Just recently, I saw the documentary film, "Inequality For All." At first viewing, I think it's easy to miss quite a bit; I will probably take the time to view it again. It's not the greatest documentary ever made, but it's mixture of statistics, history, personal biographical material and, of course, the interviews with featured guests makes it, in my mind, of poignant interest.
But I'm not writing today as a film critic. I'm much more interested in some salient economic and political points made by the film. I'll mention some of them in brief before I get to the main subject of today's Blog.
1) 70% of the economy is consumer-driven, which means that a lack of consumer spending right now is hurting our recovery from the Great Recession. That lack of spending is, of course, the result of several forces, including the flat-lining of middle class wages since the 1970s, the loss of jobs that began even before the crash and Recession, loss of jobs to globalization, decline of union membership and influence, use of technology that replaces the need for some types of workers, reduced tax rates for the rich. All of this, and more, has resulted in the squeezing of the middle class and something close to devastation for the poor. No wonder consumer spending is down. What's worse, it may stay that way for a while.
2) Growth in the economy is affected by a growing inequality of income and wealth. Research from the International Monetary Fund suggests that the widening disparity since the 1980s might shorten economic recovery by as much as a third, says a NY Times article. The IMF concluded that reducing inequality and bolstering growth, in the long run, might be "two sides of the same coin."
3) The profit motive has taken over to the extent that industrialists seem to think that low wages
are the key to greater profits, and thus they have moved jobs and businesses to countries where the labor force will accept minimal wages, and in this country have consorted with Right-wing politicians to destroy union existence and influence in the hopes of getting non-union workers to accept low wages without a fight. They have had great success, as the recent vote at the Volkswagen plant in Tennessee attests.
4) Income inequality continues to increase exponentially. Although the richest in this country took a hit during the worst of the Great Recession, they have managed to rebound quite nicely, earning a larger and larger share of overall income. The 1% earns about one-sixth of all the income, and the top 10% take in about half of all the income in the U.S. The top 1% now hold a larger share of overall wealth than the bottom 90% ! The statistics put forth in the documentary stress the widening inequality gap in a way that can only distress those of us in the middle class. We are facing not only a job crisis and a personal debt crisis, we are facing an inequality crisis which threatens our very existence as a leading nation.
5) A whole series of "things that matter" are discussed. Education is at the top of the list because it is so intertwined with access to jobs of the future. The minimum wage matters because a hike in line with inflation over the last 30 years would help many people advance beyond poverty level and reduce the burden on government in picking up those who are barely holding on or who have just sunk into poverty. Values matter, because the growth of a plutocracy dedicated to extraction of wealth from the economy is detrimental to most of society, except for the very few at the very top of the wealth ladder. Democracy matters because the people are the real strength of democracy and of the economy. If apathy or indifference reign, then an oligarchy will surely be the result, and we will all be dancing to the tune played by the top .1%!
Of all the interviews conducted in the documentary, I was most taken with that done with a millionaire pillow company CEO who happens to have made a fortune as an early investor in Amazon.com. His name is Nick Hanauer, and he acknowledges that he earns 1,000 times what the average wage-earner does. A few more biographical facts about him: he has managed, founded or financed over 30 companies, including Amazon.com, Aquantive, Inc.(sold to Microsoft for $6.4 billion), Insitu Group (purchased by Boeing for $400 million), Seattle Bank and the Pacific Coast Feather Company (makes pillows!). The aggregate market value of these companies amounted to tens of billions of dollars (for more about Nick Hanauer, consult his website at nick-hanauer.com).
He makes some points that require serious consideration, in my opinion.
1) "When employers stop thinking about employees as costs to cut, but instead as customers, they see it is in their self-interest to raise the minimum wage. We need to change their concept of self-interest."
One of his points is that the inability of consumers to purchase goods means that businesses suffer the loss of customers - a fundamental law of capitalism. That's why, he says, that "the widening wealth gap in our economy presents an economic challenge: rising inequality creates a death spiral of falling demand that ultimately takes everyone down."
He also points out that the rich and the filthy rich are not going to rescue the economy by their own consumption of products, even if that consumption is somewhat conspicuous. He says the problem comes down to this: "My annual earnings equal about 1,000 times the U.S. median wage, but I don't consume 1,000 times more pillows than the average American. Even the richest among us only need one or two pillows to rest their heads at night." (He does admit in an article he wrote that the rich do spend a lot more than the average family, but claims that the only truly expensive line item in his own budget is a private airplane, manufactured in France and filled with fuel from the Middle East). He says it's just crazy to believe that any of this is more beneficial to our economy than hiring teachers or police officers or investing in our infrastructure. It is interesting that in his article he references Henry Ford as one who knew well how important it was to pay his workers a decent wage in order to enable them to buy Ford cars.
2) "The most powerful and elegant antidote is sitting right before us: a spike in the minimum wage."
He realizes that, in the past, calls for minimum wage hikes have come from unions and advocates for the poor. He believes that businessmen and entrepreneurs ought to be advocating for this as it can only increase consumer demand for products and services.
He makes the point that if the minimum wage had simply followed U.S. productivity gains since 1968, it would be $21.72 an hour -- three times what it is now. And, we can't even get this Congress to legislate a raise to $10.10 per hour!
Knowing that Congress would never consider a raise to over $20 per hour, he settles on $15 as an appropriate figure. Why? Because, he says, "studies by the Economic Policy Institute show that a $15 minimum wage would directly affect 51 million workers and indirectly benefit an additional 30 million. That's 81 million people, or about 64% of the workforce and their families, who would be more able to buy cars, clothing and food from our nation's businesses."
This all goes contrary to conventional economic orthodoxy, preached by certain business leaders, and by conservatives, that raising the minimum wage to such an extent would make jobs scarcer because businesses couldn't afford to hire at a higher amount. Economists David Card and Alan Krueger show, contrary to that bit of propaganda, that increases in the minimum wage increase employment! "In 60 percent of the states that raised the minimum wage during periods of high unemployment, job growth was faster than the national average." It's pretty simple really: workers who earn more, spend more, helping businesses to grow by meeting the increase in product demand.
3) "A big increase in the minimum wage would substantially reduce government intervention and dependency on public assistance programs."
One of the reasons Hanauer advocates for the $15 per hour minimum wage is that he believes it would make many low-income families less dependent on government programs. He makes the case that "no one earning the current minimum wage of about $15,000 per year can aspire to live decently, much less raise a family." How true, and what he doesn't say is that this one fact also leads to a multiple job scenario that so many people, single mothers especially, resort to in order to supplement their income. But that's another story.
"Almost all workers subsisting on ...low earnings need a panoply of taxpayer-supported benefits, including the earned income credit, food stamps, Medicaid or housing subsidies. According to the Congressional Budget Office, the federal government spent $316 billion on programs designed to help the poor in 2012. The CBO report (also) shows that the federal government gives about $8,800 in annual assistance to the lowest-income households but only $4,000 to households earning $35,500, which would be about the level of earnings of a worker making $15 an hour."
A decent minimum wage is not a panacea for every ill we face, but it sure looks like this particular entrepreneur thinks it would go a long way toward helping the poor and those on the brink of poverty, as well as the businesses that need more customers, and the middle class which will expand outward as millions climb out of poverty. The ripple effect could be tremendous, as well. Schools could benefit as fewer children come to school hungry, and as new property owners pay school taxes more teachers and more resources come into play; perhaps more young people could aspire to attend college; perhaps other young people could afford to upgrade their skills in trade-centered training centers and schools; perhaps parents might be freed up from a second or third job and become more active in advocating for their children. We need this change right now!
4) "The conventional wisdom that the rich and businesses are our nation's 'job creators' is false."
It's refreshing to hear a millionaire entrepreneur admit that this mantra is not true. So, it must follow that the line we get from so many conservative politicians is equally untrue: that raising taxes on the rich will adversely affect job creation. Hanauer admits that without entrepreneurs and investors, you can't have a dynamic and growing capitalist economy. But, he says, "It’s equally true that without consumers, you can't have entrepreneurs and investors. And the more we have happy customers with lots of disposable income, the better our businesses will do."
Hanauer also admits that he himself has never been a job creator. He has started businesses based on good ideas and he has initially hired hundreds of people. But he reminds us again that if no one can afford to buy what he has to sell, the business and those jobs will soon evaporate. What does lead to more employment - thus to job creation - is the "virtuous cycle" set in motion by consumers that allows companies "to survive and thrive and (enables) business owners to hire." He claims that the middle-class consumer is more of a job creator than he has ever been or will be. Now, that's a pretty hefty statement coming from a millionaire businessman.
It turns the conventional wisdom (mantra) upside down, and puts the emphasis on all of us as the job creators. Without consumers buying products and services on an on-going demand basis, you don't have any jobs to create. Maybe that's why the richest 1% are sitting on more than 2 trillion dollars - there isn't enough demand from consumers for their products and services, because there isn't enough money in the pockets of those consumers like you and me.
He concludes: "We've had it backward for the last 30 years. Rich businesspeople like me don't create jobs. Middle-class consumers do, and when they thrive, U.S. businesses grow and profit."
5) "We must raise taxes on the rich to reward the true job creators."
Now this is where it gets really dicey for the Right-wing and the Chamber of Commerce. Hanauer boldly proclaims that we should raise taxes on the rich to levels that once existed in order to put purchasing power back into the hands of the middle class which will spur growth for all. He reminds us to remember that "capitalists without customers are out of business." He wants to shift the burden of taxation from the 99% to the top 1% as the "surest and best way to get our consumer-based economy rolling again."
He cites some figures that certainly are provocative. "Since 1980, the share of the nation's income for fat cats like me in the top 0.1% has increased a shocking 400%, while the share for the bottom 50% of Americans has declined 33%. At the same time, effective tax rates on the super-wealthy fell to 16.6% in 2007 from 42% at the peak of U.S. productivity in the early 1960s, and about 30% during the expansion of the 1990s. In my case, that means that this year (2011), I paid an 11% rate on an eight-figure income." We know that Mitt Romney didn't pay much more than that - about 14%; and Warren Buffet indicated that he paid at a lesser rate than anyone on his office staff!
What's the point? Well, simply stated, it takes money to run a government, and it takes money to invest in a broad middle-class growth that makes for consumers that spend on goods and services, and it takes money to keep our nation secure. If the true job-creators are the middle-class, and if demand for more goods and services is to happen, and if our nation is to be secure, and moreover, fulfill all of its other obligations under our Constitution, the middle class cannot be expected to carry the burden of producing tax revenue to pay for all those obligations. The rich must pay their fair share, or we shall see our economy decline and our middle class shrink. I forgot -- the latter is already happening; the former has not yet happened!
Hanauer makes this statement: "Significant tax increases on the about $1.5 trillion in collective income of those of us in the top 1% could create hundreds of billions of dollars to invest in our economy, rather than letting it pile up in a few bank accounts like a huge clot in our nation's economic circulatory system." As he does in the movie, he reveals the fact that he does not even know where his money is or what it's doing. He depends on others to invest it and keep it producing more money through a wide-ranging portfolio that is invested in a myriad of financial products including hedge funds. But he does know that it is not working for the economy; it's working for him and his company. That's what the rich are doing. They are taking their tax earnings (from not paying their fair share) and investing that money for themselves so they can have even more money. It's not working to produce jobs or growth; it's working to produce income upon which the rich pay only a maximum of 15% on investment income. The rich are clogging the economic arteries and making it more difficult for us all to get ahead.
So Hanauer asks us to consider one simple thing we could do immediately: a "puny" 3% surtax on incomes above $1 million. He says it would be enough to maintain and expand unemployment insurance, while also enabling us to invest in rebuilding schools and infrastructure.. And even then, taxes on the rich would remain historically low and their incomes would be astronomically high. That's just a short-term fix; he still advocates a return to much higher rates over the long-term for the richest 1%!
Nick Hanauer makes reference in passing to one more item that I think should get people thinking a bit. The current $7.25 minimum wage forces taxpayers to subsidize stores like Wal Mart, and other large employers. How? Well, because Wal Mart and others pay minimum wage with very few benefits for their employees, the federal government ends up covering medical care, food stamps, housing subsidies because these working-poor families cannot survive on these low wages and lack of benefits. Costco doesn't operate that way; how come Wal Mart gets away with it? Because, as usual, the American middle class and the working poor tend to forget what they do when they shop at these stores. They feed the monster who steals from them to make their profits.
Perhaps one of the most important things to come out of this documentary is the fact that it is not just a film; it is a call to action: a motion picture designed to "put people into action," and to "engage ordinary people to advocate for pro-middle class policies in all 50 state capitals," as one commentator put it. Kristina vanden Heuvel, in her article on the film, suggests "Reich concludes his Berkeley course on wealth and poverty by stressing the power of his students -- and all citizens -- to make change. Free and fair markets don't just happen; governments elected by voters, set the rules by which the economic system works. For all of Washington's gridlock...it is still up to the American people to stand up and fight to make the market work better -- not just for some, but for all."
I would add: it's time to stop shopping at retailers and other businesses that take both your spending money and your tax money and use it to exploit both the economic system and the tax system, diminishing your own ability to earn a decent wage. Don't shop at Wal Mart and see how long it takes them to change their policies. In politics, it is imperative that we stop voting for politicians who have exploitation on their minds; who exploit the middle class to favor the rich and to increase their extraction of your money and mine out of the tax code and the regulations that they write for their benefit. Likewise, don't vote for those politicians who defend the status quo and support the concept that the rich must be protected and coddled in order not to offend or disrupt their role as "job creators."
Nick Hanauer comments: "When the American middle class defends a tax system in which the lion's share of benefits accrues to the richest, all in the name of job creation, all that happens is that the rich get richer." The rest of us then must help pay for the rich and their cronies, the politicians, but we get poorer, as has happened for the last 30 years. "Inequality For Now" says we must stand up and advocate for the middle class and the working poor and begin to make the common-sense rules that should govern our economy. We cannot continue under the rule-making of the 1% because they do not believe that any rules should apply to them and their insatiable appetite for our money.
Publius Speaks
Become A Follower
2/17/2014
“I didn’t know it could be any different”
One of four children in this country is growing up poor. What’s even worse perhaps is that so many of those children are growing up resigned to their own helplessness, because they cannot envision any other possibilities or opportunities. It should not be a surprise to anyone that our nation, with a high level of income inequality, is also becoming a nation with an equally high inequality of possibilities, when compared to the richest one-percent. As has been said by Diane Ravitch in Reign of Error, ‘Demography is not destiny, but students’ social and economic family characteristics are a powerful influence on their average achievement. On average, the advantages and disadvantages into which children are born make a difference.”
Then, Ravitch launches into a litany of disadvantages that children born into poverty are likely to experience. Although fairly long, it’s worth quoting in its entirety:
Children born to poor mothers are less likely to:
--receive regular medical care
--have books and magazines in their home
--be read to by a parent or guardian
--be enrolled in a pre-kindergarten program
--have their own bedroom or a quiet place to study
--hear a large and complex vocabulary at home, as compared to professional families
--receive three nutritious meals every day
--live in sound housing
--live in a safe neighborhood
--take family trips to the local library or museum
--participate in organized activities after school
--take a family vacation or go to a summer camp
But are more likely to:
--be born preterm or with low birth weight and consequently to suffer cognitive impairments, learning and attention deficits
--suffer “fetal alcohol syndrome” (occurs ten times more often among low-income black children than among middle-class white kids)
--live in a dwelling infested with rats and roaches
--have a parent or guardian who is incarcerated or unemployed
--be homeless
--move frequently and change schools frequently
--to have asthma (caused by low-grade heating oil, excessive dust, reactions to mold, cockroaches, and secondhand smoke)
--be ill without getting treated by a doctor
--be hungry or suffer anemia because of poor diet
--have undetected vision and hearing problems
--have toothaches and cavities
--be exposed to lead in paint on their walls
“The burdens imposed on children by poverty are physical, emotional, cognitive, and psychological. Because of poverty, the achievement gap begins before the first day of kindergarten,” Ravitch concludes. The Shriver Report says that “by the time they turn 4, poor children are typically 18 months behind their middle-class peers and the vast majority never catch up!”
One of my vivid memories from a recent symposium on poverty is of a young woman who spoke of her struggle to break out of her childhood of poverty. She described something of her life –lack of food, lack of early education, lack of parental guidance, a dysfunctional family, and then she said what stayed with me: “I thought it was the way things were; that what I had was normal; that there was nothing beyond what I experienced!” And then, as a teenager, she found something: an opportunity that had not been available before; a program for young adults that changed her life.
Joseph E. Stiglitz in his book, The Price of Inequality comments: "The United States has become a society in which there is less equality of opportunity, less than it was in the past, and less than in other countries." He cites three examples of items that could be broadened to make a significant difference for those in or facing poverty: the earned income tax credit, health insurance for poor kids, and access to a good education.
It occurs to me that everyone of us individually and collectively has an obligation and a responsibility in this democratic society: to create, to provide or to support the possibilities for a better life, not just for people living in poverty, but for those who live on the brink of poverty, and for those who live with special challenges no matter their place or status. We must all be possibility-makers, so that those who do not know that life can be any different, will be able to find something that can change their outlook; their vision; their life story. We must be the possibility-makers so that others can be successful possibility-seekers.
I realize at this point that I just avoided using a word that distresses radical conservatives. They do not like “takers”; they appreciate only those who pull themselves up by their own bootstraps, and create their own possibilities and successes. I understand what they believe. What I don’t understand is how they miss the obvious point that for so many in our society, there are no bootstraps!
Providing bootstrap possibilities is a whole lot different than providing temporary, means-tested programs that comprise a "safety net" into which one can simply fall and flounder. There are so few possibilities available to the poor to be able to pull themselves from the depths of deprivation onto the heights of success and wealth. And sometimes, tragically, opportunities and possibilities exist of which they know nothing, or they exist but can’t be seized because of mitigating factors. It is fair and just policies that tend to be the engines of change, not just programs that make-up a very disconnected safety net that is almost as impossible to navigate as it is to escape poverty itself.
The one concept that so often gets left out by the radically conservative viewpoint is that even successful people in the private sector – the bankers, the financiers, the manufacturers and the retailers, the service providers and the care-givers – are all flawed and imperfect in one way or another (an influential concept for our Founding Fathers in developing “ checks an balances.”). We and they are all guilty of the same shortcomings – greed, avarice, cheating, fraud, and indifference. Because we all fall short of perfection, we ought not to act as though certain people are somehow better than others and deserve special privileges, while some deserve fewer possibilities than others simply because they have not achieved some so-called "success" in life. It is primarily because of our commonality, our interdependence, and our common destiny no matter who we may be, that we bear a mutual responsibility for each other while living in this imperfect world.
It is that interdependence and mutual responsibility for each other that prompts me to say that every one of our institutions should be dedicated to the proposition that the more possibilities for a good life that can be invented and offered to all of our people by both the public and private sectors, the better off our whole society will be. Instead of imposing an austerity that seeks to limit possibilities, we should be looking to create a plethora of possibilities that can be offered to all.
To the contrary, we have gotten ourselves into a stupid fight over “benefits and entitlements,” “givers and takers,” “rich and poor,” “class warfare”; “deficits and debt.” It seems as though we have all but forgotten the “self-evident truths” upon which we based our Declaration of independence: “that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable RIGHTS, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.”
We also seem to have overlooked the mission of government as proposed in the Preamble to our Constitution: “We, the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the General Welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”
Somewhere in our haste to be frugal, safe and secure - and perfect - we have laid aside our obligations to equality, justice, the pursuit of happiness, the blessings of liberty and the very broad obligation to promote the general welfare. Have we cherry-picked our obligations and narrowed them to civil obedience, defense, law and order, an austere budget and to liberty as defined by a very small cadre of plutocrats? I wonder…
How then can we open up the possibilities for the governed to enjoy full participation in the possibilities of life, liberty and happiness? Certainly not by simply developing more governmental programs that attempt to soothe, or alleviate, or temporarily relieve the inadequacies of our system and the special needs of our people. We are apt to get further toward creating more relevant possibilities by following a process similar to that outlined in the Shriver Report: “Women on the Brink.” Here we have relevant polls, studies and stories that lead us to think of what the problems are, how people view them and what possibilities might be engendered to address those problems and concerns.
The first disturbing fact in this report is that more than 70 million women and children live on the brink today in our nation, and that one in three women is living in or near poverty. While most of these women are white, they are of every color, creed and ethnicity. What’s more, many of these women are part of the working poor: they are our dental hygienists, our restaurant servers, our receptionists; the caretakers of our aging parents or of our children. Yet they are living on the brink of, or in the grip of, poverty.
Another disturbing statistic is that we have moved from the small pockets of poverty in the 1960’s to a broad-ranging financial insecurity now experienced by a third of the country, mostly women and children. According to the Report, if women working full time, year round, were paid the same for their work as comparable men, we could cut the poverty rate for working women and their families by half. Our public policies have not adjusted to a world in which nearly two-thirds of mothers are primary or co-breadwinners. The consequences are particularly troubling for single mothers, who are much less apt to receive decent wages and family-friendly benefits. We need new policy prescriptions for new circumstances. The Report suggests that the lack of policies to help families manage conflicts between work and family takes the possibility of working away from too many women. Adequate child care and sick days or “family leave” days would open up work possibilities for many women right away.
It is also clear from the Shriver Report that one of the major problems for women on the brink, or actually within poverty, is the lack of an adequate education, and perhaps, more cogently, the lack of possibilities for pursuing an adequate education. Here are just some examples of the lack of opportunities:
--most young children do not have access to affordable high-quality preschool, and without this possibility an at-risk child is 25% more likely to drop out of school, 40% more likely to become a teen parent; and 60% more likely never to attend college.
--the effectiveness of a kindergarten teacher appears to have lifelong effect upon children, yet schools that serve children in areas of poverty are the least likely to be able to afford to hire experienced kindergarten teachers, and are more apt to be using part-time less-experienced teachers at that level.
--the lack of an adequate tax base is one reason why schools in poverty areas are not equipping students for the daunting task of learning; the poor don't have the resources to be able to live in affluent neighborhoods, and most of them are renters anyway, not owners. The lack of an adequate tax base clearly translates to a lack of the resources necessary for hiring excellent teachers, buying up-to-date text books; for providing excellent resources like computers for every child, or small classrooms for every student, or classroom assistants in every class, to say nothing of lacking after-school activities, or in-house counselors, or social workers to work with families.
--the absolute need for parents to work at all hours of the day or night has a deleterious effect upon the early parent-child relationship in terms of reading books, teaching math in simple everyday ways, or taking kids to libraries, museums, or other cultural venues.
--coming to school hungry has a measurable effect on being able to learn; cut-backs in school breakfast and lunch programs are having an effect upon the performance level of many poor children
--the drop-out rate, although decreased, is still abysmal compared to other developed countries
These are just a few of the many factors that undermine, or result from, schools that are located in zones of poverty or near-poverty. The most important lesson that can be learned from these factors is that it is because of the lack of money that these exigencies exist; they are not the result of the behavior or characteristics of those living in poverty. Poor behaviors are not the cause of poverty - they are, most often, the results of Poverty -- and they can be rectified. Students who are most likely to succeed are clustered in certain school districts that are already rich in resources and who have a leg-up on students struggling with poverty, inadequate teaching and under-funded resources. In fact, a good education depends increasingly on the "income, wealth and education of one's parents," says Joseph Stiglitz. A lack of money and opportunity is the cause upon which we must focus our attention.
It is important to list some of the suggested solutions contained in the Report to understand that we need to attack the roots of poverty, not the poor, and to remedy the lack of resources, not the behavior of the poor; and we need to be aware that these aren't just "women's issues."
1) Early childhood education is one of the best investments we can make in America's future. Forty states now have publicly-funded preschool programs, but they serve only a quarter of 4-year-olds. Nobel prize winner, James Heckman (Economics), has found that every public dollar spent on high-quality early childhood education returns $7 through increased productivity and savings on public assistance and criminal justice programs. Head Start helped to change the lives of more than 30 million children and their families, and study after study has confirmed young children who experience secure, stimulating environments with rich learning opportunities from an early age are better prepared to thrive in school. President Obama's administration is committed to closing unfair opportunity gaps by expanding high-quality early learning services for children from birth to 5 years of age, including high-quality preschool for every 4-year-old in America.
2) Another writer in the Shriver Report, the Mayor of Fort Worth, Texas, suggests that one of the vital necessities in a young person's life is after-school activities, many of which are inaccessible to families on or over the brink of poverty. She says, "The evidence is clear: Kids in after school programs are more engaged and interested in their education, have better school attendance; rate their school experience more positively; and are less likely to commit or to be victims of crimes." These programs not only help the kids toward higher achievement, but they allow working parents to keep their jobs while their kids are provided with a safe place to learn and grow.
3) Miami Dade College is a diverse campus where 70 percent of the students come from low-income families (46% of whom live below the poverty line). Many of these students are the first in their families to ever attend a college, and they need supports to help them finish a degree. MDC assists them (especially young women) to gain access to federal and state programs that can provide supports, such as Medicaid, SNAP, Head Start, legal counseling and pregnancy support. Additional partnerships with mentoring organizations, internship possibilities, career planning, peer-engagement programs are also integrated into their college lives.
4) Higher education is one answer to the gaps of opportunity and equity in our society, especially for women. Women with only a high school degree are three to four times more likely to live on the financial brink than those with a college degree. Today's girls need to think of themselves as providers, not just as caretakers. Preparation for that larger role in families means seeking out degrees that enhance one's chances for success in this new role.
5) Improving the health of children birth to age 5 is a necessity, because the connection between chronic childhood stress and long-term health is something that cannot be ignored.
6) Women must mentor younger girls to teach them about the importance of making smart decisions -- financial, personal and educational. "Foster the mindset that girls must invest in themselves, and that they have the power to succeed."
Conservative intellectuals, commentators and politicians have one thing in common: they blame the poor for being poor. According to an article in the Shriver Report, "Time to Wake Up: Stop Blaming Poverty on the Poor" by Barbara Ehrenreich, "By the time of the Reagan Era, it had become a cornerstone of conservative ideology that poverty is caused, not by low wages or a lack of jobs and education, but by the bad attitudes and faulty lifestyles of the poor. In their view, the poor are shiftless, irresponsible, and prone to addiction... have too many children and fail to get married. So, if they suffer from grievous material deprivation…they have no one to blame but themselves.” Poor single mothers were singled out as “welfare Queens” who chose to stay at home and collect welfare rather than to find work. Welfare “reform” was the conservative answer for ending such laziness and curing the self-induced “culture of poverty” that was supposedly at the root of their misery. It was meant to counter the prevailing attitude that the poor were entitled to welfare benefits without working for those so-called “hand-outs.”
Ehrenreich says the Great Recession should have put the victim-blaming theory of poverty to rest after millions of educated, hardworking and ambitious workers (including tech workers, managers and other once-comfortable professionals) began to slip into poverty, and found themselves applying for food stamps, showing up in shelters, and lining up for level-entry jobs in retail and fast food. No one could rightly accuse these “nouveau poor” of having made bad choices or bad lifestyle decisions. It could have been a moment for the prevaricating pundits and blustering politicians to finally admit the truth: “Poverty is not a character failing or a lack of motivation. Poverty is a lack of money,” and I would add, a lack of possibilities and opportunities because of the lack of money!
She concludes: “Sadly, this (conservative mantra) has become the means by which the wealthiest country in the world manages to remain complacent in the face of alarmingly high levels of poverty by continuing to blame poverty not on the economy, or inadequate social supports, but on the poor themselves. It’s time, she says, “to revive the notion of a collective national responsibility to the poorest among us, who are disproportionately women and especially women of color.”
The Shriver Report includes a poll of 3,500 adults that indicates just as forcefully, if not more so, that the financially vulnerable women who participated in the poll --blue-collar women, single mothers, low-income women, women of color -- say that they are optimistic about their economic future and confident in their own ability to turn their lives around. In policy terms, they are not looking for handouts, but for specific policy accommodations that would allow them to fulfill their dual role as primary caregiver and breadwinner. But, they see a disconnect between their own ability and motivation to move ahead and the inability of the current economic structure to change with the changing family structure, and with the dynamics in this country caused by so many women in the workplace. Thus, they advocate for paid sick leave, flexible hours, pay equity, job security for pregnant women and college assistance for single mothers -- all of which find overwhelming support among the people, Democrat or Republican!
The specially-commissioned poll to determine from a broad cross-section of women what they have to say about their own situation was undertaken jointly by a Republican polling firm and one that is operated by a Democrat. The questions and the results were bi-partisan. When was the last time the radical Republicans in Congress (or even the Democrats, for that matter) commissioned a non-partisan poll, overseen by professional pollsters, to determine what those polled say are the real problems they are facing, and what factors contribute to their circumstances?
If the basic job of Congress is to legislate to enhance the General Welfare and the possibility of Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of happiness for all citizens (who are said to be created equal), then why aren't Congresspersons gathering reliable statistics on which to base their budgets, policies and programs? Unfortunately, they are more committed to propagandizing every little bit of data they can gather in order to make it seem like they are resolving problems, not just seeking re-election. In essence, they are simply trumpeting ideology that appeals to their base, and to their real constituency: the special interests and large corporate donors.
Meanwhile, Congresspersons are failing at their primary task: representing grassroots constituents in the making of laws, policies, and programs that present a myriad of real possibilities for the enhancement of Life, Liberty, success, happiness and the general welfare. Their present behavior toward the poor is inexcusable.
Then, Ravitch launches into a litany of disadvantages that children born into poverty are likely to experience. Although fairly long, it’s worth quoting in its entirety:
Children born to poor mothers are less likely to:
--receive regular medical care
--have books and magazines in their home
--be read to by a parent or guardian
--be enrolled in a pre-kindergarten program
--have their own bedroom or a quiet place to study
--hear a large and complex vocabulary at home, as compared to professional families
--receive three nutritious meals every day
--live in sound housing
--live in a safe neighborhood
--take family trips to the local library or museum
--participate in organized activities after school
--take a family vacation or go to a summer camp
But are more likely to:
--be born preterm or with low birth weight and consequently to suffer cognitive impairments, learning and attention deficits
--suffer “fetal alcohol syndrome” (occurs ten times more often among low-income black children than among middle-class white kids)
--live in a dwelling infested with rats and roaches
--have a parent or guardian who is incarcerated or unemployed
--be homeless
--move frequently and change schools frequently
--to have asthma (caused by low-grade heating oil, excessive dust, reactions to mold, cockroaches, and secondhand smoke)
--be ill without getting treated by a doctor
--be hungry or suffer anemia because of poor diet
--have undetected vision and hearing problems
--have toothaches and cavities
--be exposed to lead in paint on their walls
“The burdens imposed on children by poverty are physical, emotional, cognitive, and psychological. Because of poverty, the achievement gap begins before the first day of kindergarten,” Ravitch concludes. The Shriver Report says that “by the time they turn 4, poor children are typically 18 months behind their middle-class peers and the vast majority never catch up!”
One of my vivid memories from a recent symposium on poverty is of a young woman who spoke of her struggle to break out of her childhood of poverty. She described something of her life –lack of food, lack of early education, lack of parental guidance, a dysfunctional family, and then she said what stayed with me: “I thought it was the way things were; that what I had was normal; that there was nothing beyond what I experienced!” And then, as a teenager, she found something: an opportunity that had not been available before; a program for young adults that changed her life.
Joseph E. Stiglitz in his book, The Price of Inequality comments: "The United States has become a society in which there is less equality of opportunity, less than it was in the past, and less than in other countries." He cites three examples of items that could be broadened to make a significant difference for those in or facing poverty: the earned income tax credit, health insurance for poor kids, and access to a good education.
It occurs to me that everyone of us individually and collectively has an obligation and a responsibility in this democratic society: to create, to provide or to support the possibilities for a better life, not just for people living in poverty, but for those who live on the brink of poverty, and for those who live with special challenges no matter their place or status. We must all be possibility-makers, so that those who do not know that life can be any different, will be able to find something that can change their outlook; their vision; their life story. We must be the possibility-makers so that others can be successful possibility-seekers.
I realize at this point that I just avoided using a word that distresses radical conservatives. They do not like “takers”; they appreciate only those who pull themselves up by their own bootstraps, and create their own possibilities and successes. I understand what they believe. What I don’t understand is how they miss the obvious point that for so many in our society, there are no bootstraps!
Providing bootstrap possibilities is a whole lot different than providing temporary, means-tested programs that comprise a "safety net" into which one can simply fall and flounder. There are so few possibilities available to the poor to be able to pull themselves from the depths of deprivation onto the heights of success and wealth. And sometimes, tragically, opportunities and possibilities exist of which they know nothing, or they exist but can’t be seized because of mitigating factors. It is fair and just policies that tend to be the engines of change, not just programs that make-up a very disconnected safety net that is almost as impossible to navigate as it is to escape poverty itself.
The one concept that so often gets left out by the radically conservative viewpoint is that even successful people in the private sector – the bankers, the financiers, the manufacturers and the retailers, the service providers and the care-givers – are all flawed and imperfect in one way or another (an influential concept for our Founding Fathers in developing “ checks an balances.”). We and they are all guilty of the same shortcomings – greed, avarice, cheating, fraud, and indifference. Because we all fall short of perfection, we ought not to act as though certain people are somehow better than others and deserve special privileges, while some deserve fewer possibilities than others simply because they have not achieved some so-called "success" in life. It is primarily because of our commonality, our interdependence, and our common destiny no matter who we may be, that we bear a mutual responsibility for each other while living in this imperfect world.
It is that interdependence and mutual responsibility for each other that prompts me to say that every one of our institutions should be dedicated to the proposition that the more possibilities for a good life that can be invented and offered to all of our people by both the public and private sectors, the better off our whole society will be. Instead of imposing an austerity that seeks to limit possibilities, we should be looking to create a plethora of possibilities that can be offered to all.
To the contrary, we have gotten ourselves into a stupid fight over “benefits and entitlements,” “givers and takers,” “rich and poor,” “class warfare”; “deficits and debt.” It seems as though we have all but forgotten the “self-evident truths” upon which we based our Declaration of independence: “that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable RIGHTS, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.”
We also seem to have overlooked the mission of government as proposed in the Preamble to our Constitution: “We, the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the General Welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”
Somewhere in our haste to be frugal, safe and secure - and perfect - we have laid aside our obligations to equality, justice, the pursuit of happiness, the blessings of liberty and the very broad obligation to promote the general welfare. Have we cherry-picked our obligations and narrowed them to civil obedience, defense, law and order, an austere budget and to liberty as defined by a very small cadre of plutocrats? I wonder…
How then can we open up the possibilities for the governed to enjoy full participation in the possibilities of life, liberty and happiness? Certainly not by simply developing more governmental programs that attempt to soothe, or alleviate, or temporarily relieve the inadequacies of our system and the special needs of our people. We are apt to get further toward creating more relevant possibilities by following a process similar to that outlined in the Shriver Report: “Women on the Brink.” Here we have relevant polls, studies and stories that lead us to think of what the problems are, how people view them and what possibilities might be engendered to address those problems and concerns.
The first disturbing fact in this report is that more than 70 million women and children live on the brink today in our nation, and that one in three women is living in or near poverty. While most of these women are white, they are of every color, creed and ethnicity. What’s more, many of these women are part of the working poor: they are our dental hygienists, our restaurant servers, our receptionists; the caretakers of our aging parents or of our children. Yet they are living on the brink of, or in the grip of, poverty.
Another disturbing statistic is that we have moved from the small pockets of poverty in the 1960’s to a broad-ranging financial insecurity now experienced by a third of the country, mostly women and children. According to the Report, if women working full time, year round, were paid the same for their work as comparable men, we could cut the poverty rate for working women and their families by half. Our public policies have not adjusted to a world in which nearly two-thirds of mothers are primary or co-breadwinners. The consequences are particularly troubling for single mothers, who are much less apt to receive decent wages and family-friendly benefits. We need new policy prescriptions for new circumstances. The Report suggests that the lack of policies to help families manage conflicts between work and family takes the possibility of working away from too many women. Adequate child care and sick days or “family leave” days would open up work possibilities for many women right away.
It is also clear from the Shriver Report that one of the major problems for women on the brink, or actually within poverty, is the lack of an adequate education, and perhaps, more cogently, the lack of possibilities for pursuing an adequate education. Here are just some examples of the lack of opportunities:
--most young children do not have access to affordable high-quality preschool, and without this possibility an at-risk child is 25% more likely to drop out of school, 40% more likely to become a teen parent; and 60% more likely never to attend college.
--the effectiveness of a kindergarten teacher appears to have lifelong effect upon children, yet schools that serve children in areas of poverty are the least likely to be able to afford to hire experienced kindergarten teachers, and are more apt to be using part-time less-experienced teachers at that level.
--the lack of an adequate tax base is one reason why schools in poverty areas are not equipping students for the daunting task of learning; the poor don't have the resources to be able to live in affluent neighborhoods, and most of them are renters anyway, not owners. The lack of an adequate tax base clearly translates to a lack of the resources necessary for hiring excellent teachers, buying up-to-date text books; for providing excellent resources like computers for every child, or small classrooms for every student, or classroom assistants in every class, to say nothing of lacking after-school activities, or in-house counselors, or social workers to work with families.
--the absolute need for parents to work at all hours of the day or night has a deleterious effect upon the early parent-child relationship in terms of reading books, teaching math in simple everyday ways, or taking kids to libraries, museums, or other cultural venues.
--coming to school hungry has a measurable effect on being able to learn; cut-backs in school breakfast and lunch programs are having an effect upon the performance level of many poor children
--the drop-out rate, although decreased, is still abysmal compared to other developed countries
These are just a few of the many factors that undermine, or result from, schools that are located in zones of poverty or near-poverty. The most important lesson that can be learned from these factors is that it is because of the lack of money that these exigencies exist; they are not the result of the behavior or characteristics of those living in poverty. Poor behaviors are not the cause of poverty - they are, most often, the results of Poverty -- and they can be rectified. Students who are most likely to succeed are clustered in certain school districts that are already rich in resources and who have a leg-up on students struggling with poverty, inadequate teaching and under-funded resources. In fact, a good education depends increasingly on the "income, wealth and education of one's parents," says Joseph Stiglitz. A lack of money and opportunity is the cause upon which we must focus our attention.
It is important to list some of the suggested solutions contained in the Report to understand that we need to attack the roots of poverty, not the poor, and to remedy the lack of resources, not the behavior of the poor; and we need to be aware that these aren't just "women's issues."
1) Early childhood education is one of the best investments we can make in America's future. Forty states now have publicly-funded preschool programs, but they serve only a quarter of 4-year-olds. Nobel prize winner, James Heckman (Economics), has found that every public dollar spent on high-quality early childhood education returns $7 through increased productivity and savings on public assistance and criminal justice programs. Head Start helped to change the lives of more than 30 million children and their families, and study after study has confirmed young children who experience secure, stimulating environments with rich learning opportunities from an early age are better prepared to thrive in school. President Obama's administration is committed to closing unfair opportunity gaps by expanding high-quality early learning services for children from birth to 5 years of age, including high-quality preschool for every 4-year-old in America.
2) Another writer in the Shriver Report, the Mayor of Fort Worth, Texas, suggests that one of the vital necessities in a young person's life is after-school activities, many of which are inaccessible to families on or over the brink of poverty. She says, "The evidence is clear: Kids in after school programs are more engaged and interested in their education, have better school attendance; rate their school experience more positively; and are less likely to commit or to be victims of crimes." These programs not only help the kids toward higher achievement, but they allow working parents to keep their jobs while their kids are provided with a safe place to learn and grow.
3) Miami Dade College is a diverse campus where 70 percent of the students come from low-income families (46% of whom live below the poverty line). Many of these students are the first in their families to ever attend a college, and they need supports to help them finish a degree. MDC assists them (especially young women) to gain access to federal and state programs that can provide supports, such as Medicaid, SNAP, Head Start, legal counseling and pregnancy support. Additional partnerships with mentoring organizations, internship possibilities, career planning, peer-engagement programs are also integrated into their college lives.
4) Higher education is one answer to the gaps of opportunity and equity in our society, especially for women. Women with only a high school degree are three to four times more likely to live on the financial brink than those with a college degree. Today's girls need to think of themselves as providers, not just as caretakers. Preparation for that larger role in families means seeking out degrees that enhance one's chances for success in this new role.
5) Improving the health of children birth to age 5 is a necessity, because the connection between chronic childhood stress and long-term health is something that cannot be ignored.
6) Women must mentor younger girls to teach them about the importance of making smart decisions -- financial, personal and educational. "Foster the mindset that girls must invest in themselves, and that they have the power to succeed."
Conservative intellectuals, commentators and politicians have one thing in common: they blame the poor for being poor. According to an article in the Shriver Report, "Time to Wake Up: Stop Blaming Poverty on the Poor" by Barbara Ehrenreich, "By the time of the Reagan Era, it had become a cornerstone of conservative ideology that poverty is caused, not by low wages or a lack of jobs and education, but by the bad attitudes and faulty lifestyles of the poor. In their view, the poor are shiftless, irresponsible, and prone to addiction... have too many children and fail to get married. So, if they suffer from grievous material deprivation…they have no one to blame but themselves.” Poor single mothers were singled out as “welfare Queens” who chose to stay at home and collect welfare rather than to find work. Welfare “reform” was the conservative answer for ending such laziness and curing the self-induced “culture of poverty” that was supposedly at the root of their misery. It was meant to counter the prevailing attitude that the poor were entitled to welfare benefits without working for those so-called “hand-outs.”
Ehrenreich says the Great Recession should have put the victim-blaming theory of poverty to rest after millions of educated, hardworking and ambitious workers (including tech workers, managers and other once-comfortable professionals) began to slip into poverty, and found themselves applying for food stamps, showing up in shelters, and lining up for level-entry jobs in retail and fast food. No one could rightly accuse these “nouveau poor” of having made bad choices or bad lifestyle decisions. It could have been a moment for the prevaricating pundits and blustering politicians to finally admit the truth: “Poverty is not a character failing or a lack of motivation. Poverty is a lack of money,” and I would add, a lack of possibilities and opportunities because of the lack of money!
She concludes: “Sadly, this (conservative mantra) has become the means by which the wealthiest country in the world manages to remain complacent in the face of alarmingly high levels of poverty by continuing to blame poverty not on the economy, or inadequate social supports, but on the poor themselves. It’s time, she says, “to revive the notion of a collective national responsibility to the poorest among us, who are disproportionately women and especially women of color.”
The Shriver Report includes a poll of 3,500 adults that indicates just as forcefully, if not more so, that the financially vulnerable women who participated in the poll --blue-collar women, single mothers, low-income women, women of color -- say that they are optimistic about their economic future and confident in their own ability to turn their lives around. In policy terms, they are not looking for handouts, but for specific policy accommodations that would allow them to fulfill their dual role as primary caregiver and breadwinner. But, they see a disconnect between their own ability and motivation to move ahead and the inability of the current economic structure to change with the changing family structure, and with the dynamics in this country caused by so many women in the workplace. Thus, they advocate for paid sick leave, flexible hours, pay equity, job security for pregnant women and college assistance for single mothers -- all of which find overwhelming support among the people, Democrat or Republican!
The specially-commissioned poll to determine from a broad cross-section of women what they have to say about their own situation was undertaken jointly by a Republican polling firm and one that is operated by a Democrat. The questions and the results were bi-partisan. When was the last time the radical Republicans in Congress (or even the Democrats, for that matter) commissioned a non-partisan poll, overseen by professional pollsters, to determine what those polled say are the real problems they are facing, and what factors contribute to their circumstances?
If the basic job of Congress is to legislate to enhance the General Welfare and the possibility of Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of happiness for all citizens (who are said to be created equal), then why aren't Congresspersons gathering reliable statistics on which to base their budgets, policies and programs? Unfortunately, they are more committed to propagandizing every little bit of data they can gather in order to make it seem like they are resolving problems, not just seeking re-election. In essence, they are simply trumpeting ideology that appeals to their base, and to their real constituency: the special interests and large corporate donors.
Meanwhile, Congresspersons are failing at their primary task: representing grassroots constituents in the making of laws, policies, and programs that present a myriad of real possibilities for the enhancement of Life, Liberty, success, happiness and the general welfare. Their present behavior toward the poor is inexcusable.
2/08/2014
Does the BIG LIE Threaten Democracy Itself?
There is something about Gov. Chris Christie’s problems that fascinates me. Perhaps it’s better said that everything about his case is fascinating. But, one thing stands out to me: if he is lying (and that is yet-to-be-determined), and he knew about the bridge closure being for some sort of political revenge, why are some people, including members of his own party, calling for his resignation? Let me put it in other words:
--is lying considered “bad” when it involves a sitting official, but not when used as a political strategy to win office?
--is impeachment or resignation considered appropriate for a lie told about conduct or motivation by a public official, but a candidate is free to lie whenever he/she deems it appropriate?
I raise these questions simply because attitudes toward lying by politicians seem not only contradictory, but downright incongruous. After all, is it not the leaders of the Republican Party that have gathered together in fancy restaurants as well as in less fancy back rooms to work out strategies for using the Big Lie technique to prevent President Obama from winning a second term, and then to tarnish his reputation and legacy as President after he won re-election? Those meetings have been well-publicized, and do not need added proof here. But, in case you missed it, there is now a concerted effort by certain office-holding Republicans to make sure that the President, by the time he leaves office, is known as a liar, a tyrant, a socialist dictator, a man involved in numerous scandals (Ben Ghazi, IRS, NSA), a man not to be trusted, a failure as President or worse, an illegitimate President, who deserves to be impeached because he is "lawless!" You are going to be hearing these contemptuous lies for the next two years (and most likely beyond that if favorability ratings begin to rise after the President leaves office!). If a sitting official like Governor Christie is apt to be held impeachable or at least censured for his behavior, are these officials immune to such penalties?
Let us pause for a moment to recall the “Big Lie” technique. Wikipedia puts it in a nutshell for us:
“The Big Lie is a propaganda technique. The expression was coined by Adolf Hitler, when he dictated his 1925 book Mein Kampf, about the use of a lie so "colossal" that no one would believe that someone ‘could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously.’ Hitler asserted the technique was used by Jews to unfairly blame Germany's loss in World War I on German Army officer Erich Ludendorff.”
Let us listen to Hitler’s own words, as he expounds on why the technique is so successful.
“All this was inspired by the principle--which is quite true within itself--that in the big lie there is always a certain force of credibility; because the broad masses of a nation are always more easily corrupted in the deeper strata of their emotional nature than consciously or voluntarily; and thus in the primitive simplicity of their minds they more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie, since they themselves often tell small lies in little matters but would be ashamed to resort to large-scale falsehoods. It would never come into their heads to fabricate colossal untruths, and they would not believe that others could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously. Even though the facts which prove this to be so may be brought clearly to their minds, they will still doubt and waver and will continue to think that there may be some other explanation. For the grossly impudent lie always leaves traces behind it, even after it has been nailed down, a fact which is known to all expert liars in this world and to all who conspire together in the art of lying.” —Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, vol. I, ch. X
It is chilling to read his words, given the situation we now find in our political arena. This propaganda technique is alive and well, and has infected our governmental and economic systems to such an extent that we are practically immune to its consequences. The major consequence of the repeated use of this propaganda technique is that truth backed up by factual evidence is very difficult to discern or to find. Have we succumbed to a Facebook- twitter- Instagram- instant comment syndrome that ignores facts, but promotes fantasy and fiction? Have we abandoned the scientific method as a basis for discerning what is factual and what is simply hypothetical or theoretical? Have we so long accepted the propaganda of product advertising that we cannot discern what is evidence-based from what is simply emotionally or psychologically appealing? The answers to all these questions are perhaps debatable, but we know in our hearts that the influence of this propaganda technique cannot be ignored. Look at some of the evidence from Wikipedia regarding popular culture:
“George Orwell's novel Nineteen Eighty-Four refers to the Big Lie theory on several occasions. For example:
‘The key-word here is ‘blackwhite.’ Like so many Newspeak words, this word has two mutually contradictory meanings. Applied to an opponent, it means the habit of impudently claiming that black is white, in contradiction of the plain facts.’
Definition of ‘doublethink’: ‘To tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them, to forget any fact that has become inconvenient, and then when it becomes necessary again, to draw it back from oblivion for just so long as it is needed....’
Frank Zappa continually referred to ‘the Big Lie’ in his book, ‘The Real Frank Zappa Book.’ He used it to describe organized religion, government, and the music industry. The song ‘When the Lie's So Big’ from Zappa's 1989 album Broadway the Hard Way also dealt with the concept.
Richard Belzer defines The Big Lie, in his book ‘UFOs, JFK, and Elvis: Conspiracies You Don't Have To Be Crazy To Believe,’ this way: ‘If you tell a lie that's big enough, and you tell it often enough, people will believe you are telling the truth, even when what you are saying is total crap.’
In Six Days of War, by Michael Oren, ‘The Big Lie’ is used in a similar context to describe the widespread accusation (primarily by Syria and Egypt), that the Arab defeats during the Six Day War were a consequence of direct United States and United Kingdom military intervention, especially from their air-posts in Libya.
In 2002, French journalist Thierry Meyssan wrote a controversial book called 9/11: The Big Lie, which argued that the 9/11 attacks were the result of a conspiracy by the United States government.
Now, the Big Lie is everywhere, but mainly as it is applied within the context of the hatred of President Obama. Yet, we continue to ignore the Big Lie's effects upon our political system, even after we realize that we have had in place “truth-in-advertising” laws for some time now. In other words, we have recognized the deleterious effects of lies upon us as consumers of products and services, but seem incapable of applying that same standard to our political ads and electioneering speeches. The first amendment right of free speech should not extend to the telling of lies to gain political power or elective office for that is a perversion of a right in order to gain power that can be used to destroy that very right and all the others we hold dear. Unfortunately, that larger issue has not been dealt with to any great extent. Instead, we have focused on areas of reform that tend to deal with transparency and disclosure of donors and backers.
There is, in both the House and Senate, a piece of legislation, called the “Disclose Act” (HR 5175) which addresses the issues of transparency and disclosure of election financing. This is one way to begin putting some truth back into the election process. As a direct response to the Citizens United decision, it would amend the Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971 “to prohibit foreign influence in Federal elections, to prohibit government contractors from making expenditures with respect to such elections, and to establish additional disclosure requirements with respect to spending in such elections, and for other purposes” and would also require unions and corporations to disclose their top five donors when spending more than $10,000. And, Just recently, Reps. John Sarbanes (MD) and John Larson (CT) introduced legislation to create a system of public financing of elections for Congress. It is called "Government By The People" (H.R. 20) and it leans toward giving back to the small donor the ability to influence the system through many small donations, by
-- Encouraging the participation of everyday Americans in funding campaigns by providing a $25 My Voice Tax Credit,
-- Establishing a Freedom From Influence Matching Fund to amplify low-dollar contributions. Candidates would be eligible for matching funds only by agreeing to limits on large donations;
-- Providing candidates with additional resources in the homestretch of a campaign so that outside special interest spending doesn’t dominate the airwaves and drown out the messages of citizen-backed campaigns.
This is all fine and good, because it begins to reform election financing, and to reduce the overall influence of big money on the election process. But, what about the larger issue of “Truth in advertising” that seems to have been “hands-off” for quite some time? According to Lippmannwouldroll .com posted by Matthew L. Schafer on June 22, 2010:
“Perhaps surprisingly, election advertisements are not required to follow the same truth in advertising laws that govern commercial advertisements. In order to protect consumers, the commercial advertiser is required to be truthful and non-deceptive; have evidence to back up claims; and to be fair.
“Political advertisements, however, are not governed by any truth in advertising rules. “[Instead,] they can legally lie about almost anything they want,” Brooks Jackson (of FactCheck.org) argues. “In fact, the Federal Communications Act even requires broadcasters who run candidate ads to show them uncensored, even if the broadcasters believe their content to be offensive or false.”
“While based on providing First Amendment protection to political candidates, a scan of recent advertisements shows the consequences of “free-range” political advertisements. The range of abuse in political advertisements, known for their low budgets and poor production quality, varies greatly. Some advertisements contain outright lies, while others are simply ridiculous in nature. While it would be impossible to regulate the “ridiculousness” of the advertisements, Congress could–at the very least–hold politicians to the same standards that the FTC holds corporations.
An ad is deceptive if misleading statements or omitted information affect a consumer's purchasing decision or product use. An ad or business practice is unfair if it causes unavoidable consumer injury that is not outweighed by the benefit. And, If you've been wronged by deceptive or unfair advertising, you can seek justice through the federal government."
It is, of course, questionable for the government to dictate matters of truth. However, there are already evidentiary measures for truth-telling in courts; why can’t they be applied to false political ads and speeches? In law, rules of evidence govern the types of evidence that are admissible in a legal proceeding, as well as the quality and quantity of evidence that are necessary to fulfill the legal burden of proof. What are some of those rules of evidence? Well, here are a few taken from the Federal Rules of Evidence (FRE) governing the admission of facts by which parties in the U.S. Federal court system may prove their cases, both civil and criminal. The Rules were enacted in 1975, with subsequent amendments.
"In general, if evidence is shown to be relevant, material, and competent, and is not barred by an exclusionary rule, it is admissible. (Evid. Code § 351; Fed. Rules Evid. 402.) When the relevance of evidence depends on whether a fact exists, proof must be introduced sufficient to support a finding that the fact does exist.
There are four traditional types of evidence: real, demonstrative, documentary, and testimonial (summarized for us on FindLaw.com):
REAL EVIDENCE.
Real evidence is a thing the existence or characteristics of which are relevant and material. It is usually a thing that was directly involved in some event in the case. The written contract upon which an action is based is real evidence both to prove its terms and that it was executed by the defendant.
DEMONSTRATIVE EVIDENCE.
Demonstrative evidence is just what the name implies--it demonstrates or illustrates the testimony of a witness. It will be admissible when, with accuracy sufficient for the task at hand, it fairly and accurately reflects that testimony and is otherwise unobjectionable. Typical examples of demonstrative evidence are maps, diagrams of the scene of an occurrence, animations, and the like. Because its purpose is to illustrate testimony, demonstrative evidence is authenticated by the witness whose testimony is being illustrated
DOCUMENTARY EVIDENCE.
Documentary evidence is often a kind of real evidence, as for example where a contract is offered to prove its terms. When a document is used this way it is authenticated the same way as any other real evidence--by a witness who identifies it or, less commonly, by witnesses who establish a chain of custody for it. However, because they contain human language, and because of the historical development of the common law, documents present special problems not presented by other forms of real evidence, such as when they contain hearsay. In addition, some documents, such as certified copies of public records, official documents, newspapers, periodicals, trade inscriptions, acknowledged documents to prove the acknowledgment, certificates of the custodians of business records, and certain commercial paper and related documents are, to one extent or another, self authenticating.
TESTIMONIAL EVIDENCE.
Testimonial evidence is the most basic form of evidence and the only kind that does not usually require another form of evidence as a prerequisite for its admissibility. See Evid. Code § 702(b); Fed R. Evid. 602. It consists of what is said in the court at the proceeding in question by a competent witness.
One might simply say that Federal Laws of Evidence should be systematically and wholly taken over by the Federal Election Commission to enforce rules for political speech. At the very least, we ought not to shy away from realizing that we already possess the rudiments for promulgating the existence of rules for acceptable political advertising and "speechifying."
So, let us get to the main point. It should not be all that difficult to petition the FEC asking them to formulate rules for the conduct of truth in political advertising. Do they have the power to formulate such a code of ethics, so to speak? Well, basically, it's not that simple. Wikipedia provides us with a summary of the FEC, and some clues to an answer:
"The Federal Election Commission (FEC) is an independent regulatory agency that was founded in 1975 by the United States Congress to regulate the campaign finance legislation in the United States. It was created in a provision of the 1975 amendment to the Federal Election Campaign Act. It describes its duties as "to disclose campaign finance information, to enforce the provisions of the law such as the limits and prohibitions on contributions, and to oversee the public funding of Presidential elections."
"Although the Commission's name implies broad authority over U.S. elections, in fact its role is limited to the administration of federal campaign finance laws. It enforces limitations and prohibitions on contributions and expenditures, investigates and prosecutes violations (investigations are typically initiated by complaints from other candidates, parties, "watchdog groups," and the public), audits a limited number of campaigns and organizations for compliance, and administers the presidential campaign fund, which provides public funds to candidates for president and nominating conventions."
That particular duty statement does not leave much room for hope that the FEC would even see "truth in political advertising" as part of its duties. But, there’s more...
"The Commission is made up of six members, who are appointed by the President of the United States, and confirmed by the United States Senate. Each member serves a six-year term, and two seats are subject to appointment every two years. By law, no more than three Commissioners can be members of the same political party and at least four votes are required for any official Commission action. Critics of the Commission argue that this structure regularly causes deadlocks on 3 -3 votes, but others argue that deadlocks are actually quite rare, and typically based on principle rather than partisanship." Current members include two appointed by President Obama and four members appointed by George W. Bush. The Chairmanship of the Commission rotates among the members each year, with no member serving as Chairman more than once during his or her term. The current Chair is an Obama appointee.
"Critics of the FEC, including campaign finance reform supporters such as Common Cause and Democracy 21, have complained that it is a classic example of regulatory capture where it serves the interests of the ones it was intended to regulate. The FEC's bipartisan structure renders the agency ‘toothless.’ Critics also claim that most FEC penalties for violating election law come well after the actual election in which they were committed. To complete steps necessary to resolve a complaint - including time for defendants to respond to the complaint, time to investigate and engage in legal analysis, and finally, where warranted, prosecution - necessarily takes far longer than the comparatively brief period of a political campaign."
This rather narrow mission of the FEC leaves just one alternative, perhaps and that is, legislation designed to regulate first and third party political advertisements that disseminate lies and unfounded distortions. To be more specific, since speech cannot be regulated in the same way as products or services, let us say that what should be required of political speakers in discussing another candidate is verifiable documentation of any charge, allegation, personal description or characterization, any citing of "facts" against a candidate or office-holder; and that any citing of hypotheticals, postulations, theories or opinions must likewise be undistorted and able to be documented. Any candidate or office-holder who fails the 3-part test for truth, non-distortion and fairness could be subject to fine or imprisonment, or be made to pay for equal time on the airways and the internet to rebut the undocumented speech, or some other penalty.
In other words, a candidate would still be free to say anything he or she desires, but undocumented claims against a person or his family, his office or his candidacy and his record could be deemed to constitute an unfair and distorted or harmful mode of campaigning. It should be up to Congress and the FEC to define what constitutes adequate documentation, and within what time frame it must be presented when challenged. This would apply to direct attack ads, third party or issue ads, political speeches and documentaries about a particular candidate.
Free speech must be protected, but lying speech is destructive of society's norms and of its most cherished values and institutions. To say that any type of speech should be free and unrestricted is to put our system of government at risk. The Big Lie technique is not acceptable political speech. It is as destructive to our system of laws as is the crime of perjury! It gnaws at the roots of our system of laws and freedoms and eventually eats them away. We cannot go on ignoring the current attempts by radical Republicans to use the propaganda technique of the Big Lie to gain power. It is not only a question of fairness, it is a question of survival. In this case, the protection of the freedom to lie and dissemble, and to bear false witness, is paramount to protecting the very vice against which major religions and common law have warned since human history began. Unrestricted lying is equivalent to a cancerous growth, because it inexorably alters the fundamental pillars of society: trust, justice, truth, honesty and mutual responsibility for one another, all of which hang in the balance, to say nothing of the relationship with a faithful Creator or Source of Truth.
Soon, I expect to post more on this subject and to cite examples, not only of the types of political communications that should be so regulated, but to present further examples of what happens to societies that condone lying as an acceptable norm of conduct for its leaders.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)