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“Christian Economics” Meets The Anti-Union Movement

Gary North was nearly impossible to track down. He did not return multiple e-mails, and when finally reached by phone, he refused to talk and hung up.

But if you know where to look, he is everywhere.

Mr. North, a onetime aide to Representative Ron Paul of Texas, a possible 2012 Republican presidential candidate, is the leading proponent of “Christian economics,” which applies biblical principles to economic issues and the free market.

Largely unknown to the broader public, Mr. North is an influential figure on the American far right. He has written dozens of books, blogs prolifically and is on the curriculum of Christian home-schoolers across America.

He may even have turned up among the antiunion protesters in Madison, Wis., this year.

Not literally, of course (and who would have recognized him if he had been there?). But Christian conservatism and free-market conservatism meet in Mr. North’s writings. A small but vigorous part of the conservative movement has absorbed his view that the Bible is opposed to organized labor, and especially to organized public employees.

“Not only do Reconstructionists believe that public employees should not have the right to organize, they believe that almost all of them should not be public employees,” writes Julie Ingersoll, of the University of North Florida, in the Web magazine Religion Dispatches. “Most of the tasks performed by those protesting the Wisconsin state budget would, in the biblical economics of North,” be privatized.

These “Reconstructionists” are believers in Christian Reconstructionism, the philosophy of R. J. Rushdoony, who died in 2001. According to Reconstructionism, a Christian theocracy under Old Testament law is the best form of government, and a radically libertarian one. Biblical law, they believe, presupposes total government decentralization, with the family and church providing order. Until that day comes, Reconstructionists believe the rights to home-school and to worship freely at least provide the barest conditions of liberty.

Mr. North, who is Mr. Rushdoony’s son-in-law but was not on speaking terms with him from 1981 until Mr. Rushdoony’s death, focuses on how that biblical libertarianism applies to economics. He concluded that the Bible forbids any welfare programs, is opposed to all inflation, and requires a gold-coin standard for money.

“God has cursed the earth,” Mr. North writes, alluding to the Book of Genesis in his 1973 book “Introduction to Christian Economics.” “This is the starting point for all economic analysis. The earth no longer gives up her fruits automatically. Man must sweat to eat.” Mr. North writes that no form of government assistance “will escape the ethical limits” of the Apostle Paul’s dictum, in II Thessalonians, that “if any would not work, neither should he eat.”

And evidence that God would prefer gold money to paper can be found throughout the Old Testament, according to Mr. North. There are more than 350 references to gold in Strong’s famous Bible concordance, he writes. Gold is used in worship, godly wisdom is compared to gold and the Hebrew prophets used the debasement of metals as a metaphor for immorality.

Home-schoolers can download Mr. North’s economics textbook free from his Web site. And his thinking may have influenced Representative Paul, who briefly employed Mr. North as a speechwriter, working on monetary policy, in 1976.

Michael J. McVicar, who teaches at Ohio State and wrote a doctoral dissertation on Mr. Rushdoony, said Mr. North discovered Mr. Rushdoony’s writing as a young man in Southern California, shortly after he became, along with his parents, an evangelical Christian.

“He corresponded with Rushdoony and made this his livelihood: to generate some synthesis between biblical law and libertarian economics,” Mr. McVicar said. “Eventually Rushdoony took him under his wing and became a sort of surrogate father for North, who married one of Rushdoony’s daughters.”

The two men’s “spectacular break,” as Mr. McVicar calls it, split Reconstructionism into two camps. The break was partly over the kind of theological minutiae that would impress even a rabbinical scholar. In fact, one issue might pique the interest of real rabbinical scholars.

“It was about North’s interpretation of, of all things, Passover and the Israelites’ marking the doorposts with the blood of the lamb,” Mr. McVicar said. “North made this argument, that because of the doorpost’s structure, that this was an indication of hymenal blood from the marriage bed, and tied it into what Rushdoony called this ‘fertility cult’ mentality. And Rushdoony took a much more common-sense approach to the blood.

“The subtext is, it’s a father-son spat,” Mr. McVicar concluded.

The deeper one looks into the obsessions of Mr. North — who was born in 1942 and who as of 2007 lived in Horn Lake, Miss. — the harder it is to spot his influence in Wisconsin. The main themes of the Wisconsin budget battles were union influence, the distribution of wealth and the public fisc; Mr. North, by contrast, is associated with his own brand of far-right Presbyterianism, gun-owners’ rights, home-schooling and the gold standard for money.

Mr. McVicar believes that Professor Ingersoll’s attempted connection between Christian economics and the rallies in Madison is a bit tenuous. “Her insight has to be in my mind so heavily qualified as to make it almost nothing,” he said. But he concedes that it “has the most basic essence of truth,” given how widely Mr. North’s teachings have been disseminated on the Christian right.

Professor Ingersoll concedes it is difficult to prove direct connections between Mr. North’s writings and Wisconsin antiunion conservatism. On the other hand, Mr. North might like to think he has influenced the Wisconsin debate, and he has written in vociferous support of Gov. Scott Walker.

And, as Professor Ingersoll cautions, influence does not always announce itself:

“I like to say, ‘How many Christians know who is Augustine is, and how he influenced them?’ ”

By: Mark Oppenheimer, The New York Times, April 29, 2011

May 1, 2011 Posted by | Collective Bargaining, Conservatives, Democracy, Government, Ideologues, Ideology, Liberatarians, Politics, Religion, Right Wing, Union Busting, Unions, Wisconsin | , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Democracy On Trial: Wisconsin Supreme Court Recount Begins

The recount in Wisconsin’s Supreme Court race begins this Wednesday, April 27. Why was the recount called, how will it be carried out, and how can individuals get involved?

The Why

A recount was expected after the final, unofficial vote count showed Kloppenburg winning by 204 votes. Governor Scott Walker implied as much when he told the Associated Press “[t]he overriding principle has got to be that every vote that was legally cast in Wisconsin needs to be counted.”

The landscape shifted two days after the election when Waukesha County Clerk Kathy Nickolaus, a Republican activist in the state’s most conservative county, announced she inadvertently missed 14,000 votes, giving the conservative Justice Prosser a lead of more than 7,500 votes. This eleventh-hour announcement by someone who once worked for Prosser led many to question the integrity of Wisconsin’s elections, and Congresswoman Tammy Baldwin asked the U.S. Department of Justice to investigate.

The election was marked by other problems. The director of the state elections board, Kevin Kennedy, significantly miscalculated public interest in the election, predicting a turnout of 20 percent when the actual turnout topped 33 percent statewide and in some areas was as high as 54 percent. Wards around the state ran out of ballots and resorted to using photocopies or requiring all voters to use a single touch-screen machine normally reserved for persons with disabilities. While no voters were turned away, long lines may have deterred some potential voters, and photocopied or otherwise improvised ballots can give rise to challenges.

Even if Prosser’s lead will be difficult to overcome, Kloppenurg said she called for the recount because:

“Wisconsin residents must have full confidence that these election results are legitimate and that this election was fair. A recount will establish where votes were incorrectly tabulated and expose if irregularities compromised the electoral process. A recount may change the outcome of this election or it may confirm it. But when it is done, a recount will have shone necessary and appropriate light on an election which, right now, seems to many people, suspect.”

Additionally, Kloppenburg’s campaign asked the state elections board to appoint an independent investigator to look into potential misconduct surrounding the uncounted Waukesha County votes, citing County Clerk Nickolaus’ partisan affiliations and history of incompetence, and noting that right-wing media outlets reported the changed results before Nickolaus’ April 7 press conference. Kloppenburg may be requesting an independent investigation because Kevin Kennedy rushed to the defense of Nickolaus, issuing a statement expressing “confidence in Wisconsin’s county and municipal clerks,” before he had a chance to investigate the issue and even while admitting that he himself was not informed of the problems with the Waukesha count prior to the press conference held by Nickolaus.

The complaint also alleges that Prosser had a meeting with Governor Walker on April 6, one day after the election (and one day before the Waukesha votes were announced), and that Governor Walker commented on April 6 that there might be “ballots somewhere, somehow found out of the blue that weren’t counted before.” Both Walker and Prosser have denied there was such a meeting.

The How

Because Justice Prosser’s margin of victory was within ½ of one percent after statewide canvassing, Wisconsin law provides for a recount should a candidate request one.  All counties will count simultaneously, with participants likely working through the weekends in order to finish by the May 9 completion date. See the recount manual for more information.

The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel sets the scene:

An indoor sports arena is filled with poll workers from every municipality in Milwaukee County, each in their own area. At each station, poll workers examine and count ballots one by one. And as they count, campaign volunteers, attorneys and journalists watch their every move – with the campaign representatives sometimes challenging the poll workers’ decisions – while sheriff’s deputies stand guard.

The Journal-Sentinel also reports that “Prosser attorney Jim Troupis has already said the incumbent’s campaign would have hundreds of volunteers, including some flying in from around the country, to monitor the recounts.” Prosser had initially hired the DC lawyer who represented George W. Bush during the infamous 2000 Florida recount that made “W” president, but has apparently replaced him with Troupis, the go-to election lawyer for Wisconsin Republicans. In the past year Troupis has represented Americans for Prosperity in a challenge to fair election rules, legislative Republicans in redistricting efforts, and Club for Growth in a case to compel Senate Democrats back into the state. (See OneWisconsinNow’s 2009 Troupis bio here). He also sits on the Board of Directors of the right-wing, Koch-connected thinktank MacIver Institute.

Kloppenburg initially hired attorneys who represented now-Senator Al Franken in his successful Minnesota recount, but has since retained the Madison firm Cullen, Weston, Pines & Bach.

Both Candidates Are Looking for Volunteers and Donations

Both campaigns are seeking volunteers to aid with the recount. The “Kloppenburg for Justice” facebook page has information on who lawyers and other potential volunteers can email to get involved, and Justice Prosser’s “Recount for Victory” website has a volunteer signup sheet.

Observers can watch for lapses in procedure and challenge the decisions of the canvassers if the intent of the voter becomes an issue on any specific ballot. Even in the wards where optical scanners will be used, the ballots will be visually inspected before they are fed to the machine, and observers can verify the machine total.

Although the state will pay for most of the costs associated with the recount, it will not pay lawyers’ fees, and public funding for campaigns no longer applies. Both candidates are accepting donations for what may be substantial lawyers’ fees; according to Justice Prosser’s “Victory Recount Fund” site, “donations are unlimited,” but corporate donations will not be accepted, possibly to avoid conflict-of-interest issues if a case involving a donor comes before the Supreme Court.

By: Brendan Fischer, Center for Media and Democracy, April 26, 2011

April 26, 2011 Posted by | Democracy, Elections, Politics, Wisconsin, Wisconsin Republicans | , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Sarah Palin: You Becha, “I Am AFP”…”All For Profit”

Former half-term Gov. Sarah Palin (R) — remember her? — headlined a conservative rally in Madison yesterday, apparently hoping to generate support for Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker’s (R) far-right agenda. More interesting than the message, though, was the turnout.

Attendees heard fairly predictable rhetoric. Palin, for example, insisted that Walker’s anti-union agenda is “not trying to hurt union members.” The Fox News personality also excoriated congressional Republicans for not being even more intransigent. The whole thing was organized by the Koch brother’s right-wing Americans for Prosperity, and Palin spoke behind a podium with a sign that read, “I am AFP.”

But who exactly heard all of this?

Away from the stage, the passionate arguments went right on, each side claiming the upper hand, the larger crowd, the right side of history. The police estimated a crowd — at its highest point — of about 6,500 people, though it was uncertain how many of those were Tea Party supporters and how many were there to protest. Either way, the figure was far smaller than the tens of thousands of demonstrators that had been reported around the Capitol on several days in recent months.

At the height of progressive protests in February and March, tens of thousands braved the elements to condemn the Walker agenda — and wouldn’t leave. Yesterday, Palin led a parade of odd right-wing figures, at an event paid for by powerful billionaires, and about 6,500 people showed up.

And of those 6,500, most of those in attendance were there to oppose Palin and her far-right allies, not support them.

It’s a reminder about the changing tide. When Tea Partiers organize a rally and bring one of their highest-profile stars to headline, but are nevertheless outnumbered at their own event, which suffered from poor attendance anyway, it’s not a good sign.

By: Steve Benen, Washington Monthly, Political Animal, April 16, 2011

April 17, 2011 Posted by | Birthers, Conservatives, Democrats, Elections, Exploratory Presidential Committees, GOP, Journalists, Media, Politics, Pundits, Republicans, Right Wing, Teaparty, Union Busting, Unions, Wisconsin | , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Our Narrow And Wrong Headed Economic Debate

There’s a janitor who lives in a studio apartment just outside of Stevens Point, Wis. He cleans the math and science buildings at a state university, a job he’s been doing for about 18 months, after a year of unemployment. He’s 43 and last year made $24,622. He doesn’t have kids, so he doesn’t qualify for a child-care tax credit. He doesn’t own a home or a hybrid car — those credits don’t apply to him, either. He hasn’t been enrolled in school since the 10th grade, so he definitely doesn’t qualify for any education credits or deductions. He just learned that Gov. Scott Walker’s new budget has slashed his benefits and that next year he’ll be bringing in about 16 percent less per month. And when he sits down to do his taxes next week, he’ll find that he paid the federal government around $1,400 in 2010.

 About a thousand miles to the east, in Fairfield, Conn., General Electric, one of the world’s largest multinational corporations, posted a $14.2 billion profit for 2010. When its accountants were finished working their magic, the company didn’t owe a single dollar in federal taxes.

“People can think what they think,” said Jeff Immelt, GE’s chief executive, in response to a growing anger to this story, first reported last week by the New York Times. What else is there to think, one wonders, but that with the muscle and money of lobbyists and lawyers, with the access and influence built over generations, GE has done not just the audacious but the outrageous. And it is not alone.

Exxon Mobil, for example, made $19 billion in profits in 2009 but paid no federal income taxes. In fact, it received a $156 million rebate from the IRS. Bank of America received a $1.9 billion tax refund from the IRS last year, even though it made $4.4 billion in profits and was handed a nearly $1 trillion bailout by taxpayers. The list, inconceivably, goes on.

And yet the conversation in Washington hasn’t turned to aggressively closing the loopholes that GE’s lobbyists created for its accountants to exploit. It hasn’t turned toward ending the ridiculous tax breaks on corporate dividends and capital gains that allow hedge fund managers and the very wealthy to pay the government a lower percentage than their middle-class employees. Instead, Congress is debating whether $33 billion in cuts to the social safety net is enough to make the Tea Party happy.

While Republicans in the House have stopped talking nearly altogether about jobs (and have embraced a budget that could cost the economy 700,000 of them, according to Moody’s chief economist Mark Zandi), the head of the President’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness, someone charged with finding a way to sustained job growth, is none other than Jeff Immelt himself, tax evader in chief. This is a systemic problem that neither belongs to nor can be solved by a single man. But for Immelt to keep his post with the administration now would be bad politics, bad policy and bad messaging. Yet as I write this, it doesn’t look as if he will be asked to step down.

Still, I am hopeful.

I am hopeful because an incredible spirit and energy has been unleashed. It was first shown during the Wisconsin labor battle, and it is being sustained and nurtured, and broadened to communities across the country. People are showing that they will not abide a system that finances corporate greed on the backs of the poor and middle class.

On Monday, the nation commemorated the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., who was killed in Memphis, where he had gone to fight for the rights of sanitation workers. Thousands gathered across America for a national day of action supporting public employees, other working people and trade unions in a common quest for jobs, justice and decency for all citizens. They participated in teach-ins, protests, demonstrations and vigils, all with a simple and deeply American message: It is time for the richest, most privileged among us to pay their fair share.

They spoke of the widening gulf in American politics, between the powerful and the powerless, between those who most need the government’s assistance and those most likely, instead, to receive it. They are not alone. For all the disappointment that progressives feel about this Congress, there are members who have been leaders and allies on Capitol Hill.

Consider Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.). Always the people’s champion, Sanders has called for closing corporate tax loopholes, which, if done, would raise more than $400 billion over a 10-year period. He’s also introduced legislation imposing a 5.4 percent surtax on millionaires that would yield up to $50 billion more a year — more than enough to protect Pell Grants and Head Start and other programs facing the chopping block.

He is joined by Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.), who has introduced legislation to create a separate tax bracket for millionaires and billionaires — an option that garners the support of 81 percent of the American people, according to an NBC/Wall Street Journal poll.

The common sense, humane response at this moment is to fight to reset the terms of a suffocatingly narrow and wrongheaded debate. This is the heritage of the progressive movement and, indeed, our obligation. The best principles of our country have been trampled by corporate immorality and right-wing extremism. But they can be restored. Martin Luther King Jr. knew as much when he fought for the sanitation workers of Tennessee 43 years ago. Now, we must know it too.

By: Katrina Vanden Heuvel, Opinion Writer, The Washington Post, April 5, 2011

April 10, 2011 Posted by | Big Business, Budget, Class Warfare, Congress, Corporations, Democracy, Economy, General Electric, Ideologues, Jobs, Labor, Lawmakers, Middle Class, Politics, Public Employees, Right Wing, Tea Party | , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Women And “Husband Issues”: We Work Hard, But Who’s Complaining?

When a couple dozen brawny, uniformed and helmeted firefighters, led by a bagpipe player, marched through a crowd of pro-union protesters in Madison, Wis., last month, I knew, almost to a certainty, that Gov. Scott Walker had picked a fight with the wrong crew.

As the firemen assembled on the Statehouse steps, the swelling, boisterous crowd, which had raucously encircled and occupied the Capitol for days, pushing back against Governor Walker’s plan to strip public employee unions of their collective bargaining rights, all of a sudden slipped into silent reverence.

While the plan exempts policemen and firemen, the first responders rallied under the oldest first principle of militant unionism: An Injury to One is an Injury to All. And the presence of these mostly white, husky, mustachioed firemen — many with soot still speckling their uniforms — had highlighted a major issue that generally goes undetected by the news media when covering labor conflicts.

In short, it’s what my old union called “the Husband Issue.”

Allow me to explain.

I spent five years as an organizer, and hundreds of hours in the living rooms, at the kitchen tables and on the porches of countless low-wage nursing assistants, hospital food workers and clinical lab scientists, trying to talk them into our union.

These were almost always women. No surprise, really. Whatever growth there has been in organized labor over the last few years — and there hasn’t been much — has been primarily among service workers, that near-invisible class of underpaid workers who clean bedpans, vacuum hotel rooms and mop the floors of operating rooms. I recall one heady organizing drive in Southern California that unionized 9,000 hospital workers, and they were almost exclusively low-wage immigrant women.

Most of those I was recruiting had never been in a union before, had no relatives in unions, and were being introduced to a strange new concept, collective bargaining. For any question a woman had, whether about dues, strikes, seniority, pensions or what she had to gain from forming a union, I had an answer ready to go. (Dues give you power; strikes are rare; every one deserves to retire with dignity. You want a direct say in your wages and benefits, don’t you?).

There was one rebuff, nevertheless, against which I was utterly powerless. It had nothing to do with politics, the boss or dues. Seven simple but devastating words: “I need to ask my husband first.”

Despite the endless training we got on how to ease workers’ doubts, we could never really establish a convincing response for the Husband Issue. It would shift the dynamic so suddenly, and require treading on such volatile emotional territory, that we would often politely say goodbye and scuttle out the door.

(For the record: No man I ever spoke to said, “Excuse me, I have to check first with my wife,” before signing a union card.)

In the current storm over public employee unions rattling the Midwest, this issue of gender is usually overlooked. Women, working as state clerks, teachers and nurses, dominate the organized public sector. And just as Rust Belt Republicans have deftly exploited longstanding stereotypes about public workers as lazy, pampered and gorging themselves on the taxpayers’ teat, they have also made cynical use of gender clichés to try to keep female-dominated unions in their place.

The reality that women are increasingly the breadwinners, providing the financial stability for middle-class families through a good union job, doesn’t seem to inform the Republican state of mind. Instead, women’s income and benefits are still perceived by many as strictly supplementary to the nuclear family, if not entirely superfluous. And therefore they are a prime target for budget cuts.

In addition, pink-collar jobs already require a saint-like disposition and an overall doing-more-with-less attitude. Cutting the pensions of these female workers, freezing their wages and curtailing their rights seems, to many, one of a piece with the suffering and forbearance reserved for our mothers.

The error committed by the antiunion governors is that their attack this time around was so slashing that it cut to the very marrow of organized labor: middle-class white men who saw their futures and their rights threatened. In Ohio, Gov. John Kasich even signed a law that goes so far as to prohibit policemen and firemen from negotiating over their staffing, or even the number of patrol cars and trucks at their disposal.

Police officers and firemen? Who is going to successfully argue that these guys are pampered and spoiled?

Call it what you want, and ascribe it to whatever motivation you please, but there’s just a radically different emotional atmosphere, a very divergent set of optics and ultimately an explosive political dynamic established when stoic firemen in bulky parkas and red helmets are on the picket line rather than teachers in pink T-shirts.

For better or for worse, they are still the Alpha Males of American society, our designated and respected protectors. They might be routinely taken for granted as a reliable conservative force, but someone forgot they are also still union men. These are men who recall clearly how the old-line male-dominated industrial unions — the steelworkers, autoworkers, miners and millworkers — have been whittled down or expunged. And to fiddle around with their livelihoods is like watching someone push your dad around. The reaction is an instinctive anger, horror and a sensation of the bottom falling out.

So, when those firemen took the steps of the Madison Capitol a few weeks ago, I was among those heartened and stirred. I could not resist, though, feeling more than a twinge of disappointment. I fear if it had been just some state home care workers or public school kindergarten teachers up there on the steps, it would not have ignited the same public sympathy and this fight would not be taken as seriously as it is.

By: Natasha Vargus-Cooper, Op-Ed Columnist, The New York Times, April 2, 2011

April 3, 2011 Posted by | Class Warfare, Collective Bargaining, Employment Descrimination, Equal Rights, Governors, Income Gap, Jobs, Labor, Media, Middle Class, Politics, Union Busting, Unions, Wisconsin, Women | , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

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