DebateWeNeed

A New Progressive Era?

Robert Borosage — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 07:21:24 -0700

An Institute for America's Future op-ad in Tuesday's New York Times calls on us to "remember who we are," comparing the present crisis with that our parents and grandparents faced at the dawn of the New Deal.

If, as seems likely, Sen. Barack Obama is elected and Democrats win greater majorities in both houses of Congress, will we witness a new era of bold progressive change, a 21st-century Green New Deal? Certainly many of the elements are present:

• Moment: Events force change. Franklin D. Roosevelt famously campaigned in 1932 on a balanced budget and resisted laying out a bold agenda. But the scope of the economic collapse required bold action. Similarly, Obama began his campaign intentionally vague about his "change" agenda. But the scope of the financial collapse, the deepening global economy downturn have already forced what was unimaginable only months ago.

• Mandate: Herbert Hoover's failure and the speculative excesses and crimes exposed in the stock market crash discredited the Gilded Age policies of that conservative era, giving FDR a mandate for a very different direction. Similarly, President Bush's catastrophic failures have discredited modern day conservatism. Sen. John McCain has helped define the scope of Obama's mandate, with his closing argument that the election poses a choice between Reaganism—smaller government and lower taxes—and "socialism." At this point, socialism is winning. Obama is far from a socialist, but he too has framed his closing argument as a choice of a new direction or the "failed philosophy" of trickle-down economics that scorns government, lowers taxes on the rich and increases insecurity for the many. He will be elected with a clear mandate for a change in direction, not simply a change in parties.

• Majority: Roosevelt's overwhelming victory cowed what remained of his Republican opposition. Indeed, he had greater trouble corraling the various factions of the Democratic Party, particularly its entrenched Southern wing. Next Tuesday is likely to expose the Republicans as a minority, regional, aging, whites-only party in the grip of its evangelical extreme. For Obama, the greatest obstacles to pursuing progressive reform are likely to come from his party's conservative Blue Dogs and Wall Street centrist "new Democrats."

• Moral Armament: Roosevelt, by the time of his first inaugural address, was portraying the challenge to the country in moral terms. He warned against "fear itself," called people to service and to unity. He demanded "safeguards against a return of the evils of the old order," particularly that of "speculating with other people's money." He skewered the "unscrupulous money changers" who had failed because

.. "...their efforts have been cast in the pattern of an outworn tradition. Faced by failure of credit, they have proposed only the lending of more money. Stripped of the lure of profit by which to induce our people to follow their false leadership, they have resorted to exhortations, pleading tearfully for restored confidence. They only know the rules of a generation of self-seekers. They have no vision, and when there is no vision the people perish."

In his "closing" for the election, Obama is already issuing a similar moral indictment. He, too, is calling Americans to come together, to trust one another.

In one week, you can turn the page on policies that have put the greed and irresponsibility of Wall Street before the hard work and sacrifice of folks on Main Street....

I know these are difficult times for America. But I also know that we have faced difficult times before. The American story has never been about things coming easy - it's been about rising to the moment when the moment was hard. It's about seeing the highest mountaintop from the deepest of valleys. It's about rejecting fear and division for unity of purpose. That's how we've overcome war and depression. That's how we've won great struggles for civil rights and women's rights and worker's rights. And that's how we'll emerge from this crisis stronger and more prosperous than we were before - as one nation; as one people.

Does all this add up to a new era of bold reform? Two more elements are vital.

• Presidential Determination: Roosevelt was known neither as a radical nor a particularly bold leader. Yet, as he came to understand the depths of the challenge facing the country, he clearly decided that "constant and persistent experimentation" were necessary, and that bold and dramatic measures were vital: the Reconstruction Finance Corporation to shackle the banks, the Securities and Exchange Commission to police markets, the Works Progress Administration to put people to work, Social Security to provide basic security for all, the Wagner Act to empower workers and more.

Obama will face the same choice in the worst economic crisis since that Great Depression. Yet, today's conditions are far less dire. Many voices will counsel caution. Many will tell him to limit his priorities. Many will warn of unsustainable debts and deficits. What he decides is needed will be telling.

• Progressive Movement. Roosevelt was blessed—although he often thought it a curse—with a mobilized progressive movement, led by militant labor unions. They pushed hard for reform, challenging Roosevelt's agenda, criticizing his timidity, demanding more. But they were also responsible, working to help him win reforms, challenging those who stood the way, understanding that they had to keep building power to gain further progress. Roosevelt was smart enough to help them: "The president wants you to join a labor union," their organizers said. They were disciplined enough to help the president, even as they pushed for more.

The current progressive movement is neither as organized nor as grounded. Some good many are pure Obama fans. Some—including many of the best bloggers—grew up in opposition to the war in Iraq and the crimes and catastrophes of the Bush administration. They are scornful of compromised Democrats, suspicious of a leadership that didn't end the war and cynical about the many corruptions of modern-day politicians.

Most of the organized progressive movement has spent the last years fighting to stop bad things from happening. Will a progressive movement come together that is independent enough to push Obama hard to go father than he might otherwise go, and responsible enough to help support reforms and go after those in both parties that stand in the way? The Obama White House will clearly prefer the remarkable base that will have been built during the campaign, ready to be mobilized in his support. Will an Obama administration come to appreciate the benefits of an independent progressive movement demanding more than it thinks is possible?

Inheriting a country mired in two wars, headed into a deep and long recession, marked by Gilded Age inequality and growing insecurity, the next president will face stark challenges. If Obama is elected on Tuesday, he will have the moment, mandate, momentum and moral armament to launch a new era of bold progressive reform. And in the coming months we will learn if he has the audacity of hope to undertake it and whether progressives can forge a force for change to propel it.

Bonfires For The Global Vanities

Phyllis Bennis — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 15:21:11 -0700

On January 20, be on the lookout for bonfires across the country and around the world, as ceremonial burnings of the Bush war doctrine light up the sky. A new administration provides an opportunity for change, after eight dark years of devastating wars and consistent violations of international law, matched by the shredding of the Constitution.

But even if the Republican reign of abuse of power and its drive towards empire is ended, it will take a powerful, mobilized antiwar movement across the United States – and indeed, around the world – to hold a new administration accountable to promises made, and to obligations undertaken and imposed.

The Bush administration came into office committed to an aggressive, militarized unilateralism – a tendency that skyrocketed after the September 11, 2001 attacks, when the White House used fear as a weapon to win public acquiescence to extremist policies which would once have met widespread outrage. Bush announced the “global war on terror” and used it to reaffirm and legitimize Americans’ fears. The cost in human lives, especially in Iraq and Afghanistan, and in the trillions of dollars diverted from urgently needed social needs at home and abroad, is almost incomprehensible.

Now there is a new opportunity. What is required to reverse the devastation these eight years have wrought?

First, the occupation of Iraq must be ended. Unequivocally and completely. That means bringing home all the U.S. occupation troops (not only the officially named “combat” troops) and all U.S.-paid foreign mercenaries. It means closing all the U.S. military bases that have been built across Iraq. It means renouncing all claims to control of Iraq’s oil. Only then will Iraq and Iraqis have a chance to end their internal wars and rebuild their own shattered country in their own image.

All of that is step one. Only then we can begin the long process of making good on our real obligations to the people of Iraq: real reconstruction — meaning money that goes directly to Iraqis instead of to U.S. war-profiteering contractors — and reparations for the damage to the country that began with the first Gulf crisis in 1990. Fulfilling this obligation will be difficult at a time of economic crisis at home, but U.S. legitimacy in the world will never be restored as long as Iraq remains ravaged.

Then there’s Afghanistan, ostensibly Washington’s “good war.” But that illusion is a dream that has long meant nightmares for the people of Afghanistan. Do we really think that the constant toll of civilian deaths caused by U.S. airstrikes will win Afghan hearts and minds away from the Taliban? Have we forgotten so much history that we really are surprised that the Taliban, however repressive themselves, are now gaining in popular support because they are increasingly seen as the only force able to oppose the hated occupiers? Do we really think this political battle inside Afghan society can be solved by U.S. commandoes and Predator drones dropping bombs, let alone with another “surge” of 30,000 U.S. ground troops from Iraq?

And beyond ending the existing wars, a new administration has the chance to reject the Bush administration’s unilateralism and militarism, and build an entirely new foreign policy based on multilateral cooperation and diplomacy – a whole new paradigm that recognizes there is no such thing as “national security,” there is only international security. But such a shift won’t be easy.

It means shutting down the 1,000-plus military bases around the world that have become the most visible symbol of the U.S. drive towards empire and a major cause of anti-Americanism in every continent. It means recognizing that the decline of U.S. economic power cannot – must not – result in greater reliance on military force as the centerpiece of U.S. foreign policy. It means going back to basics – privileging diplomacy over threats and invasions, the State Department over the Pentagon, the United Nations over NATO, and an end to coerced “coalitions of the willing.”

And we can’t assume that with a Democrat in the White House this transformation will happen automatically. It was Madeleine Albright, after all, then United Nations Ambassador for the ostensibly multilateralist Clinton administration, who boasted that “the U.N. is a tool of American foreign policy.” In fact, regardless of who gets elected in November, our work come January doesn’t change all that much.

McCain has said he’ll keep the troops in Iraq maybe for a hundred years, until he “wins” the war. Obama says he’ll pull out some, but leave behind as many as 80,000 U.S. troops still occupying Iraq, even though his mobilized constituency took shape with his promise to “end the war.” Both say they will escalate in Afghanistan and continue attacking Pakistan. Without a diverse, powerful, and principled movement demanding an end to these wars, no president will reverse course. Electing the best possible candidate we can is only step one. Holding that president’s feet to the fire, demanding he make good on his promises and not only his threats, on what he can be as well as what he isn’t, is up to us as well.

The world always pays attention to U.S. elections – the U.S. president exerts power far beyond our borders. But this time, people are watching with an urgent demand for change – for a real transformation, not cosmetic tweaks – that is palpable across the globe. The world wants a United States that stands as a partner with the other nations of the world, not a U.S. empire standing as a colossus above all others. The new administration could make good on that global wish – and in doing so make Americans, and the rest of the world, far safer than we are today.

Phyllis Bennis is a Fellow of the Institute for Policy Studies. Her books include Challenging Empire: How People, Governments and the UN Defy U.S. Power and the just-released Ending the Iraq War: A Primer.

How Universal Health Care Changes Everything

Sara Robinson — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 02:44:13 -0700

With one fell stroke, giving Americans universal access to health care will undermine some of the deepest and most persistent myths of the conservative worldview.

-------------------
We've worked hard to build a progressive political juggernaut that will, God willing and the creek don't rise, put us in control of both Congress and the Executive Branch starting just a week from now.

But it's one thing to get power, and another thing to keep it.

Someone (OK, it was Rick Perlstein) recently asked a group of friends to name the single most important policy step progressives could take to solidify a long-term grip on the government — the kind of extended run we had from 1932 through to the Age of Reagan.

Read the final ad in our series for "a debate worthy of a great nation in crisis" and join the discussion.

There were a lot of good answers. Ending privatization was, I thought, the best answer of all. Reinvesting in education is important if we want to ensure that the next generation will support and sustain our work and values. (I like to joke that the reason they call it "liberal education" is that the more of it you have, the more liberal you're likely to be. It's not quite accurate, but it's true enough.) Ensuring that people's interactions with government are useful and positive was another: In a lot of states, one afternoon at the DMV is enough to make the most ardent good-government partisan turn into Grover Norquist. (Maybe we don't want to drag the whole government into the bathtub to drown it, but that SOB at Window 11 would be a fine place to start.)

But in the end, I settled on "provide universal health care—preferably single-payer" as my final answer. I chose this not just because health care is an important public good (though it is), but because I'm convinced that this single step will do more to rapidly and permanently undermine the conservative worldview than anything else we could possibly do.

How Universal Care Changes Everything: The Canadian Example

I've seen this happen, at very close range. Over the course of nearly five years living in Canada, I've been continually impressed by the durable, far-reaching role universal health care plays in expressing and reinforcing the entire country's political philosophy. It's probably not overstating things to say that the health care system is at the very core of the Canadian sense of national identity, right up there with the Mounties and the Hudson's Bay Company and well above the Queen. Every time my neighbors go to the doctor, the experience reaffirms a set of cultural assumptions that, over time, have made and kept the country unwaveringly progressive.

A civilized country does not turn any of its citizens away from the table. And that idea, once set, opens up a broader sense of what we owe each other.

First, they're reminded that taking care of each other is a core Canadian value—a cherished piece of who they are. In the Harper era, the conservatives up here have tried hard to sell American-style rugged individualism and the belief that "you're on your own" (or should be), beholden to no one, needing no one. Most Canadians reject this as a peculiar form of insanity: Their interdependence is so patently obvious to them that it's like denying the existence of gravity. They're so proud of their health care system—and what it says about them as a nation—that, when asked to name the greatest Canadian in history a few years ago, they chose Tommy Douglas, the provincial premier (governor) from Saskatchewan who was the father of the first single-payer plan.

Second, they're reminded that their government does useful and important things that add immensely to their quality of life, and thus deserves their ongoing support. And their high hopes also lead to high expectations. They not only expect a lot from their health care system; they also expect that their police will be respectful and law-abiding, their city parks will be well-tended; and their public buildings will be beautiful. If it takes money to make that happen, they'll spend it—but those who've been trusted with it had better be damned careful. Where Americans believe in "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness," the Canadian Constitution calls for "peace, order, and good government." And that set of aspirations is reinforced every time they walk into a doctor's office and get the treatment they need.

Third, they're reminded that certain rights are inalienable, and certain levels of inequality are intolerable—and that every Canadian has an intrinsic and equal entitlement to shelter, food, education, and health care. In the conservative era, America's hypercompetitive society has been very quick to throw away people who haven't made the cut in some way—people without money, connections, or education; people with disabilities that make them economically less viable; people who come from the wrong racial or religious group or the wrong part of the country. You only deserve what you, personally, are capable of earning. If you're badly equipped to do that, it's your own damned fault. If you can't afford health care, you deserve to die. In no case is it the taxpayers' job to step in and make it right.

That attitude is completely foreign up here. It's notoriously hard for immigrants to find good jobs here, but even immigrants get health care. There's a heroin problem in downtown Vancouver, but even junkies get health care. You don't lose your insurance just because you got sick, or got disabled, or had to quit your job; even the unemployed get health care.

Nobody falls through the cracks, no matter what condition their condition is in. Nobody is chained to a job they hate because they can't afford to lose their health care. Nobody has to pass up the chance to go back to school, or take a year abroad, or stay home with their kids. Nobody hesitates before starting their own business, either. The result is a healthier, more skilled, better-traveled, more fulfilled, more entrepreneurial and ultimately more competitive workforce.

A lot of Americans seem downright threatened by the idea that everybody deserves the same level of health care, delivered by the same doctors. It sounds like wild-eyed socialist ranting (all this crazy talk of "rights"!). For Canadians, though, that right is such a basic assumption that it's not even up for discussion. A civilized country does not turn any of its citizens away from the table. And that idea, once set, opens up a broader sense of what we owe each other. Health care is the social contract in daily action. Ultimately, having that contract reaffirmed so intimately and so often affects how my neighbors do business, how they treat the environment, and how they relate to the rest of the world. The effects of this affirmation ripple out into everything Canada touches.

Which brings us to the last observation: sharing a common health care system reminds Canadians that they're all in this together. From the richest to the poorest, everyone arrives and dies in the same hospitals, tended by the same doctors. It's in nobody's interest to let that system fail. (Prairie folks -- Canada's version of Midwesterners -- will tell you that the northern climate extremes also encourage people to look out for each other. And that makes some sense, too: denying help to neighbors and strangers during the winter in places like Edmonton or Winnipeg can all too easily become an act of negligent homicide. In extreme conditions, free access to good hospitals becomes a critical piece of that caretaking.)

The upper classes occasionally try to introduce privatization options in one province or another; but the citizens/patients, the government, and the health care unions have usually brought tremendous pressure to bear to limit or end these experiments. Everybody understands that if the wealthy bail on the system, there won't be the political will to keep the quality high. This conversation is ongoing—and the very fact that they keep having it also helps keep the symbolic importance of the system front and center. Everybody understands very clearly what's at stake.

How Guaranteed Health Care Could Change America

If we could get Americans thinking along similar lines, all manner of impossible things will become possible. With one fell stroke, providing universal access to health care will instantly undermine some of the deepest and most persistent myths of the conservative worldview. People will, very quickly, remember that we cannot function as a democracy unless we're deeply invested in common wealth and a common future—that "you're on your own" is simply a conservative lie that allows the rich to divide and conquer. We'll be startled at first to see just how much a single well-run government program can actually deliver—and then, as our confidence grows, we'll start expecting more of other government efforts, and become more willing to experiment with other kinds of programs. It's quite likely we'll start asking hard questions about programs that divert taxpayers' money away from these essential goods, and re-prioritize our spending. Thrown together into a shared health care system, we may even learn some compassion for each other, and start to heal some of the deep social and political rifts that have divided us for so long.

Social Security shut up the economic royalists and reintroduced Americans to the value of social contracts and a belief in the common good. Creating a long-term 21st-century progressive renaissance depends on our ability to bring these same lessons home to a whole new generation in the most vivid and unforgettable way possible.

If it works in the U.S. half as well as it does in Canada, the conservatives will be forced to give up on all those plans for that big 2012 comeback they're so eagerly anticipating right now. With roughly a third of the country either uninsured or under-insured; and everybody else at risk of losing their coverage at a moment's notice, the sheer relief at having that burden lifted from 300 million souls is going to make the old conservative nostrums sound absolutely insane. Anybody who suggests that there's something wrong with universal care, or that it was better the old way, or that this is that Pure Communist Evil they've been warning about since the days of McCarthy, is going to be dismissed out of hand as an ideological crank. Because only people who buy their Kool-Aid by the barrel could even think about going back to the awful way things were in 2008.

It's all happened just this way before, of course. Social Security did all these same things in its time. It shut up the economic royalists and reintroduced Americans to the value of social contracts and a belief in the common good. Americans accepted these ideas so completely that liberals were able to seize control of the country's political discourse, and dominate it for the next four decades. On most issues, the conservatives had no choice but to follow their lead.

Unfortunately, though, all this happened over 70 years ago—so far in the past that most Americans can't even imagine what life was like before we had a guaranteed retirement income. We take that much too much for granted now. Creating a long-term 21st-century progressive renaissance depends on our ability to bring these same lessons home to a whole new generation in the most vivid and unforgettable way possible. Guaranteed health care will do that. It has the potential to become the catalyst for a new season of American progressivism that could last another 40 years.

This notion is no secret to conservatives, who figured out 15 years ago that universal health coverage could well become their undoing. In the heat of the 1993 debate over the proposed Clinton health care plan, Bill Kristol wrote a famous strategy memo in which he argued that "passage of the Clinton health care plan in any form would be disastrous. It would guarantee an unprecedented federal intrusion into the American economy. Its success would signal the rebirth of centralized welfare-state policy at the very moment that such policy is being perceived as a failure in other areas."

Conservatives are already acutely aware that if we get health care that works, they're going to be shut out of power and out of the conversation for decades to come. They also know that, come January, they may find themselves too weak to put up a fight.

Presidential candidate Barack Obama knows it, too, which is why he's made universal health care a central part of his agenda. If he succeeds, I think people are going to be surprised at the depth and speed of the resulting leftward shift in American values. Seeing the government deliver such an essential and powerful good to so many people will permanently discredit many of the most fundamental assumptions of the conservative worldview—and in doing so, will make it much, much harder for the cons to ever make themselves politically relevant again.

There's nothing else that will do so much for so many so quickly—and, at the same time, lay down the sturdy foundation for a long, strong progressive future.

Are We Ready For A New Progressive Era?

Isaiah J. Poole — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 16:19:23 -0700

We are retrieving your content. If it does not appear in a few seconds, please click here.

Remember Who We Are: The Facts

Anita Chariw2 — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 11:05:21 -0700

We have let public good be subordinated to corporate greed.

• Corporate profits have climbed 13 percent a year in the six years after the 2001 recession ended. Productivity has also increased by 11 percent since the recovery of the 2001 recession.

“Worked and Over Worked.” New York Times. Pg. 3. 20 April 2008.
Lawrence Mishel, Jared Bernstein, and Heidi Shierholz. The State of Working America 2008/2009. (Advance Proof). Economic Policy Institute. Pg 121. Ithaca, New York: Cornel University Press, 2008.

• Furthermore, it takes an average worker a whole year to earn what a CEO takes home in one day. In 2007, the chief executives of the 500 largest companies in the United States made an average of $12.8 million apiece—$51,200 a day—while the average weekly wage earner makes $42,650 a year.

Scott DeCarlo. “Top Paid CEOs.” Forbes. 30 April 2008.
United States Department of Labor. Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages. Bureau of Labor Statistics. 2008. Data compiled: 12 September 2008.

• However, since 2000, median household income has declined by 1 percent ($324.00); employer provided health insurance for workers has decreased by 8 percent, a decline of almost 2 million workers; and employer provided pension coverage receded by 2.8 percentage points from 2000 to 2006 to 42.8 percent, 7.8 percentage points below the level in 1979.

United States Census Bureau. Current Population Survey 2007. Table A-1: Households by Total Money Income, Race, and Hispanic Origin of Householder: 1967 to 2007. Pg 31. August 2008. (Adjusted 2008 Dollars)
United States Census Bureau. Current Population Survey 2007. Table A-1: Households by Total Money Income, Race, and Hispanic Origin of Householder: 1967 to 2007. Pg 61. August 2008.
Lawrence Mishel, Jared Bernstein, and Heidi Shierholz. The State of Working America 2008/2009. (Advance Proof). Economic Policy Institute. Pg 121. Ithaca, New York: Cornel University Press, 2008.

• Policymakers, egged on by Wall Street lobbyists, enacted policies that let financial institutions govern themselves. They rejected the warnings of financial experts who saw a disaster in the making. Only now are the apostles of deregulation admitting, in Alan Greenspan's words, "shocked disbelief" at the result.

The New York Times. "The Reckoning," (series). September 28-October 23, 2008.

We’ve let our economy be run into the ground, as bankers ran wild.

• The U.S. Federal Reserve and U.S. Treasury provided over $900 billion in the government bailout of reckless financial institutions.

“FACTBOX: Government Bailout Tally Tops $900 Billion." Reuters. 16 September 2008.

• Since 2001, the overall cost of living has increased 21.5 percent; driven by big increases in living essentials; such as gas, home-heating oil and food. Gasoline and home-heating oil prices have increased 108 percent and 99 percent since 2001, respectively. Prices of some staple foods have increased disproportionately as well; for example, the price of eggs in this period increased 61 percent.

United States Department of Labor. Consumer Price Index: All Urban Consumers-(CPI-U); U.S. City Averages. Bureau of Labor Statistics. 14 August 2008.
Oil Price Information Service and AAA. Daily Fuel Gauge Report. 2008. (Adjusted 2008 Dollars).
Energy Information Administration. Weekly U.S. no. 2 Heating Oil Residential Price. 19 March 2008. (Adjusted 2008 Dollars)
United States Bureau of Labor Statistics. Consumer Price Index: Average Price Data. 2008. Data compiled: 12 September 2008. (Adjusted 2008 Dollars)

• Wages haven't kept pace: Since 2000, median household income has declined by 1 percent ($324.00).

United States Census Bureau. Current Population Survey 2007. Table A-1: Households by Total Money Income, Race, and Hispanic Origin of Householder: 1967 to 2007. Pg 31. August 2008. (Adjusted 2008 Dollars)

• The Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight reported United States’ home prices fell 4.8 percent between the second quarter of 2007 and the second quarter of 2008—back to 2005 levels.

Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight. Monthly Seasonally-Adjusted and Unadjusted Indexes: January 1991 - June 2008. 26 August 2008.

• Since 2000, we’ve lost one out of five manufacturing jobs. Between September 2000 and September 2008, the United States has lost over 3.8 million manufacturing jobs—a decline of 22 percent. Fully twenty million more are at risk.

United States Department of Labor. “Employment, Hours, and Earnings from the Current Employment Statistics Survey (National).” Bureau of Labor Statistics. Data Compiled: 3 October 2008.

• American business is steadily moving finance, technology, production, and marketing beyond our borders. Some 50 percent of all U.S.-owned manufacturing production is now located in foreign countries, and 25 percent of the profits of U.S. multinational corporations are generated overseas—and the shares are rapidly growing.

Martin Crutsinger. “Factory Jobs: 3 Million Lost Since 2000.” Associated Press. 20 April 2008.
Jeff Faux. Globalization that Works for Working Americans. Economic Policy Institute. Briefing Paper #179. 11 January 2007.

We’ve let labor unions be attacked...

• Since 2000, the number of workers belonging to a union has decreased 600,000 to 15.7 million workers.

United States Department of Labor. “Union Members in 2000.” Bureau of Labor Statistics. 18 January 2001.
United States Department of Labor. “Union Members in 2007.” Bureau of Labor Statistics. 25 January 2008.

• Some 60 million U.S. workers say they would join a union if they could, based on research conducted by Peter D. Hart Research Associates in December 2006.

American Federation of Labor-Congress of Industrial Organizations. “60 Million Workers Would Join A Union If They Could.” 2007.

• However, when faced with organizing drives, 25 percent of employers fire at least one pro-union worker; 51 percent threaten to close a worksite if the union prevails; and 92 percent force employees to attend one-on-one anti-union meetings with their supervisors.

American Federation of Labor-Congress of Industrial Organizations. “Employer Interference by the Numbers (Private-Sector Employees).” 2007.

... and our middle class be weakened.

• The personal savings rate is the lowest it has been since the Great Depression (since 1933, the last year it was negative).

United States Department of Commerce. National Income and Product Accounts Table; Table 2.1 Personal Income and Its Disposition [Billion of Dollars] Seasonally Adjusted at Annual Rates. Bureau of Economic Analysis. 28 August 2008.

• In 2007, the total value of all forms of household debt was at its highest on record—nearly 20 percent of all assets. All debt, as a share of annual disposable personal income, was also at its highest at 141 percent.

Lawrence Mishel, Jared Bernstein, and Heidi Shierholz. The State of Working America 2008/2009. (Advance Proof). Economic Policy Institute. Pg 121. Ithaca, New York: Cornel University Press, 2008.

• Employer-provided health insurance for workers has decreased by 8 percent since 2000—a decline of almost 2 million workers.

United States Census Bureau. Current Population Survey 2007. Table A-1: Households by Total Money Income, Race, and Hispanic Origin of Householder: 1967 to 2007. Pg 61. August 2008.

• Employer-provided pension coverage receded by 2.8 percentage points from 2000 to 2006 to 42.8 percent, 7.8 percentage points below the level in 1979.

Lawrence Mishel, Jared Bernstein, and Heidi Shierholz. The State of Working America 2008/2009. (Advance Proof). Economic Policy Institute. Pg 121. Ithaca, New York: Cornel University Press, 2008.

Bold vs. Incremental: The Debate Shifts

Bill Scher — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 09:03:58 -0700

Five years ago, I interviewed now-Nobel Laureate Paul Krugman for LiberalOasis.com, and I asked him about his past support for NAFTA-style trade and globalization. He responded:

I have to say those issues -- they seemed terribly big issues a few years ago. And I'd like to imagine us back to a situation where they become top issues. But at this point, they're really second-order.

The key thing, in terms of the state of the world right now, is that the United States has gone mad. Let's get some return to fiscal and environmental and general governmental sanity in this country, and then we can talk about we manage globalization...

...My dream for America would be to return to a situation in which people of decency and good will can have vicious arguments of globalization again. Right now, that seems to be a luxury we can't afford.

With the final chapter on the Bush Era about to close, it appears we may be able to have those sorts of constructive arguments again between who see themselves as progressives and moderates.

Conservative ideology was buried in the wake of the financial crisis, as now even President Bush has been compelled to partially nationalize the banking industry. In turn, the broader national debate is moving away from whether or not our government needs to be involved in our economy, to how best can government get our economy back on track?

Conservative NY TImes columnist David Brooks sees this debate coming, predicts progressives will win, and that it will be terrible:

The new situation will reopen old rifts in the Democratic Party. One the one side, liberals will argue (are already arguing) that it was deregulation and trickle-down economic policies that led us to this crisis. Fears of fiscal insolvency are overblown. Democrats should use their control of government and the economic crisis as a once-in-a-lifetime chance to make some overdue changes. Liberals will make a full-bore push for European-style economic policies.

On the other hand, the remaining moderates will argue that it was excess and debt that created this economic crisis. They will argue (are arguing) that it is perfectly legitimate to increase the deficit with stimulus programs during a recession, but that these programs need to be carefully targeted and should sunset as the crisis passes. The moderates will stress that the country still faces a ruinous insolvency crisis caused by entitlement burdens.

Obama will try to straddle the two camps — he seems to sympathize with both sides — but the liberals will win. Over the past decade, liberals have mounted a campaign against Robert Rubin-style economic policies, and they control the Congressional power centers. Even if he’s so inclined, it’s difficult for a president to overrule the committee chairmen of his own party. It is more difficult to do that when the president is a Washington novice and the chairmen are skilled political hands. It is most difficult when the president has no record of confronting his own party elders. It’s completely impossible when the economy is in a steep recession, and an air of economic crisis pervades the nation.

What we’re going to see, in short, is the Gingrich revolution in reverse and on steroids. There will be a big increase in spending and deficits. In normal times, moderates could have restrained the zeal on the left. In an economic crisis, not a chance. The over-reach is coming. The backlash is next.

Beyond the wild assumptions of how a President Obama would work with Congress, Brooks also makes a fundamental assumption -- commonplace among Establishment punditcrats -- that "moderate restraint" is always necessary to counter ideological "zeal" -- when it is quite possible for bold polices to be simultaneously and inherently pragmatic. (See "Deal, New.") Such an assumption is exactly the kind of simplistic knee-jerk argument that centrist-style pundits (and wanna-be-centrist conservative pundits like Brooks) always chastise others for making.

Surely, debates will be had between progressives and moderates. But they do not always have to cause "rifts." (Krugman's dream of "vicious" arguments was said facetiously.) Especially when it is clear that both sides share big common ground.

Today, Institute for America's Future offers that latest "Debate We Need" Op-Ad in the NY Times about health care, laying out core principles for comprehensive health care reform:

Health care is a right. We need clear rules requiring private insurance companies to cover everyone -- even those with pre-existing conditions. And we need the security of knowing we can keep our current health plan, or we can choose a public plan like Medicare, so we're not at the mercy of the same profit-down companies that got us into this mess!

Meanwhile, health care blogger Joe Paduda embraces the view that comprehensive reform is not possible in the short-term. Instead, he offers incremental steps increasing regulation on insurance companies, but holding off on bolder proposals such as establishing a public plan option.

Paduda and I don't disagree much on the end goal. We only have a disagreement on the tactics how to get there. That's not a small thing, since how we seize any "progressive moment" will be critical to our success. But it's not something that has to result in a damaging rift either.

Paduda is concerned that the money simply isn't there, and we'll certainly hear similar arguments a lot in the next few months.

But the point behind making bold investments in health care, clean energy, infrastructure and education is because they will pay off long-term. The health care plan envisioned by Health Care for America Now would save $1 trillion in health care spending over 10 years, according to the Lewin Group. Similarly, the idea behind this banker rescue plan is injecting capital in the banks will stabilize the market and the investment will be recouped later.

Worrying too much about the short-term budget ledger when our foundation is crumbling and recession is looming, I would contend, is not pragmatic or responsible.

But let's have that debate now, and have it constructively, so we can unify on shared principles and hit the ground running in January.

Health Care Victim Of Wall Street Madness?

OurFuture.org Staff — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 08:45:12 -0700

Butter Over Guns

OurFuture.org Staff — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 08:56:28 -0700

Chickens Home to Roost

Leo Gerard — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 08:12:20 -0700

While the recently passed bailout bill may or may not help to stabilize the credit markets (and on Monday it looked as if it may have in fact made it worse) it is absolutely clear that it does nothing to address the fundamental cause of this crisis – declining home prices and eight years of stagnant wages for the overwhelming majority of working families.

George W. Bush’s chickens have come home to roost, and they’re not pretty.

With the full support of Arizona Sen. John McCain, who voted with him 90 percent of the time, eight years of the Bush-McCain philosophy have left us in a terrible mess:

138 trade deals – every single one enthusiastically supported by McCain – have contributed to a loss of 3.9 million manufacturing jobs and the growth of our current account balance by $4.4 trillion.

A federal budget, which was running a $236 billion surplus in 2000, will balloon to an estimated deficit of $407 billion in fiscal 2008, and perhaps $500 billion in 2009.

And last week we learned that another 159,000 jobs were lost last month, many more than expected and the worst job losses in five years.

We have mortgaged not just our homes but our entire future to foreign governments that have made clear in recent days that they care not one wit for the concerns of America’s working families. The people with the leverage are now the Chinese, the Russians and the oil-producing countries, each of whom will want assurances that the debt they hold now and the new debt they will soon be buying are worth something.

If anything good can come out of this awful mess, we must begin by clearly and unequivocally recognizing the absolute bankruptcy of the Bush-McCain approach.

Congress and the next president, together with all those who care about America, need to come together and develop concrete plans for supporting real productive activity in this country and making meaningful public investments in our economy. We must create real wealth in our economy, and value-added manufacturing is the best answer.

Over and above creating millions of jobs and preserving countless more, investments in the “real economy” also offer the greatest opportunity to get something back on the hundreds of billions of bad loans which our government is about to acquire from Wall Street on behalf of the American people who live on Main Street. Just as we cannot consume our way to financial health, neither can we “swap” enough paper to re-create a vibrant economy.

Government must take the lead in revitalizing the economy that Wall Street speculators have almost destroyed. To create jobs, we need to invest in rebuilding our crumbling infrastructure – our roads, schools and bridges. We need to rebuild our outdated electricity grid and build new broadband lines to connect all of America. And we need to create the jobs of the future by transforming our energy economy, tapping our natural gas reserves, investing in clean coal, and finding ways to safely harness nuclear power.

We must also invest in affordable, renewable sources of energy – wind power, solar power and the next generation of biofuels, investments that will lead to new industries and millions of new jobs that pay well and can’t be offshored.

We need to once and for all bury the philosophy that worships only business, free markets, deregulation and free trade, and replace it with an economic program that restores the balance of power between workers and business, rebuilds the middle class and curbs corporate excesses.

The Real Economy Strikes Back

Robert Borosage — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 07:44:24 -0700

So much for the $700 billion bailout of Wall Street. Stocks are tanking across the world. Clearly, once the bailout passed, investors took a good look at the real economy and dove for the mattresses. We’re headed into a great reckoning. And at the heart of that, as argued in our new op-ad in the New York Times, is this country’s unsustainable global economic strategy.

What we’re seeing, as Joseph Stiglitz has argued, is the failure of an economic model, an implosion of free market fundamentalism – the notion “that markets are self-correcting, allocate resources efficiently and serve the public interest well,” and governments should just get out of the way.

We’ve gone down this path for 30 years. Abroad, global corporations and banks essentially wrote the constitution of the new global economy, protecting property rights but not workers, consumers or the environment. Banks and currencies were deregulated without protection against destabilizing speculation.

At home, President Reagan launched the war on unions and the rollback of government and regulation. The minimum wage was frozen for a decade. Undocumented workers were exploited to undermine wages and standards. Companies used globalization as a club against workers. Pensions and health care benefits were cut. Over the last eight years, productivity and profits rose, but wages lost ground. We lost one in five manufacturing jobs. Now some 15 million service jobs are at risk of being offshored.

Yet the global economy depended on American consumers as the buyers of last resort. Sustaining a low-wage, high-consumption economy is no mean trick. The gulf was bridged by growing debt built on successive asset bubbles. Household debt soared to unprecedented levels as Americans loaded up on credit cards and cashed out their homes. And the U.S. is now the world’s largest debtor, having added over $4.4 trillion in foreign debt since 2001. We must borrow or sell off assets with $2 billion a day simply to cover our trade deficits. We now run a high-tech trade deficit with China. Mexico exports 50 percent more cars to the U.S. than the U.S. exports to the rest of the world.

What can’t go on indefinitely, won’t. And with the bursting of the housing bubble, the reckoning is here.

Clearly we need to change course. We need a national economic strategy for a global economy, a strategy for the nation, not for the multinationals that have very different interests. First, we need to work with other nations to rewrite the global rules, protecting the rights of workers to organize, creating the global environmental accords vital to dealing with global warming, raising consumer protection standards, and most important, regulating banking and currency speculation, with far greater transparency.

At home, we have to decide if America will remain a center of innovative manufacturing. A central initiative should be a concerted drive for energy independence, investing in conservation, renewable energy and the next generation of energy-efficient technologies. By doing this, we would be putting people to work while capturing the lead in the green markets of the future. This will dramatically reduce the half of our trade deficits that come from oil.

We need to create the basis for a high-income economy by empowering workers to organize and developing a public social contract to replace the private one shredded by corporations, with national health care, a national pension system, mandated paid vacations and sick leave.

Then we’ll need to make the investments vital to competing as a high-wage economy – in education and lifelong learning, in research and development, in the most efficient infrastructure.

Finally, we have to shed the fantasy that the U.S. and mercantilist nations like China are playing by the same set of rules. Clearly we have to bring our trade with China into balance. Dealing with our leading creditor won’t be easy. But we will have to either force an adjustment of the currencies, manage our trade, or slap on import surcharges or regulatory hurdles to counter their strategic trade practices.

This will cost significant sums. In the short term, as we seek to get out of the recession and get the global economy, we’ll be able to borrow the money. In the longer run, we’ll need to return to a progressive tax system that will finance the needed public investment.

What’s clear now is we deserve a serious public debate about what’s gone wrong – and about what our strategy should be going forward. Enough about Bill Ayers or Palin’s husband's flirtation with Alaskan separatism. We deserve a debate worthy of a great nation in trouble.