Category: Politics

If you despise labor movements (unions), fair wages, equitable employment, and all government regulations to these effects then you support the corporate distortion of the free market.  Rejecting labor means you embrace the “global economy” now pushing the American middle class closer to third world conditions with every passing day.  There is no middle ground.  The corporate takeover of government is all about removing any resemblance of a level playing field.

The labor agenda is known:  Increased wages, worker benefits, equitable education, all parts of the plan.  They could stand to calm down on the pension issue.  Overly generous pensions, lifetime free rides were a mistake, many causing great harm but we’ve not even begun to feel the pain from these ill conceived devices now that contributions are decreasing.  What is not widely known is how far corporations have gone with their presumptions that the American consumer base is declining and may soon be forsaken.  The accepted economic phrase is “emerging markets”.  Loosely translated these are markets where consumer spending power is increasing when compared to America.  Wal-Mart wants in.

US corporations thank you for believing their tall tales of how free trade agreements will help American companies export goods.  Never mind we don’t have the public infrastructure, ports, to handle the worlds largest container ships.  Don’t worry about those details.  Who needs taxes for infrastructure for the future when immediate profits can be pocketed now?  Free trade agreements are cheap labor agreements, nothing more or less.  As one international textile executive put it “we chase poverty”, moving mobile sewing operations anywhere the labor is cheapest on the globe.  I personally know a textile executive who stopped in my office on his way from Chicago to negotiate with Butner Federal Prison in NC for cheap manufacturing labor.  Ironically he spotted Bernie Madoff working the cash register in the canteen.

Corporations are not interested in job creation.  No tax break will make them interested in job creation.  Therefore any politician towing their corporate sponsors line is not interested in job creation or wage increases, they are interested in increasing profits for shareholders. <- That’s a period.  The United States is, after all, beholden to the shareholder economy.  The only solution put forward by corporate owned legislators, “lower taxes”, is about the most aggravatingly insane, narrow minded, out of touch one liner that working American’s can be insulted with.  A repeated call for a failed and failing strategy.  But you like it.  Why?  You don’t like being a primary component in the international consumer base?  Think your spending power should rival that of a typical Pakistani seamstress on a loom?  There almost isn’t an answer that can be correlated to prosperity for the American middle class.  Our demise is often blamed on “liberalism” through some abstract, loosely correlated dialog or completely out of touch racist or bigoted rant.  Somehow gays getting married and abortions are the causes of wage stagnation?  Truth is there is no political party beholden to American workers.  Politicians are RIGHTFULLY beholden to their corporate persons.  That’s the way the law is written per the SCOTUS and their Citizen’s United ruling.  Having conquered US politics these corporate persons now have their sights set on bypassing international laws and regulations with TTIP.

Until we can break the invasion of government by Wall Street the American middle class and working poor are at the mercy of an international race to the bottom deigned by corporations and implemented through their political ties and donations.  This means voters must embrace consumer and labor advocates who are prepared to fight for a stakeholder economy and oppose the seemingly national obligation to insure investment gains on Wall Street at all costs.  To do otherwise is to contribute to your own demise and you will not be at peace with the Lick Liberal.

“Our disposition to admire, and almost to worship, the rich and the powerful, and to despise, or, at least, to neglect persons of poor and mean condition, though necessary both to establish and to maintain the distinction of rank, class and the order of society, is, at the same time, the greatest and most universal cause of the corruption of our moral sentiments.  Wealth and greatness are often regarded with the respect and admiration which should be reserved only for wisdom and virtue; and that the contempt, of which vice and folly are the only proper objects, is often more unjustly bestowed upon poverty and weakness, has been the complaint of moralists in all ages.” – Adam smith

Have you heard of TTIP?  Most people have no idea what it is.  It’s the Trans Atlantic Investment and Trade Partnership.  It’s all about removing “non tariff trade barriers”.  In other words, allowing businesses to undermine government.   They put aside the idea that Democratically elected governments SHOULD reflect the will of the people.  More often now these purchased government officials represent the lobbyists who’ve bought them.  That must be remembered as context for the remaining explanation.

Think about a dark, smokey room, closed doors, full of billionaires and politicians from the EU conducting these “negotiations”.  That’s not much exaggeration.  It’s what’s happening right now and it is the greatest threat to regional government sovereignty in the history of planet earth.  The premise is simple from the corporate perspective: removing regional legal barriers to international trade will result in prosperity for big business and therefore prosperity to all.  An international “trickle”.  Except this is pissing on everyone and everything for profit, not just the working poor.  The international version of “What’s best for Wall Street is best for Main Street”, the ongoing farce wrapped inside corporate PR lies.

Imagine a country having rules in place about GMO’s, environmental protections, addictive substances such as cigarettes voted on and supported democratically by the voters of that region or country.  Then understand that a built in component of the TTIP, an ISDS or Investor State Dispute Settlement clause, would allow corporations to file suit against a government for imposing laws that impact a corporations profits.  That’s right, a direct mechanism for international corporations to undermine democratically enacted laws for consumer, environmental and economic protections.  It’s ugly.  Real ugly and many a pro-business corporatist will stop at nothing to proclaim this a benefit.  Really, allowing corporations to over ride local and regional government regulations and protections a benefit?  I don’t give one damn how they try to candy coat that BS.  It stinks.

Again, these negotiations are all taking place very much in secret.  Recently the BBC questioned this transparency and the only pro corporatist panel response was “transparency could help businesses decide”.  That infuriated me.  How about this… Screw your big business and your single track profiteering mind!  Profit seems to be the only thing these people can correlate anything to.  The transparency is needed for the human beings these negotiations will inflict havoc upon.  In case the smart ass, pro corporate geniuses haven’t noticed corporate profits do not translate into jobs or a more stable economy for the middle class, they enrich the 2%.  The European estimates show 600K jobs lost to TTIP.  European farmers will be undermined as TTIP lowers import standards for US foods while they must adhere to local laws.  The will of the people is going to be undermined by the will of corporate leaders and profiteers who will stop at nothing, including killing people, making others destitute and destroying the environment all in the name of a return to shareholders.  This is not an exaggeration.

It’s noted that 97% of European consumer consults reject TTIP.  Ninety seven f*#king percent.  Yet they move ahead with these “negotiations”.  Why?  Corporate influence.

The counter argument in favor of ISDS is that corporations should be able to invest in foreign lands without the threat of new laws undermining their profitability.  Governments see this as a way to entice multinational corporations.  In other words, they want to negate international investment risk and insure future corporate profits.  Too big too fail, tax payer bailouts, ISDS – all mechanisms distorting what they refer to as a “free market” in the name of sought after, insured revenue and profits.

How much longer is the world going to stand by and let the wealthy international corporations tear down all consumer protection barriers to insure profit?  Not long from now we will literally be paying taxes to insure corporations and industries do not fail and that shareholders are guaranteed returns.   Workers, humans, the environment, be damned.  To these short sighted fools it’s ALL about profit, all the time.  This is not just unsustainable, it’s f*#king ludicrous and self deprecating.  It’s a miscalculated destruction of a world wide consumer base over the long term.

When you hear anything about globalization sold as beneficial remember that LOCAL is best.  LOCAL wins.  We cannot continue to hand over the will of the people in LOCAL communities to big business so their shareholders are insured profits.  I don’t know how these corporatist pigs can sleep at night after worshiping at the altar of the dollar every day.

But I do ride through the intersection, by the Wendell Auto Brokers lot, almost daily.  Sometimes straight through the lot on my bike.  And I got into an argument on the phone with Amy Shirley once because of an undisclosed towing fee for all wheel drive cars.  It was before she claimed her fame and became too important to answer the phone.

Many Americans, in their immeasurable wisdom, support the war on labor.  They despise many of the vile things unions and labor rights provided: high wages, benefits, workplace safety.  These efforts raised the price of goods right, made it harder for American corporations to compete?  Pensions almost put several companies and municipalities in bankruptcy.  Labor rights, as so many Americans assert, set the stage for U.S. corporations and local governments to fail.  Damned unions!

We don’t need labor laws because the “free market” handles all of those things labor advocates are concerned about (the simpleton version, dumbed down for easy digestion):

• The market will dictate an employees value, no union representation is required to insure a living wage.
• Employer sponsored benefits only hurt a companies bottom line.  Don’t like your benefits, quit and get another job.  Or the universal old, ignorant, white guy solution: start your own business.  Everyone can work for themselves!  That’s realistic, sound advice.  No?
• Workplace safety is self correcting, if a company has an accident their workman’s comp insurance will go up so they have an inherent duty to a safe workplace.

Now lets return to reality.

It was indeed union negotiation that lead to the real problem, the pension, not workers rights.  America has a pension problem, not a labor problem.  Someone damn sure needs to be advocating for higher wages because Big Corp., Inc. and their masters, Wall St. shareholders, certainly aren’t.  America needs to return to being a model of stakeholder capitalism, not shareholder.  Customers and employees should be every companies first priority, not insuring returns to the “hard working” investors (the wealthiest of whom never worked a hard day in their lives).

Instead Americans fill their heads with corporatist propaganda from Fox News as they correlate anti-abortion legislation to vile labor laws.  They get their heads programmed to believe that “union thugs” are responsible for the downfall of GM.  While partially true due to pension negotiations, shitty, gas guzzling cars and recalls remain the true reason GM can’t get out of the red.  There I go with reality again.  We’re all supposed to ignore that, it’s called denial.

So, if we are going with “the rich are powerful, we should worship them because they earned it” let’s at least be honest about what conservative, anti-labor advocates really want; a class system.  Americans want haves and have-nots.   No middle class, nothing to insure fair wages, no upward mobility and definitely no job security.  No, we want “right to work” states.  Let me translate “right to work”.  Despite semantics and double talk explanations “right to work” really means right to fire your ass for any reason at all without liability.  Hell yes.  What a win!  That way entrepreneurs and businesses don’t have to worry about insuring employment.  They can downsize at any time so our businesses (never forget we are all independent owners/operators or “corporate persons” in America… or you’re supposed to be) can insure those guaranteed returns to the shareholders.

Yes, America hates labor.  We hate the labor movement, working for honest wages, we hate being a burden to corporations because they are people with feelings too.  We hate labor because liberals and progressives support the labor movement and they’re all going to hell in an abortion basket.  Labor is evil because it’s possible shareholders could actually face risks on their investments.  Better the wealthy investors and Wall St. have insured returns than employees have living wages.

Record profits. If that doesn’t work then record quarterly profits. Not making profit? Then try for some record revenue to reach record profits. Got decent profit? Get more.

This is the model of the retail industry. This model hits everyone in the economy on some level regardless of how distanced they perceive themselves to be from the drive for more profit under any circumstances by retailers. We already know that almost every product in America has been off shored for manufacturing thanks to the retailers demands for increased margins. This is one of the obvious costs to US workers and the economy. There are less obvious and more ominous tactics used by retailers to increase profit at the expense of working Americans.

Here’s one example: the price of cotton. A year ago it was trading in the mid $90’s/100 lbs. It’s now down in the mid to low $80’s. When prices rose retailers raised the price of everything from garments to drop cloths to maintain their margins. Okay fine, their costs went up from their vendors. Now the raw materials price is dropping and the manufacturers, distributors and vendors are enjoying a few more points themselves, which is rare. Not so fast say the retailers, we want our price drop, based on raw materials cost, or you will lose our business to someone else willing to practically give us merchandise. Okay fine… vendors/distributors drop the price under retailer demands to keep the business. So as a consumer you should see your retail price go down in turn correct?  Wrong.

Retailers establish industry or product base lines of what consumers are willing to pay and they stick.  True, competitive discounts to consumers between retailers may cost them a point or two but it does not come close to the margin increases they enjoy as consumer prices rise and their procurement costs fall.  In short, most big boxes don’t pass savings on to their customers.   They pass them on to shareholders.  Once again shareholder capitalism rears it ugly head.  Stakeholders such as employees of Big Box, Inc. don’t enjoy wage increases along with product margin increases.   Customers don’t enjoy price breaks.  It’s Wall Street investors who enjoy the additional cash in the coffers and possible dividends.  Placing investors above all else, a relatively new part of the American experiment, is unsustainable and works to greatly exaggerate the growing inequality in the United States which, despite any argument against the poor and the reason for being so, will lead to the countries ultimate demise.  Stay tuned.