Category Archives: Random Blogging

A Candid Cashier

Saturday, my husband and I made our “oh-my-god-Thanksgiving-is-Thursday-and-the-cupboard-is-bare” Costco run.

As we were checking out (with more wine than two elderly citizens ought to be purchasing), the pleasant and chatty young man putting our purchases into the basket noted some purchase (I didn’t notice which one) and said “You are obviously smart shoppers.”

I laughed and responded that at least we were smart enough to shop at Costco, rather than Walmart or Sam’s Club.

At that, the cashier looked up and said, “You can say that again! I worked at Sam’s Club for 13 years, and it was terrible. I hated it. I’m so glad to be here. You can’t imagine the difference.”

I’ve read plenty of comparisons between Costco and Walmart, and their treatment of employees, but this was qualitatively different: heartfelt testimony volunteered by someone who clearly had a basis for comparison.

Later in the day, I came across this paragraph in a story about the widening gap between rich and poor in America:

Few companies are as emblematic of the New American System as is Walmart. The company that in 2011 generated more revenues than any other, the company that is now the largest food retailer in the world is the same company that recently encouraged donations of food to its own employees. It’s also a company that, putting aside any losses generated when it replaces smaller, local stores, causes a net loss to every community it enters in the form of increased tax revenues needed to support its underpaid employees. Walnart not only counts on taxpayer dollars to subsidize its “low cost” stores, it counts on those same taxpayer dollars to drive its business. Walmart employees not only need food stamps to get by, Walmart is the largest place where those food stamps are redeemed. It’s a cycle that grinds employees (and communities) relentlessly down, while driving Walmart revenues just as consistently up.

In principle, I don’t mind having my tax dollars used for welfare. But I do object–strenuously–to the use of my tax dollars to subsidize Walmart’s (outsized) profits. If Walmart insists on screwing over thousands of people like the cashier I met yesterday, the company needs to do so on its own dime, rather than on the back of taxpayers. (But of course, that wouldn’t work. Walmart needs public assistance in order to continue paying the below-living wages that generate its generous profit margins.)

Ironically, as I’ve previously noted, Costco’s profits per square foot exceed Walmart’s by a significant percentage, even though Costco pays its employees far more, treats them better and provides health insurance.

Costco will be closed on Thanksgiving, so that its employees can spend time with their families. Walmart–of course–will be open.

Comments

Exceptionalism, Corporate Edition

Only in America. No other nation gives its corporations as many rights as we do.

Before you launch into a knowing and cynical “sure–big business bought our lawmakers,” consider the fact (highlighted in a recent article in the Journal of Law and Courts) that these expansive rights are almost all the result of federal court decisions, not legislation.

The privileges currently enjoyed by the fictitious “persons” we call corporations weren’t a result of our Constitution, either.  According to David Ciepley, author of the referenced article,

“the framers were so concerned about the possibility of privileged monopolies squeezing out ordinary citizens that they did not endow Congress with the traditional right of Parliament to charter corporations, let alone expressly extend constitutional rights to corporations.”

There are three theories about corporations and their rights: the associational theory (corporations are constituted by their members and thus deserve the same rights as those members); the “real entity” theory (a corporation is distinct from its members–a separate, albeit fictional, “person” entitled to the rights accorded to “persons” under the 14th Amendment); and the grant theory (corporations exist because government has created them, and they have only the powers with which their creator endowed them).

The legal problem with the associational theory is that in the U.S., rights are individual. My family doesn’t have a right to free speech–although each member of my family does. The practical problem with basing a corporate right to free speech on the First Amendment rights of its shareholders is obvious: those shareholders are likely to have different opinions (especially on public policy issues) and to want to say different things.

The notion that a corporation is somehow an organic “person” separate from both government and its shareholders and entitled to 14th Amendment protections is so historically and logically flawed as to require little rebuttal–especially in an era where Justice Scalia remains ambivalent about including living, breathing women within that Amendment’s protections.

The only theory that accords with both history and logic is the grant theory. Governments  created corporations in order to encourage commerce–in large part by limiting the liability of individuals. (We are more likely to innovate if a failure won’t entirely wipe us out.) Corporations should have all of the rights that are required to fulfill their purpose, which is to do business–the right to own property, to contract and to engage in commercial speech.

The Supreme Court has gotten two things very wrong: money is not speech, and corporations are not people. (I have to agree with a popular Facebook slogan: I’ll believe corporations are people when Texas executes one.) Those two errors have massively distorted our politics and corrupted our governing institutions.

The Court failed to recognize the contemporary operation of the golden rule: He who has the gold, rules.

Comments

The Death of Language….

One of my constant complaints–one that undoubtedly gets tiresome–is that the words we use in political discourse no longer mean what they used to. Or for that matter, much of anything.

Thanks to Rush Limbaugh and his ilk, “liberal”–which used to refer to 18th Century libertarian Enlightenment thinkers and later was used to mean “open minded”– was twisted into an epithet and replaced by “progressive.” (“Progressive” gets applied to pretty much anyone who doesn’t hate government and gay people, and send racist emails.)

I used to consider myself something of a cross between an Eighteenth-Century liberal and an Edmund Burke conservative, back before the term “conservative” didn’t call up the image of an angry old white guy in a tricorner hat demanding the return of “his” country. So I was nostalgic reading this recent post about Burke by Andrew Sullivan. I really encourage you to read it in its entirety, but here’s a taste:

For a conservative should not be implacably hostile to liberalism (let alone demonize it), but should be alert to its insights, and deeply aware of the need to change laws and government in response to unstoppable change in human society. Equally, a liberal can learn a lot from conservatism’s doubts about utopia, from the conservative concern with history, tradition and the centrality of culture in making human beings, and from conservatism’s love and enjoyment of the world as-it-is, even as it challenges the statesman or woman to nudge it toward the future. The goal should not be some new country or a new world order or even a return to a pristine past that never existed: but to adapt to necessary social and cultural change by trying as hard as one can to make it coherent with what the country has long been; to recognize, as Orwell did, that a country, even if it is to change quite markedly, should always be trying somehow to remain the same.

……..

This means a true conservative – who is, above all, an anti-ideologue – will often be attacked for alleged inconsistency, for changing positions, for promising change but not a radical break with the past, for pursuing two objectives – like liberty and authority, or change and continuity  – that seem to all ideologues as completely contradictory.

I miss the days when labels had content.

Comments

Doctor Faustus, I Presume?

Despite pressure from religious groups, humanitarian organizations and the business community–not to mention the U.S. Senate and the Administration– GOP leadership in the House of Representatives is refusing to bring comprehensive immigration reform to a vote.

They “don’t have time this year.”

They had time, however, to vote on a measure sponsored by Rep. Steve King (R-Crazy) to defund the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program and treat Dream Act kids like criminals.

The amendment, from Rep. Steve King (R-IA), undercuts the flexibility that allows the Department of Homeland Security to halt deporting DREAMers and instead focus on people convicted of crimes.

After the vote, the House Hispanic Caucus tweeted,”House Republicans just voted to treat DREAMers and undocumented spouses of servicemembers in the same way as violent criminals.” Only six Republicans voted against the measure.

None of those six Republicans was from Indiana.

We expect Marlin Stutzman, Todd Rokita and Jackie Walorski to vote for measures sponsored by the Crazy Caucus (Michelle Bachmann, Steve King, Louis Gohmert et al). But we tend to expect a measure of moderation from those elected from less rabid precincts.

Susan Brooks ran as a reasonable, albeit conservative, alternative to David MacIntosh. Much of her appeal to the more moderate Hamilton County GOP voters was premised on her own (relative) moderation. And those of us who’ve known her for years had, in fact, known her to be personally pretty reasonable and middle-of-the-road.

But Brooks voted to deport the Dream Act kids.

In fact, Brooks’ voting record is strikingly similar to the voting records of Bachmann, King and Gohmert. Her one act of “courage” (if voting as your constituents clearly prefer can be characterized as courageous) was to end the recent government shutdown.

I suppose it is possible that the Susan Brooks I thought I knew was really a rabid anti-Choice, anti-government, anti-immigrant extremist in disguise. But I doubt that.

I think it’s more likely that she is one of the numerous, ambitious political figures who finds it personally advantageous to pander to the currently dominant wing of her party, and is willing to set aside any pesky moral qualms in order to do so.

Doctor Faustus sold his soul and traded his integrity for a taste of earthly pleasures.

As long as I’m trading in literary and historical analogies, here’s a question: Is the Republican base better off with True Believers like MacIntosh, who’ve evidently imbibed the hemlock, or with those who, like Brooks, are willing to make Fausian bargains?

Comments

A Possible Parallel?

It’s always dangerous to draw parallels between past phenomenons and current ones–contrary to the old saying, the past really doesn’t repeat itself.

But still.

I was intrigued by an article examining the rise and demise of the Know Nothing Party in the most recent issue of “Religion and Politics,” a political science journal. The Know Nothing Party (KNP) was launched in 1851, and it was dead by 1862. It was rooted in the Nativist movement, and was profoundly anti-immigrant, anti-Catholic and xenophobic.

The authors propose three theories for the sudden rise of the KNP: moral panic (a collective response to social change–a spontaneous “panic” propelled by social stress);  a conflictual cultural cycle (persistent cultural patterns that emerge periodically in response to the sudden visibility of ‘out groups’); and something with which I was previously unfamiliar–Revitalization Theory (religiously motivated movements of discontented persons who want to change the culture.)

The authors concluded that there were elements of all three at work. They noted that–as with all such movements–the KNP looked to a (fantasized) pristine past that they wanted to restore.

Shades of “I want my country back.”

About those parallels….a recent Bloomberg poll found that Tea Party Republicans are “more likely to be male, less financially secure, more pessimistic about the direction of the country and much more antagonistic to President Obama.” The poll notes “anger and alienation” by the GOP rank-and-file, based in part on considerable amounts of misinformation. (Thanks, Faux News…) For example

Two thirds of regular Republicans believe the federal deficit has grown this year, and 93 percent of Tea Party Republicans agree. Both are wrong: the budget deficit is projected to fall this year from 1.1 trillion to 642 billion.

To the extent that we can draw parallels between the KNP and the GOP fringe today, the more pertinent question addressed by the article is: what happened? Why did the KNP have such a short life span?

The article pointed to several factors: internal dissension, newly recruited political figures who were inexperienced and incompetent, rowdyism and sporadic violence by some of the “fringe of the fringe” and ultimately, a recognition that their objectives were simply unachievable.

Food for thought. And hope….

Comments