The American Wealth Machine

Last week I watched. “Slavery By Another Name” on PBS. I was ashamed and sickened by those stories. The history of the early years after the Civil War are unknown to most white Americans. Thanks to the civil rights movement of the 60s, I was familiar with the Jim Crow laws that ruled Black life in the South for most of the 20th century. But I had no idea that Blacks were essentially enslaved again right after Reconstruction. That they rebuilt the South and fueled the growth of both Southern and Northern industry. Without them, the South might never have recovered or built the industrial engines that anchored their economy.

While this documentary enlightened me about Black history, recent media reports, opened up broader questions about the creation of American wealth. In particular, a story on tomato workers, one about Apple’s manufacturing of my beloved iPads, and a podcast featuring Mike Daisey on “This American Life,” exposed the truth that our long history of exploitation in the service of the American economic engine continues. It is hard not to conclude that an unarticulated American core value is that we the people will tolerate worker abuse and outright slavery if it yields a higher standard of living or cheap gadgets.

We are proud to be the wealthiest country on earth. We have the best of everything and the most liberty. Or so we say. We believe that we got that way from the hard work of individuals, few restrictions on economic expansion, exceptional inventiveness, and a Free Market. As a result, Americans have been rewarded with unprecedented wealth.

Here’s the truth: key pieces of our economy depended on slavery, near-slavery, and the systematic exploitation of human and environmental capital. In the South, African American enslavement was critical to success. Chinese Americans were instrumental in opening up the West. Most recently, Mexicans (who we won’t even allow to become Americans), are exploited everywhere. Our economic well-being is predicated on cheap labor. Corporate greed was only briefly mitigated by the labor movement. As American labor got more expensive and the capacity to exploit without restraint became more difficult, American corporations went global. Today the abuse of Chinese labor is in the headlines. One of the richest corporations on earth, Apple, which was founded by a counter-culture kind of guy, created great wealth by outsourcing manufacturing to unregulated Chinese factory barons. Out of sight, out of mind.

The Occupy movement has exposed Americans to the discrepancies between rules for the 1% and the rules that govern the rest of us. But it hasn’t challenged the fundamental and unstated belief that it is OK to exploit anyone who is lower on the economic food chain in order to preserve your own place in the hierarchy. Without addressing the abuses of Free Market Capitalism (a la Milton Friedman), we will perpetuate an inherently unequal and immoral system. With the modern labor movement decimated by right-wing labor-busting tactics and internal corruption, no one protects workers. Worker abuses, whether in China or Florida, are human rights abuses. For all our talk about religion in this country, we feel little moral outrage about the treatment of those who farm for us, slaughter our animals, cook our meals, or build our phones. Tellingly, almost all of these people are people of color.

There is a ray of hope. There was this news yesterday about Foxconn which was likely in response to Apple’s move to address labor abuses. However, pressure on Apple and other tech companies must continue, given the attempt at a premature whitewash by the president of the “labor” organization investigating abuse. Addressing abuse here at home is harder, especially in a dismal economy. Labor -- whether in manufacturing, computing, agriculture or meat-packing -- is held hostage to the fear of deportation. For the middle class, the jobs get deported. For the working poor, they get deported.

We no longer lock people in cages, refuse to feed them, work them literally to death, and then dump them in unmarked graves. Every one of us should honor the men and women who died because we looked the other way while white Southerners enslaved a whole people, TWICE. But abuse, more subtle and often invisible, continues in our name. It’s past time for an American Spring.

Boomer and Busted

This is not fun. The whole lot of us, are going mad ... and feeling mad ....and soon, we'll be behaving badly. You just watch.

This week, MSNBC posted this story: "Boomers Face Stark Choices in a Bleak Economy". Now there's a headline that'll turn your blood to ice.

The article lays out the daunting tasks ahead for people my age who are too young and too financially vulnerable to retire. Between the crash in the housing market -- where most of us stashed a big chunk of our money -- and the crash in the stock market -- where our alleged retirement savings safely resided for "the long term" -- we've been left floundering. More dire, our jobs are at risk and when we lose them, many of us never find another. Today, even the poorly paying ones in retail and low-paying service businesses, are vanishing.

Losing your job when you are in your 50s and 60s is nothing like the experience when you are in your prime -- your 30s and 40s. Ageism rules, and don't for a minute think it doesn't. You are too expensive to hire -- not just the overt salary cost, but the cost of your health care may be higher. Your experience makes people reluctant to place you in a lower level job, where you might cause trouble for your (almost certainly younger) boss. You are presumed to be less adaptable intellectually, less technologically savvy, less interested in new approaches to work. And you are expected to tire easily and resist working long hours.

Most of this is bullshit. And if you've ever worked with a lot of 30- somethings, you should have some pretty eye-opening experience with the gap between the baby boomer work ethic and the one held by younger workers. But I digress. The bottom line: if we lose a job, we aren't going to find one any time soon and if we do, it will pay less.

The article goes on to promote a return to school. Go ahead, retrain, "re-invent" yourself. OK. I'm good with that. I've done that more than once. The last time, I spent the majority of my life savings going to graduate school in my late 50s. It landed me my current job, which I've just been told may be at-risk. For all the hype around the potential for growth in the health care industry, many hospitals and physician groups are down-sizing. They may need workers, but they don't have money to pay them. So what are we supposed to reinvent ourselves to do??

Yeah, I know, we are all going to have to work until we die. OK, I'm "in". But the assumption is that the work will be there. I fear that it won't. If my hunch is right, then what? The burden of this reality is not going to strike my generation alone. For those of us with adult children, the possibility is growing that we are going to have to move back to multi-generational homes. Parents, grandparents, and grandchildren may begin to live together again, and we will all be living with less. Even if the economy begins to recover over the next 12-18 months, our savings and our jobs will never return to the levels they were before the Great Recession of 2009. We are facing an entirely different future than the one we envisioned.

Compounding it all is our guilt and shame. We almost certainly made mistakes ...investing badly out of ignorance, assuming the boom times would persist, getting hooked by the seductions of a consumer society. Now, even if we still have a job, we know how thin the ice is beneath our feet. Most of us cannot survive a catastrophe -- major housing expenses, a dire health care diagnosis, a job loss. We have vowed to work harder, to prove our value to our employer, to be willing to do whatever it takes to earn a living. But the dice may not land as we hope ...and so much is out of our control. The article notes that we have become increasingly isolated, for we don't want to let on how scared and vulnerable we are. We are a proud and mostly optimistic generation, who believed we could achieve all our dreams if we just worked hard enough. Here we are. With dreams and assumptions shattered, along with our security.

On the community level, we need to use our legendary boomer creativity to imagine other futures, other ways to live and be of value. We need to consider the potential for founding new businesses that have growth potential. And we need to loudly and aggressively lobby for universal, government sponsored health care -- the source of our largest expense, a major deterrent to entrepreneurial activity, and a primary reason for bankruptcy.

On the personal level, we need to talk. To our kids, to our friends. We need to be honest about the reality that at some point, despite our best efforts, we may not be able to afford to live on our own, much as we dread that possibility. Some good may come of that. We may create stronger and more compassionate families. We have much to teach our children and grandchildren, if they choose to value our experience and wisdom. But none of this was in our plan. We never intended on becoming more dependent than our own parents were. But if we've hit our high mark, and it is likely many of us have, we'd all -- parents and children -- best be thinking pragmatically about Plan D.

I Have a Very Bad Feeling ...

South Carolina results are in. We took a whoopin'. There is just no way to dismiss these results as aberrant or a reflection of the black vote alone. I truly believe this is a message to Bill and Hillary that their hardball politics were repugnant to voters. When S.C. white voters line up behind Barack, you have to be willing to entertain the idea that he just might be able to mobilize white voters in the south and west.

We have a long way to go yet, but one thing is clear: Bill needs to get out of the way. He is suddenly making this contest about him, not about Hillary. I'm deeply concerned that she will not be able to stand on her own now, not because she doesn't know how, but because his messages overshadow her. It is also possible that the tactics of their well-oiled machine are no longer appropriate to this time and place.


I have been mighty pissed at Obama supporters over the last two weeks. Their insistence that he is the second coming borders on a faith-based ardor that some days scares the piss out of me. They are intolerant of any facts that fly in the face of the reality they have constructed. That is perilously close to the dynamic we've lived with for the last 7 years. I do not think that Obama is promoting this; I think it is a reflection of the youth that dominate his campaign.

I'm a pragmatist and have said I would support our nominee, regardless who that might be. Since I declared myself one week ago, the universe shifted. The MSM has decisively lined up behind the Obama campaign and defined the narrative. The increasingly subtle and not-so-subtle attacks on Obama, that stirred up the spectre of racial divides, have been toxic beyond imagining. But the bad feeling I'm having isn't about Obama supporters or Obama himself, it's the feeling that I have that S.C. was the tipping point. Hillary just might be done.

Holy Crap ...Urrr, Matrimony!

Just released. Is this good news for Democrats this year? No question that it is the right answer morally, at least from my perspective. But I can just imagine the distraction this will cause in the primary campaigns and later, the general election. The last damn thing we need is another 'values' election in which the Fundies gear up to defeat Democrats who are constantly being asked, "So, do you support gay marriage like Al Gore does?"

I applaud Al's courage but I'm thinkin' that this time, his judgment sucks.

Coulter-Geist Sticks It to the Jews

In case you missed this:



So, Ann Coulter, the darling of the Right, thinks Jews should be 'perfected'. America would be better off if we were a Christian-only country.

This woman makes millions spewing her hate. Media men, in particular, seemed charmed by this anorexic, unredeemable bitch and feature her repeatedly on their shows. Her current book is in the top 10 on many best seller lists. While her existence demonstrates that the Constitution can protect even hateful bigots, I'm troubled, disgusted, and enraged that:

• There is a large contingent of Americans who think she has something valid to say
• Right-wing pundits and politicians are silent when she spits her venomous lies
• My so-called compassionate Christian friends don't vocally reject her
• The MSM continues to give her free air-time

What is most amazing about this current hateful episode is that she made her remarks to a Jew, and even excused them because she assumed that he wasn't 'practicing', so he had no right to be offended. Her arrogance and ignorance are astounding. To his credit, the host struck back -- vocally, definitively, and effectively. I, of a more volatile temper, would have knocked the bitch on her bony little ass. But that's just me.

You know, we Lefties are supposed to pride ourselves on tolerance and a preference for non-violence. But there are times when to be tolerant is to be complicit in spreading hate that has the potential to fan violence against The Other, whether that "other" be Muslims, Jews, gays, Blacks, Asians, Hispanic immigrants...anyone who isn't a white Christian.

A core tenet of the Jewish faith is to be welcoming to those who are not like us. We have an obligation to heal the fractured world, without regard to whether or not those living in it are like us or not. Nowhere does our faith suggest we be for ourselves alone. In fact, that is counter to everything we are supposed to stand for. Christians like Coulter (and she is a surrogate for those who lack her mainstream platform) are exclusivists. Her vision is to have a world where everyone is a white, Christian, Republican. Period.

She sickens me. And yes, I hate her. I have a moral obligation to stand against her. And you can bet that I will. Hopefully, whatever your faith, you will too.