Supreme Court Shame

During the Civil Rights Movement, the court system, particularly the Supreme Court was regarded as the one branch of government that could largely be counted on to protect the rights of African-Americans when Congress and the Executive Branch were stymied by political concerns. Because of the Supreme Court schools were desegregated and basic rights were affirmed, even when lower courts at the municipal and state level ignored or shirked their responsibilities.

However, yesterday to its shame the Supreme Court affirmed and expanded the rights of wealthy individuals to unfairly influence the political system by removing all limits on the amount of money people can contribute to political campaigns. (Link to article here)  This follows the ”Citizens United” decision of 2010 , which deemed corporations to be legally considered “persons,” who then could contribute in an unrestricted way to political campaigns.  A political system that already was bought and sold to the highest bidder, now just came even more deeply entrenched in a system where the wealthy and the powerful get access that the rest of us do not.

For the last two weeks the Philadelphia Inquirer has run a special report focusing on an investigation of five local state legislators who were caught on tape receiving money or gifts from a paid informant. The value of the money or gifts was in the thousands of dollars. While I think that such actions should be brought to light, the irony was that the problem was not that they received these money and gifts; it was that they did not report them. That is, it’s okay for legislators to receive money as long as they make it known. In Sunday’s (March 30) paper just below the latest installment on this case, there was an article describing how in 2013 Comcast, one of Philadelphia’s largest employers, spent $18.8 million lobbying for its interests, and employing 107 lobbyists to do their bidding. Comcast was listed as only the seventh largest lobbying spender in the country, the largest being the U.S. Chamber of Commerce which spent $74.5 million on lobbying in 2013. This was all perfectly legal and does not include campaign contributions.( See article here) 

What is wrong with this picture? A few small time politicians take some small change and get smeared, but large corporations and wealthy individuals get to make their case in exchange for gifts and money. Now the Supreme Court has essentially blessed this process and said the sky is the limit.

We need to recognize that whatever we want to call our form of government, it is not democracy. Democracy by definition is a system that is rooted in the community and gives all persons, regardless of rank, wealth, or position, an equal voice in government. One way to view our history as a nation is to see it as a struggle to make the dream of democracy a reality for all: people of color, women, various racial/ethnic groups, the poor, and now undocumented immigrants. The slogan “One person, one vote” is the bedrock of democracy; all get a voice and no voice is of greater inherent value than another. If we are to reclaim our democracy, it must start by denouncing the lie that wealth gives one the right to greater influence, and by working to strengthen local communities and if necessary take to the streets to reject such efforts.

In Philadelphia, the interfaith network POWER is working with local unions and the City Council to pass a referendum on May 20 that would ensure that any company doing business with the city would pay its employees and subcontractors 1 ½ times the minimum wage, which at this time would mean the wage would be $10.88/hr. Fast food workers across the country have been advocating for a similar provision in their contracts.  The Immokalee Workers in Florida have been advocated for similar treatment among farmworkers. Already the corporations have pressed hard for such efforts to fail, threatening to cut jobs while fearing that their profits might not be as great. Ironically despite their rhetoric about jobs and profits they seem to have the money to put pressure on politicians. (Hmmm – ironic isn’t it?) What communities have is people. We are engaged in a war, and the issue of a living wage is only one battle in that war.

The Supreme Court’s decision has made clear that the government is up for sale. Those who believe in true democracy, and not the plutocracy we now call our government, must act with equal or even greater force.

Why Race is a Factor in This Year's Election

At the risk of stating the obvious to some and “playing the race card” to others, I believe race is a central issue in this year’s presidential contest. However, I say that not simply or even because Mitt Romney (a white guy) is running against Barack Obama (a mixed race male who identifies as African American). Rather I say that because of what the two men symbolize and what is at stake for the poor and for people of color in this election. In terms of the numbers Obama is estimated to have received votes from 43% of whites four years ago, but is expected to only pull in about 38% of the white vote this year. Now this is not to imply that a vote against Obama means one is racist. However, we contrast that with the fact that 95% of blacks are expected to vote for Obama, and a majority of Asians, and Hispanics are also expected to vote Obama though not to the same extent of blacks. Add to that that according to the PBS special “Race 2012” 90% of people who voted in the Republican primaries this spring were white. Put this together and the picture that emerges is that the Republicans are an overwhelmingly white party, while the Democrats are attracting a diversity of voters. 

Race is a major factor in this campaign.

Now we might chalk this divide up to embarrassing coincidence, but the fact that the Republicans neither can nor care to attract more voters of color is not something we can easily overlook. Oh yes they had Condoleeza Rice speak at the Republican Convention, Michael Steele was chairman of the Republican Party for a couple of years, and Clarence Thomas the only black judge on the Supreme Court was appointed by a Republican President, but that is colorful window dressing that apparently is not speaking generally to the needs and perspectives of people of color. Now I would contend that neither is Barack Obama. Except for his pre-presidency speech on Race during the 2004 Democratic primary and an oblique reference to Trayvon Martin last spring, Obama has not broached the topic of race either; maybe he doesn’t feel like he can, or maybe he chooses not to. Meanwhile he has surrounded himself with advisors who look and talk like the white power brokers that preceded him. However what is interesting is that according Chrystia Freeland author of Plutocracy: The Rise of the New global Rich and the Fall of Everyone Else, Obama sees himself as one of the plutocrats. (Notice how when he talks about taxing the super-rich, he always refers to “we”; i.e. he recognizes he is one of them.)Yet even so, people of color (and those whites who see themselves as allies) hold out hope that they have a better chance with Barack Obama in the White House than Romney. At least that is what the numbers suggest.

Race is a factor in this presidential election.

Four years ago when Barack Obama was elected president, many pundits in the media wondered out loud if we had entered a “post-racial society.” There is no question that Barack Obama’s election was historic because he broke the white barrier, but I was not among those who thought we had crossed the post-racial threshold. One could sense in conservative white America a fear that in some way Obama might “retaliate” for all the centuries of slavery, Jim Crow, discrimination and marginalization faced by African Americans through history. Gun rights advocates feared Obama would take away all their guns. Conservatives feared he would establish a socialist state. Look at the trailer for the recent film “Obama 2016” and you see some even feared he would retaliate for colonialism in Africa. His opponents questioned his credentials and even his birth certificate. The underlying racial fear was palpable if not ridiculous. To his credit Mitt Romney has tried not to play on those fears, but his conservative base still harbors them despite clear evidence that such fears were totally unfounded.

While I don’t think Obama’s election ushered in a post-racial era, as my colleague Nathan Corbitt has pointed out, his election was a “tipping point;” that is, with the election of Barack Obama we were served notice that white control of levers of power were beginning to slip. Now there is no question when we look at who sits around the advisors’ tables and who sits on the boards of major corporations and who occupies most of the CEO positions, white males are still very much in control of levers of power. However, the fact that a black man sits in the Oval Office and can set controls on their power, sends a very clear message that the rules of the game have changed. Obama signals a move toward a more diverse society where the white establishment is no longer in control. His push to provide universal healthcare, and his focus on increased education funding point to a strategy that moves from the bottom up, rather than the trickle down philosophy of Reaganites like Romney.

If one only looks at the policies of conservative governors in places like Wisconsin, Ohio and Pennsylvania, the pattern is clear: programs that serve the needs of the homeless, the disabled, the poor and the mentally ill are being cut, while tax breaks are being given to corporations and the wealthy. Young people of color committing petty theft get jail time, while bankers who defraud people out of millions in their pensions and mortgages get regulations loosened and receive bonuses. The rights of unions are being curtailed, while regulations on corporations are being relaxed (in spite of the actions leading to the 2008 recession). Public Education is increasingly privatized and vouchered, while these same leaders make sure their kids don't have to go to those schools. The issue is clear: do we adopt policies that continue to serve the wealthy and powerful, or do we redistribute to provide basic needs for all?

While the word has rarely if ever been mentioned by the candidates in this election, and only cautiously by the media, let’s not kid ourselves: race is a factor in this election, and the choices we make determine whether we close our eyes and hope for a past that never was to return, or move wide-eyed into the future of a multicultural America where the blessings of this nation are shared fairly and equally.

Mad as Hell at Plutocracy

At different times in this blog, I have referred to the US government as a plutocracy (rule by the wealthy) rather a democracy (rule by the people). Exhibit A of this reality is the current debate in Congress over whether or not to extend the Bush tax cuts to the wealthiest Americans (those earning over $250,000) while also haggling as to whether or not to continue unemployment benefits to the long term unemployed.  On the one hand proponents of extending the cuts say we must continue the tax cuts (thus foregoing something like $70 billion in potential revenue), while on the other hand they are saying the government cannot afford to continue to support the unemployed. The audacity of this position is so outrageous that Warren Buffett, one of the wealthiest men in the world, and a group from Boston called Wealth for the Common Good have called for the tax cuts to be allowed to expire on December 31, 2010. Even these 400 wealthy Americans are saying the Republicans’ position on these issues is out of bounds!

The efforts of Buffett and his wealthy colleagues aside, this current Congressional debate illustrates how far we have strayed from what Abraham Lincoln referred to as a government “for the people, by the people and of the people.” However, this is not a new problem. When the U.S. Constitution was originally ratified  in 1787, only white men who owned land were allowed to vote. From the beginning, our country has operated on the principle that the wealthy would rule on behalf of the masses, a kind of benevolent oligarchy. Over time the right to vote was extended to all white men, then men of color, (14^th Amendment, 1868) and then eventually women (19^th Amendment, 1920). Even so the original notion that governing was for the few and not the many has persisted throughout US history. So it is no wonder that today only those with great personal wealth (e.g. Meg Whitman, Ross Perot, Mitt Romney) or those with access to money (everyone else who can find a lobby or a PAC or special interest to finance them), can afford to run for election.

What is the effect of this trend toward plutocracy? The greatest inequity between the haves and the have-nots in the last 30 years. According to Nicholas Kristof  in 1976 the wealthiest one percent of Americans earned 9 percent of the nation’s income; today that number is 24%. In 1980 the CEOs of America’s largest companies earned 42 times the average worker; today that ration is 531 to 1 – an increase of over 1200 percent! Moreover, the incomes of the highest earners in the U.S. (those earning over $50 million a year) increased fivefold between 2008 and 2009 in the height of the recession.

This increasing disparity has not come by accident. Two noted political scientists, Jacob Hacker of Yale, and Paul Pierson of Cal-Berkley, have studied this trend and documented their findings in a new book, Winner Take All Politics: How Washington Made the Rich Richer – and Turned Its back on the Middle Class. Contrary to popular belief, these scholars have concluded that this increasing disparity between the haves and have-nots is not primarily a result of either technology or globalization, but rather due to a pattern of U.S. government policy changes that have continually favored the wealthiest 5-10% of the population.

So for instance, earlier this year The Supreme Court ruled in the “Citizens United"case that the government can not place any limits on the amount of money corporations can give to political campaigns. In 2009 when the Health Care Reform bill was being debated, according to Open Secret.org, the health care lobby spent a combined $545 million is influencing legislation – the highest in its history. And now we find the Congress embroiled in a debate that appears to pit the tax cuts for the wealthy against benefits for the unemployed. According to Hacker and Pierson such a pattern is not something that has just occurred in the last year, but has increasingly developed over the last 30 years (if you do the math that means since Ronald Reagan became president and shifted the tide in that direction).

As much as I appreciate the beneficence of people like Warren Buffett, and the philanthropy of wealthy Americans like Bill Gates, I don’t think the policy change will come from the top. The rich will not have a massive conversion to equity economics. Don’t get me wrong, I am not bashing wealthy Americans; I come from that stock and literally some of my friends and family are in this group. However, as Frederick Douglass said over 150 years ago “Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will” (1857). Change will only happen when folks get together and demand a redistribution of the wealth: the poor, the working class, the unemployed, the white, the black, the Hispanic, the Asian, the native American – all those who have been shortchanged in the process of wealth redistribution over the last 30 years.

I was fortunate to have come of age during the Civil Rights movement and the Vietnam War. I participated in the Clamshell Alliance that stopped the construction of an additional nuclear power plan in Seabrook, New Hampshire. I have participated in many other actions since those early days with more modest success. I have seen what can happen when people get organized, get focused and get busy demanding that justice be done. I am not sure where or how such a movement will emerge, but there are rumblings all over the place. I felt that rumbling in a big way at the U.S. Social Forum  last summer in Detroit, where 15,000 activists gathered to envision a more democratic future.

I am reminded of the famous line from the 1976 movie Network,  where newscaster Howard Beale urged his listeners to go to their windows and shout: I AM MAD AS HELL AND I’M NOT GOING TO TAKE IT ANY MORE !” Plutocracy must go, true democracy, a democracy of the grassroots, must come. Folks must get together and demand equity and justice for all. This cruel foolishness must end before the whole system collapses, and more suffer than already are.