Mediaboss Marketing

Bill Knight / Opinion columnist

Conservatives occasionally concede that organized labor has been a reason for rising standards of living and making the middle class, and The Atlantic magazine shows that unions provide common ground for progressives and conservatives alike.

Historically, conservative pundits and politicians have praised unions. Columnist George Will in 1977 said, I think American labor unions get a large share of the credit for making us a middle-class country.

In 1991, Republican economist George Schultz (Secretary of Labor under Richard Nixon and Secretary of State under Ronald Reagan) said a healthy workplace [needs] some system of checks and balances and unions provided an effective system of industrial jurisprudence, a check on corporations focus on profits.

In The Atlantic, Jonathan Rauch recalls a 2016 brunch with conservative Eli Lehrer, who runs Washingtons Republican-leaning R Street Institute, and Andy Stern, former president of the Service Employees International Union.

Lehrer believes the time has come for the American Right to reconsider its decades-long war on unions, Rauch says. Their collapse, he says, has fueled the growth of government and of the welfare state, which has stepped in to regulate workplaces and provide job security as unions have died out.

Stern thinks unions cannot survive unless they innovate and change, but laws intended to protect and preserve them get in the way, Rauch adds.

The journal National Affairs this summer published Lehrer and Sterns essay about the need for change. In How to Modernize Labor Law, the two write, The fundamental federal rules governing employer-worker relations were written for a different era.

That era was the Great Depression. It resulted in 1935s National Labor Relations Act, but it hasnt substantially changed except for court rulings and sometimes-partisan National Labor Relations Board decisions since 1947s anti-union Taft-Hartley Act.

Meanwhile, regular working people are worried about pay but also anxious, if not angry, about how theyre treated. Last years campaign showed that many workers feel voiceless and powerless, that unhappy workers are angry voters, and that angry voters can lash out against trade, immigration, and even democracy.

Private-sector unions are close to extinct, Rauch writes. In the 1950s, more than one in three private-sector workers belonged to a union; today, unionization is down to 6 percent of the private-sector workforce, lower than it was a century ago before the modern labor movement took off.

The decline of unions is one of the countrys most pressing problems and at least as much a social and political problem as an economic one, he continues. Old-style, mid-20th-century industrial unions had their flaws. But when unions work as they should, they serve important social functions. They can smooth the jagged edges of globalization by giving workers bargaining power. They are associated with lower income inequality. Perhaps most important, they offer workers a way to be heard.

Other models exist for workers organizing, from Europes works councils, which give workers a voice in company affairs, to Germanys permitting unions to organize sectors rather than employers, offering incentives to workers and companies to cooperate for better competitiveness.

Unfortunately, in America in 2017, we dont know how a truly modern union would look, writes Rauch, because it is mostly illegal to find out.

Efforts to legislate reforms have fizzled (most recently, during President Obamas first term, when Democrats had more power), and the GOP-dominated Capitol makes change doubtful. But Stern and Lehrer suggest a workaround like giving states authority to grant labor-law waivers permitting experimentation. For example, if employers and unions had an interesting model that met certain guidelines, they could try it.

The Stern-Lehrer waiver idea is a no-brainer if we want to address the deeper causes of the malaise and distemper afflicting Americas lower-middle class, Rauch writes. Although income stagnation is certainly one culprit, another is the decline of the civic organizations and social institutions that help people feel connected. Service fraternities, volunteer clubs, youth groups, churches, political parties, widespread military service, unions and the rest in their prime all fostered social interaction a sense of social cohesion even when times were much tougher. None matters more than unions.

GOP President Dwight D. Eisenhower in the 1950s seem to know this, but also saw the relationship as unchanging.

Only a handful of reactionaries harbor the ugly thought of breaking unions and depriving working men and women of the right to join the union of their choice, Ike said. I have no use for those regardless of their political party who hold some vain and foolish dream of spinning the clock back to days when organized labor was huddled, almost as a hapless mass. Only a fool would try to deprive working men and women of the right to join the union of their choice.

Contact Bill at Bill.Knight@hotmail.com.

See more here:
Knight: Unions offer balance to conservatives, progressives - Peoria Journal Star

Billionaire Mark Pincus, co-founder of social game developer Zynga, and one of the new WTF Democrats.

Jake Johnson at CommonDreams writesProgressives Explain Why Centrist Tech Billionaires Won't Save the Democrats:

In a move already being denounced by progressives as "tone-deaf" and "literally the stupidest f------ idea" ever, tech billionaires Mark Pincus and Reid Hoffman have launched an initiative titled Win the Future (WTF) with the goal of bringing the Democratic Party back from the political wilderness.

"The weakness of the Democratic Party is not due to an underrepresentation of venture capitalists and tech company board members." Alex Lawson, Social Security Works

Recode's Tony Romm firstreportedon the billionaires' plans and lofty objectives, which include pushing Democrats to "rewire their philosophical core" and recruiting candidates to challenge Democratic incumbents. The recruits, according to Romm, will be called "WTF Democrats."

The tech moguls have "contributed $500,000 to their still-evolving project" so far, Romm notes, and they have been "aided by Jeffrey Katzenberg, a major Democratic donor and former chairman of Disney, as well as venture capitalists Fred Wilson and Sunil Paul."

Pincus, the co-founder of Zynga, signaled that the WTF platform will be "pro-social [and] pro-planet, but also pro-business and pro-economy."

"I'm fearful the Democratic Party is already moving too far to the left," Pincus said. "I want to push the Democratic Party to be more in touch with mainstream America, and on some issues, that's more left, and on some issues it might be more right."

Progressives reacted to the projectand to the comments of its founderswith a combination of scorn and dismay, portraying the effort as just thelatest in a seriesof misguided attempts to push the Democratic Party rightward.

If the self-interested elites behind "Win the Future" want to be helpful, say critics, they should go save the Republican Party instead.

"It would be much more valuable for the world if sane, but conservative, self-protective rich people who are against bigotry and recognize that climate science is real became forces within the Republican Party and supported sane Republicans in primaries rather than water down the message of the Democratic Party and its commitment to economic equality and social justice,"Jeff Hauser, director of the Revolving Door Project at the Center for Economic and Policy Research,toldThe Huffington Post.

Hauser concluded that the last thing the Democratic Party should be promoting is a coalition of candidates who are "regressive on corporate power."

Others similarly panned the billionaires' ambitions as yet another "centrist push" that runs counter to the prevailing agenda of the grassroots, which has of late ramped up calls for the Democratic Party to push aggressively for programs likeMedicare for Alland free public college tuition. [...]

"Win the Future's technocratic bent seems to ignore the unexpected success of PresidentDonald Trumpand the competitive bid for the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination by Sen.Bernie Sanders(I-Vt.), both of whom ran populist campaigns against the reigning financial elite and the power it exerts in politics,"notedThe Huffington Post's Daniel Marans.

According to recent polls, most Americans believe that the Democratic Party isalready out of touch, and many Democratsare not optimisticabout their party's prospects. Tech billionaires, progressives argued, are the opposite of what the party needs.

"The weakness of the Democratic Party is not due to an underrepresentation of venture capitalists and tech company board members,"concludedAlex Lawson, executive director of Social Security Works.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License

TOP COMMENTS HIGH IMPACT STORIES

QUOTATION

Neoconservatives and the Pentagon have good reason to fear the return of the Vietnam Syndrome. The label intentionally suggests a disease, a weakening of the martial will, but the syndrome was actually a healthy American reaction to false White House promises of victory, the propping up of corrupt regimes, crony contracting and cover-ups of civilian casualties during the Vietnam War that are echoed today in the news from Baghdad. ~Tom Hayden, 2004

TWEET OF THE DAY

BLAST FROM THE PAST

At Daily Kos on this date in 2011Obama administration ends coal rip off; liberal titan Abner J. Mikva dies at 90:

The Obama administration has already established a standard 35.5 mile-per-gallon fuel-efficiency average for cars, light trucks and SUVs manufactured in 2016 and beyond. The discussion now is over how much the standard should be increased to by 2025. The administration has slated an announcement on its decision about this for September.

Eco-advocates are seeking a 62-mpg standard. The big car companies, including GM, the one that taxpayers still own one-fourth of, are aghast. It's the usual whine, which comes down to the usual claim: no-can-do, too-expensive, unsafe.

OntodaysKagro in the Morningshow,Greg DworkinandJoan McCarterguide us out of the long weekend. GOPSenators duck July 4th parades. Hold your breath: NorthKorea launches ICBM.Trump heads to G20. Declaration of Independence trashed. Theres even more collusion than you thought.

YouTube|iTunes|LibSyn| Keep us on the air! Donate viaPatreonorSquare Cash

Go here to see the original:
Open thread for night owls: Progressives pan 'WTF Democrats' as just more self-interested centrists - Daily Kos

When Stay Woke showed up as a category in Fridays screening of Jeopardy!, progressives on social media were elated, thinking that it would advance their ideology and promote social justice to a nationwide audience.

Their hopes were dashed to pieces when the game show revealed the term to be nothing more than a play on words which should be expected, given the shows fierce love of puns.

The term woke arose to public prominence during the height of the Black Lives Matter protests in 2015, when its proponents would encourage others to stay woke to the realities of living under a system of white supremacy. The definition of woke was even recently added to the Oxford English Dictionary, following years of use.

Given its status in the lexicon, its no surprise that some progressives would be under the mistaken belief that the long-running game show would be using the term exactly as they (the progressives) do.

As with everything else on Jeopardy, the term was meant as a play on words, to be taken in literal terms to refer to staying awake.

The first question that popped up reads: This substance many use to stay awake can lead to tremors & anxiety at 500 mg/day; the average American consumes 300.

It was at that point that progressives, realizing the ruse, expressed anger and outrage at the show for making light of their cause.

Feminist vertical The Mary Sue condemned Jeopardy for what it considers to be a very problematic low blow against their ideology.

We all know Jeopardy is going to go for a pun where it sees one, but perhaps ideologies centered around fighting racism and other social injustices shouldnt be their target, wrote Vivian Kane. As is, the shows take on wokeness is anything but.

But commenters werent impressed by the sites attempt to virtue signal, with many calling out Kane for being too readily offended.

Ill be honest, whenever I think of Jeopardy, I think of Will Ferrells impression. Also, in my personal opinion, this really isnt bad at all. Jeopardy constantly has puns, wrote one reader.

Ill take Trolling for $600, Alex, said another.

Read more here:
Jeopardy Trolls Progressives With 'Stay Woke' Category - The Daily Caller

So, the Golden State had a great idea. To make it crystal clear that theyre a cesspool of progressivism, theyre going to try and adopt a single-payer health care system. It would cost $400 billion and the California state legislature had no mechanism to pay for it. The State Senate pushed it through, but it met a legislative death in the State Assembly. Even The Washington Post noted the systems astronomical price tag, adding that the increases in taxation would be coupled with a decrease in benefits and access to care, which has to happen to keep costs down and ensure universal coverage. That isnt a trade off the vast majority of Americans are willing to accept. Now, as the Californias first attempt at single payer dies, the backlash from the progressive Left against the state's Democrats has been brutal, with some receiving death threats (via Fox News):

Assembly Democrats publicly decried the bullying tactics in a written statement over the weekend, maintaining that lawmakers are committed to improving health care but need to have an open discourse.

In recent days, we have become alarmed and disheartened by bullying tactics, threats of violence, and death threats by a few who disagree with the decision of Speaker Anthony Rendon to postpone the advancement of SB 562, they said, referring to the scrapped single-payer health care bill. While it is appropriate for persons of varying views to express concern, disapproval or disfavor about the delay, it is never acceptable to engage in those tactics.

Rendon announced on June 23 that he was shelving legislation to set up a government-run, single-payer health care system in the state. This prompted an immediate backlash from the California Nurses Association, which had backed the $400 billion plan.

[]

Rendon also confirmed that hes faced death threats over the decision to halt consideration of the bill

[]

It certainly wasnt a bill, Rendon told The Hill. There was absolutely no funding attached to a $400 billion proposal, no service delivery mechanism.

More:
Eating Their Own: California Democrats Facing Death Threats From Progressives For Shelving Single-Payer Bill - Townhall

Email to a friend Permalink

Wednesday, July 05, 2017

Guest MINDSETTER Andrew Stewart

Bill Lynch

I am not some absurd sectarian dogmatist despite some beliefs to the contrary. Anthony F.C. Wallace described in a 1956 article for the journal American Anthropologist what he calls 'revitalization movements' which span the entire spectrum of human experience and orientations, from religion to politics to civic organizations. These movements promote a sort of gnosticism wherein the true believers work through a series of graduated membership steps towards a final enlightenment that they feel will offer them a salve for grievances that they believe cannot be redressed through traditional venues and methods. In my own life I have encountered these types in the Catholic Church, the extreme Left, and even the Boy Scouts. It is a symptomatic element of the inability within an individual to develop a truly independent and self-reliant support system that can integrate completely into the wider society.

Erich Fromm wrote in his 1957 article The Authoritarian Personality that We usually see a clear difference between the individual who wants to rule, control, or restrain others and the individual who tends to submit, obey, or to be humiliated. To use a somewhat friendlier term, we might talk of the leader and his followers. As natural as the difference between the ruling and the ruled might in many ways be, we also have to admit that these two types, or as we can also say, these two forms of authoritarian personality are actually tightly bound together.

Fromm's work was written in the aftermath of a generational moral collapse caused by first the ascent of the Nazi Party in his native Germany and then the discrediting of Communism, which had spearheaded the defeat of fascism in Europe. A year prior to Fromm's publication, in 1956, Nikita Khrushchev delivered his so-called 'Secret Speech' that acknowledged the crimes of his predecessor Joseph Stalin, a seismic impact whose crater caused millions to retreat into despair and quit worldwide Communist parties en masse.

Fromm continues by writing All the great dictatorial movements of our times were (and are) based on irrational authority. Its driving forces were the submissive individuals feeling of powerlessness, fear, and admiration for the 'leader.' All the great and fruitful cultures are founded on the existence of rational authority: on people, who are able to muster the given functions intellectually and socially and have therefore no need to appeal to irrational desires. But I do not want to close without emphasizing that the individuals goal must be to become his own authority; i.e. to have a consciousness in moral issues, conviction in questions of intellect, and fidelity in emotional matters. However, the individual can only have such an inner authority if he has matured enough to understand the world with reason and love. The development of these characteristics is the basis for ones own authority and therefore the basis for political democracy.

I provide such an extended side-note because understanding this dynamic is required for a progressive victory in the next election cycle, which is absolutely necessary to reinforce our communities and protect the most vulnerable from the onslaught of both the Trump administration and neoliberal Democrats who agree with Trump on policies that give hand-outs to the rich, tax the poor, privatize infrastructure, and harm working class families. The corporate media as well as pseudo-alternative Left outlets, which I have studied for over a decade now, have provided for almost twenty years a repeated series of narrative tropes that the public, including many intelligent and well-educated progressive thinkers, has internalized and made a part of their overall ideological orientation. Some of these include the demonstrably untrue ideas about Ralph Nader's Green Party run in 2000, the historical motivations and outcomes of military actions supported by both war parties since 9/11, the true nature of climate change as the most dire threat to our survival as a species in the next century, the method for repeal of Citizens United, and thousands of other notions that fly squarely in the face of reality. I would propose to offer two which must be deflated in order to have a successful 2018 progressive seizure of power.

The first is the idea that there is a wide ideological divide separating progressives from conservatives. According to the media, we live in a near-Manichean ideological landscape where everyone is polarized around ideas which their opponents respond to with antithetical positions that can never be compromised. It is a comforting narrative for two reasons. First, it lends itself to an individual's self-esteem by allowing them to say 'I have the right view, s/he has the wrong view, and we are opponents until they change their minds.' In religious terms, it is the difference between the Chosen and the sinful.

Fortunately for us this is absolutely untrue and there is a significant level of statistical data to back this up. In reality, as Ralph Nader wrote in his 2014 book 'Unstoppable: The Emerging Left-Right Alliance to Dismantle the Corporate State', the political landscape is defined in the legislature by only one sort of socio-economic philosophy, corporatism, which also can be called neoclassical economics. Both Republicans and Democrats promote corporatist policies that continue corporate welfare/crony capitalism. In order to keep the voters from uniting as a single base around their membership in the working class/as taxpayers, the parties agree to effectively manipulate their voter bases through deceptive and duplicitous media messaging that makes people think their neighbors are the enemy rather than the corporatists, usually based around notions of identity, sex, gender, creed, migration status before the law, or nationality.

As a result we as the working class/taxpayers stay at each other's throats rather than taking on the bipartisan corporatist agenda. Nader goes as far as pointing to 25 different and substantial areas where studies and his personal experience indicate solid class solidarity/universal taxpayer support, or to use his word, 'convergence', listen here.

Those who doubt this unity of class/taxpayers can actually look to a recent major event in our own state that was absolutely and undeniably an instance of convergence, the total and complete rejection of a taxpayer-subsidized baseball stadium for the Pawtucket Red Sox on the Providence waterfront. I very clearly and fondly remember Fred Ordonez from DARE (Direct Action for Rights and Equality) saying at the Rhode Island Commerce Corporation I dont think I ever imagined that I was going to be at a rally with the Tea Party on the same side but here we are! This is because the proposal was nothing but a corporatist hand-out for the rich to the detriment of the working class/taxpayers.

You see what I keep doing there with saying things like corporate welfare/crony capitalism, working class/taxpayers, and class solidarity/universal taxpayer support? That is not accidental, what I am trying to do is indicate that it is through the language of politics used by the corporatist duopoly system, including their media courtiers, that we are prevented from uniting around common goals.

Are there genuine revitalists who cannot be flexible and act dogmatically about certain matters, such as working with third parties? Absolutely, such types are drawn to political struggle like moths to a flame. And there also are many times where one side has some very bad ideas about people owing to the various factors of their identity which requires patient and adult conversation so to rectify such matters and promote further convergence. I personally would absolutely refuse to throw people of color or undocumented workers or women under the bus in the name of convergence. But I also would work very hard to rectify the issue and promote a level of trust and friendliness reflective of the great Aim Csaire's quote There is room enough for all at the rendezvous of victory.

This cuts to a fundamental issue of the budget the Democrats are jousting over, a massive corporatist document if there ever was one and the second fantastic notion to negate. Those supporting regressive cuts would do well to understand a very simple economic principle. Every public sector expense that is cut in a budget is undeniably absorbed by the taxpayers as a privatized expense that usually costs more, a kind of tax increase that in an Orwellian fashion is passed of as a tax cut. If the General Assembly refuses to pay for a $2 sandwich, the taxpayers will pay the private sector $5 for that sandwich which is still going to be necessary for sustenance. While there certainly are structural problems with our current public sector financing system, ones which can and have promoted corruption due to a lack of oversight, it also is a simple mathematical fact, the added expenses created by privatizing of public services in all cases are to the detriment of both the poor and the taxpayers, it is merely a matter of time before the bill comes due. The increase in necessity of living expenses for working class families through private services means their ability to inject demand into the local luxury economy is diminished, which in turn furthers the stagnation we are witnessing locally.

The only way progressives will actually change this policy is by working with a progressive third party. If they protest to the Democratic leadership and then are forced to stew in their anger over being ignored, they will become a captive caucus. The corporatist national Democratic Party leadership understands this completely and operate by the maxim 'we can move further to the right because they have nowhere else to go', meaning they will never vote for the Republicans (just ask Sista Souljah). On the converse, the middle class in this country quite obviously and openly boasts about how, if they don't get what they want, they do in fact have somewhere else to go, the GOP, which drives the Democrats further to the right.

It is in this spirit I would encourage progressives to relieve themselves of the false ideological narrative about third party spoilers. Take an honest and serious look at the Rhode Island Green Party. The 2016 platform document is a thorough and detailed roadmap to remake Rhode Island politics with. After a year of reporting on them, it seems like a simple matter of political thermodynamics, progressives must create equal pressure inside and outside the Democratic Party so to develop a shift in local politics towards our progressive goals. Refusal to do so owing to a false narrative about Ralph Nader or Jill Stein will only promote a further rightward shift locally at a time when we need to fortify our defenses. Pragmatic, flexible, mature, and reasonable progressives will understand this easily. Those who are interested should visit (greensofri.nationbuilder.com) to begin a fruitful and constructive dialogue so to build a better Rhode Island for all.

Hopefully by that time the national Democrats will begin to apologize to progressives for their treatment of Bernie Sanders and their decision to hand the election to Donald Trump as a result. That might seem odd but I in fact did talk to people who voted for Sanders and then Trump owing to the fact Donald plagiarized talking points from the Vermont senator on the campaign trail.

There has yet to be any apology for the continuing swindle of the pension heist, the largest loss of money in Rhode Island history. There is no apology for Democrats like Gina Raimondo who privatize our schools and damage our public infrastructure.

It is time for progressives to recognize the writing on the wall and bring their efforts to where they are welcomed.

CCRI

The state's community college is poised to be the sole beneficiary of the Governor's Promise scholarship program.

It would make Rhode Island the fourth state to have tuition-free community college, allowing every resident the opportunity to earn an associate's degree tuition free. There is no means testing for the program and few standards.

The cost would be roughly $3 million in the FY18 (for the first cohort of students) and then $6 million the following year there are two classes.

State Government

As part of negotiations -- and the fiscal realities facing Rhode Island with a nearly $140 million shortfally, the Speaker announced Thursday that $25 million will be cut in generalspending.

"It's something we discussed with the Governor and she thinks she can make [it] work," said Matteillo.

Also on the chopping block -- funding for the legislative office to the tune of $2 million.

Elderly and Disabled Bus Riders

After levying fares on some of the most needy RIPTA bus riders (the elderly and disabled) for the first time this past year, which resulted in strong public outcry, the House Finance budget contains just over $3 million -- for each of the next two years -- to refund the program this coming year.

WATCH: Opponents of RIPTA Fare Hikes to Rally at RI State House Wednesday Afternoon

Mattiello noted that after the two years is up, it is up to the Governor to find the funding.

Governor Raimondo

On Thursday, Raimondo learned she is poised to get a piece (jCCRI) of her free college tuition proposal, which had been a major focal point of her budget proposal - and political strategy.

On the flip side, she is tasked with finding $25 million in government spending to cut, in order to balance the budget.

Unlike the May estimating conference, where Rhode Island revenues were found to be off nearly $100 million plus, the Governor can't say she didn't see this coming.

Medical Marijuana Expansion

In June, Raimondo called for an increase in medical marijuana dispensaries and an increase in licensing fees to generate $1.5 million in revenue for the state.

She called for "no less than six licensed compassion centers."

On Thursday, Mattiello said it was not in the budget, due the proposal's late timing.

Davies High School

The House finance budget contains additional help for manufacturing, including $3.6 million to upgrade facilities at Davies Career and Tech.

Commerce Corporation

While Mattiello made scant mention of cuts in the briefing Thursday - save for the $25 million out of government spending -- the question was raised as to where the rest of the $140 million shortfall will come from.

"Millions in cuts came from the Commerce Corp budget. The budget kept the Rebuild RI funding, but money for several other Commerce programs were reduced," said Larry Berman, spokesman for Mattiello.

Mininum Wage Hike

Workers will be happy, employers might not.

The FY18 budget proposal calls for a $.50 minimum wage increase as of January 1, 2018, and then an additional $.40 the following year.

Business owners have continuously fought against such hikes.

Email to a friend Permalink

Read more here:
Guest MINDSETTER Stewart: Progressives Should Refuse to be Captive Caucus, Work With Green Party - GoLocalProv