Undernews For 16 Feb 2011

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What a populist rebellion might look like
Sam Smith

The media tells you about the Tea Party, but not that, according to a recent poll, an equal number of Americans have similar positive feelings about socialism. Part of the reason is the deep conservative bias of the mass media, but it is also because progressives and liberals have not done a good job of promoting specific policies that people will appreciate and the establishment will fear.

Further, progressives and liberals have done a rotten job of reaching out beyond their own natural constituency to find the new supporters that change will require. They have been increasingly content - often quite smugly so - to remain in their nest attacking the right but failing to offer a decent alternative. In other words, they have forgotten the importance and skill of organizing.

Finally, as liberals have become more upscale they have drifted right in their political view, particularly demonstrated by growing indifference to the economic policies and philosophy that once defined them. The right has exploited this shift by distracting a logical constituency away from its own economic and social interests towards such matters as gay marriage and abortion.

But, as Egypt has reminded us, things do change. And since the bipartisan right - i.e. the GOP and Obama - are clearly failing at getting the country back on its economic feet, it's worth considering that how a populist rebellion might turn things around.

Here are a few suggestions:

- Repeal the upscale tax cuts provided in the GOP-Obama tax package. This alone would eliminate the need for Obama's deficit proposal for the next two years. Yes, it would be class warfare, but until the upper classes start behaving themselves, go for it.

- Press for the indictment of those criminally responsible for the foreclosure disaster. Fifty states are doing it and the feds should do it, too.

- Start a drive for a constitutional amendment for an elected Attorney General. 43 states have them and it's a major reason they're going after the banks now.

- Join the drive for a constitutional amendment to deny corporation the status of a human person in political matters.

- Oppose all deficit reduction programs aimed against lower and mid income Americans such as the cut in heating fuel assistance.

- Allow the government to become co-owners of troubled mortgages, just as they became co-owner of GM.

- Replace the high speed rail program with transportation and other public works programs that help ordinary citizens rather than the business class.

- Support instant runoff voting to increase the influence of the rightfully discontented in our nation.

- Pursue a strongly localist politics aimed at bringing decisions down to the lowest practical level. We need local democracy as well as local lettuce.

- Support public campaign financing.

- Get banks out of financially risky and speculative activities by restoring key provisions of the Glass-Steagall Act.

- Support cooperatives and worker-owned businesses.

- Establish state banks as in North Dakota.

- Start selective boycotts, probably the single most effective and underused organizing tool left in our increasingly oppressive society. The boycotts should be carefully chosen and include easy alternatives (e.g. Coke vs. Pepsi)

- End usury, starting with the prohibition of two digit interest rates on credit cards.

- Strong support for small businesses and strong regulation of large corporations.

- Increase taxes on business outsourcing to foreign countries. For example, over half of Americans support a tax on foreign customer service calls.

- End offshore tax havens

- Protect Social Security and Medicare

- Prevent employers from taking a tax deduction, loss, or credit if they downsize or cease operations in the U.S. and subsequently expand or reopen overseas

- Single payer health care

There are, of course, other important things we need to do like end the drug war and dismantle our failed empire with its huge military costs. But the list above is centered on one goal: doing the most for the most in ways that an ordinary citizen can understand and which involve the wallet, the shortest path to a voters' heart.

If progressives strongly pursue policies of economic populism, they will discover millions of new allies. If they continue to fail to do so, they can expect little but the continued collapse of their country.

Morning Line: Making the victim pay for the crime
Sam Smith

Add Obama's budget to numerous actions at the state and local level and one thing is clear about the current fiscal crisis: the victim is going to be made to pay for the crime and most of the perps will either get off free or actually come out ahead.

The media and pols are treating the crisis as though it were just another economic catastrophe, sort of like a hurricane or tornado. It is nothing of the sort.

It is the result of deliberate, reckless and wanton actions by those whose control over the economy vastly outstrips the aggregate power of ordinary citizens. And it is the result of deliberate, reckless and wanton actions by those whose control over the economy has substantially increased thanks to the deliberate undermining of legal protections designed to protect ordinary citizens, such as the bipartisan repeal (with Bill Clinton's happy signature) of the 66 year-old Glass-Stegel Act, an early step in recovering from the Great Depression.

Yet, while 50 state attorneys general - 43 of them elected by the people - have joined in an investigation of the subprime scandal (in no small part the result of the Glass-Stegel repeal), the main thing we have heard from the federal attorney general, Eric Holder, is a vague promise to look into the matter.

Aside from the fact that this strengthens the argument for an elected federal attorney general, it illustrates how indifferent the Obamites are to dealing with obvious criminal and civil offenses that have been committed in the guise of a "free market economy" by bankers and others.

One could, for example, argue that the RICO conspiracy laws should be used as forcefully against Wall Street as they are against drug dealers. Or consider this definition of the felony known as reckless endangerment: "A person commits the crime of reckless endangerment if the person recklessly engages in conduct which creates a substantial risk of serious physical injury to another person. Reckless conduct is conduct that exhibits a culpable disregard of foreseeable consequences to others from the act or omission involved. The accused need not intentionally cause a resulting harm or know that his conduct is substantially certain to cause that result. The ultimate question is whether, under all the circumstances, the accused’s conduct was of that heedless nature that made it actually or imminently dangerous to the rights or safety of others."

But nothing like this is about to happen in our corporatist Congress and White House. Instead, according to Obama's plan, heating assistance for the poor will be cut by fifty percent, the community development of poorer communities will be slashed, Pell grants will be cut, cleaning up the Great Lakes shoved to the back of the line and so forth.

In other words, the ordinary citizen - the victim of a major bipartisan fiscal felony - is going to have to pay still more while those responsible for the offense escape and/or find new ways to profit upon it.

In other words, the crime continues and gets worse.
Clinton wants free Internet abroad, but not here
Wired - “History has shown us that repression often sows the seeds for revolution down the road,” Clinton said in reference to Egypt and Tunisia. ”Those who clamp down on internet freedom may be able to hold back the full impact of their people’s yearnings for a while, but not forever.” It was the secretary’s second address on net freedoms and comes as social media sites like YouTube, FaceBook and Twitter helped fuel uprisings from Algeria to Syria. “I urge countries everywhere to join the United States in our bet that an open internet will lead to stronger, more prosperous countries,” she said at George Washington University.

Clinton’s speech came a day after the House voted to extend to December 8 three controversial domestic spy provisions of the Patriot Act. And Customs officials seized 18 more internet domains without giving the pirate website owners a chance to challenge the forfeiture.

The secretary, meanwhile, was quick to point out that the United States government’s vocal and legal campaign against WikiLeaks is premised on a “theft” of government material.
The real GOP platform
Asked about the tens of thousands of workers who would be unemployed if the GOP budget plan goes through, John Boehner said, "If some of those jobs are lost, so be it."
Take that, deficit, Egypt, environment, Afghanistan, just to name a few
Mike Huckabee says abortion is "an issue that . . . transcends all of the political issues."
South Dakota measure, approved by committee, would making killing a doctor who provides abortions a "justifiable homicide"
Mother Jones - A law under consideration in South Dakota would expand the definition of "justifiable homicide" to include killings that are intended to prevent harm to a fetus¬a move that could make it legal to kill doctors who perform abortions. The Republican-backed legislation, House Bill 1171, has passed out of committee on a nine-to-three party-line vote, and is expected to face a floor vote in the state's GOP-dominated House of Representatives soon.
Word: Why so many don't want the truth
Bill Moyers, Alternet - As Joe Keohane reported last year in The Boston Globe, political scientists have begun to discover a human tendency "deeply discouraging to anyone with faith in the power of information." He was reporting on research at the University of Michigan, which found that when misinformed people, particularly political partisans, were exposed to corrected facts in new stories, they rarely changed their minds. In fact, they often became even more strongly set in their beliefs. Facts were not curing misinformation. "Like an underpowered antibiotic, facts could actually make misinformation even stronger."

While "most of us like to believe that our opinions have been formed over time by careful, rational consideration of facts and ideas and that the decisions based on those opinions, therefore, have the ring of soundness and intelligence," the research found that actually "we often base our opinions on our beliefs . . . and rather than facts driving beliefs, our beliefs can dictate the facts we chose to accept. They can cause us to twist facts so they fit better with our preconceived notions."

These studies help to explain why America seems more and more unable to deal with reality. So many people inhabit a closed belief system on whose door they have hung the "Do Not Disturb" sign, that they pick and choose only those facts that will serve as building blocks for walling them off from uncomfortable truths. Any journalist whose reporting threatens that belief system gets sliced and diced by its apologists and polemicists. . . George Orwell had warned six decades ago that the corrosion of language goes hand in hand with the corruption of democracy. If he were around today, he would remind us that "like the rattling of a stick inside a swill bucket," this kind of propaganda engenders a "protective stupidity" almost impossible for facts to penetrate.

But you can't give up. If you do, there's no chance any public memory of everyday truths - the tangible, touchable, palpable realities so vital to democracy - will survive. We would be left to the mercy of the agitated amnesiacs who "make" their own reality, as one of them boasted at the time America invaded Iraq, in order to maintain their hold on the public mind and the levers of power. You will remember that in Orwell's novel "1984," Big Brother banishes history to the memory hole, where inconvenient facts simply disappear. Control of the present rests on obliteration of the past. The figure of O'Brien, who is the personification of Big Brother, says to the protagonist, Winston Smith: "We shall squeeze you empty and then we shall fill you with ourselves." And they do. The bureaucrats in the Ministry of Truth destroy the records of the past and publish new versions. These in turn are superseded by yet more revisions. Why? Because people without memory are at the mercy of the powers that be; there is nothing against which to measure what they are told today. History is obliterated.
Republicans now oppose child safety laws
AFL-CIO - Missouri State Sen. Jane Cunningham (R) has introduced a bill to minimize child labor laws: "This act modifies the child labor laws. It eliminates the prohibition on employment of children under age fourteen. Restrictions on the number of hours and restrictions on when a child may work during the day are also removed. It also repeals the requirement that a child ages fourteen or fifteen obtain a work certificate or work permit in order to be employed. Children under sixteen will also be allowed to work in any capacity in a motel, resort or hotel where sleeping accommodations are furnished. It also removes the authority of the director of the Division of Labor Standards to inspect employers who employ children and to require them to keep certain records for children they employ. It also repeals the presumption that the presence of a child in a workplace is evidence of employment."
Court rules employees lack free speech even when warning about safety
First Amendment Center - In 2003, while working as head custodian at Somers Central High School in Lincolndale, N.Y., Norman Morey received a phone call about a mass that had fallen onto the gymnasium floor. Morey feared that it might be asbestos and warned school administrators. The result was that Morey lost his job ¬ supposedly for reasons unrelated to his asbestos report. However, Morey had never been disciplined before voicing his concerns about asbestos.

In March 2010, a federal district court granted the school officials summary judgment, finding that Morey’s speech was job-duty speech within the meaning of the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2006 decision in Garcetti v. Ceballos.

Under Garcetti, public employees have no First Amendment protection ¬ even for whistleblowing ¬ when they make statements as part of their official job duties.

Morey appealed to the 2nd Circuit, which affirmed the lower court in its Feb. 9 decision in Morey v. Somers Central School District.

“The district court correctly concluded that, on the evidence of record, any reasonable jury would be required to find that Morey’s speech was made pursuant to his official duties,” the appeals court wrote. “As head custodian, Morey was responsible for overseeing the general cleaning and upkeep of the school building.”

Morey had argued that by continuing to warn about possible asbestos, he had removed his speech from the job-duty category. The appeals court was not convinced: “That Morey continued to press his concerns about asbestos communication, even after supervisors told him to leave the matter alone, does not change our analysis.”

The decision continues a trend in the lower courts to apply Garcetti broadly, even to employees who speak out on public-safety issues.
Budget math
The Washington Post noted that President Obama's budget called for a $30 billion bank fee to recoup losses from the TARP. It would raise approximately $3 billion a year, this is less than one-fifth the size of the $17.5 billion bonus pool at Goldman Sachs in 2010. - Dean Baker
Chicago's rep threatened by New York
A report says that one of every 11 New York legislators who left office since 1999 has done so on account of ethical or criminal charges, making it more common reason than being voted out of office as a impetus for legislative turnover - Obsterver
Valid health concern
I exercise regularly. I eat moderate amounts of healthy food. I make sure to get plenty of rest. I see my doctor once a year and my dentist twice a year. I floss every night. I've had chest x-rays, cardio stress tests EKGs and colonoscopies. I see a psychologist and have a variety of hobbies to reduce stress. I don't drink. I don't smoke. I don't do drugs. I don't have crazy, reckless sex with stranger. If Charlie Sheen outlives me, I'm gonna be really pissed. - Chuck Lorre
Study: Wal Mart hurts local communities
Activist Post - New York’s Public Advocate, Bill de Blasio, recently released a very important study about Wal-Mart’s effects on local communities. It represents a major step forward in the understanding of the effects of Big Business. . .

The fundamental conclusions are these:

1. Wal-Mart store openings kill three local jobs for every two they create. Wal-Mart is the biggest employer in the USA, with 1.4 million ‘associates’. The conclusion is that Wal-Mart alone has killed about 700,000 American jobs. Only Wall Street can boast greater destruction to the American labor market.

2. Chain stores, like Wal-Mart, send most of their revenues out of the community, while local businesses keep more consumer dollars in the local economy: for every $100 spent in locally owned businesses, $68 stayed in the local economy, while chain stores only left $43 to re-circulate locally. This means Big Business has a deflationary effect on local economies. And this in turn explains why Big Business destroys both employment and business. . .

3. Stores near a new Wal-Mart are at increased risk of going out of business. After a single Wal-Mart opened in Chicago in September 2006, 82 of the 306 small businesses in the surrounding neighborhood had gone out of business by March 2008.

4. Wal-Mart’s average annual pay is $20,774, which is below the federal poverty level for a family of four. . .
How liberals misread the healthcare law
Mark Scaramella, Counterpunch - Former health insurance PR man Wendell Potter . . . wrote last year that the key provision in Obamacare - that millions of Americans would be required to buy health insurance - was the only way the Obama administration could get the bill past the insurance companies:

“Many insurance executives were wary of such a mandate because they don't like the government mandating anything, especially those pesky state mandates that force them to include certain benefits in the policies they sell. Advocates of an individual mandate eventually brought the skeptics, including many of AHIP's [American Health Insurance Plan’s] board members, around to their way thinking by persuading them that insurers could make billions more in profits if every American had to buy an insurance policy from them. Now you know the real reason behind AHIP's shift from neutrality on the issue to full-fledged support. It's all about the money.”. . .

Not so, says Judge Vinson. The omission was intentional. “The defendants have asserted again and again that the individual mandate is absolutely ‘necessary’ and ‘essential’ for the Act to operate as it was intended by Congress,” said Vinson. “I accept that it is.” After some more detailed analysis, Vinson added, “In other words, the severability clause was intentionally left out of the Act.”

So Judge Vinson is agreeing with the health insurance companies that without the mandate, the health insurance business would be in trouble because they might have to provide slightly better insurance without getting millions of new customers. And we can’t have that.

Further on, Judge Vinson adds, “For the reasons stated, I must reluctantly conclude that Congress exceeded the bounds of its authority in passing the Act with the individual mandate. That is not to say, of course, that Congress is without power to address the problems and inequities in our health care system. The health care market is more than one sixth of the national economy, and without doubt Congress has the power to reform and regulate this market.”

By referring to the “health care market,” Judge Vinson is essentially ignoring single-payer style reformers and is trying to save the insurance companies from having to live with the minor reforms in Obamacare without getting billions in profits from millions of Americans who will be forced to buy (very bad) “health insurance.”
Word
Charles M. Blow, NY Times - It was only the second time since Harry S. Truman’s State of the Union address in 1948 that such a speech by a Democratic president did not include a single mention of poverty or the plight of the poor. . .

The closest Obama got to a mention was his confirmation for “Americans who’ve seen their paychecks dwindle or their jobs disappear” that, indeed, “the world has changed. The competition for jobs is real.” I’m sure they appreciated that. . .

So how is it that this Democratic president has the temerity to deliver a State of the Union address that completely neglects any explicit mention of the calamitous conditions now afflicting his staunchest supporters: the poor?

(In 2008, Obama won 73 percent of the vote of those earning less than $15,000 a year, 60 percent of those earning between $15,000 and $30,000 and 55 percent of the vote of those earning $30,000 to $50,000. Those were his widest margins of victory of any income group and helped to propel him to victory.). . . .

I want to believe that President Obama’s speech omissions were oversights, not acts of arrogance. But I’m not sure.

President Truman wrote in 1953 that, “ultimately, no President can master his responsibilities, save as his fellow citizens ¬ indeed, the whole people ¬ comprehend the challenge of our times and move, with him, to meet it.” But, it is sometimes hard to follow ¬ indeed, to chase ¬ a president who appears to be moving, often at a full sprint, away from the people who once carried him.
Things less important to Obama than losing in Iraq & Afghanistan
Winter heating for local income people
Public health
Pell Grants
Community development programs
The health of the Great Lakes
Water treatment plants
PS: No spending freeze for the military



Mubarak needed time to transfer his funds offshore

Worst housing collapse in history

Wisconsin GOP governor's war on unions

12,000 protesters gather at Wisconsin state capital to oppose governor's war on unions
Green Bay Packers join battle
According to George Bush and Barack Obama, you or any American citizen can, without criminal charges, be placed in an isolation cell, denied sleep (with no mattress, blanket, sheet, or pillow) and painfully shackled. It's already happened.

New Yorkers on food stamps up 65% over five years ago

Source of Iraq bio-weapons claim admits he lied

Ecuadorian court fines Chevron $8 billion for pollution

ENDS

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