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citizens united
Trade Unionism vs. the Oligarchy on Labor Day and Every Day
The working people of our country are increasingly aware of the unprecedented level of corporate greed and power we are now experiencing, and the outrageous level of income and wealth inequality that exists.
Sep 02, 2024
As we celebrate Labor Day, 2024, there is some very good news.
Public approval of labor unions, at 70%, is higher today than it has been in decades. Over the last year major unions like the UAW have won some highly publicized strikes, while many other unions have negotiated trail-blazing contracts for their members. Young people at Starbucks and on college campuses are now more involved in labor organizing than ever before. And, for the first time in American history, a president of the United States, Joe Biden, walked a picket line with striking workers.
It is not an accident as to why we are now seeing more militancy and growth in the labor movement. The working people of our country are increasingly aware of the unprecedented level of corporate greed and power we are now experiencing, and the outrageous level of income and wealth inequality that exists. They understand that never before in American history have so few had so much, while so many continue to struggle. And they are fighting back. They know that workers in unions can negotiate contracts that give them better wages, working conditions and benefits than non-union workers. They appreciate that when you’re in a union you have some power against the arbitrary decisions corporate bosses.
On this Labor Day, let us redouble our efforts to grow trade unionism in America and create the kind of grassroots movement we need to take on the power of the Oligarchy.
Working people today are more than aware that, over the last 50 years, there has been a massive transfer of wealth from the bottom 90% to the top 1%. They are disgusted that, despite huge increases in worker productivity, real inflation-accounted for wages for the average American worker are lower now than they were over 50 years ago as 60% of Americans live paycheck to paycheck. They are insulted that CEOs of major corporations make almost 350 times as much as their average employee. They are concerned that the American dream is ending and that their kids may have an even lower standard of living than they do. And they worry that with the rapid growth of Artificial Intelligence and robotics, they have no power as to what will happen to their jobs as the economy undergoes major transformations.
The average American worker also understands that his/her political power has been significantly diminished as billionaires pour huge amounts of money into both political parties as they undermine our democracy. It is no great secret as to who now has the clout in Congress. It is the billionaires, the corporate CEOs, the campaign donors and their well-connected lobbyists.
Bottom line: The average American worker is sick and tired of status quo economics and politics. He/she knows that in the richest country on earth we can and should have an economy and political system that works for all, and not just the wealthy few, and that a strong union movement is the vehicle for bringing about the changes that we need.
On this Labor Day, as we reaffirm our support for the trade union movement and for labor solidarity throughout the world, as we continue to fight the day to day struggles against corporate greed, it’s important that we not lose sight of our vision for the future and what kind of country we want to become. Here, in my view, are just a few components of the agenda we need to fight for.
We must establish a vibrant democratic political system. One person, one vote. We must end the disastrous Citizens United Supreme Court decision and the billionaire funding of campaigns through super-PACs. We need to move to the public funding of elections and give political power back to ordinary Americans.
We need to pass the PRO Act and end the ability of companies to illegally intimidate and fire workers who want to join a union. Corporate interests spend an estimated $400 million a year on anti-union consultants who do everything possible, legal and illegal, to fight the right of workers to join unions.
We need to end starvation wages in America and raise the $7.25 an hour federal minimum wage to a living wage. People should not have to work two or three jobs just to pay the bills for their families.
We need trade policies that benefit workers in the U.S. and abroad, not just the CEOs and stockholders of major conglomerates. We need to rebuild our manufacturing sector and create good paying jobs here.
We need to join the rest of the industrialized world and guarantee health care to all people as a human right through a Medicare for All, single payer system. No one should go bankrupt because of a hospital stay. Everyone in America, regardless of income, should have the right to see a doctor.
We must finally guarantee paid family and medical leave to every worker in America. New moms and dads should be able to spend the first few months after delivery with their newborn child. Family members should be able to care for a loved-one who is sick without having to worry about missing a paycheck.
Like health care, education and job training must be considered a human right from childcare to graduate school. At a time when, in a highly competitive global economy, we need the best-educated workforce in the world, no one should be forced to go deeply in debt to get the education and training they need to be productive members of our society.
At a time when 50% of older workers have nothing in the bank for retirement, and 25% of seniors are trying to live on $15,000 a year or less, we must re-establish Defined Benefit Pension plans and increase Social Security benefits. Workers are entitled to a secure and dignified retirement.
And finally, we must address the unprecedented and outrageous level of income and wealth inequality that currently exists. No. It is not acceptable that three multibillionaires own more wealth than the bottom half of American society. It is not acceptable that many billionaires pay an effective tax rate that is lower than truck drivers or nurses. We need a progressive tax system that demands that the wealthiest people in our country finally start paying their fair share of taxes.
Let’s be clear. None of these progressive concepts are “radical.” While they are opposed by the Big Money interests and marginalized by the corporate media and the political establishment, they are strongly supported by a majority of the American people. Most of these ideas, in one form or another, are already in place in other wealthy countries around the world.
So, on this Labor Day, let us redouble our efforts to grow trade unionism in America and create the kind of grassroots movement we need to take on the power of the Oligarchy. Let us, in the wealthiest nation in the history of the world, create an economy that provides a decent standard of living for all, and not just massive and obscene income and wealth inequality.
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The Corrupt Right-Wing Supreme Court Is the Cancer at the Heart of US Democracy
Republicans on the Supreme Court, 5 of the 6 appointed by presidents who lost the national vote, are the main reason why Americans can’t have nice things.
Aug 29, 2024
Republicans have pulled off a coup against an entire branch of government, and nobody seems to have noticed. But if you pay attention, it’s shocking.
Sometimes you can learn as much from attending to what Republicans suddenly stop saying as from what they are talking about. In this case, it’s their half-century-long obsession with convening a constitutional convention to rewrite the U.S. Constitution. Under Article V of our Constitution, when two-thirds of the states formally call for a “con-con” to rewrite our nation’s founding document, it officially comes into being.
They can then make small changes like enshrining the right of billionaires and corporations to bribe judges and politicians, or insert the doctrine of corporate personhood into the document, or simply throw the whole thing out and start over. Many on the right are hoping to insert a national ban on abortion into a new constitution; others want to end the right of women to vote, do away with all antidiscrimination laws, outlaw labor unions, or return the selection of senators to the states.
So far, 19 Republican-controlled states have signed on to a call for for a convention under Article V. The project, heavily funded by righ-twing billionaires, even has its own website: conventionofstates.com. Consider just a sampling of recent GOP supporters of the project:
- Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.): “One of the things I’m going to do on my first day in office is I will put the prestige and power of the presidency behind a constitutional convention of the states.”
- Texas Gov. Greg Abbott: “We need a Convention of States to restore the rule of law in America.”
- Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis: “An Article V Convention of States is the best way to bring power back to the states and the people.”
- Rep. Jodey Arrington (R-Texas): “We need to go back to our founding document, back to our Constitution, and put the restraints on Congress that our founders intended.”
- Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas): “An Article V Convention of States is a powerful tool given to us by the founders to rein in the federal government.”
- Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.): “I’m a big fan of the Convention of States project. I think it’s the solution to Washington’s overreach.”
But over the past year, Republicans have suddenly fallen silent on the issue. Project 2025, for example, the all-encompassing wish-list for the GOP and its billionaire owners, lacks even one single mention of a constitutional convention.
Why would this be?
The simple and obvious answer is that Republicans are rewriting the Constitution right now, this year and last, through their proxies among the six corrupt Republicans on the U.S. Supreme Court.
Having succeeded in seizing the court, the GOP has been able to relax about their plan to call a convention. So far, just in the past two years, Republicans on the court have taken an ax to the Constitution. They have:
- Turned presidents who are inclined to break the law into kings or monarchs who are no longer accountable to police, courts, or juries, essentially rewriting Article II, Section 2 of the Constitution.
- Ended the constitutional rights of women to their own bodies, ignoring or rewriting the 1st, 4th, 9th, and 14th Amendments to the Constitution.
- Gutted the power of federal agencies to protect consumers and our environment, essentially rewriting Article I, Section 7 of the Constitution.
- Fully legalized the bribery of politicians so long as the bribes are paid after the deed is done (making it a “tip”) rather than before (which the court said would still be a bribe) overriding multiple constitutional prohibitions on bribery.
- Overturned parts of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution and the Voting Rights Act to legalize racially discriminatory gerrymandering where it benefits Republicans.
- Rewritten the Second Amendment and legalized bump stocks to put functionally fully-automatic weapons of war on our streets.
And, it appears, they’re just getting warmed up. Next year could see an end to gay marriage, contraception for single people, the abortion pill, the right to possess pornography (which they get to define) or read “banned” books, any meaningful regulation of billionaire-owned social media, further gutting of union rights, and the insertion of religion into schools nationwide… among other things.
Given how radical and willing they are to overturn established law, constitutional doctrine, and to create new law or constitutional doctrine out of thin air, it’s easy to see why Republicans would shift their efforts away from trying to rewrite the Constitution and toward supporting their shills on the court.
This has not gone unnoticed by U.S. President Joe Biden and his Democratic colleagues. Last month, when the six corrupt Republicans on the Supreme Court ruled that presidents can commit crimes without consequences if they call them “official acts,” President Biden spoke out with an uncharacteristic ferocity:
This decision today has continued the court’s attack in recent years on a wide range of long-established legal principles in our nation, from gutting voting rights and civil rights to taking away a woman’s right to choose to today’s decision that undermines the rule of law of this nation.
Two weeks later, The Washington Post reported:
President Biden is finalizing plans to endorse major changes to the Supreme Court in the coming weeks, including proposals for legislation to establish term limits for the justices and an enforceable ethics code, according to two people briefed on the plans.
With Vice President Kamala Harris having replaced President Biden at the top of the Democratic ticket, and the House still under the control of extremist Republicans under Rep. Mike Johnson (R-La.), it appears that President Biden’s Supreme Court agenda has receded into the background.
But Vice President Harris and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz should be (and almost certainly are) putting considerable attention and work into how to restrain the Supreme Court from doing further violence to our constitutional system of government once they’re in office.It must be, in fact, their first order of business, for two major reasons.
The first is that several of the rulings by Republicans on the court have had the effect of amplifying and solidifying Republican control over the nation. By single-handedly overturning the voting rights act and legalizing bribery by billionaires, they’ve created a political imbalance that fails to represent the people of our country and instead just does what their favorite billionaires and giant corporations want.
As Michael Moore reports, multiple polls have found in recent years:
- 90% of Americans want stronger gun control laws.
- 89% want an end to partisan and racial gerrymandering.
- 84% want free pre-kindergarten.
- 79% want the morbidly rich and corporations to pay their damn taxes.
- 76% want a higher minimum wage.
- 73% want an end to student debt and free college.
- 72% want action on the climate crisis and money out of politics.
- 71% want an end to union-busting.
- 70% want marijuana legalized nationwide.
- 69% want to maintain gay marriage and abortion rights.
- 65% want to end the electoral college and put term limits on SCOTUS justices.
None of these things are happening because of the Republican lock on the Supreme Court, the third and unelected branch of government which is today only beholden to whichever billionaire offers individual members the best gifts, goodies, and expensive vacations.
Had the actual winners of the national vote become president in 2000 and 2016, the only Republican on the court today would be Clarence Thomas, and America would be a very different nation.
Instead, we’ve had two illegitimate Republican presidents who essentially packed the court. Justice Sandra Day O’Connor was clear about why she cast the tie-breaking vote to hand the presidency to George W. Bush in 2000: She told friends she didn’t want her replacement to be chosen by Al Gore. And, of course, Donald Trump would never have become president without help from Russian President Vladimir Putin.
These Republicans on the Supreme Court, 5 of the 6 appointed by presidents who lost the national vote, are the main reason why Americans can’t have nice things—from a national healthcare system to free college to a functioning democracy that does what the majority of its citizens want—like every other democracy in the world.
The second reason Harris and Walz should be preparing to act immediately after they’re sworn into office on January 20 of next year (G-d willing!) is that a president’s power is at its peak the moment she takes office. After that, it’s largely downhill, as opposition politicians and the press pile on and even members of their own party begin to highlight cracks in the new administration’s policy chops.
This is why FDR, LBJ, Ronald Reagan, Barack Obama, and Bidenall got so much done in their first 100 days. If they hadn’t started out with their top and most controversial priorities, they never would have been able to get to them.
And, because the cancer at the heart of our democracy is currently centered in the Supreme Court, it’s why President Harris and Gov. Walt must focus their energy and political capital on taking on this out-of-control Supreme Court’s power as soon as they take office.
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3 Important Questions You Won’t Hear Asked in the Presidential Debates
We should not underestimate the power of debate questions to shape the political landscape.
Aug 28, 2024
In November 2020, Common Dreams published my op-ed “Three Questions That Didn’t Get Asked During the Presidential Debates (and Probably Never Will).” The article offered several probing policy questions that (I surmised) would never make it through the corporate media’s screening process. Sure enough, none of those issues were addressed in the widely televised debates in advance of the 2020 election.
But here we are again. As we approach the November election, I find myself once again reflecting on some of the urgent policy issues that always seem to get buried in the corporate media’s constant supply of irrelevant distractions. This includes but is not limited to endless and often relatively inconsequential and inconclusive polls, the character assassinations of the day, gratuitous speculation from talking heads supplying what one of my old college professors used to call “graceful monuments to the obvious,” and whole buckets of information overload that lack perspective and thoughtful analysis. The now nearly universal proclivity of large news organizations to emphasize horse-race politics combined with infotainment and political theatrics has produced conventions and debates that sometimes seem to have more in common with rock concerts or sporting events than venues offering the kind of thoughtful analysis of issues that are supposed to be the core of democracy.
In what is undoubtedly one of the oddest and most convoluted elections in U.S. history, we seem to be in the position of choosing not only two presidential candidates but two alternate realities.
Back in the day, all this character assassination used to be called muckraking journalism and it was primarily bottom-feeder publications that engaged in it. Now, we have supposedly well-regarded mainstream media outlets digging up as much dirt and negative trivia as they can find on candidates who are now expected to pass impossible purity tests. While, on the one hand, our reigning cultural amnesia almost guarantees that the lessons of the past will get memory holed, paradoxically, the unforgiving permanence of the digital realm and the internet also guarantees that no act or mistake on the part of any public figure is either forgotten or forgiven. It seems to go without saying that all of this turmoil generates far more heat than light. Given this sorry state of affairs and offered as a simple thought experiment, here are some questions that the corporate media should be asking candidates, not only in the presidential debates but also as a matter of course given the dizzying events of this most unusual presidential campaign.
Question 1: The Role of AI in the Economy and the Job Market
Although there’s a widespread public perception that AI was only developed by Big Tech, for many years the federal government has sponsored a huge AI development program working closely with and even funding the private sector. In 2024, Big Tech unleashed powerful but still poorly understood AI capabilities into the economy before their implications and impact on labor markets could be fully assessed. The federal government lagged even further behind industry in trying to come up with sound regulatory policies so that AI would not severely disrupt an already tenuous and unstable economic picture. It now seems abundantly clear that AI is indeed displacing all sorts of jobs ranging from customer service to professional positions in marketing, accounting, entertainment, and many other fields of endeavor.
Rather than facing and managing a problem that government itself helped create, Congress and the executive branch seem content to allow unelected technocrats such as Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, to formulate policy proposals and other much needed guardrails. In addition, it’s troubling that rogue AI is already acting as a chaos agent, can undermine the foundations of democracy by empowering hackers, and is further aggravating the crisis of information quality and validity that haunts our political landscape. In the larger picture, both robots and AI—with the apparent blessing of both corporations and government—are beginning to intrusively inject themselves into society, culture, and politics. Given all of these trends, what is your position on how AI and robotics will impact the economy and the quality of life in the U.S.?
Question 2: Privatizing the Healthcare System
The mass closings of Steward hospitals nationwide has dramatically highlighted state and federal governments’ failure in allowing for-profit and private equity companies to take over many aspects of the healthcare system. This company, which operated 31 hospitals in eight states, has now filed for bankruptcy and has been selling its hospitals to pay off creditors after years of mismanagement and profiteering by its executive team. Private equity firms have been making acquisitions in healthcare for years including ambulances, hospitals, and, more recently, primary care practices.
The corporate greed of these companies is appalling. They see the decline in healthcare offering opportunities for monetary gain even as they themselves contribute to that decline and government regulators do little to ameliorate the situation. Many citizens, through no fault of their own, are mired in medical debt. Reportedly, the largest use of gofundme in the U.S. is now for paying medical bills. In addition, the way that the Covid-19 crisis was handled—a topic now seemingly memory holed during the campaign—has also been a major factor in the downward spiral of healthcare quality. Given these realities, what is your plan for restoring reliable and affordable healthcare in the U.S. and getting for-profit companies out of the healthcare system?
Question 3: Out-of-Control Corporate Influence in U.S. Politics
The longstanding ripple effects from the Citizens United Supreme Court decision have dramatically altered the political landscape. Not only has it opened the door to outsized influence from dark money and billionaire donors but it has also allowed corporations to wield wildly disproportionate influence on government policies and legislation. This is a problem that threatens the very core of our democratic processes. Over the last few decades, corporate power has increased many times over and the takeover of U.S. politics has opened the door to corrupt practices and allowed corporations to place their interests over and above the collective interests and well-being of the public. Public opinion polls show this is one major reason why Americans now have such little faith in all three branches of government.
Because the most powerful and influential companies tend to be in the Big Tech sector, equally concerning is how technological control is being used to advance and consolidate this new “behind the scenes” power structure. We might view it as technologically-enhanced “back door” politics. The overall privatization of the public commons and the sweetheart deals that take place behind the scenes are now deceptively coded as “public-private partnerships.”
Many current and challenging societal problems can be traced to this corporate takeover. Further, a huge part of this scenario is the information control wielded by Big Tech and Big Media which have become our primary sources of political news and information. Given this situation, what is your position on the disproportionate control that corporations now exercise over our political system? What will your administration do to eliminate pay-for-play politics, and restore the kind of democratic governance that Americans deeply long for and deserve?
In what is undoubtedly one of the oddest and most convoluted elections in U.S. history, we seem to be in the position of choosing not only two presidential candidates but two alternate realities. It’s all the more important therefore that responsible and responsive probing of the top-of-mind existential issues faced by the American public be thoughtfully and proactively addressed by the media. Many Americans are already asking these hard questions in their minds and hearts. If this process can be broadened to embrace the public commons of debate and vigorous discourse, then perhaps we’ll see a glimmer of hope for real transformative change at this unprecedented crossroads in our nation’s history.
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