Winning Progressive

As we’ve explained previously, Mitt “Severe Conservative” Romney is demonstrating time and again that reactionary conservatives, not moderates, would be running the show if he were to be elected President.  Today’s post focuses on Romney’s strong support for Robert Bork, the former federal judge and conservative activist whose 1987 nomination to the Supreme Court by President Reagan was rejected 58-42 by a bi-partisan coalition in the U.S. Senate because of his reactionary views about the Constitution, civil rights, and the role of the courts in protecting individual liberties.  Since then, it has become clear that Bork’s views are even more reactionary than they appeared in 1987.

Romney made his support for Bork clear last summer, when he named Bork a co-chair of the campaign’s Justice Advisory Committee. That Committee was established to advise the campaign “on the Constitution, judicial matters, law enforcement, homeland security, and regulatory issues.”  It is also clear that Romney’s appointment of Bork was not just a symbolic gesture, as Romney has stated that he wishes that Bork “were already on the Supreme Court.”

Bork claims to take an originalist approach to interpreting the Constitution.  But in a new report titled Borking America, People for the American Way has documented how Bork’s real agenda is promoting the a reactionary right-wing agenda on a wide array of issues, including corporate power, reproductive freedom, civil rights, censorship, and the death penalty.

With Romney so willing to publicly support Bork, the important question is how much of Bork’s reactionary agenda does Romney agree with?  For example:

* Does Romney agree with Bork that “Sooner or later, censorship is going to have to be considered as popular culture continues plunging to ever more sickening lows” source and that “Liberty in America can be enhanced by reinstating, legislatively, restraints upon the direction of our culture and morality”?  Source

* Does Romney agree with Bork that “It is clear that mindless feminist ideology is inflicting enormous damage on the readiness and fighting capability of the armed forces of the United States”? Source

* Does Romney agree with Bork’s rejection of the Supreme Court’s decision in Griswold v. Connecticut, which recognized a right to privacy and forbid states from outlawing the use of contraceptives, as an improper “Constitutional time bomb”?  Source

* Does Romney agree with Bork that the Constitution’s Equal Protection Clause should not extend to prevent gender discrimination but, instead “should be restricted to race and ethnicity because to go further would plunge the courts into making law without guidance from anything the ratifiers understood themselves to be doing.”  Source

* Does Romney agree with Bork that the Equal Protection Clause does not need to protect women from discrimination because “It seems to me silly to say, ‘Gee, they’re discriminated against and we need to do something about it.’ They aren’t discriminated against anymore.” Source

* Does Romney share Bork’s support for a Constitutional amendment that would allow Congress to reverse Supreme Court decisions?  Source

* Does Romney agree with Bork that the Supreme Court’s decision in Roper v. Simmons, which barred the death penalty for minors, was “lawless” and a “new low” for which there “are plenty of reasons to deplore”?  source

The record shows that on issue after issue, Bork has been opposed and even downright hostile to the recognition of equality and individual liberty that is inherent in our Constitution and Bill of Rights.   The views espoused by Bork raise serious questions about why Romney would put Bork in charge of the campaign’s Justice Advisory Committee, much less desire to see Bork on the Supreme Court.  Romney should be compelled to answer whether he agrees with each of the Bork statements identified above and, if Romney says he disagrees, he should be asked why he would want someone like Bork on the Supreme Court.  Our nation has already faced the question of Bork on the Supreme Court once, and responded with a resounding no.  There is no reason that Romney should be pushing that same extreme agenda again.

By Josh Marks

Many progressives will never forgive former President William Jefferson Clinton for the sin of signing away the Glass-Steagall Act. Also called The Banking Act of 1933, Glass-Steagall separated commercial and investment banking activities after the Great Depression in order to prevent another economic catastrophe. In 1999 Clinton signed the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act because Citibank merged with Travelers Insurance a year earlier and a law needed to be passed to make the merger legal. While repealing Glass-Steagall didn’t directly lead to the 2008 financial crisis, it was one of a series of post-Depression financial industry regulations stripped away, starting when Ronald Reagan took office, that allowed Wall Street to bring the world to the brink of another Great Depression. (Click here to read an appeal by former Clinton Labor Secretary Robert Reich to bring back Glass-Steagall).

Could Clinton have known how ruinous to the economy repealing Glass-Steagall would be when the financial industry went into a tailspin more than a decade later after years of risky bets? How many countless Americans have lost their jobs and their faith in the American system after this economic collapse?

Well, I’m here to tell you that Clinton is making amends and his new book “Back to Work: Why We Need Smart Government For a Strong Economy” is a must read. There is a lot for progressives to like about Clinton’s approach to solving the big issues of the day.

That said, Clinton still doesn’t take full responsibility for the damage done when he repealed Glass-Steagall, however he does point out that he regrets not making a bigger push to regulate financial derivatives, although he was up against a Republican Congress hostile to any regulations.

Clinton starts out “Back to Work” with an impassioned defense of the important role government plays in society and calls out the Tea Party wing of the GOP for its irrational and self-destructive hatred of the public sector. What Clinton does in this book is give a global perspective to America’s political paralysis and inability to work towards solutions to our problems. This, I believe, is a result of the humanitarian work Clinton has done around the world through the Clinton Foundation, where he has helped poor people around the world improve their health care and be economically empowered. Through the book, Clinton compares the United States to other countries, giving perspective to our problems. In the opening chapter he lays out his vision for a more prosperous and fair society.

“I believe the only way we can keep the American Dream alive for all Americans and continue to be the world’s leading force for freedom and prosperity, peace and security, is to have both a strong, effective private sector and a strong, effective government that work together to promote an economy of good jobs, rising incomes, increasing exports, and greater energy independence. All over the world, the most successful nations, including many with lower unemployment rates, less inequality, and, in this decade, even higher college graduation rates than the United States, have both. And they work together, not always agreeing, but moving toward common goals. In other countries, conservatives and liberals also have arguments about taxes, energy policy, bank regulations, and how much government is healthy and affordable, but they tend to be less ideological and more rooted in evidence and experience. They focus more on what works.”

This is Clinton’s framework to set up a scathing rebuttal to the anti-tax, anti-government ideological extremists who have hijacked the political system in this country for the past thirty years.

Clinton is very effective when he uses charts and figures to explain our positions relative to other nations. For example, the United States spends only 1.7 percent of GDP on infrastructure, compared with 4 percent in Canada or 9 percent in China. And the World Economic Forum ranks the United States 24th in the quality of overall infrastructure, right behind Malaysia (Switzerland ranks first). Also, the U.S. ranks 15th in broadband connection speed, just behind Luxembourg. No. 1 South Korea’s broadband connections is four times faster than ours. And Clinton points out that the U.S. spends a whopping 17.4 percent of GDP on health care compared to France at 11.8 percent and Japan at 8.5 percent.

Not everything Clinton writes will please progressives. For example, he isn’t critical of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act for not being big enough in stimulating job creation. Clinton believes that the $800 billion stimulus (only a third went into direct job projects) “was designed to put a floor under the collapse and begin the recovery.” That’s all well and good, but economists like Paul Krugman were warning that the stimulus wasn’t big enough and that the Republicans would manipulate the slow job growth that follows as saying that government spending doesn’t work. Now it is nearly impossible to pass a second stimulus, as President Obama tried to do with the American Jobs Act. So it would have been helpful if Clinton would have admitted the stimulus wasn’t big enough and that we need more fiscal stimulus to plow our way out of this depression (I’m reading Krugman’s excellent new book “End This Depression Now!” and plan to write a review).

Clinton also devotes an entire chapter to the debt (Krugman makes a compelling case that deficit hawks are misguided and that the debt is blown way out of proportion when the focus should be on the government creating jobs). However, Clinton does acknowledge that dealing with the deficit needs to be delayed until full employment is achieved and healthy economic growth is restored. With the ridiculous obsession with the debt and deficits among the political and media class in Washington, it is encouraging to hear a voice of reason like Clinton’s saying that, yes, we need to tackle the deficit (although again, Keynesian economists like Krugman would argue that deficits aren’t as bad as people think), but right now the sole priority and topic of conversation should be focused on how government spending can create jobs and grow the economy.

Ultimately Clinton is optimistic, and he is confident America will get past this current state of dysfunction and ideological warfare.

“We’re in a mess now. At the dawn of the new century, after years of strong job growth, rising incomes, and declining debt, we abandoned a proven path to shared prosperity in favor of doubling down, once more, on anti-government ideology. Now we’re paying for it. The only sensible thing to do is for all of us to take some responsibility for changing things. The world is moving on, and if we want to stop falling behind, we have to get back in the game. Let’s ditch the stale certainty of ideology and bring our values, ideas, experiences, and dreams to a real debate about the future. Think how exciting it would be if all of us — Democrats, Republicans, and independents, conservatives, liberals, progressives, and libertarians — had real arguments based on real facts that produced real results through principled compromise based on what works.”

(By Joanne Boyer, cross-posted at Wisdom Voices)

Each generation of Americans has been tasked with preserving and expanding this great experiment in representative government. Ours is no different. Although the assault thrown at us by the Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling (allowing corporations to pour unlimited amounts of money into our political system) seems overwhelming, it is up to ‘we the people’ to push back and say, ‘No.’  We are the people who run this country – not corporations.

In that spirit, I am pleased to announce that I will be joining with Stewart Acuff, Chief of Staff for the Utility Workers of America and Jack Nelson-Pallmeyer, peace studies professor at the University of St. Thomas (St. Paul, Minnesota) on a speaking tour:  Reclaiming The Middle Class:  An Evening of Conversation.

It is our hope that by engaging in discussion with the electorate we can remind them of the individual power they carry to fight back against the corporate interests who appear to control every aspect of our lives – from health care to education, to the very air we breathe and water we drink.

Our first stops will take us to the heart of the great Iron Range of Minnesota. On Monday, May 21, Stewart and I will be speaking on issues central to restoring strength to middle-class America at 7 p.m. at the Duluth Labor Temple (Wellstone Hall), 2002 London Road in Duluth.  It was Paul Wellstone who once said:  “The people of this country, not special interest big money, should be the source of all political power. Government must remain the domain of the general citizenry, not a narrow elite.”

On Tuesday, May 22, we will be at Kaleva Hall in Virginia, Minnesota (7 p.m.).  Acuff’s book, Playing Bigger Than You Are:  A Life in Organizing, illustrates his belief that the struggle for workers’ rights is rooted in fairness, righteousness and the lessons of nonviolence exhibited by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Mahatma Gandhi. Acuff’s 35 years of union organizing has led him to say: “I know that as bad as it may seem today, and it may get worse, there will be a time when good people, average people, unite and turn it around.  That’s been what’s happened in the course of human history and American history.  Every generation has struggled to make this species more fair, more free, more just.

We will then join with Nelson-Pallmeyer on Wednesday, May 23 at Common Good Books in St. Paul at 7 p.m. Nelson-Pallmeyer, is also founder of Minnesota’s Arms Spending Alternative Project (MN-ASAP), and he is the author of the book:  Authentic Hope:  It’s The End of the World As We Know It, But Soft Landings Are Possible.  Nelson-Pallmeyer is a firm believer in the power generated at the local level: “It really is the grass roots groups who are doing the effective and creative work to move us into a different future.  That’s where hope really lies.  Hope isn’t rooted in the notion that we’ll elect a politician who will bring about the solution. What we need to do is activate our own potential and stop being the consumers of politics and be more the protagonists for change in what has become a really ugly system.”

We look forward to going down this path and meeting with the United Citizens of our great country who will eventually be the ones who turn back Citizens United and put us back on the road to reclaiming the middle class as the vibrant force for our future.

(By NCrissie B)

This is the last of three posts looking at Brian Miller and Mike Lapham’s new book The Self-Made Myth. In the first post, we considered how the “self-made man” myth of the Horatio Alger stories morphed into the “makers vs. takers” meme of Ayn Rand and her followers. Then we saw stories that illustrate what Miller and Lapham call “The Built-Together Reality.” Today we conclude with how “The Build-Together Reality” calls for different policies to support innovation and entrepreneurship.

Brian Miller is the executive director of United for a Fair Economy. Over the past 20 years, Miller has worked to build cross-class alliances of citizens from all walks of life – business leaders, workers, family farmers, seniors, students, and others – to work together for change, promoting healthy communities and an economy that works for all Americans.
 Mike Lapham is the founding director of Responsible Wealth, a project of United for a Fair Economy. Responsible Wealth amplifies the voices of more than 700 progressive business leaders and other affluent individuals in public policy debates to promote progressive tax policy and greater corporate accountability in Congress, in the media, and in corporate boardrooms.

Motivational Speaker Syndrome

Google {keys to success} and you’ll get over 32 million hits, including many books and lectures by motivational speakers. Many are sincere and based on interviews with successful people, such as ABC’s 20/20 episode titled Who Wants to be a Billionaire? 20 Keys to Success from the Superrich. Miller and Lapham quote a simpler version by J. Paul Getty: “Formula for Success: rise early, work hard, strike oil.” In terms of personal motivation, such bromides are useful. They encourage us to find what we do well, learn to do it as well as we can, look past immediate satisfaction to long-term goals, and other success-enabling attitudes and behaviors. It’s easy to ‘get’ that doing these things will improve our chances to succeed, and that’s why the Self-Made Myth is so attractive.

But not all successful people rise early and work hard, nor do all of them practice all 20 of the keys offered by the billionaires on 20/20. Far more important, tens of millions of other people in the U.S. and around the world do rise early and work hard – and practice those 20 keys – yet never achieve financial success. The Self-Made Myth may be useful for personal motivation, but it’s still a myth and when we base policy on that myth, we fall for what I’ll call Motivational Speaker Syndrome: focusing on individual attitudes and behaviors as if improving those were enough to ensure prosperity.

The Wealth of the Commons

While Miller and Lapham acknowledge that successful entrepreneurs do work hard and make sacrifices, they also recognize that:

Try as we may, it is simply impossible to completely untangle the contributions of the individual from those of society in making individual success possible. The entrepreneurs and the business leaders profiled in this book have all benefited, both personally and in their business activities, from the investments and structures made possible through governmental action. The personal testimonies of these successful individuals are a powerful rejection of the self-made myth in the United States.
[...]
In addition to the central role of government, there are nongovernmental actors that contribute to individual success. Images of community barn raisings come to mind as do the supports that many receive through our deep and rich network of nonprofit organizations. Even these nonprofit organizations, however, are supported in part by special provisions of the U.S. tax code. Any comprehensive understanding of individual success must take these societal contributions into account.

As we saw in the previous post in this series, well-regulated markets account for 30-50% of a publicly-owned company’s value, as measured both by what happens when a privately-held company goes public and by what happens when key regulations are repealed or ignored and the market confidence fails. Add the value of other hard and soft infrastructure – roads, ports, utilities, law enforcement and emergency services, education, scientific research, intellectual property and contract law, and of course the internet – and most of the wealth in the United States is created by the commons: shared resources and institutions created and/or maintained primarily by government.

Qui Bono?

That Latin phrase translates to “for the benefit of whom,” and it’s an important question to ask about the commons. As Miller and Lapham note, while no individual created or maintains the commons, those shared resources and institutions do not benefit everyone equally. For much of our nation’s history, women and non-whites were excluded from many of those benefits and the authors acknowledge that “Race, gender, class, birthright, and other factors still weigh heavily on one’s prospects in life.” They add that “Even though the story of the self-made man is a myth, we should not cease striving to create the conditions under which every American has a real opportunity to succeed in this world, free of the societal barriers that privilege some groups over others.”

Miller and Lapham also recognize the role of luck:

For every successful business person who rose early and worked hard, there are thousands of others who rose equally early and worked equally hard, but their work did not pay off with the same level of success due to factors beyond their control. An awareness of the randomness of luck should give us pause when we elevate some above others, as though their relative success and wealth is a measure of their work ethic, risk taking and inventiveness and somehow suggests a lack of effort on the part of others.

And they add the issue of historical timing, which can seem like another form of luck:

Unlike true luck, however, timing is often a reflection of public policies of the era. Those who came of age during the economic boom of the 1950s and 1960s – when unions were strong and the government was making massive investments in the United States and its citizens – had significantly more economic opportunity (provided they were white and male) than those entering the workforce now, amidst the Great Recession and a significantly weakened public sector following 30 years of tax cutting for the wealthy.

To argue that fairness is defined by market outcomes, as Mitt Romney does, is to ignore the structures that allow a privileged few to capture most of the benefits from the vast wealth of the commons.

And Many Wealthy People Agree

Although opt-in online polls are weak evidence, one such survey conducted by the Spectrem Group found that 68% of millionaires support tax increases for those earning more than $1 million per year. United for a Fair Economy’s Responsible Wealth project is:

[A] network of over 700 business leaders and wealthy individuals in the top five percent of income and/or wealth in the U.S. As beneficiaries of economic policies tilted in their favor, these individuals advocate for fair taxes and corporate accountability. Their message is simple, and surprising to some: we can afford to pay more; we don’t need any more tax breaks.

Members of Responsible Wealth recognize that their own prosperity and success would not be possible without the foundation of a strong public education system, an effective transportation network, a strong legal system and more. RW members are bound by their commitment to supporting the public investments from which they have greatly benefited.

The policies advocated by Responsible Wealth members include a more progressive income tax, taxing capital gains and dividends as earned income, extending the estate tax, and ensuring that corporations pay their fair share. United for a Fair Economy and Responsible Wealth also advocate investment in rebuilding our infrastructure, both hard infrastructure such as roads, bridges, ports, and utilities and soft infrastructure such as support for public education and scientific research.

And they recognize that social safety nets and an economic floor, rather than the “moral hazard” argued by conservatives, help encourage the entrepreneurship and innovation our nation needs:

One fact that may surprise many readers is that Europe, with its more expansive welfare state and universal health care, has a much higher rate of small business ownership than does the United States. Only about 7% of Americans are self-employed, compared with 9% of French, 12% of Germans, and 26% of Italians. Even when measured by small (fewer than 20 employees) and medium-sized (fewer than 500 employees) firms, the United States is at or near last among Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development nations.

Finally, Miller and Lapham write:

If you are a progressive activist or community leader, challenge those in your group who may instinctively, and mistakenly, assume that all business leaders are against you. Some are, but many others are not. Seek out the business leaders in your community with an open mind and foster cross-class alliances that build greater political power and, ultimately, help better all of our communities. When you see local business leaders speaking out in favor of funding important public services, let them know they are not alone. Applaud their leadership and build new relationships where you can.

A fairer economy is not about “class warfare.” It’s about recognizing that most of our nation’s wealth is created by the commons, and advocating policies that maintain and build that commonly-created wealth to benefit all of “We the People.”

(Crossposted from Blogistan Polytechnic Institute (BPICampus.com))

(By Mark Bridger, cross-posted at ThatMansScope)

For this weekend’s reading list, we have articles on public support for cuts to military spending, the growing number of children in foster care after their parents were deported, the continued strength of Social Security, how public-private partnerships on infrastructure projects are too often a rip off of taxpayers, and the continued privatization of education in Philadelphia and other urban school districts.

If you have any feedback on any of these articles, or would like to recommend an article for next weekend’s reading list, please let us know in the comments section below or at the Winning Progressive Facebook page.

Public Overwhelmingly Supports Large Defense Spending Cuts – An in-depth survey of public opinion shows that the public favors cutting an average of $103 billion per year from military spending, which is far larger than either political party is currently proposing.

Shattered Families – a report on how there are currently at least 5,100 children in foster care in the US because their parents have been deported, and how increasingly aggressive deportation efforts could increase that number to 20,000 within five years.

What the 2012 Trustee’s Report Shows About Social Security – an in-depth review of the Social Security Board of Trustee’s 2012 report on the status of Social Security.  The report confirms that Social Security remains fully solvent until 2033, would be able to continue paying 75% of benefits after that, and can remain fully solvent until for the next 75 years with only relatively minor changes.

The Wall Street Racket Looting Your City, One Block At a Time – how the “public-private partnerships” that are frequently used to finance infrastructure projects are far too often end up sapping away needed public resources so that the private investors can continue to profit.

The Remaking of Philadelphia Public Schools: Privatization or Bust – a critical look at the City of Philadelphia’s plan to close 64 of its public schools over the next five years and to funnel at least 40% of the system’s students into charter schools, which seems to be part of a growing privatization of education in urban school districts.