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“A New Kind of Union”: Best Hope For Restoring Political Equality Is For The Poor And Middle Class To Organize Politically

The financial challenges low- and middle-income Americans face are daunting. But the poor and middle class are in an equally serious, if less well recognized, political predicament: the government has become almost entirely unresponsive to them.

This a profound political failure. A democracy in which government policy responds to the rich and not to the poor or the middle class is a democracy unworthy of the name.

For several decades now, we have tried to deal with the problem of money in politics with campaign finance regulation, but reform has failed. Political actors, enabled by the Supreme Court, have responded to regulations simply by redirecting their spending in unregulated directions.

The end of campaign-finance reform, however, is not the end of the line. Although we pay too little attention to this fact, there are still sources of power in American politics that are not dependent on wealth. Primary among these is political organization. In fact, the best hope for restoring political equality is to make it easier for the poor and middle class to organize politically.

Throughout much of the 20th century, we had a legal system in the United States that was remarkably successful at promoting just this kind of political organizing. That legal system was labor law, and it is not a coincidence that during these same decades the labor union was able to serve as a highly successful political voice for the lower and middle classes.

Unions, after all, represent workers, nearly all of whom are in the income classes currently lacking effective political representation. Unions turned out their members to vote and consolidated millions of modest contributions into powerful campaign and lobbying operations. Sometimes, unions pushed for politically liberal causes, and sometimes for conservative ones. But when they were powerful, unions were able to insist that government policy respond to the views of the poor and the middle class.

In contemporary America, however, there is a nearly insurmountable impediment to unions’ ability to serve as a collective political voice for workers. It stems from the legal requirement that unions bundle political organization with collective bargaining, which means that in order to take advantage of the union as a form of political organization, workers must organize economically for collective bargaining purposes.

This bundling of functions, an artifact of how unions formed historically, is a major problem for political organizing today. This is true most obviously because managerial opposition to collective bargaining has become pervasive. It is also true because changes in markets have made the practice of collective bargaining difficult. And because substantial numbers of American workers say they do not want to collectively bargain with their employers, traditional unions are not an attractive form of political organization for many.

All of this has contributed to a dramatic decrease in unionization rates, which has in turn played a central role in the declining responsiveness of government.

But what if we unbundle the union and allow workers to organize politically without also organizing for collective bargaining? If we shift our aim away from reviving collective bargaining and toward enabling political organizing by underrepresented groups, we would allow workers to organize “political unions” even when they don’t want to organize collective bargaining ones.

It’s more straightforward than it sounds. The key is that we would make the workplace available as a site for political organization. While the law would continue to protect workers’ right to organize traditional unions, it would also protect workers’ right to organize strictly political ones. Workers would have the right to talk about politics with one another at work, as long as they did so during nonworking time.

Employers would be prohibited from retaliating against their employees who organized politically, and if the workers did form a political union, they would be entitled — as traditional unions are — to use voluntary payroll deductions to finance their activities. But these political unions would be prohibited from collective bargaining, and no worker would ever be required to pay dues to a political union — or to be represented by one — unless she chose to be.

The types of policies that political unions chose to pursue would be entirely up to their members. Some might fight for bread-and-butter issues like a higher minimum wage, but others might concentrate on social issues or even foreign policy. But whatever issues they chose to pursue, these unions would give a political voice to those in America who currently lack one.

Campaign-finance reform has failed because it does nothing to address the underlying disparities in wealth distribution that produce political inequality in the first place. Legal reforms that enable political organizing are fundamentally different because organization, like wealth, is its own source of political power.

Allowing workers to organize for politics, even when they decide not to organize for collective bargaining, would help restore balance to a democracy that wealth has so badly skewed.

 

By: Benjamin I. Sachs, Op-Ed Contributor, The New York Times, September 1, 2013

September 2, 2013 Posted by | Economic Inequality, Unions | , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

“Rights, Obligations, And Ignorant Libertarians”: If You Define Yourself By A Philosophy, At Least Have An Idea Of What It Implies

Oh, Rand Paul. What are we going to do with you?

I’ll tell you in a moment what I’m referring to. But first: One of the principal functions parties serve is that they act as a heuristic, or cognitive shortcut, for voters. If you have to vote for someone to serve on your city council and you know nothing about the candidates, you can use party as a proxy and you’ll be right almost all the time. You can also look to your party to see where you should come down on issues. It doesn’t necessarily make you lazy; sometimes it’s just efficient to look to others with values similar to yours for cues about what policies are worthwhile. We can’t all be experts on everything. In a similar way, parties give people who run for office a set of policy positions they can adopt without having to know everything about anything a lawmaker might have to address.

But if you call yourself a libertarian, you’re saying that parties aren’t enough for you, even if you’re a Republican. Instead, you’re motivated by a philosophical perspective to which you’ve given some serious thought. Every libertarian in politics, including Rand Paul, presents themselves this way. They’re concerned with ideas. So if you’re going to define yourself by a philosophy, isn’t it incumbent upon you to at least have an idea of what that philosophy implies, and a grasp of some basic philosophical concepts—for instance, like what a right is—so that you can talk about them with some modicum of sense when they come up, as they inevitably will?

Apparently not. Here’s Paul in a new National Review article:

“There’s a philosophic debate which often gets me in trouble, you know, on whether health care’s a right or not,” Paul, in a red tie, white button-down shirt, and khakis, tells the students from the stage. “I think we as physicians have an obligation. As Christians, we have an obligation. . . . I really believe that, and it’s a deep-held belief,” he says of helping others.

“But I don’t think you have a right to my labor,” he continues. “You don’t have a right to anyone else’s labor. Food’s pretty important, do you have a right to the labor of the farmer?”

Paul then asks, rhetorically, if students have a right to food and water. “As humans, yeah, we do have an obligation to give people water, to give people food, to give people health care,” Paul muses. “But it’s not a right because once you conscript people and say, ‘Oh, it’s a right,’ then really you’re in charge, it’s servitude, you’re in charge of me and I’m supposed to do whatever you tell me to do. . . . It really shouldn’t be seen that way.”

Oh dear. Paul is obviously unaware of this, but saying that health care is a right doesn’t mean that doctors have to treat people without being paid, any more than saying that education is a right means that public school teachers have to work for free. Because we all agree that education is a right, we set up a system where every child can be educated, whether their families could afford to pay for it themselves or not. It doesn’t mean that any kid can walk up to a teacher in the street and say, “I command you to teach me trigonometry for free. Be at my house at 9 tomorrow. You must do this, because I have a right to education and that means I am in charge of you and you’re supposed to do whatever I tell you to do.”

All this talk of “servitude” and “conscription” is just baffling. The only way I can interpret it is that libertarianism is something Paul picked up from his dad, and it seems to go over well with Republicans when he mentions it, but he hasn’t spent any time thinking about it.

I don’t know if the 2016 Republican presidential contest is going to be quite the nincompoop parade that 2012 was. But I wouldn’t be surprised if Rand Paul presents himself as the candidate with the big ideas. Make of that what you will.

By: Paul Waldman, Contributing Editor, The American Prospect, August 27, 2013

August 28, 2013 Posted by | Libertarians, Rand Paul | , , , , , | Leave a comment

“A Calculated Risk Making For An Ugly Fall”: The Scary Reason Republicans Want A Debt Ceiling Fight

Washington Monthly’s Ed Kilgore notes with appropriate alarm the won’t-go-away talk among House Republicans about substituting a threat of government shutdown if Obamacare isn’t defunded with a refusal to raise the debt ceiling. This is a terrifically stupid idea, he notes, because, as Ezra Klein says, a government shutdown would be an “inconvenience” while a debt default “is a global financial crisis.”

So what, Kilgore asks, are Republicans thinking? He suggests movement conservatives are ensorcelled by the Green Lantern/”Nike existentialism” (“Just do it!”) theory of politics, which holds that the only thing standing between a movement and victory is a lack of will. And I think there’s something to that.

But I think there’s another dimension more grounded in reality (and so arguably scarier) why Republican leaders might see a debt ceiling fight as better ground than a government shutdown showdown. First, we’ve seen both of these movies before. Revisionist conservatives aside, Republicans took a beating during the government shutdowns of the mid-1990s, while they managed to extract concessions from President Obama during the last debt ceiling fight. From that point of view, if you have to have a fight, it might as well be the one that – from a cold political perspective – turned out better than the other.

Ultimately Republicans suspect that (per Politico today) Democrats actually want a government shutdown, that they see it as a way to reset midterm congressional elections stacked heavily in the GOP’s favor. Add to that the fact that everyone knows Obama is desperate to avoid a debt default (for the same rational reasons every president – Democrat and Republican alike – has been desperate to avoid one) and the fact that conservatives have a deep-seated belief that Obama is inclined to cave (see also the certitude among the ludicrous right that he’ll sign a defunding bill at all).

What you have is a formula where the debt default (which he’s desperate to avoid) is a better fight than the shutdown (which, they believe, he wants anyway).

As I said, that analysis makes a default fight even scarier because it’s not just being pushed by the Republican rank-and-file, but could be a calculated risk by the leadership.

It could be an ugly fall indeed.

By: Robert Schlesinger, U. S. News and World Report, August 22, 2013

August 24, 2013 Posted by | Debt Ceiling, Government Shut Down | , , , , , | Leave a comment

“Welcome To The Age Of Denial”: In Today’s World, It’s Politically Effective And Socially Acceptable To Deny Scientific Fact

In 1982, polls showed that 44 percent of Americans believed God had created human beings in their present form. Thirty years later, the fraction of the population who are creationists is 46 percent.

In 1989, when “climate change” had just entered the public lexicon, 63 percent of Americans understood it was a problem. Almost 25 years later, that proportion is actually a bit lower, at 58 percent.

The timeline of these polls defines my career in science. In 1982 I was an undergraduate physics major. In 1989 I was a graduate student. My dream was that, in a quarter-century, I would be a professor of astrophysics, introducing a new generation of students to the powerful yet delicate craft of scientific research.

Much of that dream has come true. Yet instead of sending my students into a world that celebrates the latest science has to offer, I am delivering them into a society ambivalent, even skeptical, about the fruits of science.

This is not a world the scientists I trained with would recognize. Many of them served on the Manhattan Project. Afterward, they helped create the technologies that drove America’s postwar prosperity. In that era of the mid-20th century, politicians were expected to support science financially but otherwise leave it alone. The disaster of Lysenkoism, in which Communist ideology distorted scientific truth and all but destroyed Russian biological science, was still a fresh memory.

The triumph of Western science led most of my professors to believe that progress was inevitable. While the bargain between science and political culture was at times challenged — the nuclear power debate of the 1970s, for example — the battles were fought using scientific evidence. Manufacturing doubt remained firmly off-limits.

Today, however, it is politically effective, and socially acceptable, to deny scientific fact. Narrowly defined, “creationism” was a minor current in American thinking for much of the 20th century. But in the years since I was a student, a well-funded effort has skillfully rebranded that ideology as “creation science” and pushed it into classrooms across the country. Though transparently unscientific, denying evolution has become a litmus test for some conservative politicians, even at the highest levels.

Meanwhile, climate deniers, taking pages from the creationists’ PR playbook, have manufactured doubt about fundamental issues in climate science that were decided scientifically decades ago. And anti-vaccine campaigners brandish a few long-discredited studies to make unproven claims about links between autism and vaccination.

The list goes on. North Carolina has banned state planners from using climate data in their projections of future sea levels. So many Oregon parents have refused vaccination that the state is revising its school entry policies. And all of this is happening in a culture that is less engaged with science and technology as intellectual pursuits than at any point I can remember.

Thus, even as our day-to-day experiences have become dependent on technological progress, many of our leaders have abandoned the postwar bargain in favor of what the scientist Michael Mann calls the “scientization of politics.”

What do I tell my students? From one end of their educational trajectory to the other, our society told these kids science was important. How confusing is it for them now, when scientists receive death threats for simply doing honest research on our planet’s climate history?

Americans always expected their children to face a brighter economic future, and we scientists expected our students to inherit a world where science was embraced by an ever-larger fraction of the population. This never implied turning science into a religion or demanding slavish acceptance of this year’s hot research trends. We face many daunting challenges as a society, and they won’t all be solved with more science and math education. But what has been lost is an understanding that science’s open-ended, evidence-based processes — rather than just its results — are essential to meeting those challenges.

My professors’ generation could respond to silliness like creationism with head-scratching bemusement. My students cannot afford that luxury. Instead they must become fierce champions of science in the marketplace of ideas.

During my undergraduate studies I was shocked at the low opinion some of my professors had of the astronomer Carl Sagan. For me his efforts to popularize science were an inspiration, but for them such “outreach” was a diversion. That view makes no sense today.

The enthusiasm and generous spirit that Mr. Sagan used to advocate for science now must inspire all of us. There are science Twitter feeds and blogs to run, citywide science festivals and high school science fairs that need input. For the civic-minded nonscientists there are school board curriculum meetings and long-term climate response plans that cry out for the participation of informed citizens. And for every parent and grandparent there is the opportunity to make a few more trips to the science museum with your children.

Behind the giant particle accelerators and space observatories, science is a way of behaving in the world. It is, simply put, a tradition. And as we know from history’s darkest moments, even the most enlightened traditions can be broken and lost. Perhaps that is the most important lesson all lifelong students of science must learn now.

 

By: Adam Frank, Op-Ed Contributor, The New York Times, August 21, 2013

August 22, 2013 Posted by | Climate Change, Science | , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

“The Conservative Dilemma In A Nutshell”: Carrying A Message Deliberately Designed To Line Their Pockets

Jim DeMint, the former firebrand senator from South Carolina who now heads The Heritage Foundation, has been on the speaking junket of late calling for the replacement of any Republican who has the good sense to oppose a purely symbolic and unwinnable vote on repealing ObamaCare. DeMint is an absolutist, and is revealing a sad truth about too many spokespeople for conservative causes these days: They play to an audience that does not understand (or does not care about) the demographic realities of electoral politics, and offer a message designed to line their own pockets rather than improve the party. This has to change if our party is to rise again.

Take DeMint. GOPers who are against the symbolic move to replace ObamaCare “should be replaced,” he says. DeMint also says he’s “not as interested in the political futures of folks who think they might lose a showdown with the president.” These remarks highlight two of the most fundamental obstacles to the GOP’s return to viability as a ruling party in this country.

Large swaths of the conservative base have come to believe that all conservatives in all states should be fire breathers like DeMint. But even if it would be good or desirable to run candidates like DeMint as the nominee in every race in America, the demographics of modern America make such a policy politically suicidal. Democratic elections mean that people tend to elect leaders that hold views that approximately resemble their own. The very qualities that make a DeMint clone wildly desirable in a dark red southern state like South Carolina make the identical person totally and completely unelectable in Connecticut, Delaware, or Nevada. And if you think my choice of those last three states was a coincidence, it was not, since the GOP has thrown away two slam-dunk Senate wins and one potential Senate win in recent cycles in those states by nominating a fire breather rather than a more “moderate” candidate in the general election.

This is basic politics. Almost any objective observer can look at the numbers and demographic realities and recognize the problem. That raises this question: Jim DeMint may hold some pretty extreme political views, but he’s no idiot, so why does he continue to spout this nonsense? The answer, as with so many things, becomes quickly apparent when we think about who he works for and what he is trying to do.

DeMint does not work for the Republican Party. He does not have the best interests of the GOP in mind when he goes on tour. Instead, DeMint is paid something close to $1 million a year to run the Heritage Foundation. The reason that Heritage is paying the former senator so much cash is because they expect him to raise a lot of it, as think tanks rarely generate revenue and therefore must raise money to survive. So make no mistake, in his present position, DeMint is concerned foremost not with the betterment of the GOP’s national position or the good of America, but the bottom line of the Heritage Foundation.

This leads us to a final question: What kind of person is apt to give money to a partisan think tank like Heritage? Your answer: Hyper-enthusiastic rich conservatives. And what these donors like to hear is their own beliefs echoed on television. They are less concerned with, you know, reality… or whether the GOP takes a Senate seat in Connecticut.

This last incentives problem is one that pervades the GOP. Right now, too many people are making too much money by being conservatives. Rush Limbaugh is a bright enough guy and he is an exceptional entertainer, but he knows that his core audience is hyper conservative and he plays to that audience exceptionally well. Same with Fox News: Their core viewers are über-conservative, Fox is in business to make money, and that means catering to the audience’s beliefs.

Sadly, the two problems play off of one another. Perhaps if DeMint and Limbaugh were not so busy looking our for #1 (and the organizations they represent), they might talk to their fans about what is and isn’t possible. In all likelihood, many of the true believers would embrace a compromise if it meant more conservatives rather than less. But to do so, Limbaugh and DeMint and Fox News would have to risk alienating some of their biggest fans, customers, or donors for the betterment of the party and, as we are so often reminded, they just don’t work for the party.

 

By: Jeb Golinkin, The week, August 21, 2013

August 22, 2013 Posted by | Conservatives | , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

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