A rhetorical question

 Earlier this month, NPR asked "Is American Democracy Sliding Toward Minority Rule?" I'm guessing that was a rhetorical question. As the late John Prine sang, "a question ain't really a question if you know the answer too."

I think the short answer is, we always have been (the same can be said of any class society)...but things are getting worse. For starters, as Princeton researchers reported years ago, with growing inequality and the power of money (not to mention Citizens United), the US is more an oligarchy than a democracy.

However, the NPR story was more about politics as usual than political economy. The Constitution mandates that each state be represented by two senators, no matter how small,  although it was adopted prior to the formation of formal political parties. 

Today, that means that while the Senate is evenly divided by party, Democratic senators represent 41.5 million more Americans than their Republican counterparts. If these trends continue, by 2040, 70 percent of Americans will be represented by 30 percent of senators and vice versa. 

(Then there's the whole thing about places like the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico being denied statehood and representation...and I'm not even going to mention the electoral college.)

Add to that the fact that with the filibuster, 40 percent counts for more than 60 percent. Add the numbers above and it's clear we have a problem that's only going to get worse in times to come.

Something has to give.

The boot or the face?

For some reason, “1984,” George Orwell’s book about a nightmarish society, has had a revival in the Trump era.

Maybe it’s the weather.

The New York Times reported it was top of Amazon’s list in early 2017. Around the same time, Penguin USA reported a 9,500 percent increase in sales over a few days. It’s a hot item nearly 70 years since its publication.

It’s probably a good thing that more people have been reading it. It’s probably a bad thing that people felt like they had to.

A haunting line from the book that has stuck in my mind: “If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face — forever.”

Some days I think that might not be too far off — unless we act to prevent it. There are dangerous trends that, if unaddressed, point towards a disastrous future.

The top two are economic inequality and climate change.

Let’s start with inequality, which is reaching record levels and is likely to worsen, since returns from wealth grow much faster than productivity or wages. This doesn’t just impact life chances; it affects the length and quality of life itself.

Research shows that one’s relative position within society has a huge impact on health and longevity. People in higher social positions tend to live longer and be healthier than those below them — even if you control for behavioral factors such as smoking, exercise, obesity and diet.

Studies by British epidemiologist Michael Marmot suggest that the key ingredients to longevity and health are a sense of control over one’s life and the ability to fully participate in society. These diminish as we move down the ladder.

According to Marmot, “It is inequality in these that plays a big part in producing the social gradient in health.” The wider the divide, the sharper are the effects.

In “The Spirit Level: Why More Equal Societies Almost Always Do Better,” epidemiologists Richard G. Wilkinson and Kate E. Pickett expand on these themes. Using international data, they found that high degrees of inequality have negative effects not just on mental and physical health, but also on things like substance abuse and addiction, education, incarceration, obesity, social mobility, violence, social trust, teen pregnancies and child well-being.

While social problems pile up at the bottom, “The effects of inequality are not confined to the poor. A growing body of research shows that inequality damages the social fabric of the whole society.”

Harvard researcher Ichiro Kawachi has described inequality as a “social pollutant.”

The concentration of wealth makes it easier for the very wealthy to buy political influence and further stack the deck, endangering democracy. One person/one vote is turning into one dollar/one vote. It’s a self-perpetuating cycle, with the state, including its means of repression, effectively being captured and controlled by economic elites.

Overheated economic systems are also prone to catastrophic recessions and depressions, which have devastating impacts on communities, as we saw during the most recent recession.

Widespread inequality increases social tensions around the world, and the frustration it causes is a fertile breeding ground for toxic political movements, hate groups, religious extremism, armed conflict, racism and scapegoating vulnerable people. Movements such as these feed on the pain but ultimately will fail to cure it.

In the worst case, authoritarian political movements can gain political power and use it to advance the interests of elites while repressing popular resistance. It’s happened before and the results weren’t pretty.

Unfortunately, the same inequality of economic and political power is also being used to block meaningful action on climate change, since those who profit from a fossil fuel economy prefer short-term profit to long-term sustainability.

The playbook is pretty obvious: use wealth and political clout to delay action on climate until it’s too late, then say it was going to happen anyway.

Meanwhile its effects include things like extreme weather events, heating oceans, melting glaciers, rising sea levels, extinctions, crop failures, health impacts, damaged habitats, invasive species, mass displacement and migration, conflict over scarce resources, water contamination, desertification, epidemics, collapsing fisheries, droughts and floods and a host of other unpleasantries that will affect everyone but hit poorer communities hardest.

And that fun is only beginning.

If this keeps up, things don’t look good for the human face. The smart money will be on the boot.

I’m not sure what it will take to keep that from happening, but it probably won’t be business as usual.

In 1933, the great German Christian theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer pondered what a just response from people of faith would be required to deal with the evils of his time, particularly the persecution of the Jews.

He came up with three possibilities.

One was to “ask the state whether its actions are legitimate and in accordance with its character as state, i.e. it can throw the state back on its responsibilities.” That’s worth a shot, even though it hasn’t worked too well lately.

Another option was to “aid the victims of state action,” since “the church has an unconditional obligation to the victims of any ordering of society ...” That’s always in order, even if it doesn’t solve the problem.

The third option was a bit edgier: it was “not just to bandage the victims under the wheel, but to jam a spoke in the wheel itself.”

Just a thought.

(This appeared in today's Gazette-Mail.)

Leftovers

Well, the legislative session is finally over. Some bad stuff happened. We didn't get all we wanted and got a good bit of what we didn't. On the other hand, we had a huge successful nonviolent uprising. I guess you can't have everything.

Speaking of which, we discussed the lessons of the teachers' strike on the latest edition of The Front Porch. It's great to watch the ripples spread out around the country.

I had trouble getting published in the Gazette this year, with only one op-ed on the dangers of oligarchy getting printed.

Here's the last edition of Wonk's World, which we produced on the day before the session ended.

Speaking of the Gazette, we got the good news that the paper was bought by HD Media, a non-evil locally owned newspaper group. For a long while it looked like it would be bought by Ogden, which seems to specialize in producing not-too-readable reactionary stuff. That would have been for WV what Bedford Falls would have been if Mr. Potter took over in the movie It's a Wonderful Life.

Last word (for now) goes to Gazette-Mail political columnist Phil Kabler (who just dodged a likely bullet, as the above paragraph explains), who summed up the session pretty well here.

The verdict

Sorry about the slow posts. Aside from running around, I was without phone and internet for a good chunk of last week, which was very frustrating. The big news, obviously, was the Don Blankenship verdict. Short version: guilty on conspiracy to evade mine safety laws, not guilty on charges related to corporate reporting and the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Here's my thought: how (fill in the blank)-ed up is it that the maximum sentence he could face for helping to bring about the needless deaths of 29 miners is one year, whereas the sentences for misleading investors carried a penalty of decades? OK, so that was a rhetorical question.

I mean, golly, one might almost think that the interests of the wealthy and powerful count for more than those of working people in this country.

Still the fact that a corporate boss got any penalty (or even inconvenience) at all for causing the deaths of workers is a big deal, so I'll try to focus on the positive.

Anyway, the story is all over the web. I think WV Public Broadcasting did a good job on Inside Appalachia and Ken Ward at Coal Tattoo had this to say after following this developing story for years.

Oligarchy 2, Democracy 0

As if there weren't enough downers out there these days, here are two more. The first looks at the power of corporate lobbyists in Washington (pretty much total), while the second looks at the Koch brothers grand design for the elections of 2016.

It's a pretty disgusting state of affairs.

Two for the road

 This explains a lot: a Princeton study suggests that the USA is no longer a democracy but rather an oligarchy, as in rule by the wealthy few. To some that might be a radical assertion; to others, it is stating the obvious. I tend to fall into the latter camp.

And then here are the post-election reflections of my friend Ken Ward at Coal Tattoo.

Cheers!

A scary business

I mentioned earlier that I just got around to reading Laurence Leamer's The Price of Justice: A True Story of Greed and Corruption, about WV's adventures in Masseyland. Here's a paragraph that jumped at me:

Blankenship and his cohorts made it a scary business to live in West Virginia and dare to suggest that the state could no longer be so dependent on coal for economic growth. Not a single major politician in the state directly faced the realities of a declining coal industry and a future in which, if the state's leaders did not wake up, the historic coal fields would be nothing but wastelands of the lost and the left behind. Politicians knew if they offered even the mildest criticism, the coal industry would immediately vilify them as traitors and look for ambitious candidates to challenge them. There would be no easy solutions and no technical magic wand that could place mini-Silicon Valleys, for instance, up mountain hollows--but no one was asking the questions that had to be asked.

I would say there there were some exceptions, such as Senator Byrd in his last years or Senator Rockefeller as he approaches retirement. There are even some state legislators who want to move in a post-colonial direction. But overall the paragraph stands.

HERE'S A SURPRISE. The rich rule.

ON THE BRIGHT SIDE, nonviolence trumps violence when it comes to making revolutions.

SPEAKING OF VIOLENCE, this item argues that climate change is just that.

DOING THE NUMBERS. Here's a look at health care reform enrollment.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Occupying the courts

Last Friday marked the second anniversary of the Citizens United Supreme Court decision, which gave corporations even more power than they had before to corrupt democracy.

That day, over 100 people gathered in Charleston, WV, as they did around the country to make a statement that this was not cool.

One of my favorite parts of the event was a bit of street theater in which Uncle Sam tried to teach certain justices the difference between real people and corporations.

All kinds of people showed up.

Of course there were signs. This was one of my favorites.

And there was music, including a song by Little Steven aka Steve van Zandt which I hadn't heard for years. If you recall, Little Steven is part of Bruce's E Street Band and played Silvio Dante on The Sopranos.

A good time was had by all.

Mad Men revisited

Once upon a time, consumer demand in the US was driven in significant part by middle class consumption and the idea of shared affluence.

Goodbye to all that. Rich folks are pulling the train these days, which makes sense since they seem to be sitting on the cookie jar.

Here's a snip from a blog post from Ad Age:

The wake of the global economic recession has shown a spotlight on the yawning divide between the richest Americans and everyone else -- inflation-adjusted incomes of most American workers have remained more or less static since the 1970s, the income of the rich (and the very rich) has grown exponentially. The top 1% alone control nearly 40% of the wealth.

And while the social and political effects of this inequality may be cause for concern, the accrual of wealth among the very few is of great consequence for marketers, since 10% of U.S. households "account for almost half of the consumer spending" and represent about one-third of total GDP, according to the American Affluence Research Council.

Simply put, a small plutocracy of wealthy elites drives a larger and larger share of total consumer spending and has outsize purchasing influence -- particularly in categories such as technology, financial services, travel, automotive, apparel and personal care.

Welcome to the surplus population. There's more on that here.

WHAT HE SAID. Krugman nailed it today on the economy.

WHAT WAS THEIR FIRST CLUE? Ken Ward reports in the Charleston Gazette today that Massey Energy's board was aware that it might have had a tone and image problem.

THIS IS YOUR BRAIN on music.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

The pelting of this pitiless storm

My heart goes out to those who have lost loved ones, homes, pets, and everything else during the recent storm that hit the south. I think we're entering a period of extreme weather events and we have narrowly dodged some meteorological bullets here at Goat Rope Farm.

Another storm that is smashing the country is the one that is battering away at protections for workers, low income people, children and the elderly. The latest pro-corporate US Supreme Court decision is another step on the road to oligarchy. Actually, we're pretty much already there but there are degrees. But it's going to get worse and it's hitting from all directions.

I've used these lines from King Lear before here, but they seem especially appropriate now:

Poor naked wretches, whereso'er you are,
That bide the pelting of this pitiless storm,
How shall your houseless heads and unfed sides,
Your loop'd and window'd raggedness, defend you
From seasons such as these? O, I have ta'en
Too little care of this! Take physic, pomp;
Expose thyself to feel what wretches feel,
That thou mayst shake the superflux to them,
And show the heavens more just.

CIRCLE OF PROTECTION. A number of religious leaders from many faith traditions are calling on Congress and the administration to protect the poor and vulnerable in budget decisions.

HELLO plutocracy.

DONALD TRUMP. Where do you start with that one? Not only is he trash talking the president in a way that strikes many as racist, but he fired my main man Gary Busey.

GOAT ROPE ADVISOR LEVEL: ELEVATED

Bad apples and bad ideas

An interesting survey of public opinion on education found that most Americans--68 percent--bear a heavy share of the blame for problems in the nation's public school system. Only 35 percent set a great deal of blame on teachers.

That's quite a different perspective than one finds in recent efforts to promote education reform, including those coming from the Obama administration, where a "if we purge teachers, things will improve" mentality seems to prevail. Some reform initiatives from the administration encourage firing of teachers in poorly performing schools, without taking into account all the other factors involved.

Nobody I know, including people represented by teachers' unions and those who work for them, denies that there are some bad teachers out there. But problem teachers should be dealt with on a case by case basis, not by blanket purges that punish the competent along with the incompetent.

The blame-teachers-first mentality seems to view teachers as the sole or primary cause of poorly performing schools. But as I've said here before, to establish causality, one needs three things, two of which are easy and one of which is hard. First, the cause and effect need to be associated (teachers and schools, in this case). Second, the cause must come before the effect (the teachers were there before the kids were). Third--and this is the kicker--you need to be able to rule out other factors. And here is where that train derails.

There are all kinds of factors affecting poorly performing schools and students, including poverty, family, nutrition, health, community issues, distance from school and enrichment activities, parental and community involvement, etc.

A friend of mine, the Rev. Matthew Watts, actually did the math and calculated that from a child is born until he or she reaches age 19, only 9 percent of the time will have been spent in school. The other 91 percent is spent in the home or in the community. To really address these issues, we need to look at the other 91 percent as well.

MORE ON ALL THAT here.

KLEPTOCRACY lives. And more from Krugman here.

A DOWN PAYMENT ON HEALTH CARE REFORM. West Virginia is launching a new pilot program to provide low cost primary care to the uninsured.

VIRAL CAT VIDEO DEPARTMENT. By way of Youtube, patty cake will never be the same.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED