In 1865, the 13^th amendment abolished slavery, but there was a loophole. Prisoners were exempt. Since the passage of the amendment, prisons and businesses have been forcing inmates to work for slave wages, or sometimes no wages.

Capital thrives on squeezing as much profit and productivity as possible out of workers. In the eyes of the corporation, inmate labor is a brilliant strategy for maximizing profit.

In an article at U.S. Uncut, Kelly Davidson reports that corporations, in partnership with the United States government, are forcing prisoners to work for wages as low as .25 and $1.15 per hour. It’s called “insourcing.” If you are a CEO or a stockholder in one of these companies it’s great! You get your products made by prison slaves for practically nothing, or you get your products made in third world countries for practically nothing—either way, you reap the profits.

Which companies make use of prison labor?

I’ve annotated Davidson’s list:

Lets start with Whole Foods. This high-end grocery chain purchases artisan cheese and fish prepared by prison inmates who work for private companies. The inmates are paid .74 cents a day to raise tilapia that Whole Paycheck sells for $11.99 a pound.

Then we have McDonald’s. It buys tons of prison-manufactured items including plastic cutlery, food containers, and uniforms. As Davidson notes, the inmates who sew the uniforms make even less money per hour than the people who wear them.

And, of course, there’s Wal-Mart. The official company policy is: “no forced or prison labor will be tolerated.” But Wal-Mart gets around this by buying from independent prison labor factories. Same thing Whole Foods is doing. According to Davidson: “Wal-Mart purchases its produce from prison farms where laborers are often subjected to long, arduous hours in the blazing heat without adequate sunscreen, water, or food.”

If you like sexy lingerie, you may enjoy buying from Victoria’s Secret. Know that female inmates in South Carolina, forced to work for slave wages, make a lot of the company’s garments, as well as J.C. Penny’s women’s underwear.

In 1993, AT&T laid off thousands of union telephone operators in a move to smash unions and increase profits. It has a prison labor policy similar to Wal-Mart’s. Yet, since 1993, AT&T has used inmates, managed by third party companies, to work their call centers, paying them $2 a day.

It turns out BP used African-American inmates to clean up the 4.2 million barrels of oil it spilled into the Gulf coast after the Deepwater Horizon oil rig disaster. The right thing was for BP to hire Coastal residents whose livelihoods it had just destroyed, but the company opted for cheap prison labor. Then its PR department put out ads touting the company’s dedication to the Gulf and the people who live there.

Davidson sums up:

From dentures to shower curtains to pill bottles, almost everything you can imagine is being made in American prisons. Also implicit in the past and present use of prison labor are Microsoft, Nike, Nintendo, Honda, Pfizer, Saks Fifth Avenue, Macy’s, Starbucks, and more.

The “more” includes, among others, Nordstrom, Eddie Bauer, Motorola, Compaq, IBM, Boeing, Texas Instrument, Revlon, Macy’s, Target Stores, Nortel, Hewlett-Packard, Intel, Honeywell, Pierre Cardin, 3com, and Lucent Technologies.

The Prison-Industrial-Complex and UNICOR

Davidson fingers the U.S. government as the guilty party in this modern day reincarnation of slavery. UNICOR, a corporation created in 1934 and owned by the federal government, oversees penal labor, and sets the condition and wage standards for working inmates.  UNICOR’s official line is that in exchange for their slave labor, prisoners are given “vocational training.” Yet the workplace conditions are often appalling, and the transfer of skills to the private sector is dubious.

For example, at one UNICOR operation at a California prison, inmates “de-manufactured” computer cathode-type monitors. According to industry safety practices, a mechanical crushing machine is supposed to be used to minimize danger from flying glass, with an isolated air system to avoid releasing lead, and other toxic substances into the workplace atmosphere. At the UNICOR facility, prisoners were required to smash CRTs with hammers without any protection.

The United States of Incarceration

We have a huge per capita prison population—the second highest in the world. Although we have only 5 percent of the world’s population, we incarcerate 25 percent of the world’s prisoners. Racism, drug laws, mandatory sentencing, and of course, privatization of prisons all play a part. The partnership of the U.S. government with big business allows prisoners to be used as slave labor, another great incentive for filling prisons. Prison overcrowding is common. Instead of helping and rehabilitating people, we use them for profit—another grotesque feature of a capitalist system fixated on making money over everything else.

I’m afraid the answer is not prison reform, because that simply won’t happen in our current political and economic environment. Also, the use of prisoners for profit has been going on for 150 years. Instead, we have to examine and question the overriding system that created prison slave labor in the first place. We have to break the taboo on talking about capitalism. We have to question capitalism’s ruthless, limited way of thinking, and its distorted, often inhumane values. We have to step back and ask ourselves: Is this how we want to treat people? Is this really how we want to live? Is capitalism a system that works for most Americans, or most inhabitants of the Earth, or just a lucky few? How can we transition to a better, more humane system, a new democratic socialism for the 21^st century?

Michael Liebowitz writes about the nature of capitalism in his book The Socialist Alternative: Real Human Development:

. . .no one could say that capitalism is a good society. Capitalism is certainly not oriented toward solidarity, respect, social responsibility, or caring: it is not about creating the conditions for protagonism in the workplace and society—that necessary way by which people can achieve “their complete development, both individual and collective.” On the contrary, capitalism is not about human development at all.

The logic of capital generates a society in which all human values are subordinated to the search for profits. . . .Rather than building a cohesive and caring society, capital tears society apart. It divides workers and pits them against one another as competitors to reduce any challenge to its rule and its bottom line. Precisely because human beings and nature are mere means to capital’s goal, it destroys what Marx called the original sources of wealth—human beings and nature.

The post U.S. companies make a killing off prison labor appeared first on Occasional Planet.

The most popular post, over the years, on Occasional Planet is: “Military Mystery: how many bases does the US have, anyway?”  American University anthropology professor, David Vine, spent six years trying to answer that question and to investigate the effect of U.S. military presence on foreign soil. In researching his subject, he traveled to U.S. military installations around the world, interviewing both the military and local residents. His findings are published in his new book, Base Nation: How U.S. Military Bases Abroad Harm America and the World. (Henry Holt, 2015).

Some of David Vine’s main points:

The military admits we have an excess base capacity worldwide. It doesn’t have a clear idea, and/or doesn’t want to confirm how many bases we have. The official count is 686 but it excludes known bases in Kosovo, Kuwait, and Qatar, “secret” bases in Israel and Saudi Arabia, and who knows how many in Iraq and Afghanistan. Vine settles on 800 as a good estimate.

The sites vary from massive bases in Germany and Japan to smaller facilities in Peru and Puerto Rico, to off-the-record “black sites” run by the CIA and military intelligence. By comparison, Russia has bases in 10 countries, mostly in former Soviet states. India and China have none.

Maintaining installations and troops overseas cost at least $85 billion in 2014. Our presence in Afghanistan and Iraq brings the total to $156 billion—money, Vine says, that could be better spent on education, infrastructure, housing and health care.

Our presence in other countries provokes hatred toward Americans. Our bases and troops in the Middle East have been major catalysts for anti-Americanism and radicalization.

Foreign bases heighten military tensions and discourage diplomatic solutions, while, at the same time, encourage excess military spending.

Imprisonment, torture, and abuse at bases from Guantanamo Bay to Abu Ghraib have generated worldwide disgust and damaged our reputation. Drone bases enable missile strikes that have killed hundreds of civilians, producing further outrage.

The official line is that these military bases are defensive and make us, and the host countries, safer. Yet they have functioned more as launching pads for interventionist wars that have resulted in repeated disasters costing trillions of dollars and millions of lives from Vietnam to Iraq and Afghanistan.

David Vine: On the presence of U.S. foreign military bases as a catalyst for war:

Placing U.S. bases near the borders of countries such as China, Russia, and Iran, for example, increases threats to their security and encourages them to respond by boosting their own military spending. Again, imagine how U.S. leaders would respond if Iran were to build even a single small base in Mexico, Canada, or the Caribbean.

Notably, the most dangerous moment during the Cold War—the Cuban missile crisis—revolved around the creation of Soviet nuclear missile facilities roughly ninety miles from the U.S. border. Similarly, one of the most dangerous episodes in the post-Cold War era—Russia’s seizure of Crimea and its involvement in the war in Ukraine—has come after the United States encouraged the enlargement of NATO and built a growing number of bases closer and closer to Russian borders.

Indeed, a major motivation behind Russia’s actions has likely been its interest in maintaining perhaps the most important of its small collection of foreign bases, the naval base in the Crimean port Sevastopol. West-leaning Ukrainian leaders’ desire to join NATO posed a direct threat to the base, and thus to the power of the Russian navy.

Perhaps most troubling of all, the creation of new U.S. bases to protect against an alleged future Chinese or Russian threat runs the risk of becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy. By provoking a Chinese and Russian military response, these bases may help create the very threat against which they are supposedly designed to protect. In other words, far from making the world a safer place, U.S. bases overseas can actually make war more likely and America less secure.

Questioning American military empire

At no time in history has a nation had such a vast international military presence as the United States does today. Our foreign bases serve US “interests” meaning the geopolitical/economic/financial interests of banks and corporations. The military and its war industries account for a large share of the budget while most Americans are experiencing declining incomes and quality of life.

The hubristic attitude, shared by Republicans, Democrats, and progressives alike, is that the United States is “exceptional,” and therefore has some sort of self-appointed moral right to militarily and economically dominate the world. We decide when a national leader “has to go” and initiate a covert or overt “regime change.” We assassinate identified “enemies” with drones along with innocent bystanders referred to not as “human beings” but as “collateral damage.” We ignore international law and the United Nations if they get in the way of our pursuing our “interests” in a country or region. We prefer destroyed, failed states that we can control to independent, functioning states that refuse to be US vassals (Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Ukraine, Syria). Sadly, the American people are generally comfortable with all this, or indifferent.

Absent in the media, among elected officials, or in the general public, is a debate about whether we should continue this hubristic and destructive hegemonic agenda. The only voices raised against a US-dominated, unipolar world come from the Left, and a few on the Libertarian Right. Those voices are routinely slapped down and ridiculed as being overly critical, negative, ideological, unrealistic, disloyal, utopian, hyperbolic, naïve, conspiratorial, weak, unpatriotic, and, when critical of the role of Israel in the middle east, anti-Semitic. Rarely do Americans engage with the challenging issues raised by the Left.

The US public, perhaps the most uninformed in the developed world, may never question, or worse yet, even be aware of, the vast number of US military bases and operations around the globe. Our jingoistic media supports our corporate-backed military agenda by demonizing any country that refuses to align itself with our interests. Fear-based war mongering is routinely served up as “news” on CNN, FOX, and in the pages of the New York Times. Mainstream media-driven, official narratives abound, dissenting voices occasionally, but rarely appear, while everywhere serious analysis or dialog is discouraged.

The US debt is now at 101% of GDP, much of that from unpaid for wars and an unsustainable and bloated military/intelligence budget. By comparison, China’s debt is 64.37% of GDP, and Russia’s is 11.66% of GDP. (http://www.nationaldebtclocks.org) The powerful British Empire, once controlled 25% of the world. Eventually, it fell under the weight of its overextended global presence. Given the stagnation of our economy and the deterioration of our infrastructure, we are clearly headed down that road.

In 2004, the late Chalmers Johnson, “cold-warrior,” Korean War veteran, CIA consultant, and university professor, wrote the following prescient analysis:

Without grasping the dimensions of this globe-girdling Baseworld, one can’t begin to understand the size and nature of our imperial aspirations, or the degree to which a new kind of militarism is undermining our constitutional order. Militarism and imperialism are Siamese twins joined at the hip; each thrives off the other. Already highly advanced in our country, they are both on the verge of a quantum leap that will almost surely stretch our military beyond its capabilities, bringing about fiscal insolvency and very possibly doing mortal damage to our republican institutions.

The post The case for closing our overseas military bases appeared first on Occasional Planet.

In a recent interview in Jacobin, linguist, philosopher, and political activist Noam Chomsky gave an interesting answer to a question about the American capitalist system. He basically said we don’t have one. We have something else, more akin to “state capitalism.”

And by not being engaged and involved in the political process, we’ve allowed corporations and banks to “run things,” to take over government. We’ve felt powerless to effect change, and we’ve allowed them to suck up resources that should be going to fund projects and policies that directly help us and the communities where we live.

Chomsky’s comment on our so called “capitalist system:”

What’s called “the capitalist system” is very far from any model of capitalism or market. Take the fossil fuels industries: there was a recent study by the IMF, which tried to estimate the subsidy that energy corporations get from governments. The total was colossal. I think it was around $5 trillion annually. That’s got nothing to do with markets and capitalism.

I think Chomsky is saying that our form of capitalism is not one Adam Smith would recognize. In our version, fossil fuel companies fund politicians, who then vote for industry subsidies. Even though the industry is a big contributor to climate change, the government continues to promote fossil fuels. Bought senators and congressmen continue to give away money to a highly profitable industry that doesn’t need it. Money in politics has a life of its own, and it’s not benign. If a senator or congressperson stops voting for subsidies, there’s hell to pay when he or she is up for reelection. Not only will they no longer get campaign donations, they will have money being spent against them. We live under the illusion that  we have a “free-market” economy, when its more akin to a mafia-run protection racket.

Chomsky turns the conversation to banks:

And the same is true of other components of the so-called capitalist system. By now, in the US and other Western countries, there’s been, during the neoliberal period, a sharp increase in the financialization of the economy. Financial institutions in the US had about 40 percent of corporate profits on the eve of the 2008 collapse, for which they had a large share of responsibility.

There’s another IMF study that investigated the profits of American banks, and it found that they were almost entirely dependent on implicit public subsidies. There’s a kind of a guarantee—it’s not on paper, but it’s an implicit guarantee—that if they get into trouble they will be bailed out. That’s called too-big-to-fail.

And the credit rating agencies of course know that, they take that into account, and with high credit ratings, financial institutions get privileged access to cheaper credit, they get subsidies if things go wrong and many other incentives, which effectively amounts to perhaps their total profit. The business press tried to make an estimate of this number and guessed about $80 billion a year. That’s got nothing to do with capitalism.

It’s clear that without massive subsidies and bailouts, the banks would be insolvent. In a real capitalist system they would have been failed businesses. Chomsky is not the first to point this out. For nearly imploding the world economy, banks were rewarded with access to free money, which they use, not for repairing the damage they did to main street, but for speculation. Thanks to Bill Clinton removing the wall between traditional and investment banking, big banks continue to operate like gambling casinos.

Corporations, too, have been borrowing money at very low, or no interest for stock buy-backs, which raises stock prices and CEO pay. Profits are off-shored and tax-sheltered. Nothing big banks and big corporations are doing right now is helping middle class and working people. Chomsky continues:

It’s the same in many other sectors of the economy. So the real question is, will this system of state capitalism, which is what it is, survive the continued use of fossil fuels? And the answer to that is, of course, no.

By now, there’s a pretty strong consensus among scientists who say that a large majority of the remaining fossil fuels, maybe 80 percent, have to be left in the ground if we hope to avoid a temperature rise which would be pretty lethal. And, unfortunately, that’s not happening. Humans may be destroying their chances for a decent survival. It won’t kill everybody, but it would change the world dramatically.

This is Chomsky’s conclusion if the current situation were to continue. But there’s a rebellion brewing against the status quo. Bernie Sanders in the US, Jeremy Corbyn in the UK, Alex Tsipris in Greece, and Pablo Iglesias in Spain are openly challenging the corporate/bank/billionaire grip on their respective governments. And in Canada, the Liberal Party just won back control of Parliament after nine years of the conservative Harper government. So, there’s reason for hope.

Getting a person or party elected is not enough

We can’t pin all our hopes on another Wall Street-funded candidate. Chomsky thinks it will take pressure from a large popular movement to effectively challenge the grip of money and power on government. The job of activists and organizers, he says, is to help people understand they have power, and even though they feel powerless, they’re not powerless. “People feel impotent, but that has to be overcome.”

About Bernie Sanders, Chomsky feels it’s pretty unlikely in a system of bought elections that he could win. And even if he won, he would be abandoned by both corporate parties, In other words, he couldn’t get much done. But, even if he loses he will have made a positive contribution. Chiomsky says:

In fact, the Sanders campaign I think is valuable—it’s opening up issues, it’s maybe pressing the mainstream Democrats a little bit in a progressive direction, and it is mobilizing a lot of popular forces, and the most positive outcome would be if they remain after the election.

It’s a serious mistake to just to be geared to the quadrennial electoral extravaganza and then go home. That’s not the way changes take place. The mobilization could lead to a continuing popular organization, which could maybe have an effect in the long run.

A little history

In 2009, newly elected President Barack Obama could have nurtured and expanded his extremely effective Obama for America organization to be exactly the kind of popular organization Chomsky calls for—one standing behind him and supporting him in demanding real change—but he funneled everyone into the newly formed “Organizing for America.” Organizing for America served to neutralize and eventually shut down the enthusiasm and populist energy stirred up by his campaign, thwarting any threat to the big money interests that bankrolled his election. As Gloria Bilchik wrote in 2010, OFA became a propaganda machine for the President and a subsidiary of the Democratic National Committee.

The best outcome of the coming election will be if Bernie’s followers form a truly progressive organization independent of the Democratic Party. It’s purpose would be to keep pressure on politicians to do the right thing for the American people.

The post Noam Chomsky: On capitalism and why electing Bernie isn’t enough appeared first on Occasional Planet.

My 49-year-old daughter has limited abilities, but has worked since finishing high school and has lived independently all these years. In fact, she just paid off the mortgage on her house in Springfield.

After 23 years in the catering department at Mercy Hospital in Springfield, Missouri, she was fired for supposedly mixing broken mayonnaise packets in with good ones. No, I’m not kidding. She was “written up” twice before that, once for not preparing the supplies for a co-worker’s event, even though she wasn’t told to do that.

She has been a loyal employee all these years, even going in on her day off if a co-worker called in sick. I’ve always stressed to her what my mother told me about doing a good job, following orders, and giving a full day’s work for a full day’s pay. (That sounds so old fashioned now, doesn’t it?)

My daughter doesn’t handle change well. She doesn’t even like things in her kitchen to be rearranged. So you can imagine how stressful this life changing event has been for her.

She and I visited with the head of the Human Resources Department on Monday. Cathy had not been given anything in writing when she was abruptly “terminated.” (Isn’t that an awful word to use in a situation like this?)

The HR guy printed out what is in the hospital employee record system about Cathy’s “failure to…..” and the dates of the three warnings. Curiously, they were all during the 3rd week of the month, almost as if the supervisor was expected to find something to criticize at a certain point each month. The “precipitating event” which led to her being fired is, no kidding, the accusation that she mixed leaking mayonnaise packets with good ones thereby ruining them.

I told the HR guy this is so bizarre that it reminds me of the Caine Mutiny. He didn’t know what that was.

I also told him my theory that the hospital is cutting expenses by getting rid of employees at the top of their pay scale (for Cathy’s job it was $13.78/hr.) and replacing them with folks who will work for half that. He said he’d be shocked and saddened to learn that was true. At the time, my daughter and I believed him to be telling the truth.

We left with assurances he would not challenge her right to collect unemployment compensation. He also said HR won’t give a prospective employer negative information about Cathy’s reason for leaving. They supposedly only give out the dates of employment. I say “supposedly” because I know someone who called pretending to be a prospective employer and asked about her son’s firing. She was given quite an earful about him. So “policy” is one thing but actuality may be another.

My daughter and I next visited the Career Center which is the arm of the state employment agency that helps people find jobs. We were very impressed with the layout of the offices (in an open circular pattern making it very inviting) and the staff who were extremely helpful. They have lots of resources and seem honestly concerned about the clients they help. The last stop in the process was with a career counselor. She told us there have been many, many former employees of Mercy Hospital coming in for help. In fact, there were 30 from one department all fired at the same time. The work was contracted out. I assume she means to a private contractor, but I don’t know for sure. She said she knew highly skilled IT workers who left because of the pressure and the depressing work environment.

I know for a fact that doctors are leaving the Mercy system too. Both of my husband’s heart doctors left and went with other hospitals in the St. Louis area. The plastic surgeon who removed a skin cancer from my husband’s ear described Mercy as a company that was “metastasizing” in its zeal to expand. Kind of an ironic comparison from someone who removes cancerous tissue.

But it’s not just the Mercy system. My daughter’s husband works in food service at a nursing home that is part of a chain of facilities owned by a large corporation. He makes $8.50 an hour and is expected to finish the work assigned to him in a certain amount of time despite the fact that no one could possibly do that. He is written up if he doesn’t take his breaks and written up if the work isn’t done. Needless to say, there is a big turnover in that place which can’t be good for the residents.

In Southwest Missouri, the Republicans win the majority of seats in the state legislature. It’s impossible to get those voters to understand the consequences of their decision to elect people who won’t expand Medicaid and who want to cut all social service programs. They listen to right wing radio and blame everything on “Obamacare.”

Bernie Sanders is right that corporate greed is destroying America. He is trying to start a revolution in the sense that people need to wake up and see what’s being done to them. I’m too old and cynical to think we can escape the clutches of the powerful moneyed interests.

My daughter is just one of the millions of Americans being hurt by insatiable greed. We watch the stock market for encouraging news, but who is watching out for the people with no voice? Thank goodness there are non-profit organizations trying to make life better for the people at the bottom of the income scale. They may be our only hope.

The post How corporate greed got my daughter fired appeared first on Occasional Planet.

At a recent conference of media and tech influencers, a member of the audience asked Elizabeth Warren a simple question. Her spontaneous and passionate answer was breathtaking. It’s always breathtaking to me when someone speaks the truth—that Washington DC, the White House, and Congress, primarily serve the rich and powerful.

Warren says, with great emotion, that we don’t have a functioning government and we don’t have a functioning democracy. She wants us to know that our so called “representatives,” with a very few exceptions, serve the rich and powerful, and that ordinary people have no influence in Washington. (This is not just her opinion. a recent Princeton study reached the same conclusion.) Warren, before becoming a United States senator, worked in the White House with Obama and later under Tim Geithner in Treasury. She took on Wall Street. She knows up close and personal how money and access to power corrupts elected officials. She has been a fierce critic of Obama’s trade deals, which would be windfalls for banks and corporations but devastating for working families. Warren says: The only way we get change is when enough people in this country say I’m mad as hell and I’m fed up and I’m not going to do this anymore.

Where do we start?

We can start by confronting both Hillary Clinton and Jeb Bush on their false and vague claims that, if elected, they will rebuild the middle class, reign in Wall Street, reduce defense spending, rebuild our infrastructure, provide better healthcare, increase funding for education and create jobs. They won’t and we let them know we aren’t buying their false promises. Instead, as Warren suggests, we push them to go on record advocating specific programs and ask how they plan to make them a reality. We ask them how they are going to serve the interests of donors and those of us who elect them when those interests are most often diametrically opposed.

Next, we support Bernie Sanders in the primary over Wall Street candidate Hillary Clinton, and demand that the media cover his campaign. We demand substantive televised debates on the issues.

No matter how “populist” Hillary Clinton sounds, no matter how many focus-group-tested cliches she repeats, or how many diners she frequents to convince you that she is “just like you,” she is not just like you. She is not going to represent you, or the needs of your friends and family members. She is going to represent the rich and powerful as she has as senator from New York, and as secretary of state. It’s a done deal. The rich and powerful are going to give her billions and she is going to serve their interests. If she has permission, and there is anything left over, she may do something for you.

Hillary and Bill have already profited, obscenely, from Wall Street kickbacks in the form of speaking fees, because they have served the elite very well. This is how the official bribery in Washington works. Yet starry eyed Democrats and misguided feminists identify with her, and “really like her.” They believe what she says, and think having a “woman in the White House” will usher in an era of “real change,” just like we believed electing an African-American would bring “change we can believe in.” Elizabeth Warren is pleading with us to look at what is starting us in the face. She is saying “your elected officials don’t represent you” and won’t represent you, and you need to know that and deal with it.

How do we deal with corruption in government?

First, we have to understand how it happens. We need to read progressive sources outside of mainstream media and educate ourselves on how the rich and powerful have highjacked our democracy. We have to understand the ways in which they buy government and elected officials. We have to understand the “shadow government” hidden from view, the military/intelligence complex, that serves corporate and banking interests domestically and world wide. We need to explore how the elite exert tremendous control over the media, and therefore control our domestic and foreign policy narratives,

Back on the campaign trail, I think it’s important to confront Hillary Clinton in town hall meetings, and in question and answer sessions, about her record as secretary of state in approving arms sales to various countries in exchange for donations to the Clinton Foundation. We can ask about the failure of the Clinton foundation programs in Haiti and the rampant corruption surrounding them, and we can ask her about making $250,000 a pop for half hour speeches at Wall Street banks and what she did to earn such lucrative fees?. We can ask about her warmongering and how she thinks reducing once prosperous Libya to rubble served you and me, and other ordinary Americans.

Rather than getting sucked in to the media-driven election charade where we are manipulated into cheerleading our party’s candidate and demonizing the other, all the while avoiding serious issues—it’s time to digest what an emotional and passionate Elizabeth Warren is telling us. It’s time for us to stop buying into these Wall Street pre-selected presidential “candidates,” and corporate-backed senators and congressmen, and demand the right to have real representation in Washington.

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On May 12, Joseph Stiglitz and the Roosevelt Institute published a new report titled “Rewriting the Rules of the American Economy: An Agenda for Growth and Shared Prosperity.” You can download the report and watch a two-hour presentation and panel discussion on it here.

Guest speakers at the report launch were Senator Elizabeth Warren and Mayor of New York city, Bill DeBlasio, along with a slew of really interesting panelists. I started watching the event over breakfast, thinking I would turn it off after I finished off my smoothie, but I kept watching—all two hours of it! Stiglitz offered one of the best explanations of what went wrong with the economy I have heard to date. And he offers a clear path for making it work for the majority of Americans.

Bernie Sanders entering the race for president and Joe Stiglitz launching this report on how to fix the economy are truly hopeful events. I’m talking real hope here, something I have not felt in a long time. There’s been no shortage of ideas on how to fix the economy—break up the big banks, raise the minimum wage, raise the cap on Social Security taxes, raise taxes on companies that offshore jobs. But this slingshot approach is inadequate to what is really a systemic and structural problem. Stiglitz offers a fresh look at the causes of our economic downturn, and puts forward a comprehensive list of solutions, all of which have to be addressed, if the economy is to work for everyone.

Stiglitz’s list of the causes of growing income inequality:

• More market power, less competition
• The growth of the financial sector
• The ‘shareholder revolution,’ the rise of CEO pay, and the squeezing of workers
• Lower taxes for the wealthy
• The end of full-employment monetary policy
• The stifling of worker voice
• The sinking floor of labor standards
• Racial discrimination

Stiglitz’s solutions for rebalancing the economy:

• Make markets competitive
• Fix the financial sector
• Incentivize long-term business growth
• Rebalance the tax and transfer system
• Make full employment the goal
• Empower workers
• Expand access to labor markets and opportunities for advancement
• Expand economic security and opportunity

The report, clearly written and easy to read, goes in-depth on each topic. It refutes the idea that there is a mysterious market force, or “invisible hand” or “natural” business cycle, or changes in the global economy that is causing unemployment and stagnant wages. The economy is in shambles, Stiglitz says, because, for the last thirty years, the rich and powerful have written the rules that govern the economy. Both Republicans and Democrats have participated in this orgy of “rule making for the rich,” which has resulted in the systematic destruction of the middle class, and the increasing impoverishment of the working poor.

Inequality has been a choice, he says, made by the few and foisted on the majority who were sold a bill of goods. It is within our power to reverse those rules. Here’s an excerpt from the report, my emphasis:

Rules are the regulatory and legal frameworks that make up the economy, like those affecting property ownership, corporate formation, labor law, copyright, antitrust, monetary, tax, and expenditure policy, and other economic structures. They also include the institutions that perpetuate discrimination, including structural discrimination—an entire system of rules, regulations, expenditure policies, and normative practices that exclude populations from the economy and economic opportunity. Unequal socio-economic outcomes for women and people of color are rooted in this kind of structural discrimination, in addition to other forms of bias. . . .

Our challenge, then, is to rewrite the rules to work for everyone. To do so, we must re-learn what we thought we knew about how modern economies work. We must also devise new policies to eliminate the distortions that pervade our financial sector, our corporate rules, our macroeconomic, monetary, tax, expenditure, and competition policies, our labor relations, and our political structures. It is important to engage all of these challenges simultaneously, since our economy is a system and these elements interact. This will not be easy; we must push to achieve these fundamental changes at a time when the American people have lost faith in their government’s ability to act in service of the common good.

The problems we face today are in large part the result of economic decisions we made—or failed to make—beginning in the late 1970s.

The changes occurring in our economy, politics, and society have been dramatic, and there is a corresponding sense of urgency in this report. We cannot afford to go forward with minor tweaks and hope that they do the trick. We know the answer: they will not, and the suffering that will occur in the meantime is unconscionable. And, as we explain, this is not just about the present, but the future. The policies of today are “baking in” the America of 2050: unless we change course, we will be a country with slower growth, ever more inequality, and ever less equality of opportunity. Inequality has been a choice, and it is within our power to reverse it.

The good news is that Stiglitz’s report is not just an intellectual exercise. Along with the Roosevelt Institute, he will be releasing a series of specific proposals to help rewrite the rules of the economy in favor of ordinary Americans. As the presidential campaign heats up, I have no doubt that Bernie will be onboard, but will Hillary or Jeb Bush? Joe Stiglitz is one of many official advisors to the Clinton campaign, but I’m not holding my breath that she will embrace the kind of changes he envisions.

We are entering an interesting time in history, when the majority of voters are aware that, despite cheery statements from the Obama administration to the contrary, there has been no economic recovery for ordinary Americans. Also, the majority of voters know that banks and corporations will be spending obscene amounts of money to elect Hilary Clinton, or the GOP candidate, who will continue to write rules that favor the elite.

The time is ripe for genuine progressive ideas to take hold because, for once, they have a chance to resonate with people across the political spectrum. Bernie Sanders and Joe Stiglitz, together, offer real solutions to an economy, and a country, gone off the rails.

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Since 2009, the Obama administration has been negotiating the Trans-Pacific Parnership (TPP) trade agreement in secret. Only lawyers and advisors representing banks and corporations, and trade representatives from other nations are allowed to participate. Until recently, senators and congressmen had been left in the dark. Under protest, Obama gave them very limited access to the document. He told them they are forbidden, under threat of government prosecution, from discussing the trade deal with the public.

Rep. Alan Grayson said “Having seen what I’ve seen, I would characterize this as a gross abrogation of American sovereignty. And I would further characterize it as a punch in the face to the middle class of America. I think that’s fair to say from what I’ve seen so far. But I’m not allowed to tell you why!”

Obama, trying his best to sell a pig in a poke, is pushing the TPP as promoting “free trade,” which he equates with creating more jobs and prosperity for the American people. He claims it will be “good for the middle class.” This. of course, is exactly what Bill Clinton said about NAFTA in 1993.

A report published by Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch in 2014 reviews the promises and failures of NAFTA:

Like the TPP, NAFTA was sold to the U.S. public in 1993 with grand promises. The deal would create hundreds of thousands of good jobs here–170,000 jobs within the pact’s first two years, according the Peterson Institute for International Economics. U.S. farmers would export their way to wealth. NAFTA would bring Mexico to a first-world level of economic prosperity and stability, providing new economic opportunities that would reduce immigration to the United States. Environmental standards would improve.

Twenty years later, the grand projections and promises made by NAFTA’s proponents remain unfulfilled.

The report details how destructive NAFTA has been for the citizens of the United States and Mexico:

The data show that NAFTA proponents’ projections of broad economic benefits from the deal have failed to materialize. Instead, millions have suffered job loss, wage stagnation, and economic instability from NAFTA. Scores of environmental, health and other public interest policies have been challenged. Consumer safeguards, including key food safety protections, have been rolled back. And NAFTA supporters’ warnings about the chaos that would engulf Mexico, and a new wave of migration from Mexico, if NAFTA was not implemented have indeed come to pass, but ironically because of the devastation of many Mexicans’ livelihoods occurring, in part, because NAFTA was implemented.

What exactly is “free trade?”

Independent political writer, “Gaius Publius,” explains the meaning of the term “free trade” in the context of the TPP.

[I]n essence “free trade” means one thing to most of us and another thing to people with money. For us, “free trade” is about exchange of goods. Not for those with almost all the money in the world. For them, “free trade” is and always has been this:

“Free trade” means “unrestricted capital flow.” It’s the right of money to flow anywhere it wants, seeking any profit it can, unrestricted by any government, and then flow back out again on a whim.

Before FDR, this is what “liberalism” meant; it’s why people like the infamous free-market economist Friedrich Hayek are considered “classic liberal economists.” FDR so changed the definition of “liberal,” in fact—by allowing a place for government in the management of the economy—that it led people like Hayek to object that the name had been misappropriated:

In 1977, Hayek was critical of the Lib-Lab pact, in which the British Liberal Party agreed to keep the British Labour government in office. Writing to The Times, Hayek said, “May one who has devoted a large part of his life to the study of the history and the principles of liberalism point out that a party that keeps a socialist government in power has lost all title to the name ‘Liberal’. Certainly no liberal can in future vote ‘Liberal'”.

This “free market” stuff has been with us for centuries in the West, and it’s always about capital and the rights of capital to be free of government. Guess who that benefits? If you said “capitalists and the politicians who serve them,” you’d be right. You can’t have a predatory Industrial Revolution without that kind of “philosophy” in place as a cover story.

Needless to say, the cover story is still in place. Welcome to the world of TPP.

The TPP “free trade” deal, up close and personal

Besides losing your job to someone in one of the TPP countries, there are other ways the TPP could directly impact your life. For example, the TPP will free banks and corporations from the constraints of government laws and regulations—both here and in other signatory countries—by setting up a corporate-run legal tribunal that would supersede all government jurisprudence. What exactly does that mean?

Lambert Strether, writing at Naked Capitalism, gives us examples of how this form of absolute rule by corporations enshrined in the TPP could play out in your state or your neighborhood.

So, if you were a corporate lawyer, sitting in judgement on a TPP tribunal, totting up the damages some hapless government had wreaked against a corporation by, oh, providing its citizens with single payer health care, or preventing an oil company from poisoning their groundwater through “excessive regulation,”—or halting development to protect a historic site under local zoning ordinances, or halting the East-West Corridor to protect the Penobscot—what would you consider “distinct, reasonable, investment-backed expectations”? I’d guess it would be the Net Present Value (capitalization) calculations done by the wounded corporation itself, eh? Like on an Excel spreadsheet. What could be more credible? Or more just?

In other words, TPP elevates capitalization—the expectation of profit—as a principle to the level of, say, the Bill of Rights, or the Declaration of the Rights of Man. And then, government, when it provides concrete material benefits to its citizens, must “compensate” capitalists whenever their calculated, immaterial expectations—capitalization—have been “expropriated.” What a racket! TPP is the biggest enclosure in the history of the world!

“Arbitrary control”—absolutism—in service of capital as a global change in the constitutional order, and all done in secret. What could go wrong?

It’s no wonder Obama wants to keep this deal secret from the American people. It is written by and for corporations, it undermines national sovereignty and nullifies your voice as a citizen.

Elizabeth Warren, who has been highly critical of Obama negotiating the TPP in secret, had this to say on her blog:

Have you seen what’s in the new TPP trade deal?

Most likely, you haven’t – and don’t bother trying to Google it. The government doesn’t want you to read this massive new trade agreement. It’s top secret.

Why? Here’s the real answer people have given me: “We can’t make this deal public because if the American people saw what was in it, they would be opposed to it.”

If the American people would be opposed to a trade agreement if they saw it, then that agreement should not become the law of the United States.

Well said, Senator Warren! And shame on you President Obama.

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My Obamaphile friends may object, but it’s time to consider an uncomfortable fact about Obama: His indifference to the plight of labor unions in Wisconsin led to the rise of Scott Walker as a possible presidential candidate. According to Andrew Levine, the liberal Obamaphile view of Obama goes something like this:

From the moment that it became clear that his presidency would be rife with “disappointments” and sparing in achievements, Democrats have maintained that he means well and would be a force for good—were it not for pesky Republicans thwarting his every move.

Obamaphiles believe Obama is a progressive and therefore assume he is pro labor. When confronted with a fact that is incongruent with this view, their impulse is to a) not believe it, or b) imagine there are mitigating factors that “we simply can’t know,” or c) insist he can’t do (fill in the blank) because Republicans will attack him and/or use it against him.

Because the Obamaphile tendency is to always give him a pass on his record, they deprive themselves of the opportunity to develop a clear understanding how government and politics currently function. If we are to ever rebuild our democracy—and I’m not sure at this point we can—we have to take a clear-eyed look at the corrupting effect of money in government, especially at the presidential level. One way to do that is to compare a president’s rhetoric to his actual record.

Some uncomfortable facts

The elite, who pay massive sums to support candidates from both parties, are deeply hostile to labor unions. Case in point: Penny Pritzker, billionaire Obama bundler and recent cabinet appointee, has a strong anti-labor record, both at the Chicago public schools where she served on the school board, and at her family’s Hyatt hotel chain. Although Obama’s campaign rhetoric and statements while in office have been pro-labor, his record shows that he has served the interests of the anti-union elite—donors who will remain important to him after he leaves office.

In rousing campaign speeches Obama has vowed to walk picket lines in solidarity with workers, but Andrew Levine gives us a revealing account of Obama’s indifference to labor struggles (my emphasis in bold).

Like other Democrats in recent decades, Obama offers verbal support to organized labor around election time, while practicing malign neglect all the time. . . .

The state Democratic Party in Wisconsin did try to send Governor Scott Walker—the first of the pack to go after public sector unions—on his way. Obama did nothing to help them.

He must have thought that his time would be better spent chatting up wealthy donors than campaigning against a union buster.

This, anyway, is what he did in the days before the 2012 recall election that Walker won. When he could have been campaigning in African American neighborhoods in Milwaukee and Racine, where he might have done some good by getting potential Democratic voters to the polls, he chose instead to hobnob with the rich and heinous at fundraisers – for his own 2014 campaign — in Minnesota and Illinois.

Then, the night before the election, he sent out a tweet in support of the recall movement. Yippee!

Scott Walker emboldened by Obama’s indifference to union struggles

Emboldened by winning his recall election, and his success in destroying public sector unions, Walker went after all labor unions. The result? Once blue Wisconsin is now a “right to work” state. Liberals blame ALEC and the Koch brothers but Obama’s complete lack of support of Wisconsin union workers is equally, if not more to blame.

After the horse was out of the barn, and the bill was signed, Obama made this statement:

As its governor claims victory over working Americans, I’d encourage him to try and score a victory for working Americans — by taking meaningful action to raise their wages and offer them the security of paid leave,” Obama said, without mentioning Walker by name.

That’s how you give hardworking middle-class families a fair shot in the new economy — not by stripping their rights in the workplace, but by offering them all the tools they need to get ahead.

The fact that Obama was absent when he was needed belies his progressive-sounding rhetoric. A complacent, stenographic media fails the public by not asking why he didn’t show up in support of union workers in Wisconsin.

Obama supports union bashing corporate Dem Rahm Emanual

Levine goes on to contrast Obama’s indifference towards struggling pro-labor Democrats in Wisconsin with his lavish support for pro-corporate candidate for mayor of Chicago, Rahm Emanual, also known by local progressive opponents as “Mayor One Percent.”

Here’s a list of Rham Emanual’s accomplishments in his first term as mayor.

• He closed more than 50 public neighborhood schools, primarily in African American and Latino neighborhoods.
• He closed half of Chicago’s public mental health clinics, leaving many of the poorest and most in need without access to quality, affordable care.
• He attacked unions, including cutting pension benefits while using tax dollars for corporate subsidies.
• He refused to hire more police officers to combat the city’s crime problem, citing budgetary constraints.
• He broke his promise of openness, fighting efforts at increased transparency, ignoring community input, and micro-managing the press.

Although he couldn’t be bothered with Wisconsin labor struggles, Obama recently flew to Chicago, campaigned for Rahm, and even produced a radio ad for him. Even though Rahm had Obama’s backing and truckloads of “one percent” money, he failed to get 50% of the vote and will have to win a run-off election this April against progressive Jesus Garcia, whom the Chicago teacher’s union has endorsed. Levine continues:

Cronyism is not the only reason why Obama was there for Emanuel but AWOL in the struggle against Walker. Obama will sometimes support Democrats who run against genuine progressives. But when a Democrat runs against a rightwing miscreant, he can’t be bothered.

Indeed, he seems to relish sticking it to all of his core constituencies—organized labor most of all. Unions do yeoman service for the Democratic Party at election time. Even Scott Walker can figure out that the weaker unions are, the less service they are able to perform. But Obama doesn’t care. . . .

Walker could have been crushed in 2012. Because he wasn’t, Democrats may have to deal with him again before long. The man is a flyweight even by Republican standards, but, partly thanks to Obama’s indifference, he is now a serious contender for winning the GOP’s nomination in 2016.

If by some unlikely but not impossible course of events, Walker or someone similarly god-awful actually becomes America’s next President, Obama will have much to answer for.

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In case you haven’t noticed, U.S. mainstream media has been spewing out anti-Russian, anti-Putin propaganda since the U.S. backed coup in Kiev last year. If you believe the lies on TV and in the New York Times, an emboldened Putin is planning to take over the world, one country at a time. First, they report breathlessly, he is determined to take over Ukraine, then he’s after the former Soviet nations, and then, who knows? Scary isn’t it? Obviously, Russia wants to take over the world. Oh, wait a minute. . . that’s what the United States is trying to do.

If the rebels in the Eastern Provinces really are Russian soldiers, (rather than Russian-speaking Ukrainian citizens who refuse to accept the corrupt, U.S. stooge government in Kiev) you would think the Ukrainians in the West would eagerly join the army to fight Putin’s soldiers invading from the East. But they know better. They are refusing to be drafted to fight and kill their fellow Ukrainians in a war that they know is being run by the corrupt, U.S. backed government in Kiev. The photo is of Ukrainian soldiers surrendering to the rebels in Eastern Ukraine

On February 10, the Guardian reported that Ukrainian journalist:

Ruslan Kotsaba posted a video addressed to the Ukrainian president, Petro Poroshenko, last week in which he said he would rather go to prison for five years for draft-dodging than fight pro-Russia rebels in the country’s east. Now he faces 15 years in jail after being arrested for treason and obstructing the military.

Justin Raimondo, reports at Antiwar.com about the growing anti-war movement in Ukraine:

Draft resistance is at an all-time high: a mere 6 percent of those called up [to fight the rebels in the eastern provinces] have reported voluntarily. This has forced the Kiev authorities to go knocking on doors—where they are met either with a mass of angry villagers, who refuse to let them take anyone, or else ghost towns where virtually everyone has fled. In the Transcarpathia region of western Ukraine, entire villages have been emptied, the inhabitants fleeing to Russia to wait out the war—or the fall of the Kiev regime, whichever comes first. “It may seem a paradox,” says Transcarpathia’s chief recruitment officer, “but from the western Ukrainian region of Ternopyl people have fled to Russia in order to escape army conscription.” The frantic [U.S backed] Ukrainian regime is now contemplating conscripting women over 20.

Poroshenko’s military mobilization is due not only to numerous setbacks in the east – Ukrainian troops are being pushed back on all fronts by highly motivated rebels defending their own towns and villages – but also because thousands are deserting, throwing down their arms and fleeing to Russia. In response, the Ukrainian parliament has passed a law authorizing local commanders to shoot deserters on the spot.

Raimondo continues:

With [Ukrainian president] Poroshenko’s war looking like a major disaster, one that could easily topple his EU/US-installed regime, the War Party in the US is turning up the heat, demanding that Washington provide Kiev with arms. Sen. John McCain is – naturally – leading the charge, but prominent liberals are also in the front ranks, with leading scholars of the Brookings Institution recently calling for heavy weapons to be sent. That provoked a response from a dissident within Brookings, former State Department official Jeremy Shapiro, who argues that the Ukrainian conflict is a civil war that cannot have a military solution, and is more than likely to provoke a dangerous military confrontation with Russia.

Ya think? Raimondo nails it:

All this [fomenting a coup and a civil war in Ukraine] was done in the name of sticking a finger in Vladimir Putin’s eye, whose great sin has been kicking out thieving oligarchs and opposing US pretensions to global hegemony. Washington’s ultimate goal is regime-change in the Kremlin, and the reinstallation of a Yeltsin-like sock puppet who, when Washington says “Jump!” will answer: “How high?”

The truth about the United States is this: anyone who challenges U.S. global economic and/or military hegemony will be taken out. The standard playbook includes the demonization, in the media, of whatever leader is in the U.S.’s crosshairs in order to justify an illegitimate war against the country in question for the economic gain of banks and corporations. And so, in corporate-owned media, Putin is mocked and vilified by “journalists” who regurgitate the false narratives fed to them by the White House, State Department, intelligence community and military. This, of course, is to legitimize regime-change in the eyes of U.S. citizens as well as the obscene sums our Wall Street/ corporate-backed government spends on war.

That they’re [President Obama and the military/industrial/intelligence complex] willing to risk World War III in order to achieve their goal underscores the sheer craziness of US foreign policy. The latest official US “National Security Strategy” puts the new cold war at the center of Washington’s military-diplomatic vision—an emphasis so monstrously misplaced that it’s hard to believe they’re serious.

Yet you had better believe it: this is what we can expect from a future Democratic administration, if one should come to pass, with Hillary Clinton taking her husband’s Slavophobia—remember the Kosovo war?— to new heights of unreason.

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The fossil-fuel industry is reaping the rewards of its three-quarters of a billion dollar investment to secure a Republican controlled congress. But they weren’t just buying Republicans—in a spirit of bi-partisanship, they bought 37 Democrats.

On January 9, 28 House Democrats voted with 238 Republicans to authorize construction of the controversial Keystone XL oil-sands pipeline. On January 20, nine Democratic senators voted with 53 Republicans to approve Keystone XL:

1. Michael Bennett, Colo.
2. Thomas Carper, Del.
3. Robert Casey, Pa.
4. Joe Donnelly, Ind.
5. Heidi Heitkamp, N.D.
6. Joe Manchin, W. Va.
7. Claire McCaskill, Mo.
8. Jon Tester, Mont.
9. Mark Warner, Va.

A list of the 28 House Democrats who voted for Keystone can be found here.

Corporate money and the Keystone vote

Think Progress reports that Senators voting in favor of the recent Keystone XL bill have received a combined $31 million over their careers from the oil and gas industry, compared to under $2.7 million in career contributions for the Senators who voted against the bill.

In other words, Republican and Democratic senators voting for Keystone XL have received seven times more oil and gas industry money than the 36 Senators who voted against it. Republican and Democratic Representatives who voted in favor of Keystone XL received 8.5 times more oil and gas industry money in the 2014 election cycle, on average, than those voting against the bill.

Because the Keystone pipeline will cause a significant increase in greenhouse gas emissions, and will threaten the land it crosses with toxic spills, scientists and environmentalists have pronounced it too dangerous to build. Yet 37 Democrats, who claim to represent interests of the people, voted for it.

The motivations of Democrats to vote for Keystone XL, I’m sure, are complicated and varied. But the money connection is there.

Democratic betrayal more damaging than Republican

Republicans have always been the party of banks and corporations. We don’t expect them to be interested in the welfare of ordinary people or in promoting democracy. Their blatant efforts to suppress the vote are well-known. Traditionally, Democrats have been the party of the people. We expect them to be interested in our welfare and in promoting democracy. So when Democrats campaign as progressives, then join Republicans in serving the interests of banks and corporations, when they vote “yes” for the Keystone pipeline in return for donations or favors from the fossil-fuel industry, when they mindlessly accept the false narratives generated by corporations to sway the public, they deliver a huge blow to democracy. When Democrats become corporate Democrats, we have no one left in Washington DC to represent us.

The EPA and Obama’s veto

Obama, a long-time friend of the fossil-fuel industry, has enthusiastically promoted “clean coal,” fracking, and offshore drilling. However, he has decided to veto Keystone X—if it is found to adversely affect climate change. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), by directly contradicting the bogus pro-Keystone studies generated by the State Department, has given him cover to do so.

On February 2, the EPA issued a letter on the proposed Keystone XL Pipeline, in which it advised that, “development of oil sands crude represents a significant increase in greenhouse gas emissions.”

The EPA found that greenhouse has emissions from the extraction, transport, refining and use of the 830,000 barrels per day of oils sands crude would result in an additional 1.3 to 27.4 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalents per year. To put that in perspective, 27.4 million metric tons per year is equivalent to the annual greenhouse gas emissions form 5.7 million passenger vehicles or 7.8 coal-fired power plants.

If Obama vetoes the Keystone Pipeline bill, it is unlikely there will be enough votes in congress to override his veto. No thanks to Senator McCaskill, and other DINOs, we will have dodged a bullet. But, Sen. John Hoeven, [R-ND], sponsor of the Keystone bill, stated that if Obama vetoes it and there aren’t enough votes to override, Republicans could attach approval for the Keystone to other legislation. Unfortunately, this story is not over.

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