Patrick Gilbert And The Danger Of Insufficient Reform

This remarkable viral campaign on Facebook has a very simple message. It happens to be the one that Harris Wofford rode to a Senate victory over a well-funded Republican opponent prior to the 1992 elections. It's what Bill Clinton pretty much ran on during those 1992 elections. It's an appeal to basic American fairness, and it's worked over and over again.

No one should die because they cannot afford healthcare. No one should go broke because they get sick, and no one should be tied to a job because of pre-existing condition. If you agree, please post this as your status for the rest of the day.

Before the day was out yesterday, Barack Obama had posted this message on his Facebook page, along with tens of thousands of others. It distills the entire debate about health care into something simple. An individual's health care should not be based on an individual's available funds. It's a winning message.

Except this message is exactly what's being bargained away, if reports are correct, in the latest round of capitulations.

Patrick Gilbert, an uninsured lumber company worker in upstate New York, is in a predicament that President Barack Obama and congressional Democrats believe they can solve. Gilbert and his wife have two children, but he says that on his family's $50,000 annual income, he can't afford the $600 monthly premiums for his employer's coverage.

"If I could find some reasonable insurance for about $100 a month, then I would do that," says Gilbert, 38, a lymphoma survivor who lives near Lake Placid. "Something reasonable, not with high deductibles. Something fair."

The House's health overhaul proposal would allow Gilbert to obtain family coverage for $250 a month, with the government picking up the rest of the premium costs. While that subsidy would make insurance more affordable for Gilbert, he could still be stuck with huge medical bills if he or his family members got seriously ill. In the worst case scenario, Gilbert could end up paying $4,400 in co-insurance and deductibles on top of $3,000 in annual premiums — adding up to 15 percent of his family's income.

Concern about the legislation's cost has overshadowed a major worry among some policy experts: Whether the Democrats' plans would protect low- and moderate-income earners from excess financial burdens, as backers have promised.

Under the House proposal, people receiving government subsidies could still end up spending 20 percent or more of their annual incomes on premiums, deductibles and co-insurance, according to estimates prepared by the House Committee on Ways and Means and obtained by Kaiser Health News. That financial load could grow substantially if the proposal's financing — $1 trillion over a decade — is pared back as congressional leaders come under pressure to reduce the legislation's costs.

The number now being put out there for the cost of the bill is $700 billion over 10 years. That may save rich people from a surtax, but it's impossible to provide affordable health coverage to everyone with those numbers. It probably needs to be twice that much. And so people will still die because they cannot afford health care. And people will still go broke because they get sick.

The problem is completely a lack of political will. There are plenty of savings that could be gathered from inside the health care system. But the White House wanted to protect industry profits and make deals to keep them from running attack ads. And unions don't want to go after the employer deduction, which keeps in place an inefficient system of employer-based health care that keeps costs high (because employers take them out of your wage increases, so they have little or no incentive to shop for good premium prices). By protecting most of the current system, the costs inside the system cannot possibly go down to the degree to make health care affordable. And as far as going outside the system, Democrats haven't made an argument about tax fairness since 1933, I think, and couldn't even pull off something as simple as lowering deductions for charitable donations back to where they were during the Reagan Administration.

A $700 billion dollar bill will have practically useless subsidies. And people just won't be able to afford insurance. So they'll remain out of compliance with the mandate. In fact, they'll probably qualify for exemptions from the mandate because insurance will be too expensive for them. And then insurers will complain that people aren't joining their system, making it unable for them to spread risk and lower costs. So they will raise premiums as a result, or maybe even go back to discriminating against people for medical history.

The subsidies and coverage expansion is crucial to the entire jury-rigged project here. You cannot take the subsidies away and expect the architecture to remain standing. Politically speaking, if the Congress accepts a $700 billion dollar spending bill and coverage remains unaffordable for those who need it, and prices continue to rise, it will be an unmitigated disaster just begging for repeal.

Washington, We Have A Jobs Problem

The jobs report for August showed another 216,000 losses. That's far less than previous months, in fact the smallest in a year, but still not very good. The unemployment rate jumped up to 9.7%, and it'll basically be a matter of time before we're at 10%.

The AFL-CIO released a stunning report about young workers, showing their struggles in the past decade, where they have less jobs, worse jobs and no security.

Some of the report’s key findings include:

31 percent of young workers report being uninsured, up from 24 percent 10 years ago, and 79 percent of the uninsured say they don’t have coverage because they can’t afford it or their employer does not offer it.
Strikingly, one in three young workers are currently living at home with their parents.
Only 31 percent say they make enough money to cover their bills and put some money aside—22 percentage points fewer than in 1999—while 24 percent cannot even pay their monthly bills.
A third cannot pay their bills and seven in 10 do not have enough saved to cover two months of living expenses.
37 percent have put off education or professional development because they can’t afford it.
When asked who is most responsible for the country’s economic woes, close to 50 percent of young workers place the blame on Wall Street and banks or corporate CEOs. And young workers say greed by corporations and CEOs is the factor most to blame for in the current financial downturn.
By a 22-point margin, young workers favor expanding public investment over reducing the budget deficit. Young workers rank conservative economic approaches such as reducing taxes, government spending and regulation on business among the five lowest of 16 long-term priorities for Congress and the president.
Thirty-five percent say they voted for the first time in 2008, and nearly three-quarters now keep tabs on government and public affairs, even when there’s not an election going on.
The majority of young workers and nearly 70 percent of first-time voters are confident that Obama will take the country in the right direction.

At the low end, workers are often paid under the minimum wage and cheated out of overtime pay.

This is just not sustainable. A thin layer of the super-rich exploiting a permanent underclass, with many out of work or unable to gain independence, will not result in a workable society. Social unrest is a more likely outcome.

We cannot forget this. The Democratic Party is becoming reliant on the professional class instead of the working class, and it leads to policy that doesn't help workers. The shrinking unionized sector, and the inability to create policy to reverse that trend, will come back to hurt the so-called "party of the people."

Labor's lack of clout to pass EFCA in even the most overwhelmingly Democratic -- and progressive -- Congress in decades is an indication that we already have a successful progressive movement in which labor plays only a modest role. Union support was less crucial to Obama's nomination and his general election victory than it was to any previous Democratic president, which is why he's not obligated to twist arms to pass the bill. Many Democratic victories in 2008 were in states and districts where labor is weakest, like Virginia and North Carolina. And I know dozens of engaged liberals who have no idea why EFCA matters.

The new progressive coalition follows the lines of the "emerging Democratic majority" that Ruy Teixeira and John Judis predicted in their 2002 book of that name: minority, professional, and younger voters, with help from a large gender gap. This is a coalition that can win without a majority of white working-class voters, whether union members or not. (Those who were union members were always solid Democrats.) In many ways, that's good because it helps to bring an end to the culture wars that limited the party's ability to speak clearly about matters of fundamental rights and justice.

But it's also dangerous. A political coalition that doesn't need Joe the -- fake -- Plumber (John McCain's mascot of the white working class) can also afford to ignore the real Joes, Josés, and Josephines of the working middle class, the ones who earn $16 an hour, not $250,000 a year. It can afford to be unconcerned about the collapse of manufacturing jobs, casually reassuring us that more education is the answer to all economic woes. A party of professionals and young voters risks becoming a party that overlooks the core economic crisis--not the recession but the 40-year crisis--that is wiping out the American dream for millions of workers and communities that are never going to become meccas for foodies and Web designers.

I think the lack of connection between Democrats and the working class reflects itself in all these jobless recoveries we're seeing. Policy just isn't made for the median income, but of, by and for the rich. It's a very dangerous situation.

Workers Rising

While the job numbers are appalling and business plans to cut to the bone to survive the economic turmoil, we are seeing the rise of a new set of labor activism - workers demanding respect for the law and dignity for themselves. And they're starting to win some fights.

The employees at Republic Windows and Doors ended their sit-in strike with the bank acceding to their demands:

Jubilant workers, cheering and chanting "Yes We Can," celebrated outside a Chicago factory after approving a $1.75 million agreement to end their six-day sit-in, a dispute that became a symbol of the plight of labor nationwide [...]

About 200 of 240 laid-off workers began their sit-in last week after Republic gave them just three days' notice the plant was closing. They vowed to stay until they received assurances they would get severance and accrued vacation pay.

Each former Republic employee will get eight weeks' salary, all accrued vacation pay and two months' paid health care, said U.S. Rep. Luis Gutierrez, who helped broker the deal. He said it works out to about $7,000 apiece.

That's not nothing, although of course they have no job. But it's a warning to any other company attempting to get away with stiffing their workers on their obligations.

And then there's this great achievement for the labor movement:

Workers at the world's largest pork slaughterhouse have voted for a union, ending a bitter fight and scoring a huge victory for organized labor in the South.

It was a narrow victory among the more than 4,500 employees at Smithfield Foods' Bladen County plant, who voted Wednesday and Thursday. The vote tally, released late Thursday, was 2,041 to 1,879.

"Today, justice has truly been served," said Mattie Fulcher, a nine-year employee of the plant. Fulcher, a union supporter who observed the count, said the union would protect her from a company where "the pigs mean more to them than I do."

The Washington, D.C.-based United Food and Commercial Workers Union has been trying to unionize the plant, about 80 miles south of Raleigh, since it opened in 1992. The plant's workers slaughter and butcher as many as 32,000 hogs a day.

You'll notice that it took 16 years to get the union, so, remember that the next time Republicans tell you that all they want is a democratic secret ballot for union elections. They actually want the ability to stall and delay and allow businesses to stop their workers from organizing.

A victory like this in the traditionally "right-to-work" South is doubly significant.

Don't mourn, organize.

An Evening With Some Community Organizers

Last night I had the pleasure of attending the 15th Anniversary Awards Dinner for LAANE (The Los Angeles Alliance For A New Economy), which brought 1,000 people to the Beverly Hilton (including Mayor Villaraigosa, Sean Penn, and more) and raised $500,000 for their cause. I know I get depressed reading about endless budget fights and cutbacks to schools and health care, so it's important to take comfort (and some valuable lessons) in those doing important work - and fighting some of the most powerful and entrenched interests in the city and the country - and winning.

LAANE is a group dedicated to fighting for economic and environmental justice by building coalitions and waging campaigns to improve the lives of people in underserved and at-risk communities. Their success stories include some of the most astonishing victories of the last decade - the living-wage campaign in Los Angeles, the (eventually) successful grocery worker's strike, the campaign to keep Wal-Mart out of Inglewood in 2004, the fight for justice for hotel workers near LAX. More recently, they achieved success with a landmark blue-green alliance of nearly 40 environmental groups, community organizers and labor organizations like the Teamsters, to clean up the Port of Los Angeles, which resulted in a huge victory for clean air and clean water which will also provide good-paying sustainable jobs for truck drivers. The Coalition for Clean and Safe Ports is a model for the nation, to combine economic security and respect for the environment at the ports, and Chuck Mack & Jim Santangelo from the Teamsters were honored last night (sporting leis flown in by a Teamster rep from Hawaii).

Another of their campaigns is the "Construction Career Policy," dedicated to providing local residents in low-income communities the opportunity to get middle-class, union construction jobs on projects happening in their area. This has resulted in thousands of jobs for at-risk and underserved communities of color, and the goal is for 15,000 jobs over the next 5 years. Mayor Villaraigosa presented Cora Davis, a construction business owner and leading advocate for the program, with an award.

Finally, in the wake of the movie "Milk," many are remembering the work of Cleve Jones, an activist in San Francisco during the era and the leader of the AIDS Quilt Project. Today, Jones is a community organizer working for UNITE HERE, and he has worked with LAANE on their campaigns to create living-wage jobs and improve working conditions for the 3,500 hotel workers around LAX Airport. Sean Penn, who became friendly with Jones over the last year working on "Milk," presented him with an award for his service. In his speech, Jones talked about these noble working-class people, many of them immigrants, "the ones who are serving you dinner tonight," and he paid tribute to their struggle and dignity. He also had a few words to say about the passage of Prop. 8, which left him heartbroken and drew eerie parallels to the Prop. 6 campaign he worked on with Harvey Milk in 1978. But, Jones said, the real parallel moment is 1964, a time when civil rights for African-Americans in the Deep South appeared remote. "Now is the time for Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid to sign a new Civil Rights Act restoring fundamental rights for every American in this country." It's not the tactic you hear from the leading gay rights organizations, but Cleve doesn't hold much of a brief for them either:

The new (gay rights) activists have impressed some gay rights veterans.

“They’ve shown a clear ability to turn out large numbers of people,” said Cleve Jones, a longtime gay rights advocate and labor organizer. “It’s also clear that they are skeptical of the established L.G.B.T. organizations. And I would say they have reason to be.”

Overall, it was inspiring to see a community-based organization so dedicated to restoring fairness, justice, dignity and respect to a part of a population that frequently doesn't have a voice in political affairs, and more important, to see them get results. LAANE is doing some great work.

The New Lucky Duckies

It is remarkable to see McCain play the socialism card on Obama, days after voting for a $700 billion dollar bailout of the banks and the largest government intervention of the last 100 years. The institutional memory doesn't even go back three weeks anymore? Furthermore, he characterizes Obama's refundable tax credits as "welfare," neglecting the fact that his own refundable tax credits, the centerpiece of his entire health care plan, which go to the same low-income members of society who supposedly "don't pay taxes," are not welfare but "reform".

It's silly, but this is very powerful stuff. And I think Atrios makes the salient point.

Basically everybody pays taxes. So you when you're talking about giving free money to people who don't pay any taxes, that must be somebody else because, you know, I pay taxes.

I suppose that works.

Yes, I suppose it does.

FAYETTEVILLE, N.C. — When Sen. Barack Obama entered a barbecue joint here to greet dozens of people eating lunch after church services on Sunday, Diane Fanning, 54, who works at a Sam's Club, began yelling, "Socialist, socialist, socialist — get out of here!"

Plumbers and Joe Sixpacks may make out better under Obama's plans, and McCain is peddling lies. But the way Republicans have historically won elections is by getting some members of the working class to think that other members of the working class are getting away with a free lunch. I don't know if it'll work, but the pull is undeniable and will last well past the election. Wait for the statistics to come out of Rush Limbaugh's mouth about how big a tax cut Obama has given to black people.

After all, this is the type of code they use. And it works.

Herbert reminds us about the Southern Strategy -- and famed GOP strategist Lee Atwater's candid admission: “You start out in 1954 by saying, ‘Nigger, nigger, nigger. By 1968, you can’t say ‘nigger’ — that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states’ rights, and all that stuff. You’re getting so abstract now [that] you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things, and a byproduct of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites.”

Joe The 285 Million Other People Who Can't Buy A Plumbing Business

If you want to know why Barack Obama is poised to win this election, it's because of circumstances like this:

To monitor the multiple sclerosis attacking Ann Pietrangelo's central nervous system, her doctor recommends an annual MRI. Last year, the 49-year-old Winchester, Va., woman had to pay a $3,000 co-payment to get the imaging done.

This year, she's skipping the test. Even with insurance, it's more than her budget can tolerate, especially with the roller coaster on Wall Street devouring her retirement savings.

"I'm doing everything I can to avoid going to the doctor," she said.

From Park Avenue dental offices to the Arlington Free Clinic, the global economic crunch is forcing a growing number of Americans to scale back on medical care. Consumers are attempting their own form of triage, pushing off seemingly less-urgent services in the hope that their financial health will improve. But the danger, say physicians, is that the short-term savings may translate into more severe long-term health implications [...]

Nationwide, the number of consumers who went without a prescription, tapped into retirement savings to pay for health care or skipped a doctor visit for themselves or a child has risen since last year, according to a survey released this summer by the Rockefeller Foundation and Time magazine. One-quarter of the 2,000 respondents, for example, said they had decided not to see a doctor because of cost in 2008, up from 18 percent the year before. Ten percent said they did not take a child to the doctor for the same reason.

This is about more than just the subject of health care, which even the head of the Congressional Budget Office agrees must be dealt with as soon as possible or it'll threaten the entire federal budget and make the financial bailout look like the give-a-penny take-a-penny tray. But indeed you could have chosen any topic that the vast majority of Americans interface with. Their wages haven't gone up, their gas prices are still twice as much as they were before, their food costs are higher, the student loans for their children are a crushing burden, the jobs are scarce and aren't much more promising than service-sector McJobs, their credit cards are full, their home prices (if they're lucky enough to own one) are falling and they owe more on their houses and cars than they're worth, and their quality of life, between commutes, carrying two or three jobs to get by, etc., is, to put it mildly, in the crapper. They aren't making it. The American dream that's been sold to them for decades is dead. And it's been that way for a while.

And yet our profoundly stupid political discourse continues to focus on the aspirational class and small businessmen and the methods to trickle wealth down. And they use these insane shibboleths, icons that stand in for human beings who have actual struggles, to make it seem like there's any respect left for the common man. The common man has been kicked. He's been punched. He's laying on the side of the road. And he doesn't give a damn about someone screeching about a $900 tax increase.

Joe the Plumber, or whoever the fuck he is, means nothing. Neither does the media conception of white working-class voters. They are absurd caricatures, disconnected from any truth and really just pawns in the depressing reality show that has become politics. The more we look at some sideshow, the more muzzled the truly voiceless in this society become. For all the faults of the Democratic Party, there is finally a recognition this year that people vote, not pastiches or sketches but hundreds of millions of people, and maybe, just this once, we ought to pay attention to what the hell they are going through.

You Want Tough?

A lot of liberals are worried that Barack Obama is acting like a wimp, not defending himself in the face of these attacks, not fighting back. Well, this is a pretty hard-hitting ad, tying McCain to Bush on gas prices and noting the $2 million in contributions from Big Oil he's received.



There's a problem here, of course. He hedged on offshore drilling on Friday, endorsing the bipartisan process toward a comprehensive solution. Though offshore drilling isn't mentioned in this ad, it takes the wind out of it.

The other problem is that we have a press corps which is determined to pay attention to the most trivial things imaginable. Ads which have Britney and Paris in them - worth amplifying. An ad from a Democrat - we'll pass and just joke about how stupid it is to keep your car running properly.

So let's see if this gets any actual media play. Regardless, it'll run on the air. And because he shows an actual concern for people, perhaps Obama will continue to run well with downscale voters - who would-a thunk it?

Democratic Sen. Barack Obama holds a 2 to 1 edge over Republican Sen. John McCain among the nation's low-wage workers, but many are unconvinced that either presidential candidate would be better than the other at fixing the ailing economy or improving the health-care system, according to a new national poll.

Obama's advantage is attributable largely to overwhelming support from two traditional Democratic constituencies: African Americans and Hispanics. But even among white workers -- a group of voters that has been targeted by both parties as a key to victory in November -- Obama leads McCain by 10 percentage points, 47 percent to 37 percent, and has the advantage as the more empathetic candidate.

The problem, as it notes later in the article, is that most low-wage workers don't see any hope for government to help them. That's been the linchpin of the conservative project over the past 30 years. Hopelessness is their currency. Maybe Obama can break this cycle.

UPDATE: Hey look, Mitt Romney's lying about John McCain's record! This is a shock. The point he's making is that McCain isn't asking for any special tax breaks for Big Oil. That's true, he's just lowering their tax burden as part of an overall corporate tax cut.



That's not exactly helpful.

The Reverse Wes Clark

Let's be clear: John McCain's campaign had to distance himself significantly from Phil Gramm this week, even suggesting that they're no longer on speaking terms.

GERSH: Is Senator Gramm still giving advice to Senator McCain?

HOLTZ-EAKIN: No.

GERSH: No.

HOLTZ-EAKIN: At — I haven’t spoken to Senator Gramm since the comments took place, and I’m not expecting to.

This is despite the fact that among conservative movement types, Gramm's comments are being seen as largely correct. Some are saying it on technical grounds, that the country hasn't technically slipped into recession based on the outdated statistics which govern that decision, the ones that are totally disconnected to working-class Americans' lives. Others, like George Will, simply agree that Americans "are the crybabies of the western world."

Traditional media outlets have finally picked up on the fact that the Gramm comments and McCain's cluelessness on Social Security and health care led to a pathetically bad week, despite it being the week where the campaign message would be reset and more tightly focused. And hardcore conservatives are seeing McCain's "gaffes" resulting from their core beliefs, and his distancing from them as a repudiation of economic conservatism. And they don't trust him already.

Of course, Gramm helped shape McCain's policies, and on the overwhelming majority of domestic issues McCain is exactly in line with the President. But a significant segment of the conservative base sees Gramm as fundamentally correct and brave, and they see his ouster as a betrayal.

Sound familiar?

In fact both sides are having problems with their base as they lurch to the center.

UPDATE: This is howlingly funny.

Obama ran an ad calling McCain—McSame in the economy. Republican Governor Mark Sanford of South Carolina went blank trying to think up any differences between John McCain and George Bush’s economic policies when Blitzer asked him to name some. After stammering for a minute, he brought up NAFTA? Say, what? Blitzer then said they had no differences on NAFTA. Oh, and then Sanford mentioned McSame’s opposition to earmarks. That’s sure going to cut your gas prices. (rough transcript)

Blitzer: Are there any significant economic differences between what the Bush administration has put forward over these many years as opposed to John McCain’s support?

Sanford: Yea, I mean for instance take, you know, ummm, ahhh, take for instance the issue of, ahhhh..(knocks on table) I’m drawing a blank. I hate it when I do that, particularly on TV. Take for instance the contrast between NAFTA. I mean, I think the bigger issue is credibility in where one is coming from. I mean, to that position are they consistent where they come from? John McCain has consistently stood against earmarks throughout his tenure in the US Senate. Regrettably, the President has not been exactly busy with the veto pen.

Now Mark Sanford, who has impeccable conservative credentials, will be tossed under the proverbial bus. But it's John McCain making this problem by having a hard-right domestic policy that you can't tell the truth about because it's designed to be hidden.

Words, Action... And Never The Twain Shall Meet

On the one hand, Ben Bernanke lauds the expansion of education access at all areas of development, including the community college system, as among the best methods to reduce income inequality in the long-term. Now, Bernanke doesn't set education policy for the Administration. But he does have some sway over the financial services industry, if only in terms of influence and not the levers of policy, so he might be in a position to do something about this.

Some of the nation’s biggest banks have closed their doors to students at community colleges, for-profit universities and other less competitive institutions, even as they continue to extend federally backed loans to students at the nation’s top universities.

Citibank has been among the most aggressive in paring the list of colleges it serves. JPMorgan Chase, PNC and SunTrust say they have not dropped whole categories, but are cutting colleges as well. Some less-selective four-year colleges, like Eastern Oregon University and William Jessup University in Rocklin, Calif., say they have been summarily dropped by some lenders.

The practice suggests that if the credit crisis and the ensuing turmoil in the student loan business persist, some of the nation’s neediest students will be hurt the most. The difficulty borrowing may deter them from attending school or prompt them to take a semester off. When they get student loans, they will wind up with less attractive terms and may run a greater risk of default if they have to switch lenders in the middle of their college years.

Walling off colleges like this, which are a tremendous opportunity for low-income students to achieve a degree and some upward mobility, by making loans unreachable is the equivalent of a new caste system. This would be an absolute disaster for the working class and their children.

If this is so crucial to America's economic future, surely Bernanke can devise some incentives for banks to make available student loans for community colleges. I mean, he wouldn't want to be accused of delivering empty, meaningless rhetoric.

The Simple Life

John McCain is extremely rich. Not just a little bit rich, but fabulously wealthy. This leads to awkward moments like this which are likely to be replayed throughout this "Forgotten Americans" tour.

Standing before a nearly shuttered factory pocked with broken windows, John McCain on Tuesday urged Americans to reject the "siren song of protectionism" and embrace a future of free trade.

He used his own recent political fortunes — a dramatic fade followed by an unexpected comeback to secure the Republican presidential nomination — to illustrate that depressed Rust Belt cities such as Youngstown can have bright futures.

"A person learns along the way that if you hold on — if you don't quit no matter what the odds — sometimes life will surprise you," McCain said in a speech at Youngstown State University after meeting the five remaining workers at Fabart, a steel-fabricating factory that had more than 100 employees a few years ago.

In other words, "keep working at luring your factory back home, look at me, I had a few less million to spend than Mitt Romney!"

It's really an out-of-touch statement, and the Ohio Democratic Party pounced on it:

The difference between Youngstown and McCain couldn't be starker:

• Youngstown is a working class city; John McCain is one of the richest members of the Senate.

• McCain's plans shred the safety net for Youngstown; McCain's safety net is a rich heiress wife worth $100 million.

"McCain's attempt to compare a poorly-managed campaign budget to the increasing demands on a family's budget shows the bubble McCain lives in," said Kelly.

You cannot analogize the continuing struggles in the manufacturing sector to a campaign fundraising deficit. Especially when you are, as I said fabulously wealthy. John Edwards would say throughout his campaign "We're all going to be fine, the American people won't be." McCain seems to be saying "We're all struggling together, you and I... never mind the beer distributor fortune."



Today we got a sense of how John McCain rewards his elite friends. The story dropped on the same day as the Pennsylvania primary so nobody's paying attention to it, but it's fairly devastating.

Donald R. Diamond, a wealthy Arizona real estate developer, was racing to snap up a stretch of virgin California coast freed by the closing of an Army base a decade ago when he turned to an old friend, Senator John McCain.

A letter from Senator John McCain may have helped Donald R. Diamond, a longtime friend, gain the rights to develop property at a former Army base. Mr. Diamond has raised more than $250,000 so far for Mr. McCain’s presidential campaign.
When Mr. Diamond wanted to buy land at the base, Fort Ord, Mr. McCain assigned an aide who set up a meeting at the Pentagon and later stepped in again to help speed up the sale, according to people involved and a deposition Mr. Diamond gave for a related lawsuit. When he appealed to a nearby city for the right to develop other property at the former base, Mr. Diamond submitted Mr. McCain’s endorsement as “a close personal friend.”

Writing to officials in the city, Seaside, Calif., the senator said, “You will find him as honorable and committed as I have.”

Courting local officials and potential partners, Mr. Diamond’s team promised that he could “help get through some of the red tape in dealing with the Department of the Army” because Mr. Diamond “has been very active with Senator McCain,” a partner said in a deposition.

We can keep talking about waffles and bowling and shots of Crown Royal, but in truth we have a Republican wedded to the issues of the wealthy, and Democrats discussing issues that affect workers. This is true this year as much as any primary in recent memory. And so we cannot lose sight of that.

See also Tom Frank on this issue.

Bring It On, Bipartisan Fetishists

David Sirota basically wrote the post I was about to write, but I'll summarize it in shorter form. This Mike Bloomberg "Old White Men For Bipartisanship As Defined By Agreeing With Us" boomlet is nothing more than a desire to save the country from the evils of a progressive agenda. The High Broderists of the world who scream for centrist bipartisan solutions don't know what they're talking about, nor do they understand how American democracy works, nor do they really want American democracy. Bloomberg is a neoconservative narcissist who wants to buy the White House for him and the Big Money boys. He has steadfastly supported the war in Iraq and some of the dregs of Washington like Paul Wolfowitz and Joe Lieberman. As Greenwald notes:

A Bloomberg candidacy would have no purpose other than satisfy his bottomless personal lust for attention and bestow the wise old men threatening the country with his candidacy with some fleeting sense of rejuvenated relevance and wisdom. His political views are conventional in every way and he's little more than an establishment-enabling figurehead. The whole attraction to his candidacy has nothing to do with any issues or substance and everything to do with an empty addiction to vapid notions of Establishment harmony and a desire to exert control, whereby our Seriousness guardians devote themselves to a candidate for reasons largely unrelated to his policies or political views, thus proving themselves, as usual, to be the exact antithesis of actual seriousness.

Digby's worried about this and thinks that Bloomberg is the kind of guy that could bamboozle a lot of so-called "independent Democrats" and swing the election to the Republicans, but I would relish shutting this guy up. Could you imagine a scenario where John Edwards faces Mitt Romney, with Michael Bloomberg as an independent? Would that not be just the perfect embodiment of Edwards' candidacy, going against two corporate suits and their billions? And I don't think that having the clueless Villagers against you would be an impediment. Worried about an Edwards nomination, you're starting to see shills like Stu Rothenberg and Joe Klein attack him for having the temerity to line up on the side of the working man. Klein's is particularly stupid because he has to lie ("NAFTA has been a wash, creating as many jobs as have been lost.") in order to get his point across, as well as magically find ordinary citizens who just so happen to parrot back his own arguments.

My sense is that the country is fed up with these gasbags who think they can do what's best for the country without interference from the rabble. I think that Sirota is right:

In my reporting over the last year I learned that things are - finally - starting to change. The Joe Kleins, Stu Rothenbergs and Mike Bloombergs still have influence, because they have lots of money behind them. But an uprising is on - one that has already impacted the 2008 presidential race, and one that will continue to seethe well past the upcoming caucuses and primaries. It is that simple fact that truly frightens the defenders of the status quo who have gotten used to the good life inside the palace walls.

Edwards' message resonates to those who've been kicked around by an economy that values the super-rich for the last three decades. He's not running against George Bush, but a system in Washington that is rigged for moneyed interests. He understands that a politics of confrontation is the only way to get a decent outcome, that only through epic fights and, yes, partisanship, have we ever made progress in this country. These bipartisan fetishists don't want anything that would disrupt a status quo that keeps real power for themselves. What's ironic is that, in the name of changing the country, they want to keep it the same.

John Edwards Can Re-Spin The Earth And Control The Fourth Dimension! BREAKING!!!

We're two weeks out from the Iowa caucuses (and if you're in Southern California, I'll have info on the it place to be on caucus night soon), and between the endless horse race media coverage, most of it wrong, and the somewhat crazy hero-worship lionization of candidates throughout the blogosphere, particularly in diaries on the big community sites (Kos, MyDD), I haven't had much to add. I do follow the Republican candidates with interest because they're all so impossibly flawed that I can't imagine any of them winning, which is just fascinating to me.

But obviously, I'll be voting for a Democrat, so let me try and make up for my lack of writing about the primary here. From the beginning of this race, the candidate that has intrigued me most is John Edwards. He seems to be maintaining his traction in Iowa, depending upon what poll you read, and he is absolutely right to excoriate the media for losing all attention to him in the months leading up to the caucuses, in favor of their preferred story about the Hillary/Obama race. I confess to not guilt but certainly a twinge of awkwardness in going for the only viable white guy in the race, and I do hope that Edwards at least does his part to make the general election still historic by choosing someone like Gov. Kathleen Sebelius of Kansas as his running mate. I had a running joke that, as a comedian, I can't do a Hillary impression, and the Obama one wouldn't come off too well either, so I was starting a PAC called White Male Comedians for Edwards. In truth I believe that any of the Democratic candidates will be running on a platform far to the left of Bill Clinton, and that they're all electable against the sorry field of the GOP. But with me, there is a stronger connection to Edwards.

See, I am also the son of a millworker. My dad started in the textile factories of Philadelphia at the age of 15. I remember going around with him, when he graduated into the sales arena, to those mills. They were dusty and dingy and so hot that the employees would work with their shirts off. It was honest but often grueling work. And in the subsequent years after I was born, it was a job that vanished from the streets of Philadelphia. When I was born there were close to a hundred textile mills, mainly sweater mills, in Philly. Today there are none. The entire industry was moved offshore, given away to the developing world as an opportunity for them to advance themselves in a low-skill trade. This was done through systematically lowering trade barriers and in the name of neoliberal free trade, and it started in the 1970s lest anybody think it was ushered in by Reagan. But the truth is that it didn't lift up the developing world, it didn't create an economic engine globally, it didn't help American workers move into the jobs of the 21st century. It created a bunch of nations scrambling to turn their wage force into a permanent underclass, and instituted the same dichotomy at home, through menial service-sector jobs. And it did little for "world peace," which was the putative reason given to my father for the transformation, when he lobbied Congress on the issue in 1979.

This chart from the Congressional Budget Office shows that, while the roots of this growing inequality are long and deep, the age of George W. Bush has stratified it even more.



The top one-fifth of the country has seen their incomes rise 16%, while the rest have close to a 3% increase. The top 10%: up 20.9%. The top 5%? 27.7%. And the top 1%? A 43.5% increase.

There is a disconnect between the economy of the rich and the economy of the rest of the nation, between those who understand the nation's economic health by watching the stock market, and those who understand by watching the streets. And nobody but John Edwards on the Democratic side taps into that disconnect, gives voice to a frustration and anxiousness that the American working class has felt for some time. Some have claimed that Edwards' anti-corporate rhetoric is a sharp change from 2004. It's not. He talked about the two Americas on the stump all the time four years ago. What he now understands is that there is more of a sense of desperation, that these times must be matched with a rhetorical force that is uncompromising against special interests and lobbyists and those who attempt to run Washington through the endless placement of dollars at the feet of politicians. This is a simple, grounded message that makes media types, who don't live in the world of his target audience, naturally uncomfortable. And it's most certainly the message in John Edwards' soul, regardless of the sniffs about a lack of authenticity. It's fair to look at his Senate record and claim that he did not stand boldly for change when an elected official. But Ezra Klein looks deeper and sees someone who's commitment is far more clear.

Reminded of (Lauch, the man who he beat in his Senate run) Faircloth's attacks on trial lawyers, Edwards' longtime pollster Harrison Hickman laughs. "We were very much like Br'er Rabbit: glad to be thrown into that brier patch. It lets Edwards talk about the kinds of people he represented, families and children who'd been injured in egregious ways. The challenge would always have been, in a debate: Name one of my clients who didn't deserve the award they got."

It is a failure of political reporting that those legal cases are rarely evaluated as anything but potential attack ads. The stories, people, and corporations Edwards came into contact with amounted to a searing, visceral course in old-style populism.

Think of it this way: Hillary Clinton's caution and political savvy are obvious products of an adult life spent entirely in politics, the last 15 years or so on the national stage. Barack Obama's broad appeal and talent for consensus building are not unexpected traits in a former community organizer. So what does spending decades confronting the grievous, heartbreaking damage done to individuals and families by powerful, profit-driven corporations do to a man?

"Every single day," says Edwards' wife, Elizabeth, "what he saw were good people, in great need, who were being mistreated by big corporations -- corporations that knew that they had done wrong, and often insurance companies that were taking a calculated risk going to trial. … If you took that person, a person who chose that as his life, you would end up with the politics that he's talking about today."

In 2003, when John Edwards wanted to present himself to the electorate, he, like every other world-leader wannabe, wrote a book. But his Four Trials, unlike most campaign tracts, doesn't say a word about his experience in the Senate or his plans for the country. Instead, it recounts a quartet of trials Edwards fought: two against corporations, two against doctors. More to the point, it introduces four clients whom Edwards fought for: ordinary individuals who display heroic endurance in the face of profoundly unfair events. At the close of one wrenching trial, Edwards turns to the jury and says, "What you have been doing for the last seven weeks is you have been watching what happens when absolute corporate indifference collides with absolute innocence. That's what this case is. That is what this case is about. And that is why you are here."

I don't think Edwards is a deity. The "One Corps" volunteer aspect of his campaign - the call to build a movement rather than build around a leader - never really materialized. And it's an open question whether as President he could leverage the bully pulpit and progressive movement power to get real change past those corporate gatekeepers, who would unite to sabotage him. But you would absolutely know where he stood. With Clinton you get the feeling that she is committed to incremental steps within the system. Obama hasn't shown the willingness to fight to a large degree. When given the chance, Edwards has stood against corporate power, and with a mandate he'd have a lot of energy he could harness. Chris Bowers thinks there's an absence of left-wing power in the primary, and he may be right. But I don't think any of the top candidates would give an ear to the broader progressive movement in the way that Edwards would. Sometimes it's not about the perfect candidate so much as the candidate who you think will be available to your concerns. I think America would have a progressive partner in the White House with John Edwards.

...And You Will Know Him By The Trail Of Dead (Bills)

I saw Bill Maher on Friday in an interview with former Mexican President Vicente Fox, lamenting that Bill Clinton and Arnold Schwarzenegger wouldn't be able to face off as Presidential candidates due to Constitutional violations. "Isn't that sad," he said. For all his conceits as a free thinker, Maher represents a kind of baseline Hollywood groupthink when it comes to Arnold, reading the headlines and the magazine covers but never bothering to uncover the whole story. That story can be easily divined from this weekend's veto massacre. In addition to stopping the California DREAM Act, he vetoed needed legislation for the state's migrant farm workers, allowing them to organize through a "card check" system. He even disabled a bill that would have added a sunset clause to the card check system, making it ever harder for them to organize and support themselves and their families. Here's another bill that went down the drain:

On Saturday, another bill was vetoed, AB 377, by Assemblymember Juan Arambula (D-Fresno). It would have required an employer who is a farm labor contractor to disclose in the itemized statement furnished to employees up to five names and addresses of the legal entities that secured the employer's services.

According to the sponsor of the bill, the California Rural Legal Assistance Foundation more than 40,000 California farms grow fruits and vegetables on almost four million acres in this state, so it is not surprising that a 2006 survey of Central Valley farm workers found that 70% could not identify the name of the farm they were working on.

The same survey found that 56% had not been paid the minimum wage when working on a piece rate; 31% had not been paid all the overtime they were owed; and that 42% had unexplained deductions made from their pay. Between 60% and 80% of harvest work is done by labor contractors. Without being able to readily identify the farm who hired the contractor, enforcement actions against the contractor are unlikely to either make the worker whole for wages owed or to have any deterrent effect at all against a grower who shares legal responsibility for the contractor's labor law violations.

So while Governor Schwarzenegger told the hundreds of farm workers who were at the Capitol in September that he was supportive of their goals, in the end, he vetoed these bills and sided with agribusiness.

Indeed, this is part of a persistent pattern by the Governor to make life harder for working families while protecting the corporate interests that helped get him elected. Far from a governor of the people, he is simply a corporatist who has the backs of the elite. Because we don't have a functioning political press, this contempt for the average Californian will probably not make it too far off the blogs and insider political circles. But they have real-world consequences that people will only discover when they are put in the situation that legislation could have covered, and they aren't likely to connect the dots. A sampling of the pro-worker legislation that was vetoed:

• SB 549 (Corbett)-this bill would have protected the job of a worker taking time off to attend to the funeral of a family member.

• SB 727 (Kuehl)-this bill provided that employees covered by family temporary disability insurance (FTDI) could take the leave to care for a grandparent, siblings, grandchildren and parent-in-law.

• AB 537 (Swanson)-this bill expanded the definition of family under the California Family Rights Act (CFRA) to allow eligible workers to take job-protected leave to care for a seriously ill adult child, sibling, grandchild, or parent in law.

• AB 435 (Brownley)-this bill would have addressed harsh limitation periods on bringing certain wage discrimination claims. These claims are frequently brought by working women who have been underpaid relative to their male counterparts, and many of these women are struggling to raise kids in single parent situations.

• AB 1636 (Mendoza)-this bill would have expedited a job retraining voucher to disabled workers unable to return to their former jobs; workers such as these are struggling to adapt to replace the income needed for the family to survive.

• SB 936 (Perata)-this bill would have increased the benefits paid to permanently disabled workers over a 3 year period. Since 2004 these workers have seen their benefits slashed by 50% or more according to studies by University of California researchers. At the same time, insurer profits have exceeded all benefits paid to or on behalf of disabled workers; it’s a concept that is clearly not family-friendly. The families and kids of disabled workers suffer as they struggle to keep pace with the financial devastation of injuries.

AB 435 is the state version of the Lily Ledbetter Pay Act, attempting to remedy a horrible Supreme Court decision from earlier in the year. So Arnold is putting himself squarely in the position of Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas, John Roberts and Smuel Alito. This is our post-partisan "leader."

Furthermore, he vetoed meaningful health care reform in AB 8, and put forth flawed legislation of his own that has no chance of coming out of the legislature, partially financed by the stupid, shortsighted practice of leasing the lottery to private interests.

I'd like to say that there's an "on the other hand," a couple bills Arnold allowed through that provide aid or comfort to the working class. But on these issues, he comes down squarely on the side of his corporate buddies. It feels like spitting into the wind to keep noting this. Maybe someday Bill Maher won't have a big-time TV show, he'll be working for his own retirement, and he'll realize that he's been screwed by this Administration. But I wouldn't bet on it.

Take A Hint, Corporate America

This really is reason #1 why universal health care is so important, not just for the lives of our citizens but for the economic health of our country. Unless we want a completely denuded manufacturing base, as oppposed to the partial one we have now, we simply have to take health care out of the labor costs for anybody who wants to build something in America. The UAW is on strike because GM wants to drastically reduce their health care costs, which are more than the STEEL they use to make the cars. This is something Andy Stern talks about all the time, that $1,500 on the list price of every car made in the USA is from health care costs. So you would think that these executives would love the idea of severing the employer/health care relationship that is almost entirely unique to the US at this point.

GM says it needs to cut costs. Perhaps it would like to work with the Democrats and the Unions to get universal health insurance. It would be good for their workers, good for the country and good for the bottom line.

This is precisely why I'm skeptical of any health care plan which retains the employer mandate in any way. It's extremely dangerous to be a country unable to produce any goods at an affordable enough price to compete in the marketplace. You would think you'd want the military, for example to be provided with guns and transport vehicles from the country of origin. And so pushing for universal health insurance that's NOT on an employer model would be beneficial for corporations as well as citizens, and the increased economic activity would more than pay for it. The only people it wouldn't help are Republicans, who have no interest in providing anyone who needs it with health care.

And fittingly, it takes the labor movement to drive this issue home, as well as the larger point that prosperity and a strong working class go hand in hand.

But as critical of an issue as health insurance is, this strike is about something even bigger. It's about whether we're going to have a middle class in this country. The UAW was at the heart of the creation of what we know as the American middle class -- more than any other force in society, it institutionalized the idea that workers should be entitled to health care, vacation, and a secure and comfortable retirement. Before the rise of the UAW, blue-collar workers had no hope of securing their family and their future, and lived in constant fear of injury or layoff, with no prospect of anything resebling "retirement." The UAW changed that. The UAW made sure that the workers at the base of the postwar boom got their share. The UAW made it possible for a man like my grandfather, a brilliant guy from the Irish ghetto in Buffalo who never had the opportunity to study past high school, to send every single one of his kids to college. And the victories won by the UAW bore fruit well beyond the homes of their members -- because of the size and importance of the union, every UAW contract had a massive ripple effect. Employers in other industries -- even non-union employers -- had to raise their standards to attract employees. In short, the UAW allowed workers to get a taste of a life where leisure was possible, where relaxation and economic security were something that could be earned with hard work, and where their labor was treated with honor and dignity.

This is a society we hardly recognize today. This strike could be a turning point where we can get it back.

The LA Times and the Working Class

I have a conflicted relationship with the LA Times. On the one hand, they still do a stellar job covering international news; I would put the paper's Iraq reporting up with any other news organization in the world. But on the editorial side, the paper has taken up the neoliberal consensus with a vengeance, and turns a blind eye to vital issues to this community, like inequality and poverty. Nancy Cleeland, an excellent writer, has decided to leave the paper for just this reason:

It's awkward to criticize an old friend, which I still consider the Times to be, but I think the question of how mainstream journalists deal with the working class is important and deserves debate. There may be no better setting in which to examine the issue: The Los Angeles region is defined by gaping income disparities and an enormous pool of low-wage immigrant workers, many of whom are pulled north by lousy, unstable jobs. It's also home to one of the most active and creative labor federations in the country. But you wouldn't know any of that from reading a typical issue of the L.A. Times, in print or online. Increasingly anti-union in its editorial policy, and celebrity -- and crime-focused in its news coverage, it ignores the economic discontent that is clearly reflected in ethnic publications such as La Opinion.

Of course, I realize that revenues are plummeting and newsroom staffs are being cut across the country. But even in these tough financial times, it's possible to shift priorities to make Southern California's largest newspaper more relevant to the bulk of people who live here. Here's one idea: Instead of hiring a "celebrity justice reporter," now being sought for the Times website, why not develop a beat on economic justice? It might interest some of the millions of workers who draw hourly wages and are being squeezed by soaring rents, health care costs and debt loads.

Go read the whole thing, this is an important article. You would think that it would be easier and more cost-effective for the Times to cover what's happening in its own backyard. Of course, the Times was first part of a corporate-owned media collective, the Tribune Corporation, and now Sam Zell, a multi-millionaire. The top editors and senior staff aren't affected by the real issues impacting working people, and it shows in where they place their emphasis.

I remembered the workers who killed chickens, made bagged salads, packed frozen seafood, installed closet organizers, picked through recycled garbage, and manufactured foam cups and containers. They were injured from working too fast, fired for speaking up, powerless, invisible. I saw that their impact on all of us who live in the region is huge.

Now, like hundreds of other mid-career journalists who are walking away from media institutions across the country, I'm looking for other ways to tell the stories I care about. At the same time, the world of online news is maturing, looking for depth and context. I think the timing couldn't be better.

I would suggest that Cleeland would always be welcome on the blogosphere. There is a market for understanding the complex issues of class and inequality.

UPDATE: I would add that proof of the LA Times' relationship to the poor can be easily gleaned in this BS hit piece on John Edwards by Jonah Goldberg, someone who doesn't live in California but is hired to write lazy smear jobs based on two-week old stories without merit.