Blog

Leo W. Gerard

By Leo W. Gerard
USW International President

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker and his crew of country club conservatives this week brutalized the nation’s democratic traditions to secure legislation demanded by big corporations and billionaire conservative financiers like the Koch brothers – legislation stripping workers of collective bargaining rights.

Walker & Crew succeeded in terminating workers’ rights – but they achieved that only by violating traditional American democratic values. They positioned themselves with dictators who act against the will of the people, deny free speech rights and suppress protests.

They violated the state’s open meetings law, breached the right of Wisconsin residents to rally in their own state capitol building, and contravened conventional standards of fairness by voting to deny workers their rights without assembling a quorum of senators.

Free speech and free access to government protect America’s democracy. Walker & Crew disregarded First Amendment rights repeatedly.

Just this week, Walker & Crew locked protesters out of their own capitol building in Madison. They locked the few protesters already in the building out of the meeting rooms where senate and house members voted. They denied access even to progressive Wisconsin Assembly members, one of whom climbed through a colleague’s window to gain access to his workplace.

In the weeks since Wisconsin’s 14 progressive senators fled to Illinois to prevent the chamber from achieving the quorum needed to vote on a measure spending the people’s money, Walker & Crew also shut down access from the capitol to a web site posted by protesters. And they severely restricted protesters’ access to the capitol where a sit-in and sleep-in began in mid-February.

Protesters, who peacefully gathered in Madison in the tens of thousands, began chanting, “Whose house is it?” referring to the capitol. “It’s our house,” they responded.

That’s not the way Walker & Crew saw it. They said voters gave them control of the people’s house in last fall’s elections. That, apparently, means to them that they don’t have to listen to the will of the people anymore. Polls show a large majority – more than 60 percent – of Wisconsinites oppose stripping workers of collective bargaining rights.

Walker & Crew didn’t listen to the people. And they repeatedly attempted to shut the people up. The First Amendment was written and adopted to protect the people from that kind of oppression by political leaders.

In addition to shutting the people up, Walker & Crew attempted to shut them out. On Wednesday, without providing proper notice, the state’s conservative senators conducted a meeting to consider a newly-written measure to strip workers of their collective bargaining rights. Notice is required by states’ open meetings laws, sometimes called sunshine acts. These guarantee citizens access to government meetings and documents. They’re intended to prevent governments from conducting the people’s business in secret. These laws also require notice of meetings so that citizens can exercise their access rights.

Walker & Crew ignored the notice requirements so that they could ram through their legislation terminating workers’ rights before citizens could comment on or protest the new measure. The conservatives deliberately disregarded citizens’ right in a democracy to participate in the political process that directly affects their lives.

In addition, by clandestinely arranging the vote to be conducted without a quorum of senators, Walker & Crew asserted that although state law prohibits spending the people’s money without a quorum, they feel it is fine to strip citizens of their rights without a quorum. This is the stuff of oligarchy.

Throughout the first two years of the Obama administration, conservatives in the U.S. Senate repeatedly used the filibuster maneuver to prevent votes on legislation that would otherwise have been approved by a majority. The progressives in Wisconsin essentially performed a filibuster with their feet – by going to another state to prevent a vote. What Walker & Co. did this week was exploit a loophole to circumvent the filibuster-by-foot. They damaged the democratic process in a way the progressives in the U.S. Senate never even considered when thwarted repeatedly by filibusters.

Walker & Crew got what they wanted. They commandeered from workers the right to collectively bargain for a better life. They did it with nefarious methods that disrespect the Constitution, disrespect democracy and disrespect workers. They did it in a way that heaps dishonor on them.

***

Leo W. Gerard also is a member of the AFL-CIO Executive Committee and chairs the labor federation’s Public Policy Committee. President Barack Obama recently appointed him to the President’s Advisory Committee on Trade Policy and Negotiations. He serves as co-chairman of the BlueGreen Alliance and on the boards of the Apollo Alliance, Campaign for America’s Future and the Economic Policy Institute.  He is a member of the IMF and ICEM global labor federations and was instrumental in creating Workers Uniting, the first global union.

There’s a bold way to create jobs that’s being ignored by Washington!

What’s the plan? Pass a federal law to return to our pre-1970 status of maintaining a positive overall annual balance of  trade with other trading nations.

How would that work? We’d permit total imports each year to match our own ongoing exports. Import certificates  would be issued and traded by the U.S. government to implement the new arrangement. It’s not a protectionist tariff or added cost to U.S. consumers!

Give us the figures. Right now we import $2.3 trillion a year, and we export $1.5 trillion. $300 billion of the $800 billion deficit is from petroleum imports. The remaining $500 billion goods and services deficit would return to the U.S. for production and 5 plus million new jobs! The Obama jobs creation efforts have fallen far short, and there don’t seem to be any big ideas except ones needing heavy deficit spending.

Why hasn’t this balanced trade plan been adopted? Twice, first in late, 2009 and again this year, Obama held jobs summits. He said he’d consider all credible ideas, but both times his “free trade” advisors blocked all balanced trade proposals.

Result: There’s been no action on already-available legislation- “The Balanced Trade Restoration Act.” It wasn’t adopted by former President George W. Bush. It should be updated and passed. It would create millions of new jobs.

It’s time for bold action now!

Kenneth N. Davis Jr.
President, Economic Strategy Associates, Inc.
Stamford, Ct.
Former U.S. Assistant Secretary of Commerce
Former IBM Corp. vice president and chief financial officer
Former investment banker

***

To submit a blog to Free Speech Zone, e-mail it to bstack@usw.org. Keep it to 250 words or fewer. You MUST include your full name, hometown, and state. You may attach a photograph of yourself. Please include a phone number. This WILL NOT be published. Posting any given blog is within the discretion of the USW.  No blog using foul language (this is a family site), false information (we don’t want to get sued), or unnecessary personal attacks (again, we don’t want to get sued) will be used. Wait a reasonable period of time, then blog again! This is a Free Speech Zone.

Robert Reich

By Robert Reich
Former U.S. Secretary of Labor, Professor at Berkeley

Two important victories for President Obama this week — the New Start anti-ballistic missile treaty with Russia to reduce weapons and re-start inspections, and the end of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell after a 17-year ban on gays in the military.

Why have Senate Republicans been willing to break ranks on these two, while not a single Republican went along with Obama’s plan to extend the Bush tax cuts on the first $250,000 of income? Why has Obama consistently caved on economic and taxes, but held his ground on foreign policy and issues like gays in the military?

A hint of an answer can be found in another Senate defeat for Obama over the last few weeks that got almost no attention in the media but was a big one: Republicans blocked consideration of the House-passed Disclose Act, which would have required groups that spend money on outside political advertising to disclose the major sources of their funding.

The answer is this. When it comes to protecting the fortunes of America’s rich (mostly top corporate executives and Wall Street) and maintaining their strangle-hold on the political process, Senate Republicans, along with some Senate Democrats, don’t budge. (more…)

Mike Lux

By Mike Lux
Author, “The Progressive Revolution: How the Best in America Came to Be”

I was going to call this post Revolt of the Screwed, but decided that I didn’t want to get readers who were looking for porn sites. However, that is a good summary of what happened in the election: the middle class voters most hurt by this terrible recession turned against the Democrats with a vengeance. They were looking for someone to blame for their economic woes. The good news is that their first pick was Wall Street. The bad news for Democrats is that they associated Obama with Wall Street. The two most important and dramatic statistics coming out of the exit polling were (1) the 40% of voters who felt worse off economically in the last couple of years went Republican by 29% after going for Obama in 2008 by 42%; and (2) the 35% of voters who said Wall Street was more to blame than anyone else for the bad economy broke 56-42 for the Republicans. That first number is the biggest swing by far in any demographic group I have ever seen after looking at exit poll numbers for the past 25 years. I have seen swings in the 30s before, maybe even into the low 40s in some small segment of the electorate once or twice, but I have never seen anything close to a 71% swing before.

I wrote early in 2009 that voters were going to be in a very bad mood in November of 2010, and that this would be a blame election, where economically stressed swing voters would be wanting to take their misery out on someone. I was certainly right about that, but here’s the ironic thing: I suggested that since I thought it was unlikely we could get them to blame the economy on Bush since we were in charge now, that our best hope was to get them to blame it on Wall Street. They did, that 35% who laid the blame on Wall Street’s door were primarily the middle class swing voter bloc in this election, but they associated us Democrats and Obama with Wall Street more than Republicans. The TARP bailout and Obama and Geithner’s vigorous defense of it, the kid glove treatment of the big banks at the hands of Geithner, the AIG and big bank bonuses that closely followed, the failure to prosecute or break up the Too Big To Fail banks: it all came together in those angry middle class voters’ minds as Obama being associated with the same Wall Street actors people were blaming for their economic problems. The fact that once the financial reform bill that had some important wins for the middle class was passed, Democrats barely ever talked about it again didn’t help.

So now that this election from hell is over, the question is how do Obama and the Democrats come back in 2012. There’s a lot of talk about moving to the center, but what does that even mean? When Washingtonians talk about the center, they tend to mean cutting Social Security and doing trade deals, but what do the economically stressed swing voters who turned against Democrats mean by the center? Well, these voters have very strong feelings about certain issues, and they don’t tend to track with what pundits in DC talk about much. Check out these numbers from a Stan Greenberg poll done for the Campaign for America’s Future. Stan did a careful analysis of which voters were the key swing voters, and what he found is striking:

-Swing voters supported a message about challenging China on trade, ending subsidies to corporations that send jobs overseas, and stopping NAFTA-like trade deals over a message about increasing exports, passing more trade agreements, and getting government out of the way by 59-28 (more…)

Mike Lux

By Mike Lux
Author, “The Progressive Revolution: How the Best in America Came to Be”

There’s all the usual post-election palaver that happens after a Democratic loss: Republican and right-wing triumphalism, the pro-corporate wing of the Democratic party and conventional wisdom pundits arguing that Democrats should “turn to the center” (by which they mean the Washington center — cutting Social Security, doing more trade deals, not antagonizing Wall Street — as opposed to what the center is for voters), and progressives arguing that Obama should stand strong on Democratic values and not cave to the Republican agenda. There’s also a classic dynamic where some Democrats are urgently calling on people not to attack each other or the president, to try to keep the party from looking like it is in disarray, and others wanting to really engage in that old centrist versus left debate and critique.

I have been thinking hard about all this in part because it’s the obvious thing everyone is thinking and talking about and in part because I am doing a lot of panels and media interviews right now — the latest one yesterday at Harvard where I did left-right panel with Bill Kristol on analyzing the elections. Interestingly, while Kristol and I naturally disagreed on the substance and political dynamics on many key issues — Afghanistan, tax cuts for the rich, health care among the big ones that came up — we agreed on the essential point that Obama can only survive by reconnecting with both the Democratic base and working class swing voters by being more populist on jobs, banking issues, and Social Security/Medicare (Republicans get honest while speaking academically in the weeks immediately after the elections — like Lee Atwater, also speaking at Harvard after the 1988 election, Kristol agreed that the swing vote in national elections is a working class populist vote).

At the end of the day, though, I keep coming back to one thing. Political positioning is significant, and I continue to believe populist rhetoric and substance on issues helps. Energizing the base and doing more to turn out Democratic base voters in 2012 will be important. But ultimately there will be only one way for Obama and the Democrats to come back in 2012, and that is for the economy to be substantially better. The thing Washington insiders always seem to glide over is the level of economic pain that is out there. The real unemployment rate is far higher than the official numbers because they don’t include part-time and temporary workers still looking for full time jobs as well as those who are too discouraged to look for work. Incomes have been flat while a lot of everyday costs for things like groceries, gas and utilities, health care, and college tuition are a lot higher than they were a few years ago. Pensions and savings wiped out by the stock market collapse still haven’t recovered for most people. And the housing crisis — 25 percent or more of homeowners are in real trouble, and housing prices are staying down — looms like a massive New York skyscraper towering over everything else. (more…)

Dave Johnson

By Dave Johnson
Fellow with Campaign for America’s Future

Today the US Trade Representative (USTR) Ron Kirk filed two complaints with the World Trade Organization (WTO). The first alleges that China is keeping American credit and debit card companies out of their electronic payment market. The second is a “dumping” (selling under cost) complaint on steel products.

“We are concerned that China is breaking its trade commitments to the United States and other WTO partners,” Kirk said in announcing the two cases.

This is a big deal, because it tells China that we are willing to fight back. But Sen. Charles Grassley said this was not enough,

“The administration should go one step further and bring a case against China’s unfair currency manipulation at the WTO. Everyone knows China is manipulating its currency to gain an unfair advantage in international trade,” Grassley said.

Almost exactly a year ago I wrote a post, President Obama Enforces Trade Law In China Tire Case!, celebrating President Obama’s decision to enforce the ITC’s recommendation to impose tariffs on Chinese tire imports.

What was the result of that decision to actually enforce trade laws? Did the world end? Did it start a “trade war” with China? No, the result was that jobs started to return.

The Alliance for American Manufacturing is running this full page ad in a few newspapers today:

AAM explains: (click through for links) (more…)

Leo W. Gerard

By Leo W. Gerard
USW International President

China is disrespecting America.

The Asian giant is an international trade outlaw, and U.S. manufacturers and workers are its crime victims.

China illegally subsidizes its export industries and unlawfully manipulates its currency. That kills U.S. industry and destroys U.S. jobs. Earlier this year, the Obama administration asked China nicely to allow its currency value to float up naturally on international markets. On June 19, China said it would.

And then it didn’t.

That’s flipping the bird at America.

Before China’s June 19 promise, bipartisan groups of lawmakers in the U.S. House and Senate proposed legislation that would force the U.S. Treasury Department to even the score and to call China out for what it is: a currency manipulator. Hearings on the bills are being conducted this week.

Pass the legislation. It’s time for America to flip the bird back.

Negotiation and threats have failed to produce a sustained, substantial currency float by China. Now, the Chinese currency, the renminbi, is undervalued by as much as 40 percent, a figure accepted by conservatives like C. Fred Bergsten of the Peterson Institute for International Economics. Even the International Monetary Fund managing director said the currency is undervalued.

China simply denied it. In March, the Chinese premier, Wen Jiabao, said he did not believe the renminbi was undervalued. That’s flipping off the world.

It works like this: China prints renminbi to buy billions of U.S. dollars, which makes them appear more desired and valuable, and the renminbi, by contrast, less valuable. That undervaluation of the renminbi acts as a subsidy for Chinese exports, artificially making them as much as 40 percent cheaper when sold in the U.S. Conversely, it acts as a tax of as much as 40 percent on American-made goods sold in China.

This dynamic contributed significantly to the rise of manufacturing in China. Earlier this year, China surged past Japan to become the world’s second-largest economy. And it contributes significantly to America’s massive trade deficit. The gap in July was $42.8 billion, more than half of which — $25.9 billion — was a result of trade with one country – China.

China’s rapid economic growth has ended poverty for millions of its workers.  Here in the United States, however, China’s flouting of international trade law is destroying the lives of millions of workers. The Economic Policy Institute estimates that 2.4 million American jobs have been lost or displaced since 2001 as a result of the trade deficit with China. American workers celebrate their Chinese counterparts’ improved quality of life, but they condemn the government of China for accomplishing that with beggar-thy-neighbor trade practices.

Earlier this year, it briefly looked like threats would prompt China to act. In March, a bipartisan coalition of U.S. Senators introduced legislation specifying the factors necessary to label a country as a currency manipulator and detailing American reprisals. And in April, the Treasury Department delayed its report identifying countries that manipulate currency rates, suggesting that it was ready to take on China.

China appeared to respond to that pressure in June. It announced it would allow the renminbi to float toward its real value on the open market. The Treasury Department backed off, omitting China from its list of currency manipulators in July.

China then permitted the value of the renminbi to rise less than one percent. One percent. When it’s as much as 40 percent undervalued. That’s flipping the bird at America. Big time.

Still, America didn’t react.

On Aug. 25, the Commerce Department announced 14 new measures to crack down on trade violations, such as ending certain exemptions from duties.

It did not, however, mention currency manipulation.

Dan DiMicco, CEO at Nucor Corp., the largest U.S. steelmaker, said the 14 measures are important, but the problem with China won’t be resolved until the United States takes on currency undervaluation. Here’s what he said:

“As long as we continue to let them get away with it, they’ll keep doing it.”

Six days later, in a trade case filed by the U.S. Aluminum Extrusions Fair Trade Committee, a coalition of domestic manufacturers of aluminum extrusions and the USW, the Commerce Department again squirmed out of dealing with currency manipulation.

Commerce imposed import duties on Chinese aluminum companies because China unfairly subsidized $514 million in aluminum exports to the U.S. in 2009. But Commerce refused to investigate the Fair Trade Committee’s evidence that China’s currency manipulation functions as an additional illegal export subsidy.

Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York, a sponsor of currency manipulation legislation, said afterward:

“The Commerce Department made its finding while still managing to ignore the elephant in the room, which is China’s currency manipulation.”

Commerce and Treasury have decided the proper response to China flipping off America is averting their eyes.  See no evil.

Yesterday Japan followed China’s lead. It bought dollars and sold yen, decreasing the value of yen and increasing the value of dollars. This, the New York Times explained, was “a bid to protect its export-led economy.” That’s exactly what China is doing.

It’s a very public show of contempt for international regulations and for American citizens.

Normally, Americans don’t respond passively to contempt.  Be normal, America.

***

Leo W. Gerard also is a member of the AFL-CIO Executive Committee and chairs the labor federation’s Public Policy Committee. President Barack Obama recently appointed him to the President’s Advisory Committee on Trade Policy and Negotiations. He serves as co-chairman of the BlueGreen Alliance and on the boards of the Apollo Alliance, Campaign for America’s Future and the Economic Policy Institute.  He is a member of the IMF and ICEM global labor federations and was instrumental in creating Workers Uniting, the first global union.

Bill Scher

By Bill Scher
Executive editor of LiberalOasis.com

Speaker Nancy Pelosi addressed the America’s Future Now! conference, delivering a fierce speech over the persistent heckling from a little-known disabled rights organization, receiving strong applause from the vast majority of attendees.

After an initial day of the conference that focused on what has not been accomplished by the White House and Congress in the Obama Era, Speaker Pelosi stressed what has become law, while also praising conference attendees for their “impatience” and “dissatisfaction” recognizing that those are necessary qualities to be successful “advocates of change.”

After initially addressing the issue regarding nursing homes that the protesters sought to raise, she dismissed the continued heckling by joking, “Listen, I’m used to noise. I talk to the Democratic Caucus every single day,” and bravely pressed on despite an attempt from a member of her security detail to get her to leave for her safety.

While noting the urgency to do more so laid-off and long-term unemployed Americans can get back to work, the Speaker highlighted recent legislation passed by the House including the COMPETES Act which will create jobs by investing in science research and education, as well as the tax changes bill which closes the loophole that gives a tax break to companies that offshore jobs, and included a $1 billion summer jobs program. She also praises the robust investment in college affordability that was incorporated into the health care law signed by the President.

Pointing to the Recovery Act, which has put as many as 2.8 million Americans back to work according to the Congressional Budget Office, Speaker Pelosi heralded President Obama for creating more jobs in 18 months than President Bush did in 8 years.

She also laid the blame for the current budget deficit on President Bush, reminding the audience of the budget surplus that was frittered away on tax cuts for the wealthiest and “two unpaid for wars.” And she argued that investments education and jobs, particularly clean energy jobs, were essential components in any long-term deficit reduction strategy by increasing revenue to the Treasury.

The Speaker’s remarks, and her embrace from the vast majority of conference attendees who are dissatisfied with the pace of progress, was a reminder that honorable public servants see value in communicating with an forceful grassroots, and grassroots activists can pressure those in power and respect them at the same time.

***

Bill Scher is the author of Wait! Don’t Move To Canada!: A Stay-and-Fight Strategy to Win Back America.  He is the online campaign manager at Campaign for America’s Future, a regular contributor to Bloggingheads.tv and a fellow at the Commonweal Institute.

***

Originally posted at OurFuture.org

Leo W. Gerard

By Leo W. Gerard
USW International President

Tea Party darling and Republican U.S. Senate nominee Rand Paul spoke last week like the political novice he is – revealing unfiltered GOP “truths.”

First he informed MSNBC talk show host Rachel Maddow that government should not be able to force businesses to serve black people. Corporate desire to discriminate should trump the civil rights of black people, Muslims, Jews, Catholics, and pants-wearing women, according to this Republican candidate, who has since rushed to assure everyone that he personally is not a bigot.

Rand Paul followed up the assertion of corporate-privilege-over-human-rights with two more Republican tenet revelations. First he called the Obama administration “un-American” for holding the corporation BP accountable for the explosion on the Deepwater Horizon oil rig that killed 11 workers and devastated the ecology of the Gulf of Mexico. Then Rand Paul added that society should refrain from the “blame game” in the case of another corporation, Massey Energy, the owner of the West Virginia mine that blew up killing 29 workers. “We had a mining accident that was very tragic,” he said, “Then we come in, and it’s always someone’s fault. Maybe sometimes accidents happen.”

The Republican candidate who openly espoused these views was embraced last Saturday by U.S. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell at a rally in Frankfort, Ky. And during the primary, former GOP vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin and Republican senators Jim DeMint of South Carolina and Jim Bunning of Kentucky actively supported Rand Paul. He simply said what Republicans believe – that this country should focus on promoting corporations and those corporations should have privileges, but not responsibilities. To the GOP, the U.S.A. should be a country of corporations, by corporations, for corporations.

People, by contrast, are trifling to the GOP. In the past couple of weeks, the GOP has made its position on humans clear by trying to end an emergency fund that will create 186,000 subsidized jobs this year for poor people and by blocking an extension of unemployment insurance for those thrown out of work during the worst recession since the Great Depression, a downturn caused by reckless Wall Street corporations. Following the lead of Bunning, who delayed an extension in February, Republican Sen. Judd Gregg of New Hampshire said the unemployed shouldn’t receive the insurance because it “encourages people to, rather than go out and look for work, to stay on unemployment.”

While attempting to deny relief to the desperate, Republicans have also blocked efforts to force oil corporations to assume full liability for catastrophic spills – like the BP disaster in the Gulf. If the oil corporations – which vehemently oppose an increase in their liability — don’t pay for environmental clean up, then taxpayers – including the unemployed – will get the bill. Still, House Minority Leader John Boehner of Ohio opposed raising the laughably-low liability cap of $75 million, and Republicans James Inhofe of Oklahoma and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska have blocked efforts to lift the cap in the Senate.

Like Rand Paul, Boehner didn’t want to assign culpability to BP. Boehner said, “I think it’s important that we get to the bottom, get to the facts, before we begin to point fingers.”

Murkowski and Inhofe have a financial interest in kissing up to Big Oil. Those corporations have handed them buckets of bucks. According to the nonpartisan OpenSecrets.org, the oil and gas lobby has given Inhofe $433,950 over the past five years.  That lobby gave Markowski $240,326 in just the past year. That is 15 times what she got from oil and gas just two years ago, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. A Murkowski spokesman said the senator’s connection to oil and gas corporations is “the same relationship she has to all constituents.”

So, to Republican Murkowski, oil and gas corporations are constituents, exactly like the actual humans who live in her district. That characterization of corporations is consistent with the recent U.S. Supreme Court decision, written by its Republican-selected, right-wing majority, giving corporations the same rights as humans under the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, a ruling that will enable corporations to spend virtually unlimited money to influence elections.

Usually such rights come with responsibilities. But Republicans, by impeding an increase in the liability cap, have made clear their opposition to oil and gas corporations bearing the responsibility of paying all costs when their errors kill workers and destroy the environment. Not only that, under the guise of government downsizing, they have thwarted enforcement of regulations intended to prevent deaths and catastrophes. The Bush administration, for example, cut funds for the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA).

Also during the Bush administration, according to a Department of Interior inspector general report released this week, federal regulators responsible for oversight of drilling in the Gulf of Mexico allowed corporate officials to fill out inspection reports in pencil, then traced over those marks in pen and submitted them. That “self-regulation” is consistent with the Republican contention that the “invisible hand” of the market will adequately smack down bad corporate behavior.

Rand Paul reiterated the Republican policy on government during his rally with McConnell last Saturday. He said, “What unifies Republicans is a belief that the Constitution restrains the size and scope of government.” Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, who Republicans chose to respond in February, 2009 to President Obama’s first address to a joint session of Congress, told that national TV audience he opposed “big government,” like all good Republicans do.

Also in that speech, Jindal joined the Republican chorus of “Drill Baby Drill,” calling for increased domestic oil and gas drilling. Now he’s got the ugly results of drilling-gone-wrong coating his coast. 

Since the spill, Jindal has petitioned the federal government – yes, the very government Republicans want to shrivel – to solve his state’s problems. He asked Obama to pay for 6,000 National Guardsmen for 90 days to help clean up. He wants the U.S. Department of Commerce to provide financial help to fishermen, the Environmental Protection Agency to test air quality, and the U.S. Business Administration to suspend loan repayments for small businesses affected by the gushing oil.

The Republican policy, apparently, is “Drill Baby Drill;” taxpayers can always clean the “accidental” spill. In the Republican world, corporations have the right to do anything they want, but no responsibility to do it right or restore what they wreck. Republicans hold the unemployed accountable – but not corporations.

Les Leopold

By Les Leopold
Author, “The Looting of America”

The Jeffersonian anti-federalists feared that a strong national government would lead our fledgling nation back towards monarchy. Instead they wanted government closer to the people where it would better serve their interests rather than interests of the moneyed merchants and traders.

That not good enough for Tea Party and other conservative activists today: They’re against all government, at all levels. They don’t want government to provide much of anything except maybe a vast military industrial complex. But public schools, environmental protection, social services for low and moderate income people? Fugetaboutit!

The Wall Street-led crash has created the perfect climate for this crusade to eviscerate the public sector, especially at the state and local level. It’s ugly and getting uglier.

With 29 million American unemployed or forced into part-time jobs, tax receipts have plummeted more steeply than any time since the Great Depression. State and local governments are slashing their services–at the very moment when people most desperately need them. This is the very definition of a fiscal crisis.

In a saner world it would be obvious to everyone that state and local governments are not to blame for this mess. They didn’t cause the Great Recession–Wall Street did. And if you can’t see that, then you’re enveloped in an ideological cloud so thick that no facts can penetrate. Even Alan Greenspan, the life-long anti-government libertarian, has confessed that under his watch as Fed chair, Wall Street ran wild, touching off a global economic calamity. So let’s not argue about this any more.

State and local governments are far from perfect, of course. More than a few got suckered into Wall Street’s financial engineering schemes. Some foolishly invested their pension funds in toxic assets. Some allowed their debt to pile up, even while balancing their budgets. Many states, if not most, have been letting their super-wealthy residents pay too little at tax time. Even before the Great Recession, middle and lower income residents shouldered a heavier tax burden than the super-rich (who, of course, deduct their state and local taxes from their federal taxes — assuming they pay any taxes at all).

These problems can be addressed without destroying state and local governments. But now that a genuine budgetary crisis has hit 42 out of 50 states, the knives are out. It’s not just about fixing problems. It’s about revenge.

In New Jersey, where I live, we’re watching Governor Chris Christie try to devour the teachers union as if it were a slice of his favorite cheesecake. He’s not worried that his plan to cut the state’s education budget by a whopping $820 million might harm our children. No, he’s loving the crisis because now he can stick it to teachers all over the state. You choose, he tells them: Do you want wage and benefit cuts, or layoffs? And sorry, parents: If your kid’s after-school tutoring program closes, you know who to blame. It’s those greedy teachers. (In our town the teachers union made concessions and 85 teachers still will lose their jobs.)

We’ll feel the awful effects of state and local budget cuts all over the country, in virtually every area of public life. Parks will be closed and privatized. Libraries will cut hours or close altogether. And we’ll all be trained like Pavlov’s dogs to detest government as we wait on longer and longer lines for basic services and have to tangle with stressed out government employees whose jobs have become a living hell. (When you have a lot of time to kill, try getting your New Jersey license renewed.)

When you strip away all the loose talk about getting our fiscal house in order, Governor Christie and many other conservatives see this as a golden opportunity to crush the last bastion of trade unionism in America. Only 7.2 percent of private sector workers were in unions in 2009, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Pretty grim, from a union point of view. But in the public sector, 37.4 percent of workers are unionized — with the teachers leading the way.

Christie’s no dummy. But you don’t have to be a rocket scientist to figure out how to use this financial crisis to gut public sector workers’ wages and benefits. The argument is simple: Why should private sector workers who’ve lost most of their benefits have to pay taxes to support decent healthcare plans and pensions for those lazy public workers? Hey, those teachers even get the whole summer off!

It’s certainly true that private sector workers’ benefits are vanishing before their eyes. In 1991, 88 percent of Fortune 500 workers got medical coverage if they retired before Medicare kicked in. Now it’s 33 percent. In 1998, 68 percent of Fortune 500 workers had pension plans. Now only 42 percent had them. Meanwhile, public workers not only have pensions, they have good pensions: 80 percent still have “defined benefit” retirement plans. (Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago) So at a time when other workers are watching their 401(k) retirements tank (assuming they have any at all), public workers are still slated to get a fixed monthly pension check. How dare they! Better that we all should have next to nothing than have those pampered teachers get more than we do!

It’s a pathetic argument, but it works.

You hate government? You hate unions? Fine. But do you hate yourself as well? As this race to the bottom accelerates, the budget-cutting mania will act as a gigantic anti-stimulus program, sucking jobs out of the public and private sectors. It’s estimated that in 2010 and 2011, the states’ budget shortfalls will total $375 billion. That will just about wash out the positive job impact of the federal stimulus program.

Job loss leads to reduced tax revenues, which leads to more job loss. No wonder most economists predict we’ll suffer through years and years of high unemployment. (And if you think that the private sector is going to pick up the slack as workers’ purchasing power goes down, please pass me whatever you’re imbibing.)

If we could just get over our blinding hatred of unions and public sector workers, we might see that we do in fact have the money we need to rebuild our ramshackle infrastructure, enhance public education and create a new green economy. It’s right there–in the hands of the few. Since 1979 the wealth of the top 1/100th of one percent of all earners increased by 384 percent, while the median earner gained only 12 percent in real wages! (New York Times, ) And yet the effective federal income tax rate for the 400 top taxpayers with the very highest incomes has declined by nearly half over the past two decades–even as their pre-tax incomes have grown five times larger, according to new IRS data. The 400 wealthiest Americans alone have more than $1.3 trillion (not billion) in wealth – just 400 people!

A surcharge on these super-rich individuals could help fund our collapsing public sector. Plus, as a matter of simple justice we should have our Wall Street barons pay reparations for the damage they have done and still are doing. After all, they’ve just walked off with $150 billion in bonuses derived directly from our bailout money.

The moment is right for the Obama administration and the Democratic Congress to make a very simple case: Wall Street crashed our economy and knocked a giant hole in every state budget. Let’s tax Wall Street’s gambling and bonuses to make the states whole. Under Nixon, it was called revenue sharing. Let’s do it again, and avoid a grim future of service cuts and job loss.

Dream on, you say? Maybe. But each of us actually has a choice. We can either sit and watch as our state and local governments are turned into slaughterhouses, or we can work together to compel the financial elites to pay their fair share. Those of us who are ready to tackle our billionaire bailout society need to form a progressive populist alternative to the Tea Party, and fast.

***

Les Leopold is the author of The Looting of America: How Wall Street’s Game of Fantasy Finance destroyed our Jobs, Pensions and Prosperity, and What We Can Do About It Chelsea Green Publishing, June 2009.