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Cursor.orgMediaTransparency.org sponsor More stories by Jerry Landay The "Civil War" squabble: Waging combat with words Media Transparency writersAndrew J. Weaver FundometerEvaluate any page on the World Wide Web against our databases of people, recipients, and funders of the conservative movement. |
ORIGINAL RESEARCHJerry Landay The meltdown of the middle classHere's one of the net outcomes of the radical-right agitprop machine: There's bankruptcy and there's bankruptcy. We learn that in 2005, more than two million Americans filed for bankruptcy -- one in every 53 American households -- many having fallen prey to excessive medical costs, and/or maxed out on their credit cards. It's the highest number of bankruptcies on record. It coincided with Congressional passage of legislation misleadingly labeled The Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Law. Some protection. Simon Legree would love it. The law toughens the ground rules for declaring bankruptcy, as well as hoisting the bar to get out of it. Now, many Americans may never escape the clutches of indebtedness. We may yet re-establish the Dickensian poorhouse, where debtors can spend cold days breaking rocks while their mates and offspring shiver inside. The game of Darwinian economics and the enshrinement of market-miracle theology is really the systematic looting of the pockets and purses of the middle class Some 400 senior executives of the UAL Corporation, the parent company of United Airlines, will divide among themselves 10 million shares of company stock -- or eight percent of the total shares the company plans to issue when it comes out of bankruptcy. This, after the working stiffs voluntarily took pay cuts and gave up other perks to help salvage the outfit. It's much the same with senior executives at the Delphi Corporation, who have given themselves generous rewards for mismanaging the company into bankruptcy. As Gretchen Morganstern points out in the New York Times, "outsized pay at troubled companies is a disturbing new trend." It's a subset of a much larger trend in which the gulf between the privileged management class and the rest of us grows wider and wider, in which a new corporate aristocracy will preside over ever more impoverished proles, a destructive socioeconomic process in which the middle class merges into the underclass. You can define the middle class by what it earns -- somewhere, say, between $45,000 and $95,000 a year. More importantly, you can define it by what it stands for. The middle class has been the architect and maintainer of a healthy democracy -- well educated, informed, aware. It works hard, the living symbol of upward mobility, a place you can always reach if you try. Out of the great middle class came the potent activist concern for equal opportunity, the defense of the poor and needy, and enlightened justice. But the middle class in America is eroding as the national wealth is shifted upward. It's getting tougher to hold onto jobs headed overseas, to afford suitable housing, to meet escalating bills for energy, medical care, education, food and transportation. Peter Gosselin, the stellar economics writer for the Los Angeles Times, reported in December on the way the Bush administration and its friends are approaching the rebuilding of New Orleans -- turning reconstruction increasingly over to the private sector, letting the strong win and the weak lose. "The situation in which residents find themselves is an extreme example of a trend underway for a quarter-century," Gosselin writes, "a shift of economic risk from business and government to working families, and an increasing reliance on free markets to manage society's problems." When powerful people become fearful, the easy way out is to wrap themselves in the sacred dogma of "me." The formula eases stomach cramps and relieves brain strain. That describes members of the Church of Latter-Day American business. "We're the chosen; Heaven-sent capitalism made us successful. Why can't you folks do the same as I did?" Their absence of empathy is as stunning as their sociopathic abandonment of any responsibility to their society. And so, we see the "real men" in company after company, and their servants in Washington, declaring -- "The public interest be damned." We witness them slashing wages -- boff! Abandoning defined-benefit pensions -- wham! Slashing pledged medical benefits for their retirees -- bam! Walking away from unemployment benefits --- biff! Shipping off American jobs to China and Malaysia -- bang! Moving whole operations to India -- whop! Doing their best to wipe out what's left of the trade unions by labeling them regressive -- whiff! They are skimming what's left of the cream off the top while their country is increasingly laid waste. The game of Darwinian economics -- "I'm okay, Jack, let the unfit and unlucky perish" -- and the enshrinement of market-miracle theology is really the systematic looting, Abramoff-and-Enron-style, of the pockets and purses of the middle class. It is preventing government from doing what it does best -- operating at a scale that is beyond the capability of lone individuals. It is the soiling of their American nest. Peter Gosselin quotes Louisiana Congressman Richard Baker, who puts his finger on the fatal fallacy of market theology: "It does no good to stand up, just one person or family, because there's nothing left where they once lived -- no schools or grocery stores, doctors or banks, police stations or fire trucks. We've got to go into the business of restoring whole communities." It doesn't take either a political scientist or a rocket scientist to see where this once-great nation -- and the great middle class that built it -- are headed. Harvard Professor Elizabeth Warren aptly sums it up: she calls it a game of feast and famine -- "starving the shareholders and creditors while the management grows fat on big salaries." If the middle class goes, America goes. Jerry M. Landay of Bristol, Rhode Island has written for Mediatransparency on the right-radical agitprop machine. He is a former CBS News correspondent and journalism professor. sign in, or register to email stories or comment on them.
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MORE ORIGINAL RESEARCHBill Berkowitz PERC receives Templeton Freedom Award for promoting 'enviropreneurs'Right Wing foundation-funded anti-environmental think tank grabbing a wider audience for 'free market environmentalism' On the 15th anniversary of Terry Anderson and Donald Leal's book "Free Market Environmentalism" -- the seminal book on the subject -- Anderson, the Executive Director of the Bozeman, Montana-based Property and Environment Research Center (PERC - formerly known as the Political Economy Research Center) spoke in late-January at an event sponsored by Squaw Valley Institute at the Resort at Squaw Creek in California. While it may have been just another opportunity to speak on "free market environmentalism" and not the kickoff of a "victory tour," nevertheless it comes at a time when PERC's ideas are taking root.
Bill Berkowitz Neil Bush of Saudi ArabiaDuring recent visit, President’s brother describes the country as a 'kind of tribal democracy' In late February, only a few days after Saudi Arabia beheaded four Sri Lankan robbers and then left their headless bodies on public display in the capital of Riyadh, Neil Bush, for the fourth time in the past six years, showed up for the country's Jeddah Economic Forum. The Guardian reported that Human Rights Watch "said the four men had no lawyers during their trial and sentencing, and were denied other basic legal rights." In an interview with Arab News, the Saudi English language paper, Bush described the country as "a kind of tribal democracy."
Bill Berkowitz Newt Gingrich's back door to the White HouseAmerican Enterprise Institute "Scholar" and former House Speaker blames media for poll showing 64 percent of the American people wouldn't vote for him under any circumstances Whatever it is that former House Speaker Newt Gingrich has come to represent in American politics, the guy is nothing less than fascinating. One day he's espousing populist rhetoric about the need to cut the costs of college tuition and the next day he's talking World War III. One day he's claiming that the "war on terror" may force the abridgement of fundamental first amendment rights and the next he's advancing a twenty-first century version of his Contract with America. At the same time he's publicly proclaiming how "stupid" it is that the race for the presidency has already started you know that he's trying to figure out how to out finesse Rudy, McCain and Romney for the nomination. And last week, when Fox News' Chris Wallace cited a poll showing that 64 percent of the public would never vote for him, he was quick to blame those results on how unfairly he was treated by the mainstream media back in the day.
Bill Berkowitz American Enterprise Institute takes lead in agitating against IranDespite wrongheaded predictions about the war on Iraq, neocons are on the frontlines advocating military conflict with Iran After doing such a bang up job with their advice and predictions about the outcome of the war on Iraq, would it surprise you to learn that America's neoconservatives are still in business? While at this time we are not yet seeing the same intense neocon invasion of our living rooms -- via cable television's news networks -- that we saw during the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, nevertheless, a host of policy analysts at conservative think tanks -- most notably the American Enterprise Institute -- are being heeded on Iran by those who count - folks inside the Bush Administration.
Bill Berkowitz After six years, opposition gaining on George W. Bush's Faith Based InitiativeUnmentioned in the president's State of the Union speech, the program nevertheless continues to recruit religious participants and hand out taxpayer money to religious groups With several domestic policy proposals unceremoniously folded into President Bush's recent State of the Union address, two pretty significant items failed to make the cut. Despite the president's egregiously tardy response to the event itself, it was nevertheless surprising that he didn't even mention Hurricane Katrina: He didn't offer up a progress report, words of hope to the victims, or come up with a proposal for moving the sluggish rebuilding effort forward. There were no "armies of compassion" ready to be unleashed, although it should be said that many in the religious community responded to the disaster much quicker than the Bush Administration. In the State of the Union address, however, there was no "compassionate conservatism" for the victims of Hurricane Katrina.
Bill Berkowitz Frank Luntz calls Republican leadership in Washington 'One giant whining windbag'On the outs with the GOP, legendary degrader of discourse is moving to California He doesn't make great art; nothing he does elevates the human spirit; he doesn't illuminate, he bamboozles. He has become expert in subterfuge, hidden meanings, word play and manipulation. Frank Luntz has been so good at what he does that those paying close attention gave it its own name: "Luntzspeak."
Bill Berkowitz Spooked by MoveOn.org, conservative movement seeks to emulate liberal powerhouseFueled with Silicon Valley money, TheVanguard.org will have Richard Poe, former editor of David Horowitz's FrontPage magazine as its editorial and creative director As Paul Weyrich, a founding father of the modern conservative movement and still a prominent actor in it, likes to say, he learned a great deal about movement building by closely observing what liberals were up to in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
Bill Berkowitz Ward Connerly's anti-affirmative action jihadFounder and Chair of the American Civil Rights Institute scouting five to nine states for new anti-affirmative action initiatives Fresh from his most recent victory -- in Michigan this past November -- Ward Connerly, the Black California-based maven of anti-affirmative action initiatives, appears to be preparing to take his jihad on the road. According to a mid-December report in the San Francisco Chronicle, Connerly said that he was "exploring moves into nine other states."
Bill Berkowitz Tom Tancredo's missionThe Republican congressman from Colorado will try to woo GOP voters with anti-immigration rhetoric and a boatload of Christian right politics These days, probably the most recognizable name in anti-immigration politics is Colorado Republican Congressman Tom Tancredo. Over the past year, Tancredo has gone from a little known congressman to a highly visible anti-immigration spokesperson. "Tancredo has thoroughly enmeshed himself in the anti-immigration movement and with the help of CNN talk show host Lou Dobbs, he has been given a national megaphone," Devin Burghart, the program director of the Building Democracy Initiative at the Center for New Community, a Chicago-based civil rights group, told Media Transparency.
Bill Berkowitz Institute on Religion and Democracy slams 'Leftist' National Council of ChurchesNew report from conservative foundation-funded IRD charges the NCC with being a political surrogate for MoveOn.org, People for the American Way and other liberal organizations If you prefer your religious battles sprinkled with demagoguery, sanctimoniousness, and simplistic attacks, the Institute on Religion and Democracy's (IRD) latest broadside against the National Council of Churches (NCC) certainly fits the bill.
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