Dana Milbank at The Washington Post writes Bernie Sanders is right to be outraged:
It’s just 9 a.m., but the socialist senator, contemplating a presidential run as a Democrat or as a populist independent, is red in the face and his white hair askew. In a conference room at The Washington Post, he’s raising his voice, thumping his index finger on the table and gesturing so wildly that his hand comes within inches of political reporter Karen Tumulty’s face. […]
“We are living in the United States right now at a time when the top one-tenth of 1 percent own more wealth than the bottom 90 percent,” the Vermont lawmaker says in his native Brooklyn accent. […]
The real outrage, though, is that so few people share his fury.
There’s widespread agreement about the problem – that inequality is as bad as it has been in America since the crash of ’29. Even Republican leaders are talking about it (their solution, alas, is a tax system with even more breaks for the wealthy.) But there’s no sign yet of the mass anger that could turn into a political movement.
Paul Krugman at
The New York Times writes
The Long-Run Cop-Out:
On Monday, President Obama will call for a significant increase in spending, reversing the harsh cuts of the past few years. He won’t get all he’s asking for, but it’s a move in the right direction. And it also marks a welcome shift in the discourse. Maybe Washington is starting to get over its narrow-minded, irresponsible obsession with long-run problems and will finally take on the hard issue of short-run gratification instead.
O.K., I’m being flip to get your attention. I am, however, quite serious. It’s often said that the problem with policy makers is that they’re too focused on the next election, that they look for short-term fixes while ignoring the long run. But the story of economic policy and discourse these past five years has been exactly the opposite.
Check out other pundit excerpts below the fold.
David Moberg at In These Times, a labor journalist for more than 40 years, ponders a political conundrum in Rahm Emanuel Is a Union-buster. So Why Are Chicago Unions Backing Him?
When Rahm Emanuel strode into office as mayor of Chicago in 2011, one of his first targets was the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU). He sought and obtained state legislation limiting the right of Chicago teachers to strike. But he lost doubly in the fall of 2012: The CTU successfully mobilized its members to go on strike, then won both a good contract and the battle for public support. Yet Emanuel still closed 49 public schools and expanded charter schools the following spring. Meanwhile, other public employee unions moved into the mayor’s crosshairs as he drastically cut and privatized city jobs and services, often with help from a Democratic governor and state legislature.
Emanuel stands for re-election February 24 in a non-partisan primary against four challengers (and if no one wins 50 percent of the vote plus one, there will be a run-off between the top two on April 7). Polls suggest Chicagoans are not satisfied with their mayor, but most observers give him the odds because of his financial advantage—as of early 2015, he had a $11 million war chest, 10 times that of any opponent.
In theory, labor could be an important part of these calculations. Chicago is a more unionized city than most, and union endorsements typically come with credibility, money and an army of campaign workers. But despite Emanuel’s anti-union record, unions are divided about how to deal with “Mayor 1%,” as Kari Lydersen’s biography of Emanuel is titled.
Robert Reich at his own blog writes
Wall Street’s Threat to the American Middle Class. The former Labor secretary has been talking populism for quite some time now, and has moved away from the free trade arguments he made in the 1990s, challenging the TransPacific Partnership. But he ought ALWAYS to make note of that pact when making the case for the middle class that he does below:
It’s nice that presidential aspirants are talking about rebuilding America’s middle class.
But to be credible, he (or she) has to take clear aim at the Street.
That means proposing to limit the size of the biggest Wall Street banks; resurrect the Glass-Steagall Act (which used to separate investment from commercial banking); define insider trading the way most other countries do—using information any reasonable person would know is unavailable to most investors; and close the revolving door between the Street and the U.S. Treasury.
It also means not depending on the Street to finance their campaigns.
Jenny Brown at
Labor Notes points out in
Servers, Not Servants— how tipping helped make sexual harassment the norm for female servers:
While I was writing about sexual harassment of women workers at Ford, restaurant workers reminded me that 37 percent of Equal Employment Opportunity Commission claims of sexual harassment come from their industry. These dismal stats are connected to how many restaurant workers get paid: tips.
U.S. unions opposed tipping when it first became a thing in the early 1900s, imported by hoity-toity Americans imitating the European rich. Most Americans denounced the dispensing of a few coins to workers as anti-democratic and a reminder of the kind of master-servant folderol we had rejected with King George.
But now the tables are turned, and tipping is much more prevalent in the U.S. than it is in Europe. In some countries, like Australia, it’s regarded as really bad manners. “Who do you think you are, the Queen?” they ask.
Moustafa Bayoumi at
The Progressive writes in
Human Rights Lose In US–Saudi Alliance is good at calling out human rights abuses of its enemies but fails in this matter when it comes to its allies:
President Obama’s visit to Saudi Arabia this week to pay his respects to the passing of King Abdallah is not surprising. Abdallah was a head of state, after all, and the oil-rich Saudi Arabia is a strategic ally to the United States. But the President’s visit shouldn’t obscure the fact that the United States turns a blind eye to Saudi Arabia’s terrible human rights record or that both the United States and Saudi Arabia directly meddle in the affairs of other states in the region in order to mold the Middle East to their liking, often at the expense of popular movements and human rights.
Since his death on January 23, the American media has frequently spoken of the late King Abdallah as a reformer. While Abdallah promoted women’s education, provided scholarships for Saudis to study abroad, and built a more extensive social welfare system especially for lower-income Saudis, the truth is that the kingdom did not significantly change under his rule. Dissent is still not tolerated. The case of Raif Badawi, who was sentenced to 10 years in prison and 1,000 lashes because he wrote a blog criticizing the government, is one example that has attracted international outcry. But there are many others. And women’s rights are still sorely limited in the kingdom. Saudi Arabia’s state religion is a particularly austere version of Islam, and it is the only country in the Muslim world where it is illegal for women to drive.
Linda Sarsour at
The Guardian writes, in the wake of the Texas state Representative Molly White’s
McCarthyist spew, that
Republicans need to learn that Muslim and American are not mutually exclusive:
Bigotry against American Muslims from inside the Republican party is not a new phenomenon. Beginning in 2010, Islam became a major wedge issue in partisan politics, fueled by Congress members like Allen West, Louie Gohmert, Joe Walsh, Michelle Bachmann (dubbed the “Islamophobia Caucus”) and supported by former House speaker and one-time presidential candidate Newt Gingrich. Politicians across the country have made their careers and gotten campaign donations – and gotten their otherwise unknown mugs on Fox News—by vilifying and spewing hate against Muslims. Although their views once represented a lunatic fringe of their party, Republicans learned to tolerate a certain level of hate from within their ranks rather than marginalizing these politicians’ voices. And now, like cockroaches, they’ve spread out and spawned more.
This vitriolic rhetoric cannot be left unchecked because the sentiments displayed informs policies that directly impact American Muslims (as well as other faith communities). Anti-sharia legislation has been introduced in 32 states, and these unconstitutional laws, which prohibit the free expression of religion, have actually passed in multiple states—including North Carolina, Alabama and Arizona.
Meanwhile, American Muslims continue to build civic and electoral power. From serving on state party committees in California to founding the first-ever Muslim Democratic Club in New York City (dedicated to electing Muslims on all levels of government across the nation, which I co-founded and of which I am currently the president), American Muslims are an emerging political bloc.
Jacques Peretti at
The Independent proves in his
What I learnt about inequality after spending time with some of the richest people in the world that he missed a lot in his six months of close-up observing of the one percent. Like, for example, in all but two throwaway sentences, where are the politics in his analysis of what he dare not call the ruling class?
No matter how hard they try, the super-rich live in a hermetically enclosed bubble. Seeing the way they lived made me think of an Ebola patient in a highly pampered quarantine, staring the outside world. They feel like they should be part of it, but spend their lives unconvincingly parodying the things ordinary people do. Their wealth has made them suspicious and distant. It has dehumanised them, and there's nothing they can do about it.
That is their tragedy. But it's not quite on a par with the tragedy of a mum juggling eight jobs on zero hours contracts. So boo hoo, you might say.
We should pity their separation from the 99 per cent. But not too much—when the next crash happens, let's not use quantitative easing and the bail-out to super-charge inequality further. Pity democracy, pity people, but don't pity those with too much money.
John A. Fry at the
Los Angeles Times urges business to
Stop exploiting young workers: Here's an alternative to unpaid internships that works:
At any one time, 500,000 to 1 million interns are working for free or minimal pay, too often shadowing executives or running errands instead of learning skills.
Universities shoulder some of the blame by failing in their oversight role, awarding course credit for internships that weren't a meaningful step forward in their students' development.
Employers should consider an overlooked alternative: Expanding and improving cooperative education, or co-ops. In these programs, businesses and universities acknowledge their mutual goals and work together to create new pathways of career training that benefit all parties, including the many young people who've been so poorly served by unpaid internships.
As president of Drexel University, I know first-hand that the co-op model works. More than 95 years ago, Drexel created some of the nation's earliest co-ops, and more than 17,000 employers have participated. Drexel is one of only a few universities in the country that have made co-ops integral to teaching and learning university-wide.
Ira Byock at the
Los Angeles Times writes
We should think twice about 'death with dignity':
The message from supporters and the media is clear: Like women's rights, voting rights, gay marriage and hikes to the minimum wage, it's only a of time before physician-assisted suicide becomes legal because, after all, it is the right thing to do. If this bill fails, supporters promise a ballot initiative in 2016.
As someone who supports all those other liberal causes, yet opposes physician-assisted suicide, I'd ask my fellow progressives to shine a cold hard light on this issue. We have been the target of a decades-long branding campaign that paints hastening death as an extension of personal freedoms. We should bring the same skepticism to physician-assisted suicide that we do to fracking and genetically modified food. […]
“Death with dignity” implies that frail or physically dependent people aren't already dignified. But they are. People who are disabled or facing life's end can be cared for in ways that allow them to feel respected, worthy and valued.