Losing Our Way

I would encourage everyone to photocopy this article and pass it it out at every demonstration across the country along with the unity program on the top of my blog. Post it on every union bulletin board and every break-room and lunch-room. Post it on every church bulletin board and in every school. This op-ed column should form the basis for discussion groups. It is unfortunate that this column is Bob Herbert's last column for the New York Times.

Link: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/26/opinion/26herbert.html?_r=1

Op-Ed Columnist New York Times

Losing Our Way


By BOB HERBERT


Published: March 25, 2011

So here we are pouring shiploads of cash into yet another war, this time in Libya, while simultaneously demolishing school budgets, closing libraries, laying off teachers and police officers, and generally letting the bottom fall out of the quality of life here at home.


Damon Winter/The New York Times

Bob Herbert
Welcome to America in the second decade of the 21st century. An army of long-term unemployed workers is spread across the land, the human fallout from the Great Recession and long years of misguided economic policies. Optimism is in short supply. The few jobs now being created too often pay a pittance, not nearly enough to pry open the doors to a middle-class standard of living.

Arthur Miller, echoing the poet Archibald MacLeish, liked to say that the essence of America was its promises. That was a long time ago. Limitless greed, unrestrained corporate power and a ferocious addiction to foreign oil have led us to an era of perpetual war and economic decline. Young people today are staring at a future in which they will be less well off than their elders, a reversal of fortune that should send a shudder through everyone.

The U.S. has not just misplaced its priorities. When the most powerful country ever to inhabit the earth finds it so easy to plunge into the horror of warfare but almost impossible to find adequate work for its people or to properly educate its young, it has lost its way entirely.

Nearly 14 million Americans are jobless and the outlook for many of them is grim. Since there is just one job available for every five individuals looking for work, four of the five are out of luck. Instead of a land of opportunity, the U.S. is increasingly becoming a place of limited expectations. A college professor in Washington told me this week that graduates from his program were finding jobs, but they were not making very much money, certainly not enough to think about raising a family.

There is plenty of economic activity in the U.S., and plenty of wealth. But like greedy children, the folks at the top are seizing virtually all the marbles. Income and wealth inequality in the U.S. have reached stages that would make the third world blush. As the Economic Policy Institute has reported, the richest 10 percent of Americans received an unconscionable 100 percent of the average income growth in the years 2000 to 2007, the most recent extended period of economic expansion.

Americans behave as if this is somehow normal or acceptable. It shouldn’t be, and didn’t used to be. Through much of the post-World War II era, income distribution was far more equitable, with the top 10 percent of families accounting for just a third of average income growth, and the bottom 90 percent receiving two-thirds. That seems like ancient history now.

The current maldistribution of wealth is also scandalous. In 2009, the richest 5 percent claimed 63.5 percent of the nation’s wealth. The overwhelming majority, the bottom 80 percent, collectively held just 12.8 percent.
This inequality, in which an enormous segment of the population struggles while the fortunate few ride the gravy train, is a world-class recipe for social unrest. Downward mobility is an ever-shortening fuse leading to profound consequences.

A stark example of the fundamental unfairness that is now so widespread was in The New York Times on Friday under the headline: “G.E.’s Strategies Let It Avoid Taxes Altogether.” Despite profits of $14.2 billion — $5.1 billion from its operations in the United States — General Electric did not have to pay any U.S. taxes last year.

As The Times’s David Kocieniewski reported, “Its extraordinary success is based on an aggressive strategy that mixes fierce lobbying for tax breaks and innovative accounting that enables it to concentrate its profits offshore.”

G.E. is the nation’s largest corporation. Its chief executive, Jeffrey Immelt, is the leader of President Obama’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness. You can understand how ordinary workers might look at this cozy corporate-government arrangement and conclude that it is not fully committed to the best interests of working people.

Overwhelming imbalances in wealth and income inevitably result in enormous imbalances of political power. So the corporations and the very wealthy continue to do well. The employment crisis never gets addressed. The wars never end. And nation-building never gets a foothold here at home.

New ideas and new leadership have seldom been more urgently needed.


•

This is my last column for The New York Times after an exhilarating, nearly 18-year run. I’m off to write a book and expand my efforts on behalf of working people, the poor and others who are struggling in our society. My thanks to all the readers who have been so kind to me over the years. I can be reached going forward at bobherbert88@gmail.com

On the road...

These past few days I have been on the road traveling through Minnesota, Wisconsin and now I'm in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan meeting with rank-and-file labor activists and progressive-minded labor leaders along with grassroots activists.

There is one thing everyone is talking about: working people are getting screwed and people are fed up with these Republicans--- the Republicans who now control the legislatures in Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan and the two vicious thoroughly reactionary governors--- Walker in Wisconsin and Snyder in Michigan... two cowards who didn't have the courage to run on the anti-labor agenda they are now implementing.

The one bight spot is liberal Minnesota Governor Mark Dayton who is standing alone in trying to stand up for what is right and just for working people but is being pummeled by even most members of the Democratic Party who have more in common with Republicans and big-business interests than with working people.

The AFL-CIO leadership has refused to flex its muscle in Minnesota to back up Dayton--- of course these labor "leaders" were slow to endorse him, too; and after they endorsed him they did little to help elect him. Why? Because Dayton is too liberal for them? Labor leaders should be more liberal than anyone and they should be leading the fight against the Republicans.

Obviously Walker, Snyder and the Republican crowd had a "hidden agenda" as they piously and dishonestly campaigned on a platform of "fiscal responsibility." Their only agenda is about corporate profits.

Unions made a big mistake in backing Obama. Unions should have backed Hillary Clinton because with the massive upsurge from labor's rank-and-file now sweeping the midwest she would have "bent towards justice." Obama has proven to be nothing but a Wall Street stooge who is not going to "bend towards justice" in the way required to improve the lives of working people.

Obama has to go.

Labor needs to dump Obama in 2012.

Whether we Primary Obama with Hillary Clinton, Anthony Weiner, Russ Feingold makes no difference--- what we need is a president who when pushed by labor will "bend towards justice" the way President Franklin D. Roosevelt did with the New Deal reforms.

Wall Street has made a mess of things in this country and we need working people in the streets and voting for candidates that are going to stand up to the corporations; not buckle and give in. We need labor leaders that are going to fight to improve the conditions of working people not negotiate more concessions because corporate profits are soaring and Wall Street coupon clippers are making out like the bandits they are.

The problems we as working people are experiencing are not going to be solved without one hell of a fight.

Working people are fed up and ready to fight for what they are entitled to. It's time for labor's leaders to free up the resources for the battle.

We can beat back the attacks on labor coming from Walker and Snyder and give Mark Dayton the support he needs. But, simply waiting for election day isn't going to get the job done. We need to stop these Republicans in their tracks right now. This means more and more people in the streets leading up to an election day where workers are running their own candidates.

March 19, 2011---- marching for peace, social and economic justice; St. Paul, Minnesota

See all the pictures:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?fbid=10150174865101337&id=703206336&aid=334386