Hiring, firing and Mitt Romney

Creative destruction

Hiring, firing and Mitt Romney

January 10, 2012

Before he entered politics, Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney made a fortune at Bain Capital, the private-equity firm he ran from 1984 to 1999.

Ari Berman on January 13, 2012 - 10:30am ET

In recent days Mitt Romney has strenuously defended his tenure at Bain Capital, lauding his former employer as a classic success story of free-market capitalism and lambasting his opponents on the left and right for practicing the “bitter politics of envy.”

In his New Hampshire primary speech, Romney claimed that “President Obama wants to put free enterprise on trial” and “turn America into a European-style entitlement society.” In Romney’s telling, Obama relies on government for his solutions, while Mitt draws his inspiration from the power of the free market. There are winners and losers in the free market, this argument goes, and it’s not the government’s job to determine who they are. At a recent debate, Romney said that government “by and large…gets in the way of creating jobs.”

But a closer look at Bain’s record under Romney reveals that the company relied on the very government subsidies that Romney and Tea Party conservatives routinely denounce as “crony capitalism.” The Los Angeles Times ran a big story yesterday about Bain’s investment in Steel Dynamics, which received $37 million in subsidies and grants to build a new plant in DeKalb County, Indiana. An analyst at the Cato Institute called it “corporate welfare.”

Romney has recently pointed to Steel Dynamics as one of his success stories at Bain, including in a new ad, which contributed to the 100,000 net jobs he’s claimed to have created at the firm (an incorrect figure he’s subsequently had to walk back). He never mentions that government subsidies played a major role in ensuring that success.

Phil Mattera, research director for Good Jobs First, provides a few more examples of the government subsidies Bain received during Romney’s tenure at his blog, Dirt Diggers Digest.

GS Industries. In 1996 American Iron Reduction LLC, a joint venture of GS Industries (which had been taken private by Bain in 1993) and Birmingham Steel, sought some $20 million in tax breaks in connection with its plan to build a plant in Louisiana’s St. James Parish (Baton Rouge Advocate, April 6, 1996). As the United Steelworkers union noted recently, GS Industries later applied for a federal loan guarantee, but before the deal could be implemented the company went bankrupt.

Sealy. A year after the 1997 buyout of this leading mattress company by Bain and other private equity firms, Sealy received $600,000 from state and local authorities in North Carolina to move its corporate offices, a research center and a manufacturing plant from Ohio (Greensboro News & Record, March 31, 1998). In 2004 Bain and its partners sold Sealy to another private equity group.GT Bicycles. In 1997 GT, then owned by Bain and other investors, decided to move its manufacturing operations to an enterprise zone in Santa Ana, California. Being in the zone gave the company, which was later purchased by Schwinn, special tax credits relating to hiring and the purchase of equipment (Orange County Register, July 9, 1999).These subsidies didn’t always provide the return states and localities were looking for. Seven hundred and fifty workers lost their jobs, for example, after Bain took over GS Industries. “They walked out of here with millions,” said one former steelworker. “They left us with nothing.”Sealy, another company cited by Mattera, moved its headquarters from Cleveland to Greensboro after Bain’s investment to take advantage of the generous government subsidies, a fact that is not likely to endear Romney to Ohioans.There are likely other examples of Bain profiting from these type of subsidies, along with a host of unanswered questions.

How much did Bain-owned companies receive in total government subsidies? Did Bain take public money and then lay off workers? Did Romney seek these subsidies out?Romney will no doubt try to channel Reagan in the coming campaign, echoing, in one form or another, the Gipper’s famous refrain that “government is not the solution to our problems; government is the problem.” Romney, based on his own compromised history, will have a tougher time making that argument.

 

Romney could have expected that Democrats would give him a hard time about his role buying, building, selling and sometimes closing businesses, which created — and eliminated — a lot of jobs. But he's getting ripped by his Republican opponents, too."If you are a victim of Bain Capital's downsizing, it is the ultimate insult for Mitt Romney to say he feels your pain when he caused it," Texas Gov. Rick Perry said Monday. 

 

Newt Gingrich has echoed the sentiment that Romney profited handsomely while causing more pain than gain for workers.For his part, Romney couldn't have been more ham-handed on Monday when he said, "I like being able to fire people who provide services to me." Perhaps not so bad in context: He was talking about having the ability to change health insurers if an insurer doesn't provide good care. But as a sound bite, oh, he's going to hear this one again and again and again. And again.Romney, of course, would rather focus on the jobs that were created during his time at Bain. He pegs that at a net gain of 100,000 jobs, though he has not substantiated that claim. 

 

So, how to look at this? 

 

Private equity is not evil. It is a natural part of capitalism. In its simplest form, its practitioners put money to work on behalf of investors willing to take a chance on expanding young companies or fixing troubled ones. When it succeeds, the companies prosper. When it fails, the companies shrink, or disappear. 

 

Private equity is not constructed to be some altruistic job engine, and Romney shouldn't pretend that it is. Success in private equity requires unsentimental decision-making. The goal is to produce a return on investment.Private equity companies, including Bain, are almost certain to have a mixed record. Bain funded the Staples office-supply chain under Romney's watch. It also has closed companies that it could not fix in short order. 

 

On Monday, The Wall Street Journal reported on 77 businesses in which Bain Capital invested during Romney's tenure. Bain produced "stellar returns," largely coming from a small number of its investments, while 22 percent of its companies filed for bankruptcy or closed within eight years of Bain's involvement, "sometimes with substantial job losses." 

 

Private equity generally operates on what many workers would consider a hurry-up timetable: Its investments might include a three- to five-year "exit strategy." Companies that fail to make money as expected typically suffer the consequences of impatient investors. 

 

At its best, private equity births and sustains companies that provide goods and services and put people to work. At its worst, well, in the junk-bond-fueled heyday of the 1980s, some corporate raiders were accused of buying companies with borrowed money strictly to sell off assets and pocket as much cash as possible — leaving behind bankrupt shells and ousted employees.Romney's decision-making at Bain will and should undergo much more scrutiny. Romney can neither shrink from his resume nor try to sugarcoat it. He was immensely successful for his investors. His experience at Bain in some ways prepares him well for the job he seeks: Presidents have to make tough decisions too. His experience gives Romney an edge in understanding the American economy, though not necessarily the American public. 

 

No doubt the candidate has polling data that show how Americans distrust financiers in the wake of an economic near-meltdown and unpopular bailout of the banking system. The real-estate bust wiped out trillions of dollars in wealth for middle-class Americans. The job market still suffers.The creative destruction that keeps an economy fresh creates and destroys thousands of jobs every month. It's a brutal fact of life. It doesn't make for a very appealing presidential campaign slogan, but if Romney is going to be honest with the public, he'll acknowledge this. And so will every other candidate for president.

Republicans under a merciless spotlight - The Trib is in the bag for Barackie ObeeWanKenOHBEEE

Republicans under a merciless spotlight

For flawed candidates, no place to hide

Steve Chapman

January 12, 2012

The Republican presidential race is now moving on from New Hampshire to South Carolina, but it's really taking place in an upside-down Lake Wobegon — where all the men are homely, all the women are weak and all the candidates are below average.

Which has been the state of Republican Presidential Candidates since George H. W. Bush - Robert Dole?  George W Bush? John McCain? (Actually, Mike Huckabee was a fine candidate, just not one that corporate America, and therefore Corporate-owned-media-America could snuggle up to - he might have actually gone and done some good for po' folk, as is DEMANDED by both Testaments of the Christian Bible.

We are often told that modern campaigns generate rivers of pointless trivia and shameful misinformation. But this one has served ably to do something that is as valuable to voters as it is unwelcome to the Republican Party: put a merciless spotlight on the mammoth flaws of every aspirant.

Modern mass media COVERAGE of modern campaigns generate OCEANS of pointless trivia and shameful misinformation; to date, this has failed to put a spotlight on the mammoth flaws of media coverage of the campaigns which invariably focuses on the most trivial of all possibilities - whether or not the candidate "knows himself," "dresses authentically," has a spouse that "dresses badly," the candidates "character," which invariably begins as a story line agreed to by all the pundits (puny dick heads - ESPECIALLY the cunt Maureen Dowd) as in "Al Gore is a serial liar, just like William Jefferson Clinton," as in "Al Gore claimed he invented the inernet," etc, etc, ad nauseum, ad nauseum.

There are people who yearn for the short political campaigns in parliamentary countries like Britain, where the process of choosing a national leader is over before Rick Perry can count to three.

Too bad none of these people write about or report on the US campaigns - breathlessly - who has raised the most money? who is winning the horse race?

But in those places, candidates are generally well-known and thoroughly vetted before they offer themselves for the nation's highest office. Here, random individuals are apt to follow the example of Joan of Arc, called to service by voices only they can hear.

I suggest Saint Joan heard the voice of the Lord God Almighty, and plenty of people OUGHT to be able to hear that voice, and even more of them ought to be able to recognize one so called forth.

But as she discovered, an auspicious beginning doesn't assure a happy outcome. In a long, expensive, nonstop campaign like this one, first impressions mean nothing. What matters is enduring appeal. Or, at least, tolerability over time.

Jeez, Lou-Ease, just admit it - corporate America has the biggest hard on of its life for Barry O - the corporate whore, who has spent more time on his knees sucking corporate cock than a Bangkok Whore while the American sailors are on shore leave.

The wide-open nature of presidential politics makes the contest as unpredictable as cow-pie bingo. Candidates who appear formidable while watching from the sidelines turn out to be inept on the field. Candidates who seem laughably unlikely at the outset suddenly take flight on the wings of destiny — before eventually plunging back to earth.

That's the value of the endless debates and media scrutiny. They expose every liability a candidate labors to conceal, while demolishing every asset the candidate presumes to publicize.

There is a perfectly accurate way to gage how a candidate will behave, what types of legislation he will advocate and attempt to advance upon winning election to office - just like real estate - look at the record; look at the record; look at the candidate's voting record.

Perry started out looking like a rugged cowboy but soon gave voters the impression he would try to milk a bull. Herman Cain unveiled a "999" plan that, it turned out, represented the number of women he has hit on. Michele Bachmann, who made headway on the assumption that Republicans wanted a little bit of crazy, offered more than they could take.

NOBODY with the nick-name "Good Hair" could ever be considered to be or ever have been a "real" cowboy.  Cain has probably hit on way more than 999 women, but, he was usually so drunk, he has his excuse for not remembering all set up.  Republicans don't merely want a "little bit of crazy," they want bat-shit loopier than a slave owner who father's dozens of children a year to his female slaves.

Newt Gingrich talked himself to the top of the Iowa polls and then talked himself back down. No one ever left a Gingrich encounter wanting to hear more.

This is likely to be the definitive line of the media coverage of the Republican primaries. Nice job, there, Steverino, old boy.

Rick Santorum, offering himself as a clear conservative alternative to Mitt Romney, got a big "no thanks" from New Hampshire voters. Even in the Republican Party, he has demonstrated, you can be too anti-gay. Jon Huntsman found that you can also be too reasonable.

Ron Paul, meanwhile, has unearthed surprising evidence that many Republicans think the battle against big government should not stop at the water's edge. Unlike Barack Obama and George W. Bush, they are not eager to launch attacks on other countries or take on massive nation-building projects.

Paul sounds eerily like the Bush who ran in 2000 — promising we would be "a humble nation." So he has no chance of getting the nomination of a party in thrall to endless war.

Romney remains the candidate for Republicans who are willing to settle, which is not most of them. His two chief credentials for high office are a career in private equity investment and one term as governor of Massachusetts, and he has been busy explaining away both.

He has had to downplay his signature achievement in government, a health insurance program that inspired the Obama administration plan so detested on the right. He has had to pretend that Bain Capital was in the business of creating jobs, as though making money were an inconsequential afterthought.

Romney's best bet for conservative credibility, oddly, is absorbing attacks from more conservative candidates. Gingrich and Perry, who regard Obama as a socialist for his attacks on the alleged excesses of capitalism, now attack Romney for profiting from the alleged excesses of capitalism.

Both invoke Ronald Reagan 10 times a minute, but it's impossible to imagine Reagan denouncing private equity firms as "vultures" with a "mentality of making money against all other considerations," as Perry did, or depicting Bain Capital as "rich guys looting companies," as Gingrich did.

Once their campaigns are over, these two have a bright future with Occupy Wall Street. Meanwhile, they may achieve the feat of making Romney look like a man of consistency and principle.

Unreal? Sure. But in this race, unreality is the new reality.

Steve Chapman is a member of the Tribune's editorial board and blogs at chicagotribune.com/chapman

January 12, 2012

America Isn’t a Corporation

By PAUL KRUGMAN

“And greed — you mark my words — will not only save Teldar Paper, but that other malfunctioning corporation called the U.S.A.”

 

That’s how the fictional Gordon Gekko finished his famous “Greed is good” speech in the 1987 film “Wall Street.” In the movie, Gekko got his comeuppance. But in real life, Gekkoism triumphed, and policy based on the notion that greed is good is a major reason why income has grown so much more rapidly for the richest 1 percent than for the middle class. 

Today, however, let’s focus on the rest of that sentence, which compares America to a corporation. This, too, is an idea that has been widely accepted. And it’s the main plank of Mitt Romney’s case that he should be president: In effect, he is asserting that what we need to fix our ailing economy is someone who has been successful in business.

In so doing, he has, of course, invited close scrutiny of his business career. And it turns out that there is at least a whiff of Gordon Gekko in his time at Bain Capital, a private equity firm; he was a buyer and seller of businesses, often to the detriment of their employees, rather than someone who ran companies for the long haul. (Also, when will he release his tax returns?) Nor has he helped his credibility by making untenable claims about his role as a “job creator.” 

But there’s a deeper problem in the whole notion that what this nation needs is a successful businessman as president: America is not, in fact, a corporation. Making good economic policy isn’t at all like maximizing corporate profits. And businessmen — even great businessmen — do not, in general, have any special insights into what it takes to achieve economic recovery. 

Why isn’t a national economy like a corporation? For one thing, there’s no simple bottom line. For another, the economy is vastly more complex than even the largest private company. 

Most relevant for our current situation, however, is the point that even giant corporations sell the great bulk of what they produce to other people, not to their own employees — whereas even small countries sell most of what they produce to themselves, and big countries like America are overwhelmingly their own main customers. 

Yes, there’s a global economy. But six out of seven American workers are employed in service industries, which are largely insulated from international competition, and even our manufacturers sell much of their production to the domestic market. 

And the fact that we mostly sell to ourselves makes an enormous difference when you think about policy. 

Consider what happens when a business engages in ruthless cost-cutting. From the point of view of the firm’s owners (though not its workers), the more costs that are cut, the better. Any dollars taken off the cost side of the balance sheet are added to the bottom line.

But the story is very different when a government slashes spending in the face of a depressed economy. Look at Greece, Spain, and Ireland, all of which have adopted harsh austerity policies. In each case, unemployment soared, because cuts in government spending mainly hit domestic producers. And, in each case, the reduction in budget deficits was much less than expected, because tax receipts fell as output and employment collapsed. 

Now, to be fair, being a career politician isn’t necessarily a better preparation for managing economic policy than being a businessman. But Mr. Romney is the one claiming that his career makes him especially suited for the presidency. Did I mention that the last businessman to live in the White House was a guy named Herbert Hoover? (Unless you count former President George W. Bush.) 

And there’s also the question of whether Mr. Romney understands the difference between running a business and managing an economy. 

Like many observers, I was somewhat startled by his latest defense of his record at Bain — namely, that he did the same thing the Obama administration did when it bailed out the auto industry, laying off workers in the process. One might think that Mr. Romney would rather not talk about a highly successful policy that just about everyone in the Republican Party, including him, denounced at the time.

But what really struck me was how Mr. Romney characterized President Obama’s actions: “He did it to try to save the business.” No, he didn’t; he did it to save the industry, and thereby to save jobs that would otherwise have been lost, deepening America’s slump. Does Mr. Romney understand the distinction? 

America certainly needs better economic policies than it has right now — and while most of the blame for poor policies belongs to Republicans and their scorched-earth opposition to anything constructive, the president has made some important mistakes. But we’re not going to get better policies if the man sitting in the Oval Office next year sees his job as being that of engineering a leveraged buyout of America Inc.

Journalists’ campaign trail secrets revealed

, Published: January 10
NASHUA, N.H.

I’ve long suspected that if editors knew how little journalism occurs on the campaign trail, they would never pay our expenses.

Forget door-knocking. In reality, it’s more trainspotting. Reporters hang out at candidate appearances — and restaurants — talking primarily among themselves and comparing notes on which canned events they attended. (Did you see Santorum in Salem? No, I went to Romney in Hudson so I could catch Newt in Nashua.)

But this week something terrible happened. The Post’s op-ed editor, Autumn Brewington, joined me in New Hampshire — and discovered the reporters’ dirty little secret.

This year turned out to be a particularly wasteful one in the Granite State. Once Romney won in Iowa, the question was not whether he would win here but by how much. Yet the reporters descended anyway: Our hotel rooms were nonrefundable.

The good residents of New Hampshire, uninspired by the candidates, seemed less interested in attending candidate rallies than in years past. The result was that traveling mobs of journalists routinely outnumbered the “real people.”

As Jon Huntsman wound down his New Hampshire campaign with a stop Monday at Crosby Bakery in Nashua, he was trailed by about 150 journalists. Total number of New Hampshire voters: Perhaps a dozen. And some of them seemed more focused on taking pictures of “Meet the Press” moderator David Gregory than in seeing the candidate.

As I played sherpa for my editor, it was hard to conceal the fact that I was leading her on a journalistic road to nowhere. Among our first stops was the debate in Manchester, where one of the most embarrassing truths of campaign coverage was revealed: Reporters who attend debates aren’t even in the same room with the candidates. We take our seats in a gymnasium, plug in our laptops — and then watch on TV, like everybody else does at home.

While my editor watched on the screen in front of us, I attempted to look busy by sending out tweets: “Gingrich has now officially surpassed Churchill in jowls . . . Uh-oh. Sounds as if Perry is back on NyQuil.”

Next day, we headed to a Gingrich appearance that had great metaphorical promise: He reached out to Manchester’s Hispanic community by holding an event at Don Quijote’s Mexican and Caribbean restaurant. But it turned out to be more stagecraft for the media mob.

The campaign handed out “Newt Con Nosotros” buttons and had a local man with a Spanish accent introduce the candidate. A Gingrich daughter attempted what sounded like first-year Spanish on the crowd. But her proficiency didn’t matter, because two rooms in the restaurant, and a good part of a third, were crammed with journalists.

“All I see are white faces,” complained one news photographer. Instead of Hispanics, Gingrich found protesters outside (a few posed as a mariachi band and shouted, “Workers of the world unite”) and hostile questioners inside. “I’m not getting into a debate,” he told one of them. “You asked your question; you’re done.”

At a Rick Santorum event Monday, about 100 journalists and 20 TV cameras filled the chamber of commerce hall, where Santorum struggled with sound system feedback that sounded like a “Star Wars” lightsaber. “Is this bothering you? It’s bothering me?” he told the crowd, then turned off the microphone. “Can everybody hear me now?”

“Not for television!” one cameraman answered.

A moment later Santorum was back on the microphone.

After Mitt Romney spoke at a metal fabrication plant outside Nashua on Monday, the candidate took questions from reporters — who dwarfed the number of locals on hand. But even that was a made-for-TV special. Aides made sure that supporters waving Romney signs were the only people visible in the background. “We want the press out of here,” an aide said. They wanted the press out of a press conference?

Later, my editor and I retreated to Jackie’s Diner in Nashua, around the corner from the Huntsman event. Waitress Barbara Justason, 77, told us she had tired of the campaign events. “It’s all reporters and no real people,” she said.

The “real people” just weren’t into the campaign this year. “Usually I research everything and have big arguments at the counter. This time, I found myself not even wanting to read the articles in the paper,” she said. “Maybe I’ll close my eyes and it’ll be eenie, meenie, mynie, moe.”

That’s just what we were afraid to tell our editors: The New Hampshire primary just wasn’t much of a story.

danamilbank@washpost.com

Why the Republican Party’s Spectacular Collapse Isn’t Good for Social Justice

January 10, 2012 by Color Lines by Kai Wright

New Hampshire Republicans vote today and, barring the unexpected, Mitt Romney will celebrate another tepid victory, earning a fraction of his party’s support. The Republican establishment will then begin its coronation effort in earnest, working hard to end the comic tragedy that this primary has been for the party. In so doing, they will surely further alienate the tea party activists they once encouraged—and just as surely risk further dividing their already fractured party. If President Obama is lucky, the GOP establishment may even invite a third-party challenge for itself.

Democrats and many progressives are watching all of this with glee. The Republicans are, it seems, eating their just desserts.

For four years, Republican leaders have fanned the tea party’s destructive flames. They’ve been stoking the rage of the conservative fringe ever since Sarah Palin stood up and told armed, angry crowds of white people that they were the “real America.” When that divisive strategy failed to win the presidency, the party’s establishment happily mounted its tea party tiger and rode roughshod over Capitol Hill. The unvarnished cynicism of Mitch McConnell and John Boehner has been at times obscene; they’ve openly preferred a failed Obama presidency to a successful economic recovery. And the tea party caucus has provided cover for this ugliness, allowing Republican leaders to throw up their hands in helplessness—sorry dude, we’d like to make an effort at governing, but the caucus just won’t allow it.

Given all of this, it’s understandable that many progressives welcome the Republican foibles of recent months. Let them hobble out of the election a divided, weakened party and perhaps in the next four years we’ll see an emboldened, truly reformist Obama presidency, right? Maybe. There’s little doubt the Republican Party’s implosion is good for Democrats. But that doesn’t make it a good thing for those of us who want to see real progress toward a just society.

To be sure, for the Obama camp the Republican primary has truly been a grand old party. Political chief David Axelrod crowed with joy following the Iowa caucuses, noting that Romney got barely more votes than he had just four years earlier—when he lost. “He’s still the 25 percent man,” Axelrod jeered in a morning-after call with reporters. “It is very possible that this race will go on for a while.” And it’s hard to argue with him: The GOP’s newly built, tea party base clearly does not like Mitt Romney.

Congressional Democrats are equally eager to see the tea party show go on. Much like on the national stage, established Republicans are facing frustratingly difficult local primaries that will at least weaken them in the general election—and in some cases produce beatable candidates like 2010’s Sharron Angle.

Take my home state of Indiana. The widely respected Republican Sen. Richard Lugar, who’s been the state’s trusted grandfather since I was a grade schooler, is staring down a meaningful threat from a tea party challenger. Why? In part because unemployment in Indiana is high and people are pissed. Also, though, because he had the audacity to support a path to citizenship for anxious Hoosiers’ undocumented brown neighbors. So now Lugar is fighting for his job, making the once-safe Republican Senate seat vulnerable to Democratic attack. They’ll either have a substantially weakened Lugar to run against, or a neophyte tea party candidate with extreme views. If you’re a Democrat, these are happy times.

But once we set the horse race of partisan politics aside, the Republican collapse begins to look less gratifying. Here’s the thing: Elections are for incumbents all about being held accountable for their choices. And what the Obama White House needs more than anything at this juncture is a jolt of accountability from the social justice reformers who believed in the change it sold four years ago.

Democratic Party leaders have for generations distracted their own base with the horrific threat of their Republican challengers. From LGBT people to unionized workers, the message is too often the same: Never mind our failings, look at the scary other guys. That’s long been a winning strategy for uniting the Democratic coalition. But the Obama team has wielded it against progressive critics with particular vengeance. Indeed, the tea party has in some ways been as helpful a distraction for the White House as it has been an obstructionist tool for the Republicans.

In this light, the Republican field that’s emerging from Iowa and New Hampshire is tailor made for the Obama administration to avoid a much needed reality check with its own reformists supporters. The president will be able to run simultaneously against the lunacy of a Rick Santorum—or, whoever wins the so-called “conservative primary”—and the weakness of Mitt Romney. The latter poses little threat with voters and the former keeps picky progressives off his tail. As long as he faces no meaningful challenge, the president has little reason to vow a course correction from the choices of his first term.

The good news, though, is the president is working hard early to get his own party in order. As the GOP primary has distracted most of the nation with its wild show, the president has taken the opportunity to use the executive power that social justice advocates have been begging him to wield since January 2009. He appointed a consumer watchdog chief. He kept the National Labor Relations Board running. His FCC squashed the AT&T-T-Mobile merger. And he’s even eased off the gas on the relentless pace of deportation that has tarred his presidency.

These are just the sorts of tangible, meaningful policy victories that reformers can eek out when the major parties go to battle with one another. The more meaningful threat the president faces, the more likely we can win more of them. So while I do find the Republican primary battle an amusing piece of political theater, I’m not sure it’s terribly helpful for winning the change I already believe in.

© 2012 Color Lines

Occupy US Health Care

January 10, 2012 by CommonDreams.org

by Mary O’Brien

After wincing a bit from the free flu shot, my young patient turned to me and said, “What you’re doing here is awesome – it’s so hard get health care!”

“Here” happened to be New York City’s Zuccotti Park in mid-November, the epicenter of Occupy Wall Street, just days before the encampment was broken up by hundreds of Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s armor-clad police in the dead of night. But it could have been anywhere in the United States.

Health care is in fact increasingly unaffordable for the 99 percent. More than 50 million Americans lack health insurance and thus reasonable access to treatment. A recent Harvard study showed about 45,000 excess deaths annually can be linked to lack of insurance.

Even people with insurance face formidable barriers to care like rising co-pays and deductibles. As a result, they are putting off care, getting sicker and ending up in our emergency rooms with serious complications – often facing crushing medical bills later.

This increased “cost sharing” by patients helps explain this week’s report by U.S. Health and Human Services showing the use of medical services has slowed. People can't afford it.

But lack of care invites serious illness or worse. That’s part of the reason why I and scores of other doctors, nurses, medical students and social workers came down to Zuccotti Park and volunteered our time to give out free flu shots.

But I confess that my desire to help went beyond the Samaritan impulse of preventing illness and aiding the sick, an impulse that, remarkably, still persists among our nation’s health professionals despite the toxic atmosphere of our for-profit health system.

I and many others were impelled to take action because the Occupy movement struck a chord with us. We’re angry that our health economy – like the overall economy – has more than sufficient resources to take care of all of us, but the resources are siphoned off by profit-driven corporations in the interest of “the 1 percent.”

Working on the front lines of health care, we see that economic and social inequalities in our present system make our patients sick. The lack of jobs and decent wages, affordable housing, healthy food and quality education takes a heavy toll on the mind and body, and each workday we see the casualties mounting.

We also recognize that the private health insurance industry and Big Pharma exemplify one of the Occupy movement’s central themes: that unchecked corporate greed tramples human needs. Need I recite the billions in profits these companies make each year, or the outlandish salaries of their CEOs, based on skyrocketing premiums and denials of care?

The private insurers, with all the bureaucracy and paperwork they inflict on us, add enormous costs to the delivery of health care, but add no value. Yet, unfortunately, they remain at the very center of our health system under the federal reform law.

There is a clear solution to our health care crisis. Put patients ahead of corporate greed and establish a nonprofit single-payer health care system – an expanded and improved Medicare for all – with no co-pays or deductibles.

A single-payer system would provide high-quality, comprehensive care for everyone – without exception – for no more money than our nation is paying now. We’d save about $400 billion annually due to lower administrative costs. Such a system would also give us tools to rein in costs, like the ability to negotiate lower pharmaceutical prices

. While helping out at Zuccotti Park, I was gratified to hear others chant a slogan I and millions of other Americans have long embraced: Health care is a human right. We will not stop fighting until that principle is enshrined in law and delivered in practice.

Now that will be truly awesome.

Mary O’Brien, M.D., practices internal medicine and serves on the faculty at Columbia University’s College of Physicians and Surgeons in New York. She is a national board member of Physicians for a National Health Program and co-editor of the book 10 Excellent Reasons for National Health Care.

Occupy Wall Street: Why Now? What's Next?

Tuesday, January 10, 2012 by The Nation

Naomi Klein and Yotam Marom in Conversation About Occupy Wall Street by Naomi Klein and Yotam Marom

The following conversation was recorded recently in New York City:

Naomi Klein: One of the things that’s most mysterious about this moment is “Why now?” People have been fighting austerity measures and calling out abuses by the banks for a couple of years, with basically the same analysis: “We won’t pay for your crisis.” But it just didn’t seem to take off, at least in the US. There were marches and there were political projects and there were protests like Bloombergville, but they were largely ignored. There really was not anything on a mass scale, nothing that really struck a nerve. And now suddenly, this group of people in a park set off something extraordinary. So how do you account for that, having been involved in Occupy Wall Street since the beginning, but also in earlier anti-austerity actions?

Yotam Marom: Okay, so the first answer is, I have no idea, no one does. But I can offer some guesses. I think there are a few things you have to pay attention to when you see moments like these. One is conditions—unemployment, debt, foreclosure, the many other issues people are facing. Conditions are real, they’re bad, and you can’t fake them. Another sort of base for this kind of thing is the organizing people do to prepare for moments like these. We like to fantasize about these uprisings and big political moments—and we like to imagine that they erupt out of nowhere and that that’s all it takes—but those things come on the back of an enormous amount of organizing that happens every day, all over the world, in communities that are really marginalized and facing the worst attacks.

So those are the two kind of prerequisites for a moment like this to take place. And then you have to ask, What’s the third element that makes it all come together, what’s the trigger, the magic dust? Well, I’m not sure what the answer is, but I know what it feels like. It feels like something has been opened up, a kind of space nobody knew existed, and so all sorts of things that were impossible before are possible now. Something just got kind of unclogged. All sorts of people just started to see their struggles in this, started being able to identify with it, started feeling like winning is possible, there is an alternative, it doesn’t have to be this way. I think that’s the special thing here.

NK: Do you feel that there is an organic discussion happening about fundamentally changing the economic system? I mean we know that there is a strong, radical, angry critique of corruption, and of the corporate takeover of the political process. There’s a really powerful calling out happening. What’s less clear is the extent to which people are getting ready to actually build something else.

YM: Yeah, I definitely think we’re in a unique moment in the development of a movement that’s not only a protest movement against something but also an attempt to build something in its place. It is potentially a very early version of what I would call a dual-power movement, which is a movement that’s—on the one hand—trying to form the values and institutions that we want to see in a free society, while at the same time creating the space for that world by resisting and dismantling the institutions that keep us from having it. Occupation in general, as a tactic, is a really brilliant form of a dual-power struggle because the occupation is both a home where we get to practice the alternative—by practicing a participatory democracy, by having our radical libraries, by having a medical tent where anybody can get treatment, that kind of thing on a small level—and it’s also a staging ground for struggle outwards. It’s where we generate our fight against the institutions that keep us from the things that we need, against the banks as a representative of finance capitalism, against the state that protects and propels those interests.

It’s surprising and it’s really encouraging because that’s something that has been missing in a lot of struggles in the past. You usually have one or the other. You have alternative institutions, like eco-villages and food coops and so on—and then you have protest movements and other counter-institutions, like anti-war groups or labor unions. But they very rarely merge or see their struggle as shared. And we very rarely have movements that want to do both of those things, that see them as inseparable—that understand that the alternatives have to be fighting, and that fighting has to be done in a way that represents the values of the world we want to create. So I do think there’s something really radical and fundamental in that, and an enormous amount of potential.

NK: I absolutely agree that the key is in the combination of resistance and alternatives. A friend, the British eco-and arts activist John Jordan, talks about utopias and resistance being the double helix of activist DNA, and that when people drop out and just try to build their utopia and don’t engage with the systems of power, that’s when they become irrelevant and also when they are extremely vulnerable to state power and will often get smashed. And at the same time if you’re just protesting, just resisting and you don’t have those alternatives, I think that that becomes poisonous for movements.

But I’m still wondering about the question of policy—of making the leap from small-scale alternatives to the big policy changes that allow them to change the culture. A lot of people have come to the realization that the system is so busted that it really isn’t about who you get into office. But one of the ways of responding to that is to say, “Okay, we’re not going to form a political party and try to take power, but we are going to look at this system and try to identify the structural barriers to real change, and advocate for political goals that might begin to mend those structural flaws.” So that means things like the way corporations are able to fund elections and the role of corporate media and the whole issue of corporate personhood in this country. It is possible to find a few key policy fights that could conceivably create a situation where, ten years down the road, people might not feel so completely cynical about the idea of change within the political system. What do you think about that?

YM: Well, I think you’re right that we have to find ways to do that, but ways that don’t compromise what’s been so successful about this movement and this moment so far, which is that it’s so broad that so many different people can find themselves in it.

I think that within the broader movement, we do have different roles, and there is a particular role for Occupy Wall Street. I personally don’t want to have anything to do with people lobbying or running for office right now, nor do I want to focus all of my time winning small policy changes, and I don’t think that’s the role of Occupy Wall Street. But I sure as hell hope the people whose terrain that is do go and do it. I hope that they can recognize that what’s happening now is the creation of a climate where it’s possible for them to push left and win more. I’m not going to be happy with all the compromises those people have to make, and I don’t think we’re going to survive on reforms alone, but we need that too. If we want a real, meaningful social transformation, we need to win things along the way, because that’s how we provides people the foundations on top of which they can continue to struggle for the long haul, and it’s how we grow to become a critical mass that can ultimately make a fundamental break with this system.

And in the meantime, our role as Occupy Wall Street should be to dream bigger than that. I think it’s our job to look far ahead, to assert vision, to create alternatives and to intervene in the political and economic processes that govern people’s lives. We need to recognize that the institutions that govern our lives really do have power, but we don’t necessarily need to participate in them according to their rules. I think Occupy Wall Street’s role is to step in the way of those processes to prevent them from using that power, and to create openings for the alternatives we are trying to build. And then if politicians or others who consider themselves in solidarity with this movement want to go get on that, then they should use this moment to win the things that will help make us stronger in the long run, and they have a chance now to do that.

NK: You know, I’m torn about this. On one hand, OWS is so broad that a huge range of people has found a place in the tent. And there is certainly value in just having a very broad movement that is able to intervene in the political narrative at key junctures. Particularly because, looking at what is happening in Europe at the moment, I think we have to brace for the next economic shock. It’s a very big deal that when the next round of austerity measures comes down in the US, there will be a mass movement ready to say: “No way. We won’t pay—if you need money, tax the 1 percent and cut military spending, don’t cut education and food stamps.”

But we should be clear: that’s not making things better, it’s just trying to keep things from getting a whole lot worse. To make things better, there has to be a positive demand.

Look at the Chilean student protests, for instance. That’s a remarkable movement, and it’s historically hugely significant, because this is really the end of the Chilean dictatorship more than twenty years after it actually ended. Pinochet was in power for so long, and so many of his policies were locked in during the negotiated transition, that the left in Chile really did not recover until this generation of young people took to the streets. And they took to the streets sparked by austerity measures that were hitting education hard. But rather than just say, “Okay, we’re against these latest austerity cuts,” they said, “We are for free public education and we want to reverse the entire privatization agenda.” And that may seem like a narrow demand, but they were able to make it about inequality much more broadly. They did it by showing how the privatization of education in Chile, and the creation of a brutal two-tiered education system, deepened and locked in inequality, giving poor students no way out of poverty. The protests lit the country up, and now it’s not just a student movement. So that’s a completely different circumstance from OWS because it started with a demand. But it shows how, if the demand is radical enough, it can open up a much broader debate about what kind of society we want.

I think it’s more about vision than it is about demands. My worry is that there are so many groups trying to co-opt this movement, and trying to raise money off of its efforts, that the movement risks defining itself by what is not, rather by what it is or, more importantly, might become. If the movement is constantly put in a position of saying, “No, we’re not your pawn. We’re not this. We’re not that,” the danger is getting boxed into a defensive identity that was really imposed from the outside. I think some of that happened to the movement opposing corporate globalization post-Seattle, and I’d hate to see those mistakes repeated.

YM: I think you’re right about that. And you’re right about the question of demands versus vision. We don’t have demands in the way that other people want to hear them. But of course we have demands, of course we want things. When we reclaim a foreclosed home for a foreclosed-on family, or organize students to do flash mobs at the banks keeping them in debt, or environmental activists to do die-ins at banks that invest in coal, these are ways of speaking our demands in a new language of resistance. Occupy Wall Street is a really big tent that doesn’t have one voice, but that doesn’t mean all of our other groupings disappear when we enter it. There are still housing rights groups demanding an end to foreclosure, or labor unions demanding good jobs, and so on. We are trying to build a movement where individuals and groups have the autonomy to do what they need to do and pick the battles they need to pick, while being in solidarity with something much broader and far-reaching, something radical and visionary. And that’s part of the reason vision is so important, since it connects all those struggles.

But I do think we have to win things, you’re absolutely right about that. I guess the way I look at it is that we’re now about to make a transition, hopefully, from the symbolic to the real, both in the realms of creating the alternatives and fighting back. We need to reclaim homes, not just as symbols, but for people to live in them. Open the shut-down hospitals and put doctors in them. And same with the fighting: to actually disrupt business as usual, to move from protest to resistance. We’ll have an actual impact when Congress cannot pass those bills because there’s too much resistance, because there are people in the streets. We’ll have a real impact when it’s not only bank branch lobbies that we’re dancing around in but when we’ve blockaded the doors of the headquarters where they make their policies. We need to force policy-makers to re-evaluate their decisions, and we need to build power to eventually replace them altogether, not only in content but in form. If this is just about changing the narrative and it stops there, then we’re going to end up having missed an incredible opportunity to really affect people’s lives in a meaningful ways. This is not a game. A society where there are empty homes but people who don’t have homes is a fundamentally revolting thing and it’s unacceptable, can’t be allowed. You can say that for all the other things: for war, or for patriarchy, racism. We have an incredible responsibility.

NK: And nobody knows how to do what we’re trying to do. You can point to Iceland or something that happened in Argentina. But these are national struggles, somewhat on the economic periphery. No movement has ever successfully challenged hyper-mobile global capital at its source. So what we’re talking about is so new that it’s terrifying. I think people should admit that they’re terrified and that they don’t know how to do what they dream of doing, because if they don’t, then their fear—or rather our fear—will subconsciously shape our politics and you can end up in a situation where you’re saying, “No, I don’t want any structure,” or, “No, I don’t want to be making any kind of policy demands or have anything to do with politics,” when really it’s that you’re just completely scared shitless of the fact that you have no idea how to do this. So maybe if we all admit we are on unmapped territory, that fear loses some of its power.

YM: Yeah, that’s really important. We’re all just making it up. What you just said kind of reminded me of this moment that we had that was really a turning point for me. About three weeks in, sitting and talking with a bunch of people I had only just met, we were thinking about the movement and where it might be headed, and I remember this crazy moment when it hit me: “Oh, we’re winning.” It was surreal. And then that thought was immediately followed by the question: “So what do we want?” You know, we hadn’t won much, and we still haven’t, and we’re nowhere near the society we want to live in, but it was still that feeling—that the narrative was shifting, that the whole world was watching, that there was a lot of possibility before us. It was the first time that I’ve ever experienced that and I think probably the first time that a lot of people who are alive today have. And that was an incredibly empowering moment, really changed my life, but it was also an unbelievably terrifying moment, because, holy shit, that means it’s real, this is high stakes, this is no joke.

So, then, following that thread of what’s possible: all of this was impossible a few months ago. All of this was inconceivable. And I felt that very personally and I was cynical and I learned a lot from that. Turns out we know very little about what is possible. And that’s really humbling and important and it opens a lot of doors. What do you think is possible?

NK: First of all, it’s a moment of possibility like I’ve never seen because we never had as many people on our side as this moment does. I mean in the Seattle moment, we didn’t. We were marginal. We always were because we were in an economic boom. Now, the system has been breaking its own rules so defiantly that its credibility is shot. And there’s a vacuum. There’s a vacuum for other credible voices to fill that, and it’s very exciting.

Personally, I think the greatest possibility lies in bringing together the ecological crisis and the economic crisis. I see climate change as the ultimate expression of the violence of capitalism: this economic model that fetishizes greed above all else is not just making lives miserable in the short term, it is on the road to making the planet uninhabitable in the medium term. And we know, scientifically, that if we continue with business as usual, that is the future we are heading towards. I think climate change is the strongest argument we’ve ever had against corporate capitalism, as well as the strongest argument we’ve ever had for the need for alternatives to it. And the science puts us on a deadline: we need to have begun to radically reduce our emissions by the end of the decade, and that means starting now. I think that this science-based deadline has to be part of every discussion about what we’re going to do next, because we actually don’t have all the time in the world.

We should also be aware that this kind of existential urgency could be a very regressive force if the wrong people harness it. It’s easy to imagine autocrats using the climate emergency to sa, “We don’t have time for democracy or participation, we need to impose it all from the top.” Right now, the way the urgency is used within the mainstream environmental movement is to say, “This problem is so urgent that we can only ask for these compromised cap-and-trade deals, since that’s all we can hope to achieve politically.” Talking about the links between economic growth and climate change is pretty much off the table because, supposedly, we don’t have time to make those kinds of deep changes.

But that was a pre-OWS political calculation. And as you pointed out, OWS is in the business of changing what is possible. So what I’ve been saying when I speak to environmental groups is: start to imagine what would be possible if the climate movement were not out there on its own but part of a much broader political uprising fighting a greed-based economic model. Because in that context, it is practical to talk about changing this system. It’s much more practical, in fact, than pushing corrupt plans like cap-and-trade, which we know don’t stand a chance of getting us where science tells us we need to go.

I’m also excited about the fact that, over the past ten years since the peak of the so-called anti-globalization movement, a lot of work has been done that proves that economic re-localization and economic democracy are both feasible and desirable. Look at the explosion of the local food movement, of community-supported agriculture and farmers markets. Or the green co-op movement. Or community-based wind and solar energy projects. And then you have cities like Detroit, Portland or Bellingham, which are working on multiple fronts to re-localize their economies. The point is that there are living examples that we can point to now of communities that have weathered the economic crisis better than those places that are still dependent on a few large multinational corporations, and could just be leveled overnight when those corporations shut their doors. Most importantly: many of these models address both the economic and ecological crises simultaneously, creating work, rebuilding community, while lowering emissions and reducing dependence on fossil fuels.

Coming back to the idea of resistance and alternatives being the twin strands of DNA, I see a possible future where the resistance side of OWS could start to support the policies these economic alternatives need to get to the next level. So, yeah, that’s where I see a lot of potential—both potential strength and also potential loss, lost opportunities. You?

YM: I think there is more possibility right now than I could have ever imagined. I think in the not-so-distant future, we can win a lot of things that actually improve people’s lives, we can continue to change the political landscape, and we can grow into a mass movement with the strength to propose another kind of world and also fight for it. I think we’re only in the beginning of that, and I think there is a ton of potential. And I also see that kind of possibility in the long term. I think we can win a truly free society. I think it’s totally possible to have a political and economic system that we have a genuine say in, that we democratically control, that we participate in, that is equitable and liberating, where we have autonomy for ourselves and our communities and our families, but are also in solidarity with one another. I think it’s possible, and necessary. That’s kind of the amazing thing about this moment and this movement, I guess. Right now, sitting here, I can’t even imagine the limits of possibility.

© 2012 The Nation Naomi Klein is an award-winning journalist and syndicated columnist and the author of the international and New York Times bestseller The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, now out in paperback. Her earlier books include the international best-seller, No Logo: Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies (which has just been re-published in a special 10th Anniversary Edition); and the collection Fences and Windows: Dispatches from the Front Lines of the Globalization Debate (2002). To read all her latest writing visit www.naomiklein.org. You can follow her on Twitter: @NaomiAKlein.

Is It a First Amendment Violation When A Prison Limits Inmates’ Ability to Solicit Pen-Pals?

JANUARY 10, 2012

The Prison Pen Pal Case by JULIE HILDEN

Last year, on December 22, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit affirmed a federal district court’s grant of summary judgment in a case involving prisoners’ First Amendment and due process rights. In this column, I’ll argue that the court made the wrong call.

The First Amendment standard for rules that apply to prisoners is lower than the standard for rules that apply to others: It requires only that a challenged policy must bear a rational relationship to a legitimate penological interest.

Yet there was a strong argument, here, that the Florida Department of Corrections (FDOC) policy at issue failed to meet even that low bar.

The Plaintiff, the Services, and the Rule at Issue

The rule at issue was the FDOC’s Pen Pal Solicitation Rule—which prohibits inmates from placing advertisements for pen-pals.

The plaintiff in the case was Joy Perry, who operates two pen-pal services, Freedom in Christ Prison Ministry and Prison Pen Pals, and the website WriteAPrisoner.com (“WAP”). (WAP also, laudably, provides inmates with educational materials and an online resume-posting service, and offers scholarships to the children of inmates and of crime victims.)

The two pen-pal services connect prisoners with those who would like to correspond with them, by sending out lists of prisoners to interested persons on the outside, and vice-versa. Their services are provided free of charge. WAP charges $40 per year to inmates who seek to post advertisements for pen-pals on its website.

But now, under the Pen Pal Solicitation Rule, Florida inmates cannot avail themselves of these services.

The Claimed Reasons for the Pen Pal Solicitation Rule

Strikingly, FDOC did not cite a single case of a Florida prisoner’s pen-pal solicitation going wrong, or doing harm, in any way. It cited concerns about fraud, but apparently could not cite a single case of pen-pal-related inmate fraud that had occurred in Florida.

Instead, FDOC relied upon a former FDOC employee’s testimony, and upon what the court called “anecdotal evidence from newspaper reports around the country.”

In practically any other legal context, this paltry showing would not be enough. Only the low bar that the “rational relationship” test, cited above, sets could possibly have led to FDOC’s win on the First Amendment issue.

There was also a due process issue raised here: After the policy was put in place, all Perry’s organizations’ correspondence to inmates was returned to sender – whether or not it constituted pen-pal solicitation. Thus, those organizations’ other good works were impeded.

Meanwhile, another organization, Christian Pen Pals, was allowed to offer FDOC prisoners one-to-one pen-pal matching, on the dubious ground that that did not count as a kind of pen-pal solicitation. The claim was that one-to-one matching, as opposed to the circulation of a list containing a number of persons’ contact information, decreases the risk of fraud.

Here, too, however, it seems that FDOC did not cite any actual fraud that had occurred. And here, too, in any other legal context, that lack of evidence would have crippled FDOC’s argument.

In Theory, Prisoners Have First Amendment Rights, but a Watered-Down Test Means That, in Practice, They May Not

In reaching its result, the Eleventh Circuit panel cited a spate of Supreme Court cases that affirm that prisoners have First Amendment rights, and so do those persons who seek to correspond with them. Even advertising brochures sent to prisoners, the panel noted, may fall under this rule.

But the panel also cited cases constricting prisoners’ First Amendment rights. Such cases upheld, for instance, a ban on hardback books (with an exception for books from certain trusted sources) because they might contain contraband.

The panel focused especially on the seminal 1987 case of Turner v. Safley. There, the Supreme Court set forth the “reasonable relationship to legitimate penological interests” test that I cited above.

It also set forth the following four factors, to aid courts in applying that test: (1) whether there is “a valid, rational connection between the regulation and the prison’s legitimate governmental interest;” (2) “whether there are alternative means of exercising the right;” (3) “the impact accommodation of the asserted constitutional right will have on guards and other inmates, and on the allocation of prison resources;” and (4) “the existence of obvious, easy alternatives [, which] may be evidence that the regulation is not reasonable, but is an exaggerated response to prison concerns.”

The Application of the Supreme Court’s Turner Test in This Case

Regarding the first factor of the Turner test, the Eleventh Circuit panel held that a rational connection was proven by an expert affidavit claiming that when prisoners’ pen-pals are acquired via personal associates, not pen-pal companies, the chance of the prisoner’s defrauding the pen-pal is lower.

That’s common sense—in that people are less likely to defraud a stranger than a friend (or a friend of a friend). But given that FDOC could not come up with a single actual case of pen-pal fraud in its own long history, the question of which set of persons is more likely to be defrauded than the other seems somewhat academic.

Surely the Ninth Circuit—which resolved a parallel case that this Eleventh Circuit opinion cites—was right to require actual evidence of fraud in this context, not just a prison official’s self-interested guess as to what kind of fraud is more likely.

Moving on the second factor of the Turner test, the Eleventh Circuit panel concluded that there were, indeed, alternative avenues through which the inmates could exercise their First Amendment rights. But the panel’s logic, here, was faulty.

Essentially, the panel saw the core right here as the right to correspond, not the right to solicit correspondence. But that can’t be correct: The very gist of this case is the right of the inmate to solicit—including by posting his own advertisements.

Thus, even if the plaintiffs – the two pen-pal organizations and WAP—were to offer one-to-one pen-pal matching, as the Eleventh Circuit panel suggests that they could, the inmates themselves would still have their First Amendment rights separately compromised by the prison policy against solicitation. And so, arguably, would the organizations working with the inmates to enable them to vindicate those rights.

Regarding the third factor of the Turner test—the impact on guards, inmates, and prison resources—the Eleventh Circuit panel found a significant impact, due to anticipated bulk mail resulting from prisoner solicitation of pen-pals. According to prison officials, that additional mail would need to be sorted through with an eye to fraud, thus consuming resources and diverting staff.

But given FDOC’s inability to cite even one specific case of past pen-pal fraud in its prisons, wouldn’t it be tremendously wasteful to initiate broad screening for such fraud? The screening would be like looking for a needle in a haystack—a haystack where no other needles had been found.

Surely, it would be easier for the prison, instead, to take other measures. For instance, it could request—or perhaps even require, though that would raise other First Amendment questions—that the two pen-pal services and WAP warn those who seek to write to inmates, as a result of reading their pen-pal solicitations, to be wary of certain kinds of offers and requests that inmates might make, and that should be refused.

Pen-pal arrangements can provide prisoners with vital hope and a precious connection to the outside world; they may also pose some dangers, but those dangers can be warned against. Wouldn’t it have made more sense for FDOC to try to work with the pen-pal services and WAP, rather than cracking down on them? A regulation requiring that disclosures be made by the services, and by WAP, of the risks of corresponding with inmates would be far less burdensome, from a free-speech standpoint, than a blanket ban on pen-pal solicitation by inmates.

Finally, in considering the fourth factor of Turner’s test, the Eleventh Circuit panel looked to alternative means to prevent pen-pal scams that would impose a lesser burden on First Amendment rights. Here, too, the panel mentions the one-to-one matching pen-pal services, and an alternative that would have the two pen-pal service plaintiffs and WAP switch to one-to-one matching. But again, here, the right is the right to solicit, not just the right to correspond. Thus, this purported solution actually is no solution at all, from a First Amendment perspective.

In sum, the Eleventh Circuit should have required at least some evidence of actual fraud before instituting its harsh anti-solicitation rule. The Ninth Circuit was wise not to simply believe the vouching of prison officials in this context; the Eleventh Circuit should have done the same. JULIE HILDEN practiced First Amendment law at the D.C. law firm of Williams & Connolly from 1996-99. She is the author of a memoir, The Bad Daughter and a novel Three. She can be reached through her website.

The Looming Showdown in Longview

JANUARY 10, 2012

“The ILWU Cannot Lose This Fight”

by BEN SCHREINER

The long-simmering dispute between the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) and the international consortium EGT Development transpiring in Longview, Washington looks to be coming to a head.

In a January 3 letter addressed to his members, ILWU International President Robert McEllrath disclosed that EGT will soon attempt to commence operations at its new $200 million grain terminal located at the Port of Longview. As McEllrath wrote, “We believe that at some point this month a vessel will call at the EGT facility in Longview, Washington…Prepare to take action when the EGT vessel arrives.”

The Struggle and Its Stakes

At the heart of the Longview dispute has been EGT’s refusal to hire longshoremen from ILWU Local 21 to work its grain terminal at the Port of Longview. The publicly owned port—as with all West Coast public port docks—has been worked exclusively by the ILWU for decades.

Dismissing this hard-won jurisdiction, EGT chose to break off negotiations with the ILWU last year and contract with a third party employing labor from International Union of Operating Engineers (IUOE) Local 701. The ILWU argues that this is in direct violation of EGT’s lease agreement with the Port of Longview, which explicitly stipulates all port work is to indeed be done by the ILWU.

For its part, IUOE Local 701 has been widely condemned within the Northwest labor community, with many accusing the local of conspiring with EGT to break the ILWU. Both the Washington and Oregon state AFL-CIO bodies, along with numerous other unions, have already passed resolutions condemning Local 701. The July resolution passed by the Oregon AFL-CIO described 701’s actions at the EGT terminal as “scab labor.”

The national AFL-CIO, on the other hand, has remained conspicuously muted on the dispute. No mention of the ILWU’s struggle in Longview can be found on the federation’s website or blog. In fact, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka has referred to the entire matter as a mere “jurisdictional dispute.”

Yet despite the AFL’s seeming indifference, the outcome of the struggle couldn’t have greater stakes. As Kyle Mackey, Secretary/Treasurer of the Cowlitz-Wahkiakum Central Labor Council (the umbrella labor body for the Longview area), argues, “If EGT succeeds, they will have essentially broken the ILWU.” As he explains:

First, they will set a precedent that work on public port docks is no longer automatically longshore jurisdiction. Then within less than a year, when the northwest grain handlers’ agreement is set to be negotiated, all the other grain elevators will seek to either go non-ILWU or to match the eroded standard EGT creates. Shortly thereafter, in 2014, the ILWU will negotiate its master contract with the Pacific Maritime Association. If they lose, you can bet the PMA will take notice and hit hard.

In the midst of a nationwide attack on organized labor and the right to collectively bargain, the defeat of the powerful ILWU would also be sure to have consequences reaching far beyond the docks.

The Call for Solidarity

Responding to the intensifying situation, the Cowlitz-Wahkiakum Central Labor Council on January 2 passed a resolution calling for solidarity action to stop the EGT vessel from being loaded. The resolution read in part:

Be it Resolved: That this Council call out to friends of labor and the “99 percent” everywhere to come to the aid of ILWU Local 21, and to support them in any way possible in their fight against multinational conglomerate EGT. And,

Be it further Resolved: That this Council request that anyone willing to participate in a community and labor protest in Longview, Washington, of the first EGT grain ship do so when called upon by this body.

Accordingly, planning for a regional solidarity caravan to shuttle ILWU rank-and-file and other supporters to Longview on word of the EGT vessel’s arrival is already underway. With the support of the San Francisco Labor Council, ILWU Local 10, for one, has already pledged funds for a bus to ferry rank-and-file picketers up to Longview once given the word.

The Northwest Occupy movement, meanwhile, has also begun to mobilize. On December 19, Occupy Longview issued a call for Occupy activists to converge on the port to blockade the loading of any vessel at EGT’s terminal. As Occupy Longview stated, “We are calling out to all occupies, from New York City down to Florida, all the way through to the West Coast, to join us in solidarity…We ask that tens of thousands travel to Longview to join us and make this action the central action for January 2012.”

Occupy and the ILWU

The inclusion and participation of outside activists in the ILWU’s Longview struggle—such as those from the Occupy movement—has not been without its share of controversy. As was widely publicized, the ILWU leadership refrained from embracing the West Coast Port Shutdown in December, which the Occupy movement had called in part to show solidarity with the ILWU in the struggle against EGT. In fact, the Occupy-led port shutdown led a few unionist and other observers to question the merits and rational behind an action conducted without much in the way of ILWU input and participation.

Occupy activist, though, maintained that they did indeed have rank-and-file support for the action. Moreover, they argued that the antagonistic statements coming from the ILWU leadership regarding the port shutdown were merely for legal cover. (Local 21, for instance, already faces upwards of $300,000 in fines due to unfair labor practice charges accrued from its ongoing struggle.)

Regardless, the matter of independent action conducted in solidarity with, or in the name of, the ILWU remains an issue. As President McEllrath cautioned in his January 3 letter, “Any showing of support for Local 21 at the time that a vessel calls at the EGT facility must be measured to ensure that the West Coast ports have sufficient manpower so as not to impact cargo movement for PMA member companies. A call for a protest of EGT is not a call for a shutdown of West Coast ports and must not result in one.”

Facing a Stacked Deck

The dictate to limit any ILWU action to EGT in Longview stems from the severe restrictions American labor law places on unions. As McEllrath notes in his letter to members, “Locals need to be aware of the narrow path that we must cut through a federal labor law (the Taft-Hartley Act) that criminalizes worker solidarity, outlaws labor’s most effective tools, and protects commerce while severely restricting unions.”

Of course in addition to repressive labor laws, a key challenge facing any attempt to effectively blockade EGT’s terminal from beginning operations will be the expected heavy-handed police presence. To date, at least 75 out of the 200 Local 21 members have already faced arrest, citation, fines, or both. (Little surprise, then, to learn that EGT has made contributions to local police and fire bureaus.)

But as for what to expect once EGT seeks to load a grain barge later this month, McEllrath warns, “We have been told that this vessel will be escorted by armed United States Coast Guard, including the use of small vessels and helicopters, from the mouth of the Columbia River to the EGT facility and that the facility itself will be protected by a full complement of local law enforcement from multiple jurisdictions.”

But even facing such a stacked deck—with the courts, police, and, needless to say, the media conspiring against them—make no mistake: the ILWU has never been a union to back away from a struggle. As ILWU Local 21 President Dan Coffman has stated, “The ILWU cannot lose this fight; we are in it to it to win it.”

And so it is that as we approach the one-year anniversary of the Wisconsin uprising, the long sleeping giant that is American labor stirs once more.

Ben Schreiner is a freelance writer living in Salem, Oregon. He may be reached at bnschreiner@gmail.com.

America’s Lost Decade by MARK WEISBROT

JANUARY 10, 2012

Economics Without Facts

The American Economic Association’s annual meetings are a scary sight, with thousands of economists all gathered in the same place – a veritable weapon of mass destruction. Chicago was the lucky city for 2012 this past weekend, and I had just finished participating in an interesting panel on “The Economics of Regime Change,” when I stumbled over to see what the big budget experts had to say about “The Political Economy of the U.S. Debt and Deficits.”

The session was introduced by UC Berkeley economist Alan Auerbach, who put up a graph of the United States’ rising debt-to-GDP ratio, and warned of dire consequences if Congress didn’t do something about it. Yawn.

But the panelists got off to a good start, with Alan Blinder of Princeton, former vice-chairman of the U.S. Federal Reserve, describing the public discussion of the U.S. national debt as generally ranging from “ludicrous to horrific.” True that. He asked and answered four questions: (1) Is there any urgency (to reduce the deficit or debt)? No. The government can borrow short term at negative real interest rates, and long-term at about zero. The world is paying us to hold their money. That is anything but a debt crisis.

The Fed is out of bullets, he said – referring to the fact that the U.S. Federal Reserve had lowered short-term rates to zero and had used quantitative easing to help keep long-term rates low. So we need more fiscal stimulus, preferably spending that focuses on actually creating jobs. Amen.

(2) Should we focus on the next decade? No, he said, and noted that the Congressional Budget Office’s (CBO’s) budget deficit projections over the next decade are about 3.6 percent of GDP, which is not much to get agitated about. Also true.

(3) Is government spending the problem? No, he said, it’s health care costs, and mainly the rising price of health care (i.e not the aging of the population). Most important truth yet ! (More on this below).

(4) Is the public really up in arms about the deficit? No, actually they care more about the economy and jobs. As they should.

Blinder concluded that since this is an election year, we can forget about having any fact-based discussion of these issues in 2012. Happy New Year, he said, and the audience laughed. Well that was refreshing, I thought — an economist telling the unvarnished truth to hundreds of his people at the annual meetings. But a rapid descent into Hell was imminent.

Former CBO director Douglas Holtz-Eakin was next, talking about the need to “repair” Social Security and Medicare. The United States has all the characteristics of countries that run into trouble, he said. Then he warned that the U.S. is going to end up like Greece. This is one of the dumbest things that anyone with an economics degree can say.

Hello, Mr. Holtz-Eakin! Have you ever heard of the U.S. dollar, the world’s key reserve currency? The United States is not going to end up like Greece any sooner than it will end up like Haiti or Burkina Faso. A country that can pay its foreign public debt in its own currency and runs its own central bank does not end up like Greece. In fact, even Japan is not going to end up like Greece, and Japan has a gross public debt of about 220 percent of its GDP, more than twice the size of ours and vastly larger – again relative to its economy — than that of Greece. And the yen is nowhere near the dollar in its importance as an international reserve currency. But the Japanese government is still borrowing at just 1 percent interest rates for its 10-year bonds.

At this point it was clear that this panel, other than Blinder, was living in a dystopian fantasy world. Next up was Rudy Penner of the Urban Insitute, another former CBO director. His perspective was not much different from that of Auerbach or Holtz-Eakin. He complained about the polarization of the political process, which prevents the two major parties from reaching an agreement. It’s not partisanship, he said – House Speaker Tip O’Neill and President Ronald Reagan knew how to be partisan but they were able to reach agreement on the 1983 Social Security package and the 1986 tax reforms. And yadda yadda. He might have added that we have had 25 years of lying about Social Security since then, and even Reagan didn’t dare try to privatize Social Security. And of course Social Security can currently pay all promised benefits for the next 24 years without any changes.

These arguments about polarization really beg the question. From the viewpoint of the 99 percent, it’s not polarization, but weakness in defending our interests that is the problem. President Obama compromised much more than he should have last year, offering cuts to Social Security and Medicare in exchange for a long-term budget deal. The 99 percent are just lucky that the Republicans are too extremist to make this kind of a “grand bargain” with Obama.

The last panelist was Alice Rivlin of the Brookings Institution, another former CBO budget director and Fed vice-chair, as well as a member of the President’s (2010) National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform. She agreed with Blinder that we need more stimulus. But we can only get this if we agree to long-run spending cuts, including Social Security, of course. Yuck. This is a political strategy that is sure to end in disaster, given the prevailing state of misinformation and disinformation.

During the discussion, Blinder – who identified himself as a Democrat – expressed his frustration in not being able to convince fellow Democrats to cut Social Security. Double yuck. The average Social Security check is about $1,177 a month, and a majority of senior citizens are getting most of their meager income from Social Security. Why these people insist on creating more poverty among the elderly, especially when the program is solvent for decades to come, is beyond me.

I got to ask the first question for the panel. I called attention to Blinder’s presentation of the long-term budget problem as almost completely a problem of the rising price of health care. I pointed out that you could take any country with a life expectancy greater than ours – including the other high-income countries – and put their per capita health care costs into our budget, and the long-term budget deficit would turn into a surplus. My question was simple: Are Americans so inherently different from other nationalities that we can’t have similar health care costs? And if not, then why are we talking about long-term budget problems instead of how to fix our health care system?

None of the panelists offered a serious answer to this question. Auerbach, the moderator, said that other countries have rising health care costs, too. And some of the others said or implied that health care costs were rising at an unsustainable pace worldwide.

But this is nonsense. The United States pays about twice as much per person for health care as other high-income countries – and still leaves 50 million people uninsured. This is a result of a dysfunctional health care system that has had health care prices rising much faster than those of other high-income countries for decades. What the budget hawks are basically telling us is that we must assume that insurance and pharmaceutical companies will have a veto over the provisions of health care reform for decades to come. And that therefore we must find other ways to make up for these excessive costs, including cutting Social Security and other government spending, and pushing us into higher rates of poverty and inequality than we already have.

And even worse in the short run, all this crap about the deficit and the debt will be used to block the necessary stimulus measures – “stimulus” has already become a dirty word that Democratic politicians are afraid to utter. This means high unemployment and a lot of unnecessary misery in the world’s richest country for the foreseeable future.

A dismal performance for the dismal science, on some of the most important issues of the day. Of course there are other economists, including Nobel Prize winners such as Paul Krugman, Joe Stiglitz, and Robert Solow (full disclosure: the latter two are members of CEPR’s advisory board), who would offer more sensible views. But this panel was, sadly, representative of economists with the most influence on public policy. W

ith a brain trust like this, a lost decade for America looks likely – unless the citizenry can steer a different course.

Mark Weisbrot is an economist and co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research. He is co-author, with Dean Baker, of Social Security: the Phony Crisis.

This article originally appeared in The Guardian.