Author: chasdarwin

Active in Americans United, Center For Inquiry, and ACLU

The New Progressive Movement

Those who think that the cold weather will end the protests should think again. A new generation of leaders is just getting started. The new progressive age has begun

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From NY Times, via RSN

By:  Jeffrey D. Sachs

N.B.: Organisers take note: blueprint inclosed.

“Occupy Wall Street and its allied movements around the country are more than a walk in the park. They are most likely the start of a new era in America. Historians have noted that American politics moves in long swings. We are at the end of the 30-year Reagan era, a period that has culminated in soaring income for the top 1 percent and crushing unemployment or income stagnation for much of the rest. The overarching challenge of the coming years is to restore prosperity and power for the 99 percent.

Thirty years ago, a newly elected Ronald Reagan made a fateful judgment: “Government is not the solution to our problem. Government is the problem.” Taxes for the rich were slashed, as were outlays on public services and investments as a share of national income. Only the military and a few big transfer programs like Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and veterans’ benefits were exempted from the squeeze.

Reagan’s was a fateful misdiagnosis. He completely overlooked the real issue – the rise of global competition in the information age – and fought a bogeyman, the government. Decades on, America pays the price of that misdiagnosis, with a nation singularly unprepared to face the global economic, energy and environmental challenges of our time.

Washington still channels Reaganomics. The federal budget for nonsecurity discretionary outlays – categories like highways and rail, education, job training, research and development, the judiciary, NASA, environmental protection, energy, the IRS and more – was cut from more than 5 percent of gross domestic product at the end of the 1970s to around half of that today. With the budget caps enacted in the August agreement, domestic discretionary spending would decline to less than 2 percent of GDP by the end of the decade, according to the White House. Government would die by fiscal asphyxiation.

Both parties have joined in crippling the government in response to the demands of their wealthy campaign contributors, who above all else insist on keeping low tax rates on capital gains, top incomes, estates and corporate profits. Corporate taxes as a share of national income are at the lowest levels in recent history. Rich households take home the greatest share of income since the Great Depression. Twice before in American history, powerful corporate interests dominated Washington and brought America to a state of unacceptable inequality, instability and corruption. Both times a social and political movement arose to restore democracy and shared prosperity.

The first age of inequality was the Gilded Age at the end of the 19th century, an era quite like today, when both political parties served the interests of the corporate robber barons. The progressive movement arose after the financial crisis of 1893. In the following decades Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson came to power, and the movement pushed through a remarkable era of reform: trust busting, federal income taxation, fair labor standards, the direct election of senators and women’s suffrage.

The second gilded age was the Roaring Twenties. The pro-business administrations of Harding, Coolidge and Hoover once again opened up the floodgates of corruption and financial excess, this time culminating in the Great Depression. And once again the pendulum swung. FDR’s New Deal marked the start of several decades of reduced income inequality, strong trade unions, steep top tax rates and strict financial regulation. After 1981, Reagan began to dismantle each of these core features of the New Deal.

Following our recent financial calamity, a third progressive era is likely to be in the making. This one should aim for three things. The first is a revival of crucial public services, especially education, training, public investment and environmental protection. The second is the end of a climate of impunity that encouraged nearly every Wall Street firm to commit financial fraud. The third is to re-establish the supremacy of people votes over dollar votes in Washington.

None of this will be easy. Vested interests are deeply entrenched, even as Wall Street titans are jailed and their firms pay megafines for fraud. The progressive era took 20 years to correct abuses of the Gilded Age. The New Deal struggled for a decade to overcome the Great Depression, and the expansion of economic justice lasted through the 1960s. The new wave of reform is but a few months old.

The young people in Zuccotti Park and more than 1,000 cities have started America on a path to renewal. The movement, still in its first days, will have to expand in several strategic ways. Activists are needed among shareholders, consumers and students to hold corporations and politicians to account. Shareholders, for example, should pressure companies to get out of politics. Consumers should take their money and purchasing power away from companies that confuse business and political power. The whole range of other actions – shareholder and consumer activism, policy formulation, and running of candidates – will not happen in the park.

The new movement also needs to build a public policy platform. The American people have it absolutely right on the three main points of a new agenda. To put it simply: tax the rich, end the wars and restore honest and effective government for all.

Finally, the new progressive era will need a fresh and gutsy generation of candidates to seek election victories not through wealthy campaign financiers but through free social media. A new generation of politicians will prove that they can win on YouTube, Twitter, Facebook and blog sites, rather than with corporate-financed TV ads. By lowering the cost of political campaigning, the free social media can liberate Washington from the current state of endemic corruption. And the candidates that turn down large campaign checks, political action committees, Super PACs and bundlers will be well positioned to call out their opponents who are on the corporate take.

Those who think that the cold weather will end the protests should think again. A new generation of leaders is just getting started. The new progressive age has begun.”
Jeffrey D. Sachs is the director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University and the author, most recently, of “The Price of Civilization: Reawakening American Virtue and Prosperity.”


Emphasis Mine

see:http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/277-75/8379-the-new-progressive-movement

Occupy the Education System: Students, Teachers and Parents Find New Spirit and Challenge the Attack on Public Schools

In the past couple of weeks, Occupy Wall Street has spurred dedicated education activists into some of the most innovative and inspiring actions.

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From: Alternet

By:Sarah Jaffe

“I work hard, but my grades don’t matter. But I have a voice and I will be heard!”

Jordan is 13, and she’s speaking to a crowd of mostly adults, sitting on the granite steps of the New York City Department of Education at Tweed Hall. Or rather, she is speaking through them, as her words echo through the people’s mic used at Occupy Wall Street just few blocks south from where she’s speaking.

Tonight the steps of the DOE themselves have been occupied and are packed with teachers, students, parents, and supporters holding a general assembly on the state of public education in New York.

Jordan was far from the only student to speak. A young girl holding up one end of a sign that read “Nothing about us, without us, is for us!” declared “I am angry! I am PISSED! And I want JUSTICE!” in ringing tones, and Devan, a poet, read a poem over the people’s mic.

Perhaps the most remarkable thing about this event was the way in which it brought together those who might be considered adversaries in a conversation about the things they feel are hurting schools.

Students spoke about the pressure of high-stakes testing, but also of their teachers’ hard work and low pay. Teachers worried that their students were not learning because they were cramming for tests, and parents called for teachers to be supported, not threatened.

Rosie Frascella, a teacher and one of the organizers of this general assembly, told me before the event happened that invitations to speak had been issued to Mayor Mike Bloomberg and Schools Chancellor Dennis Walcott.

“If Chancellor Walcott and Bloomberg choose to show up, they will have the same opportunity to speak as all of us, and to show them what a democratic process looks like, because obviously they don’t know,” she said.

The Fight in New York

The first Occupy the Department of Education (Occupy the DOE) action took place on October 25 at the Panel for Educational Policy’s regular public meeting where teachers, parents and students are invited to speak to the city’s education policymakers—but on the policymakers’ terms.

“The PEP represents the struggle of OWS in many ways. The PEP is essentially mayoral control, the mayor appoints eight out of 13 panelists, so whatever Bloomberg decides, he makes sure that his panelists vote in alliance with his beliefs. It’s very clear who the 1 percent is in education: Bloomberg and Chancellor Walcott. The rest of us feel like the 99 percent: teachers, students, and parents,” Frascella said.

Brian Jones, a teacher at Brooklyn’s PS 261, told me there was intense frustration with the PEP among parents and teachers who had gone to many meetings and testified through the approved channels, only to have their voices ignored. “When they tried to close the 19 schools people testified until four in the morning, hundreds testified, and the PEP of course votes with the mayor,” he said. “We’re going through these motions of democracy even though what stands behind it is a dictatorship.”

The discussion that night was supposed to have been on new standards to be implemented in the schools. “We should’ve had the discussion before the implementation of such standards,” Jones said. “These standards were funded by Bill Gates. The guy who wrote them is not even a teacher. it’s like having a Surgeon General who never practiced medicine.”

Frascella said, “We’re thinking of new ways that we can allow parents and students and teachers to have a voice in the decisions that are affecting our lives, our working conditions, addressing and combating this mayoral control. Mayoral control is really killing our city.”

She noted that Mayor Bloomberg renewed a $120 million contract with Verizon while 45,000 of its workers were on strike, and when the company was already involved in a scandal around fraudulent billing—in August, Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer called for the return of $800,000 to the city from Verizon.

“We don’t have mayoral control in white suburbia, you only see policies like these in urban settings,” Frascella said.

It’s not just the handing over of education department dollars to big corporations that led to the education actions, though. Standardized, high-stakes testing at the expense of real teaching time is also a major complaint. Jones told me that plans are now underway for high-stakes testing in arts and music. “There’s urgency around making sure that every kid takes a music test but not that every kid has a music teacher,” he said. “The city has laid off 700 school aides. Meanwhile we have tens of millions of dollars wasted on technology consultants, and the DOE is hiring more data specialists, data consultants at very high salaries.”

And the drive toward more charter schools led the Grassroots Education Movement (of which Jones is a part) to create a documentary called The Inconvenient Truth Behind Waiting for Superman, to push back against the seemingly endless flood of pro-charter-school media.

Jones pointed out that charter schools are pushed by people who have an agenda, like Eva Moskowitz, a former city councilwoman and failed candidate for Manhattan borough president who now runs a multi-million-dollar charter school network. Moskowitz has her sights set on Brooklyn now. “This new charter school that Moskowitz is trying to build is backed by Goldman Sachs,” Jones noted. “You don’t have to work very hard to make the connections.”

“I think there’s certainly a critical mass of consciousness–a critical mass of people who through their direct experience with so-called education reform have come to figure out that this is a wolf in sheep’s clothing,” Jones said.

Occupy the DOE

The Occupy the DOE movement sprang out of teachers’ involvement with the encampment in Liberty Plaza. Frascella explained, “We were doing these grade-ins at OWS, where teachers would come together and just grade at Wall Street. And while we were grading we were thinking about ways we could bring the Occupy movement to education.”

The group held a meeting at one of their grade-ins and decided to take their movement to the PEP, and gathered supporters to join them.

And so on October 25 over 200 parents, teachers and students headed for the PEP meeting, unsure of what would happen, but determined to make their voices heard.

As the panel began, the cry of “mic check!” familiar to anyone who’s attended an Occupy Wall Street event rang out.”

Eventually, the panel, including Chancellor Walcott, left the room, while parents and teachers and students (including 8-year-old Adriana, who told the meeting about her crowded class of 28 students) continued to hold their teach-in on the state of New York’s schools.

“The first speaker was prepared to be escorted out,” Frascella told me. “We were prepared to cooperate and to leave but to have enough people to keep the people’s mic going. It was kind of the best-case scenario that the panel decided to leave and go upstairs and hold their meeting upstairs.”

“I was almost in tears,” Jones said, explaining that he was seated at the end of a row in the back when the first speaker stood up. “There were cops lining the hallways. another sure sign of a strong democracy. There was a plainclothesman behind us and I’m sitting right on the aisle, and I’m thinking, is he gonna grab me? Well, why me? Sure enough, the police were baffled, they had no idea what to do.”

As Occupy Wall Street has grown and spread, working groups within the movement have explored ways to use its direct action tactics in different places to different ends. This was one of the first times the People’s Mic itself was used as a tactic for occupying a space—which was later done to great effect at a speech by Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker as well.

“It was an amazing nonviolent form of civil disobedience,” Jones said. “[The people’s mic] was invented for having a meeting, because [city officials] had prohibited them from having a sound system. They are the ones who prevented people from being amplified and then we used it to amplify ourselves in a different form and a different way.”

“[Chancellor Walcott] tried to spin it like we were taking away the voices of the parents. But we brought out more parents than he did,” Frascella noted.

Jones said the feeling among the crowd was: “We know and you know that this is a sham, it really does not matter, so why should we listen to you at all? Why not just break the farce and do our own thing? That’s what we decided to do. Maybe we were rude but they, with quiet voices and with perfect manners, do horrible things. So frankly I think there’s a lesson in here about form and content. One can do horrible things with perfect manners, is that worse than doing the right thing by shouting?”

Building a National Movement

New York is far from the only state with a fight on its hands over education. Lisa Morrow (a pseudonym) is a Texas schoolteacher who told me, “The school districts are hurting for money big-time.”

To avoid teacher layoffs in her district, Morrow said, they’re packing more and more students to a classroom. “Pre-K is up to 26 now that they can have in a classroom, it went up from 22. It’s a different ratio for different grade levels. It’s 30-something for high school, it’s approaching 30 at the elementary level, which is ridiculous. It’s ridiculous to be expected to teach that many little people.”

In addition, in her district, when teachers are absent, instead of hiring substitutes, they simply split up the kids and send them to other classrooms. “One day last week teachers had 12 extra people,” she said. “Almost 40 little people in your room, you don’t have enough places to put them, you don’t have enough material because you didn’t know you were going to have that many people.”

Finally, despite the fact that many students in her district don’t speak English at home, she said, “They’re phasing out ESL as a separate program, so they’re requiring that all teachers have to get ESL-certified. So all the little kids who don’t speak English, they’re going to split them all up and it’s going to be sink or swim.”

The problem with schools, in other words, is a nationwide issue requiring nationwide solutions as well as local action. But, Jones said, there seems to be little indication of real solutions coming from the top. “Barack Obama campaigned on the idea that he was going to challenge No Child Left Behind, that there was going to be a reversal of this whole top-down high stakes testing policy. Instead of a reversal of the Bush-era approach, we’ve gotten a ramping up of that.”

He argued, “The high-stakes test eliminates the connection between life and learning. It’s this remote, very artificial exercise that is given so much importance. Not only do the children’s careers depend on it but now the adults depend on it too.”

Jordan, the 13-year-old speaking at the Occupy the DOE General Assembly, agreed with him. “A test is a one-shot deal, if I forget something I could do bad.”

Teachers’ unions have faced blame in New York and elsewhere for the problems with education, but Morrow’s school district (and much of Texas) is not unionized and still faces the same crunch. “Teachers really have no power and no voice, they need their jobs and so all kinds of illegal things happen, people find all kinds of creative ways to get around the law, to violate students’ rights, violate teachers’ rights, violate parents’ rights.”

“We’re moving toward a system the same way they did for Wall Street, they want the deregulation of education. They want to get rid of pesky union contracts and let the free market rip. It’s not going to be shocking that we see all kinds of scandals blossom,” Jones said.

But teachers have been at the heart of the resistance that’s sparked in this country this year, from Wisconsin to Wall Street. Jones noted that despite what wound up being a loss in Wisconsin, teachers are very proud of the leading role that Wisconsin’s educators played in fighting back against union-busting.

“Over the summer I went to at least two different meetings that were meetings of teachers from around the country trying to make these local struggles into a national struggle, trying to connect the dots from these different localities. It’s part of the aftermath of Wisconsin, but it’s also it is a national attack.”

School reformers like Michelle Rhee, who recently charged a university $35,000 for a speech, have claimed success for charter schools—Rhee wants to raise $1 billion to fight teachers’ unions. But as Jones noted, scandals have been erupting that disprove some of the claims of success—and the teachers I spoke with feel the system is working just fine for education’s 1 percent.

“What would they do if our students were 100-percent college bound? They don’t have the financial aid and the resources to fund those kids to go to school,” Frascella said. “What would happen? You’d have more educated people with no jobs. They want people to work in the service industry. Until we create more high-paying, respectable jobs, where are the students going to go, even if they do get a college education?”

Morrow said that some people in her part of the country think the ultimate goal for the Right is the end of public schools entirely. “They want to privatize education so that the school districts will go out of business. Public school is really for poor people, moderate-income people, and everyone else can go to private school and they don’t care. It’s shown just how little they really care about the education system.”

She continued, “The way they have education finance set up, it’s unequal in its conception. It’s based off the tax base in your neighborhood, it reinforces the status quo.”

So what can be done? Can Occupy the DOE become a movement that spreads, like its parent movement, around the country and changes the way education conversations happen?

Jones pointed out that the movement’s successes thus far make it seem like a time to dream big. “If we can hold Zuccotti Park, what else can we hold? What else should we hold? If we can take over a PEP meeting, what else can we take over? What else should we take over?”

“The students are really excited about Occupy Wall Street and are interested in it,” Frascella agreed.

But the education reform crowd is big and well-funded, and won’t give up easily. Jones noted, “They don’t have to teach all day, they are working overtime to make sure that that never ever happens again, and we’re busy trying to figure out how to make sure it always happens.”

Still, the New York crowd was elated on Monday night at the Department of Education, the students thrilling to the feeling of speaking to a crowd and having their words repeated back to them with the same gravitas as their teachers and parents. Plans for splitting Occupy the DOE into working groups to plan strategies and more actions going forward were discussed at the general assembly, and on Sunday, Nov. 13, the group will be meeting at 60 Wall Street at noon to plan those working groups.

Jones said, “Once you get a taste of [victory], it’s hard to put that genie back in the bottle. You always remember what it felt like to challenge them and win.”

Sarah Jaffe is an associate editor at AlterNet, a rabblerouser and frequent Twitterer. You can follow her at @seasonothebitch.

Emphasis Mine.

see:http://www.alternet.org/story/153028/the_1%27s_war_on_america%27s_public_education_challenged_by_brave_ows_kids%2C_teachers_and_parents?page=entire

Progressive Victories in Ohio, Mississippi, Maine, Arizona Provide Seven Key Lessons for 2012

The 99% versus the 1% frame is critical to making clear that the problem with our economy has nothing to do with how much teachers, or firefighters, or steel workers, or home care workers, or Social Security recipients make for a living. It has everything to do with growing economic inequality, the exploding financial sector, and an unproductive class of speculators and gamblers who don’t make anything of value but siphon off all of our increased productivity.

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From:HuffPost

By:Robert Creamer.

“A year ago the Empire struck back. Right Wing money capitalized on anger at the economic stagnation that their own policies caused just two years before. They brought a halt to the hard-won progressive victories that marked the first two years of Barack Obama’s presidency.

Last night the progressive forces tested some of the weapons and tactics they will use in next year’s full-blown counter offensive. They worked very, very well.

Progressives won key elections in Ohio, Maine, Mississippi, and Arizona.

The importance of yesterday’s labor victory in Ohio cannot be overstated. It could well mark a major turning point in the history of the American labor movement -and the future of the American middle class.

The people of Ohio rejected right wing attempts to destroy public sector unions by an astounding 61% to 39%. Progressives in Ohio won 82 out of 88 counties.

In his “concession,” the author of the union-stripping bill, Governor John Kasich, looked like a whipped dog. He was.”

from the Plain Dealer 9.11.11

“Last night’s victory will have a direct and immediate impact on the livelihoods of thousands of middle class state employees in Ohio. It will stall similar attempts to destroy unions in other states. It will turbo-charge the campaign to oust Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker who jammed a union-stripping measure through his own legislature. And it will massively weaken Kasich and other Republicans in Ohio.

But last night’s victory also carried critical lessons for the progressive forces throughout America as we prepare for the crossroads, defining battle of 2012.

Lesson #1: Creating a Movement. The industrial state labor battles that culminated in last night’s overwhelming Ohio success transformed the image of unions from a large bureaucratic “special interest” that negotiates for workers and are part of the “establishment” — into a movement to protect the interests of the American Middle Class.

The Republican Governors who began these battles hoped to make a bold move to destroy union power. In fact, they have succeeded in creating their worst nightmare — the rebirth of a labor movement.

That is critically important for the future of unions – which by any measure provide the foundation of progressive political power in the United States. It also provides an important lesson for every element of the Progressive community.

These battles put the “movement” back in “labor movement.”

And the importance of “movement” can’t be overstated. Particularly at a time when people are unhappy with the direction of the country and desperately want change — they don’t want leaders who appear to be embedded parts of the status quo. They want to be part of movements for change.

Movements have three critical characteristics:

    • They make people feel that they are part of something bigger than themselves.
    • They make people feel that they themselves can play a significant role in bringing about that larger goal.
  • They involve “chain reactions” –– they go viral. You don’t have to only engage people in movements one by one or one or group by group. They begin to engage each other.

Because they make people feel that they are part of something larger than themselves — and that they can personally be a part of achieving that larger goal — movements inspire and empower. And for that reason they give people hope.

To win, Progressives must turn the anger and dissatisfaction with the present into inspiration and hope for the future.

The labor movement turned the battle in Ohio into a fight for the future of America’s middle class. It turned the battle into a fight over the dignity of everyday working people — and their right to have a say in their future. Instead of being about “contracts,” it was about “freedom.”

Lesson #2: It’s much easier to mobilize people to protect what they have than to fight for something to which they aspire.

Every one of the big victories yesterday involved battles that had been framed as attempts by the Right — or their allies on Wall Street – to take away the rights of everyday Americans.

In Ohio, it was the right to collectively bargain about their future. In Maine, it was the right to same-day voter registration. In Mississippi it was the right to use contraceptives –– once it became clear that the so-called “personhood” amendment was not just about abortion, but ultimately about a woman’s right to use birth control. In Arizona, it was the rights of Latino Americans.

And of course, that’s why the Republicans’ plan to privatize Social Security and eliminate Medicare are so toxic for them in the election next year.

Among referenda yesterday, the one progressive setback came in the largely symbolic vote — once again in Ohio — against the Health Care Reform Act’s mandate to buy insurance. The very same people who had voted against taking away the rights of their neighbors to join a union — also voted against being “forced” to buy health insurance.

The whole issue of the “mandate” is the major card the Right has played against the critically important Health Care Reform Act. Of course the whole issue could have been framed differently. The “mandate” to start paying Medicare premiums when you’re sixty-five isn’t framed as a “mandate.” People do it, both because they really want to get on Medicare, and because if they wait to pay premiums until they need it, their premiums go way up.

That’s why a Public Option was so popular with the voters. You got to choose to join something you wanted. But it’s also the way we should have framed the overall “mandate” to get insurance — with premium penalties if you fail to “opt in.”

Once the health care law becomes a fact on the ground that benefits ordinary people, every day, it will certainly become very popular. But that will wait until 2014 when most of its provisions go into effect. Once it does goes into effect, if they try to take away those benefits and the Right will run into a firestorm of opposition.

Of course if Romney is the Republican candidate next year, we don’t have to worry about the “mandate” issue at all. In fact, our attitude should be “go ahead, make my day.” It will be simple to neutralize any attack by Romney or Super-Pacs on Democrats about “mandates” by simply pointing out that the entire question is just one more example of how Romney has no core values — since he authored and passed the Massachusetts health care law built around “mandates.” In the end, Romney’s lack of core values is a much more powerful message than anything having to do with “mandates.”

Lesson #3: Framing the battle is key. In every one of these issue referenda, Progressives won the framing battle.

In Ohio, Progressives made the fight into a battle for the rights of the middle class — part of the overarching battle between the 99% and the 1%.

In Maine, Progressives made the battle into a fight over the right to register to vote. Of course the right wing frame was that eliminating same-day registration provided protection against “voter fraud.” That was pretty hard to sustain given the fact that there had been exactly two instances of “voter fraud” involving same-day registration in 28 years.

The Mississippi “personhood amendment” was framed as a battle over the rights of women to use birth control – not to make “miscarriage” a crime.

Lesson #4: Turnout is king. In Virginia, a Republican candidate leads his Democratic opponent by only 86 votes, so a recount will determine whether the Republicans there take control of the State Senate.

Turnout in the Virginia contests was low.

In Ohio, by contrast, 400,000 more voters went to the polls yesterday than in the elections in 2010. That’s one big reason why Progressives won.

And it wasn’t just inspiration and great messaging that turned them out. Rank and file union members and Progressives of all sorts conducted massive get out the vote efforts in every corner of the state.

After all, victory isn’t just about great strategy, mostly it’s about nuts and bolts — it’s about great execution. In Ohio they had both.

In Arizona, the Latino community mobilized to defeat the author of Arizona’s “papers please” law, State Senator Russell Pearce. He lost a recall election, by seven points, 52.4% to 45.4%. The Pearce defeat is just one more example of how the Republicans play the “immigration” card at their peril — and how important the Latino vote will be to the outcome next year in critical states like New Mexico, Nevada, Colorado, Florida — and Arizona.

Pearce didn’t count on Latinos going out to vote. They did.

Lesson #5: Progressives win when we stand up straight. We won last night where we stood proudly for progressive values — planted the flag — mobilized our forces and took the offensive.

People in America are not looking for leaders who apologize for their progressive beliefs or are willing to compromise those principles even before they enter the fight. They want leaders who will fight for the middle class, and fight for change; who stand up against the big Wall Street banks and the CEO class that they believe – correctly – have siphoned off the nation’s wealth, and whose greed has caused the economy to collapse.

People are willing to compromise when it seems to advance the common good — but only after their leaders have done everything in their power to defend their interests — and have mobilized them to defend theirown interests.

Lesson #6: The face of the battle in Ohio was your neighbor.

The Republicans bet that they could make public employees the “Welfare Queens” of our time. They bet that they could make public employees the scapegoats for all that has gone wrong with the American economy — that they could divide the middle class against itself.

They bet wrong.

Turned out to be impossible to convince everyday Americans that firefighters, cops, and teachers were greedy villains. Normal voters recognized them as their neighbors — as people just like themselves.

The 99% versus the 1% frame is critical to making clear that the problem with our economy has nothing to do with how much teachers, or firefighters, or steel workers, or home care workers, or Social Security recipients make for a living. It has everything to do with growing economic inequality, the exploding financial sector, and an unproductive class of speculators and gamblers who don’t make anything of value but siphon off all of our increased productivity.

Lesson #7: Progressives win when we frame the issue as a moral choice.

In Ohio, Progressives did not frame the debate as a choice between two sets of policies and programs. They posed the question as a choice between two different visions of the future.

It was a choice between an America with a strong, vibrant, empowered middle class, where every generation can look forward to more opportunity than the one that went before – or, a society with a tiny wealthy elite and a massive population of powerless workers who do their bidding.

It was posed as a choice between a society where we’re all in this together –– where we look out for each other and take responsibility for our future as a country — or as a society where we’re all in this alone — where only the strong, or the clever, or the ruthless can thrive.

If given a clear, compelling choice, Americans will chose a progressive vision of the future every time.”

Robert Creamer is a long-time political organizer and strategist, and author of the book: Stand Up Straight: How Progressives Can Win, available on Amazon.com. He is a partner in Democracy Partnersand a Senior Strategist for Americans United for Change. Follow him on Twitter @rbcreamer.


Emphasis Mine

see:

The right-wing’s shellacking

This week’s elections around the country were brought to you by the word “overreach,” specifically conservative overreach.

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From: Washington Post

N.B.: what we have not been able to achieve on our own – building class consciousness – gets a big assist from the tea party: Thanks.

By:E.J. Dionne

“This week’s elections around the country were brought to you by the word “overreach,” specifically conservative overreach. Given an opportunity in 2010 to build a long-term majority, Republicans instead pursued extreme and partisan measures. On Tuesday, they reaped angry voter rebellions.

The most important was in Ohio, where voters overwhelmingly defeated Gov. John Kasich’s (R) bill to strip public-employee unions of essential bargaining rights. A year ago, who would have predicted that standing up for the interests of government workers would galvanize and mobilize voters on this scale? Anti- labor conservatives have brought class politics back to life, a major threat to a GOP that has long depended on the ballots of white working-class voters and offered them nothing in return.
Mississippi votes on the “personhood” amendment, which would designate a fertilized egg as a person. 
 
In Maine, voters exercised what that state calls a “people’s veto” to undo a Republican-passed law that would have ended same-day voter registration, which served Maine well for almost four decades.
What’s often lost is that the conservative Republicans elected in 2010 aren’t simply pushing right-wing policies. Where they can, they are also using majorities won in a single election to manipulate future elections — by making it harder for young and minority voters to cast ballots, and by trying to break the political power of unions. The votes in Maine and Ohio were a rebuke to this strategy.In Mississippi, perhaps the most conservative state in the union, voters beat back a referendum to declare a fertilized human egg a person by a margin of roughly 3-to-2. Here was overreach by the right-to-life movement,which tried to get voters to endorse a measure that could have outlawed popular forms of birth control and in vitro fertilization.The war against overreach extended to the immigration issue, too. Russell Pearce became, as the Arizona Republic noted, the first sitting state Senate president in the nation as well as the first Arizona legislator ever to lose a recall election. Pearce, who spearheaded viciously anti-immigrant legislation, was defeated by Jerry Lewis, a conservative with a mild demeanor. Lewis correctly saw his as a victory for restoring “a civil tone to politics.” This was a case of old-fashioned conservatism beating the Tea Party variety.And in Iowa, Democrats held their state Senate majority by winning a special election that had been engineered by Republican Gov. Terry Branstad. Occupy Wall Street, notice that elections matter: A Republican victory over Democrat Liz Mathis would have opened the way for Branstad to push through a cut in corporate income taxes.

Mathis’s defeat could also have allowed conservatives to amend the Iowa Constitution to ban same-sex marriage. Mathis prevailed despite robocalls from an obscure group instructing voters to ask Mathis which gay sex acts she endorsed. (It should be said, as the Des Moines Register reported, that better-known organizations opposed to gay marriage denounced the calls.)

The one potential bright spot for Republicans was not as bright as it was supposed to be. In Virginia, both sides had expected the GOP to take over the state Senate. But at best, the Republicans will achieve a 20-to-20 tie, giving Lt. Gov. Bill Bolling (R) a decisive role. And their chance of getting even to 20 hangs on the recount of an 86-vote margin in one district.

The split means Virginia has not reverted to its earlier status as a Republican bastion. It remains a purple state. Especially significant, Democratic consultant Mo Elleithee observed, were the party’s successes in the Washington suburbs and exurbs and in Hampton Roads, precisely the areas where President Obama needs to do well if he is to carry Virginia next year, as he did in 2008. Democrats also comfortably held the New Jersey Legislature, suggesting the limits of Gov. Chris Christie’s (R) much-touted political magic.

One of the only referendum results the GOP could cheer was a strong vote in Ohio against the health-insurance mandate. While health-reform supporters argued that the ballot question was misleading, the result spoke to the truly terrible job Democrats have done in defending what they enacted. They can’t let the health-care law remain a policy stepchild.

That useful warning aside, Tuesday’s results underscored the power of unions and populist politics, the danger to conservatives of social-issue extremism and the fact that 2010 was no mandate for right-wing policies. They also mean that if Republicans don’t back away from an agenda that makes middle-class, middle-of-the-road Americans deeply uncomfortable — and in some cases angry — they will lose the rather more important fight of 2012.

ejdionne@washpost.com

Emphasis Mine

see:

Rob from the Poor, Give to the Rich

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From: care2

By  

” Politicians and critics who wonder why the Occupy movement hasn’t disappeared with cooler weather should read a study just released by Citizens for Tax Justice. “Corporate Taxpayers & Corporate Tax Dodgers, 2008-2010” makes uncomfortable but important reading.

The study looks at 280 of America’s largest companies, all of them on the Fortune 500 list. These are high-profit corporations so it would be reasonable to expect them to be fair contributors to the system that allows them to operate. After all, they benefit from roads, schools, hospitals, parks and other amenities and services tax dollars provide.

As it turns out, between 2008 and 2010, 78 of them avoided paying any taxes at all. That is only one way these corporations raided the futures of millions of their fellow Americans. Robert McIntyre, Director at Citizens for Tax Justice and lead author on the report, says, “These 280 corporations received a total of nearly $223 billion in tax subsidies. This is wasted money that could have gone to protect Medicare, create jobs and cut the deficit.”

Some of the highlights, or low points, of the report:

  • 38 corporations had negative tax rates all three years. Pepco Holdings topped the list, at -57.6%, with General Electric second at -45.3%.
  • In 2009 49 companies paid zero or less federal taxes
  • In 2008, 22 of the 280 companies did not pay one dollar in federal taxes, but they received $3.3 billion in tax rebates. In 2010, those numbers jumped to 37 companies that paid no taxes but received $7.8 billion in rebates.

The list of tax avoiders and subsidy recipients includes a lot of familiar names, such as Boeing, Yahoo, Yum Brands, Marathon Oil, FedEx, Hewlett Packard, American Express, and Time Warner. Corporations point out they are doing nothing illegal paring their taxes to nothing and receiving rebates. They are merely abiding by tax laws. However, as the report points out, “The laws were not enacted in a vacuum; they were adopted in response to relentless corporate lobbying, threats and campaign support.”

Tax reform is desperately needed in a country where the growing gap between rich and poor is leaving the country at risk for social instability and continuing economic chaos. However, “GOP candidates for president are all promoting huge cuts in the corporate tax or, in several cases, even elimination of the corporate income tax entirely.”

The whole report is worth reading, especially as campaign rhetoric heats to the melting point in advance of the 2012 elections.  Should elected politicians be held accountable for this untenable situation?    Can voters make them change the system?  What do you think?

Related Care2 Stories

Top 10 US Corporate Tax Avoiders Named on Senate Floor

Top 25 Hedge Fund Managers Make Almost $1 Billion Each – And Pay Less Taxes Than You Do

Cantor Tells Republicans to Dig in on Tax Increases

Emphasis Mine

see:http://www.care2.com/causes/rob-from-the-poor-give-to-the-rich.html

Economist: Idea That Deregulation Leads To Jobs ‘Just Made Up’

“Republicans favor tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations, but these had no stimulative effect during the George W. Bush administration, and there is no reason to believe that more of them will have any today,” writes Bruce Bartlett. He’s an economist who worked for Republican congressmen and in the administrations of Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush.

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From HuffPost – see link below

N.B. If deregulation created jobs, we would have had a labor shortage by 2008.

WASHINGTON — Key proposals from the Republican presidential candidates might make for good campaign fodder. But independent analyses raise serious questions about those plans and their ability to cure the nation’s ills in two vital areas, the economy and housing.

Consider proposed cuts in taxes and regulation, which nearly every GOP candidate is pushing in the name of creating jobs. The initiatives seem to ignore surveys in which employers cite far bigger impediments to increased hiring, chiefly slack consumer demand.

“Republicans favor tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations, but these had no stimulative effect during the George W. Bush administration, and there is no reason to believe that more of them will have any today,” writes Bruce Bartlett. He’s an economist who worked for Republican congressmen and in the administrations of Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush.

As for the idea that cutting regulations will lead to significant job growth, Bartlett said in an interview, “It’s just nonsense. It’s just made up.”

Government and industry studies support his view.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics, which tracks companies’ reasons for large layoffs, found that 1,119 layoffs were attributed to government regulations in the first half of this year, while 144,746 were attributed to poor “business demand.”

Mainstream economic theory says governments can spur demand, at least somewhat, through stimulus spending. The Republican candidates, however, have labeled President Barack Obama’s 2009 stimulus efforts a failure. Instead, most are calling for tax cuts that would primarily benefit high-income people, who are seen as the likeliest job creators.

“I don’t care about that,” Texas Gov. Rick Perry told The New York Times and CNBC, referring to tax breaks for the rich. “What I care about is them having the dollars to invest in their companies.”

Many existing businesses, however, have plenty of unspent cash. The 500 companies that comprise the S&P index have about $800 billion in cash and cash equivalents, the most ever, according to the research firm Birinyi Associates.

The rating firm Moody’s says the roughly 1,600 companies it monitors had $1.2 trillion in cash at the end of 2010. That’s 11 percent more than a year earlier.

Small businesses rate “poor sales” as their biggest problem, with government regulations ranking second, according to a survey by the National Federation of Independent Businesses. Of the small businesses saying this is not a good time to expand, half cited the poor economy as the chief reason. Thirteen percent named the “political climate.”

More small businesses complained about regulation during the administrations of Bill Clinton and George H.W. Bush, according to an analysis of the federation’s data by the liberal Economic Policy Institute.

Such findings notwithstanding, further cuts in taxes and regulations remain popular with GOP voters. A recent Associated Press-GfK poll found that most Democrats and about half  of independents think “reducing environmental and other regulations on business” would do little or nothing to create jobs. But only one-third of Republicans felt that way.

The GOP’s presidential hopefuls are shaping their economic agendas along those lines.

Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney says his 59-point plan “seeks to reduce taxes, spending, regulation and government programs.”

Businessman Herman Cain would significantly cut taxes for the wealthy with his 9 percent flat tax plan. Rep. Michele Bachmann of Minnesota said in a recent debate, “It’s the regulatory burden that costs us $1.8 trillion every year. … It’s jobs that are lost.”

The candidates have said little about another national problem: depressed home prices, as well as the high numbers of foreclosures and borrowers who owe more than their houses are worth.

After the Oct. 18 GOP debate in Las Vegas, a center of foreclosure activity, editors of the AOL Real Estate site wrote, “We didn’t hear any meaningful solutions to the housing crisis. That’s no surprise, considering that housing has so far been a ghost issue in the campaign.”

To the degree the candidates addressed housing, they mainly took a hands-off approach. “We need to get government out of the way,” Cain said. “It starts with making sure that we can boost this economy and then reform Dodd-Frank,” which is a law that regulates Wall Street transactions.

Bachmann, in an answer that mentioned “moms” six times, said foreclosures fall most heavily on women who are “losing their nest for their children and for their family.” She said Obama “has failed you on this issue of housing and foreclosures. I will not fail you on this issue.” Bachmann offered no specific remedies.

Romney told editors of the Las Vegas Review-Journal: “Don’t try and stop the foreclosure process. Let it run its course and hit the bottom. Allow investors to buy homes, put renters in them, fix the homes up and let it turn around and come back up.”

Perry spokesman Mark Miner said the Texas governor’s “immediate remedy for housing is to get America working again. … Creating jobs will address the housing concerns that are impacting communities throughout America.”

Bartlett, whose books on tax policy include “The Benefit and the Burden,” recently wrote in the New York Times: “People are increasingly concerned about unemployment, but Republicans have nothing to offer them.”

The candidates and their supporters dispute this, of course. A series of scheduled debates may give them chances to explain why their proposals would hit the right targets.

Emphasis Mine

see:http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/10/31/gop-candidates-plans-on-economy-housing_n_1066949.html

Thirty Years of Unleashed Greed

It is class warfare.

chasdarwin1 Comment

From TruthOut, by Robert Scheer, TruthDig

“Class inequality had been rising sharply in the United States even before the banking-induced recession…

It is class warfare.

It was not begun, however, by the tear-gassed, rain-soaked protesters asserting their constitutionally guaranteed right of peaceful assembly. Rather, this war was sparked by the financial overlords who control all of the major levers of power in what passes for our democracy. It is they who subverted the American ideal of a nation of stakeholders in control of their economic and political destiny.

Between 1979 and 2007, as the Congressional Budget Office reported this week, the average real income of the top 1 percent grew by an astounding 275 percent. And that’s after payment of the taxes that the super-rich and their Republican apologists find so onerous.

Those three decades of rampant upper-crust greed unleashed by the Reagan Revolution of the 1980s will be well-marked by future historians recording the death of the American dream. In that decisive historical period, the middle class began to evaporate and the nation’s income gap increased to alarming proportions.

“As a result of that uneven growth,” the CBO explained, “the distribution of after-tax household income in the United States was substantially more unequal in 2007 than in 1979: The share of income accruing to higher-income households increased, whereas the share accruing to other households declined. … The share of after-tax household income for the 1 percent of the population with the highest income more than doubled.”

That was before the 2008 meltdown, which ushered in the massive increase in unemployment and housing foreclosures that further eroded the standard of living of the vast majority of Americans while the super-rich rewarded themselves with immense bonuses. To stress the role of the financial industry in this march to greater income inequality, as the Occupy Wall Street movement has done, is not a matter of ideology or rhetoric but — as the CBO report details — a matter of discernible fact.

The CBO noted in comparing top earners that “the (income) share of financial professionals almost doubled from 1979 to 2005” and that “employees in the financial and legal professions made up a larger share of the highest earners than people in those other groups.”

And no wonder, since it was the bankers and the lawyers serving them who managed to end the sensible government regulations that contained their greed. The undermining of those regulations began during the Reagan presidency, so it’s not surprising that, as the CBO reports, “the compensation differential between the financial sector and the rest of the economy appears inexplicably large from 1990 onward.” Citing a major study on the subject, the CBO added, “The authors believe that deregulation and corporate finance activities linked to initial public offerings and credit risks are the primary causes of the higher compensation differential.”

So much for the claim that excessive government regulation has discouraged business activity. The CBO report also denies the charge that taxes on the wealthy have placed an undue burden on the economy, documenting that federal revenue sources have become more regressive and that the tax burden on the wealthy has declined since 1979.

In the face of the evidence that class inequality had been rising sharply in the United States even before the banking-induced recession, it would seem that the Occupy Wall Street protests are a quite measured and even timid response to the crisis.

Actually, the rallying cry of that movement was originally enunciated not by the protesters in the streets but by one of the nation’s most respected economists.

Last April, Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz wrote an article in Vanity Fair titled “Of the 1 percent, by the 1 percent, for the 1 percent,” and it should be required reading for those well-paid pundits who question the logic and motives of the Wall Street protesters. “Americans have been watching protests (abroad) against repressive regimes that concentrate massive wealth in the hands of an elite few,” Stiglitz wrote. “Yet, in our democracy, 1 percent of the people take nearly a quarter of the nation’s income — an inequality even the wealthy will come to regret.”

Maybe justice will prevail despite the suffering that the 1 percent has inflicted on the foreclosed and the jobless. But to date, those who have seized 40 percent of the nation’s wealth still control the big guns in this war of classes.”

emphasis mine

see:http://www.truth-out.org/30-years-unleashed-greed/1319808045

Incomes down for most but up for wealthiest

growing income gap between the nation’s rich and poor.

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News Alert?!

By Associated Press Staff

“The government is reporting that 50 percent of U.S. workers earned less than $26,364 last year, reflecting a growing income gap between the nation’s rich and poor.

According to the Social Security administration, there were fewer jobs, and overall pay was trending down — except for the wealthiest Americans. The number of people making $1 million or more soared by over 18 percent from 2009. There were 5.2 million fewer jobs in 2010 than in 2007, when the deepest recession since the 1930s began.

The payroll figures are based on W-2 forms submitted by employers to the IRS. The figures were posted by Social Security on its website as demonstrations raged on Wall Street and across the country protesting high unemployment and a growing income gap.”

Emphasis Mine

see:http://www.cleveland.com/business/index.ssf/2011/10/incomes_down_for_most_but_up_f.html#incart_mce

Three Reasons Why It’s Better for the Economy if the Super-Committee Fails to Get a Deal

chasdarwin1 Comment

By Robert Creamer, HuffPost

“Last Thursday’s Washington Post headline blared: “Debt panel’s lack of progress raises alarm on Hill.”

In fact it is far better for everyday Americans if the so-called Super Committee fails entirely to get a deal.

The overarching reason is simple: any deal they are likely to strike will make life worse for everyday Americans — and worsen our prospects for long-term economic growth.

Of course that’s not the view of many denizens of the Capitol who are still obsessed by the notion that it is critical for the Congress to produce a “compromise” that raises revenue and cuts “entitlements.” There are three reasons why these people are wrong:

1). Any deal would likely slash the income of many everyday Americans. You could design a plan to substantially reduce the deficit without big cuts in Social Security, Medicare or Medicaid. My wife, Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky, who served on President Obama’s Fiscal Commission, designed just such a proposal last year. And, of course, Social Security has nothing to do with the deficit in the first place.

Unfortunately, however, in order to get Republican support any large-scale deal in the Super Committee would almost certainly require big cuts in either Social Security, Medicare or Medicaid — or all of them. Substantial cuts in any of these programs will make life harder for everyday Americans and reduce the likelihood of long-term economic growth.

Without a “deal” in the Super Committee, the current budget plan does not cut Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid — and that’s a good thing.

According to the Social Security Administration, the average monthly Social Security check now averages the princely sum of $1,082 — or about $13,000 per year. Next year, for the first time since 2009, payments will increase by $39 per month to offset inflation, but $18 a month of that increase will go right back out the door in the form of Medicare premium increases.

Already under current law, Medicare Part B premiums, that cover services like doctors, outpatient care and home health services, must be set annually to cover 25% of program costs. And remember that Medicare recipients aren’t getting an “entitlement” — they are getting an earned benefit that they paid for throughout their working lives. The same, of course, is true of Social Security.

Mean while, Medicaid is the principle means of assuring that America actually begins to provide health care for all — including nursing home and home care.

The problem with medical care costs isn’t that “greedy” seniors and others are gobbling up too much care. The problem is that the costs of providing care are going up too fast. In fact, the per capita costs of providing health care in America is 50% higher than anywhere else on earth, and the World Health Organization only ranks health care outcomes as 37th, in the world.

Medicare is actually the most efficient means in the American economy for providing health care. Any action by the “Super Committee” that reduces the percentage of Americans on Medicare — say, by raising the eligibility age from 65 to 67 — would cost the American economy.

  • According to a study by the Kaiser Family Foundation, if such a proposal were operational in 2014 it would raise total health care spending in America by $5.7 billion per year.
  • This is so because, while it would save the Federal government a net of about $5.7 billion ($24 billion savings in Medicare payments largely offset by $18 billion of increased Medicaid payments and subsidies to low-income participants in exchanges), it would also generate an additional $11.4 billion in higher health care costs for individuals, employers and states — resulting in a net cost to the economy of $5.7 billion.

The one thing you could do to cut Medicare costs without hurting ordinary families or the economy as a whole is to require Medicare to negotiate with the drug companies for lower prices the same way the Veterans Administration does today. That would cut hundreds of billions in costs to the government over the next ten years, but don’t expect the Republicans to include that as an acceptable cut in “entitlements” as part of a Super Committee deal.

Of course, America has no business cutting the income of seniors who get $13,000 a year in Social Security payments regardless of anything else that is in a deal. The deficit problem should be fixed by asking millionaires and billionaires to pay their fair share and by jobs plans that put America back on a path of sustained economic growth. And we have no business reducing access to health care for everyday people so that CEO‘s can fly around in their corporate jets, oil companies can keep their tax breaks, or Wall Street hot shots — who we all bailed out just three years ago — can pack in their huge bonuses.

Even if a Super Committee proposal includes increases in revenue to the government from millionaires and billionaires, that is not reason that normal people — whose real incomes have dropped over the last decade — should also be called upon to “share in the sacrifice.”

The problem isn’t that everyday Americans are gorging themselves on excesses that “America can’t afford.” The problem is that Wall Street, the financial sector and the 1% have gobbled up all of the increases in economic growth that the country has produced over the last two decades.

That has meant that the standard of living for normal people has been stagnant. But just as problematic, it has lead to a stagnant economic growth. Since the incomes of everyday people haven’t increased at the same rate as increased worker productivity, there simply haven’t been enough new customers to buy the new products and services that American businesses produce. That is the formula for recession and depression. And that’s just what happened.

American corporations are sitting on two trillion dollars of cash. The reason they aren’t hiring has nothing to do with the need for more tax breaks. What stops them isn’t lack of “confidence,” it’s a lack of customers.

For decades the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has preached the need for fiscal constraint and austerity. According to the Washington Post, now even the IMF is warning that, “austerity may trigger a new recession, and is urging countries to look for ways to boost growth.”

If you want to lay a foundation for long-term economic growth in America, the last thing you would do is reduce the income going to ordinary Americans — even over the long run. That’s not the problem — just the opposite. We do not need ordinary people to “share in the sacrifice.” We need policies that will increase the share of income going to ordinary people and reduce the exploding inequality between the 99% and the 1%.

Any deal in the Super Committee will almost certainly do just the opposite.

2.). The worst effects of sequestration could be solved without a “grand bargain”. The one big downside of a failure of the Super-Committee to act would be the level of discretionary spending cuts that would be required through the resulting sequestration. This is particularly true of cuts in education funding.

The budget deal that was struck in order to prevent Republicans from plunging America into default last summer requires an additional $1.2 trillion reduction in the deficit over the next ten years. If the Super Committee fails to agree on the distribution of these cuts, they will automatically be spread over defense and non-defense segments of the budget beginning in 2013. But there would be no cuts in Social Security, Medicare or Medicaid.

Congress would have the ability to adjust these sequestration requirements between now and 2013, regardless. But the “fast track” authority that would require up or down votes on a proposal from the “Super Committee” would expire if the Committee cannot reach agreement by November 23rd.

The best solution to the problem of big cuts in discretionary spending would be to put together a smaller deal to raise some revenue and reduce cuts in discretionary and – if necessary — military spending — after the mandate of the Super Committee has expired.

The Congress will have a year to help solve this problem, and the pressure to ameliorate some of the cuts in military spending that have so far proved ineffective at forcing Republicans to consider big revenue increase, may be more persuasive when it comes to smaller increases as the actual date of sequestration (2013) draws near.

Of course it’s possible that the Super Committee itself could come with a small-bore deal of this sort, simply to avoid the full force of sequestration. But that would be very different than a $1.2 trillion dollar package that includes cuts in Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. Progressives should avoid cuts to these programs at all costs, because any cuts that sliced Social Security, Medicare or Medicaid benefits would require changes in the structure of the programs themselves that would last forever. Cuts in discretionary spending — as bad as they might be — are one-time events and do not fundamentally change the structure of the American social contract.

3). There is no reason for Congress to fear that its failure to act on a “Super Committee” agreement will have massive adverse consequences on “market confidence,” since the level of the deficit will not be affected. That has already been set — with a mandate for a $1.2 trillion cut. The Wall Street gang and the ratings agencies might sputter something about government dysfunction for a day or two. But the fundamentals will not be affected, since the level of government borrowing won’t be affected by whether or not there is a deal.

It’s also worth noting that even after Standard and Poor’s downgraded the U.S. debt because of the process leading up to the debt ceiling deal, it had no effect on the interest rates the government is paying for bonds. In fact those interest rates dropped to record lows. U.S. government debt remains the safest investment in the world, no matter what S&P did, and the market reflected that indisputable fact.

In other words then, Congress does not have its back against the wall like it did during the debt ceiling “hostage” crisis. When it came to the debt-ceiling deadline, failure was not an option. In the case of the “Super Committee” failure to come to an agreement is a very real option — in fact, it’s the best option.

There are some in Congress — most notably in the Senate — who truly believe that what the country needs is a “grand bargain” that cuts the deficit by making ordinary people “share in the sacrifice” even if millionaires and billionaires are asked to share some as well.

Hopefully those who are working for such bargain will be thwarted by two important political realities.

First, that cuts in Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid are politically toxic. People get really angry when you take away something they have earned.

Second, the Republican’s stubborn unwillingness to give an ounce of new revenue from the pockets of millionaires and billionaires – who, after all, are the true core constituency of the Republican Party.

This time a little “gridlock” may be a good thing.”

Robert Creamer is a long-time political organizer and strategist, and author of the book: Stand Up Straight: How Progressives Can Win, available on Amazon.com. He is a partner in Democracy Partners and Senior Strategist for Americans United for Change. Follow him on Twitter @rbcreamer.

Emphasis Mine

see: /robert-creamer/three-reasons-why-its-bet_b_1030166.html

10 Ways to Help OWS!

There are many things you can do to be part of this growing movement—and only some of them involve sleeping outside.

chasdarwinLeave a comment

From AlterNet by Sarah van Gelder

N.B.: OWS is manifest Class Consciousness!

“The #OccupyWallStreet movement continues to spread with more than 1,500 sites. More and more people are speaking up for a society that works for the 99 percent, not just the 1 percent.

Here are 10 recommendations from the YES! Magazine staff for ways to build the power and momentum of this movement. Only two of them involve sleeping outside:

1. Show up at the occupied space near you.

Use this link to find the Facebook page of an occupation near you. If you can, bring a tent or tarp and sleeping bag, and stay. Or just come for a few hours. Talk to people, participate in a General Assembly, hold a sign, help serve food. Learn about the new world being created in the occupied spaces.

2. Start your own occupation.

Use this Meetup site. Or call together friends, members of your faith group, school, or community group. Reach out to people from parts of your community you don’t normally work with. Unexpected alliances keep the movement from getting labeled as partisan or representing only some people.

3. Support those who are occupying.

Most sites need food, warm clothes, blankets, tarps, sleeping bags, communications gear, and money. Many need people to do loads of laundry, to help with medical care, to provide legal support, to serve food, and to spread the word. Some people call in pizza orders from nearby vendors. Support the folks at Liberty Square in New York here, or check in with your local occupiers to see what they need.

4. Speak out. Get into the debates and the teach-ins.

Many occupation sites have workshops and discussions on critical issues of our time. Get into the discussion. Bring your expertise and reading materials to share. YES! Magazine is offering free copies of the current New Livelihood issue to occupied sites (request them by emailing JobsIssue@yesmagazine.org). Bring the discussions to other groups you are part of. Listen to perspectives you haven’t heard before. This process represents a critical, but under-reported side of the movement: People are shifting from being passive, frustrated observers of politics to  active, powerful players. Instead of waiting for our leaders to do the right thing, people from all walks of life are becoming leaders. It makes us unstoppable.

5. Share your story.

Post how you’re part of the 99 percent on Facebook, Twitter, blogs, or in print. Through this movement, people are discovering others who are also losing jobs and homes, who are overwhelmed by debt or working a dead-end job. Through this sharing, humiliation turns into compassion and self-respect. And it builds understanding of the sources and the impacts of our crisis: A Wall Street system that funnels wealth to the top 1 percent is leaving the rest of us behind. Community plus insight makes us powerful.

6. Be the media.

Show up with your video recorder, camera phone, or laptop and share the stories of the occupation. You can download a selection of posters donated by graphic designers and spread them around. Highlight the human dimension of the protests. It is harder for critics to disparage a movement when people see the faces of those involved.

7. Name the meaning of this moment.

What will make the world better for the 99 percent? How has the power of the 1 percent gotten in the way of your hopes and dreams? Make a sign, write a blog, update your Facebook page, or speak out on the issue that means the most to you. Include the phrase, “I am the 99 percent.”

8. Insist that public officials treat the occupations with respect.

The eviction of the Liberty Square occupation on Wall Street was averted by massive public resistance from those in the square and from others. Other occupations also need support. The 99 percent don’t have the money, political access, and media empires of the 1 percent; the occupations are one of the few ways we are building power. Ask your local officials to respect people’s right to assembly.

9. Study and teach nonviolent techniques.

There are many examples of outside provocateurs who spark violent incidents that can discredit nonviolent movements such as this. The corporate media is hungry for violent images. (There’s already been an example of an admitted provocateur from the right-wing “American Spectator” who provoked pepper spraying at the National Air & Space Museum). Learn how to lovingly and firmly interrupt and contain violence, and teach what you know. Here are some resources.

 10. Be resilient. 

This movement is here for the long term. Some efforts may fade because of cold weather or harsh police responses. Others may self-destruct through faulty process or violent outbreaks. The movement may be idealistic, but it won’t be ideal. Don’t get disillusioned; the demand for a society that serves the 99 percent won’t go away. The movement may morph, but it has become unstoppable. Help it evolve.

The genie is out of the bottle. People will no longer accept the systematic transfer of wealth and power fromwe the people to the 1 percent. In this remarkable, leaderless movement, each one of the 99 percent who gets involved helps shape history.”

Sarah van Gelder is Executive Editor of YES! Magazine where you can read her blog.

Emphasis Mine.

see:http://www.alternet.org/story/152833/_10_ways_to_support_the_occupy_movement?akid=7763.123424.-Ub7Ko&rd=1&t=5