“Path To Salvation Doesn’t Pass Through Barbarity”: Bernie Sanders Brings The Anti-Austerity Fight to America
Bernie Sanders is as focused as any member of Congress could be on the struggles of the state he represents, and more generally on the challenges facing working people across the United States.
But that does not mean that the independent senator from Vermont fails to recognize when things are kicking up around the world—especially when those developments have meaning for the fights he is waging in Washington.
So it should come as little surprise that the news from Europe—of a democratic rejection of failed austerity policies—has caught his imagination.
Sanders knows that austerity is not just a European crisis. It threatens America as well. And he is highlighting what his Senate website recognizes as: “An Austerity Backlash.”
The senator is right to be excited that citizens are pushing back.
Sanders says Europe’s voters are sending a message that America’s voters can and should echo: the time has come to reject austerity measures that have unfairly burdened working families, while redistributing ever more wealth upward to millionaires and billionaires.
France on Sunday elected a new president, Socialist François Hollande, who campaigned on a promise to tax the very wealthy in order to free up funds for investment in job creation, education and social services.
Hollande rejects the attacks on unions and cuts to education and public services that have stalled European economies, promising that he will not casually continue the job-killing austerity policies foisted on Europe by bureaucrats and bankers.
There is, Hollande says, “hope that at last austerity is no longer inevitable.”
In Greece, the leader of the Syriza, the radical coalition that as a result of Sunday’s election results has leapt from the sidelines of politics to status as the nation’s second-largest party, is even more blunt in his rejection of austerity.
“We believe the path of salvation doesn’t pass through barbarity of austerity measures,” argues Syriza’s Alexis Tsipras.
Hollande and Tsipras are different players, with different styles and different policies.
Yet, their dramatic shows of strength in Sunday’s voting, along with similarly strong results for critics of austerity running in German state elections and Italian local elections, suggests that voters are fed up with the austerity fantasy that says the best response to tough times is a combination of tax cuts for the rich and pay and benefits for the workers.
What should Americans make of the results?
Sanders knows. The independent senator from Vermont, who has led the fight to preserve education, healthcare and social services funding in the face of proposals by House Budget Committee Chair Paul Ryan and his fellow proponents of an American austerity agenda, says the message sent by European voters can and should be echoed by American voters.
Yes, of course, the accent will be different, as will specific concerns and proposals. America is different from Germany, Greece and France.
But the threat posed by failed and dysfunctional policies is the same.
“In the United States and around the world, the middle class is in steep decline while the wealthy and large corporations are doing phenomenally well,” says Sanders. “The message sent by voters in France and other European countries, which I believe will be echoed here in the United States, is that the wealthy and large corporations are going to have to experience some austerity also and that that burden cannot solely fall on working families.”
Sanders is making the connections, recognizing the importance of a democratic push-back against policies that are as cruel as they are economically unsound.
“In the United States, where corporate profits are soaring and the gap between the rich and everybody else is growing wider, we must end corporate tax loopholes and start making the wealthy pay their fair share of taxes,” the senator explains. “At the same time, we must protect Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. Austerity, yes, but for millionaires and billionaires, not the working families of this country.”
Sander is, of course, correct.
Let’s just hope that his message is echoed by other leaders in the United States.
Just as austerity is wrong for Europe, it’s wrong for the United States.
By: John Nichols, The Nation, May 7, 2012
“Corporations Are Very Rich People”: Record $824 Billion Last Year As Conservatives Claim Obama Anti-Business
A favorite conservative attack on President Obama is that his policies — and even his personality — amount to an assault on American businesses. “President Obama himself is the most anti-business presidentin my lifetime. With rhetoric not befitting a president he has attacked oil companies, banks, airplane users, Wall Street and anyone who makes money,” wrote Gary Shapiro, president and CEO of the Consumer Electronics Association.
However, according to the latest data, President Obama has been very good for America’s biggest businesses. Last year, in fact, the Fortune 500 made a record $824 billion, topping the previous record set before the Great Recession:
The Fortune 500 generated a total of $824.5 billion in earnings last year, up 16.4% over 2010. That beats the previous record of $785 billion, set in 2006 during a roaring economy. The 2011 profits are outsized based on two key historical metrics. They represent 7% of total sales, vs. an average of 5.14% over the 58-year history of the Fortune 500. Companies are also garnering exceptional returns on their capital. The 500 achieved a return-on-equity of 14.3%, far above the historical norm of 12%.
Of course, that return to pre-recession level earnings hasn’t translated into job or wage growth for America’s workers. In fact, inflation-adjusted wages fell last year. Big companies are also squeezing more productivity out of their workers, with annual revenue generated per worker increasing by more than $40,000 over the last five years. CEO pay, meanwhile, increased 15 percent last year.
This data also puts the lie to the Republican claim that corporate tax cuts will spur businesses to hire. If all it took were extra cash, businesses would be hiring like crazy. However, they are clearly not doing so — and the effective corporate tax rate is already at a forty year low.
By: Pat Garofalo, Think Progress, May 7, 2012
“Murderers And Madmen”: The Heartland Institute Has A Message For You
As far-right groups go, the Heartland Institute hasn’t quite reached household-name status yet, but it’s working on it. The group’s strange new billboards, at a minimum, will probably help push the group’s notoriety.
The Heartland Institute is “a tax-exempt organization which promotes conspiracy theories about climate scientists, distorts climate science, and attacks regulation of air and water pollution.” Despite support from corporate allies, the group has become so extreme that high-profile supporters, including GM and AT&T, no longer want anything to do with the outfit.
Instead of moderating its views and aiming for the mainstream, the Heartland Institute is buying billboards along highways in Chicago. Joe Romm reported today:
The Heartland Institute has launched one of the most offensive billboard campaigns in U.S. history. The Chicago-based anti-science think tank is comparing all those who accept climate science — and the journalists who report on it accurately — to Charles Manson, the Unabomber, and Osama Bin Laden.
The Guardian described this as “possibly one of the most ill-judged poster campaigns in the history of ill-judged poster campaigns.”
Of course, the Heartland Institute doesn’t quite see it that way. In its defense of the group’s propaganda, the Heartland Institute says it’s eager to convince people that “believing in global warming” is not “sophisticated,” and to do so, it’s noting that “murderers and madmen” agree with those who accept climate science.
Perhaps the group can use some of its remaining funds to buy a textbook on Logical Fallacies 101?
Andrew Sullivan added, “In some ways, this is an almost perfect illustration of what has happened to the ‘right.’ A refusal to acknowledge scientific reality; and a brutalist style of public propaganda that focuses entirely on guilt by the most extreme association.”
By” Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, May 4, 2012
“”Disenfranchising Our Fellow Citizens”: A Sad Day For Our Democracy
Partisan politics aside, it’s disgraceful that we’ve empowered lawmakers to disenfranchise our fellow citizens.
Thanks to a sluggish economy, and restrictive voter identification laws from Republican lawmakers, voter registration is down for the first time in years. In particular, registration among African Americans and Latinos has taken a plunge:
Together, the number of registered blacks and Hispanics across the country declined by 2 million from 2008 to late 2010, when the Census Bureau collected the data through its Current Population Survey.
The figure among blacks is down 7 percent, to just over 16 million. Among whites, it dropped 6 percent to 104 million.
Among Latinos, the decline has altered a trend line of steady growth. Given that 12 million Latinos were registered to vote in 2008, some analysts had projected the number would grow to 13 million in 2010 and 14 million this election cycle. Instead, it fell in 2010 to 11 million.
I would hold off on declaring doom for President Obama’s reelection effort. The Obama campaign has spent millions of dollars on building field offices, registering voters, and navigating the new laws. My hunch is that, at the end of the day, these restrictions won’t have as much as affect as we think on the Obama campaign’s ability to mobilize minority voters.
Of course, the horse race is the least important aspect of this development; what should worry everyone is the degree to which the Republican Party has normalized the idea that there ought to be voter restrictions. Remember, voter fraud is virtually nonexistent; between 2002 and 2007, the Justice Department failed to prosecute a single person for impersonating another voter. But rather than confront the reality of voter security, proponents of voter ID push faulty analogies; we check ID for cigarettes and ‘R’-rated movies, why should we leave it at the door when for voting?
The easy (and correct) answer is that voting is a right of citizenship, and restrictions—even if they sound reasonable—do nothing but limit the voices that have input in our democracy. Indeed, as the Washington Post shows, the actual effect of voter ID laws is to make voting rights contingent on race and income. If you’re poor, a minority, or both, it is now harder for you to vote than if you were better off and white.
Americans love to call theirs the greatest democracy in the world, but as long as we actively work to disenfranchise our fellow citizens, there’s no way that we have a claim on “great,” much less good.
By: Jamelle Bouie, The American Prospect, May 4, 2012
“Disingenous Circular Arguments”: Conservatives Make Nonsense Arguments Against Voting Rights
As the media shine a spotlight on conservative efforts to disenfranchise Democratic voters through aggressive anti–voting fraud measures, conservatives have begun their counterattack. A pair of op-eds published by conservative activists and pundits in the wake of a national anti&endash;voter fraud conference in Houston demonstrates the approach they will take. They also provide a case study in disingenuous, tautological conservative argumentation. They use statistics that are misleading, irrelevant or evidence of nothing more than the success of their own propaganda.
Both pieces cite polling data showing majorities support requiring voters to show photo identification. “Rasmussen Reports showed that 73 percent of Americans approve of Photo ID laws—and in fact, states that have Photo ID in place are seeing increased turnout at the polls, including minority groups (according to data from Indiana and Georgia),” writes Catherine Engelbrecht, the founder and president of True the Vote, a conservative anti-voter fraud group in Houston which sponsored the recent conference.
John Fund of National Review cites the same source. “A brand-new Rasmussen Reports poll finds that 64 percent of Americans believe voter fraud is a serious problem, with whites registering 63 percent agreement and African-Americans 64 percent,” he writes. “A Fox News poll taken last month found that 70 percent of Americans support requiring voters to show ‘state or federally issued photo identification’ to prove their identity and citizenship before casting a ballot. Majorities of all demographic groups agreed on the need for photo ID, including 58 percent of non-white voters, 52 percent of liberals and 52 percent of Democrats.”
These are circular arguments. Rasmussen Reports and Fox News are both Republican-leaning. Conservatives love to cite poll numbers, especially from sympathetic pollsters, that the public agrees with a false claim as if that made it true. But it doesn’t. Rasmussen finds 73 percent think photo ID requirements “do not discriminate.” That’s up from 69 percent the previous time Rasmussen asked the question. Does that mean photo ID laws became 4 percent less discriminatory during the intervening five months?
Whether voter fraud is a regular occurrence, and whether photo ID laws discriminate by disproportionately disenfranchising minorities, city-dwellers, young people and the disabled are matters of fact, not opinion. They should be answered empirically, not by taking a poll. One needs to only look at the data to discover that in-person voter fraud is virtually nonexistent in the United States today. The Republican solution to this imaginary problem, photo identification requirements, is clearly discriminatory, because members of some demographic groups are much less likely to have IDs than others.
If polling shows that a majority of the public disagrees with these factual findings, that just proves they are ignorant or that they have been misled by conservative propaganda. And then conservatives turn around and cite the evidence of mass ignorance, or successful conservative propaganda, as proof that their false claims are true.
Even the majorities in favor of photo ID laws cited by Engelbrecht and Fund are not dispositive. Unlike incorrect beliefs about factual matters, popular opinion on what voting law should be does have some relevance. But unlike some other policy matters, voting rights law should not be decided solely on the basis of popular opinion. Voting rights are civil rights. And it is a fundamental American value that civil rights cannot always be legislated away. A majority’s desire to oppress or disenfranchise the minority must be constrained.
The remainder of Engelbrecht’s and Fund’s analysis are mere sophistry and speculation. That’s election law expert Rick Hasen awarded Fund’s piece the “Fraudulent Fraud Squad Quote of the Day” for the following contention: “Most fraudsters are smart enough to have their accomplices cast votes in the names of dead people on the voter rolls, who are highly unlikely to appear and complain that someone else voted in their place.”
Hasen responds, “I’d love to see the evidence of a single election in the last quarter of a century in which in person impersonation voter fraud using dead people affected the outcome of an election.” Opinion polls notwithstanding, photo ID laws remain a solution in search of a problem.
By: Ben Adler, The Nation, May 6, 2012
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