Why would I do it?

Robert Reich had a poll up about the just-passed bill about the Child Tax Credit. He noted that half of the funding would go toward expanding the tax credit and half would got to tax cuts for the rich and Big Business, resulting in an average increase of 0.3% in after-tax income for beneficiaries and 0.5% for the rich. The question was if you would vote for the bill.

The choices were Yes, it helps the poor; No, it increases income inequality; and Other (in comments). I voted Other and this was my comment:

I would vote for it, but with great and vocal reluctance, using it as an occasion to point out as loudly as I could (not just on the floor but through social media and press statements) the disgusting, stomach-wrenching greed and moral bankruptcy of the rich, those "squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous, old sinners" whose only concern is "Gimmie more! Gimmie more!" and often have quite literally more money than they can use and so buy things from apartment-building-sized yachts to private islands to joyrides into the upper atmosphere just to have things to spend it on.

That, and just as loudly pointing out that the very fact that an average income increase of $60 a year potentially could make a difference in the lives of number of people is undeniable proof of just how screwed up, sick, and wretched our economy has become.

We regard the "gilded age" as a time of ostentatious wealth and extreme poverty. We are facing such a time again, one where being a multimillionaire is to be small fry, billionaires seem ordinary, and centibillionaires (with the arrival of the first trillionaire in sight) are presented by the media as affable folk heroes. Meanwhile, nearly 40 million among us remain in poverty with the "official" rate varying between 11 and 15 percent for the last nearly 60 years, some among us so poor that, again, $60 a freaking year makes an actual difference, and some legislators propose to deal with this by revoking child labor laws.

All in line with George Wills' statement "'Back to 1900' is a serviceable summation of the conservatives' goal."

We need to take that sense we have of the "gilded age" as being tacky, distasteful, and apply it to the present and add the moral outrage that radicals and reformers expressed at the time. We need to make possession of that level of wealth something shameful. We need, that is, to stop simply referring to economic inequality and instead make it both a moral campaign and the central economic issue of our age.

So why I would vote for this bill? Because for all the moral and ethical faults it represents, it does provide some benefits to the poorer among us. According to the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, it would benefit some 16 million children in the first year and could raise over 500,000 children above the poverty line when fully in effect. (Bear in mind the $60 after-tax figure is an average for everyone eligible to apply for the benefit, including those above the poverty line, with shrinking benefits as income rises.)

So I would vote yes for the sake of the small benefit it does give those in need while expressing my thorough disgust at the shameless, immoral, inhumane, avarice of those who put me in the soul-killing position of having to do it.

36.6 - Special Comment: some sympathy and understanding for the white working class

Special Comment: some sympathy and understanding for the white working class

For the rest of the show, I'm going to be talking about something I've been meaning to raise for a time so I just decided I was going to go ahead and do it.

Although the thoughts involved are not new, the more immediate prompt was something that happened few weeks ago. Hillarybot Joy Ann Reid of MSNBC was on The Daily Show with Trevor Noah and was going on about how the Democrats should be the party of, I forget the term she used, outsiders or minorities or those without power, something along those lines. The idea is that it should be the party of women, minorities, LGBTQ folks, and so on, rather than dwelling on economic issues and the working class. When Noah said why can't you do both, she said, referring to the working class, "Because they're Republicans." That is, "Hey, working class people, we should write you off. You're a lost cause. We don't care about you and shouldn't waste any time on you."

She is far from the first to say this and she certainly wasn't the last either, that implied and sometimes explicit declaration often offered with an undercurrent of "Our time is coming; soon we will outnumber you."

At this point it's important to note that when people talk about "the working class" they are really - and usually state directly that they are, in fact - talking about the "white working class," with the emphasis on "white" rather than on "working class."

That is, they mean specifically white people who are working class - a group that, according to the Census Bureau and using the Bureau's definition of "working class," makes up 42 percent of the population of the US, more then any other single group.

So let's be blunt: When we talk about in effect writing off the working class, when we talk about pursuing so-called "identity" politics as opposed to - not, I repeat, in addition to or in conjunction with, but opposed to - so-called "lunchpail" politics, we are being profoundly politically stupid. When we think we can just write off 42 percent of the population, that is stupid.

And even more bluntly we are being profoundly immoral. When we say "Who cares about you, we don't care about you, in fact we shouldn't care about you," we are being immoral.

This notion of writing off the white working class is usually justified by saying they were the people who put TheRump over the top - actually they weren't, it was more upper-class whites that did that, but this is the argument, the argument that the white working class is, as one writer put it, "allergic to voting for Democrats" and that the reason for that, the real reason, the only reason, is racism. Period, full stop.

I say that is narrow-minded, insensitive, even cruel. So here I am going to have some words of sympathy, of understanding, for the white working class.

Right at top, we have to say that we have been through this before, we have had this discussion before: There were for example the "angry white male" of mid-1990s and the Tea Party of several years back.

So it's absurd to say we got TheRump because of bigotry with no other factors involved unless you are making the ridiculous assertion that this racism suddenly just appeared in 2016. But the racism was always there, it has been there, and despite the rise in hate crimes, despite the rise in overt bigotry, we as a  people are no more racist than before. The difference is that now it's more acceptable to show it, to express it.

But why? It can't be simply because TheRump started his campaign by calling Mexicans rapists, because that wouldn't have had the effect on what became his base unless it resonated with them in a way that wouldn't have in previous years - and,  more importantly, the increase in hate crimes began in 2015, before he declared.

For a "why" it would be better to look back to 2008, to the time when Barack Obama was attacked during the campaign for referring to people in western Pennsylvania as "clinging to their guns and their religion." The point was clumsily expressed and deserved a clearer explanation, but it was entirely valid: The people in the area were suffering real economic dislocations. Jobs were disappearing and the sort of stable communities on which those people had depended for generations were disappearing along with them. So of course they clung to their guns and their religion. When you are under pressure, constantly stressed, when the things you have counted on seem to be slipping away, you are going to cling ever more tightly to those things you have left, those parts of your world that still make sense, that you still can control. It is a natural, normal, entirely human reaction.

And let's be clear, those of the white working class are not without legitimate grievances: Their hopes are shrinking, their dreams for their family and their children are fading, they keep working harder and getting less for it - they are, in short, losing ground or at the very best, like Alice, running as fast as they can to stay in the same place. And it's been going on for decades.

Robert Reich recently said this:

Look at the past 44 years, 1972 to 2016. The average typical American is actually, adjusted for inflation, making less today than they were making in 1972.

That is, we have been working for 44 years to get exactly - nowhere.

Yes, yes, of course those of the white working class were not only ones affected, but the very fact of saying they were not the only ones means acknowledging that they were affected - that those grievances, those stresses, are real.

Meanwhile, things that they thought they could take for granted in social relationships - or,  more accurately, never thought about at all because privilege, the privilege which they possessed (and possess), is generally invisible to those that have it -  things that they thought they could take for granted have been subjected to almost constant assaults in which they are too often cast as the conscious villains of the piece rather than as what they are: the unwitting beneficiaries of standards and (pre-)judgments that profit them in the short run but damage them in the long run.

The result is that they feel pressured, frustrated, haunted by the suspicion that they've failed their families, that their efforts are unappreciated, and that they’re being blamed for things that "aren't my fault" - which combine to make them bitter and defensive; ready, even eager, to have someone to blame to relieve their own guilt and creeping despair.

Bill Clinton, of all people, expressed the idea well in a speech back in 1995, when the "angry white male" was the symbol du jour: Referring to middle-aged white men who when they were 20 looked forward to a "good life" of sending their kinds to college followed by a secure retirement, he said:

Now they've been working for 15 years without a raise and they think they could be fired at any time. And they go home to dinner and they look across the table at their families and they think they let them down. They think somehow, what did I do wrong? It's pretty easy for people like that to be told by somebody else in the middle of a political campaign with a hot 30-second ad, you didn't do anything wrong, they did it to you.

So the problem isn't that the "white working class"'s frustrations are without any legitimate cause. It's rather that the very people who are most responsible for that contracting future, for the sense of loss (and for the genuine loss of economic security) - that is, the corporate elite, the rich, the powerful, those who've selfishly gained from the economic trends of the past decades, those who benefit the most from the old oppressions and divisions - are the very people who are doing their damnedest (so far successfully) to get that white working class to point their fingers at anyone except them.

These people, who too many among us would dismiss and condemn, have been misguided. Misled. Lied to. Manipulated. Manipulated into directing their frustrations at the weak, not the strong; at the victims, not the victimizers; at the servants of the powerful (in and out of government), not the powerful themselves (mostly not in government).

The sad fact is, it's always easier to blame those weaker than yourself for reasons that are not only sociological but also psychological: In a foot race, you may resent or envy those in front of you, particularly if you see them pulling away - but it's those coming up from behind who make you feel a threat to your position. Meanwhile, challenging the legitimacy of the position of the leaders would require an adjustment in how the structure of the race itself is viewed. In other words, blaming the poor, blaming undocumented immigrants, blaming minorities, blaming affirmative action, blaming who- or whatever, that requires only calling them names. Blaming the rich requires re-thinking the nature of society. Which of those is more likely to be seized on by lost people who feel - and have been misled into feeling - their world no longer makes sense?

The thing is, social changes can cause confusion and resentment, but you get over it, you adjust and move on and, usually, the next generation isn't sure what all the fuss was about. Economic recessions, even depressions, cause genuine hardship, but you hunker down, you survive, and expect, in what I maintain is the real American dream, that at the end of the day your children will be at least a little better off than you were. Instead, we have seen an unremitting stagnation in personal income that has come to look as though it has no end, that this is no "slump" or "downturn" that will eventually reverse itself, that rather this is the way it is and is going to be, that it's not going to change, that work gets you nowhere and more work gets you more nowhere. Perhaps never before in our history, certainly never before in this century, has such a large portion of our population (and not just that white working class, either) looked at their children and felt that those children will wind up worse off than they themselves are - felt, that is, like failures.

What has this has done to that white working class? It's made them a little colder, a little harder, a little more inured to others' suffering, and a lot angrier. It's prompted them to regard as "unfair" anything that they don't see as benefitting themselves, personally and immediately. It's propelled them toward isolation from their own communities, fragmentation of any sense of mutual responsibility, and condemnation of anyone different or "other."

It's been demonstrated often enough by both psychological testing and historical analysis to be common wisdom that the one common factor that unites those who call themselves "conservative," crossing all lines of age, sex, race, nationality, and gender, is fear of change. The more change, the more conservatism grows. Conservatism, bluntly, is based on fear - the internal fear, the personal fear, that the world around you is no longer comprehensible. I've talked before of the idea of a "worldview," a way of organizing the world we perceive around us such that it makes sense. Our worldview significantly shapes our views on matters of philosophy and morality and it informs our positions on issues of public policy. What that worldview consists of can vary greatly from person to person, but every sane, sentient being has one; you can't function without it.

If the world, if society, around you is changing in ways you can't seem to understand, that don't fit your personal worldview, you can become disoriented and frightened - and that fear, that fear of the changes, will make you more conservative, angry at the prospect of change and with an increasing urge to show that anger, to have someone or something on which to focus that anger. (Which is also why people in general tend to become more conservative as they get older: The more "set in your ways" you are, the more used you are to things being a certain way, the more disturbing changes can seem.)

So why is all this relevant? Why does it mean that dismissing 42% of the population is not only politically stupid and immoral but also counterproductive?

Because people who feel economically secure can accept more change, can deal with, can adapt to change to a degree that others without that security can't. (Remember here we are not talking about changes you want or seek but about adapting to, accepting, changes you never sought and which are being thrust upon you.)

For an example, think of the 1960s. Think of social disruptions of civil rights movement, of the Indochina war, of emerging feminism, of the environmental movement (which at the time was charged with being a communist-inspired plot to "undermine the American way of life") and more. The divisions that were generated were not just between red and blue states or political parties or even between friends, these divisions were deep enough to rip up families. We had sit-ins, mass demonstrations, civil disobedience, riots, wars, terrorism.

But we survived and managed to get through it without generating the sort of calcified divisions that we are seeing today.

Why? One good reason is that the economy was pretty strong. You knew as member of the white working class that you could get job. Heck, you very likely had a job, one that you looked forward to staying with until retirement. In the six-year period of 1966-1971, unemployment was always below 5%; in the four years of 1967-1970, it was always below 4%. Except for a couple of years in the mid-1950s, it was the closest to the so-called "full employment" level of 3% in the past almost 70 years. And remember, it was not accompanied by that stagnation in personal income and unlike today, unemployment was not low because of a mass of low-paying, low- or no-benefit jobs.

And because you felt that security in your economic life, you were better able to handle the changes in society that you saw around you. Not to say you liked or even approved of those changes, but you could, at the end of the day, deal with them.

So, again: The racism has always been there. The difference now is that it is being justified, legitimized, exploited. We were no more racist in 2016 than we had been before, it was just more acceptable to show it - and there was more of an urge to have the anger focus on someone or something, just as with the "angry white male," just as with the Tea Party, because that white working class had felt so insecure for so long.

So we can't just say we got TheRump just because of bigotry without reference to the economy because it was the economy, it was that decades-long, growing frustration and feeling of failure and fear and anger that was lever, the crowbar, that was used to pry open the emotional gates containing the bigotry and use it as a weapon.

So when we propose to ignore 42% of the population, we are politically stupid. When we say we can't be bothered addressing the legitimate economic concerns of the working class in general or the white working class in particular, we are being immoral.

And when we ignore the reality that by not addressing those concerns we are enabling the reactionaries to marshal the emotional stresses arising from those concerns to their own greedy advantage we are doing damage to our own cause, that cause, the only one worth fighting for, being justice, political and economic and social.

33.6 - The little Thing: Airlines ripping off last-minute passengers is emblematic of capitalism

The little Thing: Airlines ripping off last-minute passengers is emblematic of capitalism

Finally for this week, one of our occasional features, this one called The little Thing, where I was struck by something in a story which was being overlooked, not getting the attention or comment it deserved.

We start by noting that as Hurricane Irma approached Florida, there were, not surprisingly, a lot of people trying to leave.

One person, Leigh Dow, was looking for a flight online. Instead of what she expected for last-minute flyers, that is, flights for about $400-500 one way, the prices were running to $1700. When she found a Delta flight on Expedia for over $3200, she got mad enough to tweet about it - a tweet which went viral, sparking outrage and even moving two US Senators (Richard Blumenthal and Ed Markey) and Representative Charlie Crist to write letters to Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao, asking her to look into reports of possible price gouging.

After a lot of harrumphing and fuming and fussing, Delta got Dow a flight for $315, the Expedia price was chalked up to some kind of screwup, some airlines capped their fares out of south Florida, and some others, such as JetBlue, cut their one-way fare to $99.

George Hobica, the founder of AirfareWatchdog.com, chalked up the increases to standard industry practice and dismissed the notion that the airlines were taking advantage of the emergency, saying "I don't think airlines would be callous or stupid enough to be consciously jacking up fares."

"Sure," he said, "some are high, but last-minute fares are often more expensive in general."

And, in fact, airfare data by Hopper, an airfare search engine, shows that the price hikes that took place the week immediately before the storm were similar to those from two weeks before that.

So all's well and no price gouging, right?

Except for The little Thing, the thing I didn't hear any comment on even though this certainly should have provoked it.

"Last-minute fares are more expensive." Well, of course they are, we all know that, but what does that truly mean?

It means that it is standard operating procedure for airlines to rip off passengers who need to get a flight last-minute for whatever reason. It's standard practice to jack up the price when people are in a take-it-or-leave-it situation.

It has nothing to do with cost: Certainly the incremental cost to the airline of the last passenger to book a flight is no greater than that of the first passenger to do so; in fact having the plane be fuller is to the airline's advantage. There is no economic necessity whatsoever for last-minute fares to be so much more expensive.

Except, that is, for the "necessity" of the logic of capitalism, the "logic" of "maximize profit any way you can," the "necessity" of "get more," and if you can take advantage of someone's situation to do that, then you not only can, by that controlling logic you "must." The fact that last minute walk-up passengers are for the most part business fliers trying to close a deal or make a meeting or whatever and who are working on expense accounts doesn't change any of that.

I've said before that it's not profit itself, it's the love of profit, where profit is made out to be the goal of economic activity, not the means of driving it, the love of profit is the baseline cause behind economic inequality and all the poverty, homelessness, hunger, and the rest that goes along with it. And the fact that airlines so casually taking advantage of last-minute flyers as a normal part of business, the fact that this provokes so little response, is proof of how wound into our psyches that destructive love is.

What's Left #33

Left Side of the Aisle
for the weeks of September 22 - October 6

This week:

Good News: House pushes back against civil asset forfeiture
http://whoviating.blogspot.com/2013/08/left-side-of-aisle-120-part-1.html
http://reason.com/blog/2017/08/31/legislation-in-congress-would-block-jeff
https://theintercept.com/2017/07/20/jeff-sessions-wants-to-make-legalized-theft-great-again/
http://ij.org/press-release/house-unanimously-passes-bill-curb-civil-forfeiture-irs/
https://theintercept.com/2017/09/12/in-surprise-vote-house-passes-amendment-to-restrict-asset-forfeiture/

Good News: Teamsters Local is a "sanctuary" union; California is a "sanctuary" state
http://teamsters.nyc/2017/09/13/new-york-teamsters-become-sanctuary-union-following-deportation-union-member/
http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/41976-teamsters-resolve-to-become-sanctuary-union-to-fight-deportation-of-members
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2017/7/25/1683837/-ICE-agent-anonymously-speaks-out-We-seem-to-be-targeting-the-most-vulnerable-not-the-worst
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/immigration/sessions-visits-sanctuary-city-tells-it-stop-n802796
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2017/9/1/1695283/-Jeff-Sessions-s-constant-claims-that-violent-crime-is-on-the-rise-are-simply-not-true
http://www.france24.com/en/20170918-anti-trump-resistance-grows-california-values-act-declares-sanctuary-state
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/politics-government/national-politics/article172605966.html
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2017/09/15/trumps-crackdown-sanctuary-cities-blocked-nationwide/671900001/
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2017/04/25/california-judge-blocks-trump-order-sanctuary-city-money/100897066/
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2017/08/30/federal-judge-blocks-texas-tough-sanctuary-cities-law/619168001/
http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-wexler-sanctuary-cities-immigration-crime-20170306-story.html

Not Good News: SCOTUS reinstates TheRump's ban on refugees while case is on appeal
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/12/us/supreme-court-refugee-ban.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/us-appeals-court-rules-against-trump-effort-to-broadly-enforce-travel-ban_us_59b1cde0e4b0dfaafcf6cb7d?section=us_politics
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2017/9/8/1697022/-Trump-s-Muslim-ban-2-0-gets-smacked-down-in-court-yet-again

And the wars drag on: Afghanistan, Syria, Iraq, and Yemen
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/mattis-says-over-3000-additional-u-s-troops-will-deploy-to-afghanistan/
https://www.vox.com/world/2017/9/19/16227730/trump-afghanistan-3000-troops-mattis
http://indianexpress.com/article/world/us-backed-militia-hit-by-air-strikes-in-syrias-deir-al-zor-say-syrian-democratic-forces-4846399/
http://us.cnn.com/2017/09/21/politics/russia-us-syria-meeting/index.html
http://www.newsweek.com/russia-threatens-us-special-forces-syria-and-will-fire-them-if-provoked-668855
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-mideast-crisis-syria-kurds/syrias-kurds-to-hold-historic-vote-in-message-to-assad-idUSKCN1BW279
http://www.dcmilitary.com/strikes-continue-in-effort-to-defeat-isis-in-syria-iraq/article_63c34e59-151b-506b-a69f-f672b564ea9f.html
https://www.democracynow.org/2017/9/21/headlines/us_led_coalition_airstrikes_reportedly_kill_six_civilians_on_syria_iraq_border
http://www.france24.com/en/20170921-iraq-begins-offensive-retake-islamic-state-group-stronghold-hawija
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/sep/14/isis-kills-at-least-50-in-southern-iraq-attacks
http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2017/09/urges-kurds-call-independence-vote-170916070603153.html
http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2017/09/guterres-urges-iraqi-kurds-scrap-referendum-170917223002535.html
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-mideast-crisis-kurds-referendum-minis/turkey-iran-iraq-consider-counter-measures-over-kurdish-referendum-idUSKCN1BW1EA
http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2017/09/iraq-top-court-rules-suspend-kurdish-referendum-170918102729593.html
https://www.albawaba.com/news/hrw-saudi-led-airstrikes-yemen-are-war-crimes-1020666
https://www.hrw.org/news/2017/09/12/yemen-coalition-airstrikes-deadly-children
http://whoviating.blogspot.com/2017/07/276-outrage-of-week-war-crimes-in-yemen.html
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AKsYw8n3Fyw

Clown Award: Air Force chaplain Captain Sonny Hernandez
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4891096/Trump-supporting-David-Clarke-told-revise-thesis.html
http://splinternews.com/republican-senator-accidentally-reveals-the-toxic-truth-1818593567
https://www.vox.com/health-care/2017/9/20/16333338/obamacare-repeal-graham-cassidy
http://www.newsweek.com/chaplain-urges-service-members-reject-religious-tolerance-665614
https://www.militaryreligiousfreedom.org/

The little Thing: Airlines ripping off last-minute passengers is emblematic of capitalism
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/dr-gridlock/wp/2017/09/06/3200-for-a-one-way-ticket-out-of-miami-the-story-behind-the-hurricane-irma-tweet-that-went-viral/
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/09/travel/airlines-face-criticism-amid-irma-price-gouging-charges.html
https://www.wsj.com/articles/airlines-mark-down-tickets-in-irma-affected-areas-following-complaints-1504989080
http://whoviating.blogspot.com/2017/04/166-love-of-profit-is-root-of-all.html
http://whoviating.blogspot.com/2015/10/2227-pursuit-of-profit-is-baseline.html

16.6 - The love of profit is the root of all economic evil

The love of profit is the root of all economic evil

Because that's the focus for them. That's the deal for them. That's the whole game for them: a little more profit, a few more bucks, even if - maybe especially if - those bucks can be squeezed out of the lowest-paid workers, the politically and economically weakest workers, the ones most desperate for work, the ones who out of necessity will go along with and put up with whatever is inflicted on them.

I said it a year and a-half ago: The pursuit of profit is the baseline cause of economic injustice. It is the baseline cause of income inequality, the baseline cause of poverty, the baseline cause of unemployment, the baseline cause of homelessness, the baseline cause of hunger.

The pursuit of profit does not allow for the common good, it does not allow for the advancement or the benefit of the community as a whole, it does not allow for "the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few - or the one." In fact, the pursuit of profit declares the opposite: not even the needs, but the desires of the one outweigh the needs of all the rest.

That is the way they think. That is what the corporate elite, the 1%, the economic powers of our nation, the Masters of the Universe, however you refer to them, this is how they really think. They hold that profit is not only its own reward, it is its own justification, and that everything else, including ethics and the law, must fall before it.

THEY DO NOT CARE ABOUT YOU! They never have and they never will. You are just a tool for their gain, a means to their end.

Profit itself is not evil. Recall that the statement from the Bible is not "money is the root of all evil," but "the love of money is the root of all evil." In a similar way, profit is not the root of inequality, poverty, and hunger, but the pursuit of profit, where making profit is itself the goal, is the root of inequality, poverty, and hunger; is destructive; is evil.

Consider the example of the so-called "New Detroit." That's a nickname Alabama has been trying on ever since 1997 when a Mercedes-Benz assembly line opened near Tuscaloosa, followed by Toyota, Honda, and Hyundai opening Alabama plants of their own.

With them came the auto parts makers. Alabama's burgeoning auto parts industry employs 26,000 workers, who in 2016 earned $1.3 billion in wages. It seemed like the relief the nation's 5th-poorest state had been dreaming of.

But Bloomberg News looked at records of OSHA - the Occupational Safety and Health Administration - which told of the human cost involved. The companies would make promises of delivery schedules impossible to meet and then demand the employees make good on those promises, forcing them to work insanely long hours, as much as 12 hours a day, six or seven days a week, for months on end, sometimes demanding they work on dangerous machinery for which they had had no training, in utter disregard for their health and welfare.

Hourly pay is low, turnover is high, and safety is an afterthought. In fact, safety violations often were ignored because it was cheaper to ignore the warnings and pay the fine than to fix the problem; proft was more important than the lives and safety of the employees.

As a result, quoting the article,

OSHA records document burning flesh, crushed limbs, dismembered body parts, and a flailing fall into a vat of acid. The files read like Upton Sinclair, or even Dickens.

Adam Wolfsberger, a former manager at a temp agency that supplied workers to one of the parts manufacturers, said the companies "treated people like interchangeable parts."

Which is to be expected because that's all they are, that's all you are, to the bosses: interchangeable parts. Wear one out then get another one cheap.

We now live in a national economy where inequality has grown steadily over the past four presidents; indeed it has grown steadily since the 1970s.

We live in a national economy where after eight years of supposed recovery, poverty is still higher than it was in 2009 and in fact higher than almost every given year since at least 1981.

We live in a national economy where the typical CEO makes 276 times as much as the typical worker. As recently as about 1965, it was only 20 times as much. And believe it of not, that 276 times is an improvement: Around the year 2000, it was 376 times as much.

We live in a national economy where real median household income has gone up just 5.5% since 1989.

And we live in a world economy where in 2010, just 43 people owned as much wealth as half of the world's population - and where in 2017 that number has dropped to just eight. Eight people - all men - now own as much wealth as half the world's population. That is the world we live in.

They do not care about you and they will not care about you. All they care about is "more." And they do not care about the price you have to pay for them to get it.

We need to realize that we are on our own, that the bosses and politicos will only respond when, how, and to the degree we make them respond, and we must stand up for ourselves because they will not stand up for us.

What's Left #16

What's Left
for the week of March 30 - April 5, 2017

This week:

Good News: victory on disability rights
http://www.foxnews.com/us/2017/03/22/high-court-bolsters-rights-learning-disabled-students.html
http://www.latimes.com/politics/washington/la-na-essential-washington-updates-supreme-court-rules-for-children-with-1490202454-htmlstory.html

Good News: victory on the death penalty
https://www.aol.com/article/news/2017/03/28/supreme-court-rules-for-texas-death-row-inmate-over-iq-claim/22015198/

Good News: resistance to corruption in Russia
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/nationwide-protests-bring-thousands-to-russias-streets/2017/03/26/7e3af598-128b-11e7-bb16-269934184168_story.html?utm_term=.dcb767264b97
https://www.rt.com/news/382381-russia-opposition-protests-detentions/
http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/03/26/521594477/russians-take-to-the-streets-in-nationwide-anti-government-protests
http://www.latimes.com/world/europe/la-fg-russia-protests-20170326-story.html

Not Good News: $15 minimum wage vetoed in Baltimore
http://dailycaller.com/2017/03/26/dem-mayor-vetoes-15-min-wage-bill/
http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/pass-the-buck.html
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/who-actually-earns-the-minimum-wage/

Right-wing trying to change rules on minimum wage
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2017/03/11/minimum-wage-advocates-won-big-in-november-but-now-theyre-at-risk-of-losing-all-over-again/
http://www.thestand.org/2017/03/early-i-1433-results-are-in-raising-minimum-wage-boosts-jobs/
http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2017/3/23/1645780/--SaveTheWage-Protect-Minimum-Wage-Raises-from-Corporate-Lobbyists-and-Lawyers
http://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/news/minimum-wage-supreme-court-backs-voters-over-business-interests-9163185
http://whoviating.blogspot.com/2017/03/1511-update-repressing-protest.html

The love of profit is the root of all economic evil
http://whoviating.blogspot.com/2015/10/2227-pursuit-of-profit-is-baseline.html
https://www.kingjamesbibleonline.org/1-Timothy-6-10/
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2017-03-23/inside-alabama-s-auto-jobs-boom-cheap-wages-little-training-crushed-limbs
http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/02/26/during-obamas-presidency-wealth-inequality-has-increased-and-poverty-levels-are-higher/
http://www.epi.org/publication/the-top-charts-of-2016-13-charts-that-show-the-difference-between-the-economy-we-have-now-and-the-economy-we-could-have/
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEHOINUSA672N
http://fortune.com/2017/01/16/world-richest-men-income-equality/

Outrage of the Week: TheRump attacks the climate
https://thecorrespondent.com/6285/shell-made-a-film-about-climate-change-in-1991-then-neglected-to-heed-its-own-warning/692663565-875331f6
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/jul/08/exxon-climate-change-1981-climate-denier-funding
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/7/8/1400557/-Former-Exxon-scientist-says-Exxon-knew-about-climate-change-and-fossil-fuels-in-1981
http://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2017/3/27/14922516/trump-executive-order-climate
https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2013/11/06/2013-26785/preparing-the-united-states-for-the-impacts-of-climate-change
https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2017/03/16/press-briefing-press-secretary-sean-spicer-3162017-25
https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2017/03/trumps-war-on-the-climate-begins/519159/


For the Record: Daniel Pantaleo should have been fired long ago
http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2017/3/22/1646219/-Leaked-documents-show-the-NYPD-officer-who-killed-Eric-Garner-should-have-been-fired-a-long-time-ago

For the Record: MakeTweetsGreatAgain
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2017/03/27/1647743/-Thanks-to-these-computer-developers-when-Trump-tweets-the-ACLU-gets-a-donation
https://maketweetsgreatagain.us/

For the Record: forum on trade with Africa included no Africans
https://www.indy100.com/article/africa-trade-meeting-african-visa-denied-us-travel-ban-global-economic-development-summit-7637666

Hero Award: Aramis Ayala
http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/politics/92813296-132.html
http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/breaking-news/os-aramis-ayala-no-death-penalty-20170316-story.html
http://miami.cbslocal.com/2017/03/28/judge-backs-scotts-removal-of-prosecutor/amp/
http://www.wesh.com/article/florida-legislators-propose-cutting-budget-of-state-attorney-aramis-ayala/9196886

Clown Award: a majority of American men
https://www.scribd.com/document/342699692/PerryUndem-Gender-and-Birth-Control-Access-Report
https://thinkprogress.org/congress-is-more-regressive-on-womens-rights-than-most-voters-poll-finds-88efc93d7e59#.t6051vj6e

5.6 - For the Record: the rich are not like us

For the Record: the rich are not like us

For the record...
...it remains true that yes, the rich are not like you and me.

About two weeks ago, the Washington Post carried an article about what it called the haute horology world - that is, the world of people for who watches are not a means to tell the time, they are a way to declare your importance and flaunt your wealth.

They are "timepiece connoisseurs" who will tell you "You don't need a watch to tell the time" and if you do, a Timex will do just fine. They attend watch events with - quoting the article - "expertly lighted booths that make the watches sparkle like diamonds" and dealers who "resemble charming Bond villains in dark clothes and black gloves."

They will spend tens of thousands of dollars for a watch, in fact $15,000 models are deemed "middle-class" timepieces and a Rolex is regarded as a starter watch. Luxury watches, the article says, "are Porsches for your wrist, Birkin bags for boys that speak stacks of cash about the owners."

They are, that is, a means to show off, to impress others, and to be able to recognize those not worth your time, those too déclassé to realize the superior quality of what is on your wrist.

Collecting such watches is, in the words of one collector, "basically a silly hobby." A silly hobby involving useless baubles each of which costs more than most of us will make in a year (or two, or three) being pursued by people with more money than they know what to do with.

5.5 - For the Record: another state finds the poor are not drug abusers

For the Record: another state finds the poor are not drug abusers

For the record...
...Michigan just completed a year-long pilot program to ferret out drug users among welfare recipients - without finding a single one.

Of the 443 applicants for or recipients of what the state calls its "Family Independence Program," 14 were chosen for "suspicion-based screenings." Only one was found to have "a reasonable suspicion of use of a controlled substance" and that person dropped off the rolls "for an unrelated reason" and was never tested. So not only did they not find any drug users, they didn't even find anyone to test.

Michigan thus becomes the ninth state that I know of - the others being Arizona, Florida, Kansas, Mississippi, Missouri, Oklahoma, Tennessee, and Utah - that has instituted some form of drug testing program for the poor only for these states to find, without exception, that people on or applying for public aid are less likely to be using drugs than the general population.

What's Left #5

What's Left
for the week of December 8 to 14

This week:

Good News: victory at Standing Rock
http://fortune.com/2016/12/04/dapl-army-corps-of-engineers/
http://wpri.com/2016/12/05/trump-not-saying-what-hell-do-about-dakota-access-pipeline/
http://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/308884-five-things-to-watch-for-in-the-dakota-access-pipeline-fight
http://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/308833-opponents-seek-to-tie-up-dakota-pipeline-for-years
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-north-dakota-pipeline-idUSKBN13T0QX
http://www.valleynewslive.com/content/news/DAPL-protesters-Its-not-over-so-why-should-we-go-home-404895325.html
http://sacredstonecamp.org/blog/december-action

Footnote: USAToday gets it wrong
http://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2016/12/05/dakota-access-pipeline-sioux-climate-change-obama-trump-editorials-debates/95004054/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DDYWdABRQIo
http://www.greenpeace.org/usa/global-warming/keep-it-in-the-ground/
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/the_americas/colombian-congress-approves-historic-peace-deal/2016/11/30/9b2fda92-b5a7-11e6-939c-91749443c5e5_story.html?utm_term=.649ced88992b

Good News: peace settlement in Colombia
http://whoviating.blogspot.com/2016/08/2587-colombia-and-farc-sign-peace-deal.html
http://www.foxnews.com/world/2016/11/30/colombian-congress-ratifies-peace-deal-critics-boycott-vote.html

For the Record: harsh anti-abortion law in Ohio
http://www.cnn.com/2016/12/07/politics/ohio-abortion-bill/
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2016/12/7/1608253/-Bill-to-ban-abortions-once-heartbeat-is-heard-goes-to-Ohio-governor-s-desk

For the Record: another state finds the poor are not drug abusers
http://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/local/michigan/2016/12/02/welfare-drug-screening/94826672/
http://whoviating.blogspot.com/search?q=drug+test

For the Record: the rich are not like us
https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/porsches-for-your-wrist-inside-the-world-of-luxury-watches/2016/11/25/70218556-947f-11e6-bb29-bf2701dbe0a3_story.html

Clown Award: Christina Alesci of CNN
http://money.cnn.com/video/news/2016/12/02/trump-ceo-advisers.cnnmoney/index.html
http://fair.org/home/cnn-praises-diverse-viewpoints-of-trumps-bipartisan-ceos/

Latest Clintonite excuses for losing: blame Jill Stein and millennials
http://fair.org/home/tv-pundits-eager-to-make-trump-the-new-normal/
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/politics/ct-donald-trump-carrier-jobs-20161201-story.html
http://fair.org/home/spinning-bannon-as-provocateur-who-relishes-combativeness/
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/for-trump-adviser-stephen-bannon-fiery-populism-followed-life-in-elite-circles/2016/11/19/de91ef40-ac57-11e6-977a-1030f822fc35_story.html
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/12/02/donald-trump-deserves-more-credit-than-hes-getting-for-his-cabinet-picks/?utm_term=.7e39f2ffa271
http://www.politico.com/story/2016/12/michael-flynn-conspiracy-pizzeria-trump-232227
http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/308353-trump-won-by-smaller-margin-than-stein-votes-in-all-three
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/12/02/yes-you-can-blame-millennials-for-hillary-clintons-loss/
http://fair.org/home/blaming-trumps-win-on-the-age-group-least-responsible-for-it/

248.6 - Footnote: media ignore poverty in debates

Footnote: media ignore poverty in debates

Just in case you were indulging in the fantasy that the media would act as a counterbalance to the party establishment's thumb on the scales, let me disabuse you of that foolish notion.

The media watchdog group FAIR did an analysis of all nine democratic debates over the past seven months. They found that 30 questions were asked about ISIS or terrorism, even though since 2001 - this is quite literally true - Americans are as likely to be killed by having unstable furniture fall on them as by Islamic terrorists. They found 11 questions were asked Russia. Ten questions were asked about socialism or communism, all of which were directed at Bernie Sanders.

But in nine debates, there was not one single question about poverty. The candidates themselves did bring it up; Clinton did so five times, Sanders, 12 times. But not one question addressed it.

According to the 2014 census, 14.5 percent of Americans, or over 45 million people, live in poverty, up from 11.3 percent in 2000. But to the gatekeepers of our national political debate, it wasn't worth asking about.

An estimated 16 million Americans under the age of 18 live below the poverty line. But it wasn't worth asking about.

A 2011 study attributed 133,000 deaths a year to poverty-related illnesses. Poverty has been linked to diminished IQ in children in the US and has been shown to impact economic gains, overall health and quality of life. But it wasn't worth asking about.

Americans are literally a million times more likely to live in poverty than to have been killed by “jihadi terror” since 9/11. But the masters of our mainstream media decided it wasn't worth asking about.

I have said I don't know how many times that we are uninformed, misinformed, and malinformed by our major media. And the beat goes on.

These people are not on your side. Never forget it for a moment.

Sources cited in links:
http://fair.org/
http://fair.org/home/in-nine-democratic-debates-not-a-single-question-about-poverty/
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2015/11/23/youre-more-likely-to-be-fatally-crushed-by-furniture-than-killed-by-a-terrorist/

247.4 - Outrage of the Week: Wisconsin Gov. Scott WalkAllOverYou

Outrage of the Week: Wisconsin Gov. Scott WalkAllOverYou

Now for our other regular feature, this is the Outrage of the Week.

Wisconsin Gov. Scott WalkAllOverYou is at it again, trying to find ways to humiliate and denigrate people applying for public benefits which they need and to which they are entitled.

We start with the fact that federal regulations do not allow states to make applicants for unemployment benefits or SNAP benefits (what we used to call Food Stamps) take a drug test. Scotty boy does not like that and is suing the federal government. Y'see, in the case of applying for cash benefits under the program of TANF, which stands for Transitional Aid to Needy Families and is what we used to call welfare, drug testing can be allowed - and WalkAllOverYou is insisting that unemployment and Food Stamps are exactly the same as TANF.

Scott WalkAllOverYou

Not satisfied with that, on May 4, he authorized rules allowing employers who made drug tests a condition of employment to voluntarily submit to the state information about the results of those tests and considerations of privacy be damned. If any of those people later apply for unemployment or SNAP benefits but either failed the employer's drug test or wouldn't take it, they can be denied benefits unless they agree to get drug treatment.

In other words, he is trying to make an end run around the federal regulations by creating a database of pee, allowing him the opening to potentially deny benefits to those in need with the claim that "Well, we didn't make them take the test." This, he says, is part of moving people from "government dependence to true independence," with "independence," it seems, consisting of getting no help at all and screw you. The "independence" which he seeks, that is, is for him and his cat cat cronies to be freed from any legal or ethical obligation to care about anyone or anything other than their own selfish desires.

And no matter how many times these drug-test regimens fail, no matter how many times they wind up showing that the poor are less likely to use drugs than the general population, as they invariably do, still we are afflicted with stupid, obnoxious, sneering, classist jerks like Scott WalkAllOverYou looking down their noses at the poor and viewing them as inferior beings.

It is - he is - a moral and ethical outrage.

Sources cited in links:
http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2016/5/7/1523972/-Gov-Scott-Walker-to-form-statewide-pee-database-in-his-latest-attempt-to-stick-it-to-the-poors
http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2016/05/06/3776097/walker-drug-test-unemployment/
http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2015/02/26/3624447/tanf-drug-testing-states/

Left Side of the Aisle #247

NOTE: Left Side is taking a vaction. The next episode will be for the week of June 2 - 8.

Left Side of the Aisle
for the week of May 12-18, 2016

This week:

Some items on LGBTQ rights
http://www.rawstory.com/2016/05/italian-lawmakers-begin-final-debate-on-bill-allowing-same-sex-civil-unions/
http://www.thelocal.it/20160510/italys-civil-unions-bill-gets-put-to-a-final-confidence-vote
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-05-11/same-sex-unions-bill-gets-final-approval-in-catholic-italy
http://www.slate.com/blogs/outward/2016/05/10/eastern_europe_is_still_a_very_hard_place_to_be_queer.html
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2016/02/23/charlotte-city-council-approves-transgender-bathroom-ordinance-over-governors-protest.html
http://www.cnn.com/2016/05/09/politics/north-carolina-hb2-justice-department-deadline/
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/politics-government/article76503097.html#emlnl=Evening_NewsletterIt http://www.salon.com/2016/05/09/ag_loretta_lynch_slams_north_carolina_bathroom_bill_likening_it_to_jim_crow_laws/
http://www.politifact.com/north-carolina/article/2016/apr/22/roundup-hb2-fact-checks-north-carolinas-controvers/
http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2016/4/25/1519775/-Fox-News-host-calls-bathroom-bills-a-solution-in-search-of-a-problem
http://www.publicpolicypolling.com/main/2016/04/hb-2-deeply-unpopular-in-north-carolina-voters-think-its-hurting-state.html
http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/05/10/477481119/texas-lt-gov-targets-fort-worth-schools-chief-over-transgender-guidelines
http://trailblazersblog.dallasnews.com/2016/05/dan-patrick-wants-ft-worth-super-ousted-for-accomodating-for-transgender-students.html/
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2016/4/13/1514823/-Louisiana-governor-signs-order-protecting-transgender-and-gay-government-workers

Some updates on secret trade negotiations
http://whoviating.blogspot.com/2012/09/left-side-of-aisle-75-part-4.html
http://whoviating.blogspot.com/2015/06/2091-update-on-fast-track.html
http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2016/03/04/3756197/trudeau-visit-preview/
http://www.care2.com/causes/obama-pushes-tpp-despite-overwhelming-concerns.html
http://whoviating.blogspot.com/2015/07/2126-outrage-of-week-state-dept-to.html
http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2015/10/05/3709061/tpp-agreement-reached-environmental-concerns-remain/
http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2016/2/8/1481868/-Obama-signs-TPP-largest-corporate-coup-in-history
http://www.opednews.com/articles/Clinton-Commits-No-TPP-F-by-Dave-Johnson-Corporations_Hillary-Clinton_Issues_Tpp-Trans-pacific-Partnership-160509-882.html
http://www.progressive.org/news/2016/05/188713/clinton%E2%80%99s-vp-trial-balloon-can-she-really-be-full-air
http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/34629-chamber-of-commerce-lobbyist-tom-donohue-clinton-will-support-tpp-after-election
http://whoviating.blogspot.com/2015/08/2172-more-on-three-secret-trade-deals.html
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-36185746
https://www.nrdc.org/
https://www.nrdc.org/issues/toxic-chemicals
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article44603.htm

Clown Award: Larry Pratt of Gun Owners of America
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/05/top-gun-lobbyist-calls-hundreds-child-gun-deaths-occasional-mishaps
http://everytown.org/

Outrage of the Week: Wisconsin Gov. Scott WalkAllOverYou
http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2016/5/7/1523972/-Gov-Scott-Walker-to-form-statewide-pee-database-in-his-latest-attempt-to-stick-it-to-the-poors
http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2016/05/06/3776097/walker-drug-test-unemployment/
http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2015/02/26/3624447/tanf-drug-testing-states/

Rapid-fire items
http://www.latimes.com/local/education/me-union-charter-study-20160509-snap-story.html
http://www.newsobserver.com/news/politics-government/politics-columns-blogs/under-the-dome/article76747402.html
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2016/05/07/alabamas-top-judge-is-suspended-and-may-lose-job-after-blocking-gay-marriage/?wpmm=1&wpisrc=nl_headlines
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/seth-abramson/clinton-must-release-wall_b_9857934.html?m=false
http://www.alternet.org/civil-liberties/san-francisco-protesters-targeting-police-brutality-end-hunger-strike-after-17-days
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/04/hunger-strike-san-francisco-police-shootings
http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/uks-long-delayed-iraq-war-report-published-july-38984787
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/the-chilcot-inquiry-timeline-of-the-events-from-911-to-the-announced-publication-date-of-chilcot-a7020936.html
http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-36024725
http://www.foxnews.com/world/2016/05/03/us-service-member-killed-in-northern-iraq.html

246.7 - Outrage of the Week: Wisconsin restricts voting rights

Outrage of the Week: Wisconsin restricts voting rights

But even as we edge in the right direction on one part of voting rights, we still seem to be moving further in the wrong direction on another aspect of that: voter ID laws.

Which brings us to Outrage of the Week.

Wisconsin has one of the most restrictive voter ID laws in the nation. It requires a government-issued photo ID in order to be able to vote.

Despite claims about a nonexistent plague of in-person voter fraud, the real purpose of such laws, is to suppress the votes of students and minorities, who tend to vote more liberal. If there ever was any doubt, we now have the word of a former top staffer for a Republican legislator in Wisconsin, who stated he was at a meeting where GOPper legislators openly said they wanted the law because it would help them at the ballot box.

It's estimated that 9 percent of Wisconsin registered voters, that's 300,000 voters, do not have a government-issued photo ID and will be disenfranchised in this year's elections.

Scott WalkAllOverYou

So the city and county of Milwaukee decided to help with this by providing local photo IDs to city and county residents who were having trouble getting such IDs.

So what's happened? On April 25, Wisconsin Gov. Scott WalkAllOverYou signed a bill passed by his cronies in the legislature prohibiting towns and counties from spending money on, or issuing, photo IDs. It also prohibits using city or village IDs to vote.

How blatant can you be?

How obvious can you make it that your intent is to actively hinder people - the young, the poor, minorities - from being able to vote? How transparent can you make your intention to rig the game, to fix the game, to show your desire to go back to the days of literacy tests and poll taxes, to guarantee the continuation of government of the rich and powerful, by the rich and powerful, and for the rich and powerful?

This is disgusting. It is despicable. It is an outrage.

Sources cited in links:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2016/4/5/1510915/-Scott-Walker-s-Wisconsin-may-disenfranchise-300-000-Americans-in-blatant-voter-fraud-scheme
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/muckraker/todd-allbaugh-voter-id-wisconsin-gop
http://www.wpr.org/walker-signs-bill-blocking-communities-issuing-ids-voting

242.5 - Drug war used to demonize poor people

Drug war used to demonize poor people

Well, plus ça change. In more recent times, drugs have served not so much to attack hippies or the antiwar left - probably in good part because there aren't a lot of hippies around and the antiwar left seems to evaporate whenever a Democrat is in the White House. But they have still proved politically useful to demonize a different group: poor people, who are usually envisioned in the racism-infused public mind as African-Americans, so it's kind of a two-fer.

Patron saint of welfare "reform"

It was in 1996, during the presidency of - and with the urging of - the sainted Bill Clinton, that the US enacted a welfare "reform" law that among other abominations placed a lifelong ban on receiving welfare on people convicted of drug felonies. No other sort of felony was subject to this lifelong ban - not murder, not assault, not armed robbery, not arson, none of them. Nothing except drugs.

As a direct result, to this day, many men and women exiting prison after doing their time don't have access to certain forms of government assistance, including TANF, or Temporary Aid to Needy Families, what we used to call welfare, and SNAP, still commonly known as Food Stamps.

It has gotten somewhat better with regard to SNAP: Eighteen states have abandoned the federal prohibition on drug offenders receiving Food Stamps and 26 more, most recently Alabama, have eased the restrictions, allowing benefits under certain conditions. Three more states - Georgia, Indiana, and Nebraska - are considering doing the same.

But six states - Alaska, Georgia, Mississippi, South Carolina, West Virginia, and Wyoming - still bar anyone with a drug felony from receiving any Food Stamp benefits and need be damned.

"Need be damned" is even more true of TANF benefits. Thirteen states continue to fully prohibit anyone with a drug-related conviction from getting welfare benefits, and 23 others maintain a partial ban. Only 14 have lifted the ban and treat people who have done their time the same as they do anyone else.

The Marshall Project, which collects this data, suggests that the difference is that, unlike Food Stamps, states have to foot part of the bill for TANF. Put another way, the frequent attitude is, "Sure, you can have benefits on the same basis as everyone else - provided we don't have to pay for it."

But even if there has been some improvement in the possibility of those with drug convictions being able to obtain aid if they need it, there is still an on-going effort to use the specter of drugs to demonize the poor. Only the means, not the intent, has changed.

The means now is drug-testing of applicants or recipients of public aid, of making it a requirement for obtaining or continuing to receive assistance.

State after state after state - 13 states, in fact - have instituted some form of drug-testing regimen for those in need of aid, with 19 more considering it. And it's always, always, always, done on the claims that this will save money and we don't want the tax dollars or hard-working citizens to be subsidizing the drug habits of those poor people and besides we're actually helping poor people because this will force them to get off drugs and get a job!

That stigma of the poor as being druggies, and as being poor because they are druggies, drives the entire enterprise, an enterprise pushing the idea that we are somehow doing poor people a favor by treating them all as suspected criminals who have to prove the purity of their bodily fluids to their governing overlords, those who hold in their hands the power to decide if the accused gets any help with food or shelter or health care for themselves or their children.

So state after state after state has pursued this notion - and state after state after state has shown it to be a fantasy.

Florida tried it and found only 2% of recipients of public aid used drugs, in a state where the rate of drug use among the population as a whole is estimated to be 8%.

Utah tried it and found a rate of drug use among benefit recipients to be just 0.2%. In Tennessee, it was under a quarter of a percent.

In Arizona, more than 87,000 welfare recipients went through drug testing and only one person tested positive. Not one percent, one person.

Kansas, Mississippi, Missouri, Oklahoma, all with similar results.

And now North Carolina has joined the list. According to the state's Department of Health and Human Services, a mere 0.3% of the approximately 7,600 applicants and recipients screened for drug use tested positive.

But none of this has stopped states from doing testing and it hasn't stopped other states from considering doing the same. How many failures does it take to add up to failure?

Unless - unless it actually wasn't a failure. Unless the drugs were never the issue. Unless the actual intent is to, as I said at the top, demonize the poor, mark them as somehow different, alien, as "not us," and so as undeserving of our concern.

That stigma of the poor as druggies, which drives the entire drug-screening idea, is just one more obstacle faced by those who economically struggle every single day, with all that entails for, again, necessities such as food and clothing and shelter and health care and more, who struggle every day to try to escape the trap of poverty but who find that stigma of them as drug abusers that follows them even as they try to find work, that demonization of their condition, that assumption of their moral inferiority, that classism, our contempt for the poor, is just one more mountain for them to climb.

For the sake of maintaining our sense of class superiority, we have made the poor into more victims of our failed war on drugs.

But I have to add, footnote, whatever, that the stigma goes beyond the false idea of the poor as druggies. It goes to the core of our entire social attitude about poverty.

Consider, for example, how many states have precise rules as to what Food Stamps can be used to buy, in one case going right down to the size and type of canned beans you can buy. Consider how often any sort of treat for a child, a soda, candy, whatever, is on the banned list. Consider how many states have similar rules about TANF, with long lists of things for which welfare assistance can't be used, ranging from the absurd (jewelry, cruises) to the mundane because God forbid if you are poor that you should be able to take your kid to a movie.

Consider, particularly, how often we put demands on the poor that we would never dream of putting on others who are not poor but who are getting public benefits.

CalWORKS is California's welfare program. Everyone who applies for aid and is accepted must agree to have their homes be preemptively searched for evidence of fraud at a time of the agency's choosing, which of course they do not tell you in advance because then you could hide the evidence of fraud of which they assume you are guilty - and if you're not there when they come, obviously unannounced, you can be declared "uncooperative" and denied aid. In short, the Fourth Amendment does not exist for you and neither does innocent until proven guilty - because you are poor and need help.

Can you even conceive of someone who declares their children as deductions on their tax return being told they have to agree to have their home preemptively searched to prove those kids really live there and really are dependent on them? Remember, that deduction is a benefit, a tax benefit that by cutting their taxable income puts extra money in their pocket just as surely as does any cash aid to a poor person. But can you even imagine anyone being told they have to surrender their Fourth Amendment rights in order to claim that benefit?

You know, some of those drug-testing regimens not only want you to be drug-tested to get benefits, they want you to be tested on a regular basis to keep them.

Can you even imagine, can you even conceive of, someone declaring a home mortgage deduction on their income taxes being told that every year that they do so that they have to submit to a drug test to prove that they are not using the benefits we are providing to them to get high?

Of course you can't. It seems absurd. But you can imagine such being done to a poor person; in fact, you know it does and it happens to them every single day.

None of this is about helping the poor. Rather, it is all about being able to say that because you are poor, because you are in need of help, because you are struggling, therefore you are no longer a full human being, therefore you are morally inferior, therefore we have the right and the power to judge you, to look down on you, therefore we have the right and the power to shape you, to correct your (to we superior sorts) obvious failings, to demand that you behave as we tell you to, we have the right and the power to humiliate you, to demean you, to strip away your rights, and you will kowtow and tug at your forelock and kiss our ring or you can just damn well go hungry and cold.

I say it again: None of this, none of this, none of this is about helping the poor. It is about our contempt for the poor, our classist assumptions that those who are poor are simply inferior in some way, morally, ethically, or both, that it's simply a matter of personal failings and they somehow deserve their condition rather than being just the most obvious victims of the economic injustice that has turned too many of us into economic throwaways as power and wealth become more concentrated.

I have in the past referred to classism as our greatest unacknowledged evil. And so it remains.

Sources cited in links:
http://www.aol.com/article/2016/03/17/should-people-with-felony-drug-convictions-have-access-to-food-s/21328901/
http://www.al.com/news/index.ssf/2016/02/alabamians_with_drug_convictio.html
https://www.themarshallproject.org/2016/02/04/six-states-where-felons-can-t-get-food-stamps?ref=tsqr_stream#.8s7hSzmEc
http://whoviating.blogspot.com/2015/02/1939-outrage-of-week-drug-testing-poor.html
http://www.aol.com/article/2016/02/18/States-tested-their-welfare-recipients-and-the-results-w/21314760/
http://whoviating.blogspot.com/2015/10/2237-states-continue-to-demonize-poor.html
http://whoviating.blogspot.com/2015/07/2112-our-worst-unacknowledged-evil-part.html
http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2016/2/22/1489251/-The-Republican-war-on-poor-people-s-grocery-lists-continues
http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2016/3/20/1501544/-Punishing-the-poor-is-not-going-to-end-poverty

Left Side of the Aisle #242

Left Side of the Aisle
for the week of March 24-30, 2016

This week:

Good News: Cop-shielding prosecutor in Tamir Rice murder voted out
http://www.care2.com/causes/bungling-tamir-rice-prosecutor-loses-reelection-bid.html
http://whoviating.blogspot.com/2016/01/2355-prosecutor-in-tamir-rice-case-may.html
http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2016/03/15/3760660/bye-anita/
http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2015/11/24/3725304/laquan-mcdonald-shooting-murder-charges/
http://www.chicagoreader.com/chicago/anita-alvarez-cook-county-states-attorneys-office/Content?oid=19119102

Racism is alive and well
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/25/upshot/measuring-donald-trumps-supporters-for-intolerance.html?rref=upshot&smid=tw-upshotnyt&smtyp=cur
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/cleveland-ems-captain-fired-tamir-rice-facebook-post-article-1.2569853
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/king-cincinnati-cops-reveal-double-standards-black-men-face-article-1.2537271

Outrage of the Week: citizens deported as "illegal aliens"
http://www.thenation.com/article/why-has-president-obama-deported-more-immigrants-any-president-us-history/
http://jacquelinestevens.org/StevensVSP18.32011.pdf
https://news.vice.com/article/the-us-keeps-mistakenly-deporting-its-own-citizens
http://stateswithoutnations.blogspot.com/2015/05/deported-us-citizen-andres-robles-wins.html#EOIRDataAnalysis
http://www.care2.com/causes/ice-has-accidentally-deported-thousands-of-american-citizens.html
https://news.vice.com/article/theres-a-new-us-policy-on-sanctuary-cities-that-makes-it-easier-for-ice-to-deport-people

"War on drugs" was a lie from the start
https://harpers.org/archive/2016/04/legalize-it-all/
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/nixon-aide-war-drugs-tool-target-black-people-article-1.2573832

Drug war used to demonize poor people
 http://www.aol.com/article/2016/03/17/should-people-with-felony-drug-convictions-have-access-to-food-s/21328901/
http://www.al.com/news/index.ssf/2016/02/alabamians_with_drug_convictio.html
https://www.themarshallproject.org/2016/02/04/six-states-where-felons-can-t-get-food-stamps?ref=tsqr_stream#.8s7hSzmEc
http://whoviating.blogspot.com/2015/02/1939-outrage-of-week-drug-testing-poor.html
http://www.aol.com/article/2016/02/18/States-tested-their-welfare-recipients-and-the-results-w/21314760/
http://whoviating.blogspot.com/2015/10/2237-states-continue-to-demonize-poor.html
http://whoviating.blogspot.com/2015/07/2112-our-worst-unacknowledged-evil-part.html
http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2016/2/22/1489251/-The-Republican-war-on-poor-people-s-grocery-lists-continues
http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2016/3/20/1501544/-Punishing-the-poor-is-not-going-to-end-poverty

More troops in Iraq
http://www.centcom.mil/en/news/articles/march-20-26th-marine-expeditionary-unit-on-ground-in-iraq
http://www.military.com/daily-news/2016/02/03/number-us-troops-iraq-more-than-4000-exceeds-previous-claims.html
http://www.cnn.com/2016/03/20/politics/us-firebase-iraq-isis/index.html
http://www.commondreams.org/news/2016/03/22/revelation-secret-iraq-base-belies-claim-no-boots-ground

238.6 - New study shows impact of voter ID laws on minorities

New study shows impact of voter ID laws on minorities

To wrap up the week, we can tell you that researchers at UC-San Diego are working on a study that so far shows what every sentient being who is not a right-wing ideologue already knew and which a lot of them knew as well but also knew it was to their advantage to lie about it: Voter ID laws do depress voting rates among minorities, particularly those of Latinos, and disproportionately affect Democratic voters.

That is, they are a program of trying to rig elections in favor of the reactionaries by keeping more liberal-minded people from voting. Just like we knew all along they are.

The report, technically a working paper, was based on research lead by political science professor Zoltan Hajnal and assisted by Nazita Lajevardi, a PhD candidate in polisci, and Lindsay Nielson, a post-Doc, all at UC-San Diego.

There have been some studies done that indicated voter ID laws have an insignificant effect on turnout, including among minorities, but in their paper the authors noted significant drawbacks to those studies, not the least of which was that only one is less than six years old, which means they were largely done before the wave of voter ID laws that followed the Supreme Court's approval of Indiana's photo ID law in 2008 and, more importantly, before the wave of strict photo ID laws, those the authors described as the ones "that prevent the voter from casting a regular ballot if they cannot present appropriate identification."

In addition, those earlier studies relied on self-reported voting statistics, that is, figures derived from polls asking people "Did you vote?" Such figures are notoriously unreliable as people - and the literature says this is particularly true of minorities - over-report their own voting histories. "Yeah, of course I voted! Sure!"

So instead, the researchers used more recent data and more reliable data, the "validated vote" numbers from the Cooperative Congressional Election Studies. Significantly, they also checked the data over a large number of elections cycles - over 50, in fact - over the period 2006 to 2012, this first time this has been done for so many elections.

So, after controlling for pretty much every factor other than the law that could affect turnout, what did they find? In a nutshell, in the words of Lajevardi,

where [strict voter ID laws] are enacted, racial and ethnic minorities are less apt to vote.

In general elections, states with strict photo ID laws show a Latino turnout 10.3 percentage points lower than in states without them. The law also affected turnout in primary elections, where Latino turnout decreased by 6.3 points and Black turnout by 1.6 points.

But it gets worse, because they also looked at something else that previous studies hadn't: not just the turnout, but the difference in turnout between minority voters and whites, who overall are less impacted by voter ID laws.

In primary elections, the gap between Latino and white turnout nearly tripled in states with the tough laws, from 5.0 points to 13.3 points. The gap between black and white turnout nearly doubled in primaries - from 4.8 points to 8.5 points. The effect on Latinos carried over to general elections, where the turnout gap more than doubled, from 5.3 points to 11.9 points.

What's more, very likely as a effect of those whose ability to vote has been hindered, the research also showed that in strict photo ID states, the turnout gap in general elections between Republicans and Democrats more than doubled from 2.3 points to 5.6 points.

So: Enact photo ID laws. Suppress minority turnout? Check. Suppress Democratic turnout? Check. Rig the system in favor of the really right wing? Check.

The right wing surely will try to dismiss these results while continuing to screech about the essentially non-existent crime of in-person voter fraud, which is the only type crime these laws could affect.

But behind closed doors, I have no doubt they are reading the authors' paper with glasses of champagne in their hands.

Sources cited in links:
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/dc/voter-id-study-minorities-liberals
http://pages.ucsd.edu/~zhajnal/page5/documents/voterIDhajnaletal.pdf
http://whoviating.blogspot.com/2008/04/theres-no-intelligence-in-this-id.html

235.7 - Income inequality is growing, hideous, and immoral

Income inequality is growing, hideous, and immoral

Another topic I haven't talked much about of late is the economy. And here just a few figures show everything that's wrong.

Fifty-six percent of Americans have less than $1,000 combined in their checking and savings accounts; a majority of us are living paycheck-to-paycheck.

Furthermore, almost two-thirds of Americans - 63 percent - do not have enough in their savings for an emergency, defined as an unexpected expense of $500-$1000. A substantial majority of Americans would need to borrow money from a family member, take out a bank loan, or put it on their credit card if faced with such an expense because they lack the resources to do otherwise.

This was all according to a survey cited in Forbes, which had the takeaway not that the economy sucks or that wealth continues to congeal at the top or that people are underpaid or that chronic long-term unemployment remains stubbornly high, but rather that "Americans are terrible savers." Which becomes bitterly funny when it's recalled that in June, Jon Hilsenrath, chief economics correspondent of the Wall Street Journal, was grousing that we are saving too much and not spending enough.

Meanwhile, the richest 0.1 percent of Americans have almost as much wealth as the bottom 90 percent combined and income inequality is the highest it has been since 1928. As Ben Norton, a politics staff writer at Salon magazine, wrote, "the term 'middle class' is useless" because, as he says, we don't have one anymore. I have for some time been saying that we are becoming a two-class nation of just a tiny number of rich and a great number of poor or at best working poor. And it seems that every day there is new information to confirm that.

Worldwide, the situation is even worse as income and wealth inequality continue to steadily worsen.

According to Oxfam, in 2010 the world's richest 388 people had the same amount of wealth as the bottom 50% of the world's population. By 2014, that number had shrunk to 80. In 2015, it was 62. Just 62 people, together, were as rich as half the population of the world combined. Indeed, since 2010, the wealth of that lower 50% has dropped by about $1 trillion, or 41 percent. The world is hideously and immorally unequal, and that inequality is not only increasing, it is accelerating. And for all their talk about how much they worry about that inequality, our economic and political leaders seem revealingly uninterested in actually doing anything about it except in cases - such as global climate change - where the inequality becomes so severe as to threaten what they value second only to their bottom lines, which is stability.

Those who are now gathering at the annual World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland - which I am forever tempted to call Davros - no matter what platitudes they may mouth, they are not on your side. They don't give a damn about you except insofar as you can fatten their bank accounts.

And don't think it's any better here. Don't.

Do you really think those politicos of both parties who blather on about the non-existent middle class really have your interests at heart? I know I don't have to convince you about people like Paul Rantin' or Ted Crazy or Donald TheRump, but do you really believe that, to cite a prominent example, Hillary Clinton, who has so many ties to Wall Street that it looks like some sort of kinky bondage party, is going to challenge the interests of the banks and bankers any more than did Barack Obama,

- who failed to prosecute Wall Street crooks, even going so far as to specifically refuse to follow up on criminal referrals from the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, which was set up to investigate criminality in the 2008 collapse;

- who thus let the bankers get away with, in the words of one source, "theft, wire fraud, bank fraud, loan fraud, securities fraud, and commodities fraud" while millions of Americans lost their life savings and their homes even as his Justice Department made mortgage fraud its lowest-ranked national criminal priority and closed hundreds of cases after little or no investigation;

- who depended for economic advice on the likes of Tim Geithner and has stood silent as the too-big-to-fail banks have gotten even bigger?

Do you really think people like that are on your side, on the side of the 56%, the 63%, the 90%?

Do not believe it. Not for a second.

Now, I'm not going to claim to you that every leader, every officeholder, every politician, every rich person, is a solely self-interested selfish scumbag. I suppose I would say that, for again a prominent example, Bernie Sanders could be an exception, based largely on the fact that he's been saying pretty much the same things for 40 years or so, even though he's not the socialist he claims to be, even less the one he's painted as. But I do say for him and for all the rest that "guilty until proven innocent" is a good and reliable standard.

Sources cited in links:
http://www.salon.com/2016/01/14/myth_of_the_middle_class_most_americans_dont_even_have_1000_in_savings/
http://www.forbes.com/sites/maggiemcgrath/2016/01/06/63-of-americans-dont-have-enough-savings-to-cover-a-500-emergency/#408481996dde
http://whoviating.blogspot.com/2015/06/2077-clown-award-jon-hilsenrath-of-wall.html
http://www.salon.com/2016/01/21/this_global_wealth_study_will_make_you_weep_the_most_disturbing_findings_partner/
https://www.oxfam.org/
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-davos-meeting-divisions-idUSKCN0UW007?feedType=RSS&feedName=worldNews
http://tardis.wikia.com/wiki/Davros
http://whoviating.blogspot.com/2012/09/left-side-of-aisle-72-part-5.html
http://whoviating.blogspot.com/2014/03/1516-outrage-of-week-fraud-about.html
http://www.cnbc.com/id/101204216