Washington Post: "Admit It. The Republicans Are Worse."

By Jank2112 | Sourced from DailyKos

Sunday's Outlook section of the Washington Post will be dubbed: "The Polarization Issue"

Writers Thomas E. Mann and Norman J. Ornstein finally, finally, FINALLY, bring to the front pages what we here have been saying since, OH, SINCE DKOS FIRST STARTED.

...we have no choice but to acknowledge that the core of the problem lies with the Republican Party.

The GOP has become an insurgent outlier in American politics. It is ideologically extreme; scornful of compromise; unmoved by conventional understanding of facts, evidence and science; and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition.

When one party moves this far from the mainstream, it makes it nearly impossible for the political system to deal constructively with the country’s challenges

I mean, really now, how much longer can the second biggest newspaper keep its head in the sand? This isn't the party of Reagan anymore. It's not the party of Goldwater, Nixon or Eisenhower.

What we have is a Democratic party filled with socialists, greens, progressives, moderates, social conservatives, fiscal conservatives....and then you have the Republicans. That's pretty much it.

We need to stop with all the bullshit false equivalency. There is no left-wing equivalent to Allen West. Or Ted Nugent. Or Sarah Palin. Or Ron Paul. Or Grover Norquist. Or Glenn Beck. Or Steve King. Or Orly Taitz. Or any of the other 10,000 psychotic nutjobs who will be in Tampa this September. They just aren't there.

Democrats aren't perfect...but they're not conservatives either.

The Far Right Takes Root in Europe.

Photo Credit: THOMAS WINJE / AGENCE-FRANCE PRESSE

openDemocracy.net / By Mariano Aguirre

Anders Behring Breivik’s attacks are part of a worrying trend in Europe: the far right’s rise within mainstream politics.

 

The bloodthirsty attacks perpetrated by Anders Behring Breivik in Norway on July 22 last year (leaving 77 dead) provided a brutal awakening for all those in Europe who had been passively observing the rise of the Islamophobic far right. As the trial opens, around thirty political parties that openly call for a "pure European identity" are effectively in the process of consolidating their parliamentary positions (occasionally even signing agreements with mainstream right wing parties, as is the case in the Netherlands), and are claiming an ever greater media presence.


These parties, following the example of the Nordic Forum, are adept at using new technology and social networks, which gives them an even greater platform to spread their messages of hate and bolster their national and international alliances.

Those responsible for this noxious propaganda always hide behind the principle of freedom of expression, and, when they are criticised for the speeches they deliver encouraging the Breiviks of the future, they assert that the carnage perpetrated by this “lone wolf" has nothing to do with the climate that they have helped to create. Indeed, they present themselves as victims that are being suppressed. They make out that Europe will ultimately lose its "Christian identity". These demagogues are active both inside and outside the electoral system: just as they have an elected presence in the parliaments, on the other hand they endlessly criticise democracies, accusing them of being far too liberal on the issue of immigration.

The European far right is seduced by the fantasy of a "pure" Europe as opposed to a real Europe, which is in fact successfully diversified. Like Anders Behring Breivik, thousands of individuals that haunt websites and blogs (Gates of Vienna, Brussels Journal), organisations such as the English Defence League, Platform per Catalunya, or Militia Christi, as well as religious leaders are all actively preparing fertile ground for the growth of extremism.

A study at the University of Nottingham undertaken for Chatham House by Matthew Goodwin demonstrates that extremist parties are primarily characterised by their visceral opposition to immigration (particularly Muslim immigration), to ethnic diversity, and finally to multiculturalism, alongside social behaviours that they consider to be a great danger to Europe.

Further, they think that mainstream political parties are far too "soft" in their responses to the issues surrounding immigration. Another study, by Elisabeth Ivarsflaten , shows that populist parties have always had their greatest electoral successes after integrating a strong anti-immigration strand into their speeches and manifestos.

These "new" populists carefully avoid the usual racist and anti-Semitic discourse, and prefer to position their stance more subtly, around questions of culture and identity. Paradoxically, they claim two conflicting identities: Christian through their recognition of a mythological European past, and secular in their fight against Islam.

They fight "Marxist" politicians, or those that are too liberal. It's with this in mind that Anders Behring Breivik attacked the government buildings in Oslo and subsequently the summer camp of young labour party activists on Utøya island. They are generally pro-American, have close working relationships with the far right in the United States, and consider Israel to be a defensive western bulwark against Islam. During times of crisis they also use the argument of the welfare state to justify themselves: they contend that immigrants are stealing jobs and scamming the welfare state, in particular social security, as they have many more children than the European average, and so on.
In his manifesto - a vast copy and paste job of the greatest hits of extremist ideas - Anders Behring Breivik opposed the welfare state and a pluralistic hegemonic identity. "European societies" he wrote "must be able to rely on a solid social cohesion, which can only really exist in a monocultural system where everyone has complete confidence in one another."

Goodwin's study reveals that the majority of those who vote for populist parties come from a modest background or the middle classes. They are also often small business owners or farmers afraid of drastic economic and social change. "Market globalisation and economic deregulation have hurled the planet into an era of uncertainty which is inevitably provoking fear" reminds Javier de Lucas, professor at the University of Valencia. To this, the extreme right counters with a riposte made up of simplistic formulas, and lays responsibility for the all the economic and social woes on "the politicians", "leftists" and immigrants.

As the philosopher Slavoj Zizek concludes: “The only way to introduce passion into this kind of politics, the only way to actively mobilise people, is through fear: the fear of immigrants, the fear of crime…”

Timid counter-offensives

Moderate politicians remain relatively impotent in the face of attacks from the far right, and when they attempt a riposte, they do so in a contradictory fashion: centre-left parties - to avoid losing a public that is sensitive to these issues - willingly revisit the pet subjects of the far right, in particular immigration. In fact, Europe is imposing ever more restrictive policies to limit the right to asylum and inward migratory flow, while at the same time political parties are lauding "greater tolerance" towards foreigners. The reality is that xenophobic sentiments are on the rise, and immigrant Muslim populations and their culture are being increasingly rejected.

If Europe wants to sustain growth, then it will need to open the door wide to immigration. However, this argument does not succeed in halting the advance of Islamophobia. "There is something that worries me far more than the growth of the far right at the 2010 ballot, explains Thomas Hammarberg , Commissioner for Human Rights at the European Council:

“and that is the profound inertia and above all confusion that seems to reign amongst moderate democratic parties of both the left and right. One even has the impression that these parties have come to accept the narrative of hatred and that this unencumbered xenophobia has been integrated into the political discourse as though it were something quite ordinary: their leaders have totally failed to check this rise in Islamophobia."

Leading media outlets have opened the debate, keeping centrally in their sights the fact that a major segment of their audience is sliding steadily, at least electorally speaking, towards the populist right. Meanwhile new ultra-nationalist media outlets are appearing on the media landscape, just as they have in the United States ↑ , along with thousands of websites and books, which for the most part, have been able to find a place in the unfolding discussions as though they were serious political institutions.

It is thus that the British essayist Bat Yeor, using her real name Gisele Littman-Orebi, invented the famous Euro-Arabian axis (or Eurabia), abundantly referenced by Breivik in his manifesto, and in which Europe will sooner or later be conquered by Muslims. The author explains that Jews and Christians will be subjected to Islamic law.

"Today, freedom of speech is complete and the essence of what is published is neither edited nor censored," comments Sindre Bangstad, a teacher at the University of Oslo.

"Islamophobic discourse can spread much more easily than before. In this context, outlandish opinions like those held by Breivik are barely discernible from those found on some social networks, and sometimes even in the mainstream media in Norway..."

Nevertheless, dangerous agitators are by no means all paranoid and bloodthirsty madmen. The highly respectable German social-democrat economist Thilo Sarrazin published a book in 2010 in which he very seriously explained that his country will become more and more impoverished and lose its identity as well as its potential, because Turkish and Arab immigrants possess a lower IQ. He maintains that his ideas are supported by a third of Germans who believe that the state should limit immigration and the practice of Islam. In October 2010 Angela Merkel declared, "Multiculturalism has failed". David Cameron, the British Prime Minister, said exactly the same thing a few days later. In September 2011, the German National Democratic Party (NDP) gained 6% of the vote in the Mecklenburg-West Pomeranian parliament, an unprecedented result in that country.

On the question of immigration, centre-left parties have two options: ‘integration’ or ‘assimilation’. The concept of assimilation has suffused political discourse since the 1980s: it suggests that immigrants must adapt to ‘our’ society and renounce all or part of their religion, culture or traditions. ‘Integration’, for its part, allows ‘new citizens’ to keep their idiosyncrasies, as have all prior immigrant groups for that matter. In its modern sense, integration expects a mutual attempt to adapt and notably, the acceptance of the welcoming country of the religion of those that it is seeking to welcome.

Attempts to make religious symbols disappear from public spaces (minarets, burkhas, veils, mosques...) are more and more vocal, Olivier Roy noted in 2009 in ‘L’Islam en Europe, une religion qui doit être traitée comme les autres’, pointing out that Europe wanted to have immigrants working here, but wanted them to be invisible.

In a general sense, both strategies have failed. Immigrant communities have more of a tendency to isolate themselves to avoid being assimilated. They often feel discriminated against, and the societies that are hosting them don't feel the need to change anything at all to accommodate them since they consider the immigrants to be an undifferentiated and fragmented external group. In Germany, after forty years of communal living, Turkish and German populations still only know very little about each other. It's a paradox.

Goodwin's study has also dug up worrying results regarding the political response to the extreme right in general. Since political parties became ‘electoral machines’, populist parties have been fully exploiting their ability to directly address the electorate and respond to their concerns about immigration, which the other parties do not do.

Are we ready to abandon our community-based approaches in order to adopt a multi-strand citizenry founded on fundamental shared norms and values?

"European society in its plurality is collectively responsible," explains Javier De Lucas. "We need to teach our societies to accept an evolution towards a multicultural world and to negotiate this change successfully. Unfortunately however, society is not moving. It is not very motivated, and very restrictive migratory politics are sending contrary signals: without negotiation, a desire to change, to evolve, the unilateral integration project of immigrant populations is doomed to fail."

Translated by Tristan Summerscale. This article was originally published in French in Le Monde Diplomatique on March 10, 2012.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Mariano Aguirre is the director of the Norwegian Peacebuilding Centre (Noref) in Oslo.

Why Is Autism So Drastically on the Rise? An Environmental Horror Story.

 

 

 

 

AlterNet / By Eleanor J. Bader

 

An investigation into the relationship between environmental poisons and human health is riveting -- and terrifying.

 

|

 

If horror is your genre, environmental writer Brita Belli’s The Autism Puzzle, is the book for you. Her terrifying look at the chemicals we eat, drink and breathe is guaranteed to make your hair stand on end.

We should thank her for it.


Statistics released earlier this spring by the Centers for Disease Control revealed that one in 88 U.S. born toddlers has an autism spectral disorder—from the less severe Asperger’s Syndrome to the so-called classical form of the ailment. Worse, it’s not just a North American phenomenon; Belli also reports a 57 percent spike in Asia and Europe.


The question is why. Perhaps, some posit, medical professionals have simply become better diagnosticians and people previously labeled eccentric or developmentally disabled were in fact, autistic. Or, perhaps there’s a genetic culprit since ASD typically runs in families. Belli gives credence to both theories, but ultimately concludes that there is more to the puzzle. “If the rise in autism numbers were only due to improved diagnosis and awareness of autism among the medical community—or if the roots of the epidemic were primarily genetic—professionals would have seen an increase in adult or adolescent patients who had not been diagnosed or who had been misdiagnosed in the past,” she writes.


But they haven’t. This realization piqued Belli’s curiosity and her investigation into the relationship between environmental poisons and human health is riveting. “The idea that a toxin can cause autism is neither controversial nor speculative,” she begins. In fact, thalidomide, a medication used in the 1960s to control morning sickness in pregnant women, was tied to autism almost 20 years ago. Likewise valproic acid, used to treat bipolar disorder, misoprostol, an ulcer drug, and chlorpyrifos, an insecticide.


And that’s just the tip of the chemical iceberg. “Many other chemicals distributed far and wide across the natural world by power plant smokestacks, leaking waste sites, improper storage facilities, and outdated manufacturing processes have been proven to cause injury to developing brains,” Belli continues. More specifically, mercury, lead and polychlorinated biphenyls—also known as PCBs—along with the chemicals used to make insulation, flame retardants, electronic equipment, and plastic pose known health risks to fetal life and newborns.


Belli cites recent studies by the Environmental Working Group that discovered an average of 200 pollutants in the umbilical cord blood of infants. Among them: pesticides, perflourinated compounds, antibiotics, and polybrominated diphenyl ethers.


Belli is particularly interested in “autism clusters,” geographic areas with higher than average rates of the disorder. One such place is Brick Township, New Jersey, where 63 million gallons of septic waste were dumped into a nearby landfill between 1969 and 1979. By the time the community learned that heavy metals and volatile organic compounds had leaked from storage containers, it was too late--soil and groundwater had already become contaminated by bromoform, chloroform and chloroethylene.

Researcher Carol Reinisch tested the impact of each of these substances on clam embryos—a precursor to human trials—and found that the “chemical cocktail”--the combined impact of the three substances acting together--was far more destructive to the body than each of the chemicals acting alone. Reinisch’s research, Belli writes, “made a solid case for the fact that toxins in combination can have a unique impact on the way brains develop. It is likely not one bodily insult that’s driving up [autism] cases, but a number of contaminants and exposures acting in concert.”


That there are approximately 1,300 Superfund sites on the National Priorities List—200 of them in New Jersey, the state with the highest autism rates—should both give us pause and make us furious since we know who is responsible for fouling the air, water and soil—unscrupulous businesses. In fact, Belli reports that the corporations responsible for the lion’s share of pollution often avoid taking responsibility for their misdeeds, sometimes declaring bankruptcy to avoid paying necessary cleanup costs, at other times disappearing altogether. Many companies simply continue polluting without consequence.


Take Fairfax County, Virginia. “The EPA’s Toxic Release Inventory for the country notes that BP Products North America releases 2822 pounds of toxins per year,” Belli writes. Joining BP are the Newington Concrete Plant (171 pounds); the Sipca Securink Corporation, which makes security inks for bank notes (250 pounds); the Virginia Concrete Edsall Road Plant (154 pounds) and several petroleum and concrete operations for which pollution data were unavailable.

Unfortunately, Fairfax County is not an anomaly. In fact, Belli presents a startling statistic: 25 percent of us live within four miles of a hazardous waste site.


Are you scared yet? Me too.

Belli offers readers a few common sense—albeit limited—suggestions: Eat fresh fruit and vegetables or choose frozen over canned; avoid washing plastic in the dish washer or putting it in the microwave because chemicals like biphenyl A (BPA) can leach and contaminate food; use a French-press coffeemaker instead of one with phthalate-containing tubing; avoid Teflon, Gore-Tex and stain, grease and water-resistant materials; and steer clear of cosmetics containing triclosan, formaldehyde, toluene, dibutyl phthalate, and lead. She also suggests cleaning with white vinegar and baking soda rather than harsh chemical cleansers.


Regardless of where scientific research goes in the next few years in its conclusions on the environmental connections to autism, we are undoubtedly in an environmental crisis.


And that current environmental crisis will take more than individual action, which is why Belli believes the government needs to enforce and strengthen environmental protections. The Toxic Substances Control Act was first passed in 1976 and has remained essentially unchanged—that is, toothless--for 36 years. When the Act passed Congress it grandfathered in 62,000 chemicals, in essence giving a free pass to known toxins such as trichloroethylene and BPA. To remedy this, Senator Frank Lautenberg has introduced the Safe Chemicals Act (S. 847), which would, for the first time, require industry to provide information on the health and safety of chemicals in order for them to be introduced or remain on the market. It would further allow the EPA to take immediate action on hazardous chemicals including lead, mercury and flame retardants.


Whether passage would roll back autism levels to what they were 20 or 30 years ago is impossible to know. What is certain is this: The number of autism diagnoses is spiraling and is cause for immediate concern and immediate action. One child in 88 will soon be one adult in 88. And then?

Dan Rather Got it Right: George W. Bush DID go AWOL.

By Leftycoaster | Sourced from DailyKos

 

 

I always suspected something like this was the case. The new issue of Texas Monthly delves into the long neglected story of George W. Bush less than stellar military career in the Texas Air National Guard. The Texas Monthly lays out the surprisingly complicated mechanizations that led to the Junior Bush landing this plumb spot in the T.A.N.G.

That George W. got special treatment at a time when draftees were likely to end up slogging through the jungles of Viet Nam shouldn't come as too much of a surprise to anyone who knows how America routinely gives special treatment to the offspring of the 1%. What did come as a surprise was why George W. stopped flying and that he apparently did so with the tacit approval of his commanding officers in TANG, who who viewed Bush's move to Alabama to work on Winton "Red" Blount's campaign for the U.S. Senate as the the Junior Bush's effective departure from their unit and apparently from his 6 year obligation to the National Guard as well.

Truth or Consequences(subscription)

by Joe Hagan
MAY 2012

But the CBS documents that seem destined to haunt Rather are, and have always been, a red herring. The real story, assembled here for the first time in a single narrative, featuring new witnesses and never-reported details, is far more complex than what Rather and Mapes rushed onto the air in 2004. At the time, so much rancorous political gamesmanship surrounded Bush’s military history that it was impossible to report clearly (and Rather’s flawed report effectively ended further investigations). But with Bush out of office, this is no longer a problem.

While the Linkes were there, Bush’s former commanding officer, Lieutenant Colonel Jerry Killian, allegedly told them that Bush had stopped flying because he became afraid to land the plane. “He was mucking up bad, Killian told us,” Janet said to a Florida newspaper. (Jan Peter died in a car accident in 1973.)

But by the time Linke went public with her allegation, the press had already abandoned the Bush National Guard story for the Dan Rather controversy. Also ignored was some possible corroborating evidence...

What’s clear, however, is that Bush’s superiors made it unusually easy for him to quit flying and leave Houston. They first attempted to sign him up for a postal unit in Alabama that met once a month. (The commander of the outfit told Bush he couldn’t guarantee that the group would even exist in three months but added, “We’re glad to have you!”) When Bush was informed that he couldn’t fulfill his duty by doing that, he sent a letter requesting “equivalent duty” with the 187th Tactical Reconnaissance Group, at Dannelly Air Base, in Montgomery. The unit commander, in official memos, said Bush could start by attending two drills in September 1972. He didn’t show up for the drills.

When Bush lost his flight status, in August 1972, the official military protocol of the Texas Air National Guard was to open an internal investigation and review why the pilot didn’t show up for his physical. It says so on Bush’s own documents. That never happened.

Bush’s go-to expert on his military record, Albert Lloyd, said a report wasn’t necessary because Bush’s commanders knew he had stopped flying to go to work in Alabama—proof only that the Air National Guard blew off the rules when it came to Bush.

The Junior Bush wasn't so much disobeying orders as getting vague orders crafted to fit into his plans. Too bad so many other young Americans without Bush's Daddy's connections had their lives interrupted to be sent off to Viet Nam.

Also see the last in exlrrp's series on Bush's TANG career Bush Military History Project- still at it.

Here' is a link to the military's own records with a hat tip to exlrrp.

6 Burning Questions on the Wal-Mart Corruption Scandal.

 

 

 

 

AlterNet / By Marcia L. Narine

A law professor and compliance consultant examines the scandal as a wake-up call for corruption and corporate culture.

 

 

I've worked for many years as a compliance consultant, and no one I know in corporate America was surprised by the recent New York Times allegations that Wal-Mart de Mexico spent over twenty million dollars to bribe Mexican officials to fast track their store openings. Unfortunately, doing in business in Mexico, China, India, Brazil, Russia, Africa and a number of other places means that government officials are going to ask for bribes. Some - but not all - companies pay them as a cost of doing business. If the allegations against Wal-Mart prove to be true, the case is a wake-up call to companies and investors that there are more important things than profits and growth. A company's ethical reputation is priceless.

When I served as a compliance officer for a multinational company a few years ago, I trained a Chinese businessman on the US bribery laws. He asked why the United States focused so much on the small bribes that get things done while allowing American legislators to accept big checks from corporate donors who wanted favorable legislation and tax treatment. I admit that I had no good answer other than the fact that lobbying is not illegal in the US, but bribery is.

As a law professor who uses Wal-Mart as a case study on corporate responsibility, what surprised me was the reported coverup at the highest levels of the organization once executives at Wal-Mart’s headquarters learned of the alleged bribery from one of their own managers in Mexico in 2005. Ironically, on the last day of class last week, I assigned one group of students to propose five priorities out of 50 choices for Wal-Mart’s board to consider. They presciently chose beefing up global regulatory compliance and ensuring that the company had a social media and crisis management plan in place in the event of a corporate scandal.

Not surprisingly, the corporate social responsibility report that the company released this month using a globally accepted set of metrics failed to provide any information at all in the section related to bribery, including the information that wouldn’t necessarily put the company in legal jeopardy such as what percentage of employees have been trained in anticorruption or how many business units had been audited for potential bribery.

In fact, it appears that the company’s significant and laudable efforts at corporate social responsibility and sustainability around the world have not bought it any goodwill with legislators, the press or the public. Wal-Mart’s official response to the New York Times story rang hollow to many.


The appointment of a new global anticorruption officer and infrastructure may be too little too late to satisfy critics. At least three law firms are “investigating” the possibility of suing Wal-Mart and are soliciting “deceived” investors. To date, Wal-Mart has lost over $10 billion in value after its share price dropped. Anti-Wal-Mart crusaders feel vindicated and invigorated, and Congress has demanded answers. The company will face extra scrutiny as it tries to expand abroad. Wal-Mart should also expect tough questions from its shareholders at its annual meeting in June.

If past experience is any guide, Wal-Mart will likely pay over $100 million in legal fees to investigate and defend itself and could pay significant amounts in fines to both the Department of Justice and Securities and Exchange Commission. (For an excellent description of Wal-Mart’s potential legal woes, see "Wal-Mart's FCPA Scrutiny Grows.")

In December when Wal-Mart first disclosed its internal investigation to Wall Street after learning of the New York Times story, I compared the company to Massey Energy, which had just settled with the government after willfully violating the law and causing the deaths of 29 miners. I argued that the government should treat companies differently depending on their good-faith efforts to prevent criminal acts. I assumed that Wal-Mart’s alleged bribery was not widespread and involved a few rogue managers around the world who chose to ignore the training, policies and a strong tone at the top.

I predicted that “depending on what they find, the company will do what every good corporate citizen does to avoid indictment -- disclose all factual findings and underlying information of its internal investigation, waive the attorney-client privilege and work product protection, fire employees, replace management, and actively participate in any government investigations of employees, competitors, agents and vendors.”

Perhaps I was naïve. I assumed that because of the government’s well-publicized war on bribery, a company with vast resources and a less-than-stellar public image would have a robust compliance program. I assumed that the world’s largest employer understood the legal ramifications under not only the bribery laws but also Sarbanes-Oxley, which requires the CEO and CFO to sign off on the accuracy of financial statements and adequacy of internal controls under threat of civil and criminal penalties. I assumed a corporate culture that may not have existed when these incidents reportedly occurred.

Despite Wal-Mart’s actions, some members of the press’ zeal for a headline-grabbing story has led to a sensationalist treatment of a serious issue. For example, many are now focusing on the fact that Wal-Mart (and many other companies and former government officials, by the way) have lobbied Congress for a “defense” to bribery. In reality many in the business community have proposed meaningful reform that doesn’t unduly penalize companies for the acts of reprobate employees who violate clearly established and enforced rules without management’s approval or knowledge and who ignore training on ethical and legal practices.

No organization that I am aware of contends that companies that have clearly and repeatedly violated the law with sustained, significant bribes or willful blindness to the possibility of bribes could avail themselves of any proposed defense. Make no mistake, if the allegations against Wal-Mart are true, clearly there would and should be no defense for the executives’ reported refusal to correct the wrongdoing when notified by a credible source and prohibition of an independent spare no expense investigation. If true, the government needs to levy fines that cause the company real pain and needs to prosecute as many people as possible both to deter Wal-Mart and other companies from future criminality. It’s possible, however, unless worse facts are revealed, after the spotlight shifts to the next corporate scandal, the company and government will settle and Wal-Mart won’t face prosecution at all.

Here are the questions that regulators, shareholders and legislators should ask Wal-Mart:

1) Who was fired, not merely reassigned or permitted to resign following the initial cursory internal investigation in 2005? Will Wal-Mart fire any executives if an independent investigation uncovers more facts? Who will fall on the sword, take responsibility and resign even before the investigations end?

2) Did the board fail in its legal duty to oversee the adequacy of the compliance program? Did board members ask the probing questions that may have led to answers they didn’t want to hear but needed to know?

3) What kind of corporate culture did Wal-Mart foster to either engender or minimize respect for compliance? What changed following past high-profile allegations related to the use of child labor overseas, undocumented workers, wage and hour violations and a near miss on a potential sex discrimination class case?

4) Where were the gatekeepers from internal audit, finance, compliance and legal counsel? Other than former international general counsel and the director or corporate investigations, did any of them protest the executives’ actions several years ago to sweep bribery reports under the rug? Did any of them go to the board? Did they feel empowered to do so?

5) Does the company have financial incentives in place that either encourage unlawful or unethical behavior through goals that are impossible to reach or that fail to penalize bad conduct?

6) How does the company know that its training and auditing practices for its employees, agents, suppliers and partners are effective?

Similarly, socially responsible investors should hold the company accountable at the June annual meeting, through shareholders resolutions, substantive meetings with management and detailed progress reports as to the effectiveness of the new compliance structure.

All companies should ensure that their employees know they can and must do business legally in environments in which the local governments demand payment to play. While “facilitating” payments to expedite permits may be legal under US law, in many countries, including Mexico, they’re considered pure bribes even if they are requested and expected. And even if they were legal under US and Mexican law, Wal-Mart would have been required to accurately report these payments in their books.

Instead of pandering to the justifiable public outrage, we need to get to the heart of the scandal -- a corporate culture that reportedly condoned widespread bribery and deliberately suppressed efforts to investigate further.

While none of this may be important to the average Wal-Mart shopper who values convenience for the cheapest price on goods and services, the allegations, if corroborated, are a serious reminder to all companies and investors that there are more important things than profits and growth. Crime should not pay and an ethical reputation is priceless.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Marcia L. Narine is a visiting assistant professor at the University of Missouri-Kansas City and a compliance consultant for MDO Partners.

The Self-Made Myth: Debunking Conservatives' Favorite -- And Most Dangerous -- Fiction.

 

Photo Credit: Gage Skidmore

AlterNet / By Sara Robinson

 

 

A new book makes a strong case that nobody ever makes it on their own in America.

 

The self-made myth is one of the most cherished foundation stones of the conservative theology. Nurtured by Horatio Alger and generations of beloved boys' stories, It sits at the deep black heart of their entire worldview, where it provides the essential justification for a great many other common right-wing beliefs. It feeds the accusation that government is evil because it only exists to redistribute wealth from society's producers (self-made, of course) and its parasites (who refuse to work). It justifies conservative rage against progressives, who are seen as wanting to use government to forcibly take away what belongs to the righteous wealthy. It's piously invoked by hedge fund managers and oil billionaires, who think that being required to reinvest any of their wealth back into the public society that made it possible is "punishing success." It's the foundational belief on which all of Ayn Rand's novels stand.

If you've heard it once from your Fox-watching uncle, you've probably heard it a hundred times. "The government never did anything for me, dammit," he grouses. "Everything I have, I earned. Nobody ever handed me anything. I did it all on my own. I'm a self-made man."

He's just plain wrong. Flat-out, incontrovertibly, inarguably wrong. So profoundly wrong, in fact, that we probably won't be able to change the national discourse on taxes, infrastructure, education, government investment, technology policy, transportation, welfare, or our future prospects as a country until we can effectively convince the country of the monumental wrongness of this one core point.

The Built-Together Realty
Brian Miller and Mike Lapham have written the book that lays out the basic arguments we can use to begin to set things right. The Self-Made Myth: The Truth About How Government Helps Individuals and Businesses Succeed is a clear, concise, easy-to-read-and-use summary that brings forward a far more accurate argument about government's central role in creating the conditions for economic prosperity and personal opportunity.

Miller, the executive director of United For a Fair Economy, and Lapham, a co-founder of UFE's Responsible Wealth project, argue that the self-made myth absolves our economic leaders from doing anything about inequality, frames fair wages as extortion from deserving producers, and turns the social safety net into a moral hazard that can only promote laziness and sloth. They argue that progressives need to overwrite this fiction with the far more supportable idea of the "built-together reality," which points up the truth that nobody in America ever makes it alone. Every single private fortune can be traced back to basic public investments that have, as Warren Buffet argues in the book, created the most fertile soil on the planet for entrepreneurs to succeed.

To their credit, Miller and Lapham don't ask us to take this point on faith. Right out of the gate, they regale us with three tales of famous "self-made" men -- Donald Trump, Ross Perot and the Koch brothers, whose own stories put the lie to the myth. (This section alone is worth the price of admission -- these guys so did not make it on their own!) Once those treasured right-wing exemplars are thoroughly discredited, the middle of the book offers a welcome corrective: interviews with 14 wealthy Americans -- including well-known names like Warren Buffet, Ben Cohen, Abigail Disney, and Amy Domini, who are very explicit about the ways in which government action laid the groundwork for their success. Over and over, these people credit their wealth to:

* An excellent education received in public schools and universities. Jerry Fiddler of Wind River Software (you're probably running his stuff in your cell phone or car) went to the University of Chicago, and started his computer career at the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory. Bookseller Thelma Kidd got her start at Texas Tech and the University of Michigan. Warren Buffet went to the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Nebraska as an undergrad. And beyond that: several interviewees paid for their educations with federal Pell Grants and Stafford loans.

Over and over, the point gets made: public universities -- and the good public schools that feed them, and the funding programs that put them within financial reach -- have hatched millions of American entrepreneurs who might not have been fledged without that opportunity to get an education.

* The support of the Small Business Administration and other government agencies. Ben Cohen notes that almost all the business training he and Jerry Greenfield had came from the extension courses at the University of Vermont and Penn State, and small brochures produced by the SBA. And as they spun up, they also got an Urban Development Action Grant from the federal government. Other interviewees started their businesses in incubators or other quarters provided or arranged by their local city governments.

* A strong regulatory environment that protected their businesses from being undercut by competitors willing to cut corners, and ensured that their manufacturing inputs are of consistently high quality. Glynn Lloyd of Boston's City Fresh Foods points out that nobody in the food business can get by without reliable sources of clean water; and that the USDA inspection process is an important piece of his quality control.

* Enforceable copyright and intellectual property laws that enabled them to protect good ideas. Abigail Disney recalls that her father, Roy Disney, and her Uncle Walt made and lost one great cartoon character -- Oswald the Rabbit -- because they didn't have copyright protection. They didn't repeat that mistake when Mickey Mouse was born three years later, launching the Disney empire.

* A robust system of roads, ports, airports, and mass transit that enabled them to reliably move their goods both within the US, and around the world. Kim Jordan of New Belgium Brewing (the makers of Fat Tire beer) points out that "Beer is heavy, and it needs to be transported in vehicles. Certainly, the highway system has been important to New Belgium Brewing." Lloyd also points out that Boston's excellent public transit system enables him to draw on a far wider employee base.

* The government's role in creating the Internet, without which almost no modern company can function. Anirvan Chatterjee built Bookfinder.com (now a subsidiary of Amazon.com), the world's biggest online used-book marketplace, an achievement that wouldn't have been remotely imaginable without DARPA, the establishment and enforcement of common protocols, and significant congressional investment in the 1980s to take the Internet commercial.

* The ability to issue public stock in a fair, reliable, regulated marketplace -- a benefit that raised the value of several interviewees' companies by about 30 percent overnight. Peter Barnes, founder of Working Assets, spoke with concern about the loss of trust in this system over the past decade. "The corporate scandals [Enron and Worldcom] caused people to stop trusting the numbers that companies were reporting. Imagine how much value is created by trust and the whole system that assures that trust?"

Besides the government, most of those interviewed also locate their companies in the context of a large community of customers they utterly depend on for their success. "It takes a village to raise a business," says Nikhil Arora of Back to the Roots, a sustainable products company that came about through partnerships and grants from UC Berkeley, Peet's Coffee and other interested parties.
Others are quick to acknowledge the contributions of their employees, without whom their companies wouldn't exist. When Gun Denhart and her husband sold their company, children's clothier Hanna Andersson, in 2003, they distributed a healthy portion of the sale proceeds to their employees, prorated on the basis of their length of service.

All businesses exist within a vast network of human connections -- customers, vendors, employees, investors, and the communities that support their work. These stories make it clear: saying you did it all yourself and therefore don't owe anybody anything is about as absurd (and self-centered) as saying that you raised yourself from babyhood, without any input from your parents, and therefore don't have any further obligations to your family.

The Role of Luck and Timing
We all know wealth isn't just a matter of hard work, brains or talent. Most of us probably know some hard-working, brilliant, or extraordinarily talented people who aren't being rewarded at anything close to their true value. So perhaps the most intriguing and useful part of the book is a long discussion of the many other factors that go into making someone wealthy -- factors that are blithely brushed off the table whenever the self-made myth is invoked.

Rich conservatives have to downplay the role of luck. After all, if we think they're just lucky, rather than exceptionally deserving of exceptional wealth, we'll be a lot more justified in taxing their fortunes. But luck -- the fortunate choice of parents, for example, or landing the right job or industry at the right time -- plays a huge role in any individual's success. Timing also matters: most of the great fortunes of the 19th century were accumulated by men born during the 1830s, who were of an age to capitalize on the huge economic boom created by the expansion of the railroads after the Civil War. Likewise, the great tech fortunes almost all belong to people born between 1950 and 1955, who were well-positioned to create pioneering companies in the tech boom of the late 1970s and 1980s. Such innovative times don't come along very often; and being born when the stars lined up just so doesn't make you more entitled. It just makes you luckier.

Because Americans in general like to think we're an equal society, we're also quick to discount the importance of race, gender, appearance, class, upbringing, and other essential forms of social capital that can open doors for people who have it -- and close them on those who don't. The self-made myth allows us to deflect our attention from these critical factors, undermining our determination to level the playing field for those who don't start life with a pocket fat with advantages.


What Changes?

The book winds up with specific policy prescriptions that can bring the built-together reality back into sharper political and cultural focus. The last section shows how abandoning the self-made myth for a built-together reality creates fresh justification for a more progressive income tax, the repeal of the capital gains exemption and raising corporate and inheritance taxes. It also makes a far more compelling philosophical backdrop against which progressives can argue for increased investment in infrastructure, education, a fair minimum wage, a strong social safety net, and better anti-discrimination laws.

But the most striking thing about the book -- implicit throughout, but explicit nowhere -- was the alternative vision of capitalism it offers. Throughout the book, Miller and Lapham seem to be making the tacit case that businesses premised on the built-together reality are simply more fair, more generous, more sustainable, and more humane. While far from perfect (Disney's empire being one case in point), they are, as a group, markedly more aware of the high costs of exploiting their workers, their customers, the economy, or the environment. Owners who believe themselves to be beholden to a community for their success will tend to value and invest back into that community, and they seem to be far more willing to realize when they've got enough and it's time to start giving back.

The implication is clear: if we can interrupt American's long love affair with the self-made myth, we will effectively pull the center tent pole out from under the selfish assumptions that shelter most of the excesses of corporate behavior that characterize our age. This isn't just another point of contention between progressives and conservatives; it's somewhere near the very center of the disconnect between our worldviews. The Self-Made Myth is an essential primer that gives us the language and stories to begin talking about this difference, and the tools to begin to bend that conversation in some new and more hopeful directions.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Sara Robinson, MS, APF is a social futurist and the editor of AlterNet's Vision page.

Earth Day 2012: This Isn't About Tree-Hugging Anymore, It's About The Way We Live.

By Edward Norton - Actor; Founder, Crowdrise

 

Most of what I know about environmental conservation I learned from my father, who has been one of the leading minds and strategic architects of the movement for over 30 years.

When Dad was head of public policy for the Wilderness Society in the early '80s, he affixed a "Swat Watt" bumper-sticker to our Volvo... I asked who James Watt was and why we needed to swat him and thus began my education in the interplay between politics and the environment... a discourse that has essentially continued to this day. In litigating the Watt EPA, founding the Grand Canyon Trust, leading the Nature Conservancy's pioneering program in China, and brokering the largest public/private purchase of timber holdings for conservancy in U.S. history or working with private equity titans to audit the environmental impact of their investments to increase both their sustainability and their returns, Dad's essential accomplishment, along with other leading advocates of his generation, has been to infuse hard-nosed professionalism and legal acumen into a movement that had previously been anchored in emotional appeal from the days of John Muir through to David Brower.

Dad's career spans an era that has seen the strategy of fighting for the 'intrinsic spiritual value of nature' give way to making the 'bottom line' argument that we have to accurately account for the value of natural resources in our global economy and confront the economic consequences of destruction of ecosystems and loss of biodiversity. In the face of the needs of 7 billion people, this might now have to be acknowledged as the only argument that stands us a chance of saving the planet anymore. This also happens to be the moment that Dad's generation is passing the baton to mine and it doesn't seem too dramatic to suggest that what we do with it in the next 40 years is going to define the next era of human experience on Earth.

I think that every generation is called in different ways to a higher purpose and is forced to realize that the Great Challenge of an era will identify itself; we don't get to choose it. My grandparent's generation certainly had other plans when they rose and faced the great battles against fascism and totalitarianism; my parents' generation sacrificed care-free youth to carry the torch of civil rights and social equality.

I'm 42 years old. I have little doubt that the legacy of my generation and likely the next will hinge on how we responded to the revelation that we were altering the natural systems of this planet in ways that could not sustain our civilization. The geo-political realities of our moment and all of our domestic social arguments are going to seem like minor squabbles to future generations facing the massive destabilizations that we're queuing up for them with our heedless degradation of the global environment. Whether our great-great grandchildren look at us as wise or as latter-day Nero's, fiddling while the planet burned, is a fate that's going to be decided by what we do in the second Century of the environmental movement.

I feel fairly confident in saying that my generation and even those younger than us have accepted this as our cause and that we are ready to rise to the challenge. And by that I don't mean just the small acts of using CFL's and biodegradable soaps and less plastic. I mean that we understand and are prepared to pay the true long-term costs of overhauling the basic infrastructure of how we live. But we face a daunting reality, which is that all the activism of the last 50 years has not stopped the juggernaut of environmental degradation and climate change and all of the righteous advocacy of the next 50 will still not meet the scale of this challenge unless bold action is taken by political leadership.

Let's say this bluntly: We need a national, bi-partisan commitment to legislation curbing carbon emissions here at home and we need it to have teeth and we need it immediately. And we need to invest in an American technological future that operates sustainably within the natural systems that support our lives.

This isn't about tree-hugging and fish-kissing anymore, it's about the way we live. In the housing sector alone, a federal investment of $5 billion a year over 10 years to 'greening' our housing stock could deliver huge benefits across the board: 25-40 percent energy savings in up to 25 million residential units, up to 50 million tons of carbon dioxide emissions avoided and hundreds of thousands of green jobs created annually when fully implemented.

Such a federal commitment is relatively modest when one considers that HUD currently spends more than $4 billion annually to pay utilities in inefficient government-assisted properties.

The point is that solutions are available but there has been faint political will and now there is no more time for small scale, incremental progress. Policymakers must act with urgency and seriousness of purpose. For starters, Congress simply should not continue to allow taxpayer funds to support building of any kind that does not meet a more demanding minimum standard for energy efficiency and lower carbon emissions.

These are policy decisions that should be easy...they transcend partisan economic philosophies and achieve that rare benchmark of true common sense.

International agreements like the Convention on Biodiversity are important too. Cynics could say these are gestural or bureaucratic or difficult to enforce... but the world community can't get serious about addressing a problem unless that problem is defined, acknowledged and solutions are outlined. How much time have we wasted failing to address climate change just trying to get our leaders to acknowledge the fact that it is happening? Leadership means facing difficult realities and committing to the sacrifices entailed in addressing them. The United States is one of only 3 countries in the United Nations that is not a signatory to the Convention on Biodiversity, having failed to ratify President Clinton's commitment. That's not leadership.

Grassroots action matters too. Earth Day is important because it's about waking up more people to this challenge and committing to engage in it more deeply ourselves. Power in numbers is real, and when we take collective action it matters. We can affect things with daily choices like the products we buy, we can affect things with our votes and we can also affect the pace of change by directly supporting the many terrific organizations working for environmental health.

My partners and I at CrowdRise have set up this fundraising Challenge where you can read all about dozens of the organizations working for the cause of defending the Earth, with all its miraculous life and incredible systems, and a small contribution will help some of them win a total of $50,000 in support from our pals at Groupon.

Martin Luther King spoke famously of 'the urgency of now' but his next words were equally profound. He said:
"We have no time to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism."

It's time to get serious.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Edward Norton is an actor and filmmaker who has starred in over 25 films and been nominated for two Academy Awards. He serves as the UN Ambassador for Biodiversity and is a Board member of Enterprise Community Partners, one of the largest non-profit developers of 'green' affordable housing in America. In 2010 he co-founded CrowdRise, a web platform to empower people and charities to revolutionize activism and fundraising.

May Day's Radical History: What Occupy Is Fighting for This May 1st.

AlterNet / By Jacob Remes

Occupy actions planned on May Day are tied to the generations-long movement for the eight-hour day, to immigrant workers, to police brutality and repression of the labor movement.

 

 

 

American general strikes—or rather, American calls for general strikes, like the one Occupy Los Angeles issued last December that has been endorsed by over 150 general assemblies—are tinged with nostalgia.

The last real general strike in this country, which is to say, the last general strike that shut down a city, was in Oakland, California in 1946—though journalist John Nichols has suggested that what we saw in Madison, Wisconsin last year was a sort of general strike. When we call a general strike, or talk of one, we refer not to a current mode of organizing; we refer back, implicitly or explicitly, to some of the most militant moments in American working-class history. People posting on the Occupy strike blog How I Strike have suggested that next week’s May Day is highly symbolic. As we think about and develop new ways of “general striking,” we also reconnect with a past we've mostly forgotten.

So it makes sense that this year’s call for an Occupy general strike—whatever ends up happening on Tuesday—falls on May 1. May Day is a beautifully American holiday, one created by American workers, crushed by the American government, incubated abroad, and returned to the United States by immigrant workers.

The history of May 1 as a workers’ holiday is intimately tied to the generations-long movement for the eight-hour day, to immigrant workers, to police brutality and repression of the labor movement, and to the long tradition of American anarchism.

Perhaps the first nation-wide labor movement in the United States started in 1864, when workers began to agitate for an eight-hour day. This was, in their understanding, a natural outgrowth of the abolition of slavery; a limited work day allowed workers to spend more time with their families, to pursue education, and to enjoy leisure time. In other words, a shorter work day meant freedom. It was not for nothing that in 1866, workers celebrated the Fourth of July by singing “John Brown’s Body” with new lyrics demanding an eight-hour day. Agitating for shorter hours became a broad-based mass movement, and skilled and unskilled workers organized together. The movement would allow no racial, national or even religious divisions. Workers built specific organizations—Eight Hour Leagues—but they also used that momentum to establish new unions and strengthen old ones. That year, the Eight Hour Movement gained its first legislative victory when Illinois passed a law limiting work hours.

The demand for an eight-hour day was about leisure, self-improvement and freedom, but it was also about power. When Eight Hour Leagues agitated for legislation requiring short hours, they were demanding what had never before happened: that the government regulate industry for the advantage of workers. And when workers sought to enforce the eight-hour day without the government—through declaring for themselves, through their unions, under what conditions they would work—they sought something still more radical: control over their own workplaces. It is telling that employers would often counter a demand for shorter hours with an offer of a wage increase. Wage increases could be given (and taken away) by employers without giving up their power; agreeing to shorter hours was, employers knew, the beginning of losing their arbitrary power over their workers.

The Illinois eight-hour law was to go into effect May 1, 1867. That day, tens of thousands of Chicago’s workers celebrated in what a newspaper called “the largest procession ever seen on the streets of Chicago.” But the day after, employers, en masse, ignored the law, ordering their workers to stay the customary 10 or 11 hours. The city erupted in a general strike--workers struck, and those who didn’t leave work were forced to by gangs of their colleagues roaming through the streets, armed with sticks, dragging out scabs. After several days of the strike, the state militia arrived and occupied working-class neighborhoods. By May 8, employers and the state they controlled had won, and workers went back to work with their long hours. The loss of the eight-hour-day movement led also to a massive decline in unions, and the labor movement would not pick up in such numbers for almost two decades.

The Illinois law and its defeat, however, were not forgotten. By the 1880s, a new labor movement had grown up in Chicago. This one was more radical and was dominated by immigrant workers from Germany. They remembered 1877, when a strike by railroad workers spread around the country. For a brief moment, as strikers took control of St. Louis and Pittsburgh, staring down the national guard and local police, nobody knew what would happen. But President Rutherford B. Hayes called out the army and brutally repressed the strike. They also remembered the state was rarely if ever on the side of the worker. Yet they also remembered the brief shining moment when it appeared that there might be an eight-hour day.

So in 1886, the Chicago Central Labor Union again demanded an eight-hour day. Led largely by anarchists like August Spies and Albert Parsons, this renewed movement demanded “eight for 10”--that is, eight hours’ work for 10 hours’ pay. Throughout the winter of 1886, they successfully organized and won a series of small victories, largely in German butchers’ shops, breweries and bakeries, where owners agreed to recognize unions and grant shorter hours. Then they issued a new demand: that again on May 1, Chicago would go on a general strike and not return to work unless employers agreed to an eight-hour workday.

The demands of the militant Chicago anarchists coincided with a massive upswing in other militant movements. Workers and Texas farmers were rebelling against a monopolistic railroad system. The Knights of Labor were rapidly organizing and spreading their vision of a cooperative, rather than capitalistic, society. “What happened on May 1, 1886,” writes James Green, the most recent and most accessible historian to have written about it, “was more than a general strike; it was a ‘populist moment’ when working people believed they could destroy plutocracy, redeem democracy and then create a new ‘cooperative commonwealth.’”

Four days later, it all came crashing down. On May 3, police had shot to death six strikers at the McCormick Works, where a long-standing labor dispute had turned the factory into an armed camp, and beaten dozens more. On May 4, anarchists held an outdoor indignation meeting at a square called the Haymarket to protest the police murders. Anarchist leader Samuel Fielden was wrapping up his speech when the police, led by the same inspector who had led the charge at McCormick the night before, moved in to disperse the crowd. “But we are peaceable!” Fielden cried, and just then somebody wasn’t. Somebody threw a bomb at the police, the police open fire, and the course of American history changed.

To this day we do not know, nor will we likely ever know, who threw the bomb. Some say it was an agent provocateur. Some say it was an anarchist. If it wasn’t an anarchist, it surely could have been, since there were indeed anarchists who made bombs and would have thrown one given the opportunity. But we also know that many of those who died that night, including police, were felled by the police bullets.

We also know that the effect of the Haymarket bombing was far greater on the labor movement than it was on the police. Eight anarchist leaders were rounded up and put on trial for the murder of a police officer. No evidence was ever given that any of them threw the bomb, and only the flimsiest evidence was presented that any of them were remotely involved. All eight were convicted, and seven were sentenced to hang. Two of these had their sentences commuted, and a third—Louis Lingg, undoubtedly the most radical and militant of them—cheated the hangman by chewing a detonator cap and blowing off his jaw. The remaining four—August Spies, Albert Parsons, Samuel Fischer, and George Engel—were hanged on November 11, 1887. They went to their deaths singing the Marseillaise, then an anthem of the international revolutionary movement, and before he died, Spies shouted out his famous last words: “The time will come when our silence will be more powerful than the voices you strangle today.”

Before that happened, the state ensured more silence. The strike collapsed. Police around the country raided radicals’ homes and newspapers. The Knights of Labor never recovered. In the place of the radical industrial labor movement of the mid-1880s rose the American Federation of Labor, the much more exclusive and conservative organization that would dominate the labor movement until the 1930s. Meanwhile, it would take until the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 to finally enshrine the eight-hour day into federal law.

May 1 would live on, mostly abroad. In 1889, French syndicalist Raymond Lavigne proposed to the Second International—the international and internationalist coalition of socialist parties—that May 1 be celebrated internationally the next year to honor the Haymarket Martyrs and demand the eight-hour day, and the year after that the International adopted the day as an international workers’ holiday. In countries with strong socialist and communist traditions, May 1 became the primary day to celebrate work, workers and their organizations, often with direct and explicit reference to the Haymarket Martyrs. May Day remains an official holiday in countries ranging from Argentina to India to Malaysia to Croatia—and dozens of countries in between.

Yet in the United States, with some exception, the workers’ tradition of May 1 died out. Partially this was because the Knights of Labor had already established a labor day in September. Opportunistic politicians, most notably Grover Cleveland, glommed onto the Knights’ holiday in order to diminish the symbolic power of May 1. In 1921, May Day was declared “Americanization Day,” and later “Loyalty Day” in a deliberately ironic attempt to co-opt the holiday. Even that was not enough, though, and in 1958 Dwight Eisenhower added “Law Day” to the mix, presumably a deliberate jibe at the Haymarket anarchists who declared, “All law is slavery.” Today, few if any Americans celebrate Loyalty Day or Law Day—although both are on the books—but the origins of May Day are largely forgotten. Like International Women’s Day (March 8), which also originated in the U.S., International Workers’ Day became a holiday the rest of the world celebrates while Americans look on in confusion, if they notice at all.

Yet May 1 lives on, and indeed has been rejuvenated in the United States in the past few years. In 2006, immigrant activists organized “a day without an immigrant,” a nationwide strike of immigrant workers and rallies. It was perhaps the largest demonstration of workers in United States history. These immigrants, mostly from Latin America, had brought May 1 back to its birthplace, and in so doing they resurrected its history as a day specifically for immigrant workers.

It is appropriate that when the Occupy L. A. first issued its call for a general strike this May 1, it said the strike was “for migrant rights, jobs for all, a moratorium on foreclosures, and peace.” The order was significant, for migrants in the United States have been the ones who have made sure that the voices the state strangled that November day have remained so powerful. And regardless of what happens on Tuesday—and of course an actual general strike, in which cities grind to a halt and workers control what activities occur, is unlikely—we can, through a national day of action for the working class, work toward a new cooperative commonweath. We have a opportunity now to create and renew the labor movement, through new tactics, but ones that pay homage to the generations that preceded us.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Jacob Remes teaches history and public affairs at Empire State College, SUNY’s college for adult learners.

5 Supreme Court Decisions Pandering to Christianity.

AlterNet / ByRob Boston

In these five cases, the Supreme Court dropped the ball on separation of church and state.

In theory, the Supreme Court is where Americans turn to protect their rights when all else fails. The high court is supposed to be beyond the reach of politics, and more importantly, beyond the reach of popular will. After all, just because many Americans want something doesn’t mean it’s constitutional.

This is true especially in matters of religion. Despite what many Americans believe, the majority does not rule when it comes to religion. Core freedoms depend on no vote. Most people in your town may sincerely believe that compelling students to say Christian prayers or learn creationism in public schools is a desirable – but that doesn’t make it legal.

In the main, the Supreme Court has done a pretty good job of upholding the separation of church and state. The high court has put the brakes on mandatory religious worship in public schools and barred direct tax support of sectarian enterprises.

But the court has made a few missteps along the way. That’s inevitable because as much as we’d like to think that the court is not a political institution, presidents do use the power of appointment to shape the bench, beyond their own terms in office.

Here are five cases where the Supreme Court dropped the ball on separation of church and state.


1. Holy Trinity Church v. United States (1892): Congress, in one of its periodic waves of anti-immigrant delirium, passed a law placing restrictions on the ability of American firms to hire laborers from overseas. Holy Trinity Church in New York, which had contracted with a minister in England to be its pastor, was accused of violating the law.

The Supreme Court ruled for the church. Justice David Brewer asserted that the law was intended to apply to manual laborers, not other types of workers. A minister, the court wrote, was a “toiler of the brain” and thus exempt from the act.

Unfortunately, Brewer did not stop there. He went off on a tangent and started compiling evidence of the religious nature of the American people. Brewer concluded, “These, and many other matters which might be noticed, add a volume of unofficial declarations to the mass of organic utterances that this is a Christian nation.”

Brewer’s diatribe is considered dicta, a legal term meaning writing not directly relevant to the case. But the damage was done. Holy Trinity has never been cited in the modern era and established no precedent in church-state relations, but it gave ammunition to Religious Right activists who still cite it today as proof that America is a “Christian nation.”

2. Zorach v. Clauson (1952): In a 1947 case called McCollum v. Board of Education, the Supreme Court struck down an Illinois law that allowed religious instructors to enter public schools during the day for “voluntary” worship and theological instruction.

In response, proponents of the idea tweaked the plan and came up with an idea whereby students would leave school during the day for religious instruction offsite. They called it “released time.” In 1952, the Supreme Court upheld released time on a 6-3 vote.

That was bad enough. For some reason, Justice William O. Douglas decided to expound on the religiosity of America. “We are a religious people whose institutions presuppose a Supreme Being,” Douglas wrote. He later added, “When the state encourages religious instruction or cooperates with religious authorities, it follows the best of our traditions.”

Douglas’ endorsement of symbolic union between church and state has been seized on by Religious Right advocates who have used it to justify official prayer in public schools and other schemes. Luckily, the Supreme Court has never fully embraced this line of argument. However, the Douglas passage has been used to buttress various forms of “civil religion” over the years.

Douglas may have realized his mistake. He went on to become one of the high court’s strongest advocates for separation of church and state. As for released time, while in some parts of the country it’s popular (especially Utah where the Mormons have fine-tuned it to an art form), by and large it never really caught on.

3. McGowan v. Maryland (1961): Many states used to have laws regulating what stores could sell on Sunday. In 1961, two challenges to these “blue laws” reached the Supreme Court, one from Pennsylvania and one from Maryland.

Blue laws had never made much sense. Some commerce on Sunday is inevitable. Medicine and other health-related items could be sold, for example, as could Sunday newspapers, gas for cars and so on.
In Maryland, the law limited Sunday sales to food, medicine, gasoline and newspapers. Opponents argued that limiting sales on Sunday, the Christian Sabbath, violated church-state separation. They noted that blue laws were a throwback to the Puritan era.

Remarkably, the Supreme Court in McGowan disagreed. In an 8-1 ruling, the high court lamely asserted that blue laws, though they indeed originally had a religious purpose, had become secularized over the years. Their only purpose now, the court declared, was to provide a “day of rest” for weary retail workers. (Of course, many retail workers weren’t getting the day off. Lots of stores were open; they were just restricted in what they could sell.)

But even the court’s poor logic couldn’t save blue laws. The public wanted to shop on Sunday, and stores owners, eager for the extra profits, lobbied for change. Most states were only too happy to comply because they didn’t want to lose tax revenues to neighboring states that allowed Sunday shopping.

Blue laws began to fall. An echo of them still exists in some states where the sale of liquor is curtailed on Sunday or certain stores, such as auto dealerships, are closed.


4. Marsh v. Chambers (1983): If you’ve ever wondered why the House of Representatives, Senate and many state legislative bodies open their deliberations with prayers you need look no further than a 1983 Supreme Court decision called Marsh v. Chambers.

In Marsh, a legislator in Nebraska’s unicameral legislature sued over the practice of paying a chaplain to recite daily prayers. On the surface, it looked like an easy case, since government was not only endorsing prayer but paying for it.

The Supreme Court, however, ruled 6-3 that Nebraska’s practice was constitutional. The justices, it seems, were wary of making the ruling that the First Amendment demands: that taxpayer-paid religious ministers do not square with separation of church and state.

The high court dodged precedent and instead asserted that government chaplains have a long history in the United States and are thus traditional. The majority pointed out that the first Continental Congress had appointed state-funded chaplains, and thus no constitutional violation was found.
The justices did not consider that perhaps the first Congress had got it wrong. After all, an early Congress passed a “Sedition Act” that punished newspaper editors for speaking ill of government officials – an obviously unconstitutional bill.

Justice William Brennan was not taken in. In his dissent, Brennan pointed out that founding father James Madison opposed state-funded legislative chaplains, concluded that the practice had been unconstitutional all along and was not saved by its long history. He argued that the first Congress had acted more out of political concerns than respect for the Constitution some of them had helped draft.


5. Zelman v. Simmons-Harris (2002): In some states, your tax dollars fund Roman Catholic,
fundamentalist Protestant and other religious schools that are free to preach homophobia, “creation science,” sexism and other repugnant ideas through voucher programs. How did this happen in a nation where religion has traditionally paid its own way?

In a close 5-4 ruling, the Supreme Court upheld Ohio’s voucher plan in the case Zelman v. Simmons-Harris. Justice Sandra Day O’Connor was the swing vote. O’Connor bought voucher advocates’ argument that the religious school aid scheme was merely one “choice” among others. Of course, the other choices were illusionary; they amounted to going back to public school or being tutored.

Thanks to the Simmons-Harris ruling, more states are implementing voucher programs, siphoning money away from public schools during a time when tax funding for education is already being slashed. To make matters worse, states almost never require oversight or accountability of religious schools that are awarded tax money. They simply cut the check and walk away.

The Dishonorable Mention: Minersville School District v. Gobitis (1940): Jehovah’s Witness parents brought this challenge to a Pennsylvania law that required public school children to salute the flag every day. Witnesses, who believe in pledging allegiance only to God and not to any earthly symbol, protested. The Supreme Court ruled 8-1 in favor of the state. The flag salute, the high court asserted, was a mainly patriotic exercise necessary to foster national cohesion. “National unity is the basis of national security,” declared the court.

The fallout from the decision was severe. Across the nation, Witnesses were assaulted, forced to leave their homes and even jailed. Their children were expelled from public schools.

Gobitis fails to make the top five because it was short-lived. Three years later, the Supreme Court reversed it in the case West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette. The high court held that public schools could sponsor the flag pledge but that they must excuse dissenters. Observed the court, “If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein.”


What can we learn from this list? Mainly that as much as we would like it to be otherwise, the Supreme Court can be a political institution. Today’s court is delicately balanced on church-state issues, and many recent church-state decisions have been 5-4 rulings.

The president appoints justices, who then face a Senate vote. Except in unusual cases, they are confirmed. High court justices serve for life and can long outlast the presidents who appoint them. (Remember, it was President Ronald Reagan who appointed Antonin Scalia to the Supreme Court way back in 1986.) It’s something to keep in mind the next time you’re in the ballot box.
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Rob Boston is the assistant director of communications for Americans United for Separation of Church and State, which publishes Church and State magazine.