Saturday, November 8, 2014

Buddy Bullies Boehner

Art by Kevin Kreneck

Dems Need Populist Pitch


Give the Republicans this: They did a much better job of focusing the rage of the American electorate than Democrats did. Republicans have succeeded in their strategy of blocking President Obama at every turn, and then blaming him for not accomplishing his goals.

The conspiracy started on the night of Obama’s inauguration, Jan. 20, 2009, when 15 GOP leaders met in the upscale Caucus Rooom in Washington, D.C., at the invitation of Republican strategist Frank Luntz. They agreed to obstruct the new President, regardless of the impact on the nation, in the hope that gridlock would tarnish Obama and sabotage his re-election.

Despite the precarious condition of the nation’s economy in the first two years, Republicans opposed Obama on the stimulus; they opposed him on rescuing General Motors and Chrysler; they opposed him on developing a national health reform bill, even though it was based on a Republican proposal; they opposed Obama on reforming Wall Street. And the obstruction worked! Even as the economy began to stabilize, Republicans complained that the economy wasn’t improving fast enough, despite their almost unanimous opposition to the measures designed to save jobs and stimulate business, and they won control of the House in 2010.

Since then the Republican House has blocked virtually every Obama initiative, but the economy has continued to improve from the stimulus that Democrats passed during the first two years of his term, and Obama managed to win re-election in 2012. His approval rating has dropped to the low-to-mid 40s in the process, about the same as the Democrats, who had 42.2% approval going into the midterm election, but Republicans have become even more unpopular, with a 36.2% favorable rating going into the election. That makes the Republican sales job in this election all the more remarkable.

Loss of the Senate is more damaging to the lame duck president, because the Senate must approve judicial nominees and new members of the Obama administrative team. Every two-term president since Dwight Eisenhower has had to deal with a Senate in opposition hands. Eisenhower and Bill Clinton both lost the Senate in their second year as president and never got it back. Richard Nixon never had a Republican Senate and didn’t make it to his sixth year before he was forced to resign for his perfidy. Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush both lost the Senate in their sixth years, as Obama has, but it probably is fair to say that the Senate has never been so polarized along partisan lines in the past century.

Among the most disappointing Senate losses was in Iowa, where Rep. Bruce Braley (D), a four-term congressman and chair of the House Populist Caucus, entered the race favored to win the seat Sen. Tom Harkin (D) was giving up, but he ran a flawed campaign and was virtually unseen in Western Iowa, which re-elected Rep. Steve King (R) but has a history of supporting populist Democrats, including Harkin. State Sen. Jodi Ernst (R) won the race by 8.5 points with not much more to recommend her than her experience castrating hogs. NBC News exit polls showed that Braley got only 34% of the vote in rural Western Iowa. Statewide, he carried cities over 50,000 population, with 55% of the vote, but lost suburbs 58-40 percent and rural voters 60-38 percent. He virtually broke even with Ernst among families with under $50,000 income, nominally leading 49-48 percent. Those are the people who should gain from “Obamacare” expansion of Medicaid and subsidies for health insurance for the working poor and middle-class families.

Democrats should not overreact to the loss of the Senate majority and the 14-seat Republican gain in the House. Republicans won’t have a veto-proof majority in either chamber and after a couple years with no excuses for the Republican Congress not passing the crazy legislative initiatives that appeal to the GOP’s right-wing base, voters should be looking forward to kicking Republicans out of power. But it would help if the Democrats offered a more appealing choice.

Democrats also must do better in appealing to rural white voters if they want to reverse their fortunes for 2016. Democrats ought to be able to make the case that they are the better choice for the working class, not with appeals to social issues but with the populist pitch that Republican priorities are to benefit the rich and giant corporations at the expense of the middle class and mom-and-pop businesses in small towns and big cities. It would help if the Obama administration would send a few banksters to jail.

Texas Democrats hoped that former organizers for Barack Obama, operating as Battleground Texas, would register voters and get out the vote in growing minority communities, as they did in competitive states such as Colorado, Florida and Nevada in 2012, but their efforts were not the game changer Dems had hoped for.

In the race for governor, Wendy Davis (D), a state senator from Fort Worth who gained fame leading a filibuster against a bill severely restricting abortion services in Texas, hoped that women would carry her to victory, but Republican nominee Greg Abbott, the state’s attorney general, actually won 54% of the female vote en route to a 20-point victory margin over Davis. NBC News exit polls showed Davis got 49% of voters under 44, narrowly beating Abbott in that age group, but only 14% of that young electorate were 18 to 29 and 27% were 30 to 44. Among voters 45-64, which was 41% of the electorate, Abbott beat Davis 67-32 percent.

In Texas, fully 56% of the population is non-white, and Democrats hope a new generation of Latino voters will restore them to power, but the Nov. 4 electorate was still 66% white and Abbott carried them 72-25 percent. Blacks (12% of the population as well as the electorate) voted 92% for Davis but Latinos (38% of the population but only 17% of the electorate), voted 55% for Davis. Republicans blanketed Latino South Texas with ads emphasizing Davis’ support for abortion “on demand,” as well as running ads of Abbott’s Latina mother-in-law saying what a nice guy he is — and Davis failed to make a case for how a Democratic governor would make a difference in their lives. (Texas Latinos had voted 70% for President Obama in 2012 when Mitt Romney won the state by 16 points.)

Obama Should Go For Broke


Progressives should be wary of President Obama’s interest in reaching centrist deals with Republican House and Senate leaders. The day after the election, Obama said he would be willing to work with Republicans if they are interested in infrastructure projects or other measures that will create jobs that pay well — they have resisted such projects so far. He also suggested he would be open to corporate tax reforms that close loopholes, while Republicans insist on tax breaks. He also is willing to work with Republicans on immigration reform, but we saw what happened to the bipartisan deal the Senate passed in 2013. House Speaker John Boehner, intimidated by the white supremacist wing of the GOP, has refused to allow the House to take up the bill.

Of course, Latino voters were upset that Democrats had failed to enact the immigration reforms, possibly depressing their turnout Nov. 4. That may have been fatal to Colorado Sen. Mark Udall’s re-election hopes. Democrats will need those votes in 2016.

The election results have only emboldened the white supremacist wing of the GOP, so Obama might as well go ahead an implement as many immigration reforms and regulations to address climate change as he can by executive order and dare the GOP to do something about it.

The rabid Republican base will settle for nothing less than impeachment on trumped-up charges. Obama should welcome that overreach. The House can impeach with a simple majority — and the Republican caucus has a bunch of simpletons who are rarin’ to go with that radical remedy — but removal from office requires a two-thirds vote by the Senate, and Democrats should be able to muster the 34 votes to preserve the incumbent and expose the charlatans running the partisan process. — JMC

From The Progressive Populist, December 1, 2014
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Friday, November 7, 2014

Our worst fear should be an accommodation between President Obama & Republican legislators

By Marc Jampole

Typically I would take with a grain of salt the consensus analysis of the midterm elections: that the voters repudiated President Obama. But it’s hard to come to any different conclusion when you dig into statewide and local initiatives, which show a landslide for social and economic progressives. From medical marijuana to gun control to higher minimum hourly wages, the left side of the issue won most of the votes.

Thus many people in a sense “split the ticket” by voting with Democrats on particular issues but against the President.

Obama has certainly had a bad year, some of it of his own making. Saying that the Administration had no plan to combat ISIS was a big PR mistake—a Romneyesque (Romneytic?) moment from which he never recovered. He should have just shut up until he had a plan. Not having a plan is how we roll. In the 21st century: not having a plan didn’t stop the United States in Iraq or in Afghanistan. Most Americans don’t realize yet that U.S. foreign and military policy is going to be the same no matter who is president—we’re going to keep having these small wars so we can keep paying the defense contractors. No one who isn’t with that program will ever have a chance to become president, given the current structure of both parties and the election finance laws.

But the head of the Center for Disease Control had no business apologizing because one hospital in Texas screwed up treating an Ebola patient. What did he hope to gain, unless he is a secret Republican who wanted to throw more gas on the editorial flames?  The CDC and all health institutions have been doing a wonderful job keeping Ebola out of the population. The news media keeps us scared, but the government health agencies have kept us healthy. So why apologize?

I’m not saying Obama has been a great president, but he doesn’t deserve the disapprobation he received in the news media and among politicians before the election, and I don’t think he would have gotten it if he were white. Over the years in Pittsburgh I watched several African-Americans do average work in highly visible jobs and get fired after replacing whites who had done average jobs for decades. The most egregious case was the Pittsburgh Board of Education who fired an African-American superintendent for his plan to downsize the schools and then praised his successor—a white—for taking the same plan and implementing it. I have to think that the same standard applies in many if not most regions across the country.

It wasn’t just an insidious kind of racism that swung the mid-term elections to the Republicans: most of the key races were close, and in many states such as Wisconsin there were new laws restricting the right to vote. Even where court decisions had stopped enforcement of these laws, the publicity must have discouraged many citizens from voting.

Let’s also not forget the power of money. Large corporate interests and the Republican Party hammered voters for weeks with anti-Obama nonsense. ISIS and Ebola. Ebola and ISIS. You saw it in rightwing news coverage. You saw it in political ads. You saw it reported as part of the centrist balance of mainstream news media. Ebola and ISIS.

What’s next has been a subject of great speculation in the mainstream news media. Everyone seems to be rooting for a true coming together of the President and the Republicans, but it’s what I fear the most. The President has shown himself ready to capitulate just to get a deal. I could see him go for Social Security reform that cuts benefits, raises the retirement age and allows people to privatize their Social Security investment, while not lifting the cap on the income that’s assessed the Social Security tax. I could also see him agreeing to a deal that lowered corporate taxes and cut more social welfare, education or infrastructure programs.

What’s so odd about this election is that even though it signified a resounding repudiation of President Obama, Democrats still received more votes than Republicans nationwide. That bodes well for whoever the Democrats nominate for President in 2016. Of course by that time, the team of Republicans and Obama may have done a lot of damage that it will take the country years from which to recover.

Let’s hope that the Republicans and Obama can’t agree on anything and that gridlock continues—at least until 2016.

Tuesday, November 4, 2014

Foreign Affairs writers all learn the same thing from recent wars—unfortunately, it’s how to fight future wars

By Marc Jampole

The current issue of Foreign Affairs exemplifies one of the most common of all propaganda devices: selection of possibilities. It’s a simple yet powerful tool for fooling people: you say you’re going to get experts to discuss an issue, but all the experts either agree or agree with some highly nuanced differences. The audience gets the idea that the discussion has covered the waterfront, when it fact it has only analyzed one narrow possibility.

Foreign Affairs is the highfalutin quarterly journal in which political science professors, think tank gurus, government officials and other hired hands of the ruling political elite argue foreign policy strategy. The first part of the current issue focuses on what we as a nation can learn from the Iraq and Afghanistan wars as far as military and foreign policy goes. Funny thing is, though, all we learn from the distinguished panel of six foreign policy experts is how to fight wars more effectively or efficiently in the 21st century. The broader questions of whether we should be fighting wars is never asked, because the viewpoint of all the panelists is interventionist, by which I mean they all want to intervene in the affairs of other countries through the use of military force.

Max Boot of the Council on Foreign Relations starts things off with a statement of befuddled frustration: “If only a nation as powerful and vulnerable as the United States had the option of defining exactly what wars it wages. Reality, alas, seldom cooperates.” To Boot, not being able to define the war means one thing only: being forced to fight non-traditional armies, such as al Qaeda or IS. Boot gives us a number of tips for waging these wars, all learned from the Iraq and Afghanistan fiascos, such as: be prepared to occupy the country after we win; don’t assume the best case scenario; do better strategic thinking; do a better job of managing mercenaries; and train troops for more than just short conventional operations. At no time does Boot question the idea that we will have to fight these wars. He assumes we will and will do so with mercenaries. He just wants us to do a better job of it.

Richard Betts, director of a foreign policy institute at Columbia University, advocates that the United States fights fewer wars but do “more decisively, erring, when combat is necessary, on the side of committing too many forces…” Betts also wants us to stop “fighting in places where victory depends on controlling the politics of chaotic countries” and focus military planning on fighting wars against great powers. Betts says that we are living in an era of permanent war, but evidently wants us to focus our militarism on China and Russia.  It’s not so much that Betts thinks the so-called small wars in Iraq and elsewhere have been worthless but that they have not prepared us for “bigger wars for bigger stakes against bigger powers.” What that means, by the way, are wars in which not thousands but hundreds of thousands of Americans die. By the way, it’s rare when the loser of a war does not descend into the kind of chaos Betts wants us to avoid in our opposition.

Rick Brennan, a political scientist at the private think tank, RAND Corporation, reviews in detail the events that led to and followed the departure of U.S. troops (but not U.S. mercenaries) from Iraq at the end of 2011. His article lists the lessons we should learn from what he sees as the bungling of the exit from Iraq. It was inevitable that such an article would appear from the day that the troops hit the ground in 2003. Chaos, partisanship, terrorism and revolt were going to be the fate of Iraq no matter when we cleared out our troops, be it 2011 or 2121. That’s what happens when a country cobbled together by outside forces loses its strong man. It happened in Yugoslavia. It’s happening in Syria. And the United States made it happen in Iraq. It’s an endgame predictable to anyone in the reality-based community, which unfortunately never included those who started the war. I think it took a lot of guts on Obama’s part to stick to his pledge to get the troops out of Iraq, even though he knew what would likely ensure. He didn’t pass the buck down the road so that the next president—or the one after that—would be left holding the bag when Iraq disintegrated after U.S. forces left. 

What is most interesting about Brennan’s article, though, is that he never mentions learning the lesson not to invade. No, his teachable moment from the exit from Iraq only concerns exiting dirty little wars that destabilize countries, thus assuming we’ll be fighting more of them.

An article by Daniel Byman of Georgetown and Jeremy Shapiro of the Brookings Institute next warns us not to overreact to the threat of Islamic extremists living in western countries immigrating to fight for IS. After telling us why the threat is overblown, the good professors propose some changes to make it harder for would-be IS fighters to leave their respective motherlands. It seems like a small-bore article for a special segment dedicated to the big issue of learning from past wars. When we think of the number of innocent civilians killed, injured or displaced in Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria, the problem of a couple of fanatics making their way into the IS ranks seems trivial. 

Finally Peter Tomsen, a former U.S. special envoy to Afghanistan, reviews three books about the bungling by all sides of the Afghanistan war. At the end of the article, Tomsen expresses a fear that, once all U.S. troops vacate Afghanistan, the country will descend into a full-scale civil war. Of course it will, just like Iraq has. That’s what happens when you break something and try to put it together with spit and string. It falls apart as soon as you set it down.
 
None of these distinguished scholars considers for even one paragraph an alternative to the military imperialism that we have called our foreign policy for decades now. They all take it for granted that we are going to get into wars. They are just trying to make sure that we’re fighting the right wars and that we win them quickly and with a minimum of hassle. No one ever considers that maybe we shouldn’t be fighting any wars. Certainly the last several we have fought have had no strategic value to us—unless we somehow improve our safety and access to raw materials by throwing one of the major oil producers into permanent disarray. These esteemed gentleman all take it for granted that we will need to fight wars to protect our political and economic interests in the future and that these wars—or at least most of them—are just and necessary.

Readers can come away from the pages of Foreign Affairs thinking that they have learned every imaginable lesson they can from the Iraq and Afghanistan conflagrations.  But in fact, readers will learn nothing but the ways of military imperialism. 

Thursday, October 30, 2014

Hold your nose & vote Democratic if you want our elected officials to work for the 99%

By Marc Jampole 

Today’s the day for my annual Vote Straight Democrat essay. These past few years it seems to be an exercise in futility in every other area than social issues, as many Democrats are almost as right-wing as the Republicans on economic and foreign affairs issues, further to the right than the Eisenhower administration.

Most Democrats were once true progressives, which makes it doubly frustrating. The urge to stay home rather than vote for an Allison Lundergan Grimes or an Andrew Cuomo is strong.

But there are only two ways to influence elected officials, because those are only two things they want: votes and money. Correction—they want money and need votes. Unless you’re willing to cough up a few thousand—or a few hundred thousand—bucks, all you can offer a politician is your vote.

Votes don’t speak as loudly as money because you only have one vote and you can give many, many, many dollars. But the collective votes of demographic groups can speak loudly and clearly to the candidates.

Nothing short of an enlightened dictatorship will magically transform the United States overnight into a land in which all people get adequate health care, education and retirement as part of the social contract, there is an equitable distribution of wealth and income and we have secured our future as a species by slowing down man-made global warming and resource shortages. 

In our system of government, movement in a new direction, or back into old and successful direction, comes slowly. We have to keep pushing, just like the 1%, social conservatives and gun manufacturers have kept pushing over the past 35 years, gradually increasing inequality, limiting the right to an abortion, weakening unions, lowering taxes on the wealthy, attacking any scientific theory that doesn’t support their views and making it easier to carry guns in the street and get away with shooting people in cold blood for flimsy excuses.

To turn back the tide may take as long as or longer than it took for the right-wing waters to gather and flood our country. The first step is for progressives to show our power, which we can’t do if we don’t vote, since we 99% don’t have the same ability as the 1% do to feed money to the candidates and parties. Until minorities, young people and the poor establish a track record of voting, Democrats will continue to ignore our pressing needs, make compromises with the right wing and pursue militarism and 21st century imperialism abroad.  

Right now the best reason to vote Democratic is that the other side is so much worse. Let’s call it “voting on the Gore,” as we now know that progressives who voted for Ralph Nader instead of Al Gore for president in 2000 are in a large part responsible for the Iraqi and Afghanistan wars, the torture gulag, the disastrous federal tax cuts for the wealthy, racking up major debt and then paying for it by cutting funds for education, the poor and our infrastructure, the embedding of the religious right in key government posts, the curtailment of civil rights in the name of security—and, as it turns out, possibly the 9/11 bombings through deliberate ignoring of many warnings signs.

Today we have to vote, and vote on the Gore. But if we can swing the Senate for the Democrats, erode the Republican majority in the House and start to hand governorships and state legislatures back to the Democrats, we will be in a position in 2016 to move the party left—to insist on more progressive candidates, and to maybe get Elizabeth Warren, Bill De Blasio or some other progressive on the national ticket.

But if we stay home this year, the Democrats will once again treat 2016 as if it were Halloween and dress up as a bunch of right-looking centrists. And I’ll be back again telling everyone to hold their noses and vote straight Democratic. 

Monday, October 27, 2014

Kellogg’s adds to infantilization of American adults with Fruit Loops TV spot

By Marc Jampole 

It’s Saturday night. The kids are in bed and their early-thirties parents are finally alone.  She slips into a negligee while he opens a bottle of wine. She turns off the lights and waits for him on the sofa by the soft flickering light of a few candles. He programs some smooth jazz into the stereo, then sits down beside her. He tells her how beautiful she is.

Sounds like a great way to spend an evening without the kids, doesn’t it?

But not if you’re in a TV commercial for Fruit Loops, a Kellogg’s dry cereal with toxic contents: sugar is the first ingredient and you won’t find a single fruit or fruit product anywhere in the list of ingredients on the side of the box.

The commercial starts with an attractively plain-looking man and woman pouncing onto a plushy sofa, both with smiles as large as a half moon now that the kids are asleep and they are alone. But instead of getting amorous, she frenetically grabs a joy stick and starts playing a video game on the flat screen, while he excitedly spoon feeds her Fruit Loops from a large bowl which may or may not contain milk. They are completely into it, but not in a sexual way, but gleeful, like children at an amusement park having fun.

They do what boys and girls of all sexual proclivities do before they discover sex.

Kellogg’s is obviously targeting adults, but in doing so, they offer not an adult pleasure, but a retreat to a pre-sexual childhood. Contrast with the TV spot for Post’s Cinnamon Toast Crunch of a few years back that equated eating the cereal to scratching a dog’s belly, suggesting it was the highest of sensual pleasures. 

Kellogg’s is only one of many advertisers who infantilize adults or present a juvenile world as the ideal for adults.  Advertisers want adults to behave like children because it makes them better consumers. Children are more self-centered and find it harder to think long-term, so they are more likely to make an impulse purchase for themselves. Children have less sophisticated thought processes and are therefore easier to convince to buy or believe something. Children have not had rigorous training in economics, the scientific method and logic, all part of the core curriculum of any high school. Children tend to believe anything an authority figures says.

But as OpEdge has demonstrated in several columns, advertisers are not alone in supporting the infantilization of American adults. Year after year, the movie industry turns out movies about adults remaining children, behaving like children or returning to childhood. The “Harold & Kumar” movies,  “Old School,”  “Big,”  “Grandma’s Boy,”  “Ted,”  “The Wedding Crashers,”  “Billy Madison,”  “You, Me and Dupree,”  “Dodgeball,”  “”Step Brothers,”  “The 40-year-old Virgin,”  “Knocked Up,”  all three “Hangovers,”  the “Jackass” movies, “Bridesmaids,”  “Hall Pass”  and “Identity Thief” --these infantilizing movies dominate the playlists of the dominant cable networks. Marketers from the American Museum of Natural History to amusement parks are packaging childhood experiences for adults, as are makers of products for children such as LEGO and My Little Pony, who see a market in adult followers.

The 2006 satirical film, “Idiocracy,” depicts a future world in which humans have become stupid and illogical, basing most of their knowledge on what television commercials tell them. Thus they water their crops with Brawndo, a Gatorade like liquid they believe is good for everyone and everything because ads tell them “it has electrolytes.”  Of course the crops fail.

When I see commercials like the one for Fruit Loops and movies like “Ted,” I wonder how far off we are from the world of “Idiocracy.”  It wouldn’t be the first time that the educational levels and cultural sophistication has declined for a period of time. Think of the decline of knowledge and literacy in Western Europe after the death of Charlemagne.  

It’s more than just the infantilization of adults in the mass media and mass entertainments that troubles me. There’s the virulent reaction of the religious right and their political factotums to scientific knowledge. There are the attempts by state school boards to sneak fake theories and false notions into curricula. There’s the retreat from modernism in poetry and other art forms.  There’s the almost plague-like spread of celebrity culture stealing more and more news media space and time from real news and the discussion of issues.

Many signs point to a new dark age of ignorance falling upon the United States.

Saturday, October 25, 2014

Editorial: Public Needs Facts, Nurses Need Union


Republicans and corporate media have sown fear with rampant misinformation on the Ebola threat. They blame federal authorities for failing to prepare local hospitals to deal with potential victims, but the debacle at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital in Dallas points out the need for more oversight of healthcare providers as well as unions to protect doctors, nurses and other healthcare providers from administrators who are more concerned with bottom lines than quality control for patients and workers.

The biggest mistake the officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention made in late September was in trusting Texas health authorities to deal with the Ebola victim, but Gov. Rick Perry has largely escaped criticism for the state’s failure of oversight.

Thomas Eric Duncan, who showed up at the Dallas emergency room on Sept. 25 with a fever, stomach pains and a piercing headache, reportedly told an ER worker that he had recently arrived from Africa and didn’t have insurance. He was sent home with antibiotics. When he returned three days later in an ambulance, he was left waiting with other patients for hours before he was admitted to the hospital’s isolation unit, nurses say.

“No one knew what the protocols were or were able to verify what kind of personal protective equipment should be worn and there was no training,” a nurse told National Nurses United, which has been warning for months that poor training and oversight is putting US healthcare workers at risk of contracting the virus. A nursing supervisor who demanded that Duncan be moved to an isolation unit faced resistance from other hospital authorities, the nurses said.

Luckily, none of the hospital’s patients or Duncan’s friends and family came down with Ebola as the 21-day incubation period expired on Oct. 20. But two nurses who treated Duncan were infected with the deadly virus, possibly because they were not trained in use of the limited protective gear they had, and more than 200 others with proximity to the stricken nurses were still being monitored.

As the hospital sought to defuse the criticism of its treatment of Duncan, it hired the global public relations firm Burson-Marsteller and started a more assertive defense, with employee pep rallies and complaints that the CDC didn’t help the hospital adequately prepare for an Ebola outbreak.

But some of the nurses at Presbyterian, who are not represented by a union, contacted the nurses union out of frustration with the lack of training and preparation. They spoke anonymously because they were warned not to speak to reporters and they fear retaliation from the hospital, NNU officials said.

Before Duncan showed up there was one optional lecture/seminar on Ebola and a link to the CDC website, but no mandate for nurses to attend the training sessions or protocols on what nurses had to do in the event of arrival of an Ebola patient.

“This is a very large hospital. To be effective, any classes would have to offered repeatedly, covering all times when nurses work; instead this was treated like the hundreds of other seminars that are routinely offered to staff,” the nurses said.

There was no advance hands-on training on the use of personal protective equipment for Ebola. No training on what symptoms to look for. No training on what questions to ask.

The problem is nationwide. NNU conducted a survey of 700 RNs at over 250 hospitals in 31 states and found that 80% said their hospital had not yet communicated any policy regarding potential admission of patients infected with Ebola; 87% said their hospital had not provided education on Ebola where nurses could interact and ask questions; and one-third said their hospital had insufficient supplies of eye protection and fluid-resistant gowns.

Also, while Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital operates as a non-profit organization, it booked an operating profit of $89 million for a 14.5% profit margin in 2012 and the Dallas Morning News reported Oct. 18 that Presbyterian’s ER actually is run by an independent contractor, Emergency Medicine Consultants Ltd., operating as Texas Medicine Resources L.L.P.

In such arrangements, which are common nationwide, companies typically assume many duties for the hospital, the News noted. So it is possible that the night the ER sent Duncan home with a wrong diagnosis of sinusitis, no Presbyterian employee was involved.

We agree with AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka, who called on President Obama to use his executive authority to put in place mandatory protections and other workplace standards for hospitals and other healthcare facilities.

“Existing protocols, standards and guidelines, and adherence to them, are deficient,” Trumka said. “The failures in the response have put dozens of additional health care workers at risk, and potentially exposed many other workers and members of the public. ... Immediate action is needed.”

The standards should include the “highest level of protective equipment,” including use of air purifying respirators and full body suits with hands-on training on the proper way to put on and take off the protective gear. Trumka also called for protection from retaliation against workers who report health and safety issues or who contract the Ebola virus or are restricted or placed under quarantine.

Congress also must stop partisan posturing and work with the administration to provide support that is needed to stop the threat here and the bigger threat in West Africa, restoring the budget cuts that House Republicans have demanded since 2011 and adopting legislation to see that these protections are put in place without delay.

Supreme Court OKs Voter Suppression


A federal judge in Texas ruled Oct. 9 that a Voter ID bill unconstitutionally imposes a tax on the right to vote but the Supreme Court Oct. 18 decided to let Texas go ahead with suppressing hundreds of thousands of Texas voters in this year’s general election while the appeal works its way through the courts.

The order was unsigned, but Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg filed a six-page dissent joined by Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan. “The greatest threat to public confidence in elections in this case is the prospect of enforcing a purposefully discriminatory law, one that likely imposes an unconstitutional poll tax and risks denying the right to vote to hundreds of thousands of eligible voters,” Ginsburg wrote.

Republicans claim to be confident that they can keep control of Texas, but they don’t want to leave anything to chance, so they railroaded the voter ID bill through the Legislature in 2011. US District Judge Nelva Gonzalez Ramos of Corpus Christi ruled the bill was passed with a “discriminatory purpose” and could disenfranchise more than 600,000 citizens, disproportionately black and Hispanic, including students and seniors who don’t have cars so they don’t have drivers’ licenses, a military ID, a passport or a concealed weapons permit. Republicans claimed the law was needed to prevent voter fraud, but only two people were found to have impersonated others at Texas polls during a recent 10-year period.

The Supreme Court also upheld new restrictions on voting in North Carolina and Ohio that cut back early voting, but the high court stopped Wisconsin from implementing a voter ID bill for this election. At least 16 Republican-dominated states have acted to restrict voting in this election — and the suppression works. The US Government Accountability Office reported that strict photo ID laws in Kansas and Tennessee lowered voter participation in the 2012 elections by roughly 2 to 3 percentage points from 2008.

If Republicans were acting in good faith to prevent voter fraud, they would make state IDs easier to obtain for the roughly 10% of people who lack them. Many of those unlicensed don’t have the time or money to get the required documents, take a day off and find transportation to a license bureau, which are often in the suburbs, to get a state-approved voter ID. The GOP is unmoved.

Some day Republicans will be embarrassed by their role in suppressing the vote. But not this year. — JMC
From The Progressive Populist, November 15, 2014
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Tuesday, October 21, 2014

Pennsylvania legislature & Governor join forces with NRA to put more guns in hands of criminals

By Marc Jampole

On election day the citizens of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania will most certainly sweep out of office Tom Corbett, their ultra-rightwing Republic Governor who drastically cut aid to public education, impeded implementation of the Affordable Care Act, kept taxes and regulations low on shale gas drillers, and tried to restrict voting rights.  But before they “throw ‘de bum out,” he intends to inflict even more damage on his constituents.

Corbett is expected to sign a new law that would allow the National Rifle Association (NRA) to sue local municipalities in Pennsylvania that enact guns laws stricter than the state’s. Once Corbett signs this odious sop to the gun lobby, the NRA is going to sue the cities of Pittsburgh and Philadelphia over laws on their books that require gun owners to report when a firearm is lost or stolen.  

One study counts 230,000 guns stolen in the United States every year in burglaries and property crimes. Pittsburgh and Philadelphia surely account for a share of those thefts. By definition, all 230,000 of those guns end up in the hands of criminals. I haven’t seen any studies, but I think it’s safe to assume that a significant number of lost guns also end up in the hands of the bad guys. 

Police can’t go after stolen and lost guns unless the owners report the losses. Not having the report on file slows down the process of gathering evidence when they succeed in encountering or arresting a criminal. And let’s not forget that sometimes people who don’t report a “lost” or “stolen” firearm have in fact sold the weapon, possibly to a criminal.

It’s mind-boggling that in many places in this supposedly civilized country people don’t have to tell the police when a gun goes missing.

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette article on this truly outrageous and dangerous legislation focuses most of its attention on the great drain on city treasuries that defending the lawsuits will make. And it’s not just the big cities. Thirty other municipalities across the Keystone State have similar laws that the NRA could challenge or topple once Corbett signs the law.

What a win-win-win this law will therefore be to the broad spectrum of the right.

Taking city funds from fixing roads, clearing snow, educating the young, feeding the poor and ensuring public health and safety and giving it to attorneys certainly helps to give the rich a larger share of the income and wealth pies.

It must help gun manufacturers sell more guns, but I’m not sure I see how, unless they think they will benefit from an increase in crime rates, which may make more people buy guns for protection.

Finally, because of the widespread myth that most urban dwellers and recipients of government aid are minorities, the racists will be delighted to see city funds diverted from helping those whom they consider undeserving.

When Harry Golden wrote and Jay and the Americans sang, “Only in America,” I don’t this is what they meant!

Monday, October 20, 2014

Scenes from the class warfare the rich are waging against everyone else

By Marc Jampole 

For days, images of the Philadelphia public school system have haunted me. More than 30 children in one class share 11 math books. Bathrooms locked because there aren’t enough hall monitors. What’s most heartbreaking is to know that just a few miles away other school students attend some of the highest rated public and private schools in the nation, where they are lavished with cutting edge technology and enrichment opportunities. 

Then there are the images of elected officials turning a deaf ear to the protests of the students, teachers and parents angered at the extreme cuts. And the image of the Philadelphia Board of Education voting to cancel the contract with the teachers’ union. Shame on the board and shame on everyone else who blames Pennsylvania’s and American’s crisis in public education on teachers or believe the solutions to the problem all involve taking money out of the pockets of these highly skilled professionals.

Most people agree that the immediate cause of the public school crisis in Philadelphia is the extreme cuts—50%!!—to public education enacted by Pennsylvania under right-wing Republic Governor Tom Corbett. These cuts have led to resource shortages, less enrichment and larger classes throughout Pennsylvania.  According to polls, Corbett is going to pay at the polls for these Draconian cuts, his attempts to limit the voting franchise and his opposition to implementing the Affordable Care Act.

But all that means is Corbett will go back to some cushy job at a major law or lobbying firm. What about the tens of thousands of children who will receive inferior education because of his cuts?

The other thought that haunts my mind lately is a claim that I am unable to substantiate that a major nonprofit health institution in the western part of Pennsylvania makes job applicants pay the cost for background checks that are part of the hiring process. The checks cost $57.50 for a job paying $11.51 an hour, barely more than the purchasing power of the minimum wage in the 1960’s. I heard from several people I know that it is standard for some nonprofits to ask job applicants to pay for these security clearances.

I connect the charging of job applicants to the gutting of state support of public education. Both are little pieces of the wealth-and-income pie taken in the 35-year program to give a larger share to the rich folk and less to the poor and middle class.

The logic of cutting aid to public school makes perfect sense if you want to transfer wealth up the economic ladder. The cuts by definition will negatively affect teacher compensation, if for no other reason than it will increase the pool of teachers looking for jobs. The cuts will also make poor folk less able to climb the economic ladder because they will receive inferior education. Finally, it drives the middle class into private schools, translates into support of the education of the rich, who have always taken the private route.  That’s maiming three birds with one stone, the glorious topper to which is that the money saved from harming public education goes directly to the wealthy without passing Go. Brilliant strategy!

Cutting public education may be brilliant class war strategy, but making people pay to apply for low-paying jobs is merely sadistic. The message is, “we have the job and we can do anything we want.” It equates to Lebron James spiking the ball in the face of a fifth-grader.  Of course, anything to save a buck. That’s the excuse that Amazon.com gives for not paying its employees for the half hour it takes for each to go through the security screening process before and after work.

You would think that the extremity with which corporations and right-wing state governments are going would sicken the electorate. After all, 99% of us are not gaining from the continual grabbing by the wealthy of our government benefits and income. Now I know some vote with the right wing because of its 19th century views on women, gays and race. But all surveys suggest that number is decreasing rapidly in all parts of the country.

What I think drives the 99% away from the Democrats is that they aren’t much better than the Republicans. Massive contributions from billionaires and multinational corporations have colored the views of most Democrats on public education, tax policy and unionism. For six years now, President Obama has started negotiations on economic, taxation and budgetary matters by giving away the store, so eager has he been to make a deal—any kind of deal—with the factotums of the 1%.

It doesn’t help people trying to distinguish between Democrat and Republican that the Obama Administration continues to build on the Bush II security state and still uses bombing and troops as the primary tools of foreign policy—save the ending of the Bush II torture gulag.

Note how popular are the candidates like Elizabeth Warren and Bill De Blasio who have articulated a progressive vision. But instead of following their lead, the Democratic Party in general is consolidating into a centrist position that resembles 1950’s Republicanism without the racism and sexism: in other words, more progress on social issues than economic ones. 

Monday, October 13, 2014

USC law & business professor latest to pretend rich pay enough taxes in the United States

By Marc Jampole

Reading Professor Edward Kleinbard’s opinion piece titled “Don’t Soak the Rich” in the New York Times reminds me of Mark Twain. Not that Kleinbard can write fluently and passionately in a variety of styles and dialects. No, Kleinbard makes me think of America’s greatest novelist because in Twain’s expression, “Figures never lie, but liars figure,” Kleinbard would be the liar. 

I’m not accusing Kleinbard of telling out-and-out fibs, at least not more than maybe one. What the good doctor does is use figures to lie.

Kleinbard, a professor of law and business at the University of Southern California, manipulates statistics and gives only part of the facts to make his case, which is simple:  Government spending is the key to reducing inequality and social welfare programs help the economy, but we should finance them like they do in Europe, by raising everyone’s taxes, not just the taxes of the wealthy. Kleinbard reports that here in the United States, we pay on average 22% of our taxes, whereas in economically strong Germany, people pay 41%. He proposed funding more needed government programs by raising our average to match Germany’s. He never gives a reason why rich folk shouldn’t pay more than others except to say that a chief executive officer earning 200% more than her employees does not get 200 times the benefit from our investments in highways, which is a back-handed argument that the rich should pay less of a percentage of their income in taxes than the poor and middle class do.

It all seems to make sense if you look at his words uncritically. But take a closer look and you can quickly recognize four types of lies he tells to make his case:
1.      Kleinbard lies by omission: He advocates more government spending on social services and infrastructure without raising taxes on the wealthy, while forgetting to mention that we used to have a pretty good social service net and a wonderful research, development and infrastructure investment program back in the days when the rich were paying more in taxes than they do now. The two super trends of the last 35 years of Reaganomics are lower taxes on the wealthy and less government spending.  By not mentioning this history, Kleinbard can pretend that we have a clean slate and are trying to figure out how best to fund an increase in government spending.
2.      Kleinbard tells a straight-out lie: Kleinbard’s explicit whopper is to assert that a CEO who makes 200 times what her employees does not get 200 times the benefit of government spending.  Dear Dr. Kleingloss—I mean Kleinbard—do you think that a CEO doesn’t benefit every time a consumer, employee or vendor drives to her facilities on a road paid by government spending? And do you think the CEO’s benefit is not greater than the employees who take a smaller piece of the wealth pie created by that economic activity? How about the spending on security that not only protects customers, but gives them the confidence to venture out and shop?  We only see a law of diminishing returns in benefits from taxes if we look solely at the individual and ignore, as Kleinbard does, the benefit derived by the individual through benefits to other individuals. As an economist, Kleinbard should understand this concept, which I why I believe he is fibbing when he avers that the CEO does not get 200 times the benefit from tax spending that her employees do.
3.      Kleinbard lies by his use of hypothetical numbers: As noted, in building his weak case for keeping taxes low on the wealthy, Kleinbard compares the income made by a hypothetical CEO to what her employees make. The problem is the 200 to one ratio is so far off the mark that it constitutes a lie because it makes us think that 200 to one is close to the truth. But it’s not. Recent surveys compute that U.S. CEOs make on average from 331 to 345 times what their average employees make, and CEOs of the l00 largest public companies make 774 times the minimum wage. By the way, in Germany, CEOs make 142 what their average employees make; in Spain it’s 127 and in Switzerland, it’s 147. Most readers will assume that Kleinbard’s 200 to one is realistic, when in fact it’s a gross underestimate of the enormous difference in earning capacity between those at the very top of the heap and everyone else in the United States.
4.      Kleinbard lies by making an incomplete comparison: Kleinbard compares the 22% that we all pay in taxes in the United States to 41% in Germany. But he neglects the other part of the comparison—that German (and other Western European and Japanese) executives get a smaller part of the income pie to begin with. You can’t just compare the apples to apples, you also have to compare the oranges, and when you do, it should rapidly become apparent that we can’t raise everyone’s tax load to 41% unless we also split the income pie more equitably so that CEO’s make a smaller multiple of their average employees.

To his benefit, Kleinbard never tries to make the disproven case that you have to have low taxes on (rich) job creators, so they can do their thing. But the case he does make—just raise taxes on everyone—is full of logical holes that he tries to cover with his multiple deceptions.

On second thought, Kleinbard’s essay reminds me less of Twain than of the French writer Julien Benda, who wrote “The Betrayal of the Intellectuals” in which he bemoaned the fact that so many intellectuals in western Europe in the 19th and early 20th centuries went against what their expertise told them was true so they could support false notions such as racism held by the ruling elite. Kleinbard is one of a large number of mediocrities who prefer to propose specious arguments that support the 1% than to address our real economic challenges.   It’s the 21st century betrayal of the intellectuals. 

Saturday, October 11, 2014

Editorial: Health Obstruction Breeds Contagion


The best thing Americans can do to eliminate the threat of the deadly Ebola virus in the United States would be to hasten the implementation of the Affordable Care Act so that every American with a fever and/or an upset stomach can see a doctor without fear of losing their job or emptying their savings.

Cable TV “news,” according to its business model, has whipped up hysteria over the Ebola threat in the US. Demagogues have demanded that the government stop all traffic with West Africa — which health professionals say is unnecessary and could even make the situation worse.

Thomas Freiden, director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said on CNN Oct. 6 that if those countries with outbreaks were to be isolated, “the ability to stop the outbreak there” would become “very problematic.” If airlines only fly medical supplies and health workers into West Africa, and can’t fly travelers back, those routes quickly become unprofitable, American citizens (including health workers) won’t be able to return to the US and governments in those countries will get less stable, Frieden said.

The facts are that Thomas Eric Duncan, a Liberian national, showed no signs of illness when he flew from Liberia, to Belgium Sept. 19. He appeared well when he arrived at Dallas/Fort Worth Airport Sept. 20 to visit his fiancee. He showed up at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital in Dallas on Sept. 25 with fever and abdominal pain but no insurance. He told medical personnel he had recently arrived from Africa, but he apparently did not mention being around sick people. (He had helped take a pregnant neighbor to a clinic in Liberia. She later died and Duncan may not have known she had Ebola.) Duncan was released with antibiotics but his condition continued to worsen and when he returned to the ER Sept. 28 he was placed in isolation. He was diagnosed with Ebola two days later. He died Oct. 8. Officials are watching at least 10 people with whom Duncan had contact before he was hospitalized.

Duncan, as a visitor to the country, probably would not have had insurance anyway (which argues in favor of implementing a single-payer system that covers everybody in the nation). The threat of a contagious disease spreading throughout the population is greatly increased when a major part of the population lacks health insurance and hospitals have to consider how much care they can give the uninsured, since they know a large portion of that care will be uncompensated with fiscal “conservatives” in charge. And a breadwinner with a fever and an upset stomach has to weigh the cost of taking time off to get checked out by a doctor, at his own expense, or going ahead to his job at a restaurant, for example.

Laurie Garrett, a senior fellow for global health at the Council on Foreign Relations writing in the Chicago Tribune Oct. 2, noted that even with the millions who have gained health insurance under the Affordable Care Act, 13.8% of Americans — about 43.3 million individuals — still lack health insurance. Millions more have policies whose “copays” for medical services are exorbitant for working people.

“These are the Americans who routinely tough out the flu, fever, aches and pains because seeking medical care is prohibitively expensive. If they become sick enough to feel desperate, the uninsured and underinsured of America go to public hospital emergency rooms for care, where waiting times in often-crowded settings can stretch on for hours. This reality is compounded by a weakened public health infrastructure: 52 health agencies, including 48 states, three territories and Washington, D.C., have reported budget cuts since 2008,” she wrote.

Republican attempts to obstruct the implementation of the Affordable Care Act, which is designed to make health insurance affordable to people whose bosses refuse to provide health coverage, greatly increases the risk of an epidemic.

The risk of an Ebola outbreak — which requires close contact with a sick person who is showing symptoms — is relatively small in the United States. The risk of a flu epidemic — which is spread by an airborne virus, requires 200,000 hospitalizations and contributes to the deaths of more than 24,000 Americans a year — is much more likely. Republican obstruction of health coverage makes it worse.


Keep the Senate Democratic


If you are unhappy with President Obama, the last thing you should do is refrain from voting for Democrats in the mid-term election on Nov. 4 — and that goes double in states with hot US Senate races. People on the left who think there is no appreciable difference between Democrats and Republicans and giving the GOP full control of Congress haven’t been paying attention.

When progressives stayed home in 2010 to punish Democrats for not pushing progressive initiatives far enough, Republicans seized power in states such as Florida, Ohio, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. They then steamrolled Democratic minorities with a right-wing legislative agenda provided by the Big-Business dominated American Legislative Exchange Council that included measures to bust unions, make it more difficult for low-paid workers to get affordable health care, suppress the vote of the working-class and seniors and other affronts to the working class while enriching the corporate class. It might take a generation to reverse those defeats.

Many on the center-left are working to overturn the 2010 Citizens United decision, as well as other rulings by the right-wing majority on the Supreme Court. But that takes two-thirds majorities in both the House and Senate and ratification by three-fourths of the states (that is, 38). It’s good to get started on an amendment to challenge corporate personhood but, in the meantime, there is nothing wrong with the Court that a strategic funeral (from natural causes) couldn’t fix. Remove one of the doctrinaire Republican justices and a newly configured Court could revisit the objectionable rulings. However, that only works if Obama is in position to get a replacement choice confirmed by the Senate. That isn’t going to happen if Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) is in charge of vetting those nominees at the Judiciary Committee. (Be very afraid if departures from the Court come from among the liberal justices and the right wing doesn’t need occasional voice of reason Justice Kennedy to form a majority.)

Democrats hold a 55-45 majority in the Senate, including independents Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Angus King of Maine, who caucus with the Dems. Republicans need to gain six seats to capture control of the Senate and Republicans expect to pick up seats from retiring Democratic incumbents in Montana, South Dakota and West Virginia. Key battleground races include Alaska, Arkansas, Colorado, Georgia, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, New Hampshire, North Carolina and perhaps South Dakota. Nine of those dozen hot seats are now held by Democrats. Republicans hoped to capture the seat of retiring Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.), but Rep Gary Peters (D-Mich) appears to be pulling away from the Republican challenger in Michigan. Democrats in South Dakota also have a good if underfunded progressive populist candidate in Rick Weiland, a former aide to ex-Sen. Tom Daschle (D-S.D.) for the seat Sen. Tim Johnson (D-S.D.) is giving up. Former Gov. Mike Rounds, the Republican nominee, and former Republican Sen. Larry Pressler, running as an independent, are splitting the GOP vote. Weiland could win it with 40% of the vote — which Dems ought to be able to muster. And at least three incumbent Republicans are threatened. Alison Lundergan Grimes appears to be giving Minority Leader Mitch McConnell the fight of his life in Kentucky; Michelle Nunn (D) is pushing businessman David Perdue, who made his fortune outsourcing jobs, for the Georgia seat of retiring Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R); and centrist independent Greg Orman is leading Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kansas).

And, for God’s sake, Minnesota, please send Al Franken back to the Senate with a big enough margin that he can feel comfortable using his considerable sense of humor again. — JMC

From The Progressive Populist, November 1, 2014
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Friday, October 10, 2014

In the idealized world of television commercials, we care at least as much about dogs as we do about children

By Marc Jampole

Television commercials collectively present an idealized version of the real world. It’s the real world as imagined by the collective minds of the companies that advertise.  “Ad World” is primarily a suburban, middle-class world of two-car, two-parent families and affluent singles surrounded by great friends. The ads always make clear that buying products and services is the road to happiness. Even when depicting single-parent families as Wal-Mart sometimes does in holiday season advertising, the overtone is positive and happy in Ad World—if the family has any problems, they can all be solved in the usual manner: by buying something.

One big question for those who investigate the impact of advertising and other mass media on society in general is the degree to which the idealized version of advertising reflects the real world and how much advertising actually shapes the real world.

Whether descriptive of the real world or prescriptive of what advertisers want that world to be, the values depicted in Ad World can lead to some very disturbing conclusions about America and the American people.

For example, let’s take a look at dogs in current advertising. It’s almost impossible to find a TV commercial that features a family without a dog. Dogs also inhabit commercials that depict the lives of the singles crowd in Ad World. The broadcast of the most recent Super Bowl, for example, included television spots featuring dogs for Doritos, Cheerios, Budweiser, MetLife, Toyota and Audi.

The trend to feature dogs in TV commercials started about 20 years ago, and every year it seems to intensify. The past few years have produced a number of very disturbing spots in which dogs are equated to humans, as much a part of a family as children or as the most important loved one. There was the spot for Cinnamon Toast Crunch a few years ago in which a 30’s something single woman compared eating the sugary cereal to the sensual feeling her dog must get when its belly is scratched. Or Traveler’s Insurance longtime ad series in which a dog is not only part of the family, but a role model for how human beings should act.

Consider a current commercial for Budweiser that focuses on how important it is to come home for loved ones who depend on you after a night of boozing. The denouement of the narrative is when a sad dog perks up because its owner has come home after spending the night away. The owner explains that he stayed at a friend’s house because he had a little too much to drink and didn’t want to drive home.  Like many dog owners, the young man acts as if he believes that the dog can really understand what he’s saying.

This commercial could have featured a girlfriend, parent, roommate, brother or teenaged child as the symbol of “those we love who depend on us,” but the writers and the corporation that hired them selected a dog.

Are any of my dear readers—dog lovers or not—exasperated with me and ready to cry out, “They’re just trying to be cute”? Of course they are, but they are also communicating that dogs are as important as people, an ancillary message of so much TV advertising nowadays.

Let’s look at two other ads, both for dog products.  In one spot, by a company named Blue, a narrator talks to the audience while we see happy images of a mother doing housework and her son and dog at play. The narrator is directing his words at the mother and by implication to all mothers. The message of the narrator is that you (mothers) care about all the people you love and want them all to eat nutritious food. Then the narrator goes on to explain all the great nutritional advantages of Blue dog food in language that out of context we would assume applied to humans. While the spot for Budweiser uses a dog symbolize all loved ones, this spot for Blue avers that the dog is as much of the family and as loved as the child.

The same sentiment equating (and I would say conflating) dogs with children takes place in a Pet Smart ad which discusses and displays the various treats one can get for one’s dog at Pet Smart to celebrate Halloween.  Dogs after all are part of the family. You wouldn’t want them to be without their treats. I wonder if the people who buy Halloween-themed food and costumes for their dogs also take them trick-or-treating?

We all know cat ladies, but in the idealized world of television commercials, only dogs attain the special place in people’s hearts of children or friends.  The number of commercials for food and other products for dogs far outnumber the number for cats. More significantly, cats never appear in commercials for other products, whereas you can see dogs in TV commercials for everything from laundry soap to automobiles.

It’s easy to figure out why corporate America would want to put a pet every yard, to join two cars in every garage and five cell phones in every house. Whatever the pet, the more people bond with the animal, more likely they will purchase goods and services for the animal. The pet becomes another thing to spend money on, and better than a car or a wardrobe, the spending is for someone you love, creating a strong emotional dynamic to the commercial transaction.

But why dogs?

I would hate to think that Ad World reflects reality accurately. I would hate to think that large numbers of people actually do prefer dogs to humans, or treat their dogs better than they treat the people they know. I would like to think that Ad World is an unreal place that only describes the aspirations that corporate America has for all of us. To my mind in a world in which people have food insecurity and public high schools have to give their pupils obsolete text books, all pets are a frivolity. I would be happy to see a small tax placed on all purchases of pets and products for pets, with the funds earmarked for programs to help poor and disadvantaged children.

Such a tax would be impossible in Ad World, of course, because in Ad World there are no poor people and the only hungry people are those about to sit down to a fast-food meal, pizza and beer or a bowl of chips. 

Tuesday, October 7, 2014

Let’s distinguish between sentiment against the actions of the Israeli government and pure anti-Semitism

By Marc Jampole 

The current wave of anti-Semitism in Western Europe is much more complicated than traditional European hatred of Jews, but it is also much less virulent and much less widespread.  Thanks to the efforts of virtually all governments and the European equivalent of the mainstream media, anti-Semitic feelings are marginalized in all of the states of the European Common Market with the possible exception of Hungary.

The complications derive from the split of the population of anti-Semites into two parts, one of which also distrusts and looks down upon the other. I’m talking of course about the growing Islamic minorities and the very small fringe of right-wing anti-Semites who continue the secular anti-Semitic traditions that dominated the 19th and first part of the 20th centuries in Europe.  The traditional anti-Semites dislike Muslims as much as or more than they hate Jews. 

A further complication is the political situation in the Middle East. Whether inclined to support the countries which supply Europe with oil or disturbed at the growing list of Israeli atrocities against Palestinians, a pool of fellow travelers stands ready to join the small fringe of Jew haters at any particular time or to respond to any specific issue involving Jews.

Of course, anti-Semites have always been able to find reasons to hate Jews—first for their supposed role in the death of their god, then for being usurers and the agents of exploitation (e.g., for the Hanseatic League in the Polish wheat fields), and then as the quintessential “other” during the early modern era when racist philosophies dominated so much western thought. Now it’s possible to hate Jews because they support Israel and are equated with Israelis and Israeli policies. 

The conflation of Jews with Israel is a mistake made by both Islamic and Christian anti-Semites. Progressive Jews such as me are disappointed when we see disappointment in Israel mentioned as a reason for the rise in anti-Semitic activity. We want the mass media to make a distinction between anti-Israeli opinion, which is often based in fact, and purely irrational Jew-hating.

Unfortunately, no such distinction is made among Jews either, at least in the United States. A major part of the education of Jewish youth in both after-school and day school programs revolves around connecting the Jewish religion and Jewish people with not just the land of Israel, but with the state of Israel as well. There are many programs that bring teens and young adults to the mother land—called “birthright” trips. The indoctrination doesn’t end with adulthood, as synagogues and Jewish federations all over the United States sponsor frequent tours and missions to Israel, all of which contain several appeals for funds to support the Israeli state. The mainstream American Jewish media questions Israeli actions in the occupied lands about as much as the U.S. mainstream media questions the assertion that the Ukrainian situation is all Russia’s fault. In virtually every Jewish setting, Jews are constantly barraged with twin ideological premises: 1) There can be no Judaism without Israel; 2) Israel can do no wrong.

How can we expect those susceptible to the siren song of anti-Semitism not to use every transgression by Israel as a reason to turn against the Jews when they see the Jewish establishment everywhere knee-jerk approval of every Israeli action, no matter how cruel or bellicose?  And how can we blame the anti-Semites for hiding behind Middle East politics as their excuse for Jew-hating when we see so many frequent anti-Islamic comments made in the news media by ultra-right and religious Jews? 

The easiest way to reduce anti-Semitism in Europe and elsewhere is for the American and European Jewish establishments to start criticizing Israel when it is wrong and to put real pressure on Israel to settle their differences at the negotiating table, not with armed conflict that sacrifices innocent victims and policies that deny people basic human and civil rights.  Splitting anti-Israel sentiment from anti-Semitic sentiment will reduce anti-Semitism as many begin to realize that it’s not inherent for Jewish culture and the Jewish religion to create and enforce apartheid-like conditions or to care little about harming civilians in an armed conflict. Rather it’s the actions of a governing elite hounded by special interest groups and in power for too long that has led Israel to its current predicament. Sounds like what happens all the time in the good old U. S. of A.!

People around the world don’t hate Christians because of American actions in Viet Nam, Central America and Iraq, but many people do hate Muslims because of the actions of a few terrorists and rogue governments such as Syria. That’s wrong, and it’s equally as wrong to hate Jews because of the actions of Israel. But if Jews want this wellspring of anti-Semitism to dry up, their actions must support their belief that Israel  does not equal Judaism. And that means criticizing Israel when its bombs indiscriminately, kills masses of children or begins building a new round of settlements in the occupied lands. 
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