Robert L. Borosage: American Opinion: Rebuild America, Dont Sack It

Robert L. Borosage: American Opinion: Rebuild America, Don't Sack It: "

'I still believe that this will be largely a referendum on the administration's policies,' said Senator John Cornyn of Texas, chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, explaining why the primary successes of wingnut tea party conservatives may not hurt Republican chances this fall.

With the economy in dire shape, Cornyn may be right -- but what he doesn't say is that that's virtually the only way Republicans make dramatic gains this fall. If the election becomes a choice of direction, conservatives will be in trouble -- even with foul economy.

An opinion poll released today by the Campaign for America's Future and Democracy Corps reveals that Americans are strongly opposed to conservative ideas about cutting the deficit -- and far more sophisticated about what is needed for the economy than the right-wing anti-government rant would suggest. The poll results, Democracy Corps memo, and slide presentation are available here (The poll was done with the support of Moveon.org, the SEIU and AFSME).

For example, a majority of Americans (53-42) and a plurality of likely voters support the federal government providing aid to states and localities to avoid further layoffs and service cuts. (See slide on page 7).

Provided even minimum context -- that some '300,000 teachers and other educational workers are potentially facing layoffs' -- support rises to 65-30, and over 60% of likely voters, with Republicans and independent moving dramatically in support. Republicans could pay a price for their continued obstruction of efforts to extend aid to the states or extend unemployment insurance.

Similarly, when it comes to cutting the deficit, Americans have very clear priorities -- and they are a far remove from the conservative agenda. For example, House minority leader, the perpetually tanned Rep. John Boehner has called for extending the top end Bush tax cuts (without paying for them) and for raising the retirement age for Social Security to 70.

Large majorities of Americans just say no. By 54-41, likely voters support letting the Bush top-end tax cuts expire (with Democrats and independents united) And by a stunning 68 to 28, voters say that cuts for Social Security and Medicare should not be part of any deficit reduction plan -- including over 60% of Republicans. Two-thirds of likely voters (65%) oppose raising the Social Security retirement age to 70 -- including two-thirds (66%) of Republicans.

Instead, over 60% of Americans choose progressive measures -- ending tax breaks for corporations that outsource jobs abroad, taxing excess profits on Wall Street, or lifting the cap on Social Security payments above the current 106,500 limit. By 54-31, they prefer higher taxes on the wealthy over a national sales tax that hits working people harder.

None of this is surprising. Americans are furious that Wall Street has been bailed out, and Main Street remains in trouble. They see the deficits as caused by bad political decisions -- unfunded wars abroad, the bailout of Wall Street, special interest subsidies. They can't understand talk of providing more tax cuts to the wealthy while cutting Social Security or raising the retirement age. In a time of Gilded Age inequality, they sensibly favor progressive taxes on the wealthy.

More telling, American attitudes about reviving the economy and dealing with deficits are far more sophisticated than the conservative rant about austerity and cutting spending.

Needless to say, Americans are increasingly negative about the economy -- and for good reason. They are losing faith in Obama's policies. While Americans hold Republicans in record low regard, they have also soured on Democrats in Congress. They are looking to protest Washington's failure. So Cornyn may be right; if the election becomes a referendum on the administration's policies, Republicans could make significant gains as a protest vote, not as an endorsement of conservative priorities.

But when Americans think about what needs to be done to get us out of the hole, they resist the rising media hysteria about deficits -- or the conservative focus on slashing spending. As many -- six-in-ten -- give a favorable rating to a plan to invest in new industries and rebuild the country over the next five years as to a plan for dramatically reducing the deficit. They want action on both.

By 52 to 42 percent, more voters prefer investing in the future over an alternative proposition for bold cuts in spending -- so long as it is combined with deficit reduction over time.

Six-in-ten voters respond positively to a broad narrative focused on resolving our public investment deficit in infrastructure. Investments in 'roads, sewers, schools, trains, renewable energy and other basic parts of our communities' that would 'create jobs, help business compete, improve our communities and generate revenues to pay down the deficit' makes sense to them. This message tests better than any other progressive message on investment as well as more conservative messages focused on spending cuts.

The reason for this is apparent. Americans are worried about deficits because they fear they will hurt the economy and jobs, and may threaten key programs like Social Security. They believe that cutting the deficit will create jobs. And they believe that putting people to work will help to reduce the deficit. The two are intertwined.

As Stan Greenberg concludes, 'Voters take the long view, seeing the need for both a commitment to a 21st century economy and long-term strategies to reduce the deficit. These are complimentary, not exclusive goals. Progressives need to show they are serious about the deficits, but once they do, voters turn to them, not conservatives, for the right spending priorities and answers.'

Much of this is common sense:

The best way to cut the deficit is to put people to work. To do that, we need to make investments vital to our future and get the economy going, even as we address deficits. To address the deficits directly, we should make the rich and corporations pay their fair share of taxes and end wasteful spending on entrenched interests. It isn't right to cut Social Security and Medicare to pay for deficits caused by foolish wars abroad, bailouts of the big banks and wasteful special interest spending. Common sense, but this is not the agenda of today's conservatives.

More tantalizing for Democrats are the attitudes of the 'rising American electorate' -- the young, minorities and single women. These represent 52% of eligible voters and were the heart of the Obama majority coalition in 2008. Today, they are also 70% of 'drop off voters,' eligible voters that indicate that they may not turn out to vote. Their turnout has been notably reduced in special elections this year. They have been hit hard by the recession.

Yet these voters remain the most supportive of President Obama. They are staunchly progressive in their attitudes about investment and how to deal with deficits. They strongly support investing in areas vital to our future to get the economy going. They are most attracted to the message of building a new foundation for the economy. To mobilize them, they have to be given vision and hope.

Amid the drumbeat of elite alarms about deficits, tea party fury at spending, Republican trumpeting of the 'voodoo' of top end tax cuts and balanced budgets, most Americans haven't lost their heads. They don't want working families to pay for the calamity that they did not cause. They expect those who had the party to pay for cleaning up the mess. And they are looking for a plan that will rebuild America, not simply one that will sack government.

"

(Via Huffington Blog.)

Serial Denial and the Permanent War System

Serial Denial and the Permanent War System: "

Two months ago, I wrote that the Obama administration and the U.S. command in Afghanistan faced an ‘Iraq 2006 moment’ in the second half of 2010 – a collapse of domestic political support for a failed war paralleling the political crisis of Bush’s Iraq War in 2006.  Now comes Republican Congressman Frank Wolf to make that parallel with 2006 eerily precise.

Wolf published a letter to President Obama last week calling for the immediate establishment of an ‘Afghanistan-Pakistan Study Group’.  It would be the son of the Iraq Study Group.  Wolf is the Congressman who authored the legislation in 2005 creating the Baker-Hamilton Iraq Study Group to come up with fresh ideas for that failing war.  The Wolf proposal came nearly a year after American public had turned against the war decisively in January 2005, when support for the war fell to 39 percent.

The U.S. public had withdrawn its support because it had become obvious that the war was a failure. The Bush administration had overthrown the Saddam Hussein regime only to unleash a violent Sunni-Shi’a sectarian power struggle that the U.S. military couldn’t control.  Even worse, the U.S. military presence was objectively supporting one side in that power struggle by building up a clearly sectarian military and police sector, even as it pretended by the honest broker between Sunni and Shi’a.

By 2006 it had become apparent even to the political elite that the war was failing and that something had to be done.  But for war supporters like Wolf, the idea was not to find a way out of a criminally stupid war but to tweak the war strategy so that the administration could rebuild public support for it.

The problem with the Baker-Hamilton group was not that it didn’t have the information it needed to call for end to the U.S. war.  Bob Woodward’s The War Within reveals that the commander of all U.S. ground forces in Iraq, Pete Chiarelli, told the Iraq Study Group that the sectarian character of the Shi’a-dominated Iraqi government was the primary problem.  And the officer in charge of training the Iraqi army, Gen. Martin Dempsey, told the group that, without Sunni-Shi’a reconciliation, ‘[T]here are not enough troops in the world to provide security.’

Elementary logic would have suggested that with Sunni-Sh’ia reconciliation there would be no need for U.S. troops and that without it, U.S. troops would be unable to change the situation.  Either way, the U.S. military presence was irrelevant to the future of Iraq.  After nearly four years of fighting, with enormous casualties on both sides, the U.S. military had succeeded only in helping Iran consolidate Shi’a rule in Iraq.

Nevertheless the Study Group’s report went along with an indefinite continuation of the U.S. military role in Iraq.

Now we have the same nightmare of a stupid war that the political class can’t bring itself to end.

Wolf says he’s been talking with retired figures in the national security elite, who tell him that ‘our Afghanistan policy is adrift’.  And he warns of a ‘palpable shift in the nation’s mood and in the halls of Congress’ on the war.  He notes that 62 percent of the American public in a July 2010 poll said the war is ‘going badly’.

So now Wolf proposes the same kind of bipartisan study group that he says helped rebuild support for the Iraq war to come up with ‘fresh strategies’ for the war in Afghanistan.  Wolf makes no effort to hide his hope to ‘reinvigorate national confidence in how America can be successful’ in Afghanistan.

Wolf is the poster child for the deep denial on U.S. wars practiced by a very large segment of the political elite.  On one hand, his proposal is the clearest evidence of the desperation that has overtaken Washington about the palpable failure of Obama’s war. But on the other hand, Wolf suggests that all we need is a group of ‘respected’ war supporters to offer a new strategy for the Afghan War to be back on the road to victory again.

This refusal to face up to reality that the United States cannot succeed in Afghanistan, despite all the evidence to the contrary, suggests that something much deeper is going on here.  Wolf and his fellow deniers in the political elite are not just refusing to give up on the specific war in Afghanistan.  They are doing it because they are desperately clinging to the broader system of global military hegemony which impels the U.S. national security state to continue that war.

In his latest book, Washington Rules, historian Andrew Bacevich points to this largely un-discussed aspect of recent U.S. wars.  The ‘Washington rules’ to which the title refers are the basic principles of U.S. global policy that have been required beliefs for entrance into the U.S. political elite ever since the United States became a superpower.  The three rules are U.S. global military presence, global projection of U.S. military power and the use of that power in one conflict after another.

Bacevich suggests that personal and institutional interests bind the U.S. political elite and national security bureaucrats to that system of global military dominance. The politicians and bureaucrats will continue to insist on those principles, he writes, because they ‘deliver profit, power and privilege to a long list of beneficiaries: elected and appointed officials, corporate executives and corporate lobbyists, admirals and generals, functionaries staffing the national security apparatus, media personalities and policy intellectuals from universities and research organizations.’

That description of the problem provides a key to understanding the otherwise puzzling serial denial by the political elite on Iraq and Afghanistan.  It won’t do much good for anti-war people to demand an end to the war in Afghanistan unless they are also demanding an end to the underlying system that has now produced quasi-permanent American war.

"

(Via Firedoglake.)

What collapsing empire looks like

What collapsing empire looks like: "

(updated below)

As we enter our ninth year of the War in Afghanistan with an escalated force, and continue to occupy Iraq indefinitely, and feed an endlessly growing Surveillance State, reports are emerging of the Deficit Commission hard at work planning how to cut Social Security, Medicare, and now even to freeze military pay.  But a new New York Times article today illustrates as vividly as anything else what a collapsing empire looks like, as it profiles just a few of the budget cuts which cities around the country are being forced to make.  This is a sampling of what one finds:

Plenty of businesses and governments furloughed workers this year, but Hawaii went further -- it furloughed its schoolchildren. Public schools across the state closed on 17 Fridays during the past school year to save money, giving students the shortest academic year in the nation.

Many transit systems have cut service to make ends meet, but Clayton County, Ga., a suburb of Atlanta, decided to cut all the way, and shut down its entire public bus system. Its last buses ran on March 31, stranding 8,400 daily riders.

Even public safety has not been immune to the budget ax. In Colorado Springs, the downturn will be remembered, quite literally, as a dark age: the city switched off a third of its 24,512 streetlights to save money on electricity, while trimming its police force and auctioning off its police helicopters.

There are some lovely photos accompanying the article, including one showing what a darkened street in Colorado looks like as a result of not being able to afford street lights.  Read the article to revel in the details of this widespread misery.  Meanwhile, the tiniest sliver of the wealthiest -- the ones who caused these problems in the first place -- continue to thrive.  Lets recall what former IMF Chief Economist Simon Johnson said last year in The Atlantic about what happens in under-developed and developing countries when an elite-caused financial crises ensues:

Squeezing the oligarchs, though, is seldom the strategy of choice among emerging-market governments. Quite the contrary: at the outset of the crisis, the oligarchs are usually among the first to get extra help from the government, such as preferential access to foreign currency, or maybe a nice tax break, or -- here's a classic Kremlin bailout technique -- the assumption of private debt obligations by the government. Under duress, generosity toward old friends takes many innovative forms. Meanwhile, needing to squeeze someone, most emerging-market governments look first to ordinary working folk -- at least until the riots grow too large.

The real question is whether the American public is too apathetic and trained into submission for that to ever happen.

 

UPDATE:  Its probably also worth noting this Wall St. Journal article from last month -- with a subheadline warning:  'Back to Stone Age' -- which describes how 'paved roads, historical emblems of American achievement, are being torn up across rural America and replaced with gravel or other rough surfaces as counties struggle with tight budgets and dwindling state and federal revenue.'  Utah is seriously considering eliminating the 12th grade, or making it optional.  And it was announced this week that 'Camden [New Jersey] is preparing to permanently shut its library system by the end of the year, potentially leaving residents of the impoverished city among the few in the United States unable to borrow a library book free.'

Does anyone doubt that once a society ceases to be able to afford schools, public transit, paved roads, libraries and street lights -- or once it chooses not to be able to afford those things in pursuit of imperial priorities and the maintenance of a vast Surveillance and National Security State -- that a very serious problem has arisen, that things have gone seriously awry, that imperial collapse, by definition, is an imminent inevitability?  Anyway, I just wanted to leave everyone with some light and cheerful thoughts as we head into the weekend.

"

(Via Salon: Glenn Greenwald.)

Johann Hari: And the Most Inspiring Good News Story of the Year Is...

Johann Hari: And the Most Inspiring Good News Story of the Year Is...: "

At first, this isn't going to sound like a good news story, never mind one of the most inspiring stories in the world today. But trust me: it is.

Yan Li spent his life tweaking tiny bolts, on a production line, for the gadgets that make our lives zing and bling. He might have pushed a crucial component of the laptop I am writing this article on, or the mobile phone that will interrupt your reading of it. He was a typical 27-year old worker at the gigantic Foxconn factory in Shenzen, Southern China, which manufactures iPads and Playstations and mobile phone batteries.

Li was known to the company by his ID number: F3839667. He stood at a whirring line all day, every day, making the same tiny mechanical motion with his wrist, for 20 pence an hour. According to his family, sometimes his shifts lasted for 24 hours; sometimes they stretched to 35. If he had tried to form a free trade union to change these practices, he would have been imprisoned for twelve years. On the night of May 27th, after yet another marathon-shift, Li dropped dead.

Deaths from overwork are so common in Chinese factories they have a word for it: guolaosi. China Daily estimates 600,000 people are killed this way every year, mostly making goods for us. Li had never experienced any health problems, his family says, until he started this work schedule; Foxconn say he died of asthma and his death had nothing to do with them. The night Li died, yet another Foxconn worker committed suicide -- the tenth this year.

For two decades now, you and I have shopped until Chinese workers dropped. Business has bragged about the joys of the China Price. They have been less keen for us to see the Human Price. KYE Systems Corp run a typical factory in Donguan in southern mainland China, and one of their biggest clients is Microsoft - so in 2009 the US National Labour Committee sent Chinese investigators undercover there. On the first day a teenage worker whispered to them: 'We are like prisoners here.'

The staff work and live in giant factory-cities that they almost never leave. Each room sleeps ten workers, and each dorm houses 5000. There are no showers; they are given a sponge to clean themselves with. A typical shift begins at 7.45am and ends at 10.55pm. Workers must report to their stations fifteen minutes ahead of schedule for a military-style drill: 'Everybody, attention! Face left! Face right!' Once they begin, they are strictly forbidden from talking, listening to music, or going to the toilet. Anybody who breaks this rule is screamed at and made to clean the toilets as punishment. Then it's back to the dorm.

It's the human equivalent to battery farming. One worker said: 'My job is to put rubber pads on the base of each computer mouse... This is a mind-numbing job. I am basically repeating the same motion over and over for over twelve hours a day.' At a nearby Meitai factory, which made keyboards for Microsoft, a worker said: 'We're really livestock and shouldn't be called workers.' They are even banned from making their own food, or having sex. They live off the gruel and slop they are required to buy from the canteen, except on Fridays, when they are given a small chicken leg and foot, 'to symbolize their improving life.'

Even as their work has propelled China towards being a super-power, these workers got less and less. Wages as a proportion of GDP fell in China every single year from 1983 to 2005.



They can be treated this way because of a very specific kind of politics that has prevailed in China for two decades now. Very rich people are allowed to form into organizations -- corporations -- to ruthlessly advance their interests, but the rest of the population is forbidden by the secret police from banding together to create organizations to protect theirs. The political practices of Maoism were neatly transferred from communism to corporations: both regard human beings as dispensable instruments only there to serve economic ends.

We'll never know the names of all the people who paid with their limbs, their lungs, or their lives for the goodies in my home and yours. Here's just one: think of him as the Unknown Worker, standing for them all. Liu Pan was a 17 year old operating a machine that made cards and cardboard that were sold on to big name Western corporations, including Disney. When he tried to clear its jammed machinery, he got pulled into it. His sister said: 'When we got his body, his whole head was crushed. We couldn't even see his eyes.'

So you might be thinking -- was it a cruel joke to bill this as a good news story? Not at all. An epic rebellion has now begun in China against this abuse -- and it is beginning to succeed. Across 126,000 Chinese factories, workers have refused to live like this any more. Wildcat unions have sprung up, organized by text message, demanding higher wages, a humane work environment, and the right to organize freely. Millions of young workers across the country are blockading their factories and chanting 'there are no human rights here!' and 'we want freedom!' The suicides were a rebellion of despair; this is a rebellion of hope.

Last year, the Chinese dictatorship was so panicked by the widespread uprisings that they prepared an extraordinary step forward. They drafted a new labor law that would allow workers to form and elect their own trade unions. It would plant seeds of democracy across China's workplaces. Western corporations lobbied very hard against it, saying it would create a 'negative investment environment' - by which they mean smaller profits. Western governments obediently backed the corporations and opposed freedom and democracy for Chinese workers. So the law was whittled down and democracy stripped out.

It wasn't enough. This year Chinese workers have risen even harder to demand a fair share of the prosperity they create. Now company after company is making massive concessions: pay rises of over 60 percent are being conceded. Even more crucially, officials in Guandong province, the manufacturing heartland of the country, have announced they are seriously considering allowing workers to elect their own representatives to carry out collective bargaining after all.

Just like last time, Western corporations and governments are lobbying frantically against this -- and to keep the millions of Yan Lis stuck at their assembly lines into the 35th hour.

This isn't a distant struggle: you are at its heart, whether you like it or not. There is an electrical extension cord running from your laptop and mobile and games console to the people like Yan Li and Liu Pan dying to make them. So you have to make a choice. You can passively let the corporations and governments speak for you in trying to beat these people back into semi-servitude - or you can side with the organizations here that support their cry for freedom, like No Sweat in Britain, or the National Labour Committee in the US, by donating to them, or volunteering for their campaigns.

Yes, if this struggle succeeds, it will mean that we will have to pay a little more for some products, in exchange for the freedom and the lives of people like Yan Li and Liu Pan. But previous generations have made that choice. After slavery was abolished in 1833, Britain's GDP fell by 10 percent -- but they knew that cheap goods and fat profits made from flogging people until they broke were not worth having. Do we?

Johann Hari is a writer for the Independent. To read more of his articles, click here or here.

You can follow Johann at www.twitter.com/johannhari101 or email him at j.hari [at] independent.co.uk

To read his latest article for Slate, click here

"

(Via Huffington Blog.)

David Stockman: Four Deformations of the Apocalypse

Op-Ed Contributor: Four Deformations of the Apocalypse: "How my Republican Party destroyed the American economy."

(Via NYT > Opinion.)