Why the 99 percent keeps loosing ...
Submitted by mimi on Tue, 03/24/2015 - 4:09am
Why the 99 percent keeps loosing - by Robert Kuttner
Reason One. The Discrediting of Politics Itself.
Reason Two. Compromised Democrats
Reason Three. The Reign of Politicized Courts and Big Money.
Reason Four. The Collapse of Equalizing Institutions.
Reason Five. Bewildering Changes in How Jobs Are Structured
Reason Six. The Internalization of a Generation's Plight.
Reason Seven. The Absence of a Movement.
Quick and painless, err ... may be not so painless. Reason Five is not talked about enough, imo.
Comments
I really would like to see the country literally divided
I cannot stand living in a red state, and I cannot stand conservatives. If birds of feather flock together, I say we move them all to Texas and let them have one giant cage match and be done with em.
Perhaps you could elaborate a little on #5.
"Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich."--Napoleon
On #5
Directly from Kuttner's article:
This is happening even as far down as local government now. I retired from local govt. in the early 2000's and then went back as a part time OPS for several years thereafter. The relationship of employer to employee has become one in which the employee is no longer considered a valuable part of a team. But I saw these changes happening way back in the early 1990's. As a lifelong employee of my department, I had great pride in what I was doing and in my Dept. But then it became very clear one day when my department head told us employees in a staff meeting that everyone is dispensable and we could all be replaced. It came as a shock because up until that time we all felt we were part of a team for the greater good and then suddenly we were being told that none of us had any real value. We were now just interchangeable cogs.
Sometime around 2005, the city laid off some employees for the first time in its entire existence. They started filling the gaps with OPS or temporary employees. Temps and OPS do not receive any benefits and must work less than 30 hours a week. In the retail/service sector, part time and /or on call employees are becoming the norm. With flexible scheduling and/or on call employment, it makes it nearly impossible for a worker to hold a second job to bring in enough income to provide for a living family income. IMHO, on call employment is a form of wage and time theft and it is becoming more and more prevalent.
Pensions and retirement plans are becoming a thing of the past. With the attacks on Social Security, we are creating a situation in which the coming generations with be facing both employment insecurity and retirement insecurity. It does not have to happen, which is the focus of Kuttner's article. It is happening because our politicians are allowing it to happen as they continue to funnel wealth upwards at the expense of the rest of us and the future of our young people.
Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?
“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ President John F. Kennedy
A permanent underclass is part of the plan
They work cheap and can be exploited.
Yesterday, I had a conversation with a 25 year old who had just been fired from a food service job. The kid missed the bus and was 15 minutes late.
My advice, the job sucked, the pay sucked and your manager is/was a butt head. Move on to the next thing, you are not losing anything.
The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself. - Friedrich Nietzsche -
I could add lots of stories like that
... from the Cruise Ship Industry.
And it's not dependent anymore on having an official degree in your field or having already worked (contract to contract to contract) for a longer period of time in this field.
Ironically there are people who studied "hospitality" and have an accounting additional degree, got a student loan, which they now have to pay back, enduring
those kind of work contracts they hoped to get around with the help of their "good education and a degree". The circle is closing in on them. Even worse, if you wouldn't even get a contract and would fail to pay your monthly rates. There is a kossack in my area, whose originally student loan ballooned into some huge amount. She is retired and the student loan payments get automatically deducted from her SS check. I mean ... the country is not only not helping his young to get an education, it seems to punish the elderly who lost jobs and couldn't continue to make the payments. Pretty cruel.
While attractive
Not a feasible solution.
Michigan is bewildering. The urban versus rural divide seems to be particularly disparate. I am not sure of the catalyst for so many working class conservatives, but suspect that segregated work places and the relative prosperity of the Caucasian participants is a factor. Racial and immigration political practice is often the politics of division. "They are taking your job." Couple that with the 1% effect. The Devos dark network has had a profound effect on Michigan. Hey, SS is a ponzi scheme, but Amway is a legitimate business.
The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself. - Friedrich Nietzsche -
NAFTA was a major contributor. BTW, some of
our relatives retired south partly due to the racial polarization in Michigan.
IOW--when they retired, they became 'reverse transplants.'
*****
NAFTA is one of the major policy disasters that's created conservative dems. just ask them! for many of them, it amounted to the loss of the ability to have any semblance of 'a middle-class life.'
remember, GWH Bush only participated in the 'ceremonial' signing of NAFTA.
NAFTA was 'the Big Dog's' baby--and he takes credit for it in every audience that he addresses, but progressive ones. (As did the DLC).
WJC pushed it through congress, and of course, signed it into law.
democrats 'own it.'
mollie
Everyone thinks they have the best dog, and none of them are wrong.
The thing about
having them all move to Texas is that given the hateful ignorant and violent nature of it's citizens? Texas would promptly invade the rest of us. We liberals would be an 'existential' threat to their theocratic manifest destiny.
Lack of $peech
to persuade/buy politicians.
The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself. - Friedrich Nietzsche -
Good list, although he must be a democrat.
I'd add propaganda to the list, the control of the mass media and thus the control of our brains.
Without that the ruling class wouldn't be nearly as successful.
Also, the fact remains that we aren't living in a democracy, it's an oligarchy/plutocracy. Relying on
the oligarchy to make progress isn't going to happen, not now. The democratic and republican parties
are part of the oligarchy. HIs blaming the republican party and letting the democratic party largely off
the hook, except for supposed ineptness, is off the mark imo. The 99 percent will keep loosing under this
system of government.
Actually, he does address the media
Under reason #1, Kuttner goes into it further and one of the areas he addresses is the media.
Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?
“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ President John F. Kennedy
Actually, he does address the media
Under reason #1, Kuttner goes into it further and one of the areas he addresses is the media.
Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?
“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ President John F. Kennedy
find out
I think we need to find out why even Bellows, who does not appear to be compromised, lost.
Has anyone talked to people on the ground in Maine, who know what happened?
We can all speculate but it would be nice to have some solid data.
It was not like it was even close. Bellows got 30%
http://ballotpedia.org/United_States_Senate_elections_in_Maine,_2014
Don't fight the stream - Tyr Anasazi
Thanks for posting GideonAB...
and welcome, glad to have you aboard.
I wonder who voted
My theory of why the Democrats lost so badly in recent elections is pretty simple. The party has and is not showing leadership on the pocketbook issues that get their base and independent out to vote. If you offer nothing more than we are not as bad, you give the voters nothing to vote for. The Republican base is going to show up regardless.
I will probably either not vote or vote third party in many of the coming elections. Either way, my vote is a vote lost. I voted for a Democrat in my congressional district. Gwen Graham ousted the incumbent Republican, Steve Southerland. What did my vote get me in Gwen Graham? Exactly the same votes that Southerland would have made had he been re-elected. Many Dems in her district are angry as hell as her, but she continues to vote with the Republicans on nearly every major issue. She does not care. She figures that the conservatives and Republicans in her district will carry her in the next election. So why should I ever vote for her again? There is no compelling reason for me to do so.
Because of the national Democratic party strategy, some good candidates are getting hurt. The party's response to these resounding defeats is to move even further rightward. I am fed up with them.
BTW, welcome Gideon!
Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?
“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ President John F. Kennedy
X2--welcome, Gideon! n/t
Everyone thinks they have the best dog, and none of them are wrong.
interesting
Can you say what Gwen Graham votes you would have wanted to be different?
What issues are your priority? Can she afford to move to the left and still get elected in Florida?
I thank the people who created this forum for nice discussions.
Don't fight the stream - Tyr Anasazi
I probably would need to go
I probably would need to go back through all the votes to tell you the issues. I do know that she campaigned as someone who respected and would defend the environment, citing her father, Bob Graham. As a point of reference, Bob Graham was governor when Flroida's growth management legislation was passed. In retirement, he has worked on defending the environment in Florida.
Gwen Graham voted for the Keystone XL. She voted for gutting legislation regulating the banks. She voted against all three Democratic budget proposals. These are the ones off the top of my head.
The point is that as far as I have seen, Gwen Graham has voted with the Republicans on every major issue. If I wanted those votes, then I would have voted to keep her predecessor, Steve Southerland.
My issues are the environment, the endless wars, and economic equity.
The point with Graham is that she has voted with the Republicans on issues that have no direct effect upon her district. She could have at least established that she cared about some issues like the environment, even if it was not in her district. But she has chosen to play the part of DINO.
She got elected because the Democrats in her district supported her and because her father is still popular among Floridians. We are a purple district, but as is the case with so many Blue Dogs, if the people have to chose between a real Republican or Republican lite, they will choose the real Republican. Graham got an opportunity to show that she could do something different from Southerland and thus far, she is Steve Southerland in a skirt and lipstick.
Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?
“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ President John F. Kennedy
While I agree with this
'Politics -- not technology -- caused the evisceration of these instruments.' I do not agree with this part 'Politics could take back a fairer America.' The current political, electoral by-partisan, sham has successfully destroyed every parliamentary means for people to address their grievances. Even on a local level there is no way that 'elections have consequences'. Look at Chicago as an example, Emmanuel Ramn, a Democratic mayor, is appalling and arrogant to boot. The electoral system is in reality nothing but the voters ratifying whoever the big bucks decide will best represent their interests.
Once these candidates, even the lesser evil Dems., are elected things get worse. The kabuki show in DC, your state capital or city, is so bad it fools no one but the loyalist partisan idiots on both sides. My city government is solidly Democratic and yet the people are getting screwed by bankster's, developers, privateers, and we're told this is progress and growth. It's inevitable. The 'losers' are irresponsible and need to make better life choices or get out of the way. Sacrifice and eat your peas or cat food. Once people figure out that both D's and R's are complicit politics becomes nothing more then a ridiculous wrestlin' match that is rigged from the start. Only 37% gave their consent in the last election and it's no mystery to me why they don't vote.
There is no way to take it back. They have it covered and keep the people divided and distracted with the endless culture war. One of my neighbors a liberal environmental biologist fly's the American flag on random days. I asked him why? His reply was to show the Republicans they don't own it. What a meaningless political gesture. All political participation does is keep the game in play. The government is broken it and it was carefully eviscerated by intent. I kind of find it heartening that people's are not buying this farce of representative democracy.
Kuttner may be right with his 7 reasons but I totally disagree with his conclusions or remedies. The perceptions of those who are hip to this bad wresltin' match are not wrong. Politics cannot take it back and make a fairer America as the last thing both sides want is justice fairness, equality or democracy. The common good of the 99% is an impediment to their by-partisan nasty 1% global agenda. People are just an expendable profit loss and the planet is theirs to pillage. They have successfully eviscerated all checks and balances on power and even taken away the rule of law.
As for movements and leaders 'don't follow leaders, watch the parking meters'. I also disagree with his assessment of OWS's purity process being what stopped it from growing and spreading. It was the viscous coordinated unleashing of their violent enforcers that shut it down. Fear seems to be at the heart of all our politics and I for one am sick of it. Extortion and fear certainly doesn't seem to be getting out the vote these days.
Wow!
Great analysis.
Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?
“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ President John F. Kennedy
I've had a while
to think about this as I have been gradually disengaging with partisan politics since 2008. I switched to local Democratic activism but quickly found out it was just as corrupt and owned as national politics are. It took awhile for me to get over feeling guilty with my bad attitude as the so called progressive Democratic side places all the blame on conservatives, third party voters and non voters. They refuse to even deal with the real problem the Democratic party itself and instead focus on how to win or get the stay sheeple back in the fold. I voted Jill Stein, a green last national election. In the off year I could not bring myself to vote for gov. Kitzhaber or a lot of the city,state Dems. on the ticket.
I did vote enthusiastically on the ballot measures as in Oregon we take our civic issues seriously. We had a 60 something % turn out and if you ask me pot and the equal right's amendment won the day and GOTV. I had to laugh at our incumbent congressman Earl Blumenauer's political ad where he just said you young people should vote as pot's on the ballot. His ad followed a Kitz ad where he promised to cross the aisle and compromise with the really loonie Oregon Repugs. He barely won. I haven't figured out where or how to engage politically yet but i know it's not with the lesser evil. It isn't even lesser as the Dems. are more effective at deception and to me much more dangerous then the overt RW loons. I'm kind of in limbo politically speaking after a lifetime of being an old school Democratic supporter and voter. I will vote as depressing as it is because of ballot measures and third party challenges that in my dreams have a chance.
Earl Blumenauer is a 'fiscal hawk,' for sure. anyhoo,
i'm highly suspicious of anyone who wears a pink bowtie!
mollie
Everyone thinks they have the best dog, and none of them are wrong.
Earl lol.
In 2003 at the height of our Democratic party activism when Eric was a 'precinct person' and I was going to Dean meet ups, we attended Democratic state and local functions. We went to a fund raising/rally dinner for our districts boots on the ground downtown. Earl, pink bow tie and all, was shaking hands and mingling with the grass roots. I was introduced to him and he bypassed my face entirely and fastened his gaze overtly on my breasts. I should have slapped his idiotic face but instead just chalked him up for the clown he is. I still get his annual reports of what he's up to in DC and do not believe a word they say.
hear, hear--say it sister! ;-) N/T
Everyone thinks they have the best dog, and none of them are wrong.
If a movement is not the solution - what is?
... which means that the current constitution and laws in the books allows that to happen.
...which means that media and propaganda and social media suffocations allow that to happen.
But then you disagree with the conclusion that a movement is what is needed. From the article:
So the question I have: Why isn't there a movement? Why was there a Roosevelt Revolution and the Civil Rights Revolution? (Where both real revolutions?)
I like to know what you consider to be a revolution? There are "springs", "uprisings", "rebellions", "peaceful resistance movements declared revolutionary", "violent revolutions declared coups"... so it's not clear to me. Is the factor that makes one of these activities a revolution the occurrence of a change in government and policies? What if the new government is doing the same thing and no change has occurred? May be the only thing that real happened was "bloodshed"?
Here is a list of revolutions:
If a movement is not the solution, then what is? If checks and balances and the rule of law are gone into the dumpster, you need to rewrite parts of the constitution and new laws, or not? How can you get that done? As I am not academically education I have no better way to express my question. Sorry for that. There are a couple of books I intend to read that hopefully make some of the "revolutionary" stuff clearer to me.
revolution has got to be the most overused and abused term...
in the political lexicon.
also, an excessive focus on the government as the nexus of power is quite overdone. a government is a tool. in the right hands, it is a tool for promoting the general welfare of a society and fostering good relations among its people and external societies. in the wrong hands, it can be a tool of oppression of people and external societies.
when a government gets into the hands of the wrong people, sometimes an adjustment can be made and the oppressed can convince the elites that control the government to make concessions (such as the roosevelt adjustment) that the other classes can live with. sometimes the elites that control the government are so resistant to the reasonable demands of the other classes that more extreme methods need to be employed by the long-suffering masses (see: tar and feathers or guillotine, for example). sometimes not only is it required that the ruling elites need to be chastened with extremity, but the structures that they have created to maintain control must be liquidated and rebuilt in less dangerous forms because they retain the stench of oppression odious to the masses. the latter example is indicative of a revolution.
Ya mon,
I think we're at the latter.
Tear it down!
you think that these structures
have been created in the last two decades or have they been always there due to your constitutional law and your electoral college? If you would want to rebuild something, there should be ways to achieve that within or with your legal framework and electoral process, but it seems that this is not possible. If that would be true, and the elite in power and their funding entities don't come to their senses themselves and don't fight for amending those structures, you would have nothing left but a very persistant, very strong resistance. I can't imagine anymore that this would be possible in the US without a disastrous civil unrest. So, I don't think it will happen.
What else then be done?
good question mimi
I think what ever resistance or revolution takes this down it will have to be global. If oligarchical collectivist's rule the world and all people globally are at their anti-democratic mercy it will take people globally to form solidarity and stop this shit. As Stephane Hessel the 90 something author of Outrage Now which helped spark the global spring and OWS here, said
"You must find the things that you will not accept, that will outrage you. And these things, you must be able to fight against nonviolently, peacefully, but determinedly,"
Solidarity globally amongst the people everywhere is the only solution. When will humanity withdraw their consent to be governed by the !% who as they always do proclaim they are inevitable. There not ever, they always fall eventually. It's up to people globally to withdraw consent to be governed by these globalizing Visigoths. As senator Obama said to the Hamilton Project there will be blood but God knows the blood is flowing here and everywhere. Enough. These would be rulers of the the world are not inevitable and they can be and will be stopped in their destruction of both the planet and humanity.
How about,
"we the people of this earth demand the end of rule by the rich for the rich".
No, we mean really, THE END!"
And get two billion people to sign the petition, send it to the U.N. and see what happens.
the global solidarity ... a fata morgana
All outrage is personal and local. So, I don't see a global solidarity thing happening, just in words may be, online, and that's it. The global solidarity movement will be happening if at all, online, and the internet is owned and managed by the 1 percent. So, not going to work.
(Corrected Typos) i am always amazed
when i hear dem shills trot out pablum about false equivalencies, etc., regarding which party is to blame for so-called 'dysfunction.'
let's remember, had it not been for the tea party (jerks), massive cuts to social security would probably have already been passed.
iow, a 'grand bargain' was blocked because tea partiers would not agree to massive tax hikes--which will be mostly on low- and middle-income americans [per Rep Jan Schakowsky].
and this is at the same time that the marginal tax brackets for the wealthy and corporations will be slashed. the tax brackets for lower- and middle-class Americans may be dropped by a couple of percent, but it won't matter when then abolish many of the tax expenditures which mostly apply to working- and middle-class folks--including the one that affects 150 million Americans enrolled in group health plans, etc.
you see, this is an easy tax expenditure for them to end--most wealthy folks aren't participating in group health plans--they either self-insure, or carry private plans. (some exceptions like corporate ceos, etc., of course)
i'd bet the family farm that no tax expenditures which mainly benefit the top quintile, much less the top 1%, will be entirely eliminated. (aside from the one that applies to group health insurance)
certainly, when you're talking a group health plan, you've normally got folks at all income levels, from the custodian to the ceo.
oh, more about those clowns Thomas E. Mann and Norman Ornstein, later. closer to FSC's announcement, i'll trot out a video of the two of them shilling for a plan which 'the big dog' pushes. you know if he's behind it, it's a loser (except for the wealthy).
thanks for the diary.
[sorry, if typing is inconsistent--transitioning to Joe's method of 'lower case typing'--for efficiency. this will take getting used to, lol! but with two arthritic fingers, it will be useful if i can master it.]
mollie
Everyone thinks they have the best dog, and none of them are wrong.
i saw that article and almost posted it in eb, until i saw this:
occupy failed to gel because it was attacked and undermined by a democratic administration that treated it like a terrorist organization instead of doing its constitutional duty to protect citizens who were exercising their first amendment rights to speak and organize politically.
it was further undermined by democratic/liberal/progressive activists who saw occupy as a threat to their political relevance, much like mr. kuttner with his purity trolling.
hear, hear! and it was democratic party 'mayors' who
generally took the most aggressive action against the 'occupiers.'
Kuttner's very much a part of the problem. As are many of his so-called 'solutions.'
Al's right--'propaganda' is our worst enemy. and some of the most damaging and misleading--that affects the progressive community--comes from dem party shills like Kuttner.
mollie
Everyone thinks they have the best dog, and none of them are wrong.
mocking or putting down people's voices due to their
"moral purity" is a thing I encountered on dailykos and I think it's pure psychological and emotional warfare (arrogant bullying). Were the Occupy participants supposedly more successful, if they had been more "morally impure"? I thought we had enough of those "impurities" already. It's a BS argument.
Thank you Joe!
This is one of the things that greatly bugs me about dkos (ie, the Democrats) along with those who never participated or understood the Occupy movement. They still fail to get what Occupy was all about.
Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?
“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ President John F. Kennedy
don't know if you were here, then,
but 'mocking' the left was exactly how the DLC waged their so-called insurgency, and ultimately took over the Dem Party. (mid-1980s)
it's also a major plank in the dem party's playbook, used extensively by both dem lawmakers and dem strategists/shills.
most of the corporatist neoliberal 'establishment dems' marginalize both the left and the right (non corporatist tea partiers) as 'extremists.'
it appears to be a very effective tool.
and, I fear that it is working like a charm on the dem party base, as being used by today's 'no labelers' and corporatist dems.
one case in point--'no labeler' US Rep Patrick Murphy (FL) is being touted at Dkos as the best thing since sliced bread.
support him for senate, they say!
And many of these same folks mock Rep Alan Grayson, who's considering a run, as too 'leftist.'
Patrick Murphy is the same US Rep who, in one of his debates, ended his closing remarks with "I was a Republican for years."
(which is true--according to Wikipedia, he left the republican party in 2011, in order to run as a dem in 2012.)
mollie
Everyone thinks they have the best dog, and none of them are wrong.
no, I started to "grasp" a bit more about
your political system only after 2000. In the eighties I loved Dr. Huxtable and Michael Jordan and was not thinking about politics. I always found your Presidents kind of "head-shakingly amazing and incomprehensible". In the nineties I just was seeing the "potential of the internet", had a lot to deal with and didn't pay much intention to politics. I wondered about Bill Clinton, but didn't understand anything about the economic policies he was pushing. So it dawned on me just after GWB was elected. Remind you, I am really not into US party politics and never expected to live in this country for good. So, I am just watching and learning and wondering what's going on here and in the last years dailykos became my hang-out to "watch the people talk".
Patrick Murphy is the same age my son is. He is also an Iraq War Veteran. Unlike my son he is educated. He used his Veteran status and the population's sympathies for Veterans to go into politics. By now I think that is a recurring pattern, including people like him switching parties. If the US had another system to build its armed forces (mandatory for every one equally, no volunteer army, in case of a declaration of war and deployment, drafting everyone equally) I think that would change and that kind of "using your hero status as a Veteran for furthering your political career" would fade away into the background. But that's just me. I think the best system is used in Switzerland, democratic and treating everyone equal when it comes to serve in the military.
But I don't remember Patrick Murphy as an especially unsympathetic or dishonest guy. So I have no opinion about his run for Senate. Probably would end up following DK's advice if I wouldn't find another candidate more appealing politically.