Ed. Note: The School to Prison Pipeline exists because there is no due process for our youth and low-socio-economic sector families. Special Education Due Process is a FARCE. Legal Abuse Syndrome, here we are! kps
The Importance of Due Process in American Schools
May 31, 2011 2:10 am
Author: Matthew Lynch contributor EducationNews.org Matthew Lynch - The underlying idea behind practicing and attaching appropriate importance to procedural due process is to ensure that individual students, as well as teachers, are not unnecessarily burdened with arbitrary actions against them by any institution or individual
Due process in education means that fairness should be rendered in all areas, and that the teacher’s or student’s rights as individuals should under no circumstances be violated. Due process is important in the sense that most court decisions regarding teachers, education, and ethical teaching pertain to the fundamental issue of fairness. All protections and rights pertaining to due process actually emerge from 2 amendments of the U.S constitution, listed below:
The Fifth Amendment, which states that “no person shall . . . be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law”; and
The Fourteenth Amendment, which asserts that “the equal protection of the law” ought not to be denied to any individual and “nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.”
Typically, due process that is appropriated in the judging of the fairness of an action can be classified under two broad headings, namely:
Substantive due process that deals with the issue per se.
Procedural due process which delves into the fairness of the process that is appropriated in delivering justice.
For instance, if a teacher was dismissed from his or her duties for treating a child in a particular manner that the child’s parents were not pleased about, an issue of substantive due process is raised. The court’s decision will be based on whether or not the teacher’s actions fell within the lawful bounds of ethical teaching.
Procedural due process, on the other hand, would involve the circumstances and the manner in which the case was handled. Issues such as whether or not the teacher received a fair chance to present his or her side of the story in defense, and given an opportunity to question the evidence provided against him or her come into play here. Procedural due process is actually a broader term and its meaning changes from state to state, depending upon the region-specific laws and regulations. To understand this concept, let’s have a look at the court verdict in Goldberg v. Kelly (1970), which included the following account of the minimum procedural safeguards demanded by basic due process:
The provision of an opportunity to be heard, and the date and time for which this opportunity should be provided to the concerned individual well ahead of time.
A full detailed account of the reasons for the proposed suspension must be furnished well in advance.
The opportunity for the accused employee to defend him or herself, and to question the evidence provided against him or her ought to be provided.
He or she must, under no circumstance, be deprived of the opportunity to retain an attorney.
A chance has to be given to the individual to cross-examine the witnesses present.
It is compulsory that the decision reached must strictly rest on legal rules and laws and on the evidence presented at the hearing.
The decision making body must be impartial and unbiased (Cambron-McCabe et al., 2004).
The underlying idea behind practicing and attaching appropriate importance to procedural due process is to ensure that individual students, as well as teachers, are not unnecessarily burdened with arbitrary actions against them by any institution or individual.
Matthew Lynch is an Assistant Professor of Education at Widener University.
He may be contacted at mlynch@mail.widener.edu
Tuesday, May 31, 2011
Are We Living in Post-Legal America? by Tom Engelhardt
Are We Living in Post-Legal America?
By Tom Engelhardt
At least in terms of what used to be called "foreign policy," and more recently "national security," the United States is now a post-legal society.
May 30, 2011 |
� Is the Libyan war legal? Was Bin Laden’s killing legal? Is it legal for the president of the United States to target an American citizen for assassination? Were those “enhanced interrogation techniques” legal? These are all questions raised in recent weeks. Each seems to call out for debate, for answers. Or does it?
Now, you couldn’t call me a legal scholar. I’ve never set foot inside a law school, and in 66 years only made it onto a single jury (dismissed before trial when the civil suit was settled out of court). Still, I feel at least as capable as any constitutional law professor of answering such questions.
My answer is this: they are irrelevant. Think of them as twentieth-century questions that don't begin to come to grips with twenty-first century American realities. In fact, think of them, and the very idea of a nation based on the rule of law, as a reflection of nostalgia for, or sentimentality about, a long-lost republic. At least in terms of what used to be called “foreign policy,” and more recently “national security,” the United States is now a post-legal society. (And you could certainly include in this mix the too-big-to-jail financial and corporate elite.)
It’s easy enough to explain what I mean. if, in a country theoretically organized under the rule of law, wrongdoers are never brought to justice and nobody is held accountable for possibly serious crimes, then you don’t have to be a constitutional law professor to know that its citizens actually exist in a post-legal state. If so, “Is it legal?” is the wrong question to be asking, even if we have yet to discover the right one.
Pretzeled Definitions of Torture
Of course, when it came to a range of potential Bush-era crimes -- the use of torture, the running of offshore “black sites,” the extraordinary rendition of terrorist suspects to lands where they would be tortured, illegal domestic spying and wiretapping, and the launching of wars of aggression -- it’s hardly news that no one of the slightest significance has ever been brought to justice. On taking office, President Obama offered a clear formula for dealing with this issue. He insisted that Americans should “look forward, not backward” and turn the page on the whole period, and then set his Justice Department to work on other matters. But honestly, did anyone anywhere ever doubt that no Bush-era official would be brought to trial here for such potential crimes?
Everyone knows that in the United States if you’re a robber caught breaking into someone’s house, you’ll be brought to trial, but if you’re caught breaking into someone else’s country, you’ll be free to take to the lecture circuit, write your memoirs, or become a university professor.
Of all the “debates” over legality in the Bush and Obama years, the torture debate has perhaps been the most interesting, and in some ways, the most realistic. After 9/11, the Bush administration quickly turned to a crew of hand-picked Justice Department lawyers to create the necessary rationale for what its officials most wanted to do -- in their quaint phrase, “take the gloves off.” And those lawyers responded with a set of pseudo-legalisms that put various methods of “information extraction” beyond the powers of the Geneva Conventions, the U.N.’s Convention Against Torture (signed by President Ronald Reagan and ratified by the Senate), and domestic anti-torture legislation, including the War Crimes Act of 1996 (passed by a Republican Congress).
In the process, they created infamously pretzled new definitions for acts previously accepted as torture. Among other things, they essentially left the definition of whether an act was torture or not to the torturer (that is, to what he believed he was doing at the time). In the process, acts that had historically been considered torture became “enhanced interrogation techniques.” An example would be waterboarding, which had once been bluntly known as “the water torture” or “the water cure” and whose perpetrators had, in the past, been successfully prosecuted in American military and civil courts. Such techniques were signed off on after first reportedly being “demonstrated” in the White House to an array of top officials, including the vice-president, the national security adviser, the attorney general, and the secretary of state.
In the U.S. (and here was the realism of the debate that followed), the very issue of legality fell away almost instantly. Newspapers rapidly replaced the word “torture” -- when applied to what American interrogators did -- with the term “enhanced interrogation techniques,” which was widely accepted as less controversial and more objective. At the same time, the issue of the legality of such techniques was superseded by a fierce national debate over their efficacy. It has lasted to this day and returned with a bang with the bin Laden killing.
Nothing better illustrates the nature of our post-legal society. Anti-torture laws were on the books in this country. If legality had truly mattered, it would have been beside the point whether torture was an effective way to produce “actionable intelligence” and so prepare the way for the killing of a bin Laden.
By analogy, it’s perfectly reasonable to argue that robbing banks can be a successful and profitable way to make a living, but who would agree that a successful bank robber hadn’t committed an act as worthy of prosecution as an unsuccessful one caught on the spot? Efficacy wouldn’t matter in a society whose central value was the rule of law. In a post-legal society in which the ultimate value espoused is the safety and protection a national security state can offer you, it means the world.
As if to make the point, the Supreme Court recently offered a post-legal ruling for our moment: it declined to review a lower court ruling that blocked a case in which five men, who had experienced extraordinary rendition (a fancy globalized version of kidnapping) and been turned over to torturing regimes elsewhere by the CIA, tried to get their day in court. No such luck. The Obama administration claimed (as had the Bush administration before it) that simply bringing such a case to court would imperil national security (that is, state secrets) -- and won. As Ben Wizner, the American Civil Liberties Union lawyer who argued the case, summed matters up, "To date, every victim of the Bush administration's torture regime has been denied his day in court."
To put it another way, every CIA torturer, all those involved in acts of rendition, and all the officials who okayed such acts, as well as the lawyers who put their stamp of approval on them, are free to continue their lives untouched. Recently, the Obama administration even went to court to “prevent a lawyer for a former CIA officer convicted in Italy in the kidnapping of a radical Muslim cleric from privately sharing classified information about the case with a Federal District Court judge.” (Yes, Virginia, elsewhere in the world a few Americans have been tried in absentia for Bush-era crimes.) In response, wrote Scott Shane of the New York Times, the judge “pronounced herself ‘literally speechless.’”
The realities of our moment are simple enough: other than abusers too low-level (see England, Lynndie and Graner, Charles) to matter to our national security state, no one in the CIA, and certainly no official of any sort, is going to be prosecuted for the possible crimes Americans committed in the Bush years in pursuit of the Global War on Terror.
On Not Blowing Whistles
It’s beyond symbolic, then, that only one figure from the national security world seems to remain in the “legal” crosshairs: the whistle-blower. If, as the president of the United States, you sign off on a system of warrantless surveillance of Americans -- the sort that not so long ago was against the law in this country -- or if you happen to run a giant telecom company and go along with that system by opening your facilities to government snoops, or if you run the National Security Agency or are an official in it overseeing the kind of data mining and intelligence gathering that goes with such a program, then -- as recent years have made clear -- you are above the law.
If, however, you happen to be an NSA employee who feels that the agency has overstepped the bounds of legality in its dealings with Americans, that it is moving in Orwellian directions, and that it should be exposed, and if you offer even unclassified information to a newspaper reporter, as was the case with Thomas Drake, be afraid, be very afraid. You may be prosecuted by the Bush and then Obama Justice Departments, and threatened with 35 years in prison under the Espionage Act (not for “espionage,” but for having divulged the most minor of low-grade state secrets in a world in which, increasingly, everything having to do with the state is becoming a secret).
If you are a CIA employee who tortured no one but may have given information damaging to the reputation of the national security state -- in this case about a botched effort to undermine the Iranian nuclear program -- to a journalist, watch out. You are likely, as in the case of Jeffrey Sterling, to find yourself in a court of law. And if you happen to be a journalist like James Risen who may have received that information, you are likely to be hit by a Justice Department subpoena attempting to force you to reveal your source, under threat of imprisonment for contempt of court.
If you are a private in the U.S. military with access to a computer with low-level classified material from the Pentagon’s wars and the State Department’s activities on it, if you’ve seen something of the grim reality of what the national security state looks like when superimposed on Iraq, and if you decide to shine some light on that world, as Bradley Manning did, they’ll toss you into prison and throw away the key. You’ll be accused of having “blood on your hands” and tried, again under the Espionage Act, by those who actually have blood on their hands and are beyond all accountability.
When it comes to acts of state today, there is only one law: don’t pull up the curtain on the doings of any aspect of our spreading National Security Complex or the imperial executive that goes with it. As CIA Director Leon Panetta put it in addressing his employees over leaks about the operation to kill bin Laden, “Disclosure of classified information to anyone not cleared for it -- reporters, friends, colleagues in the private sector or other agencies, former Agency officers -- does tremendous damage to our work. At worst, leaks endanger lives... Unauthorized disclosure of those details not only violates the law, it seriously undermines our capability to do our job."
And when someone in Congress actually moves to preserve some aspect of older notions of American privacy (versus American secrecy), as Senator Rand Paul did recently in reference to the Patriot Act, he is promptly smeared as potentially “giving terrorists the opportunity to plot attacks against our country, undetected."
Enhanced Legal Techniques
Here is the reality of post-legal America: since the attacks of September 11, 2001, the National Security Complex has engorged itself on American fears and grown at a remarkable pace. According to Top Secret America, a Washington Post series written in mid-2010, 854,000 people have “top secret” security clearances, “33 building complexes for top-secret intelligence work are under construction or have been built since September 2001... 51 federal organizations and military commands, operating in 15 U.S. cities, track the flow of money to and from terrorist networks... [and] some 1,271 government organizations and 1,931 private companies work on programs related to counterterrorism, homeland security, and intelligence in about 10,000 locations across the United States.”
Just stop a moment to take that in. And then let this sink in as well: whatever any one of those employees does inside that national security world, no matter how “illegal” the act, it’s a double-your-money bet that he or she will never be prosecuted for it (unless it happens to involve letting Americans know something about just how they are being “protected”).
Consider what it means to have a U.S. Intelligence Community (as it likes to call itself) made up of 17 different agencies and organizations, a total that doesn’t even include all the smaller intelligence offices in the National Security Complex, which for almost 10 years proved incapable of locating its global enemy number one. Yet, as everyone now agrees, that man was living in something like plain sight, exchanging messages with and seeing colleagues in a military and resort town near Islamabad, the Pakistani capital. And what does it mean that, when he was finally killed, it was celebrated as a vast intelligence victory?
The Intelligence Community with its $80 billion-plus budget, the National Security Complex, including the Pentagon and that post-9/11 creation, the Department of Homeland Security, with its $1.2 trillion-plus budget, and the imperial executive have thrived in these years. They have all expanded their powers and prerogatives based largely on the claim that they are protecting the American people from potential harm from terrorists out to destroy our world.
Above all, however, they seem to have honed a single skill: the ability to protect themselves, as well as the lobbyists and corporate entities that feed off them. They have increased their funds and powers, even as they enveloped their institutions in a penumbra of secrecy. The power of this complex of institutions is still on the rise, even as the power and wealth of the country it protects is visibly in decline.
Now, consider again the question “Is it legal?” When it comes to any act of the National Security Complex, it’s obviously inapplicable in a land where the rule of law no longer applies to everyone. If you are a ordinary citizen, of course, it applies to you, but not if you are part of the state apparatus that officially protects you. The institutional momentum behind this development is simple enough to demonstrate: it hardly mattered that, after George W. Bush took off those gloves, the next president elected was a former constitutional law professor.
Think of the National Security Complex as the King George of the present moment. In the areas that matter to that complex, Congress has ever less power and, as in the case of the war in Libya or the Patriot Act, is ever more ready to cede what power it has left.
So democracy? The people’s representatives? How quaint in a world in which our real rulers are unelected, shielded by secrecy, and supported by a carefully nurtured, almost religious attitude toward security and the U.S. military.
The National Security Complex has access to us, to our lives and communications, though we have next to no access to it. It has, in reserve, those enhanced interrogation techniques and when trouble looms, a set of what might be called enhanced legal techniques as well. It has the ability to make war at will (or whim). It has a growing post-9/11 secret army cocooned inside the military: 20,000 or more troops in special operations outfits like the SEAL team that took down bin Laden, also enveloped in secrecy. In addition, it has the CIA and a fleet of armed drone aircraft ready to conduct its wars and operations globally in semi-secrecy and without the permission or oversight of the American people or their representatives.
And war, of course, is the ultimate aphrodisiac for the powerful.
Theoretically, the National Security Complex exists only to protect you. Its every act is done in the name of making you safer, even if the idea of safety and protection doesn’t extend to your job, your foreclosed home, or aid in disastrous times.
Welcome to post-legal America. It's time to stop wondering whether its acts are illegal and start asking: Do you really want to be this “safe”?
Tom Engelhardt, editor of Tomdispatch.com, is co-founder of the American Empire Project and author of The American Way of War: How Bush's Wars Became Obama's.
Sign up to receive the latest updates fromTomDispatch.com here.
By Tom Engelhardt
At least in terms of what used to be called "foreign policy," and more recently "national security," the United States is now a post-legal society.
May 30, 2011 |
� Is the Libyan war legal? Was Bin Laden’s killing legal? Is it legal for the president of the United States to target an American citizen for assassination? Were those “enhanced interrogation techniques” legal? These are all questions raised in recent weeks. Each seems to call out for debate, for answers. Or does it?
Now, you couldn’t call me a legal scholar. I’ve never set foot inside a law school, and in 66 years only made it onto a single jury (dismissed before trial when the civil suit was settled out of court). Still, I feel at least as capable as any constitutional law professor of answering such questions.
My answer is this: they are irrelevant. Think of them as twentieth-century questions that don't begin to come to grips with twenty-first century American realities. In fact, think of them, and the very idea of a nation based on the rule of law, as a reflection of nostalgia for, or sentimentality about, a long-lost republic. At least in terms of what used to be called “foreign policy,” and more recently “national security,” the United States is now a post-legal society. (And you could certainly include in this mix the too-big-to-jail financial and corporate elite.)
It’s easy enough to explain what I mean. if, in a country theoretically organized under the rule of law, wrongdoers are never brought to justice and nobody is held accountable for possibly serious crimes, then you don’t have to be a constitutional law professor to know that its citizens actually exist in a post-legal state. If so, “Is it legal?” is the wrong question to be asking, even if we have yet to discover the right one.
Pretzeled Definitions of Torture
Of course, when it came to a range of potential Bush-era crimes -- the use of torture, the running of offshore “black sites,” the extraordinary rendition of terrorist suspects to lands where they would be tortured, illegal domestic spying and wiretapping, and the launching of wars of aggression -- it’s hardly news that no one of the slightest significance has ever been brought to justice. On taking office, President Obama offered a clear formula for dealing with this issue. He insisted that Americans should “look forward, not backward” and turn the page on the whole period, and then set his Justice Department to work on other matters. But honestly, did anyone anywhere ever doubt that no Bush-era official would be brought to trial here for such potential crimes?
Everyone knows that in the United States if you’re a robber caught breaking into someone’s house, you’ll be brought to trial, but if you’re caught breaking into someone else’s country, you’ll be free to take to the lecture circuit, write your memoirs, or become a university professor.
Of all the “debates” over legality in the Bush and Obama years, the torture debate has perhaps been the most interesting, and in some ways, the most realistic. After 9/11, the Bush administration quickly turned to a crew of hand-picked Justice Department lawyers to create the necessary rationale for what its officials most wanted to do -- in their quaint phrase, “take the gloves off.” And those lawyers responded with a set of pseudo-legalisms that put various methods of “information extraction” beyond the powers of the Geneva Conventions, the U.N.’s Convention Against Torture (signed by President Ronald Reagan and ratified by the Senate), and domestic anti-torture legislation, including the War Crimes Act of 1996 (passed by a Republican Congress).
In the process, they created infamously pretzled new definitions for acts previously accepted as torture. Among other things, they essentially left the definition of whether an act was torture or not to the torturer (that is, to what he believed he was doing at the time). In the process, acts that had historically been considered torture became “enhanced interrogation techniques.” An example would be waterboarding, which had once been bluntly known as “the water torture” or “the water cure” and whose perpetrators had, in the past, been successfully prosecuted in American military and civil courts. Such techniques were signed off on after first reportedly being “demonstrated” in the White House to an array of top officials, including the vice-president, the national security adviser, the attorney general, and the secretary of state.
In the U.S. (and here was the realism of the debate that followed), the very issue of legality fell away almost instantly. Newspapers rapidly replaced the word “torture” -- when applied to what American interrogators did -- with the term “enhanced interrogation techniques,” which was widely accepted as less controversial and more objective. At the same time, the issue of the legality of such techniques was superseded by a fierce national debate over their efficacy. It has lasted to this day and returned with a bang with the bin Laden killing.
Nothing better illustrates the nature of our post-legal society. Anti-torture laws were on the books in this country. If legality had truly mattered, it would have been beside the point whether torture was an effective way to produce “actionable intelligence” and so prepare the way for the killing of a bin Laden.
By analogy, it’s perfectly reasonable to argue that robbing banks can be a successful and profitable way to make a living, but who would agree that a successful bank robber hadn’t committed an act as worthy of prosecution as an unsuccessful one caught on the spot? Efficacy wouldn’t matter in a society whose central value was the rule of law. In a post-legal society in which the ultimate value espoused is the safety and protection a national security state can offer you, it means the world.
As if to make the point, the Supreme Court recently offered a post-legal ruling for our moment: it declined to review a lower court ruling that blocked a case in which five men, who had experienced extraordinary rendition (a fancy globalized version of kidnapping) and been turned over to torturing regimes elsewhere by the CIA, tried to get their day in court. No such luck. The Obama administration claimed (as had the Bush administration before it) that simply bringing such a case to court would imperil national security (that is, state secrets) -- and won. As Ben Wizner, the American Civil Liberties Union lawyer who argued the case, summed matters up, "To date, every victim of the Bush administration's torture regime has been denied his day in court."
To put it another way, every CIA torturer, all those involved in acts of rendition, and all the officials who okayed such acts, as well as the lawyers who put their stamp of approval on them, are free to continue their lives untouched. Recently, the Obama administration even went to court to “prevent a lawyer for a former CIA officer convicted in Italy in the kidnapping of a radical Muslim cleric from privately sharing classified information about the case with a Federal District Court judge.” (Yes, Virginia, elsewhere in the world a few Americans have been tried in absentia for Bush-era crimes.) In response, wrote Scott Shane of the New York Times, the judge “pronounced herself ‘literally speechless.’”
The realities of our moment are simple enough: other than abusers too low-level (see England, Lynndie and Graner, Charles) to matter to our national security state, no one in the CIA, and certainly no official of any sort, is going to be prosecuted for the possible crimes Americans committed in the Bush years in pursuit of the Global War on Terror.
On Not Blowing Whistles
It’s beyond symbolic, then, that only one figure from the national security world seems to remain in the “legal” crosshairs: the whistle-blower. If, as the president of the United States, you sign off on a system of warrantless surveillance of Americans -- the sort that not so long ago was against the law in this country -- or if you happen to run a giant telecom company and go along with that system by opening your facilities to government snoops, or if you run the National Security Agency or are an official in it overseeing the kind of data mining and intelligence gathering that goes with such a program, then -- as recent years have made clear -- you are above the law.
If, however, you happen to be an NSA employee who feels that the agency has overstepped the bounds of legality in its dealings with Americans, that it is moving in Orwellian directions, and that it should be exposed, and if you offer even unclassified information to a newspaper reporter, as was the case with Thomas Drake, be afraid, be very afraid. You may be prosecuted by the Bush and then Obama Justice Departments, and threatened with 35 years in prison under the Espionage Act (not for “espionage,” but for having divulged the most minor of low-grade state secrets in a world in which, increasingly, everything having to do with the state is becoming a secret).
If you are a CIA employee who tortured no one but may have given information damaging to the reputation of the national security state -- in this case about a botched effort to undermine the Iranian nuclear program -- to a journalist, watch out. You are likely, as in the case of Jeffrey Sterling, to find yourself in a court of law. And if you happen to be a journalist like James Risen who may have received that information, you are likely to be hit by a Justice Department subpoena attempting to force you to reveal your source, under threat of imprisonment for contempt of court.
If you are a private in the U.S. military with access to a computer with low-level classified material from the Pentagon’s wars and the State Department’s activities on it, if you’ve seen something of the grim reality of what the national security state looks like when superimposed on Iraq, and if you decide to shine some light on that world, as Bradley Manning did, they’ll toss you into prison and throw away the key. You’ll be accused of having “blood on your hands” and tried, again under the Espionage Act, by those who actually have blood on their hands and are beyond all accountability.
When it comes to acts of state today, there is only one law: don’t pull up the curtain on the doings of any aspect of our spreading National Security Complex or the imperial executive that goes with it. As CIA Director Leon Panetta put it in addressing his employees over leaks about the operation to kill bin Laden, “Disclosure of classified information to anyone not cleared for it -- reporters, friends, colleagues in the private sector or other agencies, former Agency officers -- does tremendous damage to our work. At worst, leaks endanger lives... Unauthorized disclosure of those details not only violates the law, it seriously undermines our capability to do our job."
And when someone in Congress actually moves to preserve some aspect of older notions of American privacy (versus American secrecy), as Senator Rand Paul did recently in reference to the Patriot Act, he is promptly smeared as potentially “giving terrorists the opportunity to plot attacks against our country, undetected."
Enhanced Legal Techniques
Here is the reality of post-legal America: since the attacks of September 11, 2001, the National Security Complex has engorged itself on American fears and grown at a remarkable pace. According to Top Secret America, a Washington Post series written in mid-2010, 854,000 people have “top secret” security clearances, “33 building complexes for top-secret intelligence work are under construction or have been built since September 2001... 51 federal organizations and military commands, operating in 15 U.S. cities, track the flow of money to and from terrorist networks... [and] some 1,271 government organizations and 1,931 private companies work on programs related to counterterrorism, homeland security, and intelligence in about 10,000 locations across the United States.”
Just stop a moment to take that in. And then let this sink in as well: whatever any one of those employees does inside that national security world, no matter how “illegal” the act, it’s a double-your-money bet that he or she will never be prosecuted for it (unless it happens to involve letting Americans know something about just how they are being “protected”).
Consider what it means to have a U.S. Intelligence Community (as it likes to call itself) made up of 17 different agencies and organizations, a total that doesn’t even include all the smaller intelligence offices in the National Security Complex, which for almost 10 years proved incapable of locating its global enemy number one. Yet, as everyone now agrees, that man was living in something like plain sight, exchanging messages with and seeing colleagues in a military and resort town near Islamabad, the Pakistani capital. And what does it mean that, when he was finally killed, it was celebrated as a vast intelligence victory?
The Intelligence Community with its $80 billion-plus budget, the National Security Complex, including the Pentagon and that post-9/11 creation, the Department of Homeland Security, with its $1.2 trillion-plus budget, and the imperial executive have thrived in these years. They have all expanded their powers and prerogatives based largely on the claim that they are protecting the American people from potential harm from terrorists out to destroy our world.
Above all, however, they seem to have honed a single skill: the ability to protect themselves, as well as the lobbyists and corporate entities that feed off them. They have increased their funds and powers, even as they enveloped their institutions in a penumbra of secrecy. The power of this complex of institutions is still on the rise, even as the power and wealth of the country it protects is visibly in decline.
Now, consider again the question “Is it legal?” When it comes to any act of the National Security Complex, it’s obviously inapplicable in a land where the rule of law no longer applies to everyone. If you are a ordinary citizen, of course, it applies to you, but not if you are part of the state apparatus that officially protects you. The institutional momentum behind this development is simple enough to demonstrate: it hardly mattered that, after George W. Bush took off those gloves, the next president elected was a former constitutional law professor.
Think of the National Security Complex as the King George of the present moment. In the areas that matter to that complex, Congress has ever less power and, as in the case of the war in Libya or the Patriot Act, is ever more ready to cede what power it has left.
So democracy? The people’s representatives? How quaint in a world in which our real rulers are unelected, shielded by secrecy, and supported by a carefully nurtured, almost religious attitude toward security and the U.S. military.
The National Security Complex has access to us, to our lives and communications, though we have next to no access to it. It has, in reserve, those enhanced interrogation techniques and when trouble looms, a set of what might be called enhanced legal techniques as well. It has the ability to make war at will (or whim). It has a growing post-9/11 secret army cocooned inside the military: 20,000 or more troops in special operations outfits like the SEAL team that took down bin Laden, also enveloped in secrecy. In addition, it has the CIA and a fleet of armed drone aircraft ready to conduct its wars and operations globally in semi-secrecy and without the permission or oversight of the American people or their representatives.
And war, of course, is the ultimate aphrodisiac for the powerful.
Theoretically, the National Security Complex exists only to protect you. Its every act is done in the name of making you safer, even if the idea of safety and protection doesn’t extend to your job, your foreclosed home, or aid in disastrous times.
Welcome to post-legal America. It's time to stop wondering whether its acts are illegal and start asking: Do you really want to be this “safe”?
Tom Engelhardt, editor of Tomdispatch.com, is co-founder of the American Empire Project and author of The American Way of War: How Bush's Wars Became Obama's.
Sign up to receive the latest updates fromTomDispatch.com here.
Sunday, May 29, 2011
k8longstory and "The Rat of EPIC Proportions"
By now, you've heard that SB County Superintendent Bill Cirone is retiring and SBSD Superintendent Brian Sarvis is taking his place so that he will run as an incumbent in 2012.
By now, you've heard that I was falsely arrested for trespassing, (daring to show up at a duly noticed SBSD Special Board Meeting at Griffth and
Thornburgh, where Craig Price pulls in $$$$$$$$$ for assisting Bill Cirone and His Cronies to manage the School to Prison Pipeline and the Education-Politico-Industrial Complex).
I am a Sacred Activist, dedicated to Gandhi's Satyagraha, (NON-VIOLENT NON-COOPERATION with injustice). Obviously, the Santa Barbara Police have not been apprised of my activism, ADA protections, and safe ways to move non-resisting protesters. My shoulders and arms were injured; the x-ray technician said I was lucky that I wasn't more seriously hurt).
My last Small Claims Court claim will be against Bill Cirone and His Cronies for false arrest, Brown Act violations, collusion, conspiracy, and cover-up of wrong-doing. Oh, and denial of rights under color of law, and a dozen more causes of action.
I will be in court on June 10, 2011, Superior Court, Department 5 at 10 am. Katherine Anne Smith vs. SB County Counsel Dennis Marshall and Steve Underwood (#1380118). False Arrest, and violations of Americans with Disabilities Act, intentional inflicton of emotional distress, etc.
The restraining orders were a Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation (SLAPP) and were orchestrated by Bill Cirone and His Cronies.
Got subpoenas?
Namaste,
k8longstory4sbschooltalk.com
P.S. This year, I Madonnari is dedicated to Bill Cirone---"For all that he does for our children." Uh, the event is sponsored by the SB County Office of Education. The chalk picture of Cirone is nauseating...oy!
By now, you've heard that I was falsely arrested for trespassing, (daring to show up at a duly noticed SBSD Special Board Meeting at Griffth and
Thornburgh, where Craig Price pulls in $$$$$$$$$ for assisting Bill Cirone and His Cronies to manage the School to Prison Pipeline and the Education-Politico-Industrial Complex).
I am a Sacred Activist, dedicated to Gandhi's Satyagraha, (NON-VIOLENT NON-COOPERATION with injustice). Obviously, the Santa Barbara Police have not been apprised of my activism, ADA protections, and safe ways to move non-resisting protesters. My shoulders and arms were injured; the x-ray technician said I was lucky that I wasn't more seriously hurt).
My last Small Claims Court claim will be against Bill Cirone and His Cronies for false arrest, Brown Act violations, collusion, conspiracy, and cover-up of wrong-doing. Oh, and denial of rights under color of law, and a dozen more causes of action.
I will be in court on June 10, 2011, Superior Court, Department 5 at 10 am. Katherine Anne Smith vs. SB County Counsel Dennis Marshall and Steve Underwood (#1380118). False Arrest, and violations of Americans with Disabilities Act, intentional inflicton of emotional distress, etc.
The restraining orders were a Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation (SLAPP) and were orchestrated by Bill Cirone and His Cronies.
Got subpoenas?
Namaste,
k8longstory4sbschooltalk.com
P.S. This year, I Madonnari is dedicated to Bill Cirone---"For all that he does for our children." Uh, the event is sponsored by the SB County Office of Education. The chalk picture of Cirone is nauseating...oy!
Saturday, May 28, 2011
BUILDING A NEW ECONOMY by Gar Alperovitz
The Old Economy’s Not Coming Back. So What’s Next?
Meet the people and ideas on the cutting edge of the movement for a new economy.
by Gar Alperovitz
posted May 26, 2011
Editor's Note: When our friends at The Nation asked us to share this article with you, we were excited. We're big admirers of the author, Gar Alperovitz, a visionary thinker on economic possibilities and a former YES! Magazine board member. This article comes at an especially good time—the YES! editorial team is in the midst of work on the fall issue of YES!, which will assemble some of the most promising innovations for solving the jobs crisis. We believe that we aren't going back to the old economy—we can't, and we really don't want to. As Gar describes, we're witnessing the birth of something better: a new economy where livelihoods that are just, sustainable, and meaningful will be available to all.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The idea that we need a “new economy”—that the entire economic system must be radically restructured if critical social and environmental goals are to be met—runs directly counter to the American creed that capitalism as we know it is the best, and only possible, option. Over the past few decades, however, a deepening sense of the profound ecological challenges facing the planet and growing despair at the inability of traditional politics to address economic failings have fueled an extraordinary amount of experimentation by activists, economists and socially minded business leaders. Most of the projects, ideas and research efforts have gained traction slowly and with little notice. But in the wake of the financial crisis, they have proliferated and earned a surprising amount of support—and not only among the usual suspects on the left. As the threat of a global climate crisis grows increasingly dire and the nation sinks deeper into an economic slump for which conventional wisdom offers no adequate remedies, more and more Americans are coming to realize that it is time to begin defining, demanding and organizing to build a new-economy movement.
The new economy movement seeks an economy that is increasingly green and socially responsible, and one that is based on rethinking the nature of ownership and the growth paradigm that guides conventional policies.That the term “new economy” has begun to explode into public use in diverse areas may be an indication that the movement has reached a critical stage of development—and a sign that the domination of traditional thinking may be starting to weaken. Although precisely what “changing the system” means is a matter of considerable debate, certain key points are clear: the movement seeks an economy that is increasingly green and socially responsible, and one that is based on rethinking the nature of ownership and the growth paradigm that guides conventional policies.
Democratizing Ownership
This, in turn, leads to an emphasis on institutions whose priorities are broader than those that typically flow from the corporate emphasis on the bottom line. At the cutting edge of experimentation are the growing number of egalitarian, and often green, worker-owned cooperatives. Hundreds of “social enterprises” that use profits for environmental, social or community-serving goals are also expanding rapidly. In many communities urban agricultural efforts have made common cause with groups concerned about healthy nonprocessed food. And all this is to say nothing of 1.6 million nonprofit corporations that often cross over into economic activity.
For-profits have developed alternatives as well. There are, for example, more than 11,000 companies owned entirely or in significant part by some 13.6 million employees. Most have adopted Employee Stock Ownership Plans; these so-called ESOPs democratize ownership, though only some of them involve participatory management. W.L. Gore, maker of Gore-Tex and many other products, is a leading example: the company has some 9,000 employee-owners at forty-five locations worldwide and generates annual sales of $2.5 billion. Litecontrol, which manufactures high-efficiency, high-performance architectural lighting fixtures, operates as a less typical ESOP; the Massachusetts-based company is entirely owned by roughly 200 employees and fully unionized with the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers.
A different large-scale corporation, Seventh Generation—the nation’s leader in “green” detergents, dishwashing soap, baby wipes, tissues, paper towels and other household products—has internal policies requiring that no one be paid more than fourteen times the lowest base pay or five times higher than the average employee.
In certain states, companies that want to brandish their new-economy values can now also register as B Corporations. B Corp registration (the “B” stands for “benefit”) allows a company to subordinate profits to social and environmental goals. Without this legal authorization, a CEO could in theory be sued by stockholders if profit-making is not his sole objective. Such status ensures that specific goals are met by different companies (manufacturers have different requirements from retail stores). It also helps with social marketing and branding. Thus, King Arthur Flour, a highly successful Vermont-based, 100 percent employee-owned ESOP, can be explicit, stating that “making money in itself is not our highest priority.” Four states—Maryland, Vermont, New Jersey and Virginia—have passed legislation that permits B Corp chartering, with many others likely to follow.
New Economy, New Ways to Work
Cooperatives may not be a new idea—with at least 130 million members (more than one in three Americans), co-ops have broad political and cultural support—but they are becoming increasingly important in new-economy efforts. A widely discussed strategy in Cleveland suggests a possible next stage of development: the Evergreen Cooperatives are linked through a nonprofit corporation, a revolving loan fund and the common goal of rebuilding the economically devastated Greater University Circle neighborhoods. A thoroughly green industrial-scale laundry, a solar installation company and a soon-to-be-opened large-scale commercial greenhouse (capable of producing about 5 million heads of lettuce a year) make up the first of a group of linked co-ops projected to expand in years to come. The effort is unique in that Evergreen is building on the purchasing power of the area’s large hospital, university and other anchor institutions, which buy some $3 billion of goods and services a year—virtually none of which, until recently, had come from local business. Senator Sherrod Brown is expected to introduce national legislation aimed at developing Evergreen-style models in other cities. (Full disclosure: the Democracy Collaborative of the University of Maryland, which I co-founded, has played an important role in Evergreen’s development.)
Leading Thinkers and Organizations
Along with the rapid expansion of small and medium-size businesses committed to building the new economy has come a sense of community and shared mission. Staff, managers and owners at many of these companies are finding more opportunities to share ideas and pool resources with like-minded professionals. The American Sustainable Business Council, a growing alliance of 150,000 business professionals and thirty business organizations, has emerged as a leading venue for such activity. Most members are “triple bottom line” companies and social enterprises committed to the environment and social outcomes as well as profits.
In many ways the council operates like any advocacy group attempting to lobby, educate and promote legislation and strategies. Thirty-five leaders recently met with Labor Secretary Hilda Solis, for instance, to make clear that the US Chamber of Commerce does not speak for all American business, to seek her help with specific projects and issues, and to fill her in on a range of environmentally and socially concerned economic efforts that definitely do not do business as usual. The names of some of the council’s constituent organizations offer a sense of what this means: Green America, Business for Shared Prosperity, Social Enterprise Alliance, Count Me In for Women’s Economic Independence, California Association for Microenterprise Opportunity. Although ecological concerns are at the top, the council’s agenda is highly supportive of other progressive social and economic goals. A recent blog by Jeffrey Hollender, chair of the council’s advisory board (and former CEO of Seventh Generation), attacked the US Chamber of Commerce for “fighting democracy and destroying America’s economic future.”
Growing Local: Interview with Michelle Long
Michelle Long helped make Bellingham, Washington a national leader in urban sustainability. With BALLE, she's taking her vision to cities around North America.
The Business Alliance for Local Living Economies (BALLE), made up of more than 22,000 small businesses, is another rapidly growing organization that works to strengthen new-economy networks. BALLE brings together locally owned efforts dedicated to building ecologically sustainable “living economies,” with the ambitious long-term goal of developing a global system of interconnected local communities that function in harmony with their ecosystems. The group’s Mid-Atlantic Regional Hub, the Sustainable Business Network of Greater Philadelphia, recognizes area businesses that “demonstrate a strong social and environmental impact while also making a profit.” A recent example is GreenLine Paper, a company that produces green products and works to preserve forests and prevent climate change. By participating in the network, GreenLine Paper gains brand recognition and promotion, as well as marketing, policy support, technical assistance and access to a like-minded coalition of businesses.
“Our most important role has been to help create a larger sense of shared common direction in a time of crisis—a sense that the new-economy movement is much greater than the sum of its diverse parts.”Sarah Stranahan, a longtime board member at the Needmor Fund, recalls having a sense in late 2009 that large numbers of Americans were beginning to understand that something is profoundly wrong with the economy. Bearing this in mind, with a small group of other activists she brought leaders of diverse organizations together in early September of that year to explore ways to build a larger movement.
The New Economy Network (NEN), a loosely organized umbrella effort comprising roughly 200 to 250 new-economy leaders and organizations, was the low-budget product of their meeting. NEN acts primarily as a clearinghouse for information and research produced by member organizations. “However, our most important role,” says Stranahan, who serves as the network coordinator, “has been to help create a larger sense of shared common direction in a time of crisis—a sense that the new-economy movement is much greater than the sum of its diverse parts.”
Several initiatives have begun to deal systematically with fundamental problems of vision, theory and longer-term strategy. The New Economics Institute (NEI), which is in formation, is a joint venture that brings together the former E.F. Schumacher Society and the New Economics Foundation, in Britain. Among the environmentalists and economists involved are Gus Speth, David Orr, Richard Norgaard, Bill McKibben, Neva Goodwin, John Fullerton and Peter Victor.
“For the most part, advocates for change have worked within the current system of political economy,” says Speth, a former adviser to Presidents Carter and Clinton, onetime administrator of the United Nations Development Programme and the recently retired dean of the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, who has emerged as one of the new-economy movement’s leading figures. “But in the end,” Speth declares, “this approach will not succeed when what is needed is transformative change in the system itself.”
NEI is teaming up with other organizations, like the progressive think tank Demos, on several projects. One shared effort is attempting to develop detailed indicators of sustainable economic activity. As many scholars have demonstrated, the gross national product indicator is profoundly misleading: for instance, both work that generates pollution and work that cleans it up are registered as positive in the GNP, although the net real-world economic gain is zero, and there is a huge waste of labor on both sides of the effort. Precisely how to develop a “dashboard” of indicators that measure genuine economic gain, environmental destruction, even human happiness is one of NEI’s high priorities. Another is a detailed econometric model of how a very large economic system can move away from growth as its central objective. Related to both are earlier and ongoing Great Transition studies by the Tellus Institute, a think tank concerned with sustainability.
A less academic effort concerned with vision and long-term institutional and policy reform is the New Economy Working Group, a joint venture of the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS) and YES! Magazine. Among other things, the working group (which includes people, like Speth, who are concurrently involved in other initiatives) is attempting to create detailed designs for state and local banks in support of new-economy institutional development. (The longstanding Bank of North Dakota is one important precedent.) The larger goal of the Working Group is to advance a coherent vision of an economy organized around sustainable local community economies. John Cavanagh, on leave as director of IPS, and his wife, Robin Broad, a professor of international development at American University, emphasize the importance to developing nations of communities that provide economic, social and environmental “rootedness” in an “age of vulnerability.” David Korten, board chair of YES! Magazine and author of Agenda for a New Economy, stresses a radically decentralized domestic free-market vision of “self-organizing” communities that rely almost entirely on local resources. He envisions a trajectory of cultural change that could not only reduce conventionally defined economic growth but even reverse it—in part to make up for past ecological and resource destruction, and also to deal with global warming.
Challenges in the Near-Term ... and Beyond
It is possible, even likely, that the explosion and ongoing development of institutional forms, along with new and more aggressive advocacy, will continue to gather substantial momentum as economic and ecological conditions worsen.It is possible, even likely, that the explosion and ongoing development of institutional forms, along with new and more aggressive advocacy, will continue to gather substantial momentum as economic and ecological conditions worsen. It is by no means obvious, however, how even a very expansive vision of such trends would lead to “systemic” or “transformative” change. Moreover, different new-economy advocates are clearly divided on matters of vision and strategy.
Speth, for instance, sees far-reaching change as essential if the massive threat posed by climate change is ever to be dealt with; he views the various experiments as one vector of development that may help lay groundwork for more profound systemic change that challenges fundamental corporate priorities. Others, like David Levine, executive director of the American Sustainable Business Council, emphasize more immediate reforms and stress the need for a progressive business voice in near-term policy battles. What to do about the power of large private or public corporations in the long term is an unresolved question facing all parties.
Obviously, any movement that urges changing the system faces major challenges. Apart from the central issue of how political power might be built over time, three in particular are clearly daunting: first, many new-economy advocates concerned about global warming and resource limits hold that conventionally defined economic growth must be slowed or even reversed. In theory an economic model that redistributes employment, consumption, and investment in a zero- or reduced-growth system is feasible, but it is a very hard sell in times of unemployment, and it is a direct challenge to the central operating principle of the economic system. It is also a challenge to the priorities of most elements of the progressive coalition that has long based its economic hopes on Keynesian strategies aimed at increasing growth.
A pro-union protester in Madison, Wisconsin on February 18, 2011. David Korten points out that America's once strong middle class came out of New Deal legislation, including strong support of labor unions.
Photo by Rob Chandanais.
A related problem concerns the labor movement. Many new-economy advocates hold progressive views on most issues of concern to labor. In a recent letter supporting progressives in Wisconsin, for instance, the American Sustainable Business Council wrote that “eliminating collective bargaining is misguided, unsustainable and the wrong approach to solving deeper, more systemic economic issues”—hardly the standard Chamber of Commerce point of view! Still, the ultimate goal of reducing growth is incompatible with the interests of most labor leaders.
Although there have been tentative off-the-record explorations of how to narrow differences among groups, no direction for agreement has emerged. That some cooperation is possible is clear, however, from common efforts in support of “green jobs,” such as the Apollo Alliance (which aims to create 5 million “high-quality, green-collar jobs” over the coming ten years) and the BlueGreen Alliance, a partnership of major labor and environmental groups dedicated to expanding the quality and availability of green jobs. IPS director Cavanagh is working with a small group of theorists and activists on a plan for green jobs that attempts to integrate new-economy concerns with those of labor and other progressive groups, and to link the expanding local efforts with traditional national strategies.
A further line of possible long-term convergence is new interest by the United Steelworkers in alternative forms of economic enterprise—and, importantly, larger-scale efforts. The Steelworkers signed an agreement with the Mondragon Corporation in 2009 to collaborate in establishing unionized cooperatives based on the Mondragon model in manufacturing here and in Canada. (Mondragon, based in the Basque region of Spain, has nearly 100,000 workers and is one of the largest and most successful cooperative enterprises in the world.)
A third and very different challenge is presented by traditional environmental organizations. Speth, a board member of the Natural Resources Defense Council, has found very little willingness among his fellow board members to discuss system-changing strategies, even if understood as long-term developmental efforts. The traditional organizations spend most of their time trying to put out fires in Washington, he notes, and have little capacity to stand back and consider deeper strategic issues—particularly if they involve movement building and challenges to the current orthodoxy.
As citizen uprisings from Tunisia to Madison, Wisconsin, remind us, judgments that serious change cannot take place often miss the quiet buildup of potentially explosive underlying forces of change.For all the difficulties and despite the challenges facing progressive politics, there are reasons to think that new-economy efforts have the capacity to gather momentum as time goes on. The first is obvious: as citizen uprisings from Tunisia to Madison, Wisconsin, remind us, judgments that serious change cannot take place often miss the quiet buildup of potentially explosive underlying forces of change. Nor were the eruptions of many other powerful movements—from late-nineteenth-century populism to civil rights to feminism and gay rights—predicted by those who viewed politics only through the narrow prism of the current moment.
Why This Crisis May Be Our Best Chance to Build a New Economy
Many years ago, I was legislative director to Senator Gaylord Nelson, known today as the founder of Earth Day. No one in the months and years leading up to Earth Day predicted the extraordinary wave of environmental activism that would follow—especially since environmental demands are largely focused on morally informed, society-wide concerns, unlike those of the labor, civil rights and feminist movements, all of which involve specific gains important to specific people.
In my judgment, new-economy efforts will ultimately pose much more radical systemic challenges than many have contemplated. Nonetheless, new-economy advocates are beginning to tap into sources of moral concern similar to those of the early environmental movement. As the economy continues to falter, the possibility that these advocates—along with many other Americans who share their broader concerns—will help define a viable path toward long-term systemic change is not to be easily dismissed. In fact, it would be in keeping with many earlier chapters of this nation’s history.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Gar Alperovitz is the Lionel Bauman Professor of Political Economy at the University of Maryland, co-founder of the Democracy Collaborative, and the author of Unjust Deserts. He wrote this article for the June 13, 2011 edition of The Nation.
Copyright © 2011 The Nation – distributed by Agence Global.
Interested?
The Moral Underground: How Ordinary Americans Are Subverting an Unfair Economy
All around you are everyday heroes who refuse to be complicit in the economic mistreatment of other people.
Why we can’t go back to the old economy
Five reasons why the old economy isn't working.
10 Common Sense Principles for a New Economy
David Korten: How we can declare our independence from an economy that values profits over people
Meet the people and ideas on the cutting edge of the movement for a new economy.
by Gar Alperovitz
posted May 26, 2011
Editor's Note: When our friends at The Nation asked us to share this article with you, we were excited. We're big admirers of the author, Gar Alperovitz, a visionary thinker on economic possibilities and a former YES! Magazine board member. This article comes at an especially good time—the YES! editorial team is in the midst of work on the fall issue of YES!, which will assemble some of the most promising innovations for solving the jobs crisis. We believe that we aren't going back to the old economy—we can't, and we really don't want to. As Gar describes, we're witnessing the birth of something better: a new economy where livelihoods that are just, sustainable, and meaningful will be available to all.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The idea that we need a “new economy”—that the entire economic system must be radically restructured if critical social and environmental goals are to be met—runs directly counter to the American creed that capitalism as we know it is the best, and only possible, option. Over the past few decades, however, a deepening sense of the profound ecological challenges facing the planet and growing despair at the inability of traditional politics to address economic failings have fueled an extraordinary amount of experimentation by activists, economists and socially minded business leaders. Most of the projects, ideas and research efforts have gained traction slowly and with little notice. But in the wake of the financial crisis, they have proliferated and earned a surprising amount of support—and not only among the usual suspects on the left. As the threat of a global climate crisis grows increasingly dire and the nation sinks deeper into an economic slump for which conventional wisdom offers no adequate remedies, more and more Americans are coming to realize that it is time to begin defining, demanding and organizing to build a new-economy movement.
The new economy movement seeks an economy that is increasingly green and socially responsible, and one that is based on rethinking the nature of ownership and the growth paradigm that guides conventional policies.That the term “new economy” has begun to explode into public use in diverse areas may be an indication that the movement has reached a critical stage of development—and a sign that the domination of traditional thinking may be starting to weaken. Although precisely what “changing the system” means is a matter of considerable debate, certain key points are clear: the movement seeks an economy that is increasingly green and socially responsible, and one that is based on rethinking the nature of ownership and the growth paradigm that guides conventional policies.
Democratizing Ownership
This, in turn, leads to an emphasis on institutions whose priorities are broader than those that typically flow from the corporate emphasis on the bottom line. At the cutting edge of experimentation are the growing number of egalitarian, and often green, worker-owned cooperatives. Hundreds of “social enterprises” that use profits for environmental, social or community-serving goals are also expanding rapidly. In many communities urban agricultural efforts have made common cause with groups concerned about healthy nonprocessed food. And all this is to say nothing of 1.6 million nonprofit corporations that often cross over into economic activity.
For-profits have developed alternatives as well. There are, for example, more than 11,000 companies owned entirely or in significant part by some 13.6 million employees. Most have adopted Employee Stock Ownership Plans; these so-called ESOPs democratize ownership, though only some of them involve participatory management. W.L. Gore, maker of Gore-Tex and many other products, is a leading example: the company has some 9,000 employee-owners at forty-five locations worldwide and generates annual sales of $2.5 billion. Litecontrol, which manufactures high-efficiency, high-performance architectural lighting fixtures, operates as a less typical ESOP; the Massachusetts-based company is entirely owned by roughly 200 employees and fully unionized with the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers.
A different large-scale corporation, Seventh Generation—the nation’s leader in “green” detergents, dishwashing soap, baby wipes, tissues, paper towels and other household products—has internal policies requiring that no one be paid more than fourteen times the lowest base pay or five times higher than the average employee.
In certain states, companies that want to brandish their new-economy values can now also register as B Corporations. B Corp registration (the “B” stands for “benefit”) allows a company to subordinate profits to social and environmental goals. Without this legal authorization, a CEO could in theory be sued by stockholders if profit-making is not his sole objective. Such status ensures that specific goals are met by different companies (manufacturers have different requirements from retail stores). It also helps with social marketing and branding. Thus, King Arthur Flour, a highly successful Vermont-based, 100 percent employee-owned ESOP, can be explicit, stating that “making money in itself is not our highest priority.” Four states—Maryland, Vermont, New Jersey and Virginia—have passed legislation that permits B Corp chartering, with many others likely to follow.
New Economy, New Ways to Work
Cooperatives may not be a new idea—with at least 130 million members (more than one in three Americans), co-ops have broad political and cultural support—but they are becoming increasingly important in new-economy efforts. A widely discussed strategy in Cleveland suggests a possible next stage of development: the Evergreen Cooperatives are linked through a nonprofit corporation, a revolving loan fund and the common goal of rebuilding the economically devastated Greater University Circle neighborhoods. A thoroughly green industrial-scale laundry, a solar installation company and a soon-to-be-opened large-scale commercial greenhouse (capable of producing about 5 million heads of lettuce a year) make up the first of a group of linked co-ops projected to expand in years to come. The effort is unique in that Evergreen is building on the purchasing power of the area’s large hospital, university and other anchor institutions, which buy some $3 billion of goods and services a year—virtually none of which, until recently, had come from local business. Senator Sherrod Brown is expected to introduce national legislation aimed at developing Evergreen-style models in other cities. (Full disclosure: the Democracy Collaborative of the University of Maryland, which I co-founded, has played an important role in Evergreen’s development.)
Leading Thinkers and Organizations
Along with the rapid expansion of small and medium-size businesses committed to building the new economy has come a sense of community and shared mission. Staff, managers and owners at many of these companies are finding more opportunities to share ideas and pool resources with like-minded professionals. The American Sustainable Business Council, a growing alliance of 150,000 business professionals and thirty business organizations, has emerged as a leading venue for such activity. Most members are “triple bottom line” companies and social enterprises committed to the environment and social outcomes as well as profits.
In many ways the council operates like any advocacy group attempting to lobby, educate and promote legislation and strategies. Thirty-five leaders recently met with Labor Secretary Hilda Solis, for instance, to make clear that the US Chamber of Commerce does not speak for all American business, to seek her help with specific projects and issues, and to fill her in on a range of environmentally and socially concerned economic efforts that definitely do not do business as usual. The names of some of the council’s constituent organizations offer a sense of what this means: Green America, Business for Shared Prosperity, Social Enterprise Alliance, Count Me In for Women’s Economic Independence, California Association for Microenterprise Opportunity. Although ecological concerns are at the top, the council’s agenda is highly supportive of other progressive social and economic goals. A recent blog by Jeffrey Hollender, chair of the council’s advisory board (and former CEO of Seventh Generation), attacked the US Chamber of Commerce for “fighting democracy and destroying America’s economic future.”
Growing Local: Interview with Michelle Long
Michelle Long helped make Bellingham, Washington a national leader in urban sustainability. With BALLE, she's taking her vision to cities around North America.
The Business Alliance for Local Living Economies (BALLE), made up of more than 22,000 small businesses, is another rapidly growing organization that works to strengthen new-economy networks. BALLE brings together locally owned efforts dedicated to building ecologically sustainable “living economies,” with the ambitious long-term goal of developing a global system of interconnected local communities that function in harmony with their ecosystems. The group’s Mid-Atlantic Regional Hub, the Sustainable Business Network of Greater Philadelphia, recognizes area businesses that “demonstrate a strong social and environmental impact while also making a profit.” A recent example is GreenLine Paper, a company that produces green products and works to preserve forests and prevent climate change. By participating in the network, GreenLine Paper gains brand recognition and promotion, as well as marketing, policy support, technical assistance and access to a like-minded coalition of businesses.
“Our most important role has been to help create a larger sense of shared common direction in a time of crisis—a sense that the new-economy movement is much greater than the sum of its diverse parts.”Sarah Stranahan, a longtime board member at the Needmor Fund, recalls having a sense in late 2009 that large numbers of Americans were beginning to understand that something is profoundly wrong with the economy. Bearing this in mind, with a small group of other activists she brought leaders of diverse organizations together in early September of that year to explore ways to build a larger movement.
The New Economy Network (NEN), a loosely organized umbrella effort comprising roughly 200 to 250 new-economy leaders and organizations, was the low-budget product of their meeting. NEN acts primarily as a clearinghouse for information and research produced by member organizations. “However, our most important role,” says Stranahan, who serves as the network coordinator, “has been to help create a larger sense of shared common direction in a time of crisis—a sense that the new-economy movement is much greater than the sum of its diverse parts.”
Several initiatives have begun to deal systematically with fundamental problems of vision, theory and longer-term strategy. The New Economics Institute (NEI), which is in formation, is a joint venture that brings together the former E.F. Schumacher Society and the New Economics Foundation, in Britain. Among the environmentalists and economists involved are Gus Speth, David Orr, Richard Norgaard, Bill McKibben, Neva Goodwin, John Fullerton and Peter Victor.
“For the most part, advocates for change have worked within the current system of political economy,” says Speth, a former adviser to Presidents Carter and Clinton, onetime administrator of the United Nations Development Programme and the recently retired dean of the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, who has emerged as one of the new-economy movement’s leading figures. “But in the end,” Speth declares, “this approach will not succeed when what is needed is transformative change in the system itself.”
NEI is teaming up with other organizations, like the progressive think tank Demos, on several projects. One shared effort is attempting to develop detailed indicators of sustainable economic activity. As many scholars have demonstrated, the gross national product indicator is profoundly misleading: for instance, both work that generates pollution and work that cleans it up are registered as positive in the GNP, although the net real-world economic gain is zero, and there is a huge waste of labor on both sides of the effort. Precisely how to develop a “dashboard” of indicators that measure genuine economic gain, environmental destruction, even human happiness is one of NEI’s high priorities. Another is a detailed econometric model of how a very large economic system can move away from growth as its central objective. Related to both are earlier and ongoing Great Transition studies by the Tellus Institute, a think tank concerned with sustainability.
A less academic effort concerned with vision and long-term institutional and policy reform is the New Economy Working Group, a joint venture of the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS) and YES! Magazine. Among other things, the working group (which includes people, like Speth, who are concurrently involved in other initiatives) is attempting to create detailed designs for state and local banks in support of new-economy institutional development. (The longstanding Bank of North Dakota is one important precedent.) The larger goal of the Working Group is to advance a coherent vision of an economy organized around sustainable local community economies. John Cavanagh, on leave as director of IPS, and his wife, Robin Broad, a professor of international development at American University, emphasize the importance to developing nations of communities that provide economic, social and environmental “rootedness” in an “age of vulnerability.” David Korten, board chair of YES! Magazine and author of Agenda for a New Economy, stresses a radically decentralized domestic free-market vision of “self-organizing” communities that rely almost entirely on local resources. He envisions a trajectory of cultural change that could not only reduce conventionally defined economic growth but even reverse it—in part to make up for past ecological and resource destruction, and also to deal with global warming.
Challenges in the Near-Term ... and Beyond
It is possible, even likely, that the explosion and ongoing development of institutional forms, along with new and more aggressive advocacy, will continue to gather substantial momentum as economic and ecological conditions worsen.It is possible, even likely, that the explosion and ongoing development of institutional forms, along with new and more aggressive advocacy, will continue to gather substantial momentum as economic and ecological conditions worsen. It is by no means obvious, however, how even a very expansive vision of such trends would lead to “systemic” or “transformative” change. Moreover, different new-economy advocates are clearly divided on matters of vision and strategy.
Speth, for instance, sees far-reaching change as essential if the massive threat posed by climate change is ever to be dealt with; he views the various experiments as one vector of development that may help lay groundwork for more profound systemic change that challenges fundamental corporate priorities. Others, like David Levine, executive director of the American Sustainable Business Council, emphasize more immediate reforms and stress the need for a progressive business voice in near-term policy battles. What to do about the power of large private or public corporations in the long term is an unresolved question facing all parties.
Obviously, any movement that urges changing the system faces major challenges. Apart from the central issue of how political power might be built over time, three in particular are clearly daunting: first, many new-economy advocates concerned about global warming and resource limits hold that conventionally defined economic growth must be slowed or even reversed. In theory an economic model that redistributes employment, consumption, and investment in a zero- or reduced-growth system is feasible, but it is a very hard sell in times of unemployment, and it is a direct challenge to the central operating principle of the economic system. It is also a challenge to the priorities of most elements of the progressive coalition that has long based its economic hopes on Keynesian strategies aimed at increasing growth.
A pro-union protester in Madison, Wisconsin on February 18, 2011. David Korten points out that America's once strong middle class came out of New Deal legislation, including strong support of labor unions.
Photo by Rob Chandanais.
A related problem concerns the labor movement. Many new-economy advocates hold progressive views on most issues of concern to labor. In a recent letter supporting progressives in Wisconsin, for instance, the American Sustainable Business Council wrote that “eliminating collective bargaining is misguided, unsustainable and the wrong approach to solving deeper, more systemic economic issues”—hardly the standard Chamber of Commerce point of view! Still, the ultimate goal of reducing growth is incompatible with the interests of most labor leaders.
Although there have been tentative off-the-record explorations of how to narrow differences among groups, no direction for agreement has emerged. That some cooperation is possible is clear, however, from common efforts in support of “green jobs,” such as the Apollo Alliance (which aims to create 5 million “high-quality, green-collar jobs” over the coming ten years) and the BlueGreen Alliance, a partnership of major labor and environmental groups dedicated to expanding the quality and availability of green jobs. IPS director Cavanagh is working with a small group of theorists and activists on a plan for green jobs that attempts to integrate new-economy concerns with those of labor and other progressive groups, and to link the expanding local efforts with traditional national strategies.
A further line of possible long-term convergence is new interest by the United Steelworkers in alternative forms of economic enterprise—and, importantly, larger-scale efforts. The Steelworkers signed an agreement with the Mondragon Corporation in 2009 to collaborate in establishing unionized cooperatives based on the Mondragon model in manufacturing here and in Canada. (Mondragon, based in the Basque region of Spain, has nearly 100,000 workers and is one of the largest and most successful cooperative enterprises in the world.)
A third and very different challenge is presented by traditional environmental organizations. Speth, a board member of the Natural Resources Defense Council, has found very little willingness among his fellow board members to discuss system-changing strategies, even if understood as long-term developmental efforts. The traditional organizations spend most of their time trying to put out fires in Washington, he notes, and have little capacity to stand back and consider deeper strategic issues—particularly if they involve movement building and challenges to the current orthodoxy.
As citizen uprisings from Tunisia to Madison, Wisconsin, remind us, judgments that serious change cannot take place often miss the quiet buildup of potentially explosive underlying forces of change.For all the difficulties and despite the challenges facing progressive politics, there are reasons to think that new-economy efforts have the capacity to gather momentum as time goes on. The first is obvious: as citizen uprisings from Tunisia to Madison, Wisconsin, remind us, judgments that serious change cannot take place often miss the quiet buildup of potentially explosive underlying forces of change. Nor were the eruptions of many other powerful movements—from late-nineteenth-century populism to civil rights to feminism and gay rights—predicted by those who viewed politics only through the narrow prism of the current moment.
Why This Crisis May Be Our Best Chance to Build a New Economy
Many years ago, I was legislative director to Senator Gaylord Nelson, known today as the founder of Earth Day. No one in the months and years leading up to Earth Day predicted the extraordinary wave of environmental activism that would follow—especially since environmental demands are largely focused on morally informed, society-wide concerns, unlike those of the labor, civil rights and feminist movements, all of which involve specific gains important to specific people.
In my judgment, new-economy efforts will ultimately pose much more radical systemic challenges than many have contemplated. Nonetheless, new-economy advocates are beginning to tap into sources of moral concern similar to those of the early environmental movement. As the economy continues to falter, the possibility that these advocates—along with many other Americans who share their broader concerns—will help define a viable path toward long-term systemic change is not to be easily dismissed. In fact, it would be in keeping with many earlier chapters of this nation’s history.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Gar Alperovitz is the Lionel Bauman Professor of Political Economy at the University of Maryland, co-founder of the Democracy Collaborative, and the author of Unjust Deserts. He wrote this article for the June 13, 2011 edition of The Nation.
Copyright © 2011 The Nation – distributed by Agence Global.
Interested?
The Moral Underground: How Ordinary Americans Are Subverting an Unfair Economy
All around you are everyday heroes who refuse to be complicit in the economic mistreatment of other people.
Why we can’t go back to the old economy
Five reasons why the old economy isn't working.
10 Common Sense Principles for a New Economy
David Korten: How we can declare our independence from an economy that values profits over people
Friday, May 27, 2011
The Spanish Revolution
Spain's Enormous, Inspiring Protests Are Rooted in Restoring Democracy and Decent Life in an Era of Turbocapitalism
What we are seeing in Spain goes way beyond a student revolt. It's a revolt that lays bare a profound ethical crisis convulsing a whole society.
by Pepe Escobar of Asia Times
May 24, 2011 |
� "No one expects the #spanishrevolution." That's one of the signs in Madrid's iconic - and occupied - Puerta del Sol Square; Monty Python revised for the age of Twitter.
"I was in Paris in May '68 and I'm very emotional. I'm 72 years old." That's one of the signs in Barcelona's iconic - and occupied - Plaza Catalunya. The barricades revised as a Gandhian sit-in.
The exhilarating northern African winds of the great 2011 Arab revolt/spring have crossed the Mediterranean and hit Iberia with a vengeance. In an unprecedented social rebellion, the Generation Y in Spain is forcefully protesting - among other things - the stinging economic crisis; mass unemployment at a staggering 45% among less than 30-year-olds and th e ossified Spanish political system that treats the citizen as a mere consumer.
This citizens' movement is issuing petitions that get five signatures per second; it can be followed on Twitter (#spanishrevolution); streaming live from Puerta del Sol at Soltv.tv; to see its reach, click here. Reverberations are being felt all across Spain and word-wide - from Los Angeles to Sydney. A mini-French revolution started at the Bastille in Paris. Italians are planning their revolutions from Rome and Milan to Florence and Bari.
Outraged of the world, unite
They call themselves los indignados - "the outraged". Puerta del Sol is their Tahrir Square, a self-sufficient village complete with working groups, mobile first-aid clinic, and volunteers taking care of everything from cleaning to keeping an Internet signal. The May 15 movement - or 15-M, as it's known in Spain - was born as a demonstration by university students which spontaneously morphed into an open-ended sit-in meant to "contaminate" Spain via Facebook and Twitter and thus turn it into a crucial social bridge between Northern Africa and Europe.
They were only 40 people at the beginning. Now there are tens of thousands in over 50 Spanish cities - and counting. Soon there could be millions. Crucially, this is without the support of any political party or institution, trade union or mass media (in Spain, totally exposed to ridicule by political power). That's extraordinary in a country not exactly known by its tradition of dissent or the power of citizen organization.
The outraged are pacifists, apolitical and altruists. This is not only about the unemployed, "no future" youth - but an inter-generational phenomenon, with a middle-class crossover. This full stop to Spanish inertia - as in the sign "the French and the Greek fight while the Spanish win on soccer" - implies a profound rejection of the enormous abyss between the political class and the population, just like in the rest of Europe (Greek and Icelandic flags are seen side-by-side with the Egyptian flag.)
The outraged want citizens to regain their voices - as in a participative democracy embodied by neighborhood associations, and in favor of the right to vote for immigrants. Practically, they want a reform of the Spanish electoral law; more popular say on public budgets; political and fiscal reform; increased taxes for higher incomes; a higher minimum wage; and more control over big banking and financial capitalism.
Early this year, students in London protested en-masse against the rise in university tuition costs. The potential for protest is huge all across Europe. In Mediterranean Europe, the lack of prospects is absolutely bleak - from Generation Y to unemployed thirty-somethings stacked with diplomas. Even though the context is markedly different - in Northern Africa the fight is against dictatorships - the Arab Spring has shown young Europeans that mobilized citizens are able to fight for more social justice.
The Spanish left has tried to co-opt the movement. Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodroriguez Zapatero - badly bruised by these past Sunday elections, obviously boycotted by 15-M - said they must be listened to. The right, predictably, privileges a Hosni Mubarak approach, even asking the Ministry of Interior to go Medieval, as the former Egyptian president did. Right-wing media accuse the outraged of being communists, anti-system, urban guerrillas and having relations with the Basque separatists from ETA. The only thing missing was an al-Qaeda connection.
The outraged respond they are not anti-system; "it's the system that it's against us." Their original manifesto condemned the Spanish political class as a whole, plus corporate media, as allies to financial capital; those that have caused and are benefiting from the economic crisis. The outraged J'accuse includes the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the European Union, financial risk agencies and the World Bank.
The Spanish economy is in fact being controlled by the IMF. Whether or not he was a reformer, the IMF under disgraced Dominique Strauss-Kahn's unleashed major social devastation over Spain, Greece and Portugal. It's not only the unemployment rate of 45% for under-30-year-olds in Spain; it's pensions and wages reduced by 15%. The IMF is leading the way for the economies of southern Europe to, in a nutshell, regress.
It's as if the 15-M movement had been electrified by that famous dictum by Polish Marxist theorist Rosa Luxemburg - according to which capitalism is unredeemable in its antagonism to true democracy. The record shows that's exactly what's happening in the industrialized North as well as in the global South.
The new 1968
So this goes way beyond a student revolt. It's a revolt that lays bare a profound ethical crisis convulsing a whole society. And it goes way beyond the economy; this is a movement seriously inquiring over the place of human beings in turbo-capitalist society.
No wonder baby boomers - the parents of Generation Y - cannot but be reminded of the late, great German philosopher Herbert Marcuse. Compared with this breath of fresh air amid the asphyxiating social and economic landscape in Spain and great swathes of Europe, how not be reminded of Marcuse in a conference in Vancouver in 1969, talking about a worldwide student rebellion.
Marcuse then evoked how French existentialist philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre was asked the same question - why these rebellions everywhere? Sartre said the answer was very simple - no sophisticated reasoning necessary. Young people were rebelling because they were asphyxiated. Marcuse always maintained this was the best explanation for this rebel yell denouncing a structural crisis of capitalism.
Marcuse was an ultra-sharp analyst of the degrading of culture as a form of repression, and the necessity of a critical elite capable of smashing the totalitarian opium of consumer culture (the outraged are also performing this role).
Marcuse identified the French and the American 1968 as a total protest against specific ills, but at the same time a protest against a total system of values, a total system of objectives. Young people didn't want to keep enduring the culture of established society; they refuted not only economic conditions and political institutions but also a rotten, global system of values. In 1968, they were realists; they were demanding the impossible. Today, one of their signs read, "If you don't let us dream, we won't let you sleep."
Bob Dylan turns 70 this Tuesday. In Bob We Trust; he won't tell us, but deep in his heart and mind he knows where los indignados are coming from. If, as he wrote in Absolutely Sweet Marie, to live outside the law you must be honest, los indignados couldn't be more honest themselves, because they refuse to live under this law that is in fact killing them as well as most of us.
That's why it feels so great to be stuck inside of Madrid with the Cairo blues again.
Pepe Escobar is the author of Globalistan: How the Globalized World is Dissolving into Liquid War (Nimble Books, 2007) and Red Zone Blues: a snapshot of Baghdad during the surge. His new book, just out, is Obama does Globalistan (Nimble Books, 2009).
He may be reached at pepeasia@yahoo.com.
What we are seeing in Spain goes way beyond a student revolt. It's a revolt that lays bare a profound ethical crisis convulsing a whole society.
by Pepe Escobar of Asia Times
May 24, 2011 |
� "No one expects the #spanishrevolution." That's one of the signs in Madrid's iconic - and occupied - Puerta del Sol Square; Monty Python revised for the age of Twitter.
"I was in Paris in May '68 and I'm very emotional. I'm 72 years old." That's one of the signs in Barcelona's iconic - and occupied - Plaza Catalunya. The barricades revised as a Gandhian sit-in.
The exhilarating northern African winds of the great 2011 Arab revolt/spring have crossed the Mediterranean and hit Iberia with a vengeance. In an unprecedented social rebellion, the Generation Y in Spain is forcefully protesting - among other things - the stinging economic crisis; mass unemployment at a staggering 45% among less than 30-year-olds and th e ossified Spanish political system that treats the citizen as a mere consumer.
This citizens' movement is issuing petitions that get five signatures per second; it can be followed on Twitter (#spanishrevolution); streaming live from Puerta del Sol at Soltv.tv; to see its reach, click here. Reverberations are being felt all across Spain and word-wide - from Los Angeles to Sydney. A mini-French revolution started at the Bastille in Paris. Italians are planning their revolutions from Rome and Milan to Florence and Bari.
Outraged of the world, unite
They call themselves los indignados - "the outraged". Puerta del Sol is their Tahrir Square, a self-sufficient village complete with working groups, mobile first-aid clinic, and volunteers taking care of everything from cleaning to keeping an Internet signal. The May 15 movement - or 15-M, as it's known in Spain - was born as a demonstration by university students which spontaneously morphed into an open-ended sit-in meant to "contaminate" Spain via Facebook and Twitter and thus turn it into a crucial social bridge between Northern Africa and Europe.
They were only 40 people at the beginning. Now there are tens of thousands in over 50 Spanish cities - and counting. Soon there could be millions. Crucially, this is without the support of any political party or institution, trade union or mass media (in Spain, totally exposed to ridicule by political power). That's extraordinary in a country not exactly known by its tradition of dissent or the power of citizen organization.
The outraged are pacifists, apolitical and altruists. This is not only about the unemployed, "no future" youth - but an inter-generational phenomenon, with a middle-class crossover. This full stop to Spanish inertia - as in the sign "the French and the Greek fight while the Spanish win on soccer" - implies a profound rejection of the enormous abyss between the political class and the population, just like in the rest of Europe (Greek and Icelandic flags are seen side-by-side with the Egyptian flag.)
The outraged want citizens to regain their voices - as in a participative democracy embodied by neighborhood associations, and in favor of the right to vote for immigrants. Practically, they want a reform of the Spanish electoral law; more popular say on public budgets; political and fiscal reform; increased taxes for higher incomes; a higher minimum wage; and more control over big banking and financial capitalism.
Early this year, students in London protested en-masse against the rise in university tuition costs. The potential for protest is huge all across Europe. In Mediterranean Europe, the lack of prospects is absolutely bleak - from Generation Y to unemployed thirty-somethings stacked with diplomas. Even though the context is markedly different - in Northern Africa the fight is against dictatorships - the Arab Spring has shown young Europeans that mobilized citizens are able to fight for more social justice.
The Spanish left has tried to co-opt the movement. Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodroriguez Zapatero - badly bruised by these past Sunday elections, obviously boycotted by 15-M - said they must be listened to. The right, predictably, privileges a Hosni Mubarak approach, even asking the Ministry of Interior to go Medieval, as the former Egyptian president did. Right-wing media accuse the outraged of being communists, anti-system, urban guerrillas and having relations with the Basque separatists from ETA. The only thing missing was an al-Qaeda connection.
The outraged respond they are not anti-system; "it's the system that it's against us." Their original manifesto condemned the Spanish political class as a whole, plus corporate media, as allies to financial capital; those that have caused and are benefiting from the economic crisis. The outraged J'accuse includes the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the European Union, financial risk agencies and the World Bank.
The Spanish economy is in fact being controlled by the IMF. Whether or not he was a reformer, the IMF under disgraced Dominique Strauss-Kahn's unleashed major social devastation over Spain, Greece and Portugal. It's not only the unemployment rate of 45% for under-30-year-olds in Spain; it's pensions and wages reduced by 15%. The IMF is leading the way for the economies of southern Europe to, in a nutshell, regress.
It's as if the 15-M movement had been electrified by that famous dictum by Polish Marxist theorist Rosa Luxemburg - according to which capitalism is unredeemable in its antagonism to true democracy. The record shows that's exactly what's happening in the industrialized North as well as in the global South.
The new 1968
So this goes way beyond a student revolt. It's a revolt that lays bare a profound ethical crisis convulsing a whole society. And it goes way beyond the economy; this is a movement seriously inquiring over the place of human beings in turbo-capitalist society.
No wonder baby boomers - the parents of Generation Y - cannot but be reminded of the late, great German philosopher Herbert Marcuse. Compared with this breath of fresh air amid the asphyxiating social and economic landscape in Spain and great swathes of Europe, how not be reminded of Marcuse in a conference in Vancouver in 1969, talking about a worldwide student rebellion.
Marcuse then evoked how French existentialist philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre was asked the same question - why these rebellions everywhere? Sartre said the answer was very simple - no sophisticated reasoning necessary. Young people were rebelling because they were asphyxiated. Marcuse always maintained this was the best explanation for this rebel yell denouncing a structural crisis of capitalism.
Marcuse was an ultra-sharp analyst of the degrading of culture as a form of repression, and the necessity of a critical elite capable of smashing the totalitarian opium of consumer culture (the outraged are also performing this role).
Marcuse identified the French and the American 1968 as a total protest against specific ills, but at the same time a protest against a total system of values, a total system of objectives. Young people didn't want to keep enduring the culture of established society; they refuted not only economic conditions and political institutions but also a rotten, global system of values. In 1968, they were realists; they were demanding the impossible. Today, one of their signs read, "If you don't let us dream, we won't let you sleep."
Bob Dylan turns 70 this Tuesday. In Bob We Trust; he won't tell us, but deep in his heart and mind he knows where los indignados are coming from. If, as he wrote in Absolutely Sweet Marie, to live outside the law you must be honest, los indignados couldn't be more honest themselves, because they refuse to live under this law that is in fact killing them as well as most of us.
That's why it feels so great to be stuck inside of Madrid with the Cairo blues again.
Pepe Escobar is the author of Globalistan: How the Globalized World is Dissolving into Liquid War (Nimble Books, 2007) and Red Zone Blues: a snapshot of Baghdad during the surge. His new book, just out, is Obama does Globalistan (Nimble Books, 2009).
He may be reached at pepeasia@yahoo.com.
Chris Hedges on Moral Cowardice
Chris Hedges on Truthdig.com
The liberal class, which attempted last week to discredit the words my friend Cornel West spoke about Barack Obama and the Democratic Party, prefers comfort and privilege to justice, truth and confrontation. Its guiding ideological stance is determined by what is most expedient to the careers of its members. It refuses to challenge, in a meaningful way, the decaying structures of democracy or the ascendancy of the corporate state. It glosses over the relentless assault on working men and women and the imperial wars that are bankrupting the nation. It proclaims its adherence to traditional liberal values while defending and promoting systems of power that mock these values.The pillars of the liberal establishment—the press, the church, culture, the university, labor and the Democratic Party—all honor an unwritten quid pro quo with corporations and the power elite, as well as our masters of war, on whom they depend for money, access and positions of influence. Those who expose this moral cowardice and collaboration with corporate power are always ruthlessly thrust aside.
The capitulation of the liberal class to corporate capitalism, as Irving Howe once noted, has “bleached out all political tendencies.” The liberal class has become, Howe wrote, “a loose shelter, a poncho rather than a program; to call oneself a liberal one doesn’t really have to believe in anything.” The decision to subordinate ethics to political expediency has led liberals to steadily surrender their moral autonomy, voice and beliefs to the dictates of the corporate state. As Dwight Macdonald wrote in “The Root Is Man,” those who do not make human beings the center of their concern soon lose the capacity to make any ethical choices, for they willingly sacrifice others in the name of the politically expedient and practical.
By extolling the power of the state as an agent of change, as well as measuring human progress through the advances of science, technology and consumption, liberals abetted the cult of the self and the ascendancy of the corporate state. The liberal class placed its faith in the inevitability of human progress and abandoned the human values that should have remained at the core of its activism. The state, now the repository of the hopes and dreams of the liberal class, should always have been seen as the enemy. The destruction of the old radical and militant movements—the communists, socialists and anarchists—has left liberals without a source of new ideas. The link between an effective liberal class and a more radical left was always essential to the health of the former. The liberal class, by allowing radical movements to be dismembered through Red baiting and by banishing those within its ranks who had moral autonomy, gradually deformed basic liberal tenets to support unfettered capitalism, the national security state, globalization and permanent war. Liberalism, cut off from the radical roots of creative and bold thought, merged completely with the corporate power elite. The liberal class at once was betrayed and betrayed itself. And it now functions like a commercial brand, giving a different flavor, face or spin to the ruthless mechanisms of corporate power. This, indeed, is the primary function of Barack Obama.
The liberal class, despite becoming an object of widespread public scorn, prefers the choreographed charade. It will decry the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan or call for universal health care, but continue to defend and support a Democratic Party that has no intention of disrupting the corporate machine. As long as the charade is played, the liberal class can hold itself up as the conscience of the nation without having to act. It can maintain its privileged economic status. It can continue to live in an imaginary world where democratic reform and responsible government exist. It can pretend it has a voice and influence in the corridors of power. But the uselessness and irrelevancy of the liberal class are not lost on the tens of millions of Americans who suffer the indignities of the corporate state. And this is why liberals are rightly despised by the working class and the poor.
The liberal class is incapable of reforming itself. It does not hold within its ranks the rebels and iconoclasts who have the moral or physical courage to defy the corporate state and power elite. And when someone such as Cornel West speaks out, packs of careerist liberals—or perhaps one should call them neoliberals—descend on the apostate like hellhounds, never addressing the truths that are expressed but instead engaging in vicious character assassination. The same thing happened to Ralph Nader, Noam Chomsky, Dennis Kucinich, Jeremiah Wright and others who defied the political orthodoxy of corporate capitalism. The corporate forces, which have taken control of the press and which break unions, run the universities, fund the arts and own the Democratic Party, demand the banishment of all who question the good intentions of the powerful. Liberals who comply are tolerated within the system. They are permitted to busy themselves with the boutique activism of political correctness, inclusiveness or multiculturalism. If they attempt to fight for the primacy of justice, they become pariahs.
Leo Tolstoy wrote that there were three characteristics of all forms of prophecy: “First, it is entirely opposed to the general ideas of the people in the midst of whom it is uttered; second, all who hear it feel its truth; and thirdly, above all, it urges men to realize what it foretells.”
Prophets put forward during their day ideas that the mass of people, including the elite, denounce as impractical and yet at the same time sense to be true. This is what invokes the rage against the prophet. He or she states the obvious in a society where the obvious is seditious. Prophecy is feared because of the consequences of the truth. To accept that Obama is, as West said, a mascot for Wall Street means having to challenge some frightening monoliths of power and give up the comfortable illusion that the Democratic Party or liberal institutions can be instruments for genuine reform. It means having to step outside the mainstream. It means a new radicalism. It means recognizing that there is no hope for a correction or a reversal within the formal systems of power. It means defying traditional systems of power. And liberals, who have become courtiers to the corporate state, must attempt to silence all those who condemn the ruthlessness and mendacity of these systems of destruction. Their denunciation of all who rebel is a matter of self-preservation. For once the callous heart of the corporate state is exposed, so is the callous heart of the liberal class.
Chris Hedges is a weekly Truthdig columnist and a fellow at The Nation Institute. His newest book is “The World As it Is: Dispatches on the Myth of Human Progress.”
The liberal class, which attempted last week to discredit the words my friend Cornel West spoke about Barack Obama and the Democratic Party, prefers comfort and privilege to justice, truth and confrontation. Its guiding ideological stance is determined by what is most expedient to the careers of its members. It refuses to challenge, in a meaningful way, the decaying structures of democracy or the ascendancy of the corporate state. It glosses over the relentless assault on working men and women and the imperial wars that are bankrupting the nation. It proclaims its adherence to traditional liberal values while defending and promoting systems of power that mock these values.The pillars of the liberal establishment—the press, the church, culture, the university, labor and the Democratic Party—all honor an unwritten quid pro quo with corporations and the power elite, as well as our masters of war, on whom they depend for money, access and positions of influence. Those who expose this moral cowardice and collaboration with corporate power are always ruthlessly thrust aside.
The capitulation of the liberal class to corporate capitalism, as Irving Howe once noted, has “bleached out all political tendencies.” The liberal class has become, Howe wrote, “a loose shelter, a poncho rather than a program; to call oneself a liberal one doesn’t really have to believe in anything.” The decision to subordinate ethics to political expediency has led liberals to steadily surrender their moral autonomy, voice and beliefs to the dictates of the corporate state. As Dwight Macdonald wrote in “The Root Is Man,” those who do not make human beings the center of their concern soon lose the capacity to make any ethical choices, for they willingly sacrifice others in the name of the politically expedient and practical.
By extolling the power of the state as an agent of change, as well as measuring human progress through the advances of science, technology and consumption, liberals abetted the cult of the self and the ascendancy of the corporate state. The liberal class placed its faith in the inevitability of human progress and abandoned the human values that should have remained at the core of its activism. The state, now the repository of the hopes and dreams of the liberal class, should always have been seen as the enemy. The destruction of the old radical and militant movements—the communists, socialists and anarchists—has left liberals without a source of new ideas. The link between an effective liberal class and a more radical left was always essential to the health of the former. The liberal class, by allowing radical movements to be dismembered through Red baiting and by banishing those within its ranks who had moral autonomy, gradually deformed basic liberal tenets to support unfettered capitalism, the national security state, globalization and permanent war. Liberalism, cut off from the radical roots of creative and bold thought, merged completely with the corporate power elite. The liberal class at once was betrayed and betrayed itself. And it now functions like a commercial brand, giving a different flavor, face or spin to the ruthless mechanisms of corporate power. This, indeed, is the primary function of Barack Obama.
The liberal class, despite becoming an object of widespread public scorn, prefers the choreographed charade. It will decry the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan or call for universal health care, but continue to defend and support a Democratic Party that has no intention of disrupting the corporate machine. As long as the charade is played, the liberal class can hold itself up as the conscience of the nation without having to act. It can maintain its privileged economic status. It can continue to live in an imaginary world where democratic reform and responsible government exist. It can pretend it has a voice and influence in the corridors of power. But the uselessness and irrelevancy of the liberal class are not lost on the tens of millions of Americans who suffer the indignities of the corporate state. And this is why liberals are rightly despised by the working class and the poor.
The liberal class is incapable of reforming itself. It does not hold within its ranks the rebels and iconoclasts who have the moral or physical courage to defy the corporate state and power elite. And when someone such as Cornel West speaks out, packs of careerist liberals—or perhaps one should call them neoliberals—descend on the apostate like hellhounds, never addressing the truths that are expressed but instead engaging in vicious character assassination. The same thing happened to Ralph Nader, Noam Chomsky, Dennis Kucinich, Jeremiah Wright and others who defied the political orthodoxy of corporate capitalism. The corporate forces, which have taken control of the press and which break unions, run the universities, fund the arts and own the Democratic Party, demand the banishment of all who question the good intentions of the powerful. Liberals who comply are tolerated within the system. They are permitted to busy themselves with the boutique activism of political correctness, inclusiveness or multiculturalism. If they attempt to fight for the primacy of justice, they become pariahs.
Leo Tolstoy wrote that there were three characteristics of all forms of prophecy: “First, it is entirely opposed to the general ideas of the people in the midst of whom it is uttered; second, all who hear it feel its truth; and thirdly, above all, it urges men to realize what it foretells.”
Prophets put forward during their day ideas that the mass of people, including the elite, denounce as impractical and yet at the same time sense to be true. This is what invokes the rage against the prophet. He or she states the obvious in a society where the obvious is seditious. Prophecy is feared because of the consequences of the truth. To accept that Obama is, as West said, a mascot for Wall Street means having to challenge some frightening monoliths of power and give up the comfortable illusion that the Democratic Party or liberal institutions can be instruments for genuine reform. It means having to step outside the mainstream. It means a new radicalism. It means recognizing that there is no hope for a correction or a reversal within the formal systems of power. It means defying traditional systems of power. And liberals, who have become courtiers to the corporate state, must attempt to silence all those who condemn the ruthlessness and mendacity of these systems of destruction. Their denunciation of all who rebel is a matter of self-preservation. For once the callous heart of the corporate state is exposed, so is the callous heart of the liberal class.
Chris Hedges is a weekly Truthdig columnist and a fellow at The Nation Institute. His newest book is “The World As it Is: Dispatches on the Myth of Human Progress.”
Tuesday, May 24, 2011
THE MORAL UNDERGROUND
The Big Squeeze: How Americans Are Being Crushed by Financial Insecurity and Doubt
By David Rosen
AlterNet.com
Americans are living lives of lowered expectation and intensified financial uncertainty.
May 19, 2011 |
� The Great Recession officially started in December 2007 and ended in June 2009. It was the gravest financial crisis the nation has faced since the Great Depression of the 1930s. Sadly, most Americans have yet to recover.
It fostered what many call the “new normal,” the unspoken sense that America is stuck if not in decline. This new sensibility bears profound consequences; foremost is the recognition that Americans are living lives of lowered expectation and intensified financial uncertainty.
The “American Century” is over. The great historical phase of America’s domestic prosperity and global hegemony is withering. In the decades following the Second World War, American capitalism fashioned the postmodern, and increasingly globalized, world order. In the process, it abandoned America and the American people.
We first witnessed the transfer of jobs overseas, rationalized as “throwaway” or low-skilled jobs. Then came the growing dependency of foreign borrowing, rationalized by the U.S.’s ostensible credit worthiness. Now, America’s great corporations, like GE and GM, are earning more overseas than at home, accompanied by generous domestic tax breaks. More disturbing, the U.S. military-industrial-political establishment repeatedly embarks on doomed “great war” campaigns that rob the nation of its young, its wealth and its ideals.
Domestically, over the last three decades the rich have systematically expropriated the middle-class’s sizable and hard-earned wealth. It has been the most massive transfer of wealth in the nation’s history, with the gravest consequences. It has been a period of legalized robbery.
The decades following WWII witnessed the middle-class accumulating significant wealth as measured in the pride of home ownership, the glamour of a new car, the accomplishment of sending one’s kid to college, the security of good health and assured retirement. It was a period marked by the narrowest income gap separating the rich and the poor in the nation’s history. It fostered the great social, legal, technological and cultural movements that distinguish the post-war era -- civil rights, Roe v. Wade, a man on the moon and the counterculture.
Today, the U.S. is stuck, confronting an historical sea change. Most Americans live at the intersection of earning the next dollar and paying the latest bill. This is the powerful vice of the Big Squeeze, of financial uncertainty and doubt, of living holding one’s breath.
Nearly everyone feels squeezed by the Big Squeeze, excepting, of course, those rolling in dough or too naïve to care. A November 2010 Rasmussen poll found that just over one-third (37 percent) of respondents believe America’s best days are still ahead; sadly, nearly half (47 percent) said the nation’s best days were in the past. A recent New York Times front-page article announced: “New Poll Shows Darkening Mood Across America.” [NYT, April 22, 2011]
Capitalism is being restructured, and in the process, Americans are being disciplined, forced to accept a poorer quality of life. The process of social and personal “reeducation” now being imposed on the vast majority of Americans is the Great Squeeze, it is the process of accepting a qualitatively more miserable life.
* * *
Big Squeeze is revealed in many ways. The clearest examples are the key economic indicators, particularly those detailing the growing income gap and the resulting social consequences. In a recent report, the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) finds that, "since 1983 the top 5% of wealth holders consistently held more than 50% of all wealth, but the share increased from 56.1% in 1983 to 63.5% in 2009. The bottom 80% of wealth holders consistently held less than 20% of all wealth, but the share declined from 18.7% in 1983 to 12.8% in 2009."
In simplest terms, the rich have gotten richer, amassing an ever-greater share of social wealth, while the rest of us, especially the poor, have gotten poorer.
EPI’s findings lay out the broad terrain on which the Big Squeeze is played out. More disturbing are the innumerable ways it is experienced in the lives of ordinary Americans.
First and foremost of these ways is the growing wage gap. The U.S. Census Bureau found that while the GDP increased nearly three-fold between 1970 and 2000 (from $3.8 trillion to $9.8 trillion), the average "real weekly wage" fell by 14 percent between 1970 and 1996. The following table documents this income stagnation.
Sector
1970
2003
Gain
Poorest (lowest 20%
$15,126
$17,984
18.9%
Median (50%)
$35,832
$43,318
20.9%
Wealthiest (top 5%)
$95,090
$154,120
62.1%
Source: U.S. Census Bureau, 2004
As EPI notes, “the typical worker has had stagnating wages for a long time, despite enjoying some wage growth during the economic recovery of the late 1990s.” In the wake of the Great Recession, this situation has only gotten worse.
To compensate for the erosion of earnings among male head-of-household workers, American society adjusted. First, women entered the workforce in ever growing numbers, helping launch the second-generation women’s movement and normalizing the two-income household. Second, Americans went into debt, big-time.
The U.S. Labor Department estimates the female workforce participation grew from two-fifths (40 percent) in 1975 to three-fifth (60 percent) in 2008. It reminds us: “The long-term increase in the female labor force largely reflects the greater frequency of paid work among mothers.”
The income stagnation that affected the vast majority of Americans and characterized the period between 1970 and 2000 was hidden in the gluttony of consumerism. Average consumption per person increased 66 percent during this three-decade period. To pay for this fictitious luxury, Americans went into debt.
During the latter decades of the 20th century, personal debt incurred in home mortgages, car loans, tuition loans and credit-card purchases soared. The Federal Reserve estimated total household debt in 2010 at $13.4 trillion or 116 percent of disposable income; reflecting the Big Squeeze, household debt has declined from the peak year of 2007 – the year before the bubble burst -- when it reached 130 percent. Debt should continue to erode as people hold onto the little they make.
The days of consumer gluttony are over. The ranks of the unemployed and the underemployed are estimated at 14 million. Older workers, including those with a college degree, are especially vulnerable, even those willing to take lower-wage jobs to simply hold on. Lower-skilled younger adults between 18 to 34 years, especially minority people, have witnessed the largest jump in poverty. This has led many to double-up in housing with parents, friends and loved ones, let alone growing numbers calling their car home and, finally, the increasing number of the homeless.
The Big Squeeze is taking its toll on all aspects of the lives of a growing number of Americans. Home ownership is down, as is the savings rate. However, there has been a significant increase in the number of U.S. households receiving food stamps and visiting food banks.
The area of personal life taking the biggest hit is health care, as reflected in the rise in the uninsured and emergency room visits. A 2009 report by the American Optometric Association found more than a third (36 percent) of Americans are limiting their doctor visits, including 63 percent cutting dental visits, 59 percent cutting visits to primary care physician and 52 percent cutting visits to eye doctors. Two years later, things have surely gotten worse. The failure to provide quality health care to a growing segment of Americans will have the gravest impact on the nation’s long-term development.
* * *
Progressive resistance to the Big Squeeze has been slow in coming. The Tea Party movement expressed the first round of popular rage, reflecting the genuine fears of a segment of the aging, insecure, white (often racist) and conservative Christian populace. It screamed loud and was heard.
However, having been organized and funded by well-financed conservative and Republican operatives, the politicians and legislative solutions it championed are turning out to only make worse the lives of an increasing number of the more vulnerable Tea Party proponents. Tea Party ideology and politics is being exposed as a con job.
The response among more self-conscious progressives, the broad moderate citizenry (i.e., the majority of the voting public) and decent, apolitical Americans, has been slow to come to a boil. In light of the uprising in Madison and the growing number of angry constituents greeting Republican Congressmen throughout the country, political resistance is beginning to bubble up.
There is, however, a form of resistance that takes place everyday, but is invisible to the media and traditional political analysis. It occurs at the friction points of the Big Squeeze, where the values and/or authority of the more middle-class or managerial sector rubs up against the reality lived by poor and low-wage working Americans. These are the junctures where everyday class power is exercised and inchoate social struggle is waged.
Lisa Dodson’s recent book, The Moral Underground, analyzes the friction points played out in the social relations that define low-wage jobs, in the classroom and in healthcare institutions. They are the settings where Americans confront profound, often deeply perplexing, moral challenges. These moral confrontations involve those on both sides of the economic and power divide.
Dodson calls these points of resistance to the Big Squeeze the “moral underground.” Everyday, those with power, including managers, supervisors, teachers and health care professionals – and the list can go on and on – make decisions that determine the fate of employees, students or the ill and their families. Dodson sees these points of friction serving as moments for moral resistance to the dictates of business-as-usual. For those in authority, subverting corporate protocols and procedures can involve risking their jobs. And they are doing it.
Resistance to the Big Squeeze will likely intensify over the next two years as the nation builds to the 2012 election. The most visible form of this resistance will likely be protest marches, strikes and other public demonstrations. A new, emboldened progressive movement may well take shape.
As this occurs, we shouldn’t lose sight of the more invisible, but mounting, resistance of the moral underground. As it grows, it may undermine one of the great social fictions grounding American capitalism: That one leaves one’s morals and politics at the office, factory or store door when one enters the job site. This fiction is based on the well-propagated notion that when one sells one’s labor power one leaves one’s personal beliefs and values at home. This social fiction is crumbling under the pressure of the Big Squeeze.
David Rosen regularly contributes to AlterNet, CounterPunch and Filmmaker Magazine; check out www.DavidRosenWrites.com.
/http://www.alternet.org/story/151016/the_big_squeeze%3A_how_americans_are_being_crushed_by_financial_insecurity_and_doubt?page=entire
By David Rosen
AlterNet.com
Americans are living lives of lowered expectation and intensified financial uncertainty.
May 19, 2011 |
� The Great Recession officially started in December 2007 and ended in June 2009. It was the gravest financial crisis the nation has faced since the Great Depression of the 1930s. Sadly, most Americans have yet to recover.
It fostered what many call the “new normal,” the unspoken sense that America is stuck if not in decline. This new sensibility bears profound consequences; foremost is the recognition that Americans are living lives of lowered expectation and intensified financial uncertainty.
The “American Century” is over. The great historical phase of America’s domestic prosperity and global hegemony is withering. In the decades following the Second World War, American capitalism fashioned the postmodern, and increasingly globalized, world order. In the process, it abandoned America and the American people.
We first witnessed the transfer of jobs overseas, rationalized as “throwaway” or low-skilled jobs. Then came the growing dependency of foreign borrowing, rationalized by the U.S.’s ostensible credit worthiness. Now, America’s great corporations, like GE and GM, are earning more overseas than at home, accompanied by generous domestic tax breaks. More disturbing, the U.S. military-industrial-political establishment repeatedly embarks on doomed “great war” campaigns that rob the nation of its young, its wealth and its ideals.
Domestically, over the last three decades the rich have systematically expropriated the middle-class’s sizable and hard-earned wealth. It has been the most massive transfer of wealth in the nation’s history, with the gravest consequences. It has been a period of legalized robbery.
The decades following WWII witnessed the middle-class accumulating significant wealth as measured in the pride of home ownership, the glamour of a new car, the accomplishment of sending one’s kid to college, the security of good health and assured retirement. It was a period marked by the narrowest income gap separating the rich and the poor in the nation’s history. It fostered the great social, legal, technological and cultural movements that distinguish the post-war era -- civil rights, Roe v. Wade, a man on the moon and the counterculture.
Today, the U.S. is stuck, confronting an historical sea change. Most Americans live at the intersection of earning the next dollar and paying the latest bill. This is the powerful vice of the Big Squeeze, of financial uncertainty and doubt, of living holding one’s breath.
Nearly everyone feels squeezed by the Big Squeeze, excepting, of course, those rolling in dough or too naïve to care. A November 2010 Rasmussen poll found that just over one-third (37 percent) of respondents believe America’s best days are still ahead; sadly, nearly half (47 percent) said the nation’s best days were in the past. A recent New York Times front-page article announced: “New Poll Shows Darkening Mood Across America.” [NYT, April 22, 2011]
Capitalism is being restructured, and in the process, Americans are being disciplined, forced to accept a poorer quality of life. The process of social and personal “reeducation” now being imposed on the vast majority of Americans is the Great Squeeze, it is the process of accepting a qualitatively more miserable life.
* * *
Big Squeeze is revealed in many ways. The clearest examples are the key economic indicators, particularly those detailing the growing income gap and the resulting social consequences. In a recent report, the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) finds that, "since 1983 the top 5% of wealth holders consistently held more than 50% of all wealth, but the share increased from 56.1% in 1983 to 63.5% in 2009. The bottom 80% of wealth holders consistently held less than 20% of all wealth, but the share declined from 18.7% in 1983 to 12.8% in 2009."
In simplest terms, the rich have gotten richer, amassing an ever-greater share of social wealth, while the rest of us, especially the poor, have gotten poorer.
EPI’s findings lay out the broad terrain on which the Big Squeeze is played out. More disturbing are the innumerable ways it is experienced in the lives of ordinary Americans.
First and foremost of these ways is the growing wage gap. The U.S. Census Bureau found that while the GDP increased nearly three-fold between 1970 and 2000 (from $3.8 trillion to $9.8 trillion), the average "real weekly wage" fell by 14 percent between 1970 and 1996. The following table documents this income stagnation.
Sector
1970
2003
Gain
Poorest (lowest 20%
$15,126
$17,984
18.9%
Median (50%)
$35,832
$43,318
20.9%
Wealthiest (top 5%)
$95,090
$154,120
62.1%
Source: U.S. Census Bureau, 2004
As EPI notes, “the typical worker has had stagnating wages for a long time, despite enjoying some wage growth during the economic recovery of the late 1990s.” In the wake of the Great Recession, this situation has only gotten worse.
To compensate for the erosion of earnings among male head-of-household workers, American society adjusted. First, women entered the workforce in ever growing numbers, helping launch the second-generation women’s movement and normalizing the two-income household. Second, Americans went into debt, big-time.
The U.S. Labor Department estimates the female workforce participation grew from two-fifths (40 percent) in 1975 to three-fifth (60 percent) in 2008. It reminds us: “The long-term increase in the female labor force largely reflects the greater frequency of paid work among mothers.”
The income stagnation that affected the vast majority of Americans and characterized the period between 1970 and 2000 was hidden in the gluttony of consumerism. Average consumption per person increased 66 percent during this three-decade period. To pay for this fictitious luxury, Americans went into debt.
During the latter decades of the 20th century, personal debt incurred in home mortgages, car loans, tuition loans and credit-card purchases soared. The Federal Reserve estimated total household debt in 2010 at $13.4 trillion or 116 percent of disposable income; reflecting the Big Squeeze, household debt has declined from the peak year of 2007 – the year before the bubble burst -- when it reached 130 percent. Debt should continue to erode as people hold onto the little they make.
The days of consumer gluttony are over. The ranks of the unemployed and the underemployed are estimated at 14 million. Older workers, including those with a college degree, are especially vulnerable, even those willing to take lower-wage jobs to simply hold on. Lower-skilled younger adults between 18 to 34 years, especially minority people, have witnessed the largest jump in poverty. This has led many to double-up in housing with parents, friends and loved ones, let alone growing numbers calling their car home and, finally, the increasing number of the homeless.
The Big Squeeze is taking its toll on all aspects of the lives of a growing number of Americans. Home ownership is down, as is the savings rate. However, there has been a significant increase in the number of U.S. households receiving food stamps and visiting food banks.
The area of personal life taking the biggest hit is health care, as reflected in the rise in the uninsured and emergency room visits. A 2009 report by the American Optometric Association found more than a third (36 percent) of Americans are limiting their doctor visits, including 63 percent cutting dental visits, 59 percent cutting visits to primary care physician and 52 percent cutting visits to eye doctors. Two years later, things have surely gotten worse. The failure to provide quality health care to a growing segment of Americans will have the gravest impact on the nation’s long-term development.
* * *
Progressive resistance to the Big Squeeze has been slow in coming. The Tea Party movement expressed the first round of popular rage, reflecting the genuine fears of a segment of the aging, insecure, white (often racist) and conservative Christian populace. It screamed loud and was heard.
However, having been organized and funded by well-financed conservative and Republican operatives, the politicians and legislative solutions it championed are turning out to only make worse the lives of an increasing number of the more vulnerable Tea Party proponents. Tea Party ideology and politics is being exposed as a con job.
The response among more self-conscious progressives, the broad moderate citizenry (i.e., the majority of the voting public) and decent, apolitical Americans, has been slow to come to a boil. In light of the uprising in Madison and the growing number of angry constituents greeting Republican Congressmen throughout the country, political resistance is beginning to bubble up.
There is, however, a form of resistance that takes place everyday, but is invisible to the media and traditional political analysis. It occurs at the friction points of the Big Squeeze, where the values and/or authority of the more middle-class or managerial sector rubs up against the reality lived by poor and low-wage working Americans. These are the junctures where everyday class power is exercised and inchoate social struggle is waged.
Lisa Dodson’s recent book, The Moral Underground, analyzes the friction points played out in the social relations that define low-wage jobs, in the classroom and in healthcare institutions. They are the settings where Americans confront profound, often deeply perplexing, moral challenges. These moral confrontations involve those on both sides of the economic and power divide.
Dodson calls these points of resistance to the Big Squeeze the “moral underground.” Everyday, those with power, including managers, supervisors, teachers and health care professionals – and the list can go on and on – make decisions that determine the fate of employees, students or the ill and their families. Dodson sees these points of friction serving as moments for moral resistance to the dictates of business-as-usual. For those in authority, subverting corporate protocols and procedures can involve risking their jobs. And they are doing it.
Resistance to the Big Squeeze will likely intensify over the next two years as the nation builds to the 2012 election. The most visible form of this resistance will likely be protest marches, strikes and other public demonstrations. A new, emboldened progressive movement may well take shape.
As this occurs, we shouldn’t lose sight of the more invisible, but mounting, resistance of the moral underground. As it grows, it may undermine one of the great social fictions grounding American capitalism: That one leaves one’s morals and politics at the office, factory or store door when one enters the job site. This fiction is based on the well-propagated notion that when one sells one’s labor power one leaves one’s personal beliefs and values at home. This social fiction is crumbling under the pressure of the Big Squeeze.
David Rosen regularly contributes to AlterNet, CounterPunch and Filmmaker Magazine; check out www.DavidRosenWrites.com.
/http://www.alternet.org/story/151016/the_big_squeeze%3A_how_americans_are_being_crushed_by_financial_insecurity_and_doubt?page=entire
Sunday, May 22, 2011
More Bad Arguments
More Bad Arguments: The Roberts Court & Money in Politics
by Ronald Dworkin
New York Review of Books, April 27, 2011
This is the second of two posts examining the Supreme Court’s “step by step” overruling of longstanding precedents and constitutional tradition. The first post discusses the Court’s recent decision to uphold an Arizona tax credit for donations to religious schools.
Consider the Supreme Court’s newest electoral reform case, also from Arizona. In their earlier Citizens United decision the five justices in the majority—Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Anthony Kennedy, Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas, and Samuel Alito—guaranteed corporations a constitutional right to use their own capital for political advertising. They said that the point of the First Amendment is to provide the electorate with as much political speech as possible. They did not deny that the political process would be fairer if candidates and political organizations were more equal in their campaign resources. But the First Amendment forbids infringing free speech for the sake of equality, they said, and so “leveling the playing field” is no justification for stopping corporations or anyone else from spending as much on political advertising as they wish. Some commentators said that the Citizens United decision would make little practical difference: though it was wrong in principle, they thought, it would not actually do much harm. They were mistaken: the decision’s impact has already proved dramatic.
The new case—Arizona Free Enterprise Club PAC v. Bennett—gives the five justices another opportunity to protect the power of wealth in politics. Arizona, like many states, offers public financing to election candidates who agree to limit their spending but permits candidates who refuse public funding to spend as much as they wish. In a 1998 referendum following a series of political scandals, Arizona voters adopted a “Clean Elections Act” providing that if a privately funded candidate spends more than a stipulated amount, other candidates who have accepted public financing receive additional campaign funds from the state.
Conservative political organizations challenged the Clean Elections Act: they argue that this act, too, violates the free speech clause of the First Amendment. The Court heard oral argument in the case on March 28; it has not yet announced its decision but the remarks of four of the five conservative justices (Thomas almost never speaks during oral argument) leave little doubt that all five will rule the Clean Elections Act unconstitutional. They agreed with the plaintiffs that the act would “chill” the speech of privately funded candidates who would know that if they spent more than the stipulated limit their opponents would receive additional funding. In that way, they suggested, the act infringes the rights of privately funded candidates to speak as freely as they wish.
This is a bizarre argument. The five justices do not challenge the constitutionality of public funding; they hardly could since such funding obviously increases the amount—as well as the diversity—of political speech. But public funding presumably deters many rich candidates from broadcasting dubious claims they would happily broadcast if their opponents had no money to rebut them. Indeed, public funding for potential opponents might well deter some wealthy individuals from running for office and therefore from campaigning at all. The First Amendment can hardly be thought to guarantee rich politicians and organizations that they will not be effectively opposed, even when the possibility of effective opposition might induce them to say less.
Nor would increased subsidies for publicly funded candidates lower the total amount of speech available to the electorate. Political spending has increased in Arizona since the act was passed, and common sense argues that the act would increase rather than decrease the amount of political speech. Organizations like the Free Enterprise Club can raise much more money than publicly funded candidates would have even with the additional funds the act would provide them. The act would indeed diminish the financial advantage of rich candidates and organizations. But it would hardly erase that advantage and it would therefore be unlikely to stop privately funded candidates and groups from raising and spending what they otherwise would. If so, the act would increase overall speech by providing somewhat more money for poorer candidates to spend.
The transcript reveals a different and more ominous argument that some of the conservative justices seemed to have in mind, however—an argument that would make the impact of the Clean Elections Act on anyone’s speech irrelevant. They repeatedly declared that the real intention of the act was egalitarian—that it was actually designed not to reduce corruption but to make the resources available to different candidates somewhat more equal—and that the act was unconstitutional for that reason.* Roberts put the point this way: “Well, I checked the Citizens’ Clean Elections Commission website this morning, and it says that this act was passed to, quote, ‘level the playing field’ when it comes to running for office. Why isn’t that clear evidence that it’s unconstitutional?”
It is almost always implausible to attribute a single purpose even to an ordinary statute; different legislators might well have had very different intentions and hopes in voting for it. But the Clean Elections Act was adopted in a referendum directly by the Arizona voters and it is worse than implausible to attribute a single or dominant motive to all the many thousands who voted for it. We have no idea, for instance, how many of them wanted just to curb the well-publicized corruption in the state.
But even if we accept that every Arizonan who voted for the act hoped to reduce the advantage of rich candidates and institutions, that assumption would provide no argument for holding it unconstitutional. Past decisions, including Citizens United, held that a legislative desire to reduce the inequality in candidates’ spending cannot rescue a scheme that is otherwise objectionable on First Amendment grounds. Roberts’s declaration in the new case suggests a malign sleight of hand: that an act passed by popular referendum to promote electoral equality will now be condemned by that motive even if there is no other constitutional objection to it. The enthusiasm with which at least three of the conservatives toyed with the idea that equality is just in itself a forbidden goal gives further evidence that they are driven by political convictions wholly alien to the Constitution—convictions that a genuine jurisprudence of principle must reject.
* Scalia, however, rejected that putative principle: “I’m sure that in some of the public financing cases that we’ve heard argued, it was asserted that the purpose was to level the playing field, and that that was an entirely valid purpose.” ?
by Ronald Dworkin
New York Review of Books, April 27, 2011
This is the second of two posts examining the Supreme Court’s “step by step” overruling of longstanding precedents and constitutional tradition. The first post discusses the Court’s recent decision to uphold an Arizona tax credit for donations to religious schools.
Consider the Supreme Court’s newest electoral reform case, also from Arizona. In their earlier Citizens United decision the five justices in the majority—Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Anthony Kennedy, Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas, and Samuel Alito—guaranteed corporations a constitutional right to use their own capital for political advertising. They said that the point of the First Amendment is to provide the electorate with as much political speech as possible. They did not deny that the political process would be fairer if candidates and political organizations were more equal in their campaign resources. But the First Amendment forbids infringing free speech for the sake of equality, they said, and so “leveling the playing field” is no justification for stopping corporations or anyone else from spending as much on political advertising as they wish. Some commentators said that the Citizens United decision would make little practical difference: though it was wrong in principle, they thought, it would not actually do much harm. They were mistaken: the decision’s impact has already proved dramatic.
The new case—Arizona Free Enterprise Club PAC v. Bennett—gives the five justices another opportunity to protect the power of wealth in politics. Arizona, like many states, offers public financing to election candidates who agree to limit their spending but permits candidates who refuse public funding to spend as much as they wish. In a 1998 referendum following a series of political scandals, Arizona voters adopted a “Clean Elections Act” providing that if a privately funded candidate spends more than a stipulated amount, other candidates who have accepted public financing receive additional campaign funds from the state.
Conservative political organizations challenged the Clean Elections Act: they argue that this act, too, violates the free speech clause of the First Amendment. The Court heard oral argument in the case on March 28; it has not yet announced its decision but the remarks of four of the five conservative justices (Thomas almost never speaks during oral argument) leave little doubt that all five will rule the Clean Elections Act unconstitutional. They agreed with the plaintiffs that the act would “chill” the speech of privately funded candidates who would know that if they spent more than the stipulated limit their opponents would receive additional funding. In that way, they suggested, the act infringes the rights of privately funded candidates to speak as freely as they wish.
This is a bizarre argument. The five justices do not challenge the constitutionality of public funding; they hardly could since such funding obviously increases the amount—as well as the diversity—of political speech. But public funding presumably deters many rich candidates from broadcasting dubious claims they would happily broadcast if their opponents had no money to rebut them. Indeed, public funding for potential opponents might well deter some wealthy individuals from running for office and therefore from campaigning at all. The First Amendment can hardly be thought to guarantee rich politicians and organizations that they will not be effectively opposed, even when the possibility of effective opposition might induce them to say less.
Nor would increased subsidies for publicly funded candidates lower the total amount of speech available to the electorate. Political spending has increased in Arizona since the act was passed, and common sense argues that the act would increase rather than decrease the amount of political speech. Organizations like the Free Enterprise Club can raise much more money than publicly funded candidates would have even with the additional funds the act would provide them. The act would indeed diminish the financial advantage of rich candidates and organizations. But it would hardly erase that advantage and it would therefore be unlikely to stop privately funded candidates and groups from raising and spending what they otherwise would. If so, the act would increase overall speech by providing somewhat more money for poorer candidates to spend.
The transcript reveals a different and more ominous argument that some of the conservative justices seemed to have in mind, however—an argument that would make the impact of the Clean Elections Act on anyone’s speech irrelevant. They repeatedly declared that the real intention of the act was egalitarian—that it was actually designed not to reduce corruption but to make the resources available to different candidates somewhat more equal—and that the act was unconstitutional for that reason.* Roberts put the point this way: “Well, I checked the Citizens’ Clean Elections Commission website this morning, and it says that this act was passed to, quote, ‘level the playing field’ when it comes to running for office. Why isn’t that clear evidence that it’s unconstitutional?”
It is almost always implausible to attribute a single purpose even to an ordinary statute; different legislators might well have had very different intentions and hopes in voting for it. But the Clean Elections Act was adopted in a referendum directly by the Arizona voters and it is worse than implausible to attribute a single or dominant motive to all the many thousands who voted for it. We have no idea, for instance, how many of them wanted just to curb the well-publicized corruption in the state.
But even if we accept that every Arizonan who voted for the act hoped to reduce the advantage of rich candidates and institutions, that assumption would provide no argument for holding it unconstitutional. Past decisions, including Citizens United, held that a legislative desire to reduce the inequality in candidates’ spending cannot rescue a scheme that is otherwise objectionable on First Amendment grounds. Roberts’s declaration in the new case suggests a malign sleight of hand: that an act passed by popular referendum to promote electoral equality will now be condemned by that motive even if there is no other constitutional objection to it. The enthusiasm with which at least three of the conservatives toyed with the idea that equality is just in itself a forbidden goal gives further evidence that they are driven by political convictions wholly alien to the Constitution—convictions that a genuine jurisprudence of principle must reject.
* Scalia, however, rejected that putative principle: “I’m sure that in some of the public financing cases that we’ve heard argued, it was asserted that the purpose was to level the playing field, and that that was an entirely valid purpose.” ?
Saturday, May 21, 2011
How to Defeat a Corporatocracy
I have eight public arenas that would benefit from a show of solidarity. Got thoughts? Namaste, k8longstory4sbschooltalk.com
AlterNet.com / By Bruce E. Levine May 20, 2011
96 COMMENTS
10 Steps to Defeat the Corporatocracy
The only way to overcome the power of money is regain our courage and solidarity. Here's how to do that.
� Many Americans know that the United States is not a democracy but a "corporatocracy," in which we are ruled by a partnership of giant corporations, the extremely wealthy elite and corporate-collaborator government officials. However, the truth of such tyranny is not enough to set most of us free to take action. Too many of us have become pacified by corporatocracy-created institutions and culture.
Some activists insist that this political passivity problem is caused by Americans' ignorance due to corporate media propaganda, and others claim that political passivity is caused by the inability to organize due to a lack of money. However, polls show that on the important issues of our day - from senseless wars, to Wall Street bailouts, to corporate tax-dodging, to health insurance rip-offs - the majority of Americans are not ignorant to the reality that they are being screwed. And American history is replete with organizational examples - from the Underground Railroad, to the Great Populist Revolt, to the Flint sit-down strike, to large wildcat strikes a generation ago - of successful rebels who had little money but lots of guts and solidarity.
The elite spend their lives stockpiling money and have the financial clout to bribe, divide and conquer the rest of us. The only way to overcome the power of money is with the power of courage and solidarity. When we regain our guts and solidarity, we can then more wisely select from - and implement - time-honored strategies and tactics that oppressed peoples have long used to defeat the elite. So, how do we regain our guts and solidarity?
1. Create the Cultural and Psychological "Building Blocks" for Democratic Movements
Historian Lawrence Goodwyn has studied democratic movements such as Solidarity in Poland, and he has written extensively about the populist movement in the United States that occurred during the end of the 19th century (what he calls "the largest democratic mass movement in American history"). Goodwyn concludes that democratic movements are initiated by people who are neither resigned to the status quo nor intimidated by established powers. For Goodwyn, the cultural and psychological building blocks of democratic movements are individual self-respect and collective self-confidence. Without individual self-respect, we do not believe that we are worthy of power or capable of utilizing power wisely, and we accept as our role being a subject of power. Without collective self-confidence, we do not believe that we can succeed in wresting away power from our rulers.
Thus, it is the job of all of us - from parents, to students, to teachers, to journalists, to clergy, to psychologists, to artists and EVERYBODY who gives a damn about genuine democracy - to create individual self-respect and collective self-confidence.
2. Confront and Transform ALL Institutions that Have Destroyed Individual Self-Respect and Collective Self-Confidence
In "Get Up, Stand Up, " I detail 12 major institutional and cultural areas that have broken people's sprit of resistance, and all are "battlefields for democracy" in which we can fight to regain our individual self-respect and collective self confidence:
• Television
• Isolation and bureaucratization
• "Fundamentalist consumerism" and advertising/propaganda
• Student loan debt and indentured servitude
• Surveillance
• The decline of unions/solidarity among working people
• Greed and a "money-centric" culture
• Fear-based schools that teach obedience
• Psychopathologizing noncompliance
• Elitism via professional training
• The corporate media
• The US electoral system
As Ralph Waldo Emerson observed, "All our things are right and wrong together. The wave of evil washes all our institutions alike."
3. Side Each Day in Every Way With Anti-Authoritarians
We can recover our self-respect and strength by regaining our integrity. This process requires a personal transformation to overcome our sense of powerlessness and fight for what we believe in. Integrity includes acts of courage resisting all illegitimate authorities. We must recognize that in virtually every aspect of our life in every day, we can either be on the side of authoritarianism and the corporatocracy or on the side of anti-authoritarianism and democracy. Specifically, we can question the legitimacy of government, media, religious, educational and other authorities in our lives, and if we establish that an authority is not legitimate, we can resist it. And we can support others who are resisting illegitimate authorities. A huge part of solidarity comes from supporting others who are resisting the illegitimate authorities in their lives. Walt Whitman had it right: "Resist much, obey little. Once unquestioning obedience, once fully enslaved."
4. Regain Morale by Thinking More Critically About Our Critical Thinking
While we need critical thinking to effectively question and challenge illegitimate authority - and to wisely select the best strategies and tactics to defeat the elite - critical thinking can reveal some ugly truths about reality, which can result in defeatism. Thus, critical thinkers must also think critically about their defeatism, and realize that it can cripple the will and destroy motivation, thus perpetuating the status quo. William James (1842–1910), the psychologist, philosopher, and occasional political activist (member of the Anti-Imperialist League who, during the Spanish-American War, said, "God damn the US for its vile conduct in the Philippine Isles!") had a history of pessimism and severe depression, which helped fuel some of his greatest wisdom on how to overcome immobilization. James, a critical thinker, had little stomach for what we now call "positive thinking," but he also came to understand how losing belief in a possible outcome can guarantee its defeat. Antonio Gramsci (1891–1937), an Italian political theorist and Marxist activist who was imprisoned by Mussolini, came to the same conclusions. Gramsci's phrase "pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will" has inspired many critical thinkers, including Noam Chomsky, to maintain their efforts in the face of difficult challenges.
5. Restore Courage in Young People
The corporatocracy has not only decimated America's labor union movement, it has almost totally broken the spirit of resistance among young Americans - an even more frightening achievement. Historically, young people without family responsibilities have felt most freed up to challenge illegitimate authority. But America's education system creates fear, shame and debt - all killers of the spirit of resistance. No Child Left Behind, Race to the Top and standardized testing tyranny results in the kind of fear that crushes curiosity, critical thinking and the capacity to constructively resist illegitimate authority. Rebel teachers, parents, and students - in a variety of overt and covert ways - have already stopped complying with corporatocracy schooling. We must also stop shaming intelligent young people who reject college, and we must instead recreate an economy that respects all kinds of intelligence and education. While the corporatocracy exploits student loan debt to both rake in easy money and break young people's spirit of resistance, the rest of us need to rebel against student loan debt and indentured servitude. And parents and mental health professionals need to stop behavior-modifying and medicating young people who are resisting illegitimate authority.
6. Focus on Democracy Battlefields Where the Corporate Elite Don't Have Such a Large Financial Advantage
The emphasis of many activists is on electoral politics, but the elite have a huge advantage in this battlefield, where money controls the US electoral process. By focusing exclusively on electoral politics at the expense of everything else, we: (1) give away power when we focus only on getting leaders elected and become dependent on them; (2) buy into the elite notion that democracy is all about elections; (3) lose sight of the fact that democracy means having influence over all aspects of our lives; and (4) forget that if we have no power in our workplace, in our education and in all our institutions, then there will never be democracy worthy of the name. Thus, we should focus our fight more on the daily institutions we experience. As Wendell Berry said, "If you can control a people's economy, you don't need to worry about its politics; its politics have become irrelevant."
7. Heal from "Corporatocracy Abuse" and "Battered People's Syndrome" to Gain Strength
Activists routinely become frustrated when truths about lies, victimization and oppression don't set people free to take action. But when we human beings eat crap for too long, we gradually lose our self-respect to the point that we become psychologically too weak to take action. Many Americans are embarrassed to accept that, after years of corporatocracy subjugation, we have developed "battered people's syndrome" and what Bob Marley called "mental slavery." To emancipate ourselves and others, we must:
• Move out of denial and accept that we are a subjugated people.
• Admit that we have bought into many lies. There is a dignity, humility, and strength in facing the fact that, while we may have once bought into some lies, we no longer do so.
• Forgive ourselves and others for accepting the abuser's lies. Remember the liars we face are often quite good at lying.
• Maintain a sense of humor. Victims of horrific abuse, including those in concentration camps and slave plantations, have discovered that pain can either immobilize us or be transformed by humor into energy.
• Stop beating ourselves up for having been in an abusive relationship. The energy we have is better spent on healing and then working to change the abusive system; this provides more energy, and when we use this energy to provide respect and confidence for others, everybody gets energized.
8. Unite Populists by Rejecting Corporate Media's Political Divisions
The corporate media routinely divides Americans as "liberals," "conservatives" and "moderates," a useful division for the corporatocracy, because no matter which of these groups is the current electoral winner, the corporatocracy retains power. In order to defeat the corporatocracy, it's more useful to divide people in terms of authoritarians versus anti-authoritarians, elitists versus populists and corporatists versus anticorporatists. Both left anti-authoritarians and libertarian anti-authoritarians passionately oppose current US wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the Wall Street bailout, the PATRIOT Act, the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), the so-called "war on drugs" and several other corporatocracy policies. There are differences between anti-authoritarians but, as Ralph Nader and Ron Paul have together recently publicly discussed, we can form coalitions and alliances on these important power-money issues. One example of an anti-authoritarian democratic movement (which I am involved in) is the mental health treatment reform movement, comprised of left anti-authoritarians and libertarians. We all share distrust of Big Pharma and contempt for pseudoscience, and we believe that people deserve truly informed choice regarding treatment. We respect Erich Fromm, the democratic-socialist psychoanalyst, along with Thomas Szasz, the libertarian psychiatrist, both passionate anti-authoritarians who have confronted mental health professionals for using dogma to coerce people.
9. Unite "Comfortable Anti-Authoritarians" and "Afflicted Anti-Authoritarians
This "comfortable-afflicted" continuum is based on the magnitude of pain that one has simply getting through the day. The term comfortable anti-authoritarian is not a pejorative one, but refers to those anti-authoritarians lucky enough to have decent paying and maybe even meaningful jobs, or platforms through which their voices are heard or social supports in their lives. Many of these comfortable anti-authoritarians may know that there are millions of Americans working mindless jobs in order to hold on to their health insurance, or hustling two low-wage jobs to pay college loans, rent and a car payment, or who may be unable to find even a poorly paying, mindless job and are instead helplessly watching eviction or foreclosure and bankruptcy close in on them. However, unless these comfortable anti-authoritarians have once been part of that afflicted class - and remember what it feels like - they may not be able to fully respect the afflicted's emotional state. The afflicted need to recognize that human beings often become passive because they are overwhelmed by pain (not because they are ignorant, stupid, or lazy), and in order to function at all, they often shut down or distract themselves from this pain. Some comfortable anti-authoritarians assume that people's inactions are caused by ignorance. This not only sounds and smells like elitism, it creates resentment for many in the afflicted class who lack the energy to be engaged in any activism. Respect, resources and anything that concretely reduces their level of pain is likely to be far more energizing than a scolding lecture. That's the lesson of many democratic movements, including the Great Populist Revolt.
10. Do Not Let Debate Divide Anti-Authoritarians
Spirited debate is what democracy is all about, but when debate turns to mutual antipathy and divides anti-authoritarians, it plays into the hands of the elite. One such divide among anti-elitists is over the magnitude of change that should be worked for and celebrated. On one extreme are people who think that anything is better than nothing at all. At the other extreme are people who reject any incremental change and hold out for total transformation. We can better unite by asking these questions: Does the change increase individual self-respect and collective self-confidence, and increase one's energy level to pursue even greater democracy? Or does it feel like a sellout that decreases individual self-respect and collective self-confidence, and de-energizes us? Utilizing the criteria of increased self-respect and collective self-confidence, those of us who believe in genuine democracy can more constructively debate whether the change is going to increase strength to gain democracy or is going to take the steam out of a democratic movement. Respecting both sides of this debate makes for greater solidarity and better decisions.
To summarize, democracy will not be won without guts and solidarity. Risk-free green actions - such as shopping from independents, buying local, recycling, composting, consuming less, not watching television and so on - can certainly help counter a dehumanizing world. However, revolutions that truly transform fundamental power inequities and enable us to feel like men and women rather than children and slaves require risk, guts and solidarity.
Bruce E. Levine is a clinical psychologist. His Web site is www.brucelevine.net.
AlterNet.com / By Bruce E. Levine May 20, 2011
96 COMMENTS
10 Steps to Defeat the Corporatocracy
The only way to overcome the power of money is regain our courage and solidarity. Here's how to do that.
� Many Americans know that the United States is not a democracy but a "corporatocracy," in which we are ruled by a partnership of giant corporations, the extremely wealthy elite and corporate-collaborator government officials. However, the truth of such tyranny is not enough to set most of us free to take action. Too many of us have become pacified by corporatocracy-created institutions and culture.
Some activists insist that this political passivity problem is caused by Americans' ignorance due to corporate media propaganda, and others claim that political passivity is caused by the inability to organize due to a lack of money. However, polls show that on the important issues of our day - from senseless wars, to Wall Street bailouts, to corporate tax-dodging, to health insurance rip-offs - the majority of Americans are not ignorant to the reality that they are being screwed. And American history is replete with organizational examples - from the Underground Railroad, to the Great Populist Revolt, to the Flint sit-down strike, to large wildcat strikes a generation ago - of successful rebels who had little money but lots of guts and solidarity.
The elite spend their lives stockpiling money and have the financial clout to bribe, divide and conquer the rest of us. The only way to overcome the power of money is with the power of courage and solidarity. When we regain our guts and solidarity, we can then more wisely select from - and implement - time-honored strategies and tactics that oppressed peoples have long used to defeat the elite. So, how do we regain our guts and solidarity?
1. Create the Cultural and Psychological "Building Blocks" for Democratic Movements
Historian Lawrence Goodwyn has studied democratic movements such as Solidarity in Poland, and he has written extensively about the populist movement in the United States that occurred during the end of the 19th century (what he calls "the largest democratic mass movement in American history"). Goodwyn concludes that democratic movements are initiated by people who are neither resigned to the status quo nor intimidated by established powers. For Goodwyn, the cultural and psychological building blocks of democratic movements are individual self-respect and collective self-confidence. Without individual self-respect, we do not believe that we are worthy of power or capable of utilizing power wisely, and we accept as our role being a subject of power. Without collective self-confidence, we do not believe that we can succeed in wresting away power from our rulers.
Thus, it is the job of all of us - from parents, to students, to teachers, to journalists, to clergy, to psychologists, to artists and EVERYBODY who gives a damn about genuine democracy - to create individual self-respect and collective self-confidence.
2. Confront and Transform ALL Institutions that Have Destroyed Individual Self-Respect and Collective Self-Confidence
In "Get Up, Stand Up, " I detail 12 major institutional and cultural areas that have broken people's sprit of resistance, and all are "battlefields for democracy" in which we can fight to regain our individual self-respect and collective self confidence:
• Television
• Isolation and bureaucratization
• "Fundamentalist consumerism" and advertising/propaganda
• Student loan debt and indentured servitude
• Surveillance
• The decline of unions/solidarity among working people
• Greed and a "money-centric" culture
• Fear-based schools that teach obedience
• Psychopathologizing noncompliance
• Elitism via professional training
• The corporate media
• The US electoral system
As Ralph Waldo Emerson observed, "All our things are right and wrong together. The wave of evil washes all our institutions alike."
3. Side Each Day in Every Way With Anti-Authoritarians
We can recover our self-respect and strength by regaining our integrity. This process requires a personal transformation to overcome our sense of powerlessness and fight for what we believe in. Integrity includes acts of courage resisting all illegitimate authorities. We must recognize that in virtually every aspect of our life in every day, we can either be on the side of authoritarianism and the corporatocracy or on the side of anti-authoritarianism and democracy. Specifically, we can question the legitimacy of government, media, religious, educational and other authorities in our lives, and if we establish that an authority is not legitimate, we can resist it. And we can support others who are resisting illegitimate authorities. A huge part of solidarity comes from supporting others who are resisting the illegitimate authorities in their lives. Walt Whitman had it right: "Resist much, obey little. Once unquestioning obedience, once fully enslaved."
4. Regain Morale by Thinking More Critically About Our Critical Thinking
While we need critical thinking to effectively question and challenge illegitimate authority - and to wisely select the best strategies and tactics to defeat the elite - critical thinking can reveal some ugly truths about reality, which can result in defeatism. Thus, critical thinkers must also think critically about their defeatism, and realize that it can cripple the will and destroy motivation, thus perpetuating the status quo. William James (1842–1910), the psychologist, philosopher, and occasional political activist (member of the Anti-Imperialist League who, during the Spanish-American War, said, "God damn the US for its vile conduct in the Philippine Isles!") had a history of pessimism and severe depression, which helped fuel some of his greatest wisdom on how to overcome immobilization. James, a critical thinker, had little stomach for what we now call "positive thinking," but he also came to understand how losing belief in a possible outcome can guarantee its defeat. Antonio Gramsci (1891–1937), an Italian political theorist and Marxist activist who was imprisoned by Mussolini, came to the same conclusions. Gramsci's phrase "pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will" has inspired many critical thinkers, including Noam Chomsky, to maintain their efforts in the face of difficult challenges.
5. Restore Courage in Young People
The corporatocracy has not only decimated America's labor union movement, it has almost totally broken the spirit of resistance among young Americans - an even more frightening achievement. Historically, young people without family responsibilities have felt most freed up to challenge illegitimate authority. But America's education system creates fear, shame and debt - all killers of the spirit of resistance. No Child Left Behind, Race to the Top and standardized testing tyranny results in the kind of fear that crushes curiosity, critical thinking and the capacity to constructively resist illegitimate authority. Rebel teachers, parents, and students - in a variety of overt and covert ways - have already stopped complying with corporatocracy schooling. We must also stop shaming intelligent young people who reject college, and we must instead recreate an economy that respects all kinds of intelligence and education. While the corporatocracy exploits student loan debt to both rake in easy money and break young people's spirit of resistance, the rest of us need to rebel against student loan debt and indentured servitude. And parents and mental health professionals need to stop behavior-modifying and medicating young people who are resisting illegitimate authority.
6. Focus on Democracy Battlefields Where the Corporate Elite Don't Have Such a Large Financial Advantage
The emphasis of many activists is on electoral politics, but the elite have a huge advantage in this battlefield, where money controls the US electoral process. By focusing exclusively on electoral politics at the expense of everything else, we: (1) give away power when we focus only on getting leaders elected and become dependent on them; (2) buy into the elite notion that democracy is all about elections; (3) lose sight of the fact that democracy means having influence over all aspects of our lives; and (4) forget that if we have no power in our workplace, in our education and in all our institutions, then there will never be democracy worthy of the name. Thus, we should focus our fight more on the daily institutions we experience. As Wendell Berry said, "If you can control a people's economy, you don't need to worry about its politics; its politics have become irrelevant."
7. Heal from "Corporatocracy Abuse" and "Battered People's Syndrome" to Gain Strength
Activists routinely become frustrated when truths about lies, victimization and oppression don't set people free to take action. But when we human beings eat crap for too long, we gradually lose our self-respect to the point that we become psychologically too weak to take action. Many Americans are embarrassed to accept that, after years of corporatocracy subjugation, we have developed "battered people's syndrome" and what Bob Marley called "mental slavery." To emancipate ourselves and others, we must:
• Move out of denial and accept that we are a subjugated people.
• Admit that we have bought into many lies. There is a dignity, humility, and strength in facing the fact that, while we may have once bought into some lies, we no longer do so.
• Forgive ourselves and others for accepting the abuser's lies. Remember the liars we face are often quite good at lying.
• Maintain a sense of humor. Victims of horrific abuse, including those in concentration camps and slave plantations, have discovered that pain can either immobilize us or be transformed by humor into energy.
• Stop beating ourselves up for having been in an abusive relationship. The energy we have is better spent on healing and then working to change the abusive system; this provides more energy, and when we use this energy to provide respect and confidence for others, everybody gets energized.
8. Unite Populists by Rejecting Corporate Media's Political Divisions
The corporate media routinely divides Americans as "liberals," "conservatives" and "moderates," a useful division for the corporatocracy, because no matter which of these groups is the current electoral winner, the corporatocracy retains power. In order to defeat the corporatocracy, it's more useful to divide people in terms of authoritarians versus anti-authoritarians, elitists versus populists and corporatists versus anticorporatists. Both left anti-authoritarians and libertarian anti-authoritarians passionately oppose current US wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the Wall Street bailout, the PATRIOT Act, the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), the so-called "war on drugs" and several other corporatocracy policies. There are differences between anti-authoritarians but, as Ralph Nader and Ron Paul have together recently publicly discussed, we can form coalitions and alliances on these important power-money issues. One example of an anti-authoritarian democratic movement (which I am involved in) is the mental health treatment reform movement, comprised of left anti-authoritarians and libertarians. We all share distrust of Big Pharma and contempt for pseudoscience, and we believe that people deserve truly informed choice regarding treatment. We respect Erich Fromm, the democratic-socialist psychoanalyst, along with Thomas Szasz, the libertarian psychiatrist, both passionate anti-authoritarians who have confronted mental health professionals for using dogma to coerce people.
9. Unite "Comfortable Anti-Authoritarians" and "Afflicted Anti-Authoritarians
This "comfortable-afflicted" continuum is based on the magnitude of pain that one has simply getting through the day. The term comfortable anti-authoritarian is not a pejorative one, but refers to those anti-authoritarians lucky enough to have decent paying and maybe even meaningful jobs, or platforms through which their voices are heard or social supports in their lives. Many of these comfortable anti-authoritarians may know that there are millions of Americans working mindless jobs in order to hold on to their health insurance, or hustling two low-wage jobs to pay college loans, rent and a car payment, or who may be unable to find even a poorly paying, mindless job and are instead helplessly watching eviction or foreclosure and bankruptcy close in on them. However, unless these comfortable anti-authoritarians have once been part of that afflicted class - and remember what it feels like - they may not be able to fully respect the afflicted's emotional state. The afflicted need to recognize that human beings often become passive because they are overwhelmed by pain (not because they are ignorant, stupid, or lazy), and in order to function at all, they often shut down or distract themselves from this pain. Some comfortable anti-authoritarians assume that people's inactions are caused by ignorance. This not only sounds and smells like elitism, it creates resentment for many in the afflicted class who lack the energy to be engaged in any activism. Respect, resources and anything that concretely reduces their level of pain is likely to be far more energizing than a scolding lecture. That's the lesson of many democratic movements, including the Great Populist Revolt.
10. Do Not Let Debate Divide Anti-Authoritarians
Spirited debate is what democracy is all about, but when debate turns to mutual antipathy and divides anti-authoritarians, it plays into the hands of the elite. One such divide among anti-elitists is over the magnitude of change that should be worked for and celebrated. On one extreme are people who think that anything is better than nothing at all. At the other extreme are people who reject any incremental change and hold out for total transformation. We can better unite by asking these questions: Does the change increase individual self-respect and collective self-confidence, and increase one's energy level to pursue even greater democracy? Or does it feel like a sellout that decreases individual self-respect and collective self-confidence, and de-energizes us? Utilizing the criteria of increased self-respect and collective self-confidence, those of us who believe in genuine democracy can more constructively debate whether the change is going to increase strength to gain democracy or is going to take the steam out of a democratic movement. Respecting both sides of this debate makes for greater solidarity and better decisions.
To summarize, democracy will not be won without guts and solidarity. Risk-free green actions - such as shopping from independents, buying local, recycling, composting, consuming less, not watching television and so on - can certainly help counter a dehumanizing world. However, revolutions that truly transform fundamental power inequities and enable us to feel like men and women rather than children and slaves require risk, guts and solidarity.
Bruce E. Levine is a clinical psychologist. His Web site is www.brucelevine.net.
Friday, May 20, 2011
Do We Have Psychopaths Misruling Our World?
Maverick Media / By Greg Guma
256 COMMENTS
Schwarzenegger, DSK, and Gingrich: Do We Have Psychopaths Misruling Our World?
The serial misbehavior of these men was rationalized and excused for years, but it demonstrates a perpetual problem: ruling class impunity.
May 19, 2011 |
Change.org
� In recent days the political news has been like an episode of some TV drama about high-level corruption – call it Criminal Minds meets The West Wing. The head of the International Monetary Fund – the global financial organization that sets terms for development aid -- was jailed in New York for allegedly assaulting a housemaid sexually at his hotel. Meanwhile, in California news broke that the state’s movie-star governor – known as both the Terminator and the Gropinator – fathered a love-child almost a decade ago and it didn’t come out until he was about to leave office.
Then, of course, there’s the presidential campaign of Newt Gingrich, a poster child for bad behavior, launched last week with a series of disastrous missteps and rationalizations.
What the three men have in common, aside from wielding more influence than they can handle or deserve, is that their serial misbehavior went unchecked for years. In fact, it was rationalized as mere exuberance, frequently excused in “exceptional” people, when it actually demonstrated something else – ruling class impunity.
Ask yourself: Is it possible that these were isolated lapses in judgment? In other words, was this the only time Dominique Strauss-Kahn went after the help, or the only instance of Arnold Schwarzenegger cheating on his wife and exploiting those beneath him? Not too likely. And it’s surely not the only time Gingrich has excused his own bad behavior as a side effect of patriotism – while simultaneously trashing the basic humanity of a political opponent.
If these are patterns, why are millions so fascinated, often even seduced, by people whose behavior actually points to pathology? Perhaps we are wired to be attracted by psychopaths, sociopaths, narcissists, people so focused on their own central role in whatever takes place that the rest of us are sucked into their reality.
Think about entering a portal and emerging into the head of Donald Trump. What could that level of self-absorption be like? Begin by imagining a complete lack of empathy, one of the tell-tale signs of the psychopath.
Is Trump a psychopath? Well, he does score well on a 20 item checklist. And are there more psychopaths around us than we think? Not just serial killers and the violent type, but successful, powerful psychopaths who will do anything to win and affect our lives in profound ways?
The checklist, a way to help identify potential psychopaths among us, was developed by Bob Hare, a prison psychologist who conducted remarkable experiments and eventually codified his findings. Jon Ronson has provides an excellent history and analysis in his new book, The Psychopath Test.
Here’s the basic list, a collection of tendencies and an analytical tool to spot those who might be functioning psychopaths. The last two items relate specifically to criminals, but you don't have to be caught to have "criminal versatility." Keep in mind that having mild tendencies doesn’t make you a psychopath. But a high score – more than 30 on Hare’s 40 point scale – should be a warning sign. Personally, I give Trump and Gingrich high marks:
1.Glibness, superficial charm
2.Grandiose sense of self-worth
3.Need for stimulation, proneness to boredom
4.Pathological lying
5.Conning, manipulative
6.Lack of remorse or guilt
7.Shallow affect
8.Callous, lack of empathy
9.Parasitic lifestyle
10.Poor behavioral control
11.Promiscuous sexual behavior
12.Early behavior problems
13.Lack of realistic long-term goals
14.Impulsivity
15.Irresponsibility
16.Failure to accept responsibility for own actions
17.Many short-term marital relationships
18.Juvenile delinquency
19.Revocation of conditional release
20.Criminal versatility
In his book, Ronson follows the trail of research about psychopaths, gets to know a few, and sees how they have affected society. For example, he tracks down Toto Constant, former leader of Haitian death squads backed by the CIA, who was given asylum in the US but restricted to Queens. Although the guy was basically in hiding, he still thought he was beloved in Haiti (#2), took no responsibility for his crimes (#16), and badly imitated strong emotions. Since psychopaths don’t experience emotions that same as other people (#7), they often compensate through imitation. But not all are excellent actors. Constant even thought he would someday be called back to “help” Haiti again (#13).
Psychopaths could be the reason the world seems so screwed up. If so, humanity’s tragic flaw may be that a few bad apples – people whose amygdalas don’t fire the right signals to their central nervous systems – really can spoil the whole barrel. Prime examples include the corporate psychopaths who trashed capitalism a few years back. To dig into that group check out Snakes in Suits: When Psychopaths Go to Work, by Bob Hare and Paul Babiak. Examining these financial terrorists, you might well conclude that the conspiracy theory about shape-shifting lizards who secretly rule the world isn’t so far off. After all, psychopaths are often social shape-shifters.
So, the question is: Do psychopaths run the country and maybe the world? Dominique Strauss-Kahn is a strong candidate. Among recent presidents Nixon, Bush 2 and Clinton could qualify. The masters of the universe at places like Goldman Sachs are solid choices. And it only takes a few to destabilize a financial system, poison a community or destroy a business. Yet some studies suggest that, percentage-wise, there are more potential psychopaths among CEOs, directors and supervisors than in the general population, or even in prisons.
Who hasn’t known a business type who was borderline, a mercurial tyrant subject to fits of rage and impulsive acts? Or followed a public figure who was charming but also irresponsible, manipulative and self-aggrandizing? The tell-tale signs of the psychopath are often ignored or excused.
In his book, Ronson recalls a meeting with businessman Al Dunlop, a ruthless executive famous for his apparent joy in firing people. Together they go through Hare's psychopath checklist and Dunlop simply redefines many of the traits as aspects of leadership. Impulsiveness becomes quick analysis. Grandiose sense of self-worth? Absolutely, you have to believe in yourself, says Dunlop. Manipulative? Hey, that’s just leadership. Inability to feel deep emotions? Emotions are mostly nonsense, he says. And not feeling remorse frees you up to do great things.
Newt Gingrich would likely have a similar response if confronted with his own psychopathic tendencies. At the moment, he is engaging in a standard strategy – claiming redemption and re-inventing himself. In his case it's an epic rationalization that may not work.
It is widely agreed that Newt is an opportunist and a scoundrel. But that clearly doesn’t disqualify him from becoming president. Warren Harding, the Ohio senator who became president in 1920, carried on a 15-year affair both before and during his presidency. The "other woman," Nan Britton, gave birth to a son.
This was shortly after the end of World War I. People were disillusioned with Woodrow Wilson, and Democrats deserted the party to give Harding the biggest landslide in US history, 60 percent of the vote. That year Eugene Debs, who was in federal prison, got his best turnout, a million votes. Less than three years later, in the middle of a “goodwill” tour,” Harding dropped dead suddenly in San Francisco. He was replaced in August 1923 by Calvin Coolidge, a native Vermonter and Massachusetts governor who had been picked for vice-president in the original smoke-filled room.
Some people said Harding had been poisoned by his wife, Florence DeWolfe, a cold, snobbish banker’s daughter known as The Duchess. Rumors spread that she was trying to avoid disgrace, possibly even Harding’s impeachment. The administration had become notoriously corrupt. The Duchess fed the rumors by refusing to allow an autopsy.
It remains a mystery to this day. But Harding provided his own epitaph in advance. “I am not fit for this office and never should have been here,” he once admitted. That self-awareness suggests, despite his shortcomings, that at least he wasn’t a psychopath.
The point: if Warren Harding could become president, why not Newt Gingrich or someone equally disturbed? Just think of the future scandals and all the pathological behavior we would get to witness. Bad behavior is, after all, catnip for millions of information consumers. Can they ever really get enough?
This is adapted from Maverick Media’s Rebel News Round Up,* broadcast live at approximately 11:15 a.m. Friday on WOMM (105.9-FM/LP – The Radiator) in Burlington.
256 COMMENTS
Schwarzenegger, DSK, and Gingrich: Do We Have Psychopaths Misruling Our World?
The serial misbehavior of these men was rationalized and excused for years, but it demonstrates a perpetual problem: ruling class impunity.
May 19, 2011 |
Change.org
� In recent days the political news has been like an episode of some TV drama about high-level corruption – call it Criminal Minds meets The West Wing. The head of the International Monetary Fund – the global financial organization that sets terms for development aid -- was jailed in New York for allegedly assaulting a housemaid sexually at his hotel. Meanwhile, in California news broke that the state’s movie-star governor – known as both the Terminator and the Gropinator – fathered a love-child almost a decade ago and it didn’t come out until he was about to leave office.
Then, of course, there’s the presidential campaign of Newt Gingrich, a poster child for bad behavior, launched last week with a series of disastrous missteps and rationalizations.
What the three men have in common, aside from wielding more influence than they can handle or deserve, is that their serial misbehavior went unchecked for years. In fact, it was rationalized as mere exuberance, frequently excused in “exceptional” people, when it actually demonstrated something else – ruling class impunity.
Ask yourself: Is it possible that these were isolated lapses in judgment? In other words, was this the only time Dominique Strauss-Kahn went after the help, or the only instance of Arnold Schwarzenegger cheating on his wife and exploiting those beneath him? Not too likely. And it’s surely not the only time Gingrich has excused his own bad behavior as a side effect of patriotism – while simultaneously trashing the basic humanity of a political opponent.
If these are patterns, why are millions so fascinated, often even seduced, by people whose behavior actually points to pathology? Perhaps we are wired to be attracted by psychopaths, sociopaths, narcissists, people so focused on their own central role in whatever takes place that the rest of us are sucked into their reality.
Think about entering a portal and emerging into the head of Donald Trump. What could that level of self-absorption be like? Begin by imagining a complete lack of empathy, one of the tell-tale signs of the psychopath.
Is Trump a psychopath? Well, he does score well on a 20 item checklist. And are there more psychopaths around us than we think? Not just serial killers and the violent type, but successful, powerful psychopaths who will do anything to win and affect our lives in profound ways?
The checklist, a way to help identify potential psychopaths among us, was developed by Bob Hare, a prison psychologist who conducted remarkable experiments and eventually codified his findings. Jon Ronson has provides an excellent history and analysis in his new book, The Psychopath Test.
Here’s the basic list, a collection of tendencies and an analytical tool to spot those who might be functioning psychopaths. The last two items relate specifically to criminals, but you don't have to be caught to have "criminal versatility." Keep in mind that having mild tendencies doesn’t make you a psychopath. But a high score – more than 30 on Hare’s 40 point scale – should be a warning sign. Personally, I give Trump and Gingrich high marks:
1.Glibness, superficial charm
2.Grandiose sense of self-worth
3.Need for stimulation, proneness to boredom
4.Pathological lying
5.Conning, manipulative
6.Lack of remorse or guilt
7.Shallow affect
8.Callous, lack of empathy
9.Parasitic lifestyle
10.Poor behavioral control
11.Promiscuous sexual behavior
12.Early behavior problems
13.Lack of realistic long-term goals
14.Impulsivity
15.Irresponsibility
16.Failure to accept responsibility for own actions
17.Many short-term marital relationships
18.Juvenile delinquency
19.Revocation of conditional release
20.Criminal versatility
In his book, Ronson follows the trail of research about psychopaths, gets to know a few, and sees how they have affected society. For example, he tracks down Toto Constant, former leader of Haitian death squads backed by the CIA, who was given asylum in the US but restricted to Queens. Although the guy was basically in hiding, he still thought he was beloved in Haiti (#2), took no responsibility for his crimes (#16), and badly imitated strong emotions. Since psychopaths don’t experience emotions that same as other people (#7), they often compensate through imitation. But not all are excellent actors. Constant even thought he would someday be called back to “help” Haiti again (#13).
Psychopaths could be the reason the world seems so screwed up. If so, humanity’s tragic flaw may be that a few bad apples – people whose amygdalas don’t fire the right signals to their central nervous systems – really can spoil the whole barrel. Prime examples include the corporate psychopaths who trashed capitalism a few years back. To dig into that group check out Snakes in Suits: When Psychopaths Go to Work, by Bob Hare and Paul Babiak. Examining these financial terrorists, you might well conclude that the conspiracy theory about shape-shifting lizards who secretly rule the world isn’t so far off. After all, psychopaths are often social shape-shifters.
So, the question is: Do psychopaths run the country and maybe the world? Dominique Strauss-Kahn is a strong candidate. Among recent presidents Nixon, Bush 2 and Clinton could qualify. The masters of the universe at places like Goldman Sachs are solid choices. And it only takes a few to destabilize a financial system, poison a community or destroy a business. Yet some studies suggest that, percentage-wise, there are more potential psychopaths among CEOs, directors and supervisors than in the general population, or even in prisons.
Who hasn’t known a business type who was borderline, a mercurial tyrant subject to fits of rage and impulsive acts? Or followed a public figure who was charming but also irresponsible, manipulative and self-aggrandizing? The tell-tale signs of the psychopath are often ignored or excused.
In his book, Ronson recalls a meeting with businessman Al Dunlop, a ruthless executive famous for his apparent joy in firing people. Together they go through Hare's psychopath checklist and Dunlop simply redefines many of the traits as aspects of leadership. Impulsiveness becomes quick analysis. Grandiose sense of self-worth? Absolutely, you have to believe in yourself, says Dunlop. Manipulative? Hey, that’s just leadership. Inability to feel deep emotions? Emotions are mostly nonsense, he says. And not feeling remorse frees you up to do great things.
Newt Gingrich would likely have a similar response if confronted with his own psychopathic tendencies. At the moment, he is engaging in a standard strategy – claiming redemption and re-inventing himself. In his case it's an epic rationalization that may not work.
It is widely agreed that Newt is an opportunist and a scoundrel. But that clearly doesn’t disqualify him from becoming president. Warren Harding, the Ohio senator who became president in 1920, carried on a 15-year affair both before and during his presidency. The "other woman," Nan Britton, gave birth to a son.
This was shortly after the end of World War I. People were disillusioned with Woodrow Wilson, and Democrats deserted the party to give Harding the biggest landslide in US history, 60 percent of the vote. That year Eugene Debs, who was in federal prison, got his best turnout, a million votes. Less than three years later, in the middle of a “goodwill” tour,” Harding dropped dead suddenly in San Francisco. He was replaced in August 1923 by Calvin Coolidge, a native Vermonter and Massachusetts governor who had been picked for vice-president in the original smoke-filled room.
Some people said Harding had been poisoned by his wife, Florence DeWolfe, a cold, snobbish banker’s daughter known as The Duchess. Rumors spread that she was trying to avoid disgrace, possibly even Harding’s impeachment. The administration had become notoriously corrupt. The Duchess fed the rumors by refusing to allow an autopsy.
It remains a mystery to this day. But Harding provided his own epitaph in advance. “I am not fit for this office and never should have been here,” he once admitted. That self-awareness suggests, despite his shortcomings, that at least he wasn’t a psychopath.
The point: if Warren Harding could become president, why not Newt Gingrich or someone equally disturbed? Just think of the future scandals and all the pathological behavior we would get to witness. Bad behavior is, after all, catnip for millions of information consumers. Can they ever really get enough?
This is adapted from Maverick Media’s Rebel News Round Up,* broadcast live at approximately 11:15 a.m. Friday on WOMM (105.9-FM/LP – The Radiator) in Burlington.
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