ianbreen

[ianbreen]

The most fucked up thing about economic imperialism is that governments will literally kill their own citizens using a military if they protest working conditions because they work with a wealthy company. Companies encourage that. They’ll allow workers to be punished for trying to form a union.

Capitalism is horrific and I hope those people die in my lifetime. I hope capitalism dies in my lifetime too but I doubt it will happen.

[ianbreen]

Why Wages Are Going Nowhere

The official rate of unemployment in America has plunged to a remarkably low 3.8%. The Federal Reserve forecasts that the unemployment rate will reach 3.5% by the end of the year.

But the official rate hides more troubling realities: legions of college grads overqualified for their jobs, a growing number of contract workers with no job security, and an army of part-time workers desperate for full-time jobs. Almost 80% of Americans say they live from paycheck to paycheck, many not knowing how big their next one will be.

Blanketing all of this are stagnant wages and vanishing job benefits. The typical American worker now earns around $44,500 a year, not much more than what the typical worker earned in 40 years ago, adjusted for inflation. Although the US economy continues to grow, most of the gains have been going to a relatively few top executives of large companies, financiers, and inventors and owners of digital devices.

America doesn’t have a jobs crisis. It has a good jobs crisis.

When Republicans delivered their $1.5tn tax cut last December they predicted a big wage boost for American workers. Forget it. Wages actually dropped in the second quarter of this year.

Not even the current low rate of unemployment is forcing employers to raise wages. Contrast this with the late 1990s, the last time unemployment dipped close to where it is today, when the portion of national income going into wages was 3% points higher than it is today.

What’s going on? Simply put, the vast majority of American workers have lost just about all their bargaining power. The erosion of that bargaining power is one of the biggest economic stories of the past four decades, yet it’s less about supply and demand than about institutions and politics.

Two fundamental forces have changed the structure of the US economy, directly altering the balance of power between business and labor. The first is the increasing difficulty for workers of joining together in trade unions. The second is the growing ease by which corporations can join together in oligopolies or to form monopolies.

What happened to unions

By the mid-1950s more than a third of all private-sector workers in the United States were unionized. In subsequent decades public employees became organized, too. Employers were required by law not just to permit unions but to negotiate in good faith with them. This gave workers significant power to demand better wages, hours, benefits, and working conditions. (Agreements in unionized industries set the benchmarks for the non-unionized).

Yet starting in the 1980s and with increasing ferocity since then, private-sector employers have fought against unions. Ronald Reagan’s decision to fire the nation’s air-traffic controllers, who went on an illegal strike, signaled to private-sector employers that fighting unions was legitimate. A wave of hostile takeovers pushed employers to do whatever was necessary to maximize shareholder returns. Together, they ushered in an era of union-busting.

Employers have been firing workers who attempt to organize, threatening to relocate to more “business friendly” states if companies unionize, mounting campaigns against union votes, and summoning replacement workers when unionized workers strike. Employer groups have lobbied states to enact more so-called “right-to-work” laws that bar unions from requiring dues from workers they represent. A recent Supreme Court opinion delivered by the court’s five Republican appointees has extended the principle of “right-to-work” to public employees.

Today, fewer than 7% of private-sector workers are unionized, and public-employee unions are in grave jeopardy, not least because of the Supreme Court ruling. The declining share of total US income going to the middle since the late 1960s – defined as 50% above and 50% below the median – correlates directly with that decline in unionization. (See chart below).

Perhaps even more significantly, the share of total income going to the richest 10 percent of Americans over the last century is almost exactly inversely related to the share of the nation’s workers who are unionized. (See chart below). When it comes to dividing up the pie, most American workers today have little or no say. The pie is growing but they’re getting only the crumbs.

What happened to antitrust

Over the same period time, antitrust enforcement has gone into remission. The US government has essentially given a green light to companies seeking to gain monopoly power over digital platforms and networks (Google, Apple, Amazon, Facebook); wanting to merge into giant oligopolies (pharmaceuticals, health insurers, airlines, seed producers, food processors, military contractors, Wall Street banks, internet service providers); or intent on creating local monopolies (food distributors, waste disposal companies, hospitals).

This means workers are spending more on such goods and services than they would were these markets more competitive. It’s exactly as if their paychecks were cut. Concentrated economic power has also given corporations more ability to hold down wages, because workers have less choice of whom to work for. And it has let companies impose on workers provisions that further weaken their bargaining power, such as anti-poaching and mandatory arbitration agreements.

This great shift in bargaining power, from workers to corporations, has pushed a larger portion of national income into profits and a lower portion into wages than at any time since the second world war. In recent years, most of those profits have gone into higher executive pay and higher share prices rather than into new investment or worker pay. Add to this the fact that the richest 10% of Americans own about 80% of all shares of stock (the top 1% owns about 40%), and you get a broader picture of how and why inequality has widened so dramatically.

What happened to politics

Another consequence: corporations and wealthy individuals have had more money to pour into political campaigns and lobbying, while labor unions have had far less. In 1978, for example, congressional campaign contributions by labor Political Action Committees were on par with corporate PAC contributions. But since 1980, corporate PAC giving has grown at a much faster clip, and today the gulf is huge.

It is no coincidence that all three branches of the federal government, as well as most state governments, have become more “business-friendly” and less “worker-friendly” than at any time since the 1920s. As I’ve noted, Congress recently slashed the corporate tax rate from 35% to 21%. 

Meanwhile, John Roberts’ supreme court has more often sided with business interests in cases involving labor, the environment, or consumers than has any Supreme Court since the mid-1930s. Over the past year it not only ruled against public employee unions but also decided that workers cannot join together in class action suits when their employment contract calls for mandatory arbitration. 

The federal minimum wage has not been increased since 2009, and is now about where it was in 1950 when adjusted for inflation. Trump’s labor department is busily repealing many rules and regulations designed to protect workers.

The combination of high corporate profits and growing corporate political power has created a vicious cycle: higher profits have generated more political influence, which has altered the rules of the game through legislative, congressional, and judicial action – enabling corporations to extract even more profit. The biggest losers, from whom most profits have been extracted, have been average workers.

America’s shift from farm to factory was accompanied by decades of bloody labor conflict.The shift from factory to office and other sedentary jobs created other social upheaval.

The more recent shift in bargaining power from workers to large corporations – and consequentially, the dramatic widening of inequalities of income, wealth, and political power – has had a more unfortunate and, I fear, more lasting consequence: an angry working class vulnerable to demagogues peddling authoritarianism, racism, and xenophobia.

[This article originally appeared in the July 29, 2018 edition of The Guardian, under the title “Almost 80 Percent of Americans Live From Paycheck to Paycheck. Here’s Why.”]

[ianbreen]

The fact that billionaires exist is an extremely important example of the inherent hierarchal structure of capitalism. You can’t genuinely believe that ONE person can work 600x harder than their employees, it’s physically impossible, yet we see it as normal. They aren’t working 600x harder, they’ve simply been exploiting people to get on top, and using the state as a tool to keep their position and crush any opposition.

When unions and protests are frowned upon, it’s no wonder that workers don’t get their fair share. People all around the world fight back. They’re just killed or thrown in jail. The struggle is there, we’ve just been brainwashed to think it’s wrong.

The idea that the state and ruling class shouldn’t be coercively dictating people’s everyday lives to fit their interests isn’t nearly as radical as you’ve been told it is.

[ianbreen]

White men make up approximately 36% of the population, but commit 75% of mass shootings. What would be called terrorism by any other skin tone is suddenly some mysterious unnamed disease. We as a society are perfectly happy to further stigmatize mentally ill people, who are far more likely to be victims of violence than commit violence, in the service of protecting white supremacy and male entitlement.

The “Mental Illness” We Refuse To Name: White Male Entitlement (via sowithathousandsweetkisses)

[ianbreen]

Please read if you’re voting in the California Primary

If you’re registered to vote in California for the Democratic primary please check your voter status here

Many people are starting to discover that they’ve registered with the American Independent Party (AIP) instead of an actual independent on their voter registartion. The AIP is the third largest party in California, but instead of being a standard independent status for voting purposes, the party is affiliated with right-wing politics and isn’t an actual independent status.

But most importantly, if you’re registered as an AIP affiliate, you cannot vote in the California primary on June 7th

Most people have registered with the party in error, as many as 500,000 people could be excluded from the Democratic Primary, so please check your voter status if you registered as an independent

You only have until May 23rd to fix this error

Don’t let this be another New York scandal, check the status of your voter registration before it’s too late

[ianbreen]

What is the White House doing to address sexual assault when LGBTQ people are involved (as perpetrators and/or victims)?

We are doing everything we can in our policy and in our language to include LGBTQ people as a part of the conversation. We know from the DOJ BJS Campus Climate Validation Survey released in January that lesbian, bisexual, and transgender women (and especially bisexual and transgender women) are at highest risk of sexual assault victimization prior to and while in college.  The study found that approximately 28% of transgender women students and 35% of bisexual women students experience sexual assault in college. The Vice President spoke to these tragic realities in his remarks earlier this month, at the University of Pittsburg, UNLV, and CU Boulder during the It’s On Us Week of Action. We are working with student and advocacy organizations to identify prevention and response programs that address the lesbian, bisexual, and transgender population. —The It’s On Us Team

[ianbreen]

It’s absurd that the parties are upset about who is winning their primaries.

We have an electoral system that ensures a two-party system, but yet the two candidates all voters get to choose from in November are chosen in the primaries by only the 58% of voters who are registered with either parties (assuming even they get to choose)?

The system is undeniably undemocratic but seemingly enough to placate the public otherwise.

[ianbreen]

There are over 1 million registered Independent voters who were not able to vote today in New York because it is a closed primary. 

Independents overwhelmingly favor Bernie Sanders.

[ianbreen]

I don’t go around telling people, ‘Vote for me; I’m gonna solve all your problems.’ Never said that. I say, ‘Vote for me, and together, when millions of us stand up, we can make real change in this country.

Bernie Sanders (via iwriteaboutfeminism)

[ianbreen]

It’s important to not over-celebrate Nike for its decision -as its decision was surely part PR stunt and there are plenty of issues still with Nike as a company- but the public display of support for LGBT communities by prominent brands and organizations helps show LGBT communities that they have allies and those willing to stand up for them in public.  That makes a difference all things considered and helps move social acceptance forward!

[ianbreen]

North Carolina’s primary is less than a month away, but the key swing state may be forced to postpone. A federal court ruling last week declared the state’s voting maps unconstitutional thanks to racial gerrymandering, and ordered them to be redrawn. Unless the Supreme Court intervenes, state lawmakers will have to scramble to create new maps that don’t pack African American voters into small, oddly shaped districts that make the surrounding districts whiter and easier for Republicans to win.

[ianbreen]

The Most Pragmatic Way to Fix American Democracy

he Democratic contest has repeatedly been characterized as a choice between Hillary Clinton’s “pragmatism” and Bernie Sanders’s “idealism” – with the not-so-subtle message that realists choose pragmatism over idealism.

But this way of framing the choice ignores the biggest reality of all: the unprecedented, and increasing, concentration of income, wealth and power at the very top, combined with declining real incomes for most and persistent poverty for the bottom fifth.

The real choice isn’t “pragmatism” or “idealism.” It’s either allowing these trends to worsen, or reversing them. Inequality has reached levels last seen in the era of the “robber barons” in the 1890s. The only truly pragmatic way of reversing this state of affairs is through a “political revolution” that mobilizes millions of Americans.

Is such a mobilization possible? One pundit recently warned Democrats that change happens incrementally, by accepting half loaves as being better than none. That may be true, but the full loaf has to be large and bold enough in the first place to make the half loaf meaningful. And not even a half loaf is possible unless or until America wrests back power from the executives of large corporations, Wall Street bankers and billionaires who now control the bakery.

I’ve been in and around Washington for almost 50 years, including a stint in the cabinet, and I’ve learned that real change happens only when a substantial share of the American public is mobilized, organized, energized and determined to make it happen. That’s more the case now than ever.

The other day Bill Clinton attacked Sanders’s proposal for a single-payer health plan as unfeasible and a “recipe for gridlock.” But these days, nothing of any significance is politically feasible and every bold idea is a recipe for gridlock. This election is about changing the parameters of what’s feasible and ending the choke hold of big money on our political system. In other words, it’s about power – whether the very wealthy who now have it will keep it, or whether average Americans will get some as well.

How badly is political power concentrated in America among the very wealthy? A study published in the fall of 2014 by two of America’s most respected political scientists, Princeton professor Martin Gilens and Northwestern’s Benjamin Page, suggests it’s extremely concentrated.

Gilens and Page undertook a detailed analysis of 1,799 policy issues, seeking to determine the relative influence on them of economic elites, business groups, mass-based interest groups and average citizens. Their conclusion was dramatic: “The preferences of the average American appear to have only a minuscule, near-zero, statistically nonsignificant impact upon public policy.” Instead, Gilens and Page found that lawmakers respond almost exclusively to the moneyed interests – those with the most lobbying prowess and deepest pockets to bankroll campaigns.

I find it particularly sobering that Gilens and Page’s data came from the period 1981 to 2002. That was before the Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United opinion, which opened the floodgates to big money in politics, and before the explosion of Super Pacs and secretive “dark money” whose sources do not have to be disclosed by campaigns. It stands to reason that if average Americans had a “near-zero” impact on public policy then, the influence of average Americans is now zero.

Most Americans don’t need a detailed empirical study to convince them of this. They feel disenfranchised, and angry toward a political-economic system that seems rigged against them. This was confirmed for me a few months ago when I was on book tour in America’s heartland, and kept hearing from people who said they were trying to make up their minds in the upcoming election between supporting Bernie Sanders or Donald Trump.

At first I was incredulous. After all, Sanders and Trump are at opposite ends of the political spectrum. It was only after several discussions that I began to understand the connection. Most of these people said they were incensed by “crony capitalism,” by which they meant political payoffs by big corporations and Wall Street banks that result in special favors such as the Wall Street bailout of 2008.

They wanted to close tax loopholes for the rich, such as the special “carried interest” tax break for hedge-fund and private-equity partners. They wanted to reduce the market power of pharmaceutical companies and big health insurers, which they thought resulted in exorbitant prices. They were angry about trade treaties that they characterized as selling-out American workers while rewarding corporate executives and big investors.

Somewhere in all this I came to see what’s fueling the passions of voters in the 2016 election. If you happen to be one of the tens of millions of Americans who are working harder than ever but getting nowhere, and you feel the system is rigged against you and in favor of the rich and powerful, you will go in one of two directions.

Either you will be attracted to an authoritarian bigot who promises to make America great again by keeping out people different from you and recreating high-paying jobs in America. Someone who sounds like he won’t let anything or anybody stand in his way, and who’s so rich he can’t be bought off.

Or you’ll be attracted to a political activist who tells it like it is, who has lived by his convictions for 50 years, who won’t take a dime of money from big corporations or Wall Street or the very rich, and who is leading a grass-roots “political revolution” to regain control over our democracy and economy. In other words, you will be enticed either by a would-be dictator who promises to bring power back to the people, or by a movement leader who asks you to join together with others to bring power back to the people.

Of the two, I would prefer the latter. But what about the “pragmatic” Hillary Clinton? I have worked closely with her and have nothing but respect for her. In my view, she’s clearly the most qualified candidate for president of the political system we now have.

But the political system we now have is profoundly broken. Bernie Sanders is the most qualified candidate to create the political system we should have because he’s leading a political movement for change.

[ianbreen]

The beginning is so on-point

Having failed to defeat the Affordable Care Act in Congress, to beat it back in the last election, to repeal it despite more than eighty votes in the House, to stop it in the federal courts, to get enough votes in the Supreme Court to overrule it, and to gut it with outright extortion (closing the...

[ianbreen]

Granted, this sorta seems like old news

The National Security Agency secretly tapped into the overseas phone calls of prominent critics of the Vietnam War, including Martin Luther King, Muhammad Ali and two actively serving US senators, newly declassified material has revealed.

The NSA has been forced to disclose previously secret passages in its own official four-volume history of its Cold War snooping activities. The newly-released material reveals the breathtaking – and probably illegal – lengths the agency went to in the late 1960s and 70s, in an attempt to try to hold back the rising tide of anti-Vietnam war sentiment.

That included tapping into the phone calls and cable communications of two serving senators – the Idaho Democrat Frank Church and Howard Baker, a Republican from Tennessee who, puzzlingly, was a firm supporter of the war effort in Vietnam. The NSA also intercepted the foreign communications of prominent journalists such as Tom Wicker of the New York Times and the popular satirical writer for the Washington Post, Art Buchwald.

Alongside King, a second leading civil rights figure, Whitney Young of the National Urban League, was also surreptitiously monitored. The heavyweight boxing champion, Muhammad Ali, was put on the watch list in about 1967 after he spoke out about Vietnam – he was jailed having refused to be drafted into the army, was stripped of his title, and banned from fighting – and is thought to have remained a target of surveillancefor the next six years.

The agency went to great lengths to keep its activities, known as operation Minaret, from public view. All reports generated for Minaret were printed on plain paper unadorned with the NSA logo or other identifying markings other than the stamp “For Background Use Only”. They were delivered by hand directly to the White House, often going specifically to successive presidents Lyndon Johnson who set the programme up in 1967 and Richard Nixon.

The lack of judicial oversight of the snooping programme led even the NSA’s own history to conclude that Minaret was “disreputable if not outright illegal”.

The new disclosures were prized from the current NSA following an appeal to the Security Classification Appeals Panel by the National Security Archive, an independent research institute based at the George Washington university. “Clearly the NSA didn’t want to release this material but they were forced to do so by the American equivalent of the supreme court of freedom of information law,” said Matthew Aid, an intelligence historian specialising in the NSA.

Together with William Burr of the National Security Archive, Aid has co-authored an article in Foreign Policy that explores the significance of the new disclosures. In addition to the seven names of spying targets listed in the NSA history, the two authors confirmed the names of other targets on the watch list from a declassified document at the Gerald Ford presidential library in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

They include the actor Jane Fonda, Weather Underground member Kathy Boudin and black power activist Stokely Carmichael. In total, some 1,650 individuals were tracked by the NSA between 1967 and 1973, though the identities of most of those people remain unknown.

Aid told the Guardian that, in his view, the new material underscores the dangers of unfettered surveillance. Minaret was initially intended for drug traffickers and terrorist suspects, but was twisted, at the request of the White House, to become a tool for tracking legitimate political activities of war protesters.

"If there’s a lesson to be learned from all this, when we are dealing with a non-transparent society such as the intelligence community that has a vast amount of power, then abuses can and usually do happen."

(Read Full Text)

[ianbreen]

What is theory for? What good is it, in the fight against capital and state? For much of the left, the Marxist left in particular, the answer is obvious: theory tells us what to do, or what is...

This is a really good article about the anti-capitalist movement, theory and epistomology, the recent history of capitalism, and the way that we relate theory to revolution.  Definitely worth the read.

[ianbreen]