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By Pat Garofalo
Economic Policy Editor, Center for American Progress Action Fund ThinkProgress.org

As ThinkProgress reported yesterday, despite yet another outbreak of food-borne illness — this time stemming from listeria infected cantaloupes — congressional Republicans are still trying to cut back on the nation’s food safety regulations. The tainted melons have caused 16 deaths so far, making this the deadliest outbreak in more than a decade, and it comes just a month after salmonella-tainted turkey forced food-giant Cargill into the third-largest food recall on record.

Lost in the well-deserved focus on the listeria outbreak is the fact that another giant food-producer, Tyson Fresh Meats, was forced this week to recall more than 130,000 pounds of ground beef due to E. Coli contamination. And this particular breakdown in food safety should earn the attention of the man leading the GOP in its slash-and-burn approach to the budget, Speaker John Boehner (R-OH), as four children in his district were sickened by the meat:

The recall of 65 tons of ground beef that might be contaminated with E. coli has hit close to home for House Speaker John Boehner of Ohio.

(more…)

Zach Carter

By Zach Carter
Economics Editor, AlterNet; Fellow, Campaign for America’s Future

Several key House Democrats are circulating a letter urging support for new regulations that would crack down on what critics say are rampant foreclosure abuses in the nation’s banking system.

The letter, authored by Rep. Brad Miller (D-N.C.) encourages federal banking regulators to rein in practices at bank divisions called “mortgage servicers.” Servicers are responsible for collecting and processing payments, charging late fees, negotiating with troubled borrowers and implementing the foreclosure process. Servicers have been criticized for committing widespread fraud in recent months, charging improper fees and incorrectly evicting borrowers.

The three House Democrats have already signed the letter, including House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank (D-Mass.), House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers (D-Mich.), Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.), Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.) and Rep. Laura Richardson (D-Calif.).

The letter from lawmakers comes one day after more than fifty economists, consumer advocates and banking experts urged regulators to take action on mortgage servicers. Federal Regulators are currently divided over whether or not to use new powers to regulate mortgage securities granted by this year’s Wall Street reform bill to crack down on servicing abuses. The FDIC wants to take the opportunity to rein in servicers, but the Federal Reserve and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency are resisting the new rules, although spokespeople for both agency say they support stronger standards for mortgage servicing. (more…)

Zach Carter

Zach Carter
Economics Editor, AlterNet; Fellow, Campaign for America’s Future

A full 90 members of Congress who voted to bailout Wall Street in 2008 failed to support financial reform reining in the banks that drove our economy off a cliff. But when you examine campaign contribution data, it’s really no surprise that these particular lawmakers voted to mortgage our economic future to Big Finance: This election cycle, they’ve raked in over $48.8 million from the financial establishment. Over the course of their Congressional careers, the figure swells to a massive $176.9 million.

The complete list of these Crony Capitalists is below, along with the money they pulled in from Big Finance, according to data compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics (opensecrets.org). The career data goes back to 1989. Of the 69 House members who voted with Wall Street on both the bailout and financial reform, 60 are Republicans, while nine are Democrats. All 21 Senators who voted with Wall Street on both issues are Republicans, and Republicans raked in over
90 percent of the total campaign contributions.

Here’s a chart showing Wall Street’s total contributions to this crowd for the 2010 cycle, by political party:

And here’s one showing total Wall Street contributions over the course of their careers:

These aren’t the only politicians carrying water for Wall Street–only the most flagrant. Some of the bank lobby’s savviest servants on Capitol Hill do their dirty work early in the legislative process. They push through technical amendments and deploy complex procedural tricks to defang a bill, but when the final vote comes, they can still create the appearance of taking a stand against Wall Street’s interests. Rep. Melissa Bean, D-Ill., is a master of this technique, and Tea Party favorite Sen. Scott Brown, R-Mass., was able to claim credit for voting in favor of reform after demanding–and receiving–a host of big bank giveaways in return for his vote. (more…)

The political pendulum of time was swinging more to the right when we ended up with George W. Bush as President. After that we got a person that was supposed to be for workers and came as a Democrat but a moderate (Blue Dog Democrat). He was none other than William Jefferson Clinton. He changed the face of the Democratic Party, which was a party that represented the working class. He made such statements as “The era of big government was over.”  That’s when I knew things were really going to the radical right wing.

I always felt government was good as long as they counteracted the power of the corporate interests in favor of the consumers and workers. Clinton brought us NAFTA and other free trade deals, and we really started losing our manufacturing base. They opened the door for those countries to flood us with foreign products, thus creating a huge trade imbalance.

Incidentally, most of the countries to which American corporations moved were paying less than subsistence wages, had no unions, no consumer rights, etc. So free trade did not lift those people out of their desperate economic and social conditions.

One good thing about Clinton, though, was he did leave a surplus on the books. After his administration, we had ended up with the most Radical Right Wing Government ever under George Bush#2. They created a policy of deregulating all business. After eight years of Bush and Carl Rove, the country was bankrupt with a huge deficit! We all know the economic collapse that Bush left – a near worldwide depression which we still are suffering from.

Michael Cmero Sr.
Carmel, N.Y.
Retired Railroad Worker

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Dave Johnson

By Dave Johnson
Fellow with Campaign for America’s Future

The terrible Gulf oil, West Virginia mining, Wall Street finance and government debt disasters all demonstrate the ongoing catastrophic and continuing results of conservative policies. Each of these is a direct consequence of letting corporate conservatives take over government and dismantle the regulatory and democratic protections that We, the People fought so hard for following the Great Depression — itself a previous demonstration of the failure of conservative policies.

How often have you had to hear that “the market” is the best way to run things? That is is “self-correcting?” That regulations are government “interference” or “meddling” in the market? That business/free markets/private sector always does things better or is more efficient than government? When you hear these you are experiencing the clash between a “one-dollar-one-vote” free market system — as we had before the Teddy Roosevelt progressive era and the Franklin Roosevelt New Deal — and “one-person-one-vote” democratic, We, the People system that brings the benefits of our economy and our country to the most people. But because of the power of money and marketing most people are hearing only one side of an ongoing argument between the wealthy few and the broad masses of working people.

For decades we have heard these pro-market, anti-government arguments repeated over and over and over and over and over and over. Big corporations have a lot of money to buy a big megaphone, so you hear that government is bad, business is good and the people ought to just keep their noses out of the marketplace and stop telling businesses how to do things. You hear that taxes are bad, “hurt the economy,” “cost jobs,” “take money out of the economy,” “just get passed through to customers anyway” and a million similar great-sounding slogans that fall down under minimal evaluation. They have been repeated over and over, until we forgot why we had fought so hard for strong government regulations and high taxes at the top.

After the disaster of Nixon the country learned about cracks in our democracy that let big money get their nose under the tent. But after Watergate we didn’t plug all of the leaks, and big money got into the tent anyway. They used their position to give themselves more power, and used that power to give themselves even more, etc. and now we have a system that is corrupted absolutely.

So with the conservative government of Reagan and then later under the all-out anti-government conservative administration of George W. Bush we have had the opportunity of seeing just what happens when these “free market” ideas are given free reign to replace democracy. Anti-government zealots were put into positions inside the government and used that power to take apart the protections that We, the People had painstakingly built.

Taxes were cut to “defund” government in order to “starve the beast.” The strategy was create huge deficits so the public would later demand cuts in government benefits. In the meantime the deficits would be used as an excuse to cut government oversight, inspections and enforcement of rules restricting the activities of big corporations. But all they did was create huge deficit that added up to massive debt.

Katrina was the first clear, public demonstration of the governing offered by conservatives. When they talked about replacing progressive ideas of “we’re in this together” and “watching out for each other” with “personal responsibility” they meant it. And the country saw what that meant to real people in real trouble.

More recently we have been hearing about disaster after disaster and catastrophe after catastrophe, all caused by businesses running out of control, aided by conservative government that relaxed or just stopped enforcing regulations and laws. Each catastrophe is beyond the scope or willingness of private businesses to repair, requiring public intervention, at great cost. (But never any suggestion of “clawback” — or getting back the profits that were made while creating the catastrophe.)

We all certainly know about the Wall Street financial crisis caused by the big banks and insurance giants. We heard about the SEC ignoring warnings about Bernie Madoff and Goldman Sachs and all the others. We’ve seen hearings about the things that WaMu was doing, and loans going to people who couldn’t read, and brokers making up incomes on “liar loans” and ratings agencies giving top ratings to “designed to fail” bond deals that investment banks and hedge funds had put together so they could make huge “swap” bets against them when the loans went under… The government, under control of “free market” conservatives looked the other way the whole time.

They brought down the economy of the whole world, requiring government bailouts that added up to more money that has been spent by our government in the history of the country. And now they are fighting tooth and nail to keep We, the People from passing financial reforms to bring Wall Street back under control.

Just recently there was the West Virginia mining disaster caused by deregulation, sweet deals between the company and regulators and lack of enforcement. The CEO of the Massey Energy had literally bought himself a judge, who then voted in favor of Massey Energy. Corrupted absolutely, 29 dead later.

And now, the huge, huge catastrophe in the Gulf.

This is the Reagan Revolution coming home to roost, and I will be writing about the terrible price we are paying and will be paying for a long time for the failed experiment in conservative ideology.

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This post originally appeared at Campaign for America’s Future (CAF) at their Blog for OurFuture as part of the Making It In America project. Sign up here for the CAF daily summary.

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Johnson also is a fellow at the Commonweal Institute and a Senior Fellow at the Institute for the Renewal of the California Dream.

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Follow Dave Johnson on Twitter: www.twitter.com/dcjohnson

Leo W. Gerard

 

 

By Leo W. Gerard

International President

From sea to shining sea, America is suffering.

She is, however, afflicted with an avoidable condition she brought on herself, like a hangover. Only this one’s interminable and internationally contagious.

She did it by choosing over the past 30 years to establish an economy that worshiped avarice. That decision has destroyed her financial system and taken down with it much of the world’s.

Now America must decide whether to be swayed by the greedy urging her to continue basing her economy on the destructive policies of deregulation, de-unionization, globalization and privatization or to construct a new financial system focused on industry and profit shared by the workers who produce it.

Over much of the  20^th century, the nation created real wealth by manufacturing – taking raw materials from the ground, using machines, energy and labor to convert them into products and selling those here and overseas. That process, to make steel or tires or washing machines, was the engine of the economy. In 1947, 32 percent of the workforce engaged in it belonged to unions, which meant workers received good wages and benefits. This enabled them to churn real money throughout the economy by buying homes and cars and television sets and sending their children to college. And it enabled them to save 7.5 percent of their earnings.

Then, in the 1980s, a new narrative for the economy emerged. In this story, greed was good. Self-interest was supposed to lead to the best outcomes for business. To accommodate this concept, Government de-regulated and, in fact, passed laws favoring big corporations and the nation’s wealthiest citizens. The idea was that some of the prosperity they created as a result of the abolished protections for workers and the environment would trickle down.

This was the new economy.

This was a scam to move wealth from the middle class to the affluent. And it worked. In 1976, the richest 10 percent in this country possessed 49 percent of the wealth. In 2007, it was 73 percent.

During this time of bowing to corporate demands, the government actually gave multinational corporations tax benefits to offshore their U.S. manufacturing facilities. Sometimes they shut down, throwing hundreds of Americans out of work, then packed the factory pieces into crates, numbered piece by numbered piece, and shipped them to China or Indonesia or whatever country would allow blatant violation of its own labor and environmental regulations. Sometimes they closed American factories and built brand new ones overseas with breaks from foreign governments. As U.S. companies closed, union membership dropped to below 12 percent. And America found herself importing toxic lead coated toys, paper made from trees illegally harvested in Indonesian national forests and untested pharmaceuticals.

Companies that remained here threatened to leave if workers didn’t accept wage and benefit concessions. American workers were vilified for seeking a living wage while CEOs pulled millions out of corporations in annual bonuses.

The American economy began to depend less on manufacturing and more on the “financial sector,” where profit was made moving money around, betting on stock trades, and participating in asset bubbles. Remember the tech bubble? That was manufactured value – not manufactured goods – and that’s why it disappeared when the bubble burst.

The same has now happened with the housing bubble. Those smart guys on Wall Street, among the brilliant ones who sold America on the idea that greed was good, bet on housing prices never falling. A decline in home values never entered their calculations.

Then they fell. And they took down with them a couple of Wall Street banks and the largest insurance company in the world and Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, credit markets and then the economy of the nation and the world.

Now workers are really in trouble.

They were struggling before the crash as manufacturing jobs disappeared and wages stagnated. Personal savings declined so that the average family now owes $8,000 to credit card companies. Without sufficient wage increases to sustain their lifestyle, families borrowed against their major asset, their homes. Now, because the housing bubble burst, a quarter of mortgage holders owe more than their homes are worth and 2.5 million have lost theirs to foreclosure.

All of this is because America failed to give greed the wide berth warranted by one of the seven deadly sins.

Alan Greenspan, who served as steward over the rise of the culture of avarice for nearly two decades as chairman of the Federal Reserve, admitted to Congress in October that his opposition to federal regulation was a blunder:

“I made a mistake in presuming that the self-interests of organizations, specifically banks and others, were such that they were best capable of protecting their own shareholders and their equity in the firms.”

In the song, America the Beautiful,” from which the lines “from sea to shining sea, come, lyricist Katharine Lee Bates counseled in the second verse, “America! America! God mend thine every flaw.”

Clearly, this greed-based economy is a flaw. It was created by covetous humans. It must be mended by Americans of better grace, people Katharine Lee Bates described as those, “Who more than self their country loved.”

America’s workers must seize back control of their country and wrest back determination of its priorities. They must re-regulate the financial markets and remove the onerous restrictions placed on unions to prevent organization of new workplaces and bargaining of new contracts to raise worker salaries and benefits.

But, most immediately, America’s workers must insist Congress immediately pass an economic renewal package that will reinvigorate Main Streets across the nation. This is essential to prevent a prolonged and excessively painful deep recession resulting from the housing bubble collapsing.

This public investment has two purposes. It will stimulate the economy by providing jobs. In addition, it will strengthen America’s manufacturing competitiveness in the international marketplace.

The Institute for America’s Future has developed a plan called A Main Street Recovery Program calling for investment of $900 billion over two years.

The money would be targeted to areas that would create sustained, long-term, shared economic growth. This includes investing in green technologies to reduce the nation’s dependence on foreign oil and the threat of global warming. Another focus is repair and modernization of the country’s physical infrastructure, such as roads and bridges, and intellectual infrastructure – its education system. And finally, the third targeted area is assistance to workers most in need, which would include moves toward universal affordable health insurance, a middle class tax cut and expanded unemployment insurance.

More than 250 organizations and economists have endorsed this program. President-elect Barack Obama’s recovery plan outlined last weekend includes many of its aspects. Its passage would signal the beginning of conversion to an economy that values production and workers, something the self-interested greed-mongers will oppose.

But let’s work for realization of Katharine Lee Bates’ final verses:

“America! America”

God shed his grace on thee

Till selfish gain no longer stain

The banner of the free!”

 

 

 

 

Jared Bernstein

By Jared Bernstein

Director of the Living Standards Program, Economic Policy Institute

Most Congressional hearings are not that scintillating. The ones you see on TV, with Roger Clemens testifying about steroids, Ben Bernanke, or some general back from the field, are the exceptions (and let’s face it: they’re pretty predictable too, with important people working hard to not say anything important). Mostly, it’s a group of policy wonks or industry reps talking to members of Congress about some minutiae in a bill that may or may not go anywhere. At their worst, these hearings are scripted events where actors trot out their lines in order to move (or block) some legislation valuable (or hurtful) to their constituents.

At their best, however, a hearing can be a great example of good government in action, and as someone whose been testifying for years, let me tell you about one from last week that struck me as uniquely positive. My point is not simply to report on an unusually useful couple of hours in the halls of government. At the risk of over-extrapolating, I thought I saw a glimpse of what our political future might look like if we make the right choice on Nov. 4. And it provided a glimmer of hope.

The hearing was before the House Committee on Education and Labor, chaired by Rep. George Miller (D-CA). The topic was how to best craft a recovery package to accomplish two things: help those hurt by the troubled economy, and stimulate that economy back to life. The majority party gets to choose most of the witnesses, so this panel featured only one Republican witness and, uncharacteristically, not one Republican member of the committee showed up.

This sounds like glib snark, but I can tell you based on personal experience, that’s one reason why this hearing worked well. Like I said, I’ve done these for years, and ever since Reagan, Republican witnesses in economic hearings almost always have one, and only one, theme: supply-side tax cuts (okay, lately they’ve added “drill, baby, drill,” but that’s a newcomer, and it’s just about as compelling as their tax plan; oh yes, and “deregulation” shows up a lot too, though this is a bit of a non-starter right now, to put it mildly).

If you don’t believe me, read the testimony at the above link by the R witness, William Beach from the conservative Heritage Foundation: high-end tax cuts (extend the Bush cuts, cut the capital gains rate, lower the corporate tax), find more oil, avoid “burdensome regulations.”

That’s almost all they bring to the table, regardless of the evidence, the topic, or outside circumstances. Case in point, this hearing was about a stimulus package that needs to move quickly off the mark, and Beach was pushing tax changes (extending the Bush cuts) that come into play at the end of 2010. It’s the same supply-side agenda the Heritage folks push in good times and bad. Their only tool is a hammer, so it all looks like nails to them. Same with the oil thing. Does Beach not recognize that the price of gas is down well over a dollar nation-wide, yet we’re still mired in recession?

As I wrote last week in this space, ideology that’s impervious to facts is the last thing we need right now, and the fact that such thinking was vastly under-represented was one reason why this hearing worked.

The hearing began with testimony by Dana Stevens, a woman from New Jersey who’s been unemployed since July. Since then she’s applied for 143 jobs and gotten only seven interviews. She’s an extremely impressive, articulate person, and she’s even willing to take a pay cut, within reason given her financial needs.

But there’s just no work out there. Hiring freezes are pervasive. Back in January of last year there were 1.5 job seekers per available job. Now that ratio has doubled–it’s 3 to 1. Add in the six million people who are working fewer hours than they desire, and one in nine persons is un- or underemployed.

Economist Ron Blackwell and I presented facts like these, along with our views re the magnitude and composition of a recovery package. In order to offset a recession that is likely to drive unemployment to at least 8% by the end of next year (it’s about 6% now), I think we need to spend roughly $50 billion to help strapped states, $50 billion on infrastructure (more on that below), and $50 billion on extending both unemployment insurance and food stamps. Beyond that, it might be useful to boost household incomes with direct payments, but that was the exclusive thrust of the last round of stimulus, and we should deemphasize such payments this round. Checks can help for awhile, no question, but people need jobs, and that’s why many of us are bullish on infrastructure investment right now.

Here’s where Professor Robert Pollin’s testimony comes in. Do yourself a favor, and give this one a read (same link as above). It’s a detailed road map of a vital public investment agenda, with an emphasis on green technologies. There are the usual candidates–schools, water management, roads, bridges–as well as building retrofits, smart grid electrical systems, and renewable energy. Moreover, Pollin shows that in terms of jobs, these investments get you a bigger bang for the buck than tax cuts, military spending, or “drill, baby, drill” (see his figure 1).

In a similar vein, Chris Hansen made a solid case for including the expansion of high speed broadband networks in an infrastructure agenda, providing access to areas that are still off this grid, a serious economic and social disadvantage in today’s world.

(A related point in my testimony is that infrastructure investment has often been dismissed in the context of stimulus as having too long a lead time. Not so. There are tons of productive projects in all of these areas ready to go, if not already underway but starved for resources.)

But beyond the good information exchange, what stood out in this hearing was the discussion between the members of Congress and the panelists. These exchanges can too often reduce to partisans getting “experts” to confirm their biases: “Mr. X, you noted in your testimony that 2+2=5. Could you elaborate?”

In this case, members were genuinely seeking our insights into how to structure a recovery package, and providing their own amplification as to what parts made most sense to them. Reps. George Miller and Lynn Woolsey, clearly motivated by the deteriorating economy and rising unemployment, wanted to hear about ways we might extend unemployment insurance benefits to meet the needs of people like Ms. Stevens, including upping the “replacement rate”–the share of salary replaced by UI benefits (it rarely breaks 50%; I think now’s a good time to go up to 70%, at least temporarily).

John Sarbanes (D-MD) picked up on a great Pollin point about “crowding in”–how sometimes government investment creates untapped markets that later draws in private investment. The internet is, of course, a classic example, and green technologies create the same possibilities, with even greater potential benefits.

Other members, like Dave Loebsack (D-IA) stressed how the recession is cutting into their state’s revenues, and wanted to learn more about the actions states were taking. Unlike the Feds, states have to balance their budgets, and they’re actively cutting services (and jobs), as well as raising fees and taxes, actions that will only serve to deepen the recession. Thus, unlike the earlier stimulus package, this one must include state fiscal relief.

Like I said, I don’t want to get all starry-eyed here, but I couldn’t help but wonder if the dynamics of this hearing–creative, open-minded thinking about solving problems in a progressive, even green, way–might be a tiny harbinger of a new era, where government actually works to solve problems, not create them. Is this, I asked myself, the way things might operate in an Obama era?

I know, this election is by no means over, and despite the favorable polls, I’m not one iota complacent about the outcome. It’s just that this hearing revealed what may be a light at the end of the tunnel. Unless that’s the headlights of the Straight-talk Express headed right for us.

International President

In a perverse way, the media painted Republicans perfectly when it selected red for their states.

Reporters would never have guessed when they did it that the red party’s candidate would engage in red-baiting. But there was John McCain repeatedly doing it in the debate Wednesday night, trying to convert Barack Obama into a terrifying “spread-the-wealth-around” commie. And earlier this month, the Republican’s brother, Joe “McCarthy” McCain, called two Democratic-leaning Virginia counties “Communist Country.”

When it comes to spreading assets around, however, the royal red Republicans, led by King “I-am-a-capitalist-really” George, take the Triple Crown. Their upside down communism works like this: the middle class pays for the tax breaks awarded the nation’s rich and for the financial recklessness of Wall Street’s ultra-wealthy.

Trickle down

In the Republican world, in the view of John McCain and George W. Bush, it never, ever works the other way. A curse, they would say, on anyone who would dare suggest that the rich should be taxed so that government could “trickle down” a portion of their extraordinary wealth to benefit the majority.

They believe in “free markets,” that is, allowing financial markets to run unrestrained and unregulated, or as some have put it recently – amok. They believe government interferes in markets and therefore should be shrunken and impotent. They believe that when an elite few accumulate wealth in that system, some of it naturally will eventually “trickle down” into the empty porridge bowls of the nation’s vast unworthy masses.

A dreadful thing happened on the way to the fiscal crash, though. That philosophy failed.

The “small government” Bush and Republican Congress increased spending, thus replacing the budget surplus bequeathed them with deficits. And not just any deficits – the largest known to man — $455 billion this year, edging out the $413 billion record debt Bush set in 2004.

The rich won’t be paying for that. No, Bush gave them a tax break, and McCain swears he’ll make that break for the wealthy permanent. The middle class, and their children and grandchildren will be making payments on that debt — which, by the way, was caused in part by the revenue loss from Bush’s tax break for the rich.

That’s spreading the wealth around – from the pockets of middle class to trust funds of the rich.

Over the past eight years, middle class Americans have watched with shock and awe as corrupt and incompetent CEOs left their failing corporations with golden parachutes – like McCain’s top financial advisor Carly Fiorina, who exited Hewlett-Packard with $45 million in 2005 when the board dismissed her as CEO following the company’s stock dropping 50 percent and her furloughing 20,000 workers.

Bail out speculators

Now those same middle class Americans are incredulous as Bush — who had McCain’s support 90 percent of the time over the past eight years — is taking $700 billion of their tax dollars to nationalize banks. Their tax dollars will be used to bail out the Wall Street financiers who wouldn’t cut the middle class a break when they were late on mortgage payments, the speculators whose uninhibited risk-taking caused financial institutions to fail, lending to freeze, stocks to swoon.

Deregulation of the financial industry allowed banks and other sorts of financial institutions to merge and become “too big to fail” and engage in risky purchases without sufficient supporting capital. McCain, who until recently bragged about being “Mr. Deregulation,” endorsed this suspension of rules. Its chief champion served as his campaign co-chairman – former Texas Senator Phil Gramm.

Gramm successfully pressed for repeal of the depression-era Glass-Steagall Act, which was designed to prevent financial institutions from becoming too big to fail, and for passage of the Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000 that deregulated those now infamous credit default swaps that took down insurer AIG, costing taxpayers another $85 billion.

Gramm left the senate in 2002 for an executive position with the Swiss investment bank, UBS, the stock for which, by the way, has plummeted right along with that of American banks.

McCain’s mentor

Gramm still advises McCain, though he’s no longer campaign co-chair. He had to resign that position after he called the United States a nation of whiners during an interview in which he also denied the seriousness of the financial crisis. Here’s what McCain’s financial mentor said, “You’ve heard of mental depression; this is a mental recession.”

Sure, when the coins of the middle class are flowing up into your pockets, Mr. Gramm, it doesn’t feel like a recession at all. Spreading the wealth around – from the middle class to the wealthy Gramms and multi-millionaire McCains.

Really, Joe “McCarthy” McCain was right when he called the Virginia counties of Arlington and Alexandria Communist Country. John McCain owns a condo in Arlington, and that’s where he located his campaign’s national headquarters. They’re communist all right, McCain Republican-communist, under which middle class earnings are spread to the rich.

In the debate Wednesday night, McCain accused Barack Obama of conducting class warfare because the Democrat wants to end Bush’s tax breaks for the wealthy and instead cut the taxes of the middle class – 95 percent of American families.

What Obama proposes isn’t warfare; it’s fairness.

Class warfare is what the Republicans have done to the middle class over the past eight years, and what McCain pledges to continue. It’s a war the rich now are winning.

That’s what Obama wants to change.

By Leo W. Gerard
International President

Republicans in the House contend that critical words by Speaker Nancy Pelosi compelled them to vote against the initial $700 billion Wall Street bailout bill that their GOP President had asserted was essential to save the country from certain economic doom.
But, really, they were pressured by something far less ethereal than Pelosi’s commentary, something far more grassroots: livid constituents calling and e-mailing so fast and furious — with furious being the operative word — that they nearly shut down networks.
It was an uprising. It showed that under the right set of circumstances –  like  impending balloting on their re-election — they would respond to public outcry. That occurred just as a filmmaker Stuart Townsend’s new movie, “Battle in Seattle” debuted around the country, highlighting an uprising that changed the course of global events.
“Battle in Seattle” recounts the massive protests in 1999 that shut down the World Trade Organization talks scheduled to occur in that Washington city, the first time the ministers were to meet in the U.S. The movie depicts the diverse group of protestors — idealist college kids, environmentalists, endangered species activists, and trade unionists concerned about so-called free trade — who converged on the city for five days of mostly peaceful demonstrations only to be met by tear gas, rubber bullets, police batons and concussion bombs.
Stopping these talks forced the all-powerful WTO to recognize the deep layers of opposition to its secretive actions that created trade deals disregarding the human condition, the environment and endangered species while favoring global corporations and large nations. And, in the case of the U.S., these agreements could circumvent the will of Congress.

Marginalized nations empowered

In addition, the protest and shutdown empowered small, marginalized nations to stand up and object to the process that enabled global corporations to profiteer from their national resources as cheap raw materials and their people as cheap labor. This recovery of rights by small nations contributed to the disintegration of the Doha Round of WTO talks that broke off in July without resolution.
Mark Engler, a senior analyst with Foreign Policy in Focus and author of “How to Rule the World: The Coming Battle Over the Global Economy,” wrote about it in an essay entitled, “The Impact of the Battle in Seattle.” He describes the insurrection in Seattle by ministers for some small countries and quotes Sir Shridath Ramphal, chief negotiator for the Caribbean: “This should not be a game about enhancing corporate profits. This should not be a time when big countries, strong countries, the world’s wealthiest countries, are setting about a process designed to enrich themselves.”
Engler goes on to say:

“Given that less powerful countries had typically been bullied into compliance at trade ministerials, this was highly unusual stuff. Yet it would become increasingly normal. Seattle launched a series of setbacks for the WTO and, to this day, the institution has yet to recover. Efforts to expand the reach of the WTO have repeatedly failed.”

The two events – the collective uprising in Seattle that shut down the WTO talks and the angry public uprising that prompted the initial House vote rejecting the bailout bill — share another important connection.
In both cases, the protestors believed the governing agency was kowtowing to corporate interests at the expense of individuals. In Seattle, the protestors felt that the WTO would make any deal to increase trade between nations for the profit and pleasure of global corporations, no matter what indigenous people, fragile eco-system, endangered Queen Alexandra’s Birdwing Butterfly or threatened Knysna Banana Frog stood in the way. The wealth created by this increased commerce was supposed to create economic growth and stability within nations and trickle down to the poor. But, as small nations in particular experienced, that didn’t seem to occur.  The rich corporations and rich countries just got richer – at the expense of the small.

Angry constituents called

Similarly, with the initial House vote on the bailout bill, a thin majority of U.S. representatives opposed it after angry constituents called demanding to know why their tax dollars should be used to salvage giant banks that would never forgive a depositor an overdraft, that paid executives obscene salaries while the rest of America increasingly got layoff notices, and that had taken the risks that resulted in pulling the American economy down.
At the same time, these taxpayers knew the federal government had tightened bankruptcy regulations to make it more difficult for citizens like them to get a bailout. They could recite the Reagan Republican economic mantra that government should deregulate so that corporations could do whatever they wanted, and, eventually, the resulting massive profits were supposed to trickle down to the great unwashed. It had never worked for the American middle class as corporations shipped jobs oversees to exploit labor there. And now a new Republican president was telling them to begin paying for a reverse philosophy –  their tax dollars would trickle up into the pockets of reckless corporations. This time, the public revolted.
Again, there’s a connection between Seattle and Washington, D.C.  Engler writes, “Privatization, deregulation and corporate market access have failed to reduce inequality or create sustained growth. . .”  He finishes that sentence with “in developing countries” because he is writing about the WTO. But if it changes to: “Privatization, deregulation and corporate market access have failed to reduce inequality or create sustained growth. . .in the United States,” it remains true.
Those who feel defeated by the events on Wall Street and in Washington or feel depressed by the prospect that nothing they do can change that, should go take a dose of “Battle in Seattle.” It’s a tonic because it shows people still have power.