Saturday, December 14, 2013

Editorial: No ‘Fast Track’ for Secret Trade Deal


The Obama administration, its corporate partners and a dozen Pacific nations have been negotiating behind closed doors on a massive trade agreement that, among other things, would allow corporations to challenge national, state and local laws if they believe regulations put profits at risk. Congress hasn’t seen the text of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which hasn’t been finished yet, but the White House has requested that Congress proceed with granting “fast track” authority that would commit to an up-or-down vote on the deal with limited review and no possibility of amendment.

Congress should not approve fast track review for a trade deal that has been negotiated in secret. Dave Johnson noted at Campaign for America’s Future (ourfuture.org) that the agreement itself is also about getting democracy and government power out of the way of the big corporations. “It actually sets (certain) corporate (‘investor’) interests above the law of any country. For example, word has leaked that TPP negotiators are arguing over whether to prevent countries from running anti-smoking campaigns, because this interferes with tobacco-company profits. One side says this is going too far and they should “carve out” tobacco from the agreement, the other side says carving out tobacco sets a precedent of allowing governments to protect their citizens from other things corporations might want to profit from. This should tell you all you need to know about why Fast Track must not pass, enabling them to push TPP through with no changes.”

Talks on the TPP will resume in January, after the 12 prospective members in December gave up on meeting Washington’s year-end deadline for a deal, Agence France-Presse reported Dec. 10. The TPP is being negotiated by Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, the US and Vietnam. They make up 40% of the global economy and other countries may join the pact later.

One of the sticking points has been the US negotiators’ insistence, backed by the powerful pharmaceuticals industry, that drug companies get longer patent protection for a new class of drugs called “biologics” which are developed from living tissue, AFP reported.

Drug firms say this is necessary to allow them to recoup investments and continue research into fresh cures. But critics such as the humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders say such patent protection would restrict access to cheaper generic drugs for millions of poor people.

Documents leaked to the Huffington Post suggest that concerns about the Obama administration’s push for corporate power to challenge regulations are shared by some of those who are negotiating across the table from the US. HuffPost’s Zach Carter quoted a memo from another country charging the US had “shown no flexibility on its proposal” for investor dispute tribunals; Carter reported that with such language, “companies could challenge an even broader array of rules” than under the North American Free Trade Agreement, the deal that allowed companies like Exxon Mobil and Dow to fight Canadian rules on issues from drilling to drug patents. The same memo said the US “shows zero flexibility” on its push for restrictions on bank regulation, and had reintroduced a widely-opposed proposal to restrict governments’ negotiations to push down drug prices. A USTR spokesperson told Carter that “some elements” in those documents were “outdated, others totally inaccurate,” but did not specify which.

The Teamsters set out key fair-trade objectives three years ago that the proposed trade deal had to meet to earn the union’s support. They are:

If the Tea Party Republicans really were a populist movement, as many of their advocates claim, progressive Democrats would be able to make a coalition with them to stop these trade deals that interfere with American and local sovereignty. But we don’t expect the teabaggers to provide the sort of obstruction to “free trade” that they did against extension of jobless benefits. After all, the Tea Party has never showed much concern for workers’ rights, environmental protection or sustainable agriculture — indeed, the original call for action in January 2009 was not a reaction against the banks that abused the mortgage financing system, but instead focused anger on homebuyers — particularly minorities — who bought homes but were unable to keep up their mortgage payments. And one of the main sponsors of the Tea Party, the Koch brothers, run a petrochemical refining and distribution empire that would be a beneficiary of the dismantling of environmental rules by special trade tribunals, so they don’t have to get approval of the EPA or other state and federal agencies to pollute the air, water or other natural resources. Certainly Democrats in Congress should have no part of this chicanery.


Skinflint Budget Deal Accomplishes Little


Congress’ top two budget chiefs on Dec. 10 produced a bipartisan agreement that would set spending levels for two years and fix some spending cuts required by the sequester.

The deal announced by Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) and Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) would establish spending at $1.012 trillion in 2014 and $1.014 trillion in 2015 — up from the $967 billion required by the across-the-board sequester cuts. It provides for about $63 billion in sequester relief, divided equally among defense and non-defense programs.

The deal offsets the sequester relief with a mix of targeted spending cuts and non-tax revenues via higher government fees and sales, totaling $85 billion over 10 years. That means it would reduce the deficit by about $23 billion. The revenue raisers include higher federal worker contributions to pensions and higher airline ticket fees. In an effort to secure conservative support, none of the revenues come from the tax code. The budget deal doesn’t resolve the impasse over the farm bill and the House’s $40 billion cut in food assistance that would drop as many as six million poor Americans from the anti-hunger rolls.

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) called the budget deal a “very modest proposal that will prevent a disastrous government shutdown. On the other hand, it goes nowhere close to addressing the enormous crises facing this country, including the expiration of unemployment benefits, rebuilding infrastructure, creating millions of jobs, investing in clean energy and early childhood education.”

The biggest win in the budget deal, Sanders said, was that progressives rallied the American people to stop the proposal to cut Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid benefits. But the deal still leaves 1.3 million Americans losing their long-term unemployment benefits three days after Christmas, expected to scrounge for work despite an official unemployment rate of 7% and an underemployment rate of 13.2%.

Democrats said they would continue to push for an extension of unemployment benefits in a separate bill — but that initiative has little chance of passage when many Republicans, including House Budget Chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), think aid to the unemployed encourages the jobless to stop looking for work. (Extension of jobless benefits would cost $26 billion next year — or about the same amount that the Republican government shutdown cost in October.)

The budget deal likely will be one of the last bills to clear Congress before it adjourns for the year. That leaves those 1.3 million long-term unemployed on their own. And this skinflint budget is the entirely foreseeable result of giving Republicans a majority in the House of Representatives. Until Republicans fear the electoral backlash of the unemployed, and the other working classes that the GOP trashes, the least among us will continue to be cast adrift in favor of the corporate sponsors masquerading as “job creators.” — JMC

From The Progressive Populist, January 1-15, 2014
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Thursday, December 12, 2013

Why did the FDA make its new antibiotic restrictions voluntary instead of mandatory?

By Marc Jampole

Were you as delighted as I was when I read the headline that the Food and Drug Administration has a new policy prohibiting the use of antibiotics to speed the growth of pigs and other animals cultivated for human consumption? Trace antibiotics in the animals we eat have contributed to the increasing resistance of bacteria to the antibiotics we use to treat infections.  The new policy forbids use of antibiotics as growth stimulants and also requires farmers to get prescriptions each and every time they want to treat a sick animal with antibiotics.

On the surface it looks like a great victory for every American because it is going to make all of us safer and less likely to die in an illness. The New York Times version of the announcement points out that two million people fall sick and 23,000 die every year from antibiotic-resistant infections.  CNN reports that in April the FDA said that 81% of all the raw ground turkey the agency tested was contaminated with antibiotic-resistant bacteria.  Currently every hospital patient encounters the danger of opportunistic infections that don’t respond to antibiotics.

Every one of the 15 news reports I read hail it as big news: “major new policy,” ”broad measures” and “sweeping plan” are some of the descriptions of the FDA action.

But before we break out the champagne, let’s read the fine print: It’s all voluntary.

Virtually all the news stories bury this fact or downplay it.  For example, the Times says that, based on comments made during the discussion period that proceeds all federal regulation, rules and advisories, the FDA was confident that drug companies would comply (which I suppose means refusing to sell antibiotics to farmers without prescriptions for specific animals). 

Then there’s the matter of a three-year phase-in period. No one has bothered to explain why anyone would need three years to implement this plan: just stop doing it, right away.

As some reports have noted, health officials have warned about the overuse of antibiotics leading to increased resistance since the 1970s. In other words after 40 years of warnings, studies, discussions and negotiations regarding a major public health challenge, the best we can come up with is a voluntary plan.

Have no doubts about it: Some drug company somewhere in the world will continue to sell this stuff to farmers and farmers will still use it. 

If the federal government were really serious about lowering the amount of antibiotics humans ingest in their food and water, it would have set mandatory regulations that took effect within 30 days. But such an action would take a cash stream from drug manufacturers and raise the cost of raising domesticated animals. Farmers and meat processors would make less money and consumers would likely pay a little more for their ground round and chicken nuggets.  It’s worth it, though, as the eradication of the use of antibiotics will make everyone in the United States (and the world) safer from the threat of contracting a life-threatening infection every time they have an operation and safer from the risk of an epidemic of virulent and untreatable infections.


Industry pressures most assuredly caused the wishy-washy action of asking drug makers to resist the urge to make more money. The news behind the news then is that once again, our government has compromised the health, safety and economic well-being of its citizens to enable a small group of companies to continue making money. The additional illnesses and deaths are paid for by all of society, bringing down the costs or raising the profits for a small segment of society.  It’s another example of shifting of the costs from companies to society at large, and it demonstrates once again that unfettered free market capitalism does not lead to the greatest good for the most people.       

Monday, December 9, 2013

Serious economists must be laughing at Wall Street Journal attempt to use Laffer Curve to support tax cuts

By Marc Jampole

Wall Street Journal editorials often twist facts, leave out key facts, make incorrect inferences from facts or just plain get the facts wrong.  But the editorial titled “Britain’s Laffer Curve” shows that sometimes the editorial writers simply have no idea what the facts are saying.

In this editorial, the Journal wants to show that cutting taxes leads to increased tax revenues and invokes the notorious Laffer curve to do so. Laffer Curve theory has been around for ages but is associated with right-wing economist Arthur Laffer who supposedly drew it on a paper cocktail napkin for some government luminaries during the 1970s.  When I interviewed Laffer in 1981 for a television news report, he denied the myth.

What the Laffer Curve postulates is that as taxes are raised, less money circulates in the economy and rich folk are less likely to invest to make more money, since they are keeping so little of it. Research suggests that neither of these statements are true, but by assuming that they are true, one could imagine a situation in which taxes are so high that by lowering them, you raise the amount of revenue that is raised by the government.  Laffer Curve theory proposes that there is a theoretical point at which the tax rate is at a level that produces the most revenues possible from an economy. Laffer Curve theory also predicts that there are occasions when raising taxes will indeed raise significantly more revenue and lowering taxes will indeed lower revenues—it depends on whether we are on the upward or downward slope of the imaginary Laffer Curve.

President Ronald Reagan and a slew of right-wingers since him have used the theory of the Laffer Curve to justify cutting taxes. They assume that no matter what the conditions are, we are always on the side of the imaginary Laffer Curve on which a cut in taxes always leads to an increase in revenues.

The Journal of course takes it for granted that taxes are always too high, especially on businesses, even though they are currently still much lower than during most of the last hundred years and certainly far lower than when Laffer supposedly took Mont Blanc to napkin.    

The editorial in question proudly states that since Great Britain cut its corporate tax rate from 28% to 22% in 2010 that the British Treasury has gained from 45 cents to 60 cents in additional taxes for every one dollar of revenues lost by cutting the tax rate. In other words, economic growth (or more people paying all their taxes) compensated for 45%-60% of the revenues lost through the tax cut.

Now that may or may not prove the existence of a Laffer Curve that can describe the relationship between tax revenues and taxes collected. But it does prove that you cannot use Laffer Curve economics to justify a tax break.   Even after the Laffer Curve effects, the British government is still 55%-40% in the hole, meaning it must find other sources of revenues or cut government spending by that amount. 

And where did the shortfall go? To businesses and their owners, AKA rich folk, who history suggests will invest their additional wealth in the secondary stock market and luxury goods, neither of which really help the economy to grow.

The Journal wants us to believe that the experience of Britain should make us want to cut taxes to raise government revenues. But what the example shows is that cutting taxes leads to a loss of government revenue and a net transfer of an enormous amount of wealth from the poor and middle class to the wealthy. It’s as if the editorial writers have looked at a blue sky and declared, “Look at that blue sky. It proves that the sky is always yellow.” They see the facts, but that doesn’t persuade them from believing what they want to believe is true.

Real economists the world over must be laughing at the Journal and its editorial board’s gross misinterpretation of the facts. Except, of course, those economists in the pay of right-wing think tanks.

Increase in adults reading juvenile fiction another sign of infantilization of Americans

By Marc Jampole

The title of Alexandra Alter’s Wall Street Journal article on adults reading fiction written for middle-schoolers describes the situation perfectly. “See Grown-ups Read. Read, Grown-ups, Read” suggests not middle school, but an elementary school reading level.  Alter’s story describes one of the many ways that our mass culture is infantilizing adults, turning them into oversized children.

Alter finds several reasons why adults like reading fiction written at the reading, intellectual and maturity level of 12- to 15-year-olds:
  1. The Harry Potter series of books continues to influence reading choices.
  2. There is less of a difference in tastes between generations today than in the past.
  3. There is less of a stigma in adults reading children’s books for pleasure.
  4. The quality of literature for middle-school children has increased and the themes have become more mature.
The first three reasons are euphemistic ways to say that many adults now maintain the interests of childhood or pursue childhood interests. Of course, Alter avoids the negative judgment implied—and meant—by my expression, “the infantilization of adults.”  As one of the several experts Alter quotes puts it, “It used to be kids would emulate what their parents were reading, and now it’s the reverse.”

The fourth reason is worth analyzing further. Let’s accept the premise that the quality of the writing in books for the middle school audience has improved and the themes and situations are more complex than in the past. The easy rhetorical response is that these books are still for children and not for adults. There is no stream of consciousness writing, no shifting of perspectives without signaling the shift (known as free indirect discourse), no long elegant Proustian sentences, and no modernistic imagery. Even today’s new and improved middle school fiction falls short of the best of fictional writing for adults. In addition, the themes covered are those of interest to the middle schooler and thus inherently less complicated than what should be of interest to adults.

Alter peppers the article with quotes from experts, but all of them are authors, editors or publishers of juvenile fiction. No place does she have room for the views of a sociologist, psychologist or philosopher, who might fear, as I do, that adults are losing their capacity for complex thought by reverting to their childhood joys and activities, be it juvenile fiction, theme parks or shoot-shoot-bang-bang video games. In fine Wall Street Journal free-market tradition, the article is about a growing market. In the Journal’s view, all free markets are good and the results of free market growth are always good.  The editorial slant of the newspaper reflects a modern version of Voltaire’s buffoonish professor, Dr. Pangloss. He’s the one who keeps repeating in Candide that everything is for the best in the best of all possible worlds. For the Journal, everything is for the best when the free market is operating.

Besides, infantilization of adults is good for Journal advertisers and the American consumer economy is general. Infantilization makes people less able to understand the fine print, less able to understand if what is for sale is really of value. It leaves people less in control of their emotions and more insecure and susceptible to manipulation, just as children and teens are when compared to mature adults. In short, it’s easier to sell products and services—especially useless ones—to the less mature mind.

Friday, December 6, 2013

While celebrating the life of Nelson Mandela, let’s not forget that segregation still exists

By Marc Jampole

Segregation is the separation or isolation of individuals or groups from a larger group or from society. Segregation has taken many forms throughout history: refugee camps, work camps, concentration camps, castes, class systems, quarantines, slave quarters, homelands, ghettos, pales, redlined districts, housing development covenants, mass transit seating and classrooms, to name some of the more prevalent means of denying people the right to enter or leave.

Except for medical quarantines, not one of the myriad means to segregate are fair, moral, ethical, humanistic, righteous or tolerable to the fair, moral, ethical, humanistic, righteous and tolerant person. While it enriches a pluralistic society when individuals of a group—say Jews or Pakistanis—move to the same neighborhood and open specialty stores catering to their cultural predilections, to restrict these or other groups to areas undermines any society or nation. The same is true if a group tries to keep others out, either everyone or another specific group. A free society demands free access to everyone to all areas that offer free access to anyone, except of course for private property not engaged in civic affairs, commerce or other public ends.

Nelson Mandela defeated a particularly pernicious form of segregation called apartheid.  He resolutely withstood years of jail to lead a movement that eventually negotiated with the defenders of apartheid and defeated them in a democratic election. He fulfilled the vision of Gandhi, the dream of Martin Luther King.  That he began his public career supporting violence only makes more poignant the story of his achieving the good he sought peacefully. It also demonstrates the caliber of the man—always growing, always improving, always questioning.

In celebrating Mandela’s long life, however, let us not forget the many forms of segregation that still exist today throughout the world, including the abominable irony of an apartheid-like system in a nation controlled by a national group that suffered one of the most horrifying examples of segregation in recorded history.

In the United States, our most harmful form of segregation is the separation of rich from poor in access to education. Educational segregation—enforced by expensive private schools, private lessons and gerrymandered public school districts, has unleveled the playing field, helping to create what is the least socially mobile country in the western world. In the United States, it is harder for people to leave the lowest fifth in income and wealth and easier for someone in the highest fifth to remain there than in any other industrialized country. It makes a mockery of our democratic ideals for it to be so hard to climb the economic ladder. Education has usually been the way that the poor have become rich in open societies; thus the connection between educational segregation and growing inequality of wealth and opportunity.

But educational segregation is merely one form of this pox on society that we need to address. The situation in Israel and the occupied lands is morally intolerable.  The Wikipedia article titled “Racial Segregation” details legal and de facto segregation in Bahrain, Canada, Fiji, India, Malaysia, Mauritania, the United Kingdom and Yemen. This list doesn’t include prisoner and refugee camps.

The mass media is already trying to homogenize Nelson Mandela, as they have successfully done for Martin Luther King, turning the day of remembering King’s life into a general day of service to the community, which whitewashes that he dedicated his life to one particular kind of service: peaceful disobedience to oppose racial discrimination.  In the same way, the mass media is already focusing on Mandela the peaceful fighter for democratic elections and freedom. But freedom for South African Blacks involved much more than getting the right to vote.  Mandela’s fight was to create a pluralistic post-racial society of equal access, equal treatment, equal rights and equal opportunity.

The only way to appropriately honor Nelson Mandela is to continue the fight—the peaceful fight—against segregation of every kind, wherever it is.

Thursday, December 5, 2013

What current media fascination is most like AIDS news coverage in the 1990s? Hint: Lots of K’s involved

By Marc Jampole

To those old enough to remember the 1990s, the phrase “AIDS story of the day” will resonate, because in fact there was a new story about some aspect of AIDS virtually every day of the week in the mass media: research into its origin or cure, its spread, measures to prevent it, art and literature about AIDS or by artists with AIDS, changing cultural patterns, types of condoms, famous people outed because they contracted AIDS, protests by AIDS victims, the impact of AIDS on communities and cities, the spread to the heterosexual community, vignettes of sufferers and their families, the overcoming of prejudices, funding challenges, studies and reports from other countries. Every day it was something new as reporters, magazines, newspapers and TV programs tried to top each other with the new or unusual related to this dreaded plague.

That there was a constant onslaught of news stories over pretty much an entire decade was understandable. It was a worldwide epidemic of a horrible disease that was related to sexual practices or intravenous drug use with an unknown cause. The story of the world’s reaction to AIDS—finding its cause and then the means to ameliorate if not prevent it, while gaining a new respect and tolerance for its victims—represents humanity at its best.

How ironic then that the contemporary news phenomenon that most resembles the AIDS story in its longevity and number of story angles is not a monumental medical epic involving millions, but the private bantering and peccadilloes of a family of rich but garish narcissists.

Only those who ignore the mass media don’t know to whom I’m referring: It’s the Kardashians.

Every day, a story about one or more Kardashians appears on the Yahoo! home page, Google News, the news pages of popular email portals such as Verizon’s and Time Warner’s, many of our finest tabloid newspapers like The Daily News and gossip-based televisions shows like Entertainment Tonight and The Wendy Williams Show. More staid and serious news media such as Wall Street Journal and New York Times cover the family with some frequency.

Their loves, flirtations and breakups, frustrations, life events and parties, purchases, vacations, clothes, cars and other toys, family relationships, faux pas and ignorant statements, rumors, popularity and the very fact that they are a phenomenon are all grist for the Kardashian mill. Even the Kennedy family at its height did not command so much constant attention, partially because they flourished before the age of 24/7 Internet and television media.

And why so much news coverage for a pack of uneducated conspicuous consumers of luxury products?
  1. Their parents are rich.
  2. They tend to couple with famous people, mostly second rate professional athletes.
  3. They have starred in a succession of reality TV programs in which they inelegantly portray garishly ostentatious lives of conspicuous consumption and family bickering.
In short they are pure celebrities, famous for being famous, or more bluntly, famous for sleeping with famous people.  The fact that much of the detail of their lives and adventures may be created by a stable of reality show and public relations writers matters little. The post-modern blending of reality and fantasy is accepted as gospel by so much of the news media that the Kardashian world has become the fulfillment of the Karl Rove dream of replacing a reality-based world with an ideologically determined one.

The Kardashian ideology, embraced by the show’s sponsors and the owners of the many media outlets that cover their antics, is worship of the commercial transaction. Peruse the stories (but not too many) and you will find that virtually all them involve buying or giving/taking something someone has bought. Their many complex but frangible relations all boil down to shopping. What Lamar got Khloé, where Kourtney shopped, what designer jewelry Kris was wearing.

There is not a day that goes by when the sheer volume of Kardashian stories overwhelms coverage of more important matters. Just now, for example, I found 69.7 million stories about the Kardashians in Google News, but only 140,000 on the car bomb attack in Yemen and a mere 6,000 about the Illinois pension overhaul. Several months ago I reported a study by some Stanford scientists which demonstrated how to provide enough electricity for the entire world through wind power, which garnered exactly one news story throughout the Googlesphere.

Even the most ostensibly high-minded mainstream news media are prisoners of the need to make money by appealing to advertisers. And advertisers like stories that exhort readers to buy expensive toys. And even more do they like stories which advocate the idea that every emotion and human expression must manifest itself in a commercial transaction—buying something.  And most of all they like stories which glorify the shopper as the person to be most admired and honored.

Tuesday, December 3, 2013

So-called bioethicist would rather see people die than change society

By Marc Jampole

In a New York Times Op/Ed column, Daniel Callahan, co-founder of the Hastings Center, a bioethics research institution, questions the wisdom of extending human life. 
 
Callahan rightfully calls aging “a public issue with social consequences” and mentions two of the ramifications of more people living into old age: 1) More medical costs for society; 2) Fewer jobs for the young, as the old extend their working lives.

But instead of seeing health care and the workforce as challenges to overcome as we extend the amount of time people can live, he sees them instead as reasons not to extend life. He doesn’t say it explicitly, but his underlying argument essentially throws people under the bus when their usefulness to the economy appears to end.

The increase in medical costs to treat the elderly should not be seen as society’s burden, but rather as our joyous reward for having created a world in which people can live longer and continue to thrive. That so many people live longer is a sign of success, not a reason to stop the advance of medical research. We expanded educational institutions to meet the large increase in the population of children when the Baby Boomers started popping out. What is so different about expanding medical and social programs for our increasing population of the elderly?

The jobs issue is a little more complicated, primarily because our automated economy does not create enough jobs for everyone willing and able to work. But instead of artificially creating job openings by kicking out people at a certain age, we could fix what’s wrong with our economic system. Here are some thoughts:
  • As more people live to 90, 100 and beyond, they will need more caregivers, which creates jobs for younger people.
  • Local organic farming requires more human labor. If we created an agricultural system that relied on a mix of industrial and older techniques, it would create many more jobs for the young. The key, of course, is to make certain that these jobs pay a decent wage.
  • Unless there is a pressing financial reason, those in their 60s, 70s and beyond typically don’t want to work 40-hour weeks. Job-sharing, especially between the old experienced hand and the young go-getter, makes a lot of sense.
  • We are currently not spending enough on many job-creating enterprises, such as fixing our roads and bridges, hiring enough teachers to decrease class sizes, exploring out-of-space and developing renewable energy sources and systems.
To make any of these ideas work requires two actions that give conservatives the willies: 1) More government management of the economy; and 2) A more equitable distribution of the wealth.

When people use economic arguments to justify denying people basics such as nutrition, healthcare or education, I always wonder if they include themselves. Evidently the 83-year-old Callahan does not, as he admits to having received a seven-hour heart operation and to using oxygen at night for his emphysema.  In our current world, the rich—and I include Callahan—can afford to keep themselves alive and have nice cushy jobs from which they can keep drawing income for decades after turning 65.

Callahan’s sole concern is that as currently constructed, our society and economy cannot afford to extend such privileges to everyone.  While he seems to care about the social good, he argues explicitly from the point of view of someone who doesn’t believe or want society to improve or change. He is happy living in a world dominated by the politics of selfishness, the idea that “I got mine, who cares about anyone else.” He sees an increase in the very old as a threat to that world, as opposed to being a sign that we are making progress towards a better one.

We all know people whose lives are so filled with pain and suffering that to the outsider it seems as if they would be better off dead. Focus on these poor souls (and don’t ask if they want to remain alive in their pain) and Callahan’s argument that life extension may not be an absolute good makes a tad of sense.

But instead, try focusing on the many vibrant 80 and 90 year olds around. Even those who are not so active can still enjoy their friends, their favorite foods, music, outings and games, sports teams, reading, the changing of the seasons, the chirping of birds, the affection of pets, the delight in seeing the flowers pop up in the spring, in short the sheer joy of existence.  We should be doing as much as possible to extend that joy for all people.

Monday, December 2, 2013

What is the biggest cause in the drop in crime rates?

By Marc Jampole

The latest statistics demonstrate that New York City’s Draconian stop-and-frisk policy has not been the cause for a precipitous drop in the rate of violent crime in the five boroughs. Even after NYC’s finest curtailed stop-and-frisk without cause, crime rates continued to plummet.

I’ve been meaning for some time to analyze why crime rates have dropped and continue to drop across the United States, but especially in urban areas outside of Chicago.  Despite the right’s wails and lamentations about unsafe communities, most of us live in far safer places than we did a decade or two ago. Interestingly enough, the crime rate is down most precipitously in that modern Sodom or Gomorrah, the Big Not-So-Rotten Apple.

Why has crime decreased?

First, I want to discount the idea that crime fell as a result of increased incarceration of individuals, victims to the many 3-strikes-you’re-out and anti-crack laws passed in the late '70s and '80s. We have filled our prisons with a bunch of people—black males to a large extent—who don’t deserve to be incarcerated. All they have done is minor kid’s stuff or drugs. We have the highest incarceration rate in the western world and yet we still have the highest rate of violent crimes. No doubt, some small percentage of those locked up for years for tooting crack might have committed future crimes, but some percentage of those locked up learned criminal ways in prison and became lost to society.  I’m thinking the net effect disproves the idea that locking more people up than any other industrialized nation led to a drop in crimes rates.

One of the gun lobby’s many fantasies is that the increase in open carry and other gun rights leads to a decrease in crime, because the criminals won’t want to run into someone who would shoot back. This absurd claim crumbles to lies as soon as we look at the facts: Forget that the incidents of citizens stopping criminals by pulling out their gun are extremely rare. Consider that the higher the prevalence of guns in any country in the world, the higher the rate of deaths and injuries from guns in that country. More guns equal more violent deaths. Also consider the fact that while there are more guns out there now, fewer households own guns today than 20 years ago, continuing a trend that is more than 50 years old now.  Fewer people own more guns. I think it’s likely that the decline in gun owners may have led to a drop in crime.

So far, I’ve consider some bogus arguments conservatives make about the drop in crime. Now let’s take a look at three legitimate arguments which I think have been factors in the continued drop in crime, but not any as the primary cause.

Let’s start with the end of the use of lead paint: This theory goes that crime increased soon after we started using lead-based paint in apartment buildings, because children would eat the paint chips and suffer one or more of the side effects, which include learning disabilities resulting in decreased intelligence, attention deficit disorder and behavior issues, all predictors of criminal behavior. Once we stopped using lead paint, the crime rate went down (even thought the rate of diagnosing ADD continues to soar). It’s a very believable theory backed by evidence that suggests but does not prove causality. Not enough research has done on the affect of lead paint on human adherence to social norms, but the explanation does sound plausible.

We can also look at the growth of dispute resolution programs in the schools as another factor in lowering the rate of crime. I think it was some time in the '80s when these programs began, first in urban areas. Having sixth grade kids mentor first-graders, throwing middle school kids in with high schoolers, bringing together groups of students from different schools to talk about race, religion and other hate issues, the growth in organized sports leagues—all of this additional socialization had to turn many marginal children away from crime.

My own pet theory is that the growth of video game play helped to lower the crime rate.  The idea is that people work out their anger and anti-social urges playing Grand Theft Auto and Call of Duty: Black Ops.  So while I despair that most video games tend to infantilize young men, preventing their ideas and thought processes to mature, I do think that the games have kept many young men busy and out of trouble.

I do reject one non-conservative theory: A professor has postulated that the legalization of abortion has resulted in fewer unwanted children born and that unwanted children commit more crimes. The problem with this theory is that the introduction of birth control pills assuredly prevented the birth of more children than did the legalization of abortion. But the introduction of the pill paralleled the increase in the crime rate in the 1960s and early '70s, at least at first.

Lead paint, growth in socialization programs and video games all played a role in the decrease in crime, without being the main cause. Sociologists and historians who calculate crime rates in many cultures through centuries report that the rate of crime is primarily a function of the number of 16-29 year old males in the population. Most crime is committed by young men, so the higher percentage of young males in the population, the higher the crime rate.

The facts certainly match this theory until about 2003. When the Baby Boom turned 16, crime rates started to soar. Males aged 16-29 represented the largest percentage of our population in our nation’s history.  When Generation X—otherwise known as the Baby Bust—started to turn 16 and Baby Boomers started turning middle-aged, crime rates started dropping. Now the birth rate increased again with the Millennial generation (AKA Generation Y, although judging from the high achievements of its female members, maybe Generation Non-Y is a better moniker!). But when the Millennials started turning 16, the crime rate did not pick up again.

My thought is that the impact of the Millennials on the overall population is far less than that of the truly outsized Baby Boom generation. So while we have more 16-29 year old males, this demographic segment is not as great a percentage of the whole as it was at the height of Boomer young adulthood.  The end of lead paint, greater socialization, the growth of video games, a decline in gun ownership and other factors still unidentified all combined to keep the crime rate going down.  By this theory, if the Millennials were as large a factor as the Baby Boom generation had been, the crime rate might still not have risen, but not to Boomer levels because of these additional factors. 

Wednesday, November 27, 2013

Ayn Rand Institute factotum tries to convince us Wal-Mart pays its employees enough

By Marc Jampole

Right-wing factotum Doug Altner, an analyst with the Ayn Rand Institute, poses a provocative question in a Forbes article: If Wal-Mart is such a crappy place to work, why do 1.4 million Americans work there and many more want to? 

It’s the type of question that extreme free-marketers love to ask, because it assumes that we really have a free market in which every market participant has equal rights and equal clout. 

Altner forgets that the poor and the uneducated have very few options.  That 10,000 people apply for 300 openings when a new Wal-Mart opens says less about the attractiveness of the company and more about the lack of jobs, especially for young people who don’t have diplomas from one of the top 300 or so colleges. In many rural areas, Wal-Mart’s entrance into the marketplace destroyed many local and regional retailers who paid their employees more in wages and benefits. Wal-Mart does pay marginally more money than burger-flipping, but that does not mean that it pays a decent wage.

Altner gives three reasons why he thinks people clamor to work for Wal-Mart:

1.  The work is not physically straining. 
What Altner writes is that “Many entry-level Walmart jobs consist of comparatively safe and non-strenuous work such as stocking shelves, working cash registers, and changing price labels.” Altner goes on to mention that these jobs pay more than other entry-level jobs that require few skills. What he doesn’t say is that other non-strenuous jobs pay much more money. I can’t remember the last time I worked up a sweat writing an article or meeting with a client. I do remember that an attorney and a company president with whom I recently met both looked absolutely exhausted—they had just come from a racquetball game at 10:00 a.m. on a week day! Sarcasm aside, the fact that work is not physically exhausting shouldn’t justify paying less than a living wage.

2.  Wal-Mart provides entry to myriad career opportunities. 
Altner points out that Wal-Mart tends to promote from within and that three-quarters of its store managers started as hourly workers (Altner uses the Wal-Mart euphemism and calls them “associates.”). I’m not sure how Altner earned a PhD in industrial engineering, because he certainly forgot to do the math. Counting 1.3 million employees and about 5,000 Wal-Marts and Sam’s Clubs across the 50 states, a new hire at Wal-Mart has less than three-tenths of one percent chance of becoming a store manager.  But the 1.3 million number is the wrong one to use, since 70% of all Wal-Mart employees quit within a year, a stunning indicator of employee dissatisfaction which Altner neglects to mention.  If we consider the competition for 75% of store manager jobs to be everyone hired in a 12-month period, then the statistical probability of becoming a store manager is significantly less than two-tenths of a percent. But the real odds of getting a job are assuredly even less than this number, since the company does not turn over all store manager jobs within a year. Maybe the competition for store manager jobs includes everyone hired by Wal-Mart in a six-year period (less than 6/100ths of a percent) or even a 10 year period (less than 4/100ths of a percent).  I’m guessing that if you consider everyone who draws a salary playing for all the major and minor leagues of baseball, basketball, soccer, hockey, race car driving, golf, tennis and every other professional sport, the chance of becoming a professional athlete is probably as great as starting as a Wal-Mart entry level employee and becoming a store manager. In other words, the opportunity is there, but it’s far-off and very unlikely.

The article does not miss a beat in defending Wal-Mart. For example, the one example of an hourly worker who made it to the top is a woman named by Fortune Magazine as one of the 50 most powerful women of 2006. I’m sure that offers consolation and hope to the many Wal-Mart female employees who are suing the company for wage discrimination and a hostile work environment. He doesn’t say it, but Altner selects this woman as his example to fight the negative publicity Wal-Mart continues to get for its treatment of women.

3.  Others are waiting for the Wal-Mart jobs.
Altner declares that Wal-Mart can get away with paying low wages, so why should it pay higher wages. He complains that critics think Wal-Mart should pay more, “regardless of whether he has the skills or experience to justify such a wage, regardless of whether he is a model employee or a slouch, regardless of how many other individuals are willing and able to do his job for less, regardless of whether raising wages will be good for the company’s bottom line. In effect, their premise is that $12+ per hour wages shouldn’t have to be earned or justified; they should be dispensed like handouts.”  He forgets that it is Wal-Mart that is getting a handout because so many of its employees rely on government assistance programs to supplement their low wages.

Altner is really making a case for no minimum wage and, in fact, no government regulation.  He can’t really believe that Wal-Mart offers a great deal if 70% of employees quit within a year, unless he postulates that all 70% are “slouches.”  The fact that others are waiting in line to take the jobs is no excuse for paying less. Many attorneys are clamoring for high-priced jobs at corporate law firms. I get dozens of resumes a month from people clamoring for a job at a public relations agency. These are high-paying jobs that stay high-paying despite the fact that lots of people want them.

For decades, Wal-Mart has taken advantage of the economic climate. It thrives by exploiting the fact that the minimum wage has lost its buying power through inflation and is much lower than it should be; the fact that the current laws allow corporations to play games with part-time work to limit benefits; the fact that there are far fewer jobs than there are people seeking them.  In this sense, they are bottom feeders who take advantage of the poor and uneducated.

The heart of Ayn Rand’s philosophy is selfishness. In its discussion of Ayn Rand’s philosophy, the Ayn Rand Institute website writes, “Man—every man—is an end in himself, not the means to the ends of others. He must exist for his own sake, neither sacrificing himself to others nor sacrificing others to himself. The pursuit of his own rational self-interest and of his own happiness is the highest moral purpose of his life.”

I disagree entirely. All of our sustenance and pleasure—our necessities like food and shelter and our joys like music and sports—come through our interactions with society.  We owe society—for roads and bridges, our electrical grids, our safety, our markets, our cultural norms and standards, our base of knowledge and all our goods and services. No one can live outside society or without other people. As a society, we owe everyone, and in this I mean everyone in the world, food, shelter, education, health care and a chance to better themselves.

As individuals, we manifest what we owe society by following its rules and regulations. For the good of the whole, we impede people’s rights to adulterate food or use inaccurate weights and measures. And we also impede people’s right to take advantage of the downtrodden. That’s what the minimum wage is all about.

If Wal-Mart (and many other employers) did not operate always and only on the principles of pure selfishness, there would be no need to unionize or to raise the minimum wage. But they don’t, so society and its members have every right to foster unionization and to set a minimum wage. 

We are living in a particularly harsh time now, mainly because for too long we have let those like Doug Altner and other Randers set the tone of the political debate. We hear too much about the rights and prerogatives of corporations and rich folk and too little about the family of humans and how interconnected we all are.

Tuesday, November 26, 2013

Dunkin’ Donuts adds both extra sugar and salt to new hot chocolate-flavored concoction

By Marc Jampole

The amazing thing about the diversity of manufactured food offerings in food stores and restaurants is the degree to which the proliferation of new food products leaves everything tasting the same: half salty and half sweet.

For one thing, there’s the sauce inflation at national chains for what is called “casual dining.”  You know, Applebee's, Red Lobster, Olive Garden, Outback.  The fad now is to cook meat with one sauce, glaze or other covering and then pour both a cheese or cheese product and another sauce over the entire entree.  For example, Olive Garden has its Steak Gorgonzola Alfredo and Pizza Fritters Napoli. Applebee’s has its Fiesta Lime Chicken and Four-cheese Macaroni and Cheese with Honey Pepper Chicken Tenders. And check out the description of this sweet and salty delicacy from Outback: wood-fire grilled chicken breast topped with sautéed chicken with mushrooms, crisp bacon, melted Monterey Jack and cheddar and honey mustard sauce. The combinations of meats, sauces and spices always leave these dishes with both a salty and a sweet taste, sometimes with or without a slightly hot favor, depending upon whether or not it is “spicy.” There is no other taste and no subtlety of taste or aroma.

Forget about the added calories from the cheese and multiple sauces for the moment. Just think what happens when you put salt and sugar on everything—it all comes out tasting the same.  Now I know that we only taste salt, sweet, sour, bitter and umami (meat flavor), but with the varied smells of food, it really is possible to create a myriad of taste combination. It seems as if all American food manufacturers want to do is make us taste only salt and sugar.

The latest salt-and-sugar concoction—at least as far as I can tell with my limited TV viewing and total abstinence from processed food and national chain restaurant offerings—is Dunkin’ Donuts’ (DD) “salted caramel hot chocolate.”

Caramel is the smoky sugary flavor you get when you melt sugar at a low heat. There is always some sugar or other sweetener in all chocolate, but adding caramel pumps another jolt of sugar—or whatever sweetener DD uses—into the drink. Plus there’s the salty part: who wants to drink something salty anyhow? Salty food make you want to drink something—I’ve found water is best to quench a salted thirst. So the effect of drinking DD’s salted caramel hot chocolate drink is to make you want to drink something else. A Dunkin’ coffee anyone?

The small version of this beverage product runs 220 calories and the extra large version comes in at 550 calories, which is approximately one-quarter of what nutritional experts tell us the average adult male should eat in an entire day.  While looking at the list of ingredients, keep in mind that the ingredients are always listed in order of quantity—the first item is used the most in the food product, the second item second most, etc.

Here are the ingredients in salted caramel hot chocolate: Water, Salted Caramel Flavored Hot Chocolate Powder {Sugar, Non Dairy Creamer [Partially Hydrogenated Coconut Oil, Corn Syrup Solids, Sodium Caseinate (a milk derivative), Dipotassium Phosphate, Sugar, Mono and Diglycerides, Sodium Silicoaluminate, Sodium Stearoyl Lactylate, Soy Lecithin, Artificial Flavor and Artificial Color (Annatto and Turmeric)], Nonfat Dry Milk, Cocoa processed with alkali, Natural and Artificial Flavor, Salt, Cellulose Gum, Silicon Dioxide, Sodium Citrate}.   

The first thing to note is that what we have is a packet of dry chemicals that DD stirs into hot water. Some of the chemicals derive from processing plants or animals; others are completely artificial, in that the starting point wasn’t a food that grows such as sugar or cocoa. Also note that cocoa is probably the fifth most used product in the dry mixture, behind non-dairy creamer, which in and of itself has seven chemical parts, including corn syrup and even more sugar.  I write “probably,” because of all the stuff in the non-dairy creamer. Note, too, that there is more non-dairy creamer than nonfat dry milk. Thank goodness there is less salt than cocoa in this brew.

Don’t think that drinking one, or even five, of this beverage comprised of sugar, chemicals and salt will count towards the daily dark chocolate dose that keeps away heart disease. In fact, a DD salted caramel is one of the unhealthiest things you can put in your body.  Drinking one defiles the body much as dumping radioactive wastes defiles a wooded area or wetlands.

Don’t think that the sauces, glazes, cheese products and drizzles at national casual dining chains are any different. Dig deep into the ingredients of most of these concoctions and you’ll find a lot of chemicals, a lot of corn syrup and sugar and a lot of artificial flavors.

Of course, with all the potential carcinogens and all those unneeded empty calories come that simultaneous hit of both sugar and salt which the food manufacturing industry has trained us to crave.

Monday, November 25, 2013

Pro-nuclear journalists nuke mainstream news media; fall-out is wasted time in addressing global warming.

By Marc Jampole

In the past week, both Eduardo Porter, a left-leaning columnist from the New York Times and Hendrik Hertzberg, a centrist-looking-left columnist at the New Yorker have advocated nuclear power as the necessary bridge to solar and wind power.

Both writers use the same arguments: We can’t produce enough energy—by which they mean electricity—by solar and wind, so we need nuclear to replace carbon-spewing coal and oil if we are to address global warming in time.  Porter and Hertzberg make two assumptions: 1)  we must wait for the market to develop for solar and wind as opposed to making massive government investment to create the market; and 2) the only viable solutions involve central generation of electricity controlled by large companies and the decentralized solutions such as mini-generators in neighborhoods and solar panels for heating space and water are unacceptable.

But using nuclear energy to produce electricity strikes a bargain with a devil as pernicious to the earth as global warming. The safety problems with nuclear power are numerous and well documented. Briefly, a major accident spewing significant radiation has occurred somewhere in the world about every 10 years since the 1950’s, including Chalk River, Kyshtym, Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and Fukushima, to name some of the more notorious accidents.

There is also the issue of storage. The United States still hasn’t found a permanent place to store nuclear wastes, so it sits at the plants or in temporary locations smoldering  and spewing radioactivity.  The half life of some nuclear waste is 25,000 years, which means that in 25,000 years half of the radioactivity will have dissipated. That’s more than twice the length of time that humans have had civilizations with written records and agriculture. How many people can speak the languages humans spoke 25,000 years ago? When I think of storage of nuclear waste, I always imagine future intelligent life discovering cavernous vaults with strange hieroglyphics on them, wondering what the symbols mean and eager to break open the vault and see what is inside. They drill through only to let the radioactivity escape and poison them and those in nearby settlements.

By spending money on building more plants for the nuclear generation of electricity we deny resources that could make solar viable. Instead of the private sector investing in nuclear, why can’t the government increases taxes on the private sector’s use of coal and oil and use the funds to buy solar-based batteries, solar roof panels for heating federal buildings and other existing solar products? Making solar and wind more competitive does not have to involve only making them cheaper; it can also involve making coal and oil more expensive by raising taxes or withdrawing current tax breaks. The government could also give greater tax breaks for developing wind mills and solar plants. It could pass a law that makes it harder for rich folk to pursue lawsuits because their view of the Atlantic is impeded by a windmill. 

Why waste precious public and private resources in nuclear energy? Let’s go right to what must be the energy of the future—solar and wind.

Saturday, November 23, 2013

Editorial: Swindlers Get Reprieve


Conservatives are betting big on the failure of the Affordable Care Act. They seem to think that if they can sabotage the health reforms, not only will it cause the general collapse of liberalism, but they also hope that health care in the United States will revert to the corrupt old system that allowed insurance companies to deny coverage to people with chronic health problems, cancel policies of people as soon as they were diagnosed with expensive illnesses, sell junk policies with little practical coverage for the unwary, and distribute excessive profits to their shareholders.

We aren’t going back. As of Jan. 1, regardless of whether the Obama administration ever gets HealthCare.gov glitch-free, millions of working poor people will start getting coverage through Medicaid. Millions of others will start getting subsidies to pay for private insurance through the federal marketplace. Those insurance policies will have to meet minimum standards for the first time. Insurance companies no longer will be able to deny coverage for people with pre-existing conditions. Annual and lifetime limits on coverage will be outlawed. And profits will be limited.

Progressives should frame the insurance reforms that are contained in the Affordable Care Act as the last chance for insurance companies to show they can provide health coverage without swindling their customers. But those bad habits are hard for insurance companies to give up.

The reforms will be rough for some — particularly for those in the middle class who buy their own individual insurance policies but whose income is too great to qualify for subsidies. Some of them have junk policies that seem like a good deal until they actually get sick; others might have gotten relatively good, inexpensive coverage because they had a good health history, but even those able-bodied middle-classers probably won’t have to look far to find a friend or relative who has been going for years without health care because they have a pre-existing condition or they just never could afford the insurance premiums.

Insurance companies have been sending out letters to several million of their customers telling them that they have to cancel their plans because of the Affordable Care Act. In many cases, the letters try to steer the customers to higher-cost plans, and because HealthCare.gov has been balky and the customers might not know they can get the information by phone, they might not know they could get a better deal from the federal healthcare marketplace — particularly if they earn less than four times the federal poverty rate (that would be $45,960 for a single person or $94,000 for a family of four) and qualify for a subsidy..

Enough people are howling about rate shock that President Obama was forced to concede that insurance companies should be allowed to continue selling junk insurance policies to existing customers for one more year, to make good on his promise that “If you like your health plan, you can keep your health care plan.” At least under Obama’s terms the insurance companies are required to notify customers of their options under the Affordable Care Act.

That wasn’t good enough for Republicans who want to dismantle the ACA by any means they can. So the House, on a 261-157 vote that included 39 panicked Democrats siding with the Republicans and four Republicans siding with the rest of the Dems, passed the Swindlers’ Relief Act, sponsored by Rep. Fred Upton (R-Mich.) on Nov. 15. The bill would allow insurers to maintain existing substandard policies but also would let them offer those plans to new customers, which would undermine the new system, and would exempt the insurance companies from some of the consumer protections.

If the insurance mandate fails to provide a financially viable private insurance market, the next step for Congress should be passage of the Expanded and Improved Medicare for All Act (HR 676, sponsored by Rep. John Conyers Jr., D-Mich.), which would simply expand Medicare to cover everybody.

Passage of that bill will remain a long shot, even if Dems regain the House majority and neuter the Senate filibuster, but single-payer advocates can pick up the slack at the state level. The Affordable Care Act provides for “state innovation waivers” to be granted beginning in 2017, allowing states to implement creative plans they believe would work best for them. With this in mind, organized single-payer movements have taken root in Colorado, Hawaii, Illinois, New York, California, Oregon and Vermont. Vermont passed a law in 2011 setting the state on the party toward its own single-payer program.

Canada moved to a single-payer health care program starting at the provincial level with Saskatchewan in 1946. The United States might have to get the momentum going at the state level too.

In the meantime, enrollment in healthcare plans is surging in many states. In California, where only 31,000 people enrolled in October, nearly twice as many had enrolled in the first two weeks of November, the Los Angeles Times reported Nov. 19. Several other states, including Connecticut and Kentucky, were outpacing their enrollment estimates. In Minnesota, enrollment in the second half of October ran at triple the rate of the first half, officials told the Times. Washington state also was on track to easily exceed its October enrollment figure.

The 36 states that depend on the federal website, many of whose Republican state officials declined to build their own exchanges, lagged far behind, but the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services reported in mid-November that HealthCare.gov was working for 90% of users who have tried to sign up. The agency has sent out 275,000 emails to people who had started to create accounts but couldn’t get through the process. As of mid-November, more than 50,000 people had selected an insurance plan — up from 27,000 in the entire month of October, the New York Times reported Nov. 19.

Joan McCarter noted at DailyKos.com Nov. 19 that many people are likely still in window-shopping mode. Enrollments should pick up even more — both on the state sites and the federal site — in the last week or two before the Dec. 15 deadline for insurance to be in place on Jan. 1. Then it will pick up again in February and March before the final deadline. The experience implementing Massachusetts health reform provides the best model for enrollment patterns, and in the first four months of enrollment just about one-fifth of the uninsured population enrolled.

“The people will come. They’re not freaked out over what most people perceive as inevitable: a problematic new government program. They’re not abandoning support for the program in droves. They’re not calling for an end to the program. They’re patient enough to give it time to work, even if Republicans and the traditional media are not.”

States found it easier to enroll low-wage residents in the expanded Medicaid programs. Under the law, the federal government picks up nearly the entire cost of that expansion for the first several years. That wasn’t a good enough deal to convince Republican leaders in 26 states to give five million working poor a break, but in the other half of states, nearly 400,000 new people already qualified for Medicaid coverage in October. In Oregon, whose marketplace has had problems, the state reported that it signed up 70,000 new people for Medicaid.

Meanwhile, in Texas, where Rick Perry has failed in 15 years as lieutenant governor and governor to take any action to address the health-care crisis for the one-quarter of Texans who are uninsured, not only has Perry denied Medicaid expansion to cover one million working poor Texans who are uninsured; his heir-apparent, Attorney General Greg Abbott, has moved to prevent “navigators,” many of whom work for non-profit organizations, from helping potential customers find the insurance plan and federal subsidy that’s right for them.

Next year, when the benefits of “Obamacare” become apparent to all Americans, we hope Democrats can make the Republicans pay for their hostility to working people. — JMC

From The Progressive Populist, December 15, 2013
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Friday, November 22, 2013

What do Wal-Mart and Arne Duncan have in common? Neither understands that it’s all about the wages

By Marc Jampole

Two stories floating around the news media lately both make me want to shake the principal actors and yell in their faces, “Raise wages and you’ll solve the problem.”

The first story involves Wal-Mart’s latest embarrassment—employees in its Canton, Ohio store organized a Thanksgiving food drive for fellow workers.  This act of charity—by and for employees only—begged the question that pundits, labor leaders, left-leaning actors and supporters of the minimum wage are all asking: Does Wal-Mart pay its employees too little money?

The Canton food drive for Wal-Mart employees came on the heels of a report by Demos, the liberal think tank, that if Wal-Mart had not engaged in a stock buy-back program in recent years, it would have had the money to raise employee salaries by $5.83 an hour and kept the same profit.  My only problem with the survey is that it doesn’t attack the profit margin, which is pretty fat for Wal-Mart and could be reduced to pay employees a living wage.

At this point, Wal-Mart’s treatment of its employees has achieved near mythic notoriety in the mainstream and the left-leaning media. The food drive is merely this week’s “Wal-Mart doesn’t pay its employees enough” story. I’m sure many others are as tired as I am of shouting at the paper, TV, radio or computer screen, “Just do the decent thing and raise their salaries to $15 an hour!”

Perhaps not so many people were yelling at  Secretary of Education Arne Duncan the other day when he announced a new public  relations campaign by the Department of Education to get more kids to consider careers as school teachers. Other sponsors include the Advertising Council, Microsoft, State Farm Insurance, Teach for America, the nation’s two largest teachers’ unions and several other educational groups. The problem the campaign addresses is that the Baby Boom generation of teachers is beginning to retire and many predict teacher shortages in the future.

If Arne Duncan doesn’t know it, maybe his friends at Microsoft and the multinational advertising agencies involved in the Advertising Council could tell him that it’s a simple matter to attract more—and more competent—people to a job or career. Just offer more money.

I suspect that Duncan is not entirely serious about attracting more people to the teaching profession, given his continued support of charter schools. From day one, the goal of the charter school movement has been to hammer down salaries of teachers by destroying public school unions.  We know that the big money funding the charter school movement doesn’t really care about quality education. Otherwise they would have pulled the plug on charter schools years ago, given that on average charter schools underperform public schools.

The equation is simple:
  1. Charter schools pay less
  2. Thus, charter schools drive down teachers’ salaries
  3. Lower teacher salaries decrease interest in becoming a teacher.
If this esteemed group of government entities, companies and nonprofit organizations really wanted to build the next generation of school teachers, it would be bankrolling a campaign to make union organizing easier and to set high federal wage standards for all school teachers, public and private.

Both these stories come down to people with power scratching their heads and wondering what to do when the answer is standing right in front of them like a large cold and hungry elephant shivering and trumpeting loudly. PAY THEM MORE! It may mean taking a little less in profits, which are currently exorbitant. Or it may mean raising taxes. Doesn’t matter—those with jobs should make enough money to feed their families, and the professionals to whom we entrust our children should not have their decent wages reduced but instead be raised to the same rate at which we pay lawyers, accountants and other professionals. Pay teachers as much as we pay neurosurgeons and top PR execs, and we’ll have more people interested in the profession. 
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