Capitalism? Or Corporatism?

Inequality has become the topic du jour–and as with so many other topics Americans debate, what anyone means by “unequal” and if and why inequality matters depends on one’s perspective.

In a capitalist system, some people will do better than others. There is nothing wrong with that; the promise of a bigger reward for building a better mousetrap spurs innovation and benefits us all. It’s only when the disparity in rewards becomes disproportionate and  especially when those rewards become disconnected from actual economic productivity that things get seriously out of whack.

When what people make is a reflection of their connections and/or the success of their lobbyists, it’s time to consider whether we still have a capitalist system, or whether what America  currently has is corporatism–a system where power is exercised through large organizations in pursuit of their own economic agendas, to the detriment of the common good.

Capitalism creates opportunity; corporatism keeps it “all in the family,” exacerbating inequality. Consider the following statistics and draw your own conclusions:

Between 1947 and 1972, the average hourly wage, adjusted for inflation, rose 76%. Since 1972, it has risen 4%.

In 2011, the poverty rate for female-headed families with children was 40.9%

In 2009, CEOs of major corporations were paid a wage that was 269 times the average compensation of American workers.

Between 1979 and 2007, wages for the top 1% rose ten times as fast as those for the bottom 90%–156.2% versus 16.7%.

There’s much more, but you get the picture.

The question is, how do we return to a system where the market actually decides the winners and losers, rather than the oligarchs?

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File Under “It’s Who You Know”…

Oligarchies work really well if you are one of the oligarchs. The Indianapolis Star recently re-engaged in something that used to be called “journalism,” and reported that the State of Indiana had intentionally misused federal funds during the Daniels Administration.

Federal auditors say Indiana intentionally misused federal funds when one of its contractors, operating with little state oversight, funneled nearly a half million dollars to a start-up business run by the nonprofit’s chairman.

Elevate Ventures, which was the subject of an Indianapolis Star investigation last year, was hired by the state to manage millions of dollars in state and federal investment funds. The federal audit concluded that the nonprofit should not have awarded $499,986 in federal cash to a start-up business called Smarter Remarketer managed by the firm’s chairman, Howard Bates.

The article was thorough, and drew a pretty damaging picture of the games being played with our tax dollars. State officials, of course, denied any intentional wrongdoing and attributed the “problem” to inadequate oversight.

Spoiler alert: I will now go into “broken record” mode. For the past quarter-century, citizens have been told that government can’t do anything by itself, and that privatizing–“contracting out”–is the way to deliver government services. Sometimes contracting makes good sense. Often, it doesn’t. See here and here.

When contracting is appropriate, government remains responsible for oversight and management. Even if the scam detailed by the Star wasn’t a case of cronyism (and if you believe that, I have a great bridge to sell you…), it points to one of the dangers of  contracting: government officials who lack either the will or the expertise to manage those contracts adequately.

Of course, the article suggests that the folks responsible for overseeing Elevate Ventures weren’t inept. They were cozy.

Ah, oligarchy….

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Of Urinals and Impeachment…

I don’t know about the rest of you, but I am disgusted by the crazy  self-professed Christians whose recent “Faith and Freedom” Convention was highlighted by the presence of crude racist figurines of President Obama in the urinals.

This crude and childish prank was only marginally more offensive than last Saturday’s call for Obama’s impeachment by the South Dakota GOP. (As a friend noted on Facebook, Article I of the specifications would be “Governing while black.”)

I have a news bulletin for the South Dakota Republican Party: disagreeing with a President and/or his policies is not grounds for impeachment. Like him or hate him, find him competent or feckless, this President has done nothing remotely approaching the high crimes and misdemeanors that warrant impeachment. Impeachment isn’t a recall mechanism.  (Besides, if Dick Cheney wasn’t impeachable, no one is.)

There are lots of reasons why people might disagree with this or any President. And certainly this is not the only era in which toxic partisanship has encouraged unhinged animus toward an occupant of the White House. But in my (long) lifetime I have never seen anything approaching the level of pure hatred, disrespect for the office of the Presidency, and complete and utter irrationality that has characterized the reaction of so many Americans to the Obama Presidency.

Is everyone who opposes this President a racist? Of course not.

But most of those who hate him are. And in their hysterical efforts to deny our first black President any  policy or political successes, these moral midgets are willing to block progress for the whole country. They are willing to keep judicial and administrative positions unfilled for years. Willing to shut down the government. Willing to oppose measures that they themselves introduced and formerly championed. Willing to tear the country apart in order to blame Obama for failing to hold it together.

They are willing to piss on America if just a little of that piss lands on the President.

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Come Out to Come In

Here’s my sermon for your Sunday.

Back in the early days of the women’s movement, an oft-repeated mantra was “the personal is the political.” The point was that unless an issue was personal, you were unlikely to bother engaging it politically.

There’s research confirming the insight. Academics who study civic engagement talk about the connection between “salience” and action—the personal importance of any particular issue is one predictor of that individual’s political involvement.

This accords with common sense: unless something matters to you, you are unlikely to participate in political advocacy around that issue.

“Coming out” is the perfect political expression of that insight. People who may have favored equal rights for GLBT folks in the abstract found the issue much more salient when they realized that their own friend or family member was one of those subject to marginalization and discrimination. Suddenly, being an ally meant something more affirmative than refraining from opposition, or expressing an inclusive sentiment at a cocktail party.

It seems so obvious to us now, but in the early days of the gay rights movement, coming out was a real gamble—a gamble that might not have worked, and that took a great deal of courage. Until there was a critical mass of “out” gay folks, out was a lonely and sometimes dangerous place to be. Being “out and proud” didn’t simply risk social disapproval—jobs were lost, families estranged, friendships shattered.

Today, after a generation of activism, we can say with some assurance that the gay community is in “mop up” mode. There’s still a good deal of bigotry, but thanks to coming out, the handwriting on the civic wall reads “Come on in.” Out gays hold elective office, enjoy marriage equality in more and more states, and participate in Pride celebrations that are more celebratory and less defiant than in the old days.

If we needed any more evidence of the success of the gay rights movement, it can be found in the fact that other despised minorities are looking to the GLBT community for strategic guidance.

In a blog earlier this week, I referenced a meeting of the Secular Coalition for America. The Coalition includes a variety of organizations concerned with the marginalization of non-believers, the war on women and science, religiously-based homophobia, and especially with efforts by “bible-believing” conservatives to move America toward “godliness”—aka theocratic laws.

Coalition members want non-theists to emulate the central strategy of the gay civil rights movement, and come out.

According to recent Pew data, nonbelievers—defined as those who answer “none” when asked about their religious affiliations—number around 20% of the American population. In 2000, some 14% of the public self-identified as part of the Religious Right. And yet, the Religious Right exercises immensely more political power than the religiously disengaged. They haven’t just been drivers of the culture wars and efforts to recast discrimination as “religious liberty,” they have been the most effective foot soldiers in the war on science.

Lawmakers—and not just Republicans—fall over themselves to pander to the obsessions of that 14%, because unlike the “nones,” they’ve been so public and visible that we think there are more of them than there really are.

Think how much more rational and inclusive our politics would be if even half of the “nones” came out and worked with the many reasonable religious folks to demand equal treatment and respect for all Americans, whatever their beliefs or lack thereof.

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It Isn’t Just Me

I know I sound like a broken record on the subject of civic knowledge, but I’m not the only person despairing of the consequences of our civic deficit. A recent article in Salon by C.J. Werleman describes the civic landscape and its implications.

A few of the author’s more trenchant observations:

The health of a democracy is dependent on an educated citizenry.  Political illiteracy is the manure for the flourishing of political appeals based on sheer ignorance.

So let me introduce you to House Majority Speaker Eric Cantor’s Republican Party vanquisher David Brat (R-VI). First thing you need to know about this far right-wing political upstart is he’s a university professor, which means it’s highly probable he’s not an idiot. He also identifies with the Tea Party strain of conservatism, which, paradoxically, means it’s likely he is, indeed, an idiot. And by idiot, I mean wholly ignorant of U.S. history and constitutionality.

In fact, in his victory speech delivered last week to his supporters, Brat demonstrated that he sits among the majority of Americans when it comes to political and cultural illiteracy.

“I wish to restore America to its Judeo-Christian roots,” declared Brat. “God acted through people on my behalf.”

Ignoring the self-delusion of the latter part of the above text, Brat now joins no less than 200 million Americans, according to a number of polls, who believe the U.S. Constitution and our laws are based on Judeo-Christian values. On any given Sunday you will hear Christian-right politicians claim absurdly that U.S. laws are based on the Bible. Spoiler alert: they’re dead wrong. The Constitution’s secular provisions came into being thanks to the Founding Fathers, who shared a deep suspicion of both organized religion and the supernatural. The Constitution was framed with a conscious omission of any mention of God and a prohibition of all religious tests for public office. Moreover, the First Amendment’s declaration that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion” embodied the founders’ view that religion has no place in the political domain.

That not a single major media outlet bothered to correct Brat’s ignorance represents America’s continual decline in American civic and cultural literacy.

The rest of the article is equally scathing, and well worth reading, but I want to focus on that last quoted paragraph, because I think it points to one of the major reasons Americans are so uninformed, and so easily manipulated.

We have lost journalism.

What used to be called “the journalism of verification” has disappeared into a sea of Kardashian-watching, Faux News “reporting,” hate radio, consumerism and internet conspiracy theories. The few actual reporters who remain–and I mean few (a couple of years ago I used a textbook in my Media and Policy class titled “Will the Last Reporter Please Turn Out the Lights”)–simply do not know enough to ask what should be obvious follow-up questions, or to provide readers with background and context that would allow them to properly evaluate what political actors are saying or doing.

Werleman is dead-on when he concludes:

In other words, when Republicans say there is no such thing as gravity, and Democrats reply that gravity is real, CNN and the like say, “Look, Democrats and Republicans are fighting again,” which not only exacerbates the nation’s anti-intellectualism and anti-rationalism, but also increases the likelihood of extremist views and falsehoods taking hold in the national electorate.

We’ve replaced fact-checkers with “he said/she said” stenographers, and in the process, we’ve created a political world in which there are no facts–only opinions.

It’s a recipe for disaster. Ignorance isn’t a survival strategy.

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