Every so often we come across a secular Jewish ‘anti’ Zionist’ who argues that Zionism is not Judaism and vice versa. Interestingly enough, I have just come across an invaluable text that illuminates this question from a rabbinical perspective. Apparently back in 1942, 757 American Rabbis added their names to a public pronouncement titled ‘Zionism an Affirmation of Judaism’. This Rabbinical rally for Zionism was declared at the time “the largest public pronouncement in all Jewish history.”
Today, we tend to believe that world Jewry’s transition towards support for Israel followed the 1967 war though some might argue that already in 1948, American Jews manifested a growing support for Zionism. However, this rabbinical pronouncement proves that as early as 1942, the American Jewish religious establishment was already deeply Zionist. And if this is not enough, the rabbis also regarded Zionism as the ‘implementation’ of Judaism. Seemingly, already then, the peak of World War two, the overwhelming majority of American Rabbis regarded Zionism, not only as fully consistent with Judaism, but as a “logical expression and implementation of it.”
In spite of the fact that early Zionist leaders were largely secular and the East European Jewish settler waves were driven by Jewish socialist ideology, the rabbis contend that “Zionism is not a secularist movement. It has its origins and roots in the authoritative religious texts of Judaism.”
Those rabbis were not a bunch of ignoramuses. They were patriotic and nationalistic and they grasped that “universalism is not a contradiction of nationalism.” The rabbis tried to differentiate between contemporaneous German Nationalism and other national movements and they definitely wanted to believe that Zionism was categorically different to Nazism. “Nationalism as such, whether it be English, French, American or Jewish, is not in itself evil. It is only militaristic and chauvinistic nationalism, that nationalism which shamelessly flouts all mandates of international morality, which is evil.” But as we know, just three years after the liberation of Auschwitz the new Jewish State launched a devastating racially driven ethnic-cleansing campaign. Zionism has proven to be militaristic and chauvinistic.
Shockingly enough, back in 1942 as many as 757 American rabbis were able to predict the outcome of the war and they realised that the suffering of European Jewry would be translated into a Jewish State . “We are not so bold as to predict the nature of the international order which will emerge from the present war. It is altogether likely, and indeed it may be desirable, that all sovereign states shall under the coming peace surrender some of their sovereignty to achieve a just and peaceful world society [a Jewish State].”
Some American patriots today are concerned with Israeli-American dual nationality and the dual aspirations of American Jews. Apparently our rabbis addressed this topic too. According to them, there is no such conflict whatsoever. All American Jews are American patriots and all American decision makers are Zionists. “Every fair-minded American knows that American Jews have only one political allegiance–and that is to America. There is nothing in Zionism to impair this loyalty. Zionism has been endorsed in our generation by every President from Woodrow Wilson to Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and has been approved by the Congress of the United States. The noblest spirits in American life, statesmen, scholars, writers, ministers and leaders of labor and industry, have lent their sympathy and encouragement to the movement.”
Back in 1942 our American rabbis were bold enough to state that defeating Hitler was far from sufficient. For them, a full solution of the Jewish question could only take place in Palestine. “Jews, and all non-Jews who are sympathetically interested in the plight of Jewry, should bear in mind that the defeat of Hitler will not of itself normalize Jewish life in Europe.”
But there was one thing the American rabbis failed to mention – the Palestinian people. For some reason, those rabbis who knew much about ‘universalism’ and in particular Jewish ‘universalism’ showed very little concern for the people of the land. I guess that after all, chosenness is a form of blindness and rabbis probably know more about this than anyone else.
Zionism: An Affirmation of Judaism
ZIONISM
AN AFFIRMATION
OF JUDAISM
A Reply by 757 Orthodox, Conservative and Reform
Rabbis of America to a Statement Issued by Ninety
Members of the Reform Rabbinate Charging That
Zionism Is Incompatible with the Teachings of Judaism
THE SUBJOINED REPLY was prepared at the initiative of the following Rabbis who submitted it to their colleagues throughout the country for signature: Philip S. Bernstein, Barnett R. Brickner, Israel Goldstein, James G. Heller, Mordecai M. Kaplan, B. L. Levinthal, Israel H. Levinthal, Louis M. Levitsky, Joshua Loth Liebman, Joseph H. Lookstein, Jacob R. Marcus, Abraham A. Neuman, Louis I. Newman, David de Sola Pool, Abba Hillel Silver, Milton Steinberg, and Stephen S. Wise.
WE, THE UNDERSIGNED RABBIS of all elements in American Jewish religious life, have noted with concern a statement by ninety of our colleagues in which they repudiate Zionism on the ground that it is inconsistent with Jewish religious and moral doctrine. This statement misrepresents Zionism and misinterprets historic Jewish religious teaching, and we should be derelict in our duty if we did not correct the misapprehensions which it is likely to foster.
We call attention in the first place to the fact that the signatories to this statement, for whom as fellow-Rabbis we have a high regard, represent no more than a very small fraction of the American rabbinate. They constitute a minority even of the rabbinate of Reform Judaism with which they are associated. The overwhelming majority of American Rabbis regard Zionism not only as fully consistent with Judaism but as a logical expression and implementation of it.
Our colleagues concede the need for Jewish immigration into Palestine as contributing towards a solution of the vast tragedy of Jewish homelessness. They profess themselves ready to encourage such settlement. They are aware of the important achievements, social and spiritual, of the Palestinian Jewish community and they pledge to it their unstinted support. And yet, subscribing to every practical accomplishment of Zionism, they have embarked upon a public criticism of it. In explanation of their opposition they advance the consideration that Zionism is nationalistic and secularistic. On both scores they maintain it is incompatible with the Jewish religion and its universalistic outlook. They protest against the political emphasis which, they say, is now paramount in the Zionist program and which, according to them, tends to confuse both Jews and Christians as to the place and function of the Jewish group in American society. They appeal to the prophets of ancient Israel for substantiation of their views.
TREASURING the doctrines and moral principles of our faith no less than they, devoted equally to America and its democratic processes and spirit, we nonetheless find every one of their contentions totally without foundation.
Zionism is not a secularist movement. It has its origins and roots in the authoritative religious texts of Judaism. Scripture and rabbinical literature alike are replete with the promise of the restoration of Israel to its ancestral home. Anti-Zionism, not Zionism, is a departure from the Jewish religion. Nothing in the entire pronouncement of our colleagues is more painful than their appeal to the prophets of Israel—to those very prophets whose inspired and recorded words of national rebirth and restoration nurtured and sustained the hope of Israel throughout the ages.
Nor is Zionism a denial of the universalistic teachings of Judaism. Universalism is not a contradiction of nationalism. Nationalism as such, whether it be English, French, American or Jewish, is not in itself evil. It is only militaristic and chauvinistic nationalism, that nationalism which shamelessly flouts all mandates of international morality, which is evil. The prophets of Israel looked forward to the time not when all national entities would be obliterated, but when all nations would walk in the light of the Lord, live by His law and learn war no more.
Our colleagues find themselves unable to subscribe to the political emphasis “now paramount in the Zionist program.” We fail to perceive what it is to which they object. Is it to the fact that there are a regularly constituted Zionist organization and a Jewish Agency which deal with the mandatory government, the Colonial office, the League of Nations and other recognized political bodies? But obviously, even immigration and colonization are practical matters which require political action. The settlement of a half million Jews in Palestine since the last war was made possible by political action which culminated in the Balfour Declaration and the Palestine Mandate. There can be little hope of opening the doors of Palestine for mass Jewish immigration after the war without effective political action. Or is it that they object to the ultimate achievement by the Jewish community of Palestine of some form of Jewish statehood? We are not so bold as to predict the nature of the international order which will emerge from the present war. It is altogether likely, and indeed it may be desirable, that all sovereign states shall under the coming peace surrender some of their sovereignty to achieve a just and peaceful world society.
Certainly our colleagues will allow to the Jews of Palestine the same rights that are allowed to all other peoples resident on their own land. If Jews should ultimately come to constitute a majority of the population of Palestine, would our colleagues suggest that all other peoples in the post-war world shall be entitled to political self-determination, whatever form that may take, but the Jewish people in Palestine shall not have such a right? Or do they mean to suggest that the Jews in Palestine shall forever remain a minority in order not to achieve such political self-determination?
PROTESTING their sympathy both for the homeless Jews of the world and for their brethren in Palestine, our colleagues have by their pronouncement done all these a grave disservice. It may well be that to the degree to which their efforts arc at all effective, Jews who might otherwise have found a haven in Palestine will be denied one. The enemies of the Jewish homeland will be strengthened in their propaganda as a result of the aid which these Rabbis have given them. To the Jews of Palestine, facing the gravest danger in their history and fighting hard to maintain morale and hope in the teeth of the totalitarian menace, this pronouncement comes as a cruel blow.
We do not mean to imply that our colleagues intended it as such. We have no doubt that they are earnest about their fine spun theoretical objections to Zionism. We hold, however, that these objections have no merit, and further that voicing them at this time has been unwise and unkind.
We have not the least fear that our fellow Americans will be led to misconstrue the attitudes of American Jews to America because of their interest in Zionism. Every fair-minded American knows that American Jews have only one political allegiance–and that is to America. There is nothing in Zionism to impair this loyalty. Zionism has been endorsed in our generation by every President from Woodrow Wilson to Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and has been approved by the Congress of the United States. The noblest spirits in American life, statesmen, scholars, writers, ministers and leaders of labor and industry, have lent their sympathy and encouragement to the movement.
Jews, and all non-Jews who are sympathetically interested in the plight of Jewry, should bear in mind that the defeat of Hitler will not of itself normalize Jewish life in Europe.
An Allied peace which will not frankly face the problem of the national homelessness of the Jewish people will leave the age-old tragic status of European Jewry unchanged. The Jewish people is in danger of emerging from this war not only more torn and broken than any other people, but also without any prospects of a better and more secure future and without the hope that such tragedies will not recur again, and again. Following an Allied victory, the Jews of Europe, we are confident, will be restored to their political rights and to equality of citizenship. But they possessed these rights after the last war and yet the past twenty-five years have witnessed a rapid and appalling deterioration in their position. In any case, even after peace is restored Europe will be so ravaged and war-torn that large masses of Jews will elect migration to Palestine as a solution of their personal problems.
Indeed, for most of these there may be no other substantial hope of economic, social and spiritual rehabilitation.
THE freedom which, we have faith, will come to all men and nations after this war, must come not only to Jews as individuals wherever they live, permitting them to share freedom on a plane of equality with all other men, but also to the Jewish people, as such, restored in its homeland, where at long last it will be a free people within a world federation of free peoples.
Of the 757 Rabbis listed below, 214 are members of the Central Conference of American Rabbis (Reform); 247 are members of the Rabbinical Assembly of America (Conservative); and the rest are affiliated with the Rabbinical Council of America (Orthodox) or the Union of Orthodox Rabbis. The total represents the largest number of rabbis whose signatures are attached to a public pronouncement in all Jewish history.
To see the scanned image in PDF format with the list of signers, click here
Note: A version of the above statement was released to the press on November 20, 1942. By that time 818 rabbis had signed on. It appears in Samuel Halperin’s The Political World of American Zionism. (Detroit: Wayne State UP, 1961) 333.
http://zionistsout.blogspot.com/2008/03/zionism-affirmation-of-judaism.html
May 16, 2013
Posted by aletho |
Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Supremacism, Social Darwinism, Timeless or most popular | American Jews, Gilad Atzmon, Israel, Judaism, Palestine, Zionism |
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Under current U.S. law, all our publicly traded corporations must annually disclose exactly what they pay their top executives. So why do all those CEO pay scorecards we see every spring show such different results?
USA Today found an 8 percent hike in 2012 CEO pay while The New York Times detected an 18.7 percent increase. Towers Watson, a corporate consulting firm, announced that CEO pay growth “slowed considerably,” rising at just a 1.2 percent rate last year.
What explains all these wildly divergent results? Let’s start with how corporations pay their top execs. This can get tricky.
Most executive pay today comes as stock-related compensation. Stock “options” give executives the right, down the road, to buy shares of their company stock at today’s share price. If that share price jumps, the execs can buy low and sell high. Instant windfall.
“Restricted” stock awards, on the other hand, give executives actual shares of stock, not just an option to buy them. Execs do have to wait a few years before they can actually claim these shares. No big deal. The shares will still have value in future years even if a company’s stock takes a hit.
But how should we value all this share-related compensation right now? Should CEO pay scorekeepers estimate how much stock awards granted this year will be worth in years to come? Or should scorekeepers only tally stock-related awards when execs actually profit personally from them?
Different executive pay scorekeepers give different answers. Scorekeepers also keep score on different sets of corporations. USA Today‘s new scorecard for 2012 tallies pay at 170 firms, the New York Times at just 100.
Given all this, do we have any single stat that tells us what we need to know? We do. That stat: the divide between worker and top executive pay.
America’s big-time CEOs, labor researchers at the AFL-CIO report, are now making 354 times the pay of average U.S. workers, the “largest pay gap in the world.”
Three decades ago, in 1982, American CEOs averaged just 42 times more than average U.S. workers. Two decades ago, in 1992, the gap stood at 201 times. A decade ago: 281 times.
The overall trend line, in other words, couldn’t be clearer. How can we reverse it? Identifying the specific pay gap between individual CEOs and their own workers would be a good first step.
Corporations have had to publish, for decades now, how much they pay their top execs. They haven’t had to reveal publicly how much — or how little — they pay their workers. The Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act enacted in 2010 changes this dynamic, at least on paper.
Dodd-Frank requires corporations to annually disclose the gap between what they pay their CEOs and their most typical workers. But a corporate lobbying blitz has kept the Securities and Exchange Commission from writing the regulations needed to enforce this disclosure mandate.
Why do our biggest corporations so fervently oppose disclosing their CEO-worker pay ratios? Disclosure by itself, after all, won’t shove down CEO pay levels. But disclosure could open the door to other steps that could curb CEO pay excess.
Lawmakers could, for instance, choose to deny government contracts or tax breaks to corporations that pay their top executives over 25 or even 50 times what their own workers are making.
Far-fetched? Current law already denies government contracts to companies that discriminate by race or gender in their employment practices. As a society, we’ve concluded that our tax dollars must not go to corporations that widen racial or gender inequality.
So why should we let our tax dollars enrich corporations that widen our economic divide?
Sam Pizzigati is the author of The Rich Don’t Always Win, Seven Stories Press, New York.
April 29, 2013
Posted by aletho |
Economics, Supremacism, Social Darwinism, Timeless or most popular | Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, Executive pay |
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Major European retailers C&A, KiK and El Corte Inglés will contribute to a compensation plan for the victims of the Tazreen Fashions fire in Bangladesh.
The brands made the commitment at a meeting held on 15 April in Geneva to discuss a 5.7 million USD compensation plan for the victims of the Tazreen Fashions fire in Bangladesh, which killed 112 workers and injured about 120 in November 2012.
The meeting was hosted by IndustriALL Global Union and attended by major European retailers, a leading Bangladesh trade unionist, the Clean Clothes Campaign and the Worker Rights Consortium.
In an outrageous display of indifference to the suffering of Bangladeshi families, major US corporations Walmart, Sears/Kmart and Disney refused to pay any compensation to the victims and failed to attend the meeting. Walmart was apparently the largest buyer from the Tazreen factory. The companies, which failed to enforce their own worker safety standards, have claimed to be deeply saddened by the deaths.
Major European retailers C&A (Netherlands), KiK (Germany) and El Corte Inglés (Spain) attended the meeting and agreed to make substantial contributions to the compensation plan for the families of the dead and for the injured. The Italian clothing brand Piazza Italia did not attend but has agreed to participate in the package.
“We have agreed on confirming the concrete amounts that each of these brands will contribute by the end of this month,” says IndustriALL General Secretary Jyrki Raina. “The families and the injured have already waited far too long.”
Other companies that were sourcing from Tazreen and failed to attend include Hong Kong based trader Li & Fung, Teddy Smith (France), Edinborough Woolen Mills (UK), Dickies (US) and Karl Rieker (Germany). Li & Fung has however agreed to paying compensation.
The compensation plan, developed by IndustriALL and its affiliates in Bangladesh and supported by international labour rights groups, is based on the compensation formula used in other recent fires. These include the December 2010 fire at That’s It Sportswear, a factory producing for Gap and other US brands, and the fire this January at Smart Export Garments, which was producing clothes for Inditex and others. The details of the plan will be worked out in a subsequent meeting to be held in Dhaka, Bangladesh.
Says Ineke Zeldenrust from the Clean Clothes Campaign, “We once again call upon Walmart and the other major companies sourcing from Tazreen to aid the families of the dead and the injured workers. Their refusal to do so indicates a shocking lack of concern for the rights and well-being of the workers who make their clothes and who, in this case, were injured or killed in the process.”
April 27, 2013
Posted by aletho |
Supremacism, Social Darwinism | Bangladesh, Clean Clothes Campaign, Disney, IndustriALL Global Union, Kmart, Sears, United States, Walmart, Worker Rights Consortium |
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The worst ever industrial accident in Bangladesh has killed more than 200 garment workers with fears of a final death toll reaching 1,000 as hundreds remain injured and trapped in the debris.
“Cut off my hand, save my life!” screams a woman trapped under the collapsed eight-story Rana Plaza building in Savar, 30 kilometres outside Dhaka. The same request is shouted by trapped Aftab, while other screams in the rubble demand oxygen. 200,000 local people have assembled in Savar offering to donate blood to the rescue effort, as hospitals are gravely under supplied.
The mass industrial manslaughter occurred at 9am, 24 April. The collapsed building, illegally constructed, contained five garment factories with 2,500 workers. Those five factories are Ether Tex, New Wave Bottoms, New Wave Style, Phantom Apparels and Phantom-TAC. These factories are believed to have produced for several well-known western brands including Mango, Primark, C&A, KIK, Wal-Mart, Children’s Place, Cato Fashions, Benetton, Matalan and Bon Marché.
On 23 April, the day before the collapse, large structural cracks appeared in the supporting pillars of Rana Plaza, but local authorities were ignored by the building owner Sohel Rana and the garment factory owners when they gave the order to evacuate, while the three shops and bank on the building’s ground floor heeded the warning and evacuated. A Rana Plaza garment worker had to work three days unpaid for every one work day missed, so workers were reluctant to stay safe at home on 24 April.
Now over 2,000 workers are injured in hospital, many critically, 254 are dead and many more continue screaming from under the rubble. The IndustriALL Global Union affiliated textile and garment trade unions in Bangladesh are present and supporting the rescue efforts. Affiliates work jointly through the IndustriALL Bangladesh Council (IBC) which yesterday used a joint press conference to put forward joint demands and a programme of action, calling for justice and action from authorities and brands. The IBC will mobilize all affiliates in a mass demonstration on 26 April in front of the Dhaka Press Club.
20,000 furious garment workers from neighbouring factories this morning brought five major highways to a halt, and several local skirmishes saw angry protestors target garment factories that were not respecting the national day of mourning, forcing them to close and show respect to the dead. Protestors also targetted the building of the Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers & Exporters Association (BGMEA).
The systemic problems must be tackled immediately in Bangladesh’s garment industry and much responsibility must fall on the western clothing brands making enormous profits from items made in deadly conditions on poverty wages. While brands continue refusing to pay a sufficient price for safe production of their clothes, their calls for improved safety are not sincere.
Much needed improvements to the national labour law have been debated through Bangladesh’s legislative process, with the government cabinet approving revisions on 22 April. However this process has been lobbied by the global garment industry buyers who have demanded a scaling back of workers’ rights initially proposed in the reform.
IndustriALL Global Union believes that Bangladeshi garment workers deserve the right to work in safety, with full access to organize and bargain collectively in trade unions, and a substantial rise of the current US$38 monthly minimum wage.
IndustriALL Global Union General Secretary Jyrki Raina said:
This terrible tragedy highlights the urgency of putting a stop to the race to the bottom in supplying cheap means of production to international brands, a race in which hundreds of workers have lost their lives. Global clothing brands and retailers have a responsibility for their full production chains. Now it is time for them, suppliers and the Bangladeshi government to sit down with IndustriALL and its affiliates to agree on a safety program that will ensure this will never happen again.
April 27, 2013
Posted by aletho |
Economics, Supremacism, Social Darwinism | Bangladesh, Benetton, Dhaka, IndustriALL Global Union, Matalan, Sohel Rana, Wal-Mart |
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In an article published in The Hill, Mike Coogan reports that some of the key legislation that emerged from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee’s (AIPAC) 2013 annual policy conference is running into significant difficulties in Congress. The bills, which Lara Friedman only half-jokingly called the “Israel Best Ally With Benefits” bills, have not gained close to the overwhelming support that AIPAC has come to expect from Congress.
Indeed, more than five weeks after the United States-Israel Strategic Partnership Act of 2013 was introduced in the Senate, it has gathered only 18 co-sponsors. That’s a shockingly low total for a focal point of AIPAC lobbying. It has done better in the House of Representatives, with 171 co-sponsors, but given the more hawkish nature of the House, even that’s not a success by AIPAC’s standards.
While one shouldn’t make too much of this, it certainly seems like AIPAC reached a little too far with this bill. The main issue is a portion of the bill which, in the Senate version, would grant a US visa exemption for Israeli citizens without requiring a reciprocal arrangement from Israel. The US has visa exemption arrangements with 37 other countries, but all of them reciprocate.
Ron Kampeas quotes a staffer from a leading pro-Israel lawmaker in the US House of Representatives as saying that “It’s stunning that you would give a green light to another country to violate the civil liberties of Americans traveling abroad.”
The US concern is particularly profound after a Palestinian-American, who taught English at the Friends’ School in Ramallah, was barred by Israel in January from returning to her West Bank job after a trip to Jordan, despite having a visa that allowed her to leave and re-enter Israeli-controlled territory. Israel, undoubtedly, is concerned that a reciprocal agreement would compromise its ability to bar not only Palestinian-Americans, but also pro-Palestinian activists, from entering the country.
The House version of the bill does not exempt Israel from reciprocity, but merely calls on the Secretary of State to report to Congress on the extent of Israel’s compliance with the reciprocity requirement and “…what additional steps, if any, are required in order for Israel to qualify for inclusion in such program.” That may be one reason the House bill has done better.
The bill includes other troublesome aspects. Friedman points out that the Senate bill includes shockingly weak language in support of a two-state solution: “…language that disconnects the issue from U.S. national security interests and in doing so creates a formulation that inconsistent with the actual foreign policy of the Obama Administration or ANY previous administration.”
Even so, it remains surprising that a bill that emerged as a focal point from an AIPAC policy conference would have this much trouble. Coogan thinks this is a sign that AIPAC’s grip on Congress might be weakening.
It certainly adds to a sense that AIPAC might have reached a tipping point. Equally telling is what Coogan says about how AIPAC brought this bill to the Hill: “Numerous public reports and off-the-record accounts from legislators and staff signaled that the brazenness and late release of the Israel lobby’s legislative demands blindsided both individual members and various committees. Provisions appeared tone deaf and legally problematic, even among Israel’s strongest supporters.”
I haven’t been able to locate those “numerous public reports,” but my own sense from talking to people on Capitol Hill and other informed colleagues is that there is indeed some tension there. That’s on top of congressional bristling at AIPAC’s efforts to exempt aid to Israel from the sequestration cuts. Dylan Williams of J Street told The Forward that the possibility that AIPAC might try to lobby for exempting aid to Israel from the sequester “…seems a little tone deaf,” and that some Hill staffers were “surprised that some groups — that people from AIPAC — were asking for this.”
Does all this mean AIPAC is losing its grip? Probably not, but as members of Congress grow less enthusiastic about complying with AIPAC’s demands, the possibility that more politicians will test the widely-held but unproven maxim that opposing AIPAC is electoral suicide arises. That could make things very interesting.
April 14, 2013
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Supremacism, Social Darwinism | AIPAC, American Israel Public Affairs Committee, Congress, Israel, United States |
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Obama Does Social Security and Medicare
With Barack Obama putting his plan to cut Social Security and Medicare expenditures into writing in his Federal budget proposal the ability of those who voted for him to credibly deny his years of publicly stating he would do so disappeared. The pathetic pleas from liberals and progressives who only a few short months ago were assuring the unwashed masses Mr. Obama was on the cusp of a ‘liberal’ renaissance if only doubters would join them in granting him another term are today as empty as their assurances were then. And Mr. Obama’s self ‘sacrifice’ of voluntarily giving up 5% of his own $400,000 per year salary in solidarity with seniors present and future who will see their Social Security payments reduced calls into question his intelligence if sincere—the difference between the rich (Mr. Obama) voluntarily giving up a fraction of their yacht allowance versus millions of seniors choosing between eating and living indoors is fundamental.
Those whose politics begin and end with rolling off the couch every few years to vote could in theory be forgiven for perceiving a yawning chasm between the Republican and Democrat candidates. Marketing firms were paid a lot of money to create that illusion. And Mr. Obama almost certainly has the political calculus correct that the bourgeois commentariat, a/k/a/ ‘the left,’ will whimper in protest for a few days, weeks at most, before falling in line for Hillary or whatever militaristic, corporatist abomination the Democrats put forward in the next Presidential election. Early reports even have liberal pundits sticking with the line Mr. Obama is only posturing with the proposals, despite his near decade prior explaining why he believes Social Security and Medicare must be cut to be ‘saved.’ However, this is truly a ‘let them eat cake’ moment. Mr. Obama’s policies will needlessly, and in economic terms gratuitously, hurt a lot of people—overwhelmingly those who self-identify as the Democrats’ political ‘base.’ And lest there be confusion over the matter, in his first term Mr. Obama fully restored the fortunes of America’s ruling class at several trillion dollars of public expense before proposing these cuts.
The faux official hand wringing over Social Security is a result of the bi-partisan (‘Washington’) consensus that produced the trajectory of catastrophic public policy over the last forty years. Radically skewed income distribution, the result of public policy, has seen lower and middle-income wages stagnate with all economic gains delivered up to a tiny plutocracy. This has lowered the proportion of total income paid into Social Security because above the current $113,700 cap income is excluded from contribution to the program. Raising the cap would have some effect in reducing expected future shortfalls but would reframe the social insurance nature of the program because payments are also capped. The real solution—where the real money is, lies in shifting economic gains back toward lower and middle class wages. Doing this would raise the proportion of income paid into Social Security. And this leaves aside the fact the Federal Reserve created several trillion dollars ‘out of thin air’ to restore the fortunes of a dysfunctional financial system and its beneficiaries in the plutocracy and could more productively do so to fund the nation’s social insurance programs. In short, the ‘crisis’ facing Social Security and Medicare is one of skewed income distribution resulting from bad public policy and is readily solvable without cutting benefits.
To the argument proposed tax increases on the rich balance ‘sacrifice’ across economic classes, what makes Mr. Obama’s self-imposed wage cut so ludicrous is how radically it understates the degree to which a large and growing proportion of the population has been economically marginalized. It also frames income distribution as an outcome of ‘natural’ processes from which returning some proportion for the benefit of the common weal through taxes is ‘sacrifice.’ (The rich benefit from public expenditure in far greater proportion than the rest of us). About one-third of retirees exist entirely on Social Security payments that are already at bare subsistence levels. These payments constitute the bulk of monthly income for two out of three retirees. Cutting benefits for people who lack other options for obtaining income isn’t ‘sacrifice,’ shared or otherwise—it is immiseration. And Social Security belongs to those who paid into the program throughout their working lives—it is only through radically anti-democratic governance Mr. Obama and Congressional Republicans have say in the matter.
Income distribution data shows top incomes coming from two related sources—finance and finance related and corporate executive compensation. Wall Street—the F.I.R.E. sector (Finance, Insurance and Real Estate), benefited from Wall Street’s resurrection at public expense. Government ‘bailout’ policies were framed as ‘liquidity’ provision when in fact the programs went on far longer and at greater public expense than this explanation supports. In fact, Wall Street was (is) insolvent due to poor and / or fraudulent business practices meaning bankers killed ‘their’ banks, not nature. The resurrection of Wall Street, including paychecks and bonuses, took place entirely on the public dime. And a significant proportion of the rise in corporate earnings used to justify grotesquely disproportionate executive compensation came from cutting wages to labor. The ability of executives to cut wages derives from government policies specifically designed to reduce the power of labor unions and from tax breaks and incentives to shift production to low wage countries. These are no more ‘market’ forces than the bank bailouts were.
The challenge for the bourgeois commentariat is it largely accepts the political economy that produced current circumstance but objects to the outcomes. Explicit austerity economics, of which Mr. Obama’s proposals to cut social insurance programs are a component, receive their provenance from the ‘structural adjustment’ programs the IMF (International Monetary Fund) for decades inflicted on the citizens of other nations for the benefit of Western banks. The neo-liberal premises behind structural adjustment are still taught in university economics departments by ‘liberal’ economists who are leading members of the bourgeois commenting class now critical of austerity. With the aforementioned government policies to concentrate wealth within a tiny plutocracy whilst throwing labor to the wolves in mind, liberal economists defer to ‘market’ forces to explain the income and wealth skews behind the ‘natural’ austerity faced by the bulk of the working populace and then argue explicit austerity policies are ‘unfair’ and / or economically destructive. But why argue over effects when the causes can be addressed?
In the macroeconomic context in which austerity economics is argued the mainstream debate is between Keynesian economists, ‘New’ and old and Austrians. Keynesians argue in circumstances where private demand for goods and services is ‘inadequate’ government spending produces multiples of the money spent in increased economic output. Austrians argue government spending is always and everywhere less productive than private spending and taxes levied to fund government spending take away from private spending. Eighty or so years of evidence strongly favor the Keynesian understanding of how modern economies ‘work,’ but with a caveat. Austrians tend to understand the roles of money and banking in the economy whereas ‘New’ Keynesians remain willfully clueless. This difference plays out in a few ways—private credit expansion has an economic effect similar to public expenditure but it is neither in the public interest nor is it socially neutral in its political-economic effects. And public investment funded with public debt has the power of the printing press behind its repayment whereas private credit doesn’t.
Mr. Obama’s delivery of several trillion dollars of public wealth to the banks in ongoing bailouts was sold as a way to ‘get banks lending again,’ ‘private’ Keynesianism, to raise the quantity of private debt issued to bolster consumption. But wholly reviving insolvent banks has no legitimacy in any economic theory. This is why the bailouts were, and still are, framed as liquidity provision when they are in fact solvency provision. And again, private debt has the political-economic consequence of concentrating wealth and political power in the hands of lenders (Wall Street). Intellectually honest Austrian economists would have let Wall Street die at its own hands in 2008 in favor of a functioning private credit system. ‘New’ Keynesians support public spending to bolster demand when necessary under the (correct) premise the power of the printing press is a tool to serve the public interest. But their ignorance of money and banking leaves them supporting the monetary policies of solvency provision for dysfunctional banks and at utter losses as to why fiscal policies funded by this same printing press are nowhere to be found. To coin a Clintonism, it’s the class warfare stupid!
The difference between the Federal government providing ‘liquidity’ to markets and restoring solvency to insolvent banks is more than a technicality. In the case of liquidity provision the government temporarily floods markets with money to facilitate transactions during bank panics– it is the ability to transact that is restored. In the case of restoring solvency the Federal government both buys bad assets from the banks that through fraud and / or incompetence rendered themselves insolvent and it provides subsidies from which banks can ‘rebuild’ their balance sheets. Both are transfers of public resources to private interests demonstrated by history to be economically destructive.
Without apparent irony, the structural adjustment programs fiscal conservatives look to for intellectual sustenance absolutely reject using public funds to restore dysfunctional banks because dysfunctional banks inevitably bleed the economies that remain dry. Austerity economics, the bases for IMF and World Bank policies, are banker economics designed to assure bank debts are repaid regardless of the economic devastation doing so may cause. For theoretical coherence austerity requires that core banks (Wall Street), the banks for which loans be forcibly repaid by the periphery, be functional and healthy. Having now saved a parasitic and dysfunctional Wall Street at public expense, fiscal conservatives in the U.S., led by Barack Obama, seek to cut public expenditures to pay for the privilege.
If cutting the inflation assumption for Social Security would ‘save’ the program, the purported rationale for doing so, then reversing policies designed to concentrate income and wealth would do far more. But cutting the inflation assumption isn’t intended to ‘save’ the program; it is intended to cut Federal spending in which Social Security plays only an indirect role (why else include it in budget ‘negotiations’?) because it is funded through a dedicated tax, not through Federal spending. This doesn’t mean Mr. Obama isn’t locally sincere (if wrong) in promoting the Hamilton Project (Robert Rubin) line that ‘tweaking’ social insurance programs will ‘save’ them. But here context is important. And the context is public expenditures are being cut to pay for the Wall Street bailout and the economic calamity Wall Street caused. Put another way, if there is no public debt ‘crisis’ (there isn’t) and the temporary increase in public debt was to save Wall Street and undo the damage it did to the economy, why not get the money from Wall Street?
But in fact the money is still going in the other direction. And across Europe the story is remarkably similar—through assuming bank liabilities directly (Ireland), shifting public resources to the banks to ‘save’ them and public expenditure on economic stabilizers and unemployment benefits, formerly fiscally ‘disciplined’ nations are now regularly characterized by the European Central Bank and German Chancellor Angela Merkel as nations of ‘takers’ whose morally bankrupt citizenries ruined their countries with fat public welfare programs that must be cut to restore economic health. To be clear, fiscal issues the European periphery faces came from delivering public resources to Wall Street alone. (Wall Street now includes large European banks).
For the uninitiated, the endgame appears nigh. The seizure of bank deposits in Cyprus to pay for bank losses simply removed the ‘middle men,’ the European Central Bank and the political powers that be in Europe, from transferring wealth from the citizens of Cyprus to Cypriot bankers (and to European banks and U.S. hedge funds). The capitalist media storyline promoted by gullible liberals that ‘Russian mafia’ money was seized is nonsense. By reports European banks and rich Russians had little trouble getting their money out of Cyprus. The deposits being seized are in precise inverse relation to the political-economic power the depositors wield. And across the West policies of economic austerity are being imposed in similar fashion.
Mr. Obama is who he is. But those who voted for him have some explaining to do. I oppose Mr. Obama’s policies and would have likewise vocally, and otherwise, opposed those of Mitt Romney had he ‘won.’ Were this simply a matter of resentment the situation would take care of itself—you are the schmucks who cut your own Social Security and Medicare programs. But if you think this is it, that the worst is over, I humbly suggest that was your view when Mr. Obama won his second term. To those paying attention, the Dodd-Frank legislation being sold as a way to ‘reign-in’ bailed out banks contains ‘Cyprus’ clauses that leave banks (or their creditors, beginning with derivatives counter-parties) no alternative than to seize insured deposits when they need their next inevitable bailout. On the plus side, this will eliminate the time-consuming theater of austerity ‘debates.’ On the minus side, Mr. Obama is exponentially increasing the misery of society’s most vulnerable. But I’m confident he appreciates your support for his policies.
Rob Urie is an artist and political economist in New York.
April 13, 2013
Posted by aletho |
Deception, Economics, Progressive Hypocrite, Supremacism, Social Darwinism, Timeless or most popular | Democratic Party, Democrats, International Monetary Fund, Medicare, Obama, Social Security, Wall Street |
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The Indiana Supreme Court on Tuesday unanimously upheld the country’s broadest school voucher program, which gives taxpayer dollars to poor and middle-class families to pay private school tuition, almost exclusively to religious schools. Although school voucher opponents, including the teachers’ union and parents, argued that the program was unconstitutional because nearly all the voucher money has gone to religious schools, the court held that that was irrelevant as long as the money makes a brief stop in the hands of parents before arriving at the religious school or madrasa of their choice.
In making its ruling, the Indiana court was following recent U.S. Supreme Court case law. In the case of Zelman v. Simmons-Harris (2002), the Court narrowly (5-4) overturned prior precedent and created a five-part test that allows public tax money to go to religious schools. Under the test written by the court’s five conservatives at the time, a voucher program is constitutional if: 1) the program has a valid secular purpose; 2) aid goes directly to parents, who then pay schools; 3) a broad class of beneficiaries is covered; 4) the program is facially neutral with respect to religion; and 5) there are adequate nonreligious options.
Although critics cite studies showing that voucher systems drain money from public schools, subsidize overtly sectarian indoctrination, and pay for explicitly false and incorrect instruction in subjects like biology, geology, history and astronomy, the Indiana court abjured any interest in the policy implications of its decision, writing that, “whether the Indiana program is wise educational or public policy is not a consideration,” in the case.
Nationwide, more than 100,000 students in a dozen states, including Florida, Louisiana, Georgia, Ohio and Wisconsin, use vouchers to help pay private school tuition, overwhelmingly at sectarian schools. Similar court cases challenging voucher programs in Colorado and Louisiana are currently pending in the supreme courts of those states.
To Learn More:
School Vouchers Can Fund Religious Education (by Jeff D. Gorman, Courthouse News Service)
Indiana Court Upholds Broadest School Voucher Program (by Stephanie Simon, Reuters)
Meredith v. Pence (Indiana Supreme Court, 2013 (pdf)
Indiana Supreme Court upholds school voucher program (jurist.org)
April 8, 2013
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Supremacism, Social Darwinism | Indiana, Indiana Supreme Court, Private school, Religious education, School voucher, Supreme Court of the United States |
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An opinion poll has shown that a majority of people in Spain disapprove of King Juan Carlos amid a negative trend that began after a lavish hunting trip in 2012.
The survey was conducted by the Metroscopia polling firm in March for the Spanish newspaper El Pais, which published the results on Sunday.
The poll showed that 53 percent disapproved of the way the 75-year-old king is carrying out his functions compared to 42 percent who approved.
The new results gave Carlos an overall approval-versus-disapproval rating of -11 compared to +21 in a poll conducted in December 2012, making it the first time he has received a negative rating.
According to the survey, one reason for Spaniards to dislike the king is an elephant-hunting trip, which he took to Botswana last year, while his citizens were struggling with a steep recession and a record high unemployment rate of 26 percent.
Spain’s economy collapsed into recession in the second half of 2008, which has taken with it millions of jobs.
Another reason is an embezzlement case, which was launched at the end of 2011, against Carlos’ son-in-law Inaki Urdangarin and his former business partner Diego Torres.
The two are accused of over-billing regional governments to stage sports and tourism events, and then writing off the money to non-profit Noos Institute, which Urdangarin chaired from 2004 to 2006.
In addition, the poll revealed a general dissatisfaction with Spain’s political institutions. The results showed a full 93 percent disapproved of the way politicians carried out their role, 91 percent objected political parties and 90 percent said they disapprove the behavior of banks.
The ruling centre-right Popular Party, including Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy, has been accused of receiving for many years under-the-table payments on top of their official salaries.
April 8, 2013
Posted by aletho |
Economics, Supremacism, Social Darwinism | Juan Carlos I of Spain, Mariano Rajoy, Spain |
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Budget cuts brought on by sequestration have resulted in the U.S. Department of Labor downsizing the offices charged with regulating mine safety.
The timing of the cuts couldn’t be more painful for the survivors of the Upper Big Branch mining disaster in West Virginia. April 5 will mark the third anniversary of the accident that killed 29 workers.
Federal regulators hired more than 70 attorneys following the 2010 explosion to establish the Litigation Backlog Project and reduce the backlog of contested mine safety citations, which had grown to 16,600. The mine’s owner, Massey Energy, had the highest contestation rate of any coal mine in the U.S. During the five years prior to the explosion, Massey had received 1,422 safety violation citations at Upper Big Branch alone, for which it had to pay $1.89 million in penalties. Massey was subsequently sold to one of its competitors, Alpha Natural Resources.
Two of the Backlog project’s five offices are now slated for closure, which will result in 30 lawyers being laid off by June 1.
The Labor Department says the closures will save the agency $2.1 million. Officials have added that the project was meant to be temporary and that sequestration cuts only accelerated plans for letting people go.
Some members of Congress, the miners union and families of the Upper Big Branch miners who were killed have criticized the Labor Department for its decision.
“They should have made the cuts somewhere else. This was to make mines safer,” Gary Quarles, whose son Gary “Spanky” Wayne died at Upper Big Branch, told The Washington Post. “Here we are, and it is about to be the third anniversary… We thought something good might come out of it. This is wrong.”
April 4, 2013
Posted by aletho |
Corruption, Progressive Hypocrite, Supremacism, Social Darwinism | Labor Department, Massey, Massey Energy, United States, United States Department of Labor, Upper Big Branch |
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Gilad Atzmon argues that in order to best support Palestine we must cease to view the Palestinian struggle as “just another apartheid” or “just another colonial project”
What makes the occupation of Palestine “unique” is not the “specialness” of the suffering of Palestinians, nor is it the “uniqueness” of their tragedy or the “importance” of their cause.
What makes it “unique” is the fact that: those Jewish Zionists who occupy Palestine, those Jewish Zionists who support them, and even many of those Jewish anti-Zionists who oppose them view themselves as “unique”.
Many Jewish anti-Zionists view themselves as unique in the sense that they frantically hold on to the notion of the “uniqueness” of the “Jewish suffering” and the inevitability of future “multi-holocausts” due to an historic, intrinsic and incurable human-condition called “anti-Semitism” which is in their view a “special” case of racism, of inexplicable “hatred” for Jews.
With a considerable majority, whether hard-core Zionists, soft, liberal, or anti-Zionists, they have acquired a distorted image of themselves, their suffering, their history, their morality, and that of the world.
At the core of this perceived “uniqueness” lies the rotten seed of millennia of indoctrination with the concept of “CHOSEN-NESS” which gave birth to troubling concepts such as the so called “Jewish chutzpa“, the perceived feeling of “exclusivity”, “specialness”, “elitism”, and the illusion of having a “special mission”, “higher” morality, “superior” intellect, and “unique” history and suffering.
The failure of Jewish communities -liberal and otherwise- to acknowledge, address and deal with this “heritage” in a sincere and healing manner will provoke severe and unavoidable consequences.
As it appears, many people of those who identify themselves as Jews fail to see that there is a fundamental contradiction and total incompatibility between their claim of humanism and their practices of exclusivity, and their claim of “high Jewish morality” and their real life practices of slander and excommunication when dealing with others with whom they disagree.
How can they talk about such a notion as “Jewish morality” or “Jewish heritage”:
While practicing oppression, either physical -as in the case of Zionist occupiers- or mental and psychological as in the case of anti-Zionists practice of thought oppression;
while viewing “the other” as less able intellectually or morally (i.e inferior) who is in constant need for guidance;
while placing themselves “at the helm” of social progress and imposing themselves as “guardians” of anti-racist campaigns and as “leaders” of liberation movements;
while appointing themselves as the intellectual and moral “elite” with the exclusive privilege to define the meaning of words such as racism and the right to identify who is racist or not;
while granting themselves the irrevocable and the unquestionable right to label, ostracize and excommunicate others as they wish;
Those who are engaged in the above appear to lack the most rudimentary qualities of modesty and humility needed to enable us humans to examine and evaluate our own words, actions and thoughts.
Thus they fail to gain the insight needed to self-reflect, self-criticize, self-improve thus to integrate without causing others to feel intimidated or oppressed.
Sooner or later people of the world (Palestinians included) will have to come to face such dreadful reality and deal with it.
March 15, 2013
Posted by aletho |
Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Supremacism, Social Darwinism, Timeless or most popular | Antisemitism, Zionism |
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Because they Can
Last week (March 6), McDonald’s, the international fast-food juggernaut, was surprised and, one hopes, publicly embarrassed when a group of student “guest workers” in central Pennsylvania called an impromptu strike to protest working conditions. According to these guest workers, McDonald’s failed to comply with the terms of their agreement, and used intimidation and threats or retaliation to keep them at bay.
These “guests” (from Latin America and Asia) came to the U.S. under the J-1 Exchange Visitor Visa Program, part of the Mutual Educational and Cultural Exchange Act (AKA the Fulbright-Hays Act of 1961). A J-1 is a “non-immigrant visa,” given to visitors who participate in programs designed to promote cultural exchange. Inaugurated in 1961, at the height of the Cold War, the program was both a valid attempt to introduce foreigners to the American Way of Life as well as a standard propaganda tool.
Originally, the program’s charter had it focusing primarily on medical or business training, along with visiting scholars who were in the U.S. temporarily to teach and do research. And because it was specifically a cultural exchange program, the J-1 visa fell under the auspices of the now defunct USIA (United States Information Agency) rather than the INS (Immigration and Naturalization Service). How it evolved from medical and business training to flipping hamburgers is easily explained. Business interests lobbied hard for its expansion.
These visiting workers have turned out to be a bonanza. Each year hundreds of thousands of them are brought to the United States under programs like J-1, and, according to the National Guestworker Alliance (NGA), the agency that keeps track of them (and who encouraged and supported the McDonald’s protest), these so-called “cultural exchanges” have, over the years, been badly compromised. Given the overwhelming temptation to engage in mischief, employee abuse is now rampant.
What’s happened is that guest workers are now viewed by American businesses as a “captive workforce”—a gullible and needy collection of workers unschooled in American customs and expectations, and without recourse to labor laws or union representation. Not surprisingly, these visitors are being systematically screwed over. According to the NGA, the McDonald’s “employees” had paid approximately $3,000 each for the opportunity to work in the United States. Presumably, that money was spent on transportation costs and fees to GeoVision, the for-profit organization that sponsored them.
Among the “abuses” alleged by McDonald’s guest workers: (1) They’d been promised full-time jobs, but most were given only a few hours a week. (2) They were nonetheless forced to be on call twenty-four hours a day, and were intimidated and threatened if they complained. (3) The company failed to pay them overtime they were entitled to. (5) According to NGA, their employer is also their landlord, and even though there are as many as half a dozen co-workers sharing a room, their rent (which is automatically taken out of their paycheck) renders them making less than minimum wage. Any complaints, and they’re threatened with being sent back home.
None of this should come as a surprise. When there’s an opportunity to lower operating costs by exploiting labor, management will usually take advantage of it. Call it the Law of the Jungle, call it succumbing to market forces, call it “gaining a competitive edge.” But whatever we choose to call it, it’s the workers who get skinned.
Southern California’s restaurant and car-washing industries are sparkling examples of this phenomenon. These businesses are notorious for exploiting frightened, undocumented Mexican workers by paying them less than minimum wage, and breaking with impunity every labor and safety statute in the book. Why? Because they CAN. After all, who’s going to report them?
David Macaray, CounterPunch’s labor correspondent, is a Los Angeles playwright and author (“It’s Never Been Easy: Essays on Modern Labor,” 2nd Edition). He was a former labor union rep. He can be reached at dmacaray@earthlink.net
March 12, 2013
Posted by aletho |
Economics, Supremacism, Social Darwinism, Timeless or most popular | Foreign worker, Human rights, McDonald's, United States |
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One of the more bizarre takes on Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez’s death comes from Associated Press business reporter Pamela Sampson (3/5/13):
Chavez invested Venezuela’s oil wealth into social programs including state-run food markets, cash benefits for poor families, free health clinics and education programs. But those gains were meager compared with the spectacular construction projects that oil riches spurred in glittering Middle Eastern cities, including the world’s tallest building in Dubai and plans for branches of the Louvre and Guggenheim museums in Abu Dhabi.
That’s right: Chavez squandered his nation’s oil money on healthcare, education and nutrition when he could have been building the world’s tallest building or his own branch of the Louvre. What kind of monster has priorities like that?
In case you’re curious about what kind of results this kooky agenda had, here’s a chart (NACLA, 10/8/12) based on World Bank poverty stats–showing the proportion of Venezuelans living on less than $2 a day falling from 35 percent to 13 percent over three years. (For comparison purposes, there’s a similar stat for Brazil, which made substantial but less dramatic progress against poverty over the same time period.)
Of course, during this time, the number of Venezuelans living in the world’s tallest building went from 0 percent to 0 percent, while the number of copies of the Mona Lisa remained flat, at none. So you have to say that Chavez’s presidency was overall pretty disappointing–at least by AP‘s standards.
March 8, 2013
Posted by aletho |
Economics, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Supremacism, Social Darwinism, Timeless or most popular | Associated Press, Chavez, Hugo Chávez, Jim Naureckas, Venezuela |
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