We MUST prevent bad behavior from the U.S. Senate

From the Heartland, Margot McMillen writes: Kathy Ozer, from the National Family Farm Coalition, wrote that “The votes on the Senate amendments will be no earlier than Monday as they didn’t reach an agreement last night.” She was talking about votes on The Senate Continuing Resolution spending bill, which should have nothing in it except items pertaining to spending. Instead, it contains two bad riders that would protect bad corporate behavior and hurt independent farmers, environmentalists and consumers. One of these riders would actually encourage corporate concentration in the livestock industry, and eliminate competition. For an idea of what that would mean, see the article in the Atlantic that follows the chicken industry, which was the first to become dangerously concentrated. Nowadays, there are few inspectors and regulations, because the corporations can pass any stupid laws they want. People are getting sick and the epidemic of urinary tract infections has been traced to bacteria on chickens. How stupid can we get? The “biotech rider” (section 735) would protect biotech companies from any kind of regulation if they want to try out some new kind of genetically modified crop on the land. Now that 50% of farmland in the U.S. has “superweeds” that cannot be killed with an ordinary herbicide like Roundup, there’s no telling what the biotech companies are cooking up to plant and then spray with who-knows-what. It’s a scary situation, for sure. If the rider passes, federal courts, who have occasionally stopped the planting of illegal crops, would have no authority to stop the planting of these illegal crops. The rider was originally part of the Farm Bill that didn’t pass last year, and then it was attached to a house appropriations bill and now has appeared from the senate side. There will be a vote very soon, maybe tomorrow, rushed through to get it approved before planting season. These biotech companies, with their bins of experimental seeds, are just itching to get more income streams going and they want to plant them this year. Senator Tester is leading on the challenge to these riders and he needs us to give him cover. RAFI is working on a petition regarding the GIPSA rider and the Center for Food Safety has the biotech rider. Go to those websites and help them out. Here are the links: http://rafiusa.org/takeaction/urgent-action-alert/ http://salsa3.salsalabs.com/o/1881/p/dia/action3/common/public/?action_KEY=9982

Another Monsanto Protection Act

From the Heartland, Margot McMillen writes: Well, here’s a piece of crap. The Senate Continuing Resolution spending bill, which should have nothing in it except items pertaining to spending, contains the “biotech rider” (section 735) that would protect biotech companies from any kind of regulation if they want to try out some new kind of illegal, hazardous invented crop on the land. Federal courts, who have occasionally stopped the planting of illegal crops, would have no authority to stop the planting of these illegal crops. The rider was originally part of the Farm Bill that didn’t pass last year, and then it was attached to a house appropriations bill and now has appeared from the senate side. There will be a vote very soon, maybe tomorrow, rushed through to get it approved before planting season. These biotech companies, with their bins of experimental seeds, are just itching to get more income streams going and they want to plant them this year. The Center for Food Safety is leading on this issue and has petitions on their website to sign. Here’s what they say: “There are two asks: 1) urge your Senator to oppose the biotech rider and support any amendment that would strike the rider, and 2) Tell Senate Appropriations Chairwoman Mikulski that she should not support the biotech rider. Feel free to use this as a template: http://bit.ly/DumpTheMonsantoRider (feel free to call it either the “biotech rider” or “Monsanto rider”)” You, dear reader, must help strike this amendment. Call, write or e-mail your Senator right now. That’s the only way we can get Senators to take this situation seriously.

Lobby Day in Missouri

From the Heartland, Margot McMillen writes: Today was “lobby day” for the Missouri Rural Crisis Center. The capitol was packed with citizens working for one issue or another. Lots of farmers came with our group and another group of dairy farm supporters appeared. There were also a good number of folks from the faith community working on Medicaid expansion, a larger-than-usual contingent of motorcycle riders, but I don’t know what they were working on. Our farmers seemed to have good luck talking to the Senate. As I listened to the reports from the various little teams, I heard more optimism than usual. Senators and staff were all ready to talk, and they understood how bad the bills—especially HJR 7 and 11—were. We were joking—but it’s not really funny—that if HJR 7 &11 passes, a corporation could put a Confined Animal Feeding Operation with hogs or turkeys in the middle of St. Louis. Or, funnier still, in the neighborhoods like Clayton and Ladue where the big Monsanto execs live. There’s a big dead zone in St. Louis where the auto plants have moved out and the sites leveled, a big brown zone, and it would be perfect for a bunch of stinky hogs. Talk about your urban agriculture! Anyway, it was a good day and we’ll see what happens. March 12, 2013.

Dairy: The most fragile agriculture

From the Heartland, Margot McMillen writes: Sad news today. Another dairy processor, in Monett, has announced they’re shutting down. They can’t get enough milk to keep the plant going, because farmers have stopped keeping cows. I had a talk with Dave Drennon, Missouri’s dairy industry scorekeeper, and he says our state was #2 in the nation in numbers of cows back in the late 1970s. The city of Springfield was nicknamed “little Madison” after the Wisconsin capital. Our location was perfect for dairy—lots of grain in the north part of the state and pasture in the south. Now the grain is going to make ethanol for cars instead of milk for people. We’re #25 and falling. We “import” 60% of the milk we use in the state. We’ve laid off hundreds of thousands of workers in the dairy business, from farmers to processors to veterinarians to builders and fixers of equipment. All of those workers did business in their local communities, so every layoff has a ripple effect. Tomorrow at noon, the University is to make a report to the legislature on the economic impact of losing dairy farms. I hope they pay attention. That’s enough for today. March 11, 2013.

Parade list hides fact that corporate CEOs make so much money

By Marc Jampole

Parade Magazine just came out with this year’s edition of “What People Earn,” which catalogues the jobs and earnings of about 80 people across the country.

Surveying a mere 80 people doesn’t provide statistical certainty that the results reflect realty. In fact, the 80 people could be said to people an imaginary Parade universe, which we can otherwise call the alternative world of work that Parade wants us to see it. Some readers think I cover Parade too much, but it is the most well-read magazine in the country by virtue of it being included as part of the Sunday issue of virtually all daily newspapers. In its quiet way, Parade is one of the most influential arbiters of values and mores in the mass media.

So  how does Parade’s survey do when it comes to reflecting the real world?

Not well.

For example, about 60% of the people surveyed by Parade make under $75,000 a year, whereas in the real world about 88% of people earn $75,000 or less according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

In Parade’s world, the most common way to earn $75,000-$125,000 a year is to work for the government in some specialist or managerial capacity. I couldn’t find easy statistics on what percentage of people earning from $75,000-$125,000 work for local, state or federal government, but I can’t imagine that it’s anywhere near the 55% of all employees in this salary segment that we see in Parade’s alternative world of work. Could the subliminal affect of seeing all these well-paid government workers be to make the lower wage earners think that government workers are unfairly paid? Now wouldn’t that play right into the right-wing program to foster resentment against unionized government workers.

Surely the less moneyed readers couldn’t resent any of the nine people in the survey who make more than one million dollars a year. None of the million-dollar earners, by the way, earn less than $8.0 million. 

 

Why no resentment? Because they are all celebrities—athletes or entertainers.  Typically, we admire celebrities and only resent what they earn in comparative terms—(as is: LeBron James doesn’t deserve to make more than Tom Brady, for example). 

Among the million-dollar earners on Parade’s list there is not a single CEO of a big company, nor any professional investor or investment banker, nor any very successful physician or attorney.   By contrast, the Parade survey lists only owners and executives of businesses as earning between $125,000 and $1.0 million, and all of these earn considerably less than $500,000.  It seems to me that the message here is that business owners and executives don’t make outsized amounts of money—they only make a little bit more than the average Jane and Joe.

Parade’s alternative world of work, then, is a meritocracy in which to reach the top you have to have a lot of talent in some very specific areas—athletics, singing, dancing, performing.  While Parade’s world is primarily rich and poor/lower middle class, there is actually a higher number of people in the middle and upper ends of middle class income levels in Parade’ s world than in actual life. The Parade world also seems somewhat fairer than the real world because there are no bosses making millions and tens of millions of dollars a year while their employees work for almost nothing. There are no investment bankers manipulating the finances of companies to skim off profit while workers lose ground to inflation. The only business owners we see are close to being regular and hard-working guys and gals.

All we have at the top of Parade’s alternative world of work are the mythical gods and goddesses who the mass media erect as role models showing us how we should live our lives, the alpha and omega of our value system—the celebrity.

Kurt Schaefer's legacy

From the Heartland, Margot McMillen writes: In the last week, Columbia’s representative Kurt Schaefer has met with several constituents from his district. Folks from the environmental community, health community, rural life and faith communities have all had the same experience: Kurt has been well, curt. Meaning abrupt, brisk, brusque, rude. Some folks have called him “belligerent” and “confrontational.” One friends told me, “I’m so glad you weren’t there, Margot.” Although I’ve been in lawmaker offices where the rep or sen was out-of-control, the descriptions I’m hearing, and not just about Kurt, are truly appalling. It indicates the level of pressure these guys are under. The pressure between what they’ve promised their funders, like the Farm Bureau, Monsanto, Cargill and other corporations and their own personal own moral codes about what is right for the future. After all, these lawmakers have families and friends who will be affected forever. When these political gangs dismantle environmental regulations and allow more pollution to affect our burdened waterways and air, their families will pay with increased amounts of water-borne diseases, asthma, and other unpleasantness. If they disallow the health initiatives like Medicaid that would create a healthier future for our children, their families will pay with higher costs, more health problems and mental health problems. We will soon see, because of past policies, epidemics that no one can cure. And these guys know how to fix the problems by building policies to take us into the future. They know that they’re standing in the way of solutions. They know that their corporate funders are putting dirty money into campaigns by manipulating tax codes. They know that if government puts resources into creating energy-saving devices and alternative energy sources, they can build a safe future and turn back some of the problems we’re seeing. It is sad to see lawmakers under so much stress. That’s all for today. Happy Daylight Savings!!

Chillicothe--more than sliced bread

From the Heartland, Margot McMillen writes: Something amazing has happened! On Sunday, the New York Times Magazine ran an article that actually mentioned Missouri. Chillicothe, Missouri, the home of sliced bread. This mention is amazing on so many levels I hardly know where to start. Well, for one thing, it was about Missouri. And, for another thing, it never mentioned Mark Twain or Harry Truman. See, the Midwest never gets attention from what we might call the coastal media. When we do, it’s the snarky kind, like about cow tipping or guys named Bubba. So, hey, we’ll take any sliced-bread mention when we can get it. The article says that Catherine Stortz Ripley is working on a local-history book about Chillicothe and stumbled on the sliced bread story. Good work, Catherine! I hope she also stumbles on the 1986 farmers strike that brought attention to Chillicothe and changed the laws on foreclosure against farmers. I wrote about it a lot in 2011, the 25th anniversary of the event. Here’s a little from my interview with Roger Allison: “Roger explained that, in the 1980s, farmers were trying to understand how they could be working so hard and still going broke. Groups were springing up all over the Midwest, including right-wing groups that spread a message of violence and hate. With the economy breaking down, families losing their farms, bad weather and prices out of their control, farmers were looking for someone to blame. “The first target was the banking system. After all, everyone knew that bankers were tied to the commodity market and the commodity market sets prices. And prices were the problem. When prices for farm goods are low, a farmer’s income doesn’t pay for the cost of planting. That means the farmer can’t pay the loan he got for his business. That means he carries the debt to the next year. A few years of carrying debt means a debt that can’t be paid off. Foreclosure. “Targeting the banking system was dangerously close to targeting urban folks, especially urban Jews. There are, you see, very few Jewish people in the countryside. Indeed, neo-Nazi groups had sprung up in rural America, complete with uniforms, guns and marches. People were getting magazines from them, addressed “occupant,” and spreading a message of hate. Yet the Chillicothe farmers, although they might not have said it in just this way, were focused on a mission of peaceful resistance. There were even Jewish leaders from Kansas City that joined the fight.” It’s a pretty great story, and there’s a lot about it in my book, Farming Food and Politics in the Heartland, available from Amazon and as an e-book. Well, that’s enough for today. March 5, 2013.

Missouri HJR 7 & 11

From the Heartland, Margot McMillen writes: When I talk to my friends that study social movements, we agree that it takes about 3 generations to make positive change. The first generation identifies the social stupidity (like keeping certain groups from voting, or like allowing pollution to kill entire species, or keeping certain groups from enjoying privileges) and then it takes a generation to ignore what the first generation is saying and then it takes a generation to fix the problem. So we eventually get universal suffrage or DDT bans or gay marriage. The problem is that some stupidity can’t be fixed in any easy way after it takes hold. That’s the problem with factory farms and biotech seed. Centuries of knowledge, wiped out in a generation. Reclaiming it is hard. And especially, in today’s consumer society, if it’s masked in the cloaks of convenience and technology. Today we’re fighting truly horrible Missouri resolutions that would erase decades of progress. HJR 7 & 11 has passed the House of Representatives and is on its way to the Senate. If it passes, it would strip local control from Missouri counties and elected officials so that they could not keep corporate agriculture out of their counties. Nobody could create biotech-free zones or keep CAFOs at a distance. It would make a constitutional amendment that would keep DNR from enforcing pollution controls. HJR 7&11 states: “No state law shall be enacted which abridges the right of farmers and ranchers to employ agricultural technology and modern livestock production and ranching practices, unless enacted by the General Assembly.” That’s enough for today. March 4, 2013.

Who will buy things when only a few have money?

By Marc Jampole

Was anyone shocked to learn today’s news that while corporate profits have made a recovery, jobs and incomes have not? Shouldn’t we be used to these jobless recoveries by now?

The last two recoveries before this tepid one did not see large increases in jobs.  It could be that economic bubbles hide excess labor that flourishing companies start to carry, so when the bubble bursts, millions of jobs go away permanently.

At each recession, businesses have learned how to make do with fewer workers. And as each year passes, the inequality-creating policies of low taxes on the wealthy, privatization of government services, union-busting and a low minimum wage have continued to erode the incomes and buying power of all but the top one or five percent of incomes.

This elixir of policies allows wealth to accumulate at the top and enables the owners of productive means to grab everyone’s share of a growing economy.

It used to be that when the economic pie grew, everyone’s slice got a little bigger. Now only the portion allotted by owners to themselves is growing.

The sequester is one small step in the squeezing of everyone else for the benefit of the rich. Congress and the President have decided that they no longer want to borrow money to pay for jobs and services that taxes used to finance before the Bush II tax cuts for the wealthy. Rather than raise taxes to pre-Bush levels to pay for these jobs and services, we are cutting them out. Meanwhile, the rich continue to count their tax savings.

The current trend can only go so far, however. Who will buy things if only the rich have money? Either enough businesses will realize that they need middle class customers to survive or we’ll have a 30’s-like depression and social protest movements will reach a level that scares the ruling elite into economic policies that produce a flatter income and wealth chart. 

In the mean time, however, millions of people are going to suffer. And by suffer, I don’t mean not being able to buy the latest generation of smartphones or having to go to junior college for two years. I mean not having enough to eat or having a text book in  high school classes and not having a library opened nearby. I’m talking about not being able to afford a doctor or medicine.  I’m talking about homelessness and living on the edge and off the Internet grid.

Meanwhile the wealthy will eat cake—flourless chocolate, judging from the dessert trends in expensive restaurants nowadays.

A suffragist anniversary

From the Heartland, Margot McMillen writes: March 3, 2013. Today, let it be noted, is the 100th anniversary of the biggest suffrage march in Washington D.C. Organized by Harriott Blatch, who was back from England where suffrage protests had become violent, our suffragists were orderly, polite, but focused and firm. At the head of the parade, which was like a pageant, rode Inez Mulholland, a beautiful debutant from New York. It’s hard to tell from the photos whether Inez rode astride or side saddle. At the time, riding astride was coming into fashion for defiant women, but Inez would probably have been accomplished enough to ride either way. Joan of Arc was in vogue, with stories about her by Mark Twain and others in print. She, in armor, would have ridden astride. Nobody is celebrating this anniversary, but I’m attaching a photo of Inez so you can think about it. She looks like an art nouveau drawing, whether she’s astride or side saddle. She died at a young age because there were heavy metals in the makeup she was using. A sad irony.

Sequestration and solitary confinement

From the Heartland, Margot McMillen writes: This is the big documentary film festival weekend in Columbia, the True/False festival and the thermometer is stubbornly staying at 32 degrees so that when I put my Ford 150 in gear all that happens is the wheels spin. Yesterday, the temperature rose a little so I rode with Marshall to town and I got to see the grandkids, in from sunny California for the festival. James and I built a hospital ship out of leggos, his cousin’s leggos as he reminded me frequently. So we were very careful not to lose any. We got the ship built and rescued three sick Leggo people—one with malaria, one with what James called “infinity diarrhea” and one with hypertension. Since we were out of people, having only three, we had to build a robot doctor. Fortunately, we had barrels of medicines on the ship and cured the malaria quickly. The diarrhea case was a little more tricky, since the medication made him cough. Not a good outcome for someone with diarrhea. We were lucky, though, and found the right pills to get it under control. The Leggo guy with hypertension was also in handcuffs. Did you know they make handcuffs for leggo characters? Do you find that outrageous? Since I’ve spent much of the snowstorm in my cozy bedroom working on an essay about women in the prison system, to accompany the memoir of a prison superintendent, I find it insane that our society will buy for plastic handcuffs for child play. Should we next begin telling them to build isolation cells from Leggos for plastic dolls in solitary confinement? It ain’t normal, folks. Solitary confinement, which visiting experts found in a Missouri reform school, was deemed inhumane in the 1920s and had a resurgence in the 1930s. Again, the experts discouraged it but even enlightened superintendents and wardens have used it all along, even though there are barrels of medicine available that supposedly control people. With this year’s budget “sequestration,” which sounds sort of like putting money in solitary confinement, we’re going to hear a lot about isolation, confinement, shackles on our most cantankerous folks. With no money for education, medications or any kind of reward system for good behavior, it will not be surprising if officials are driven to medieval systems of treatment. Budget cuts for federal employees? Let’s start with Congress and the President. Judges, too. One of my dairy friends, living on credit cards, figured out that if milk prices had risen like government salaries, milk would cost $25 a gallon.

Editorial: The Debt Alarm Sham

From the March 15, 2013 edition:

Democrats and Republicans alike depicted a hellscape if the federal budget “sequester” was allowed to take effect on March 1. The only difference is that Republicans were looking forward to blaming the apocalypse on President Obama.

That is, until House Speaker John Boehner was reminded that in July 2011 he told House Republicans the sequestration process was included in the Budget Control Act of 2011 to force $1.2 trillion in cuts across the board over 10 years if a joint committee couldn’t agree to more targeted cuts and/or revenue increases.

Boehner thought that, as the sequester deadline approached, the House would be able to force the Senate and President Obama to accept a substitute bill that would keep the military budget largely intact but force the cuts disproportionately on domestic programs. (But Republicans didn’t bother to pass that bill in the current Congress. Instead, they left town.)

When the President insisted that any sequester deal include tax reforms that limit tax breaks for the wealthy, Republicans balked, saying they would not go beyond the restoration of the pre-Bush tax rates for the wealthiest Americans that was approved in January. The Republican intransigence on taxes is proof that their alarms over the federal budget deficit are a sham. Rational Republicans know that budget cutting during a recession doesn’t close a deficit; it merely puts more people out of work — an estimated 750,000 jobs could be lost from the sequester — and those lost jobs reduce tax revenue, further increasing the deficit.

We know that tax rates must generate about 20% of the gross domestic product during normal economic times to balance the federal budget. That’s what Bill Clinton and the Democrats set up in 1993 when they raised tax rates modestly without a single Republican vote in favor. Instead, Republican leaders denounced the Clinton tax-raising budget as an economy killer that would certainly bring on a recession. Of course, the economy boomed. Through the ’90s we saw low unemployment rates, the Treasury reaped the benefits and, when he left the White House, Clinton turned over to new President George W. Bush a balanced budget that was on course to pay off the national debt by 2010.

But Bush denounced the surplus as proof that the government was collecting too much money. Then-Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan warned that paying off the national debt too fast could be bad for the nation. So instead Bush cut taxes on the wealthy, even as he ramped up two wars. The problem of retiring the national debt was solved!

Republicans did not discover the problems of the ballooning debt until Jan. 20, 2009. While Barack and Michelle Obama were making the rounds of Inaugural balls, GOP leaders met secretly to vow to do everything they could to make sure Obama did not succeed in pulling the economy out of the tailspin Bush had put it in.

Revenue as a percentage of the GDP bottomed out at 15.1% in the depth of the Great Recession in 2009 and 2010, according to the White House Office of Management and Budget. Deficits of $1.4 trillion in 2009 and $1.3 trillion in 2010, when measured as a share of GDP, were the largest since the end of World War II — representing 10% and 8.9% of the nation’s output, respectively. But with the economy in recovery and the slightly higher tax rates on the wealthy that were approved in January, tax revenue this year is expected to increase to 17.8% of GDP and 19.2% by 2017 under current laws.

If those laws do not change, the Congressional Budget Office reported Feb. 5, the budget deficit will shrink this year to $845 billion, or 5.3% of the GDP, its smallest size since 2008. But the CBO also reported that the economy shrank by a tenth of 1% in the last quarter of 2012, largely because of a reduction in federal spending, and the fiscal contraction would shrink the growth rate to 1.4% this fiscal year.

The nonpartisan CBO expects deficits to continue to shrink over the next few year to 2.4% of GDP by 2015. But a poll conducted for Bloomberg News (Feb. 15-18) found that 94% of Americans did not know the budget deficit was shrinking. The survey found 62% thought the deficit was growing, while 28% said it was about the same and 4% were not sure. Only 6% correctly said the deficit was smaller.

So there is no emergency and Democrats in Congress must reject any deals President Obama might reach with Republicans that would cut Social Security, Medicare or Medicaid and put the burden of deficit reduction on the poor and/or the elderly.

In the first place, Social Security has nothing to do with the federal deficit — the Social Security Trust Fund is self-sustaining through the payroll tax and promised benefits are secure at least for the next 20 years. The “problem” is that Congress borrowed $2.5 trillion from the Trust Fund to keep income taxes low while Bush was fighting the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and now Congress doesn’t want to pay the money back to Social Security.

Assuming Congress honors its obligations to seniors and pays its debt to the Trust Fund, if there is a longer-term problem in paying promised Social Security benefits — and that is only indicated under pessimistic economic projections — the shortfall could be closed by removing the cap on income subject to the payroll tax, which is now $113,700. But you wouldn’t know about that solution from listening to the pundits, most of whom don’t want to pay more payroll tax.

In the second place, the Affordable Care Act is projected to reduce the deficit by billions over the next 10 years, and it already has played a role in reducing the growth of Medicare costs. Since the health care reform was passed in 2010, the projections of the growth of health care costs has dropped by $511 billion, according to the Congressional Budget Office. At least some of that slowdown in health costs may be due to the the passage of Obamacare, which is phasing in new incentives and reforms to make health care delivery more efficient.

In the third place, Medicaid expansion will help to reduce costs to insurance companies, healthcare providers and local taxpayers because they will no longer have to subsidize health coverage of uninsured working-class families whose employers cannot or will not provide health coverage.

Simply put, any Democratic member of Congress, in the House or Senate, who supports cuts in benefits to Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid in an attempt to resolve the latest Republican-imposed budget crisis should get a challenger in next year’s Democratic primary. Labor unions should make it clear that officeholders who agree to cut Social Security — even the “minor” cuts envisioned in the proposed “Chained CPI” changes — will find themselves banished from labor’s push cards.

As Dean Baker has written, the Chained CPI, which reduces benefits compared with the current schedule by 0.3% annually, adds up to a 3% cut in annual benefits after 10 years. Since Social Security provides more than half of the income for almost 70% of retirees, a 3% cut in Social Security benefits amounts to a reduction in their total income of more than 1.5%. “By contrast, if a wealthy couple has an income of $500,000 a year, as a result of President Obama’s tax increases, they would be paying an addition 3 percentage points in taxes, or $3,000, on the income above $400,000. That comes to just 0.6% of their income,” he noted.

If the Chained CPI cut is not a big deal for Social Security retirees then the tax increases on the wealthy are even less of a big deal. And the One Percenters can better afford them.

Yet even if progressives keep Congress from raiding Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid to settle the sequestration, the Republicans will come back after them at the next self-imposed crisis, when funding for the current fiscal year expires on March 27, and again in mid-May, when the Treasury is expected to run up against its borrowing limit again. The economic terrorists won’t quit, and neither can the rest of us. — JMC

From The Progressive Populist, March 15, 2013

---

Populist.com
Blog | Current Issue | Back Issues | Essays | Links
About the Progressive Populist | How to Subscribe | How to Contact Us

---

Copyright © 2013 The Progressive Populist
PO Box 819, Manchaca TX 78652

Selections from the March 15, 2013 issue

COVER/Michael Lind
Southern poverty pimps

EDITORIAL
The debt alarm sham

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR 

RURAL ROUTES/Margot McMillen
Arrest climate change, not protesters

DISPATCHES
‘Sequester’ cuts come into focus;
Public doesn’t like cuts;
Cal Tech physicist calls out feds for blocking marijuana research;
GOP proceeds with vote rigging schemes;
Vote rigger gets challenger;
Dems face tough Senate races in ’14 ...
GRASSROOTS/Hank Kalet
Minimum wage should be a living wage

DON ROLLINS
Peace Corps undergoing power struggles

BOB BURNETT
Obama 2013: In your face

WENONAH HAUTER
With fracking, Cuomo’s future hangs in balance
HEALTH CARE/Joan Retsinas
The mark of C, for crazy

SAM URETSKY
Science heads toward truth

SETH SANDRONSKY
Democratic education reformers

WAYNE O’LEARY
Waiting for Hillary

JOHN BUELL
The taming of economic liberalism

NORMAN SOLOMON
Endless war: Becoming ‘the evil that we deplore’

D.H. KERBY
Secrecy becomes an enemy of the people
MARK ANDERSON
Michigan pig farmer seeks to rise above edicts
MARK DATEMA LIPSCOMB
Teaching Latin and the Second Amendment

POPULIST PICKS
‘Rebirth’ by Jimmy Cliff; ‘Go On’; ‘Baby Peggy: The Elephant in the Room’

ROB PATTERSON
More movies appeal to adults

and more ...

Snow can't stop the Missouri Senate from evil--can we?

From the Heartland, Margot McMillen writes: It feels like a long time since the snow started, but it’s only been a week. We got our chores done, everyone settled with food and water, made our run to town for eggs (hens don’t lay eggs in bad weather, FYI if you’re getting hens) and got back in time for the snow to begin in earnest. Then the electricity went off for a day, 24 hours, and we really felt sorry for ourselves. No internet. No TV. No radio. After a day, I started calling neighbors and found out that being cut off is harder on some folks than others. We were generally OK, but one neighbor was having panic attacks at being alone. I tried to get him to go to the gas station and hang out, maybe he did. You know how it is when you get to a certain point and you can’t think what to do? He was at that point. My idea, to get out, seemed brilliant to him and he thanked me over and over. Another neighbor heard the timbers of his barn cracking at night when he was in bed and he was too worried to go out and look. Had the roof fallen completely in? Did it kill his livestock? He couldn’t bring himself to go out. After talking to a few folks, I felt really lucky. Our barn is OK and we have plenty of food in the cupboard and wood in the woodpile. Chilly, but lucky. Everything has been cancelled for the most part, but wouldn’t you know the legislature figured out a way to hold sessions and that old bugaboo, Senate Bill 41, “the polluters’ protection act” is making its way through the Missouri Senate again. We defeated it last year, but Senator Munzlinger, a Farm Bureau puppet, brought it up again. You’d think, as a Republican, that he’d know that his bill takes away constitutional rights of farmers and landowners to protect their property & property rights through the court system. In my neighborhood, the hog CAFO owner nearby does a great job of keeping his place clean and only mildly stinky but he didn’t do that until some of the neighbors threatened a lawsuit and settled out of court. Still, corporate lobbyists have once again convinced some legislators of the need to protect a very small minority of corporate industrial livestock operations at the expense of the property rights of the majority of family farms, rural landowners and other property owners. But, hey, this law wouldn’t affect only rural folks. Anyone living near an industrial facility—a landfill, chemical plant or even a sausage making plant—can be affected by runoff and bad air. SB 41clearly favors the “rights” of corporations over the rights of Missourians, our families and our communities. So, yeah, we’re back on the phone today. Tonight, the legislature goes home and enough snow has melted that I’ll get out tomorrow. A whole new world out there!

How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Drone

By Charles Cullen

I'm going to make an argument that few progressives on Earth will be entirely comfortable reading. But I'm making it because the subject is one of the few areas where progressives are as scattered and self-deluded as the Right. As long as the Right continues to insist on taking a leave from sanity, the task of governing falls to us. And this is an issue we need to get straight.

Every pious Progressive knows how they should feel about drone strikes and drone technology in general. We are supposed to reject drones as a kind of neo-imperialistic affront to humanity; a rough beast that never should have been brought forth from the belly of the War Machine, and should be abandoned as soon as possible. But whenever we talk about drones we end up mixing the issues regarding drones and stirring these issues into a fine sauce of nonsense and general outrage. General outrage is incredibly dangerous here because it's useless in this case — it won't get anything done. It's dangerous because this is something we have to get right and because specific outrage is so desperately needed.

Chances are you have a few progressive friends. The next time you're having a drink with them, try talking drones. I guarantee that within seconds you will have managed to weave policy, legality, intelligence, and the knee jerk reaction to something fearful and inhuman roaming the skies into a finely knit crimes-against-humanity sweater. I'd like to pull the strands apart.

First we have several legal arguments about governance: how and when and on whom drones may be used, and then we have the argument about general constraints on the drone master. We need to look at each of these issues individually (as many, including the President, have already suggested). We need clear rules governing the use of drones, careful oversight of drone-strikes, and a policy commitment to sustaining excellent, actionable intelligence.

But we cannot allow a general fear of drones as a technology to bleed into our discussion of law or policy. It's fine if you're outraged by the very idea of drones, but I hope you are at minimum equally outraged by all troops currently stationed in other countries as they fight our ongoing war on a concept. As long as we are at war with “terror,” we will never be free of the need to assert some sort of military presence in countries not our own. We will always have to have some way of destroying terrorist networks, and that will usually involve killing people. As inaccurate as drones can be, I would argue that when tasked with killing enemies of our State, panicked, insufficiently supported soldiers are just as inaccurate and more likely to fan the flames of anger among members of the occupied foreign populace. People don't like houses blowing up without warning, causing collateral damage. They like being occupied even less. This is why violent occupation has and always will lead to organized resistance. If you, as an oppressed member of the native populace, pass your enemy every day on the street, folks suggesting creative ways to deal with your oppressors start sounding more and more reasonable by the day. Just ask the Taliban.

Soldiers have to deal with the shattering emotional toll of killing another human being (assuming of course they aren't killed themselves) and we are just seeing the start of what that means as veterans try to reeintegrate into normal life. Drones, as far as I know, are pretty ok with the whole thing.

So here's how the argument has to go: First, what legal changes do we need to make to drone policy? Second, what governmental changes do we need to make as far as the implimentation of policy and general oversite? And specifically, how much oversight can we ask for without jeopardizing the quick-strike necessity of drones? Third, what changes can we make to drone technology to lessen the possibilty of collateral damage in drone kills and make sure the only people we kill are the ones we mean to kill.

Countless advancements in killing technology have been greeted by people with a strong moral radar as the final step over the line; too far for a society to go and still call itself a just society. And that's good. It's necessary. But if we think that drone outrage is the first time people have looked at a weapon and recoiled, we're kidding ourselves. Certain members of the English military considered the crossbow to be “unsporting,” and some refused to use them. Refused, that is, until the other side picked them up.

And that is essentially where we find ourselves: in the grip of a policy, not a technology crisis. We can have the ethical argument when we decide to stop passing the ethical buck. If we suggest abandoning drones, we must also offer a comprehensive way to prevent our soldiers from having to sneak around buildings in the middle of the night, house to house, using the same intelligence we might give to a drone, kick down the door of the (hopefully) correct place, and execute whomever happens to be inside. Until we do that, we're worse than hypocrites, we're lazy, sadistic hypocrites.

Humane?

From the Heartland, Margot McMillen writes: From where I sit, I have a great view of two male blue jays pecking at the eaves of the garage. No idea what’s keeping them at it—bugs in the eaves? Melted snow? Something tasty in the paint? Whatever it is, they’ve been pecking for a half hour and they’re doing considerable damage to the wood. In the barn, two pigeons have nested and set up house, dropping poo all over the tractor, chore cart and all the other equipment in there. Last year we had eight or ten and we tried to trap them in live traps like raccoons but no success. We can’t use poisons because we have so many pets around. So I finally had to find a hunter with a shotgun. This year, we’re trying again to find a better way, have strung nets around the barn in hopes of nabbing them without using bullets. Seems like we’re always battling predators. They come after our lambs, our hens, our guineas. Now that the neighbors are reporting mountain lions around, I won’t let anyone go in the woods alone, even just to pick mushrooms. Got to have a buddy and got to make lots of noise. Those are my rules for the woods. But these vegans. They never have problems with mice, cockroaches, ants in the pantry, moths, mountain lions. How do they do it? Well, near as I can figure, they are rich people, movie stars. They don’t worry about fixing the garage and they have someone else take care of the mice, ants, moths. And they banish the animals from their lives. They might have a few pet dogs, vegan ones, but they don’t have goats or calves or even goldfish in their ponds. They want the planet for themselves, humans, only. They want to eat foods from fields nourished with chemicals rather than animal products. A lot of the vegans look unhealthy. Too much sugar and refined flour. Twinkies and chips, sodas and vitamin pills. And, they don’t worry about the people involved in making the things they eat, like the sugar cane harvesters that can’t feed their own kids or the farmers handling dangerous chemicals so they can raise corn for sweeteners and soy for thickening. I read one time that all humane societies begin with horses. Someone sees horses treated cruelly and they protest. Then they move to protecting dogs, cats and finally to protecting humans. Seems backwards, but that’s how it goes. At least that’s what I read. Well, enough for today. February 22, 2013.

Let’s keep the military cuts in the sequester but not the cuts to social services

By Marc Jampole

February’s crisis of the month is the looming “sequester,” which will automatically make deep cuts in government programs unless Congress gets its act together and passes an alternative fiscal plan by March 1.

As usual when it comes to money issues, Democrats and Republicans are at an impasse on how to avoid the sequester. Democrats want to replace it with a mix of tax increases and program cuts. Republicans want government services such as air traffic controller staffs, food stamps and health programs for children to take the brunt of program cuts, with no cut to military spending and no increase in taxes.

Both sides have it wrong. If the concern is to help the economy recover, we should raise taxes on the wealthy and not cut any programs.  The government will spend every penny it gets, which will pump up the economy. True enough, poor people and much of the middle class support the economy by spending most of the money that they don’t pay in taxes on goods and services. History demonstrates, however, that the wealthy will invest much of their tax savings in ways that do not help the economy, for example in stocks on the secondary market (which means the company that originally issued the stock gets nothing) and overpriced art work.  That’s why we should raise taxes on the wealthy only.

I agree with Paul Krugman, who in many of his New York Times articles over the past months has made the case that addressing the deficit can wait until the country has stabilized the economy. But if we do want to address the deficit right now, we should do it by addressing the two reasons why it is too large: war-time military spending and the Bush II reduction of taxes on the wealthy.  That means raising taxes and cutting the military, but not other programs.

When thinking about cuts in government spending, ask yourself these questions:

1. Would you rather see children in the United States have enough to eat or the U.S. stay in the senseless, objectiveless war in Afghanistan?
2. Would you rather repair bridges and put decent mass transit into our mid-sized cities or continue developing drone technology?
3. Would you rather see us work on green energies or develop that new-fangled aircraft that Congress is insisting be built even though our military leaders say we don’t need it?
4. Would you rather cut our nuclear program (which can destroy all known civilization many times over) or cut air traffic controllers and slow down the takeoff and landing of all flights across the country.

I vote for children with full bellies, bridges that don’t fall down, research that addresses global warming (as opposed to research that kills people) and getting to my destination on time.

That’s why I advocate that we replace the sequester with a mix of tax increases and cuts only in military spending.

Bowman v. Monsanto deliberations

From the Heartland, Margot McMillen writes: The Supreme Court heard the Bowman v. Monsanto case last Tuesday, attracting much more media attention than the 40,000 people who went to D.C. to advocate for the climate. Attorney Seth Waxman, arguing for Monsanto, turned in the classic statement: “Without the ability to limit the reproduction of soybeans containing this patented trait, Monsanto could not have commercialized its invention and never would have produced what is now the most popular patented technology in farming.” Imagine an attorney making that statement for a murderer, thief or kidnapper. “Without the ability to snatch children away from their homes and extract ransom, Monsanto could not have commercialized its invention and never would have produced a system to make money from desperate parents trying to save their kids.” “Without the ability to kill people, Monsanto could not have commercialized its invention . . . Well, you get the picture. But the law depends not on comparisons or fairness but on precedents. Monsanto has plenty of precedents with the Supremes. The judges will have a written opinion in June, the papers say, and we’ll see what they say. This morning, at 8 a.m., the horseshoer called. It wasn’t snowing yet at his place (about 30 miles west of here) but he was expecting it any minute, so he cancelled our appointment. Then, around 9 a.m. the snow started to fall here—big, fluffy flakes. It was warm enough that the snow was accompanied by thunder. We heard it three times. Thunder in February means snow the next October, they used to say. After a couple of hours, it got colder and the flakes got smaller, but it’s still accumulating. I’d say we have 6 to 8 inches already and it’s only 2:00.

The XL Pipeline and Local Foods

From the Heartland, Margot McMillen writes: According to one map, on Wikipedia, a route for the Keystone XL pipeline goes right through my neighborhood, or, as my husband put it, “past our back door.” So I’m particularly glad that an estimated 3,000 Missouri college students went to DC for the protest. Can’t wait to see the few that went from our campus and hear what they think! Here's the link to the pipeline map: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keystone_Pipeline Last night, the PBS news program, Newshour, covered the action and had interviews with a couple of folks with different opinions. I had just locked the sheep in the barn and come into the house, reported to my husband that a swarm of bright red cardinals were cleaning out the suet feeder and he should go look. But he was immersed in the TV where the talking heads were expressing different opinions about just where the tar sands oil, once refined, would go. Would it be piped to a Louisiana port, then traded to Asia for more computers and cars? Or would it help America overcome our fuel deficit with the middle east? Truly, neither of the guys seemed convinced that they knew. To Bill McKibben and the enviros, that doesn’t really matter. The point, to them, is that the planet can’t afford the carbon output, no matter if it’s burned in New York or Beijing. They point to the increase in carbon and the heat it traps, globally speaking. They say, “leave it in the ground and figure out new ways to take care of our needs.” They point to a 10% decrease in fuel consumption since Obama has taken office and say that’s great and we can do better. If a link in the XL pipeline comes through my neighborhood, and what does XL stand for anyway? Extra Large? Extra Leaky? Entirely X-cessive? Well, if it comes here, there’ll be thousands of new jobs and farmers will have to leave. To our biggest neighbors, that would be the end of hours on huge tractors, things they don’t really love to begin with. To the Economic Development people, it’s about good jobs that pay well. To sustainable vegetable farmers like us, it’s the end of community, nature, and our lives. To the eaters that depend on us, it’s back to canned foods from who knows where?

A Good Walk Unspoiled

By Charles Cullen

You may already be aware that the White House Babysitting Service, also known as the White House Press Corps, went nuts recently because they weren't granted full access to the President's golf outing with Tiger Woods. While this might seem like a story directly from “The Daily Show,” it isn't. Their outrage is very real, and very, very silly.

This President has been hounded for myriad made up scandals. I'm going to pick one; feel free to insert your own—the birther scandal—which received wall to wall coverage ... even though anyone with a brain not covered with the worst comb-over in history knew the whole thing to be baseless.

I find it highly unlikely that any reporter clamoring to walk the links with Obama wanted to ask him serious questions about drone strikes, economic policy, or the Hagel confirmation. Perhaps they were worried that he would fudge the numbers on his score. Maybe take a drop without accepting the penalty? Come to think of it, maybe we do need to see his long-form scorecard.

The sad fact, for reporters at least, is that there's a pretty good case to be made for Obama not granting the Press Corps any access at all. On the rare occasion they get something right, they find the need to insert the inevitably ludicrous Republican side and just “teach the controversy.” They also generally get scooped by bloggers anyway.

The President has made it a point to make himself available to the American people directly through new media — online chats, looped phone calls where ordinary citizens can ask him questions directly, and constant updates from his government website.

Since reporters have been behaving like children, Obama has begun treating them accordingly. You wouldn't force your toddler to waddle along the golf course, would you? Well, neither would Obama.

This is not George “Brush Clearin'” Bush, who, by the way, was famously skittish when it came to engaging the press. This is a man who understands that no matter what he does, a vast majority of the press will simply make something up and call it news.

I saw this habit first hand at the Democratic National Convention. Reporters from austensably reputable news sources would write “quotes” from speakers including the President before the speaker in question had uttered these “quotes.” These “quotes” would then be reported as gospel on talk-news shows, crowed about on talk radio, and so the cycle would continue; a self sustaining nonsense machine.

If reporters wish more access to the President, they need only to act less like petulant children, and more like reporters. A good start would be the reporting of facts.