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He always repeats the "homelessness in America is because Reagan emptied the mental hospitals" thing and I almost never heard him say anything else about it. I understand he wants to blame Reagan but there are more accurate and more substantive accusations he can make - like deregulation of the housing industry and eliminating housing subsidies and whatever he did to help manufacturing leave the country.
It's unlike Thom to stereotype like that but it's "fightin' words" for me when I hear somebody do that. I even wrote a member blog about it once.
I mean, he's still okay with me, i.e., I agree with him 90% of the time ...
Sorry, couldn't resist when I heard about Saket Soni.
Changing demographics! Now that's the ticket.
Alice, I knew Saket Soni here in Chicago in the early to mid 2000s when we were both organizers - he was a community organizer and I was a labor organizer organizing poor laborers, like he is now. Our laborers' organization was a bit unusual as it was a diverse group and not almost exclusively immigrant as were most contingent laborers organizations (Saket's group in New Orleans is similarly diverse). Our organization, and somewhat Saket's, primarily organized outsourced workers, temp workers, who the NLRB declared inelligible to join unions and this outsourcing of permanent jobs in the United States over the last three or four decades is a very large part of what has been driving the working people's economy down in the U.S..
In 2000, just before it left office, Bill Clinton's N.L.R.B. reversed its position of many years and made it legal for temporary workers to join unions under the Board's rules. The first act of the new, incoming N.L.R.B. under G.W. Bush was to reverse that ruling.
One of the best kept secrets of labor politics is that this position of the NLRB has done more to enable union busting than any one other thing in the arena of labor organizing. It became, as Socket wrote (and, I think, understated) in his article, so common and prevalent for business to outsource its labor needs - mainly to circumvent collective bargaining and liability under labor law - that permanent, in house employment became almost a rarity and, indeed, in certain lower wage and lower skilled sectors, almost unknown.
This had the advantage to client businesses of outsource staffing agencies of exempting them from legal liability for everything from safety standards to payroll obligations. There are few rights and little recourse for the outsourced worker who suffers an injury on the job, has their paycheck shorted, has to do a job alone that is more logistically suitable for two or three workers or has an abusive boss or working conditions.
This worker doesn't have a union to speak or bargain for them, they are powerless against the big behemoth corporation they are sent to staff - as well as against their thuggish and, not uncommonly, "mobbed up" staffing agency. Their only advocate is the government and its labor laws and regulations (which explains in a nutshell why conservative business owners and their lackeys are "libertarian" or against government and working people are not). They will get a raise when the minnimum wage is increased by law and their working conditions will improve when a new law mandates that they be (and even then they might have to chase around after the appropriate government department officers to get any enforcement action, so much so that they might find it too much bother and drop their complaint altogether and just live with the short paycheck and abusive conditions).
And, in addition to all of this, the outsource status of the contingent worker effectively makes them a scab. A Teamster Business Agent I met at a labor conference told me that in every contract negotiation he'd engaged in the employer tried to use the temps against them as a leveraged threat. It wasn't until 2007 that the AFL-CIO overcame their suspicion of us, realized we weren't happy, eager scabs but would rather be with the union members with all the rights and benefits (and happily paying the dues) and it wasn't until then that they reached out to our organizations. Anyway, it's pretty likely there is a relationship of causality between the fact of union membership decline and increased outsourcing.
So it is, like Saket Soni said, that we are all, in effect, undocumented workers now, which is what the employers wanted and hoped for when they first started outsourcing in the '80s. And the "Fight for 15" is not just for fast food workers.
SHFabian -- This reply is with respect to the not enough jobs and what to do about it. My answer which I have said many times before on Thom's blogs. is vote democratic. The reason I give for this is that if we would have had 61 dem senators in the 2009-2010 congress, card check would have passed. With card check we would have stronger labor unions. With stronger labor unions we would have higher tariffs, and more importantly, with labor unions we would have shorter work weeks. It seems with an overabundance of dems in both houses we could solve the shortage of jobs problem, Unfortunately, I do see how it would help the discrimination against the poor.
Okay here is my positive spin -- the Pope, Facebook/Twitter (power to the people; please use it for our own good), and the expanding Lationo population (is it racism to point out a positive trait about an identifiable portion of the population; various polls about happiness have shown that to the culture of S.America happiness is not so strongly correleated to wealth).
Positive spin? In this context?! Like a new coat of paint on a collapsing bridge.
Mark, just one point if I may. We needn't assume Thom was stereotyping all homeless people as mentally ill, just by emphasizing Reagan's disasterous cuts on mental hospitals. He's talked about other causes of homelessness as well, for what it's worth... - AIW
Some of that is by "intelligent design" as well. The Reagan era PR machine skillfully effected a Maoist styled Cultural Revolution from the Right in the '80s. To dismantle the New Deal they first had to dismantle its underlying, supporting, Depression Era culture and ethos of egalitarianism and empathy for the poor. They, in effect, had to supplant those values of humanity with a sociopathic nihilism.
"Greed is good" became the slogan and the poor, instead of being empathized with as equal fellow human beings, became villified and looked down upon. The ostensible justification was some supposed laziness on their part but really, because this PR revolution so promoted greed and bogus, superficial values like status and power over, say, honesty and virtue, it was really for the simple reasons that the poor were not esthetically pleasing, prestigious or too helpful to anyone's bottom line.
Resultant was a tremendous status insecurity for relatively rich and poor alike and nobody cared anymore what happened to society or to anyone else but themselves. The rest, as they say, is history. Everybody just fights with and engages in rivalry with everyone else and nobody can unify about anything. #Occupy was the first time since that anybody dared come together about anything and acknowledge that they were anything but "temporarily inconvenienced billionaires".
Ain't that the truth? Propoganda is just what it is.
Alinsky wrote about what happens when the poor enter the middle class. When he first started organizing poor Stockyards' laborers they were all beat down, had low self esteem, were relatively powerless and poor as all hell. They crafted a manifesto in which they declared that all men are equals regardless of race, color, creed or economic class. Then what happened? They won. They gained power, got a better deal and started making money. They moved out of the Back of the Yards neighborhood into a nice little subdivision in Bridgeport. No sooner had that happened than they started to talk about how they didn't want any of "these people" or "those kinda people", any riff-raff or racial minorities coming into their nice, new neighborhood.
And did I ever tell ya about Pat Brown, former governor of California and the current governor's father, about how he wrote in a book about Ronald Reagan that the Democratic Party was "a victim of its own success"? It ended the Great Depression, moved the working classes out of poverty and into the middle class. What happens when people start making money? They start buying stock and voting Republican.
I have a friend whose mother is a doctor at Cook County Hospital. At CCH doctors are salaried employees who sometimes get taken advantage of and lately more and more. Relatively recently they started to unionize joining S.E.I.U. Healthcare. My friend's mother will go on and on about the need for the doctors' union and how necessary and important it is. When asked about the nurses' union, however, she'll suddenly start spitting venom about how nurses shouldn't be allowed to unionize. So when she's not the boss unions are good and necessary but when she's the boss unions are bad and evil.
Most people in the United States are worthless POS who don't care about anything but their shit selves. I'd think they rather deserved each other if I didn't know it was the effect of many generations of capitalism causing them to be that way. Americans stand out in their self centeredness among peoples of the world and that's how they cut their own throats.
Both sides of the isle are guilty of protecting the rich in any way that they can. Most of congress are millionaires themselves, and the majority of those are Democrats. I am sure people on both sides use those tax havens.
These slot games can keep me playing for hours on end, because if one game at that new casino online begins to get on my nerves there are others to check out.
Swell. I agree though "chuck", it ain't looking good.
Thanks Suze, for the informative post. The more we learn, the worse it all looks. But we're still better off knowing.
Like the band on the sinking Titanic, play on... My piano beckons. Good night everyone. - AIW
Sort of. Newt Gingrich recognized, and lectured about, a problem that plagued our elite throughout the 20th century. Every time the richest few achieved a certain level of wealth and power, the poor and middle class "masses" united to push back, to everyone's benefit. By the 1980s "Reagan Revolution," it was understood that it would be necessary to divide the masses, pitting the middle class against the poor, to prevent a united push-back this time. It was a stunning success. Even media marketed to liberals is powerfully used to keep the "masses" divided by often reciting typical right-wing/corporatist talking points and phrases, especially on socioeconomic issues. For example, they pander relentless to the middle class (incomes roughly in the $50k range), and have written the masses of truly poor out of the public discussion. Democrats no longer talk about standing up for "ordinary Americans, " but ONLY for those still in the middle class. This time, the "masses" were divided and conquered.
I think the reason the middle class isn't outraged at the massive chunk of the budget that is redistributed to the few at the top is that they are so obsessed with the fear that a crumb might trickle down to the undeserving poor (we do believe in helping the deserving poor, but also decided that no one who is poor is deserving).
I'm not sure if corporations reflect society or the other way around. How would the average person answer this: Reality: Not everyone can work, due to health or circumstances, and there simply aren't jobs available to all who need one. They - our surplus population - don't disappear. What should we do about them?
Wish we could get over the propaganda crap about "the value of work." The richest work the least, and those who work the hardest are often the poorest.
The Reagan administration convinced the public that businesses were being "forced" to leave the US by high taxes. Those taxes were slashed, corporate profits boomed (as wages fell or stagnated), and THAT was when the great job drain began. Since Reagan, several trillion dollars have effectively been redistributed upward. Meanwhile, the "peace-loving USA" was remained engaged in wars, usually by choice, almost constantly for a full century now, keeping budgets drained, neglecting the most vital needs of the country. We no longer invest in the people, and decided to stop building a world-class workforce. The middle class is oblivious to that mass of the population not as well-off as them, so they're unaware of the inevitable social consequences. In short, we broke the country, and it's not possible to fix it under the conditions we chose. We've been in similar situations before, when too much wealth and power was concentrated at the top. Each time, the poor and middle class ultimately united to push back, to everyone's benefit. That can't happen this time, of course, as the middle class and poor have been deeply divided. President Obama will continue to "stay the course," keeping these conditions in place. If anyone can put a positive spin on any of this, please do.
Funny, America was perfectly comfortable with severe income inequality for years. It only seems to have become an issue as middle classers are starting to feel the pressures of the policies and politics that they, themselves, chose. Sorry, folks, but what the rich are doing to the middle class is simply what the middle class already did to the poor. We were warned back in the 1980s that "trickle down economics" would only result in trickle-up austerity.
You're right chuckle8, Reagan greased the skids for capital to go but it already wanted to leave. Germany and France have retained their industrial base by putting those dams in place but before the oil embargo and control by O.P.E.C.the elites didn't mind letting us have something, it was chump change to them. But that might also be due to pre-Reagan tax policy. The 70% tax kicked in after $3 million of year so business owners would require $3 million a year from their business and they would let you (the people who worked for them) have the rest. Now, they want every bit of it and don't wanna let you have shit.
AIW -- It is at the point the canary is superflous, because the mine is exploding.
I don't smoke pot, haven't for 22 years, but I've studied a lot about it and marijuana is not some new mystery drug. It is for our civilization and is characterized as such by the anti legalization PR but it has been around for 20,000 years and there is more known about marijuana than almost any other drug. I would be very skeptical of many studies of marijuana. They are traditionally bad, even fraudulent, science that is usually manipulated to yield the results that the funders of the research (traditionally the anti legalization government) wanted to get. Commonly they seem to be trying to reproduce known effects of alcohol for marijuana. The birth defects study seems that way to me.
And contrary to what Ullman says, marijuana does NOTdamage brain cells. Apparently, she too is trying to transfer known effects of alcohol to marijuana without any evidence.
Government provision of birth control is ridiculously misrepresented by Ullman as a "Big Brother" intrusion into their liberties when actually it gives poor women more freedom. Freedom to them is a luxury of the well to do, and of course, since they wanna use the rest of us as their oxen and plow horses.
I wouldn't call her a Great Mind, just a Fortune writer. So what's new? Cities gentrified, poor people are expelled to the suburbs.
By the way, I just finished reading a great article in my favorite magazine The Nation, titled "Low-Wage Nation", by Saket Soni (interesting name). The author identifies immigrants in this country as the proverbial "canary in the coal mine". It warns us that if we continue viewing immigrants as "the other", with problems separate from ours, we will find ourselves in the exact same predicament they're in, disposible to employers, completely at their mercy, vulnerable to any kind of abuse they dish out (including, I might add, all-out wage theft). We are already well on our way down that spider hole, as the job market continues to deteriorate and our safety net crumbles. Collectively we must have a goal and a strategy to get ourselves out of this mess, before we're just cheap protein for predators. I commend (Mr.?) Soni for this outstanding article. - Aliceinweonderland
I don't think presidents exactly "jump the fence" when they get into office. It is more a situation that they become captives to the powers that be. I know that Obama tried to get the Pentagon to draw up a plan to get out of Afghanistan and was ignored, twice. Then he was given a choice by the military branch of power brokers: 10 thousand, 20 thousand, 30 thousand, 40 thousand more troops for an Afghan "surge" - what will it be, Mr. President? Now Gates is out with a tell-all blaming Obama for not trusting the Pentagon and disrespecting their opinions. Gee, ya think?
All of Kennedy's military cabinet members WANTED a nuclear war with the Soviet Union. Yes, the casualties would be horrible, they said, but WE would win! They were incensed that Kennedy kept talking about peace, and and that he set up a back channel to Krushchev to avoid such a war. Thank god he did, but look at the price he paid. I am reminded that at an Organization of American States meeting, Hugo Chavez approached Obama and asked him, "Are you a prisoner?" As someone who knew the CIA's penchant for acting, sometimes on their own and without the knowledge of the President to do "regime change" in other countries, Chavez knew very well the limits of what Obama could do. Did no one notice that the takeover in Honduras (by someone trained at the "School of the Americas", no less) was labeled a "coup" by Obama and Hillary Clinton for the first couple of days? Then they dropped all mention of a coup and eventually "recognized" the new government of Honduras - the first, and I believe only, country to do so. Obviously, they were pressured to go along with the situation by whomever carried it out.
Neither Bernie Sanders nor Elizabeth Warren shows any burning interest in becoming president - for good reason. They may stage a "run", knowing that the powers that be will cut them out of the possibility, but only after they raise some uncomfortable issues for the actual candidates. Don't urge them to run, either; they are far more effective where they are. The president is overrated as a change agent, and he gets all the attention during elections in order to distract us from those who ARE important and those we SHOULD be demanding change from. His powers are very limited by his 'behind the curtains' controllers. They may run for office thinking they can change the system from the inside, but soon find they are in considerable danger if they rock too many boats. The attention should go to the members of Congress - they are the ones that make the laws, and they are the ones - given enough public pressure or 'rebellion' from involved citizens - that can be swayed, or replaced if they cannot.
Mark, aka "Anarchist cop out"- No problem. Sorry if I got a little thin-skinned.
Believe me, I share your frustration with the left. To your comments I'll add: too fragmented among subgroups, each with its own pet crusade, with much in-fighting between them. Not exactly a recipe for success in countering the oligarchy... or monarchy, or whatever you want to call it.
Those last ten years before moving to Oregon, my husband & I lived in Santa Cruz, California. I remember getting awful sick of the elitism down there. That area was populated with lots of spoiled rich kids who carried on like their shit didn't stink. That's how it was in the '80s when we lived there. I don't miss it.
We on the left have to become more effective as a unified force, behind a commonly shared goal. As I and others have emphasized from time to time, "Move to Amend" and campaign finance reform would be a good place to start. Without that accomplished, nothing else is possible. And until we learn to work together, we'll never be any match for the fascists, who are masters at working together in lockstep. While might doesn't make right, nor does righteousness guarantee doodily-do.
Anyway yes, Mark, I agree with your basic premise despite having taken one or two of your comments personally, which I now see was a mistake. Again, please accept my apologies. I'll admit, it's easy to misinterpret where people are coming from at times... - Aliceinwonderland