off police and politicians, and generally getting its way. The people, press and politicians are rising up, holding the company and its executives legally accountable and are taking back control of their system. Could this happen in the US?
This is my last full day in the UK. The top story in the media for the two weeks I have been here has been the News-Of-The-World “phone-hacking” story that I explained in some detail last week. This newspaper was engaged in criminal activity, was caught a few years ago, but used American-style damage-control techniques to manipulate the government, police and public opinion into accepting that the criminality was limited to the sacrificial lamb they threw to them. So the damage to Murdoch’s News Corp. was limited at the time, and News Corp appeared to have impunity. But, unlike how things are now done in the US, investigative reporters (particularly at the Guardian) continued to dig into the story and continued to reveal to the public that News Corp. was engaging in criminal activity until the story could no longer be ignored by the powerful.
The latest big news is that the head of Scotland Yard has resigned, in part because earlier investigations into Murdoch-corporation activities “didn’t get to the bottom of this.” The press is full of questions about how this criminal company was able to operate for in this manner so long, and who in the government looked the other way. This is now as big a story as the original and ongoing criminal activities of Murdoch’s companies.
Another story is the way executives left Murdoch’s companies and entered government into positions where they could protect the interests of Murdoch’s company, including influencing the phone-hacking investigations. And finally, the story here is about politicians who are “cozy” with Murdoch’s media empire, who were propelled into government by the power of that empire.
Not yet part of the story: the manipulation of government policy to serve the interests of the owners of the criminal company. In fact, just as the media was beginning to touch on this aspect of the story the company took extraordinary steps to build a firewall and attempt to contain the scandal. Top executives in the UK and in England were removed from their posts, an “apology” was printed in all the papers here, and Murdoch himself made public apologies and News Corp started a major counterattack. So far News Corp’s second-largest shareholder, Saudi Prince Al Waleed bin Talal has been kept in the background. Prince Al Waleed was interviewed by the BBC Thursday on his yacht in Cannes. Immediately the firewall began to be constructed.
(These are questions, not accusation. While being part-owner of the conservative News Corp., Al Waleed also speaks out for democratic reform and women’s rights in Saudi Arabia.)
But questions about News Corp. pushing policies that benefit its owners have yet to be pursued. Does News Corp. push climate-change denial to benefit the interests of oil-producing Saudi Arabit? Did News Corp push the invasion of Iraq to benefit Saudi Arabia?
What About In The US?
Does all of this sound familiar to any of you reading this in America?
And so the parallels to American standard-operating-procedure stand out. Criminal corporations manipulating government, police and public opinion. A revolving door through which corporate executives pass into government and protect the interests of their companies. A conservative media empire manipulating news and propelling politicians to benefit their financial interests. Politicians cozy with corporate executives who never seem to be held accountable.
As Richard Eskow wrote the other day, Want to Solve All your Problems, Rupert Murdoch? Become A Banker.,

But there’s an easy way for Mr. Murdoch to protect himself from these inquiries and save his company at the same time: Turn the News Corporation into a Wall Street bank. There won’t be any prosecutions, and the government will even sweeten the deal with billions of dollars in easy money. And if Murdoch follows the trail blazed by bankers like Jamie Dimon at JPMorgan Chase, soon they’ll be begging him to acquire more companies.
… By contrast, despite its long list of proven crimes nobody at [JPMorgan Chase CEO] Dimon’s bank has been arrested. Apparently arrests, like the financial consequences of one’s actions, are for borrowers only. And Dimon only appears before our elected representative for cozy private get-togethers, not public enquiries.

Seriously, there was just enough democracy left in the institutions of the UK to enable a media giant like News Corp to be held accountable. Just how accountable is yet to be seen, but with the press in full investigative mode, parliamentary investigations, resignations and arrests at the tops of big, powerful corporations that are way-to-cozy with politicians we are seeing a reaction to this story that is simply not imaginable in our own country today.
Some Tests
Here is one test that will tell us if accountability is still possible here. What follow-up will we see from the Justice Department in response to the revelation that members of the Financial Crisis panel illegally leaked inside information, including plans to investigate foreign banks, to lobbyists? See Financial Crisis Panel Commissioners Leaked Confidential Information To Lobbyists, Report Alleges,

Republican commissioners on the panel created by Congress to probe the roots of the financial crisis leaked documents to partisan allies and shared confidential information with influence peddlers, according to a Wednesday report by Democrats on a Congressional oversight committee.

Another area for investigation is the revolving door through which lobbyists or top people of the criminal corporation became government officials and government officials become executives or lobbyists. Are they using their influence in government to protect the interests of the companines that paid or will pay them? That sure looks like bribery, whatever other words one might use.
Another area of investigations is companies that fund or otherwise infleunce public opinion and politics and campaigns or reward politicians or fund their campaigns. That is bribery, because companies have to act in the financial interest of shareholders and rewarding a politician in the interest of shareholders is bribery by definition.
Please, add some more tests in the comments. What stories have you seen revealing illegal activity and collusion between elected representatives, government officials and big corporations with no one held accountable? Obviously there is Wall Street, mortgage fraud and securities manipulations. There are all the crimes from the Bush era that went uninvestigated. (Who ended up with all that money that went missing in Iraq?) But there are so many instances of crimes reported but not investigated and certainly not prosecuted. There are so many clear cases of big corporations using media to manipulate public opinion. And there are so many cases of our election laws violated with impunity.
Are we going to be able to take back democracy and accountability here? Or not? Will our own Department of Justice start to hold law-violators accountable? Or not.
This post originally appeared at Campaign for America’s Future (CAF) at their Blog for OurFuture. I am a Fellow with CAF.
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How Free Trade Made Democracy A Disadvantage

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This is my presentation from last week’s Netroots Nation panel session: Revitalizing Manufacturing: The Road to Renewed Job Growth. Click through for panel details and other panelists, here for a pdf of slides, including Jared Bernstein’s. See below for video — and be sure to watch Beri Fox!!!
Four Stories
I want to share four quick stories:
1. Democracy
The story of America
We fought a wealthy powerful few who had all the say and didn’t let us have a say, and made a country where We, the People made the decisions and share the benefits.
So because we had a say we built up a country with good schools, good infrastructure, good courts, and we made rules that said workers had to be safe, get a minimum wage… we protect the environment, we give out social security. We take care of each other.
And we used to protect that. We used to put a tariff on goods coming in if they were made by people who didn’t have the ability to speak up and better their condition. It was called the American System. Look it up. We’d let the goods in but we would use a tariff to strengthen our country, our infrastructure, our schools – our democracy.
But that changed. Superman left and we stopped protecting the American Way. We started letting goods in made by people who had no say, so the goods were cheap and they undercut us.
We have made democracy a disadvantage. We made it a disadvantage instead of an advantage.
Make no mistake, people who say they want things more “business friendly” they mean they want America to be less of a democracy, with fewer of the protections we fought to build for ourselves.
2. Trade
Once upon a time some areas made some things well, and other areas made other things well, and they would trade, and both areas could have the things they made AND the things made somewhere else, and everyone benefitted. And both areas increased the customers they had.
And so to most people “trade” means we buy things made somewhere else, and they buy things we make. In what world does “trade” mean closing a factory that is located here, moving it there where they don’t already make something, laying off all the people, and then bringing back here the same things that used to be made here and selling them in the same stores?
And the result is a lot of people have lost jobs, devastating our communities.
And then they tell workers who still have jobs that the same can happen to them, we can just close this factory, so shut up and don’t expect raises or benefits or safety or dignity.
What we see happening when a company moves production out of the country is not trade, it is getting around the borders of the democracy we built, and the things we fought and sacrificed to build.
Letting companies move factories away was giving up our ability to make a living. Sure a few people might get really rich from it, but look around you the rest of us, and our communities, and our economy have been sent sliding down a hill into the sewer.
3. The Deal
There once was a company. The company made a deal with a company in the next county, they make something you don’t, and you make something they don’t. So the deal is you’ll buy things from them if they buy from you. And you start buying from them, but they aren’t buying from you. And this goes on, and they still aren’t buying from you, but you are starting to owe them a lot of money. And they you’re borrowing from them to buy from them, and they still aren’t buying. And then they show up in your county selling the things you already made and sold, buy they used the money they got selling to you to set up to make what you made.
And by the way they say you have to pay them what you owe them.
That is how our deal with China is working out. We bought from them, they didn’t buy form us, and now they have accumulated $1.5 trillion which they were supposed to have been buying American-made goods with.
And they cheated. Or I would say they were smart and watched out for their own interests excessively, and we didn’t at all.
$1.5 trillion! So imagine what would happen if we said we’re going to default on the debt but these bonds are redeemable in the next 3 months for American made good. Can you imagine what $1.5 trillion of orders would do for our economy right now? $1.5 trillion in orders? Factories humming…
Well the picture of what that would do FOR our economy is a way of understanding what that has done TO our economy.
4. The Cost
I like to tell you a story about the cost of our free-trade deals and tax policies.
I took a road trip last fall, through four industrial states, MI, OH, WV, PA to visit some of the Manufacturing Town Hall meetings that Scott’s group put on. [Note – see posts about this tour here.]
They call it the “rust belt” because so many factories are closed and rusting.
From town to town you see downtowns devastated, because the way you make a living is gone and the cheap imported goods at wal mart competing with local businesses. Michael Moore wrote about Flint after the auto plants closed. That kept happening, town after town, year after year, and got worse.
You have to see to first hand. [Note – there are pics in this post.]
But I’ll tell you, we’re even seeing it now in Silicon Valley, seeing downtowns with lots of empty storefronts. Empty office and manufacturing buildings everywhere. That wave that hit the Midwest has reached the tech areas now.
So the moral of the four stories is that We the People have to protect the things we fought for and won. And we have to remember that We, the People have to take care of and watch out for each other because the wealthy and powerful won’t do that for us. And markets aren’t about that, either.
When we relax our eternal vigilance they will come back with a vengeance.
Progressive Solutions

    a. Industrial Policy
    We don’t believe in having the government help. We think the markets will fix everything. But other countries don’t see it that way.
    We are pitting our companies on their own against the national resources of governments. We can live in an ideological dream world and say we shouldn’t, but our competitors in the rest of the world DO.
    b. Protect Democracy
    Tariffs. Call it a democracy tariff. Or a thugocracy tax. Use this to help lift others out of their exploitation. By making democracy a disadvantage we are only encouraging the worst, and encouraging it here, too. “Business friendly” is a code word that means get rid of all the protections We, the People have built for ourselves.
    They can protect the environment, etc, or charge a tariff to bring those goods in.
    c. Renegotiate Trade Deals
    Trade can mean something different. We still have a huge market. We can require goods to either be made by people who are not exploited and who have a say so
    d. Enforce Trade Laws
    China cheats in so many ways, and we all know it. Currency rates. Indigenous innovation . Forcing companies to turn over proprietary IP…

We can do these things. Because of the strong prosperity that democracy brought us others really want to sell into our markets.
And my own favorite:

    e. Top tax rates
    With high top rates it takes time to build a fortune. You have to have long-term plans, sustainable businesses that are surrounded by healthy communities, good schools, good infrastructure.
    Lower rates, you can make a fortune in a few days. Business models changed, became short term, cash in, quick-buck schemes. Harvest infrastructure, close factories, no need for healthy communities, etc.

Video Of The Panel
Scott Paul opens
Jared Bernstein at 6:02
Rep. Jim McGovern at 17:00
Beri Fox at 31:29
Dave Johnson at 48:13
IF the video below doesn’t show up, click to see it here.

Sobotka
As always, Frank Sobotka explains what’s wrong:

This post originally appeared at Campaign for America’s Future (CAF) at their Blog for OurFuture. I am a Fellow with CAF.
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Absolute MUST-WATCH For All Progressives!!!

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Here is the video of last night’s launch of Rebuild the Dream campaign, with Van Jones. ((If you want to skip the music parts, start at 9:15.)
The three big lies:
1) America is broke.
2) Asking the super rich to pay taxes hurts the economy.
3) Hating America’s government and wrecking America’s infrastructure is patriotic.

Watch live streaming video from rebuildthedream at livestream.com

Alternet has a great write-up of the event and its meaning, in Van Jones Kicks off American Dream Movement with Energetic Rally and Speech at NYC’s Town Hall
And then you can watch this:

Does Government Know Who The Boss Is?

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In Washington state workers are allowed to organize and form unions so they can win good wages and benefits. In “right-to-work” states like South Carolina, though, the government sides with big companies against their workers. (They used to have even harsher anti-worker laws there but the North stopped rounding up the escapees…)
Boeing workers in Washington go on strike, so Boeing sets up an assembly line in anti-union South Carolina and tells the Washington workers to take what they offer and like it. This is a standard move from companies these days, telling workers, “Take the cuts or we’ll close the plant and move your jobs somewhere where workers can’t do anything about it.”
Illegal, But So What?
You probably didn’t know this but retaliating against workers like that is against the law. It is even illegal to threaten workers in order to avoid a strike. It is illegal to fire or intimidate employees for organizing.
But companies go ahead and do these things anyway, and other illegal things, because no one does anything about it. And it has been so long since anyone did anything about it – just like with banking fraud or age discrimination – that it is now standard operating procedure. No one even remembers that it is illegal. No one cares.
Like age discrimination. Look at the faces of the employees behind President Obama when he visited Facebook and tell me if Facebook is the least bit worried about age discrimination enforcement.

Or this picture of the President visiting Google:
viers_mill_PS-0253
Workers’ Rights A Thing Of The Past
With labor-law enforcement — or even a sense that workers should have rights — seemingly a thing of the past, these anti-worker sentiments are spreading. Recently, for example Arizona and South Dakota passed anti-worker laws, forbidding the formation of a union after a majority workers sign cards asking for one. Wisconsin and other states have passed laws restricting the labor rights of public-employees and restricting the ability to collect union-membership dues.
But THIS Time!
But THIS time something unusual happened. The government has actually threatened to enforce the law! The National Labor Relations Board filed a complaint against Boeing and is suing Arizona and South Dakota for violating labor laws!
Boardrooms across the land are rising up in indignation. How dare the government threaten giant corporations that they might enforce the law? Don’t they know who’s the boss? The Wall Street Journal explains, “Boeing management did what it judged to be best for its shareholders and customers and looked elsewhere. … As Boeing chief Jim McNerney noted on a conference call at the time, the company couldn’t have “strikes happening every three to four years.” and calls Boeing’s threats against unions a “reasonable business decision.”
Conservative columnists and bloggers are earning their pay, writing indignant column after column about “union bosses,” some even praising Ayn Rand. Conservative astroturfers (also) and politicians are not far behind them.


How dare We, the People (government) tell a business that it has to respect its workers and our laws!!!
Who Is Boss?
Do We, the People have the ability to enforce our laws? Do we have the power to tax corporations and the wealthy?
Do we have the power to protect the protections of democracy?
Democracy provides workers with safety protections and fair wages. We fought so hard to build and maintain this democratic society so that We, the People could share the benefits. We passed laws allowing union organizing, as a balance to the immense power of corporations and wealth. We passed laws prohibiting companies from telling workers, “Work for what we give you or don’t eat.”
And for a time this built our prosperity. But we let the protections slip, and allowed companies to cross borders to escape the protections democracy offers — to non-democratic countries like China where workers have few rights, where pay is low, environmental protections practically non-existent. Companies locating manufacturing in places like have huge cost advantages over companies located in democracies that respect and protect the rights of citizens.
The Threat Against Us
Won’t companies just move out of the state/country if we try to enforce labor laws or tax them? Won’t China just stop selling to us if we apply a tariff to protect democracy, or try to enforce trade laws? Won’t the rich just pack up and move or stop working if we don’t just give them everything they want? Won’t they move even more factories out of the city/state/country if We, the People try to demand our rights?
We Still Have The Power
Here’s the thing. We, the People still have some power left in our hands. For one thing we still have a huge market. We still have the power to make demands on those who would like to sell into that market. And we can still choose to enforce tax laws, and wage laws, and tariffs, and labor laws, and trade laws to protect and strengthen what remains of our democracy.
But we can only do this if we decide to stand up for ourselves and do something about what is happening. We have to put our foot down, and demand that our politicians listen to We, the People and do what we say. It is time to get organized, to talk to neighbors and relatives, to show up at town hall meetings and protests. We can demand that news media begin to cover more than just the corporate/conservative viewpoint. We can go out and register others to vote, and get them to the polls, and demand that votes be counted accurately. We can take back our democracy and put We, the People back in charge.
This post originally appeared at Campaign for America’s Future (CAF) at their Blog for OurFuture. I am a Fellow with CAF.
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Yet Another Poll Shows… Plutocracy Stupid, Democracy Smart

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This post originally appeared at Campaign for America’s Future (CAF) at their Blog for OurFuture. I am a Fellow with CAF.
Yet another poll is out, showing that the public wants taxes raised on the rich and on Wall Street and the giant multi-national corporations, and does not want cuts in the things We, the People do for each other. Other polls show the public wants cuts in military spending, and increases in spending on infrastructure and other job-creation, economy-growing investment. And, in fact, if we did these things the deficit problem — caused by tax cuts for the rich and increases in military spending — would be fixed. So why do Washington deficit-reduction plans always do the opposite?
From today’s Progressive Breakfast,

Yet another poll shows strong support for raising taxes on the wealthy, opposition to Medicare and Social Security cuts. W. Post: “The Post-ABC poll finds that 78 percent oppose cutting spending on Medicare as a way to chip away at the debt … 72 percent support raising taxes [on family income over $250,000] … “

Meanwhile, in DC the insider story is that the “Gang of 6” is “closing in” on a “deficit deal.” In all likelihood it will (they all do) end up being about cutting taxes for the rich and cutting the things We, the People (government) do for each other and cutting investment in the things that make our economy grow: infrastructure, education, science, job-creation, etc…
Serious People
Another popular DC-insider deficit plan is called “Simpson-Bowles.” This plan was put together by a right-wing Republican, former Republican Senator Alan “three hundred million tits” Simpson and a Wall Streeter, Erskine Bowles, a member of the Board of Directors of Morgan Stanley. This plan (they all do) cuts taxes for the rich and cuts the things We, the People (government) do for each other. It is put together by “serious” people so it is considered “serious.”
Poll after poll shows one thing, DC plan after DC plan does another. The public isn’t considered “serious.” Republicans and Wall Streeters are considered to be “serious.” In fact, things the public wants and needs are not considered at all in today’s DC. Democracy is not “serious.”
Democracy vs Plutocracy
In January I wrote about this phenomenon in, Sen. Conrad Plutocracy Plan Vs. Democracy Deficit Commission. Back then the deficit plan was (they all do) to cut taxes on the rich while increasing them on everyone else, and cut Social Security, even though Social Security has nothing whatsoever to do with the deficit. I wrote,

This is what happens when Wall Street and conservative Republicans design a plan: give even more to the already-wealthy few, gut what our government does for We, the People.
Here is the real deficit commission that you would expect to see if we were a democracy instead of a plutocracy: It would have 100 members:

  • 98 of the 100 members would make less than $250,000 a year.
  • 50 of the members would come from households in which the total income of all wage-earners is less than $50,221.
  • 17% of the commission members would be un- or underemployed, and would be wondering why they are on a deficit commission instead of a jobs commission.
  • 19 people on the commission would receive some form of Social Security benefits, 12 of those as retirees. And on this deficit commission they get to talk when the ones making over $250K propose cutting Social Security.
  • 43 of the commission members would have less than $10,000 saved up for retirement. 27 of those less than $1,000.
  • The commission would include the right proportion of factory and construction workers, and people who work in a kitchen, and waiting tables, and teaching, and nursing, and installing tires, and all the other things that people do except, apparently, those on DC elite commissions. (People who do manual labor get an extra vote each on what the retirement age should be.)
  • Include people who are on active duty in the military – the people who said they don’t need that expensive plane, but couldn’t get body armor.
  • 60 members would not have college degrees.
  • 13 members would be receiving food stamps.

What The Public Wants Is Smart
And guess what, when you take a poll, you are measuring what the public wants. A poll shows what would happen if the deficit plans were drawn up by regular people. And POLLS SHOW they want tax increases on the rich and cuts in military. They want jobs programs and infrastructure investment and investment in the things that grow the economy. They want a Medicare-For-All health care plan, and in fact other countries have proven this solves the long-term health care cost problem.
Plutocracy Stupid, Democracy Smart
Here’s the thing: what the public wants actually would fix the borrowing. And what the plutocrats want would make it worse. The deficit is the result of tax cuts for the rich, increases in military spending, spending on the recession and long-term cost increases in health care. So fixing that means putting taxes back where they were before the deficits, realizing that the Soviet Union is gone, investing to grow the economy, and implementing a Medicare-For-All plan like the rest of the world has.
And that is what polls show the public wants to so.
So maybe the public isn’t that stupid after all. Maybe democracy can work. The plutocrats plans are stupid, because the plutocrats just greedily give everything to the plutocrats, and sacrifice everyone’s future, even the plutocrats’.
Plutocracy stupid, democracy smart, fire baaaad!:


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Social Security Proposal: Make Them Work — Longer

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Update – please see RJ Eskow’s post, As The Aging Stoop To Their Labors, Prosperous Pundits Lecture Them About Sacrifice
This post originally appeared at Campaign for America’s Future (CAF) at their Blog for OurFuture. I am a Fellow with CAF.
DC is talking about cutting Social Security for working people at the very same time it is talking about extending tax breaks for the wealthiest people in history. This is a result of our county’s shift away from democracy and toward plutocracy. This post is about the astonishing change in attitude toward regular people that is the result of this shift.
There is a DC “Deficit Commission” that is supposed to be cutting budget deficits (that result from tax cuts for the wealthy and increases in military spending) but is instead talking about cutting Social Security. Get this: Social Security is a fully-funded program that uses no tax money. By law it cannot borrow so it cannot contribute to the deficit! At the same time, the huge military budget (we spend more than all other countries combined) is completely unfunded and faces a huge shortfall every year — but cutting that is off the table.
The real problem: Social Security built up a huge trust fund that was spent on tax cuts for the rich, and that money is coming due. DC thinking is to cut Social Security instead of paying back what was borrowed. One proposal under consideration is to raise the retirement age, recently increased to 67, to 70! This at the very time that every social indicator is saying that we should be increasing Social Security and lowering the retirement age. Increasing because people’s savings have been slammed by the financial collapse so they need Social Security as their fall-back position, and lowering because so many people over 50 can’t find work.
What About The People Affected?
Almost no one has been talking about how this will effect the people whose benefits will be cut. This is because there has been a change in attitudes in America. We are becoming a not kinder, not gentler nation. The crippled compassion component of conservative ideas about citizenship continues to cut into what’s left of our consciences.
Kudos to the NY Times for sending a reporter out from a comfortable desk in their air-conditioned offices to look at what cutting Social Security means to actual people who actually work. Retiring Later Is Hard Road for Laborers,

A new analysis by the Center for Economic and Policy Research found that one in three workers over age 58 does a physically demanding job … — including hammering nails, bending under sinks, lifting baggage — that can be radically different at age 69 than at age 62. Still others work under difficult conditions, like exposure to heat or cold, exposure to contaminants or weather, cramped workplaces or standing for long stretches.

A Washington Post story the next day looks at the flood of desperate people trying to get on Social Security disability because their unemployment benefits are exhausted and they can’t find work. Jobless are straining Social Security’s disability benefits program,

Social Security officials say they are confident that their vetting process screens out most people who might try to get benefits without being qualified. But, they acknowledge, when jobs are scarce, more workers who might otherwise struggle through with their ailments try to secure disability benefits.

McClatchy looked at desperate older people who can’t get jobs and are “taking early retirement” even though it means dramatically reduced monthly checks. Social Security surplus hit by joblessness, early retirement,

Led by aging baby boomers and older workers frustrated by the tough job market, record numbers of eligible Americans started receiving Social Security retirement benefits in 2009. . . . Annual jobless rates for men and women age 55 and older were higher in 2009 than at any time since the government started collecting the data in 1948, Johnson said. That forced many to claim retirement benefits at 62, their first year of eligibility, instead of waiting to collect at the full retirement age of 66.

The findings: People really need the help that Social Security offers.
Cut Social Security? Really? We spent trillions bailing out the wealthy Wall Street elite, we gave huge tax cuts to the wealthiest people in history, we spend hundreds of billions on unaccountable “defense” contractors with shadowy addresses concentrated around DC, and we are seriously considering cutting Social Security?
The New American Attitude
But this is the new America. We’re helping the rich and taking our frustrations out on the unfortunate and weak: “the help.” I wrote about this attitude change in Simpson Social Security Comments Highlight Battle Of Democracy Vs. Plutocracy

These battles over cutting Social Security and extending tax cuts for the wealthy expose the competing worldviews of We, the People democracy vs corporatist plutocracy. Is our country a community of the people, by the people and for the people? Or are we “the help,” only here for the benefit of the wealthy few.
In the democracy worldview we are a community that takes care of and watches out for each other. We are each citizens with equal rights and equal value, to be respected equally. Our government and economy are supposed to be for us. In the democracy worldview we should be increasing Social Security’s benefits because people really need it.

An effect of moving to plutocracy is that the rest of us need to “know our place.” I mean, just who do we think we are? We have been acting like we own this place, like We, the People are in charge here! We think we are entitled to … entitlements. Things have changed and we need to get with the new program. Our job now is to shut up and be thankful for anything we receive the the behest of the country’s new owners.
This is the new attitude: Make Them Work – Citizens As “The Help”

That’s right, you have to make them work, or they’ll just sit around and wont be “productive.” They wont face up to the “consequences” of unemployment. These parasites will just suck the blood out of the producers. You hear language like this all the time from conservatives. The unemployed are “lazy,” or “on drugs” etc. They are not “productive.” They are mooching off the rest of us.
This is all in sharp contrast to the noble rich, who are an entirely different species biologically and spiritually. They are the “wealth producers” who we must treat with kid gloves and certainly not ask them to pay for their use of infrastructure or government services lest they decide to stop working. They just want to keep working, and what they do is so important, so pure, so necessary to the sustenance of the rest of us that they must be coddled at all times lest we lose their golden-egg magic touch!

This is the new attitude: If You Feed Them They Breed — And Other Dehumanizing Conservative Idiocy We Should Ignore

The latest nonsense they are spreading is that helping the unemployed keeps them from finding jobs. Good Lord! This is basically the old “if you feed them they just breed” storyline. They say “it makes them dependent” as if hard-working people laid off because of Wall Street’s scams are squirrels. Or, to hear the nasty way conservatives talk about these human beings, they are like rats. “Hobos,” one Congressman called the unemployed! And the DC elite listen, chuckle and repeat.

This battle over Social Security, at the very same time as DC fights over extending tax cuts to the wealthiest people in history, points out how it will be as our democracy slides away. If we sit back and accept these changes, we lose. To fight this we need to come back to an understanding of what it means to be a citizen in a country where We, the People are supposed to be in charge. A government of We, the People should be about taking care of each other, protecting and empowering each other and respecting each other. WE are supposed to be the boss of you here. And we are supposed to be in charge.
Please add your name to the “Hands Off Social Security” petition. The Deficit Commission should get on to figuring out how to reduce the deficit (clue: it was caused by tax cuts for the rich and military spending increases) and keep their hands off Social Security!
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Simpson Social Security Comments Highlight Battle Of Democracy Vs. Plutocracy

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This post originally appeared at Campaign for America’s Future (CAF) at their Blog for OurFuture. I am a Fellow with CAF.
Former Wyoming Republican Senator Alan Simpson is co-chair of President Obama’s Fiscal Commission. This is what he said the other day about the relationship between the American people and our government:

“We’ve reached a point now where it’s like a milk cow with 310 million tits!”

This country that was once run by We, the People with government “of the people, by the people and for the people” has become instead a country where the ruling elites can talk about the public as babies, the unemployed as parasites who are jobless because they are “lazy.” The prevailing attitude about the public, from the new Versailles that has grown up around Washington, DC — what bloggers call “the village” seems to be if you feed them they will breed.
Look at the weird situation we are in today. The wealthy are wealthier than ever. The gap between the rich and the rest of us is bigger than ever. Big corporate profits are soaring and the too-big-to-fail multinational corporations have more power than ever. At the same time wages that were stagnant for decades are now dropping, people with jobs are working longer and harder, more of our people are unemployed and unemployed for longer, more without health insurance, more are depending on food stamps for basic nutrition, more are losing their homes than ever with bankruptcies soaring, and small businesses are barely hanging on or are going under at an alarming rate.
But what are our political leaders up to? On the one hand, the deficit commission is focused on cutting Social Security (which does not contribute to the deficit or debt) at a time when more people need it and need it more than ever. On the other hand many in the Congress are looking for ways to extend the deficit-causing Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest 2%.
And few are talking about our government hiring or helping the unemployed, stimulating the economy, or holding the bad actors who caused this mess accountable. In fact, far from talking about helping our fellow citizens, our ruling DC elites have a different view of things entirely. We, the People are just in the way. It is our own tit-sucking fault, they say, and we need to step up and sacrifice because we are not doing enough to help the people who really deserve it: the producers, the “job creators.”
Did you catch the rhetorical trick I used above? I said “our” people, and “our” government. How quaint. You don’t hear that kind of talk much anymore. Instead you hear about “personal responsibility,” which makes everything that is done to someone by the wealthy and powerful their own fault.
This Is About Democracy vs. Corporatist Plutocracy
These battles over cutting Social Security and extending tax cuts for the wealthy expose the competing worldviews of We, the People democracy vs corporatist plutocracy. Is our country a community of the people, by the people and for the people? Or are we “the help,” only here for the benefit of the wealthy few.
In the democracy worldview we are a community that takes care of and watches out for each other. We are each citizens with equal rights and equal value, to be respected equally. Our government and economy are supposed to be for us. In the democracy worldview we should be increasing Social Security’s benefits because people really need it.
In the plutocratic worldview held by conservatives and corporatist moderates we are “the help,” 310 million loafers (“parasites” is the Randian word) sucking their ” unearned sustenance” (more Rand) from the tits of the milk cow when we all ought to be working harder because the portfolios of the “achievers” (and more) are down a bit. Your value to society is only what you “produce.” Your role otherwise is to “consume.” In that worldview the wealthy deserve tax cuts and the parasites shouldn’t be getting Social Security checks at all.
So what is it going to be? Will we see and understand ourselves as citizens, who share this country on an equal basis with the rich and the poor, with rights and entitlements, deserving dignity, respect, protection and empowerment from a government that is of, be and for We, the People? Will we demand those things and fight for them? Or will we quietly yield those hard-won rights to our “betters” and allow ourselves to be told what to do, fleeced by giant corporations, hoping to get a flat-screen TV out of the deal if we behave?
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Do We Need A Democracy Tariff?

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This post originally appeared at Campaign for America’s Future (CAF) at their Blog for OurFuture as part of the Making It In America project. I am a Fellow with CAF.
We need a Democracy Tariff, imposed at the border on goods that are brought in from countries where the people have not been able to build a strong democracy that protects their workers, wages and environment.
Yesterday in Exporting Jobs Is Not “Trade.” It Evades Democracy’s Protections I wrote that … well … exporting jobs is not “trade.” Packing up a factory here to send the jobs there, and then bringing the same goods that factory was making back here to sell is done for one and only one reason. It is done to get around the wage, safety and environmental protections that We, the People fought to build.
We formed this country and we fought to build protections that brought us a reasonably good life, and a middle class, and some security – social security – so we don’t always have to be struggling and living on the edge of a cliff, surviving only at the whim of a wealthy few with all the power. We fought a revolution against government by a wealthy and powerful few, and we fought again and again to keep and protect government of the people, by the people and for the people.
Our wage, safety and environmental protections are the result of our democracy. We, the People fought and built a government to empower and protect us, to provide good wages and provide some security and that involves rules that limit what the owners of companies can do — regulations. We build up a system of public structures like courts, laws, schools, roads, bridges — spending — that enable commerce to prosper. And we ask those who benefit from that commerce we enabled to share the return on our investment with us — taxes and wages.
Democracy, government, regulations, spending, taxes. The stronger each of these are, the better We, the People do. The weaker they are, the worse off we are.
Lately wealthy corporate owners — who benefit from the commerce that our democracy, government, regulations, spending and taxes enabled — have found another way to get around these protections that We, the People built for ourselves. They move manufacturing and jobs to countries where the people have not been able to build strong democracies to protect their interests, and then bring the goods made by the exploited workers there back here to sell. They call that “trade” when really it is just a way to get around the borders that we are able to protect. As I wrote yesterday,

These workers make the same products that had been made here, sell them in the same stores here, but make them outside of the boundaries of our democratically-won protections. And to make things worse, the companies then demand wage and benefit cuts from the workers who are still here, claiming that “globalization” means they now have to compete with workers with no rights, so they must accept less.

There is a solution to this problem. These protections that we built brought us prosperity. And that means we have a strong market. Everyone in the world wants to be able to sell to us, and we can use that power to set the rules for access to our markets.
A Democracy Tariff
We should not let exploitation of workers and the environment be a competitive advantage that is used against the democratic protections we have built for ourselves. We can and should set a “Democracy Tariff” on goods that come from countries that do not protect their workers and/or environment. This tariff should be enough to offset the competitive advantage that comes from exploiting workers and the environment. If those countries do not change we can use the revenue from the tariff to build our infrastructure and strengthen our competitive position. If those countries do change, all the better, because as democracy strengthens there, the people will prosper and can trade fairly with us to buy things we make here. Everyone is better off when trade is free and fair.
There are degrees of democracy and there can be degrees of Democracy Tariff. For example, some countries might protect workers but not the environment. The tariff on goods from those countries should be enough to offset the advantage gained from exploiting the environment but not as high as for countries that exploit both workers and the environment. Other countries might have some degree of protections but not allow unionization. The tariff should be enough to offset whatever degree of exploitation is at work.
If a Democracy Tariff is called “protectionism” so be it. We have learned the hard way that democracy is fragile and must be protected.
We must not allow exploitation of workers and the environment to be a “comparative advantage” used against our democracy — government of the people, by the people and for the people — and the protections and prosperity it has brought us.
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Exporting Jobs Is Not “Trade,” It Evades Democracy’s Protections

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This post originally appeared at Campaign for America’s Future (CAF) at their Blog for OurFuture as part of the Making It In America project. I am a Fellow with CAF.
We, the People have fought hard to build and strengthen our democracy. We built up laws and institutions and protections. It has been a particularly hard fight to build a middle class with weekends off, good wages, worker protections and some degree of protection of our environment. Step by step we fought and built, fought and built, and a prosperous democracy with a strong middle class developed.
But this has been changing. Beginning under President Reagan our government has allowed companies to bypass the strong rules that we fought to implement. Companies have been allowed – even encouraged – to pack up and move factories to low-wage, low-protection, non-democracy countries where the workers have no choice but to do what they are told if they want to feed their families and stay out of jail. These workers make the same products that had been made here, sell them in the same stores here, but make them outside of the boundaries of our democratically-won protections. And to make things worse, the companies then demand wage and benefit cuts from the workers who are still here, claiming that “globalization” means they now have to compete with workers with no rights, so they must accept less.
This is not “trade.” This is evasion of our democratically-won protections. Moving a factory across a border to evade the protections that good governments bring to their people is not “trading with other countries” it is evasion of the rules that We, the People placed on the once-level playing field of business.
The results of these anti-democratic policies have been profoundly destructive. What is called free trade has helped bring about an intense concentration of wealth, because poor people without even the benefit of our minimum wage laws are used to threaten or just replace union workers who had fought just to get a piece of the pie.
The globalization argument says that all of this destruction of rights and protections is inevitable. The people are there, they are desperate, they will accept less, so there is nothing we can do about it. Economists even argue that economic theory says this is the correct way to do business. They say that different countries have different “comparative advantages” — some unique ability to produce something better that other countries. Central and South America are better at producing bananas and our Midwest is better at producing grain, so these items should be traded.
It is correct that they grow bananas and we grow grain, but it is not correct to say that countries with democracy, where workers can demand wage, safety and environmental protections as well as protection of the public’s common resources should be pitted against desperate and exploited people, living under repressive governments that they do not have control over. We must now allow lack of democracy and lack of worker or environmental protections to be an advantage, used against us!
We can and must stop this. We have fought this fight before and we can fight it again. We need a democracy tariff at our border that protects us and protects the democracy and its protections that we have fought so hard to build. I will write more about this in my next post.
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