Saturday, October 03, 2015

From Daily Kos: Open Letter to an Anti-47%er


53% guy
Hello,
 
I briefly visited the “We are the 53%” website, but I first saw your face on a liberal blog.  Your picture is quite popular on liberal blogs.  I think it’s because of the expression on your face.  I don’t know if you meant to look pugnacious or if we’re just projecting that on you, but I think that’s what gets our attention.
In the picture, you’re holding up a sheet of paper that says:
 
I am a former Marine.
I work two jobs.
I don’t have health insurance.
I worked 60-70 hours a week for 8 years to pay my way through college.
I haven’t had 4 consecutive days off in over 4 years.
But I don’t blame Wall Street.
Suck it up you whiners.
I am the 53%.
God bless the USA!


I wanted to respond to you as a liberal.

Because, although I think you’ve made yourself clear and I think I understand you, you don’t seem to understand me at all.  I hope you will read this and understand me better, and maybe understand the Occupy Wall Street movement better.

First, let me say that I think it’s great that you have such a strong work ethic and I agree with you that you have much to be proud of.  You seem like a good, hard-working, strong kid.  I admire your dedication and determination.  I worked my way through college too, mostly working graveyard shifts at hotels as a “night auditor.”  For a time I worked at two hotels at once, but I don’t think I ever worked 60 hours in a week, and certainly not 70.  I think I maxed out at 56.  And that wasn’t something I could sustain for long, not while going to school.  The problem was that I never got much sleep, and sleep deprivation would take its toll.  I can’t imagine putting in 70 hours in a week while going to college at the same time.  That’s impressive.

I have a nephew in the Marine Corps, so I have some idea of how tough that can be.  He almost didn’t make it through basic training, but he stuck it out and insisted on staying even when questions were raised about his medical fitness.  He eventually served in Iraq and Afghanistan and has decided to pursue a career in the Marines.  We’re all very proud of him.  Your picture reminds me of him.

So, if you think being a liberal means that I don’t value hard work or a strong work ethic, you’re wrong.

I think everyone appreciates the industry and dedication a person like you displays.  I’m sure you’re a great employee, and if you have entrepreneurial ambitions, I’m sure these qualities will serve you there too.  I’ll wish you the best of luck, even though a guy like you will probably need luck less than most.

I understand your pride in what you’ve accomplished, but I want to ask you something.

Do you really want the bar set this high?  Do you really want to live in a society where just getting by requires a person to hold down two jobs and work 60 to 70 hours a week?  Is that your idea of the American Dream?

Do you really want to spend the rest of your life working two jobs and 60 to 70 hours a week?  Do you think you can?  Because, let me tell you, kid, that’s not going to be as easy when you’re 50 as it was when you were 20.

And what happens if you get sick?  You say you don’t have health insurance, but since you’re a veteran I assume you have some government-provided health care through the VA system.  I know my father, a Vietnam-era veteran of the Air Force, still gets most of his medical needs met through the VA, but I don’t know what your situation is.  But even if you have access to health care, it doesn’t mean disease or injury might not interfere with your ability to put in those 60- to 70-hour work weeks.

Do you plan to get married, have kids?  Do you think your wife is going to be happy with you working those long hours year after year without a vacation?  Is it going to be fair to her?  Is it going to be fair to your kids?  Is it going to be fair to you?

Look, you’re a tough kid.  And you have a right to be proud of that.  But not everybody is as tough as you, or as strong, or as young.  Does pride in what you’ve accomplish mean that you have contempt for anybody who can’t keep up with you?  Does it mean that the single mother who can’t work on her feet longer than 50 hours a week doesn’t deserve a good life?  Does it mean the older man who struggles with modern technology and can’t seem to keep up with the pace set by younger workers should just go throw himself off a cliff?

And, believe it or not, there are people out there even tougher than you.  Why don’t we let them set the bar, instead of you?  Are you ready to work 80 hours a week?  100 hours?  Can you hold down four jobs?  Can you do it when you’re 40?  When you’re 50?  When you’re 60?  Can you do it with arthritis?  Can you do it with one arm?  Can you do it when you’re being treated for prostate cancer?

And is this really your idea of what life should be like in the greatest country on Earth?

Here’s how a liberal looks at it:  a long time ago workers in this country realized that industrialization wasn’t making their lives better, but worse.  The captains of industry were making a ton of money and living a merry life far away from the dirty, dangerous factories they owned, and far away from the even dirtier and more dangerous mines that fed raw materials to those factories.

The workers quickly decided that this arrangement didn’t work for them.  If they were going to work as cogs in machines designed to build wealth for the Rockefellers, Vanderbilts and Carnegies, they wanted a cut.  They wanted a share of the wealth that they were helping create.  And that didn’t mean just more money; it meant a better quality of life.  It meant reasonable hours and better working conditions.

Eventually, somebody came up with the slogan, “8 hours of work, 8 hours of leisure, 8 hours of sleep” to divide the 24-hour day into what was considered a fair allocation of a human’s time.  It wasn’t a slogan that was immediately accepted.  People had to fight to put this standard in place.  People demonstrated, and fought with police, and were killed.  They were called communists (in fairness, some of them were), and traitors, and many of them got a lot worse than pepper spray at the hands of police and private security.

But by the time we got through the Great Depression and WWII, we’d all learned some valuable lessons about working together and sharing the prosperity, and the 8-hour workday became the norm.

The 8-hour workday and the 40-hour workweek became a standard by which we judged our economic success, and a reality check against which we could verify the American Dream.

If a family could live a good life with one wage-earner working a 40-hour job, then the American Dream was realized.  If the income from that job could pay the bills, buy a car, pay for the kids’ braces, allow the family to save enough money for a down payment on a house and still leave some money for retirement and maybe for a college fund for the kids, then we were living the American Dream.  The workers were sharing in the prosperity they helped create, and they still had time to take their kids to a ball game, take their spouses to a movie, and play a little golf on the weekends.

Ah, the halcyon days of the 1950s!  Yeah, ok, it wasn’t quite that perfect.  The prosperity wasn’t spread as evenly and ubiquitously as we might want to pretend, but if you were a middle-class white man, things were probably pretty good from an economic perspective. The American middle class was reaching its zenith.

And the top marginal federal income tax rate was more than 90%.  Throughout the whole of the 1950s and into the early 60s.

Just thought I’d throw that in there.

Anyway, do you understand what I’m trying to say?

We can have a reasonable standard for what level of work qualifies you for the American Dream, and work to build a society that realizes that dream, or we can chew each other to the bone in a nightmare of merciless competition and mutual contempt.

I’m a liberal, so I probably dream bigger than you.

For instance, I want everybody to have healthcare.  I want lazy people to have healthcare.  I want stupid people to have healthcare.  I want drug addicts to have healthcare.  I want bums who refuse to work even when given the opportunity to have healthcare.  I’m willing to pay for that with my taxes, because I want to live in a society where it doesn’t matter how much of a loser you are, if you need medical care you can get it. And not just by crowding up an emergency room that should be dedicated exclusively to helping people in emergencies.

You probably don’t agree with that, and that’s fine.

That’s an expansion of the American Dream, and would involve new commitments we haven’t made before.   But the commitment we’ve made to the working class since the 1940s is something that we should both support and be willing to fight for, whether we are liberal or conservative.  We should both be willing to fight for the American Dream.  And we should agree that anybody trying to steal that dream from us is to be resisted, not defended.

And while we’re defending that dream, you know what else we’ll be defending, kid?  We’ll be defending you and your awesome work ethic.  Because when we defend the American Dream we’re not just defending the idea of modest prosperity for people who put in an honest day’s work, we’re also defending the idea that those who go the extra mile should be rewarded accordingly.

Look, kid, I don’t want you to “get by” working two jobs and 60 to 70 hours a week.  If you’re willing to put in that kind of effort, I want you to get rich.  I want you to have a comprehensive healthcare plan.  I want you vacationing in the Bahamas every couple of years, with your beautiful wife and healthy, happy kids.  I want you rewarded for your hard work, and I want your exceptional effort to reap exceptional rewards.  I want you to accumulate wealth and invest it in Wall Street. And I want you to make more money from those investments.

I understand that a prosperous America needs people with money to invest, and I’ve got no problem with that.  All other things being equal, I want all the rich people to keep being rich.  And clever financiers who find ways to get more money into the hands of promising entrepreneurs should be rewarded for their contributions as well.

I think Wall Street has an important job to do; I just don’t think they’ve been doing it.  And I resent their sense of entitlement – their sense that they are special and deserve to be rewarded extravagantly even when they screw everything up.

Come on, it was only three years ago, kid. Remember? Those assholes almost destroyed our economy.  Do you remember the feeling of panic?  John McCain wanted to suspend the presidential campaign so that everybody could focus on the crisis.  Hallowed financial institutions like Lehman Brothers and Merrill Lynch went belly up.  The government started intervening with bailouts, not because anybody thought “private profits and socialized losses” was fair, but because we were afraid not to intervene -  we were afraid our whole economy might come crashing down around us if we didn’t prop up companies that were “too big to fail.”

So, even though you and I had nothing to do with the bad decisions, blind greed and incompetence of those guys on Wall Street, we were sure as hell along for the ride, weren’t we?  And we’ve all paid a price.

All the” 99%” wants is for you to remember the role that Wall Street played in creating this mess, and for you to join us in demanding that Wall Street share the pain.  They don’t want to share the pain, and they’re spending a lot of money and twisting a lot of arms to foist their share of the pain on the rest of us instead. And they’ve been given unprecedented powers to spend and twist, and they’re not even trying to hide what they’re doing.

All we want is for everybody to remember what happened, and to see what is happening still.  And we want you to see that the only way they can get away without paying their share is to undermine the American Dream for the rest of us.

And I want you and me to understand each other and to stand together to prevent them from doing that. You seem like the kind of guy who would be a strong ally, and I’d be proud to stand with you.

---

EDIT:  Thanks to everyone for the recommendations and to Kos for the promotion to the front page.  I'm really stunned.  I hope it isn't weird to add an edit like this after you've been promoted to the front page.  But I wanted to say how much I appreciate the opportunity to be heard and I appreciate all the kind comments (which I will probably spend most of the rest of the night reading).

From Daily Kos: Why Right-Wingers Hate Planned Parenthood



Sorry buddy, it's not really about your rights to them.

In the latest attempts to smear Planned Parenthood, it has become obvious that the hatred many have for Planned Parenthood has little, if anything, to do with abortion.  

If the venom was specifically about abortion procedures or fees charged for processing donated tissue, they wouldn't want to defund Planned Parenthood in states like Oklahoma, where they already do not perform abortions.  Texas would not have defunded the Planned Parenthood clinics that did not provide abortions -- which are all run by a different umbrella organization than the few Texas clinics providing abortion services.  Louisiana clinics also don't offer abortions, and Jindal is well aware of a syphilis outbreak in his state.  Arkansas clinics only provide medical abortion, so they don't donate tissue either.

There is a recurring theme in "right to life" narratives -- the fact that many see pregnancy and childbirth as punishment for sin.  The idea isn't new, but when examined from that perspective it's obvious that most of them don't think "good girls" like their daughters will ever need any of Planned Parenthood's services.

Sadly, Anna Duggar's parents learned that's not always true.  Still, while the "right to life" movement is busily crafting legislation making infanticide after an abortion procedure a crime punishable by death, their actual agenda is clear to those who look closely.
I've noticed something lately, when discussing Planned Parenthood with people who profess to be "pro-life".  It's quite telling when, if you mention Planned Parenthood saving women from cancer to a "right to life" supporter, they ask about mammograms, not pap smears.

That's because now that we know the human papilloma virus causes cervical cancer, what used to be considered a legitimate health threat is now seen as punishment for "loose" women -- just as HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases are stigmatized.  Once this connection was discovered (around the same time as Planned Parenthood v. Casey) Planned Parenthood not only had shown yet again they would continue to fight for abortion rights, but also no longer provided any services that the sanctimonious among them presumed anyone "righteous" actually needed.

It's no wonder they aren't impressed that 97% of services provided by Planned Parenthood aren't abortion-related.  All the services are things they perceive as unnecessary for women who behave according to their cookie-cutter definition of "sexual purity".

The battle for reproductive rights has always been a fight against those who think biology should dictate the role of women in society -- a belief often perpetuated by people with a shocking level of ignorance of said biology.  The fact many pro-lifers support abortion after "legitimate rape" is a clear demonstration of just how many know the government invasion of the womb isn't about saving unborn children, but about enforcing quite different moral standards indeed.  (If you oppose both abortion and the death penalty, congratulations on avoiding another common demonstration of hypocrisy.)

Therefore, I propose that we stop attempting to engage in apologetics for Planned Parenthood that involve mentioning how few of their services are abortion-related.  They know, and they don't care.  The stories of lives saved by Planned Parenthood don't move them. They probably don't even care that even "righteous" men, having no biological impetus to be conservative about spreading their seed, may continue to engage in behavior that puts the "good girls" they're married to at risk.

Instead, let's start calling them on their real motives -- to keep their own women subservient, and enforce that morality on the rest of society.  Planned Parenthood is a symbol of female independence, started by a woman fighting the evils forced childbearing causes, and to them that is very frightening indeed.

Tue Sep 29, 2015 at  2:42 PM PT: The North Jersey People for Progress created this graphic, which quite nicely summarizes the basic point. They were kind enough to grant permission for any who wish to share out the meme.

Graphic created by the North Jersey People for Progress, permission granted to share with all
"The fight against Planned Parenthood is NOT about abortion, but against women's sexual choices and mores."
 
Wed Sep 30, 2015 at 12:29 PM PT: And another graphic, courtesy of Red State Dems :

Graphic created by Red State Dems
"It's about their concept of 'sexual purity'."

From Daily Kos: Boehner's Resignation

Sat Sep 26, 2015 at 01:48 PM PDT
by RETIII
 
This is something that should not slip by lightly. The video above is of a roomful of Republican voters interrupting the speech of a Republican Senator and presidential candidate with a standing ovation at the news that the Republican House Speaker has been forced to resign.  It is hard to watch this outburst of joyful anger (or angry joy?) without wondering: what in the world is going on with the Republican party?  Why would news of the humiliating resignation of John Boehner spark an immediate Republican celebration?

Mr. Boehner certainly was unpopular with his own Republican voters. The day of his resignation a WSJ/NBC poll found that "some 72% of Republican primary voters said they were dissatisfied with the ability of Mr. Boehner and GOP Senate leader Mitch McConnell to achieve Republican goals."  But that phrase - failure "to achieve Republican goals" - is remarkable.  As a very good "Abbreviated Pundit Round-up" details today, John Boehner and the Republicans overall never had the votes to impose Republican policies.  As Phillip Bump notes, the only "compromises" Boehner made "have been between reality and fantasy."

Indeed, it is notable that when conservative writer Erick Erickson writes a column titled "Why John Boehner Had To Go," he can't actually name or describe anything Boehner did wrong - only arguing vaguely and nonsensically that Boehner (somehow) held his own Republican party "in contempt."

When forced to explain this supposed "contempt," numerous Republicans (even presidential candidates) list not only Boehner's (non-existent) failure to stop Obamacare, but also his supposed enabling of Obamacare.  As Mike Huckabee explained, "When people sent [Republicans] here, they didn't send them to give the president more power on Obamacare[.]" Think about that: after total legislative obstruction, a government shut-down, more than 50 votes to repeal Obamacare, an ensuing presidential election, two Supreme Court lawsuits, and other pending litigation - - Republicans are livid with the belief that John Boehner has worked with the President to strengthen Obamacare.
No sane political observer could think that.  So, what gives?  As Jonathan Chait explains, we are witnessing a sort of collective Republican denial where they cannot accept that they are not the ruling party, not the "deciders" (to use a former president's phrase):
To understand the pressures that brought about Boehner’s demise as an ideological split badly misconstrues the situation. The small band of right-wing noisemakers in the House who made Boehner’s existence a living hell could not identify any important substantive disagreements with the object of their wrath. . . . The source of the disagreement was tactical, not philosophical. Boehner’s tormentors refused to accept the limits of his political power. . . .  
This discontent runs much deeper and wider than Boehner. . . . Boehner had the misfortune of leading, or attempting to lead, his party in an era when it had run up to the limits of crazy, where the only unexplored frontiers of extremism lay beyond the reach of its Constitutional powers.
What is important here is not that Republicans object to the limits of their power, but that Republicans apparently cannot accept that such limits even exist.  Greg Sargent recently caught this in a very revealing FOX News poll:
[Republicans] failed to block Obama’s transformation of the country; that must be because they didn’t even try, so they must be complicit. But this failure, too, is structural. Republicans don’t have the votes to surmount Dem filibusters or Obama vetoes. The idea that this can be overcome through sheer force of will (the argument conservatives are making in favor of another shutdown fight) is just another version of [the "Big Lie"]. Indeed, the Fox News poll unwittingly captures what is particularly problematic about this last one. It finds that 60 percent of Republicans feel betrayed by their party, and that 66 percent of Republicans don’t think their party did all it could to block Obama’s agenda. The poll asks why respondents think their party leaders failed at this: they didn’t really want to stop Obama; they weren’t smart enough; they would rather fight each other. The Fox poll doesn’t even offer respondents the option of choosing the real reason — that Republicans structurally lack the votes!
You see?  Lack of majority political power is not even a possibility.  When, in the video above, Republican supporters jumped from their chairs at news of Boehner's resignation, it is because someone or something defective had to be blocking the Republicans' exercise of their undisputed authority.  With Boehner gone, Republicans have something legitimate to celebrate in their minds - the restoration of their thwarted authority.
It sounds crazy, I know, but this represents the true "dark side" of Boehner's resignation: it is another significant step in the Republican party's shocking withdrawal from our system of democratic governance.  Specifically, it presages a doubling-down of the Republicans' intentions to assert "negative control," where government shutdowns, hostage-taking, and (the immensely dangerous) debt-ceiling fights threaten to become more determinative than electoral outcomes and a functioning government. As one Republican writer put it, the emerging Republican belief is that threats of government destruction combined with the inherent rightness of Republican beliefs "could be so strong (as Ted Cruz was of his proposal to defund Obamacare) that Senate Democrats, the Obama White House and the mainstream media would, for once, finally, this time, cave in and let the House Republicans have their way."  (And the use of the words "for once, finally" means "rightly," "appropriately," consistent with the "true" distribution of power.)

If anyone doubts that this is where we are increasingly headed, Steve Benen has a useful summary of the growing history of Republicans' "hostage governing":
* April 2011: House Republicans threaten a government shutdown unless Democrats accept GOP demands on spending cuts. * July 2011: Republicans create the first-ever debt-ceiling crisis, threatening to default on the nation’s debts unless Democrats accept GOP demands on spending cuts.
* September 2011: Republicans threaten another shutdown.
* April 2012: Republicans threaten another shutdown.
* December 2012: Republicans spend months refusing to negotiate in the lead up to the so-called “fiscal cliff.”
* January 2013: Republicans raise the specter of another debt-ceiling crisis.
* September 2013: Republicans threaten another shutdown.
* October 2013: Republicans actually shut down the government.
* February 2014: Republicans raise the specter of another debt-ceiling crisis.
* December 2014: Republicans threaten another shutdown.
* February 2015: Republicans threaten a Department of Homeland Security shutdown.
* September 2015: Republicans threaten another shutdown [over Planned Parenthood].
As Jonathan Chait, Greg Sargent and others note, the forced resignation of John Boehner is another step in the above line of this undemocratic behavior, and not some gossipy, intra-mural Republican politics.  
What we have here is one of two major political parties increasingly disengaging from the democratic process.  Did you know that President Obama is an illegitimate President because he is not a "natural born citizen"?  Or that he won election by promising "free stuff" to minorities? That minorities and illegal aliens are engaged in massive voter fraud? Or, that popular elections of U.S. Senators should be taken away?  That some "Boehner Rule" or "Hastert Rule" exists which neuters any Democratic House votes?  Or that is OK for Republicans to filibuster every proposed law while in the minority, but the filibuster should be repealed now that Republicans have a Senate majority? Or that the Electoral College should be reformed to provide proportional votes only in "Blue States"?  . . . or, that policy outcomes should not be determined by elections but instead by holding hostage the federal government or the "full faith and credit" of the U.S.?

Most importantly, did you realize that all of the above are necessary to enact the majority will of the people?  Because - believe it or not - that is what the Republicans believe.

The conclusion of Congressional scholars Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein has been widely quoted, but not sufficiently absorbed:
One of the two major parties, the Republican Party, has become an insurgent outlier — ideologically extreme; contemptuous of the inherited social and economic policy regime; scornful of compromise; unpersuaded by conventional understanding of facts, evidence and science; and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition.