One 77-year-old’s search for the truth: 9/11, election fraud, illegal wars, Wall Street criminality, a stolen nuke, the neocon wars, control of the U.S. government by global corporations, the unjustified assault on Social Security, media complicity, and the "Great Recession" about to become the second Great Depression. "The most important truths are hidden from us by the powerful few who strive to steal the American dream by keeping We the People in the dark."
All over the world, May 1st is celebrated as
International Workers Day. Yesterday, May Day also marked the
reemergence of the Occupy movement, with events in cities all over
America. AlterNet's reporters were in the field -- here are their
dispatches from New York and the Bay Area.
Midtown NYC, morning
-- Sarah Jaffe
Midtown is a great place for chanting; your voice echoes off the tall
buildings and you can hear it blocks away. Even better for marching
bands, bells and whistles. There may not actually be 99 pickets, but
midtown Manhattan is clogged with them in the morning, and they're
inside the heads of the people on the street--I walk past a couple
discussing our "cruel," unequal society as I hurry from picket to
picket.
I made it to Bryant Park a few
minutes after eight in a haze of rain, and found a crowd of around a
hundred huddled under their umbrellas or the ones at tables in the park.
The Rude Mechanical Orchestra were clustered around their instruments
but not playing, and Occupiers chatted with one another.
My first picket stop was at the New
York Times building, where the United Auto Workers (UAW) were picketing
under a lovely awning in support of the National Organization of Legal
Services Workers, (UAW Local 2320). The lawyers and legal support staff
of Legal Services NYC provide free legal aid to New York's low-income
folks who need support--they help fight evictions, support the
unemployed, work on benefits for the disabled, and more. And they're
facing cutbacks from their board, who want them to give back part of
their healthcare benefits--not to mention cuts to the services they
provide. "We make next to nothing," a legal services worker told me,
pointing out that her benefits allow her to do a low-paid service job
and take care of herself and her family. Meanwhile, none of the cuts
have hit management. Their target for the day's picket was Michael
Young, the vice chair of the Board of Directors at Legal Services NYC,
who has been the point person in negotiating with the union.
As we stood talking, the Rude
Mechanical Orchestra and a small march rolled in, playing "Which Side
Are You On?" and thrilling the workers, who didn't seem terribly
connected at first to the larger May Day celebrations. The picket line
turned into a dance party, and the band played along with chants of "Hey
hey rich boy, my job is not your toy" and "We're legal services for the
poor, fired up won't take no more."
From Twitter, colleagues Allison
Kilkenny, John Knefel and I heard reports of arrests at the Bank of
America tower, which was surrounded by barricades when we arrived but
quiet at the moment, so I moved on to News Corp headquarters--where the
ticker outside the building warned "Occupy plans to shut down city
today, gathering at Bryant Park". It made a lovely backdrop for the
lively picket line, featuring several members of OWS's Direct Action
working group as well as banners and activists from Picture the
Homeless, SEIU, VOCAL-NY (includingWayne Starks, who I spoke with on Tax Day), and other local groups.
As they marched, the crowd repeated
the crimes of Rupert Murdoch and News Corp--not only "Murdoch spies," a
reference to the phone hacking scandal in the UK, but "News Corp called
for closing HIV food pantries, housing for people with AIDS."
From News Corp, I moved on to
Chase, where a small but determined band was chanting "Save our homes,
modify loans!" outside the branch on 47th and Madison, but no one had
made it to the main headquarters, location of many an Occupy event, yet.
I saw a march rounding the corner as I headed the other way, trying to
catch a march that had left News Corp for the headquarters of the
Paulson Group, one of the world's largest hedge funds, but instead I
crossed paths with a small march flying an anarchist flag, singing
"Ain't no power like the power of the people because the power of the
people don't stop."
The marchers were young, mostly
white, but the one arrest came when a young black man, whose name, I was
told, was Gregory Walker, was slammed against a glass window and thrown
to the ground--I didn't see what happened to cause his arrest, but I
did watch him loaded into a police van and the crowd spontaneously broke
into "Solidarity Forever."
Back at Bryant Park, the scene
had picked up and the feeling was more Liberty Square than grim
determination. A woman mic-checked to offer belly dance lessons, and I
chatted with Betsy Fagin at the Library, back in action. Screenprinters
had the next table over from the Library, and were churning out prints
of a Guy Fawkes mask decorated with spring leaves. I caught up with Pam
Brown and Suzanne Collado of the Occupy Student Debt campaign, who had
been at their own picket outside of NYU, protesting student debt and the
university's expansion plan (financed, of course, with students'
money).
The park is also serving as a
staging location for marches--I spoke with organizers pulling together
an immigrant worker justice march, departing at 11 to his Praesidian
Capital, Wells Fargo, the Capital Grille, Chipotle and Beth Israel, in
support of workers trying to organize, Wells's support for
anti-immigrant legislation through ALEC, wage theft and discrimination,
the Coalition of Immokalee Workers' Fair Food Campaign, and laundry workers who clean hospital sheets, respectively.
On the way out, I spoke with
Jerry, who told me about the Summer Disobedience school that will be
held every Saturday in Bryant Park, training activists in pickets,
marches, street theater, and much more.
Wildcat Strike -- NYC
-- Anna Lekas Miller
The Wildcat Strike --
designed to bring together non-unionized, or unionized workers whose
unions had not approved the strike -- was one of the unpermitted actions
of May Day. Protestors and strikers came at the risk of their own
arrests and the authorities had the right to "do whatever they want."
I arrived at Sara Roosevelt Park half an hour early--there were
already fifty or sixty police huddled on the corner of 2nd Avenue and
East Houston. At that point, there were maybe ten protestors.
"I feel like they're the ones that should be protesting and we should
be the cops," I joked to one of the few other protestors in the park.
"I know. I wish we could pull out our batons and tell them that they're blocking the sidewalk," he replied.
A few minutes later, fellow protestors and marches streamed in from
Brooklyn, fresh from having walked across the Williamsburg Bridge. To my
surprise, the police began to subside, merely observing the
demonstrators as they played music, held signs and chanted.
Though the crowd was mostly young and though not exclusively white,
far from racially diverse, their occupations -- and reasons for showing
solidarity at the wildcat march in particular -- were vastly different.
"I am a not union metal worker, working a pretty low range for my
skill set," said Rachel, a young woman holding a foil flag as an
artistic allude to metal workers. "I'm here to represent those who are
actually in labor who don't want to be part of a permitted
anti-capitalist march and stand in solidarity with my fellow workers who
might be afraid or can't afford to be here."
Gregory, a doctoral student and graduate teaching assistant at SUNY
Stony Brook College also came to use the wildcat strike as an
opportunity to express himself in protest.
"I'm a union member, I'm a public employee of the state--and as a
public employee, we are legally not allowed to strike. The wildcat
strike provides a space for those of us who can't strike for whatever
reason to still express ourselves in protest."
Gregory went on to talk about how his role as an instructor, and a
member of the Graduate Student Employees Union (GSEU) made him align
himself more with student strikers than other instructors. As students
face state budget cuts, and increasing tuition and debt, he sees his
role as an instructor as part of the larger struggle around education
rather than precarious labor.
"I make $15,000 a year -- I should be striking for myself, but actually I'm striking for my students."
After a fairly civil twenty minutes of chatting, singing, live music
and navigating the march -- a march began. The first young man that
tried to even so much as leave Sara Roosevelt Park was immediately
tackled to the ground and arrested by the NYPD. After digesting the
chaos, demonstrators decided to run en masse to the south end of the
park, many jumping over the railings to avoid the police and began
marching south towards Chinatown.
The police followed, a ridiculous-looking parade of 30 riot cops on
mopeds following strikers on foot on the sidewalk and on bicycles in the
streets. Throughout the crowded, but peaceful march, vans and other
arrest vehicles began to follow the mopeds, indicating imminent arrests.
Ironically, the extreme police presence was blocking traffic and
inconveniencing the flow of the city far more than the strikers.
Once the march reached Houston and Lafayette -- almost a complete
square from where it began -- the cops donned their riot gear and took
out their batons. Protestors were kettled onto the sidewalks, spilling
off of them and threatened if even so much as a foot was in the street.
One nicely dressed man, without provoking anyone, was arrested and
thrown to the ground.
After being halted by the police, the march continued up Broadway --
ever racing riot cops to resist being surrounded, the march continued
and ended at Washington Square Park.
Free University: Madison Square Park, noon-3pm.
-- Sarah Seltzer
The sun came out over Madison Square Park as the OWS Free University
kicked off. Forgive the pun, but the class war was definitely in
session. Professors and experts gathered groups around htem throughout
the benches and pathways of this park as midtowners walking by stopped
to look. There was a lesson on "horizontal pedagogy,"--or how to teach
without hierarchy--talks by noted leftist thinkers Chris Hedges and
Francis Fox Piven, a discussion about native/indigenous resistance and
another about gender constructs, and most pertinently, a student debt
teach-in. One guy was even leading a class on "ancient political
philosophy" and I thought about the Athenian forum.
This action was meant to--and did--accomplish two goals. First, it
recaptured the "public square" aspect of Zuccotti Park occupation and
other encampments, that sense of people radically coming together and
talking to each other about major, transformative ideas without
boundaries or rules. Secondly, it demonstrated by example a principle of
communal, free, shared and sharing education without tuition or fees, a
rejoinder to the rising tuition costs at institutions across the
country.
As the "class" sessions came to an end under the sunshine,
demonstrators talked in clusters, took pictures and gathered around the
park's central fountain. And then the sound of chants, whistles, and
guitars began to float over the park.
Protesters rushed over to Broadway to see the advancing "guitarmy"
march--a musical, un-permitted, wild walk down from Bryant Park led by
Tom Morello, its members spilling out onto the sidewalks and the center
of Broadway flanked by the NYPD. Cheers and the sound of musical
instruments ensued as the march continued on its way down towards the
afternoon's destination: Union Square.
Global Justice
-- Alex Kane
The hundreds upon hundreds of protesters streaming into Union Square
on May Day were greeted by an elaborate paper “maypole.” There was no
need for explanation, as the top of the “maypole” read, “All our
grievances are connected”—another way of saying “We are the 99%.”
Walk a couple hundred feet in the park, and there's an Occupy Wall
Street group that fervently believes that maxim: the Occupy Wall Street
(OWS) Global Justice Working Group. A contingent of about 30 people
affiliated with the working group had gathered before the union-heavy
permitted march from Union Square to Wall Street. The reason? To
“declare our commitment to resist and to end wars at home and abroad,”
in the working group’s own words.
The names Iran, Palestine, Egypt and more were written on the
activists' placards. They joined thousands of demonstrators for a march
that capped off a day full of actions highlighting economic inequality,
police brutality, immigrant rights and more. In the streets, NY-based
Palestine solidarity activist Dave Lippman provided the guitar strumming
while others sang songs. “When you shop and when you dine,” they sang,
“stand up for Palestine”—a plea for boycotts of Israeli products.
Activists from the Global Justice Working Group are full of knowledge
and experience about struggles from Bahrain to Egypt to Palestine. It
includes organizers involved with Code Pink, the War Resisters League,
Adalah-NY and more--key groups that work on peace and justice issues in
the city. And they want to bring their knowledge to the broader world of
Occupy Wall Street activism. The march, and songs about struggles here
and abroad, were one way of doing that.
“Very often in OWS you get people who don’t know what’s going on
across the water,” explained Udi Pladott, an activist and former soldier
in the Israeli army. “We’re trying to inject global issues into
Occupy.” Towards that goal, the working group has sponsored events on
Bahrain and held a teach-in on the global tear-gas industry.
“We want to make connections between the war on the poor here and
wars abroad,” said Nancy Kricorian, an organizer with Code Pink.
Conversations with working group participants made clear what those
connections are: a system that rewards militarism with profits while
demanding austerity for the poor.
Apart from Bahrain and Palestine, the specter of a war with Iran, and
organizing to stop that possibility, was very much on the minds of OWS
Global Justice Working Group participants. A number of signs at the
march read “No to sanctions. No to war. No to state repression.” I spoke
with Manijeh Nasrabadi, a PhD student at New York University and an
organizer with Havaar, an Iranian group that now works with the Global
Justice Working Group, for more on this subject.
“There are people in Iran organizing against the same things. They
have a government pushing neoliberal policies,” she explained. Nasrabadi
also criticized the tendency of some on the left to reflexively back
Iran’s leaders since they are in opposition to the West, even as the
regime violently cracked down on dissent. “There is a third way: global
solidarity,” that isn’t morally compromised, Nasrabadi said.
I then asked Nasrabadi what the connection was between Iran, the US and the Occupy movement. Answers abound to that question.
But she had a simple answer that helps explain the importance of the
Global Justice Working Group: “If bombs fall, it would derail thinking
about class.”
Tom Morello and the Guitarmy/Union Square/
-- Julianne Escobedo Shepherd
Under unexpectedly sunny skies, thousands converged upon Union
Square yesterday afternoon, their numbers growing as the Tom
Morello-led “Guitarmy,” flanked by their acoustic axes, marched in from
Bryant Park. One of the only spots with a city permit, the Square was
the destination for the day’s live music, but it also served as a
safe space for those protesters unwilling or unable to risk arrest.
As such: the undocumented faction came out in droves, and it became a
symbolic place where unions and Occupy joined forces with immigrant’s
rights movements. People carried signs reading, “Amnesty Para Todos,”
“Trabajando y Educación Para Todos,” “Stop the Raids” and,
most crucially, “No a la guerra, ni a la militarización de la
frontera.” It’s important not to forget the bigger picture: the border
debates are an extension of our country’s war-obsession, and solve
no problems.
But the overall spirit at Union Square was one of joy and
enthusiasm and united strength. A large stage was set up to accommodate
the performers and speakers and the message was clear: through
art, activism can glean both power and relief. At around 4 PM, the
show started with the beloved Tom Morello, aka the Nightwatchman,
aka guitarist in Rage Against the Machine (which we recently learned is Paul Ryan’s favorite band, and who we hope will act on the knowledge by writing a song about him).
Because of the abundance of artists and speakers on the line-up, each
act only got to perform two songs, and Morello used his time most
effectively. Playing after a speaker announced, “We’re here to announce
that another world is not only possible, but on her way,” Morello
brought his around 20-person Guitarmy onstage to a fired-up crowd ready
to party for justice. He kicked off his set with a singalong of his song
“World Wide Rebel Songs,” which pays homage to union classics, and got
thousands of protesters singing the chorus (and freaking out when he
played the harmonica, because the proles, apparently, love a harmonica).
Then he noted that, were Woody Guthrie alive, he’d be 100, and that
if he were still with us, he’d be headlining the event. Morello’s next
song? “This Land is Your Land,” which resulted in another joyous
singalong and pogo session. His parting words: “Take it easy, but take
it.” Morello’s performance was followed by a speech by Emily Park, who
announced herself as an undocumented student at CUNY. “DREAMers like me
are the future of later,” she said, and advocated the New York DREAM Act
that’s currently underway at the state level. Then Joyce Lyon, of the
Domestic Workers union, reminded us that, “The thousands of you standing
here are the engines that make the economy run,” whether documented or
not.
Their speech was followed by a performance by an awesome
multinational Latin jazz band representing Local 802, the musician’s
union, during which the drummer protested the elimination of 31
multicultural categories at the Grammys. (Including the award for best
Latin jazz album and best Native American album, among others.) The band
was followed by performances by rap trio Das Racist (full disclosure:
the group is this reporter’s family), noise-pop musician Dan Deacon, and
rapper Immortal Technique, all of whom celebrated the energy and
presence of the thousands in the crowd. And while the focus was
certainly on the arts, the most salient point of the rally was made by a
speaker later in the day, who reminded us that the Supreme Court is on
the cusp of legalizing Arizona’s immigration law, SB 1070, and that it
was up to us to stand against similar racist laws like it. “This is not
an immigration issue,” she said. “This is a people issue.” The crowd was
penned in by barricades, guarded by ever-more police as the protest
geared up to march downtown, but her message was more powerful than the
city’s ominous message. Immigration is a people issue, and this was a
joyous, inspiring peoples’ protest.
Marching from Union Square After the Rally: 5:30 pm
-- Sarah Seltzer
Artists for Occupy and immigrant rights groups kicked off the long
march from Union Square to Wall Street down Broadway. Despite the
barricades and unnecessarily huge numbers of cops on both sides of the
street, marchers headed downtown undaunted. Among their numbers were
groups like the Teamsters, the Transit Workers Union, and student and
community organizations.
Groups let out chants like "we are students, not statistics!" the
very May Day-appropriate "black, Latin, Asian, white! Workers of the
world unite!" As we entered the shopping district they playfully shouted
"out of the shops, and into the streets!" But there was a more mellow
feeling than at marches past. One woman cheering for the protesters
pointed up at the newly-blue sky and grinned as if to say, "see? even
the weather's on your side!" Marchers ran into friends, hugged each
other and chatted. The solidarity all the unions and their official
signage showed for immigrants was remarkable--groups that once seemed to
have been divided by the one percent were making a huge effort to stand
up for each other. And the atmosphere was one of festive righteous
anger: one protester walked by a Jesus costume carrying a massive cross,
and another in a Captain American costume waved at us to applause from a
window above.
As the very vanguard of the march, led by taxicabs festooned in
banners, crossed Houston Street a huge cry went up and echoed back,
turning Broadway into a canyon of noise for block after block after
block.
"This is some serious shit," an onlooker said, shaking his head with a
smile, at the throngs weaving back all the way to Union Square.
Occupied Lower Manhattan, evening
--Sarah Jaffe
The financial district was occupied all evening--occupied by the
NYPD, who were out in riot gear, brandishing batons, lining up on side
streets and marching two by two down to rallying points for tired but
fired-up occupiers from the final march.
As the march--with crowd estimates of 30,000 or so--wound down,
hundreds or even thousands wound up in the space at 55 Water Street,
where they held a People's Assembly as night fell. The crowd was
peaceful, but the space closed at 10 and so of course the NYPD moved in,
calling for dispersal and threatening arrests. City Councilmembers
Ydanis Rodriguez and Jumaane Williams were on hand with several members
of the clergy, observing and gathering evidence. The two councilmembers
are part of a lawsuit filed this week against the NYPD.
I followed a breakout march up side streets, and while at first it
was disorganized, a crew of experienced Occupiers, including many from
the Plus Brigades (a newer working group that specifically works on
clowning and other positive reactions in order to defuse tense
situations with police) took lead of the march, walking arm in arm,
dancing, and singing. The tension faded from the air as they marched,
for a while, without police interference, singing "This is what
democracy looks like."
When we came to Wall Street, though, we ran into a barricade--it
seems that the worst thing Occupiers can do is attempt to set foot on
the actual street their movement is named for. The march turned up
William and then down Pine, and as the crew paused to debate where to go
next, reports of police violence down on Pearl Street--where we'd just
been--came in over Twitter from reporters John and Molly Knefel and Ryan
Devereaux. We sat on the steps of a JP Morgan Chase building on Pine,
and as some discussed tactics and plans for the rest of the night,
stragglers came up William, visibly shaken by what they'd seen. "Police
were just grabbing people, throwing them to the ground," one marcher
said.
And then the police arrived, bearing batons and riot cuffs. They
cleared the steps mostly without incident, though as has come to be
usual there was tension and a faceoff for a while before most of the
crowd dispersed back down Pine--where a line of police reinforced a line
of barricades once again, keeping the crowd from getting anywhere near
Wall Street.
Many of the Occupiers wound up where Occupy began, back in Zuccotti
Park, where only one side was barricaded off and about 100 people were
sitting, chatting in small groups, discussing, once again, what would
come next--for the evening, for the movement, for everyone involved. A
week of action is planned for later in May, and Brooklyn College is
holding a rally today, May 2nd, to build on momentum from May Day.
Oakland/Bay Area:
-- Joshua Holland
The Bay Area celebrated May Day with a series of strikes and protests
throughout the day, as 19 local labor unions joined thousands of
Occupiers and immigrant rights activists.
The Inlandboatmen's Union staged a half-day strike, shutting down
ferry service from Sausalito to San Francisco. The ferry workers are in a
dispute with management over health-care costs, and have been working
without a contract for over a year. Early in the morning, they were
joined by Occupy protesters in a picket line at the Larkspur Ferry
Terminal. Bus and bridge workers had promised to honor the picket.
About 200 people participated in a peaceful but boisterous
immigrants' rights march in San Francisco's Mission District in the
morning. Several separate demonstrations wound their way through
downtown Oakland, trailed by a heavy police presence. At one point, tear
gas was deployed to disperse a crowd, according to protesters who were
on the scene.
In the afternoon, a large contingent of Occupy San Francisco
activists -- as many as 1,500 -- marched from the Financial District to
set up residence in a vacant building from which they had been evicted
weeks earlier. The building, formerly a shelter, is owned by the
Archdiocese of San Francisco.
Police staged around the corner during the afternoon, but at around
4:30, approximately 200 officers clad in riot gear moved in, erecting
barricades around the building. A tense standoff ensued, during which
time a man on the roof of the building threw several objects -- a brick
and some metal pipes -- at police, striking and injuring another
protester, who was taken away by ambulance. A San Francisco police
spokesman later said that the man had been apprehended and charged with
aggravated assault.
After several hours facing down protesters, police again pulled back,
and as of press time, protesters had flooded back into the building en
masse.
The largest action of the day took place in Oakland during the
evening, as an estimated 3,000 people took to the streets around City
Hall. The protest was largely uneventful until after nightfall when, in a
scene that has come to be all-too-familiar, Oakland police ended up
dispersing occupiers with tear gas and "flash-bang" grenades. As of
press time, arrests were ongoing.
Sarah Jaffe is an associate editor at AlterNet, a rabblerouser and frequent Twitterer. You can follow her at @seasonothebitch.Sarah
Seltzer is an associate editor at AlterNet and a freelance writer based
in New York City. Her work has been published at the Nation, the
Christian Science Monitor, Jezebel and the Washington Post. Follow her
on Twitter at @fellowette and find her work at sarahmseltzer.com. Julianne
Escobedo Shepherd is an associate editor at AlterNet and a
Brooklyn-based freelance writer and editor. Formerly the executive
editor of The FADER, her work has appeared in VIBE, SPIN, New York Times
and various other magazines and websites. Alex Kane is AlterNet's New York-based World editor, and a staff reporter for Mondoweiss. Follow him on Twitter @alexbkane. Joshua Holland is an editor and senior writer at AlterNet. He is the author of The
15 Biggest Lies About the Economy: And Everything else the Right
Doesn't Want You to Know About Taxes, Jobs and Corporate America. Drop him an email or follow him on Twitter.
It is Labor Day weekend, 2011, but labor has nothing to celebrate. The jobs that once gave American workers a stake in capitalism have left and gone away. Corporations in pursuit of near-term profits have moved labor's jobs to China, India, Indonesia, Taiwan, South Korea and Eastern Europe.
Labor arbitrage, that is, the substitution of foreign labor that is paid less than its productivity for American labor, has enriched Wall Street, shareholders and corporate CEOs, but it has devastated American employment, household incomes, tax base, and the outlook for the US economy.
This Labor Day week-end's job report, announced by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) on Friday, September 2, says zero net new jobs were created in August, a number 250,000 less than the amount of monthly job creation necessary to make progress in reducing America's high rate of unemployment.
The zero figure is actually an optimistic number. As John Williams has made clear, problems with the BLS's seasonal adjustments and "birth-death" model during the prolonged downturn that began in December 2007 result in the BLS over-estimating new jobs and underestimating lost jobs.
Seasonal adjustments and the "birth-death" model were designed with a growing economy in mind and result in miscounts during downturns. For example, the "birth-death" model estimates new jobs that are created from new start-up companies that are not yet reporting, and it estimates the job losses from companies that have gone out of business. In a growing economy, start-ups exceed jobs losses, but the situation reverses during downturns or during periods of sub-normal job growth. For the past 44 months, the "birth-death" model has overestimated the number of new jobs created. When the annual revisions are made to the job reports, the excess jobs are taken out, but it is seldom headline news.
The reason that nearly four years of economic stimulus, consisting of large federal budget deficits and near zero interest rates, hasn't revived the economy is that the jobs that Americans once had have been moved offshore. Stimulus cannot put Americans back to work in jobs that have been given to foreign countries.
Post-World War II Keynesian economists, such as Paul Krugman and Robert Reich, think that if the federal government would add more stimulus by enlarging the already massive federal deficit, new jobs would somehow be created to take the place of those that have left. This is a delusion. Not only have the supply chains necessary to support US economic activity been disrupted and broken by offshoring, but also the same incentive -- excess supplies of foreign labor that produces more value than it is paid -- that sent jobs abroad is still operative.
In a word, the US economy has been de-industrializing, moving from a developed to an underdeveloped economy, for the past two decades. It has been the case for many years that when the US economy manages to eke out new jobs, they are in non-tradable domestic services, such as health care and social assistance, waitresses and bar tenders, retail clerks. Non-tradable employment consists of jobs that do not produce goods and services that could be exported to reduce the large US trade deficit.
The long-term deterioration in the US economy has been covered up by "reforming" the official measures of unemployment and inflation. The U3 measure of unemployment, the current 9.1% unemployment rate, only measures unemployment among those who are actively seeking a job. Those who have become discouraged by the inability to find a job and have ceased looking are not counted as being among the unemployed, and the U3 measure makes no adjustment for those who are forced into part-time jobs because there is no full-time employment.
The government knows that the U3 "headline" unemployment rate is seriously understated and provides a broader measure known as U6. This measure, which is seldom reported by the financial media, includes short-term discouraged workers (those who have not looked for jobs for six months or less) and an adjustment for those who wish full time employment but can only find part time work. Currently, this measure of unemployment stands at 16.2%.
In 1994, the Clinton "progressive" administration defined long-term discouraged workers out of existence. Consequently, no official unemployment rate includes long-term (more than six months) discouraged workers as unemployed. John Williams estimates this number and adds it to the U6 measure to produce a current rate of US unemployment of 22.7%, an unemployment rate 2.5 times higher than the official rate.
Similar understatement exists in the measure of inflation known as the Consumer Price Index. In order to reduce cost-of-living adjustments to Social Security checks and to hold down other inflation adjustments, the "progressive" Clinton administration accepted the Boskin Commission's recommendation to introduce substitution into what had been a fixed, weighted, basket of goods used to measure the cost of a constant standard of living. In the new "reformed" measure, if the price of an item increases, say New York strip steak, the index assumes that consumers switch to a less expensive cut, such as round steak. Thus, the price increase doesn't show up in the CPI.
Consumers, or a number of them, do tend to behave in this way. However, since the basket of goods comprising the CPI is no longer constant, but changes with price changes, the CPI has become a variable measure of the cost of living that reduces the inflation rate by measuring a lower standard of living.
John Williams estimates the CPI according to the previous official methodology that used a fixed basket of goods. He finds the rate of inflation to be much higher than is reported by the substitution-based methodology.
The understatement of inflation serves to boost real Gross Domestic Product growth. In order to compare how much larger (or smaller) the economy is this year compared to last year, the GDP figure has to be adjusted for inflation. If the economy grew 5% in nominal terms and inflation was 3%, then GDP grew 2% in real terms, that is, real goods and services, as opposed to mere price rises, increased 2% over the year.
When John Williams adjusts US GDP with the former or traditional measure of inflation, he finds that there has been no growth in real GDP for several years. In other words, during the period of "economic recovery" the economy has actually been declining.
American economic decline began with offshoring during the Clinton administration. Instead of addressing this threat, the Clinton administration launched the neoconservative program of American Empire with American and NATO naked aggression against Serbia, sending the Serbian leader off to be tried as a war criminal for resisting the dissolution of his country.
The Bush/Cheney regime elevated the pursuit of American Empire under cover of "the war on terror." Based entirely on lies and falsified intelligence, Bush/Cheney launched wars against the Taliban, who were unifying Afghanistan, and against Saddam Hussein in Iraq.
In the 1980s Hussein was used by Washington to launch a war against the revolutionary government in Iran that had overthrown the American puppet government, headed by the Shah of Iran. Ever since Washington lost its puppet rule over the Iranians, Washington has refused diplomatic relations with Iran. In the place of diplomatic relations, Washington demonizes Iran in order to set the country up for another attack a la Serbia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Pakistan, and Yemen. Syria is next.
Saddam Hussein's service to Washington was overlooked when it became more important to eliminate support for Hamas and Hezbollah, two barriers to Israel's expansion in the Middle East, than to maintain Washington's gratitude to an Iraqi pawn.
Despite unequivocal reports from arms inspectors that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction and most certainly had nothing whatsoever to do with 9/11, top Bush/Cheney regime officials demonized Iraq as the greatest threat to America. The imagery of mushroom clouds from nuclear weapons was evoked, A war was launched entirely on false pretexts that destroyed a country and left over one million Iraqis dead and four million displaced. What Washington did to Iraq is what the Nazis were tried and executed for at the Nuremberg Trials.
Obama was elected in order to stop the illegal and senseless wars. Instead, Obama both continued the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and expanded the wars into Libya, Pakistan, and Yemen. Since the deregulation of the financial system under the Bush/Cheney regime and the "war on terror," the entire economy of the US has been sacrificed for the benefit of the financial sector and the military/security complex.
Labor Day is an anachronism. It should be renamed Corporation Day or War Day to celebrate the success of Bush/Obama in eliminating labor unions as a countervailing power to corporate power and the elevation of War as the highest goal of the American state.
Definition of Communism: "A system of government in which the state plans and controls the economy and a single, often authoritarian party holds power, claiming to make progress toward a higher social order in which all goods are equally shared by the people."
Bloggers Note: I just received the material below by e-mail from former U.S. Congressman Alan Grayson. Who is he exactly? Well, if you want to know -- and you should! -- I urge you to read this short biography and/or play the first three videos you will find in the right-hand column of this blog just below my Blog Archive.
Dear David:
On May 4, 1886, in Haymarket Square in Chicago, the public rallied peacefully in support of 40,000 workers in Chicago who had gone on strike, to win the right to organize. The police attacked, and eight died.
On July 6, 1892, in Homestead, Pennsylvania, 3800 workers went on strike, to win the right to organize. Three hundred hired and armed goons attacked them. Five people died.
On April 20, 1914, in Ludlow, Colorado, 1200 coal miners went on strike, to win the right to organize. The Colorado National Guard attacked their shantytown, and burned it to the ground. Nineteen people died. Two women and 11 children were asphyxiated, and they burned to death.
Here and around the world, many people have fought and died, so that you and I would have the right to organize.
And so that 250,000 public workers in Wisconsin would have that right, too.
This is not exactly a new idea. Six months after the Ludlow Massacre, President Wilson signed the Clayton Act, prohibiting the prosecution of union members under Antitrust Law. That was almost a century ago.
Two decades later, during the Franklin Roosevelt's first term as President, he signed the National Labor Relations Act into law. It protects the right to organize. That was over 75 years ago.
The right to organize also is a fundamental principle of international law. Over 150 countries have ratified the "Right to Organize" Convention, an international treaty. It was adopted in 1949, over 60 years ago.
So why are we even talking about this, 11 years into the 21st Century?
Because the teabaggers want to "take back America." They want to take it back, all right – take it all the way back to the 19th century. When there was no right to organize. When people worked for a dollar a day. When grown men competed against children for jobs. When women were barred from most jobs entirely. When you worked until you died.
Not to mention slavery.
I want to see an America that is healthy and wealthy.
They want an America that provides cheap labor to our corporate overlords. An America where the middle class is chained by debt.
We didn't ask for this fight. But we have no choice except to fight back. For the survival of the middle class in America. For us, for our children, and for our grandchildren. And so that the victims in Haymarket, in Homestead and in Ludlow did not die in vain.
As Cardinal Spellman said 45 years ago, "it is a war thrust upon us, and we cannot yield to tyranny."
I'm ready to fight for what's right. What about you?
Time for those formerly hoaxed by duplicitious corporate schemes to wake-up and smell what billionaire sociopaths are shoveling...
Guest editorial by Ernest A. Canning
"This is not a budget issue," the policeman speaking to the cheering protesters jammed inside of the capital rotunda in Madison, WI, shouted this weekend, "This is a civil rights issue!"
"Mr. Walker, if you are listening to me, let me tell you something," he continued through the bullhorn as the crowd rallied, "We know pretty well now who you work for. Let me tell you who we work for. We work for all of these people!"
While a wide swath of Wisconsin society, entailing not only both public and private union members, but students, doctors, nurses, teachers, police officers (like the one mentioned above), and fire fighters have swarmed the streets and public buildings of Madison as part of a mass movement rivaling those we've recently seen on the streets of Cairo, there is one sector of our society who should be especially angry with the Wisconsin branch of Corporate America's wholly-owned, public subsidiary, GOP, Inc.
It is the uninformed and misinformed working class stiffs, aka "Tea Partiers," who should be most disturbed by the scam they've been subjected to over the past two years (and many more). It is they who were taken in by the lies and deceptions of billionaire sociopaths, like oil-baron David Koch of the infamous Koch Industries. Koch's aim is not liberty, freedom, and jobs but American fascism, corporatocracy, and the "eternal subjugation of the common man"...
American fascism cloaked as 'patriotism'
On April 9, 1944, while our nation was engaged in a life-and-death struggle with fascism in Europe, an op-ed written by Vice President Henry Wallace appeared in The New York Times:
The American fascist would prefer not to use violence. His method is to poison the channels of information. With a fascist the problem is never how best to present the truth but how best to use the news to deceive the public into giving the fascist and his group more money and more power.
They claim to be superpatriots, but they would destroy every liberty guaranteed by the Constitution. They demand free enterprise but are the spokesmen for monopoly and vested interest. Their final objective toward which all their deceit is directed is to capture political power so that, using the power of the state and the power of the market simultaneously, they may keep the common man in eternal subjugation.
There is perhaps no more apt example of "the American fascist" than billionaire David Koch. His libertarian rhetoric, as observed by Lisa Graves, Executive Director of the Center for Media and Democracy (see video below), masks a radical-right agenda that includes opposition to Social Security, egalitarian democracy, the minimum wage, and the right of ordinary Americans to organize into an effective check against dictatorial corporate power through collective bargaining --- an agenda fully embraced by Governor Scott Walker (R-WI). It is also an agenda which David inherited from his father, Fred C. Koch, a co-founder of the John Birch Society, a whack organization that was so absurdly radical-right that its members accused the former Republican President and Supreme Commander of Allied Forces in Europe during World War II Dwight D. Eisenhower of being a Communist agent.
David, along with his brother Charles, owns Koch Industries, whose conglomerated holdings include "oil refineries in Alaska, Texas, and Minnesota, and control some four thousand miles of pipeline." Koch Industries produces an estimated $100 billion in annual revenues and so much pollution that it has been listed as one of the nation's ten worst.
The Koch brothers do more than pollute the planet. As revealed by Jane Mayer in Covert Operations, they have funneled so much money into "organizations fighting legislation related to climate change, underwriting a huge network of foundations, think tanks, and political front groups," that Greenpeace has described Koch as "the kingpins of climate science denial."
During a Nov. 27, 2000 episode of 60 Minutes, "Blood and Oil," their brother Bill Koch gave voice to a statement that has, perhaps inaccurately, been ascribed to Honoré de Balzac: "Behind every great fortune there is a great crime."
Bill Koch described David and Charles as "autocratic." Bill said he feared the legacy of Koch Industries would be comparable to that of "organized crime." He alleged that Koch Industries "made millions by stealing oil from the government." According to Bill, the company falsified measurements of the amount of oil Koch was actually acquiring on its run sheets in order to "skim off the top," if you will, just as the mafia is well known to do.
As revealed by 60 Minutes updates, while Koch Industries dismissed Bill Koch as a disgruntled former executive, Bill's 60 Minutes account was supported by the testimony of some 50 former Koch employees in a federal lawsuit. In May, 2001, a settlement was reached which required "Koch Industries to pay $25 million in penalties to the U.S. government for improperly taking more oil than it paid for from federal and Indian lands."
Bill Koch's reference to "organized crime" may understate the problem of impunity that comes with the symbiotic relationship between corporate wealth and political power.
It is difficult to speak of "corporate crime" when it is the criminals who are in charge. As Gordon Gekko (Michael Douglas) observed in Wall Street 2, "Someone reminded me I once said 'Greed is good.' Now it seems it's legal."
During an Aug. 25, 2010 appearance on Democracy Now! Charles Lewis provided a classic example of how these corporate miscreants strive for impunity:
They [Koch] were being prosecuted for 300 oil spills by the Customs and EPA and Justice Department...And they asked the Senate Majority Leader [Bob Dole] to insert in the so-called regulatory reform legislation a clause that would get rid of any current prosecutive effort by the US government against Koch Industries...The person writing the draft for that legislation was the chair of the board of Citizens for a Sound Economy [a Koch-funded front group], former White House counsel... [C.] Boyden Gray. This did not work because several people died from bad hamburgers from an E. coli outbreak, and the public started to realize that maybe we do need regulation.
Last Thursday, the Green News Report described how the symbiotic relationship between Koch Industries and the WI GOP, Inc., had not only netted Governor Walker's union-busting effort, but a plan buried in his controversial legislation that would sell off "state-owned heating, cooling and power plants" to private entities "without solicitation of bids, for any amount" that the WI GOP, Inc., "determines to be in the best interest of the state."
Given the symbiotic relationship between Koch Industries and the WI GOP, Inc., one does not have to be a rocket scientist to realize that the WI GOP, Inc., sees Koch Industries' greed to be "in the best interest of the state."
Piercing the 'Tea Party's' "ecstatic escape of unreason"
It is ironic that Madison, WI, would serve as the backdrop for a genuine democratic uprising against the abuse of power occasioned by the symbiotic relationship between its new governor and unbridled corporate wealth.
It was just last April when the scholarly Noam Chomsky addressed some 1,000 people inside Madison's Orpheum Theater, warning of the ominous features of the Koch-funded and controlled "Tea Party" movement:
I’m just old enough to have heard a number of Hitler’s speeches on the radio, and I have a memory of the texture and the tone of the cheering mobs, and I have the dread sense of the dark clouds of fascism gathering [within these United States].
In an extended piece, Remembering Fascism: Learning from the Past, Chomsky informed us that it is a serious error to ridicule "Tea Party" antics. "It would be far more appropriate to understand what lies behind them and to ask...why justly angry people are being mobilized by the extreme right."
Referring to the deluded followers of the Koch-funded and manipulated "Tea Party" movement, Chomsky observed:
There are poignant studies of the indignation and rage of those who have been cast aside as the state-corporate programs of financialization and deindustrialization have closed plants and destroyed families and communities. They reveal the sense of acute betrayal on the part of working people who believed they had fulfilled their duty to society in a moral compact with business and government, only to discover that they had been only instruments for profit and power, truisms from which they had been carefully protected by doctrinal institutions...
Both in his April 2010 address and in the article, Chomsky observed that the "level of anger and fear in the country is like nothing [he could] recall in [his] lifetime. And since the Democrats are in power, the revulsion over the current social-economic-political world attaches to them."
Chomsky saw a parallel to what Fritz Stern, a scholar of German history, described as "an historic process in which resentment against a disenchanted secular world found deliverance in the ecstatic escape of unreason."
Any doubts one may have about the applicability of the "Tea Party's" ecstatic escape of unreason will instantly be eliminated by watching Brad Friedman's 'Tea Party Express II: Rise of the Tea Bags,' an hilarious short video documentary in which Friedman plays the straight man by asking simple questions. The comedy is furnished by spontaneous answers of the Tea Partiers called to gather in Los Angeles at an event sponsored by one of the Koch Industries front groups, the Tea Party Express.
This "ecstatic escape of unreason," aided in no small measure by the 24/7 propaganda emerging from Fox "News" and the rest of the predictable and unavoidable right-wing echo chamber which has taken over our public airwaves, not to mention the systemic failure of the corporate media to speak truth to power, suggests that the heads of most of the Tea Party's rank-and-file are so deeply embedded in the disinformation bubble as to render them impervious to facts and reason. However, the gap between the hard-right's recent rhetoric of "jobs" and "liberty" and the harsh reality of their anti-democratic, union-busting project is so stark that even the rank-and-file "Tea Bagger" may come to understand that their justified anger and revulsion was misdirected.
Infuriated by "Big Government" ruthlessly stealing away freedom from American citizens, Tea Partiers? You need look no further than what Walker and the Republicans are attempting to do in Wisconsin. It is the very definition of what you were (inaccurately) told was happening last year during the health care insurance reform debate.
'The Great American Jobs Scam'
"I’ve known Scott Walker for more than 20 years. His dad pastored my in-laws’ church, and Scott was in my office within three or four months ago, sitting and talking about his whole program. We did hours of discussions about it. He never mentioned going after collective bargaining." – Nation journalist and WI resident, John Nichols
It should come as no surprise that neither Walker nor any of the other members of corporate America's wholly-owned, public subsidiary, GOP, Inc., openly spoke of destroying the right of working class Americans to organize and engage in collective bargaining before reaching office. It is also no surprise that, after acquiring power, the duplicitous GOP, Inc., would have the temerity to claim a mandate to carry out a radical, union-busting agenda that they'd hidden from the electorate.
The hard-right practices tight message control. Irrespective of mumblings in the corporate media about a "recovery," Koch and friends well understood that U.S. manufacturing, unemployment, and poverty are mired at levels not seen since the Great Depression. They also understood that it was the average citizens, not the corporations, feeling the only real pain, as corporate profits were at a record high last year, even as ordinary Americans struggled to survive in ways they haven't had to since the 1930s.
The 2010 hard-right public message was "jobs, jobs, jobs." It was a message delivered in the carefully scripted ads of all Republican candidates. It was even included in the effort, bankrolled by Koch Industries and two other Texas-based oil industry polluters, Tesoro Corp. and Valero Energy Corp., that went so far as to deceptively label a California ballot measure designed to destroy both jobs and the environment as the "California Jobs Initiative."
But then, the 2010 "jobs" message has been a core staple of what Greg LeRoy has described as The Great American Jobs Scam. LeRoy's is a must-read book which documents how, over the past fifty years, corporations have obtained massive subsidies, outright gifts of land and property and enormous tax breaks from city, county, state, and regional governmental entities by enticing bidding wars between them through empty promises of job creation that are most often never fulfilled.
From a national perspective, the scam does not create jobs. It merely shifts them from one region to another, at least until they are later shipped overseas.
It is a scam that has long been in play in Wisconsin, where, according to the Wisconsin Department of Revenue, "two-thirds of corporations in the state pay no taxes, and the share of corporate tax revenue funding the state government has fallen by half since 1981."
The notion that deregulation, corporate tax breaks, "enterprise zones," and a so-called "business-friendly environment" are needed to create jobs is a lie. So is the Republican suggestion that public sector jobs do not amount to employment.
The cause of the current high level of unemployment lies in the fact that the billionaire class, utilizing so-called "free trade" agreements, starting with NAFTA, have been permitted to outsource the U.S. manufacturing base in search of the $2/day foreign laborer.
The illusion of prosperity was maintained by an unsustainable model of borrowing. That model crashed with the 2008 burst of the housing bubble and the collapse of a credit default swap market that was little more than a giant Ponzi scheme.
So long as we cede control of our government and our economy to the privileged few, there will be high unemployment, and, if collective bargaining ends, no defense against dictatorial corporate wealth and power.
Shouldn't those angry Tea Partiers, so manipulated to be "outraged" by the results of these very shenanigans, be marching side-by-side right now with the protesters in Wisconsin, where the actual results of this Big Government/Big Corporate partnership-against-the people have finally taken full bloom?
The beginning of a second American revolution?
Perhaps the greatest benefit that flows from the prank call from the Buffalo Beast's Ian Murphy, posing as "David Koch," is that it exposed the truth about right-wing duplicity and the severe threat it poses to liberty, equality, and democratic governance.
Former VP Henry Wallace was right. "They claim to be superpatriots, but they would destroy every liberty guaranteed by the Constitution."
Corporations own mass media which produce 95% of what we see, hear, and read, forcing the leadership of the two major political parties to troll for corporate campaign dollars in order to compete on a corporate media playing field. Candidates like Dennis Kucinich (D-OH), who do not toe the corporate line are marginalized as "not viable" and excluded from debates as the corporate media police the range of "acceptable" public discourse --- "acceptable," that is, to corporate America.
Yet, recent events in Egypt and elsewhere substantiate the late Howard Zinn's observation in A Power Governments Cannot Suppress that governmental power becomes "futile against the power of an aroused citizenry."
Our own Declaration of Independence informs us that when government becomes destructive of "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness...it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it."
Our increasingly plutocratic and authoritarian government has become destructive of those ends. It has squandered trillions on weaponry and endless war. It has committed unspeakable atrocities and torture abroad. It threatens humanity's very survival by way of global climate change denial while permitting corporations to poison our water, our food, our public discourse, and the very air we breathe. It panders to the whims of the privileged few, all the while implementing "austerity" measures that will deprive future generations of Americans of a quality of life that includes freedom from want, freedom from fear, and basic levels of education and health care.
It is too soon to tell whether the formerly duped "Tea Baggers" will awaken to reality. We don't know whether the genuinely democratic uprising in Wisconsin will continue to spread; whether it will lead to the type of mass movement, including general strikes, such as those we witnessed on the streets of Cairo --- a movement that can succeed only if growing numbers of Americans abandon the corporate media, turning instead to alternative and foreign media, such as, among the many reliable sources, Democracy Now!, The BRAD BLOG, and al Jazeera English as their primary source of information.
Meaningful democracy and a better tomorrow can be achieved only when the great masses of ordinary U.S. citizens come to appreciate a basic truth that is to be found in the erudition produced by Frederick Douglas after he escaped the clutches of slavery:
Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did, and it never will. Find out just what people will submit to, and you have found out the exact amount of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them; and these will continue until they are resisted with either words or blows, or both. The limits of tyrants are proscribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress..."
UPDATE 2/28/11: News from the front lines of the cyber revolution.
Anonymous, the internet activist group which recently exposed a plot hatched by Hunton & Williams, a law firm that represents the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and Bank of America, to employ “three well-connected, government-contracted cyber-security/intelligence firms (HBGary Federal, Berico Technologies and Palantir Technologies --- calling themselves "Team Themis" collectively) to use nefarious and likely illegal schemes in hopes of discrediting [Velvet Revolution, Brad Friedman] and other progressive citizens, journalists and organizations who had opposed the Chamber's extremist corporate agenda,” has entered the fray in Wisconsin, announcing:
Anonymous hears the voice of the downtrodden American people, whose rights and liberties are being systematically removed one by one, even when their own government refuses to listen or worse --- is complicit in these attacks. We are actively seeking vulnerabilities, but in the mean time we are calling for all supporters of true Democracy, and Freedom of The People, to boycott all Koch Industries’ paper products.
Exploiting vulnerabilities in a matter of minutes, Anonymous took down a web site of Americans for Prosperity, a Koch Industries front group.
On its website, Koch, which acquired Georgia-Pacific Corp. in 2004, states:
Georgia-Pacific’s familiar consumer brands in North America include Quilted Northern®, Angel Soft®, Brawny®, Sparkle® , Soft 'n Gentle®, Mardi Gras®, Vanity Fair®, and the Dixie® brand of tabletop products. The company’s leading European brands include Lotus®, Colhogar®, Delica®, Tenderly® and the Demak'Up® brand of facial cleansing products. The company also markets paper towel, napkin and soap dispensing systems used in commerical settings.
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Video of Lisa Graves appearance on Democracy Now follows...
Ernest A. Canning has been an active member of the California state bar since 1977. Mr. Canning has received both undergraduate and graduate degrees in political science as well as a juris doctor. He is also a Vietnam vet (4th Infantry, Central Highlands 1968).
