TODAY'S TOPICS: Status Quo Extremism, Students, Higher Ed/Occupy, Income Inequality, Unions

"The term radical can be understood as 'to the root,' but what it conveys to most of the public is that we are extreme and the status quo isn't. But look at the huge disparities between rich and poor, catastrophic climate change and destruction of ecology, inflicting massive suffering, extreme violence of war, and on and on. I would say the status quo is extreme."

- Norman Solomon

Status Quo Extremism

I just read the above quote in an article about my friend Norman Solomon’s run for Congress (in Marin…check him out) and came up with the phrase “Status quo extremism”…a phrase I’m going to start using a lot, because it perfectly encapsulates the insanity and injustice that our current “norms” perpetuate and even accelerate while it marginalizes just and practical opposition to that same, destructive status quo. It of course is these kinds of “norms”, extreme in every way, that led to the launch of the Occupy movement and that has led me to believe there is SOME hope. Because history tells us that extremes, and extreme injustices, are what create the space necessary for fundamental changes, be it women’s suffrage, civil rights, or anti-war.

What’s interesting now is that the “extreme” I’m talking about has infiltrated, like a virus (as Agent Smith calls us in the Matrix), nearly every facet of our lives. Whether it’s the extreme wealth disparity, the extreme poverty, the extremely criminal health care system, the extreme waste of money and lives we spend on the military and wars, the extreme crisis facing our species very survival in climate change (and all the other extremes related to toxics in foods and products, agribusiness, and big pharma), or the extreme prejudice that gay, Muslim, and Latino Americans in particular face everyday (African Americans too).

It is this “status quo” that is defended and celebrated by the Matrix…and it is a growing number of Americans, even in the face of this propaganda assault, on issue after issue, that ironically, and ludicrously - - according to this Matrix - continue to be qualified as “radical extremists” (I'm not talking about knuckle dragging teabaggers).

It is this great contradiction, this great clash between our current dying paradigm on one hand, and a more just and compassionate world that increasing numbers of Americans agree is needed and deserved, that lies at the heart of our current struggles. And it is this clash, between this Matrix (and those powers that control it) and what is fair and sustainable, that will decide the longterm future of our species.

As always, we are told that we can't afford to take care of people. We are told "there's not enough to go around, and its us versus them!" Of course, the reality is that we CAN provide enough food, a job, a home, and clean air and water…and those in power, and those brainwashed by that power (see "Republicans"), are the ones living fundamentally at odds with this true reality: there’s plenty for everyone if we change our ways (and who owns everything), and there’s plenty of wealth too (we just need to tax it fairly and correctly, and spend on things that benefit people, not just the owners).

Income Inequality, The Democrats, and Occupy

I have obviously focused less on electoral politics here than I did years ago – and a lot more on in depth issue analysis and critiques of our larger paradigm instead. This evolution of course was inevitable in the face of how clear it became that the "game was rigged" (though voting still mandatory), and the system (Matrix), as is, needed a FAR greater restructuring and radicalism than I ever thought. Similarly, it was in organized social movements that challenged this status quo that became more important than any political party, any election win, or that any Democratic Party politician, could ever provide (see last 3 years).

Nonetheless, being that we have a deeply corrupt and entrenched two party system, and one of those parties still has at least SOME foot in the door of basic decency (i.e. Democrats), its still worth trying to get that party to realize this moment in history and understand its IN THEIR BEST INTEREST to start tackling the real issues, and confronting the real crises. Or, if the party as it is can’t do that, then we need to find ways to take it over, from state houses to congress to the white house (in addition to the outside movements and more radical efforts, like Occupy).

I still don’t see a better way (i.e. third party, total revolution, or giving up, etc.)…then a combination of these two tracks together....which leads me all to Occupy and the Democratic Party…and how they will, or will not, relate and converse.

Overall, it is clear that the movement’s message is having some positive effect on Democrats. Certainly, even the Democratic leadership sees the advantage in addressing income inequality. 

Clearly too, the GOP crime family, nothing less than lobbyists for the plutocrats and Wall Street, serve as the PERFECT foil. This is not to say I am not deeply skeptical now anytime I start to hear Democrats saying what I want to hear…but saying it is part one, and saying it again and again, with passion and conviction is another, and then attempting to DO IT, over and over, is yet another (granted…the GOP can pretty much block MOST everything in Congress). 

David Dayen gives just one of many examples of why we SHOULD be skeptical of most Democrats (not the real progressives) when they suddenly strike a populist tone, noting, “When Democrats were in a position to do something about inequality, such as when they could have eliminated the carried interest loophole that allows hedge fund managers to pretend that their income should be taxed as capital gains, they shrunk. And there aren’t that many examples in the Democrats’ two-year control of all three branches of government in 2009-10 of them actually trying to arrest rampant inequality. So I’d wait until Democrats actually have the opportunity to pass something before saying they turned the corner.”

Still, Occupy has created that “space”, and those conditions, that can help force the Democrats hand, or, let them see that its their best hand to play on their own…and in fact, that political advantage does go hand-in-hand with anti-inequality policies.

To demonstrate this, the polls still tell the tale, and point to the disconnect between what people want, and what government is giving them, including a recent NBC-Wall Street Journal poll in which 60 percent of respondents strongly agreed that America’s economic imbalance comes from policies that favor the rich over the rest of the country. Additionally, 55 percent said income inequality is a significant problem in the country.

If that doesn’t tell you there’s a winning message in communicating to people that something is deeply wrong when the rich and Wall street are doing better than ever while everyone else is struggling…and the GOP is a party that would throw their own mothers under a bus to protect a hedge fund managers tax rates, you start to see a pathway to victory…and change. Of course, the actual “change” is the real point in question…and that, clearly, is going to take a long, long time…but at least the REAL fight has begun…not just another con job like the one perpetrated on us in 2008 (yes...OBVIOUSLY Obama is better than McCain and Palin...but that's no answer).

Occupy, Students, and Higher Education

For a few years now I’ve talked about the way our young population was INACCURATELY being construed…as lazy do-nothings that didn’t pay attention to the world around them. As I have pointed out, one of the largest polls ever done of young people (about three years ago) actually showed they were the most PROGRESSIVE of any age sector…and not just on social issues…but economic and environmental and military too.

As I’ve also been telling people for sometime, and wrote about it in my published White Paper that I did with Robert Greenwald’s Brave New Films (who contributed a short film with my paper) entitled “California’s Great Recession and the Costs of War”, one of the great crimes of our time was the increasing un-affordability of higher education…and what I predicted could very well be the next bubble to burst (i.e. student debt). So, the fact that students are protesting across the country, and Occupy is overwhelmingly younger in nature (though spans all ages), is predictable…and HOPEFUL.

As I wrote in that White Paper, “Doors will slam shut this year on as many as 35,000 applicants to the California State University system. Both university systems approved 20% tuition and fee hikes since the start of 2009 – and UC Regents has just approved an additional 30% hike this year - ending too many students dreams of a higher education, and burdening too many more with high interest debt. The news for educators is no better. More than 23,000 teachers recently received “pink slips”, unlikely to return to the classroom next fall.”

And then I added this little nugget that PERFECTLY epitomizes my “status quo extremism” theme today: Consider these stark examples of misplaced priorities: The cost of 1 soldier for 1 year in Afghanistan is $1 million; while the cost of college tuition at a California State University is $9,285. The cost of a single anti-tank missile in Afghanistan is $85,000; while the cost of providing 1 year of college books and supplies is $1,608 (average fees). And the cost of 1 predator drone in Afghanistan is $4.5 million; while 1 full Pell Grant for a college student in California is $5,350. 

Since I wrote that piece a year and a half ago things have actually gotten much worse for students. Not only is the student debt bubble at OVER $1 trillion now (with high interest rates and no job prospects) – the biggest debt bubble of them all – but, as Juan Cole points out, “The deliberate pepper-spraying by campus police of nonviolent protesters at UC Davis on Friday has provoked national outrage. But the horrific incident must not cloud the real question: What led comfortable, bright, middle-class students to join the Occupy protest movement against income inequality and big-money politics in the first place? 

The University of California system raised tuition by 9 percent this year, and the California State University system upped tuition by 12 percent. The UC system is seriously contemplating a humongous 16 percent tuition increase for fall 2012. This year, for the first time, the amount families pay in UC tuition will exceed state contributions to the university system.

University students, who face tuition hikes and state cuts to public education, find themselves victimized by the same neoliberal agenda that has created the current economic crisis, and that profoundly endangers democratic values.”

He then goes to the heart of the matter: by making college unaffordable we are essentially dismantling what’s left of the American dream…while essentially debt enslaving a whole generation (at least those that could afford to even try to pay for college) to the banks/lenders…while stratifying the have’s and have not’s at an even more rapid and pronounced rate. This is all at the heart of the Occupy movement. Cole continues:

“The assault on publicly funded higher education is wrapped up in the discontents that provoked the Occupy Wall Street movement. Inexpensive state universities are central to the ability of young people from disadvantaged backgrounds to move up in the world. The United States used to be known as a society where those at the bottom could hope to get ahead, and where being born with a silver spoon in your mouth was no guarantee of lifetime prosperity. Now, upward mobility has gotten harder, the rich more often stay rich, and Europe is the land of opportunity. European state support for institutions of higher education is key to that mobility. The United States of America, born in a rejection of an aristocracy by birth, is increasingly a land of hereditary oligarchs. 

Not only is a more rigid class structure implied by the decline of public support for state universities, but more fixed race boundaries are, as well. State universities are the most important vehicle for minority students in attaining a degree. While 800,000 minority students attend public universities, fewer than 200,000 can be found on private campuses. If the state universities become as expensive as the privates, the impact on minorities could be severe. It should be noted that the choices made by California are not “natural” or “inevitable.” Maryland dealt with the recent crisis in a progressive way, by freezing tuition and raising the corporate tax rate to create a Higher Education Investment Fund.” 

And then the final point to understand…the simultaneous collapse of our higher education funding over the past 30 years with the rapid increase spent on prisons to jail nonviolent offenders…in fact, since the early 1990s, crime in the state has fallen, whereas the prison population has gone from 25,000 to 175,000.

So Cole concludes, “Stiffer penalties have been set even for victimless, nonviolent drug-related crimes. California is also one of those states with a “three strikes and you’re out” law, which fills prisons with petty shoplifters while setting more lenient penalties for massive white collar embezzlement. The Legislature has removed judges’ discretion in releasing prisoners early for good behavior. The clout of the California Correctional Peace Officers’ Union and what has been called the “prison-industrial complex” has played a big role in pushing irrational legislation that has swollen the prison population.

Nationally, the emphasis on supposed law-and-order issues and the epochal mistake of a “war on drugs” that has criminalized a largely inoffensive and medically useful substance like marijuana have gone hand in hand with a militarization of law enforcement. That is, the defunding of higher education in favor of an enormous gulag dovetails with a rise in the paramilitary repression of the population as one of America’s premier industries.

Not only are UC Davis students being hit with massive tuition increases to pay for the penitentiaries and their policing, they are also being treated like unruly inmates by a militarizing police force. In the meantime, the country is taking giant strides toward the future Jefferson feared, of poorly educated citizens at risk of being manipulated by rising oligarchs.”

To bring home my point further, I point you to a new Pew Research Center report that makes it even MORE CLEAR why young people are leading this historic charge. The new study tracks how younger voters are now strongly rejecting traditional American hubris in favor of more empirical views on foreign policy (like let's stop wasting so much money killing people in other countries. For instance, it finds that while older citizens embrace American exceptionalism in insisting our culture is inherently superior, younger voters do not. As Pew reports:

Two-thirds of Millennials (66 percent) say that relying too much on military force to defeat terrorism creates hatred that leads to more terrorism. A slim majority of Gen Xers (55 percent) agree with this sentiment, but less than half (46 percent) of Boomers agree and the number of Silents who share this view is 41 percent. A plurality of Silents (45 percent) believe that using overwhelming force is the best way to defeat terrorism and 43 percent of Boomers share that view.

As David Sirota notes, "...the younger generation, whose foreign policy views were shaped not by World War II triumphalism but by grinding quagmires like Iraq and Afghanistan, has a far more realistic view of America’s role in the modern world. While that position may shift somewhat over the years, the numbers are striking enough to suggest an impending cultural break from the past. As the younger generation assumes more powerful positions in society and more electoral agency in our democracy, the possibility of such a break gives us reason to believe America can create a new foreign policy paradigm in our lifetime."

As I concluded in in my White Paper: 

It’s time to change our priorities. It’s time to choose life…Warnings from past American icons are worth reconsidering. The late Five-Star General, and Republican President, Dwight D. Eisenhower forewarned, "Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and not clothed. The world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children..." 

Just a few years later, a young minister and Nobel Peace Prize winning human rights champion, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., implored, “A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.”  

We would do well to heed their words today. Foreclosing on our future to fund an endless occupation on the other side of the world shouldn’t be confused with “national defense”. It’s time to end the war, bring the troops home, and invest those resources on the health and well being of the citizens of California.

So let’s CELEBRATE what students and young people are doing now, just as they have throughout history…this isn’t by accident…these people are more idealistic, they have MORE at stake when it comes to jobs, climate change, costs of war, and now, sickeningly, even debt.

As David Dayen notes, “An early leader in the Occupy movement’s list of grievances was the crushing burden of student loans. Those student loans have only become bloated and unaffordable in this era of tuition increases, forcing students who want to pursue higher education to borrow more money. The soaring cost of public education is pricing college out of reach for a large class of people, which depresses their potential for upward mobility. The 99% cannot ascend without the type of education being denied to them, as the 1% and the corporations they inhabit evade paying their fair share in taxes. This is going to be a continuing feature of Occupy movement protests over the next several months; how could it not be? The crisis in higher education is part and parcel with the two-tiered country that has been molded over the past several decades.”

One Big Answer to Inequality: Unions!!

And, if you were wondering why unions have joined forces with students and others at the Occupy rallies…remember that it was unions that BUILT the middle class in America, and it’s the DESTRUCTION of unions since the Reagan revolution that has served to dismantle that SAME middle class.

As Mike Lux perfectly illustrates, “The reason that economic inequality, as well as the depth of the unemployment problem, is so much worse in the United States than in virtually every other modern, developed economy in the world is because labor unions are so much weaker here, and because our industries — especially our financial institutions — are so much more concentrated. The fact that countries like Germany, Sweden, Canada, Denmark, and Australia all weathered the worldwide financial crisis better than we did is because their unions kept wages relatively high so people had money to buy things, and because their big banks were not nearly so dominant a party of their economy. If globalization and technology were the big and inexorable causes of economic inequality, then every country would have the USA’s bad numbers on that score, but they don’t. 

Those two causes, which are so popular with conservative economists, are certainly a factor, but concentration of wealth flows more than any other thing from concentration of power. It was true in the ancient Roman Empire, as wealth basically flowed from the size of people’s armies and their friendship with the Caesars. Throughout the middle ages, the same patterns remained true. In the late 1800s in this country, concentration of wealth came about partly because of industrialization, but mostly because the big corporate trusts of the robber barons ran government through open bribery. In the 1920s, concentration of wealth rose to incredible new heights again, as the conservative pro-big business Republicans controlled government and big corporate trusts paid little in taxes, broke unions viciously, and speculated in the stock market with impunity. 

Today, with unions as weak as they have been since the 1920s and major industries as concentrated as they have been since the 1890s, we have tremendous inequality and a disappearing middle class. That disappearing middle class includes a breakdown of small business in sector after sector as well, as the small guys have more and more trouble competing with big business. Four companies now control 70 percent of general retail sales; four grocery chains control 55 percent of grocery sales; three firms control 80 percent of beer sales, and two control 70 percent of toothpaste sales; five big oil companies control 60 percent of retail gas stations; four accounting companies lock down 70 percent of the accounting work done in this country. I could go on and on, in industry after industry, from telecom to agribusiness, from technology to pharmaceuticals. These huge conglomerates have destroyed tens of millions of small businesses, and even more jobs. They have broken unions and driven down wages. Their power is breaking the middle class in this country."

So we should all be VERY clear on why unions, students, and the younger generation are our most important and natural allies (and WHY they are) in this new battle, civil war even (but hopefully non-violent), that will decide whether we continue to devolve into a kind of quasi-fascist neo-feudal state (or plutocracy, kleptocracy...lots of ways to describe it), or blossom into something much more just and egalitarian. 

VIDEO SECTION

Ed Schultz on the FANTASTIC news that Wisconsin has already garnered over 300,000 signatures (in just 12 days!) in the effort to recall Governor Scott Walker (one of the point people for the oligarchs):

http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/heather/scott-walker-opponents-collect-over-300000

Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA) announced he is retiring (he'll be missed)...and then he slams scum bag, criminal and liar, Newt Gingrich (which is always fun):

http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/david/frank-slams-gingrich-i-will-neither-be-lobby

Sarah Anderson, co-author of a new report from the Institute for Policy Studies, “America Isn’t Broke: “How to Pay for the Crisis While Making the Country More Equitable, Green, and Secure.” visits Amy Goodman:

http://www.truth-out.org/americas-not-broke-solving-debt-crisis-making-nation-more-equitable-green-secure/1322061973

Tom Tomorrow cartoon…

http://www.truth-out.org/sites/default/files/cartoon112311.jpg

Chris Hayes on torture advocate, and Cheney's Cheney, David Addington, actually asking a question at the GOP presidential debate...who's next, Manson?

http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/heather/chris-hayes-slams-cnn-allowing-torture-adv