Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) Wins Mexican Presidency

Andrés Manuel López Obrador speaks
at a press conference in Mexico City, July 3,
2018 (Photo: Manuel Velazquez/Getty Images)
from New York Magazine

Three times can sometimes produce a seismic charm, or so it appears for Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) (1953-), who was finally elected President of Mexico on July 1, this past Sunday. Though a longtime member the leftist Partido de la Revolución Democrática (Democratic Revolution Party, or PRD) and a failed candidate in the contested 2006 and 2012 national elections, AMLO, a former Governor of the Federal District, ran under the aegis of a new left-leaning coalition, Juntos Haremos Historia (Together We Will Make History), that comprised the progressive Movimiento de la Regeneración Nacional (National Regeneration Movement/MORENA) and Partido de Trabajadores (Labor Party/PT) parties with a socially conservative party, Partido Encuentro Social (Social Encounter Party/PES). AMLO will assume office on December 1, 2018, which, given Mexico's current parlous state, will not be a moment too soon.

AMLO's chief rivals in this year's presidential election were Ricardo Anaya of the Partido Acción Nacional (National Action Party/PAN), the center-right party of former president Vicente Fox (who served from 2000-2006) an antagonist of US Republican presidents George W. Bush and Donald Trump; José Antonio Meade of the Partido Revolucionario Institucional (Institutional Revolutionary Party/PRI), the neoliberal, longtime ruling party to which incumbent president Enrique Peña Nieto (2012-2018) belongs; and two independent candidates, Jaime Rodríguez Calderón, who had previously become the first independent candidate to win a state governorship when he helmed Nuevo Leon; and Margarita Zavala, a noted lawyer, and the wife of former president and PAN figurehead Felipe Calderón (in office from 2006-2012).

In essence, AMLO was not just leading a visibly left coalition but represented the only left-leaning option for Mexican voters in this presidential election. As the campaign progressed, Mexico's political and social elites grew increasingly alarmed, and perhaps rightly so. Yet the hiccuping economy, metastasizing violence, which even marked the lead-up to the election, and continuing allegations of extensive, high-level government corruption, blunted the right's blizzard of "Mexico will turn into Venezuela"-scare tactics, some with racist and classist tones, including advertisements, robocalls, videos, and social media attacks, not unlike ones that had doomed AMLO's chances in the prior two elections.

In one instance, a PRI operative named Enrique Ochoa Reza tweeted that PRI politicians who switched parties to MORENA were "Prietos que no aprietan" (Dark-skinned/black people who can't get a hold), playing on the double meanings of "moreno/a" (brown/black man/woman) and "prieto" (dark/black person), as well as the feminine form of the former word (morena=brown woman/black woman) and the verb aprietar (not being able to keep somebody). Ochoa Reza did apologize for the racist aspect of his slur, but not the misogynistic one. Additionally, there were allegations of US and Guatemalan meddling in the campaign, and Ochoa Reza accused Russia of interfering on behalf of AMLO, a charge the eventual victor laughed off.

The attacks, however numerous and outrageous, could not overcome Mexican voters disgust at the current state of affairs. AMLO won in a landslide, defeating Anaya by 21 percentage points while winning 53% of the total vote and popular vote. The final tally in an election that saw a 63.6% turnout (or 56.6 million voters out of 89.9 registered voters) was as follows, with AMLO winning 31 of Mexico's 32 states, and the first outright majority for a presidential candidate since 1989:

2018 Mexican Presidential Candidate & Party	Vote Total
AMLO (National Regeneration Movement/Juntos Haremos Historia)	30,112,109
Ricardo Anaya (PAN/Por México al Frente)	12,609,472
José Antonio Meade (PRI/Todos por México)	9,289,378
Jaime Rodríguez Calderón (Independent)	32,743
Margarita Zavala (Independent)	31,983

While his ideology has long been diametrically opposed to what we see with a figure like Donald Trump, they share a vocal populist nationalism, AMLO's rooted in the left and democratic socialism instead of Trump's ethnonationalist and racist authoritarian approach. What this might mean for the cozy relationship between Mexico's large corporations and land owners and the government and for an approach to a renegotiated North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) that privileges international structures and rules over the country's laws remains to be seen, but given the Juntos Haremos Historia/MORENA's capture of 312 of 500 seats in the Chamber of Deputies, and the strong popular mandate for the coalition and new president, AMLO could throw wrenches in Mexico's steady march towards privatization and economic (classical) liberalization, in favor of policies that more effectively and immediately address the rising economic inequality and insecurity that millions of Mexicans are facing.

During the campaign AMLO announced that he would push to reform some of the perks of the presidency, including cutting his salary and that of top officials, selling presidential planes, creating a public park out of the presidential grounds, and ending the lifetime pension former presidents receive, with the savings being directed towards Mexican seniors, who have a far less secure and comparatively robust retirement savings system than US's fixed pensions, 401K savings plans, and Social Security (which itself is admittedly always under threat from US conservatives and neoliberals). He also attacked the International Monetary Fund as an enabler of and participant in Mexico's corruption, suggesting he might pull back not just from the IMF but from other international financial systems that have long kept Mexico under yoke. One key question would be how projected new NAFTA negotiations might change as a result of this approach.

As Nathaniel Parish Flannery argues in a recent Forbes article, "The AMLO Era: Why Mexico's 2018 Election Matters," nearly half of Mexicans live in poverty, and despite the country's prowess in manufacturing, wages remain abysmal. Stemming governmental corruption and addressing the country's sluggish growth rate, rising economic and social inequality, the persistent lack of jobs in the formal economy, and low, stagnant wages across all labor sectors could have beneficial, ramifying effects on all aspects of Mexican society. The question for AMLO and Mexico's congress is how to spur all of this such that all the wealth does not continue to flow upwards to the relatively tiny sector of rich elites. Strategies to create a viable and vibrant middle class, which would necessitate a retreat from the neoliberalization of the prior PRI and PAN administrations, transformed tax and business policies, support for public education and farmers, and a strengthened safety net, could be among AMLO's and the new left-leaning Congress's potential steps.

Some of this, beyond NAFTA talks, will hinge on the "new relationship" AMLO has vowed to forge with Mexico's often domineering neighbor the United States. While the US and Mexico are among each others' largest trading partners and cooperate extensively in a range of areas, the two current leaders, Trump and Peña Nieto, have been at loggerheads, in part because of Trump's persistent attacks on Mexico and Mexicans, beginning the day he announced his presidential campaign and slandered Mexican immigrants, and because Peña Nieto understandably has refused to pay for Trump's desired border wall. AMLO has already challenged the border wall idea in a pamphlet he published, entitled Oye Trump (Listen Up, Trump). One goal AMLO outlined was development of Mexico's "internal market," so that "Mexicans can work and be happy where they were born, where their family is, where their customs and cultures are." Creating an expanding middle class is crucial to ensuring this market can flourish, and to transforming the migrant flows.

Another challenge for AMLO will be to figure out a way to lower the violence that has plagued Mexico. Neither Calderón's nor Peña Nieto's approaches worked; corruption remains endemic at all levels, and organized crime is strong as well. In addition, since September 2017, 130 political figures, from the municipal to the national level, have been murdered, and journalists across Mexico have been targeted for investigative and critical work. AMLO supposedly has suggested amnesty for low-level drug offenders, which sparked criticism, but it also is the case that Peña Nieto's initial policy approach of militarized attacks on the cartels failed, as did prior attempts to negotiate with organized crime. Rising pay for all workers, and better wages for domestic security and military forces could help to thwart the power of organized crime to infiltrate them, but AMLO also has suggested a "peace plan," involving human rights organizations, religious organizations, among others, to negotiate a decline in the murder rate.

I see less of a parallel with Hugo Chavez, to who AMLO has been repeatedly compared, and more of one with the presidency of Luiz Inácio "Lula" da Silva, Brazil's now imprisoned but still widely popular former president. Formerly a firebrand leftist from his country's Worker's Party, Lula lost three elections before finally becoming president in 2003, and governed for two terms. Lula moderated his platform in his successful campaign, presiding over a series of liberalized economic policies that on the one hand led to considerable growth, but which included a range of social policies that helped lift millions of Brazilians out of poverty, increased Brazil's safety net, and created a visible if fragile middle class. Unfortunately, Lula did not target systemic corruption with the same zeal, and now finds himself crucified not only because of his opponents' vengeance, but as a result of his and his successor's failure to truly wrestle with the beast of corruption during the height of their successes. With AMLO, domestic economic policies and global financial trends could prove his ally or enemy, but a failure to address systemic corruption, impossible a task as that may be, could destroy not only the tremendous support he now enjoys, but damn his and his coalition's future, let alone Mexico, for decades to come.

Bill de Blasio's [Near?-]Victory (& Secret Weapon) + UPDATE

Dante, Chiara, Bill and Chirlane de Blasio
(© David Handschuh, New York Daily News)

Below I've posted bit of silliness from one of my little drawing notebooks, though this post is about the serious and very positive outcome of last night's New York City Mayoral primary, which was the victory (perhaps without a runoff) of Brooklyn City Councilman Bill de Blasio over his Democratic rivals Bill Thompson (the 2009 opponent of retiring Mayor Mike Bloomberg), City Councilor and Bloomberg ally Christine Quinn, disgraced former Congressman Anthony Weiner, former City Comptroller and Councilman John Liu, and several other candidates. De Blasio needed 40% of the vote to avoid a runoff against the second-place finisher (Thompson, who finished with 26%) and appears to have just crossed that line, but all the votes have not yet been counted so if his margin does not hold up, there will be a runoff election in three weeks. The possibility of this became Bill Thompson's chant last night.   Even if there is a runoff, de Blasio is leading in the polls, and will likely trounce the mumbling Republican victor,  Joe Lhota, former MTA head and deputy mayor to Rudy Giuliani. The three Republicans running together received fewer votes that third-place Democratic candidate Quinn, a portent of what the outcome will be in the general election.

Just a few months ago De Blasio was listing in fourth place behind Quinn, Weiner and Thompson, but the combination of increased exposure to Quinn's record, Weiner's disastrous scandal, and Thompson's waffling on the New York Police Department "stop and frisk" policy opened up a space for one of the two most progressive candidates running. (Liu's politics are decidedly to the left of the other Democrats, and he was an outspoken critic of "stop and frisk," but the whiff of financial impropriety, linked to his prior campaign and a major funder, kept him in single digits throughout.)  What boosted De Blasio's profile were his insistent push for economic policies that differed from those of the Bloomberg era, and the brilliant debut of a campaign commercial featuring a 15-year-old, brown-skinned prodigiously afroed young man named Dante, who speaks personally about the "stop and frisk" policy, and who reveals only at the political ad's end that he is, in fact, Bill de Blasio's son. Perhaps there was no direct correlation, but after the ad aired, de Blasio's star began to rise and it soared all the way to the campaign's end. It neutralized Thompson's support among black voters and reflected for Democratic-leaning voters a reality, embodied by de Blasio's family, of the city most of them live in; not just one brimming with hipsters and billionaires, but the largest, most racially, ethnically and religiously diverse city in the US. De Blasio also won over women and LGBTIQ voters from Quinn, who, had she emerged as the front-runner, would have been New York City's first woman and lesbian (i.e., openly gay) mayor.

De Blasio will face an array of challenges when he takes office. First among them will be negotiating both back wages and new contracts with the city's various unions. There will also be the issue of future pension funding, a responsibility that is the direct purview of the city's comptroller, a job that former Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer won over former governor and Attorney General Eliot Spitzer, but over which the mayor will have some say. Another pressing issue will be to find a way, at a time of tremendous, increasing economic inequality and government complacency about unemployment and the housing crisis, to create more and better-paying jobs for poor, working-class and middle-class New Yorkers. Under Bloomberg the city has increasingly expanded its tech sector, but the job opportunities remain stratified, with little for average New Yorkers in a city that is already among the most expensive in the world. Whether De Blasio will continue the positive, visionary aspects of Bloomberg's tenure (quality-of-life improvements like the bike lanes; advance planning and transformation of the city's infrastructure in preparation for mega-storms caused by global warming, etc.) is unclear. De Blasio might have visionary plans of his own that will benefit a wide array of city residents and visitors. He inherits a city that works in many ways but doesn't in others. Building upon the former while addressing the latter are tall challenges, but de Blasio looks more than capable enough to meet them.

UPDATE: As of today, Friday, September 13, 2013, 70,000 votes remain to be counted in the Democratic primary. These emergency, absentee and affidavit ballots, mainly in predominantly black neighborhoods, could break for Thompson or de Blasio, or perhaps for another candidate, so they should be counted. I must note that in 2009, Mike Bloomberg defeated Bill Thompson by only 50,597 votes total, in the general election for the mayorship. So counting and certifying all the votes is crucial, and Thompson should stay in the race until this happens, even if that means a run-off. De Blasio still seems poised for a victory in that contest, and in the general race against Joe Lhota.

The New Jersey Senate Primary

A little over two months ago, our senior US Senator from New Jersey, the very rich and progressive Democrat Frank Lautenberg (January 23, 1924 - June 3, 2013), passed away after a lingering illness. He had served two non-consecutive terms in the Senate, from 1982 through 2001, and then again, in the wake of former fellow Democratic Senator and enemy Robert Torricelli's corruption-motivated withdrawal from his re-election candidacy, from 2003 through this year. A World War II veteran and beneficiary of the GI Bill, Lautenberg went on to helm Automated Data Processing (ADP), the payroll processing behemoth, but he never forgot his Depression-era upbringing and the important role that the federal government played in his life and in the transformation of the country from the 1930s on. With Lautenberg's passing New Jersey and the country therefore lost a longstanding champion of many of the best ideals and policies of New Deal liberalism. He had initiated or strongly backed laws that helped protect consumers, increased the minimum wage, penalized drunk drivers, safeguarded the country's chemical facilities, made the tax code more progressive, controlled the free flow of firearms, expanded funding for public transportation projects, and ended smoking on most airplane flights. He had also consistently supported legal abortion services, civil rights and affirmative action, and equality for LGBTQ Americans, including same-sex marriage. Lautenberg was the main sponsor of the Ryan White Care Act, which provides federal support and services for people living with AIDS. He also pushed for the 1984 National Mininum Drinking Age Act.

New Jersey's election laws are somewhat vague on replacing a Senator who dies, because it appears the  Governor can appoint a replacement and then call for a special election; appoint a replacement who serves until the next set general election for that seat; leave the seat open and call for a special election; or leave the seat open and wait until the next set general election for that seat. In the case of New Jersey's current governor, Republican Chris Christie, he chose to appoint a replacement Senator, his friend and fellow Republican, conservative attorney and former state Attorney General Jeffrey Chiesa, and then call for a special election this fall that would not coincide with this fall's statewide general election, which includes the vote for the governorship. In so doing, Christie guaranteed that he will not have a potentially popular and victorious Democrat running for a statewide office on the same ballot as him. The special election, however, which includes a primary next Tuesday, is estimated to cost $24 million at a minimum, which undermines Christie's claims for fiscal conservatism and cost-cutting. Chiesa has thankfully chosen not to run for the seat, so it appears that whichever of the Democrats emerges victorious next week will waltz to election in the special election this fall.

On the Democratic side, four candidates are vying to replace Lautenberg. Two of them are social and economic liberals (Congressman Frank Pallone, State Assembly Speaker Sheila Oliver), one a bonafide progressive (Congressman, research physicist and former professor Rush Holt), and the fourth and leading candidate appears to espouse socially liberal and economically neoliberal policies (Newark Mayor Cory Booker). Dr. Rush Holt, who has represented the 12th District for 8 consecutive terms (since 1998), has been a real progressive. A member of the Progressive Caucus, he advocated for the public option during the health insurance bill debate, has pushed for affordable higher education, has repeatedly said he would not support cuts to Medicare and Social Security, and has been steadfast in pushing for laws to ensure safe, legal and available abortion services. On environmental issues he has championed policies that would shift the country from its current non-renewable course towards renewables, a greenhouse cap, and lower subsidies for the oil and gas industry.  He also attempted to push for greater limits on the government surveillance. 

Yet he is currently in third place in the polls, just behind Congressman Pallone, who first represented New Jersey's 3rd district, from 1988 to 1993, before becoming the 6th district representative since 1993, who also has a strong progressive record, and was endorsed by Lautenberg's widow. Assemblywoman Sheila Oliver is in fourth place so far, but her record in the New Jersey State Assembly, in which she has served since 2004, has pursued consistently liberal policies, but one of her past accomplishments that particularly stands out is her work with the Newark Coalition for Low Income Housing, which she co-founded, and which was able to provoke a federal consent order requiring the Newark Housing Authority and the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development to construct one-for-one replacement housing for any housing projects demolished in the city. She unfortunately has underplayed this background and stressed that she would be New Jersey's first female and black US Senator if elected.

So powerful is two-term Mayor Cory Booker's public appeal and charisma, so high his profile, that as of this weekend, he was far in the lead, polling above 50%, and barring a calamity, will win the primary, and, as I noted above, the general election. Razor sharp, a social media maven, and an actual hero--he really did pull a constituent out of a burning building, saving her life--Booker has a record of accomplishment in Newark, where crime has fallen and jobs and development have increased since he assumed office in 2006. Among his achievements have been achieving a significant crime drop, including the largest by percentage in the US from 2006 to 2008; streamlining the city's budget; increasing affordable public housing; and attacking "pay-to-play" land deals negotiated under his predecessor, convicted ex-mayor Sharpe James. He has also shown himself to be a humanitarian and public servant by example, with actions, criticized by some as stunts, like rescuing abandoned dogs, surviving on a Supplemental Nutritional Aid Program (SNAP) budget for a week, and inviting Newark residents displaced by Hurricane Sandy stay and dine in his home.  I have had the benefit of hearing him speak several times, and as I witnessed during the opening session of Rutgers University's annual Marion Thompson Wright Symposium, he can be an inspired and inspiring--rousing--orator, with more than just rhetorical gifts, but the ability to strike a deeper chord, and convey a passion, in that case for the important of history and of ideas, that other politicians cannot manage even under the best of circumstances.

Yet Booker has also been a strong advocate of "education reform" (charter schools, vouchers and privatizing public education) and pro-Wall Street economic policy, and has received support for financial industry and corporate backers going back to his first campaign for Newark mayor in 2002. In 2010 he persuaded Facebook co-founder and impresario Mark Zuckerberg to donate $100 million to a foundation to benefit the Newark Public Schools but it remains unclear where in the school system that money will go and how well it will be put to use. The links to Silicon Valley extend beyond Zuckerberg; The New York Times revealed this week, has presided over a private tech startup, Waywire, that has barely functioning but, far worse, is basically underwritten by Silicon Valley executives and powerbrokers and had appointed the 15-year-old son of former NBC honcho and current CNN head Jeff Zucker to its advisory board. After the uproar, Zucker's son resigned, but the status of the company and this particular episode underlined that in addition to his extensive record of success, his overwhelming positive attributes, and the star power, much like former First Lady, US Senator from New York and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, that he possesses and will continue to generate, benefiting the state, he will be as beholden to the plutocrats and their agenda as to New Jersey residents and the nation.  I have donated to Booker's and Holt's campaigns, and probably will vote for Booker, but the optimal scenario would be to have Booker and Holt as New Jersey's Senators, and the current senior senator, Democrat Robert Menendez, whiling away his time at a policy institute somewhere.

As for the Republicans, the leading candidate is Steve Lonegan, the legally blind former mayor of Bogota, New Jersey, and a twice-failed candidate for governor. Lonegan was the subject of the 2003 film Anytown, USA, which chronicled his campaign for reelection that year; once elected, he pursued conservative policies such as cutting municipal spending, consolidation of departments, and privatizing services and undercutting unions. Since leaving office in 2007, he has headed the New Jersey chapter of Americans for Prosperity, the conservative public policy organization, and pushed for policies counter to and considerably to the right of the general state political and ideological mood. He also has been dogged by various controversies, among the most recent of them that a member of his campaign staff tweeted a derogatory, racist comment about Cory Booker and the city of Newark ("just leaked — Cory Booker’s foreign policy debate prep notes," below which was a map of Newark with the words "West Africa, Guyana, Portugal, Brazil” and “Middle East, Afghanistan, Pakistan, plus Bangladesh and Trinidad" designating Newark's differing neighborhoods). Lonegan claimed that the tweet was not meant to be racist, but then one need only need look at his past, which has included calling for a McDonald's billboard in Spanish to be taken down and trying to make English the official language of Bergen County. His main challenger is Dr. Alieta Eck, a physician and diehard opponent of the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare). She has gotten no traction whatsoever, and it's unlikely that Lonegan, the favorite to win the Republican primary, will exceed 45% of the vote this upcoming fall.

Fiscal Cliff/Austerity Bomb/Phantom Crisis

There have been many excellent reports online about the alleged "fiscal cliff," which is not a cliff at all but more of a "slope," and which really merits a far better metaphor of the kind that Paul Krugman and others have devised, the "austerity" bomb. A while ago, I wrote about what was behind the push for austerity, and I urge J's Theater readers who have not already read Krugman's column today, "Fighting Fiscal Phantoms" to review it, because he not only names the chief player behind the "fiscal cliff"/"deficit scold" testeria, but summarizes why it is hardly what we're being told it is, including by the White House, with the complicity of one of Krugman's employers, the New York Times. His column crystallized for me what I've long thought about why we keep running into this crisis around taxes, the social safety net (i.e., "entitlements"), the government's role, and the establishment media's unwillingness to spell out what's really at stake (or its willingness participate in manufacturing consent by playing up the crisis). When you have multimillionaires like Goldman Sachs's chief, Lloyd Blankfein, hopping aboard Trojan horses like "Fix the Debt" despite the fact that his company has gorged at the government's troughs, the game and fix are clear enough to me. Here are my thoughts, adapted from an email I sent to some friends and broken down into numbered points, about what's really behind the current fiscal cliff crisis.

The GOP and conservative Democrats, agents of the plutocracy (or the 1%, or oligarchy, or billionocracy, whatever designation you like), seek to:

1) slash the social safety net now so that there will be less need later to keep marginal and capital gains tax rates, especially for the 1% and corporations, at even the current historically low levels--making it likely that any future necessary tax increases will disparately impact the middle and working classes and the poor;

2) under the rubric of "tax reform," steadily ratchet down marginal rates on the 1%, lower corporate rates, zero out capital gains taxes, eliminate estate taxes, cut all loopholes that do not benefit plutocrats, and allow various territorial tax schemes that allow the 1% and corporations to avoid US taxes and play other federal, regional or territorial tax regimes against each other;

3) lock in spending for the military and any programs (like Fed Reserve spending) that benefit the top 1%, Wall St., military-industrial complex beneficiaries, and if it takes a war or three to guarantee it, so be it; 

4) privatize as much of the remaining government as possible, so that those with the access and assets can feed off all the new revenue streams and what remains of a severely weakened, defunded governmental system;

5) rhetorically demonize government, via the corporate media (which has a stake in picking the bones of the government dry) to blame it for its failure to address the needs of the 99% (or 47%), while destroying and sucking every last dollar out of it.

Speaker John Boehner, President Barack Obama meet
to discuss the "fiscal cliff," November 16, 2012
(Carolyn Kaster/AP, csmonitor.com)

But it doesn't have to be this way at all. There was a Budget of the Congressional Progressive Caucus that progressives in Congress have seemed incapable of championing, and the result is that the GOP, neoliberals and the establishment media see fit not merely to sneer but to bury it altogether. Even short of the Progressive Budget, though, the default of returning to the Clinton-era tax rates, which involve much more than the federal marginal income tax rates (the top being a relatively low 39.5%; top economists Emmanuel Saez and Thomas Piketty recommend a much higher rate of around 70%), but also capital gains taxes, the estate tax, the alternative minimum tax, and payroll taxes, just to name a few, is a better option that the austerity push with safety net cuts we have before us. De jure austerity has been a complete failure in Europe, and de facto austerity here, in the form of government cuts over the last 3 years, has kept the US economy from growing as robustly as it could. Furthermore, there are fairly simple fixes for Social Security that do no involve raising eligibility or reindexing it, while Medicare's and Medicaid's problems, more difficult to resolve, need not entail raising or restricting eligibility; a single payer system or Medicare-for-all would do more to lower health care costs and ensure Medicare's future than the fixes the GOP and Democrats are proposing.

Krugman states very clearly what I learned in introductory macroeconomics. We are not anywhere close to the Federal Reserve's inflation target for full employment. Price stability is not its only mandate, and the people and corporations sitting on cash will put it to better use as we approach the 4% target. Additionally we will not go bankrupt or encounter the problems of Greece or any of the other European peripheral countries because we have our own central bank and control our own monetary policy and currency. US monetary policy over the last five years has had a beneficial effect on the economy, and the libertarian Republican Ben Bernanke is hardly about to turn into Andrew Mellon or Paul Greenspan. We will not encounter the problems South Korea did in its debt crisis because most of the debt is in our own currency, and primarily owed to the US or American creditors. The cries about a weaker dollar overlook the fact that even in a weakened global economy weak dollars help the US with exports, providing a necessary jumpstart for the economy, and improving our balance of trade.

One thing that Krugman has been begging the President and Congress to consider is the basic Keynesian principle of borrowing now, with borrowing costs at near historic lows, to underwrite a massive jobs and infrastructure bill. We can more than make up the costs by increased revenues from higher tax rates and increased employment, and we will set ourselves up for even greater economic prosperity in the future with an improved and expanded infrastructure, a better educated populace, and an economy that is powering forward. Lastly, cram down legislation, which the banks and Wall Street have fought, and which their agent Timothy Geithner has worked hard to prevent, would be the best plan for the housing crisis. It's unlikely to happen, but that coupled with all the other strategies above, and a vibrant safety net that protects vulnerable Americans, would really help the economy in ways all the tax cuts in the world to billionaires never could.

Obama & Biden Win Reelection!

President Barack Obama, First Lady Michelle Obama
Vice President Joe Biden and Second Lady Dr. Jill Biden
(Sept. 7, 2012, Portsmouth, NH (AP Photo/Jim Cole))

They did it, we did it! President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden won yesterday's national contest over Republicans Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan, by a margin of 303 electoral votes to 203 for the Romney-Ryan ticket! Our 44th President and his Vice President will have 4 more years to continue the work they began in 2008, with a more liberal US Senate, including new progressive Democratic senators like Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and the first out lesbian senator in US history, Tammy Baldwin, of Wisconsin. Despite the Romney's campaign's head games, which beguiled the establishment media, the Obama campaign did enough to energize its DEMOCRATIC coalition, and won the majority of the swing states, including Ohio, Virginia, Florida, Colorado, New Hampshire, Nevada, and VP nominee Paul Ryan's home state of Wisconsin, sealing the victory for the Democratic ticket. Despite the ongoing economic crises, enough voters felt things were turning around to give the President a second chance. Despite billions from secret Super PAC funders, many of them billionaires and multimillionaires, the outright plutocratic Republican ticket lost.

I sincerely hope President Obama will take a few more tips from his predecessor and campaign energizer, former president Bill Clinton, who despite all the gloomy predictions, especially from the right and mainstream media, modestly raised taxes in 1993 on everyone, including the rich, and went on to preside over the most successful economic expansion of any president in the last 50 years. I hope he--and voters, since the media are paid to be obtuse--realize too that as Bill Clinton, who repeatedly accommodated the GOP learned the hard way, there is only so far you can go. They will still try to destroy you, so negotiate from strength, not weakness. Ignore the Washington consensus, and push for what you believe in. Obama will have an increased Democratic majority in the Senate, led by the wily Harry Reid (D-NV), so if a jobs bill requires reconciliation, push it through. If smart-grid funding requires reconciliation, push it through. With bills that might merit bipartisanship, like immigration reform, extend an olive branch to the GOP. Otherwise, do no let them roll you, and keep pushing forward, especially on green technologies, a saner foreign policy, a progressive judiciary, and fiscal plans that shrink the income gap and increase job opportunities for the 99%.

But that all will be work to undertake after being sworn in a second time. With the victories for marriage equality in Maryland and Maine, the positive ballot measure victories in New Jersey and elsewhere, and the defeat of hatemongers like Republicans Joe Walsh of Illinois and Allen West of Florida, the country outside the deep South does appear to have rejected the politics of negation, dissimulation and aristocracy, and is showing it is willing to move forward. It's up to all of us now to maintain that movement, and keep pushing, as hard as it will often seem. Even the Clinton-era rates, set to return in January 2014, won't pry the cold fingers off the millions of those willing to spend everything to rewrite laws to benefit themselves and their elite class.

Congratulations to President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden. You did it, we did it. Now we need to really do it, and keep the country moving the best direction!

Economics and Occupy

Scrambling, between libraries, offices, cities (and states, that sit right across a river from each other) these days, so in lieu of a longer post (a few are coming), here's a link directly from Paul Krugman's "The Conscience of a Liberal Blog," on economics and the Occupy movement (let's not forget them!).

Happy Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day

Happy Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day! 

Here is the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s commencement speech at the historically progressive Oberlin College in the year of my birth. So much of what he said all the way back then has come to pass, but so much still awaits our hard, dedicated, unflinching work.  From the Oberlin College archives:

"Remaining Awake Through a Great Revolution"

Commencement Address for Oberlin College
By Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
June 1965, Oberlin Ohio

"[Oberlin College] President Carr, members of the faculty, and members of the graduating class of this great institution of learning, ladies and gentlemen:

I can never come to this campus without a deep sense of appreciation and gratitude for all that this great institution has done for the cultural, political, and social life of our nation and the world. By all standards of measurement, Oberlin is one of the great colleges, not only of our nation, but of the world. I am also deeply honored to share the platform today with so many distinguished citizens of our nation - particularly our great secretary of state who, through dedicated and brilliant service, has carved for himself a niche in the annals of our nation's history.

Now to the members of the graduating class: today you bid farewell to the safe security of the academic environment. You prepare to continue your journey on the clamorous highways of life. And I would like to have you think with me on this significant occasion on the subject, "Remaining Awake Through a Great Revolution".

I'm sure that you have read that arresting little story from the pen of Washington Irving entitled Rip Van Winkle. The thing that we usually remember about this story is that Rip Van Winkle slept 20 years. But there is another point in that story that is almost always completely overlooked: it was a sign on the inn in the little town on the Hudson from which Rip went up into the mountain for his long sleep. When he went up, the sign had a picture of King George III of England. When he came down, years later, the sign had a picture of George Washington, the first president of the United States. When Rip looked up at the picture of George Washington, he was completely lost; he knew not who he was. This reveals to us that the most striking fact about the story of Rip Van Winkle is not that he slept 20 years, but that he slept through a revolution. While he was peacefully snoring up on the mountain, a great revolution was taking place in the world - indeed, a revolution which would, at points, change the course of history. And Rip Van Winkle knew nothing about it; he was asleep.

There are all too many people who, in some great period of social change, fail to achieve the new mental outlooks that the new situation demands. There is nothing more tragic than to sleep through a revolution. There can be no gainsaying of the fact that a great revolution is taking place in our world today. It is a social revolution, sweeping away the old order of colonialism. And in our own nation it is sweeping away the old order of slavery and racial segregation. The wind of change is blowing, and we see in our day and our age a significant development. Victor Hugo said on one occasion that there is nothing more powerful in all the world than an idea whose time has come. In a real sense, the idea whose time has come today is the idea of freedom and human dignity. Wherever men are assembled today, the cry is always the same, "We want to be free." And so we see in our own world a revolution of rising expectations. The great challenge facing every individual graduating today is to remain awake through this social revolution.

I'd like to suggest some of the things that we must do in order to remain awake and to achieve the proper mental attitudes and responses that the new situation demands. First, I'd like to say that we are challenged to achieve a world perspective. Anyone who feels that we can live in isolation today, anyone who feels that we can live without being concerned about other individuals and other nations is sleeping through a revolution. The world in which we live is geographically one. The great challenge now is to make it one in terms of brotherhood.

Now it is true that the geographic togetherness of our world has been brought into being, to a large extent, through modern man's scientific ingenuity. Modern man, through his scientific genius, has been able to dwarf distance and place time in chains. Yes, we've been able to carve highways through the stratosphere, and our jet planes have compressed into minutes distances that once took weeks and months. And so this is a small world from a geographical point of view. What we are facing today is the fact that through our scientific and technological genius we've made of this world a neighborhood. And now through our moral and ethical commitment we must make of it a brotherhood. We must all learn to live together as brothers - or we will all perish together as fools. This is the great issue facing us today. No individual can live alone; no nation can live alone. We are tied together.

I remember some time ago Mrs. King and I had the privilege of journeying to that great country, India. And I never will forget the experience - it was a marvelous experience - to meet and talk with the great leaders, with the hundreds of thousands of people all over the cities and villages of that vast country. These experiences will remain dear to me as long as the cords of memory shall lengthen. But I say to you this morning, my friends, that there were those depressing moments, for how can one avoid being depressed when he sees with his own eyes evidence of millions of people going to bed hungry? How can one avoid being depressed when he sees with his own eyes millions of people sleeping on the sidewalks at night; no beds to sleep in; no houses to go into. How can one avoid being depressed when he discovers that out of India's population of more than 400 million people, some 380 million make an annual income of less than $90 a year. And most of these people have never seen a physician or a dentist. As I noticed these conditions, something within me cried out, "Can we in America stand idly by and not be concerned?" And an answer came, "Oh no! because the destiny of the United States is tied up with the destiny of India and every other nation." I started thinking about the fact that we spend millions of dollars a day in our country to store surplus food, and I said to myself, "I know where we can store food free of charge - in the wrinkled stomachs of the millions of God's children in Asia and Africa, in South America, and in our own nation who go to bed hungry at night."

All I'm saying is simply this: that all mankind is tied together; all life is interrelated, and we are all caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. For some strange reason I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. And you can never be what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be - this is the interrelated structure of reality. John Donne caught it years ago and placed it in graphic terms: No man is an Island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main... And then he goes on toward the end to say: any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee. And by believing this, by living out this fact, we will be able to remain awake through a great revolution.

I would like to mention, secondly, that we are challenged to work passionately and unrelentingly to get rid of racial injustice in all its dimensions. Anyone who feels that our nation can survive half segregated and half integrated is sleeping through a revolution. The challenge before us today is to develop a coalition of conscience and get rid of this problem that has been one of the nagging and agonizing ills of our nation over the years. Racial injustice is still the Negro's burden and America's shame. We've made strides, to be sure. We have come a long, long way since the Negro was first brought to this nation as a slave in 1619. In the last decade we have seen significant developments - the Supreme Court's decision outlawing segregation in the public schools, a comprehensive Civil Rights Bill in 1964, and, in a few weeks, a new voting bill to guarantee the right to vote. All of these are significant developments, but I would be dishonest with you this morning if I gave you the impression that we have come to the point where the problem is almost solved.

We must face the honest fact that we still have a long, long way to go before the problem of racial injustice is solved. For while we are quite successful in breaking down the legal barriers to segregation, the Negro is now confronting social and economic barriers which are very real. The Negro is still at the bottom of the economic ladder. He finds himself perishing on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity. Millions of Negroes are still housed in unendurable slums; millions of Negroes are still forced to attend totally inadequate and substandard schools. And we still see, in certain sections of our country, violence and man's inhumanity to man in the most tragic way. All of these things remind us that we have a long, long way to go. For in Alabama and Mississippi, violence and murder where civil rights workers are concerned, are popular and favorite pastimes.

Let nobody give you the impression that the problem of racial injustice will work itself out. Let nobody give you the impression that only time will solve the problem. That is a myth, and it is a myth because time is neutral. It can be used either constructively or destructively. And I'm absolutely convinced that the people of ill will in our nation - the extreme rightists - the forces committed to negative ends - have used time much more effectively than the people of good will. It may well be that we will have to repent in this generation, not merely for the vitriolic works and violent actions of the bad people who bomb a church in Birmingham, Alabama, or shoot down a civil rights worker in Selma, but for the appalling silence and indifference of the good people who sit around and say, "Wait on time." Somewhere we must come to see that human progress never rolls in on wheels of inevitability. It comes through the tireless efforts and the persistent work of dedicated individuals. Without this hard work, time becomes an ally of the primitive forces of social stagnation. So we must help time and realize that the time is always right to do right.

There is another reason why we must get rid of racial injustice. Not merely because it is sociologically untenable or because it is politically unsound, not merely to meet the communist challenge or to create a good image in the world or to appeal to African and Asian peoples, as important as that happens to be. In the final analysis racial injustice must be uprooted from American society because it is morally wrong. Segregation is morally wrong, to use the words of the great Jewish philosopher, Martin Buber, because it substitutes an I-it relationship for the I-thou relationship. Or to use the thinking of Saint Thomas Aquinas, segregation is wrong because it is based on human laws that are out of harmony with the eternal natural and moral laws of the universe. The great Protestant theologian, Paul Tillich, said that sin is separation. And what is segregation but an existential expression of man's tragic estrangement - his awful segregation, his terrible sinfulness? And so in order to rise to our full moral maturity as a nation, we must get rid of segregation whether it is in housing, whether it is a de facto segregation in the public schools, whether it is segregation in public accommodations, or whether it is segregation in the church. We must see that it is morally wrong. We must see that it is a national problem. And no section of our country can boast of clean hands in the area of brotherhood. We strengthen our nation, above all we strengthen our moral commitment; as we work to get rid of this problem.

Now there is another problem facing us that we must deal with if we are to remain awake through a social revolution. We must get rid of violence, hatred, and war. Anyone who feels that the problems of mankind can be solved through violence is sleeping through a revolution. I've said this over and over again, and I believe it more than ever today. We know about violence. It's been the inseparable twin of Western materialism, the hallmark of its grandeur. I am convinced that violence ends up creating many more social problems than it solves. This is why I say to my people that if we succumb to the temptation of using violence in our struggle, unborn generations will be the recipients of a long and desolate night of bitterness. There is another way - a way as old as the insights of Jesus of Nazareth and as modern as the techniques of Mohandas K. Gandhi. For it is possible to stand up against an unjust system with all of your might, with all of your body, with all of your soul, and yet not stoop to hatred and violence. Something about this approach disarms the opponent. It exposes his moral defenses, weakens his morale, and at the same time, works on his conscience. He doesn't know how to handle it. So it is my great hope that, as we struggle for racial justice, we will follow that philosophy and method of non-violent resistance, realizing that this is the approach that can bring about that better day of racial justice for everyone.

In international relations, we must come to see this. We must find some alternative to war and bloodshed. In a day when man-made vehicles are dashing through outer space, and guided ballistic missiles are carving highways of death in the stratosphere, no nation can win a world war. It is no longer a choice between violence and non-violence; it is either non-violence or non-existence. The alternative may well be a civilization plunged into the abyss of annihilation, our earthly habitat transformed into a tragic inferno that even Dante could not imagine. So this is our challenge: to see that war is obsolete, cast into limbo.

I do not wish to minimize the complexity of the problems to be faced in achieving disarmament and peace. But we shall not have the courage, the insight, to deal with such matters unless we are prepared to undergo a mental and spiritual change. It is not enough to say we must not wage war. We must love peace and sacrifice for it. We must fix our visions not merely on the negative expulsion of war, but upon the positive affirmation of peace. We must see that peace represents a sweeter music, far superior to the discords of war. Somehow we must transform the dynamics of the world power struggle from the negative nuclear arms race which no one can win to a positive contest to harness man's creative genius for the purpose of making peace and prosperity a reality for all of the nations of the world. In short, we must shift the arms race into a peace race.

All that I've said is that we must work for peace, for racial justice, for economic justice, and for brotherhood the world over. We have inherited a big house, a great world house in which we have to live together - black and white, Easterners and Westerners, Gentiles and Jews, Protestants and Catholics, Moslem and Hindu. If we all learn to do this we, in a real sense, will remain awake through a great revolution.

I urge you to continue the tradition that you have followed so long, for this institution has probably done more than any other to support the struggle for racial justice. You have given your time, you have given your earnings, you have given your bodies, you have participated in demonstrations, you have participated in the determined struggle to keep this issue in the forefront of the conscience of the nation. I urge you to continue to do so as you go out into your various fields of endeavor. Never allow it to be said that you are silent onlookers, detached spectators, but that you are involved participants in the struggle to make justice a reality.

We sing a little song in our struggle - you've heard it - We Shall Overcome. And by that we do not mean that we shall overcome the white man. In the struggle for racial justice the Negro must not seek to rise from a position of disadvantage to one of advantage, to substitute one tyranny for another. A doctrine of black supremacy is as dangerous as a doctrine of white supremacy. God is not interested in the freedom of black men or brown men or yellow men. God is interested in the freedom of the whole human race, the creation of a society where every man will respect the dignity and worth of personality. So when we sing We Shall Overcome, we are singing a hymn of faith, a hymn of optimism, a hymn of faith in the future.

I can still sing that song because I have faith in the future. I believe that we, as Negroes, are going to gain our freedom in America because the goal of America is freedom. Abused and scorned though we may be, our destiny is tied up with the destiny of America. Before the Pilgrim fathers landed at Plymouth we were here; before Thomas Jefferson etched across the pages of history the majestic words of the Declaration of Independence we were here; before the words of the Star-Spangled Banner were written we were here. For more than two centuries our forbears labored here without wages. They made cotton king; they built the homes of their masters; in the midst of the most oppressive conditions they continued to grow and develop. Certainly if the inexpressible cruelties of slavery couldn't stop us, the opposition that we now face will surely fail. We will win our freedom because both the sacred heritage of our nation and the eternal will of God are embodied in our echoing demands.

Yes, we shall overcome because the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice. We shall overcome because Carlyle is right: "No lie can live forever." We shall overcome because James Russell Lowell is right:

Truth forever on the scaffold,
Wrong forever on the throne,
Yet that scaffold sways the future,
And behind the dim unknown
Standeth God within the shadow,
Keeping watch above his own.

We shall overcome because William Cullen Bryant is right: "Truth, crushed to earth, shall rise again." With this faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair, the stone of hope. With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood, and speed up the day when, in the words of the prophet Amos, "Justice will roll down like waters; and righteousness like a mighty stream."

Let us stand up. Let us be a concerned generation. Let us remain awake through a great revolution. And we will speed up that great day when the American Dream will be a reality. We, in the final analysis, can gain consolation from the fact that at least we've made strides in our struggle for peace and in our struggle for justice. We still have a long, long way to go, but at least we've made a creative beginning.

And so I close by quoting the words of an old Negro slave preacher who didn't quite have his grammar right, but uttered words of great and profound significance:

Lord, we ain't what we oughta be;
We ain't what we wanna be;
We ain't what we're gonna be;
But thank God we ain't what we was! "

1/2 US Near Destitution + Acemoglu on Inequality

I don't spend much time in the precincts of the 1%, so it was no surprise to me to read back in the New York Times back in November that according the US Census figures, in 2010, 1 in 3 Americans, or around 100 million Americans, adults and children, were economically just above or already below the poverty line. The Times article focused on how an alternative measure of the US economic situation that adjusted for cost of living and included government benefits and income lost to taxes, health care and work expenses showed 17% now falling into the "near poor" category, as opposed to the 10% that the official government measures had identified (cf. the US Census Bureau). For these Americans, only a gossamer barrier--a paycheck or two, ill health, a shock of any sort--is keeping them from outright destitution.

Recent figures, however, suggest the situation is even more dire. NPR reported on Thursday that new measures of poverty, which account for "medical, commuting and other living costs" have pushed the number of those living in the near-poor to deep poor range to 146.4 million, or 48% per cent of the US population. To put it another way, nearly half the US population is right up against or in economic destitution, and despite the official economic indicators, which point to slow, modest economic growth and private job creation, half the country is still staggering through the Great Recession. As both the earlier and the current figures make clear, were it not for governmental programs, more people would be in the poor and deep-poor categories; even with them, millions of Americans are barely keeping food in their and their children's stomachs, roofs over their heads, gas in their cars or change in their pockets for public transportation.

These figures underline the fact that despite the White House's and Congress's conservative shift towards deficit reduction, the most pressing national and global problem is the economy, and a key element of the US's economic problems continues to be the unemployment crisis, especially for those trapped in long-term joblessness.  Persistent joblessness and underemployment are exacting a severe toll on Americans, especially children and people of color.  As the NPR segment notes, these dreadful economic figures represent as clear a picture as one might envision of the shrinking middle class. 30 years of wage stagnation for most working people, coupled with the 2008 global financial and economic crash, and the resultant Great Depression, have devastated the fortunes of a sizable chunk of America.  I would venture too that though the figure say little about those who are doing somewhat better, for many millions more out there making ends meet is more difficult than it has ever been.

The wage stagnation since 1980 for most workers, along with other factors including regressive federal individual and corporate taxation, job outsourcing, technological and structural changes, and the increased focus on short-term profits and rising stock prices, have led to the widening US income and wealth inequality gaps that the Occupy Together protests have brought to national and international attention. Yet I still do not see any move by those with the power to rectify things doing so. Instead, from the President and too many Democrats we get defensible but unimaginative plans that are watered down to nothing through "compromise," or as bad, "Grand Bargain" policies that will not address the problematic status quo; from the GOP we get intransigence and policies, when economically feasible at all, that will wreak even more social havoc.  One of the major aspects of the current economic crisis, the housing debacle, is still getting too little attention from

All over Europe, too, the Left has been supine, while conservatives have implemented policies that are bringing the Eurozone and individual economies, like the UK's, to the brink.  The push for fiscal austerity has been a shove towards contraction wherever it has been tried.  In Britain, Labour's leader, David Milliband, instead of challenging the demonstrated fiscal ineffectiveness of David Cameron's Conservative-Liberal Democratic coalition government's policies, offers only a tepid counterargument.

Yet it's not like other plans are nonexistent. There is The People's Budget, a truly progressive short-and-long-term plan that runs counter to the approaches of both major parties, as well as self-described "centrists" and their establishment media enablers, but it can barely get a hearing. Occupy Together protests are right to stay away from electoral politics, but if they can--if we, and we must--press a hearing on options other than the awful ones we have endlessly dangled before us, options like the People's Budget, and elect representatives to enact while also changing the structure of the system, as Senator Bernie Sanders is urging with his Constitutional Amendment to end corporate personhood, we will be on the road to preventing some of the most serious problems we now face.

===

Daron Acemoglu, who won the American Economics Association's 2005 John Bates Clark Medal for the top economist under 40. and who is now the Elizabeth and James Killian Professor of Economics at MIT, recently participated in an interview, featured on the The Browser's website, in which he discusses US and global economic inequality.  The interview itself is too brief to provide much insight on the topic, but far more enlightening are what follow the interview questions: his recommendations and concise discussions of five books on inequality, each of which takes on a different facet of the topic.  Alongside Paul Krugman's New York Times blog and columns, and the discussions of the topic I've found in online posts by Dean Baker, Brad DeLong, and Felix Salmon, among others, it fills in some useful gaps.

A snippet of the interview:

In terms of the actual figures, how bad is inequality in the US and, say, the UK? 

Based on the work of Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez, if you look from the 1950s up to the end of the 1970s, the share of total national income in the US earned by the richest 1% was about 10%. If you look at the 2000s, it’s well over 20%. It rose up to nearly 25% and then came down. In the UK it’s at about 15%, up from 7% or so. The trend towards inequality over the last 50 years has been very similar in the Anglo-Saxon economies, though it’s important to say that it’s not just an Anglo-Saxon phenomenon. There are similar trends in many economies, though there are a few that haven’t experienced it to any notable extent.

And an excerpt of his discussion of one of the recommended books, Unequal Democracy, by Larry Bartels, a political science professors at Vanderbilt University:

That’s what’s interesting about Occupy Wall Street. Its supporters aren’t just crazy lefties who don’t believe in free markets, but respected economists. 

I’m definitely in that camp. I do believe in markets. I passionately believe in the importance of property rights and private property. I think they are absolute sine qua nons for prosperity. But I also believe that these things are very political and the politics shouldn’t be one-sided. Gore Vidal said, “The United States has only one party – the property party. It’s the party of big corporations, the party of money. It has two right wings; one is Democrat and the other is Republican.” If that is true, that’s a real threat to a free market and a fair society. For that reason I think Occupy Wall Street is very important. It’s a grassroots movement that tries to stand up to this tendency of our political system.

Freedom Budget + Occupy Wall Street's Declaration

Much ado about various responsibilities, so no time for intensive blogging, but the ever brilliant Geoffrey J. pointed me toward the following remarkable document, the Freedom Budget For All Americans: Budgeting Our Resources, 1966-1975, To Achieve 'Freedom From Want,'" which the A. Philip Randolph Institute of New York published in 1966. In edition to the eponymous Randolph, the longtime president of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, one of the most important 20th century labor organizations for African-Americans, and a beacon in and of the Civil Rights Movement, other signatories to the document include many of the leading lights of the mid-century labor, progressive, civil, human and equal rights movements, crossing all racial, ethnic, ethnic, and class backgrounds. (There are almost no women on the list, but this document appears almost at the early point of what we now think of as the full-flowering of women's movement and second wave feminism; there are also almost no openly queer signatories, save Bayard Rustin, but the document precedes the Stonewall Riots by 3 years.)

A page from the Freedom Budget, 1966

It's a remarkable document, and I urge you to read it at your leisure, but sooner rather than later; it's hosted on invaluable the Internet Archive site, which allows you to read documents online, download them in a range of formats, and forward them to others quite easily, free of charge.

The Freedom Budget makes an engaging companion template to the Declaration of the Occupation of New York City, which was accepted by the General Assembly of the Occupy Wall Street protests, which I first wrote about almost three weeks ago, on September 29, 2011. I am linking to it, but also posting it in full. Whatever one may feel about the protests, which I personally believe are among the most important to have occurred in the US in some time, the principles below articulate a good deal of what a great many people--a great many of the 99% of us who have not been the beneficiaries of the disaster-capitalism, supply-side, neoliberalism-meets-libertarianism economic debacle that has marked not just the decade preceding the Global Financial Crisis 2.0 of 2007-2009 (+), but of the 3 decades before--feel about what has gone wrong, while highlighting a number of other issues that are important to progressives in the US. The document below, like the protests, is both an important start, and a vital link in a long tradition of dissent and protest from the left that has preceded it. Do read it, amend it, talk about it, challenge and debate about it, but above all, pass it on.

Declaration of the Occupation of New York City

Posted on September 30, 2011 by NYCGA

THIS DOCUMENT WAS ACCEPTED BY THE NYC GENERAL ASSEMBLY ON SEPTEMBER 29, 2011

As we gather together in solidarity to express a feeling of mass injustice, we must not lose sight of what brought us together. We write so that all people who feel wronged by the corporate forces of the world can know that we are your allies.

As one people, united, we acknowledge the reality: that the future of the human race requires the cooperation of its members; that our system must protect our rights, and upon corruption of that system, it is up to the individuals to protect their own rights, and those of their neighbors; that a democratic government derives its just power from the people, but corporations do not seek consent to extract wealth from the people and the Earth; and that no true democracy is attainable when the process is determined by economic power. We come to you at a time when corporations, which place profit over people, self-interest over justice, and oppression over equality, run our governments. We have peaceably assembled here, as is our right, to let these facts be known.

They have taken our houses through an illegal foreclosure process, despite not having the original mortgage.
They have taken bailouts from taxpayers with impunity, and continue to give Executives exorbitant bonuses.
They have perpetuated inequality and discrimination in the workplace based on age, the color of one’s skin, sex, gender identity and sexual orientation.
They have poisoned the food supply through negligence, and undermined the farming system through monopolization.
They have profited off of the torture, confinement, and cruel treatment of countless animals, and actively hide these practices.
They have continuously sought to strip employees of the right to negotiate for better pay and safer working conditions.
They have held students hostage with tens of thousands of dollars of debt on education, which is itself a human right.
They have consistently outsourced labor and used that outsourcing as leverage to cut workers’ healthcare and pay.
They have influenced the courts to achieve the same rights as people, with none of the culpability or responsibility.
They have spent millions of dollars on legal teams that look for ways to get them out of contracts in regards to health insurance.
They have sold our privacy as a commodity.
They have used the military and police force to prevent freedom of the press. They have deliberately declined to recall faulty products endangering lives in pursuit of profit.
They determine economic policy, despite the catastrophic failures their policies have produced and continue to produce.
They have donated large sums of money to politicians, who are responsible for regulating them.
They continue to block alternate forms of energy to keep us dependent on oil.
They continue to block generic forms of medicine that could save people’s lives or provide relief in order to protect investments that have already turned a substantial profit.
They have purposely covered up oil spills, accidents, faulty bookkeeping, and inactive ingredients in pursuit of profit.
They purposefully keep people misinformed and fearful through their control of the media.
They have accepted private contracts to murder prisoners even when presented with serious doubts about their guilt.
They have perpetuated colonialism at home and abroad. They have participated in the torture and murder of innocent civilians overseas.
They continue to create weapons of mass destruction in order to receive government contracts. *

To the people of the world,

We, the New York City General Assembly occupying Wall Street in Liberty Square, urge you to assert your power.

Exercise your right to peaceably assemble; occupy public space; create a process to address the problems we face, and generate solutions accessible to everyone.

To all communities that take action and form groups in the spirit of direct democracy, we offer support, documentation, and all of the resources at our disposal.

Join us and make your voices heard!

*These grievances are not all-inclusive.

 These grievances are not all-inclusive, indeed. Now read the Freedom Budget, and note how many of these issues are addressed or touched upon both in its in general principles, and in its specific plans for how the government might spend its--our--monies.

We have a ways to go, but to the people of Occupy Wall Street and all the sibling protests, all over the country and the world, you are on the best track, a new one building upon many older ones, and I like many people say: thank you!