More News On Occupy San Jose and More Articles On Income Inequality

Last Monday I visited the Occupy San Jose site to donate food to the occupiers. I had read in their facebook page that they were looking for donations after the police had taken their food and many of their supplies. When I dropped by, the group was in the middle of a meeting. A few of their members were planning to attend a City Hall meeting to engage in a dialogue about the councilmembers’ concerns and to complain about the police taking their supplies.

It was attended by around forty people. A local restaurant owner donated some of his restaurant food for dinner for the protesters. Several people just wanted to show support for the cause. Individuals were able to express their thoughts and concerns about the Occupy San Jose and everyone else listened and took each person seriously. I thought it was a nice show of democracy.

A day later, police clashed with the participants of Occupy Oakland and a protester, Iraqi war veteran Scott Olsen, was hurt by rubber bullets that were fired by a police officer. This attack has had a galvanizing effect on other Occupy protests throughout the nation. In facebook, several activists have posted on their wall their support of Olsen and Occupy Oakland. Across the Bay, police decided not to raid Occupy SF encampments, and this has reinvigorated the demonstrators. Office workers and tourists have mixed with the SF Occupiers, showing their support of the Occupy SF cause. The SF Occupiers have been conscientious about keeping the area clean, and recently four portable toilets arrived.

I admire the Occupy Wall Street movement. Right now I’m reading Eric Foner’s book Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery about Lincoln in the context of the various anti-slavery movements of his time. Foner makes a point that there was a relationship between the abolitionists and the Radical Republicans. Abolitionists were the most radical of the anti-slavery groups, and they worked outside the political system to create agitation and focus on changing public opinion on slavery and the equality of African Americans. Radical Republicans worked inside the political system to push for legislation to abolish slavery.

I think the Occupy Wall Street movement plays the same role that the Abolitionist movement played in the 1800s. They work outside the political system to creat agitation and focus the public discourse on the inequalities of the current economic system. For the past couple of years, I’ve been learning about the interplay of radicals and reformers in bringing about social change in our country’s history. Katrina Van Den Heuvel wrote in the November 4, 2008 edition of the Nation about the necessity of grassroots movements to pressure Obama and the Democrats for change:

We know the Democratic Party is not the only vehicle for change. Historically, the party’s finest moments have come when it was pushed into action from the outside by popular social movements. That same pressure is needed now. Retreat and timidity are losing strategies for addressing economic crisis, a shredded social compact, two wars which must be ended, and a damaged reputation abroad–especially with stronger majorities in Congress and a new president who has raised expectationsand promised real change.

…History tells us how Franklin Delano Roosevelt was compelled to abandon caution because of the great traumas of his day. The Great Depression gave him little choice but to be bold. But it was popular social movements working outside the administration and empowered unions of that time that put strong pressure on FDR to carry out bolder reforms. That outside force was disciplined, strategic and focused, and it made the FDR years much better than if people had just sat back and let the President fend for himself against special interests. There’s a powerful lesson in there for the movements of our times.

I think the Occupy Wall Street movement has helped focus the media and the nation on the economic inequalities that have existed in this nation for decades. Here are several articles that I have found on economic inequality. This blog is illustrated with photographs I took last Monday night of the Occupy San Jose meeting.

Andrew Sullivan wrote an article in the October 22, 2011 edition of Newsweek where he wrote:

Social and economic inequality is higher than it has been since the 1920s, and is showing no signs of declining.

Sure, multinational corporations have rescued millions from poverty in the developing world in the last decade. But they have also outsourced more and more blue- and white-collar jobs away from the West, pioneered technological innovation that has made entire professions—remember travel agents? librarians? secretaries?—redundant, and rewarded the brilliant and driven at the expense of the middle class and the job security it once enjoyed. Even great Western products like the iPhone now actually employ more Chinese than Americans in their manufacturing. People rightly wonder how they can ever master these powerful forces again. And, yes, the income numbers are staggering by any measure. From the late 1940s to the early 1970s, the median American household saw its income double. Since then: a screeching halt, or barely a 5 percent rise in incomes for the less-affluent 90 percent of Americans. But between 1979 and 2007, the top 1 percent saw their incomes soar by 281 percent. Add to that the collapse in home values, and soaring costs for health insurance and college, and it becomes remarkable that we haven’t seen much more unrest. I believe the man who posted the following statement online: “I work 3 jobs. None which provide health insurance. My son is on Medicaid. We are on W.I.C. We’re 1 paycheck from disaster. I am the 99 percent.” Do we not all know someone like him?

Add to this what can only be called an “accountability deficit.” The financial sector and its deregulated leverage binge in the Clinton and Bush years greatly benefited the top 1 percent. Much of this, we now know, was based on obscure mathematical formulas no one fully understood at best and were direct scams against their own customers at worst. What was Wall Street’s response? A furious attempt to resist any new regulation, a refusal to take full responsibility for the mess, and eager participation in a bailout paid for in part by their victims. Do we really need to understand why some have reached a snapping point—now that Wall Street is lobbying to repeal the one reform that reined it in, Dodd-Frank? In Europe, the same arrogant dynamic prevailed. Government elites merrily agreed to the euro, and then promptly violated all the rules designed to make it work—especially if it meant keeping spending under control. Large pluralities were opposed to this—majorities in some countries—and yet the European project continued its inexorable path to an unsustainable present. And who now pays the price? Not the elites. Largely the young, the poor, and, yes, the increasingly desperate middle class.

Marisol Bello and Paul Overberg wrote for the October 26, 2011 edition of USA Today:

Income is shifting to the top tier of households, especially those in the top 5%, Taylor says. The top 5% earn more than $181,000 annually.

In 2010, the top one-fifth of U.S. households collected 50.3% of all the nation’s income, up from 49.9% in 2006. The lowest-earning one-fifth of households collected just 3.3% of the nation’s income, down from 3.4% in 2006.

That leaves the three-fifths of households in between — a common definition of a broad middle class. It collected 46.3% of the income last year, down from 46.7% in 2006.

Analysts call it the middle-class squeeze.

The data are the latest signs of a trend that dates to the 1970s, says Heidi Shierholz, an economist with the Economic Policy Institute. Back then, 53% of the nation’s income went to the middle class.

She says that during the 2000s, households in the middle class began losing ground because their incomes were not growing. The recent recession made it worse as employers cut work hours, furloughed workers, froze salaries or imposed layoffs. At the same time, the value of family assets, such as homes, went down.

“Families are taking substantial losses,” Shierholz says. “The really scary thing is, there’s no relief in sight.”

Don Peck wrote an article in the September 2011 edition of the Atlantic Magazine that stated:

Arguably, the most important economic trend in the United States over the past couple of generations has been the ever more distinct sorting of Americans into winners and losers, and the slow hollowing-out of the middle class. Median incomes declined outright from 1999 to 2009. For most of the aughts, that trend was masked by the housing bubble, which allowed working-class and middle-class families to raise their standard of living despite income stagnation or downward job mobility. But that fig leaf has since blown away. And the recession has pressed hard on the broad center of American society.

“The Great Recession has quantitatively but not qualitatively changed the trend toward employment polarization” in the United States, wrote the MIT economist David Autor in a 2010 white paper. Job losses have been “far more severe in middle-skilled white- and blue-collar jobs than in either high-skill, white-collar jobs or in low-skill service occupations.” Indeed, from 2007 through 2009, total employment in professional, managerial, and highly skilled technical positions was essentially unchanged. Jobs in low-skill service occupations such as food preparation, personal care, and house cleaning were also fairly stable. Overwhelmingly, the recession has destroyed the jobs in between. Almost one of every 12 white-collar jobs in sales, administrative support, and nonmanagerial office work vanished in the first two years of the recession; one of every six blue-collar jobs in production, craft, repair, and machine operation did the same.

Autor isolates the winnowing of middle-skill, middle-class jobs as one of several labor-market developments that are profoundly reshaping U.S. society. The others are rising pay at the top, falling wages for the less educated, and “lagging labor market gains for males.” “All,” he writes, “predate the Great Recession. But the available data suggest that the Great Recession has reinforced these trends.”

|Jason B. Johnson wrote for the October 16, 2005 San Francisco Chronicle of the struggles of the middle class in the San Francisco Bay Area:

Some middle-income Bay Area residents have seen mishaps like divorce, serious illness or a layoff make the difference between comfort and a financial struggle.

The bigger picture is that the gap between Americans with the highest and lowest incomes is growing. High-wage earners now have so much disposable income that they are pulling up prices for everyone, economists say, and that is stretching middle-income households.

Upper-income families — those earning more than 95 percent of Americans — went from making $95,737 a year in 1970 to $164,104 in 2001, in constant dollars, a 72 percent increase. The very wealthiest Americans’ incomes rose even faster. But the median household income rose only 21 percent in constant dollars between 1970 and 2004. And near-poor families — those with higher incomes than only 20 percent of American families — saw their earnings inch from $20,134 to $24,640, a 22 percent increase between 1970 and 2001.

Annys Shin wrote for the January 14, 2011 edition of the Washington Post

There is the single mother from Manassas who after losing her job and going on public assistance could no longer afford to pay her mother to watch her children and had to send her mother to child development and CPR classes to qualify for public child-care assistance. There is the laid-off TV repairman who 30 years ago received a degree after studying Greek, Latin and Hebrew and now, facing meager job prospects, regrets having chosen to work with his hands. There is the well-dressed couple who after losing their jobs in the auto industry pulled into a food pantry in Gaithersburg in a gleaming, gas-guzzling four-door truck they had bought for fun a few years ago and now wish they hadn’t.

The recession exposed how precarious a hold many middle-class families had on their status. The housing meltdown and credit crunch wiped out nest eggs and the ability to maintain a credit-fueled lifestyle.

Now, as many Americans see work as the only way to dig out of debt, they’re finding that jobs are scarce. The average duration of unemployment has reached record levels, as has the proportion of jobless people who have been out of work for more than six months. For those who have slipped a couple of income brackets, that means a long road back toward the middle class, said economist Heidi Shierholz of the Economic Policy Institute.

Kay Lazar wrote for the February 24, 2008 edition of the Boston Globe:

Soaring costs of essentials such as housing, healthcare, and transportation, in the face of stagnant pay, are squeezing countless middle-class families, many to the brink. More than half have no financial assets, or have debt levels that exceed their assets, according to a recent Brandeis University study called “By a Thread, The New Experience of America’s Middle Class.”

Throughout Boston’s northern suburbs, directors of social service agencies that have long served impoverished families say they are witnessing a rising tide of requests for heating, rental, and mortgage assistance from middle-class households. Many have to be turned away because the families earn slightly more than the limit that would make them eligible.

“If you are in the middle class, there are no safety-net programs for you, and yet you are paying the same as most wealthy people for most of your costs,” said Jack Mogielnicki, executive director of Lynn Economic Opportunity, an antipoverty agency. “Water and sewer bills are going through the roof, and your property taxes have gone up because the cities and towns are in as bad a shape as you are.”

Youtube videos of America’s middle class

Religious People Participating in “Occupy Wall Street”

As the “Occupy Wall Street” protests have continued in the last couple of weeks, more religious people from many different religions have begun to join and make their presence felt. This is important, as religious people have made important contributions to past movements for social change, such as the civil rights movement, the woman’s suffrage movement, the abolition movement, and the labor movement. The three Abrahamic religions, Christianity, Judaism, and Islam, have especially have a historic concern for the plight of the poor and the marginalized that fits well with the concerns of the “Occupy Wall Street” protesters. Religious figures like Martin Luther King Jr., Rabbi Joshua Heschel, Malcolm X, Bayard Rustin, James Farmer, William Sloane Coffin, Pauli Murray, and others have all fought for similar economic justice issues that the “Occupy Wall Street” protests are fighting for today.

Jay Lindsay wrote a piece for the Associated Press about the involvement of different religious people in the Occupy Wall Street protests. Lindsay wrote:

Religion might not fit into the movement seamlessly, but activist Dan Sieradski, who’s helped organize Jewish services and events at Occupy Wall Street, said it must fit somewhere.

“We’re a country full of religious people,” he said. “Faith communities do need to be present and need to be welcomed in order for this to be an all-encompassing movement that embraces all sectors of society.”

Religious imagery and events have been common since the protests began. In New York, clergy carried an Old Testament-style golden calf in the shape of the Wall Street bull to decry the false idol of greed. Sieradski organized a Yom Kippur service. About 70 Muslims kneeled to pray toward Mecca at a prayer service Friday.

A Chicago group, Interfaith Worker Justice, has published an interfaith prayer service guide for occupation protests nationwide.

Clergy who support the protests say they are a natural fit with many faiths, because they share traditional concerns about economic injustice. They also point to history, including the civil rights movement and abolition.

“Every movement for social change that has really made a difference has included the power of God, the power of the spirit and the power of people of conscience,” said the Rev. Stephanie Sellers, one of the Episcopalian “protest chaplains” praying with protesters at different sites.

Jordana Horn wrote for the Jerusalem Post:

Occupy Wall Street and its regional cohorts, Suskin said, are an “American movement for justice, and as far as I can see the people around us recognize that Jews are Americans just as they are, and there isn’t, as far as I can tell, any evidence that the 1% term is any kind of coded message about Jews.”

In fact, organizers said, the protests afford American Jews an opportunity to rethink their relationship to their own religion. One of the organizers of Occupy Judaism, Daniel Sieradski, was involved in putting together the New York Kol Nidre service by the protest site which attracted between 700 and 1,000 participants last week. Siedradski called such services “civil disobedient davening (praying).”

“It started with one Tweet and got 1,000 people,” Sieradski said, adding that New York’s Kol Nidre Occupy service was traditional egalitarian, and included secular and ultra-Orthodox Jews alike.

Sieradski called the Occupy movements “one of the most exciting things to happen in American Judaism.”

“We’re giving people an outlet through which to express their Jewish values that no other Jewish institution has been able to provide them with,” Sieradski said, adding that he hopes that the long-term momentum of the movement will lead Jews to “occupy our own Jewish institutions, rendering them responsive and accountable to the needs of the community.”

“Most Jewish institutions are dominated by their wealthiest donors, whose views might not be in line with that of the wider Jewish community,” Sieradski said. “It’s our community and our tradition as much as it is anybody’s, and they need to make space for us.”

Ideally, Sieradski said, the Occupy Judaism movement will have the effect of “making our tradition a living, breathing justice movement.”

The OnIslam.net website comments on the Muslim groups who are participating in the Occupy Wall Street protests:

Joining the ranks of fellow Americans in protesting economic inequality, US Muslim groups have thrown their weight behind the ‘Occupy Wall Street’ protest movement against social injustice in the United States.

“We as Muslim New Yorkers are here today because we are in solidarity and support of Occupy Wall Street,” said Linda Sarsour, director of the Arab-American Association.

A number of Muslims associated with the New York Chapter of the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) and the local Islamic Leadership Council have gathered earlier this week to support the protest movement against social justice and economic inequality in the US.

Here are some videos of religious people and groups involved in the Occupy Wall Street protests around the country.

A VIDEO OF AN INTERFAITH GATHERING AT THE OCCUPY WALL STREET LOCATION

A VIDEO OF A CHRISTIAN MOVEMENT JOINING OCCUPY ATLANTA

A VIDEO OF PASTOR WILLIE AND THE CHRISTIAN COMMUNITY AT THE OCCUPY THE HOOD AND OCCUPY TROY GATHERINGS.

A VIDEO OF A JEWISH GROUP GATHERING IN A SUKKAH IN OCCUPY LOS ANGELES

A VIDEO OF A JEWISH GROUP AT A SUKKAH IN ZUCCOTTI PARK FOR OCCUPY WALL STREET

A VIDEO OF MUSLIM GROUPS AT OCCUPY WALL STREET

A VIDEO OF MUSLIMS HOLDING A PRAYER DAY AT OCCUPY WALL STREET

A VIDEO OF BISHOP ANDREW GENTRY OF OCCUPY ASHEVILLE

A VIDEO OF CAMPUS CHAPLAIN ROGER WOLSEY AT OCCUPY DENVER

TWO VIDEOS OF THE PROTEST CHAPLAINS AT OCCUPY WALL STREET AND OCCUPY BOSTON

The Protest Chaplains at #OccupyBoston from Closed Loop-Films on Vimeo.

A VIDEO OF A COMMUNION SERVICE AT OCCUPY BOSTON

Jasper and the Moderate Republican

I partially based this on a blog I wrote for Everyday Citizen on March 10, 2010

If you enjoy this cartoon, take a look at these links for more of my political cartoons at Everyday Citizen:

Obama and the Republicans

Jasper And the Homeless Veteran
Jasper Celebrates the 4th of July
Jasper Meets Howard Zinn
Jasper and the Nature Poem
The Reunion
Government and the Market Economy
Jasper Joins Two Protests
Bob the Nerd Vampire
Jasper Debates War
Jasper Finds His Way Home
Jasper Escapes the Detention Center
Jasper At A Detention Center
Jasper Meets a Poet
Jasper’s Day
Jasper Tackles Health Care
Jasper Protests the War
Jasper and the Economy
Jasper Sings a Protest Song
The Road To Health Care Reform Cartoon
A Cartoon about the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict
A Cartoon about My Experience in an Evangelical Church
A Cartoon about Political Debate
A Cartoon On Gay Marriage

“Occupy Wall Street” and the Struggling Middle Class

Here are some articles that I found on the struggling middle class. Illustrating this blog are more photos I took of Occupy San Jose last week.

Tim Mullaney wrote on the October 20, 2011 edition of USA Today

In the cold, hard world of statistics, economists say demonstrators’ grievances are on the mark. At bottom, the protests are about how American middle-class life is undermined by four decades of near-stagnant wages for middle-income workers and a recession that has brought an unprecedented level of long-term unemployment. Throw in the exploding inflation in two of the most common expectations of middle-class life, health insurance and college — and a double-digit percentage decline in wages of young college graduates in the last decade — and the root causes of New York’s Zuccotti Park become clear.

“These people are not just protesting for the hell of it,” said Allen Sinai, chief economist at Decision Economics in New York, which consults for banks and hedge funds. “A lot of people don’t have purple hair, but underneath, they feel what these people are saying. The middle class is under tremendous pressure.”

Data on incomes, health insurance and employment show mainstream standards of living have been stagnant since the 1970s, with upward blips during expansions wiped out in downturns, after steady growth before 1973. The downturn since 2007 has made things worse.

Adjusted for inflation, median household income has fallen nearly 10% since December 2007, including a 6.7% drop since the recovery began in mid-2009, according to a study by Sentier Research in Annapolis, Md. The inflation-adjusted median income of wage- and salary-earning workers is $5 a week lower than in early 1979, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

…Access to health insurance has deteriorated for years. The average worker contribution to employer-sponsored coverage has nearly doubled since 1999, rising from $1,548, or $2,068 in today’s dollars, to $4,128 this year for a family policy, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation. That’s enough to wipe out millions of middle-class raises. The number of uninsured Americans has risen 15% to more than 50 million since 2004, the foundation says.

The percentage of unemployed people out of work for six months or longer in this downturn has been the highest since records have been kept, dating to World War II. Including people involuntarily working part time or who have given up looking and aren’t counted as unemployed, 16.5% of workers are unemployed or underemployed, the government says.

Edward Luce wrote for the July 30, 2010 edition of the Financial Times:

The slow economic strangulation of the Freemans and millions of other middle-class Americans started long before the Great Recession, which merely exacerbated the “personal recession” that ordinary Americans had been suffering for years. Dubbed “median wage stagnation” by economists, the annual incomes of the bottom 90 per cent of US families have been essentially flat since 1973 – having risen by only 10 per cent in real terms over the past 37 years. That means most Americans have been treading water for more than a generation. Over the same period the incomes of the top 1 per cent have tripled. In 1973, chief executives were on average paid 26 times the median income. Now the ­multiple is above 300.

The trend has only been getting stronger. Most economists see the Great Stagnation as a structural problem – meaning it is immune to the business cycle. In the last expansion, which started in January 2002 and ended in December 2007, the median US household income dropped by $2,000 – the first ever instance where most Americans were worse off at the end of a cycle than at the start. Worse is that the long era of stagnating incomes has been accompanied by something profoundly un-American: declining income mobility.

…Combine those two deep-seated trends with a third – steeply rising inequality – and you get the slow-burning ­crisis of American capitalism. It is one thing to suffer ­grinding income stagnation. It is another to realise that you have a ­diminishing likelihood of escaping it – particularly when the fortunate few living across the proverbial tracks seem more pampered each time you catch a glimpse. “Who killed the ­American Dream?” say the banners at leftwing protest marches. “Take America back,” shout the rightwing Tea Party demonstrators.

Robert Pear wrote for the October 9, 2011 edition of the New York Times:

The full 9.8 percent drop in income from the start of the recession to this June — the most recent month in the study — appears to be the largest in several decades, according to other Census Bureau data. Gordon W. Green Jr., who wrote the report with John F. Coder, called the decline “a significant reduction in the American standard of living.”

That reduction occurred even though the unemployment rate fell slightly, to 9.2 percent in June compared with 9.5 percent two years earlier. Two main forces appear to have held down pay: the number of people outside the labor force — neither working nor looking for work — has risen; and the hourly pay of employed people has failed to keep pace with inflation, as the prices of oil products and many foods have jumped.

During the recession itself, by contrast, wage gains outpaced inflation.

One reason pay has stagnated is that many people who lost their jobs in the recession — and remained out of work for months — have taken pay cuts in order to be hired again. In a separate study, Henry S. Farber, an economics professor at Princeton, found that people who lost jobs in the recession and later found work again made an average of 17.5 percent less than they had in their old jobs.

“As a labor economist, I do not think the recession has ended,” Mr. Farber said. “Job losers are having more trouble than ever before finding full-time jobs.”

Mr. Farber added that this downturn was “fundamentally different” from most previous ones. Historically, other economists say, financial crises and debt-caused bubbles have led to deeper, more protracted downturns.

Ron Scherer wrote on the October 24, 2011 edition of The Christian Science Monitor

Think life is not as good as it used to be, at least in terms of your wallet? You’d be right about that. The standard of living for Americans has fallen longer and more steeply over the past three years than at any time since the US government began recording it five decades ago.

Bottom line: The average individual now has $1,315 less in disposable income than he or she did three years ago at the onset of the Great Recession – even though the recession ended, technically speaking, in mid-2009. That means less money to spend at the spa or the movies, less for vacations, new carpeting for the house, or dinner at a restaurant.

In short, it means a less vibrant economy, with more Americans spending primarily on necessities. The diminished standard of living, moreover, is squeezing the middle class, whose restlessness and discontent are evident in grass-roots movements such as the tea party and “Occupy Wall Street” and who may take out their frustrations on incumbent politicians in next year’s election.

…To be sure, the recession has hit unevenly, with lower-skilled and less-educated Americans feeling the pinch the most, says Mark Zandi, chief economist for Moody’s Economy.com based in West Chester, Pa. Many found their jobs gone for good as companies moved production offshore or bought equipment that replaced manpower.

“The pace of change has been incredibly rapid and incredibly tough on the less educated,” says Mr. Zandi, who calls this period the most difficult for American households since the 1930s. “If you don’t have the education and you don’t have the right skills, then you are getting creamed.”

Thinking About the Wealthy and “Occupy Wall Street”

One of my favorite Founding Fathers is Thomas Paine. The inspiration for this Everyday Citizen website, Paine was a strong foe of the aristocracy and the monarchy form of government. Despite his opposition to monarchy, Paine argued in the French National Convention during the Revolution against the execution of Louis XVI because of his opposition to revenge killings. Paine was able to separate his opposition to a particular system and his empathy to an individual within that system. I think of this often during the Occupy Wall Street protests against the 1% of the rich who own a disproportionate amount of the nation’s wealth.

I share a lot of the anger of the Occupation Wall Street protesters about the wealthy class who have benefitted from this economic system and own such a large percentage of the nation’s wealth. I want an economic system that more evenly distributes wealth towards a greater amount of people. My anger is more towards the economic system, though. I don’t want to see wealthy people become paupers. I just want to see a system where everyone benefits and not just a select few.

I’ve recently read Charles Dickens’ “A Tale of Two Cities” and I’m very conscious of one of the lessons of Dickens’ “Tale of Two Cities” and George Orwell’s “Animal Farm”. In fighting injustice, be careful not to become the thing we hate. In my facebook I read a blog that caught the idea that I had in my head but that I had a hard time articulating. United Methodist pastor Roger Wolsey wrote in his blog:

Show compassion to as many of the people caught up in this mess (all of us) as possible. Strive to love our enemies as Jesus taught. When we confront CEOs, bankers, politicians, pundits, police, or the media, let’s remember their humanity. They go home to families and pets that love them and they have wounds in their hearts that we’ll never know.
A particularly Christian thing to do might be for Church people to show up to the protests and serve water, coffee, and baked cookies to the protesters, the police, and the businesspeople walking by. It’s hard to be aggressive toward someone who is drinking hot cocoa and eating cookies with you.

That said, when he taught his followers how to love their enemies Jesus instructed them to not be doormats, but to employ tough love – even to the point of flipping the power dynamics and making the oppressors be publicly embarrassed.

Since the Kennedys and the Roosevelts were rich families that worked hard to help the poor and disadvantaged, I don’t think that all rich people are bad. I do think though that the rich have an obligation to help those who are less fortunate and to give back to their communities. It’s one of the great themes that Charles Dickens had in many of his books. In books like A Christmas Carol, A Tale of Two Cities, and Little Dorrit, Dickens feels that power and wealth often are corrupting influences that make a person less compassionate of others and more selfish, disconnecting them from the wider community. A Tale of Two Cities shows the corrupting influence on wealth and power on an entire group of people, the aristocracy. The abuse of privilege and wealth makes the French aristocracy corrupt and arrogant, as they exploit the poor French peasants, overtaxing them, raping their women, jailing any dissent, giving the poor no legal recourse or means of economic mobility. The centuries of abuse by the aristocracy towards the poor made the Reign of Terror inevitable. I’m reading A Christmas Carol right now, and it shows the consequences of the pursuit of wealth on an individual, Mr. Scrooge. He becomes isolated from the community he lives in and becomes more selfish, with no friends.

In a Christmas Carol, Dickens wants the wealthy to reconnect with the larger community and to fulfill their responsibilities to help those who are marginalized and poor. I think it is in the rich class’s interests for there to be a fairer more equitable economic system that benefits all members of the community. An economic system that only benefits a few always leads to social unrest and problems in society. One of the things that has bothered me that also bothered Charles Dickens is the callousness of many of the rich towards the suffering of the poor. It seems that many in the financial industry do not see how their actions and mistakes have caused suffering on the middle class and the poor. In a recent New York Times article by Nelson Schwarz and Eric Dash, they note that many of the Wall Street bankers dismiss the concerns of the Occupy Wall Street protesters. They wrote:

As the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations have grown and spread to other cities, an open question is: Do the bankers get it? Their different worldview speaks volumes about the wide chasms that have opened over who is to blame for the continuing economic malaise and what is best for the country.

Some on Wall Street viewed the protesters with disdain, and a degree of caution, as hundreds marched through the financial district on Friday. Others say they feel their pain, but are befuddled about what they are supposed to do to ease it. A few even feel personally attacked, and say the Occupy Wall Street protesters who have been in Zuccotti Park for weeks are just bitter about their own economic fate and looking for an easy target. If anything, they say, people should show some gratitude.

“Who do you think pays the taxes?” said one longtime money manager. “Financial services are one of the last things we do in this country and do it well. Let’s embrace it. If you want to keep having jobs outsourced, keep attacking financial services. This is just disgruntled people.”

He added that he was disappointed that members of Congress from New York, especially Senator Charles E. Schumer and Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, had not come out swinging for an industry that donates heavily to their campaigns. “They need to understand who their constituency is,” he said.

Generally, bankers dismiss the protesters as gullible and unsophisticated. Not many are willing to say this out loud, for fear of drawing public ire — or the masses to their doorsteps. “Anybody who dismisses them publicly is putting a bull’s-eye on their back,” the hedge fund manager said.

Some of today’s wealthy see the unfairness of today’s economic system. In the same article, the authors noted:

A few outspoken members of the financial industry have broken ranks with their more skeptical brethren to say they understand a bit of the outrage of the Occupy Wall Street crowd.

“When I tell people I went down to research the protests, they’re shocked, they literally laugh,” said Michael Mayo, a veteran bank analyst at Crédit Agricole Securities. “It’s just not a location they frequent.”

Citigroup’s chief executive, Vikram S. Pandit, even said he would be happy to talk with the protesters any time they wanted to drop by. Mr. Pandit, onstage Wednesday at a Fortune magazine conference, said that the protesters’ “sentiments were completely understandable.”

“I would also corroborate that trust has been broken between financial institutions and the citizens of the U.S., and that it’s Wall Street’s job to reach out to Main Street and rebuild that trust,” Mr. Pandit said. The protesters should hold Citi and others “accountable for practicing responsible finance,” he said, “and keep asking us about how we’re doing.”

In an August 14, 2011 article for the New York Times, Warren Buffett wrote:

Our leaders have asked for “shared sacrifice.” But when they did the asking, they spared me. I checked with my mega-rich friends to learn what pain they were expecting. They, too, were left untouched.

While the poor and middle class fight for us in Afghanistan, and while most Americans struggle to make ends meet, we mega-rich continue to get our extraordinary tax breaks. Some of us are investment managers who earn billions from our daily labors but are allowed to classify our income as “carried interest,” thereby getting a bargain 15 percent tax rate. Others own stock index futures for 10 minutes and have 60 percent of their gain taxed at 15 percent, as if they’d been long-term investors.

These and other blessings are showered upon us by legislators in Washington who feel compelled to protect us, much as if we were spotted owls or some other endangered species. It’s nice to have friends in high places.

…I know well many of the mega-rich and, by and large, they are very decent people. They love America and appreciate the opportunity this country has given them. Many have joined the Giving Pledge, promising to give most of their wealth to philanthropy. Most wouldn’t mind being told to pay more in taxes as well, particularly when so many of their fellow citizens are truly suffering.

Many rich people have contributed to progressive causes and to helping the poor and the marginalized. Here is a list of a few of those individuals from the past and the present.

Benjamin Franklin is my favorite Founding Father. Franklin became a wealthy man due to his printing business and through his business partnership with David Hall. This freed Franklin to contribute to his community. As well as many of Franklin’s political activities, he was also a great philanthropist and civic activist. Franklin organized the Union Fire Company, the first fire company in America. In 1752, Franklin and seventy Philedelphians formed the first insurance company, which eventually include fire insurance, crop insurance, and insurance for widows and orphans. In 1751, Franklin and Dr. Thomas Bond obtained a charter from the Pennsylvania legislature to establish the Pennsylvania Hospital, the first hospital in what was to become the United States of America. In the 1780s Ben Franklin became president of the Pennsylvania Abolition Society and worked hard to pressure legislation to end the slave trade and abolish slavery and to set up schools to educate free African Americans and give them employable skills.

Jane Addams was the daughter of John Addams, a wealthy landowner, miller, banker and state legislator. Jane’s father had a civic-mindedness that made a great impression on her and was a great influence on her interest in social reform. Addams was one of the leaders of the Hull House movement in Chicago, where social workers lived in settlement houses in poor immigrant neighborhoods where education opportunities, child care, and artistic endeavors to help empower the poor. Many women participated in the Hull House settlements and later became influential reformers in the progressive movement. Jane Addams was also a strong women’s suffragist and a strong pacifist, joining the Women’s Peace Party in 1915. Addams became president of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom in the 1920s.

Eleanor Roosevelt was the daughter of patricians Elliott Roosevelt and Anna Hall Roosevelt and the niece of President Theodore Roosevelt. Influenced by Teddy Roosevelt’s reform oriented Presidency, Eleanor participated in many of the social reform movements of the Progressive era. She worked as a teacher of the Settlement House on Rivington Street and a volunteer investigator in the New York City Consumer’s League, investigating sweatshops and overcrowded and unsanitary tenement apartments. During the 1920s, Eleanor Roosevelt participated in the Women’s Trade Union League, the Women’s City Club of New York, the Women’s Division of the New York State Democratic Committee, the League of Women Voters, and the World Peace Movement and Bok Peace Prize Committee, working on issues like government low-income housing, access to birth control information for married women, child labor regulation, worker’s compensation, and protective measures for working women.

As First Lady, Roosevelt worked on civil rights issues, women’s right issues, economic issues, and worker issues. She took many trips around the country to inspect conditions of the Americans in the area. She also worked to include women in the New Deal programs. She spoke out against Southern segregation laws, organized a concert for African American singer Marian Anderson, and lobbied for anti-lynching laws in Congress.

After she left the White House, Eleanor Roosevelt continued to speak out for civil rights and economic justice. One of her greatest accomplishments was her work as a member of the UN’s Commission on Human Rights in drafting the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Muriel Rukeyser was born in 1913 to a wealthy Republican Jewish couple in New York City. Despite being raised in a privileged environment, Rukeyser developed a deep sympathy for the plight of the underprivileged and the marginalized of society, becoming a well known poet and social activist. At the age of 19, Rukeyser reported on the second trial of the Scottsboro Boys in Decauter, Alabama in 1933 and was arrested during the trial. The Scottsboro trial involved 9 black defendants who were accused of rape, and were unable to have a fair trial due to the all white jury. In 1936 Muriel reported on the antifascist Olympics in Barcelona, Spain, that had been organized to protest the regular Olympics that took place in Nazi Germany. While there, the Spanish Civil War erupted and she wrote various articles supporting the Spanish Republicans. Rukeyser used her poems to highlight the industrial disaster in West Virginia, where migrant workers, many of them African Americans, died of silicosis poisoning due to inadequate precautions taken by Union Carbide and Carbon Corporation in the drilling of Hawk’s Nest Tunnel. In 1972, she traveled with Denise Levertov to South Vietnam to protest the Vietnam War. Muriel traveled to South Korea in her capacity as president of the PEN American Center to hold a vigil outside the prison cell of the South Korean poet Kim Chi Ha, who was in solitary confinement.

I’m a big fan of all the Kennedy brothers, but I’ll focus on Ted Kennedy because of his legislative achievements that have advanced the cause of economic and social justice. He authored over 2,500 bills, of which 500 became law. During the 1960s, Kennedy supported the 1964 Civil Rights Act, the 1968 Fair Housing Act, and was the floor manager for the 1965 Immigration Act. Ted Kennedy provided an amendment to the Economic Opportunity Act of 1966 which led to many community-based health clinics throughout the nation. Kennedy sponsored the 1975 Education for All Handicapped People Act, and the 1980 Civil Rights for Institutionalized Persons Act, which protected the constitutional rights of the elderly, the mentally ill, the disabled, and the incarcerated. In 1990, Kennedy cosponsored with Orrin Hatch the Ryan White CARE Act, which sped funds for cities most hit by the AIDs epidemic. In 1990 Kennedy wrote the Americans with Disabilities Act prohibiting disability discrimination. In 1993 Kennedy co-authored the Family and Medical Leave Act, requiring businesses to provide unpaid leave for emergencies or births. In 1996 he cosponsored with Kansas Republican Senator Nancy Kassebaum the Kennedy-Kassebaum Act, which allowed employees to keep health insurance for a time after losing job. He worked on equal pay for women workers by working for passage of the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act to restore a fair rule for filing pay discrimination cases. He worked for the Public Safety Employer-Employee Cooperation Act, bipartisan legislation that gave public safety workers the right to form and join a union and bargain with their employers over wages, hours, and working conditions under state law. Kennedy helped President George Bush with the No Child Left Behind Act. Kennedy supported the Mathew Shephard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 2009 which added violence against people due to sexual orientation to the federal hate crimes list.

A youtube video with Warren Buffett and Bill Gates advocating giving a greater percentage of the tax for the rich

A youtube video of Walter Isaacson discussing his book on Benjamin Franklin

A youtube video of Jane Addams

A youtube video of Eleanor Roosevelt

A youtube video of Ted Kennedy

More of “Occupy San Jose”

Here are more photos that I took from the Occupy San Jose protest that I visited last Friday. The protests have taken place in San Jose City Hall, where a group of activists have made encampments and plan to stay to highlight their grievances against Wall Street and the financial institutions responsible for our economic crisis. San Jose city officials have repeatedly warned the protesters that camping at city public facilities is prohibited. Yet they continue to camp out near City Hall, and they willingly face arrest as an act of civil disobedience.

When I was there, I got a chance to talk to a few of the activists, and was impressed by their idealism and their passion. They range from young college age kids to older people. Two women came with a baby carriage to show their support of the activists. I came during the early evening, and there were around thirty people there. One person told me that later in the evening, more people would show up after work to occupy the area. I left at around 7:30 p.m. and checked out the news later that night to see how they did.

I admire how these people are taking a stand for the average person for economic justice. I’m not as radical as some of these people, but I think radicals are important to issues of economic justice and human rights. History has shown that radicals have always been the first to fight in the vanguard for important progressive issues. In the instance of the abolition of slavery, for instance, some of the early Founding Fathers tried to pass legislation to end the slave trade and gradually abolish slavery. Benjamin Franklin was president of the Pennsylvania Abolition Society and in 1790 sponsored a petition to try to get Congress to end slavery. Alexander Hamilton and John Jay were members of the New York Manumission Society and fought to end slavery in New York. Thomas Jefferson tried various time in the 1770s and 1780s to pass legislation to end the slave trade and abolish slavery. Though the northern states were successful in gradually ending slavery, the southern states were adamantly for the slave system.

The reasons the early Founding Fathers weren’t able to end slavery was because they were liberal reformers who wanted to work within the system they had created to end slavery, but there wasn’t enough of a grassroots movement to challenge public opinion and put pressure on the political system to change. It took decades of work of radical abolitionists like William Lloyd Garrison, Frederick Douglass, Sarah and Angelina Grimke, and Sojourner Truth in doing protests, publishing newspapers, making speeches and doing what they can to change public opinion and agitate for change. They blazed the trail for Abraham Lincoln to finally abolish slavery during the Civil War.

We can see this in other reform movements. The right of women to vote was preceded by decades of work of radicals like Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony and Lucy Stone. The 8 hour work day, the minimum wage, the weekend, the abolition of child labor, were all fought for by radicals like Eugene Debs, Norman Thomas, Emma Goldman, John Lewis, and others. Radicals like W.E.B. DuBois, Bayard Rustin, James Farmer, and Pauli Murray paved the way for Martin Luther King Jr. and the Civil Rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s.

I think of the Occupy Wall Street protests in the same vein as the Poor People’s March of 1968, the Bonus Army March of 1932, and the Pullman Strike of 1894. All were strikes by ordinary people fighting economic injustice. Probably the greatest march for jobs and economic justice was the March on Washington in 1963, which was a march for economic rights as well as civil rights.

Though I am a Democrat, I hope that the Occupy Wall Street protests do not get co-opted into the Democratic Party. I hope they remain an outside radical force, pressuring the political and financial systems and challenging public opinion. The Democrats can respond to the pressure to the political system by making the compromises necessary for strong legislation. Radical activists have a different role. They should follow in the traditions of radicals of the past, of the radical abolitionists, the women’s suffragists, the anarchists, civil rights activists, and feminists. While it is the Democrats role to make the compromises and water down the radical ideas to make them palatable to the average American, it is the radical’s role to be uncompromising in their passionate fight for economic and human rights.

Here is the first inaugural address of Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

This is a day of national consecration. And I am certain that on this day my fellow Americans expect that on my induction into the Presidency, I will address them with a candor and a decision which the present situation of our people impels.

This is preeminently the time to speak the truth, the whole truth, frankly and boldly. Nor need we shrink from honestly facing conditions in our country today. This great Nation will endure, as it has endured, will revive and will prosper.

So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself — nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance. In every dark hour of our national life, a leadership of frankness and of vigor has met with that understanding and support of the people themselves which is essential to victory. And I am convinced that you will again give that support to leadership in these critical days.

In such a spirit on my part and on yours we face our common difficulties. They concern, thank God, only material things. Values have shrunk to fantastic levels; taxes have risen; our ability to pay has fallen; government of all kinds is faced by serious curtailment of income; the means of exchange are frozen in the currents of trade; the withered leaves of industrial enterprise lie on every side; farmers find no markets for their produce; and the savings of many years in thousands of families are gone. More important, a host of unemployed citizens face the grim problem of existence, and an equally great number toil with little return. Only a foolish optimist can deny the dark realities of the moment.

And yet our distress comes from no failure of substance. We are stricken by no plague of locusts. Compared with the perils which our forefathers conquered, because they believed and were not afraid, we have still much to be thankful for. Nature still offers her bounty and human efforts have multiplied it. Plenty is at our doorstep, but a generous use of it languishes in the very sight of the supply.

Primarily, this is because the rulers of the exchange of mankind’s goods have failed, through their own stubbornness and their own incompetence, have admitted their failure, and have abdicated. Practices of the unscrupulous money changers stand indicted in the court of public opinion, rejected by the hearts and minds of men.

True, they have tried. But their efforts have been cast in the pattern of an outworn tradition. Faced by failure of credit, they have proposed only the lending of more money. Stripped of the lure of profit by which to induce our people to follow their false leadership, they have resorted to exhortations, pleading tearfully for restored confidence. They only know the rules of a generation of self-seekers. They have no vision, and when there is no vision the people perish.

Yes, the money changers have fled from their high seats in the temple of our civilization. We may now restore that temple to the ancient truths. The measure of that restoration lies in the extent to which we apply social values more noble than mere monetary profit.

Happiness lies not in the mere possession of money; it lies in the joy of achievement, in the thrill of creative effort. The joy, the moral stimulation of work no longer must be forgotten in the mad chase of evanescent profits. These dark days, my friends, will be worth all they cost us if they teach us that our true destiny is not to be ministered unto but to minister to ourselves, to our fellow men.

Recognition of that falsity of material wealth as the standard of success goes hand in hand with the abandonment of the false belief that public office and high political position are to be valued only by the standards of pride of place and personal profit; and there must be an end to a conduct in banking and in business which too often has given to a sacred trust the likeness of callous and selfish wrongdoing. Small wonder that confidence languishes, for it thrives only on honesty, on honor, on the sacredness of obligations, on faithful protection, and on unselfish performance; without them it cannot live.

Restoration calls, however, not for changes in ethics alone. This Nation is asking for action, and action now.

Our greatest primary task is to put people to work. This is no unsolvable problem if we face it wisely and courageously. It can be accomplished in part by direct recruiting by the Government itself, treating the task as we would treat the emergency of a war, but at the same time, through this employment, accomplishing great — greatly needed projects to stimulate and reorganize the use of our great natural resources.

Hand in hand with that we must frankly recognize the overbalance of population in our industrial centers and, by engaging on a national scale in a redistribution, endeavor to provide a better use of the land for those best fitted for the land.

Yes, the task can be helped by definite efforts to raise the values of agricultural products, and with this the power to purchase the output of our cities. It can be helped by preventing realistically the tragedy of the growing loss through foreclosure of our small homes and our farms. It can be helped by insistence that the Federal, the State, and the local governments act forthwith on the demand that their cost be drastically reduced. It can be helped by the unifying of relief activities which today are often scattered, uneconomical, unequal. It can be helped by national planning for and supervision of all forms of transportation and of communications and other utilities that have a definitely public character. There are many ways in which it can be helped, but it can never be helped by merely talking about it.

We must act. We must act quickly.

And finally, in our progress towards a resumption of work, we require two safeguards against a return of the evils of the old order. There must be a strict supervision of all banking and credits and investments. There must be an end to speculation with other people’s money. And there must be provision for an adequate but sound currency.

These, my friends, are the lines of attack. I shall presently urge upon a new Congress in special session detailed measures for their fulfillment, and I shall seek the immediate assistance of the 48 States.

Through this program of action we address ourselves to putting our own national house in order and making income balance outgo. Our international trade relations, though vastly important, are in point of time, and necessity, secondary to the establishment of a sound national economy. I favor, as a practical policy, the putting of first things first. I shall spare no effort to restore world trade by international economic readjustment; but the emergency at home cannot wait on that accomplishment.

The basic thought that guides these specific means of national recovery is not nationally — narrowly nationalistic. It is the insistence, as a first consideration, upon the interdependence of the various elements in and parts of the United States of America — a recognition of the old and permanently important manifestation of the American spirit of the pioneer. It is the way to recovery. It is the immediate way. It is the strongest assurance that recovery will endure.

In the field of world policy, I would dedicate this Nation to the policy of the good neighbor: the neighbor who resolutely respects himself and, because he does so, respects the rights of others; the neighbor who respects his obligations and respects the sanctity of his agreements in and with a world of neighbors.

If I read the temper of our people correctly, we now realize, as we have never realized before, our interdependence on each other; that we can not merely take, but we must give as well; that if we are to go forward, we must move as a trained and loyal army willing to sacrifice for the good of a common discipline, because without such discipline no progress can be made, no leadership becomes effective.

We are, I know, ready and willing to submit our lives and our property to such discipline, because it makes possible a leadership which aims at the larger good. This, I propose to offer, pledging that the larger purposes will bind upon us, bind upon us all as a sacred obligation with a unity of duty hitherto evoked only in times of armed strife.

With this pledge taken, I assume unhesitatingly the leadership of this great army of our people dedicated to a disciplined attack upon our common problems.

Action in this image, action to this end is feasible under the form of government which we have inherited from our ancestors. Our Constitution is so simple, so practical that it is possible always to meet extraordinary needs by changes in emphasis and arrangement without loss of essential form. That is why our constitutional system has proved itself the most superbly enduring political mechanism the modern world has ever seen.

It has met every stress of vast expansion of territory, of foreign wars, of bitter internal strife, of world relations. And it is to be hoped that the normal balance of executive and legislative authority may be wholly equal, wholly adequate to meet the unprecedented task before us. But it may be that an unprecedented demand and need for undelayed action may call for temporary departure from that normal balance of public procedure.

I am prepared under my constitutional duty to recommend the measures that a stricken nation in the midst of a stricken world may require. These measures, or such other measures as the Congress may build out of its experience and wisdom, I shall seek, within my constitutional authority, to bring to speedy adoption.

But, in the event that the Congress shall fail to take one of these two courses, in the event that the national emergency is still critical, I shall not evade the clear course of duty that will then confront me. I shall ask the Congress for the one remaining instrument to meet the crisis — broad Executive power to wage a war against the emergency, as great as the power that would be given to me if we were in fact invaded by a foreign foe.

For the trust reposed in me, I will return the courage and the devotion that befit the time. I can do no less.

We face the arduous days that lie before us in the warm courage of national unity; with the clear consciousness of seeking old and precious moral values; with the clean satisfaction that comes from the stern performance of duty by old and young alike. We aim at the assurance of a rounded, a permanent national life.

We do not distrust the — the future of essential democracy. The people of the United States have not failed. In their need they have registered a mandate that they want direct, vigorous action. They have asked for discipline and direction under leadership. They have made me the present instrument of their wishes. In the spirit of the gift I take it.

In this dedication — In this dedication of a Nation, we humbly ask the blessing of God.

May He protect each and every one of us.

May He guide me in the days to come.

A youtube video of the Poor People’s Campaign of 1968

A youtube video of the Bonus Army of 1932

A youtube video of the Pullman Strike of 1894

Obama and the Republicans

Way back in January, I wrote a blog about possible areas that Democrats could work with Republicans on. I had thought that there must be some common ground between the Tea Party Republicans and the Democrats that they could work on. After seeing how the Republicans in the House rejected the compromise that their leader Boehner had fashioned with Obama on the debt ceiling debates and constantly rejected any proposals of Obama, I feel pretty naive about thinking that Democrats could work on some issues with these new brand of Republicans.

If my memory is correct, I think this conservative Republican revolt started towards the last years of the Bush years, when they revolted against Bush’s support of the McCain/Kennedy immigration reform bill. I think this uncompromising attitude is bad for our country. In the past I remember how Democrats and Republicans were always able to find some common ground.

Even though most Democrats opposed the Bush political philosophy, they still found some areas to agree on. Ted Kennedy teamed up with Bush on No Child Left Behind and worked with John McCain on an immigration reform bill.

During the 1990s, Clinton worked with Newt Gingrich and the Republicans on welfare reform, a capital gains tax and the first balanced budget since 1969. Before the Monica Lewinsky derailed their talks, Clinton and Gingrich had planned on working on centrist reforms on Social Security and Medicare.

Bush H.W. Bush worked with Democrats on the American’s With Disabilities Act and the Immigration Act of 1990.

Ronald Reagan and Tip O’ Neil had many political differences, but they were also good friends, and they managed to work on bipartisan solutions to keep Social Security sustainable and in passing a historic tax reform bill.

I’m a bit more skeptical now about efforts at bipartisan collaborations. At the beginning of the health care reform debate in 2009, there was a gang of six Senator including Senators Charles Grassley of Iowa , Olympia Snowe of Maine, and Michael Enzi of Wyoming. The White House had given Grassley wide lattitude to influence the shape of the health care reform bill to try to reach a bipartisan plan. In August during the town hall meetings, when the Tea Party first made their presence felt, Grassley began making false claims of the health care reform bill having death panels, even though Grassley voted in 2003 for counseling for end-of-life issues and care. John McCain and Orrin Hatch both voted against the Dream Act in 2010, even though they both had voted for the Dream Act in the past. Lindsey Graham left a partnership with Joe Lieberman and John Kerry on a compromise climate bill that would have reduced greenhouse gas emissions. I think the Tea Party has made many Republicans afraid of collaborating with Democrats in any way.

I think one of the reasons that bipartisan collaborations are more rare is that there are less moderates in either party. The situation isn’t as bad in the Democratic Party because there is still a sizable number of Blue Dog Democrats. In the Republican Party, however, there has been a concerted effort by conservatives and Tea Party members to purge the GOP of moderates. A famous case of a moderate leaving the Republican Party is Senator Jim Jeffords in 2001.

In a June 23, 1996 article entitle Why Today’s Politics Stink, David Broder writes of the reason that moderates are becoming less frequent in either political party:

The need for cross-party friendships is even greater now than in the past because the ideological differences between the parties have grown. And in both the House and Senate, a bloodless version of ‘ethnic cleansing’ has been taking place within each party.

For most of the postwar period, Democratic congressional majorities included a kaleidoscope of personalities and views, ranging from Northern liberals like Humphrey, Hart, and McGovern to Southern conservatives like Sam Ervin, John Stennis and Harry Byrd. But the conservative Southern Democrats began to disappear after the civil rights revolution. In the House, some of their seats are now held by African-Americans. But most of the House seats and all of the Senate seats that have switched parties are filled by conservative Republicans. As a result, the center of gravity in the House and Senate Democratic caucuses has moved north and moved left.

Exactly the opposite has been happening to the Republicans. With Southerners now in the top leadership positions in both House and Senate, the congressional GOP is much more uniformly conservative than it was when Dole arrived. And just as conservative Republicans have replaced conservative Democrats in the South, so liberal Democrats have replaced moderate and liberal Republicans who once were numerous in New England, the Middle Atlantic states, the Midwest and the Northwest.

As each party has become more homogeneous in terms of philosophy, there has been less tolerance of dissent. The penalties for deviating from the party line have increased.

The differences of view- even of philosophy- between the parties are genuine. But the press treats these disagreements as if they were narrowly partisan and the public often sees these battles simply as evidence of small minded, churlish behavior- and condemn everyone involved, regardless of party label. The result is a more polarized, less productive Congress- and one which the public has come to despise.

I think bipartisanship is only possible if there is a sizable number of moderates in the Republican Party where reasonable compromises could be worked out. I think the current crop of conservative and Tea Party Republicans and moderate and liberal Democrats are too ideologically apart for there to be any meaningful collaboration. The Republican ideas on free markets and small government are too opposed to the Democrats ideas of the necessity of the federal government.

I’ve had some disappointments with Obama, but I still like President Obama and will volunteer to help reelect Obama in 2012. But after the elections are over, I’m going to work on those issues that I strongly support and do my best to pressure Obama to support those issues. I’m also hoping that some moderate Republicans start to stand up to the Tea Party and starts reasserting their place in the Republican Party. A reinvigorated number of moderate Republicans would be good for both the Republican Party and for our nation.

If you enjoy this cartoon, take a look at these links for more of my political cartoons at Everyday Citizen:

Jasper And the Homeless Veteran
Jasper Celebrates the 4th of July
Jasper Meets Howard Zinn
Jasper and the Nature Poem
The Reunion
Government and the Market Economy
Jasper Joins Two Protests
Bob the Nerd Vampire
Jasper Debates War
Jasper Finds His Way Home
Jasper Escapes the Detention Center
Jasper At A Detention Center
Jasper Meets a Poet
Jasper’s Day
Jasper Tackles Health Care
Jasper Protests the War
Jasper and the Economy
Jasper Sings a Protest Song
The Road To Health Care Reform Cartoon
A Cartoon about the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict
A Cartoon about My Experience in an Evangelical Church
A Cartoon about Political Debate
A Cartoon On Gay Marriage

Capitalism In Silicon Valley

Like most people in the Left, I’m fairly critical of the Capitalist system. It’s a system that is often exploitative of workers, it exploits natural resources and causes environmental and pollution problems, it leads to great inequalities between the rich and the poor, it fosters a culture of greed and corrosive self interest, and it leads to unhealthy concentrations of wealth in a small group of people. I do think though, that Capitalism does have its good points: it fuels competition that leads to technological advancements; in the long run it helps more people get out of poverty and raise the living standards of many communities. So I think that Capitalism is a system with great benefits and great flaws. I think one of the reasons I have the views that I do is the place where I live. If I lived in Michigan or some other place that has been hardest hit by the economic crisis, I think I would be more of a revolutionary. But I live in Silicon Valley, where the benefits and flaws of capitalism are both very pronounced.

I often think of Silicon Valley as being the land of the overworked engineer. Most of the people that I know are engineers and my wife is an engineer. Engineers earn a lot of money, but they also work unearthly hours and often face a lot of pressure to solve technical problems at a deadline. During the 1990s, many young engineers worked long hours and had no private lives and eventually got burned out during the tech boom. Unions have not made any headways in organizing engineers, so they are often vulnerable to management whims. I’ve heard stories from friends who worked in start up companies that withheld their vacation pay or their last paychecks when they moved to other companies. Many high tech workers work late at night to communicate with India, as night time here is morning in India.

One of the good things of the tech companies is how they have raised the living standards of many neighborhoods. My parents’ neighborhood is a more blue collar neighborhood with many Filipinos, Hispanics, Vietnamese,and Indians. Their neighborhood improved a lot during the tech boom years, as the parks had lusher grass and new bikeways and hiking paths parallelling the creek. During the housing bubble, many people upgraded their houses and improved their lawns. After the housing crash, though, in 2008, many homes have been foreclosed, and people have been struggling. My parents and many of the people in the neighborhood have been living in their homes for over thirty years, and a large group are veterans who retired from Moffet Field military base and have found jobs in more blue collar lines of work. They bought their homes before the tech revolution in Silicon Valley, so housing prices were still within the reach of average working class families.

Over the past two decades though, people in the high tech industries have been buying homes in the heart of Silicon Valley to be near their work and have caused housing prices to rise. This has made housing prices out of reach for many lower wage workers. Many lower wage workers have had to live farther away and had to have longer commutes to get to work. This was especially tough for them when gas prices began to rise, as more of their paychecks went to pay for the longer commute. In the Silicon Valley, there are pockets of poorer neighborhoods, where people struggle in a place where there is so much wealth. Homeless people wander the streets and many churches and nonprofits have set up shelters and lunch programs to try to help them. Though many people have benefitted economically from high tech companies, many people have been left behind and are trapped.

One of the wonderful things about Silicon Valley is the great ethnic diversity. Chinese, Filipinos, Hispanics. Indians, Russians, African Americans, Vietnamese, Middle Easterners, all have flocked here for greater economic opportunities. I’ve learned a lot about different cultures just from visiting friends’ homes and having conversations about their traditions. It’s common to see interracial couples, and if you go to a farmer’s market, there are many different types of food from different countries.

One of the reasons I favor immigration reform is that our valley’s prosperity depends on immigrants. Around the country, there has been a growing prejudice against Hispanic immigrants because of the illegal immigration issue, and my observations in Silicon Valley is that these people work hard in jobs that are often unnoticed. They work to keep people’s yards clean and well manicured. They cook and serve the foods in many of the restaurants that high tech engineers eat at. In the weekends I’ve driven past the farming fields in Watsonville and Monterey, to see Hispanic workers on the fields picking the vegetables in the hot sun. The idea that is often espoused by many conservative Republicans that these people are exploiting the system seems to me a fallacy. From what I observe, our country is exploiting these immigrants for their cheap labor far more than they’re exploiting us.

Many progressives have criticized corporate CEOs for their greed and I share a lot of that sentiment. Here in Silicon Valley, my perceptions of high tech CEOs are far more complicated. High tech CEOs are often as competitive and greedy as CEOs in other industries. But many CEOs have also given back to the communities and have supported progressive causes. David Packard, one of the founders of Hewlett Packard, is a noted philanthropist who founded the Monterey Bay Aquarium Foundation, the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute , the Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital at Stanford University, and has donated to programs for populution control, environmental sustainability issues and health insurance for children. Packard’s son has helped the Stanford Theater, a wonderful theater in Palo Alto that runs old movies made before 1960.

Recently Steve Jobs died, and he’s an example of the contradictions of high tech CEOs. He’s helped Apple become a leading company with the Mac, the iPod, the iPad, and many other technological products that have changed the lives of many people for the better. His commercials extol the rebel, the noncomformist, people who “think different”. Yet Jobs was also verbally abusive to many of his employees, and his products are often made in countries that exploit poor workers for their cheap labor. Many progressives have been justifiably critical of Jobs because of this dark side. Jobs’ wife, Laurene Jobs, has been a strong supporter of progressive causes and Hillary Clinton’s presidential run. Last week I dropped by Apple to see the tributes that were being given to Jobs. A steady stream of people, from young people to whole families, filed past the flowers and cards that were placed on an Apple bench to pay tribute to Steve Jobs. I don’t own any Apple projects, but I too felt a sort of loss for a man that brought us so many technological advancements in computers and animation.

Since the Kennedys and the Roosevelts were rich families that worked hard to help the poor and disadvantaged, I don’t think that all rich people are bad. I do think though that the rich do have an obligation to help those who are less fortunate and to give back to their communities. One thing that has bothered me is the attitude among some rich people that since they worked hard to gain their wealth, they blame the poor for their condition, when in fact the poor people that I know work very hard. This attitude tends to be more prevalent among wealthy people who live in communities where they have no contact with poorer people on a social level. I have met wealthy individuals who have volunteered to serve food for the poor or to go aid in disaster areas like New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. Several wealthier business people from minority communities have tried to give back to their communities. Especially in these hard economic times, I think more is required from those people who have benefitted from this economic system to help the victims of the economic system.

The competitve spirit that drives Silicon Valley is a major reason that it is the technological hub of the country. But this competitiveness has it disadvantages, especially for its youth. Many wealthier parents compete to have their children go to Cupertino schools, as that city has a repution for having a top notch school system. Many students feel a lot of stress due to the competitive nature of the school system. In affluent Palo Alto, about two years ago, there was a rash of teen suicides where a number of high achieving teens walked in from of a train to end their life. An article by Chris Kenwick for the May 22, 2009 Palo Alto News stated:

It is hard to be a teenager anywhere, but may be particularly hard in a high-achieving place such as Palo Alto, Rey believes.

Pressure to succeed is such that teens and parents often feel a need to hide their challenges, he said.

“On the outside we all have that smile, we’re all healthy, beautiful, drive a Mercedes, have a big house, yet we suffer in silence and alone in our homes because admitting that there’s something wrong is a sign that we have failed.

“We think that going out and saying, ‘I have a depressed child’ is a reflection of the failure of the parents, when it is not. But I think we’re all afraid of that so, sadly, we stay in denial,” Rey said.

The environment in Silicon Valley has a mixed record. Because of the toxic materials that have been used to make the silicon chips for the high tech industries in the 1980s and 1990s, there are many areas that are under ground that is contaminated with those older toxic materials, The paving over of land that was once orchards and farms has been a difficult transition for many older residents. On many summer days, we have Spare the Air days because the smog levels from traffic is so bad, it becomes a health hazard to people with lung problems or to people who are sensitive to unhealthy air.

On the other hand this area has been a major center for clean air industries. Many high tech parking lots like Google have solar panels hovering over their spaces. The Adobe building in downtown San Jose has 20 wind turbines to produce around 50,000 kilowatt hours of electricity a year. The valley has many Prius and other hybrid car owners.

The San Francisco Bay Area Wetlands Restoration Program has been working to restore the wetlands around the Bay Area and it has improved the Bay environment greatly since the worst environment damage of the 1960s. A recent report called “The State of San Francisco Bay 2011″ stated that the Bay is far less polluted than it was in the 1950s and 1960s, but that more progress needs to be done to stop the diversion of fresh water that would have naturally flowed into the bay but instead go to farmland in the central valley. Environmentalists have worked to convert salt flats back into wetlands to help bring back some of the natural state of the Bay. Closer to the heart of Silicon Valley, a major effort is being expended to build up the Stevens Creek Trail, which follows the Stevens Creek through Mountain View, past the Shoreline Park in to the San Francisco Bay. Shoreline Park is a 700-acre park with a saltwater lake, golf course, rolling grassy hills, and bay trails that was built over an old landfill. There is a wonderful PBS documentary called Saving The Bay that documents the history of the San Francisco Bay.

This week a group of protesters have settled in San Jose’s City Hall to continue the protests against financial institutions that were started by the Occupy Wall Street protests. This group calls itself Occupy San Jose and it has a facebook page that people could visit. After work last Friday, I visited the group and found a lot of idealistic individuals with admirable concern for the state of our country. That night they were going to decide whether to follow a City Hall mandate to take down their encampment or to keep their encampment as an act of civil disobedience and face arrest. I hope they stay and continue to raise people’s awareness to the increased concentration of power and wealth in corporations and the flaws in this economic system. Many of the people who have been hurt by the recession that started in 2008 had no money invested in Wall Street and been leading honest respectable lives.

Here is a quote from a Nicholas D. Kristof article for the October 1, 2011 New York Times:

I don’t share the antimarket sentiments of many of the protesters. Banks are invaluable institutions that, when functioning properly, move capital to its best use and raise living standards. But it’s also true that soaring leverage not only nurtured soaring bank profits in good years, but also soaring risks for the public in bad years.

In effect, the banks socialized risk and privatized profits. Securitizing mortgages, for example, made many bankers wealthy while ultimately leaving governments indebted and citizens homeless.

We’ve seen that inadequately regulated, too-big-to-fail banks can undermine the public interest rather than serve it — and in the last few years, banks got away with murder. It’s infuriating to see bankers who were rescued by taxpayers now moan about regulations intended to prevent the next bail-out. And it’s important that protesters spotlight rising inequality: does it feel right to anyone that the top 1 percent of Americans now possess a greater collective net worth than the entire bottom 90 percent?

…Much of the sloganeering at “Occupy Wall Street” is pretty silly — but so is the self-righteous sloganeering of Wall Street itself. And if a ragtag band of youthful protesters can help bring a dose of accountability and equity to our financial system, more power to them.

I end this blog with a quote from Paul Krugman from the October 6, 2011 New York Times:

A weary cynicism, a belief that justice will never get served, has taken over much of our political debate — and, yes, I myself have sometimes succumbed. In the process, it has been easy to forget just how outrageous the story of our economic woes really is. So, in case you’ve forgotten, it was a play in three acts.

In the first act, bankers took advantage of deregulation to run wild (and pay themselves princely sums), inflating huge bubbles through reckless lending. In the second act, the bubbles burst — but bankers were bailed out by taxpayers, with remarkably few strings attached, even as ordinary workers continued to suffer the consequences of the bankers’ sins. And, in the third act, bankers showed their gratitude by turning on the people who had saved them, throwing their support — and the wealth they still possessed thanks to the bailouts — behind politicians who promised to keep their taxes low and dismantle the mild regulations erected in the aftermath of the crisis.

Given this history, how can you not applaud the protesters for finally taking a stand?

Scenes from Youtube from the Occupy San Jose movement