Hate Speech Leads to Violence

Hate Speech Leads to Violence: In Wake of Abortion Doc Murder, Religious Leaders Skirt the Issue

by Bill Berkowitz / June 3rd, 2009 /Dissident Voice

While everyone on both sides of the abortion issue seems to condemn the murder of George Tiller, few admit the malignant effects of “baby killer” rhetoric.

In the immediate aftermath of the murder of Dr. George Tiller, words came flowing forth from every conceivable direction. The media reported, longtime anti-abortion activists “condemned,” but few apologized for years of hate speech directed at Tiller.

In the hours following the murder of Dr, George Tiller, and the subsequent condemnations from Religious Right leaders, I remembered Jerry Falwell’s notorious post-9/11 remarks, blaming feminists and the ACLU, among others — and the uncomfortable flip-flopping that followed. It was clear that his comments represented what he was thinking. Yet it was also clear, as he tried to backtrack and apologize, that he realized he had monumentally goofed.

I was reminded of those wretched Falwell maneuverings on Monday evening while watching Frank Schaeffer — the son of the late Francis Schaeffer, one of the founding fathers and most revered figures on the Christian Right – point out during his appearance on MSNBC’s The Rachel Maddow Show that the condemnations of Tiller’s murder issued by leaders of the Christian Right seemed forced and empty.

The statements from anti-abortion leaders basically covered the same ground: they condemned the murder, expressed compassion for Tiller’s family, and hoped that the perpetrator would soon be captured and brought to justice.

“He reaped what he sowed”

It was left to Randall Terry, the founder of Operation Rescue, to pick up Falwell’s rhetorical baton. At a news conference at the National Press Club on Monday, June 1, Terry plainly stated that Tiller “was a mass murderer and, horrifically, he reaped what he sowed.”

Terry said that Tiller would be remembered as “one of the villains of history.” “I grieve for Dr. Tiller because he left this life, perhaps without proper preparation to face God,” Terry said. “The thought of him leaving this life with blood on his hands for having killed so many thousands of children and not having been prepared to meet his maker is a dreadful, terrifying thought.”

Terry appeared to be verbalizing what other, more “respected” Christian Right leaders couldn’t. Since Terry has been outside the mainstream for years, he had the license to say whatever he wanted; the more extremist his rhetoric, the more national media he would receive. For Dobson, Perkins, et al, they had the political realities to reckon with.

Sharing the blame

For Frank Schaeffer, the author of Crazy for God: How I Grew Up As One of the Elect, Helped Found the Religious Right, and Live to Take it All (or Almost All) of it Back, and who had for years been privy to the backroom conversations of Christian Right operatives, the condemnations were a sham. Schaeffer dramatically opened an op-ed piece in the June 2 Baltimore Sun by writing: “My late father and I share part of the blame for the murder of Dr. George Tiller . . . ”

He pointed out how his father had “compared America and its legalized abortion to Hitler’s Germany and said that whatever tactics would have been morally justified in removing Hitler would be justified in trying to stop abortion.” And Frank Schaeffer also noted, quoting from his own book:

“Angry speech has become the norm in American religion from both the right and the left. Words are spoken which, when taken seriously, lead directly to violence by the unhinged and/or the truly committed.”

While Schaeffer stated that abortion “should be legal,” he also believes “that it should be re-regulated according to fetal development.” Nevertheless, he recognizes that “the same hate machine I was part of is still attacking all abortionists as ‘murderers.’ And today, once again, the ‘pro-life’ leaders are busy ducking their personal responsibility for people acting on their words.

”The people who stir up the fringe never take responsibility. But I’d like to say that I, and the people I worked with in the pro-life movement, all contributed to this killing by our foolish and incendiary words.”

Common Ground?

Sometime during the day after Tiller’s murder, I received another condemnation in my in-box. This one was from Faith In Public Life, an organization working hard to establish “common ground” amongst conservative and liberal religious leaders. (Thus far, I have been agnostic about “common ground” efforts.) The headline read “Religious Leaders Seeking Common Ground on Abortion: Condemn George Tiller’s Murder, Say Act Offends Us All”:

In reaction to the tragic murder of Dr. George Tiller, religious leaders and groups who hold different views on the legality of abortion, but a shared commitment to working towards common ground solutions to reduce abortions by addressing its root causes issued the following statement this morning:

“We were shocked and saddened to hear that Dr. George Tiller was murdered at his church yesterday morning. Such violence is an affront to the teachings of all faith traditions and an attack on civil society. Houses of worship have served as sanctuaries providing a safe harbor even in times of widespread violence for millennia — that this act took place in Dr. Tiller’s church where he was serving as an usher on Sunday morning only underscores its abhorrence. We condemn it, and we pray for Dr. Tiller’s family, church and community.

“As people of faith working to create civility and common ground on abortion, this reprehensible attack reminds us of our moral obligation to respect the humanity of those on both sides of this issue. Wherever we stand, this act offends us all.”

The statement was signed by a host of religious leaders.

In this e-mail, Faith in Public Life asked if I had any questions. This was my (immediate, angry and not all that articulate) response:

In my mind, the statement does not go far enough. Why haven’t these highly respected religious leaders that are condemning the murder of Dr. George Tiller at the same time, also condemn the hate talk that is spewed daily against abortion providers by a number of so-called Christian groups?

What good is merely a condemnation of the murder if it doesn’t try to get to one of the reasons that ordinary people commit such acts — the hate speech (calling doctors baby killers or even calling the president a baby killer) that drives people to it. Keep in mind that even James Dobson and Tony Perkins have condemned the murder. What good is a condemnation of Tiller’s murder if the hate speech that often inspires — perhaps even drives — one to commit such murders is not also condemned?

Your thoughts?

No response yet.

Bill Berkowitz is a longtime observer of the conservative movement. His column, "Conservative Watch," documents the strategies, players, institutions, victories and defeats of the American Right. Read other articles by Bill.

Carmakers Drive Off Business, Competition and Jobs

Carmakers Drive Off Business

Doing away with local car dealers is a short-sighted, anti-consumer move that won’t help Chrysler or General Motors sell more cars but it threatens more than 100,000 jobs at dealerships.

Chrysler has notified 789 dealers with 40,000 employees that it would end their franchise agreements in June and the company would not buy back unsold vehicles and parts inventories.

GM has told 1,100 dealerships with more than 63,000 workers that it will not renew franchise agreements next year.

Dealers don’t cost the car companies much, if anything. They pay the overhead for their car lots and they fly the flag for their brands. But the consolidation of dealerships has long been sought by the car companies who would like to simplify their distribution network while larger dealers would like to do away with marginal competitors. It could mean short-term bargains for car buyers as cancelled dealers liquidate their inventory. But in the long term, fewer dealers mean less competition, higher prices for new cars and longer drives for service.

In our hometown, Chrysler has cut loose Schuelke Auto of Storm Lake, Iowa, after 75 years with the Chrysler nameplate. Schuelke had always been a distant third in car sales in Storm Lake, but they did sell and service Chrysler, Dodge and Jeep models. Next month there apparently will be no factory-authorized Chrysler service in Buena Vista County, population 20,000. It is highly unlikely that a Storm Laker will go to another county to buy a Chrysler knowing they can’t get it serviced locally. Other “county seat” towns are losing their Chrysler and GM dealerships.

Most of those dealers will simply sell used cars, which generally have higher profit margins than new cars. Don Wunschel, owner of Don’s Chevrolet in Ida Grove, Iowa, who was notified he will lose his franchise, told the Des Moines Register, “There’s nothing glamorous about being a new car dealer.” Mandatory GM expenses he ticked off include bills for computer training programs, “any new tools they come up with” and $150 monthly to rent—he’s not allowed to buy—the GM sign outside his building. “I think now, at least when I shut the door at night and go home, at least the drain on my business is gone,” Wunschel said.

Getting rid of the Schuelkes and the Wunschels from dealer lists might make sense to an MBA in Detroit or on Wall Street who has never sold a car but has been trained to maximize per-unit profit margins. Dealer consolidation makes no sense in rural Iowa—and not much more sense in the cities, either. — JMC

From The Progressive Populist, June 15, 2009

Obama's Consumerless Economics

Our Economy Is Going to Keep Tanking Until We Stop Shoveling Billions to Rich People

By Pam Martens, CounterPunch. Posted June 2, 2009.

There's a cycle going on here: if you don't put money in consumers' hands, you get repetitive cycles of layoffs and growing unemployment.

For the past eight months, we have been a nation focused on bailouts and bankruptcies. For the past ten years, we have been a nation ignoring massive wealth transfer and wealth concentration through a rigged Wall Street.

As simple and clear as this picture is, some of the brightest minds in this country are unwilling to connect the cause and effect of wealth in too few hands to bankruptcies and a tanking economy.

Wealth-deprived consumers can't buy the goods and services being produced. This leads to repetitive cycles of layoffs and growing unemployment which leads to more wealth-deprived consumers leading to more overcapacity in production plants, more layoffs, more shrinking purchasing power.

The accompanying, and equally dangerous, problem is that concentrated wealth stifles the very innovation that is necessary to create new industries, new jobs and lead us out of the downward economic spiral.

Let's think about the individuals who tapped into Wall Street's rigged wealth transfer system and what they have done with their ill-gotten loot: typically, they own three or more homes, fancy cars, multiple country club memberships, airplanes, yachts, and numbered offshore bank accounts. The problem is, they just can't buy enough to compensate for the purchases they have deprived hundreds of thousands of other consumers from being able to make.

Goods sit on shelves, new orders get cancelled, leading to production cuts, layoffs, plant closings and bankruptcies.

In a nutshell, it's the $1 Billion that Sandy Weill extracted from Citigroup as its former CEO and Chairman that's the problem; it's the $42 million condo he bought that's depriving 140 other people from having $300,000 to buy a home ready to go into foreclosure for want of a buyer. It's the hundreds of millions Weill is throwing around to plaster his name and his wife's name on buildings that could be in the hands of 10,000 consumers going out to buy Chrysler and GM cars now gathering dust on the lots of dealers about to go bust.

It's also that Sandy Weill and his colleagues of that era on Wall Street did not do anything worthy or smart in exchange for extracting that wealth from the system. They repealed the regulations that had kept the system on a more solid footing, then looted the system and left it a basket case. We have no residual benefits of innovation to compensate for all that missing wealth.

And that is the real and overlooked attendant danger: too many billionaires sitting atop too many billions tied up in mansions and yachts means that millions of budding innovators and entrepreneurs are being deprived of adequate funds to create the breakthroughs that will lead to new industries and future job growth.

And let's not forget about the trillions of dollars of wealth that evaporated in bogus ventures that Weill and his fellow Wall Streeters brought to market on NASDAQ. Add those trillions to the bailout trillions and you're looking at a lost generation of funds for innovation.

What all of this means is that President Obama has precious little time left to stop rewarding failure and bad behavior before his own Presidency is deemed a failure. It was difficult enough to countenance the reappearance in his administration of all those Wall Street faces who failed to rein in the Wall Street abuses or, worse, aided and abetted the actual creation of the opaque system that permitted the looting and pillaging. But this past week's news that the President might be considering a pivotal role for the Federal Reserve in the new regulatory structure planned for Wall Street crosses the line, if true, from hubris to outright contempt for the American people.

The inherent cronyism of the Federal Reserve renders it utterly useless as a watchdog. (Why is it even necessary to have to state that obvious fact when no one can shake loose from the Fed what it's done with trillions in taxpayer dollars or why it failed to police these Frankenbanks in the first place.) The same thing is true of the U.S. Treasury, which can't auction its own debt without the goodwill of its Wall Street primary dealers.

According to March 31, 2009 data from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, there are 8,246 FDIC insured institutions with total assets of $13.5 Trillion and domestic deposits of $7.5 Trillion. Four institutions, Bank of America Corporation, JPMorgan Chase & Co., Wells Fargo & Co. and Citigroup Inc., four institutions out of 8,246, control 35% of all the insured domestic deposits and 46% of the assets according to the March 31, 2009 figures from the FDIC.

Has the Federal Reserve taken steps to reduce this massive concentration since the financial crisis began? Quite the contrary. Bank of America was allowed to purchase the investment bank and brokerage firm Merrill Lynch as well as subprime lender Countrywide Financial; JPMorgan Chase took over the investment bank and brokerage firm Bear Stearns as well as Washington Mutual; Wells Fargo & Co. took over Wachovia.

The Federal Reserve's answer to concentrated wealth is to concentrate it further. The Federal Reserve's answer to unmanageable, dysfunctional banking institutions is to make them more unmanageable and more dysfunctional.

President Obama needs to do three things quickly to get the country back on course: he needs to separate investment banking/brokerage from commercial banks. This will restore risk taking and innovation to where it belongs, in non FDIC insured institutions. He needs to put new faces that Americans can trust in charge of real regulators with real powers. He needs to stop funneling money to zombie institutions that haven't created anything of innovative value in a decade and channel those funds into innovative research and development projects.

President Obama needs to step up to the plate and stop listening to conflicted advisors. The fate of a nation, as well as his place in history, hangs in the balance.

Pam Martens worked on Wall Street for 21 years; she has no security position, long or short, in any company mentioned in this article. She writes on public interest issues from New Hampshire. She can be reached at pamk741@aol.com

SOCIALISTWORKER.org

Operation Entrapment

Nicole Colson asks whether the FBI deserves credit for foiling a "terrorist" attack in New York--or for concocting the scheme itself and entrapping four men.

June 1, 2009

WE'VE HEARD this story before.

A group of men, disaffected, with petty criminal records and/or mental health issues, in need of money and harboring a real or imagined grudge, are approached by an FBI informant. Later, they're arrested for plotting a major "terrorist attack" on U.S. soil. Politicians and prosecutors praise the diligent work of the FBI in standing between us and another attack like the one on 9/11.

That's the story, manufactured for the evening news, complete with footage of arrestees led away by agents. But poke beneath the surface, and you find it's full of holes.

That was true once again, with the arrest on May 20 of four men accused of plotting to bomb two synagogues in the Bronx and shoot down military planes using Stinger missiles at an Air National Guard base in Newburgh, N.Y.

"It's hard to envision a more chilling plot," Assistant U.S. Attorney Eric Snyder said in federal court, claiming that the arrests ended a nearly year-long "painstaking investigation."

Initial press reports suggested the men--James Cromitie, David Williams, Onta Williams and Laguerre Payen--were Muslims who wanted to kill Jews and take revenge on the U.S. for the war in Afghanistan. One law enforcement official mistakenly told the New York Times that the men were Arabs.

In reality, none are Arab--one is Haitian and three are U.S.-born. It's unclear whether the men were practicing Muslims. And their motives for allegedly planting what they believed to be explosive devices also remain unknown.

According to the New York Times, Cromitie had told an FBI informant that he wanted to "do something to America" in response to the war. The complaint filed against the men alleges that Cromitie stated "the best target"--the World Trade Center--"was hit already." The men allegedly chose the two synagogues as targets instead, and the FBI informant helped them get what they believed to be explosive devices, but which were incapable of being fired or detonated.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

BUT LIKE many other spectacular arrests in "war on terror" cases, the charges against these four men look thin, if not entirely manufactured.

The plot was, according to one federal law enforcement official, "aspirational." In other words, the suspects might have talked about or wanted to do something, but had no weapons or explosives themselves.

For that, an FBI informant--who allegedly claimed to be an agent of a Pakistani terrorist organization--was there to conveniently provide encouragement and an assurance that weapons could be obtained.

The informant "became a critical member of the men's plot," reported the New York Times, adding, "The full nature and extent of the informant's role in facilitating the plot is unknown. In other cases, defense lawyers have sought to portray these informants as engaging in entrapment, suggesting they had, in effect, provoked and fueled the actions of their clients."

The four men seem unlikely terrorists. All were ex-convicts, with records involving various crimes (mainly drug offenses). None appears to have had any criminal background related to terrorism, nor any ties to terrorist groups, in the U.S. or abroad.

And there are disturbing indications about at least one of the men's mental health. According to the Times, Laguerre Payen was

described as a nervous, quiet sort who took medication for schizophrenia or a bi-polar disorder, was unemployed and living in squalor in Newburgh. His last arrest, in 2002, was for assault, after he drove around the Rockland County village of Monsey, firing a BB gun out of the window--striking two teens--and snatching two purses. A friend who visited Mr. Payen's apartment on Thursday said it contained bottles of urine, and raw chicken on the stovetop.

According to the Los Angeles Times, Payen's own attorney described him in court as "intellectually challenged," and as currently on medication for schizophrenia. When Payen was asked if he understood the court proceedings, he replied: "Sort of."

Onta Williams, meanwhile, has reportedly been a crack cocaine addict since high school, and James Cromitie spent 12 years in prison for selling drugs behind a school--not exactly characteristics of the media's profile of terrorist "masterminds."

None of the men seem to have been active members of the mosque in Newburgh, N.Y., where they first met the FBI informant. In fact, it appears that the informant specifically "trolled" the mosque looking for people to snare in a cooked-up plot.

According to the New York Times, the informant, a Pakistani immigrant, began working for the FBI in 2002 after being arrested on federal identity theft charges and sentenced to five years probation. He seems to have become an informant in exchange for not being deported.

In 2007, he began showing up at the Newburgh mosque, talking about "violence and jihad" to other worshippers. "There was just something fishy about him," Salahuddin Mustafa Muhammad, the mosque's imam, told the Times. Mosque members "believed he was a government agent."

As Robert Dreyfuss commented at the Nation.com: "So a creepy thug buttonholes people at a mosque, foaming at the mouth about violence and jihad? This is law enforcement? Just imagine if someone did this at a local church, or some synagogue."

According to Muhammad, at least one member of the congregation said the informant offered a substantial amount of money to join his "team."

Such an offer may have been especially attractive to one of the alleged plotters, David Williams. Williams was reportedly distraught over the fact that his younger brother, Lord McWilliams, suffers from sarcoidosis and needs a liver transplant, which his family doesn't have the money to pay for.

"My insurance wasn't good enough," Lord McWilliams told the New York Daily News. His brother, he said, wanted money "to speed up the process. Medicaid only goes so far."

According to McWilliams, the FBI informant frequently drove his brother David to visit him in the hospital--and seems to have promised enough money to pay for a transplant. McWilliams said his brother "told me, 'Don't worry, when you go to the doctor, tell them you got money.'"

David Williams' mother, Elizabeth McWilliams, said her older son had told her he would be able to give her a large amount of money on the day after the alleged "terrorist plot" was to have been carried out.

One anonymous law enforcement source told the Daily News that prosecutors would have had to approve any alleged offer of "payment" to Williams from the informant, and that "if the [informant] did this on his own, that could become a problem. A big one."

Rather than the radical Jew-hating terrorists portrayed by law enforcement, the so–called plotters seem more likely to have been down on their luck, facing the difficulties of being ex-cons, alternately mentally ill, easily manipulated and coerced, or desperate for money--and, thus, were lured into potentially committing a crime they ordinarily would not have.

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THIS IS by no means the first "terrorism" case to play out in exactly this fashion. In fact, just days before the men were arrested, the government succeeded in securing convictions against five out of six defendants in another so-called "terror" plot--this one to supposedly blow up Chicago's Sears Tower.

In that case, seven men--for the most part, U.S. citizens of Haitian descent or Haitian immigrants who lived in Miami's impoverished Liberty City neighborhood--were arrested in 2006 and accused of providing "material aid" to al-Qaeda and conspiring to blow up buildings.

The government said the men sought support from an undercover FBI agent who posed as an al-Qaeda representative. Their proof? They apparently gave the informant their shoe sizes so he could buy them military boots.

Later, government documents alleged, one of the men gave the informant lists of other items needed for possible attacks: uniforms, binoculars, radios, vehicles, bullet-proof vests, machine guns and $50,000 in cash.

The government also claimed the men conducted "surveillance" of possible targets. But in reality, the group was apparently so disorganized that the government itself provided the surveillance vehicles, as well as the cameras with which the strongest piece of evidence was captured.

Thus, the seven were accused of plotting to carry out a complicated terrorist attack on the Sears Tower, one of the most recognizable landmarks in the U.S., yet authorities admit they had no weapons or explosives, and had never been in contact with al-Qaeda or any other terrorist organization.

In this case as well, one of the defendants claims that the FBI informant promised him money for his struggling construction business and a community outreach program.

It took three years and three separate trials, but earlier this month, prosecutors finally succeeded in securing convictions against five of the original seven (one defendant was acquitted in this trial, and one was acquitted in an earlier trial).

But of course, no one is any safer because of it. In this latest case, as Robert Dreyfuss noted, the men

may have been inclined to violence, and they may have harbored a virulent strain of anti-Semitism. But it seems that the informant whipped up their violent tendencies and their hatred of Jews, cooked up the plot, incited them, arranged their purchase of weapons and then had them busted. To ensure that it made headlines, the creepy informant claimed to be representing a Pakistani extremist group...He wasn't, of course.

It is disgusting and outrageous that the FBI is sending provocateurs into mosques.

The headlines reinforce the very fear that Dick Cheney is trying to stir up. The story strengthens the narrative that the "homeland" is under attack. It's not. As I've written repeatedly, since 9/11, not a single American has even been punched in the nose by an angry Muslim, as far as I can tell. Plot after plot--the destruction of the Brooklyn Bridge! bombing the New York subways! taking down the Sears Tower! bombing the Prudential building in Newark!--proved to be utter nonsense.

Throw the worker from the train, the kiss of death

Big Business's Threat to America: Bust Unions or We'll Go Overseas

Art Levine / Huffington Post / Posted January 16, 2009 | 01:44 AM (EST)

If dirty tricks and threats can work to stop unionizing in the workplace, why can't they be used on the American public?

This week, business leaders and their GOP henchmen launched a new attack line: stop union organizing or we'll leave the country. On top of that, their allies in the ideological right are preparing a series of state constitutional amendments designed to thwart the Employee Free Choice Act, and based on the lie that the legislation stops workers from casting a secret ballot.

The Heritage Foundation reports:

Ernest Istook, Chairman of the National Advisory Board for Save Our Secret Ballot, described at the Conservative Bloggers' Briefing yesterday a grassroots, state-level strategy to nullify the effects of the Employee Free Choice Act should it be passed by Congress.

SOSBallot.org, a 501 c(4) organization, is currently pushing for constitutional amendments to be placed on the ballots of Arizona, Arkansas, Montana, Nevada and Utah. "Save Our Secret Ballot exists to give the citizens in the various states the opportunity to create state level protections for secret ballots that would include union representation elections," Istook said.

Istook, who is also a former Congressman from Oklahoma and a Distinguished Fellow at the Heritage Foundation, is determined to stop the EFCA, which he says will enable unions to strong-arm otherwise unwilling workers into endorsing the formation of a union by eliminating the privacy of their vote. Instead, a far more public system of simply signing an authorization form will replace the secret ballot.

Of course, such bogus measures would also bar the voluntary use of majority sign-up procedures that have been allowed under the National Labor Relations Act for decades, and have been used by such companies as Kaiser Permanente, ATT and Harley-Davidson.

This lie about the secret ballot is built on another myth: that there's widespread intimidation by "union bosses" to join a union. But as Mary Beth Maxwell, director of American Rights at Work noted in a recent interview on C-SPAN (via the AFL-CIO blog):

Opponents of the Employee Free Choice Act falsely claim the bill would do away with secret ballots or open the door to coercion by unions. Neither of these claims has merit. The Employee Free Choice Act will allow workers (rather than bosses) to choose whether to form unions, either through majority sign-up or the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) election process.

And claims of union intimidation are far from credible. According to AFL-CIO Associate General Counsel Nancy Schiffer, a study of NLRB decisions found only 42 cases of union fraud or coercion over more than six decades since the NLRB was established. Compared with the nearly 27,000 instances of company violations of workers' rights in 2006 alone [as determined by George Bush's National Labor Relations Board] , it's clear that corporate anti-union scaremongering is a ploy to disguise the anti-worker agenda.

Maxwell dissected the corporate disinformation campaign and outlined the intimidation, harassment and delay that are pervasive in our company-dominated system. The anti-worker campaign, Maxwell says, is fundamentally about trying to keep workers from being able to exercise the freedom to bargain for a better life.

Their opposition to this isn't about them trying to protect anyone's ballot. They want to make it more difficult for folks to form unions. We think it's your American right to form a union if you want to, and it should be more straightforward. It should be fairer for workers...

.

Will unionbusting tricks, threats and lies work as well on the American public as it has with workers in often low-wage workplaces seeking to organize?

Here's how it works:

One of the most common threats in any unionizing campaign is the threat by employers to shut down the plant, and, often, go overseas. As The American Prospect's Ezra Klein noted in an astute column on unionbusting as portayed on "The Office": "About 49 percent of employers openly threaten to close down a worksite when faced with a unionization drive. Untold more tell individual workers, in captive meetings, that jobs will be lost. 30 percent make good on the threat in real time, firing workers who engage in union activities." (The research backing up these sordid facts can be found here.)

Now, corporations are applying those same tactics to the American public and Congress in the hard-fought battle over the Employee Free Choice Act, which aims to level the playing field for union organizing. But the proposed legislation has been smeared with the lie that it takes away the secret ballot. In recent public statements by conservative business and political leaders, including former governor Mitt Romney in testimony this week, they're forecasting the exodus of major businesses unless we turn into an even lower-wage country.

As Think Progress points out:

Romney used some time during his opening statement to take a swipe at the Employee Free Choice Act:

"And there is one very bad idea that is being promoted by a special interest group. It is an idea that would have devastating impact on the economy--short term and long term. It would lead investors to send their funds elsewhere, businesses to expand elsewhere and jobs to relocate elsewhere. It is the plan to virtually impose unions on all small, medium and large businesses by removing the right of workers to vote by secret ballot. Card check is a very bad idea under any circumstances. In these circumstances, it would be calamitous."

As Michael Whitney laid out at the SEIU blog, "Business leaders and CEOs are developing a new strategy to combat the Employee Free Choice Act: threaten to take jobs overseas and divest from America." Romney's comment certainly falls into that category.

Fearmongering rhetoric aside, the Employee Free Choice Act would actually make the economy work for everyone, instead of only those at the top. According to estimates by the Economic Policy Institute, if 5 million service workers join unions:

- 5 million workers would get a 22 percent raise on average, or an additional $7,000 a year.

- $34 billion in total new wages would flow into the economy.

- 900,000 jobs would be lifted above the poverty wage for a family of four.

- Between 1.8 million and 3 million dependent children would share in these benefits.

But there are plenty of other examples of such conservative fear-mongering designed to cow voters and legislators into backing away from the legislation, which 78% of the public supports. As the SEIU blog observes, Romney's views were echoed earlier:

Gary Shapiro, the President of the Consumer Electronics Association, said basically the same thing earlier in the week:

"A fast-moving, successful tech company with differential compensation and incentive compensation and the need to adapt quickly is inconsistent with the straitjacket of a union environment. The tech industry executives I represent simply can't believe Congress would enact a card-check law that could force jobs overseas."

The Employee Free Choice Act is a strong economic solution that will help millions of working Americans get better wages and benefits. This kind of attack against the Employee Free Choice Act is the equivalent of CEOs taking their ball and going home.

Here's hoping that the American public -- and Congress -- can stand up to these fear-mongering tactics.

The Supreme Court as an institution of corporate power

The Subprime Court

By Rob Larson
Larson's ZSpace page

By now everyone knows the new Supreme Court tilts to the right. Bush's nominees Justice Alito and Chief Justice Roberts lead a conservative five-justice bloc, where reproductive health rights have been cut back and the President's Office of Faith-Based Initiatives keeps getting public money.

What's less known is the court's newly expanded function as an institution of corporate power. Since Bush's appointments, the court has begun hearing far more business cases and, in case after case, has "pushed the law in a direction favored by business," as the Wall Street Journal reports. For example, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, America's most powerful business lobby, took a position on 15 cases before the court in 2007 and its side won in all but 2.

That makes sense. Roberts previously represented and filed briefs on behalf of the Chamber and other business organizations like the National Association of Manufacturers and other corporate clients. The Financial Times refers to Roberts and Alito as "pretty much the dream candidates of economic conservatism," calling Justice Roberts "a white-shoe corporate lawyer" and noting "Justice Alito often sided with employers in his prior life as a judge."

The result is reviewed in Business Week, which quotes Robin Conrad of the Chamber of Commerce's litigation arm: "The judicial branch offers an alternative forum where business can seek changes it has failed to win from other branches of government. In the 1990s, the chamber and other business groups made this a vital part of their tort reform strategy, pouring money into local judicial campaigns to reshape state supreme courts... [now] the approach is playing out on a national level." But "tort reform"—where barriers are raised to discourage suing companies—is only one part of what business expects from the court, in what will probably be decades of "business friendly" decisions.

Consider banking regulation, which is making a comeback these days with even the Federal Reserve Chair coming out in favor. Our highest court recently ruled that national bank subsidiaries that extend mortgage loans, a major part of our current straits, can't be regulated by state governments. Impressive, since mortgages and home equity loans were among the financial assets that were repackaged into forms that ended up bringing down the banks. The subprime legacy doesn't seem to faze the court.

Additionally, the court ruled almost unanimously that banks, being "regulated" by the Securities and Exchange Commission, cannot be sued by investors—making them "generally immune from antitrust liability" as the International Herald Tribunedescribes, allowing our "too big to fail" banks to get even bigger.

The Supremes also decided that citizens have no right to legally challenge the tax breaks used by most of the U.S. states to "lure investment and jobs away from competing localities," as the Financial Times reports. "Forty-six of the 50 states offer some form of investment tax credit. Big companies, many of them carmakers, get billions of dollars each year from states and cities in what critics call an 'escalating arms race' of tax incentives." This is a big deal, since this type of tax concession is how firms drive the "race to the bottom" among states and countries—either you lower my taxes or I'll build my plant somewhere that does. So, for the Roberts Court, if the states want to oversee banks' shady mortgage-issuing, no dice. But if they're cutting taxes on Toyota so they'll condescend to build a plant, no problem.

Business involvement in elections has been a recurring subject for the court. A 2007 ruling overturned a significant part of the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law, finding that corporations, unions, and interest groups can run "issue ads" immediately before elections. The intention of the law had been to prevent a pre-election flood of campaign advertising, thinly disguised as advocating for a political issue, paid for by companies and other groups. The law was restricted to the period just prior to elections or primaries and only to ads which were funded by corporations, unions, or other groups from their own general treasuries—a very limited restriction on how companies could use their massive financial advantages in an election environment.

The court set a very high standard for these sham "issue ads" to be found in violation of McCain-Feingold. The ads have to expressly urge a position on a candidate, or be subject to "no reasonable interpretation other than as an appeal to vote for or against a specific candidate," to be found illegal. In other words, they won't be, as described by Richard Hasen, law professor at Loyola Law School, Los Angeles, in a paper on the court's new ad-friendly stance. Noting that the "burden of proof is on the government to prove the advertisement is not subject to exemption" and that the decision expressly forbids considering the context of the election in interpreting the ad, he finds that most campaign ads of the issue-oriented variety "will comfortably fall on the permitted side of the line." In fact, "Very few ads broadcast close to an election" directly push for a candidate, but "almost always mention a legislative issue, even if they are also attacking a candidate." Clearly, the 2008 flood of corporate and other campaign ads in battleground states owes a lot to our highest court.

Now the court seems ready to overturn or restrict even this weakened limitation on corporate campaign influence. Since the law could extend to any political speech, as long as it advocates a candidate and was paid for with general corporate or group funds, it's conceivable that books or signs could be banned, if paid for by firms. This has led to the conservative wing of the court posturing as defenders of the First Amendment. The poor corporations are being slightly limited in their massive dollar advantage over unions and other groups, so their political speech rights must be defended. Of course, the court also found that students can be censored and punished by schools for mocking school policy, in the well-known "Bong Hits 4 Jesus" case.

Another overturned McCain-Feingold provision, the "Millionaire Rule," raised the ceiling on individual campaign contributions for candidates facing a self-financed opponent whose vast resources tilt the playing field in their favor. The court found that this was unfair for imposing more restrictions on one party in an election, even though this doesn't address the advantage held by rich candidates who can self-finance. In fact, the rule itself was a response to a previous Supreme Court ruling overturning restrictions on wealthy candidates using their own cash to gain office. An outside observer might call this a clear argument for publicly-funded elections.

Turning to elected judges, the Supreme Court ruled "an elected judge may rule on a case where one party spent $3 million to help get him elected," the Wall Street Journal reports. The question was whether this violates the constitutional rights of due process and impartial trials. Notably, conservative Justice Scalia held that due process was not violated because the judge's conflict of interest was "vague." Three million bucks sounds pretty specific to me, but I'm no lawyer.

However, I am an economist and I'll tell you that you can thank the court for some higher consumer goods prices as well. By five to four the court overturned a 1911 Supreme Court ruling outlawing "minimum-price agreements," where a manufacturer requires that retailers not mark down the prices of its products. The business press describes the corporate rationale for legalizing this practice: "minimum resale price agreements, although raising prices within brands, could be good for consumers as price competition between brands would be stimulated...the loss of competition on price would be more than made up for by the way a price floor would allow retailers to compete on service rather than on price alone." The Wall Street Journaldescribes them as "a means to enhance a brand's image and for retailers to make enough profit on their merchandise to provide better customer service," but they "have run into legal trouble in the past when federal officials found they resulted in higher prices for consumers."

This is essentially what economists call "price fixing," where firms work together to increase markups on products and thus the price paid by consumers. In spite of the companies' argument that the MPAs will encourage price competition between brands, the Journal observes that similar video games Guitar Hero World Tour and Rock Band 2 are being sold at the same mandatory retail price—$189. The court's opinion here is that when firms increase prices, the extra money will go into improving the product or customer service. Of course, it's just possible that the higher markups will fatten the manufacturer's profitability instead.

The Roberts Court's trademark has been its limitation of damages in corporate lawsuits and its moves to prevent firms from being taken to court at all. The court reduced the punitive damage settlement against Exxon for the 1989 Valdez oil spill by 80 percent, from $2.5 billion to $500 million. It also reversed a jury decision against cigarette manufacturer Philip Morris, which awarded $79 million to the widow of an Oregon smoker, on the grounds that the jury might have based that number on a desire to punish the corporation for harming other smokers (juries are silly that way). The court now seems eager to further reduce the limited extent to which companies can be held liable through lawsuits for costs they impose on others, or "externalize."

The press describes the court as "closing the courtroom door," preventing lawsuits against corporations, very often from the firms' own investors. The court has found that class action lawsuits alleging fraud must be brought to federal courts where they're effectively barred; that investors can't sue Wall Street banks over their losses from IPO agreements during the 1990s stock mania; and they face tighter standards for bringing suit for antitrust conspiracy. This series of decisions greatly reduced corporations' liability to investor suits, leading the Chamber's Conrad to declare the Roberts Court in 2007 "our best Supreme Court ever."

The Roberts Court is essentially insulating corporations from suits from their owners and customers. Such suits are often the only recourse when firms "externalize" their costs in loose regulatory environments. Closing off the possibility of redress for victims of corporate destruction will save firms billions of dollars, hence Conrad's grateful attitude. Interestingly, while many of these business cases have been won by the court's five-justice conservative bloc, on issues of limiting court damages the court has been more unanimous—even the "liberal" justices would see firms insulated from accountability for their behavior.

There have been some cracks in the corporate lock on the court. One interesting example is the court's treatment of employee discrimination cases. Businesses, of course, would like to see these restricted. In the first such case the court ruled against plaintiff Lilly Ledbetter, a supervisor at a Goodyear plant who had learned that her employer had paid every male in a similar position about $1,000 more per month. The court threw out her case because she failed to meet a strict 180-day deadline in filing suit. This tightened statute of limitations meant that very few such cases could be filed.

After this became a prominent national issue, the court changed its tune. As the press describes, Ledbetter led to "loud protests.... Since then, the court has consistently sided with employees who have alleged discrimination and ruled...to allow lawsuits to go forward."

One such development suggesting incomplete commercial dominance of the Roberts Court is its recent decision on drug labeling. After having found that manufacturers of medical devices are shielded from lawsuits by their government-approved safety labels, the court found drug manufacturers aren't and that suits against them could go forward. This reversal has led some observers to conclude that its reputation as a business plaything was premature and that "something of a reevaluation of the court is underway." But it should first be noted that Bush's conservative appointees dissented from this decision, along with Justice Scalia. So what happened to the other conservatives, Thomas and Kennedy?

The answer lies in the doctrine of federal "preemption," where government regulation prevents state lawsuits. Preemption has only recently been extended to drugs from medical devices, mainly in a late policy of the Bush administration. Apparently that took obedience to corporate power too far for a few conservatives. Unfortunately, after the series of business rulings reviewed here, it's a drop in the water. Still, it's heartening that the court seems to have backed off in the face of the outcry after the Ledbetter decision, which suggests that an aroused public can still exert pressure.

Sure, the Supreme Court's an inherently conservative institution, sympathetic to the wealthy and powerful from whose ranks the Justices have historically been drawn. But the escalation of the number of business cases on the docket suggests that corporate America has tightened its grip. As the Economist noted, Bush's only lasting success in his "domestic legacy" probably lies in "shifting the Supreme Court significantly to the right." Over the coming decades, it will take a more thoughtful, organized, and active version of the response to the Ledbetter case to make the court even approach the desires of U.S. citizens. Popular organization and education is the only way to drag the Roberts Court kicking and screaming into the 21st century.

Z

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Rob Larson is an assistant professor of economics at Ivy Tech Community College in Bloomington, Indiana.

Grand Theft Auto: How Stevie the Rat bankrupted GM

by Greg Palast
Monday, June 1, 2009

Screw the autoworkers.

They may be crying about General Motors' bankruptcy today. But dumping 40,000 of the last 60,000 union jobs into a mass grave won't spoil Jamie Dimon's day.

Dimon is the CEO of JP Morgan Chase bank. While GM workers are losing their retirement health benefits, their jobs, their life savings; while shareholders are getting zilch and many creditors getting hosed, a few privileged GM lenders – led by Morgan and Citibank – expect to get back 100% of their loans to GM, a stunning $6 billion.

The way these banks are getting their $6 billion bonanza is stone cold illegal.

I smell a rat.

Stevie the Rat, to be precise. Steven Rattner, Barack Obama's 'Car Czar' - the man who essentially ordered GM into bankruptcy this morning.

When a company goes bankrupt, everyone takes a hit: fair or not, workers lose some contract wages, stockholders get wiped out and creditors get fragments of what's left. That's the law. What workers don't lose are their pensions (including old-age health funds) already taken from their wages and held in their name.

But not this time. Stevie the Rat has a different plan for GM: grab the pension funds to pay off Morgan and Citi.

Here's the scheme: Rattner is demanding the bankruptcy court simply wipe away the money GM owes workers for their retirement health insurance. Cash in the insurance fund would be replace by GM stock. The percentage may be 17% of GM's stock - or 25%. Whatever, 17% or 25% is worth, well ... just try paying for your dialysis with 50 shares of bankrupt auto stock.

Yet Citibank and Morgan, says Rattner, should get their whole enchilada - $6 billion right now and in cash - from a company that can't pay for auto parts or worker eye exams.

Preventive Detention for Pensions

So what's wrong with seizing workers' pension fund money in a bankruptcy? The answer, Mr. Obama, Mr. Law Professor, is that it's illegal.

In 1974, after a series of scandalous take-downs of pension and retirement funds during the Nixon era, Congress passed the Employee Retirement Income Security Act. ERISA says you can't seize workers' pension funds (whether monthly payments or health insurance) any more than you can seize their private bank accounts. And that's because they are the same thing: workers give up wages in return for retirement benefits.

The law is darn explicit that grabbing pension money is a no-no. Company executives must hold these retirement funds as "fiduciaries." Here's the law, Professor Obama, as described on the government's own web site under the heading, "Health Plans and Benefits."

"The primary responsibility of fiduciaries is to run the plan solely in the interest of participants and beneficiaries and for the exclusive purpose of providing benefits."

Every business in America that runs short of cash would love to dip into retirement kitties, but it's not their money any more than a banker can seize your account when the bank's a little short. A plan's assets are for the plan's members only, not for Mr. Dimon nor Mr. Rubin.

Yet, in effect, the Obama Administration is demanding that money for an elderly auto worker's spleen should be siphoned off to feed the TARP babies. Workers go without lung transplants so Dimon and Rubin can pimp out their ride. This is another "Guantanamo" moment for the Obama Administration - channeling Nixon to endorse the preventive detention of retiree health insurance.

Filching GM's pension assets doesn't become legal because the cash due the fund is replaced with GM stock. Congress saw through that switch-a-roo by requiring that companies, as fiduciaries, must

"...act prudently and must diversify the plan's investments in order to minimize the risk of large losses."

By "diversify" for safety, the law does not mean put 100% of worker funds into a single busted company's stock.

This is dangerous business: The Rattner plan opens the floodgate to every politically-connected or down-on-their-luck company seeking to drain health care retirement funds.

House of Rubin

Pensions are wiped away and two connected banks don't even get a haircut? How come Citi and Morgan aren't asked, like workers and other creditors, to take stock in GM?

As Butch said to Sundance, who ARE these guys? You remember Morgan and Citi. These are the corporate Welfare Queens who've already sucked up over a third of a trillion dollars in aid from the US Treasury and Federal Reserve. Not coincidentally, Citi, the big winner, has paid over $100 million to Robert Rubin, the former US Treasury Secretary. Rubin was Obama's point-man in winning banks' endorsement and campaign donations (by far, his largest source of his corporate funding).

With GM's last dying dimes about to fall into one pocket, and the Obama Treasury in his other pocket, Morgan's Jamie Dimon is correct in saying that the last twelve months will prove to be the bank's "finest year ever."

Which leaves us to ask the question: is the forced bankruptcy of GM, the elimination of tens of thousands of jobs, just a collection action for favored financiers?

And it's been a good year for Señor Rattner. While the Obama Administration made a big deal out of Rattner's youth spent working for the Steelworkers Union, they tried to sweep under the chassis that Rattner was one of the privileged, select group of investors in Cerberus Capital, the owners of Chrysler. "Owning" is a loose term. Cerberus "owned" Chrysler the way a cannibal "hosts" you for dinner. Cerberus paid nothing for Chrysler - indeed, they were paid billions by Germany's Daimler Corporation to haul it away. Cerberus kept the cash, then dumped Chrysler's bankrupt corpse on the US taxpayer.

("Cerberus," by the way, named itself after the Roman's mythical three-headed dog guarding the gates Hell. Subtle these guys are not.)

While Stevie the Rat sold his interest in the Dog from Hell when he became Car Czar, he never relinquished his post at the shop of vultures called Quadrangle Hedge Fund. Rattner's personal net worth stands at roughly half a billion dollars. This is Obama's working class hero.

If you ran a business and played fast and loose with your workers' funds, you could land in prison. Stevie the Rat's plan is nothing less than Grand Theft Auto Pension.

It doesn't make it any less of a crime if the President drives the getaway car.

******

Economist and journalist Greg Palast, a former trade union contract negotiator, is author of the New York Times bestsellers The Best Democracy Money Can Buy and Armed Madhouse. He is a GM bondholder and card-carrying member of United Automobile Workers Local 1981.

Gas price surge may stall recovery

By Aaron Smith, CNNMoney.com staff writer

Last Updated: May 30, 2009: 12:13 PM ET

Gas prices jump 20% in 32 days, nearing $2.50 a gallon and putting more pressure on the already battered economy.

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- The rising price of gasoline is putting pressure on cash-strapped motorists and throwing barricades into the path of a speedy economic recovery.

The national average price for a gallon of regular unleaded gas edged up to $2.488 on Saturday, from $2.467 the day before, according to motorist group AAA.

That marks the 32nd consecutive increase. In that one-month period, the average price of gas jumped more than 20%.

That surge is causing concern for drivers as the summer driving season gets underway.

Americans are already dealing with high unemployment and a collapsing housing market. If gas prices continue to climb at their heady rates, Americans who are living "paycheck to paycheck" could put the brakes on their plans to tool around this summer, crimping some of the government's efforts to pull the economy out of recession, said Tom Kloza, chief oil analyst for the Oil Price Information Service.

"There's way too much optimism about a driving season lift," said Kloza, who believes that higher prices, in conjunction with the recession, will dampen the typical summer travel surge.

Kloza said the impact will be especially painful in economic "sore spots" like California, Florida, Arizona and the rural South.

Gas is particularly expensive in California, where the average price is $2.725 a gallon. In Arizona, the average price is less expensive, at $2.341 a gallon.

Currently, the highest gas prices are in Alaska, where prices average $2.752 per gallon. The cheapest gas can be found in South Carolina, where the average is $2.299 a gallon.

Despite the recent surge, the average price of a gallon of gas remains 40% below its all-time peak of $4.114 on July 17, 2008. But the repercussions of that peak are still being felt.

Kloza said that drivers are more likely to focus on the recent increases, than to feel relieved that gas prices are off their 2008 peak.

"People are crazy when it comes to the price of gasoline," he said. "Nothing has quite the emotional component than gas prices do."

Last year's gas price spike also severely hampered demand for SUVs and trucks, hastening the downward spiral for the Big Three automakers.

Chrysler filed for bankruptcy on April 30 and is awaiting a ruling from a federal judge as to whether it may sell its assets and form a new company. General Motors (GM, Fortune 500) is expected to file for bankruptcy next week and its stock price is trading below $1 a share for the first time since the Great Depression.

First Published: May 29, 2009: 3:29 PM ET