Commentary

BERNIE! BERNIE! BERNIE!

By Reginald Johnson

Dec. 12, 2010

Hooray for Bernie Sanders! Hooray to a man who finally stood up and said it’s time to stop caving in to the Republicans and it’s time to start really fighting on behalf of America’s working class.

Bernie Sanders of course is the Independent/Socialist Senator from Vermont, who on Friday waged nearly a one-man war against President Barack Obama’s sell-out tax bill. The measure gives the middle class a tax cut, but also doles out hundreds of billions in unneeded tax breaks to the rich and corporations, compounding the nation’s already high deficit. The bill also threatens to undermine future funding for Social Security.

Sanders took to the floor of the Senate and in an historic address talked for more than eight hours --- eight hours!--- blasting the tax bill, which Obama and Vice President Joe Biden had secretly negotiated with Senate Republican leader Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky.

“Whose brilliant idea was it that we drive up the national debt, ask our kids to pay higher taxes to pay off that debt, in order to give tax breaks to the rich?” Sanders asked.

The Vermont senator’s long speech captivated people not just in the U.S., but around the world. There were so many people watching the senate’s live video feed, that the chamber's computer server crashed at one point. Sander’s speech was the leading trend on Twitter nationally and the second leading trend worldwide.

Sanders read letters from constituents, who are struggling economically at the same time the government ponders more giveaways for the wealthy. According to an account in the newspaper the Bennington Banner, Sanders related a letter from a woman who described trying to save money by buying food from a “dented can store.”

“Does anybody in Congress know what a dented can store is?” Sanders asked.

Sanders also laid out quite a history lesson, detailing all the factors that have gone into the decline of the middle class over the past 30 years and how the country now has a gross disparity in incomes --- with an upper crust consisting of 5 percent of the population controlling more than 50 percent of the nation’s wealth. The bottom 20 percent have almost no wealth.

Sander’s marathon speech was not technically a filibuster, since no vote was being taken up. That won’t come until Monday. But Sanders wants to slow the process down, and force senate supporters of the bill to come up with a new measure that in his words “better reflects the needs of the middle class and working families of this country.”

And Sanders is getting some support. Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown and surprisingly, Louisiana’s conservative Democratic Senator Mary Landrieu, both said they were against the bill and agreed to hold the floor for Sanders while he took brief breaks. More significantly, eight senate Democrats sent a letter Friday night to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid saying they had “grave misgivings” about the proposed bill and recommended changes before a vote.

They urged a plan which would restore tax rates on income over $1 million per year to the higher Clinton-era rates and to “dedicate the resulting revenues to shoring up the Social Security trust fund,” according to an article in The Nation by John Nichols.

Meanwhile dozens of Democrats in the House are refusing to back the Obama-McConnell plan and are also demanding changes.

Some Congressional Democrats and Social Security advocates are voicing concern over another aspect of the Obama measure, which calls for cutting the payroll tax by 2 percent to give employees a $1,000 tax break next year. It’s supposed to be a one-year tax cut on employees paying what is known as the “FICA” tax, as opposed to the income tax.

While the tax break seems to be nice on the face of it, and may act as an economic stimulus, the problem is the money is coming from a revenue stream that is supposed to be a dedicated fund only for the Social Security retirement fund.

The administration is pledging that Social Security won’t lose any money, that the Treasury Department will replenish the retirement program with other government funds. The lower tax is also supposed to end in one year.

But the fear is that in one year, a Congress more heavily dominated by Republicans will never approve a tax hike to restore the old rate, and money again will have to be borrowed from the general fund to make up the difference. In later years, the lower payroll tax rate may become permanent, putting Social Security in competition with other funding needs year to year.

With a tight general budget for the foreseeable future, and warnings about deficits, there inevitably will be calls for benefit cuts in Social Security.

“This 2 percent payroll tax cut is the beginning of the end of Social Security as we know it,” said the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare, headed by former Rep. Barbara B. Kennelly, D-Conn. “Worker contributions have successfully funded the program for 75 years and that critical linkage between contributions and benefits is what keeps Social Security a self-funded program.”

Commentary

Save Social Security

By Reginald Johnson

If you're upset over the proposed cuts to Social Security --- the most effective public service program in the history of this country --- Tuesday, Nov. 30, is the day to do something about it.

President Obama's deficit reduction commission recently recommended cuts to cost of living increases in Social Security as well as raising the retirement age to 69. These would be major blows to this vital program, which hundreds of millions of Americans have relied on for retirement income since it was first enacted in 1935.

Congress is now considering whether to adopt the recommendations.

At a time when the economy is weak, pensions and 401ks have either been wiped out or lost substantial value, it is critical to save and strengthen Social Security.

Tuesday is "National Call Congress Day" to let members of Congress know that the commission recommendations should not be followed, and you want Social Security left intact. If they want to reduce the deficit, then end the wars overseas, cut the bloated “defense” budget, stop giving trillions in welfare aid to private banks and end tax cuts for the rich.

To reach U.S. Senators, you can call a toll-free 800 number, 1-866-529-7630 and you will be connected.

In the southern Connecticut area, some numbers for members of Congress are: Rep. Jim Himes, 4th District, 202-225-5541 and Rep. Rosa DeLauro, 3rd District, 202-225-3661. If for some reason the 800 number is tied up, the direct numbers for the senators are: Senator Joe Lieberman, 202-224-4041; Senator Chris Dodd, 202-224-2823.

For more information, check http://www.strengthensocialsecurity.org/

Commentary

Out of Control

Reginald Johnson

People are right to protest the new airport screening procedures --- involving full-body x-ray scans and pat downs of passengers, including checking a person’s privates.

The fact is, these procedures --- set up supposedly to fight the holy war against terrorism --- are a complete outrage.

The scans and pat downs are a shocking invasion of people’s privacy and resemble police state tactics.

The Fourth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States says the following: “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers and effects against unreasonable searches and seizures shall not be violated…”

What happened to that?

If the government can get away with these intrusive screening procedures at airports, what’s next, pat downs before you can get on a train or bus? How about requiring travel passes within the United States, passes which can be demanded at anytime by a police officer? Doesn’t that sound like South Africa in the apartheid era, or Germany under the Nazis (“Papers please!”) What about roadblocks with officials stopping anyone who looks “suspicious”?

Just where does all this stop?

Already Homeland Secretary Janet Napolitano and Transportation Security Administration Director John Pistole have talked about pat downs for passengers boarding trains.

This entire “war on terrorism” thing has gotten way out of hand. There’s no question that terrorists are out there --- in good part because of resentment over America’s brutal resource wars in the Middle East --- but combating terrorism by curbing civil liberties at home is not the answer. Good human intelligence and law enforcement work, together with a more sane foreign policy, is.

We don’t need full-body pat downs and show-all x-ray photos (complete with unhealthy blasts of radiation) to catch terrorists.

Another point has to be made. Being in a democracy with a system of strong guarantees of civil liberties, you cannot have a complete airtight system of preventing every last possible terrorist from boarding a plane, riding a bus, checking a book out at the library, or writing something. If you want that, you have a police state. We have rights here --- freedom to travel in privacy, read what you want, say what you want.

You cannot reconcile police state surveillance with a democracy.

I certainly don’t want a police state.

Commentary

THIS CANNOT STAND

By Reginald Johnson

Nov. 12, 2010

If ever there was a moment when progressives should rise up and say “no!” --- that time is now.

Within the space of 24 hours, from Wednesday into Thursday, President Obama and his group around him have shown what they really are: a bunch of conservative Democrats who are ready to betray the interests of the working people of this country at a moments notice in order to serve their paymasters --- Wall Street and the wealthy elite.

Consider what’s happened in this short period. First, leaders of the bi-partisan deficit reduction commission ---- which Obama set up --- detailed some of the panel’s preliminary recommendations. For the middle class and poor, they’re not pretty. Cut Social Security benefits; raise the retirement age; cut Medicare benefits; cut Medicaid benefits; hike gasoline taxes; and eliminate the home mortgage interest deduction.

The proposed cuts and tax hikes come at a time when working people are already struggling to pay the bills in a bad economy and retirees and near-retirees wonder if they can make ends meet because pensions and 401K plans have been wiped out.

On Thursday, it got worse. The White House announced that it was willing to compromise on extending the Bush tax cuts --- something that the Republicans wanted, but Obama said previously he was against. This would allow high earners (generally those over $250,000 a year) to continue to get a tax break. According to Robert Kuttner, an economist and co-editor of the American Prospect Magazine, continuing the tax cuts for the wealthy will add $1 trillion to the deficit.

Wait a minute. I thought everyone had to sacrifice to help deal with this national problem, the huge deficit. Well, I guess not everyone. Not the Wall Street guys and the rich.

What a disgrace.

By the way, one of those Wall Street guys, Erskine Bowles, is the co-chair of Obama’s deficit panel. He gets paid $300,000 a year for being on the board of the huge investment firm, Morgan Stanley.

One suggestion that’s been floated in the past to raise more money and ease the deficit is by enacting a stock transaction tax. This would raise hundreds of billions of dollars, even with a fractional tax. Investment houses don't like the concept. For some reason, the commission didn’t broach this idea.

Another major area the commission didn’t take up was the cost of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. According to the National Priorities Project, they have cost over $1 trillion since 2001. While the deficit panel did recommend cuts to the military --- one thing they deserve credit for --- they didn’t call for ending the wars. These wars are a huge drain on the treasury.

It seems to me that if the wars were stopped, tax breaks for the rich were ended, and a stock transaction tax was put into place, the national deficit would not be an issue.

This approach would be a lot better than whacking the poor and the middle class.

Progressives ---- and labor in particular --- should let Obama know that their support is no longer a given --- that these outrageous recommendations and the Bush tax cuts have to go, or else.

Third party anyone?

One other thing. Jane Slaughter, the fine writer with Labor Notes, reports that a group of organizations is organizing a national Call-in Day to Congress on Nov. 30. That’s the day the deficit commission will release its final recommendations to Congress, including the provision on raising the retirement age. “They’re saying ‘Owe No You Don’t’ --- the goal is to create a groundswell of outrage that will make the recommendations dead on arrival,” she writes.

You can find out more at strengthensocialsecurity.org or labornotes.org.

Commentary

RIGHT-WARD DRIVE AT MSNBC?

By Reginald Johnson

Nov. 7, 2010

A strong grassroots effort has sprung up to fight the suspension of liberal commentator Keith Olbermann from MSNBC, as many worry that the cable news network may be heading in a more conservative direction.

The group Progressive Change Campaign Committee said Sunday it has gathered over 300,000 signatures on a petition demanding that MSNBC reinstate Olbermann to his show “Countdown with Keith Olbermann.” MSNBC President Phil Griffin announced Friday that he was suspending the commentator “indefinitely” due to three campaign contributions Olbermann had made to Democratic candidates prior to the Nov. 2 election.

Griffin said NBC rules bar company employees from making political contributions.

But there may be a double standard at work here ---- since in the past MSNBC did nothing to penalize conservative commentators Pat Buchanan and Joe Scarborough from making donations to Republicans. The media advocacy group FAIR has also pointed out that the head of NBC, Robert Wright, has made political donations in the past as well.

There’s reports that NBC officials have been growing uneasy with the liberal face MSNBC is adopting, with the views of many of its hosts such as Olbermann, Rachel Maddow and Ed Shultz. Is there a push going on now to create more “balance” by permanently removing Olbermann, and replacing him with someone more middle of the road?

The loss of Olbermann from one of the three major cable news operations (the others are FOX and CNN) would be a setback to progressives, who already struggle to get heard on the airwaves. FOX has long been a lost cause for liberals. Progressives rarely appear on FOX and if they do, they sit on panels of three or four speakers with all the others being conservative. The liberal gets shouted down. Evening hosts as well as some morning hosts on FOX are hopelessly right-wing and are running a blatant propaganda operation on behalf of the Republicans.

CNN, which tries to maintain an image of being centrist and non-partisan, has actually added a couple of right-wing commentators to its line-up in recent years – Erick Erickson and William Bennett.

So that leaves MSNBC, and why it’s important to bring Olbermann back. While far from being perfect (sometimes he can be too uncritical in analyzing different issues) Olbermann in general has been a big plus on the cable TV news scene. He frequently brings on progressive voices, and his commentaries over the years have been strong.

His “Special Comments” ripping the Bush administration for the lies concerning Iraq and the dismantling of civil liberties were particularly good.

To join the petition to reinstate Olbermann, go to http://boldprogressives.org/home.

Commentary

By Reginald Johnson

Oct. 29, 2010

CONSERVATIVE CLOUT

The power of the right wing never ceases to amaze me.

I thought of this twice in recent days, first when I went into the Barnes and Noble bookstore to pick out a gift. I went to the history and current affairs section and as always, looked for Noam Chomsky, one of my favorites. In the past, you could always count on plenty Chomsky and other liberal writers in the same section at ‘B&N.’

This time was different. I did find Chomsky, but not before noticing what seemed like an avalanche of books authored by conservatives --- Glenn Beck, Bill O’Reilly, Ann Coulter, Dick Armey, Laura Ingraham, Sarah Palin, and others. They clearly outnumbered the left-of-center writers.

A lot of these right-wingers have disgracefully assumed the mantle of being “true patriots” just like the 18^th century revolutionaries who threw boxes of tea into Boston Harbor to protest British taxation. Beck’s latest tome is entitled “Glenn Beck’s Common Sense,” with the subtitle, “The Case Against an Out of Control Government, Inspired by Thomas Paine.”

Thomas Paine, of course, was the Revolutionary-era writer whose book “Common Sense,” laid out the case against the repression of the English monarchs and really did inspire many colonists to take up arms against the Crown.

That Beck has the audacity to liken himself to a great humanist like Thomas Paine, while he spews venom nightly on his TV show, expressing hate against liberals and Muslims, is unbelievable. Yet people seem to lap it up --- his ratings are high, and his books dot the shelves of the bookstore chains.

Books by Sarah Palin and Dick Armey (“Give Us Liberty” --- “A Tea Party Manifesto --- Less Government and More Individual Liberty”) also appear to be popular. This, despite the utter hypocrisy of these right-wing and Tea Party leaders. (If these people are so opposed to big government and ‘tyranny,’ then why don’t they speak out against the government’s warrantless wiretapping and torture practices? They don’t. You can be sure if Thomas Paine were around today, he would.)

A day or so after visiting the bookstore, I saw a news piece flash on the Talking Points Memo website: Republican/Tea Party candidate Sharron Angle in Nevada had just raised $14 million in contributions in one-quarter in her Senate race to defeat incumbent Harry Reid, a Democrat.

I glanced at Angle’s contributions list. Money was pouring in from all around the country. This is amazing. Here is a candidate as unqualified as you can get, blurts out the dumbest comments, and she’s raking in the money. But she’s hard right-wing – dead against immigration, supports tax cuts for the rich, wants to abolish the department of education and loosen regulations on business. So the business class --- like the multi-billionaire Koch brothers --- love her. Doesn’t matter if she runs racist ads or says other outrageous things, she pledges to cut their taxes and keep government regulators off their backs. That’s good enough for them. Keep the dollars flowing.

The dreadful decision this year by the Supreme Court to allow corporations to give unlimited amounts of money to political candidates has made the right-wing political machine even more potent. While the Democrats get a lot of corporate money too, big business knows where their bread is really buttered --- with conservatives. So Republicans and Tea Party candidates are getting big bucks this year, often from corporate front groups that don’t have to disclose their donors.

With a wealth of funds to run political ads and promoted by right-wing radio and FOX “News” shows, conservatives may win big in next week’s elections.

Angle is running neck and neck with Reid. While Reid has been no great shakes as a senator, he’s light years better than Angle.

But in Nevada, where there’s high unemployment and foreclosures all over, many alienated voters are buying the empty-headed rhetoric of the right, that “government is the problem” and all liberals must go.

Sharron Angle may be the next U.S. Senator from Nevada.

Scary.

By Reginald Johnson
Aug. 27, 2010


Bigger than 911



The backers of the mosque in lower Manhattan should stand their ground ---- and not submit to the hysterical demands of critics that they move their facility.

This issue has become much bigger than the sensitivities of those who lost loved ones at Ground Zero, when terrorists flew planes into the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001, resulting in the deaths of nearly 3,000 people.

Those attacks were horrific, and we should never forget the people who lost their lives. Ground Zero is a special place.

But there is something at stake here that is much more important than honoring the feelings of those who think that a mosque near Ground Zero is somehow wrong, since it was Muslim fanatics who were flying the hijacked planes.

Freedom of religion, one of the cornerstones of the American constitutional system, is on the line. The framers who drew up the Constitution and Bill of Rights, knew all too well the injustice of a society where one could not practice the religion of one’s choice. Their parents and grandparents had come to the New World to escape religious persecution in England.

With the First Amendment’s provision that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,” the framers made clear that the United States would be a place where people would be free to practice the religion of their choice.

The backers of the mosque, which will be part of a larger Islamic community center called Cordoba House, purchased the property for their project and obtained all the needed land-use approvals from the city. They now have a right to build the facility the same way Christians might want to build a YMCA or Jews a community center.

To say the community center backers are somehow tainted because they share the same faith as the 911 attackers is grossly unfair and cruel. This smears all Muslims. There were 19 hijackers; there are 1.6 billion Muslims in the world.

While some of the people criticizing the plan for the mosque are local people who are having an emotional reaction because they lost loved ones on 911, it’s clear there are many opponents who live far from New York and just don’t like Muslims, period. They’re using the center controversy to whip up Islamophobia and spread hate.

In fact, there appears to be a campaign going on nationwide to smear and persecute Muslims.

There are cases all around the country where people are trying to block the construction of mosques or engaging in acts of harassment and even violence against Muslims. In two other locations in New York City, opposition has sprung up against proposed mosques. Protests against mosques have also arisen in Tennessee, Illinois, Wisconsin and California.

Right-wing politicians, including Republicans and Tea Party members, are jumping into the act, demagogically pandering to opponents. A candidate for governor in Tennessee said Islam was not a religion and Muslims shouldn’t have First Amendment rights.

In Florida, a Christian pastor denounced Islam and said he would hold a Koran book-burning at his church.

Right here in Bridgeport, a group of Christian zealots recently picketed a local mosque, shouting “Islam is a lie” and yelling verbal abuse at worshippers entering the building. Two children were called “murderers.”

And in New York this week, a cab driver was slashed with a knife by an enraged passenger after the driver told him he was a Muslim.

The wave of Islamophobia is an ominous development. It harkens back to the anti-Semitism whipped up by the Nazis in Germany in the 1920s and 1930s.

The hate directed at Muslims is part of a surge of Christian nationalism. The bigotry has to be denounced and stopped in its tracks. If the trend is not stopped, the First Amendment's protection of both religious freedom and freedom of expression will be destroyed.

We’ll be that much closer to a Christian fascist state in America.