The political friends of America’s rich aren’t aiming to convince us that higher taxes on the nation’s highest incomes make no sense. They’re just hoping to keep us distracted.

Why do so many lawmakers in Congress oppose raising taxes on America’s wealthy, even just a little? The answer: We’ll never really know for sure.

Lawmakers might deep down oppose tax hikes on the wealthy, for instance, because their wealthy campaign contributors don’t want to pay any more in taxes. Or they might oppose bigger tax bills for millionaires simply because they don’t want to pay Uncle Sam a cent more of their own million-dollar incomes.

Lawmakers under the influence of either of these motives would, of course, never openly admit to them. How could they — and politically survive? Simple political reality demands that rich people-friendly lawmakers must solemnly proffer much more noble rationales for zealously shielding rich people’s income from taxes.

Raising taxes on high incomes, we’ve been assured since long before the “fiscal cliff” debate, will discourage small business “job creators.” Higher taxes on the rich, we’re told, always backfire and never generate the revenue anticipated.

These claims make for effective sound-bites. But do they match up with facts on the ground? Last week Northwestern University’s Institute for Policy Research hosted a congressional briefing that sought to speak to those facts.

The briefing — entitled Taxing the Wealthy: What Does the Research Show? — brought to Capitol Hill top academic tax analysts, and they had a good many facts to share, to the distinct unease of the apologists for the awesomely affluent who happened to stop by.

What do the facts tell us about those small business “job creators” who’ll suffer so, as friends of the fortunate claim, if tax rates on high incomes rise? The facts don’t show much potential suffering.

Just under 70 percent of American taxpayers making over $1 million a year, U.S. Treasury Department figures show, do indeed report small business income on their tax returns. But these millionaires who do report small business income average only around 5 percent of their income from small business operations.

In other words, we’re talking investment bankers with hobby ranches in Montana here, not small business folks creating good jobs in their own local communities.

But won’t those investment bankers just flee to lower-tax pastures if Congress opts to hike the tax rates on their incomes? Won’t that exodus just negate the revenue boost that raising taxes on the rich is supposed to create?

Charles Varner, a fellow at Stanford University’s Center for the Study of Poverty and Inequality, has been researching what typically happens when governments raise taxes on taxpayers of major means.

Varner and his colleagues looked closely at tax receipts in New Jersey and California after these two states enacted new “millionaire’s taxes” in 2004 and 2005. In California, the top tax rate rose from 9.3 to 10.3 percent. After the increase, out-migation of high-income Californians actually fell.

But California, skeptics might argue, occupies a great deal of territory. A deep pocket upset about a tax hike has to travel a good bit to leave California.

True enough, but deep pockets in New Jersey operate in a totally different environment. A millionaire who works on Wall Street could easily have chosen to move in lower-tax New York State or Connecticut after New Jersey’s millionaire’s tax went into effect. A New Jersey millionaire working in Philadelphia could have chosen to relocate in lower-tax Pennsylvania or Delaware.

But these New Jersey millionaires, in real life, opted overwhelmingly to stay put. Researchers, Stanford’s Varney explained at last week’s congressional briefing, have found similar patterns in Canada between provinces with different tax rates and in Switzerland between cantons.

What about the bigger picture? Does an entire nation that raises taxes on the rich risk triggering a rich people’s exodus? France, starting next month, will be levying a 75 percent tax on income over $1 million euros, about $1.28 million. Will high-rollers in France be rushing to end their French connection?

Research can help on this question, too, suggests Varney. Tax rates on high incomes do already vary between one European nation and the next, and investigators have closely studied the migratory behavior of one category of European affluent: star professional soccer players.

These soccer stars can ply their trade in any number of countries. They can move from a high-tax nation to a low-tax nation and easily make as much money in their new locale. They may, in fact, be the most mobile mega millionaires on the face of the earth.

These uniquely mobile soccer stars, the research shows, do appear to be sensitive to taxes, but not nearly as “super-sensitive” as might be expected.

And that doesn’t surprise Stanford’s Varney. Moving carries costs, he notes, everything from the monetary cost of having to pick up stakes and shift somewhere else to the social cost of losing easy geographic access to networks of friends and colleagues.

Varney’s basic point: “Economies of place,” as he noted at last week’s Capitol Hill briefing on the research around taxing the wealthy, remain “significant even for people at the top of the income distribution.”

Varney doesn’t expect any mass exodus of the wealthy from France after the new year’s 75 percent top French tax rate kicks in. The chances of a mass deep-pocket exit in the United States? Even slimmer. If President Obama gets all of the tax hike he’s now seeking in the “fiscal cliff” negotiations, the top U.S. tax rate will nudge up only to 39.6 percent.

Veteran labor journalist Sam Pizzigati, an Institute for Policy Studies associate fellow, writes widely about inequality. His latest book, The Rich Don’t Always Win: The Forgotten Triumph over Plutocracy that Created the American Middle Class, has just been published.

It’s almost impossible to believe: With the private-sector economy struggling and politicians worried about government spending, the biggest proposal on the table is raising the Medicare age to 67. That would take far more out of household budgets than it would save in government spending – and the savings would be short-lived.

What’s more, it would impose terrible hardships on lots of people. Why do the truly terrible ideas always seem to become the really Big Ideas?

Oddly, John Boehner won’t come right out and say what he’s proposing. Instead he throws out a large figure – $600 billion in cuts over ten years – and says somewhat obliquely that he supports a proposal from former Clinton White House official Erskine Bowles. Since that proposal discussed raising the Medicare age, journalists and insiders have inferred (undoubtedly rightly) that Boehner is endorsing that option.

But he won’t speak the words. He’ll only say “$600 billion” and some mumbo-jumbo that comes out sounding like he’s saying “that thing that Bowles wants to do.”

You know … that thing.

That “thing” — raising the Medicare eligibility age — is once again under serious discussion. It’s an idea Yale Professor Jacob Hacker called “the single worst idea for Medicare reform” (if by reform we mean “slashing.”) And it’s not just a terrible thing to do to Medicare. It’s also a terrible idea for health care costs, job creation … in fact, for the entire economy.

A Kaiser Foundation study showed that “raising Medicare’s eligibility to 67 in 2014 would generate an estimated $5.7 billion in net savings to the federal government, but also result in an estimated net increase of $3.7 billion in out-of-pocket costs for 65- and 66-year-olds, and $4.5 billion in employer retiree health-care costs.”

So it would save $5.7 billion from the Federal budget in the first year, but it would cost everyone else $8.2 billion. That means it would increase overall health care costs by $2.5 billion.

“Among the estimated 5 million affected 65- and 66-year-olds,” the Kaiser study reports, “about two in three would pay an average of $2,200 more for their health care in 2014 than they would have paid if covered under Medicare.”

And those costs would skyrocket in the following years.

Raising the Medicare age would exert enormous cost pressure on employer health insurance plans, too. That can only lead to three possible outcomes:

1) Profits fall for companies with American jobs, leading to more offshoring/outsourcing and lowering corporate profits.

2) Unemployment rises as employers cut jobs to offset the added expense. It would be worst for 66 and 67-year olds, who will be considered impossibly costly job hires.

3) Health insurance benefits cover even less cost in coming years, as employers offset the cost by demanding higher copays and deductibles and limiting the types of services covered.

The likeliest outcome is some mixture of all three.

Why is Washington seriously considering such a foolish proposal?  Because government spending means less pressure to ask the wealthy to pay their fair share. And it means everybody pays the price.

You’ve heard of robbing Peter to pay Paul, haven’t you? You might call this “an appalling robbery to pay Peterson” — Pete Peterson, that is. He’s the billionaire anti-government activist who’s been working to cut Medicare and Social Security – and get lower tax rates for millionaires, billionaires, and corporations – for decades.

Billionaires: Heads they win, tails … well, you know the rest.

Macy’s is sponsoring a big holiday-season event in which empty but glittery baubles are filled with hot air and sent heavenward, then dragged through the streets before cheering and unthinking crowds. You can’t miss it: Breathless reporters will devote massive amounts of air and print time to this trivial and meaningless Macy’s spectacle.

They sponsor a parade too.

TheThanksgiving Day Parade has been taking place for 86 years and is generally considered a harmless and fun (if increasingly materialistic) way to publicize the store. But this year Macy’s is putting its corporate resources behind another overhyped and over-reported spectacle – one that’s not harmless at all. Under the leadership of Macy’s CEO Terry J. Lundgren, the retail chain is participating in a cynical and self-interest “Fix the Deficit” campaign promoted by Lundgren and roughly 80 of his fellow CEOs.

The proclamations of these self-interested and under-informed parties has received even more coverage than the \parade, despite having less content than a pumpep-up balloon. But a statement signed by 350 economists – experts in the field who, unlike these CEOs, have little personal stake in the outcome — has received very little coverage.

These economists understand that the deficit must be addressed at some point, but they unanimously agree that our highest priority today is investment in job creation and economic growth. They know that the best long-term cure for deficits is a growing economy. But that’s not in the interests of the self-serving signatories of that CEO letter, a group which includes some highly-paid executives who wouldn’t be CEOs of anything if the American taxpayers hadn’t bailed them out.

Among them is Bank of America’s Brian Moynihan, whose fraud-riddled and grossly mismanaged megabank wouldn’t exist – and therefore wouldn’t be able to overpay him – if not for a combination of massive Federal bailouts, an indulgent Justice Department, and massive giveaways from the Federal Reserve.

And speaking of the Federal Reserve – that’s the institution designed to serve the public, not the bankers, and yet has richly served the latter while ignoring the rampant unemployment that is half its mandate. That mismanagement is due in large part to a Board of Directors that’s heavily weighted toward the same bankers it so generously rescued, along with big-corporation CEOs like … well, like Terry Lundgren of Macy’s, who’s been on the Federal Reserve Board since September of 2011.

The Macy’s Corporation may soon be remembered more for the political machinations of its CEO than for the wholesome fun of its parades.

The CEOs’ “fix the deficit” campaign is designed to build support for cuts to Social Security and Medicare, along with other destructive reductions to vital government programs. That paves the way for even lower taxes for these CEOs and their mega-corporations. But, as Robert Kuttner notes, if you “fix the debt” you will “destroy the recovery” — a recovery which has yet to reach more than 20 million under- or unemployed Americans, and which has yet to improve the lives of a middle class battered by stagnant wages, underwater mortgages, and increasingly bleak futures for themselves and their children.

And yet the recommendations of those 350 economists continue to go ignored, while the selfish prescriptions of CEOs like Lundgren get more press coverage that an inflated Spiderman doll on Fifth Avenue. (For a good breakdown of this absurd missive, see Felix Salmon: “CEOs self-serving deficit manifesto.” Campaign for America’s Future has a facts page about it. And Americans for Tax Fairness addresses selfishness factor in detail.)

Not to be unkind about it, but who cares what these CEOs think about our fiscal situation, anyway? It doesn’t take economic know-how to become the top dog at a mega-corporation. Sure, it takes ability. Some, like Lundgren, are sales-driven go-getters. Others are like Bank of America’s Moynihan, who previously served as the bank’s top attorney while negotiating the bank’s massive crime spree into a series of shamefully cushy settlement deals. Those deals addressed misdeeds which the bank continued to commit, and were paid for by often-deceived investors rather than by the perps themselves.

That’s a talent, all right — but it’s not one that qualifies you to weigh in on the nation’s problems.

These CEOs aren’t altruistic, either. Take Macy’s: Miriam Krule and Noam Prywes point out that the Macy’s Parade squanders massive amounts of helium (not hot air), and that helium is an important substance whose world supply is expected to be used up in the next forty years or so.

Thanks for ruining a little holiday fun, Miriam and Noam. But we need to know these things – among other things, to be reminded how little the nation’s big-corporate CEOs care about protecting the planet. Their creation, the US Chamber of Commerce, is dedicated to despoiling it so they can continue their unimpeded pursuit of short-term profits.

And now, just in time for Thanksgiving, America’s top CEOs are offering a Hansel-and-Gretel economic menu that would help them stuff their turkeys with even more cash – and featuring you and your future as a side dish. They’re fattening us up with economic proclamations that have about as much gravitas as the squeaky voice of somebody breathing helium.

If we fall for it, we’re the turkeys.

Sure, these CEOs influence the economy – by their executive decisions, and, increasingly, by perverting the political process with campaign cash. Some of them created the very damage we’re trying to recover from today. But that doesn’t make them economic experts, any more than being a professional wrestler makes you an expert in orthopedic surgery.

And yet the real experts are being ignored while the WFF wrestlers of our national economy receive massive media coverage. Why? That goes back to Mr. Lundgren’s real area of expertise: salesmanship. That, along with tens of millions of dollars, will buy you all the coverage you want.

This is a good time to watch the television coverage of that parade and ask yourself which is filled with more hot air – excuse me, helium: the balloons in that parade, or Mr. Lundgren’s self-serving manifesto and those who inflated it until it soared into the holiday skies.

Happy Thanksgiving in corporate-owned America. Walmart workers are preparing for “Black Friday” actions nationwide as the company continues to drive wages and benefits down. And Thanksgiving-day-parade-company Macy’s CEO is standing with Donald Trump at the same time as he is urging Congress to cut our Social Security and Medicare. Let’s tell them who is boss under our We, the People Constitution. Here is how.

Walmart Black Friday Actions

I don’t have to write about how Walmart pays low wages, etc… (I don’t have a problem with companies following the laws that allow low wages, etc., I have a problem with companies using their size and influence to get those laws written for them.)

Walmart workers are finally taking action. This Friday, “Black Friday,” they are planning a number of activities and walkouts at Walmart stores around the country.

In my recent post, Help Change The Economy — Join Walmart Workers Striking On Black Friday, I wrote,

You can help change the economy! Big companies use their size and the fear of losing our jobs to force us to accept no raises or even lower pay and benefits. They can use their size to force communities, states and even the federal government to lower their taxes. You can help change the economy by standing with Walmart workers next week. They have the money but we have the people.

Here are some ways you can participate and help Walmart workers change the economy:

American Rights At Work has sent the following out,

Wow – the word has gotten out about the viral strikes happening at Walmart. Walmart even held late-night mandatory meetings for all store associates to threaten that “there could be consequences” if employees did not report for work on Black Friday. This is clearly illegal and continues to demonstrate the bravery of the workers and why you and I need to back them up.

In major cities, in rural towns, and in nearly every state, workers are standing up to Walmart to say they will not be intimidated. On Friday, they will demand an end to the retaliation they face for speaking out about unacceptable working conditions.

Can you join them this Friday? Find out the details and sign up to join your local rally:

YES, I’ll join a Walmart store action!

NO, but I can stand with Walmart workers.

This is a now-or-never moment for workers across the country.

The American Federation of Teachers (AFT) is standing in solidarity with Walmart’s workers, and sent out the following:

Before you consider hitting Walmart for Black Friday deals, consider this: The workers who ring up all those mega-deals are suffering. And now they are risking everything to make a change. Some Walmart workers will put their jobs on the line this Friday and stand up to the giant big-box store, going on strike to protest poor, unsafe working conditions; low wages; irregular hours and the company’s retaliation against workers who speak out.

Help Walmart employees win the respect they deserve.

These workers are not union members, but they’ve banded together in OUR Walmart, a worker-led organization, to make Black Friday (the biggest shopping day of the year) the most memorable Walmart holiday on record.

Here are ways you can help Walmart workers:

• Take the Black Friday Pledge to stand with workers at your local Walmart.
• Sponsor a brave striker with a $50 grocery gift card donation.
• Visit Share for Respect on Facebook and keep Walmart workers you know informed.
• Use Tumblr to post art and ideas about how to change Walmart.
• Spread the word on the Black Friday Walmart Strike and Making Change at Walmart Facebook pages.
• Use hashtag #walmartstrikers and follow Making Change at Walmart on Twitter.

Help Walmart workers secure decent wages, a safe workplace, manageable hours and the respect they deserve.

In unity,

Randi Weingarten
AFT President

Also, see David Dayen’s post at Firedoglake, Labor Unions Show Solidarity With Walmart Workers.

Macy’s CEO Tries To Ruin Company Brand

Walmart is not the only company ruining the meaning of Thanksgiving for We, the People. Macy’s CEO Terry Lundgren has been trying to ruin the Macy’s brand for the holidays by playing footsie with the right. He is standing up for Donald Trump, in teh face of more than half a million signers of a petition to get Trump off Macy’s shelves. I mean, Donald Trump? Really?

And to make matters worse, Lundgren has signed on with those CEOs who are urging Congress to cut Medicare and Social Security just in time for the holidays!

Macy’s CEO standing by Trump despite petition,

Macy’s CEO Terry Lundgren is sticking by billionaire Donald Trump and his apparel line despite an online petition to “dump Trump.”

The petition was started by Angelo Carusone of SignOn.org, a liberal website “Powered by MoveOn.org.” Carusone is trying to gather 650,000 signatures to persuade Macy’s to drop Trump’s merchandise and ads after the businessman’s repeated criticisms of President Barack Obama, culminating in an online tirade that called for a “revolution” after Obama was re-elected Nov. 6. So far, Carusone said, the petition drive has gathered more than 500,000 signatures.

Macy’s CEO has also signed on as part of the corporate “Fix the Deficit” campaign to cut the things we are entitled to as citizens, including Social Security and Medicare. This triggered the organization Progressive Congress to put out the online action, Tell Macy’s CEO: Hands off Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security,

Terry Lundgren
CEO, Macy’s, Inc.
7 West Seventh Street
Cincinnati, OH 45202

Dear Mr. Lundgren:

Our families’ futures aren’t up for negotiation. American workers, retirees, and families have sacrificed enough. Please drop out of the CEO coalition to cut Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security.

Thank you.

It also triggered CREDO to launch the online petition, Macy’s vs. Medicare?,

From Miracle on 34th Street to the Thanksgiving Day Parade, Macy’s is a powerful symbol of the holidays for many Americans.

But this holiday season, Macy’s CEO Terry Lundgren is part of a coalition of ultra-wealthy CEOs who are actively working to undermine the economic security of countless American families.

These CEOs are lobbying Congress to cut Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security benefits (not to mention other important safety net programs), all to get themselves and their companies massive tax breaks.

Tell Terry Lundgren, the CEO of Macy’s: Stop trying to cut Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid benefits.

Suggested tweet: RT @CREDOMobile: Why is the CEO of @Macys trying to cut #Medicare and #SocialSecurity benefits? http://bit.ly/RURijq #p2 #MacysParade

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Click these to follow Dave Johnson and/or Campaign for America’s Future on Twitter:

Yes, the poor have struggled mightily while our rich have become phenomenally flush. But middle-income Americans haven’t been able to jump off the treadmill either.

We’ve all heard plenty of chatter over recent years about the widening gap “between rich and poor.” But what about the gap between rich and middle? This divide seldom ever gets much media play, an inattention that makes no sense. The gap between America’s high-income and middle-income households, after all, has been growing almost as fast as the gap between rich and poor.

The latest evidence: a new income inequality study from two of Washington’s most respected research groups, the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities and the Economic Policy Institute.

These two groups have been tracking U.S. income disparities, on a state-by-state basis, for years now, and they publish their findings in a report series they’ve titled Pulling Apart. The latest Pulling Apart, released just last week, takes our inequality story through our new century’s first decade.

The core story hasn’t changed much. The gap between America’s poorest 20 percent and America’s most affluent 20 percent continues to stretch out.

In the three-year span from 2008 through 2010, in 15 different states, our most affluent 20 percent averaged over eight times the income of our poorest 20 percent. Back in the late 1970s, the new Pulling Apart points out, not one single state had a top-to-bottom ratio that ran over eight times.

Overall, after adjusting for inflation, the nation’s richest fifth of households have seen their incomes rise an average $2,550 each year since the late 1970s. Average incomes in the nation’s bottom fifth have increased a mere $1,330 for the entire last three decades.

And incomes for the household in America’s middle fifth? In all 50 states, the gap between top 20 and middle 20 percent has widened “significantly.” The gap between middle 20 percent and top 5 percent has widened even more.

In New York, for instance, the average, inflation-adjusted incomes of the state’s middle fifth increased by just $14,118 between 1977-1979 and 2005-2007. Over that same time span, top 5 percent incomes soared by $193,877.

The new Pulling Apart zeroes in on 11 of America’s largest states. Back in the late 1970s, the top 5 percent of households in these states averaged 2.8 times more income than households in the middle 20 percent. The ratio three decades later: 4.7 times. In one state, Illinois, the gap essentially doubled.

All these figures, the new Pulling Apart emphasizes, “understate” the real gap between our affluent and everyone else. The data for Pulling Apart come from the surveys on household income that the Census Bureau conducts every year. These Census surveys do not take into account income from capital gains, the profits that come from buying and selling stocks and bonds and other assets.

Capital gains income, Pulling Apart notes, goes “overwhelmingly” to America’s most affluent. In 2012, 87 percent of all capital gains “will go to families in the top 5 percent of the U.S. income distribution.” The gaps the new Pulling Apart details would be substantially wider if we took this income into account.

But do these gaps, in the end, matter all that much? The researchers behind the new Pulling Apart have a clear answer. Rising inequality, they contend, “adversely affects our economy and political system.” The most basic problem with growing income gaps? They eat away at our social cohesion.

In a democracy, the civics textbooks tell us, people come together to discuss, debate, and decide solutions to the common problems they face. But this democratic deliberation only works effectively when most people have the same problems in common. In deeply unequal societies, they don’t. The rich in these societies live apart, in their own private universes.

These wealthy, Pulling Apart observes, “become increasingly isolated from poor and middle-income communities” as income gaps widen. One example: They send their children to private schools and “can lose sight of the need to support public schools.”

“As a result,” Pulling Apart explains, “support for the taxes necessary to finance government programs declines, even as the nation’s overall ability to pay taxes rises.” This “failure to invest adequately in programs that educate children,” in turn, “can dampen” our future economic growth.

The encouraging news in the new Pulling Apart? We may still have gridlock in Washington, but states, individually, can take steps to narrow the gaps that divide our rich from our poor and our middle. States can enact state minimum wages higher than the federal minimum wage rate. They can de-emphasize sales taxes and focus instead on taxing the income of ultra wealthy households.

The payoff from moves like these?

“States that narrow — rather than widen — income gaps,” promises Pulling Apart co-author Elizabeth McNichol, “will reap economic benefits in the long run.”

Veteran labor journalist Sam Pizzigati, an Institute for Policy Studies associate fellow, writes widely about inequality. His latest book, The Rich Don’t Always Win: The Forgotten Triumph over Plutocracy that Created the American Middle Class, will be published next week.

Some people I respect are agonizing over their Presidential vote. Others are voting third-party, or not at all. Speaking only for myself, my choice wasn’t made lightly: I’ll be voting to re-elect a President whose Administration I’ve often criticized over the last four years. And yet, despite my concerns, I’ll be casting that vote without despair.

Why not? Most Americans agree on a broad range of issues, according to polls. Across party lines and “left/right” boundaries, clear majorities oppose cutting Social Security or Medicare to balance the budget. They want to raise taxes on millionaires and billionaires. They want government to invest in restoring our economy. And they want Wall Street held accountable.

Neither candidate is fighting unequivocally for these majority positions. But like the old cliché says: Despair is not an option.

Which isn’t to say it’s not tempting. What creates despair? According to the informative (if sadistic) dog experiments of Martin Seligman, the culprit is “learned helplessness.” Some of us entered this election season with the same emotions Seligman’s dogs must have felt as they were led to their electrified cubicles, and with a similar analysis of our situation: Nothing I do matters.

But that’s wrong. It does matter. Remember, a relative handful of Americans “Occupied” some public spaces and all of a sudden the political dialogue shifted. (And that movement isn’t dead; it may yet regain its strength.)

Then there’s this: As was later confirmed, the President intended to propose Social Security cuts in a State of the Union address. But then, as the Wall Street Journal reported, “The decision to hold off was made as the White House came under pressure from Democrats and liberal interest groups who oppose any cuts to Social Security benefits.”

That may not sound like much of a victory. But try telling that to the millions of women who are getting by on $850 or so in Social Security checks every month.

Barack Obama and the Democrats will sometimes do the right thing. At other times they can be persuaded or pressured. Mitt Romney and the Republicans are beyond the reach of anything except corporate money.

If any single argument swayed my vote it was Norman Lear’s spin on that Golden Oldie of Presidential politics, the Supreme Court. Lear says that Obama’s appointees will someday vote to overturn Citizens United. Could he be wrong? Sure. But we know what Mitt Romney’s appointees will do.

I live in California, which Obama will win. But if he prevails in the electoral college without winning the popular vote, the right will tie up government and he may never get his nominees confirmed. That’s a scenario from hell. So is the election of Mitt Romney, a man who lacks a moral core and whose “closing argument” was a fusillade of cynicism, puffery, and thinly-veiled threats against our system of checks and balances.

And if that’s not scary enough, remember: His election would leave Paul Ryan a heartbeat away from the Presidency.

I know, I know. I’m sick of the “lesser of two evils” argument too. It’s time we confronted the Evil of Two Lessers, by confronting the systemic corruption in our political system. I can’t keep supporting a party run by corporatist centrists in the Clinton mold.

But my first obligation today is to protect my communities – this country and this world are my communities – from catastrophe. Then comes the next obligation: either changing that party or finding another outlet for political action. Electoral politics is only one front in the nonviolent war for real change. And national elections are only one facet of electoral politics.

That’s not to say that Thomas Franks doesn’t have a point when he says that Obama’s made the left “futile and irrelevant.” Progressives like Matt Stoller and Chris Hedges have argued against voting for Obama, a position that some have greeted with disdain, contempt, and hostility. The disrespect and sarcasm is a mistake, and it’s a poor excuse for an argument. Movements are built on respect, not personal attacks.

Here’s an observation that could be used to support Stoller and Hedges: Progressives always vote Democratic, and the party always dismisses them. Tea Party members threatened to bolt, and the GOP’s at their beck and call.

That’s a reality the progressive movement needs to recognize — and soon — without looking for excuses in the Tea Party’s funding or powerful backers. Sure, they’ve got the money, but we’ve got the numbers. Some of the blame for our “futility and irrelevance” lies not in our stars — or our candidates — but in ourselves.

If we passively turn our fate over to the people we vote into office, the critics may be proven right. But if we vote and then act – clearly, forcefully, and decisively – we’ll have the chance to achieve some genuine victories.

Some have suggested that we refrain from criticizing the President until the election’s over, but I respect people’s intelligence and judgement too much for that. Others have tried to paint Barack Obama as a progressive superhero. But I respect my principles – and, more importantly, yours – too much for that. And hagiography is as disempowering as despair.

Besides, reality is reality: Not one Wall Street indictment in four years. A President who says he suspects he and Romney have a “somewhat similar position” on Social Security. A stimulus plan which was a good first step, but which hasn’t been followed by unequivocal and persuasive proposals for more much-needed investment.

And yet behind Obama’s studied ambiguity lies an inconvenient truth: An Obama victory would be a mandate, not for deficit deals, but for the stemwinding populist rhetoric of his speeches. It would be a victory for the economic plan his campaign promoted with keywords like “jobs,” “manufacturing,” “energy,” “health care,” and “retirement.”

That’s what most people will be voting for when they vote for Barack Obama. He must be held to those words.

We can’t outsource our morals or duties to any elected official. Voting is where our obligations begin, not end. If the President who won my vote acts against my principles, I am morally complicit – in cuts to Social Security and Medicare, in drone attacks, in lost civil liberties, and in a free ride for Wall Street. The only antidote for complicity is political action – which also happens to be an antidote for cynicism and hopelessness. And you know what? It just might make a difference.

You can vote with despair. But if your vote comes with a pledge to act, you can vote against despair.

Steve Earle put a slogan on one of his records: “If you don’t vote, don’t bitch.” He’s right. And here’s a new slogan: “If you do vote, do bitch” – although “bitch,” in this case, means “make your voice heard.” Vote, of course. And after that, the hell with learned helplessness. We can’t let this country go to the dogs.

First, there was Snowpocalypse. Then there was Snowmageddon. That was followed by Thundersnow. This summer brought the derecho. And most recently, we’ve been visited by Frankenstorm. Aside from their odd names, these events all have a few more things in common. Along with this summer’s historic heatwave, epic drought, and western wildfires, these events are part of a recent trend of increasingly extreme weather.

Climate change is certainly a contributing factor to both the frequency and intensity of these events. Most Americans believe extreme weather events are related to climate change, and science backs them up. In the aftermath of every extreme  weather event, activists have raised their voices to demand action on climate change or denounce the lack thereof. Hurricane Sandy, aka Frankenstorm, is just the most recent. The difference is that Sandy arrived on the eve of a presidential election between two starkly different records on climate change and related environmental policies.

Sandy’s winds were still wreaking havoc in New Jersey and New York when bloggers, writers, and activists like Salon’s Natasha Lennard began to ask: “Why Barack Obama and Mitt Romney have been silent on climate change on the campaign trail?”

As NPR’s Adam Frank points out, climate experts have tried to parse the issue of extreme weather events and climate change in two general ways. Some seek to establish “what percentage of an extreme event’s magnitude came from a changing climate.” Others, like British scientist Peter Stott, “look at the odds for a given extreme weather event to occur given human-driven climate change.”

While millions of Americans batten down the hatches and millions more stay glued from afar to Sandy’s ruinous spectacle, no resolution will be found to the climate change/freak storm question. But it is nonetheless the question on millions of minds today, as it is every time an extreme weather event strikes. So why is neither presidential candidate this year exploring the issue with us?

After all, as Peter Beinart writes at The Daily Beast, government has a basic responsibility when it comes to climate change (not to mention the disasters linked to it).

I suspect that in the days ahead President Obama will avoid mentioning Mitt Romney’s proposed disbanding of the Federal Emergency Management Agency for fear of being accused of injecting crass electoral concerns into what should be a pristinely apolitical natural disaster.

The sanctimony is nauseating. In a democracy, politics is not something we stop discussing when tragedy strikes. It’s the mechanism we use, as best we can, to prevent such tragedies.

If there’s one thing that even the Tea Party agrees that government should do, it is protect lives, property, and public order. When government policy allows, and even subsidizes, business and individuals to engage in behavior that heats up the oceans, and that extra heat helps produce killer storms like Sandy, government has failed its most basic responsibility.

While it may be that Barack Obama and Mitt Romney haven’t said much about climate change on the campaign trail, both men talked about it at their party conventions. Romney joked about climate change during his acceptance speech at the GOP convention. Obama rebutted Romney on climate change, curing his acceptance speech at the Democratic convention.

In accepting the Democratic presidential nomination, Obama cited his efforts to boost cars’ fuel efficiency, cut energy waste in buildings and expand solar and wind power. “My plan will continue to reduce the carbon pollution that is heating our planet, because climate change is not a hoax,” he told the delegates in Charlotte, N.C., who cheered loudly. “More droughts and floods and wildfires are not a joke. They are a threat to our children’s future.”

His comments, welcomed by environmentalists who’ve urged him to take more of a campaign stand on climate change, were a rebuke to GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney, who drew laughter and applause at the Republican National Convention last week by poking fun at Obama’s environmental rhetoric.

In fact, Obama went further on climate change than any other speaker at the Dem convention. And while the president may be vulnerable to critics who say he hasn’t had enough to say about climate change during the campaign, the record of what president Obama has done — or tried to do, faced with what was arguably the worst, most obstructionist, most unpopular do-nothing congress ever — makes it clear that if Obama hasn’t said enough about climate change during the campaign, he’s done several things to address climate change during his first term in office.

The White House fact sheet on the Obama administration’s environmental record includes a number of accomplishments related to climate change:

• Passing the stimulus: The stimulus contained about $90 billion in financing for a wide range of clean energy programs, and appears to have boosted wind and solar generation.
• Reducing emissions through regulations and standards: The Administration has made the largest clean energy investment in American history, putting the U.S. on track to double renewable power generation between 2008 and the end of 2011. The Administration has also proposed the first Clean Air Act standard for limiting carbon pollution from new power plants.
• Monitoring Emissions:  Under the Obama administration, the U.S. is for the first time cataloging greenhouse gas emissions from the largest sources. President Obama has also directed the federal government to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions from direct sources.
• Adapting to climate change: Under the Obama administration, federal agencies are drafting their first ever climate change adaptation plans.
• Curbing automobile pollution: Obama proposed fuel economy standards that will nearly double efficiency by 2025.

The Washington Monthly’s list of Obama’s top 50 accomplishments include a few more climate-related items.

• Created Conditions to Begin Closing Dirtiest Power Plants: New EPA restrictions on mercury and toxic pollution, issued in December 2011, likely to lead to the closing of between sixty-eight and 231 of the nation’s oldest and dirtiest coal-fired power plants. Estimated cost to utilities: at least $11 billion by 2016. Estimated health benefits: $59 billion to $140 billion. Will also significantly reduce carbon emissions and, with other regulations, comprises what’s been called Obama’s “stealth climate policy.”
• Invested Heavily in Renewable Technology: As part of the 2009 stimulus, invested $90 billion, more than any previous administration, in research on smart grids, energy efficiency, electric cars, renewable electricity generation, cleaner coal, and biofuels.

Progressives who remain resolutely unimpressed with the president’s accomplishments should familiarize themselves with Mitt Romney’s radical energy plan.

As he seeks the support of undecided voters in key swing states, Mitt Romney is portraying himself as a centrist at heart—not as the “severely conservative Republican” he said he was during the hard-fought GOP primaries. This kinder, gentler Romney was very much on display in his televised debates with President Obama. But a close examination of his energy plan, released on August 23, reveals no such moderation; rather, it is a blueprint for the systematic plunder of America’s farm and wilderness areas, coupled with a neocolonial invasion of Canada and Mexico.

The true content of the Romney plan, titled “Energy Independence,” is not easily deciphered, as it is buried in lofty rhetoric about North American energy independence and the creation of millions of high-paying jobs. “I have a vision for an America that is an energy superpower, rapidly increasing our own production and partnering with our allies Canada and Mexico to achieve energy independence on this continent,” Romney declared.

Read between the lines, however, and the predatory nature of his vision becomes evident. Essentially, the plan is intended to remove most impediments to the exploitation by US energy firms of untapped oil, gas and coal fields in the United States, Canada and Mexico, regardless of the consequences for national health, safety or the environment. In particular, the plan has five key objectives: eliminating federal oversight of oil and gas drilling on federal lands; eviscerating all environmental restraints on domestic oil, gas and coal operations; eliminating curbs on drilling in waters off Florida and the east and west coasts of the United States; removing all obstacles to the importation of Canadian tar sands; and creating an energy consortium with Canada and Mexico allowing for increased US corporate involvement in—and control over—their oil and gas production.

President Obama would do well to sat moreboth his accomplishments and second-term agenda related to climate change, but his record speaks for itself. So, for that matter, does Mitt Romney’s.

Originally published at TruthOut.

One of the major growth industries in Washington is the promotion of budget hysteria. Well-funded groups have weekly, if not daily, events designed to hype the country’s budget situation. Much of the national media, most importantly the Washington Post, have enlisted in this effort, devoting both their opinion and news sections toward this goal.

Unfortunately for the deficit-crisis industry, the facts may stubbornly refuse to cooperate. Any discussion of the deficit requires separating out the short-term and the long-term story. The short-term story is very simple. The economy collapsed in 2008 when the housing bubble burst. That is the story of the large budget deficits that we have seen in the last five years: full stop.

Fans of the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) can go back to see their projections from January of 2008, before CBO recognized the consequences of the bursting bubble. The deficit had been a modest 1.2 percent of GDP in 2007. The deficit was projected to stay near 1.0 percent of GDP over the next three years until the end of the Bush tax cuts was projected to push the budget into surplus in 2012. Even if the Bush tax cuts had not been allowed to expire the country can literally run deficits of 1.0-2.0 percent of GDP forever.

There were no huge new permanent spending programs or tax cuts put in place in 2008 or 2009. The deficit soared because the recession sent tax revenue plummeting and caused spending on programs such as unemployment benefits to jump. There were also temporary measures designed to counteract the downturn, like stimulus spending and the payroll tax cut. However had it not been for the downturn, these policies never would have been implemented.

This means that in the absence of the downturn, there is no short-term deficit problem. There would be nothing for the deficit crisis industry to do.

In the longer term the deficit-crisis industry can point to scary projections of large deficits in the next decade and even bigger ones further out. These deficits were overwhelmingly driven by projections of exploding health care costs. The United States already pays more than twice as much per person for its health care as do people in other wealthy countries with nothing much to show for it in the way of outcomes. The scary deficit projections assume that this gap in health care costs will continue to grow.

However it now looks like health care costs may not be following the path assumed by CBO and other official forecasters. The GDP data for the third quarter released last week showed that real spending on health care fell for the second consecutive quarter and that nominal spending grew at just a 0.5 percent annual rate.

In fact, the rate of growth of health care spending has been remarkably muted for several years. Nominal spending on health care services has risen by just 4.5 percent over the last year and a half. This compares with an 11.0 percent increase in overall consumption spending during the same period. Spending had been projected to grow at nearly twice this rate.

While it is still too early to draw definitive conclusions, it seems that health care costs in the United States may actually be stabilizing. If this pattern continues then we won’t have a long-term deficit problem. If our health care costs were in line with those in other countries, we would be looking at projections of long-term budget surpluses.

Bringing health care costs in the United States in line with costs in other wealthy countries should not be an impossible task. After all, the U.S. can’t be that much more corrupt than Italy, Spain, or the other countries that have managed to contain their health care costs. However most of us thought it would take major policy changes to contain health care costs, such as a universal Medicare system or at least giving people the option to buy into the existing Medicare system.

If it turns out to be the case that the existing structure – perhaps with a push from the reforms included in the Affordable Care Act – is sufficient to contain costs, that would really be great. At least some of the money that employers would have otherwise used to pay insurance premiums will now go to higher wages. And the long-term budget horror stories will largely disappear.

Of course this improved budget outlook would be bad news for the deficit-crisis industry. After building up so much momentum over the years and raising so much money from millionaires and billionaires, they would suddenly lack a purpose. This could cause the deficit crisis industry to go out of business. It is always unfortunate when people lose their jobs, but in this case it would be for a good cause.  

Dean Baker is the co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR). He is the author of The End of Loser Liberalism: Making Markets Progressive. He also has a blog, “Beat the Press,” where he discusses the media’s coverage of economic issues.

Way back at the beginning of this summer, an eternity it seems in this exhausting presidential campaign, The College Board launched its Don’t Forget Ed campaign to “get the candidates to prioritize education this election.”

The campaign kicked off, according to an article in USA Today, with two installations. The first stunt was to line up rows of 857 empty school desks on the National Mall to represent the number of students who “drop out of school each hour of every school day.” The second was to pile a six-foot-high stack of fake $100 bills on Wall Street to represent the $1.5 billion that would be put into the economy each year if the high school dropout rate was reduced by 1%.

Months before The College Board’s campaign started, however, The Beltway Class had already determined The Very Serious Issues for this election. And education wasn’t to be one of them.

Now that the three presidential debates have run their course, it’s obvious that education has indeed been relegated to a side issue at best. But it’s not the candidates’ fault.

Candidates Squeeze Education In When They Can

Thanks to the relentless reporting of Alyson Klein and Michelle McNeil on the their Politics K-12 blog at the education trade newspaper Education Week, we know that the candidates had quite a bit to say about education — although they were almost never directly asked about it.

In the first debate, education was inserted into the discussion, unprompted by the moderator, in the context of jobs and the deficit.

As McNeil reported, Obama brought education to the fore “when moderator Jim Lehrer asked him how, exactly, he plans to create more jobs.” And Obama brought up education again “when the candidates squared off on how they would cut the deficit,” referring to his efforts to consolidate education programs that the Republicans in Congress decided to cut anyway.

“Romney, too,” McNeil noted, “stressed the education and jobs connection,” and “that he would not cut federal education funding if elected.”

In the second debate, a town-hall style event, a question came from a college student “who asked what the candidates were going to do to make sure a good-paying job awaited him upon graduation.” This, by the way, was the only question, during all three debates, that even remotely asked the candidates to address the subject of education directly. And both candidates, again, linked education to “jobs” and “economic success.”

The topic of education came up two more times during the debate, when the candidates were asked about immigration and assault weapons. Each time, the candidates pivoted from those difficult, perhaps more confrontational, issues to education policy. Regarding immigration, Romney brought up the DREAM act, which lets undocumented immigrants qualify for permanent residency if they have acquired a college degree or completed at least 2 years.

When the topic of gun violence came up, Romney said “good schools could perhaps bring down violence,” and Obama used it as an opportunity to “allude to the common core standards (although not by name), and his school turnaround program.”

In the final debate, which was supposed to be devoted exclusively to foreign affairs, the candidates became embroiled in arguments “over class size, teachers, and education funding.” Again, as in the two previous debates, the candidates’ brought up education un-promoted by the moderator, when questions about American economic competitiveness and future stature in the world came up.

There are only two ways to look at this.

Either you could be really cynical and conclude that the candidates pivot to education when they are confronted with difficult questions they don’t want to address and grab on to that issue because they assume it’s safer ground to strut their stuff.

Or you could conclude that the candidates bring up education because it has enormous systemic impact on nearly every topic the media aim to address — and because of that influence, people think education is really, really important.

But either way you look at it, you have to conclude, based on the debates, education isn’t a bigger factor in the election because people in the media, other than focused concerns like Education Week, just don’t care.

What The Media Could Learn If They Cared

If major newsprint pundits and TV talking heads cared as much about education as they do about Big Bird and “binders full of women,” they might learn two very interesting things that actually do draw meaningful distinctions between the two candidates.

First, again from the reporters at Education Week, in a less reported series of debates featuring education advisers to the rival campaigns, the discussion revealed that “the campaigns disagree most over how involved the federal government should be” in determining policies and funding for local public schools.

The Obama side clearly supports the federal government’s role in pushing schools toward new standards and certain levels of service, and using increased funding to support those efforts.

The Romney camp clearly breaks from those precedents to allow states more leeway in how they provide education services and how they direct funding to providers — even those who are private concerns.

Questions about the federal role in education are especially important now when many states could be accused of falling short of meeting their constitutional obligations to provide children with an adequate education.

School funding at the state level is woefully short and increasingly looking bleak. According to a study conducted by the Center on Budget and Policy Priority,

States have made steep cuts to education funding since the start of the recession and, in many states, those cuts deepened over the last year. Elementary and high schools are receiving less state funding in the 2012-13 school year than they did last year in 26 states, and in 35 states school funding now stands below 2008 levels — often far below.

Furthermore, many states are short-changing their schools that need money the most. A recent study issued from the Center for American Progress found that there are many states “where combined state and local revenues are systematically lower in higher-poverty districts — that is, states with ‘regressive’ school funding distributions.”

“What makes these patterns more offensive,” the study author Bruce Baker notes, “is that each of these states is taking billions of statewide taxpayer dollars and channeling them back to lower-poverty districts, which are much less in need of state funding support. These states could achieve far more equitable distribution of resources and far more adequate educational opportunities in high-poverty settings if these resources were allocated based on student need.”

The problem of inadequate and inequitable funding is so bad in a state like Texas, for example, attorneys representing around 600 school districts are actually suing the state.

Second, if the media cared at all about education, they would be curious why many of the most ardent critics of the Obama policies, aside from teachers unions, are endorsing him anyway.

It makes sense that teachers unions back the president, because the Romney campaign has so clearly demonized them. But why would other critics of the president’s polices, who have less skin in the game, come to his support?

Within the past two weeks, for example, two of the most prominent critics of the Obama edu-policies — Diane Ravitch and Pedro Noguero, have come out in support of Obama.

While their endorsements of Obama differ somewhat, what they certainly have in common is that, in Ravitch’s words, “as bad as the Obama education policies are, they are tolerable in comparison to what Mitt Romney plans.”

What Romney and the Republicans plan, in particular, that frightens them is, in Noguero’s words, “nothing other than the promise of more cuts because they see education spending as a wasteful social entitlement.”

So dear Media, unless you really wish to “Forget Ed,” how about posing to candidates a couple of questions:

“What is the role of the federal government in education and what should it do about states that are drastically underfunding schools — especially schools serving the most underserved children — to the extent that they violate their constitutional obligations?”

“What kind of education are America’s children entitled to and how much should we spend on it?”

Even with less than two weeks left in the campaign, there’s still enough time t ask.

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The online petition site Change.org is best known for enabling individuals to use the viral qualities of the internet to speak truth to power, such as when a 22-year-old nanny used the site to pressure a big bank to drop its debit fee, and an Eagle Scout challenged the Boy Scouts of America’s anti-gay policy.

Now, startling documents from the company reveal that Change.org is about to roll out new advertising policies that would allow the powerful to use the site to serve their own purposes as well.

According to the new policies, the social action platform will now be open to companies and corporations of any size, political parties, “front groups,” and “Astroturf” organizations. Only advertisers strictly identified as “hate groups” are to be barred.

According to a Change.org document “Rebrand-Internal FAQs,” the more than 20 million users of the platform will not notice dramatic changes to the site. They will see “a new visual look” and “updated language on the About Us” and other boilerplate pages. And users will be able to submit petitions as they have done in the past.

But these minimal changes to user experiences mask what will soon be going on behind the scenes.

In the current configuration, when users of the site sign petitions, their actions trigger messages from the site’s advertisers – currently known as “clients” or “partners” – which can allow advertisers to obtain valuable leads for their own outreach purposes.

Heretofore, users have been assured that these advertisers were vetted by Change.org against a particular set of “values” that align with the company’s mission, according to the current website, “as a B Corporation dedicated to using the power of business to promote social good.”

What will change is that Change.org will no longer “filter potential advertisers” based on the advertisers’ “values.” Nor will Change.org filter potential advertisers based on any “gut feelings about the content of the ad itself.”

A different document, “Change.org Advertising Guidelines,” provides more detail about the new policies, including that ads can’t “promote hate, violence or discrimination… promote bullying, harassment, or intimidation… use or promote hate speech… discriminate against an organization, person, or protected group.” Also, “Ads cannot contain inaccurate or deceitful content.”

But the new policies, as they’re spelled out to staff members, make plain that the site will be opened to advertisements from political causes that previously fell outside the company’s “values,” including “anti-abortion, pro-gun, and union-busting” causes.

The company has no plans to “provocatively announce” the new guidelines to users.

Why The Change?

According to the Rebranding document, the changes have become necessary because the current policies “don’t scale.”

“We need to get out of the business of making subjective judgments about advertisers,” the explanation reads. And new “advertising guidelines will help us maximize our mission.”

But elsewhere in the document is a telling passage about the company wanting to avoid what happened “this summer.” What happened this summer was that Change.org’s partnership with two groups opposed to teachers unions, Students First and Stand for Children, became a point of heated controversy when teachers in Chicago were embroiled in labor negotiations.

Both groups drew the ire of teachers unions, the labor movement in general, and other progressives when they began running petitions on Change.org that, many felt, were deceptive and undermining of the teachers, who eventually went on strike.

When Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel stonewalled the teachers and caused a break-off in negotiations, Change.org ran a petition on its site from Stand for Children that demanded the union go back to the bargaining table. As blogger Aaron Krager noted at the time, the text of the petition featured “the same talking points used by Mayor Rahm Emanuel” and accused the teachers of holding the students “hostage.”

The controversy eventually resulted in Change.org announcing that it would drop both groups as advertisers, as reported by The Huffington Post’s Ryan Grim.

Was Students First Change.org’s “Gateway Drug” For Anti-Progressive Causes?

The group Students First had long been a particular irritant to classroom teachers and advocates for public schools. Headed by former Washington D.C. public schools superintendent Michelle Rhee, Students First lobbies in state legislatures and donates to political candidates to pass laws that reduce teachers’ job security and professional status, link their pay and evaluations to student scores on standardized tests, and erode teachers’ collective bargaining rights.

Students First is by no means a “grassroots” organization. The group has significant financial backing from Rupert Murdoch, the Walton Family of Walmart fame, and deep-pocketed hedge-fund investors.

Rhee’s organization has used Change.org’s platform to harvest over 2 million email addresses – which the organization claims as “members” – in response to its petitions focusing on teachers, immigration reform, anti-bullying, and other issues that resonate with progressives.

Teacher and activist Nancy Flanagan, writing on her blog at the website for the education trade newspaper Education Week, explains how Rhee and her group was able to use Change.org to get untold numbers of well-meaning activists to unwittingly lend their support to the cause of union-busting:

While working on the Save Our Schools campaign, I got a call from an enraged supporter who signed a Save Our Schools-endorsed petition at Change.Org and was immediately taken to the StudentsFirst site. “Please tell me,” she said through clenched teeth, “that Save Our Schools is not affiliated in any way with Michelle Rhee.”

So I spoke with Change.Org… I asked why Change.Org thought StudentsFirst was a progressive cause – the kind of initiative that pushed real democracy forward. There was a pause. Then the nice young man I was speaking to said, “Well, there was actually a lot of talk around the office about that.” Discreet. In the end, Students First becomes a revenue stream for Change.Org – $1.75 for every signature-cum-email they snag.

In many respects Students First served as Change.org’s initial foray – going back to March 2011, according to Grim – into the controversy of taking clients with anti-progressive agendas and allowing them to tap into good causes promoted on the site.

And when the company was called on it, during the controversy surrounding the Chicago teachers strike, Chang.org declared it would do “the right thing,” as was trumpeted in a diary on Daily Kos, and drop the bad actor from the site.

Now we know what Change.org really had in mind. Instead of actually dropping Students First, it has been retooling itself to get more advertisers like Students First.

A Trust Violated?

As Change.org transitions to the new advertising policies, it is also changing its mission. That new mission statement — “to empower people everywhere to create the change they want to see” – was introduced to staff members in a company email on September 28 from CEO Ben Rattray.

Maybe among people who believe “corporations are people, my friend,” Change.org’s move to open its site to the largest and most powerful actors in society aligns with a mission to “empower people.” But since when has “change” come from serving the most powerful?

It’s also important to remember the aura around Change.org that helped the company build its reputation and advance its business.

In a gushing portrait of Rattray that recently ran in the San Francisco Chronicle, reporter Meredith May proclaims, “Using a David versus Goliath framework, Change.org galvanizes people to turn their personal stories of hardships into online uprisings that get banks to drop fees, the movie industry to change film ratings, judges to unshackle minors, and countries to create new human rights protections.”

May didn’t just make that up. Rattray personally has done much to brand his company with a “truth to power” narrative. In a video interview available on YouTube, he declares that the purpose of Change.org is to “change the balance of power between individuals and large corporations and government.”

And in a TED Talk, also available on YouTube, Rattray regales the adoring audience with story after story of Change.org helping “a David fighting a seemingly insurmountable campaign against a Goliath” – and winning.

One has to wonder, given Change.org’s new advertising policy, does Rattray not understand that David and Goliath have never been on the same team?

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