Citizens' Daily Lobby

It’s December, and in defiance of the jaunty lighting, days off work, and happy faces all around, I have fallen into my usual mid-winter funk.  I’m moving into the acceptance phase as my intellectual love affair with the idea of Barack Obama ends.  So, too, ends my brief hiatus into the notion that any change can be effected at the national level.  I have long suspected that this is the case, but I chose to believe that just this once my vote could really make a difference.

Speak Truth to Power, we are told.  And then what?   Power doesn’t have to hear the truth, especially not from the likes of us.  There are far too many dollars arguing the other side.   I propose a radical, and, perhaps ultimately as unsuccessful, strategy:  let’s speak Truth to the Disempowered.   Let’s speak  to those who have fallen on hard times and don’t understand the reasons their jobs have evaporated.  To those who live permanently in unsafe neighborhoods without a decent place even to buy groceries.  To the children who believe they have no hope of attaining prosperity.  And let’s speak at length to the comfortable, who want desperately to believe that everything will be OK if they can only weather this latest financial downturn.    The Disempowered are angry, rightfully angry, and it is up to us to see that their anger is channeled at the real perpetrators of our national decline.

In so doing, let’s build our local economies and local food systems.  Advocate for sustainable communities at home.   Work with local governments to promote a business model that rewards small business equally with multinational corporations.    It will take work.  It will take conscious efforts on the part of Progressives to stop propping up the system that has failed us.  Buy local.  Buy more  important stuff and less trivia.  Spend less money on mind-numbing entertainment.   Turn off cable, and shut out the constant barrage of advertising and political propaganda.  It’s not about opting out.  It’s about opting in to a better way of life.  The new year is coming.  Make it count.

Last week, US businesses posted all-time record profits for the last quarter, part of a trend that has been ongoing since 2009.  (Profits were earned at an annual rate of $1.695 trillion dollars last quarter.)  At the same time, the US economy remains sluggish, and, tellingly, unemployment remains high.    Yet, the US taxpayer is told to expect slow recovery and difficult times ahead.    Sales of new homes fell again last month.  If we listen to the establishment, we might be tempted to accept the discrepancy between corporate profit and our own economy and well-being as an unavoidable feature of capitalism.   How can that be, when we are also told to accept that money that flows to business will ultimately come back to labor in the form of higher wages and more jobs?  Somebody is getting a snow job.

Here’s why I think trickle down economics not only won’t work, but actually can’t work in our global economy.  If corporations are required by law to produce a profit for investors (and they are) and if they are free to increase profits by moving jobs to the lowest denominator in terms of labor costs, taxes, and regulatory costs, then it follows that they have a virtual mandate to send labor out of this country (unless we want to accept wages based on developing nation type standards of living).   If profit is the only motive, shareholders, not workers, consumers, and taxpayers, will see the benefits.

The internet is abuzz with protests of the TSA’s whole body scanners and strong-arm search tactics.  When will the protests mount over the economic rape that happens each and every day in this country and around the world by multinational corporations?

Truemajority and TheOther98% are hosting a national call-in day tomorrow to urge Congress to roll-back the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy.  While I completely agree that the US can’t afford the $700 billion price tag to keep these cuts, I also strongly believe tax cuts for the middle class should remain.  The middle class has paid far more than its share, and it’s time those with most of the wealth (that would be the top 1% of the population, that now controls more than 1/3 of the total wealth of the country) stop hoarding and start helping.  You can join the Call-In here.

The next time someone tells you taxing the rich will stifle the economy, decrease jobs, and keep wages low, remind them that since 1979 after tax income for the top 1% has grown by 281% while income for the rest of us has grown only 16%.   The top 1% more than doubled the percent of total wealth they control over this same period.  Obviously, there’s a lot of wealth that is failing to trickle down.  And, because the Bush tax cuts  gave more money back to high-income households (in actual dollars and as a percent), the wealthy continue to widen the income gap.

Here is the real effect of the Bush tax cuts by income group:

Households in the bottom fifth of
the income spectrum received tax
cuts averaging $29, which raised
their after-tax incomes by an average
of 0.4 percent.

Those in the middle fifth received
tax cuts averaging $760, which
raised their after-tax incomes by an
average of 2.4 percent.

The top 1 percent of households
received tax cuts averaging $41,077,
which raised their after-tax incomes
by an average of 5.0 percent.

Data from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities

For a good discussion of the reasoning behind keeping middle class tax cuts and expiring cuts for the top 1-2%, check out this video from the Urban Institute.

John Brummett exposed the root of the problem with Tim Griffin in an editorial last Friday, accurately depicting the Congressional candidate as “a Rovian operator who knows and espouses the right-wing boilerplate.”   There’s that.  And the related fact that he was embroiled in a Bush II-era political scandal.   If that’s not enough to turn voters away, there’s also the little issue of his political philosophy.  At the Political Animals luncheon last week in Little Rock, Griffin said that being a low-labor-cost state is an advantage that Arkansas should keep.    Brummett made the assumption that “low labor costs” is a euphemism for low wages.  Griffin disagreed, and, it turns out, he’s right.  Labor costs do include much more than wages.  They represent the total value of a workers compensation and benefits.

Labor costs include more than just the hourly wages and salaries paid to a company’s employees. The cost of labor also includes employee benefits packages. Health insurance, disability insurance, PTO (paid time off) and 401-K plans all fall under the umbrella of labor costs.

And there’s workers compensation insurance, the premiums for which stay lower either if not so many of your workers get hurt or you don’t get hit with big payouts when they do get hurt.

Griffin is saying it helps Arkansas economically that employers invest less in their workers here than they do in some other places. He is saying we need to keep this situation intact.  [Opposing candidate Joyce] Elliott presumably believes we should aspire to have our people assigned greater value, and perhaps she will talk about that when she addresses this same Political Animals Club on Thursday. Griffin probably would be better off to couch this Arkansas advantage in a general cost of living.”

It’s one thing (not necessarily the right thing) to be anti-Obama, Arkansas.  It’s quite another to support out of spite a candidate that wants to keep the real value of the people that make the economy run (the workers) artificially low in order for business to profit. 

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

April 16, 2010

Contact:  Neil Sealy, Arkansas Community Organizations, 501-346-9617

RECENT POLL SHOWS THAT ARKANSAS AFRICAN-AMERICANS SUPPORT CLIMATE CHANGE LEGISLATION

A MAJORITY SAY IT IS IMPORTANT TO THEIR DECISION

ON WHO TO VOTE FOR

Pine Bluff – A recent poll conducted by the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies was released yesterday in Washington, DC and found that 52% of African-Americans surveyed in Arkansas consider climate change to be very important in deciding which US Senate candidate to vote for.  The study shows that 55% of the Arkansas African-American respondents said that Congress should pass legislation reducing greenhouse gases before the 2010 elections.

The poll was part of a larger study entitled, Opinion of African-Americans on Climate Change and the 2010 Elections, that surveyed people in four states:  Indiana, Missouri, South Carolina and Arkansas.  A copy of the full study is attached.

The survey also found that 57% of the Arkansas respondents said they would be willing to support climate change legislation even if it meant that energy costs would increase by $10 per month and that 94% had a favorable view of President Obama.

“We are very pleased to see this survey come out.  While the economy and health care are our top concerns, we want to see Congress take action to reduce greenhouse gases and address the issue of global warming.  People in my neighborhood are very supportive of the President’s agenda, and we will evaluate the candidates on their level of support for initiatives coming out of the White House,” said Maxine Nelson, chair of the West Side Community Organization in Pine Bluff.

“The vote from our community will be important in both the Primary and the General elections this year.  We hope that the Democratic candidates for US Senate will take a look at this poll.  Their position on Climate Change legislation will be a factor in the decisions we will make on May 18,” added Ms. Nelson.

Recently Arkansas Community Organizations circulated a letter addressed to Senator Lincoln that expressed concern over her opposition to the EPA’s effort to regulate greenhouse gases.  The letter was signed by more than 50 African-American community leaders and elected officials.

David Brooks, New York Times commentator, thinks American-style capitalism is great.   That’s not surprising.  What is astounding is his reasoning.  He doesn’t think American capitalism is great because of its reputed wealth-generating benefits.  He thinks it’s great because it “leads to more exciting lives.”  Europeans, he argues, have so much job security that their work, and hence their lives, lack a sense of excitement.

If lack of job security equals excitement, Americans are certainly leading scintillating lives.  Imagine how dull it would be to work fewer hours in a job you were fairly certain would exist ten years from now.  Your life would almost certainly be excruciatingly boring, and what use would that extra free time be to you, anyway,  as you while away a lackluster existence?   Those of you who are out of work should consider yourselves fortunate.   James Bond himself would envy the thrill of your lifestyle.  Nothing stimulates joie de vivre like wondering where your next meal will come from.

David Sanders of Arkansas News questions whether the 2nd District should continue to allow Vic Snyder to vote his convictions, following his historic vote for the Waxman-Markey bill.   Chambers of Commerce in energy-boom places like Searcy aren’t happy with his vote to approve the bill that includes, among other things, a cap and trade provision.  Vic Snyder showed up at their meeting last week and challenged oil spokesman Claiborne Deming when Deming misrepresented the facts about the bill’s effects on consumers and the economy.  Sanders’ editorial raises the conundrum of representative democracy.  Should those we elect to office vote their convictions or be puppets of the  polls?

It’s true that those we elect to office should reflect the political will of their constituents at a broad level.    However, this is not a direct democracy (and seeing the average voter in Arkansas, I am convinced we never should become one).  Our government operates as a representative democracy, and that leaves room for legislators to make what they believe are the best choices for their constituents on  individual issues.    Too much pandering to the people ends up as demagoguery.  In the case of Dr. Snyder, his convictions are well-known in the state, and we must assume voters have been largely in agreement with his politics.  After all,  they keep returning him to office.

Conundrum aside, it isn’t clear that voters in the 2nd district share the convictions of the Searcy Chamber of Commerce, where the natural gas industry is, naturally, running the show.   I, for one, applaud Dr. Snyder for having the courage to voice his convictions and to stand up to oil industry front man Claiborne Deming.