BroadSnark

Here in the United States, we like to pretend that we are all middle class.  We all want to believe in that myth of equal opportunity.  Despite the fact that every day we see people with no scruples who work less and earn more, we still seem to buy into the idea that those who work hard will be rewarded for it.

This mythology, this willingness to admire the rich and revile the poor, is very convenient for the people that have been bleeding us dry.  And while we are busy blaming the poor for their misfortune, the richest 1% keep taking bigger slices of the pie.

Since Ronald Reagan, every president has run on a platform of fiscal responsibility.   And since Ronald Reagan, social programs spending (except for health care costs) has been decreasing.

The republicans managed to win elections by labeling poor, black women as “welfare queens.”  Their tactics were so successful that the democratic party fell all over itself to become “new democrats” who “reformed” the welfare system.

Now the welfare queen myth is back in new form.  Once again, that greedy 1% is manipulating people into thinking that their increasingly difficult and indebted lives are the result of poor freeloaders, rather than the rich corporate welfare recipients who really benefit from government largess.

The 1% is really ratcheting up their war now.  The war is no longer just against the poor or against liberal government.  They now set their sites on civil society.  This morning’s Heritage Foundation email attacks, not just acorn, but “poverty advocacy” as a whole

That “web of relationships” between poverty advocacy groups like ACORN is the real story here that impacts the American people. ACORN is by far not the only suspect community organizer group. Just last summer federal investigators raided a city-chartered nonprofit agency accused of abusing a federally financed program that was created to clean up houses damaged by Hurricane Katrina. Teachers unions have contributed over $1.3 million to ACORN and its affiliates, since 2005. And the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) has chipped in another $7.4 million. ACORN founder Wade Rathke even has a book out titled “Citizen Wealth” which “shows how to cut through government indifference and bureaucratic obstacles” to achieve “maximum eligible participation” in the “anti-poverty programs still out there.”

So here we are.  The 1% is using their considerable arsenal to make sure they keep their lifestyles of the rich and famous.  Republican politicians and media pundits will happily help them blame the poor, brown people for all our troubles.  Democrats will, maybe, throw a little government money our way to look like they are for the people.

The real question is, what are we going do?  Are we going to let politicians attack the poor and those advocating on their behalf? Are we going to watch as democrats fall all over themselves, once again, trying to show how fiscally responsible and anti-welfare they are? Are we going to let race and culture and mistrust get in our way again?

Or are we finally going to acknowledge that the 1% has gone too far and it’s time the other 99% of us stand up for some justice?

If you read my post on Senator Crapo, you know that he has been diligently trying to change the law to allow old dead polar bear trophies to be brought into the United States.

Well it’s on now.

Congressman Raúl M. Grijalva (along with a litany of other house reps) introduced another bear bill

H. R. 3480
To conserve global bear populations by prohibiting the importation, exportation, and interstate trade of bear viscera and items, products, or substances containing, or labeled or advertised as containing, bear viscera, and for other purposes.

Bear viscera “means the body fluids or internal organs, including the gallbladder and its contents but not including blood or brains, of a species of bear.”  So, I guess that means that, while bear trophies are illegal, liquified bear is not?

I say we settle this with an old fashioned duel – - with bears.

It’s not easy being an immigrant.  That is especially true if you are an Arab immigrant to America who arrives during a war against Iraq.

Amreeka is Cherien Dabis’s debut full length film.  Dabis’s personal experiences of living in an Arab family in Ohio, and of discrimination during the first Iraq war, are the basis for much of the movie.

In the post-movie discussion I attended, Dabis said that her goal was to convey the warmth of the Arab American family.  It was a side of Arabs that we Americans just don’t see.  She succeeded.

But this is not a feel good movie, at least not just.  The prejudices of small town America are on full display.  Like Dabis’s father in real life, the doctor in this movie loses clients who no longer want an Arab doctor.  Jobs are hard to come by.  You’ll hear suicide bomber “jokes” and see racial profiling.  And you’ll see people trying to figure out how to fit in when they stand out.

You’ll also see a side to the Israel/Palestine conflict that you don’t normally see.  The family in this movie immigrates from the occupied territories.  The film shows what it is like to spend hours every day trying to get from one place to another.  It shows checkpoints and harassment.  It shows the impossibility of living as a young person in a place with no opportunity.

Everyone should see this movie.  A list of release dates and locations can be found here.

You ever get the feeling you’ve been had?

I’ve been watching our health care “debate” and marveling at the lunacy of it all.  I got into an argument last week with a woman who insists that, despite everything he says and writes, Barack Obama is some sort of far left fanatic.  There are birthers and deathers and tenthers and now someone who thinks the government is trying to set up concentration camps.

Much like Rachel Maddow in this clip, I was taking some comfort in the fact that the side I most closely identified with seemed a lot less crazy.  But are democrats really debating policy as Maddow contends?  True, democratic congresspeople are not accusing their republican counterparts of having been born on Mars.  But most of the coverage I have seen has pitted democrats who say “we need to do something” against republicans who say “no.”  That isn’t a policy debate.

While the right has been busy playing on fears of black panthers, revolution, and reparations; the left has been playing on fears of racist militias and assassins.  The media, of course, just eats it up.  They don’t want to talk policy.  They want controversy.  They want to find the extreme and put that on camera.  So Van Jones is turned into a cop killing black panther and any conservative who doesn’t trust the democrats is turned into David Duke with rabies.

Meanwhile, as Matt Taibbi points out in his must read article:

they gave away single-payer before a single gavel had fallen, apparently as a bargaining chip to the very insurers mostly responsible for creating the crisis in the first place. Then they watered down the public option so as to make it almost meaningless, while simultaneously beefing up the individual mandate, which would force millions of people now uninsured to buy a product that is no longer certain to be either cheaper or more likely to prevent them from going bankrupt. The bill won’t make drugs cheaper, and it might make paperwork for doctors even more unwieldy and complex than it is now. In fact, the various reform measures suck so badly that PhRMA, the notorious mouthpiece for the pharmaceutical industry which last year spent more than $20 million lobbying against health care reform, is now gratefully spending more than seven times that much on a marketing campaign to help the president get what he wants.

In other words, many democrats have been quietly selling us out to big money yet again.  One can’t help but think that the birthers and deathers and tenthers aren’t such a bad thing for democrats.  The dems get to rally their base against the crazies without their base actually paying much attention to what is going to be in the bill they are rallying around.  On television we see the extremists, but how many Americans just don’t trust democrats to do the right thing and don’t support reform for that reason?  That’s not such a crazy position.

Our democracy cannot function if we don’t stop seeing each other as caricatures through the lenses of politicians and media personalities.  They keep raking in the money and favors.  We keep getting screwed by the same execs and stockholders.

I find myself in a rather awkward position.  I’m about to (sort of) defend the “gun nuts.”  It freaks me out too, but what can I do.

It started when I noticed Senate bill 1317.  The bill got my attention because it mentioned terrorists.  And whenever a bill mentions terrorists, I start wondering what new civil liberty someone is trying to take away from us.  I think of illegal spying and an end to habeas corpus.  The bill says it is meant

S. 1317
To increase public safety by permitting the Attorney General to deny the transfer of firearms or the issuance of firearms and explosives licenses to known or suspected dangerous terrorists.

Now that sound reasonable. No sane person wants terrorists to get their hands on weapons.  There is that word “suspected” though.  We all know what happens when “suspected” is sufficient to take away someone’s rights.

In a nutshell, this hinges on how much you trust the Attorney General’s idea of “reasonable belief.”  For me, the verdict is not yet in on this particular attorney general.  I can say with certainty that the last couple did not have an idea of “reasonable belief” that came even close to mine.  Who knows about the next ones.  And let me remind you that our government already has a history of labeling innocuous student groups as terrorists.

Now, you may say “So what. People shouldn’t have guns anyway.”  I understand that sentiment.  I’m not a fan of guns.  I am a pacifist after all.   But the truth is that most gun owners aren’t out killing people or joining racist militias.  And given what our food industry does to animals, hunters are often a hell of a lot more humane than the people who put our meat in pretty little packages.

All of the above made me think about the two essential claims that the “gun nuts” make.  The first is that the right to bear arms is in the constitution.  The second is that there are people (democrats mostly) who want to take their guns away.  I have to admit that both of those claims are true.  I happen to be one of the people who has wanted to take their guns away.

I won’t pretend to understand gun owners love of their guns.  And I think the idea that having a rifle will protect you from your government is a bit insane at this point.  The government has bombers and nukes.  Shooting your gun up at a bomber might make a good scene in the new Red Dawn remake, but it ain’t going to do a whole lot to protect you.  Then again, those Iraqis had a pretty low tech arsenal and managed to kick our asses, so…

Much as I hate to come out on the side of the gun lobby, here I am. Do we want to give the DOJ the power to start designating people as “suspected terrorists” and then assigning their rights (or lack thereof) based on that designation?

If people are plotting to use those weapons to commit crimes, we need to investigate.  We have RICO statutes and criminal conspiracy charges that can be brought against them. We have an imperfect, but functioning, judicial system where they should be tried.

There may be people who don’t think there should be a right to bear arms.  That’s a perfectly legitimate opinion.  They should be honest about it and say that they want to amend the constitution.

I have worked with many self-described feminists who have housekeepers and nannies.  I am amazed at how few of them see the conflict inherent in building your freedom on some other woman’s lack thereof.  And I’m not talking about Wall Street women.  I’m talking about liberal women who supposedly care about inequality, oppression, racism and poverty.

What I find especially frustrating is how a reliance on hiring poor women allows men to continue to shirk their responsibilities.  How many of you have friends whose husbands refuse to clean or do their fare share of the childcare?  Did they confront their husbands?  Did they attempt to confront the sexism and unfairness of it all?  Or did they just cop out and use their privilege to buy someone poorer to make the problem go away?

Racewire has an important article out that you all should read.  It is called
Immigrant Workers at Home: Hired Hands Hold Family Bonds and it reads, in part:

So immigrant workers help lift white-collar mothers toward that coveted work-life balance. But back at home, work remains the same as it ever was: hard, endless, and never fairly compensated. The difference for domestic workers, of course, is that they are still outsiders in the home, culturally and professionally. And when overworked and exploited, they end up tending to other people’s families at the expense of their ability to care for their own.

And let’s not forget that domestic workers have few rights.  They work long hours for low pay.  They work without health insurance or other benefits.  And they are specifically excluded from the labor laws that protect the rest of us.  Families that rely on domestic workers to give them time to pursue their careers, are relying on an exploitative system.

All inequality is related. If we accept the inequality inherent in using money to resolve a problem for a few women, at the expense of others, then we accept inequality, period.

In honor of labor day, I’d like to bring your attention to Senate bill 1184.  It is titled the Rewarding Achievement and Incentivizing Successful Employees Act and its purpose is

S. 1184
To amend the National Labor Relations Act to permit employers to pay higher wages to their employees.

That doesn’t sound so bad. I mean who is against higher wages? Ah, that’s where this gets interesting, because it is exactly the people who are against higher wages who support this bill. Huh?

The bill was introduced by Republican Senator David Vitter of Louisiana.  You’ll remember him as the guy who was caught up in the D.C. Madam scandal and reportedly has a diaper fetish (eeeeeewww).

Vitter doesn’t exactly have a stellar labor rights record (although he did support the recent minimum wage hike).  His answer to the auto crisis was, of course, we need to decrease wages.  So why would he be supporting a bill that aims to give workers more pay.  He’s not.  The bill’s aim is to crush the ability of unions to do collective bargaining.

Notwithstanding a labor organization’s exclusive representation of employees in a unit, or the terms and conditions of any collective bargaining contract or agreement then in effect, nothing in either–(A) section 8(a)(1) or 8(a)(5), or (B) a collective bargaining contract or agreement renewed or entered into after the date of enactment of the RAISE Act, shall prohibit an employer from paying an employee in the unit greater wages, pay, or other compensation for, or by reason of, his or her services as an employee of such employer, than provided for in such contract or agreement.”

Divide and conquer. The power of a union is that all employees are in the same boat. The aim of this bill is to make those employees competitors rather than collaborators. The aim is to break up the union. And since unionized workers, and workers in more unionized industries, get better pay and benefits, breaking up unions means lowering wages.

The Alliance for Worker Freedom is a big supporter of this bill.  They sound very pro-labor.  They even have this vaguely 1930s labor movement feel to their website.  Then you find out that they are against even a minimum wage and are run by Americans for Tax Reform. Americans for Tax Reform is headed by Grover Norquist, a virulently anti-tax, uber-right, Republican-connected activist.

The bill is supported by a list of other right wing, anti-tax, anti-people organizations and was co-sponsored by Republican Senators John Barrasso, Jim Bunning, Richard Burr, Jim DeMint, John Ensign, Michael Enzi, John Isakson, Pat Roberts, John Thune, and Roger Wicker.

Booooooo.  Boooooo for the kings of putrescence.

I don’t normally post on weekends, but the new Carnival of the Godless is out on a Nadder and it’s a good one.  Check it out.

The new Carnival of the Liberals is up on The Lay Scientist.  Check it out.

Barbara Boxer has an interesting bill floating around the Senate Finance Committee right now.

S. 1366
To amend the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 to allow taxpayers to designate a portion of their income tax payment to provide assistance to homeless veterans, and for other purposes.

The bill would allow people to designate $3 of their income tax payment to go into a fund to assist homeless veterans.  I find this bill interesting because it fits in nicely with some thoughts I had about taxes.

Taxes are one of the most contentious political issues we deal with as a country.  Many people don’t like their money going to social programs. Others don’t like their money going to military spending.  I’ve never come across anyone who actually approves of the way government spends their money.

Of course, most people don’t actually know how government spends their money.  When Americans are surveyed about how much of our budget goes to foreign aid, for example, they consistently overestimate the percentage.  And they overestimate by a lot.

So wouldn’t it be interesting if we actually let people decide for themselves how their money should be spent?  I don’t mean line item by line item.  We could have broad categories – defense, education, social programs, foreign aid…

We could just write down the percentages on our tax return, much like the way mutual funds allow you to allocate your contributions.  Conservatives could direct all their money to defense or paying down the debt.  Pacifists could direct their money to social programs and education.  Tax resisters would have options that wouldn’t involve jail time.

Anyone who has ever worked for a nonprofit knows how difficult it is to operate when most of your money comes from restricted funds.  So this system would not be without its problems, but the benefits could be enormous.

People would still gripe about how their neighbor chose to spend their money, but they couldn’t gripe about where their money was going.  And while it is possible that we would end up with less money for things I care about, I suspect that even many conservatives would be more generous to social services than our government has been.

We don’t have to start with the whole shebang.  We could just do a portion at first.  It’s a lot more democratic than the system we have now.  What do you think?