15 September 20
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Robert Reich | Milton Friedman, 50 Years Ago Today
Robert Reich, Robert Reich's Blog
Reich writes: "In the half century since [Friedman's] article appeared, big corporations have gained so much influence over government that they've overwhelmed our democracy."
half-century ago, the economist Milton Friedman wrote an article in the New York Times Magazine that got a lot of attention. In it, he argued that CEOs should not try to be socially responsible. Their sole obligation was to maximize shareholder returns. It was the responsibility of government to respond to social needs.
Friedman’s case was based on the logic of accountability: CEOs and corporations are accountable to shareholders, not to the public at large. Government, on the other hand, is accountable to the public. So we should leave social responsibility to democracy.
Friedman’s logic seemed unassailable but there was a gaping flaw in it that Friedman couldn’t have anticipated. In the half century since his article appeared, big corporations have gained so much influence over government that they’ve overwhelmed our democracy.
According to a 2014 study by Princeton professor Martin Gilens and Northwestern professor Benjamin Page, the preferences of the typical American have no influence at all on legislation emerging from Congress. Gilens and Page analyzed 1,799 policy issues in detail, determining the relative influence on them of economic elites, business groups, mass-based interest groups, and average citizens. Their conclusion: “The preferences of the average American appear to have only a miniscule, near-zero, statistically non-significant impact upon public policy.” Lawmakers mainly listen to the policy demands of big businesses, which have the most lobbying prowess and deepest pockets to bankroll campaigns and promote their views.
Note that Gilens and Page’s data come from the period 1981 to 2002 – before the Supreme Court opened the floodgates to big money in the Citizens United case, and prior to Super PACs, “dark money,” and the Wall Street bailout.
In the 2016 election cycle, corporations flooded presidential, Senate, and House elections with $3.4 billion of donations. Labor unions and public interest groups didn’t make a dent. Corporations and Wall Street contributed $34 to candidates from both parties for every $1 donated by labor unions and all public interest organizations combined.
Largely because of the escalating surge of corporate money into politics over the last fifty years, taxes on corporations have been slashed, safety nets for the poor and middle class have begun to unravel, and public investments in education and infrastructure have waned. The “free market” has been taken over by crony capitalism, corporate bailouts, and corporate welfare.
Shareholders and top executives have done extremely well, but almost no one else has. No wonder so many Americans want corporations to be more socially responsible. They can’t rely on our democracy to be.
Corporations don’t admit to any of this, of course. They continue to pretend they’re socially responsible while hiding their growing political clout. As a result, the public gets the worst of both worlds.
Last year, the Business Roundtable issued a statement signed by 181 CEOs of major American corporations, expressing “a fundamental commitment to all of our stakeholders [emphasis in original]” – workers, communities, and the public in general. But it was just PR. Nothing changed. These corporations didn’t raise their workers’ wages (leading GM workers to stage the longest strike on record). They continued to offer ever skimpier health insurance and retirement funding (Amazon promptly cancelled health insurance for part-time workers at its Whole Foods subsidiary). They continued to fight unions, outsource abroad, and abandon communities.
If those CEOs were serious about a commitment to all their stakeholders, they’d make sure American democracy was able to respond to the needs of workers, communities, and citizens. How? They’d use their formidable political clout to reduce the necessity for candidates to raise campaign funding from corporations. They’d push for public financing of campaigns. And they’d seek a constitutional amendment limiting corporate lobbying and campaign spending.
The most important act of social responsibility that big corporations could possibly undertake would be to push for a society where big corporations could never again become as politically powerful as they have become. Presumably Milton Friedman would approve of this because it follows logically from his argument fifty years ago. But don’t hold your breath.
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Rev. William Barber. (photo: Mark J. Terrill/AP)
"Trump Is Criminality Personified": Rev. William Barber on Protecting the Vote and Mobilizing the Poor
Democracy Now!
Excerpt: "With less than two months before November, the Poor People's Campaign has launched a push to register tens of millions of poor and low-income voters, who could decide the fate of the election."
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Joe Biden. (photo: Mike Blake/Reuters)
Dear Joe Biden: The Student Loan Crisis Is Exploding. We Need Real Action
The Debt Collective, Justice Democrats, Sunrise Movement and Action Center, Guardian UK
Excerpt: "We write to you as the first generation made worse-off because of higher education. Student debt is a national crisis that destroys lives, drags down the economy and fuels the racial wealth gap."
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A domestic worker who lost work because of the coronavirus prepares food for her family in her small tent in the capital Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. (photo: Mulugeta Ayene/AP)
Report: 25 Years Wiped Out in 25 Weeks. Pandemic Sets the World Back Decades
Carmen Paun, POLITICO
Paun writes: "The crisis sets back strides made in global poverty, HIV transmission, malnutrition, gender equality, education and many more areas."
Progress on global health and the economy has regressed, Gates Foundation report finds.
n only half a year, the coronavirus pandemic has wiped out decades of global development in everything from health to the economy.
Progress has not only stopped, but has regressed in areas like getting people out of poverty and improving conditions for women and children around the world, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation finds in its 2020 Goalkeepers report published Monday.
Vaccination coverage, seen as a good indicator for how health systems are functioning, is dropping to levels last seen in the 1990s, it says.
“In other words, we’ve been set back about 25 years in about 25 weeks,” the report says. “What the world does in the next months matters a great deal."
Global action to stop the pandemic would prevent illness and deaths caused by Covid-19, but there's more at stake: The crisis sets back strides made in global poverty, HIV transmission, malnutrition, gender equality, education and many more areas. Even if the world manages to get the coronavirus under control soon, it could take years to claw back lost progress.
“We’re at the real cusp moment at how you can tackle this and how long-term the effects are,” Mark Suzman, the CEO of the Gates Foundation, told POLITICO.
If the world can get a coronavirus vaccine successfully distributed in the next 18 months or so, things may return to the way they were before the pandemic in one or two years, he said. But in some developing countries, reversing the economic downturn may take longer because they don’t have the ability to invest as much money in their economies as rich countries, Suzman said.
Every year it was released since 2017, the Goalkeepers report celebrated progress in fighting poverty and disease in the developing world, Suzman said.
But this year it's striving to show just how bad things are.
After 20 years of continuous progress, almost 37 million people have this year become extremely poor, living on less than $1.90 a day, according to the report. "'Falling below the poverty line' is a euphemism, though; what it means is having to scratch and claw every single moment just to keep your family alive,” it says.
These newly impoverished people are likely to be more women who work mostly in informal jobs in low- and middle-income countries.
And the coronavirus's bad news for women doesn’t stop there.
“Indirectly, COVID will cause more women than men to suffer and die, in large part because the pandemic has disrupted health care before, during, and immediately after childbirth,” the report says. Newborns are at risk too, as more infants are likely to die when health systems falter — as is happening now around the world.
Children are also at risk of contracting life-threatening diseases such as diphtheria, tetanus and pertussis since, for the first time in almost 30 years, the first four months of 2020 showed a substantial drop in the number of those completing the three doses of the DTP vaccine, according to the World Health Organization and UNICEF.
And outbreaks harm not only children’s health, but also their education.
“Data from the Ebola epidemic in West Africa suggests that, when schools open again, girls are less likely to return, thereby closing off opportunities for themselves and for their future children,” the Goalkeepers report says.
The early signs of that are present in Malawi, for example.
Teenage girls living with HIV who have been stuck at home as schools were closed because of the pandemic are getting pregnant, Grace Ngulube, a 25-year old HIV activist based in Blantyre, Malawi's second largest city, told POLITICO. As schools reopen, they will be busy taking care of their babies at home, she said.
Ngulube, who works with the country’s association for young people living with HIV and who was born with the disease, said some are afraid to go to youth clinics to get treatments and mental health support like they would have before the pandemic. Those who can make it need to wear a face mask, and that can be an expensive item to procure for some young people who have lost their jobs, she said.
“A lot of young people are really struggling, and some of them, they have contracted themselves into prostitution or maybe transactional sex,” she said. That could lead to new HIV infections.
In 2018, almost 1 in 10 people between 15 and 49 years old lived with HIV in the country, according to UNAIDS. Overall, 1 million out of the 18 million people in Malawi had HIV in 2018.
Recent modeling studies show that deaths from HIV, tuberculosis and malaria could as much as double in the next year as a result of the pandemic, wiping out decades of progress, the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria said in a report on Monday. There could be a half-million more AIDS deaths globally compared to 2018, setting the world close to 2008 levels, it said.
To try to avoid that, HIV Alliance India called citizens who had returned home as the country locked down to tell them which were the closest facilities providing antiretroviral treatment, Rosenara Huidrom from the Alliance told POLITICO. Field workers provided treatment to those who were too scared of getting infected with coronavirus to go out for it, she said. India has the third-highest number of people with HIV and the second-highest number of coronavirus cases.
Richer countries need to work with middle- and low-income countries to figure out how to help, the United States' top infections disease expert Anthony Fauci said during a virtual event organized by Friends of the Global Fight on Friday.
From the vantage point of the White House coronavirus task force he sits on, the “extraordinary disruption" of disease treatment and prevention the U.S. and others have invested in is not on the radar screen, “when it really should be,” Fauci said.
This year's Gatekeepers report is based on imperfect data that its partner, the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME), has managed to gather so far. The full picture won't be available until 2021.
The data covering 2020 is based on a series of smartphone surveys and telephone interviews with 70,000 people in 82 countries, though they were not a representative sample for all countries. Other data considered includes information on the number of people receiving health services monthly, the number of tourist arrivals, employment data and human mobility patterns.
IHME modeled what will happen by the end of 2021 based on what has happened so far, including an assumption that people would react to new restrictions the same way they reacted at the beginning, among others.
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'The USPS is under assault.' (photo: Paul Ratje/AFP/Getty Images)
Save the USPS, Defend Democracy
Paul Prescod, Jacobin
Prescod writes: "A combination of the pandemic, the heightened importance of mail-in voting, and massive delivery delays has pushed the post office into the news in a way not seen since the nationwide postal strike in 1970."
The USPS is under assault at the very moment we need a functioning postal service to hold a free and fair election. We can defend electoral democracy by defending the post office.
he United States Postal Service (USPS) is all the rage. A combination of the pandemic, the heightened importance of mail-in voting, and massive delivery delays has pushed the post office into the news in a way not seen since the nationwide postal strike in 1970. Even teenagers are brandishing the USPS as a weapon in the culture wars, with memes championing postal workers as the “real boys in blue.”
Socialists and progressives are correct to use this moment to highlight the value of the postal service beyond the 2020 presidential election. The Trump administration’s recent attacks are part of a broader effort to privatize a beloved universal service and destroy over six hundred thousand living wage union jobs in the process. Postal service employment has been especially crucial in helping black workers, women workers, and veterans achieve some economic stability and dignity.
Still, we shouldn’t overlook the urgency of safeguarding the election and our democratic rights. Electoral democracy, especially in the United States, is severely limited in delivering substantive change. But we should never forget that so many basic democratic rights, including voting, were won through fierce working-class struggle. There is no contradiction in protecting these rights as we try to deepen and expand democracy into all areas of life.
And on a practical level, electoral politics will play an important role in socialist strategy in the coming years. Electing working-class fighters like Cori Bush, Jamaal Bowman, and the five New York City Democratic Socialists of America state legislature candidates — just to name a few — helps keep working-class issues on the political agenda and build organizational capacity. Especially in districts outside of urban enclaves, winning these campaigns will require mobilizing large swaths of disaffected voters and inspiring them to believe that fundamental change is possible. This will be impossible if people are denied basic voting rights or given cause for cynicism about whether their vote really counts.
Joe Biden is a weak and uninspiring candidate. The long list of his crimes and follies has been well-documented. However, there are still clear stakes in this election. We don’t need to echo the Democratic National Committee’s vague talking points about lack of decency to convey the dangers of four more years of Donald Trump.
In Trump’s first term we saw vicious attacks on federal workers, the gutting of the National Labor Relations Board, tax cuts for the rich, and the further weakening of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA). Campaign promises such as a massive infrastructure project, minimum wage hike, and an overhaul of the health care system have gone unfulfilled. While Trump doesn’t articulate a future vision very cogently, he’s made clear that the USPS and Social Security are in his sights. Booting Trump from office will require a legitimate election and a functioning postal system.
During a global pandemic, people should obviously be able to vote by mail. Failure to ensure everyone has this option is nothing less than voter suppression and an assault on public health. Despite consistent claims that mail-in voting will lead to widescale election fraud, the Trump campaign could not produce any convincing evidence when asked to do so by a federal judge.
On the other hand, there is evidence that Postmaster General Louis DeJoy’s recent policy changes have caused huge mail delays across the country. While the removal of sorting machines and mail collection boxes has received lots of (justified) attention, work rule changes have had an even bigger impact on delays. DeJoy drastically cut overtime and post office hours. In an unprecedented move, he has also required all letter carriers to leave for their routes on time even if mail sorting isn’t complete.
DeJoy is selling these changes as a way to bring down costs and improve efficiency. But they should be seen as another iteration of a familiar right-wing strategy: degrade the quality of a service, turn the public against it, and then privatize. Despite promises from DeJoy that he would delay these changes until after the election, postal workers on the ground say the mail delays continue. It’s not clear whether DeJoy will follow through on his vow, let alone reverse the measures he’s already put in place.
More encouragingly, there’s been mass resistance to DeJoy’s changes. Hundreds of rallies have been held in support of the USPS, and in some areas postal workers are refusing to let mail delays happen.
We have an opportunity to leverage these budding coalitions to mount larger fights to expand the postal service in the years to come. But for now, we can’t let a corporate oligarch steal this election. Save the post office, save living wage jobs, and save our democracy.
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Alexander Lukashenko and Vladimir Putin. (photo: News Opener)
Belarus' Lukashenko to Get 1.5 Billion From Putin in Attempt to Survive Mass Protests
Al Jazeera
Excerpt: "At least 100,000 protesters flooded the streets of Minsk on Sunday."
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Erin Brockovich. (photo: Matt Turner/Newspix/Getty Images)
Erin Brockovich Still Fights for Clean Water but Says, 'I'm Not Superwoman'
Lewis Beale, The Daily Beast
Excerpt: "Hollywood made her a household name, and now every town in trouble with its water supply calls on her for help."
Hollywood made her a household name, and now every town in trouble with its water supply calls on her for help. Feeling overwhelmed, she wrote a book.
he’s Erin Brockovich, and thanks to the eponymous, Oscar-winning movie about her legal fight against a power company polluting the water of a small California town, the now 60-year-old activist has become, as she describes it, “a kind of reporting agency for suspected disease clusters and environmental issues around the country.”
But, says Brockovich, “I’m not Superwoman, I’m overwhelmed. There are so many issues out there relating to the chemicals in the water that concern me, and everyone thinks I can come fix it. That’s why I wrote the book; I want to pass the torch to all these communities.”
“The book” she is referring to is Superman’s Not Coming: Our National Water Crisis and What We the People Can Do About It, an exhaustive, and occasionally exhausting, compendium of the issues surrounding water pollution, the chemicals and politics involved, and what governments both local and national are, or are not, doing about it.
“The [political] system has issues,” says Brockovich, who spoke to The Daily Beast by phone from her home in Los Angeles. “Over decades we didn’t address those issues, and we thought municipalities were taking care of those things, and they were not. Things have to change, and people can get involved, can run for local office. We can’t just be operating on old systems and old policies.”
If nothing else, Superman’s Not Coming uses statistics to make it easy to understand how bad things really are. Like the fact that there are 40,000 chemicals on the market, but only a few hundred are regulated. Or that two-thirds of Americans are drinking water with unsafe levels of chromium-6, the same chemical that was the point of contention in the case that made Brockovich famous. And there’s this: There are over 151,000 water treatment systems in the country, and no two treat water in the same way.
It wasn’t supposed to be this way. The Environmental Protection Agency was created during the Nixon administration, the Clean Water Act was passed in 1972, and the Safe Water Drinking Act in 1974. But since those halcyon days of environmental activism and legislation, pollution has actually increased, and violations of the law have risen.
“Over the decades there has been an erosion, a rollback, mismanagement, the EPA gets their hands tied and information is concealed,” says Brockovich. “The EPA has been overburdened, there’s a lack of funding, bad policies that don’t apply today. And it takes forever on the science—chemicals come onto the market, get into the system, then there’s a study, and science catches up, and then ‘oops, we have a problem.’”
All this and more is covered in Superman’s Not Coming which, by the way, isn’t exactly a breezy read. It’s the work of a person totally committed to a cause who wants to really lay out why what she’s fighting for is so important. But the book all too often feels like an unwieldy combination of an activist handbook, chemistry text, and Ph.D. thesis. There are numerous acronyms (CWA, CEQ, MCL, OEHHA, etc.) impossible to pronounce chemical names (can you say perflurooctanesulfonic? I can’t), and a surfeit of information—like the eight (count ‘em, eight) pages listing “military contaminants of concern.” It hardly seems like a work that the general public would embrace.
Still, the message is out there, and it’s an important one. Superman’s Not Coming seems especially valuable in its discussion of various municipalities that have had to deal with pollution issues and what they were able to accomplish, if anything. Charleston, West Virginia suffered through a “do not drink” order; Corpus Christi, Texas residents were forced to boil their water; there’s the notorious, and ongoing, Flint, Michigan water crisis; and pollution is still an issue in Hinkley, California, the town Brockovich made famous.
But there are also limited successes. Dryden, New York, banned fracking, because the waste water from the process was polluting the drinking water. And in Poughkeepsie, New York, reports of brown water coming out of the taps, as well as related skin and respiratory issues, caused the water plant administrator to eliminate a chemical called chloramine from the water supply, with positive results. “A good water operator will listen to what the people are reporting,” says Brockovich.
The book is also valuable in its discussion of the ways in which corporations create scientific doubt about the dangers of their products (a tactic first used by the tobacco industry), and do their best to gut, delay, or avoid government regulation. Says Brockovich, “We need to stop spreading the lie that deregulating the government allows for a thriving economy. We have to stop politicizing water.”
Despite all the environmental horrors she has had to deal with, Brockovich remains a fighter, and an optimist. Discussing the fact that the water infrastructure in this country is aging and runs through miles of lead pipe, she nevertheless says, “I think people are afraid that there is not money for a solution, but I think there is. We’re going to have to fix it, or we’re going to flip Third World.”
Twenty years after the film named after her made her famous, Brockovich has seen both sides of national notoriety. She has hosted a TV special, Challenge America With Erin Brockovich, runs her own consulting firm, consults with a New York law firm on personal injury cases involving asbestos, and is a sought-after speaker. There are also all those folks around the world who email her for help with their local pollution issues.
But there’s always a downside to this kind of recognition. “I get overwhelmed like everyone else,” she says. “It’s a crazy ass world. And my brain hurts. I need to disconnect for a moment, take a walk on the beach. What overwhelms me is where have we been for decades? I face that every day, where my brain literally hurts. I’m one person, trying my best to engage others.”
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