This is a column about optimism and why there’s reason to feel it. Over the weekend one of the news shows referred to “morning in America.” That was Ronald Reagan’s call to optimism thirty years ago. The country was demoralized and just beginning to come out of a long recession. The point of bringing up Reagan’s slogan is that in many ways he promised a false dawn while Barack Obama is promising a real one.
Reagan’s morning didn’t shine on AIDS patients; he thought they deserved what they got. It didn’t shine on anyone outside the right-wing agenda, so civil rights, unions, and feminists were out. So was environmentalism (what else to expect from a man who said that if you’ve seen one redwood, you’ve seen them all?) There was no light for progressivism in general. Half the reason that Obama’s election felt so liberating is that the Reagan legacy of reactionary politics and exclusion was over.
That’s a huge reason for optimism, but if you look globally there are others. The right-wing agenda abroad called for free markets, unfettered capitalism, anti-Communism, and a strong military. That part of the Reagan vision is still with us, and some of it must be counted a success. There are no monolithic totalitarian governments in Russia and China anymore, whatever you think of the present regimes. The Cold War is definitively over. The mood of the world is against bullying super powers and for nuclear disarmament. These trends may be new and fragile, but the tide seems to have turned. It has also turned against deniers of climate change and opponents of environmentalism.
An even greater cause for optimism is the rise of the dispossessed. When historians look back, this may be the dominant feature of our time. Billions of poor people with little hope for advancement now are getting a place at the table where only the wealthy once sat. I’m thinking of the so-called BRIC — Brazil, Russia, India, and China — whose economies have surged and will continue to after the great recession is over.
Just a decade ago, some of these positive trends weren’t visible. Even now they are obscured by bad news. The bad news about AIDS in Africa, for example, obscures major economic surges in East Africa. Terrorism and the Iraq war obscure the fact that deaths in war have declined dramatically since 1980.
On too many fronts there is no morning, though. Sri Lanka, North Korea, Sudan, Palestine, Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan — the list of trouble spots always seems to replenish itself. Yet taken all together, these places of strife and oppression don’t equal the enmity and danger of the Cold War. Our worst problem as a planet, sudden climate change, may serve to pull the nations together. Old systems are being shaken, and even though nationalism and militarism hold on tight, decade after decade, at least the idea of global cooperation is alive and well.
All told, I think the image of morning in the world is realistic. The good and the bad will always be tangled with one another. But compared to the false dawns that never fulfilled their promise, this dawn could transform the world far more positively than we realize. Our eyes are glued on the economic crisis, but our souls have a higher vision.
Published in the San Francisco Chronicle
1. Companies that ILLEGALLY fire at least one worker
for union activity during organizing campaigns” 25%
2. Chance that an active union supporter will be illegally
fired for union activity during an organizing campaign: 1 in 5
3. Companies that hire consultants or union-busters to help them fight union
organizing drives: 75%
4. Companies that force employees to attend one on one meetings against
the union with their own supervisors: 78%
5. Companies that force employees to attend mandatory closed-door meetings
against the union: 92%
6;Companies that threaten to call U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services during
organizing drives that include undocumented employees: 52%
7:Companies that threaten to close the plant if the union wins
the election: 51%
8:Companies that actually close their plants after a successful union election: 1%
9;Workers in FY 2007 who received back pay in cases alleging company
violations of worker’s rights under the National Labor Relations Act: 29,559
10.Percentage of cases in which companies do not agree to a contract after
workers form a union under the NLRB process: 44%
11. Portion of public that supports workers’ freedom to bargain for
better wages and benefits: 78%
12.Portion of public that knows companies routinely resist
unionization efforts by their employees: 47%
13. Number and percentage of U.S. workers that belong to unions:
16.1 million-or 12.4%. (This figure is down down from 25 million in 1973)
Oh, and by the way…
78% of women are for the Employee Free Choice Act.
Imagine that….
Even today, college educated women make less than their male counterparts doing
the same job.
Especially on Wall St.
So, does Calvinism benefit everybody?
Seriously?
EMPOWER YOURSELF
Open YOUR browser
Type in- The Free Library
click search
The window opens to …The Free Library Link
(Should be the first link)
Click it
Type this into search box on the site-
Examine:”redistribution of wealth”
Great article by: The League of Women Voters
You remember them…
They used to host the Presidential Debates
They were pushed out by corporate interests
Excellent reading.
Enjoy!
Even simpler
Open browser
Type in/copy paste: Kolnick, Jeff; Anderson, Doug
Click search
Click link- Examining: redistribution of wealth
Have a good evening.
Webster, I belong to a labor union (construction trades). I also serve on a negotiating
committee,representing management for another trade union (laborers). I think your,
“us versus them” perception is a bit exaggerated. While there are “bad guys” on both
sides of the argument I can say from experience that most of the management folks
that I know realize that it is a good thing for business to have a vibrant middle class.
Many of them, like myself came up through the trades and respect the work ethic
necessary to perform that kind of work. Some of them serve on retirement trusts
and take their responsibilities to guard the retirement funds for these guys
personally. We also realize there is a point where wages become too much of a
burden to growth. If the cost of construction becomes too high and the projects
don’t pencil, they don’t get built, the contractor doesn’t do the job and make a
return on the owners investment and the workers sit at home. The high wage
no good if there is no work. There is a balance to be struck here, and holding
to the “us versus them” ignores the dynamics that are at work and affect all of us.
Do you also realize that most of these corporations you speak of are publicly held?
I have had this same conversation with a tradesman who was complaining about
corporate bigwigs and there “greed”. This guy had stock in Microsoft and I asked
him whay he chose Microsoft to invest his money, he said because “they are a
good investment”. He obviously wants to see a return on his investment as well.
The point is, what some people call greed, others call incentive. there is no perfect
economic system. The poor have been with us from eternity. No system has been
able to create a higher standard of living than ours. Communism and Socialism
are proven failures in comparison. We all have the potential to be corrupt, it takes
conviction and denying the self to do the right thing, and I can say for certain that you
have behaved in your best interest at the expense of someone else in the past,
haven’t you?
We all have.
I would stand with you and take no opposition to making laws and putting constraints
on business to keep them from behaving in ways that cheat or expose the greater good
to harm, but I’m opposed to agreeing that forceful redistribution of wealth is the answer.
It will bring disincentive into our system and incentive to succeed is what has made
this standard of living that we all benefit from.
Webster, I can also tell you this from experience…. My trade union has betrayed their
membership in the past by making policy that reinforces the union leaderships
job security by effectively lowering the rank and files wages. They forcefully instituted
the “Dues Checkoff” system after the membership had voted it down on numerous
occasions. The D/C system is set up to maintain income levels at the union hall
when work hours decrease so leadership doesn’t have to face the same cut backs
that members do….
You see my point? corruption exists wherever you find people and it doesn’t matter
if your collar is blue or white and it won’t go away even if you are successful at
getting rid of conservatives.
My parents were both union members (UAW).
Did you know the greatest creation of wealth in the history of mankind took place between the years 1947-1973. The height of the union workers membership across this country.
Here’s some info about lower wages, and how they’re created….
http://www.commondreams.org/views07/0216-30.htm
and
http://www.riseupforthenewday.net/2009/05/13/a-look-at-the-disparity-of-wealth-and-resources-in-the-world-today/
Webster, can I ask you a question?
Are you saying the world would be better if all labor was unionized? And how about if
they could go about their business unrestrained?
The grass roots initiatives rising up all around our country have a wealth of information
to empower people. We live in a participatory democracy. It’s time to wake up.
It’s a brand new morning.
I’m saying the world WILL be a better place when individuals empower themselves.
We have a lot to accomplish for future generations.
meagain said: “I would stand with you and take no
opposition to making laws and putting constraints
on business to keep them from behaving in ways that
cheat or expose the greater good
to harm, but I’m opposed to agreeing that forceful redistribution of wealth is the answer.
It will bring disincentive into our system and
incentive to succeed is what has made
this standard of living that we all benefit from.”
If you read the article from The Free Library about wealth redistribution, you’d see that the authors said “Clearly, the evidence shows that the redistribution of wealth can move from the bottom to the top or, as “Joe the Plumber” and Bill O’Reilly feared, from the top toward the bottom.”
We have opposing views on it
But we seem to agree that real wealth is built by labor.
Good enough for me.
The two links about transnational corporations will make ya think, yes?
meagain
You’re a really good writer. Hanging out with ya these last twenty four hours has
been informative. But there’s much work to be done. I’d like to see ya join us. Your
expertise with the organized labor movement makes you a tremendous resource for
change. Organized labor is the best thing we have at this moment in time to try to
keep the playing field kinda level. Don’t you agree? But the monied interests concern
me. Someone has to keep them honest. They haven’t been for a long time.
I keep thinking about Al Gore’s final campaign speech, in West Virginia, on the eve of
the 2000 election. As the sun was setting, he was speaking to people like you and I,
and his final words were
Early to bed
Early to rise
Work like hell
and organize.
Gore was born into privilege. Interesting.
We all know what happened these last eight years because we did not.
-Truthout/Perspective
Rx and the Single Payer
Friday 22 May 2009
by: Bill Moyers and Michael Winship
In 2003, a young Illinois state senator named Barack Obama told an AFL-CIO meeting, “I am a proponent of a single-payer universal health care program.”
Single payer. Universal. That’s health coverage, like Medicare, but for everyone who wants it. Single payer eliminates insurance companies as pricey middlemen. The government pays care providers directly. It’s a system that polls consistently have shown the American people favoring by as much as two to one.
There was only one thing standing in the way, Obama said six years ago: “All of you know we might not get there immediately because first we have to take back the White House, we have to take back the Senate and we have to take back the House.”
Fast forward six years. President Obama has everything he said was needed – Democrats in control of the executive branch and both chambers of Congress. So what’s happened to single payer?
A woman at his town hall meeting in New Mexico last week asked him exactly that. “If I were starting a system from scratch, then I think that the idea of moving towards a single-payer system could very well make sense,” the president replied. “That’s the kind of system that you have in most industrialized countries around the world.
“The only problem is that we’re not starting from scratch. We have historically a tradition of employer-based health care. And although there are a lot of people who are not satisfied with their health care, the truth is, is that the vast majority of people currently get health care from their employers and you’ve got this system that’s already in place. We don’t want a huge disruption as we go into health care reform where suddenly we’re trying to completely reinvent one-sixth of the economy.”
So, the banks were too big to fail and now, apparently, health care is too big to fix, at least the way a majority of people indicate they would like it to be fixed, with a single payer option. President Obama favors a public health plan competing with the medical cartel that he hopes will create a real market that would bring down costs. But single payer has vanished from his radar.
Nor is single payer getting much coverage in the mainstream media. Barely a mention was given to the hundreds of doctors, nurses and other health care professionals who came to Washington last week to protest the absence of official debate over single payer.
Is it the proverbial tree falling in the forest, making a noise that journalists can’t or won’t hear? Could the indifference of the press be because both the president of the United States and Congress have been avoiding single payer like, well, like the plague? As we see so often, government officials set the agenda by what they do and don’t talk about.
Instead, President Obama is looking for consensus, seeking peace among all the parties involved. Except for single-payer advocates. At that big White House powwow in Washington last week, the president asked representatives of the health care business to reason together with him. “What’s brought us all together today is a recognition that we can’t continue down the same dangerous road we’ve been traveling for so many years,” he said, ” that costs are out of control; and that reform is not a luxury that can be postponed, but a necessity that cannot wait.”
They came, listened, made nice for the photo op, and while they failed to participate in a hearty chorus of “Kumbaya,” they did promise to cut health care costs voluntarily over the next ten years. The press ate it up – and Mr. Obama was a happy man.
Meanwhile, some of us looking on – those of us who’ve been around a long time – were scratching our heads. Hadn’t we heard this before?
Way, way back in the 1970s, Americans were riled up over the rising costs of health care. As a presidential candidate, Jimmy Carter started talking about the government clamping down. When he got to the White House, drug makers, insurance companies, hospitals and doctors – the very people who only a decade earlier had done everything they could to strangle Medicare in the cradle – seemed uncharacteristically humble and cooperative. “You don’t have to make us cut costs,” they promised. “We’ll do it voluntarily.”
So, Uncle Sam backed down and – you guessed it – pretty soon, medical costs were soaring higher than ever.
By the early ’90s, the public was once again hurting in the pocketbook. Feeling our pain, Bill and Hillary Clinton tried again, coming up with a plan only slightly more complicated than the schematics for an F-18 fighter jet.
This time, the health industry acted more like Tony Soprano than Mother Teresa. It bludgeoned the Clinton reforms with one of the most expensive and deceitful public relations and advertising campaigns ever conceived – paid for, of course, from the industry’s swollen profits.
As the drug and insurance companies, hospitals and doctors dumped the mangled carcass of reform into the Potomac, securely encased in concrete, once again, they said don’t worry; they would cut costs voluntarily.
If you believed that, we’ve got a toll-free bridge to the Mayo Clinic we’d like to sell you.
So, anyone with any memory left could be excused for raising their eyebrows at the health care industry’s latest promises. As if on cue, hardly had their pledge of volunteerism rung out across the land than Jay Gellert, chief executive of Health Net Inc. and chair of the lobbying group America’s Health Insurance Plans, assured his pals not to worry abut the voluntary reductions. “We believe that we can do it without undermining the viability of companies,” he said, “and in effect enhancing the payment to physicians and hospitals.” In other words, their so-called voluntary “reforms” will in no way interfere with maximizing profits.
Also last week, John Lechleiter, the chief executive of drug giant Eli Lilly, blasted universal health care in a speech before the US Chamber of Commerce: “I do not believe that policymakers have yet arrived at a full and complete diagnosis of what’s wrong and what’s right with US health care,” he declared. “And I am very concerned that some of the proposed policies – the treatments, to continue my metaphor – will have unintended side-effects that make our situation worse.”
So, why bother with the charm offensive on Pennsylvania Avenue? Could it be, as some critics suggest, a Trojan horse, getting the health industry a place at the table so they can leap up at the right moment and again knife to death any real reform?
Wheelers and dealers from the health sector aren’t waiting for that moment. According to the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics, they’ve spent more than $134 million on lobbying in the first quarter of 2009 alone. And some already are shelling out big bucks for a publicity blitz and ads attacking any health care reform that threatens to reduce the profits from sickness and disease.
The Washington Post’s health care reform blog reported Monday that Blue Cross Blue Shield of North Carolina has hired an outside PR firm to put together a video campaign assaulting Obama’s public plan. And this month alone, the group Conservatives for Patients’ Rights is spending more than a million dollars for attack ads. They’ve hired a public relations firm called CRC – Creative Response Concepts. You remember them – the same high-minded folks who brought you the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, the gang who savaged John Kerry’s service record in Vietnam.
The ads feature the chairman of Conservatives for Patients’ Rights, Rick Scott. Who’s he? As a former deputy inspector general from the Department of Health and Human Services told The New York Times, “He hopes people don’t Google his name.”
Scott’s not a doctor; he just acts like one on TV. He’s an entrepreneur, who took two hospitals in Texas and built them into the largest health care chain in the world, Columbia/HCA. In 1997, he was fired by the board of directors after Columbia/HCA was caught in a scheme that ripped off the Feds and state governments for hundreds of millions of dollars in bogus Medicare and Medicaid payments, the largest such fraud in history. The company had to cough up $1.7 billion dollars to get out of the mess.
Rick Scott got off, you should excuse the expression, scot-free. Better than, in fact. According to published reports, he waltzed away with a $10 million severance deal and $300 million worth of stock. So much for voluntarily lowering overhead.
With medical costs rising six percent per year, that’s who’s offering himself as a spokesman for the health care industry. Speaking up for single payer is Geri Jenkins, a president of the California Nurses Association and National Nurses Organizing Committee – a registered nurse with literal hands-on experience.
“We’re there around the clock,” she told our colleague Jessica Wang. “So we feel a real sense of obligation to advocate for the best interests of our patients and the public. Now, you can talk about policy but when you’re staring at a human face it’s a whole different story.”
http://www.singlepayeraction.org/blog/?p=670
Webster, It’s important to remember that we live in a Constitutional Republic, not a
Democracy in the sense that the majority decision carries the day. The decision must
fit within the framework of our Constitution….
You’re right, we both believe that labor built this country, not money changers.
I also believe in the right for workers to collectively bargain for wages
and working conditions. Alternatively, I believe the ideal is for workers to
deal directly with their employer. I’ve worked for a family owned company that
truly appreciated their workers. They provided health care and retirement benefits
without being forced by the Union. They also shared profits with the employees
after a successful year. The owner was a working stiff, a now wealthy working stiff.
To me he is the American Dream. He got there by hard work and taking risk, and I
want that opportunity to be there for my children as well… It will be diminished by
demand side economics. I will remain strongly in the “supply side” camp. I am
a firm believer that wealth “trickles down”.
Your place of employment is a stroke of good fortune. For all employed there.
Workers are valued, they are a treasured resource. Unfortunately, this is
the exception, not the rule.
Don’t become complacent. Share YOUR wealth with the world.
Inform
Empower
Negotiate the un-negotiable
Trickles down?
The vast majority of ‘wealth’ lands with a thud.
It’s inherited.
Is that healthy? It’s ‘processed”. Like the food people eat.
It seems there are folks missing the deeper reason Deepak would now be
commenting on politics. We are not at an age of intelligence about humanity
that we must consider the deeper truth about human decision. He is speaking
about EGO, not just political ideology.
Political ideology is simply about right and wrong. It’s ego playing its game of
being right and completely obscurring what does not fit its model of the world.
It is the ancient adversary, the one who uses conflict, duality, to make humanity
suffer. This is why spirituality is speaking up about politics in this age.
This is the end of the age of Pisces referred to 2000 years ago. Astronomers
know this. It’s just the roughly 2000 year cycle of the Sun’s travels. Just
mathematics. But it’s also a spiritual shift away from an age of surface
understanding and ego structures.
I think Deepak bringing his insight about humanity to begin a debate at a deeper
level and it is working. Let us look at this not from an ideology, which is flawed by
ego being at it’s root. Both parties are flawed when sticking to ideology! BOTH!
One only sees what it calls liberty, but ego creates illusion to justify wars, bank
failures, and racist attacks or name calling. All illusions of freedom.
The other sides ideology shouts equality and social conscience but ego
blocks the debilitating social programs (like my califoria with $24B debt) that create
victim thinking and out of control spending.
Ego is the only thing winning this conflict. Creating conflict to create suffering.
One side against the other, ideological models rather than reality. Check out
Deepak’s Higher Self series.
The deeper point is no one is “right”. Right is an illusion of ego. 3500 yrs ago
it was named Satan. Not some red guy with horns! Just like God isn’t an old
Italian guy in the Sistine Chapel. LOL The only real opponent is ego! Conflict
created to make us suffer from ideas in our ego mind.
Alas, ego had been around for thousands of years and taken down many
great nations from within. If each side doesn’t start owning where it is wrong
the next great nation may be China. None lasts unless it resolves the conflict
within. Whether human or nation. Conflict within is the enemy.
I thank Deepak for encouraging our debate at a deeper level! Can we have that
debate at a soul level?
Are there any aspects of anything in this life
which aren’t being played out at the soul level?
It’s all a great game of hide-and-seek when
we get right down ot it. The soul cloaks itself
in one role, only to look out once more to see
Itself, as Itself, being Itself in another role.
Are we catching the truth of this? From this
level of awareness it is able to accomplish
the friction, which in Nature is the catalyst
for creating the diamond. We are that Nature.
But I sense your concern….
I don’t believe we can sit in our caves being
enlightened. That is the inward stroke of meditation.
We still need the other, the outward stroke of meditation
interacting with the interdependence this world is.
Stretching the fabric of life. Consciously. Discourse.
Questioning authority. Questioning dogma. Asking the
questions of ourselves such as, “Tell me, God. What I
just expressed, or did, or am thinking of doing- how does
it look through your eyes? Does it look civil? How, if I make
this choice, will its impact be felt?” The inner dialogue has
to continue, until it stops of Its own accord. Two worlds,
until they are reconciled into One.
God, revealing God, to God.
Even in disagreement, we can still honor the space
between us. The dialogue is still taking place, so this
is being accomplished.
Knowing the ‘truth’ is a great virtue;
living it is infinitely better.
As Truth.
peace
We’ll get there.
Exactly Webster!
And that is “liberal”. To question dogma and authority. To think as a “free man”
is what it means to be liberal (check the Latin). Not a political ideal but to
ask as a free man.
The first Republican, Abraham Lincoln did this. He did not think continuing to
enslave other men, though slavery was a “freedom” enjoyed for decades,
was the thinking of free men of liberty. What happened to the Grand Old Party?
Saw a great bumber sticker today, “What would Jesus bomb?”
What would Jesus be saying about Iraq and Iran right now? Would he be
condemned as a liberal hippy pacifist? Some Jewish guy with long hair and
beard speaking about love and taking the plank out of our own eye instead
of attacking another for the splinter in theirs?
What of truth? What of love? About treating our brother as we would be
treated?
Namaste’
Erol,
You think Jesus is pretty cool? I do too. I believe he is the promised Messiah.
That He is God who came to us in the flesh, died on the cross to take the
punishment for my sins. He rose to sit at the right hand of the Father until his return.
The Bible teaches that when he returns he will divide good and evil. The good,
according to the Bible will be those who believe in the work of the cross, and
accept him as their savior. Not as just a great guy, neat prophet, wise man etc.
The “evil” are those who do not. Pretty simple dividing line. Not good guys and
bad guys in the sense that we are all sinners. Just believers and non believers.
Do you still think he’s cool?
“It was needless hugging…It wasn’t a greeting.
It was happening all day.” – Noreen Hanjinlian,
principal of a New Jersey middle school that has
banned hugging
It’s comforting to know the Victorian “social workers”
are still gainfully employed in our country.