Each morning, Bill Scher and Terrance Heath serve up what progressives need to effect change on the kitchen-table issues families face: jobs, health care, green energy, financial reform, affordable education and retirement security.

MORNING MESSAGE: Five Plutocracy-Busting Ideas from America’s Progressive Past

OurFuture.org’s Sam Pizzigati: “In my new book ‘The Rich Don’t Always Win: The Forgotten Triumph over Plutocracy that Created the American Middle Class,’ I trace the incredible feats those progressives accomplished over the first half of the 20th century … How can we get back on a plutocracy-busting track? We could start by revisiting those struggles of years past that came up short … One: Require the rich to annually disclose the income they’re reporting to the IRS and how much of that income they actually pay in taxes … Two: Leverage the power of the public purse against excessive corporate executive pay … Three: Give Americans a safe alternative to private banks … Four: Tax undistributed corporate profits. … Five: Cap income at America’s economic summit.”

GOP Feeling Squeeze On Taxes

Obama squeezes GOP on taxes by warning of economic fallout. The Hill: “On Monday, they argued that GOP opposition would take $200 billion in consumer spending from the economy. The argument attempts to cast Republicans as opponents of economic growth and as out of touch with the middle class, a theme the White House used successfully in the end-of-2011 vote to extend the payroll tax holiday.”

Obama building outside pressure for a deal. W. Post: “Obama is strongly considering holding events in Washington or elsewhere later this week to argue for extending current tax rates for 98 percent of Americans and letting rates rise for the wealthy, according to administration officials. White House officials met Monday with the leaders of two major business groups — the Business Roundtable and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce — part of Obama’s campaign to persuade business executives to get behind a deal that raises $1 trillion or more in tax revenue. Obama plans another meeting with executives Wednesday.”

CEOs pushing for skewed deficit deal are big contributors to deficit. HuffPost: “Many of the companies recommending austerity would be out of business without the heavy federal support they get, including Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase, which both received billions in direct bailout cash, plus billions more indirectly through AIG and other companies taxpayers rescued.”

House and Senate Republicans not on same page. The Hill: “Some GOP senators want to strike a quick deal this year, while House conservatives prefer holding out for major structural changes to the tax code and entitlements that would be enacted in 2013 … Many House Republicans want to stick with the reforms they endorsed and defended during the bruising 2012 campaign.”

WH Separates Out Social Security

WH says Social Security should not be part of deficit deal. CBS: “White House spokesman Jay Carney said today that Social Security is one entitlement program that should be addressed on a ‘separate track.’ ‘We should address the drivers of the deficit and Social Security currently is not a driver of the deficit,’ Carney told reporters today.”

Republicans pushing retirement security cuts as price for tax increases. NYT: “Republicans insist that changes in the major entitlement programs be on the table in exchange for their willingness to accept increases in tax revenue. But Democrats have given no indication that they are willing to consider policy changes or savings of the magnitude demanded by Republicans … Mr. Obama and some Democrats in Congress say they are willing to squeeze savings from Medicare by trimming payments to drug companies, hospitals and other health care providers. They have generally ruled out structural changes that would increase costs for a typical beneficiary … Congress should ‘reduce the federal subsidy of Medicare costs for those beneficiaries who can most afford it,’ the president said this year. House Republicans voted for a similar proposal last year.”

GOP Sen. Bob Corker proposal spells out potential cuts. AP: “Tennessee Sen. Bob Corker is circulating a 10-year, $4.5 trillion plan loaded with controversial proposals, including a less generous inflation adjustment for Social Security, and a gradual increase in the regular Social Security retirement age to 68 and the Medicare eligibility age to 67. Corker’s plan also includes $749 billion in higher tax revenue claimed by capping itemized deductions at $50,000 … Corker has yet to attract any Democrats in support … [It also includes] higher Medicare premiums for upper-income earners and new revenue from Medicare co-payments and deductibles. Federal workers would get hit with higher contributions to their pensions and would receive an $11,000 voucher payment to finance their family’s health insurance, saving taxpayers about $7 billion a year.”

Bust The Filibuster

Majority and minority leaders square off. Roll Call: “Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell pointedly raised the prospect of a stalled lame-duck session if Democratic leaders keep threatening to change the rules at the start of the new Congress during the final weeks of the old one … Reid reiterated his plan to change the rules by a simple-majority vote at the start of the next Congress in an effort to make legislation move somewhat more quickly through the chamber.”

NYT’s David Firestone encouraged by prospects for reform: “The specific change [Reid] mentioned is fairly minor: it would ban filibusters of the ‘motion to proceed,” which would end the routine Republican practice of blocking even debate on a bill. That would end a common delaying tactic and speed consideration of a bill, but would still allow senators to filibuster passage of the bill itself. More tantalizingly, Mr. Reid also suggested he would move to end the silent filibuster, under which a single senator can object to a bill and thus trigger a 60-vote threshold for it to pass. Several younger senators have proposed a ‘talking filibuster,’ requiring members who object to a bill to stay on the floor and keep discussing their reasons for blocking it … They are proposing that the Senate be allowed to get back to its actual purpose, which is passing laws, confirming appointments and appropriating money. It’s about time.”

Breakfast Sides

SEC faces partisan deadlock after chair departs. LAT: “‘With the resignation of [Mary] Schapiro, we have two Republicans, two Democrats, and they won’t agree on anything,’ said John Coffee, a securities law expert at Columbia Law School … Obama has had difficulty getting nominees through the Senate, so the agency could remain one person short for a while.”

New study disproves conservative governors’ complaints about Medicaid expansion. The Atlantic’s Jordan Weissman: “…the Kaiser Family Foundation released a new report illustrating just what a farce the ‘It’s a budget-buster!’ argument truly is. No, growing Medicaid wouldn’t be free for places like Texas and Florida. But the expense would be minimal compared to the economic benefits of guaranteeing healthcare to millions and bringing federal tax dollars back within their borders … the federal government would be on the hook for $952 billion of the [10-year] total. The states themselves would pay another $76 billion. Nine-to-one is a pretty good bargain.”

Americans today can take more than inspiration from the struggles against plutocracy that progressives waged years ago. They can take a host of still relevant — and cutting-edge — policy proposals.

Our contemporary billionaires, most Americans would agree, are exploiting our labor and polluting our politics. Can we shrink our super rich down to a much less powerful — and more democratic — size? Of course we can. We Americans, after all, have already done that shrinking once before.

Between 1900 and the 1950s, average Americans beat down plutocrats every bit as dominant as ours. A century that began with huge private fortunes and most Americans living in poverty would come to see a mass middle class and sweeping suburban developments where grand estates and mansions once stood.

Most Americans today, unfortunately, have no inkling that this huge transformation ever took place, mainly because that exuberantly middle class America of the mid 20th century has disappeared. Those grand mansions have come back.

Does this super-rich resurgence make failures out of our progressive forebears, the men and women who fought so hard and so long to limit the wealth and power of America’s wealthiest? Our forebears didn’t fail, suggests a new book I’ve just done. They just didn’t go far enough.

In The Rich Don’t Always Win: The Forgotten Triumph over Plutocracy that Created the American Middle Class, I trace the incredible feats those progressives accomplished over the first half of the 20th century. They “soaked the rich” at tax time. They built a union movement that acted as a real check on corporate arrogance and greed. They even tamed Wall Street.

But these great victories have long since faded. How can we get back on a plutocracy-busting track? We could start by revisiting those struggles of years past that came up short, those proposals that, had they become law, might have more lastingly leveled down our super rich.

The Rich Don’t Always Win explores a host of these proposals. Here’s a sampling of just five.

One: Require the rich to annually disclose the income they’re reporting to the IRS and how much of that income they actually pay in taxes.

Eighty years ago, just like today, America’s rich were massively evading taxes. If wealthy taxpayers knew their tax returns would be open to public inspection, reformers argued, they would be far less audacious with their evading. Disclosure would also help lawmakers identify the tax loopholes that most needed plugging.

In 1934, progressives actually added a disclosure provision to the tax code. But the super rich counterattacked with a media blitz that tied disclosure to the infamous Lindbergh baby kidnapping. If all rich Americans had to disclose their incomes, the argument went, kidnappers would gain a wider pool of targets.

This PR juggernaut carried the day. Congress repealed the disclosure mandate. But the basic idea behind income tax disclosure remains as promising as ever.

Two: Leverage the power of the public purse against excessive corporate executive pay. Congress can’t set direct limits on private corporate executive pay, yesterday’s progressives understood. But Congress could impose limits indirectly by denying federal government contracts and subsidies to corporations that lavished rewards on top executives.

In 1933, then-senator and later Supreme Court justice Hugo Black won congressional approval for legislation that denied federal air- and ocean-mail contracts to companies that paid their execs over $17,500, about $300,000 in today’s dollars.

But the New Deal never fully embraced the Hugo Black perspective. We could now, by denying federal contracts and tax breaks to any companies that pay their CEOs over 25 times what their workers are making.

Three: Give Americans a safe alternative to private banks. For Louis Brandeis, a giant in the struggle against plutocracy who also became a Supreme Court justice, prohibiting financial institutions from speculating with the savings of average Americans always remained a top priority.

In the early 1930s, Brandeis advocated the expansion of postal savings banks, a system — in effect since 1911 — that paid 2 percent interest on modest savings accounts maintained with the post office. That expansion never took place, and postal savings banks withered away. They deserve a second shot.

Four: Tax undistributed corporate profits. America’s biggest corporations are currently sitting on stashes of cash that have hit mega-billion levels. Money that could be invested in creating jobs sits instead in income-generating financial assets that only sweeten corporate bottom lines.

A similar problem plagued the nation back during the Great Depression, and progressives responded by pushing for a stiff tax on these “retained earnings.” In 1936, Congress passed a watered-down version of this tax that didn’t last and didn’t make much of an impact. A stronger tax today just might.

Five: Cap income at America’s economic summit. In 1942, in the midst of a war-time fiscal squeeze, President Franklin Roosevelt proposed a 100 percent tax on all individual income over $25,000, the equivalent of about $355,000 today.

Congress didn’t go along. But lawmakers did set the top tax rate at 94 percent on income over $200,000, and federal income tax top rates hovered around 90 percent for most of the next two decades, years of unprecedented middle class prosperity.

America’s rich fought relentlessly to curb those rates. They saw no other way to hang on to more of their income. But what if we restructured the top tax rate of America’s postwar years to give the rich a new, more public-spirited incentive.

We could, for instance, set the entry threshold for a new 90 percent top rate as a multiple of our nation’s minimum wage. The higher the minimum wage, the higher the threshold, the softer the total tax bite out of the nation’s highest incomes.

Our nation’s wealthiest and most powerful, under this approach, would suddenly have a vested interest in enhancing the well-being of our poorest and weakest.

Years ago, progressives yearned to create an America that encouraged just that sort of social solidarity. They couldn’t finish the job. We still can.

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 by Seven Stories Press.

In today’s anything-goes political fundraising world, the nation’s super rich and their favored politicos are no longer even going through the motions of maintaining ‘separate and independent’ campaigns.

The U.S. Supreme Court’s most notorious decisions have almost always rested on preposterous claims. The 1896 ruling that okayed segregation, for instance, held that imposed racial separation violated no constitutional rights since government had the capacity to keep public services and facilities “separate but equal.”

But government officials during segregation made no effort to offer anything even remotely close to equal services — and no one ever expected they would.

The 2010 Supreme Court ruling in Citizens United — the decision that has opened the door to letting rich people essentially spend whatever they want, whenever they want, on political campaigns — rests on another preposterous claim.

All those millions the rich are injecting into politics won’t distort our democracy, the high court assures us, because we can keep these millions separate and independent from the campaigns that the candidates the rich favor are running.

No one in politics, of course, believes for a minute that anyone can actually keep the super rich and their “independent expenditures” totally separate from any particular candidate’s campaign. But everyone involved in the political games rich people play has been playing along with this convenient fiction. Until last week.

The game-changer came at the luxurious five-star St. Regis Hotel in Colorado’s Aspen, the favorite mountain getaway of America’s awesomely affluent.

The occasion: a retreat hosted by the Republican Governors Association that brought together, Politico reports, “some of the biggest names in GOP politics,” including top advisers to the Romney campaign, and key “representatives of deep-pocketed political spenders” like the billionaire Koch brothers.

Also on hand: some 200 big donors themselves and the political strategists — like Karl Rove — who run the “independent” campaign groups that are masterminding how best to spend their money.

How can the rich and their hired guns spend a week rubbing shoulders with the top aides of the candidates they support and still claim they’re all operating independently? They can’t. Yet no one in federal campaign law officialdom seems to care. We have come to live in a political system where anything goes.

Big money, as Mother Jones analyst Andy Kroll notes, is now “flooding the political system like never before.”

But most Americans haven’t yet noticed. Only 25 percent of Americans say they’ve heard a lot about campaign spending so far this year, the Pew Research Center reported last week, and 39 percent say they’ve heard “nothing at all.”

Two just-released public interest group reports are making a noble effort to pierce this current campaign funding fog.

A new analysis from the Center for Responsive Politics is now estimating that total spending on the 2012 presidential and congressional elections — by presidential candidates, Senate and House candidates, political parties, and “independent” groups — will likely hit $5.8 billion, an all-time record.

A hefty share of that near $6 billion, concludes a new study from Demos and the U.S. PIRG Education Fund, is coming from America’s ultra wealthy and the “small number of organizations that aggregate” their power and voices.

One example: Of the $318 million so far raised this election cycle by super PACs — the political panels that can raise “unlimited sums from virtually any source” — over 60 percent has come from just 100 donors. These 100 averaged, calculates the Center for Responsive Politics, just under $2 million each in contributions.

The public interest groups following this election’s money chase all readily acknowledge that their numbers undercount the real cash the rich are heaving into the political fray. Outside “independent” spending has become “a wild card that makes predictions tricky,” notes the Center for Responsive Politics.

Nonprofits set up to harvest political campaign dollars from the super rich, watchdog groups explain, don’t have to report their donors, and they don’t even have to report how much they’re spending on any of their “issue ads” that run over 60 days before November’s Election Day.

The top execs who run America’s biggest for-profit enterprises, meanwhile, are doing their best to keep shareholders — and consumers — in the dark about how much they’ve been funneling into campaigns since Citizens United gave corporations a green light to bankroll candidates.

Just a tiny fraction of this subterfuge has so far come to light. Only an inadvertent disclosure by Aetna, to give one example, has revealed that the insurance giant has plugged an over $7 million political outlay to conservative political nonprofits that don’t have to report out their donors.

These political nonprofits are in essence operating as “megaphones for moguls and millionaires,” add Demos and U.S. PIRG in their report released last week.

“The more money they pump in,” the report explains, “the louder they’re able to amplify their voices — until a relatively few wealthy individuals and interests are dominating our public square, drowning out the rest of us.”

The new Demos and PIRG study includes a list of reforms that could reduce the megaphone volume. One of these, a constitutional amendment to overturn Citizens United, picked up some support last week on Capitol Hill when a group of House Democrats introduced a “Restoring Confidence in Our Democracy Act.”

On the Senate side, an attempt to force wider campaign finance disclosure failed last month. Now senator Sheldon Whitehouse, a Rhode Island Democrat, is calling on Americans to put corporations that play in the “dark money” universe under the same sort of pressure that the anti-apartheid movement of the 1980s put on corporations that did business with South Africa’s apartheid regime.

A mass movement helped crush apartheid. We need a mass movement, stresses the new Demos and PIRG report, to blunt our latest plutocratic power grab.

“We cannot maintain a democracy of equal citizens in the face of significant economic inequality,” sums up the study, “if we allow those who are successful (or lucky) in the economic sphere to translate wealth directly into political power.”

Sam Pizzigati edits Too Much, the online weekly on excess and inequality published by the Institute for Policy Studies. Read the current issue or sign up here to receive Too Much in your email inbox.

Last week Republicans filibustered the Bring Jobs Home Act, when polls show dramatic support for ending tax breaks for shipping jobs overseas. Last week Republicans filibustered the DISCLOSE Act which would at least let us know who is pumping hundreds of millions into our election, when polls show overwhelming opposition to corporate purchases of politicians. That’s two BIG ones, and that’s just last week. You’d think that would clinch the election — but the public doesn’t know who to blame. In a democracy accountability is important but in a plutocracy impunity carries the day.

Campaigned Saying Dems Cut Medicare – Got Voted In And Eliminated Medicare

If people knew what Republicans were doing… but they don’t. In the 2010 election Repubicans spent hundreds of millions on ads telling the public that Democrats had “cut half a trillion from Medicare.” So the public “knew” that and Republicans took the senior vote for the first time, enabling them to gain a majority in the House. Except it wasn’t true. And when Repubicans got into office they passed a budget that … pretty much eliminates Medicare.

Eliminating Medicare Only The Beginning

That budget that eliminates Medicare is called the Ryan budget (more recently called the Romney-Ryan budget), and it was passed by House Repubicans. Here are just some of the things this budget — already passed by House Republicans and endorsed by Mitt Romney — does:

• Raises taxes on wage earners who make between $50,000 to $100,000 by $1,300
• Raises taxes on those who make between $100,000 to $200,000 by $2,600
• Cuts taxes on those who make between $500,000 and $1 million by $35,000
• Cuts taxes on those who make over a million dollars by $285,000.
• Elimininates corporate taxes for money made overseas, and from offshoring jobs.
• Maintains military spending at current levels, with some increases, in case we have to fight the Soviet Union.
• Cuts 13% from veterans programs.
• Cuts 25 % from transportation (airports, roads, etc.)
• Cuts 6% from “general science, space, and basic technology.”
• Cuts 14.6% from natural resources and the environment.
• Cuts 33% from “education, training, employment, and social services.”
• Cuts “income assistance” by 16% – food stamps, housing assistance, the earned-income tax credit.
• Ends Medicare, replaces with a voucher plan for private insurance, raises age to 67.
• Medicaid becomes block grants, states can decide how to use.
• Repleals the health care plan – no replacement.
• Repeals help for long-term care.
• Reduces and removes public health programs.
• Reduces and removes disease prevention programs.
• Limits damages collectible when doctors or hospitals injure patients.

And that’s just part of what it does. This budget has passed the House of Representatives. (The procedure is that a budget passes the House, then must pass the Senate, then be signed by the President, so this budget is not the current law.)

If People Knew – But They Don’t

If people knew… but they don’t. Did you know what was in this budget, already passed by the House? I’d bet you didn’t. So what do you think most people out there know?

People are shocked and refuse to believe when told what the Republican agenda in Congress is. They refuse to accept it, it being so far from their understanding. It’s the opposite of what their campaign ads and propaganda says it is. They cannot believe politicians in America would do this.

Go try it for yourself. Go explain to someone who doesn’t follow the news what the Republican budget contains. See what their reaction is. They will think that you are some kind of extremist or nut, for trying to tell them people would actually do this. But this budget has already passed the House.

Republicans depend on the public not understanding their agenda, and they have good reason to feel secure enough to go ahead and pass such a budget. This is because our corporate news media is no longer providing the public with information they need to make decisions.

WHY Don’t People Know?

Go try to find information on what’s in the budget that House Republicans have already passed. I challenge you. I just did that, and it was not easy. (There’s this, if you can decypher what this says, through the propaganda…)

Why doesn’t our media make it easy for people to learn about things like the contents of the already-passed Romney-Ryan budget? Here is a possible explanation:

Just 232 Media Executives Decide What We Can Know About

From the following chart, “232 media executives control the information diet of 277 million Americans.” (Clich for larger.)

Source: Frugal dad

232 media executives decide what’s in 90% of the news media. What do you wanna bet those 232 people are paid? What do you wanna bet the worldview of those 232 people is?

Just 196 People = 80% Of Campaign Spending

People now get much of their information from campaign ad. There isn’t much choice, this is what is in front of people’s faces. And the campaign ads do not give the public honest information. Why is this?

Lawrence Lessig, in Big Campaign Spending: Government by the 1% in the Atlantic,

A tiny number of Americans — .26 percent — give more than $200 to a congressional campaign. .05 percent give the maximum amount to any congressional candidate. .01 percent give more than $10,000 in any election cycle. And .000063 percent — 196 Americans — have given more than 80 percent of the super-PAC money spent in the presidential elections so far.

Repeat, 196 people have given more than 80 percent of the super-PAC money spent in the presidential elections so far.

232 media executives control 90% of our information souces. 196 people decide 80% of the campaign spending. And the House has passed a budget that greatly increases taxes on people making less than $200,000, while dramatically cutting taxes on those who make over $1 million. (This is not related to the Bush tax cuts and the coming battle over the “Grand Bargain” to cut Social Security, Medicare and other things while cutting top tax rates and corporate taxes…)

When facts became inconvenient for the corporate right the corporate media stopped reporting the facts.

When the positions became inconvenientfor the corporate right, the corporate media stopped reporting the positions.

I leave you with this: 2/3 say Romney would be better on the economy. I’d bet that very, very few of those 2/3 know that Republicans filibustered the Bring Jobs Home Act, filibustered the DISCLOSE Act, and passed a budget that raises taxes on most of us, dramatically cuts taxes on the Mitt Romneys, and dramatically cuts or eliminates the things We, the People do for each other.

When we had democracy, We, the People made the rules and we ran our country and our economy for our benefit. Now that we are a plutocracy things are different. The reason our elites are not doing anything to fix the economy is because from their viewpoint, things are just fine.

Merriam-Webster:

plu·toc·ra·cy noun \plü-ˈtä-krə-sē\

1: government by the wealthy

2: a controlling class of the wealthy

Our political leaders dance with the ones that bring them. Increasingly they are dancing with the billionaires and their giant corporations.

Our politicians are doing and saying increasingly incomprehensible things. The separation from regular people is unbelievable. But in politics you “dance with the one that brung ya,” and these things become comprehensible and believable when you look at who is bringing them to the dance.

Our Benefit

In a democracy a successful business is the result of our investment in infrastructure, education, and a system that enables our businesses to thrive. A business can’t deliver products except over the roads or ports or the Internet our government built. Our police and firefighters protect our businesses. Our schools and universities train and educate the inventors and managers and line workers. Our scientific research brings about the innovation that leads to new technologies and products.

“Entitlements” are the things We, the People are entitled to as citizens of a democracy. Those who do well as a result of our investment in our system pay back through taxes, good jobs and great products. When we were a democracy we were entitled to a minimal level of retirement, and health care, education, protection if we lost our jobs, protection of our environment, protection from corporate fraud, and other things that are now disappearing.

Now that democracy is gone, a wealthy few are living off our past investment, and cutting back on the things we used to do for each other.

Why All The Cuts, No Jobs?

Here is the reason that our leaders are cutting back on the things our country does for We, the People, and are not working very hard to do anything about the high unemployment and economic troubles most of us are feeling:

2010: Corporate Profits Were the Highest on Record Last Quarter

2011: Corporate Profits At All-Time High As Recovery Stumbles

2012: Corporate Profits Just Hit An All-Time High, Wages Just Hit An All-Time Low

2012: Bank CEO pay rises. Corporate profit margins rise. Worker wages, not so much.

2012: Richest 1 Percent Account For Nearly All Of U.S. Recovery’s Gains: Report

The billionaires and their giant corporations are doing just fine, thank you.

The reason our leaders are not doing anything to fix the economy is because, from the viewpoint of our real leaders, the economy is working just fine.

Golden Oldie

A golden oldie (updated a bit): Democracy Or Plutocracy? A Chart

I want to send a warning to working people in Europe: when you let your businesses save money by mistreating workers in other countries, it might teach them to think they can save money by mistreating you, too. Over here in the US we have learned this the hard way. We entered into “free trade” agreements that enabled our businesses to take advantage of exploited labor in countries like China, and the plutocrats used that as a wedge against us here to drive down our wages, get rid of our benefits and break our unions. Now your own business leaders are taking advantage of eroded labor rights here, and if you let them get away with this they will want to bring these working conditions back to you.

Recently in the post Democracy V. Plutocracy, Unions V. Servitude I described how American companies use China as a wedge to drive down wages and labor rights here,

The threat is in the air: “Shut up and take the wage cuts or we will move your job to China.”

… Workers in countries like China where people have no say have low wages, terrible working conditions, long hours, and are told to shut up and take it or they won’t have any job at all. They are given no choice.

Increasingly workers here have their wages, hours, benefits, dignity cut and are told to shut up and take it or their jobs will be moved to China. Because we are pitted against exploited workers in countries where people have no say, we have no choice.

The unions are weakened, the government doesn’t enforce or weakly enforces labor laws and regulations, age, gender or race discrimination laws, worker safety laws, so workers are placed in a terrible squeeze. Workers who try to organize unions are isolated, moved, smeared, fired, humiliated, whatever it takes.

In countries like Germany workers are still paid fairly well and have benefits and rights. Here our pay, benefits and labor rights have eroded terribly. This is the result of American companies using exploited labor in countries like China as a wedge to force concessions at home. Can the same chain of events attack wages, benefits and unions in Europe? Last May, Harold Meyerson’s LA Times op-ed, The U.S.: Where Europe comes to slum, described how European companies come here and behave like American companies,

… slumming in America is fast becoming a business model for some of Europe’s leading companies, and they often do things here they would never think of doing at home. These companies — not banks, primarily, but such gold-plated European manufacturers as BMW, Daimler, Volkswagen and Siemens, and retailers such as IKEA — increasingly come to America (the South particularly) because labor is cheap and workers have no rights. In their eyes, we’re becoming the new China. Our labor costs may be a little higher, but we offer stronger intellectual property protections and far fewer strikes than our unruly Chinese comrades.

… The auto companies of Europe and Japan have opened factories in the nonunion South over the last couple of decades. Not one of them has agreed to refrain from waging a union-busting campaign should their workers wish to organize. Their stance could not be more different from their attitude toward workers and unions in their home countries.

Meyerson describes the kinds of anti-union, anti-worker things these companies are learning how to do,

As a report released by Human Rights Watch late last year documents, companies that routinely welcome unions, pay middle-class wages and have workers’ representatives on their corporate boards in Germany and Scandinavia have threatened their U.S.-based employees with permanent replacement by other workers as the penalty for protesting wage cuts (that was the German manufacturer Robert Bosch), ordered workers to report on fellow workers’ pro-union activities (that was T-Mobile, a subsidiary of Deutsche Telekom) and disciplined workers who couldn’t show up for unscheduled weekend shifts announced on Friday night (that was IKEA, according to an L.A. Times story).

T-Mobile’s Anti-Union Efforts

Here is an example. Germany’s Deutsche Telkom is trying to turn their wholly-owned subsidiary US company T-Mobile into a low-wage, low-benefit, union-free dumping ground. Is this an effort to ultimately bring these tactics back home to break Germany’s unions?

This is how T-Mobile is operating now: In May T-Mobile workers in upstate New York filed a petition for a union election. Over the next three months management used anti-union “isolate and pressure” tactics to erode support. Instead of letting the workers decide for themselves if they wanted a union, they contested the effort and brought in a “union avoidance” specialist firm.

The company used excuses to delay the election, and launched a propaganda campaign, making the workers hear a constant barrage of reasons to suspect union motives, suspect the benefits the union promised, and other reasons not to vote for a union. They were repeatedly required to leave their job to attend meetings and conference calls, on company time, where they were lectured, given misinformation, told they would lose benefits they currently had, that unions would make them pay $5,000 in dues every year, told again and again that the union was lying, that union organizers were only telling them things to get bonuses, told they must not ever talk to each other about the union on company time and that if they voted for a union the company would have to eliminate their jobs and contract out the work instead. After enough of this the workers withdrew the election petition.

The Sheer Weight Of This Wears You Down

When regular people who are just doing their jobs, who work hard and get up in the morning and go home tired and don’t make a lot have to face constant tactics of daily pressure by management, constantly being told that unions are evil and “unions bosses’ and “union thugs” are trying to trick them, and they are put under tactics that isolate them from being able to discuss what is true or not, finally the sheer weight of all of it together can be too much.

Again and again when workers try to form a union they are up against these tactics. Management repeatedly calls meetings where they give professionally-crafted propaganda speeches about all the terrible things that will happen if workers vote for a union. If a worker has the courage to stand up and talk about the good reasons for a union, they are excluded from future meetings and isolated from the other workers. (This is when a company stays legal and doesn’t just fire people who favor a union – not an uncommon tactic and it takes years for the company to be penalized for illegal firings, if it ever is.) In these situations management completely controls the message and keeps workers from hearing the other side.

Typical Here, Outrageous There

This all sounds normal to American workers, because this is what American companies do. This is what workers regularly face when they try to organize to make their workplace better and safer and get things like sick pay, decent wages and some benefits. We have sort of become used to this kind of treatment here. In America we have gone from 30% to 7% union membership because companies are allowed to fight unions, and routinely do things like this.

But T-Mobile is wholly owned by a German company. Germany respects workers rights and German workers would be absolutely shocked if they understood that a German company was doing this to workers. They would be shocked to even see a company try to stop a union – why would a good company want to?

Will American Anti-Labor Policies Infect Europe?

So here is the question for European working people to ask. Will Europe let the US be their China? American companies learned to use China as a weapon against workers here. Will European companies bring American anti-labor practices home as a weapon to break down European worker rights and living standards?

Will European companies learn to use American anti-labor practices against European workers? Or will European workers stop this in time? If you think this sort of thing can’t happen in Europe, just look at what is happening to Greek workers right now.

US workers are threatened with having to do things like China does them in order to compete. Will German workers be threatened and told things have to be like the US? Will they tell that German public that their policies need to be more “Business friendly?”

So this is a warning to European working people. Pay attention to what your companies are doing in the US. You really don’t want them learning to operate the way a lot of US companies operate, or your own wages, benefits and even your jobs could be on the line – like ours are here.

In Oakland peaceful #Occupy demonstrators were camping out in front of city hall. The city launched a police raid to clear out the camp, using tear gas, flash-bank grenades, rubber bullets and beating people with batons. An Iraq war vet was hit in the head by either a rubber bullet or tear gas canister and critically injured. These days this is the typical government response to non-Tea-Party “protesters.” Let’s look at how the Occupiers and protests would be treated if we were a functioning democracy — a government of by and for We, the People — instead of a dysfunctional plutocracy serving the biggest corporations and the billionaires behind them.

Citizens?

The first thing to understand about every single person involved in the #occupy movement is that they are citizens and human beings. Even the ones with beards. Alas, even the drummers. (What do you call a drummer who breaks up with his girlfriend? Homeless. What do you call a drummer with half a brain? Gifted.)

The people involved in the #occupy movement are upset that our country has abandoned democracy in favor of plutocracy. They are upset that every decision made in Washington is based on the wishes of the top 1%. They are upset that we do not have a reasonable health care system, no reasonable pension system, or child care system, or other benefits that people in democracies around the world receive. They are upset that most of the benefits of our economy instead go to a very few at the top. They are upset that a huge amount of our money goes to pay for a military machines that costs more than all other countries spend on military combined. They are upset that there is a “Super Committee” meeting in secret to decide how much money to take out of the economy to pay for the bailouts and other costs of the fiasco caused by Wall Street and the big banks.

So with their government ignoring their majority demands they have finally decided to voice their protests publicly. For doing this they have been met with smears, derision, and police attacks.

Police Ordered To Attack

Just as in countries like Syria, Egypt, Libya and Iran, the instinctive response of our plutocratic government and Wall Street-backed power structures has been to see those people who have shown up at these protests as somehow suspect, possibly even as an enemy, and to attack them. FOX News and the entire corporate/conservative media machine regularly attacks them. And the police are ordered to attack them.

This is not “protesters vs police.” People who work in law enforcement are part of the 99%, just like us. They have families to feed, bills to pay, and have to do what they’re told.

Source: http://twitpic.com/6s2g4a

And this is what they were ordered to do, to people who were exercising their legitimate rights:

American citizens were treated as criminals and attacked just for speaking out about the injustice of Wall Street getting a huge bailout after they caused this mess, and now the rest of us are told to sacrifice to pay for it.

John Stewart on The Daily Show reacts to the Oakland attack:

If We Were A Democracy Instead Of A Plutocracy

The occupy movement clashes with federal, state and local governments the way they currently work. We really have an opportunity here to come back to an understanding of democracy and the role of government, and who government should serve. Currently government is really set up to serve the top few, and facilitate bigger businesses, and understands the people in their communities as consumers and corporate employees, and not as citizens.

So imagine how it cold be different, if we had a government designed to serve the people rather than keep them in their place. In a country with a true democratic culture the local governments would be serving these people and honoring their right to dissent and protest. They would instinctively be showing up at protests like this and offering to help with any sanitation problems, etc, setting up public toilets, and other services. They would even be offering tents. If there are security problems in the occupy camps a city would be posting police in the encampment to help the people there, with a clear mission to serve them. They certainly would not be seeing them as the enemy, and attacking them.

Imagine Real Democracy and its Implications

The #occupy movement opens up the space to imagine what the country could be if we really did have a democracy with a first instinct of serving the people, instead of serving only the wealthy and their big corporations.

Imagine a government of, by and for the people and the things that regular people want and need. Imagine everyone entitled to a free education through college? Imagine a transportation system that helps us all get around — mass transit and high-speed rail systems instead of just roads and highways for those who can afford cars, with plutocratic pay lanes so those with more money can get around.

Imagine a people outraged at special passes through airport security for those with first-class tickets.

Imagine advertisers having to get people’s permission before they are allowed to interrupt their attention. Imagine the things we would have if We, the People were in charge.

Imagine a modern, maintained infrastructure, good schools, and a guarantee of a job working on those for any9one who needed work.

Imagine a government that enforced laws even when the top few violated them, enforced job discrimination laws, enforced anti-trust laws… or a government that protected citizens from corporate fraud, fees, scams, etc.

Occupiers Are People Too

These occupiers are “the people’ just as much as any other people in the community and government should exist to serve them just as much as any other group.

Alas, even the drummers.

Each morning, Bill Scher and Terrance Heath serve up what progressives need to effect change on the kitchen-table issues families face: jobs, health care, green energy, financial reform, affordable education and retirement security.

MORNING MESSAGE: Plutocracy With A Philanthropic Face

OurFuture.org’s Sam Pizzigati: “Koch-like plutocrats slide in and out of the shadows, bankrolling our society’s most reactionary and repulsive politicos, all the while railing against unions and taxes and government regulation. But plutocrats today don’t all spout crude libertarian bromides or even play footsie, as the Kochs have, with sloganeering from our segregationist past … These more enlightened plutocrats seem to obsess over philanthropy, not profits. They do their sliding in and out of foundation board rooms, pledging their support, at one high-minded symposium after another, for initiatives sure to bring ‘efficiency’ and ‘innovation’ to our society’s most pressing problems … What will this plutocracy really do, for — and to — us? We have one clue from the ongoing high-stakes battle over reforming America’s public schools.”

American Jobs Act To Be Sent To Congress Today

President to formally send American Jobs Act to Congress today. W. Post: “Obama will appear in the Rose Garden on Monday to call on Congress to approve the bill … Obama will tour a school in Columbus, Ohio, on Tuesday to highlight the bill’s aid package to help communities hire teachers and rehabilitate aging school buildings. He’ll follow that with a trip to the Raleigh-Durham area in North Carolina on Wednesday…”

GOP caucus split on strategy for responding to President. Politico: “…despite public declarations about finding common ground with Obama, some Republicans are privately grumbling that their leaders are being too accommodating with the president … many Republicans are still placing their electoral bets on the public placing ownership of the economy squarely on the president in 2012 … But even some of his most conservative colleagues, like tea party freshman Rep. Raul Labrador of Idaho, made the case that they are willing to work for a bipartisan agreement, pointing to former President Bill Clinton as a model.”

Republicans struggle to convince public they actually care about jobs. The Hill: “As House Republicans embark on their fall agenda, they face a steep challenge: working out how a party that doesn’t believe the government should create jobs can best present a job-creation platform.

Wall St. likes American Jobs Act, but doesn’t believe Congress will pass it. The Hill: “[One analyst said] said Wall Street’s reaction to the package was mixed because of concerns that Republicans will block much of it. ‘Most people realize there are some proposals that won’t go anywhere,’ he said and cited the president’s call to spend $140 billion on infrastructure.”

AP suggests tax cuts will pass, infrastructure spending won’t: “…don’t expect Congress to funnel tens of billions of dollars into rebuilding schools and blighted neighborhoods, or helping local governments pay teachers and firefighters, or setting up an ‘infrastructure bank’ to leverage federal loans for roads, water systems and other public works projects.
‘Enough of the stimulus,’ Republican House Majority Leader Eric Cantor said Friday on CNBC …”

Some bipartisan opposition to expanding payroll tax cut. The Hill: “When Obama first pushed to include the proposal in a tax package in December, House liberals said the tax holiday would threaten the Social Security trust fund, which is maintained through the payroll levy. Now that he wants to extend and deepen the tax cut, a number of House Republicans are making the same argument.”

Christian Weller argues that payroll tax cut will address underlying cause of economic weakness, household debt, in TNR: “…the great thing about the payroll tax cut is that it allows us to have our cake and eat it, too. With the effective increase in their incomes, consumers will be able both to save more and spend at a faster rate: Faster income growth will allow families to reduce their debt burden (the ratio of debt to after-tax income) and thus facilitate spending and saving at the same time.”

President Obama has cut taxes more than President Bush in his first term, notes Daily Beast’s Eleanor Clift: “The value of the Bush tax cuts were about $475 billion in those first four years, or about 1.1 percent of GDP . Obama’s total about $1 trillion, or 1.6 percent of GDP . … Unlike the Bush tax cuts, which were served up in a single wallop on April 15, the Obama tax cuts are what economist Jared Bernstein calls ‘slow drip.’ Paychecks fluctuate enough that workers didn’t really notice the boost in take-home pay of roughly $1,000 over the year.”

Corporations Increase Pressure For Deficit Reduction

Corporate leaders press Super Committee to “go big” on deficit reduction. NYT: “A group of at least 57 prominent business executives and former government officials have signed a petition in support of a greater deficit reduction … A higher deficit-reduction goal would increase pressure on both parties to address the two main drivers of projected high debt: the rapid growth of spending for the Medicare and Medicaid programs and an inefficient tax system unable to keep pace.”

Health care providers fear “go big” means bigger cuts for them. Politico: “Health care providers are warning that President Barack Obama’s new jobs plan could actually siphon jobs from one of the few industries still hiring — because the only way to pay for it would be to make deeper cuts in the health care entitlement programs.”

Super Committee members largely reviewing what past commissions proposed. Politico: “While that doesn’t sound terribly ambitious, it does create a pretty familiar road map for the deficit panel: tax code reform, including closing loopholes for special interests and overhauling the big entitlement programs of Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. Other cuts to domestic programs are also under discussion, though the Defense Department is fighting deep cuts to military programs. Indeed, many old ideas seem to have fresh legs…”

Super Committee member eyes higher capital gains tax. W. Post: “‘This is something that should be on the table,’ said Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) … ‘There’s no strong economic rationale for the huge gap that exists now between the rate for wages and the rate for capital gains.’ Advocates for a low capital gains rate say it spurs more investment in the U.S. economy, benefiting all Americans. But some tax experts say the evidence for that theory is murky at best. What is clear is that the capital gains tax rate disproportionately benefits the ultra-wealthy.”

Perry Tries Fixing Anti-Social Security Position

Presidential candidate Rick Perry tries to recalibrate anti-Social Security position in USA Today oped: “We must have the guts to talk about its financial condition if we are to fix Social Security and make it financially viable for generations to come.”

USA Today edit board doesn’t buy it: “…Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s views on Social Security [are] both curious and troubling … he reiterated his view that the program is a ‘Ponzi scheme’ and ‘monstrous lie.’ In previous appearances and in his writings, Perry … has also called Social Security a failure and suggested it runs contrary to important constitutional principles. A Ponzi scheme? A failure? A lie? Really?”

Bloomberg reviews Perry’s cruel cuts to education in Texas: “At San Antonio’s McCollum High School, budget cuts pushed through by Texas Governor Rick Perry this year meant no money for a tutoring program that helped teenagers in one of the state’s poorest districts keep up … some say [Texas' job] gains have come from a low-tax environment that has strained the state’s educational system.”

You have probably been hearing about “the debt crisis.” I can’t open a newspaper or turn on the radio or TV without hearing about “the debt crisis.” Well stop calling it that, because that isn’t what is going on. There is no debt crisis; the only crisis going on is the threat of several members of the House to vote against raising the debt ceiling if they don’t get what their way, thereby sending our country into default. They are trying to get around the rules of democracy and force deep cuts in the things We, the People do for each other while keeping taxes really low for the wealthy.

The Fight

There is a fight going on in Washington over whether we should have a democracy that works for all of us, or a plutocracy that runs things for the benefit of the already-wealthy. Unable to change public opinion, the conservative Republicans are trying to force changes in who our government is for and who gets to have a say in how things are decided. These ideological conservatives say government “takes money out of the economy” by spending on education, infrastructure, health care, etc. for you and me and our small businesses and startups, and they want that money to instead go to the billionaires and large, multinational corporations that fund their campaigns. As you know, they already voted to eliminate Medicare, and voted for cuts in Social Security, education, infrastructure spending, and all the other things We, the People have decided to do for each other, so we know they are serious about this. They say if they can’t have a country that is run their way then we can’t have a country at all.

“Debt Crisis”

The “mainstream media” has decided to name this fight a “debt crisis.” This leads people to think that somehow the country is in crisis over debt, when the crisis is over a few people forcing default if they don’t get their cuts. There is no debt crisis. There is a lot of debt, the result of tax cuts, increases in military spending, wars and giveaways to large corporations that have occurred under the Bushes and Reagan. But the way to solve a problem that resulted from tax cuts and military spending increases is to put taxes back where they were before Reagan, and cut the military back at least to where it was when we were fighting the Soviet Union, even though the Soviet Union is long gone.

Giving In To Hostage-Takers Is A Mistake

Last year these conservatives took the unemployed hostage, refusing to keep unemployment benefits going unless we extended the bush tax cuts for the wealthy. The hostage-taking succeeded.

So, having succeeded at taking hostages, the conservatives then took another, even bigger hostage. They demanded big spending cuts, outside of the normal budget process and decision-making mechanisms of our democracy, or they would “shut down the government.” The hostage-taking succeeded.

So, having succeeded at taking hostages, the conservatives have taken another, even bigger hostage. This one is the big kahuna of hostages. If they refuse to raise the debt limit the country could go into default, destroying our economy and the economy of much of the world.

The official policy of the US government on hostage-taking is as follows:

“Based upon past experience, the U.S. Government concluded that making concessions that benefit hostage takers in exchange for the release of hostages increased the danger that others will be taken hostage. U.S. Government policy is, therefore, to deny hostage takers the benefits of ransom, prisoner releases, policy changes, or other acts of concession.”

It says that past experience has shown that giving in to hostage-takers “increased the danger that others will be taken.” We gave in to hostage-takers, and the result was that more and bigger hostages have been taken. During these “negotiations” every single time Democrats have agreed to their demands it has resulted in their asking for even more.

It was a mistake to give in then, and it would be a mistake to let them get anything from taking hostages this time. If they get rewarded again next time is guaranteed to be even worse.

Looking for a lesson in the goings-on in D.C. these days? Here’s one: The more our nation’s wealth concentrates, the more our democratic give-and-take becomes all take — by the rich.

Once upon a time in America, back a century ago, our nation’s rich paid virtually nothing in taxes to the federal government. And that same federal government did virtually nothing to better the lives of average Americans.

But those average Americans would do battle, over the next half century, to rein in the rich and the corporations that made them ever richer. And that struggle would prove remarkably successful. By the 1950s, America’s rich and the corporations they ran were paying significant chunks of their annual incomes in taxes — and the federal projects and programs these taxes helped finance were actually improving average American lives.

America’s wealthy, predictably, counterattacked — and, by the 1980s, they were scoring successes of their own.

Today, the rich and their corporations no longer bear anything close to their rightful share of the nation’s tax burden. The federal government, given this revenue shortfall, is having a harder and harder time funding initiatives that help average working families. The result: a “debt crisis.”

This “debt crisis” in no way had to happen. No natural disaster, no tsunami, has suddenly pounded the United States out of fiscal balance. We have simply suffered a colossal political failure. Our powers that be, by feeding the rich and their corporations one massive tax break after another, have thrown a monstrous monkey wrench into our national finances.

Some numbers — from an Institute for Policy Studies report released this past spring — can help us better visualize just how monumental this political failure has been.

If corporations and households taking in $1 million or more in income each year were now paying taxes at the same annual rates as they did back in 1961, the IPS researchers found, the federal treasury would be collecting an additional $716 billion a year.

In other words, if the federal government started taxing the wealthy and their corporations at the same rates in effect a half-century ago, the federal debt to investors would almost totally vanish over the next decade.

Similarly stunning numbers have come, earlier this month, from MIT economist Peter Diamond and the University of California’s Emmanuel Saez, the world’s top authority on the incomes of the ultra-rich. These two scholars have shared some fascinating “what ifs” that dramatize how spectacularly the incomes of our wealthiest have soared over recent decades.

In 2007, Diamond and Saez point out, taxpayers in the nation’s top 1 percent actually paid, on average, 22.4 percent of their incomes in federal taxes. If  that actual tax burden were to about double to 43.5 percent, the top 1 percenter share of our national after-tax income would still be twice as high as the top 1 percent’s after-tax income share in 1970.

So why aren’t we taxing the rich? Why are we now suffering such fearsome “debt crisis” angst? Why are our politicos so intent on shoving the “fiscal discipline” of layoffs and cutbacks — austerity — down the throats of average Americans?

No mystery here. Our political system is failing to tax the rich because the rich have fortunes large enough to buy off the political system. Again, some numbers can help us better visualize that plutocratic big picture.

In 2008, the IRS revealed this past May, 400 Americans reported at least $110 million in income on their federal tax returns. These 400 averaged $270.5 million each, the second-highest U.S. top 400 average income on record.

In 1955, by contrast, America’s top 400 averaged — in 2008 dollars — a mere $13.3 million. In other words, the top 400 in 2008 reported incomes that, after taking inflation into account, amounted to more than 20 times the incomes of America’s top 400 a half-century ago.

But 1955’s top 400 didn’t just make far less than 2008’s top 400. The rich in 1955 paid far more of their income in taxes than today’s rich. In 2008, the new IRS data show, the top 400 paid only 18.1 percent of their total incomes in federal income tax. The top 400 in 1955 paid 51.2 percent of their total incomes in tax.

The bottom line: After taxes, and after adjusting for inflation, 2008’s top 400 had a staggering $38.5 billion more left in their pockets than 1955’s most awesomely affluent.

Multiply that near $40 billion by the annual tax savings the rest of America’s richest 1 percent have enjoyed over recent years and you have an enormous war chest for waging class war, billions upon billions of dollars available for bankrolling think tanks and candidates and right-wing media.

In the face of these billions, should the rest of us, America’s vast non-rich majority, just toss in the towel? Our counterparts a century ago certainly didn’t. They challenged their rich, on every battlefront imaginable. They eventually prevailed. They sheared their rich down to democratic size.

We can do the same.

Sam Pizzigati edits Too Much, the Institute for Policy Studies weekly newsletter on excess and inequality. To keep updated on the growing pushback against that inequality, sign up to receive Too Much in your email inbox and check Inequality.Org for more background on the groups working to narrow the economic gaps that divide us.