According to Forbes Magazine, in 2009, the 400 richest individuals in America had a combined net worth of $1.27 trillion dollars. That is more money than the bottom 60% of all American households! To put that in raw numbers, 400 Americans have more wealth than 180 million Americans combined! Is it just me, or is there something horribly wrong with this statistic??
To further elaborate on the growing wealth disparity that is occurring in this country, here is an excerpt from Edward Wolff, a Professor of Economics at New York University. He is the top academic expert on economic inequality in the U.S.
"A somewhat rough update, based on the change in housing and stock prices, shows a marked deterioration in middle-class wealth. According to my estimates, while mean wealth (in 2007 dollars) fell by 17.3 percent between 2007 and 2009 to $443,600, median wealth plunged by an astounding 36.1 percent to $65,400 (about the same level as in 1992!) ... Trends in inequality [from 2007 to mid-2009] ... show a fairly steep rise in wealth inequality ... The share of the top 1 percent advanced from 34.6 to 37.1 percent, that of the top 5 percent from 61.8 to 65 percent, and that of the top quintile from 85 to 87.7 percent, while that of the second quintile fell from 10.9 to 10 percent, that of the middle quintile from 4 to 3.1 percent, and that of the bottom two quintiles from 0.2 to -0.8 percent."
Note: a "quintile" is 20% of U.S. households, so the the middle and bottom two quintiles include 60% of U.S. households.
You may have heard this little anecdote floating around in light of the attack on worker rights around the Country over the past few weeks:
A union worker, a tea partier and a CEO have 12 cookies. The CEO takes 11, then says to tea partier, "Look out for the union guy, he wants a piece of your cookie."
Well, here is my expanded rendition:
The taxpayers bake 20 cookies, the CEO claims to have baked at least half the cookies, (but in reality only he only baked 2 or 3).A military general and security contractor step up and take 13 cookies (64% of the U.S. discretionary budget), and the CEO says that the economy will tank unless he gets at least five of the remaining cookies. A teacher, nurse, police officer, fire fighter, park ranger, food inspector, infrastructure contractor, social services worker and a myriad of other people who work to keep America running are left to split the last two cookies.The news media then gets the Tea Partier all fired up by claiming the last two taxpayer cookies were wasted, the workers have ruined it for everybody, and that at least one and a half cookies should go back to the taxpayer so they only need to bake 18.5 cookies next year.
In recognition of the recent anniversary of the Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision, let’s all take a moment to think about the concept of individual freedom. While abortion is a very divisive topic, we can all agree that America was founded on the tenants of liberty and self-determination. In honor of our Country’s founding principals, let’s continue to fight for improving the way we care for our mothers and our children and making abortions less necessary, but let’s also fight for preserving the right of every woman to having a choice over her own well-being and livelihood.
On this, the 9th anniversary of 9/11, we should all take a moment to remember those who lost their lives on this tragic day.
On this day we should also take a moment to exercise our freedom of thought and expression to ask a tough question...do we really know the truth about what happened on 9/11? This is not a question of trust, it is a question about verification...if the "official" explanation about the attack on the Pentagon is true, why can't evidence to support that claim be produced? Take a moment to view this link and think for yourself.
If you have more questions, here is a link to a great in-depth discussion about what we know, and don't know, about the attack on the Pentagon.
This is not about taking my word, this is about thinking objectively, asking tough questions and coming to your own conclusions. As the old adage goes, "trust, but verify." I am not making accusations, I am asking questions. I hope all of you will take a moment to do the same on this "Patriots Day."
With the election of Barack Obama, the ultimate racial glass ceiling appeared to have been broken! The dialogue changed to talk of America as being a "post racial" society. We have finally gotten past the issues of racism and discrimination. The playing field is now leveling and people of all races and religions have the opportunity to achieve their goals if they work hard enough. At least that is the montra peddled by the mainstream media and those of use who would like to forget about the painful realities of our past.
But, just because you say it enough times doesn't make it true. While the visibility of racism and discrimination have been minimized, or swept under the carpet so to speak, the vestiges of our past are very much alive and well. In fact, while we may not be openly segregated society anymore (i.e. white only drinking fountains), the subtle walls of division are very firmly in place. Our suburbs and neighborhoods are gentrified, our education system unequal, our prisons disproportionally populated with minorities, our social safety-net programs stripped of funding, unemployment rates among minority disproportionately high, and yet none of these facts seem to factor in when we blissfully talk about the colorblind society that we now live.
Thus, I will say it again...JUST BECAUSE WE SAY IT DOESN'T MAKE IT SO! We need to remove the blinders and take a long hard look at just how discriminatory America still really is. And, to exemplify this point, I would encourage you to read the article below that was just recently published in the Nation Magazine. The facts are sobering and the reality may be disheartening...but you can take solace in the concept that admitting you have a problem is the first step toward recovery. Please take this message to heart and encourage others to question those who are willing to brush the topic of race aside as an issue of yesteryear.
The New Jim Crow
Michelle Alexander, March 9, 2010
Ever since Barack Obama lifted his right hand and took the oath of office, pledging to serve the United States as its forty-fourth president, ordinary people and their leaders around the globe have been celebrating our nation's "triumph over race." Obama's election has been touted as the final nail in the coffin of Jim Crow, the bookend placed on the history of racial caste in America.
Obama's mere presence in the Oval Office is offered as proof that "the land of the free" has finally made good on its promise of equality. There's an implicit yet undeniable message embedded in his appearance on the world stage: this is what freedom looks like; this is what democracy can do for you. If you are poor, marginalized, or relegated to an inferior caste, there is hope for you. Trust us. Trust our rules, laws, customs, and wars. You, too, can get to the promised land.
Perhaps greater lies have been told in the past century, but they can be counted on one hand. Racial caste is alive and well in America.
Most people don't like it when I say this. It makes them angry. In the "era of colorblindness" there's a nearly fanatical desire to cling to the myth that we as a nation have "moved beyond" race. Here are a few facts that run counter to that triumphant racial narrative:
·There are more African-Americans under correctional control today--in prison or jail, on probation or parole--than were enslaved in 1850, a decade before the Civil War began.
·As of 2004, more African-American men were disenfranchised (due to felon disenfranchisement laws) than in 1870, the year the Fifteenth Amendment was ratified, prohibiting laws that explicitly deny the right to vote on the basis of race.
·A black child born today is less likely to be raised by both parents than a black child born during slavery. The recent disintegration of the African-American family is due in large part to the mass imprisonment of black fathers.
·If you take into account prisoners, a large majority of African-American men in some urban areas have been labeled felons for life. (In the Chicago area, the figure is nearly 80 percent.) These men are part of a growing undercaste--not class, caste--permanently relegated, by law, to a second-class status. They can be denied the right to vote, automatically excluded from juries, and legally discriminated against in employment, housing, access to education, and public benefits, much as their grandparents and great-grandparents were during the Jim Crow era.
Excuses for the Lockdown
There is, of course, a colorblind explanation for all this: crime rates. Our prison population has exploded from about 300,000 to more than 2 million in a few short decades, it is said, because of rampant crime. We're told that the reason so many black and brown men find themselves behind bars and ushered into a permanent, second-class status is because they happen to be the bad guys.
The uncomfortable truth, however, is that crime rates do not explain the sudden and dramatic mass incarceration of African-Americans during the past thirty years. Crime rates have fluctuated over the last few decades--they are currently at historical lows--but imprisonment rates have consistently soared. Quintupled, in fact. And the vast majority of that increase is due to the War on Drugs. Drug offenses alone account for about two-thirds of the increase in the federal inmate population, and more than half of the increase in the state prison population.
The drug war has been brutal--complete with SWAT teams, tanks, bazookas, grenade launchers and sweeps of entire neighborhoods--but those who live in white communities have little clue to the devastation wrought. This war has been waged almost exclusively in poor communities of color, even though studies consistently show that people of all colors use and sell illegal drugs at remarkably similar rates. In fact, some studies indicate that white youth are significantly more likely to engage in illegal drug dealing than black youth. Any notion that drug use among African-Americans is more severe or dangerous is belied by the data. White youth, for example, have about three times the number of drug-related visits to the emergency room as their African-American counterparts.
That is not what you would guess, though, when entering our nation's prisons and jails, overflowing as they are with black and brown drug offenders. In some states, African-Americans comprise 80 percent-90 percent of all drug offenders sent to prison.
This is the point at which I am typically interrupted and reminded that black men have higher rates of violent crime. That's why the drug war is waged in poor communities of color and not middle-class suburbs. Drug warriors are trying to get rid of those drug kingpins and violent offenders who make ghetto communities a living hell. It has nothing to do with race; it's all about violent crime.
Again, not so. President Ronald Reagan officially declared the current drug war in 1982, when drug crime was declining, not rising. From the outset, the war had little to do with drug crime and nearly everything to do with racial politics. The drug war was part of a grand and highly successful Republican Party strategy of using racially coded political appeals on issues of crime and welfare to attract poor and working class white voters who were resentful of, and threatened by, desegregation, busing, and affirmative action. In the words of H.R. Haldeman, President Richard Nixon's White House chief of staff: "[T]he whole problem is really the blacks. The key is to devise a system that recognizes this while not appearing to."
A few years after the drug war was announced, crack cocaine hit the streets of inner-city communities. The Reagan administration seized on this development with glee, hiring staff who were to be responsible for publicizing inner-city crack babies, crack mothers, crack whores and drug-related violence. The goal was to make inner-city crack abuse and violence a media sensation, bolstering public support for the drug war which, it was hoped, would lead Congress to devote millions of dollars in additional funding to it.
The plan worked like a charm. For more than a decade, black drug dealers and users would be regulars in newspaper stories and would saturate the evening TV news. Congress and state legislatures nationwide would devote billions of dollars to the drug war and pass harsh mandatory minimum sentences for drug crimes--sentences longer than murderers receive in many countries.
Democrats began competing with Republicans to prove that they could be even tougher on the dark-skinned pariahs. In President Bill Clinton's boastful words, "I can be nicked a lot, but no one can say I'm soft on crime." The facts bear him out. Clinton's "tough on crime" policies resulted in the largest increase in federal and state prison inmates of any president in American history. But Clinton was not satisfied with exploding prison populations. He and the "New Democrats" championed legislation banning drug felons from public housing (no matter how minor the offense) and denying them basic public benefits, including food stamps, for life. Discrimination in virtually every aspect of political, economic and social life is now perfectly legal, if you've been labeled a felon.
Facing Facts
But what about all those violent criminals and drug kingpins? Isn't the drug war waged in ghetto communities because that's where the violent offenders can be found? The answer is yes... in made-for-TV movies. In real life, the answer is no.
The drug war has never been focused on rooting out drug kingpins or violent offenders. Federal funding flows to those agencies that increase dramatically the volume of drug arrests, not the agencies most successful in bringing down the bosses. What gets rewarded in this war is sheer numbers of drug arrests. To make matters worse, federal drug forfeiture laws allow state and local law enforcement agencies to keep for their own use 80 percent of the cash, cars and homes seized from drug suspects, thus granting law enforcement a direct monetary interest in the profitability of the drug market.
The results have been predictable: people of color rounded up en masse for relatively minor, nonviolent drug offenses. In 2005, four out of five drug arrests were for possession, only one out of five for sales. Most people in state prison have no history of violence or even of significant selling activity. In fact, during the 1990s--the period of the most dramatic expansion of the drug war--nearly 80 percent of the increase in drug arrests was for marijuana possession, a drug generally considered less harmful than alcohol or tobacco and at least as prevalent in middle-class white communities as in the inner city.
In this way, a new racial undercaste has been created in an astonishingly short period of time--a new Jim Crow system. Millions of people of color are now saddled with criminal records and legally denied the very rights that their parents and grandparents fought for and, in some cases, died for.
Affirmative action, though, has put a happy face on this racial reality. Seeing black people graduate from Harvard and Yale and become CEOs or corporate lawyers--not to mention president of the United States--causes us all to marvel at what a long way we've come.
Recent data shows, though, that much of black progress is a myth. In many respects, African-Americans are doing no better than they were when Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated and uprisings swept inner cities across America. Nearly a quarter of African-Americans live below the poverty line today, approximately the same percentage as in 1968. The black child poverty rate is actually higher now than it was then. Unemployment rates in black communities rival those in Third World countries. And that's with affirmative action!
When we pull back the curtain and take a look at what our "colorblind" society creates without affirmative action, we see a familiar social, political, and economic structure--the structure of racial caste. The entrance into this new caste system can be found at the prison gate.
This is not Martin Luther King Jr.'s dream. This is not the promised land. The cyclical rebirth of caste in America is a recurring racial nightmare.
With the onslaught of shape-shifting Republicans who seem to act like the Bush years never happened, TEA Party activists who are very angry but have no real idea about what they want other then to oppose Obama, and main-stream Democrats who speak of progressive ideals while acting to protect the corporate and financial... status-quo, its really easy to become quite cynical about this whole mess that is also known as the USA.
But this article provides an interesting perspective about how the progressive reform that is sooo badly needed can still win in the 2010 mid-term elections.
A 2010 Elections Primer
John Nichols, February 11, 2010 No one needed a surprise result from Massachusetts or unexpected Congressional retirements to figure out that the dynamics of the 2010 election season are volatile. With an unstable economy, an ill-defined "war on terror" and polls showing Americans who thought the country was steered off course by Republicans now think it's headed in the wrong direction under Democrats, this is shaping up as a wild race through uncharted territory. For progressives--as frustrated by Democratic compromises and missteps as they are frightened by the extremism of a reconstituted right and suddenly swaggering Republicans--it's an unsettling moment.
With Washington Democrats wrangling among themselves and spinning off-message, and with Republicans shape-shifting with agility, it's easy to imagine the worst. But the 2010 cycle, while complex and demanding, need not be a nightmare for us: it should be understood as a multi-tiered challenge with opportunities to get things right. Here are seven ways to think about the fight for Congress and the statehouses:
1. It's Not About Sixty Senators. The obsession in 2009 with building a caucus big enough to thwart Republican filibusters made it seem like a substantial Democratic majority was meaningless. Democrats handcuffed themselves by adhering to rules that gave power to "moderate" Republicans, corporate-toady Democrats like Nebraska's Ben Nelson and Montana's Max Baucus, and Connecticut Independent Joe Lieberman. It's unlikely that a GOP tidal wave will shift control of the chamber, but it is equally unlikely, given the retirements and incumbent vulnerability, that Democrats will get to, let alone beyond, sixty. Worrying about either scenario is madness. For progressives, the point should be to make the Democratic caucus more left-leaning and activist. Don't fret too much about the fate of Southern and border-state compromisers (Arkansas's Blanche Lincoln, Indiana's Evan Bayh). Worry about re-electing progressives like California's Barbara Boxer and Wisconsin's Russ Feingold. Think about helping progressive, or at least mainstream, Democrats win seats vacated by GOP incumbents in Missouri, New Hampshire and Ohio. The point is not merely to elect Democrats but to forge a caucus that is less tied to the old ways of doing things and more inclined to scrap antidemocratic Senate rules and start governing. 2. Don't Just "Keep" the House; Make It More Populist. President Obama's State of the Union address noted that Speaker Nancy Pelosi's House has done a far better job of passing legislation than the Senate. But it wasn't easy. Blue Dogs and New Democrats erected every obstruction they could. This year they'll try to suggest that the only way to "save" the House is to run to the right, while their consultant allies will peddle the fantasy that the best response to the Supreme Court's Citizens United ruling allowing corporations to spend more freely on elections is to be more business-friendly. That would be disastrous. The Democrats' greatest vulnerability is not in the South, where Blue Dog seats are in play (and will in many instances be lost), but in the upper Midwest and the Northeast, where Democrats must preserve recently won seats representing hard-hit manufacturing towns and farm regions. Whether or not the White House is prepared to deliver it, the most effective message for Democratic incumbents--and challengers for the thirty-four Republican-held districts that backed Obama in 2008--is a progressive populist one that emphasizes job creation, smart farm policy and radically altering trade rules that have battered the heartland and the Northeast.
3. Democrats Will Define Themselves in Primaries. To hear major media tell it, the only primary fights are Republican battles between mainstream conservatives and tea party rebels. In fact, some of the most critical fights of 2010 are Democratic primaries: the California Congressional contest between incumbent Jane Harman, a frequent Republican ally on foreign policy, and progressive Marcy Winograd; a potential challenge from the right to Maryland progressive Donna Edwards; and Senate contests in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Kentucky and a number of other states--perhaps even New York. Savvy groups like Progressive Democrats of America and Democracy for America and websites like Firedoglake recognize that the first step to electing progressives is to nominate them in primaries.
4. State Races Matter. State and local governments maintain the social safety net and pay for education. For that reason alone, the thirty-seven gubernatorial and several thousand state legislative races are important. But this year's state contests matter even more because immediately after election day Congressional district lines will be redrawn using data from the 2010 Census. In states like Ohio, Michigan, California and Florida, electing the right governor could do more to define the character of Congress in the 2010s than winning a particular US House or Senate seat. 5. Direct Democracy Works. The spin says Americans are in an anti-tax, cut-government frenzy. But Oregonians just voted by overwhelming margins to tax the rich and big corporations in order to preserve social services and public education. As the Ballot Initiative Strategy Center reminds us, referendums and initiatives are no longer the province of right-wing zealots. When politicians go cautious, direct democracy becomes a powerful tool. Progressives should be far more engaged with referendum fights, from California to Maine, that will focus more than ever on taxes, spending and economic policy.
6. It's Not Just Democrats and Republicans. If this becomes a throw-the-bums-out year, some of the most exciting runs may be against the two-party system. There will be too much talk about tea party renegades; there are far more significant--if underreported--campaigns: former Senator Lincoln Chafee's independent run for governor of Rhode Island, Green Party gubernatorial candidate Rich Whitney (who won 10.5 percent of the vote four years ago) in Illinois, and those of the Vermont Progressive Party and the Working Families Party in New York and Connecticut.
7. Issues Are Important; Narratives Are More Important. The top issue in 2010 is the economy. But there's a difference between chirping about green shoots and outlining a bold agenda to create family-supporting jobs and swing the policy pendulum from Wall Street toward Main Street. There can be only one party of change in an election. Democrats proved in 2006 and '08 that they could be that party merely by offering an alternative to those in power; Republicans will try to do the same in 2010. Progressives must pressure Democratic leaders and candidates, in primaries and with their general election resources and energy, to stand for something more than managing the status quo--and to recognize that talking up the Obama administration's record will not be enough.
There's going to be a great wrestling match for control of the Democratic message this year. Those who say the party should present itself as a management team that will do a better job than the Republicans on cutting domestic spending, worrying about the deficit and promoting free trade aren't writing a platform; they're penning a political suicide note. Voters are frightened and frustrated. If scared Republicans and conservative independents pack the polls while disenchanted Democrats and liberal independents stay home, it could be 1994 all over again. But if Democrats present a progressive populist message about what must be done to win not just an election but the fight for jobs, education and healthcare, they can still be the party of change, and perhaps even of hope.
Dave Zweifel is editor emeritus of The Capital Times.
It’s long been a myth that the streets, highways and bridges that accommodate our love affair with the automobile are all paid for by highway taxes.
Far from it. Just check your local city and county budgets and see how much general purpose tax revenue is siphoned into street repair every year. Property taxes help fund a lot of those orange trucks you always see on the roads.
Or how about the $8 billion that the Bush administration funneled into the highway trust fund in 2008 and the $7 billion that the Obama administration ponied up in 2009 because the gas tax money is falling short? And that’s not counting the $3 billion of taxpayers’ funds that went into the “cash for clunkers” automobile fix or the $81 billion in federal aid to GM and Chrysler.
So it’s always with some amusement that I hear politicians insist that — come hell or high water — passenger rail improvements need to pay for themselves. They’re demanding from rail what they don’t demand from every other mode of transportation, airlines included.
It’s a primary reason that America’s public transportation systems lags the rest of the developed world’s.
There was reason to rejoice earlier this year when President Obama announced that $8 billion of the country’s massive stimulus program would go to help build “high-speed” rail projects, which, hopefully, will include a Chicago-Milwaukee-Madison segment that has been on the drawing boards for years now.
But even our high-speed projects are laughable when compared to those that exist elsewhere. Japan is running its “bullet” trains at 188 miles an hour. France’s new high-speed railroad runs at 125 mph. Israel’s new Tel Aviv-to-Jerusalem line is upgrading to 120 miles an hour. China, which recently committed a trillion dollars to develop fast trains, plans on running them at 235 miles an hour.
Should the “high-speed” train between here and Chicago ever come to fruition, it will probably run at 79 miles an hour initially, but could be upgraded eventually to 110 mph. That’s because our rail infrastructure is designed mainly to handle freight trains, which operate at much lower speeds and don’t need the tighter standards and banked corners that faster trains need.
Ironically, our passenger trains in 2009 are slower than they were in the 1940s. According to Woodrow Wilson Center fellow Mark Reutter, “streamliners” such as the Super Chief, 20th Century Limited, Denver Zephyr and Hiawatha routinely topped 90 to 100 miles an hour between stops. And that was with the old steam locomotives.
“While the rest of the world has advanced, America’s passenger rail has stalled, if not reversed direction,” he says.
Most of Amtrak’s routes today are lucky if they average 50 miles an hour. Even the acclaimed Acela Express along the East Coast, the nation’s supposed answer to the bullet trains, averages only 67 mph along much of its route, even though it can hit 150 miles an hour on some short stretches of improved track.
This should be a national embarrassment, yet there are strong special interests in the country that fight passenger rail development, fiercely protecting transportation funding for more and wider roads that serve only to promote yet more automobile traffic.
If we’re ever going to develop a balanced transportation system in the United States, we need to take the blinders off. Rail, for all the efficiencies it represents, needs to get the monetary assistance that other modes of transit routinely receive. Once the infrastructure is brought up to snuff, then passenger rail can actually work to pay for itself.
Dave Zweifel is editor emeritus of The Capital Times. dzweifel@madison.com
