[PEN-L:542] Communist Free Press?
Maybe some of you PEN-L'ers can address this post from the Society of Professional Journalists List: Am I just confusing the Communist Party of India with Communism as it is actually practiced as a governmental system? It doesn't seem to make sense that a journalist fighting against press censorship would be a communist. A leftist or even socialist, yes, but not communist. I can't think of a communist country today or in the past that had freedom of the press, much less have that freedom written into their equivalent of a Constitution, like the U.S. and other democracies. Am I just ignorant on this? Jason Decker -- ... the left-wing journalist and commentator Nikhil Chakravartty... was in the forefront of the campaign against press censorship... joined the left movement in his youth and later joined the Communist Party of India. Though he ceased to be an active member, he retained his ties with old comrades...He campaigned vigourously for the freedom of the press and autonomy of the government-run electronic media THE PROGRESSIVE POPULIST James M. Cullen, Editor P.O. Box 150517, Austin, Texas 78715-0517 Phone: 512-447-0455 Internet: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Home page: http://www.eden.com/~reporter
Stop Social Security Lies/Progressive Populist 5/98
___ THE PROGRESSIVE POPULIST: A MONTHLY JOURNAL OF THE HEARTLAND May 1998 -- Volume 4, Number 5 ___ EDITORIAL Stop Social Security Lies Mark Twain said "A lie can travel half-way around the world while the truth is still putting its shoes on." And the prophets of doom for Social Security have a few years' head start. To hear the alarmists tell it, Social Security will run out of money when the Boomers cash in during the 2020s, leaving nothing for those workers who are now under 40. This Social Security scare at best is misleading; we don't think it is stretching to call it a lie. According to the projections of doom, Social Security revenues will be flush through the year 2018. Then, as the Boomers start to retire, the fund will start drawing itself down until 2029, when, according to the doomsayers, the fund will be unable to pay its obligations. These pessimistic projections have been uncritically embraced by most of the nation's corporate press. They are responsible for the widespread belief by younger workers that they will never collect on Social Security. Wall Street sees the opportunities in the Social Security Scare. It is stampeding the policymakers in Washington toward some sort of privatization scheme that would replace the Social Security annuity with private investment plans that would mainly enrich stockbrokers and investment bankers who would skim billions from the cash flow into the stock market. Republicans have been pressing to dismantle Social Security ever since it was implemented in the 1930s. Now with the widespread disinformation about Social Security's fiscal prospects they have gained support from centrist Democrats such as Senator Daniel P. Moynihan of New York, who recently proposed to cut the Social Security payroll tax, significantly reduce benefits and embrace the private investment plans. However, while President Clinton has set up a series of town meetings to discuss what should be done to "save" Social Security, Robert Reich, the former Labor Secretary who is a former trustee of the Social Security trust fund, wrote in the May/June issue of The American Prospect that Social Security is not endangered. "I can tell you that the actuary's projection ... is based on the wildly pessimistic assumption that the economy will grow only 1.8 percent annually over the next three decades," Reich wrote. "Crank the economy up just a bit, to a more realistic 2.4 percent a year ... and the fund is flush for the next 75 years. Even if we have several recessions along the way, it's highly doubtful that the economy will grow any slower, on average." Doug Henwood, editor of Left Business Observer and author of Wall Street (Verso) pointed this out in 1995: "Almost no one bothers to investigate the claim of Social Security's coming insolvency ... I did ... and discovered that the projections assume the economy will grow an average of 1.5 percent a year (after inflation) for the next 75 years - half the rate of the previous 75, and matched in only one decade this century, from 1910-20. Even the 1930s, the decade of the Great Depression, saw a faster growth rate." The Twentieth Century Fund, in a recent report, "Social Security: The Real Deal," also noted the low-ball projections but added, "Even without any adjustments to the system and slower economic growth in the future, Social Security would be able to pay 75 percent of projected benefits to retirees. What we are facing is a projected shortfall in thirty years, not an imminent crisis." Economist James K. Galbraith of the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas agrees that Social Security is not "underfunded," but he noted that the current level of funding really is not all that relevant to the condition of the retirement fund in the 2020s. "Tomorrow's Social Security will be paid by tomorrow's workers, out of tomorrow's national product, according to benefit schedules set by law at that time," he wrote. "Those trust funds are just an accounting device, wipe them out and nothing would happen; today's surpluses are just as irrelevant, in economic terms, as tomorrow's deficits. Regressive payroll taxes today buy jet fighters and aircraft carriers. It would not be a bad thing if, twenty years from now, some progressive income taxes were used to pay for pensions." Privatizing Social Security might look appealing when the value of American stocks have increased 30 percent in the past year. However, the privatization advocates are either dishonest or sloppy in their claims that stock market investments will yield an average return of 7 percent over the next 75 years, the same period when the Social Security Trustees are projecting economic growth to average only 1.5 percent. "Privatization advocates cannot have it both ways," the Twentieth
Social Security Rescue
I know Doug Henwood reported in 1995 that the Social Security "collapse" was based on low-balled projections of economic growth during the next 75 years -- an analysis that is still overlooked in nearly all reports on the Social Security "crisis". My question: If Social Security were privatized and everybody bought mutual funds, and the economy still grew at the anemic rate of 1.5 percent that the system's trustees assumed in order to manufacture the crisis, would the stock market grow enough to finance the private pensions? -- Jim Cullen THE PROGRESSIVE POPULIST James M. Cullen, Editor P.O. Box 150517, Austin, Texas 78715-0517 Phone: 512-447-0455 Internet: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Home page: http://www.eden.com/~reporter
Re: Extra Credit Assignment
Michael Pearlman wrote: The web site where I found these lyrics credits Jaime Brockett and Chris Smithers (a couple of 1960's Boston folkies) for the song, so don't blame Leadbelly for the gratuitous anti-Semitism. The Legend of the USS Titanic ORACLE ORS 701 - A Boston 1968 Tape Factory Oracle records It was back around the turn of the centuries, back around nineteen hundred'n thirteen there was a negro pugilist his name was Jack Johnson. Now old Jack Johnson he was the toughest man in the whole wide world he used walk around ... I picked up this info on Leadbelly's "Titanic" from the rec.music.folk newsgroup: "Folk Blues" by Jerry Silverman, has the song "Titanic", credited to Leadbelly, (on p. 149). He notes: "Nineteen hundred and twelve--Blind Lemon Jefferson and myself used to do this...Jack Johnson was a prizefighter at the time. he whipped Jim Jeffries...It's the first number I learned to play on the twelve-string guitar--ninteen-twelve. I could play it on the six but you had to get your twelve and get your mind together..." TITANIC It was midnight on the sea, Band playin' "Nearer My God to Thee" Cryin Fare thee, Titanic fare the well (Repeat each half-verse twice) Titanic when it got its load, Captail hollered, "All aboard: Cryin' Fare thee, Titanic fare thee well. (x2) Jack Johnson want to get on board, Captain said, "I ain't hauling no coal," Cryin' Fare thee, Titanic fare thee well. (x2) Titanic was comin 'round the curve, When she ran in to a big iceberg, Cryin' Fare thee, Titanic fare thee well. (x2) Titanic was sinkin' down, Had lifeboats all around Cryin' Fare thee, Titanic fare thee well. (x2) Had them lifeboats all around, Savin the women and children, lettin' men go down, Cryin' Fare thee, Titanic fare thee well. (x2) Jack Johnson heard the mighty shock Might 'a seen him doin' the Eagle Rock Cryin' Fare thee, Titanic fare thee well. (x2) When the women and children got to land, Crying "Lord have mercy on my man," Cryin' Fare thee, Titanic fare thee well. (x2) THE PROGRESSIVE POPULIST James M. Cullen, Editor P.O. Box 150517, Austin, Texas 78715-0517 Phone: 512-447-0455 Internet: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Home page: http://www.eden.com/~reporter
Radio concentration post-Telecom Dereg
Can anybody on this list steer me to a report on the concentration of radio stations since the Telecom deregulation act of 1996? Thanks, -- Jim Cullen THE PROGRESSIVE POPULIST James M. Cullen, Editor P.O. Box 150517, Austin, Texas 78715-0517 Phone: 512-447-0455 Internet: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Home page: http://www.eden.com/~reporter
Battlefield Conversion? Progressive Populist 3/98
___ THE PROGRESSIVE POPULIST: A monthly journal of the Heartland March 1998 -- Volume 4, Number 3 ___ EDITORIAL Battlefield Conversion? Can the Washington, D.C., elites become any more irrelevant to the lives of the citizens of the United States? Our President has been reduced to a laughingstock by the investigation of his sex life conducted by an Inquisitor working hand-in-glove with right-wing zealots. The House of Representatives is ready to impeach the President if the Inquisitor can provide the Republicans with a pretext. The media zero in on salacious speculation about rumored romps in the White House, then roll their eyes and scoff at Hillary Clinton's complaint that a "right-wing conspiracy" was dedicated to destroying her husband's Presidency. What else would you call the cabal that includes Richard Scaife, the obsessive billionaire who has bankrolled much of the anti-Clinton muckraking (see Craig McGrath's story on page 6); the Rutherford Institute, which is bankrolling Paula Jones' lawsuit; and Rev. Kenneth Starr, who apparently has been working hand-in-glove with the Jones team to set up the President? By the way, Starr is poised to accept a Scaife-financed job teaching law at a seaside university in California whenever he has finished off Clinton. We have been plenty critical of Bill Clinton when he has strayed from the populist themes that got him elected. He has bowed to Wall Street and the bondholders to the detriment of Main Street and the middle-class wage earners whenever push came to shove on economic policy. His administration squandered much of its good faith in his first term with deals to push NAFTA and GATT, and those deals helped move thousands of manufacturing jobs overseas. Now he wants "Fast Track" to pass more "free trade" deals that ignore worker rights, health concerns and even national sovereignty. He also presided over a "reform" of telecommunication law that allowed the further concentration of electronic media in a few hands. He endorsed the gutting of civil liberties in a misguided effort to crack down on potential terrorists, drug dealers and Internet smut peddlers. And his USDA is currently promoting regulations that would allow under the "organic" label bioengineering, toxic sludge, irradiation, antibiotics and non-organic feed for livestock and keeping animals in close confinement. Any of those initiatives could have been brought by a Republican (and sometimes we wish they had been). But in his time of trouble this New Democrat has returned to the people who "brung" him: workers, women, minorities - the old Democrats. In his closely watched State of the Union speech, he returned to populist themes: He proposed to offer Medicare to younger retirees, grant patients a Bill of Rights, subsidize child care for working parents, hire more teachers and increase the minimum wage by $1 over the next two years and use any budget surpluses to shore up Social Security. The public responded by giving Clinton the highest approval ratings of his Presidency, making it risky for the GOP to pursue impeachment hearings based on accusations that emerge from the politically charged Starr Chamber. Clinton cut short the GOP's plans for further tax breaks with his plan to "save Social Security first." The Republicans have been scaring the younger generations for years with pessimistic projections about Social Security and Medicare. Now the President is challenging them to do something about it. [Progressive Populist readers will recall that we proposed a Social Security fix in December 1996 that would eliminate the $60,600 ceiling on wages subject to the Social Security tax. We also would exempt the first $15,000 of income for both workers and employers, making the payroll tax more progressive. Low-to-middle-income workers would get a $1,100 annual tax break, as would their employers, while the trust fund would net an additional $24 billion a year from the high-dollar payrolls to help close the projected shortfall.] Clinton's proposed Medicare expansion is the GOP's worst nightmare: another move toward a universal health program. Clinton's new plan would let early retirees from age 55 to 64 buy into the government health plan. The cost - $3,600 to $4,800 a year - would be cheaper than most private insurance plans but more than most unemployed workers could afford. However, insurance for the unemployed - who should still be relatively healthy - could be subsidized and the expansion at least would get people talking about universal health insurance, which would be a step forward. [Note that Joan Retsinas offers a more pessimistic analysis of the proposed Medicare expansion on page 12.] Among those working poor who have lost their health insurance, those who have been dumped into corporate "managed care"
Re: Extra Credit Assignment
I believe there was a blues/gospel song about the sinking of the Titanic. Supposedly Jack Johnson was refused a fare on the Titanic by the owner who said "This ship doesn't haul coal." One important aspect of the Titanic disaster not mentioned in the film or on the list: The White Star Line made a particular point of not hiring any Black workers, even porters or coal stokers, who were common on other steamships. The sinking was celebrated in African-American communities as an act of retribution, probably one of the first examples of what now might been called the "O.J. Simpson phenomenon." _/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/ Michael Pearlman email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] J.R. Masterman School [EMAIL PROTECTED] 17th and Spring Garden Sts.fax: (215) 299-3581 Philadelphia PA 19130phone: (215) 299-3583 (215) 299-3583/299-4661 Money for Schools, not Prisons!Hasta la victoria siempre! _/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/ THE PROGRESSIVE POPULIST James M. Cullen, Editor P.O. Box 150517, Austin, Texas 78715-0517 Phone: 512-447-0455 Internet: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Home page: http://www.eden.com/~reporter
Nightmare on Wall St./Progressive Populist 2/98
___ THE PROGRESSIVE POPULIST: A MONTHLY JOURNAL OF THE HEARTLAND February 1998 -- Volume 4, Number 2 ___ EDITORIAL Nightmare on Wall Street Nothing gives Wall Street the willies like the folks on Main Street paying attention to economic policy. Ordinarily the Wizards of Wall Street like to reserve the high-dollar game of international finance to themselves while mom and pop worry about their penny-ante concerns at home. But several years of watching factories close down and move across the border into Mexico or overseas to East Asia has got mom and dad looking into this global economy and wondering what the heck is going on. The public's concern over global trade helped derail "Fast Track" in November. Now a critical eye is being cast on the bailout of the bankers who financed the flight of manufacturing jobs out of the United States over the past decade. There is plenty of cause for suspicion and there is reason to take constructive action. In the early 1990s we heard how the North American Free Trade Agreement was going to open up the Mexican economy. When the deal went down in 1993, the United States had a trade surplus with Mexico of $1.7 billion. Two years of aggressive growth led to a peso in 1995 that devastated Mexico's economy, doubled unemployment and wiped out its middle class. The U.S. trade surplus with Mexico turned into a deficit of $16.2 billion in 1996. The only ones who made any money off that turn of events were the multinational corporations who were prepared to move goods whichever direction they needed to make a profit. And the International Monetary Fund made sure the banks got their money. Since the approval of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, which was supposed to open markets worldwide, we have been hearing how the Asian tigers were the wave of the future. The Dow Jones Average soared along with corporate profits as multinationals moved their manufacturing operations from the United States to East Asia, where they could find plenty of compliant employees working for even less than the Mexicans. The Asian tigers were the wave of the future right up to the time when their economies collapsed in the past few months. Six key U.S. banks were stuck with $19.2 billion in outstanding loans in Indonesia, Thailand, South Korea and the Philippines. The Clinton Administration rushed in to help the IMF arrange more than $120 billion to bail out the overheated East Asian economies. Now Clinton wants Congress to rush through a supplemental appropriation of $18.5 billion for the IMF. The new money is not earmarked for Asia, but it could enable the IMF to carry out similar bailouts in the future. The IMF originally was supposed to help countries bridge temporary balance-of-payments problems, but in the past couple decades the IMF has extended its mandate to compel Third World countries to restructure their economies to produce exports that will earn "hard currency" such as the dollar and allow them to pay off their foreign debts. Some analysts believe the austerity measures imposed on the Asian nations could push the trade gap to $300 billion and cost 1 million American jobs. Rep. Bernie Sanders, the independent from Vermont, has been instrumental in putting together a congressional coalition of the left and the right to oppose the bailouts. "Its amazing to me that at the same time as many in Washington have told us that we have to cut back on Medicare, Medicaid, veterans' programs, affordable housing and children's needs, and that in the near future we may have to cut back on Social Security, that we can move forward with lightning speed to provide some $15 to $20 billion dollars in loans to Indonesia, Thailand, the Philippines and South Korea," he said. Sanders also opposes U.S. taxpayer dollars being used to bail out banks who made bad investments in Asian countries. "Should these banks, which screwed up royally and made very ill-advised loans to Asian concerns who were unable to pay them back, really get 100 cents returned to them on the dollar - despite their bad judgment and unsound business practices? "If you're a family farmer in Vermont, or a small businessperson in California, you can work 70 hours a week, lose money and see your family suffer - and nobody cares. But if you're a profitable, multi-billion dollar bank which pays its CEOs tens of millions a year - and you screw up - it's apparently okay to go running to the taxpayers of this country and ask for a handout. That's not right. That's socialism for the rich and the powerful, and free enterprise for the middle class and the poor." Sanders has particular scorn for the $20 billion earmarked to bail out the notoriously repressive regime in Indonesia. He contends it violates the Sanders-Frank Amendment, which he
Bernie Sanders IMF Bashing
Has anyone on this list seen press reports of the seminar on the IMF that Bernie Sanders and the House Progressive Caucus had this past Thursday on Capitol Hill? If so, can you send me a copy? Thanks, -- Jim Cullen THE PROGRESSIVE POPULIST James M. Cullen, Editor P.O. Box 150517, Austin, Texas 78715-0517 Phone: 512-447-0455 Internet: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Home page: http://www.eden.com/~reporter
The Next Battle: MAI (Progressive Populist)
___ THE PROGRESSIVE POPULIST: A MONTHLY JOURNAL FROM THE HEARTLAND January 1998 -- Volume 4, Number 1 ___ EDITORIAL The Next Battle: MAI The good news is that the move to stop "Fast Track" for international freebooters in the House of Representatives has gotten the attention of the Washington elites. The bad news is that the corporate lobby not only will make another run at the House to pass Fast Track this spring, but it will seek to belittle us, divert our attention and neutralize our leaders before the next big battle, over the Multilateral Agreement on Investments. Already we are being dismissed by the State Department as "the flat earth and black helicopter crowd." The government has deposed Teamsters President Ron Carey and is gunning for AFL-CIO President John Sweeney and Secretary Richard Trumka, who helped mobilize the anti-Fast Track insurgency; and Congress is aiming to defund unions and other progressive groups that might organize a populist movement. What is at stake with MAI? Ronnie Dugger, co-chair of the Alliance for Democracy, which has made fighting the treaty its top priority, raised the alarm at a public forum in Austin on December 3: "This secretly concocted MAI treaty is all-out war by the transnational corporations on democracy itself. It is the second Cold War." The treaty would protect the rights of international investors, but it also would make it easier to shift production to low-wage countries, without setting standards for fair treatment of employees, environmental protection or anti-competitive practices. It would accelerate the "race to the bottom," as nations would be pressured to lower living standards and weaken environmental safeguards in order to attract capital. Most importantly, the treaty would allow corporations to sue governments if they believe a national, state or local law violates the MAI or poses a barrier to investment. And the corporations could bypass regular U.S. courts and take their complaints to international tribunals or arbitration according to rules set by the International Chamber of Commerce. "We should never give up our right to pass national laws, state laws or local laws in our own interest, but if and when this treaty is adopted, that is exactly what we shall be doing," Dugger said. "GATT, NAFTA, the World Trade Organization [are] steps along the road. MAI is the shoe dropping." Over the past two years the treaty has been drawn up secretly in the basement of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, a group that represents 27 of the richest nations and two Third World nations - South Korea and Mexico. Yet it was only in January 1997, when a preliminary draft of the document was leaked to the Third World Network, that MAI became semi-public. I say semi-public because although it got some notice in publications such as The Nation, in these pages and on the Internet, it had received scant mention in the corporate-controlled big-city dailies through November. It was ignored during the debate on what sort of trade agreements might get "Fast Track" treatment by Congress. After the Fast Track retreat from the House, Peter Beinart analyzed MAI in the December 15 New Republic as "The Next NAFTA" and R.C. Longworth wrote of MAI in the Chicago Tribune of December 4. Beinart noted that the story has gone "wholly unnoticed in the elite press." Longworth also noted the lack of attention it has received, and observed, "This obscurity seems deliberate." He noted that the Clinton Administration has done nothing to promote public interest. Apparently, if they didn't issue a press release, neither the New York Times, the Washington Post nor the Los Angeles Times, much less the network news, were interested. We really hate to sound like conspiracy theorists, but there is very little in the conduct and reporting of these treaty negotiations to inspire confidence that U.S. trade officials or media moguls are acting in the best interests of the American people. For more information on MAI, as well as a draft of the treaty, see the Public Citizen web site at [www.citizen.org] or contact the Preamble Center for Public Policy, 1737 21st St. NW, Washington, D.C. 20009; phone 202-265-3263. For the text of Dugger's remarks, see the Progressive Populist web site at [www.eden.com/~reporter] As for the backlash to the wreck of Fast Track, we don't think it is too much to say the government is retaliating against unions for the more aggressive advocacy of working people's issues. Republicans are sponsoring legislation in Congress and in the states to require unions to get written approval from individual members every year before that member's dues could be used for political purposes. The disqualification of Ron Carey as Teamsters president for
Re: Fast Track Down, Not Out/Progressive Populist 12/97
At 09:02 AM 12/3/97 -0600, William Lear wrote, responding to John Gulick: Who is "you"? Could you insert the person's name to whom you are responding? It makes following the thread a bit easier. Sorry. This is a shortcoming of my mail application. Not all of the Reform Party positions are compatible with progressive populism. But progressive populists ought to work with the Reformers on common issues such as opening the ballot to alternative parties, campaign finance reform, fair trade laws and encouraging small farmers, small businesses and American manufacturing. Excuse me, but if the "progressive populist" movement has not enough moral imagination to oppose free trade agreements and the MAI because of the destitution these policies/laws/institutions wreak upon workers and peasants in "developing countries," and instead gets all up in arms embattled textile firms in the Piedmonts and gracious U.S. "sovereingty," then I don't see much difference between "progressive populism" and Buchanan's crypto-fascism, or other crypto-fascisms in Europe. All this righteous anger might be better directed at someone who actually does not oppose free trade agreements. From the quote you are responding to, "you" mentions "fair trade laws", exactly the opposite (according to my reading of Tom Athanasiou's book) of "free" trade. I deliberately intended to critique this proponent (i.e. the author of the article, who is the same person who issued the e-mail) of so-called fair trade, b/c it is my belief that they oppose so-called free trade for all the wrong (provincial and yes, protectionist) reasons. Jim Cullen responds: The tone of your criticism is one of the reasons that most American workers would just as soon export liberals to Myanmar, rather than support their causes. My editorial appeals to the self-interest of American workers because they are the ones who can have an impact on United States trade policy. If the United States adopts fair trade rules, which are designed to improve labor and health policies internationally, that ought to help workers in the Third World. I suppose at a moral level perhaps it is unworthy of us to couch our arguments in self-interest, but at a practical level I don't see anything wrong with an American worker getting involved politically to protect his or her livelihood. To paraphrase the bumper sticker, Think Globally, Act Provincially! John Gulick Ph. D. Candidate Sociology Graduate Program University of California-Santa Cruz (415) 643-8568 [EMAIL PROTECTED] THE PROGRESSIVE POPULIST James M. Cullen, Editor P.O. Box 150517, Austin, Texas 78715-0517 Phone: 512-447-0455 Internet: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Home page: http://www.eden.com/~reporter
Fast Track Down, Not Out/Progressive Populist 12/97
___ THE PROGRESSIVE POPULIST: A MONTHLY JOURNAL OF THE HEARTLAND December 1997 -- Volume 3, Number 12 ___ EDITORIAL Fast Track is Down, But the Game's Not Over The people won a round last month when President Clinton and House Speaker Newt Gingrich called off the push for a "Fast Track" vote in the House of Representatives. Clinton was unable to persuade House Democrats to grease the trade rules. He even found himself dickering with Republicans to get them to sign onto the legislation that was designed by Big Business for Big Business. Clinton may have done the GOP a favor when he threw in the towel. Polls show an overwhelming number of voters - Democrats, Republicans and independents - oppose the legislation to strip Congress of its ability to amend trade deals negotiated by the President. A record vote on Fast Track would have focused popular resentment against a Big-Business-oriented Congress in the next election. Labor unions got much of the credit for stopping Fast Track - and they apparently did their job in mobilizing members - but Lori Wallach, director of Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch, also credited an electorate that is alarmed at the flow of jobs out of the United States since the passage of NAFTA. "If labor contributions were the only factor, NAFTA would have been defeated in 1993. This victory demonstrates a sea change in U.S. politics with trade and globalization as hot political issues on which voters nationwide carefully follow their elected representatives." Ralph Nader added: "As repeated polls demonstrate, [the American people] will not accept further degradation of their standards of living so that global mega corporations can increase their already record profits." The pro-NAFTA press depicted the vote as a devastating blow to President Clinton as protectionist Democrats turned against him, but that ain't necessarily so. "The real question before us now is whether we connect our values of environmental quality, worker and human rights to our economic policy," House Minority Leader Dick Gephardt said. "We've tried it the Republican way and it's being rejected. I hope now we'll have a chance to work for a trade policy that puts American values squarely into future negotiations." "This was not a debate about protectionism versus free trade," said House Democratic Whip David E. Bonior. "Those of us who opposed this fast track have altered the terms of the trade debate ... [and] stand ready to work with the president to shape a new trade policy, one that addresses worker rights, food safety, consumer protection and the environment." Is Fast Track dead? Don't count on it. It will be harder to kill than Dracula. It may come up again next spring, after corporation executives have had time to work on resistant members of Congress. Too many multinational corporations are counting on the benign-looking global trade deals - negotiated in secret - to be dumped on Congress for a quick up-or-down vote. Only later will the public at large realize that the deals authorize international groups such as the World Trade Organization to dismantle local, state and federal regulations that, in the eyes of the WTO, "restrict trade". In practical terms, these global trade deals will have much the same effect as the federal courts had earlier in this century when they expanded the commerce clause of the Constitution to overrule state regulation of corporations. For example, the Fast Track legislation could enable the President to send the proposed Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI) to Congress for a quick up-or-down vote. MAI is an international agreement to allow corporations to sue state, local and federal governments to overturn regulations that restrict trade. But this trade deal is practically unreported in the nation's corporate press. Few Americans know about this potentially fundamental transfer of power, because they depend on the corporation-dominated media to tell them about it. A search of the Nexis database of news stories shows only 14 mentions of the MAI in national or big-city U.S. newspapers since 1992, and many of those mentions turned out to be letters to the editor. As of Oct. 30, Nexis listed only one citation for the MAI in the New York Times, on September 14, 1997. There were only two mentions of MAI in the Washington Post, on June 3, 1995, and September 26, 1997. (Thanks to Ellen Dannin of San Diego for the research.) To the dismay of the business establishment, free trade is reeling. The House voted 356-64 in September to require U.S. trade representatives to better protect local, state and federal governments threatened by the WTO. (That was an implicit repudiation of the MAI.) Then on Nov. 4 the House voted 234-182 against the Caribbean Basin Initiative, which the GOP leadership had
Progressive Populist 11/97 Fight Freebooters
___ THE PROGRESSIVE POPULIST: A MONTHLY JOURNAL OF THE HEARTLAND November 1997 -- Volume 3, Number 11 ___ EDITORIAL Fight the Freebooters, Get the Word Out This issue marks the second anniversary of the Progressive Populist as a publication. It is said that less than 10 percent of periodicals survive two years and we are proud to have made the cut. We undoubtedly have surprised a few skeptics as we have published every month and slowly built our paid circulation to a little more than 2,000. We appreciate all our subscribers. We particularly thank those charter subscribers who not only took a chance on our new Journal from the Heartland but now have chosen to renew for another year or two. For those who have held off on subscribing, wondering if we would last, let the word go forth: We're here to stay. Not everybody has been happy with our work. Occasionally we get a note from somebody who thinks we are too liberal, or even socialist. About as often we get a note from somebody who thinks we are not radical enough. But the great majority of our correspondence is appreciative of our efforts to revive democratic political debate, and that is gratifying. Some enquiring minds wonder why we started a journal of politics and economics. Lord knows, starting a political magazine that starts off by alienating corporations is a good way to lose a bundle and we're not wealthy. But we grew up believing that in America individuals can make a difference, and if you believe in something you should go for it. We also grew up in a relatively small Iowa town that reflects the changes going on in rural America. Storm Lake, Iowa, in the 1960s, when I was growing up there, was probably as close to an egalitarian community as you're likely to find. We knew the grocer, the butcher, the banker, the hardware store owner, the newspaper publisher, the radio station manager and the local meatpacking plant executive. Anybody who tried to put on airs likely would be ridiculed for their pretension. Some of the wealthiest people in the county, at least on paper, were farmers and you wouldn't want to put on their airs, particularly if they raised hogs. But in the businesses along the main street, Lake Avenue, everybody pitched in for the community. If a business manager laid somebody off, he or she would have to look that person and their families in the eye when they passed on the street. The town still looks the same, but chains have turned the groceries into supermarkets; they took over the newspaper and radio station; they're moving in on the local banks; they've placed the discount stories on the outskirts of town and driven the dime stores and hardware stores out of business. You still know who works at the chain stores but you don't have a clue who owns them or who issues the order to "downsize." The phone company is diversifying its services in more lucrative markets and cutting its local staff. The meatpacking plant changed hands, drove out the union and cut wages to the point where they had to bring in workers from out of state. They include immigrants from Mexico, Asia and Africa who make more in an hour there than they made in a day or even a week back home. Storm Lake has a lot more colorful festivals than we used to have, but it also has the state's largest share of students taking English as a second language - and growing ethnic hostility. Now the factory farms are moving in, threatening to replace the family-owned farms, feed stores and stockyards that have served small towns in the Midwest for generations. Change is inevitable; it's progress, we are told. But in the new integrated agribusiness, farmers will grow crops from seeds sold by the gene-altering bioengineers and they'll raise livestock to specifications set by the meatpacking corporation. If the farmers balk, the bank will call in their loans and sell the farm to somebody who will be more cooperative. Everybody will work for Wall Street. The Company Store will be Walmart. Vertically integrated sharecroppers will end up owing their souls to Master Card. This is progress? More importantly, how did we come to this in the span of one generation? In the case of the farmer, first we ran him into debt in the 1970s. We made him dependent on credit and chemicals in the 1980s. Then we exposed him to global competition in the 1990s and replaced the local bankers with executives from Minneapolis, Chicago, New York and Los Angeles. The New Deal, coming out of the Great Depression, helped small farmers climb out of their sharecropping condition and put some stability into agriculture. It has taken 50 years for big business to put farmers back "in their place." As the independent farmer goes, so goes the small towns. There's still nothing wrong with Storm Lake that $5-a-bushel corn and
MAI reports
Does anybody on this list have access to Nexus, where you could check the number of cites for the Multilateral Agreement on Investments (formerly known as the Multilateral Investment Agreement)? A correspondent on another list said she had not seen it in a U.S. newspaper. I don't recall seeing any articles on it in the New York Times, much less my local newspaper. The only place I have seen it discussed is in the alternative press. I would be interested in the earliest cites in the Times, the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post. Thanks, -- Jim Cullen THE PROGRESSIVE POPULIST James M. Cullen, Editor P.O. Box 150517, Austin, Texas 78715-0517 Phone: 512-447-0455 Internet: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Home page: http://www.eden.com/~reporter
Re: Is listproc working okay?
Michael, now that we have shifted to galaxy, the primary addressee when you reply to a message is not the mailing-list, but the person who sent it. A bit inconvenient and worth fixing. Louis P. Also, if you get to tinkering with the list mechanics, how about putting PEN-L back in the subject line? It helps me keep my email lists straight. Thanks, -- Jim Cullen THE PROGRESSIVE POPULIST James M. Cullen, Editor P.O. Box 150517, Austin, Texas 78715-0517 Phone: 512-447-0455 Internet: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Home page: http://www.eden.com/~reporter
[PEN-L:12614] Re: Culture
William S. Lear wrote: I have one final question. I'm not very consistent in my treatment of the words "black", "blacks", "white", "whites", etc. when referring to black persons, black "culture" (I still don't know what this is exactly), etc. Is it the accepted practice to capitalize these words? For some reason, it's popular in PC copyediting circles to capitalize Black but not white. I've never understood the reason for this. I asked editors at two now-defunct publications, the Guardian and CrossRoads, why they did this, and neither could explain it. And another style issue: why is African American generally not hyphenated but Italian-American is? Doug PS: LBO house style is to capitalize neither and hyphenate both. My AP stylebook is 17 years old and when it was published they hyphenated Afro-American (apparently African American was not in use at that time), lower-cased black as a synonym for Negro and white as a synonym for Caucasian and did not address ethnic groups such as Italian Americans. I lower-case black and white when referring to races and only hyphenate ethnic groups when the term modifies something else, such as Italian-American businessman. Otherwise the person is an Italian American, African American and so on. But I think one should be consistent in the use of these terms. So what do you call people of Latin American descent? Latino, Hispanic, Latin American? Or do you try to break it down to where they came from? And what do you call "Anglos," which I've always found a little offensive, being of Irish descent? European Americans? -- Jim Cullen THE PROGRESSIVE POPULIST James M. Cullen, Editor P.O. Box 150517, Austin, Texas 78715-0517 Phone: 512-447-0455 Internet: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Home page: http://www.eden.com/~reporter
[PEN-L:12607] Re: nature of culture
On Mon, September 22, 1997 at 07:42:32 (-0700) William S. Lear writes: When the racist University of Texas Law professor Leo Graglia ... That's "Leno", not "Leo". Letting my ears type for me again... Bill Actually, it's Lino. THE PROGRESSIVE POPULIST James M. Cullen, Editor P.O. Box 150517, Austin, Texas 78715-0517 Phone: 512-447-0455 Internet: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Home page: http://www.eden.com/~reporter
[PEN-L:12233] Re: FAST TRACK ALERT; Heads Up: Son of NAFTA
Erik, I agree with you that the problem is global corporations, and we should ban the production of harmful chemicals. I certainly am no defender of the chemical producers, who also have managed to shield themselves from liability for their exports. Nor am I a defender of the agricorporations that threaten to monopolize the U.S. food supply. But another way to curtail the use of dangerous pesticides -- and to interest U.S. consumers in the cause -- is to insist that food exported to the United States is free of pesticides and other toxic chemicals. I don't think Mexican producers necessarily are being malicious, but they are using chemicals whose use is illegal in the U.S. (and they also use underpaid laborers) to produce food and export it into the United States at lower cost than U.S. producers, who (are at least supposed to) abide by our regulations. We practically cannot force Mexico to protect its domestic food supply or its farm workers, but we should assert our right to protect our own food supply, as the European Union is trying to do. The global corporations are working to take away that right through "free trade" agreements such as NAFTA, GATT, MAI and the World Trade Organization. NAFTA is a symptom of the free reign of global corporations. I don't see why we should not fight its spread. If large-scale Mexican producers cannot use pesticides on food for export to the U.S., maybe they will scale it back for food destined for the domestic market. We could prohibit the production of dangerous pesticides in the U.S., but we can't prohibit their production elsewhere, and the global corporations will fill that demand (which they admittedly created) somehow. Ultimately, the Mexican people have to demand the enforcement of food and labor safety laws. We should support them where possible. But we should not accept tainted food in the meantime. -- Jim Cullen Jim- The bigger picture may change your mind about the protection of the food supply. The U.S. produces and exports the very pesticides that you are worried about reentering the states via Mexican food exports. If we were really worried about protecting the U.S. instead of protecting corporate profits we would ban their production and distribution here. You make it sound like mexican producers are being malicious about their food exports, aiming to harm the U.S. Unfortunatly, these practices also impact the local populations who also eat these foods. Moreover, the growers and workers in the fields are exposed to these dangerous pesticides (imported from the U.S. with safety instructions written in ENGLISH) who die in the fields from overexposure. Agriculture is a very complicated industry, with 5 or so companies controlling well over 1/2 of the global food industry. Many of these operate in Mexico (Cargill, ConAgra, Continental Grain, and Monsanto, just to name a few). So many of these injustices aren't committed by the hands of Mexicans, but by U.S. corporations. Protection of food supplies should be a priority of the U.S. but it isn't NAFTA which is the cause, it is the free reign of our global corporations. Erik Leaver Interhemispheric Resouce Center THE PROGRESSIVE POPULIST James M. Cullen, Editor P.O. Box 150517, Austin, Texas 78715-0517 Phone: 512-447-0455 Internet: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Home page: http://www.eden.com/~reporter
[PEN-L:12216] Re: FAST TRACK ALERT; Heads Up: Son of NAFTA
Blaming Mexicans for bad food and drugs is a reactionary approach. Blaming NAFTA for job losses implies capitalism without NAFTA would be just fine. Citing 'border ecology' against industry in Mexico is incredible hypocracy. These are yuppie Perot arguments - lets oppose NAFTA for **good** reasons! Bill Burgess What are *good* reasons if not the protection of our food supply? Mexican farmers use pesticides that are banned in the United States and their food safety and environmental protection regulations, where they exist, are largely unenforced (as are their labor laws). The Clinton administration does not even want to include side agreements on labor and the environment in the new round of "free trade" talks. Why should we let foreign producers cut corners, compromise safety regulations and export questionable food into the United States, allowing them to undercut domestic producers who are regulated? Also, if Perot had connected with the yuppies, he'd be president today. -- Jim Cullen THE PROGRESSIVE POPULIST James M. Cullen, Editor P.O. Box 150517, Austin, Texas 78715-0517 Phone: 512-447-0455 Internet: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Home page: http://www.eden.com/~reporter
[PEN-L:12188] Re: Can You Top This
Max Sawicky wrote, Max Sawicky wrote, And I'd gladly pay to see a jacquerie. Or a purple cow? This looks like a Chagall reference, but I don't get it. Please enlighten. I've never seen a purple cow I never hope to see one but I can tell you anyhow I'd rather see than be one I can't verify which came first, the Chagall or the cow. Regards, Tom Walker The poem is by Ogden Nash, I believe. THE PROGRESSIVE POPULIST James M. Cullen, Editor P.O. Box 150517, Austin, Texas 78715-0517 Phone: 512-447-0455 Internet: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Home page: http://www.eden.com/~reporter
[PEN-L:12144] Re: Progressive Populist 9/97
Thanks for the clarification, but I thought Congress passed a bill last year stipulating that air express companies such as Fed Ex would have to be organized nationally. As I recall, it was a provision tucked into some other bill, which Clinton signed. Does anybody know what bill that was? -- Jim Cullen Not to be too picky, but in the description below of the fact that the Teamsters are forced to organize FedEx employees nationally rather than location by location, the author describes this as a consequence of a "new law." Hardly so. This is a requirement contained in the Railway Labor Act of 1926. As I understand the facts, the Teamsters had claimed that FedEx employees were covered under the NLRA (1935), which would have allowed organizing site by site or at least community by community. FedEx claimed their workers were covered by the RLA (which includes airline employees). After hearings and legal appeals, the government in its wisdom decided to apply the RLA rather than the NLRA, thus compelling the Teamsters to conduct their organizing drive on nationwide basis in a single bargaining unit, which is what they are now doing. UPS drivers have been enlisted as volunteer organizers, since they often cross paths with FedEx drivers in the course of their work. In solidarity, Michael (the rest deleted) THE PROGRESSIVE POPULIST James M. Cullen, Editor P.O. Box 150517, Austin, Texas 78715-0517 Phone: 512-447-0455 Internet: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Home page: http://www.eden.com/~reporter
[PEN-L:12132] Progressive Populist 9/97
___ THE PROGRESSIVE POPULIST: A MONTHLY JOURNAL OF THE HEARTLAND September 1997 -- Volume 3, Number 9 ___ EDITORIAL The Human Face of Labor Wins The return of Stan, our hard-working UPS driver in Storm Lake, was welcome, but the Teamsters scored an important victory for all workers when it forced United Parcel Service to concede on the issue of part-time workers. Although the corporate spinmasters tried to play down the impact of the union win, it shocked Wall Street and it undeniably boosted labor's morale after a generation of setbacks. After 20 years of corporate union-busting, stagnant if not falling wages and the rise of the attitude that corporations owe workers nothing more than their paycheck, the Teamsters' two-week strike at UPS showed a new generation what a strong union can accomplish. It was a reformed Teamsters that fought to bring the struggling young part-time workers at UPS up to full-time employment. After all, in the bad old days, the Teamsters' old guard supported the Republicans who broke the air traffic controllers, neutered the National Labor Relations Board and winked as the corporations ran the unions out of meat-packing plants, factories and shops in the 1980s and early '90s. That changed with the election of Ron Carey as president of the Teamsters in 1991 and John Sweeney as president of the AFL-CIO in 1995. When Carey was narrowly re-elected last year, preparations for the UPS negotiations already had been underway for several months. When those talks reached an impasse Sweeney and the AFL-CIO were there to back up the 185,000 striking Teamsters with financial as well as moral support, pledging $10 million a week in loans for strike benefits. "The UPS strike is our strike. Their struggle is our struggle," Sweeney declared. Global unions in solidarity threatened to shut down UPS operations outside the United States. UPS was unprepared for the union solidarity. The Teamsters also were buoyed by the support of the public, which is accustomed to sneering at unions as well as corporations. This time America sided with this union by a two-to-one margin because the Teamsters, in a rather sophisticated public relations effort, managed to focus on the workaday stresses that individual Teamsters face, and America identified with those human faces and their problems. We sympathized with UPS workers who were trying to support families but were unable to get on full-time after working years of short hours. We also rejected UPS' claim that the company was intent on providing a better pension plan for its workers, having seen corporations raid their own pension plans. And the small businesses that were strapped by the breakdown of the nation's dominant freight service just wanted UPS to come to terms with their drivers and get their packages back on track. Democracy played a key part in the success of the strike. Ken Paff, national organizer of the Teamsters for a Democratic Union, noted that the victory was, in part, a culmination of two decades of Teamster reform. "Teamster members worked hard to get our union ready to fight and win on big issues like good, full-time jobs," he said. "A decade ago our International officers were orchestrating secret deals with UPS management, and were forcing UPS Teamsters to accept contracts that were rejected in a vote by the majority. They were making deals to allow unlimited part-time labor. That's now in the past. Now we have a union leadership and membership that can win a major victory for all of labor." The UPS victory should help Carey as he goes into a court-ordered rematch this fall with James Hoffa Jr. The new election was ordered by the federal government because of complaints about financing in last year's election campaign, but Hoffa represents the old guard that got the Teamsters into the fix. This is no time for the rank and file to give up those hard-fought democratic reforms. Organized labor must sustain the fight for job security at living wages and health care for all. Part-time employment has grown from 13 percent of the workforce in 1957 to 18 percent today. Temporary worker services, which supply workers to corporations at low pay and little or no benefits, are a growth industry, and the welfare repeal last year ensures an increasing labor pool to hold down wages. "Downsizing, outsourcing, subcontracting, and privatization have pulled the rug out from formerly steady, well-paid jobs. Almost all jobs, whether or not they bear the label 'temporary,' have become less secure," wrote Chris Tilly, an economist, in the Boston Globe. Tilly also noted that only one in five part-time workers are forced to work short hours. Of those who choose short hours, some have to care for children, others are students, are disabled or seeking partial retirement. But
[PEN-L:11993] Re: Big mouth
This must be the same Jim Cullen who wrote the book on popular culture, right? How rewarding it is to have conversations with people who know what they are talking about. Glory to PEN-L. Sorry, I'm not that Jim Cullen. I'm editor of the Progressive Populist, a monthly magazine based in Austin, Texas, and Storm Lake, Iowa. (I'm in Austin.) Before that I was a daily newspaper reporter in Texas and Louisiana and associate editor of the Texas Observer in Austin. As far as knowing what I'm talking about, warrantees are neither expressed nor implied. Does anybody on this list know the other Jim Cullen, who I believe teaches at Harvard? THE PROGRESSIVE POPULIST James M. Cullen, Editor P.O. Box 150517, Austin, Texas 78715-0517 Phone: 512-447-0455 Internet: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Home page: http://www.eden.com/~reporter
[PEN-L:11973] Re: Big mouth
Law and Order, like nearly all cop shows, is inherently conservative, but at least it provides some nuances. It is likely to show judges throwing out evidence for what appears to be capricious reasons, but the judges also occasionally tilt toward the prosecution. My major criticism is that the public defenders on Law and Order appear to be capable and smart enough to file exclusionary motions, research cases and stay awake during court proceedings. Here in Texas they are likely to pull in a civil lawyer off the street and give him $500 to prepare and present a capital defense. The New York Public Defender's Office may have more resources but I bet it's squeezed, too. As I recall, didn't Michael Moriarity, who used to play the chief prosecutor, walk off the show in a dispute with the producers because of the rightward tilt? I agree with Max Sawicky that Homicide is a better show and more likely to deal with ambiguity. Its detectives have, for example, gone back to clear a man who was wrongfully convicted of murder and who had been on death row for years. And even after the evidence clearing him was submitted, they noted that it would take time to get him a court hearing and release. Homicide is more likely to go into why someone committed a crime. However, you can go too far with moral ambiguity and conflicted personalities, witness the fate of EZ Streets, where you never could figure out who were the good guys and who were the bad guys, and there was no guarantee that those distinctions would be revealed anytime soon. I would bet on something like the toilet-plunger case appearing on one or the other of the cop shows this fall. But cops and/or prosecutors will end up as good guys in that episode, because that is the only way that producers think they can sell the shows. -- Jim Cullen THE PROGRESSIVE POPULIST James M. Cullen, Editor P.O. Box 150517, Austin, Texas 78715-0517 Phone: 512-447-0455 Internet: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Home page: http://www.eden.com/~reporter
