Too pleasant to work for the people?

The Existentialist Cowboy's guest columnist, Phil Rockstroh, provides an interesting analysis on how Clinton and Obama are alike in their deference to corporate power:

Obama and the Democrats do not move. They do not act. They do not govern. They do not serve their constituents.

Although, in reality, they do serve their true constituents ... the corporate elite -- the forces behind the rising level of authoritarian control over the lives of the people of the nation, both of ordinary citizens and the political class. In situations of veiled coercion, where unspoken threats to one's economic security and social standing are the primary motivating factors determining an individual's response to an exploitive system, there is no need to threaten potential dissenters with crude, old school totalitarian methods of repression such as forced deportment to labor and reeducation camps. In the class stratified, debt shackled US work force, where the personal consequences of financial upheaval are devastating, the implicit threat of being cast into the nation's urban gulag archipelago of homelessness coerces most into compliance with the dictates of the corporate oligarchs.

The effects are insidious. In such an environment, there is no call for the Sturm und Drang of mass spectacle, replete with blazing torches and blown banners hoisted by serried ranks of jut jawed, jack-booted ubermensch: corporatism establishes an authoritarian order by way of a series of overt bribes and tacit threats. This social and cultural criteria causes an individual to become cautious. A Triumph of the bland reigns. Obama's bland, non-threatening charm was cultivated in this hybrid, corporate soil.

As is the case with Obama, corporatism demands employees (and Obama is first among us underlings) render themselves fecklessly pleasant. This is the mandatory mode of being demanded of corporate hires -- self-annihilation by habitual amiability. And Barack Obama has perfected the form.

In his memoir, Dreams From My Father, Obama stated that he learned early: Never scare old, white people ... that is a good description of how he has dealt with BP and the banksters, and all the other old white men in their perches of privilege and power.

Obama, as was the case with Bill Clinton, will not challenge the corporate oligarchs. Both he and Clinton are gifted, intelligent men, but are products of their time. They are men of, what was once termed, "modest birth" who -- out necessity to rise past the circumstances of their origins -- studied, internalized, and made allegiance to the corporate structure. Why? Because, in the age of corporate oligarchy, they knew the only way to rise to power would be to serve its interests. In contrast, FDR came from the ruling class; he knew their ways ... wasn't tempted by the rewards and adulation that come with privilege. He was born into it, could never lose its advantages, and it held no novelty for him.

One possibility that we might also consider in explaining Obama and Clinton, and their deference to corporate interests, lies in the extraordinary scope of the job. As a new President, the sheer scale of the military, governmental, and judicial structures, needing to be led, must be overwhelming. Nothing in life as a Senator or Governor would give someone an adequate preparation for the job of U.S. President. It isn't surprising that a President would give undue weight to the advice of people who own the country, and act as if they are rightfully in charge.

Playing into the hands of terrorists

This is a sobering piece that shows the recklesness of the recent wave of anti-Islamic fear-mongering:

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

Beck Day

Well, Glenn Beck, Sarah Palin and friends put on their show at the Lincoln Memorial. The organizers did a fairly good job at keeping the speakers and crowds from saying anything overtly political, or remotely interesting. My interpretation of the whole event is that it was meant as a show of strength. First, to show that appropriating the date and place of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s most famous speech could be done with impunity. Second, to show that there are a lot of wacky white folks out there who'll show up to an event organized by right-wingers. They all got to emote about love, honor, God, guts, and glory. They pretty much followed the plan to not talk about specific political issues or people. Boring, sure, but somewhat menacing just because they all showed up when called by their masters.

Recovery!?!

Paul Krugman wants policy makers to face reality:

The small sliver of truth in claims of continuing recovery is the fact that G.D.P. is still rising: we’re not in a classic recession, in which everything goes down. But so what?

The important question is whether growth is fast enough to bring down sky-high unemployment. We need about 2.5 percent growth just to keep unemployment from rising, and much faster growth to bring it significantly down. Yet growth is currently running somewhere between 1 and 2 percent, with a good chance that it will slow even further in the months ahead. Will the economy actually enter a double dip, with G.D.P. shrinking? Who cares? If unemployment rises for the rest of this year, which seems likely, it won’t matter whether the G.D.P. numbers are slightly positive or slightly negative.

All of this is obvious. Yet policy makers are in denial.

Not only is Krugman right, the consequences of this denial may be catastrophic politically for the Democrats. Working people and the white collar unemployed have lost patience with the happy-talk from the Obama administration. Talking about being disappointed with the slow pace of the recovery won't cut it. Only by laying out a bold plan for putting millions back to work can the President regain the confidence of American voters. It may be time to propose a huge W.P.A. style jobs program.

From 36 to1?

Rhode Island may be our nation's smallest state, but it can be home to some pretty big ideas. This is from Linda Borg's report in the Providence Journal:

The leaders of the state’s two teachers’ unions said that they would not be opposed to consolidating Rhode Island’s 36 school districts into one big district.

Although they cautioned that they were speaking as private citizens, Marcia Reback, president of the Rhode Island Federation of Teachers, and Robert A. Walsh Jr., executive director of the National Education Association, Rhode Island, offered the most radical suggestions about how to fix public education. The two made their remarks at a morning-long forum in Smithfield sponsored by the Rhode Island Public Expenditure Council.

Reback said a statewide school district might be the only way to level the playing field between rich and poor students in Rhode Island, where the vast majority of poor, urban students attend schools that are largely isolated from their white middle-class peers.

“Desegregation works,” Reback told 200 educators, community leaders and public officials gathered Tuesday at Fidelity Investments. “We need to create opportunities for students of color and those with limited English language skills to go to school with kids who aren’t like them.”

What, she asked, would close the gaps between poor children and privileged ones? Combining the Central Falls and the Cumberland school districts. Joining Lincoln and Pawtucket.

This is certainly one way to remove some of the inequities inherent in a system that is mostly funded by local property taxes. Landlords in poor communities and wealthy families in affluent communities would all have their property taxes put into the same huge pot. Moving students by bus to different schools within this new mega-district would move us in the direction of desegregation.

The biggest obstacles I would foresee in implementing this bold plan are logistical and cultural. Some of the larger of Rhode Island's 36 districts, like Providence, are already accustomed to dealing with great diversity and large numbers of students. The explosion in size would be a real logistical shock to those accustomed to much smaller districts. The cultural shock would be profound. These 36 districts represent communities that have enjoyed local independent government for a long time-- in some cases well over 300 years! Could they all be brought together on one school board without deep wounds to local pride? Because Rhode Island is so small, folks define their comfort zone as a pretty tiny geographical area. Any drive of more than twenty minutes is considered an epic journey, only to be undertaken in exceptional circumstances. Families in both poor and wealthy communities will not be easily persuaded to send their kids to a school in another city or town.

Still, it is good to see that people find the current inequitable situation as something that needs major change. Hopefully this will spark needed dialogue about how to make things better.

Scaring White People

Once again Rachel Maddow shows her chops:

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

Senate Blues

Andrew Leonard has an interesting analysis of why Sen. Chris Dodd may be reluctant to back Elizabeth Warren as appointed chief of the new Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection:

We can't dismiss the possibility that Dodd's concern over whether Warren can be confirmed is merely a smokescreen disguising some long-held antipathy towards her, instead of an honest appraisal of her chances. But there's another possible explanation, too: The insane, absurd rigamarole involved in getting anything accomplished in the U.S. Senate has drained all the life out of Dodd. Throughout the American Banker interview, Dodd repeatedly talks about the challenge of doing the best you can do under the circumstances you are in -- a process that requires constant compromise and accommodation and sacrifice.

"You want to write a good bill. You can get votes, but in order to get the votes your bill becomes a shadow of itself or you try and write a stronger bill but you don't get the votes. So what's the point, you don't have a bill," he said. "You try to write the bill in a way that would be a strong bill -- that those who are watching this would say this is a remarkable bill in terms of what it does and you've got the 60 votes to pass it."

Dodd said he was pulled and pushed from both sides.

"You are working against, what was it, a thousand lobbyists that got hired to work against this bill?" he said. "I don't have a Republican partner, I have a one-vote margin in conference. It's a complicated subject matter. I've got a left that doesn't think you're being strong enough and a right that thinks you've gone too far."

Further exacerbating the situation: the other side stands to gain politically by preventing you from succeeding at all, and is willing to pretend to negotiate as a pure stalling tactic. You might think that, now that he is no longer running for election, Dodd would feel free to lambaste this mockery as the sham that it truly is. But the opposite has happened. Dodd seems to be suffering from a form of Stockholm syndrome. He's been part of a broken system for so long that he's completely internalized its rules. If GOP willingness to abuse the process of how legislation gets made becomes standard operating procedure to the point where even non-Cabinet appointments become all-out political wars, then so be it. Better to accommodate, than fight.

In this sense, the fight over Elizabeth Warren is a proxy fight over the currently inoperative system of government we are suffering under, because there's little question that in many ways the Obama administration has mirrored Dodd's capitulation. As a result, it is true, legislation has been passed. We have healthcare reform and bank reform. But we also have a right-wing outraged at even the pale "shadow" of reform and a left wing apoplectic at how little has been achieved.

The rules that allow the filibuster process in the Senate have in fact allowed the Republican minority to thwart the will of the Democratic majority. While this pisses me off, I must admit that the Republicans are simply taking advantage of rules that were knowingly adopted a long time ago. When media types say the Democrats "control both houses of Congress," they are not quite accurate. You need at least 60 Senate votes to really do that. However, if Senate Democrats were more effective in framing the national debate they would be able to pick off at least a few Republican votes from Senators who want to get re-elected. I don't blame people like Chris Dodd for feeling demoralized. Those of us out here in the country need to give more love to Senators when they do stand up for our interests. We could also be more patient with the lengthy process of breaking filibusters. Impatience to get something passed quickly leads to watered down legislation. When Republicans are forced to filibuster for a really long time, even the media begins to notice. Under scrutiny, the Republicans are forced to at least discuss their opposition. The way the game is played now, Republicans merely threaten to drag things out and Democrats quickly cave. Forcing someone like Mitch McConnell to actually keep a team awake on the floor, for days, would make the Republicans pay a greater cost for their obstructionism .

Billions for those who don't need it

From Paul Krugman's NYT blog:

What’s at stake here? According to the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center, making all of the Bush tax cuts permanent, as opposed to following the Obama proposal, would cost the federal government $680 billion in revenue over the next 10 years. For the sake of comparison, it took months of hard negotiations to get Congressional approval for a mere $26 billion in desperately needed aid to state and local governments.

And where would this $680 billion go? Nearly all of it would go to the richest 1 percent of Americans, people with incomes of more than $500,000 a year. But that’s the least of it: the policy center’s estimates say that the majority of the tax cuts would go to the richest one-tenth of 1 percent. Take a group of 1,000 randomly selected Americans, and pick the one with the highest income; he’s going to get the majority of that group’s tax break. And the average tax break for those lucky few — the poorest members of the group have annual incomes of more than $2 million, and the average member makes more than $7 million a year — would be $3 million over the course of the next decade.

We need to find a way to help ordinary folks in America understand what's going on. Many people simply accept that tax cuts for rich and poor alike are equally good for the general economy. The reason they believe this is that they generalize from their own experience. When your living expenses eat up most of your income, a cut in taxes is a significant change. Having a little more after-tax money to play with means the opportunity to eat out, buy a new microwave, save towards a vacation at Disney World. Even more affluent people, like doctors and lawyers, might be tempted to spend a little more if they can pay a bit less to Uncle Sam. But when you get to a certain level, the tax-break doesn't translate into dinners at Pizza Hut or new bicycles that would otherwise not be purchased.

The majority of this deficit-growing $680 billion would go to a group of Americans who have an average income of $7 million/year. Do you think these folks might already have a pretty nice house? A comfortable car? Do you think if we give them each an extra $3million they'll stop sitting home, pinching pennies, and run out to JCPenney's to jump-start our economy? No, there's a very good chance the extra money will be put someplace safe, to earn a guaranteed return. Or, if it is spent, does the choice to buy that diamond tennis bracelet really generate a lot of new jobs? How about another racehorse? What if the money finances a new villa in the south of France? Is that a good investment for the rest of us taxpayers? If we are to defeat Republicans in the fall, we need to do a better job of helping voters understand the true cost of their "No billionaire left behind" program.

Couric Stumps Palin With Supreme Court Question

The Sunday Funnies

This comic is actually a bit generous, since it shows an open decision to shoot the deficit hawk to protect tax cuts. Many of those opposing expiration of cuts for the wealthiest behave as if tax cuts actually have no impact on the deficit. As if a budget didn't reflect both income and expenditures.

Henry Ford

Henry Ford was no communist. He went into the business of producing automobiles to make a profit. Indeed he amassed a huge, world-class fortune through providing a sought after product to an expanding market. Yet Ford was routinely accused by some of his fellow industrialists of recklessly endangering the survival of the capitalist system. Why? Because he paid his workers more than many other blue-collar workers were paid at the time. Interestingly, he didn’t claim to do this out of some religious or humanitarian impulse. Rather, he defended his policy in strictly capitalist terms. He argued that well-paid workers would not only work harder, they would become customers as well. Automobiles were relatively expensive, and only workers paid a living wage could afford to buy them.

Incredible as it may seem, many of today’s capitalists seem to have forgotten how Ford was proven right. Workers in the U.S. are among the most productive in the world. Yet many American companies have chosen to reward this hard work with cut wages and benefits. Even worse, some companies have outsourced jobs to low-wage countries like Bangladesh. Since workers in Bangladesh are often making only 10 cents per hour they will not become new customers. Thus companies chase a short-term bump in profits at the risk of permanently shrinking their pool of potential customers. The obscene compulsion to drive down labor costs is so strong that it distorts the owner classes’ understanding of their own actions.

There are some who argue we shouldn’t worry about the disappearance of so many decent blue-collar jobs, workers simply need to “retrain for the 21^st century.” Some workers who took that advice made sacrifices to learn about computers. They were lucky to land jobs at major companies that sold software or hardware. Of course, these companies try to handle technical customer service through computerized, non-human means. Yet some customers stubbornly spend an hour or more on the phone until they reach a live person. Maybe it’s one of those displaced workers? Not any more. Thanks to the aggressive colonizing history of Great Britain, there are millions of underpaid, well-educated English speakers throughout the world for Microsoft to exploit.

Very few occupations are completely secure from the risks of downsizing and outsourcing. Even creative writers and actors who work for television have seen their employers cut costs by producing more and more “reality shows.” The truth is, there is only so much demand for “21^st century” skills. While biotechnology firms may well enjoy considerable growth going forward, their labor demands will be modest. Many millions of people have lost manufacturing jobs. They won’t all be able to find work cloning sheep. Most of them will have to settle for working at a Burger King or a Walmart.

We are now definitely moving in the direction of becoming an economy more like that of the third world, with an ever-smaller middle class. Apologists for Wall Street like to characterize this as becoming “more competitive.” Yet what does it mean for us to win this competition? Millionaires and Billionaires can pay less for their domestic help, like they do in Brazil? We already know that the situation today is untenable. Yet the super-wealthy needn’t fear the dismantling of the system that sustains them. Many of us in the bottom 98% would be content to see the return of a little common sense, like that shown by Henry Ford.

Texas

This latest controversy, over the Cordoba center in lower Manhattan, reveals a disturbing readiness of some in this country to dismiss the First Amendment. In this case, they seek to deny Muslims the freedom to spend their own money to construct a center that will include a mosque.

Yet this is not the only direction from which freedom of religion comes under attack. In addition to placing no restraints on the right of citizens to worship as they see fit, the state must also show no favor to any particular form of religion. In practice, some favoritism towards Christianity has been tolerated throughout U.S. history. Public holidays are a good example of how the simple fact of majority status has given U.S. Christians special consideration. Yet the founders’ strong distrust of any official church, like the Church of England, has persisted, and has resulted in a continuous tradition of separation between church and state. Over the last century, Jews and Catholics were often successful in preventing Protestants from improperly using the resources of the state to enforce their hegemony.

Despite all the battles won, there are many folks who still want to see their conservative Christian beliefs reflected in the content that is taught in public schools. The state of Texas recently adopted new curriculum and textbook standards that moves what teachers are expected to teach students far to the right.

In this piece about Don McLeroy, creationist, dentist, and the chair of the Texas State Board of Education we learn that he is pleased with their changes. Thomas Jefferson is marginalized while the contributions of Phyllis Schlafly and Newt Gingrich are elevated to great importance. Doubt is placed on whether the founders intended a separation of Church and State. In science, evolution must now be presented as a theory that is dubious at best.

The National Centre for Science Education, which defends the teaching of evolution in US public schools against inroads by creationists, is so alarmed that it has branded 2010 “the year of science denial” — yet nothing alarms it more than Dr McLeroy’s astonishing success in seeding the Texas high school curriculum with his literal interpretation of Genesis.

The dentist has not achieved everything he wanted. Creationism will not be taught alongside evolution as an alternative explanation for life on Earth. Even so, he says he is still “pumped”. By requiring students to probe for weaknesses in evolutionary theory the new standards will “restore the lustre of science”, he says at his surgery in College Station, near Houston.

“Take bones,” he says, offering a brief description of the collagen and amino acids in bones as an example of biological complexity. “Intuitively people have a tough time thinking nothing guided this. Are we supposed to believe that all of a sudden, say on April 1, five million years ago, the first bone appeared? The question is, how did evolution do this, and the evolutionists have been painted into a corner. They don’t even have a clue. How did that first piece of bone get there?”...

Dr. McLeroy presumably passed a biology class at some point on his way to becoming a dentist. Yet he was so strongly wedded to his fundamentalist world view that attempts to teach him basic principles of scientific reasoning simply failed. The children of Texas should not be forced to follow Dr. McLeroy in his religiously motivated resistance to modern science. Creationist parents are certainly free to send their kids to private schools that reject modern science. Other Texas parents, who pay for public schools, should not be forced to subsidize the kind of religious indoctrination that Dr. McLeroy demands.

Where the money is

Les Leopold has a good piece that puts things nicely into perspective.

We can't tackle the jobs crisis until we're willing to tackle Wall Street. Both Democrats and Republicans have stood idly by as the wage gap has turned into a Grand Canyon of inequality. (In 1970, the top 100 CEOs made 45 times more than the average worker; in 2008, they made 1,081 times more. See The Looting of America) Almost no one in Washington has the nerve to challenge Wall Street's socially useless and reckless financial games. They're afraid to say that it's wrong that the top 25 hedge fund managers made as much money during 2009 as 658,000 teachers -- or that the top ten hedge fund managers "earn" $900,000/hr. The money for job creation is right there, in the hands of the elites who profited so handsomely from the financial meltdown they helped create.

The American people are hungry for proposals to rectify this injustice. Why not turn Wall Street's ill-gotten gains into programs that put our people back to work? Here's a plan we'll probably never hear from Democrats, Republicans or the Tea Party:

Place a windfall profits tax on the super-rich who profited from our bailouts to pay for the jobs that these gamblers destroyed.

Call it a windfall profits tax or a financial transaction fee. But really it's reparations, long overdue. Tens of millions of Americans are suffering through no fault of their own. These working people didn't buy houses they couldn't afford. They didn't gamble their life's savings on derivatives and securitization.. They just went to work one day and were told their job was gone. They came home to find their neighborhood disintegrating as the housing bubble burst around them. All thanks to reckless financial games on Wall Street.

Appealing to hedge fund managers to do the right thing probably won't work. Creating incentives that reward making new jobs at home, and discourage "outsourcing," might actually work. The U.S. economy is by no means a pure free market system. If it were, big oil would be facing far more competition in the energy market. It is instead a system where the super wealthy use their overwhelming political clout to rig the system in their favor. Those of us in the bottom 98% who want to see change must set aside our differences over minor issues, and insist that our so-called representatives in government actually defend our interests.

Working together

Thomas Friedman frequently says things I don't agree with. But there's a recent plea he made that struck a chord:

The president needs to take America’s labor, business and Congressional leadership up to Camp David and not come back without a grand bargain for taxes, trade promotion, energy, stimulus and budget cutting that offers the market some certainty that we are moving together — not just on a bailout but on an economic rebirth for the 21st century. “Fat chance,” you say. Well then, I say get ready for a long phase of stubborn unemployment and anemic growth.

Our nation's unemployment crisis will not be fixed by Wall Street alone. It won't be fixed by Congress alone. It won't be fixed by unions alone. Right now Wall Street and corporate interests dominate economic policy-making completely. But the President does have the power to put other interests together with the big-money players and pressure them to find a "grand bargain." Obama would surely risk losing face if such a summit was tried and accomplished nothing. But I think many voters would give him credit for the attempt.

Friedman is mostly interested in doing something good for "the market." But, even though his suggestion isn't really motivated by any real concern for the 98% of us without major stakes in 'the market,' doing as he proposes might just help all of us. A leader who brings people together despite enormous mistrust and bitterness shows superb leadership indeed.

Applesauce

This story is close to my heart for a couple of reasons: I love applesauce, and the folks who've been making great applesauce at Motts for generations have been doing so in my native country of upstate New York. Now they are on strike because their new parent company is determined to drastically slash their wages and benefits.

The workers, meanwhile, are incensed that the company is demanding givebacks when it posted record profits last year and increased its dividend by 67 percent in May.

“Corporate America is making tons of money — this company is a good example of that,” said Mike LeBerth, president of the union local representing the strikers. “So why do they want to drive down our wages and hurt our community? This whole economy is driven by consumer spending, so how are we supposed to keep the economy going when they take away money from the people who are doing the spending?”

Dr Pepper Snapple has vigorously defended its stance. “The union contends that a profitable company shouldn’t seek concessions from its workers,” the company said in a statement. “This argument ignores the fact that as a public company, Dr Pepper Snapple Group has a fiduciary responsibility to operate in the best interests of all its constituents, recognizing that a profitable business attracts investment, generates jobs and builds communities.”

Dr. Pepper Snapple Group (parent company of Motts) is making an argument that doesn't hold water. No one is suggesting that they shouldn't try to make profits. They have in fact made enormous profits. Continuing to pay decent wages to its workers is the only way they can operate in the best interests of all their constituents. This is because workers are constituents as much as shareholders. It is true that layoffs at Xerox and Kodak give them a large pool of local workers who would work for low wages. Why is it then necessary to slash wages and benefits at Motts? Is there something wrong with being one of the few decent employers left?!?! This doesn't generate jobs and build communities. It does the opposite! Although incomes of pre-strike Motts workers were fairly modest, they allowed the surrounding community to enjoy the presence of people able to live and spend a few bucks. Pushing everyone down to subsistence level wages will destroy jobs and communities. Ice cream parlors, bookstores, realtors-- they all suffer when an important former source of decent local jobs starts paying like Walmart.

Supreme Court

Here's a news flash from the Supreme Court blog:

“Birther” lawyer rebuffed
$20,000 penalty stands

Lyle Denniston | Monday, August 16th, 2010 11:58 am

The Supreme Court on Monday put an end to a running battle between a California lawyer — a prominent figure in the movement to challenge the legitimacy of Barack Obama’s Presidency — and a federal judge in Georgia. The full Court refused, without comment, to block a $20,000 penalty that District Judge Clay D. Land of Columbus, Ga., had imposed last October on the attorney, Orly Taitz, of Rancho Santa Margarita, Calif. Earlier this month, Judge Land’s Court put a lien on all of Taitz’s real property until the penalty is paid.

The denial of Taitz’s stay application (Taitz v. McDonald, 10A56), was by the Court after the issue had been referred by Justice Samuel A. Alito, Jr. In July, Justice Clarence Thomas similarly denied the application; it was then refiled with Alito. Now that the full Court has acted, Taitz is blocked from making the same plea to another Justice.

After Justice Thomas' denial, this outcome was predictable. Yet I must confess that I was holding my breath, unsure if the right-wing majority on the court still had any grip on reality. The loonies behind Taitz, who simply refuse to believe the well-documented fact that Barack Obama was born in Hawaii, haven't managed to gain full acceptance in the conservative establishment. This is a relief. Yet we have already seen that Justices like Alito and Thomas are willing to abandon precedent and constitutional principles in order to further the radical agenda of big money interests. Through advertising, lobbyists, and the means to pursue expensive legal battles, corporations have always had tremendous power to advance their political agendas. Yet our legal system has for decades viewed that power with some mistrust. In cases where corporate power and money were used to influence the political process, there was an expectation that the people had the right to put some limits on corporate control over elections and lawmaking. At the least, it was considered that the public interest was best served when the spending of corporate money in politics was fully disclosed and not unlimited. Especially after the advent of expensive television advertising, the notion that it was unfair to allow big-money interests to easily "buy" elections was consistently upheld. That has all changed with the recent decision in Citizens United v. F.E.C. As Lyle Denniston observes:

The fact is that the decades-old image of American corporations as a destabilizing and perhaps even corrupting influence in politics has now been thoroughly re-examined by the Supreme Court, and the corporate “person” emerges from the process with — in the eyes of the majority — a burnished image of good citizen. There is a deep chasm of perception, between Thursday’s majority and the dissenters, about the nature of the corporate personality.

Ordinary people have few viable options in standing up to corporate interests. If someone willing to champion the people's interests must face unlimited and uncontrolled corporate spending, they will have little chance of being heard over the big-money noise machine. The only folks left in the arena to defend the people's interests will be liberals with great personal wealth. While I appreciate the contributions of Ted Kennedy and John Kerry, we cannot hope to find an adequate supply of well-meaning aristocrats willing to get their hands dirty in politics.

The DISCLOSE Act will come up soon for another attempt at a vote in the Senate. It is a fairly modest attempt to counter some of the most pernicious effects of the Citizens United ruling. In particular, the Act would require that large corporate political advertisers be clearly identified as sponsors of their ads. I hope this legislation passes, yet I fear that even if it does, corporations will figure out clever ways to evade its intent.

The slippery slope

Downward social mobility is always a possibility in any social or economic system. For those of us in America who are baby boomers, however, there is a strange reluctance to admit how many folks are falling down today. We were raised in a time when middle-class kids who did well in school, and went on to college, felt reasonably confident they could find an opportunity to make a decent living. My friend Peter W. is a great example of someone who was totally shocked by this recession’s impact on him and his family. After graduating college, Peter began working at a large bank in Boston. Over the years he was steadily promoted, and he earned his M.B.A. by the late ‘80s. Transferred to Rhode Island, he bought a home and started a family with his wife, Meg. The family enjoyed vacations in places like Europe and Hawaii. They had two comfortable cars, and paid landscapers to keep their yard beautiful. When the girls needed braces, Peter simply wrote out checks to the orthodontist. Financial worries seemed far away. Then, in February of 2008, Peter was laid off from the bank. Since then the only work he’s found has been a very short-term stint working for the Census. Thanks to Meg’s job as a bookkeeper there is still some income coming in. Yet they have been forced to deplete their savings. They are behind on the mortgage. They sold one of the cars, and no longer take fancy vacations. They dropped their gym membership and their subscription to the New York Times. Peter borrows a neighbor’s lawnmower to cut the yard. Peter fears they will eventually face foreclosure. Moving into an apartment in a far less attractive neighborhood is a real possibility.

Peter’s family hasn’t fallen anywhere near real poverty. They are, in fact, still living a much easier life than many. Nonetheless, their confident assumptions about the world, and their place in it, have been shattered. Peter’s former employer has recently posted record profits. Wall Street observers have heaped praise on this large bank for its “intelligent restructuring of human resources.” Corporate interests are not the same as our interests. For the very wealthy, high unemployment is mostly a good thing. It depresses wages which allows the owner class to bring goods and services to market at lower cost. This time, however, the persistence of high unemployment has begun to seriously affect consumer demand. This low demand will eventually erode profits enough that at least some rich folks may feel a pinch.

The easiest way to think of our current situation is like a huge game of chicken. On one side the corporate interests are saying: “Hey, America! Want some of your jobs back? Act more like our workers in Bangladesh who toil away for 14 hours a day at 10 cents an hour!” And the American middle and working classes are saying: “A new plasma T.V.? Are you joking? We’re not buying more stuff until we know we have a steady job at good pay!” Who’s going to win? Sadly, we all need to eat so we tend to work for less. This is why companies are so often able to find scabs to replace striking workers. The very wealthy don’t need to worry about their next meal. They can ride out even long periods of depression, investing in anything that provides any kind of return.

There is one piece of good news. The vote of a poor person counts as much on Election Day as that of a rich person. There are relatively few rich people. What’s more, some rich people have a conscience! Our votes combined with those of decent rich folks should prevail in any contest. We should be able to elect folks who will pursue policies aimed at producing full employment. If we can’t, it’s because politicians have found ways to distract and divide us. A politician who was truly willing to take up the cause of improving conditions for working people, even at the risk of losing support from the very wealthy, would have great appeal. The huge challenge for such a politician would be to speak to voters without massive funding or media exposure.

A long awaited statement of principle

WASHINGTON (AP)

- After skirting the controversy for weeks, President Barack Obama is weighing in forcefully on the mosque near ground zero, saying a nation built on religious freedom must allow it.

"As a citizen, and as president, I believe that Muslims have the same right to practice their religion as everyone else in this country," Obama told an intently listening crowd gathered at the White House Friday evening to observe the Islamic holy month of Ramadan.

"That includes the right to build a place of worship and a community center on private property in lower Manhattan, in accordance with local laws and ordinances," he said. "This is America, and our commitment to religious freedom must be unshakable."

It was quite a relief to hear the President reaffirm our basic rights to religious freedom in the U.S. It was too bad he left Mayor Bloomberg and others twisting in the wind for so long. The other day I was reflecting on just how remarkable it is to enjoy true religious freedom. This freedom is inherently controversial. We need to protect people's right to build synagogues, churches, mosques, and Buddhist temples. Equally important, we need to prevent Christians, Buddhists, or anyone else from forcing public school teachers or nurses to promote their doctrines. The U.S. will lose very much if popular sentiment against any religious group (or against atheists for that matter) is allowed to sway public officials to abandon their duty to uphold the separation of church and state. Here in Rhode Island this principle has been upheld from the days of Roger Williams and Anne Hutchinson. Rhode Islanders are rightly proud of their diverse and tolerant heritage. Of course, even Rhode Island has bigots, but I'm grateful to live in a place that celebrates its ethnic and religious diversity.

Redirecting resentment

Union membership in this country has steadily declined over the last decades, falling most sharply in the private sector. This has had a negative effect on all working Americans, reducing wages, benefits and job security. It has also hurt the bargaining power of surviving unions, leading some to allow employers almost free reign, in exchange for the dubious distinction of recognition as parties to contracts that offer less and less to workers. With less people in unions, and unions losing clout, many Americans today have no real direct experience of enjoying the benefits of union membership. This makes it possible for Republicans to call unions "special interests," on a par with those who own mineral rights on public lands, or importers of Russian mink. The teachers, police, and firefighters who were spared the ax, with the bill house Democrats just passed, are mostly union members. They do not enjoy anything like the wealth or power that an investment banker or corporate lobbyist does. Yet compared to many other working Americans, these folks have it pretty good. When you're working for a low wage with no benefits, the deal given to a cop or a school teacher seems sweet indeed. Moreover, the wages and benefits paid to these public sector union members come out of taxes. All of this might help to explain how a group of Republicans, who has vigorously fought for the interests of the very wealthiest among us, has managed to redirect some of the natural anger and resentment of the less affluent against "union special interests." This is discouraging, yet perhaps it is also what we might call a "teachable moment." Union members can point proudly to their relative strength. The recession has hurt us, the cops and teachers can say, but at least we have some protection. Wouldn't our country be better off if more workers were able to get a better deal than they're giving at WalMart? Instead of whining about fat union contracts, try to form a union and get yourself a fatter contract too!

Zagat's guide to militias by Bill Maher

Bill Maher shows how making fun of those who are truly scary can be a healthy thing. The concept is clever, and the bit doesn't drag on too long. Enjoy!