wages

The Flint Sit-Down Strike Story

hungeski — Sun, 06 Sep 2009 00:03:20 -0500

(Cross-posted from The Paragraph.) In 1936 & ’37, workers sat down in Chevrolet plants in Flint, Michigan, and fought to stay there for 44 days, until they won the right to have their union bargain for them.⁶⁰ Soon after that union victory, a wave of sit-downs swept the country and union rolls swelled. The next year, Congress set the standard of a 40-hour work week with time-and-a-half for overtime. By 1947, one-third of U.S. workers belonged to a union, and a strong middle class was rising.⁶¹ That trend went on till the early 1970’s, when both union membership and wages began to fall.⁶²⁶³

For a terse telling of the Flint sit-down strike story, click this link: Flint Workers Sat Down and U.S. Middle Class Rose Up.

Sources

⁶⁰ Flint Workers Sat Down and U.S. Middle Class Rose Up

⁶¹ ‘Union Membership Trends in the U.S. Private Sector’ – Political Calculations, 2006-03-20

Sources: Union Sourcebook 1947-1983; U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Compiled by Labor Research Association.

⁶² ‘The American Dream died in February 1973’ Realitybase 2009-03-10

The income line since 1973 is roughly flat, but should actually be going down, because the Consumer Price Index has understated inflation since the early 1980’s. (See the next note.) — QH

⁶³ ‘Consumer Price Index’ – John Williams’ Shadow Government Statistics, 2006-10-01

The CPI was designed to help businesses, individuals and the government adjust their financial planning and considerations for the impact of inflation. The CPI worked reasonably well for those purposes into the early-1980s. In recent decades, however, the reporting system increasingly succumbed to pressures from miscreant politicians, who were and are intent upon stealing income from social security recipients, without ever taking the issue of reduced entitlement payments before the public or Congress for approval.

In particular, changes made in CPI methodology during the Clinton Administration understated inflation significantly, and, through a cumulative effect with earlier changes that began in the late-Carter and early Reagan Administrations have reduced current social security payments by roughly half from where they would have been otherwise. …

…

In the early 1990s, press reports began surfacing as to how the CPI really was significantly overstating inflation. If only the CPI inflation rate could be reduced, it was argued, then entitlements, such as social security, would not increase as much each year, and that would help to bring the budget deficit under control. Behind this movement were financial luminaries Michael Boskin, then chief economist to the first Bush Administration, and Alan Greenspan, Chairman of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System.

…

Up until the Boskin/Greenspan agendum surfaced, the CPI was measured using the costs of a fixed basket of goods, a fairly simple and straightforward concept. The identical basket of goods would be priced at prevailing market costs for each period, and the period-to-period change in the cost of that market basket represented the rate of inflation in terms of maintaining a constant standard of living.

The Boskin/Greenspan argument was that when steak got too expensive, the consumer would substitute hamburger for the steak, and that the inflation measure should reflect the costs tied to buying hamburger versus steak, instead of steak versus steak

…

Aside from the changed weighting, the average person also tends to sense higher inflation than is reported by the BLS, because of hedonics, as in hedonism. Hedonics adjusts the prices of goods for the increased pleasure the consumer derives from them. That new washing machine you bought did not cost you 20% more than it would have cost you last year, because you got an offsetting 20% increase in the pleasure you derive from pushing its new electronic control buttons instead of turning that old noisy dial, according to the BLS.

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By Quinn Hungeski – Posted at G.N.N. & TheParagraph.com

Rushmore Wind Carried Warnings for Today

hungeski — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 00:15:26 -0500

(promoted by Edger)

(Cross-posted from The Paragraph.) In the 1990’s right-wing talk spread to nearly every radio dial in the United States, and, day-after-day, pelted liberal-thinking citizens with scorn, and railed against use of government to help the people—even knocking long-established programs such as the minimum wage and social security.x⁷⁰x⁷¹x⁷² Behind that barrage, a Republican majority rode into Congress, and cut regulations for financial corporations.x⁷³ Later, under cover of the ongoing barrage—now strengthened by a new right-wing TV news network—the right-wing corporate Bush regime snuck into power, and pushed through big tax cuts for the richest citizens, and cut enforcement of regulations on big corporations.x⁷⁴x⁷⁵x⁷⁶ So, with a free rein, big financial corporations sold trillions of dollars of shaky bonds, bets on bonds, and bonds on bets, which poisoned and slowed the world-wide economy, causing millions of people to lose their jobs.x⁷⁷ During all of this, the Black Hills wind blew across Mount Rushmore and the chiseled faces of four past leaders who warned about such events.

George Washington warned against internal enemies who would try to separate one group of citizens from another, and the people from their government:

The unity of Government, which constitutes you one people, ... is a main pillar in the edifice of your real independence, the support of your tranquillity at home, your peace abroad; of your safety; of your prosperity; of that very Liberty, which you so highly prize. But … it is easy to foresee, that … much pains will be taken, many artifices employed, to weaken in your minds the conviction of this truth; as this is the point in your political fortress against which the batteries of internal and external enemies will be most constantly and actively (though often covertly and insidiously) directed …x⁸⁵

Thomas Jefferson foresaw fraudulent banking:

[L]iable as [a bank’s] cash would be to be pilfered and robbed, and its paper to be fraudulently re-issued, or issued without deposit, it would require skilful and strict regulation.x⁸⁶

Abraham Lincoln believed that government “for the people” should include protecting workers’ wages:

[I]t has so happened in all ages of the world, that some have laboured, and others have, without labour, enjoyed a large proportion of the fruits. This is wrong, and should not continue. To [secure] to each labourer the whole product of his labour, or as nearly as possible, is a most worthy object of any good government. x⁸⁷

Theodore Roosevelt warned of corporate bosses undermining government for the people:

The big trust magnates …, the big politicians of the old boss type …, stand against the people. They object to the government, to government being used primarily in the interest of the people themselves. Naturally, they will do all they can to breakdown the only real enemies that they have and the only real champions, the only real and efficient champions of popular right, and economic, social, and industrial justice.x⁸⁸

Now there is liberal talk—though not nearly on every radio dial. But where it exists, it serves to beat back the right-wing barrage, and to broadcast words like those from the Rushmore wind.

Liberal Talk Radio Links

XM 167 – America Left

Sirius 146 – Sirius Left

Ohio Majority Radio Listen (online only).

WCPT 820AM Chicago Listen.

WDTW 1310AM Detroit Listen.

KPOJ 620AM Portland Listen.

WWRL 1600AM New York City – Listen

KTLK 1150AM Los Angeles Listen.

Air America – Listen

Democracy Now! Listen and watch. (Hard news.)

LTR Has many more liberal talk radio links.

Sources

⁷⁰ ‘The US Media & Democracy in Crisis’ by Robert Parry, February 19, 2009

In the latter part of the 1970s, angry Republicans and right-wing ideologues began to team up under the leadership of Nixon’s former Treasury Secretary Bill Simon, who used his control of the Olin Foundation to pull together like-minded foundations (Smith-Richardson, Scaife, etc.) to inject money into a right-wing media infrastructure and anti-journalism attack groups.

This initiative gained momentum with the 1980 election of Ronald Reagan, a former actor and ad man who surrounded himself with media savvy advisers. They, in turn, began collaborating with CIA propaganda experts in devising “perception management” tactics that could be directed against the American people as well as at troublesome mainstream journalists.

To get around legal prohibitions on the CIA influencing U.S. politics, CIA Director William Casey transferred Walter Raymond Jr., one of the CIA’s top propagandists, to Reagan’s National Security Council where Raymond headed up a government-wide task force on “public diplomacy.” [For details, see Robert Parry’s Lost History.]

The right-wing media infrastructure continued to grow with the influx of mysterious money from the likes of Rev. Sun Myung Moon, the Korean theocrat who launched the Washington Times in 1982. Later, Australian media mogul Rupert Murdoch got into the act with purchases of U.S. newspapers and eventually the founding of the neoconservative Weekly Standard and right-wing Fox News.

By the late years of the Reagan-Bush-41 era, right-wing talk radio was taking off with Rush Limbaugh and other angry white men filling the AM dial with venomous attacks on liberals. When Bill Clinton managed to eke out a victory in 1992, he immediately came under sustained attack from this potent right-wing media machine.

Meanwhile, in the mainstream press, generally conservative (or neoconservative) owners began cracking down on independent-minded journalists as early as the mid-1970s. But that trend grew stronger in the 1980s when journalists found it harder and harder to challenge the propaganda and cover-ups of the Reagan administration.

As journalists with integrity were weeded out – and as the American Left largely stayed disengaged and silent – the MSM survivors came to understand that their livelihoods required them to tilt their stories right-ward. By the Clinton years, it made perfect sense to join the Right’s media in piling on regarding the trivial “Clinton scandals.”

After years of getting pounded as “liberal,” the MSM was determined to shed the liberal label by being tougher on a Democrat than on any Republican. That tilt contributed to the Republican Revolution of 1994 and eventually to Clinton’s impeachment in 1998 (though he managed to survive a Senate trial)

⁷¹ ‘Limbaugh wrong on minimum wage—again’ – Media Matters, 2004-08-13

LIMBAUGH: The minimum wage has gotten so high that it’s paying people that are not skilled to do anything. ... It’s—whatever it is, six and a quarter, seven bucks an hour, an hour, going to be there soon. ... No, thank you. I don’t want to be imprisoned by minimum wage. ... Here, take the minimum wage. Vote for us, we’ll raise it in a couple years, as long as the rascally Republicans don’t stand in our way. They hate you. But we love you. Now go ahead, eat your rice.

According to the Economic Policy Institute, the value of the $5.15 minimum wage in real dollars was lower in 2003 than in all but three years since 1960 …

... Limbaugh claimed that “75 percent of the people earning minimum wage” are teenagers; in reality, only 32 percent are.

⁷² ‘Obama Plans to Implement FDR’s Socialist Second Bill of Rights’ – Rush Limbaugh Show transcript, October 29, 2008

How many are happy with your Social Security? How many of you think it’s what you thought it was going to be? Where is that second home down in the Bahamas that Social Security and FDR was going to get for you? Where is all this plentiful retirement and security? Where is all this freedom from economic insecurity that FDR promised you with Social Security? Every time I talk to a Social Security recipient and that’s all they’ve got, they don’t have any security about anything. They’re worried to hell it’s going to be cut. (Limbaugh is mocking Social Security, but to me it sounds like an argument for boosting benefits. – QH)

⁷³ ‘McCain Neck-Deep in K Street Sewer’ – The Paragraph 2008-08-23 Senator Phil Gramm (R-TX) pushed through the “Enron loophole”, and the “Commodity Futures Modernization Act” creating “the shadow banking system”.

⁷⁴ ‘The 2000 Campaign’ – Consortiumnews.com

⁷⁵ ‘Tax Cuts Offer Most for Very Rich, Study Says’ By EDMUND L. ANDREWS, The New York Times, January 8, 2007 “Families earning more than $1 million a year saw their federal tax rates drop more sharply than any group in the country as a result of President Bush’s tax cuts, according to a new Congressional [Budget Office] study.”

⁷⁶ ‘Let’s Have a Hanging Party’ by Jesse Eisinger, Slate.com, March 2, 2009

There were two kinds of governmental failure in the past several decades: One was active financial deregulation; the other was the purposeful malignant neglect of government’s regulatory role in overseeing the markets. Regulators were defanged.

I’ll mention just two examples. The first is when Alan Greenspan, the chairman of the Fed, blocked Fed Gov. Ed Gramlich’s efforts to have the chief banking regulatory arm of the country take a more active role in subprime lending. The second is the SEC’s decision, which Obama’s new chairman, Mary Schapiro, is repealing, to require enforcement lawyers to get the OK from commissioners before moving on cases: This was an intentional roadblock to securities enforcement erected by ideologues and cronies in the Bush administration. After all, the first SEC chairman appointed by Bush was Harvey Pitt, a lawyer who had a long career defending companies from accusations by the SEC.

⁷⁷ ‘An Inside Story of Wall Street Bank Crashes’ – The Paragraph, 2008-12-26

⁸⁵ ‘Washington’s Farewell Address’ – George Washington, 1796

⁸⁶ Thomas Jefferson to John W. Eppes, 1813

⁸⁷ ‘Fragments of a Tariff Discussion’ – 1846 or 1847, Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln

⁸⁸ ‘Why The Trusts And Bosses Oppose The Progressive Party’ – Theodore Roosevelt, Emporia, Kansas, September 22, 1912

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By Quinn Hungeski – Posted at G.N.N. & TheParagraph.com