[quote=KSMountain] …It’s not clear to me though that our system is rigged, and that there is no mechanism for redress. Yes there are some hedge fund guys that are getting a better tax deal than the rest of us – that loophole could be closed……Nevertheless, I suppose Allan could be right and folks could “feel” disempowered and justified in protest. Seems though that there needs to be a large basis in truth before there is enough widespread support to reach a tipping point…….A few folks trying to get out of having to repay their student loans ain’t gonna do it.[/quote]
KSM, if you truly believe that your reference to “some hedge fund guys that are getting a better tax deal” reflects the extent to which the system’s been “rigged” (for lack of a better term), you need to open your eyes. It is rumored that professional lobbying firms in Washington outnumber the population of the District of Columbia. I don’t know about you, but I’ve had to cut lobbying expenses from my family’s budget.
The wealthy and powerful in this country know enough not to make the same mistakes as have been made elsewhere. They’re more subtle. Instead, they’ve been very busy using the courts to systematically strip ordinary citizens of essential rights. They have been aided in this effort by citizen-elected holders of public office who have been wonderfully cooperative in stacking the courts with sympathetic jurists, and by the media, whose executives make deliberate decisions to withhold news coverage on “sensitive topics”.
For instance, the noble-sounding “tort reform” was a “movement” conceived and paid for by malpractice insurance companies: they are the *only* ones that benefit. Neither health care costs or malpractice premiums have decreased as a result (in fact, they’ve risen); even worse is that incompetent and impaired practitioners are free to continue inflicting harm on patients. The fact is, much of the so-called tort reform that has been passed severely curtails the rights of citizens to seek any form of redress through courts that were originally set up to ensure those rights.
The doors that offer the average citizen accessibility to the justice system are being irreversibly blocked off, one by one. “Arbitration” is another of those words that sounds eminently reasonable: the dispute between you and a corporation is hashed out, not in court, but before an uninvolved third party intermediary; the decision is final, and binding on both parties. More much-needed reform? Corporations can now intentionally deceive you, and you will have no other form of redress than arbitration. Who selects the arbitrator? One guess.
Think this doesn’t affect you? Look at your credit card/lending agreements, car rental contracts, product warranties, insurance policy binders – virtually everything you purchase, every contract you enter into, lists arbitration as the sole form of dispute management. You hand over your credit card or cash, and voluntary surrender your constitutional rights in one convenient transaction. Now THAT’S business innovation!
In the Appalachians of West Virginia, working families earning less than $20,000/year are living on land that’s been in their families for generations. Heavily dependent upon local natural resources, they’re finding that the once-clear water rivers are filling up with sludge, flash-flooding is on the rise, and the decreasing numbers of game animals are undernourished and diseased. This evidence of serious deterioration and environmental decline is due to another “innovation” of today’s corporate “job creators”: “mountaintop removal” of coal. Another innocuous-sounding description by great PR masterminds of a safe, clean, technologically-advanced methodology for coal mining. In reality, gigantic corporations like Massey Energy opted, instead, for instant gratification: the awe-inspiring CEO skills and intellect of Don Blankenship are clearly visible in his interpretation of “research” and “innovation” as union-busting and blowing the tops off ancient mountains.
Horrifying as this sounds (picture someone using explosives to lop the peaks off the Sierra Nevada range), the exponential environmental effects are worse. The Appalachian biosystem, aeons in the making, is – poof! –gone overnight. And the likelihood that these corporations are being responsible about the disposal of the mining byproducts would depend on your interpretation of “responsible”. The methodology routinely used consists of stripping the land of all plant/animal life, removing/storing the topsoil, using the cheapest explosive to remove the rock/ expose the coal seams. The topsoil and “waste” is supposed to be used in the “reclamation” of the mountain; in reality, it is dumped indiscriminately, where it almost always buries numerous mountain streams. However, even indiscriminate dumping was considered to be too much of a pain in the ass, an opinion apparently shared by the compassionate folk of the Bush administration, who, in 2008, eased the rules to allow Massey and others to dump mining waste directly into West Virginia’s rivers. However, let it be clearly stated that contamination of West Virginia’s environment, and destruction of its beautiful mountain ranges is a bipartisan group effort, with Democratic and Republican state and U.S. representatives and Senators, and state and Federal judges all eager to carry out the mission of Massey Energy and other mining corporations.
To date, over 1.5 million acres of Appalachian mountaintop forests have been mined in this fashion. Keep in mind that degradation of the Appalachian watershed affects those in many states; communities 1000 miles from these minesites will be negatively affected on a major scale as a result of MTR. Proponents repeatedly refer to the jobs provided by MTR mining, while stressing the “reclamation” aspects. In reality, “reclamation” amounts to the landscaping that a contractor performs upon completion of a housing development: fill, sod, a few half-dead 8-foot trees. No action is required to remediate the collateral environmental damage. As for the jobs, in 2003 there were 25,000 miner jobs, compared with 38,000 in 1993, and 65,000 in 1983. And due to Massey’s “innovative” union-busting tactics in the 80s, those remaining jobs were paid at a much lower scale to miners working longer hours in unsafe conditions (no unions = no pesky gov regulations).
This, and the other two examples, are but a very few illustrations of the dangerous shift in our nation’s power equilibrium. Wealthy and powerful individuals and corporations aren’t brilliant and innovative business executives, or benevolent job creators hog-tied by government regulation. The vast majority either inherited their wealth, or fast-talked their way into the “CEO Secret Society” and their game of Musical CEO/Board of Directors Chairs. With very few exceptions, I haven’t seen anything approaching creativity or innovation, or even competent management or leadership, from a corporation in decades. Any evidence of “success” is actually due to economic trends or to marketing; when those fail, profits tend to come out of the hides of employees and customers.
Over the past 25 years, there has been an increasing acceptance of law-breaking as business strategy. Worse yet is that this “strategy” appears to have been adopted as a competitive sport in the business world. Many of those pointed out as corporate leaders or “job creators” are, in fact, benefitting from conditions that create mental, physical, and economic hardship for many others. The beneficiaries aren’t successful by “pulling themselves up by their bootstraps” or through hard work and ingenuity or self-sacrifice. They’re achieving even more power, and acquiring even more wealth, by breaking the law (often with the full or tacit cooperation of those charged with making, interpreting, or enforcing the law). And they’re not doing it by creating jobs that allow workers a chance to work with pride, and earn a living wage in safe conditions livelihoods. Instead they are using the courts of the land to exploit their workers and customers, and keep them from claiming their rights under the law. And it’s this systematic reshaping and abuse of the justice system that represents the gravest threat to our way of life.
KSM, you need to go back in the history books to a time long before the Civil Rights Movement. The late 19th century was a time during which a very few individuals held virtually all of the wealth and power. For most of them, it was never enough. While maintaining a sympathetic public facade, they maintained employees whose jobs consisted of finding and enforcing ways to increase a worker’s utter dependence upon his or her job. While many today promote a hazy nostalgic vision of the benevolent factory or mine owner taking care of his workers, and church-based groups taking in the less-fortunate, the actual picture was horrifying. The hungry starved, orphaned children went homeless, the sick suffered and died, and many workers (including 5 and 6 year-old children) worked 65+ hours per week under horrendous conditions. They had no recourse: the rich owned the politicians, the courts, and the media of the day. The formation of unions was due to a growing sense of desperation resulting from hunger, fear, humiliation, and physical and emotional pain. It wasn’t an overnight occurrence; it took several decades and many lives. But prior to that, there was no such thing as a level playing field.
Admittedly, there are many today who have unrealistic expectations, but this condition is evenly distributed in the U.S. today, across age, gender, economic level, and political affiliation lines. The fact is, fear and desperation are increasing, and may result in forcing change, just as they did a century ago. Everyday citizens like myself are disgusted that the entities who rashly decided to play blackjack with the world’s economy, appear unbowed and unchastened. Instead, with impunity and arrogance, they continue to gamble with the world’s future, one jackbooted foot on our collective necks, attempting to elicit those last drops of sweat and blood. And our legislators are either too uneducated in the basics of economics and finance to understand WTF’s going on, or they’re too morally bankrupt to care. When I think of the sacrifices made by Americans who came before me – those who suffered pain and deprivation, who fought wars and shed blood and endured all forms of hardship – to ensure that there would be an America for future generations, I, too, want to find a way to get rid of the soulless bastards in Washington and on Wall Street who would risk what rightfully belongs to all of us on a throw of the dice.
